Along with the screen, there was no comment about the power supply. The site said they could send out Amber Alerts to the plates, so I'm assuming there will be some kind of radio (though I suppose that'd almost be a given to update the ads), there will have to be some kind of sensor to record when the car is in motion v stopped, and some means of changing the display (possibly displaying the image constantly, unless the e-ink/kindle idea discussed below is used)... All of that will probably require a fair amount of juice. Will the new plates plug into my car's battery? Or will it run off of 4 AAA batteries? Who would be responsible for changing the batteries? I'd argue the state, since they're the ones collecting the spoils from it, but they would probably require the driver to do so... Could a cop pull me over if the battery happens to die while I'm out & about and all I have is a blank screen? Other questions/issues that come to mind... If were to leave California, and stop at a traffic light or whatever and a cop pulls up behind me, and instead of seeing a bunch of alphanumeric characters, he sees ad ad for Viagra... I doubt the officer would be too fond of it and would probably ask me to pull over... That could get annoying after awhile. Going on with that - if I leave the state (assuming the data is only sent in the state), or into an area with poor reception (San Francsico on AT&T's network for example), I could be broadcasting an Amber Alert that I picked up as I was exiting the whole way from San Diego to Prince Edwards Island in Canada... That could possibly cause some issues... If the plate can tell when it is not in motion, it logically can then also tell when it is in motion. I doubt it would be too hard to have it keep track of the speed it was traveling as well. Tie that in with a GPS chip so the plate can figure out exactly where the car is & what the speed limit is... If they're selling ads to raise extra money, I could see the plate flashing "I'm speeding pull me over!" once it reaches a certain speed - after all more traffic tickets == more revenue... And there could be 4th amendment/privacy issues to if it logs the speed you travel. What if there is an ad I object to due to moral/religious/etc grounds? Will there be a way that I can opt out of certain ads? I could see all kinds of political people buying up ad space on the plates - what if I don't support a particular candidate for congress but s/he bought a plate ad? Or if both the republican & democratic candidates for position X bought plate ads, could I specify which I am so just my candidate gets time on my car? Any way to import my own ads? For example, I may want to advertise my organization's bake sale, but we don't have the million or so the state wants to run ads (nor would we want it broadcasting state wide)

You are slightly mistaken. In keeping with leromarinvit's example, it is perfectly alright (though possibly a little creepy/suspicious) for you to walk down the street, and each time you come to a house, walk up to it & jot down the publicly displayed information. For example, if I'm not mistaken, most areas in the US require/encourage you to have the number portion of your address clearly displayed in some noticeable form on/near your house (for 911 services & the like), or its also often customary to put your name/address on your mailbox, or by your door bell (especially for apartment buildings you've to be buzzed into).

Copying this information is the real world equivalent to going down the bus/train/etc line, and logging all of the SSIDs the computer can detect.

Where it starts to become illegal is when, rather than just noting the SSID, you attempt to join the network. If, instead of just jotting down whatever information I'm collecting, I twist the door nob, then I start to get into hot water (as it were). Hopefully, when I twist the door nob, I find the door locked. If I then get my lock picking tools out & "correct" that "problem", or find other means into the house (ie through an unlocked window), then yes, I have broken the law. In the real wold version, its breaking & entering. In the network version, it would be unauthorized access to a computer or networked device (or whatever the legal term is).

There is a little gray area, at least last I checked, if the network is not encrypted (ie when I twist the door nob, the door opens). Of course 2 likely reasons for this would be A.) your nice & have decided to share with whoever is near, or B.) you don't know any better. If B, you probably wouldn't even know someone was on your network (unless of course they started to hog your resources), so you wouldn't know to press charges, and if A, you wouldn't press charges because you were nice. Of course, just because charges are not pressed doesn't mean a crime wasn't committed...

Or, you could look at it this way... If it were illegal to query the SSID of a network you did not have access rights to, then A LOT of people are in big trouble pretty much every day! Do you have a smart phone that has wifi capabilities? When I ran into the local grocery store and I pulled my phone out to check the weather, as soon as I launched the weather app, it prompted me if I wanted to join the StrAwB3rrie5 network. When I ran into Walmart & was checking out something in their electronics department I again got my phone out to check google to make sure what I was going to buy was compatible with what I wanted to use it for. I was asked if I wanted to join either of the two Walmart networks (Walmart's names are not as cute (0x0583723753743 or something to that effect)). On the ride home, while looking up something for the driver, I was prompted at least 3 different times to join a network. That means I violated federal law 5 different times - all during a quick trip in town for some errands. Had I been out longer, I could have possibly picked up a few more counts. Thats just 1 person... I'm sure there are a lot more people out there just as guilty as me... If such an act as illegal, would Google, Apple, et al make it a default on their phones?

pirating movies & mp3s...After all, we're seriously cutting into the movie studio's profits... According to a recent slashdot story, "In 2009, the leading Hollywood studios made more films and generated more revenue than ever before" - 10 million USD! and they had 500 million USD to make Avatar...Obviously we're breaking their bank, no wonder the key grips can't afford food to feed their families...

