This doesn't surprise me, because I was once 'randomly' selected for 'secondary screening' at an airport in Houston, Texas. The TSA screener glanced through my carry-on without saying a word, outside of just friendly banter. But the screener locked onto the USB thumbdrive on my keys, and seemed almost afraid to remove the cap on the end; he demanded to know what it was immediately. I told him it was a USB thumbdrive, for a computer. He looked puzzled and started looking at me like I had said it was a knife, so I rattled off every name I could think of for a thumbdrive - flashdrive, jumpdrive, memory stick, etc., etc. He still didn't get it, so I told him it plugged up to a computer and stored photos. He said "Oh, well, can you turn it on and show me?". I told him no, it didn't work unless it was plugged up to a computer - that seemed to satisfy him and he gave me my keys back and waved me through.
I can understand (maybe) how someone could be ignorant of what a thumbdrive was, but how could a TSA screener at a major US airport get through his job without ever seeing a USB thumbdrive before?! This was a fairly common brand/model, too, it wasn't anything unique or rare. And this occurred in the past year or two, it wasn't like thumbdrives were new on the market at the time.
Scary stuff, so I'm not surprised at all that the new MacBook Air is causing trouble at security checkpoints; it seems like the TSA isn't training their people on what laptops and other technological devices should/should not look like, as well as what the latest developments are. Considering how commercially successful Apple has been and how many people consider the latest Apple products a status symbol, I'm floored that the TSA hasn't issued some sort of bulletin to their screeners about the new MacBook Air.
If you're one of the lucky few that's scored Amazon's new e-book reader, the Kindle, look out if you try to fly with it...I'd love to try to explain that one at security. "No, it's not really a computer, it's basically an electronic book..."
I think this is a great idea; check out my comment below, http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206648&cid =16858478 - UTA knew about the dangers, and had accidentally posted student's social security numbers on the Internet in the past. I think there's grounds for a lawsuit, and as someone who had been asking UTA to stop using his social for years, I would join a class action lawsuit if someone organized such a suit.
Ahh, UTA. My bittersweet alma matter. Had some great times there, and some really frustrating times.
Perhaps the most frustrating was when my name, phone number, dorm room number and Social Security Number were PUBLISHED ON THE INTERNET. This was in Feb 2003. The university was notified, they eventually took down the webpages that had been indexed by Google (searching for someone's name who lived anywhere on campus at UTA resulted in their social security number popping up in a result on Google. How handy!) and they engaged in massive spin-control.
After it happened, it became fairly public knowledge that UTA used your social security number as your student id, and that your student id was actually encoded in plaintext on your student id card. Lose your student id card, lose your social security number.
The University of Texas System made some system-wide rules after another data security incident occurred shortly thereafter at the University of Texas at Austin. Schools were no longer to release social security numbers to professors, since they had no need for it, and all schools in the UT System were to stop using social security numbers as identifiers within a year or two. This deadline was continually extended, until they finally set it at September 2007.
My social was also one of the ID #'s that were stolen in this theft. I too, was appalled at how UTA handled this. Originally, the notification on UTA's website said that the Office of Information Technology would have a form you could fill out giving them your email address and asking them to check if you were affected; the notification was later edited to say that you must call the University's registrar's office and update your address, email address and phone number if you wanted them to contact you - clearly an effort to update the records of the Office of Development so that they could get your current address to begin spamming you about their new fundraising campaigns. And the "discounted" identity monitoring service...from a company I've never even heard of? Nice, UTA. Makes me so proud to call UTA my alma matter.
I honestly think there's enough here for a lawsuit, and would love to participate in it. Anyone heard anything about a suit, or considering one?
XMMS, a multimedia/mp3 player was tested as part of what the article calls a "$1.2 million, three-year grant [the Department of Homeland Security] awarded to a team consisting of Coverity, Stanford University and Symantec Corp" that was setup to "reinforce the quality of open-source programs supporting the U.S. infrastructure".
40 programs were tested. 40 open source programs. Not even all the programs installed by, or regularly used on, a default install of a particular distro or two; just 40 programs. I thought maybe these 40 were just the first 40 tested, but the original announcement of the award of the grant states that 40 programs would be tested.
And yet they didn't test BIND? ssh? Also, PostgreSQL is on the results list, but MySQL isn't? Did Homeland Security put this list together?! Using a dartboard and a list of open source applications, or what?!
This seems like a great software package, and I'm glad that Homeland Security acknowledges that "much of the critical infrastructure runs on open source", but I could think of a few other ways they could've spent $1.2 million, or at least a few other applications they should've tested before they got to XMMS.
You may have a point; I can't find it now, but there's a site that tracks the number of eBay auctions over time, and it has been in a steady decline for over a year. The fee hikes, the attitude changes...eBay has alienated a lot of people in the past year or two.
Well, list it with "pearl" in the title in the jewelry catagory, I suppose!:) Good point.
At least in the jewelry catagory, you usually get a warning concerning the policy that states "sellers may use the stone name or "pearl" in the item title or description only if the stone name or "pearl" is immediately preceded or followed by the words "simulated" or "imitation", spelled out in full."
Didn't even notice what these two are selling, or that it was only two. And honestly, if it's only two sellers, and they have a combined total of over 3,000 active listings, then they won't be pulled any time soon.
Oh, by the way, it helps to look at more than just one page of the search results - it's not just 'two vendors with a bunch of boiler plate'. So far I've counted (not giving their whole eBay ID here, why make it easier for eBay to pull them): dp*****, bo******, tr******, sss****** - and that's just from the first couple of catagories I checked. Nice try, though.
Anyway, nope, none of these are our competition. Our target audience, unfortunately, won't be adopting Google Checkout any time soon, I wish they were, we'd love to implement it, but right now it's hard enough to convince our market to use a credit card direct instead of PayPal; customers in our segment drink a little too much of the eBay Kool-Aid.
Yup, a lot of people have used that to skirt various eBay rules, but as sad as this is, if you want to do well on eBay, there's a certain amount of kissing up you have to do; pissing eBay off can very much be "biting the hand that feeds you". Also, this is even sadder - if you're a PowerSeller running a thousand auctions and you put something up saying "Please contact for details", you will get at least 5-10 emails a day asking you will accept payment via this site their cousin's neighbor's dog has developed, and countless other random references. Maybe it's the market we're in, but at least in my experience on eBay, eBay has attracted a huge audience, with greatly varying levels of intelligence and understanding.
As I posted last week on that Google Checkout story ( http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189880&cid =15630137 ), eBay explicitly bans ALL payment services that eBay hasn't reviewed and approved; and I guarantee they're either going to take years to 'review' Google Checkout, or they'll find some reason "for your protection" to permanently ban Google Checkout.
