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Posts Tagged “
Big Brother
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GPS Devices Tattling on Cheating Employees
Big Brother is watching you, and this time Big Brother is watching you watch reruns of Big Brother at the gym during your shift. GPS tracking devices installed on government vehicles are telling on employees that use official cars for personal business, or use government time to engage in non-work activities &mdash thus killing an American pastime.More »
please adjust your tinfoil hat
A Future of Wi-Fi Parking Tickets
The promise of wi-fi technology enabling an open transfer of data and ideas for the computer packing everyman is rapidly unraveling. Streetline Networks CEO Tod Dykstra wants cities to stuff their coffers with lost parking ticket revenue using his company's wireless parking monitoring technology. Streetline's vehicle sensors monitor the physical time and space occupied by a vehicle, while its meter monitors keep track of the inner workings of a meter. Both systems broadcast violations wirelessly back to central bureaucracy, which will spit out tickets to scofflaws [Actually, the technology won't spit out tickets. Rather, it will just allow municipalities to better redirect assets to more effectively price meters and directing enforcement to reduce congestion, generate more revenue, increase turnover, etc. — not to individually ticket drivers. -Ed.]. (Thanks to Cole Coonce for the tip) [Wireless Sensors to Modernize Parking via Wi-fiplanet.com]
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Intelligent Cars Drink Less Gas Than Hybrids!
Some Aussie engineers have found that setting up a network of sensors in the urban driving environment and rigging cars to respond to traffic flows by optimizing speeds will cause an ordinary pure-internal-combustion vehicle to beat the fuel economy of an "unintelligent" gasoline-electric hybrid car over the same course. The drawback? Big Brother drives your car for you! We wonder what would happen with a mix of intelligent and unintelligent cars on the same streets, not to mention how much road rage would be triggered when Big Brother says your car will catch all the green lights at an optimum velocity of 3.7 miles per hour. More »
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Next Up, Skynet: Siemens Teaches Cars to Read!
Never let it be said that the Germans haven't done their part for literacy. Besides providing the world with the works of Goethe, Brecht and Werner von Braun, Deutschland also gave rise to industrial conglomerate Siemens, who've developed a system that reads speed limit signs and can adjust a vehicle's speed downward at the driver's discretion to stay within limits. The all-seeing eye cross checks the electrosensory stimulus it takes in with GPS data to ensure it's not wonky. We imagine this would be a highly-useful invention in a Gatso-riddled society. More »
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Oregon Lawmakers Try to Put Tweeny in the Corner
Goddammit. We know there are idiots in this country who have no business reproducing. Sadly, this has always been the case. And as eugenics run counter to our antifascist tendencies, all we can do is use our bully pulpette to grouse about a bill in Oregon that lawmakers are attempting to pass, mandating that children under 13 ride in the back seat of automobiles. We're all for safety — to a point. And what of kids in non-quad-cab pickup trucks? Will children be banned from riding in sports cars? Or vehicles without five-star crash ratings? At some point we need to be cognizant that overregulation and a society of fear play right into the hands of the asshats who want all of us to be just like them. Hey brother, can you tell me the way to the nearest megachurch? More »
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Motoring, What's Your Price for Fleeting Fame? Interactive Mini Billboards
When we were in San Francisco over the New Year, we noticed a Mini billboard on 80 eastbound just before the bridge with a digital readout that displayed various slogans. It turns out that the Anglo-Bavarian small-car brand has bigger plans afoot for said signs, which are currently up in Chicago, New York, Miami and obviously, Sucka Free. Now one can sign up, send the BMW unit a message you'd like to see displayed, and four to six weeks later, you'll receive a special key fob that signals the billboard as you pass by to display your personal message. Big Brother or an appeal to vanity writ large? Either way, it's amusing and troubling at the same time. More »
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Gah! Nanny-State Alert in California: What Else is New?
