Monthly Archives: February 2005

Friday Ark

This entry was posted in Friday Ark on by

Cats, Dogs, Spiders and ? every Friday.
I’ll post links to sites that have Friday (plus or minus a few days) photos of their chosen animals as I see them (no photoshops and no humans).
Leave a comment or trackback to this post or email me and I’ll add yours to the list. Check back regularly for updates throughout the day on Fridays and somewhat less frequently over the weekend.
Dog folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Dogs hosted by Mickey’s Musings.
Cat folks: remember to submit your links to the Carnival of the Cats which goes up every Sunday and will be hosted this week by Mind of Mog.
Oh, some of you may have missed the fine graphical analysis of Friday Ark history that Laurence did last week: Check it out.
Archive editions of the Friday Ark.
Cats

DogsBirdsOther Vertebrates

Invertebrates
Didn’t Make It

The HAN

This entry was posted in Health Care Technology on by

Embed sensors and transmit the data to a collection device via Human Area Network (HAN).
I can think of a myriad of health care related applications for RedTacton’s technology, e.g., real time glucose monitoring for diabetics or real time micro dosing of medication in direct response to physiological changes. RedTacton has more suggestions.
Check it out and let your imagination run wild.
Via Medgadgets via Catallarchy.

Choicepoint

This entry was posted in Capitalism Constitution Economics Federal Government Government Information Law Libertarianism on by

Most of you are, by now, aware of the Choicepoint fiasco:

Criminals posing as legitimate businesses have accessed critical personal data stored by ChoicePoint Inc., a firm that maintains databases of background information on virtually every U.S. citizen, MSNBC.com has learned.
The incident involves a wide swath of consumer data, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports and other information. ChoicePoint aggregates and sells such personal information to government agencies and private companies.

Ed Foster notes:

What the ChoicePoint fiasco really shows we need, however, are baseline federal privacy standards that apply to all industries. Although it’s certainly ironic that the “nation’s leading provider of identification and credential verification services” couldn’t figure out it was selling our info to a ring of criminals, the real problem is that data brokers like ChoicePoint can legally sell our information to just about whomever they please.

Federal standards and regulations are invariably broken and generally never written with individual citizens in mind but Ed’s last point hits the nail on the head.
No institution, government or private, can be allowed to collect or distribute, for free or for fee, any information about an individual without that individuals specific consent on a per incident basis and if the distribution is for a fee then that individual must be compensated at a rate agreeable to the individual.
The Privacy Digest has more information on both what the Choicepoint breach means to individuals and what information they may have about you.