Are you submissive? Do you do what others or other machines tell you to do?
Well, according to the Associated Press, John and Starry Rhoads took a high road that almost turned into a very low road indeed, all because they did what their Toyota Sequoia's GPS told them to.
Apparently, the high desert of Eastern Oregon is a lovely place. Until you ask your GPS for the shortest route to your destination and it sends you down a remote forest road, without actually saying: "Yo, people. You go that way and it's really remote and foresty."
Thompson Reservoir, where the Rhoads were reportedly stuck in 18 inches of snow for three days.
(Credit: Google Maps)Once they had gone where they were told, the Rhoads were on the road to no return. They ended up stuck in 18 inches of snow near a place called the Thompson Reservoir.
The Rhoads, from Nevada, are not dilettantes in a dilemma. They had plenty of warm clothing and food. And they had cell phones equipped with, yes, GPS. There was only one slight, delicate problem. They had no service.
I know there will be some of you who will hasten to hiss that they must have been AT&T customers. I can find no evidence of this. But I can find evidence that they were stuck for three days before one of their cell phones sprang to life and GPSed their co-ordinates to 911.
You will, I hope, enjoy the words of Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger, when the AP attracted his attention: "GPS almost did 'em in and GPS saved 'em."
There's another side to such words of bravado, though. It's as well to remember that in 2006, an Oregon forest took the life of CNET Reviews editor James Kim.
One of the things that came out of his death was the revelation that Oregon authorities at the time knew very little about how to even trace a cell phone. In cases such as that of Kim, the understanding of how a tragedy occurred can lead to a better understanding of how technology might help, as well as, sometimes, hinder.
For example, you might feel like a stiff conversation with some of your own technology when I tell you that the Rhoads' happy ending coincided with news that some British psychologists are to direct the world's attention to their view that GPS is, in fact, "potentially dangerous".
The Telegraph helpfully disseminated news of impending research to be conducted by brains from Lancaster University and Royal Holloway College, London. These professors have been moved by other research that indicates 78 percent of accidents are caused by drivers not paying attention.
They will therefore analyze how much GPS contributes to that inattention. Polly Dalton, one of the researchers on the project, told the Telegraph: "By the end of these experiments, we will be able to provide clear measurements of the ways in which the use of in-car navigation systems might interfere with attention and memory performance."
This is definitely a question reeking of our delightful modernity: if you were an escaped convict, would you regularly update your Facebook status?
This question is significant because Craig "Lazie" Lynch has, according to CBSNews.com, been on the run from a British prison since September. However, his Facebook page, updated with a plethora of bons mots Sunday, has stirred so many who admire freedom and, um, crime.
Lynch's musings are enjoying the attention of more than 3,000, um, friends. They have been regaled with Lynch's dilemmas, thoughts and wishes. This, for example, from Sunday: "Trying to figure out my plans for New Years. I know what I want to do but its not that easy."
Who can but sympathize with his plight? It's tough to get a reservation for dinner at a Gordon Ramsay establishment at such late notice. And if he wanted to take a lover for, say, a night at the Ritz, well, there might be problem with the credit card confirmation.
Lynch was serving a 7-year sentence for aggravated burglary before he slipped out of Hollesey Bay Prison, which is in the rather sleepy and flat part of England to the north-east of London.
An aerial view of the prison and its surroundings. Plenty of fields to hide in, no?
(Credit: CC Babylon Angel/Flickr)The police are, naturally, not well-disposed toward Lynch's updates.
"We have spoken to Facebook and we are trying to trace him from the information we have, but it's one of those things that we're also asking for help from members of the public," police spokesperson Anne-Marie Breach told CNN.
It seems, though, that late Sunday, Lynch began experiencing a little emotional pain. In what must have been an almost teary update, he posted: "right i'm coming off this page as i have better things to do."
Who might have imagined that, in his mysterious hideaway, Lynch had something better to do than continue his run as a Facebook attraction?
Still, he continued: "In fact due to the nature of some of these comments and the racist remarks that keep frequently poppin up have a dig at me by all means but why be abusive to others due to their colour or race it is petty minded fools who have ruined this site."
Petty-minded, indeed. Some of the world's great artists have suffered when their works have been ruined by unscrupulous, jealous critics, so Lynch's pain is entirely understandable.
However, he wants his supporters to know that he is grateful. For he posted: "Thank you to...all of you serious supporters out there and to my admin staff. To all you haters and hitlers out there i hope you slowly choke in your sleep."
By the way, if you ever wondered about the definition of aggravated burglary it is this: at the time of the burglary, the criminal: "has with him a firearm, imitation firearm, weapon of offense, or any explosive."
You might imagine, therefore, that Lynch is someone who might not always turn the other cheek. This might affect the level of sympathy you have for his Facebook critics.
How do you react, for example, to this update from he Saturday evening?: "Its freezing outside. Another lonely night. So far away from my family and friend. Yet I have so many supporters and haters on here. Thx for your support everyone cause this is a FAN PAGE."
One might conceive that, with the help of the large brains at Facebook, Lynch's Facebook fame might shortly come to an abrupt logout.