Oh crap. Now they want to ban smoking in cars carrying kids in California. And smoking in state parks. Not that one should smoke in an enclosed space around children, but please, California, we have enough laws. Can't we do something productive with our legislative time? This is just getting silly. More »
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Our Big Brother Can Beat Up Your Big Brother, Eh? RFID vs. Plate Readers
A Canadian company is touting its RFID solution to vehicle tracking as superior to plate-reading cameras. Instead of a passel of plate-reading cameras, they're suggesting a network of sensors throughout Southern BC, allowing authorities to track cars in real time with GPS coordinates. Some call it smart. We think either solution should be shelved. Besides, if you were a real criminal, wouldn't you simply take a cordless drill to the license plate and bore through the chip? More »
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Black Box Bogey: NHTSA Says Carmakers Must Tell Buyers They're Being Watched
The Feds have spoken: No exposure without disclosure. This week, the NHTSA gave automakers a green light to put black-box data recorders aboard new vehicles, but from 2011 onward they must inform car buyers if a model carries such a box. (Currently, 60% of new cars have them.) That'll give regulators and manufacturers plenty of time to work up a standard-triplicate disclosure document (yours is the pink copy) buyers will likely sign and date at purchase time. The agency will also set a baseline requirement for the amount of data the boxes collect during a crash at 15 pieces, including speed, seat belt use (binary), and which pedal a driver hit beforehand. That last one would indemnify carmakers in cases of accidental acceleration. Thanks, Big Bro. Er, sort of. More »
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California Mulls Smoking-In-Cars-With-Children Ban
We remember being young and riding in our friends' parents GMC Safari with cigarette smoke choking us in the backseat. We hated it. We remember staying at a youth hostel in Nuremburg — watching the European soccer championship ten years ago — and while we were puffing on our own roll-me-own, our friend's secondhand smoke was burning our eyes. So it absolutely makes no sense to say that we're opposed to proposed California legislation that would ban smoking in cars containing children. Except for one thing: it's one more intrusion by the nanny state into people's lives. Frankly, if we're gonna get into this level of micromanagement, why don't we just start euthanizing people with low IQs? Screw killing all the lawyers. Let's start with the middle-managers. More »
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Big Brother Says Slow Down: Traffic Control By Satellite; Myth or Coming Soon to the UK?
We've been following the UK's march toward state-controlled motoring with empathetic semi-amusement. With every new municipal proposal to employ technology for the sake of imposing iron will over the motoring public, we're ever more grateful even for the US's anti-driver traffic laws (in urban areas, at least) — the doubling of fines at will, the Boss Hoggian manipulation of "speed zones," the selective enforcement — and even more grateful for the Constitution (even in the shape it's in). But government control of traffic speeds via satellite? Surely that must be over the top? A conspiracy theory for sure, right? More »
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Wi-Fi! For Safety!
Dr. Raja Sengupta of Cal has come up with a novel imminent-collision-awareness idea. First, we kill all the lawyers. Then we equip each car with GPS and a Wi-Fi transmitter. Then, cars talk to each other and decide where they are in relation to each other. It's an interesting idea, and GM's throwing some money at it, but cripes if it doesn't sound like it could totally be used for evil. We're not sure on this one. More »
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Looooooooooooord! St. Albans Sets Up Crook Catchin' Road Cams
And we thought This is Hertfordshire was un-hip. Some wily Stooges fan at the copy desk came up with the headline, "Police TV eye on cars" hoping to spin it past his superiors and onto the World Wide Web for like likes of us to geek out over. According to the article, the town of St. Albans has set up cameras that track vehicles via license plate, catching miscreants, road-tax dodgers, the uninsured and general hoonage in the name of safety. We wonder if the St. Albanses know that the "TV" in the Stooges track isn't a television, but rather stands for "twat vibe." Appropriate, non? More »
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Oh Criminy. They've Got Sound Cameras Now
Red light cameras. Speed cameras. And now...wait for it...yes, sound cameras. Here, children, is the Military Industrial Complex working for your benefit. An Australian defense contractor has come up with a camera that snaps license-plate photos of bumpin' thunderboxes, extra-rumpety exhaust notes and even ill-timed horn blasts. Frankly, the only guy we really wanna ticket is the guy down the street whose oversensitive alarm goes off every time some guy on a Harley roars by. More »
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The March of the Speed Cameras: Scottsdale Report
Commenter buzaw0nk noted last month that the nation's first speed cameras had gone up on Arizona's Loop 101 highway in Scottsdale. The early reports are in, and authorities say that motorists have noted less weaving in and out of traffic, as well as reduced speeds. The program's currently a nine-month trial, but assume that we haven't seen the last of these beasts on the roadside, considering the cameras have flashed 15,000 motorists in two weeks. [UPDATE: We're dumb. DC beat Arizona to the speed-camera punch, and we even wrote about it. Thanks, Mike.] More »
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Dystopia or Utopia? You Make the Call
Man, you know, we're really thinking that Orwell was right, especially about his native land. Eggheads in the land of bangers 'n' mash are making predictions that the entire nation's transport system will be controlled by RFID-receptive "network clouds" (aren't there enough goddamn clouds in Blighty already?) that will direct the routing of vehicles running on autopilot by 2056. We're really glad that we'll be like 81 then and won't notice, so long as they keep our wheelchair's IV buddy on a Johnnie Walker drip. More »
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