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A Blue-Sky Idea For the USPS — Postal Trucks As Sensors
An anonymous reader writes "The US Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. [Registration-required link; this no-reg summary encapsulates the idea, as does this paper by the same author.] (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise."
I'm in the UK and post prices are going to rise to 46p per stamp soon. I don't care about rural areas. You pay less for property and goods in those areas, so if you have to pay extra for stuff like mail and broadband or whatever then factor it in - I've no interest in subsidizing you! Where's my interest in saving you some money?