Other than that... hmmm... Can't think of much reason for the net...

I don't think, at least in this particular case, the Netflix Friends function is what is at question. You are correct, the Friends option does allow you to view your friends queue, as well as some other recent events (ratings, reviews, etc). I've been a Netflix member for 5 years now, and am acquaintances, friends, and Brothers with numerous individuals with Netflix accounts. In all that time, I've only been Netflix friends with one person (one of my Littles) - and only because we would often swap discs & we used this to keep duplicate rentals down. All she'd have to do to protect her secret is just "forget" to accept the friend request, or just turn it down.

I'm not 100% what information Netflix released, but the it would be the rental history and/or the ratings you assign various movies. She is concerned that knowing what movies she has rented, and/or the ratings she's given movies, the researchers may discover that she has a higher probability of not being heterosexual. Then, combining it with other information that Netflix may have released (birthday, zip code, etc) be able to track her down & knock on her door, or worse... Of course, if someone did question her rental activities, all she'd really have to do is say the only reason she rented those movies was because a friend of hers wanted to see them... I've legitimately rented titles I had little interest in seeing, because I had friends over & they really wanted to see it. She wouldn't have to rate them... And I'd even advise against it if you're trying to keep it a secret... If you rate them, Netfix may put on your home screen "Because you liked 'I'm a closeted Lesbian, please help', you may like ...." And while this may help find more interesting movies, anyone who happens to be shoulder surfing (like one of her kids who happen to walk into the room) may see the title... Of course, a family member could walk into the living room while she's watching her "If-I-like-this-I'm-Lesbian" film, and figure out that mom isn't really renting Girls-Gone-Wild for daddy...

But I think she's really making a mountain out of a mole hill here... Unless of course someone has a reason to target her specifically, I doubt someone is going to take the time to compare movies, figure out who is & who isn't straight, then try to match them with a large list of birth dates, genders and names from an entire zip code... More likely than not, going national like this, will get her outted, and on a bigger scale than had she kept quiet.

Though, I do agree that some kind of attention should be placed on this. While movie rentals may not seem like a big deal, if someone doesn't say "hey, this information really isn't as anonymous as you think it is, next time, it could be something that people are a little more concerned with, like medical records, or tax information...

hey! I'm going to touch a women... Its not my fault my super-model girlfriend keeps getting called away for photo shoots before I can introduce her to anyone! She's in Austria now doing a skiing themed shoot for playboy I think... ;)

I would assume a likely reason the month, day and year was given out would be the way the database was set up. It is likely their customer database is set up so that it saves the data mmddyyyy, so if I queried the record for the US, I'd get 07041776 (or something to that effect anyway). Whoever ran the query to generate the data set possibly did not have the required privileges or know-how to manipulate the data to exclude the dd /or the mmdd part of the field.

Or maybe the Netflix peon who generated the data set didn't know it was going to be given to outside parties. He got in Monday morning, found an email from his boss "I need you to generate a data file for me with this information, I need it by Wed afternoon". generates the list, assuming his boss was going to keep it in house (and since anyone in house already has access to the customer's full record - there's no need to mask the birth date).

Besides, just because we can't think of a reason having the full birth date would be helpful doesn't mean one doesn't exist. TheSeventh argued that the month & day wouldn't be needed. grocer, on the other hand, brings up a good reason why at least month could be helpful. I'm sure with some thought we might come up with a rational for the date too. But without having access to the data & running tests on it we couldn't say. Maybe there's a trend that if you were born on an even date you're more likely to like comedy over slasher flicks. That could be useful in predicting the types of movies people like...

I thought the lack of MMS functionality was thanks to AT&T (the US carrier), not the phone itself. Something about wanting to make sure their network could handle the enhanced load it would cause if the phones had MMS, or something to that effect. Once they were satisfied with their networks, AT&T released a carrier update that enabled the MMS capability of the phone.

So, you cant really blame the phone for issues with the carrier & their network.

