Moreover, it not only shows those things, but if you had gambling industry experience and good references from it and you came to me and outright said "This demonstrates that I am trustworthy and have experience with high security software handling large dollar volume," I would take you *more* seriously as a job candidate, not less.

Dear Timothy,

I use a Mac. Menu bars are built into the system. It also has "Aqua" rendering, not the knockoff "Aero".

Love,
TheMCP

If the school is collecting any data from these devices, that could be considered medical data, and they could be forced to comply with HIPPA. That may be enough to stop them from doing it right there, because it might mean that they have to have a doctor present to collect and maintain the data. If you want to put a stop to it, I suggest you do some googling about HIPPA, print out some scary web pages about it, bring them into the school, and demand that if they don't handle all of the data from the monitors in a HIPPA compliant manner you will be speaking with your lawyer.

The insurance company claims that they would never use any information obtained to consider changes in insurance rates, but that really sounds unbelievable.

What I notice is not so much what they're promising, but what you're not saying they're promising.

They're (apparently) *not* promising not to use the footage to discriminate against the kid in regard to rates after the kid becomes an adult and wants his/her own policy. I also don't see you saying that the footage won't be shared with other insurance companies or placed in some sort of centralized database. So, you could be saving yourself a few bucks now, in exchange for screwing over your kid for the rest of their life.

And I think it's vitally important to consider that the footage could be subpoenaed by practically anyone, and could be used against your kid even if the kid didn't really do anything wrong - if the kid is in an accident, you can bet the other party's lawyer will demand the footage and try to construe it to make it seem like it shows your kid doing something wrong.

I would *never* allow such a camera in my own car - even if I own it myself - and I would *never* allow it to be installed in my kid's car, if I had a kid.

I'm with you - this could be a winner. I owned a RAZR - for one night. I bought it at 4pm, hated it so much that I decided within an hour to return it, and took it back the next day. The software sucked. BUT THE HARDWARE WAS AWESOME. It was slim and light and comfortable and felt like it was built like a tank - in fact, it was the most solid feeling cell phone I ever used. Later, I owned the Motorola branded "hip-top" phone using the Danger software... I didn't love the software and eventually replaced it with an iphone, but again, the hardware was awesome and felt really really solid.

The combination of rock-solid Motorola hardware with a great OS and software should make for a really fantastic phone and experience, and I wish them the best.

I worked at a small university a few years ago, in a fairly high level administrative position. I was privy to the overall finances of the place.

Basically, the place was barely running in the black, and expected to be operating at a loss within a few years unless they built enough buildings to have enough more classrooms and dorm rooms to allow a major expansion. So, they were building. Even then, they felt that tuition was higher than they wanted it to be, but didn't feel they had any options about lowering it. I was friendly with the head of financial aid, and I know she sincerely cared a great deal about doing everything she could to reduce the cost of education for the students. It wasn't about charging everyone as much as they could, it was about trying to cope with the costs of running the place and see what we could do to charge students as *little* as possible.

I've worked in a few universities over the years, and my impression was that they weren't trying to gouge students for money, it's just that it costs a fortune to run a traditional university.

I'm on my third tivo, but unfortunatley it's going to be my last.

My first Tivo I loved, and I wore it out.

My second Tivo was fine, but I started wanting to be able to record two shows at once and a few other features, so I gave it to a friend and switched to MythTV. MythTV was great, but the box required occasional maintenance (software updates, reconfiguring the data source, etc) and it didn't recover well from the occasional power outage, so I tried EyeTV on my mac. That was awful (worked fine but made my mac slow as molasses in vermont in january) so I decided to buy another Tivo.

The new dual tuner Tivo was fine, but two months after I got it, my cable company informed me that they were switching to all-digital service and that I would have to get - and pay for - a cable box. As they were already charging me the limit of what I was willing to pay, I decided to cancel my service and use purchased TV downloads instead for a while and see how I liked that. Ok, no big deal, I could put the Tivo on ebay. So I called to cancel my Tivo service... and they said no. It seems that somewhere in the fine print when I signed up for service, they said I had to agree to a year of service on the unit, and so they wouldn't cancel it. I would have to find a buyer willing to transfer the service to them and fulfill the remaining contract period. Given that there are plenty of tivos on ebay without such restrictions, I knew that would never fly. So I'm stuck with it until the contract runs out.