But here's the thing that seems a little peculiar. Lynch, according to the BBC, was serving time near the end of his sentence and escaped while he was on day release.
For some, the lure of Facebook fame is clearly uncontrollable.
Those nice people at Google, engineers at heart rather than craven, money-grabbing business people, seem to have suffered a sudden attack of commercialism.
The folks at the Silicon Alley Insider alerted me to this startlingly commercial ad on the Google home page. It can't be, I thought. So I went to Google.com myself and there it still was: a dry little thing in the right-hand corner suggesting that I should download Google Chrome.
(Credit:
Business Insider)
You might be wondering why Google might have taken this sudden, almost alarming step into advertising's dark hole.
You might consider that it comes soon after Google's extremely engaging Chrome campaign, the one that comes over all Picasso.
You might wonder whether the company has had enough of browser war talk and decided to enact browser war mayhem.
You might also wonder whether, following the rumors of a Google phone, the company has decided that it has had enough of its nice-guy persona. Like a priest who's renounced his vows in order to play the field, Google is going to make a grab for every last dollar in the technological space.
Whatever the reason, it all seems rather sweet. Which is just how Google wants it to seem.
Ever since someone tried to sell me on the curious notion that Houston was the Manhattan of Texas, I have become fascinated with the place.
So I am blissfully excited that PCWorld has caused my blood to turn my arteries into a NASCAR track with the revelation that police in the Houston-area county of Montgomery have decided to shame drunk drivers in a very modern way.
Yes, if you are caught driving while the special eggnog concoctions are making your nerve endings feel like Christmas lights, you will have your name on an especially festive Twitter page.
This seasonal offer only applies to those arrested between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. And the Twitter page in question will not be one newly set up for the occasion, but rather that of Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon.
Naturally, some are wondering whether this little Twittering experiment might be flying the wrong way down a lane currently occupied by the concept of "innocent until proved guilty."
As Houston attorney Paul B. Kennedy says, on his own blog, with a sarcasm that not even a sliver of cabernet sauvignon could dampen: "Of course the police never make wrongful arrests."
However, in Texas they do seem to be quite keen on humiliation as a palliative. No, I am not referring to the bedroom predilections of Texan lawmakers, but rather to Denton, Texas (near the slightly less Manhattanesque city of Dallas), where every arrest gets Twittered.
It has to be said, though, that the Denton Twitter page was originally conceived by an enthusiastic layperson, rather than a zealous arresting officer.
While the Montgomery County drunk-driving information that is being Twittered is not legally confidential, you might wonder whether Twittering humiliation is a reasonable method of enacting the law.
Montgomery County Vehicular Crimes Prosecutor Warren Diepraam told PCWorld: "I sincerely doubt that the fact that I've put someone's name on a Twitter page is going to affect their right to a fair trial."
And I sincerely doubt that Diepraam believes that social networking is anything other than a vehicle for honest and legal communication. However, could he be the same Warren Diepraam from Houston, Texas who, on his Facebook page, wants people to think he looks like the moon? Surely not.
"Sherlock Holmes" is not a wonderful movie. Despite the fact that so many ditheringly unstable people in the movie theater I wandered into on Christmas Day applauded when the final scene slithered away.
However, if you were to ask Robert Downey Jr.'s violently amusing Holmes to tell you discern the truth about the new Apple tablet, he would surely repeat his words from the movie: "Data! Data! Data! I can't make bricks without clay!"
So because there are many who are still groggy after the week's festivities, I thought I'd scour around for data that will separate the rumor from the definitive fact.
Apple's new tablet will be called the iTablet. And it will be launched last September. Yes, last September.
But wait, last September was a few months ago. So perhaps that information wasn't quite correct.
... Read more
Everyone who is anyone, or who would like to be anyone, knows that the apps you have on your iPhone say a lot, well, almost everything, about you.
However, there are a couple of new apps that might truly revolutionize your Christmas and not necessarily in a good way.
The first is called the Background Check App. Not only is it wondrously free, but it also strikes a huge and lasting blow for personal freedom.
You can look around your dinner table this holiday season and, with your usual lithe grace, pull out your iPhone. Using your Background Check app you can discover everything you need to know about the criminal history, property records, and so much more of everyone there.
It could be your neighbors who always seemed too good to be genuinely neighborly. It could be your Aunt Agatha, whose affinity for the schnapps might screen some vital information about her past life and associations.
Background Check was released December 18 and it has already received plaudits from happy iTunes store customers who have previously paid $60 to spy on others.
However, what if you decide to check up on your lover and discover she spent 18 months in an open prison in Connecticut for, um, fraud? How might that affect your experience over the Christmas morning stocking? What if you discover that your parents don't actually own the house in which your gifts are under the Christmas tree? What if you find out your sister regularly bounces checks?
Still, does Background Check have quite the potential to ruin your Christmas enjoyed by Gunman?
Gunman encourages you to enjoy the beauties of augmented reality to participate in "an epic battle with your friends."
Yes, when you hit your opponent, his iPhone will vibrate. You can leap around the rooftops of your neighborhood (please see the embedded Gunman video) before Christmas dinner, shaking your iPhone to reload before you take aim at those closest to you.