The interesting thing is to see how strictly eBay will enforce this rule - if they're really going to focus on forcing Google Checkout out of eBay, or if it'll be yet another rule that is only enforced from time to time.
The company I work for is an eBay PowerSeller, and we've noticed there's basically three types of policy violations in eBay's eyes:
1. those that eBay checks for when you list an item (try listing an item with 'pearl' in the title sometime to see what I'm talking about) and then either denies your listing or displays a warning message and flags your listing;
2. violations that eBay only acts on when reporting by another user (usually NOT a buyer, it's almost always a competitor);
3. violations that eBay is worried enough about that they write a program to automatically scan all open listings looking for violations.
So eBay obviously hasn't stepped up enforcement of this rule. However, if the number of current listings that mention Google Checkout drops suddenly, then it will be obvious that eBay has started treating Google Checkout like an item in the third type, not the second. This would be a policy shift to explicitly combat Google Checkout, instead of just discouraging it.
I don't think PayPal would be around today, or would have the market share it does, if it wasn't for eBay buying them out and then cramming PayPal down everyone's throats. The stories I could tell about how PayPal really "protects" both the buyers and the sellers and how completely they've managed to brainwash so many buyers and sellers.... But as long as eBay is "not an auction" and PayPal is "not a bank" and "not a credit card", I don't see anything changing any time soon. eBay has already shown that it is all but unbeatable in the auction marketplace (look at Yahoo Auctions, and they're -free- now; Overstock.com auctions are another competitor that is all but defeated) - they've so completely tied PayPal into eBay and integrated it into so many of their requirements (there's certain buying and selling requirements that force you to establish a PayPal account, even if you never plan to accept or use PayPal) that I don't see anyone defeating PayPal, at least in the auction marketplace, any time soon.
Google's best remaining chance to take PayPal on, head-on, would be to setup Google Auctions, and even then, eBay really has captured a frightening amount of loyalty and dedication from hundreds of thousands of buyers and sellers...it would be an interesting fight.
I have all the faith in Google to come up with a kick-butt service, but it's not going to beat PayPal on eBay any time soon - why? Because PayPal gets to make the rules on eBay. Since PayPal is owned by eBay, it's in eBay's best interests to protect PayPal's near-lock on the online eBay payment processing market, so they've come up with what they call (I love it) the eBay "Safe Payments Policy". (See, they're protecting us and keeping us safe. It's for our own good, of course.) The details of the policy are here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/safe-payments- policy.html
The policy lists, explicitly, what payment methods sellers are allowed to accept. The only non-PayPal online methods permitted (other than accepting credit cards directly) are "Sellers may offer to accept payment through Certapay and Propay."
The policy goes on to then list, explicitly, some specific methods sellers may NOT accept, and then ends with... "Not permitted on eBay.com:... Finally, sellers may not request payment through online payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy."
So it eBay hasn't given a payment method their blessing, eBay sellers can't accept it or offer to accept it in their listings. Those that do, per the policy, may suffer: " * Listing cancellation
* Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
* Listing cancellation
* Limits on account privileges
* Loss of PowerSeller status
* Account suspension "
eBay does that that "From time to time, as new payment services arise, eBay will evaluate them to determine whether they may present trust and safety concerns and are appropriate for the marketplace." - so they'll evaluate Google's system and any other new systems, but the criteria they state (I'm shocked they stated criteria...their decisions are usually arbitrary) present a huge hurdle, even for a company like Google - some of the criteria include if the method might cause "the potential for confusion among eBay users" - which, as a PowerSeller, I can say that PAYPAL causes "confusion among eBay users". The phrase "First Class Mail" or "This item is new" has even caused emails from "confused" eBay users.
The best part - eBay bans new services. So if new services are banned, and services have to have a track record to be permitted...then eBay-focused payment services that would compete with PayPal will never reach the point that eBay might have to approve them. The rule states "the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services".
You can read the rest of it at http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/safe-payments- policy.html but it makes it pretty obvious from even just these few excerpts that eBay wrote it to keep Google from competing with PayPal. I suppose because it's their sandbox, they can decide who plays in it, but this seems almost monopolistic to me. At least in the US, eBay is the default, standard, well-known auction website - Overstock, Yahoo Auctions, etc. have all tried to compete with eBay and failed; eBay has the vast majority of the traffic, and now they're using that position to limit who can startup online auction payment processing services - because if you want to have a successful, profitable online auction payment processing service in the US, it's going to -have- to work with eBay to generate any sizable levels of revenue.
Another case of "We make the rules, so deal with it if you want to buy or sell on our site" from eBay and PayPal. I miss the days when they were much more community-oriented and community-friendly.
Check out ZoneMinder, http://www.zoneminder.com/ - I'm also a 1 man IT department for a small office - a medical office, in my case. We've established a 5 camera system, using plain ole CCTV cameras (if you time it well, you can pick up fairly good quality CCTV dome cameras on eBay for $25 each) that we ran coax to. The coax then all runs back to a Linux server running ZoneMinder, which supports most network cameras as well as any device video4linux will support - webcams, capture cards, etc.
Our biggest problem has been finding capture cards that support Linux at reasonable prices. Most of the fancy 4, 8 or 16 input cards out there don't seem to have Linux drivers available.
I'd say ZoneMinder is the best F/OSS solution I've seen for DVR systems so far. It has many different modes, including (IMO the most useful mode) record-on-motion-detect, where it analyzes each frame for motion and only records when motion occurs. You can define different zones within each camera's view and assign them to different types - never alarm, always alarm, only alarm if another zone is alarming, etc. It appears the author is even working towards some type of adaptive system where the software can 'learn' what is an interesting event and what's just a false positive.
It discusses more than just business plans, but I highly, highly recommend you read The Art of the Start: Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki. ISBN# 1591840562, it's on Amazon for $17.79 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591840562/). Guy Kawasaki (http://www.guykawasaki.com/) has written several business books with a tech-focus, and was one of the first 'evangelists' at Apple for the Macintosh.
I'm right in the middle of (trying to, at least) following his advice with my own startup, and my girlfriend actually has a fairly successful online store and eBay business that after reading this book, I realized she started up much in the same way he recommends, and she's done well so far.
One interesting concept he pushes heavily in the book is bootstrapping - using your own resources to get the business up and running and generating some type of revenue, and then using that revenue to purchase the things you really need to generate the big revenue, etc. This model works really well for some types of online storefronts - it really all depends on how expensive your inventory is and how many different types/components/colors/sizes you have to stock, as well as how much inventory you need to keep on hand.
Before my girlfriend had enough money to buy a large inventory, she carefully purchased 2-5 of each item she thought she could sell well, up to whatever limit she had on how much money she could spend, and sold those. With the profits she made on those items, she started purchasing dozen-packs of the items that were selling well, and after those kept selling and generated even more revenue, she started using that money to branch out into new products. She's managed to start everything on her personal credit card, and after a pretty rough first year, she even manages to pay the credit card off each month and still have a good bit of money left over.