If that's how Tivo wants to treat their customers, I have no desire to be one of those customers. If I ever get cable or satellite again, I'll go to the effort of maintaining the mythtv box again.

There are two ways this can be dealt with.

1) Somebody could do maintenance work on the "time capsule" contents for the next 16 years. This would involve occasionally moving the digital files to fresh media and converting files from obsolete formats to current ones.

2) The time capsule could contain the entire computer setup required to view all the enclosed media.

There's really no other way around it.

"We know better than you how you should live your life and will therefore make your decisions about what you can put into your body for you without you having a say in the matter" is the very definition of a nanny-state.

Yes, you're right, destroying people's lives by throwing them in jail is not the sort of thing a nanny would do, but it is the side effect of the nanny state solutions. That doesn't mean it's not a nanny state, it just means nanny has multiple personality disorder.

What gender is a person born with female genetalia and defective ovaries that do not produce ova?

How long do you think it will take her to slap you out of your wits when you tell her she's actually neuter?

Advice for Google:
Switzerland wants not to have street view in their country? Give them what they want. Turn it off. Don't spend another dime on it. Every time someone tries to use the feature for switzerland, put up a notice that says "Street view is blocked for this country by order of the Swiss government." And then wash your hands of it. You don't have to spend any more money on delivering a perfectly reasonable feature when the government wants to give you a hard time about it, and they don't get to have enjoyment of the service after they've been pissy about it. Maybe then other countries will be slightly more reasonable about your services when they recognize that if they give you too hard a time about things, you'll make sure their population knows *precisely* why they can't get the same level of service that people in every other country can.

Next time, check up on the law before complaining about lack of accountability. There are laws against this sort of thing, and if she wants to file suit, she can get damages.

Moreover, if you aren't capable of administering your own network, standing behind them and watching them is pointless because you won't understand what you're looking at, and they could rob you blind right under your nose.

If you ARE capable of administering your own network, standing behind them and watching them is a waste of your time, because you could just be doing the administration work yourself and not have to waste the time to explain it to them and watch them.

Must be nice to be able to do that.

Here in the Boston area, any computer job that pays enough to survive is exempt. And when I say "enough to survive" I mean "enough money to live indoors, have heat, hot water, electricity, and food".

If you insist on being paid hourly instead of salaried, most employers will refuse, and the few that will oblige will then put it in writing that you're not allowed to work any overtime without being authorized in writing in advance, and then they'll use that to screw you - if you try to put in for overtime, they'll insist that it wasn't authorized, and if you insist they pay you for it, they'll terminate you for violating the overtime policy. Of course, if you refuse to work the overtime they ask for (which you know you won't be paid for because there's no written authorization) then in your next review they'll say you have a bad work ethic, and refuse to give you a raise.

Personally, I'd like to see salary exemptions be eliminated.

HIPPA non-compliance can not only be expensive, it can lead to jail time.

This is my understanding based on training I received from a lawyer while working as a secondary IT director for a medical school:

The IT director for a medical organization is required to certify that the organization is HIPPA compliant. If they are not, the IT director must make them compliant, and that may have to mean simply cutting off everyone's access to computer resources until a plan is in place to allow access in a compliant manner. (Not allowing anyone to access anything is compliant.) If the IT director certifies them to be compliant when they are actually not, the IT director can go to jail, as can anyone who may have coerced them to sign the certification. Medical professionals can also be subject to fines and/or jail time for handling data in a non-compliant manner (such as entering data into a non-compliant system such as google docs), especially if they did so knowingly.

Were I in anonymous reader's shoes, I would tell my medical clients that I am convinced that because of HIPPA they must not use Google Docs for any medical information. If they press the issue I would tell them that I am so convinced that they must not use Google Docs to handle any medical information that if I find they have done so, I will drop them as a client and report them to relevant authorities at once. No job is worth going to jail for.