What The Hell Were They Thinking?!

I was just reading about the man-hunt for Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, who worked for the Los Angeles police department from 2004 to 2008. Here's a link to the story at the New York Times. While the details behind this story are tragic, and I feel for all the police officers and their family members involved, who have either been killed or hurt, you have to wonder just what kind of training these officers have. According to the story, two women delivering newspapers who just happened to be driving the same model and color of truck that the suspect is supposedly driving, were shot and wounded when police officers opened fire on them "mistakenly".

I'm sorry, but since when is it okay for police officers to open fire on the first "vehicle" that matches the description of a suspect vehicle without making absolutely sure that the people inside it actually are the suspects. In this particular case, I don't see how two women can be mistaken for one black man. What if it were the suspect, and he had a hostage in the vehicle with him? Apparently that doesn't matter anymore and the police are free to open fire whenever they want to. I for one am hoping that the officer's involved in that, "case of mistaken identity", are on an unpaid leave of absence right now, and that an independent review board will be looking into the procedures they followed, or more likely, didn't follow!

Instagram Owns You...And They're Gonna Use You!

LINK to the story at blog.chron.com

Do you use Instagram? The popular photo sharing app made popular on IOS, now on just about every mobile platform. If you do, or even if you know someone else who uses it, you might be in for a bit of a surprise come January 16, 2013. Instagram has updated their TOS(terms of service), and as of January 16th of next year, they will be asserting that they have the right to use your images in ads for their service. So, pictures of you, of people you've taken photos of, events you've taken photos of are all fair game and Instagram says they can use them to promote their service without your permission or having to pay you a single cent!

Last time I checked, anyone who wanted to use someones likeness in an advertising campaign, they had to at the very least get a signed consent form. Usually there's payment involved as well seeing as how it's YOUR likeness being used by them to sell their service. Just about every photo on the internet these days has someone asserting copyright privileges to it after all. Apparently Instagram believes that with just a little careful wording in their TOS, they can bypass all that tom-foolery about copyright and use your images free of charge simply because you use their service. Not just you, mind you, even people you've taken pictures of who aren't users of their service.

I see this as a blatant misuse of a companies Terms of Service. My recommendation to anyone reading this that uses Instagram would be to delete your account, (the only way at this time to opt out), and use another service. There are a lot of companies on the internet like Instagram and Facebook, (which now coincidentally owns Instagram?!), that think simply because they provide a service, all of it's users content belongs to them to use as they please.

Facebook Sucks

Facebook sucks! That's the long and short of it. I got on Facebook against my better judgement since quite a few members of my family were on it, and it did make it easier to stay in touch with them. During the "entire" week that I was on it though, my virus scanner alerted me to more viruses, trojans and worms during that week than it had for the entire previous year! On top of that, several of my accounts got hacked, not very seriously though thank GOD!

In the end, my netbook was so compromised by Facebook, I had to reformat the hard-drive and re-install the operating system. Well, actually it was my son that did that for me, and he did a great job. Now it's simply become a matter of getting all my software back up and running. So, make sure you steer clear of Facebook at all costs, it just isn't worth it. If you want to stay in touch with family and friends, just use email and a secure chat program!