One of my co-workers, a police officer himself and someone who trains SWAT and special operations units, is ALL FOR recording by the public and feels there should be more recording on the part of officers themselves. During his training, he shows a video wherein an officer pulls a man over for speeding and reckless driving. As he goes back to his patrol car to run the man's license, the driver gets out of his car and refuses to get back in the vehicle, becoming verbally abusive. The officer instructs the man to come to the back of the stopped vehicle, as he is trained to do so that every word and action can be captured on video. The man begins to comply, then starts to dance and laugh. During one of his oh-so-creative dance moves, he pulls a gun and tries to level it at the officer. The officer, fortunately, stops the man's arm, and two rounds are discharged. The two then fight for a good solid couple of minutes and more rounds are discharged any time the gun gets near the officer. Now, I don't know about you lot, but let me tell you... When you're in a fight, 15 seconds seems like a year, but when you're in a fight where your life could very well end if you don't do something that same 15 seconds could seem like an eternity.

In the end, the officer manages to get his own firearm free, and fighting the whole time, puts his gun to the back of the man's head, and "Goodnight Gracie". Had that video not been there, imagine the court room drama. Imagine the inquiries. A bullet to the back of the head? Regardless of the number of rounds discharged by the guy, regardless of the injuries the officer sustained, there would have been a very good chance that officer could have faced court or even jail time. In the end, the video showed that the officer was justified in his use of deadly force. The man he'd pulled over had a litany of priors as well as jail time, nearly all related to acts of sometimes extreme violence.

Officers should be held to a higher level of acceptable behavior, it should be expected that they respect the populace and, you know, actually UPHOLD the constitution as stated in their oath. To help insure that they do just that, and to protect THEM, officers should embrace video surveillance on their own part, and on the part of citizens. The problem is the number of bad eggs out there who have, for so long, abused power that they don't exactly like the idea of being caught at it.

How about you just pay taxes, and stop ratting people out to the Chinese government. Any bugs in your software will be a lot more readily forgiven.

"Despite countless viewings of BTTF I still never through of a few of these. "
Did you the whole thing?

I work for a law enforcement agency in IT, and one of the high mucky mucks decided to try out the iPad since another high mucky muck bought one. Now most of the command and admin staff have been issued the devices as well.

From a "user" standpoint, it's... A neat toy. I bought my daughter an iPod touch, and effectively that's all it is. Bigger, heavier. The book reader is nice, some of the aps are pretty decent, but really isn't anything ground breaking. Not by a long shot.

Now, taken from my profession's standpoint, it has the potential to be a very useful device. Currently we use laptops in our cruisers ("MDT", mobile data terminal) which we can use to connect to LEAPS (Law Enforcement Automated Processing System) and run plates, wants/warrants, BOP (bureau of parole) etc. I don't know if you've ever lifted a Panasonic Toughbook, but you could use one of these things to beat a whale to death. With a relatively simple ruggedized case, and at only about $900 (as opposed to $5500), iPads would be a great alternative for officers on foot patrol, bike, Segway and the like. However AT&T sucks balls. I am aware of talks that Verizon will be an available option for the iPad, which is currently the provider we use. They give us fixed IPs, restricted connections (i.e. goes from MDT to Verizon, from Verizon to our building's router, then off to LEAPS). Officers wouldn't be able to write reports since our and most report writing / case tracking systems for law enforcement require at least Java, but still, they'd be a great addition to the tools available.

IF Verizon offers normal business plans (which AT&T won't for these devices or iPhones), and IF Apple were to pull their collective heads out of their collective backsides, iPads have the potential to find their way into a lot of industries, and I can see many uses in emergency services. For EMTs, for fire and rescue, for law enforcement, the ability to bring up floor plans of buildings, maps, health records, I could go on and on. However, limited choice of providers and a lack of any sort of discount make it unlikely. Beyond the "Well HE got one, we need one!" attitude which landed this thing in my lap, the purchase never would have been made had we not faced an end of fiscal budget, and "spend it all or next year you get less" (which boggles my mind, frankly... I would get penalized if I didn't spend ALL of my budget). But Apple insists on offering no price breaks, they insist on going through iTunes to activate the stupid things, they insist on going through their company for any sort of new application installation (yes yes, I know about the court case and jail breaking), and currently they insist on using AT&T.

