State troopers get new toy

Colorado State Patrol is training with a new radar gun that can measure the distance between cars. The idea is the troopers can find people who are following too close and give them tickets. Personally, I HATE people that follow too close and normally try to leave a good amount of distance between cars. Part of my reasoning comes from ideas about traffic patterns. Leaving extra space between cars can actually improve traffic flow.

The question I have is why do we need a fancy new radar gun to see if anyone is following too close? Colorado law reads that a car must maintain a “reasonable and prudent distance” from the car in front. The ‘reasonable and prudent’ leaves the decision completely in the hands of the State Patrol officer. It’s kind of like ‘driving too fast for conditions’, the measurement is completely subjective. Anyone who drives Colorado highways knows that there are many motorists that follow too closely, a new gadget isn’t needed to see this, yet I don’t know anyone that has been pulled over for this. I can’t see any reason why knowing the exact distance between cars is of any use at all. Sounds like it’s just another way to waste some taxpayer money. Maybe the State Patrol is planning on writing enough tickets to cover the cost.

Want to sign my YearBook?

An interesting article yesterday on students that are rejecting traditional yearbooks for online alternatives. MyYearBook.com is one of the leading websites offering an alternative to printed yearbooks.

In my opinion this is a wonderful idea – and an idea who’s time has come. Unfortunately, not everyone agrees. The article quotes Rich Stoebe, director of communications for Jostens Inc. as saying

After all, will anyone want to haul a laptop to the 25th class reunion? And what happens if the technology changes, or something happens to the dot-com?

I had to chuckle when I read this. Currently I can buy a laptop that’s not much bigger than my high school yearbook. I can’t imagine that in 25 years everyone won’t have a device that is much smaller and impressive. This appears to just be another corporate case of burying your head in the sand. Jostens stands to lose their $348 million dollar empire to a couple of high school kids that put up a website on a whim all because they fail to embrace technology.

Risk Management

In the wake of Ben Roethlisberger’s motorcycle accident I have been getting more static than usual about riding my bike. My sister and I had a heated discussion today on the topic. I like to ride, but she thinks I shouldn’t because it’s dangerous.

This discussion brings up some interesting (at least for me) philisophical issues. The first concerns risk management. How do we, as semi-rational people, come to a concensus on what is safe and what is dangerous. As a motorcycle rider, I believe the problem is with the traffic. Perhaps motorcycles would be safer if there was better awareness, better training and perhaps stiffer penalties on people that cause accidents with their 3000+ lbs automobiles. My sister believes that anyone that engages in what she believes is the high risk behavior of motorcycle riding is at fault for participating in an activity that exceeds her acceptable risk threshold. My question is, where do we draw the line? Is motorcycle riding an acceptable risk? If not, is bicycle riding? Should we get up every morning, slather ourselves with sunscreen and strap on a helmet just in case we go out in the sun or fall down? Should we eat only organic food? Should we lysol bomb our whole house so we don’t get infections? Should we, like Ben Stiller’s character in Along Came Polly, enter every activity we engage in into a computer and live based on the results?

It definitely seems like we all live in a world of our own little construction when it comes to managing risk. One of the largest areas where this is evident is in parenting. I am at the age that, while I don’t have children myself, many of my friends and family are having babies. Nearly everyone seems to rationalize decisions they make for their children based on some kind of internal risk calculation. I won’t go into any specific details right here, but I’m guessing you know what I mean. Things like the amount of supervision they are given, car seats, food they eat, vaccines, where they are allowed to play etc… ect… One parent might be fanatical about having they latest and greatest car seats and helmets while another is ridiculous about only eating certain types of foods? Who is right? Who is wrong? How do we make this judgement?

Reality shows gone boring.

In sad news today, CBS cancelled the reality show “Tuesday Night Book Club.” Whoever approved this show should be fired. Reality shows are bad enough when they are exciting, like American Idol or Survivor. People that go to Book Clubs stereotypically don’t live exciting lives anyway. What’s next, “Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting”? “American Nursing Home”?

Nasty FIFA World Cup letter

Two days ago boing boing posted an article about a nasty letter they got from Baker & McKenzie, legal council for Infront Sports & Media, exclusive brodcasters of this year’s World Cup.

Dave Taylor wrote a pointed critique of boing boing’s flippant response. He poses the question

…it’s hard to deny that this is actively defrauding the copyright holders and if you had just bid hundreds of millions for the broadcast and later Internet rights to a major event how would YOU work to defend those rights and ensure that you could later monetize that content?

The question here is not if the copyright holders are defrauded, the question is how could it possibly be stopped. How can copyright holders possibly hope to defend their ‘rights’ against a worldwide conspiracy? All sending nasty letters out has accomplished is to make a few Internet sites angry, cause a lot of discussion, and further cast anyone attempting to defend the copyrights in a negative light. It is unlikely that their actions will actually protect those ‘rights’. I expect that within hours of the completion any given World Cup game the broadcast will be available on a sever located in South America, China – any country that has little regard for foreign intellectual property. Sending letters to American blog sites (who, by the way, really aren’t interested in the World Cup) is like peeing into the wind.

The economic world that has existed for the last 150 years is changing. Copyright is quickly becoming a piece of history. The whole concept of Intellectual Property will end up as an odd blip in the history books. It will eventually fade into obscurity as have so many obscure legal concepts before it. Boing Boing was right to casually dismiss the legal threats with the attitude they displayed. The threats are a facade designed to give the impression that Intellectual Property still exists and can be protected. In reality Infront paid millions for the right to provide World Cup coverage once. After the content is out in the wild I’m confident it will be replicated, letters or no letters.