It's almost embarassing, actually, since the business I'm starting has yet to make a dime.
Obviously, if you have other resources such as a line of credit or bank-loan of some form that will charge lower interest than your credit cards, use that, but never underestimate how much you can do on your own, without needing investors. And once you do need investors, think angel investors, not VC's.
If you still think you'll need more capital than you can fund from personal resources or angels, think about bringing on a partner, someone you know who may be able to contribute some additional resources. Especially if it's someone who is a non-techie or has a more business-oriented background. I'm not talking about hiring an MBA, but it's important to balance your skills, strengths and weaknesses with someone else's, so that when you do hit a situation you don't know how to handle or need assistance with, that partner has a better chance of being able to see it from a different angle and help the business succeed.
Finally, about the business plan - Business Plan Pro is a pretty nice software package (Amazon.com sells it for $16 off the normal price, at $83.99 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 9PF1QO/) that includes quite a few sample plans and other resources and guides for writing a business plan. You can write it on your own, using your favorite text editor, using the websites of SCORE and other organizations as a guide, but I found Business Plan Pro's help with the financials was worth the price of the software. Even though a majority of the numbers in the financials of a business plan are just best-guesses and often completely wild, random guesses, potential investors put a lot of weight into the numbers they see, they want to see that you know how to put together these tables and that they have some sort of reassuring numbers to look at.
And revise it. Plan to revise your business plan often. Write
Alright, so it's fiction, but it's really good fiction, in my opinion. All about a sat. that returns to the Earth with unknown organisms aboard that create a series of crisises.
Michael Crichton wrote 'Andromeda Strain' back in the 70's, which is a pretty good book. (Barnes & Noble link, no referral ID).
It was later turned into a movie, although the movie was so-so, in my opinion.
Crichton is probably best known for Jurassic Park, but he raises some interesting issues in Andromeda Strain, if you're at all interested in science, check it out. It's also an interesting look at technology and security - Chrichton goes into detail about the safety, security and containment systems at his imagined government research facility, and then...well, read the book, but you can guess how it turns out.
Yup, an SUV with Bi-Xenon headlights that can split into two, soar into the air, and later merge back together, as well...from one of the links in the article:
They appear and disappear, veering and cavorting suddenly in odd directions. One moment there might be one, and just as suddenly, it might split into two or three or more, dividing and merging at whim. They hover in mid-air and sometimes flicker like balls of fire. They might shoot straight up into the sky, or race madly to the left and right.
People have, actually, people have 'walked towards the lights' in one form or another ever since they were first reported in the 1800's. From one of the links in the original post:
The unexpected lights alarmed the cowboys, who thought the Apaches were on the move, and they quickly doused their own campfires. But they determined to investigate the area in the daylight. After spending an uncomfortable night huddled under blankets for warmth on the cold desert floor, dawn found them on horseback, combing the area for any signs of an Indian encampment. They found none.
All day, the men searched along the base of the Chinati Mountains and the mesa between their camp and where the lights had been. They found no evidence that Indians had been anywhere in the area. No tracks, no doused campfires, no nothing. But the next night and the next after that, they again saw the strange lights.
As well as...
An unscientific method was tried in the 1980's by Dallas journalist, Kirby Warnock. Warnock's family had settled in the Trans-Pecos region just north of Big Bend country more than one hundred years ago, and he first saw the lights in 1963, when he was eleven-years-old and his brother was eight. He and his brother decided that the reason no one ever got close to the lights was because they used motor vehicles, such as airplanes, jeeps, and cars. The two men thought that if they headed out on foot across the desert, they just might be able to sneak up on the lights.
One summer, they assembled their gear and a camera, and at dusk, started walking. They tried for four hours to get close to the lights, but it was like walking up to a mirage. The more they walked, the further the lights moved away. Warnock reported that he thought the lights were "trying to frustrate and thwart us. It was like they knew what we were doing and were teasing us by staying just a little ahead of us." It is a fact that distances are deceiving in the desert. The Warnocks could not tell if they were looking at a light as big as a tire or one as big as a cantaloupe. They just could not get close enough to get a good idea of how big the lights actually were.
The lights seem to either evade or confuse anyone who attempts to walk/drive/fly closer to them, and sometimes they simply vanish if someone seems to get 'too close'. There's even been occasional reports of the lights 'chasing' a car or plane traveling through the region, but no one has ever reported getting close to any of the lights successfully.
Highway 67 was commissioned in 1927 as US Highway 67, and ended in Dallas. It didn't reach West Texas, including Marfa, until 1930. Source: Wikipedia.
As someone who lives in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex and whose company is in an office literally right in front of what I believe is the original terminus of Highway 67, you should know that the path it takes through Dallas and through most of Texas is a pretty odd one; it's a route only a (relatively) modern traffic engineer could come up with, and the path it takes through the mountains near Marfa are most likely not related to any common paths taken by carriages before the highway was built.
Also, the population density out in that part of Texas, especially before cars were common in the region, was incredibly low. I doubt there would've been enough carriage traffic on any given night to generate the type and number of phenomenon normally attributed to the Marfa lights. Considering the current population of Marfa is 2,424 people, I'm almost certain there wouldn't have been enough traffic of any sort before Highway 67 was built to generate all of the phenomenon reported during that time.
Not Very Comprehensive; Duplicate Study
on
Marfa Lights Explained
·
· Score: 5, Informative
I wouldn't be surprised if the 'official viewing area' the UTD students used in the study, supposedly constructed to keep tourists from wandering all over private property in search of a better view (but most likely constructed for the revenue), was designed so that the majority of the 'Marfa Lights' visibile from the viewing area are car headlights, as discussed in the UTD study. It ensures visible 'Marfa Lights' every night, and will keep the hype and the legend alive, in turn keeping some level of tourist dollars flowing into Marfa.
However, their study does not resolve or even address one problem with this conclusion - the lights have been visible long before cars were common, or even available, in the area. Furthermore, the students documented the lights were car headlights from US Highway 67 - however, Highway 67's west end was in Dallas when the highway was originally built; Highway 67 did not extend into west Texas and the Marfa area until 1930.
The best part is, this study has been done before, in March 1975, by another Society of Physics Students, who reached a slightly different, but similar conclusion:
Don Witt, then a physics professor at Sul Ross University in Alpine, coordinated a monumental effort to locate the lights' source. Using the Sul Ross Society of Physics Students, the Big Bend Outdoor Club comprised of community members, and local pilots, short-wave radio amateurs, and a few outside professionals, Witt's group was positively unable to form any sort of solid conclusion. They did say, however, that sometimes the lights that people claimed were "Marfa Lights," were really artificial lights from area ranches or automobile headlights merely passing behind unseen obstructions along distant Highway 67, which winds through the Chinati Mountains between Marfa and Presidio.
