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The modern news consumer ignores Weblogs and online citizen journalism at his own peril. But not everyone has the time to keep track of what's going on the Web. With this blog we hope to track the highlights of what's being discussed online so when news breaks from the Web, we're ready.

Will Femia is a Weblog enthusiast who, through good fortune and dumb luck, was introduced to the form as his position as chat producer for MSNBC.com careered into obsolescence. On any given day, Will can be found having already spent an unhealthy amount of time squinting at a computer screen.

Send a message to Will at spotter@msnbc.com



When cameras lie

Posted: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 4:58 PM by Will Femia
Filed Under:

Banksy put up a massive piece criticizing security surveillance, directly under some surveillance cameras. This refreshes my suspicion that having security cameras everywhere is mostly useless. I'm sure there are counter examples of CCTV helping catch and prosecute criminals but it seems like most of the time the camera images are either too poor to be any good or they aren't useful after all. I don't mean to suggest that we therefore need more and better cameras, but like so many other security measures, it does seem like there's a disconnect between what they're for and what they do.

Speaking of cameras not doing what they're supposed to, I've heard that red light cameras actually end up causing more accidents even as they reduce the kind of major fatal accidents that come from running red lights, but it was never clear to me why that is. The best I could figure was that people would overcompensate and stop at yellow lights out of fear of being photographed and the car behind them would not expect the stop. But this report on a possible gaming of the system by shortening the timing of yellow lights is an even better explanation. Are drivers who expect a longer yellow than they're getting causing a spike in the accident stat when they jam on the brakes at the early red?

Speaking of video cameras testifying, if they hadn't already made Sliver I'd say this was a possible premise for a movie: "They didn't find evidence of rape. But they did find videotapes of hundreds of sexual encounters with men that Barclay had filmed on high-tech surveillance cameras. The cameras were hidden inside AM/FM radios, motion detectors and intercom speaker systems, among other places. There was also one at his business office." (The twist in the story is that the guy used his secret sex tapes to prove he didn't commit rape.)

First High Definition Moon Map Released, Uranium Sites Located

Our 12 Favorite Green Technologies - Look! They list my power-generating revolving door idea! (I blogged it = "my idea")

Speaking of saving the world, Colbert and Kamen Solve the World's Water Problems - I missed this when it was on the air. Pretty remarkable. The discussion at Gizmodo is good reading but I didn't see an answer to what happens with the impurities that are removed from the water. The actual amount of resources it would take to get a program off the ground also seems problematic. Power for it, fuel for the power, instruction, maintenance...

Pongout is Pong and Breakout in the same playing screen. Stupidly hard.

Twit Links comes pretty close to being a service I've been looking for since Twitter was released. How can you find out what the most popularly traded links on Twitter are? Tweitgeist shows the most used words every hour, which is pretty cool. I often follow that with TweetScan to see if there's any telling why some words are more popular. But Twit Links is the only service I know of that shows the links being shared. The drawback to Twit Links is that they aren't drawing from the whole Twitter pool. They're only taking results from a pre-selected list of tech bloggers.

The Sony World Photography Awards - The awards are this weekend but the finalists in both the pro and amateur categories are selected and available for viewing.

Benedictions is blogging the Pope's visit to the U.S. Actually, it's always blogging the Pope.

Yankee pitcher Phil Hughes has a blog. No post yet on the recent loss to the Red Sox.

As long as I'm listing cool sites generally, Polldaddy lets you make polls in Twitter.

Mug Shot du Jour seems like it's an authentic portrayal of something, I'm just not sure what.
America's hard-luck class?

Photocrank is a photo comments application that takes caption contests to a new level by allowing the addition of talk/thought bubbles. When it's embedded in a blog the comments run like a slide show.

Mickey Kaus has the best explanation I've read of what's wrong with what Obama said in that bitter/clinging quote.

Rocketboom Founder Puts His Twitter Account On Sale - This is mostly a theoretical exercise since most people expect that either it's a hoax or Twitter will pull the plug on it but it still makes for good mental cud. We're all familiar with the way marketers gather names and contact info for sale to spammers, but to voluntarily follow someone on Twitter only to have them sell your subscription to someone else is a new level of betrayal. Then again, haven't you already bought into some degree of exploitation just by participating in online communities?

What?

Speaking of "what," I'm not with-it enough to know if Rye Rye is already popular but her "Shake it to the ground" looping is working for me. (Wikipedia: Looping)

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Comments

my breath was taken away by the sheer meanness of mugshotdujour.com

tony g (Sent Tuesday, April 15, 2008 6:11 PM)

mugshots.com is a better indication of the society

Peter Walsh (Sent Tuesday, April 15, 2008 7:02 PM)

The best part of Mickey Kaus's comments on Obama's explanation are:

Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality... He presents himself as near omniscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else's beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained.

Though I would disagree that this observation is applicable more to Obama than many others, including at other times, Hillary.  I actually think he is probably more a victim of this mentality than a perpetrator as Kaus portrays him.  There is way too much of this sort of thinking in our higher education systems in this country.  Getting paid for your observations of the other rats in the cage does not make you any less of a rat in a cage yourself.

