This whole piece is a press release, of course. Aimed at the people IVOX wants to sell their system to. Maybe you’re someone they might be “managing”?

DriverScore provides an objective measurement of individual driving behavior which, when analyzed and compared to IVOX’s repository of GPS/GIS and accelerometer data, provides an accurate picture of the relative driving performance risk.

“Insurers are increasingly using tools like predictive modeling to be able to limit risks and improve underwriting profitability,” said Kimberly Harris-Ferrante, Research Vice President with Gartner. “Using tools to perform real-time data analysis to predict driving risks and accident likelihood will ultimately help insurers meet these business requirements. Used for fleet insurance, this gives insurers the opportunity to distinguish safe drivers from drivers who are simply accident-free, promoting safer driving and accident prevention…”

IVOX’s DriverScore helps companies to reduce insurance costs through the use of a “black box” device embedded within an individual’s vehicle, which gathers ongoing data measuring a driver’s behavior – including acceleration, braking, lane changes and other actions. This data is then analyzed through algorithms to create a risk-adjusted, objective assessment of driver conduct…

DriverScore can be used as – a determinant for driver hiring and compensation.

Golly gee.

Light snow, last night. And a stunner of a sunrise, this morning.

NPR:

On Feb. 5, 1958, a B-47 bomber dropped a 7,000-pound nuclear bomb into the waters off Tybee Island, Ga., after it collided with another Air Force jet. Fifty years later, the bomb — which has unknown quantities of radioactive material — has never been found. And while the Air Force says the bomb, if left undisturbed, poses no threat to the area, determined bomb hunters and area residents aren’t so sure. The bomb found its hidden resting place when the B-47 pilot, Air Force Col. Howard Richardson, dropped it into the water after an F-86 fighter jet accidentally collided with him during a training mission. Richardson, carrying a two-man crew, was afraid the bomb would break loose from his damaged plane when he landed, so he ditched the bomb in the water before landing the plane at Hunter Air Force Base outside Savannah. Stewart ejected and eventually landed safely in a swamp.

The Navy searched for the bomb for more than two months, but never found it, and today recommends it should remain in its resting place. In a 2001 report on the search and recovery of the bomb, the Air Force said that if the bomb is still intact, the risk associated with the spread of heavy metals is low. If it’s left undisturbed, the explosive in the bomb poses no hazard, the report said. It went on to say that an “intact explosive would pose a serious explosion hazard to personnel and the environment if disturbed by a recovery attempt.”

I did some work as a Coastie with the Navys’ EOD (Explosives Ordinance) teams many years ago, recovering old WWII mines off the east coast, and towing them back to shore for disposal. Glad we never ran into anything like this.

The questionable photo

HamptonRoads.com

Police, saying they were responding to citizen complaints, carted away two large promotional photographs from the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Lynnhaven Mall on Saturday and cited the manager on obscenity charges. The citation was issued under City Code Section 22.31, Bernstein said, which makes it a crime to display “obscene materials in a business that is open to juveniles.” He did not say what was being done with the pictures and when the manager, whose name was not released, is scheduled to appear in court. The manager, reached by telephone, declined to comment on the incident Saturday, saying that he was conferring with and waiting for guidance from Abercrombie corporate officials.

Bernstein confirmed that one depicts three shirtless young men from the back, walking through a field. The man in the lead appears to be about to pull up his jeans, which have slipped down enough to reveal his upper buttocks. The same image is displayed on the Abercrombie Web site. The other image is of a woman who is topless and whose “breast is displayed with her hand covering just the nipple portion,” Bernstein said. “You could still pretty much see the rest of the breast.”

Well done guys, I’m thankful the police were able to get the situation under control. We cant have our teens corrupted by bare breasts.

It may be wishful thinking, but a Canadian government ministry has sent out a directive to its employees urging them to relax and not to use their BlackBerry smartphones at night or on weekends and holidays.

Trying to re-establish a proper balance between work and life, Citizenship and Immigration Canada is starting by trying to cut the chains to what some have called CrackBerries…

Fadden also asked employees not to use BlackBerries during meetings and also not to schedule meetings over lunch.

Try something new. Talk to your family.

Hey, it’s Sunday morning. Everyone’s sitting around waiting to check out the Super Bowl commercials.

Obsolete

A quick fix for outdoor smokers

NIPPING out for a quick smoke is about to become even quicker. Philip Morris, the tobacco giant, is planning a “snack-size” cigarette for the smoking-ban age.

The compact cigarette will be shorter than existing brands but just as smoky: it will deliver the same potency while taking less time to puff.