So some of the lights are car headlights - this was already known and accepted, I'm pretty sure. I'm disappointed with their 'grant from the Schlumberger corp.' mentioned in the PDF and the equipment they had access to at UTD, these students couldn't do a more in-depth study or come up with a more comprehensive conclusion. Sounds like a group of students at UTD wanted a 4 day all-expenses paid road-trip to one of the more beautiful parts of Texas, down near Big Bend National Park.
Then again, as a UT-Arlington (UTA) alumnus, I may be a little biased against our cross-Metroplex rivals.
First of all, it's important to read the bill and the background - it began as "The bill prohibits wireless access to obscene materials at a correctional facility." - preventing prisoners in state prisons from viewing porn.
It looks like if part (b) was struck from the bill, it would apply only to prisons, but somewhere in the process someone complained about prisoners being singled out, I bet, so they reworked the bill to include this provision.
The hearing of the House State Affairs Committee is scheduled for 8AM in room E2.010 of the Texas State Capitol. This is a public hearing, so I'd urge anyone who's in the Austin area to attend.
This site also links to a page with each representative's contact information. That second page links to their "personal" page on the Texas House of Representatives which has an "email me" form at the bottom, so you can easily email each representative on the committee about this bill.
This bill is in the Business & Commerce committee in the Senate, which has been referred 252 bills this committee, of which 221 are still in committee. Of these, approx. 14 are bills that were passed by the House and are waiting the Senate's vote. The next few scheduled meetings of the Senate Business & Committee are just to consider Senate bills, so it could be weeks before this bill is even consider in committee, if it ever is.
The bill would have to pass committee intact, then be referred back to the general body of the Senate, placed on the calendar for a vote, and then voted on. A suprising number of bills are killed by being passed by committee but never placed on the calendar - it's a way for the Senate to kill bills without actually killing them, so they can try to keep their campaign contributors AND their voters happy.
So, this is far from a done deal. Until the bill is out of the Senate Business & Commerce committee, I'd strongly urge you, especially if you're a Texas resident, to contact the members of the Business & Commerce committee.
The Senate Business & Commerce committee consists of:
Each link goes to that senators homepage at the Texas State Senate website. Most, if not all, of the senators have a web form on their site to allow you to easily email them your comments. They also list addresses, phone numbers and fax numbers - remember, letters and faxes are given much more weight than emails, so if you are really concerned about this, drop them a letter. Let them know that you are contacting them about a bill that has been referred to their committee from the House, HB 789.
I've dealt with a few of the senators in this bunch, and of the ones I know, it's a real assortment - there's a true hardcore old-style Texas politician or two in the group, but there's also a few more progressive, modern politicians that will listen to what their constiutents have to say, even over the constant drone of lobbyists in Austin.
To summarize - the meeting is Tuesday and it starts at 8AM. It's in E2.012. There are 20 other bills on the agenda for the day, so there's no way to know for sure when this specific bill will be discussed. I'd recommend you get there at or before 8AM and ask if you can testify on HB2893, and if so, what you need to do to register a written opinion on the bill or to register your desire to give your opinion in public testimony during the hearing.
The tags would store a unique ID, your VIN, make, model and year of your vehicle. There would then be a backend database that stores all of this information as well as stores if you have the minimum liability insurance required by law.
The only information not already out there is your VIN, but if you run the license plate number through a site like PublicData.com, you get the VIN.
They used to be on the plate, years ago, but they were getting stolen. They are now located inside the windshield, on the far left edge of the windshield (when sitting in the driver's seat looking out).
Apparently that didn't even totally fix the problem - the stickers now "self destruct" if you try to take them off the windshield.
Under this bill, the RFID tag will have your car's VIN, make, model and year as well as a unique ID coded to it. Furthermore, the VIN, make and model and the unique ID it corresponds to would be stored in a database connected to the RFID readers.
If you get stopped for something else, or if, for instance, they install these at the toll booths so the toll booth workers can see the data reported by the tag, faked or stolen tags would be noticed pretty quickly unless the car was the exact same make, model and year - it won't eliminate the threat altogether, but it would make it harder. Also, when they run your license plate, they get your VIN, so they could compare the VIN that's matched to the plate with the VIN that's matched to the RFID tag.
Any Texas residents or anyone that will be in Austin on Tuesday - according to the bill status at http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/db2www/tlo/ billhist/actions.d2w/report?LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER= H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=02893, the bill is scheduled for public hearing before the House Transportation Committee on 04/05/2005. Anyone may attend these hearings and register their support or opposition to the bill, and generally will also be allowed to give brief testimony. The hearing will be held at the state capitol in Austin - any of the DPS officers or volunteers should be able to point you to the right room.
Also, if you read the bill itself, the purpose of the transponder is to enforce the requirement of a minimum level of automotive liability insurance.
The transponder would rely a unique ID as well as the make, model and VIN of the vehicle it is attached to. This is all information that anyone within range of the RFID tag, including the traffic monitoring cameras, could already determine.
No matter which side you are on on this issue, show up at the hearing - this bill is very new - this is the first time it is going to be discussed, and this seems to be the first session it has been introduced in, so it's doubtful it goes very far this time. However, it's important that people show up and voice the privacy concerns inherent in this bill.
If you cannot attend the hearing, the author of the bill is Representative Phillips. His contact information is:
District Address: 421 North Crockett
Sherman, TX 75090 District Phone: (903) 891-7297
He serves as the vice-chair of the transportation committee, which this bill has been referred to.
The chair of the transportation committee is: Rep. Mike Krusee District 52 Capitol Office: CAP GW.18 Capitol Address: P.O. Box 2910
Austin, Texas 78711 Capitol Phone: (512) 463-0670
If you are a Texas resident but cannot attend the hearing in Austin on Tuesday, I'd recommend calling and requesting their fax number and faxing a letter detailing your concerns, or mailing one, but mailing it quickly.
You can also email either of these representatives via their website, although faxed or mailed letters generally get more attention.
I saw the original headline about WASTE on Slashdot, never even read the story, forgot about it. But now that I've seen AOL has yanked it from Nullsoft's site, I'm downloading it and trying it out, not to mention posting it in a few safe places.
Scarcity is an amazing thing - by trying to put a lid on this, they're actually creating a huge demand for this program. I can't wait to try it out.
"this may have more to do with Joe's friends"
on
Shuttle Politics
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Not to defend the man, because this is a stupid stance to take, but he represents an area near here at the University of Texas at Arlington, and the primary reason he would have such a high level of contributions from Lockheed Martin is because they have several locations in this area.
Opensecrets.org is based on how much employees of that company give; there's a MUCH higher than normal concentration of Locheed Martin employees in this area and in his district.
