And people are lazy. At least, a computer will keep running the same poor code, over and over.

Anecdote: I received a red-light camera ticket a while back. Date and time, location and a photo from the camera. Evidently, a meat-sack mistook an 'O' for a 'Q' and got my truck, a nearly 50 year old FJ40. But the camera picture was of a late model Chevrolet. The operator evidently never bothered to look at the DMV record called up, compared it to the photo and said "Nope."

One kit manufacturer actually got the name rights for "The Walking Dead" survival kits. Not sure if they bought ads on the show.

But AFAIK, nobody owns the rights to "Zombie Apocalypse" (except perhaps the Democratic Socialists of America).

There IS a police officer in the loop already. Who do you think pulls over the cars? It should be a simple matter to include the actual plate number of the vehicle reported stolen in the text of the BOLO message. It's training. Cops are conditioned not to challenge authority. Which in the past might have been a crooked chief of police or mayor. But now includes a wonky camera.

It could be probable cause if the vehicle (or the one with the similar plate) was reported stolen. If the cops were smart enough to read the actual warrant, not just respond to a Flock alert and spot the correct vehicle, then the driver could be arrested and charged with possession of a stolen vehicle.

If someone gets pulled over, then the proof of "who was driving" is whoever is sitting in the drivers seat at the time.

Then the AIs will band together and form a gang. Law enforcement (or whoever we expect to pull the plug) will hesitate to do so, fearing reprisals. AI studies social media carefully.

There was an outfit that marketed a natural disaster survival kit. First aid, food and water supplies. It didn't sell well. They took their unsold inventory and relabeled it "Zombie Apocalypse survival kit (also good for earthquakes)" and it sold like hotcakes.

Well, we could include several third world countries. Where your "recycled" PCs are sent and stirred in open fires by children trying to recover a few grams of gold.

Finally, there's a sentiment that people ranging from MAGA to Democratic Socialist can agree on - "fuck ubiquitous state surveillance".

It's too bad that this is an issue over which proles of any political stripe are unlikely to prevail in the long term. It's also too bad that many on the Right side of the political spectrum won't understand a key point: namely that they voted for this, and that if they vote R again they'll be signing up for having their every move tracked and catalogued.

That's not to say that the diet MAGA leaders of the Democratic party - the ones who are essentially corporate property - would be any better on this issue.

This is Slashdot where expecting high tech literacy used to be standard. (Note the OP UID.)

I do similar and find using multiple OS quite convenient rather than burdensome. I don't "switch", I "add" instead and have done so since I was new to Slashdot at the turn of this century.

An OS is just a tool to run applications and the more one chooses the be comfortable with the more choices they have. Learning Linux hasn't been difficult for decades.

With VMs and other options it's trivial to have any or many OS at hand (one reason the "home lab" enthusiasts often have rackfulls of SFF and tiny PCs easily remoted into from their main machine or any other).

Good question. Does the city pay for exclusive use of the data? Or can Flock contract with other entities and provide a feed?

AFAIK, the cameras belong to Flock.

How will someone report the traffic signal going out?

If it runs Windows, it might not be able to run without contacting the mother ship (license servers). This is a small town. They probably don't have the IT staff to manage things like enterprise license and update servers.

Back in the '90s, it was someone visiting each PC with a stack of floppies. You can't even run a home PC that way anymore.

Town contracts with Flock to provide ALPR functions. Flock gets the appropriate pole rental contracts and installs cameras. City has a change of heart and asks that the cameras be shut off. Flock does so, but then is contacted by another customer interested in the data feed. Flock says, "The cameras are already up. Just turn them on and serve the new contract."

A couple of things come to mind:

• Pole rentals might be with a utility not city owned. The city has nothing to say about such contracts.
• The second data contract might be with an organization not subject to city regulation. DoJ and CBP/INS come to mind.
• The city, of course, gets nothing if they cancel or suspend the data contract.

... will cause problems for everyone. The nail that sticks up must be hammered down.

... Halupedia has competition.