Marlboro Intense is designed to appeal to employees who are forced to take quick outdoor cigarette breaks while at work, often in cold weather.

Oh, how thoughtful of them!

Click pic to view a slide show of photos

Recently, your Uncle Dave took a working trip to Arizona where I got a chance to visit Montezuma Castle near Camp Verde, AZ and take some photos. Although named for the famous Aztec chief by early settlers, he not only never went this far North to see it, it was abandoned for unknown reasons before he was even born.

The amazing 20 room structure was built by the Sinagua people about 600-700 years ago. As you can see, it’s built into the side of a cliff. The only way up is via ladders. Lots of work went into the reconstruction (started by Teddy Roosevelt), prior to which, for many years tourists were allowed to actually climb up and roam around.

Investigators are closer to understanding a mysterious illness reported by pork plant workers in Minnesota and Indiana and now have pinned a name on it.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report Thursday summarizing the investigation so far that gives the condition a name — progressive inflammatory neuropathy.

Minnesota officials said they were broadening their investigation to thousands of former employees at the Quality Pork Processors Inc. plant in Austin, going back a decade to when a powerful compressed air system was installed to remove brain tissue from pig heads.

Investigators have been trying to determine whether pig brain tissue, sprayed into the air as droplets during removal by the compressed air system, was inhaled by workers and made them sick…

Experts said the foreign pig tissue may have triggered the workers’ immune system, which then attacked their own neural tissue.

The bad news? Most of the workers possibly affected over the last ten years are immigrants – illegal and legal – and turnover is high.

They ain’t going to have much luck tracking folks down.

 
 
 
Girl Scout, 9, back on the job after $164 in cookie cash stolen — Here is your update on the next generation and their high standards. Coming from the gated communities around Palm Beach makes it all the more disgusting.

The teenager in the hot-pink hoodie snatched the manila envelope off the table, bolted to the passenger seat of her friend’s silver Mitsubishi and peeled away with the day’s $164 in proceeds.

Gracie, the second-smallest girl in her fourth-grade class, turned to her mother in tears: “Mommy! That girl took all my money!”

That girl, officials say, is a 17-year-old who lives down the street from Gracie in the Winston Trails development west of Lake Worth. She was pulled out of class Thursday at Park Vista High School and apparently confessed.

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said the girl and the getaway driver, also a Park Vista student, face charges in the Wednesday evening theft. The case will be turned over to the state attorney’s office before arrests are made.

Gracie said she thought the girl was nice at first.

Rubenstrunk said the alleged offenders weren’t remorseful and even went back to the Winn-Dixie on Thursday joking around in front of her daughter.

Found by Dale Huber

 
Microsoft-Yahoo deal will never happen – MarketWatch — Here is a link to my Marketwatch column this week. If people think this deal is going to get past the EU regulators, they have not been paying attention.

The EU must have a red alert horn sounding in Brussels now that this deal was announced.
If the EU is already throwing a wet blanket on Microsoft’s party and, according to reports, plans more actions against the company regarding its browser strategy, then this merger will stop them in their tracks.
Heck, the directorate general for competition in the EU, Neelie Kroes, said she was going after the company in a recent BBC interview. She flatly said that the U.S. anti-trust folks are doing nothing about anything, so the EU has to step in.

Now it’s always possible with Microsoft that this Yahoo deal was never meant to be finalized. This happened with the Microsoft attempt to buy Intuit some years back. It may be a ploy to steal Yahoo technology or key employees. It may be just to give the EU commissioners something big to chew on.

(You should note that with the Intuit deal Microsoft was never told not to do the deal. Once an investigation began, the company bailed out on its own. Why take a chance when you really do not want to do the deal in the first place? This model may be at work here.)

That said, this is a merger of two of the most popular Web destinations and search sites in the world as well as being dominant players in free email, search, groups and content delivery. How is this NOT an anti-trust violation in someone’s eyes?

One of the “tidier” border crossings

Mexico is demanding that U.S. Border Patrol agents stop using tear gas to protect themselves against increased attacks as they try to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States.

Mexico’s Foreign Ministry also requested a U.S. probe into an incident last month where 15-year-old Cristian Saldana was struck in the nose by a tear gas canister after he threw stones at U.S. agents trying to stop people from crossing illegally from the Mexican border city of Tijuana near San Diego…

Border-wide assaults on agents reached a record 250 between October 1 and December 16 last year, according to the latest U.S. figures.

I could suggest substitutes for tear gas; but, they probably wouldn’t be considered politically correct either.