When making allegations like that, you should probably check into the facts. I'm sure that LMCO has some sort of sway with Joe, but there are many, many other corporations in this area that have just as much sway, if not moreso. For once, I don't think this politician's actions are based on something shady a campaign contributer has asked them to do. These stupid remarks really were just his thoughts on the issue. Scary.
Slashdot Mirror
This doesn't surprise me, because I was once 'randomly' selected for 'secondary screening' at an airport in Houston, Texas. The TSA screener glanced through my carry-on without saying a word, outside of just friendly banter. But the screener locked onto the USB thumbdrive on my keys, and seemed almost afraid to remove the cap on the end; he demanded to know what it was immediately. I told him it was a USB thumbdrive, for a computer. He looked puzzled and started looking at me like I had said it was a knife, so I rattled off every name I could think of for a thumbdrive - flashdrive, jumpdrive, memory stick, etc., etc. He still didn't get it, so I told him it plugged up to a computer and stored photos. He said "Oh, well, can you turn it on and show me?". I told him no, it didn't work unless it was plugged up to a computer - that seemed to satisfy him and he gave me my keys back and waved me through.
I can understand (maybe) how someone could be ignorant of what a thumbdrive was, but how could a TSA screener at a major US airport get through his job without ever seeing a USB thumbdrive before?! This was a fairly common brand/model, too, it wasn't anything unique or rare. And this occurred in the past year or two, it wasn't like thumbdrives were new on the market at the time.
Scary stuff, so I'm not surprised at all that the new MacBook Air is causing trouble at security checkpoints; it seems like the TSA isn't training their people on what laptops and other technological devices should/should not look like, as well as what the latest developments are. Considering how commercially successful Apple has been and how many people consider the latest Apple products a status symbol, I'm floored that the TSA hasn't issued some sort of bulletin to their screeners about the new MacBook Air.
If you're one of the lucky few that's scored Amazon's new e-book reader, the Kindle, look out if you try to fly with it...I'd love to try to explain that one at security. "No, it's not really a computer, it's basically an electronic book..."
I think this is a great idea; check out my comment below, http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=206648&cid =16858478 - UTA knew about the dangers, and had accidentally posted student's social security numbers on the Internet in the past. I think there's grounds for a lawsuit, and as someone who had been asking UTA to stop using his social for years, I would join a class action lawsuit if someone organized such a suit.
Ahh, UTA. My bittersweet alma matter. Had some great times there, and some really frustrating times.
n umber&vs=www.theshorthorn.com&fr=yscpb&fr=yscpb)
Perhaps the most frustrating was when my name, phone number, dorm room number and Social Security Number were PUBLISHED ON THE INTERNET. This was in Feb 2003. The university was notified, they eventually took down the webpages that had been indexed by Google (searching for someone's name who lived anywhere on campus at UTA resulted in their social security number popping up in a result on Google. How handy!) and they engaged in massive spin-control.
After it happened, it became fairly public knowledge that UTA used your social security number as your student id, and that your student id was actually encoded in plaintext on your student id card. Lose your student id card, lose your social security number.
The University of Texas System made some system-wide rules after another data security incident occurred shortly thereafter at the University of Texas at Austin. Schools were no longer to release social security numbers to professors, since they had no need for it, and all schools in the UT System were to stop using social security numbers as identifiers within a year or two. This deadline was continually extended, until they finally set it at September 2007.
UTA knew that too many people had access to students social security numbers; indeed, the school newspaper has over 92 articles concerning the school's use of social security numbers, the questionable legality of such use and the dangers (ref.: http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=social+security+
My social was also one of the ID #'s that were stolen in this theft. I too, was appalled at how UTA handled this. Originally, the notification on UTA's website said that the Office of Information Technology would have a form you could fill out giving them your email address and asking them to check if you were affected; the notification was later edited to say that you must call the University's registrar's office and update your address, email address and phone number if you wanted them to contact you - clearly an effort to update the records of the Office of Development so that they could get your current address to begin spamming you about their new fundraising campaigns. And the "discounted" identity monitoring service...from a company I've never even heard of? Nice, UTA. Makes me so proud to call UTA my alma matter.
I honestly think there's enough here for a lawsuit, and would love to participate in it. Anyone heard anything about a suit, or considering one?
XMMS, a multimedia/mp3 player was tested as part of what the article calls a "$1.2 million, three-year grant [the Department of Homeland Security] awarded to a team consisting of Coverity, Stanford University and Symantec Corp" that was setup to "reinforce the quality of open-source programs supporting the U.S. infrastructure".
40 programs were tested. 40 open source programs. Not even all the programs installed by, or regularly used on, a default install of a particular distro or two; just 40 programs. I thought maybe these 40 were just the first 40 tested, but the original announcement of the award of the grant states that 40 programs would be tested.
And yet they didn't test BIND? ssh? Also, PostgreSQL is on the results list, but MySQL isn't? Did Homeland Security put this list together?! Using a dartboard and a list of open source applications, or what?!
This seems like a great software package, and I'm glad that Homeland Security acknowledges that "much of the critical infrastructure runs on open source", but I could think of a few other ways they could've spent $1.2 million, or at least a few other applications they should've tested before they got to XMMS.
You may have a point; I can't find it now, but there's a site that tracks the number of eBay auctions over time, and it has been in a steady decline for over a year. The fee hikes, the attitude changes...eBay has alienated a lot of people in the past year or two.
Well, list it with "pearl" in the title in the jewelry catagory, I suppose! :) Good point.
At least in the jewelry catagory, you usually get a warning concerning the policy that states "sellers may use the stone name or "pearl" in the item title or description only if the stone name or "pearl" is immediately preceded or followed by the words "simulated" or "imitation", spelled out in full."
Didn't even notice what these two are selling, or that it was only two. And honestly, if it's only two sellers, and they have a combined total of over 3,000 active listings, then they won't be pulled any time soon.
Oh, by the way, it helps to look at more than just one page of the search results - it's not just 'two vendors with a bunch of boiler plate'. So far I've counted (not giving their whole eBay ID here, why make it easier for eBay to pull them): dp*****, bo******, tr******, sss****** - and that's just from the first couple of catagories I checked. Nice try, though.
Anyway, nope, none of these are our competition. Our target audience, unfortunately, won't be adopting Google Checkout any time soon, I wish they were, we'd love to implement it, but right now it's hard enough to convince our market to use a credit card direct instead of PayPal; customers in our segment drink a little too much of the eBay Kool-Aid.
Yup, a lot of people have used that to skirt various eBay rules, but as sad as this is, if you want to do well on eBay, there's a certain amount of kissing up you have to do; pissing eBay off can very much be "biting the hand that feeds you". Also, this is even sadder - if you're a PowerSeller running a thousand auctions and you put something up saying "Please contact for details", you will get at least 5-10 emails a day asking you will accept payment via this site their cousin's neighbor's dog has developed, and countless other random references. Maybe it's the market we're in, but at least in my experience on eBay, eBay has attracted a huge audience, with greatly varying levels of intelligence and understanding.
