Let me get this straight: The Emperor was caught with his pants down, some people took pictures and posted it to etc.com, people started learning via etc.com that the Emperor has no clothes on, and now the Emperor wants to ban all knowledge of the incident by destroying the greatest communications invention since the printing press. I think the approach in this situation is completely wrong. Several common sayings such as "we had to destroy the village in order to save it," "shoot first and ask questions later," and "shoot the messenger" all come to mind and none of them should be encouraged.

I propose the following solution to the problem: Do a comprehensive security audit of the information and everyone that had access to it. Find out who leaked the information, how they received access to the information, and how they removed the information from secured storage. In addition, do a comprehensive audit on the classification of documents. Having a minimal amount of classified material will cut down on the risk of loosing it. Document classification should be used to guard national security interests (e.g. the keys to the castle) instead of hiding potentially embarrassing material or promoting a political agenda. When you have successfully identified the responsible party and method of attack, fix the glitch and prosecute the offender to the fullest extent of the law. The Internet does not need collective punishment for the actions of a select few individuals.

This is a nice idea but it is too easy to circumvent. To circumvent this idea, you need to generate a globally unique identification number for each coupon. That globally unique number would reference an entry in the master customer database that would contain redemption status and the other biographical information that is being tracked. You do not need to have all the data on each coupon. All you need is a unique identifier (i.e. the globally unique number) to link the coupon with the other database data.

I certainly hope this story doesn't turn into a modern day retelling of Pygmalion .

The conclusion that this article makes are not really new. Nick Yee did similar studies on MMOG addiction with EverQuest many years ago. These were the studies that I could find:

The Norrathian Scrolls: The Virtual Skinner Box

Ariadne: Understanding Game Addiction

Maybe they could cut out the virtual machine and offer Windows XP SP3 as a separate product? It would eliminate all of the virtual machine overhead.

This move to bundle this with Virtual Server seems analogous to the bundling of Internet Explorer in Windows 98. I wonder if Microsoft is trying to kill VMWare and Parallel's market share like they killed Netscape's browser share.

Finally, it is pretty sad when your operating system requires a virtual machine to emulate what the operating system should do natively. I would have preferred it if Microsoft went all the way with this option and did a complete revamp of the Windows executable and security architecture with the implementation of this virtual machine architecture (Apple implemented this during the OS 9 to OS X transition). As it is implemented right now, the virtual machine seems like a waste of resources as it is duplicates existing functionality while requiring more overhead and a separate configuration.

I saw a television series about the technology. In the series I saw, the Philadelphia Parking Authority goes around with a van that scans vehicle license plates for outstanding parking tickets and other infractions. I did not connect the two concepts together until after I posted this article.

Thank you for the Chicago civics lesson. I did not name any of the internal players because the (non-Chicago) news does not bother covering it. However, they had a lot of coverage of Blagojevich during his impeachment trial.

As for the "two strikes" rule... I can see that help the collection rate. However, I am sure that the "frequent" offenders will find yet another way around the automated system.

Hello. I am Mr. Reality Check. Let us examine this proposal in detail.

Chicago, the shining star of all good and right, wants to install a sophisticated network of cameras to (a) track every motor vehicle in operation in the Chicago Metropolitan Area, (b) record the license plate tag, location, and time of motor vehicle operation, and (c) cross reference the license plate tag information with a comprehensive insurance coverage database in in order to (d) send out $500 citations via mail to potential offenders.

Unfortunately, this system is not realistic and poses some massive privacy concerns. While it may be feasible to create the network of cameras described in (a), it is substantially difficult with current technology to implement the optical character recognition required to implement part (b). Furthermore, the privacy implications of tracking every motor vehicle in the Chicago Metropolitan Area are enormous. This network would take public surveillance to United Kingdom levels.

Assuming that (a) and (b) were implemented successfully, there are major jurisdictional and scale issues with (c). In order to assure a minimum of false positives, the State of Illinois would have to implement a comprehensive insurance-to-registration tag database that would be automatically updated by the insurance companies within seconds of issuing or changing a policy. The cost of this type of project are enormous. The coordination of all involved stakeholders is extremely difficult given the various processing cycles, business policies, cross jurisdictional politics, and potential for error. There is also problems with the handling out of state registration tags. The system must be able to effectively deal with the tags of every state in the United States. If this system only processes Illinois residents, there may be some serious constitutional repercussions under Amendment 14 (equal protection of the law).

Finally, after gathering the data in (a), processing the information in (b) and (c), we get to the collections portion of the process, (d). Now, assuming for the moment that this system works and is accurate, we can now send citations to every uninsured vehicle driving on the road way. However, since most citations carry the weight of a parking ticket, most people tend to ignore them. Since these uninsured motorists usually (i) can not afford the cost of insurance or (ii) do not want to pay for insurance, it is logical to conclude that they will not pay for their automated traffic violations. While the "more than $200 million" figure is impressive, I would be even more impressed if they managed to collect 10% of that number.

In conclusion, this system will not work. It is technologically, politically, fiscally, and logistically unfeasible given today's technology and political climate.

This is Mr. Reality Check and I am signing out.

In other news, a petroleum industry funded study revealed that electric cars are responsible for terrorism, the economic crisis, pollution, global warming, and sunspots.

Is it April 1st yet?

I can see the revised textbooks now:

"Pluto is the second largest dwarf planet* in the Solar System's Kuiper Belt.

* Except in the State of Illinois."

This falls under the philosophy of "do as I say, not as I do." Microsoft is a frequent user of that philosophy.

From my experiences in mid-1990s technology:

Doom - 1993 by ID Software

AlphaWorld (now Active Worlds) - 1995 by Knowledge Adventure Worlds (developed in 1994)

Meridian 59 - 1996 by 3DO (developed in 1995)

The only "features" that I see of interest are:

* Solid state disk handling improvements.
* Multi-touch support.
* "Library" (AKA virtual folder) support.
* A redesigned task bar that looks like a carbon copy of the Mac OS X Dock.
* A "redesigned" start menu with more visual effects and no classic (i.e. Windows 2000) mode.
* More DRM.

Other than the above mentioned features, Windows 7 looks like Windows Vista/Mojave with a new UI theme.

DirectX 11 was left off the list because it will most likely be available for Windows Vista as well.