Anyway... Ramble ramble. They're neat toys, power to the people, off with their heads, bad social elite snobbery, blah blah.

SWMBO is out, my daughter is with my ex-wife (SWMBO -1), and the only other living thing in my living room would be my rather massive jade plant, and several 1/2 growlers of mead. Which, I suppose, would mean I have quite a few multitudes as they merrily bubble and churn.

But I don't think they count.

Informative, good analogy and insulting! Bravo! You're my new favorite person.

Yes, actually, I did need it spelled out. To use that analogy, we're still talking about two rather different "network protocols" and topologies, aren't we? Again, I admit I know nothing about how neural networks function, but I would think that a drug like meth or even weed would have a vastly different effect on human minds and biology than that of a snail, and gleefully admit my ignorance, hence the questions.

Hmmm... So you're suggesting that the whole Amy Winehouse problem could just go away eventually?

/I keed

I can imagine these are the same folks who thought it was "BRILLIANT!" to blow smoke in their dog's face with a one hitter. However the "On meth it does" ads will get much more amusing. "A snail doing 60mph down the highway isn't normal. But on meth it is..."

All joking aside, being no biologist I do wonder about the validity of such experiments. Anyone able to educate me on how they think that the effects on so different a neuron network will yield important information about how humans store / process memories? Are our brains THAT similar to ones found in a snail? Congress not withstanding, of course.

Hey, thanks for this! I'm googling it now.

And yes, 7min for kids... "easy enough for a grade schooler" to figure out doesn't translate into easy enough for (unfortunately) many adults. Particularly ones who are in there hoping that I'll have some magic wand that'll take away all their problems surrounding FB and maybe do their parenting for them.

Sorry... Hitchhikers Guide reference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem

I work in IT for a small police department, and recently have begun doing presentations for parents on Facebook and general online privacy, what steps can be taken and how to watch out for warning signs of problems. I'd say at least half the parents I talk to are completely unaware of what information is freely available online about their kids, if allowed to use such a site, or how much information their kids are making available online.

It only takes about 20 minutes to educate a neophyte, if they're willing to learn, how to lock down privacy on Facebook.... He said with a pained expression. One thing which never ceases to boggle my mind is the number of parents (and people in general) who really don't understand and don't CARE what information is out there, or what it can mean. ID theft, home intrusion, stalking, all that pretty much is "someone else's problem", producing enough SEP power to cloak an average sized nation.

While products like this are certainly useful, the bigger issue is education. If you're aware of the changes to FB and the like, setting security takes all of a minute. If you're unaware and someone tells you, and if you're not particularly inclined toward looking over security settings, it might take someone 10-20 minutes to go over them with you. If you just plain don't care, no amount of open or closed source software is going to make any difference whatsoever.

Well I mean first of all, having a link at the bottom of a /. article allowing users to post to their FB and Twitter accounts (emphasis on "twit" deliberate...) is certainly not going to assist the 600lb gorilla in losing market share, even if that gorilla is serving up all your personal information and pictures and all personal information and pictures of all your friends. At this point, you could have that gorilla holding up a neon sign saying "I SERVE UP YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION" acompanied by a mariachi band singing "We Expose Your Private Information CHA CHA CHA!" and still most lusers would gleefully keep using the site.

If, and I do mean if Facebook were to lose market share, it would take a stroke of pure luck. Good luck OR bad luck, as they are deeply entrenched.

And most likely Chat Roulette will be the first place it's put to use...

And I may have alzheimers, but at least I don't have alzheimers.

She told me she was TESTED!