As I posted last week on that Google Checkout story ( http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=189880&cid =15630137 ), eBay explicitly bans ALL payment services that eBay hasn't reviewed and approved; and I guarantee they're either going to take years to 'review' Google Checkout, or they'll find some reason "for your protection" to permanently ban Google Checkout.
o cus=bs&sbrftog=1&catref=C6&from=R10&satitle=%22goo gle+checkout%22&sacat=-1%26catref%3DC6&bs=Search&f ts=2&fsop=1%26fsoo%3D1&coaction=compare&copagenum= 1&coentrypage=search&sargn=-1%26saslc%3D2&sadis=20 0&fpos=75050&ftrt=1&ftrv=1&saprclo=&saprchi=)
The interesting thing is to see how strictly eBay will enforce this rule - if they're really going to focus on forcing Google Checkout out of eBay, or if it'll be yet another rule that is only enforced from time to time.
The company I work for is an eBay PowerSeller, and we've noticed there's basically three types of policy violations in eBay's eyes:
1. those that eBay checks for when you list an item (try listing an item with 'pearl' in the title sometime to see what I'm talking about) and then either denies your listing or displays a warning message and flags your listing;
2. violations that eBay only acts on when reporting by another user (usually NOT a buyer, it's almost always a competitor);
3. violations that eBay is worried enough about that they write a program to automatically scan all open listings looking for violations.
Right now, it looks like Google Checkout falls into the second type - there's over 3,000 active listings that mention accepting Google Checkout (ref. http://search-desc.ebay.com/search/search.dll?sof
So eBay obviously hasn't stepped up enforcement of this rule. However, if the number of current listings that mention Google Checkout drops suddenly, then it will be obvious that eBay has started treating Google Checkout like an item in the third type, not the second. This would be a policy shift to explicitly combat Google Checkout, instead of just discouraging it.
I don't think PayPal would be around today, or would have the market share it does, if it wasn't for eBay buying them out and then cramming PayPal down everyone's throats. The stories I could tell about how PayPal really "protects" both the buyers and the sellers and how completely they've managed to brainwash so many buyers and sellers.... But as long as eBay is "not an auction" and PayPal is "not a bank" and "not a credit card", I don't see anything changing any time soon. eBay has already shown that it is all but unbeatable in the auction marketplace (look at Yahoo Auctions, and they're -free- now; Overstock.com auctions are another competitor that is all but defeated) - they've so completely tied PayPal into eBay and integrated it into so many of their requirements (there's certain buying and selling requirements that force you to establish a PayPal account, even if you never plan to accept or use PayPal) that I don't see anyone defeating PayPal, at least in the auction marketplace, any time soon.
Google's best remaining chance to take PayPal on, head-on, would be to setup Google Auctions, and even then, eBay really has captured a frightening amount of loyalty and dedication from hundreds of thousands of buyers and sellers...it would be an interesting fight.
I have all the faith in Google to come up with a kick-butt service, but it's not going to beat PayPal on eBay any time soon - why? Because PayPal gets to make the rules on eBay. Since PayPal is owned by eBay, it's in eBay's best interests to protect PayPal's near-lock on the online eBay payment processing market, so they've come up with what they call (I love it) the eBay "Safe Payments Policy". (See, they're protecting us and keeping us safe. It's for our own good, of course.) The details of the policy are here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/safe-payments- policy.html
... Finally, sellers may not request payment through online payment methods not specifically permitted in this policy."
- policy.html but it makes it pretty obvious from even just these few excerpts that eBay wrote it to keep Google from competing with PayPal. I suppose because it's their sandbox, they can decide who plays in it, but this seems almost monopolistic to me. At least in the US, eBay is the default, standard, well-known auction website - Overstock, Yahoo Auctions, etc. have all tried to compete with eBay and failed; eBay has the vast majority of the traffic, and now they're using that position to limit who can startup online auction payment processing services - because if you want to have a successful, profitable online auction payment processing service in the US, it's going to -have- to work with eBay to generate any sizable levels of revenue.
The policy lists, explicitly, what payment methods sellers are allowed to accept. The only non-PayPal online methods permitted (other than accepting credit cards directly) are "Sellers may offer to accept payment through Certapay and Propay."
The policy goes on to then list, explicitly, some specific methods sellers may NOT accept, and then ends with... "Not permitted on eBay.com:
So it eBay hasn't given a payment method their blessing, eBay sellers can't accept it or offer to accept it in their listings. Those that do, per the policy, may suffer:
" * Listing cancellation
* Forfeit of eBay fees on cancelled listings
* Listing cancellation
* Limits on account privileges
* Loss of PowerSeller status
* Account suspension "
eBay does that that "From time to time, as new payment services arise, eBay will evaluate them to determine whether they may present trust and safety concerns and are appropriate for the marketplace." - so they'll evaluate Google's system and any other new systems, but the criteria they state (I'm shocked they stated criteria...their decisions are usually arbitrary) present a huge hurdle, even for a company like Google - some of the criteria include if the method might cause "the potential for confusion among eBay users" - which, as a PowerSeller, I can say that PAYPAL causes "confusion among eBay users". The phrase "First Class Mail" or "This item is new" has even caused emails from "confused" eBay users.
The best part - eBay bans new services. So if new services are banned, and services have to have a track record to be permitted...then eBay-focused payment services that would compete with PayPal will never reach the point that eBay might have to approve them. The rule states "the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services".
You can read the rest of it at http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/safe-payments
Another case of "We make the rules, so deal with it if you want to buy or sell on our site" from eBay and PayPal. I miss the days when they were much more community-oriented and community-friendly.
Check out ZoneMinder, http://www.zoneminder.com/ - I'm also a 1 man IT department for a small office - a medical office, in my case. We've established a 5 camera system, using plain ole CCTV cameras (if you time it well, you can pick up fairly good quality CCTV dome cameras on eBay for $25 each) that we ran coax to. The coax then all runs back to a Linux server running ZoneMinder, which supports most network cameras as well as any device video4linux will support - webcams, capture cards, etc.
Our biggest problem has been finding capture cards that support Linux at reasonable prices. Most of the fancy 4, 8 or 16 input cards out there don't seem to have Linux drivers available.
I'd say ZoneMinder is the best F/OSS solution I've seen for DVR systems so far. It has many different modes, including (IMO the most useful mode) record-on-motion-detect, where it analyzes each frame for motion and only records when motion occurs. You can define different zones within each camera's view and assign them to different types - never alarm, always alarm, only alarm if another zone is alarming, etc. It appears the author is even working towards some type of adaptive system where the software can 'learn' what is an interesting event and what's just a false positive.
