Dowbrigade

BERLIN
(Reuters) – Three German teenagers were being investigated for fraud
Friday after they spent $160
million in a two-hour
Internet shopping spree because they were "bored," authorities
said Friday.

The 19-year-olds splashed out on light aircraft, patents, industrial
machinery, restaurants and artwork after hacking into an account on an
Internet auction site.

"They gave boredom as the motive and made no attempt to disguise
what fun they had buying only the most expensive things," according
to police in the western town of Limburg.
They said state prosecutors are investigating.

from Reuters

BERLIN
(Reuters) – Three German teenagers were being investigated for fraud
Friday after they spent $160
million in a two-hour
Internet shopping spree because they were "bored," authorities
said Friday.

The 19-year-olds splashed out on light aircraft, patents, industrial
machinery, restaurants and artwork after hacking into an account on an
Internet auction site.

"They gave boredom as the motive and made no attempt to disguise
what fun they had buying only the most expensive things," according
to police in the western town of Limburg.
They said state prosecutors are investigating.

from Reuters

How
come every time the crypto-fascists take a major step forward in their
ongoing crusade
to control every aspect of American life, they test it out on the kids
first? How about obligatory, universal drug testing?  That;s what they’re up to at St. Patrick High School on Chicago’s Far West Side. All they need
are a few hairs, sent here to Cambridge…

St. Patrick officials, with the strong backing of parents, unanimously
decided this fall to approve drug testing all 990 of its students, putting
the all-boys Catholic school in league with a small fraternity of private
schools nationwide that are going beyond a Supreme Court ruling allowing
public schools to drug test students in athletics or other extracurricular
activities.

Beginning next school year, every student will have about 15 hairs snipped
1 1/2 inches, to be tested by Psychemedics, a Cambridge, Mass.-based
drug testing company.

The Dowbrigade wonders what the policy will be on BALD students.  Baldness
is definitely a fashion statement these days, especially among minorities.
 Forcing students to grow hair just for testing could be seen as
discriminatory. Perhaps NBA players have been anticipating hair-follicle
drug testing for years. We smell a conspiracy….

from the Boston Globe

Is
face recognition software ready for prime time?  It seems to work
much better in controlled situations, like airports, where the subject
can be made to sit still and smile at the camera, and not so well when
surveiling large crowds and moving targets (duh!)

Neverthless, the potential of a system like this to track all of the
people all of the time holds irresistable fascination for certian public
servants and control freaks at all levels.  The latest installation
is at Royal Palm Middle School in Phoenix….

”If it works one time, locates one missing child or saves a child from
a sexual attack, I feel it’s worth it,” said Maricopa County Sheriff
Joe Arpaio, a tough-talking sheriff who has previously gained notoriety
for putting prisoners on
chain gangs and issuing them pink underwear.

The cameras are linked to state and national databases held at the sheriff’s
office of sex offenders, missing children, and alleged abductors.

Great idea! I bet they find lots of missing children at school…..

from the Boston Globe