Of course, knowing the functionality of the phone, specifically how heavy it's going to use the network resources... one would assume the carrier would make sure their network is solid enough to handle to workload the phone will require before committing to an exclusive contract. In the article this one references mentions how AT&T was 'surprised' that iPhone users use so much data... Um, one of the built in apps streams Youtube videos, and they're surprised iPhone users stream video & other bandwidth heavy applications. The majority of the apps on my phone require some data transfer. Only a couple would be heavy users (webcam viewers), the majority are text based or other light weight (weather, etc), but it all adds up, especially if there are a lot of users....

W00t, I finally get to use all the knowledge I got with my MA in Criminology :)

According to Cesare Beccaria (who is often contributed as the father of Criminology), in his book On Crime and Punishment (1764), there are actually three important things to consider - the severity, certainty, and swiftness of the punishment.

As Obi points out, and according to Beccaria, the most important of these is certainty. You (the criminal) have to know that the likelihood that you will be caught is high. If I know there's less than a fraction of a percent that I'll be caught, I'm more likely to commit crime x than if I know its an almost 100% probability that I'll be caught. Coming in as an almost tie for importance is swiftness. Here, its argued that punishment needs to be implemented as soon after the crime as possible for it to be associated with the crime. Take for example, trying to train a cat. If you scold the cat for sharpening its claws on the couch's leg as its doing it, the scolding will be more effective of a punishment than if you wait a week to do it.

The least important, according to Beccaria, and the theme of this thread, is severity. And while it may sound like he is arguing for extended prison stays, etc, Beccaria actually argues that the punishment must be proportional to the crime. He would have (had he been alive now) argued against fining someone several billion dollars for copyright infringement on 7 songs, for example. According to his arguments, the punishment would equal the crime, plus a small amount more so that a rational person, when thinking about committing a crime, might consider the cost of getting caught to out-weigh the benefits of not getting caught. For example, if I stole 10 eggs, a good punishment for me might be to pay the person back with 12 eggs, not 20 years in prison.

OK I'm done with the lecture.

"[...] and sterilize themselves for the weekend." ... And this is a bad thing because ... wait, we're slashdot...

It'd have to be a university that doesn't have internet access... After all, "The Internet is for Porn!"

Assuming the one million in excess electricity was evenly distributed over the 10 years, that'd be $100,000 per year, or $8,333.33 per month. I'm surprised that whoever is in charge of paying the electric bill for the district never noticed a monthly 10k jump in the bill over 10 years. No emails being sent out to the faculty "Our electricity bill just doubled! Please make sure you turn off the lights when you leave at the end of the day, or we wont have enough money left to buy you new text books, Hitler will still be invading Poland for another year!"

When I was reading the article titles to see if anything looked interesting, I thought it said Hacker McKinnon to be executed in US... Really made me think twice about some of the stuff I do online in my free time :) That & the **AA has become a little more powerful/influential than the last time I heard.

A leash is cheaper, and could be more effective of keeping the pet contained, yes. But a GPS could have its advantages as well... If you live in a rural area, like I do, there's a chance you may have some woods on your property... If your walking your pet on a leash, nice relaxing walk, suddenly the pet sees a groundhog or other creature & takes off... If you're not paying attention, the leash could fly right out of your hand as the pet runs after its new "toy"... If the pet manages to get away from you enough that you can't see it, the leash won't be too helpful (possibly even dangerous, getting caught on a branch & strangling the pet), but GPS could help you track the pet down (at least give you a good idea of where to start looking for it). Also, your idea of a leash revolves around the idea that the pet being outside was a planned event (well planned by the person responsible for putting the leash on, and not the pet)... A few seconds ago I got a call that my cat had managed to sneak out while my mother was coming in the house... I can think of a few other times I've come home, hands full of groceries, or talking to someone on my cell phone or however else distracted, only to notice my cat of the time sneaking outside. Or we get home & the cat that we had thought was inside when we left is waiting for us to let her back in... Or how my last set of kittens figured out how to open the screen in my bedroom & let themselves out... In events like these, having a leash for walks & such really won't be too useful... But with GPS, you could more easily figure out where the pet has ran off to, and rescue him/her before freezing to death, or any of the other horrid things you mentioned... I've also heard stories of people having outdoor dogs - having them chained to a tree or whatever... and someone coming up & cutting the chain & dog-napping the dog... Again, GPS wins out over leash. Just grab the GPS unit, track the pet down... Then let the people who dog-napped the dog try to explain why the dog they claim is theirs has a GPS chip embedded in it with your name & address...