It discusses more than just business plans, but I highly, highly recommend you read The Art of the Start: Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki. ISBN# 1591840562, it's on Amazon for $17.79 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591840562/). Guy Kawasaki (http://www.guykawasaki.com/) has written several business books with a tech-focus, and was one of the first 'evangelists' at Apple for the Macintosh.
I'm right in the middle of (trying to, at least) following his advice with my own startup, and my girlfriend actually has a fairly successful online store and eBay business that after reading this book, I realized she started up much in the same way he recommends, and she's done well so far.
One interesting concept he pushes heavily in the book is bootstrapping - using your own resources to get the business up and running and generating some type of revenue, and then using that revenue to purchase the things you really need to generate the big revenue, etc. This model works really well for some types of online storefronts - it really all depends on how expensive your inventory is and how many different types/components/colors/sizes you have to stock, as well as how much inventory you need to keep on hand.
Before my girlfriend had enough money to buy a large inventory, she carefully purchased 2-5 of each item she thought she could sell well, up to whatever limit she had on how much money she could spend, and sold those. With the profits she made on those items, she started purchasing dozen-packs of the items that were selling well, and after those kept selling and generated even more revenue, she started using that money to branch out into new products. She's managed to start everything on her personal credit card, and after a pretty rough first year, she even manages to pay the credit card off each month and still have a good bit of money left over.
It's almost embarassing, actually, since the business I'm starting has yet to make a dime.
Obviously, if you have other resources such as a line of credit or bank-loan of some form that will charge lower interest than your credit cards, use that, but never underestimate how much you can do on your own, without needing investors. And once you do need investors, think angel investors, not VC's.
If you still think you'll need more capital than you can fund from personal resources or angels, think about bringing on a partner, someone you know who may be able to contribute some additional resources. Especially if it's someone who is a non-techie or has a more business-oriented background. I'm not talking about hiring an MBA, but it's important to balance your skills, strengths and weaknesses with someone else's, so that when you do hit a situation you don't know how to handle or need assistance with, that partner has a better chance of being able to see it from a different angle and help the business succeed.
Finally, about the business plan - Business Plan Pro is a pretty nice software package (Amazon.com sells it for $16 off the normal price, at $83.99 - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 9PF1QO/) that includes quite a few sample plans and other resources and guides for writing a business plan. You can write it on your own, using your favorite text editor, using the websites of SCORE and other organizations as a guide, but I found Business Plan Pro's help with the financials was worth the price of the software. Even though a majority of the numbers in the financials of a business plan are just best-guesses and often completely wild, random guesses, potential investors put a lot of weight into the numbers they see, they want to see that you know how to put together these tables and that they have some sort of reassuring numbers to look at.
And revise it. Plan to revise your business plan often. Write
Alright, so it's fiction, but it's really good fiction, in my opinion. All about a sat. that returns to the Earth with unknown organisms aboard that create a series of crisises.
Michael Crichton wrote 'Andromeda Strain' back in the 70's, which is a pretty good book. (Barnes & Noble link, no referral ID).
It was later turned into a movie, although the movie was so-so, in my opinion.
Crichton is probably best known for Jurassic Park, but he raises some interesting issues in Andromeda Strain, if you're at all interested in science, check it out. It's also an interesting look at technology and security - Chrichton goes into detail about the safety, security and containment systems at his imagined government research facility, and then...well, read the book, but you can guess how it turns out.
Yup, an SUV with Bi-Xenon headlights that can split into two, soar into the air, and later merge back together, as well...from one of the links in the article:
They appear and disappear, veering and cavorting suddenly in odd directions. One moment there might be one, and just as suddenly, it might split into two or three or more, dividing and merging at whim. They hover in mid-air and sometimes flicker like balls of fire. They might shoot straight up into the sky, or race madly to the left and right.
As well as...
The lights seem to either evade or confuse anyone who attempts to walk/drive/fly closer to them, and sometimes they simply vanish if someone seems to get 'too close'. There's even been occasional reports of the lights 'chasing' a car or plane traveling through the region, but no one has ever reported getting close to any of the lights successfully.
Highway 67 was commissioned in 1927 as US Highway 67, and ended in Dallas. It didn't reach West Texas, including Marfa, until 1930. Source: Wikipedia.
As someone who lives in the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex and whose company is in an office literally right in front of what I believe is the original terminus of Highway 67, you should know that the path it takes through Dallas and through most of Texas is a pretty odd one; it's a route only a (relatively) modern traffic engineer could come up with, and the path it takes through the mountains near Marfa are most likely not related to any common paths taken by carriages before the highway was built.
Also, the population density out in that part of Texas, especially before cars were common in the region, was incredibly low. I doubt there would've been enough carriage traffic on any given night to generate the type and number of phenomenon normally attributed to the Marfa lights. Considering the current population of Marfa is 2,424 people, I'm almost certain there wouldn't have been enough traffic of any sort before Highway 67 was built to generate all of the phenomenon reported during that time.
However, their study does not resolve or even address one problem with this conclusion - the lights have been visible long before cars were common, or even available, in the area. Furthermore, the students documented the lights were car headlights from US Highway 67 - however, Highway 67's west end was in Dallas when the highway was originally built; Highway 67 did not extend into west Texas and the Marfa area until 1930.
The best part is, this study has been done before, in March 1975, by another Society of Physics Students, who reached a slightly different, but similar conclusion:
So some of the lights are car headlights - this was already known and accepted, I'm pretty sure. I'm disappointed with their 'grant from the Schlumberger corp.' mentioned in the PDF and the equipment they had access to at UTD, these students couldn't do a more in-depth study or come up with a more comprehensive conclusion. Sounds like a group of students at UTD wanted a 4 day all-expenses paid road-trip to one of the more beautiful parts of Texas, down near Big Bend National Park.
Then again, as a UT-Arlington (UTA) alumnus, I may be a little biased against our cross-Metroplex rivals.
First of all, it's important to read the bill and the background - it began as "The bill prohibits wireless access to obscene materials at a correctional facility." - preventing prisoners in state prisons from viewing porn.
/ committees/cmtembrs.d2w/report?LEG=79&SESS=R&CMTEC ODE=C450&CHAMBER=H&CTYPE=House
It looks like if part (b) was struck from the bill, it would apply only to prisons, but somewhere in the process someone complained about prisoners being singled out, I bet, so they reworked the bill to include this provision.
The hearing of the House State Affairs Committee is scheduled for 8AM in room E2.010 of the Texas State Capitol. This is a public hearing, so I'd urge anyone who's in the Austin area to attend.
