The Jetsons Are Coming, The Jetsons Are Coming!

George Jetson used to step into his cylindrical closet each morning and, a few seconds later, step back out in different clothes, as the closet – with Star Trek-style sliding pocket doors – automatically dressed him. His wife Jane talked to their refrigerator, and moments later hot food slid out of a slot in the counter. And, of course, they drove a flying car, which automatically navigated George to work each day – shades of Tom-Tom!

(If you’re too young to remember the Jetsons, they were a cartoon family from the 1960s, created as a futuristic counterpart to the stone-age Flintstones. You can probably catch the show from time to time on The Cartoon Network. The theme song went something like, “Meet George Jetson, Jane, his wife, his daughter, Judy, his boy, Elroy . . .” and they had a white dog that was remarkably like Sony’s recently deceased Aibo robo-pet.)

We haven’t quite reached the point of living like the Jetsons, but we’re getting there, step by step. Recent articles have described business executives who are so wired, in both senses of the word, that they push a button to transform the bathroom mirror into an online monitor from which they can check their stock prices as they shave or do make up.



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Happy Valentine’s Day

Scorn not the sonnet; critic, you have frowned,
Mindless of its just honors; with this key
Shakespeare unlocked his heart . . .

William Wordsworth

Ah, metaphor. What would poets do without it? And what would Valentine’s Day be without poetry? They go together – as the poet says – like love and marriage, a horse and carriage; or, more prosaically, like bacon and eggs, or salt and pepper; like ebony and ivory, or the sun in the morning and the moon at night; like . . . well, you know what I’m talking about.

Love. Romance. Handing someone the key to your heart.

Read more at: http://www.vertexsecurity.com/news.php?id=39

Nanny Cams & Privacy

By Andrew Reed

Nanny Cams have, undeniably, a positive impact on the safety of children under the supervision of hired caregivers. And as any review of articles and news reports will show, nanny cams fulfill another important role besides the very real benefit of protecting small children: protecting parents’ peace of mind. Parental comfort level at leaving young children with a professional nanny or even a casual babysitter increases dramatically when they know the caregiver’s behavior is being monitored.

Some professional childcare services are beginning to install nanny cams. According to the web site of Tutor Time, a franchise childcare outlet, “classrooms are equipped with observation windows and security cameras.” (www.tutortime.com)For childcare businesses like Tutor Time, the motivation for using surveillance cameras is probably mixed. Having the cameras in use is a great selling point for customer comfort, and they serve the twofold purpose of watching over the children while also protecting the company. For, just as a nanny cam can help prove misbehavior by hired help in the home, a videotape can be a powerful defense against unjust accusations of abuse leveled at professional providers.

Read full article at: http://www.vertexsecurity.com/news.php?id=38