KRW (Sent Tuesday, April 15, 2008 8:32 PM)

Accidents caused by cameras?  What, they jump down and force the car behind to follow too closely?  It seems that most people take driving lessons from the same place that Jeff Bridges did in Starman. "green means go, red means stop, yellow means speed up"

Got new for you.  Yellow (amber) means STOP - unless unsafe to do so.  Red means STOP no matter what. It is not the driver that spikes the air at a yellow that causes accidents, it is the driver behind who wants to run that yellow light.

Richard, Dawsons Landing, BC, Canada (Sent Wednesday, April 16, 2008 1:28 AM)

Re: red light cameras, I think the problem is people panic-stopping because they aren't sure if they will make the light. I know occasionally I get caught unsure if the yellow will give me enough time to pass the intersection and the only option aside from going through it and hoping is to come to an unreasonably sharp stop.

I wonder just how many accidents really happen because someone passes through a light one second after it turns red - BEFORE the crosstraffic even gets its green. I think these cameras are primarily about boosting revenue in a way that makes those opposed to them seem indifferent to human life, a variation on "think of the children".

The cameras (if they must be used) should be set to activate with the crosstraffic green light (1/2 to 1 second delay there), not the drivers red light. That won't be done though because it would cut too sharply into the revenue generated from them.

Sean, NY (Sent Wednesday, April 16, 2008 7:00 AM)

"Obama never describes his own views as the products of anything except an accurate perception of reality... He presents himself as near omniscient, the Archimedian point from which everyone else's beliefs and behavior can be assessed and explained."

Kaus could be described in exactly the same words...

Michael B, Norman, OK (Sent Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:06 AM)

re: Rye Rye
Classic B-more club track. Looping a short vocal backed by a minimal bass and drum track. Been around since the later 80's and really broke out in the early 90's with "Doo-Doo Brown". Still going strong in the downtown clubs.

Justin Ritmiller (Sent Wednesday, April 16, 2008 3:52 PM)

That comment about security cameras reminded me of a time a friend of mine gave me a disk with footage of someone slashing tires where he worked. He hoped I could enhance the images. The footage looked like one of those  bigfoot videos. It could have been bigfoot for all I could tell.

Johnny Photon, near Indianapolis, IN (Sent Wednesday, April 16, 2008 6:35 PM)

10335 on Pongout.

Jason, NYC (Sent Wednesday, April 16, 2008 6:53 PM)

The problem with red lights began when someone had the bright idea of increasing the 'safe' time for drivers to beat the traffic, even thought the light was red.  Humans are incredibly adept at gaming systems, and soon found out that there was a no real need to slam on the brakes for a red light, because the other drivers didn't get a green light until a second or so after your light turned red.

This time period has been creeping up for a long time.  It's now common at large, multi-lane intersections to find a several-second period when everybody's light is red.  In my opinion, inattentive drivers have become acclimated to this safe period, and count on it as part of their driving paradigm.

What I believe is happening with red light cameras, is that when the timing of the lights is changed, and certainly when the timing is different at various intersections, it interrupts the driving paradigm, and causes mistakes in judgement.

Personally, I believe there should be a yellow light in both directions.  The drivers switching from red to yellow (then to green) would quickly learn to look both ways when the light turned yellow, and safety and driver awareness would be enhanced.  This would also allow for red light cameras in both directions....

Dan (Sent Thursday, April 17, 2008 2:06 AM)

I went a couple of clicks deeper into the water purifier link...

Kamen has developed a Stirling Engine generator that powers the distiller with its excess heat while also providing electricity.  The beauty of it is that the fuel can be anything that burns, including cow poop (seriously).  

Matt, Waldort, MD (Sent Thursday, April 17, 2008 10:46 AM)

On the Kamen purifier, here's a Newsweek article that talks about how it works, pricing possibilities, etc. (Try and ignore the glaring typo in the sub-headline)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/130735?from=rss

Patrick, Chicago, IL (Sent Thursday, April 17, 2008 3:11 PM)

Red Light Issues:

Back in the 1960's I lived in Memphis TN.  The counsel decided that because many people when seeing an amber light were stepping on the gas to get through it (true), rather than stopping for the light as they should made a change.   They made the amber light less than a second.  Great idea .. ya think??   Of course not, this move meant that it was impossible to clear the intersection driving at the speed limit without violating the law when the signal changed. Also not enough time to stop safely.

This lasted only a few months and they decided to put the amber time back to normal and delay the green signal on the crossroad by about 1-2 seconds.
This worked much better.  

The idea of putting the amber light on on the cross street is also bad.  Back in the 60s I was in Booneville, MS to attend a funeral of one of my dad's relitives.  This small city had probably some of the oldest traffic signals I had seen.

These signals apparantly had only THREE total lamps in them.  On one side Red was on the top, and on the cross street Red was on the bottom. Amber was on in all four directions when the light changed.  The problem was that the drivers waiting for Green would actually start through the intersection on amber!

For this reason I think that four way amber is a bad idea.

Solution:  Leave Amber times long enough to clear the intersection at the speed lmit. Include the four way Red for a reasonable time.  Let the cameras click. Issue tickets for violators.  With the amber signal correctly set, anyone who rear ends people that stop is tailgating or disregarding the signal.

If this hurts the revenue stream, I am sorry.  This SHOULD be about safety rather than ticket revenue.

Bill, Hobe Sound, FL (Sent Saturday, April 19, 2008 6:32 PM)



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