The committee's website is available at http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/db2www/tlo
This site also links to a page with each representative's contact information. That second page links to their "personal" page on the Texas House of Representatives which has an "email me" form at the bottom, so you can easily email each representative on the committee about this bill.
This bill is in the Business & Commerce committee in the Senate, which has been referred 252 bills this committee, of which 221 are still in committee. Of these, approx. 14 are bills that were passed by the House and are waiting the Senate's vote. The next few scheduled meetings of the Senate Business & Committee are just to consider Senate bills, so it could be weeks before this bill is even consider in committee, if it ever is.
.
The bill would have to pass committee intact, then be referred back to the general body of the Senate, placed on the calendar for a vote, and then voted on. A suprising number of bills are killed by being passed by committee but never placed on the calendar - it's a way for the Senate to kill bills without actually killing them, so they can try to keep their campaign contributors AND their voters happy.
So, this is far from a done deal. Until the bill is out of the Senate Business & Commerce committee, I'd strongly urge you, especially if you're a Texas resident, to contact the members of the Business & Commerce committee.
The Senate Business & Commerce committee consists of:
Chair: Senator Troy Fraser (R-Abilene)
Vice-Chair: Senator Kip Averitt (R-Granbury)
Members:
Senator Kenneth Armbrister (D-Victoria)
Senator Kim Brimer (R-Ft. Worth)
Senator John Carona (R-Dallas)
Senator Kevin Eltife (R-Longview)
Senator Craig Estes (R-Denton)
Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr. (D-Brownsville)
Senator Leticia Van de Putte (D-San Antonio)
Each link goes to that senators homepage at the Texas State Senate website. Most, if not all, of the senators have a web form on their site to allow you to easily email them your comments. They also list addresses, phone numbers and fax numbers - remember, letters and faxes are given much more weight than emails, so if you are really concerned about this, drop them a letter. Let them know that you are contacting them about a bill that has been referred to their committee from the House, HB 789
I've dealt with a few of the senators in this bunch, and of the ones I know, it's a real assortment - there's a true hardcore old-style Texas politician or two in the group, but there's also a few more progressive, modern politicians that will listen to what their constiutents have to say, even over the constant drone of lobbyists in Austin.
A copy of the public notice about the meeting is online at: http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlo/schedule/2005/C 4702005040508001.HTM
To summarize - the meeting is Tuesday and it starts at 8AM. It's in E2.012. There are 20 other bills on the agenda for the day, so there's no way to know for sure when this specific bill will be discussed. I'd recommend you get there at or before 8AM and ask if you can testify on HB2893, and if so, what you need to do to register a written opinion on the bill or to register your desire to give your opinion in public testimony during the hearing.
The tags would store a unique ID, your VIN, make, model and year of your vehicle. There would then be a backend database that stores all of this information as well as stores if you have the minimum liability insurance required by law.
The only information not already out there is your VIN, but if you run the license plate number through a site like PublicData.com, you get the VIN.
They used to be on the plate, years ago, but they were getting stolen. They are now located inside the windshield, on the far left edge of the windshield (when sitting in the driver's seat looking out).
Apparently that didn't even totally fix the problem - the stickers now "self destruct" if you try to take them off the windshield.
Under this bill, the RFID tag will have your car's VIN, make, model and year as well as a unique ID coded to it. Furthermore, the VIN, make and model and the unique ID it corresponds to would be stored in a database connected to the RFID readers.
If you get stopped for something else, or if, for instance, they install these at the toll booths so the toll booth workers can see the data reported by the tag, faked or stolen tags would be noticed pretty quickly unless the car was the exact same make, model and year - it won't eliminate the threat altogether, but it would make it harder. Also, when they run your license plate, they get your VIN, so they could compare the VIN that's matched to the plate with the VIN that's matched to the RFID tag.
Any Texas residents or anyone that will be in Austin on Tuesday - according to the bill status at http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/db2www/tlo/ billhist/actions.d2w/report?LEG=79&SESS=R&CHAMBER= H&BILLTYPE=B&BILLSUFFIX=02893, the bill is scheduled for public hearing before the House Transportation Committee on 04/05/2005. Anyone may attend these hearings and register their support or opposition to the bill, and generally will also be allowed to give brief testimony. The hearing will be held at the state capitol in Austin - any of the DPS officers or volunteers should be able to point you to the right room.
i ps.htm e .htm
Also, if you read the bill itself, the purpose of the transponder is to enforce the requirement of a minimum level of automotive liability insurance.
The transponder would rely a unique ID as well as the make, model and VIN of the vehicle it is attached to. This is all information that anyone within range of the RFID tag, including the traffic monitoring cameras, could already determine.
No matter which side you are on on this issue, show up at the hearing - this bill is very new - this is the first time it is going to be discussed, and this seems to be the first session it has been introduced in, so it's doubtful it goes very far this time. However, it's important that people show up and voice the privacy concerns inherent in this bill.
If you cannot attend the hearing, the author of the bill is Representative Phillips. His contact information is:
District 62
Capitol Office: EXT E2.720
Capitol Address: P.O. Box 2910
Austin, Texas 78711
Capitol Phone: (512) 463-0297
District Address: 421 North Crockett
Sherman, TX 75090
District Phone: (903) 891-7297
He serves as the vice-chair of the transportation committee, which this bill has been referred to.
The chair of the transportation committee is:
Rep. Mike Krusee
District 52
Capitol Office: CAP GW.18
Capitol Address: P.O. Box 2910
Austin, Texas 78711
Capitol Phone: (512) 463-0670
If you are a Texas resident but cannot attend the hearing in Austin on Tuesday, I'd recommend calling and requesting their fax number and faxing a letter detailing your concerns, or mailing one, but mailing it quickly.
You can also email either of these representatives via their website, although faxed or mailed letters generally get more attention.
Representative Phillips: http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/dist62/phill
Representative Krusee:
http://www.house.state.tx.us/members/dist52/kruse
I saw the original headline about WASTE on Slashdot, never even read the story, forgot about it. But now that I've seen AOL has yanked it from Nullsoft's site, I'm downloading it and trying it out, not to mention posting it in a few safe places.
Scarcity is an amazing thing - by trying to put a lid on this, they're actually creating a huge demand for this program. I can't wait to try it out.
Not to defend the man, because this is a stupid stance to take, but he represents an area near here at the University of Texas at Arlington, and the primary reason he would have such a high level of contributions from Lockheed Martin is because they have several locations in this area.
Opensecrets.org is based on how much employees of that company give; there's a MUCH higher than normal concentration of Locheed Martin employees in this area and in his district.
When making allegations like that, you should probably check into the facts. I'm sure that LMCO has some sort of sway with Joe, but there are many, many other corporations in this area that have just as much sway, if not moreso. For once, I don't think this politician's actions are based on something shady a campaign contributer has asked them to do. These stupid remarks really were just his thoughts on the issue. Scary.