As I gear up for the fall semester, this morning’s news bucket brought me two stories about databases.
Local legislator Wll Espero wants to create a registry for violent criminals. It’s similar to registries that track pedophiles and rapists. In dribs and drabs, other Hawaii lawmakers have announced their support. Norman Sakamoto made a statement yesterday, and Clayton Hee spoke up a few days ago.
Databases are not force fields!
The ACLU has pointed out that these registries cannot keep a convicted criminal out of a neighborhood. Privacy concerns take a back seat when momentum builds for “feel-good measures that do not increase public safety”, according to Hawaii ACLU legal director Lois Perrin.
Local supporters of these registries believe these databases will only help them. But what happens when a local government compiles a database that invades the privacy of “upstanding citizens”?
Every couple of months, some local group or politician suggests building toll roads in Honolulu, in place of a train. These efforts are laughable. There’s little space to put new expressways in Honolulu, unless the new lanes are stacked on top of existing highways. That’s a poor idea on a volcanic island. Tunnels won’t work well on an island, either.
New highways only add more cars to our roads
Mass transit makes much more sense. It’s difficult to get across town or find a parking space in Honolulu. Oahu’s economy already suffers from the thousands of cars that flit back and forth to work, home and school with only one or two passengers in each vehicle.
Many mainland toll roads offer electronic tags or E-ZPasses that let drivers travel through an express lane at tool booths. These systems let drivers prepay their tolls and avoid long lines that seem to stretch forever as other drivers fumble for paper money and change. Monthly and online statements let E-ZPass users review their journeys. That’s an excellent aid when filing for corporate reimbursements or income tax deductions. It’s also a great way to monitor fleet drivers.
Chris Newmarker of the Associated Press reported today on a growing trend in divorce cases – subpoena a spouse’s E-ZPass records to see where and when they were driving. When a spouse says they were in Pennsylvania on business but their E-ZPass account shows a tool transaction in New Jersey, credibility flies out the window.
Cheating spouses think no one will notice if they are somewhere else
Some states will not release E-ZPass transaction data to a civil investigation. These logs make excellent evidence in some criminal cases. Melanie McGuire was recently convicted of murdering her husband, cutting up his body, loading the pieces into three suitcases and dumping his remains in the Chesapeake Bay. Prosecutors used her E-ZPass records in court to describe her travels. She could have left her E-ZPass at home and paid cash, of course.
I’m doing a guest lecture tonight in Larry Rowland’s IS 6000 course. My topic is action research, and I’ll discuss several methods that MSIS students can use to complete the professional paper sequence.
Here is a PowerPoint file with annotated slides that I will use during the talk.
Here are a couple of pages from this site during tonight’s talk:
I have a page full of information about writing papers in APA style. It’s listed as “APA style” on the main menu of this site. My example of an annotated bibliography is here, and is also listed under the section about Lesley University.
This page has two relevant sections. One is a discussion of how to write research papers. The other examines the concept of authority in peer-reviewed articles. This page is listed as “References” on the main menu of this site.
The New York Times ran an article today about adaptive aids for the baby boomers. Because I was born before 1964, technically I am a boomer, even though I don’t feel like one.
The Lucida font is one example cited by Times journalist Katie Hafner. The font was co-designed for Apple by Charles Bigelow to provide a highly readable font for low resolution printers and monitors. Lucida is the default menu font for Mac OS X and the Safari web browser, and has been included in Microsoft Windows since 1995. Wikipedia has a page full of examples.
Tiny fonts in web browsers? There’s hope.
Hafner mentions that Internet Explorer and the Mac have features to enlarge fonts on the screen. These are handy, especially when using a laptop computer. I’ve noticed that Internet Explorer sometimes compresses or mangles the page layout when displaying enlarged or zoomed fonts. In my favorite web browser, Firefox, fonts can be enlarged with the Ctrl+ keystroke on a Windows computer, or Command+ on a Mac. this method doesn’t always work, especially on sites that use Flash.
There are a few screen magnifying utilities for Windows users. I’ve used Magnifixer, a freeware product that is easy to install. Windows also has its own accessibility utilities, available in the Start, Accessories folder.
Mac users can find a Zoom feature in the Universal Access preferences panel. There is a built-in feature to enlarge the mouse cursor, but the results look awful. I use Pinpoint, a US$10 app, to display a very large mouse cursor on my MacBook Pro.
It’s much harder to enlarge the fonts on a mobile phone or PDA. A few models provide adaptive features, but most don’t. The Sidekick 3 provides no way to enlarge a font on the screen, and that’s been a sore point for a few of my colleagues. Larger screens can help, like the display of an iPhone. But a larger screen almost always increases the device’s size and reduces battery life.
Oticon’s Delta hearing aid was profiled in the New York Times on September 24. This model looks more like a fashion accessory, and is marketed towards users in the 40-60 age group.
Hearing aids that look like Bluetooth headsets
A blog that covers technology for older users, 50+Digital, posted an article last week about the Audeo. This hearing aid is marketed as a “personal communications assistant”. It looks like a large Bluetooth headset, but it is similar in many ways to the Delta.
Devices like the Audeo and Delta will become more popular, according to Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe, as boomers hunt for fashionable alternatives to traditional hearing aids and reading glasses.
I expect more younger users to adopt hearing aids, partly because they’ve blown out their hearing with their iPods. I’m always careful to keep my iPod’s volume at a level that will let me hear traffic noise.
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