But what if, while you attempt to evade a sneaky attack from your cousin Jerome, you slip from the rooftop, fall into the neighbor's garden, bang your head against one of the fishing gnomes and suffer a concussion while Jerome repeatedly zaps you with his iPhone?
What if you suddenly and inexplicably spend the whole of your Christmas dinner revealing your distaste for your half sister, Griselda, by consistently zapping her over the lamb shank? Wouldn't this be augmented reality augmented to the level of dangerous mental instability?
Christmas is supposed to be a time when we embrace the shared values of love, joy, altruism and free food, wine and spirits.
Then along come these two apps, subtly targeted at the "Shared Values of Christmas" market, encouraging you to take physical and emotional risks that might result in anything from paranoia to broken relationships to broken crockery and garden gnomes.
Who on earth would create such things? Perhaps one should Background Check these people.
You will, no doubt, be plagued this holiday season by real-time conversations from real-time annoyances who claim to be members of your family. You will, therefore, be tempted to indulge in some excessive real-time drinking that might, just might, affect your sense of, well, the real time, the real place, even the real country you are inhabiting.
However, you will, I hope, be delighted that some very enterprising people have considered your plight and decided to offer you the latest hangover cures in real time. All you need to do is to have your smartest phone about your person at all real times and refer to the updates at Twitter.com/hangover_cure.
There, you will find contributions from, no doubt, hardened drinkers, hardened family therapists or, who knows, maybe hardened altruistic specimens who would like you to hurt less, party more, and not let your children see you looking like the inside of a bull's nostril after a stampede.
The Twitter page, sponsored by video-on-demand provider Blinkbox Entertainment, (yes, it's releasing "The Hangover," get it?), will offer you such gems as: "Try whipping up a Carrot Comfort (200g carrots, 1 apple, 1cm fresh root ginger & ice) & let us know."
All right, some of the suggestions might walk the thin line between holistic and horrific. But who could really fault the dedication and spirit of Christmas engendered by a suggestion such as: "Try the Honey Bun: Half a ripe banana, 1 teaspoon clear honey, 2 teaspoons natural yogurt & water; then tweet us the results!"
I feel confident that the Hangover Cure Twitter page will be a repository for scientific discovery that has not been seen since, oh, the Facebook Beacon program.
I once sent a letter to Santa Claus. He never replied. The bruises, like an ill-timed tattoo commemorating a one-night stand, have never really gone away.
However, AT&T offered me a little hope. The company has a service that allows you to text Santa with all of your wishes. All you have to do is text "SANTA" to 1224 if you are an AT&T subscriber.
"Bah, humbug," my innards whispered. "Santa doesn't care about you. He won't write back."
However, some strange hope inside me stirred and I sent a text. Within seconds, he replied: "Ho Ho Ho! Thanks for your txt! Please reply to this message and send me your wish list. I will be sure 2 get back 2 you once the elves and I finish our dance class."
I was temporarily paralyzed by the concept of a large man learning to quickstep with several animals. This was far, far beyond the slightly uncomfortable sight of Steve Wozniak on "Dancing with the Stars."
However, Santa helpfully explained: "Gotta slim down 4 those narrow chimneys, you know!"
Emboldened by my success in making contact with the world's most powerful man, I immediately texted Santa my wish list. I asked him for better 3G coverage from AT&T.
So as not to blow my cover as a sweet, innocent 4-year-old, I also asked him for a Range Rover for my girlfriend and world peace.
Would he reply? Or would some clever little algorithm suggest that asking for better 3G coverage from AT&T might be off the map?
I was wrong to worry. AT&T's Santa is fully engaged in blanketing America with 3G perfection. For he wiped his post-quickstep sweat with a large red towel and texted me: "You have an excellent wish list this year!"
He added: "We make toys and goodies all through the year so luckily we have lots of items already in stock. Keep being nice!"
I am nice. Truly, I am. My CNET handlers have yanked on my lead no more than once a week in 2009. I am therefore delighted to inform all AT&T customers that Santa is on their side and all will soon be fixed. You read the quotes.
If you don't believe me, text "SANTA" to 1224 yourself.
I have often wondered if being a divorce lawyer makes you feel better about humanity or worse. Perhaps it merely keeps you in intimate contact with all the pitfalls of relationships on a daily, even hourly, basis.
Still, whose heart could possibly lose so much as a throb on hearing that almost one in five divorces in the UK are fueled by Facebook?
No, it's not that Facebook's employees are so irresistible that anyone who comes into contact with them, even in the UK, immediately leaves their spouse. Rather, it seems that the constant lack of trust in marriages causes much trawling around spouses' Facebook pages until one party decides the party's over.
It has already been established by one study that Facebook turns lovers a painful shade of green. However, the Telegraph quotes a law firm declaring that almost one in five divorce petitions make Facebook the scene of the crime.
The managing director of Divorce-Online told the Telegraph: "I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was. I was really surprised to see 20 percent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook."
Some of the biggest culprits, according to the Telegraph, are flirty e-mails and messages found on Facebook, which are "increasingly being cited as evidence of unreasonable behavior."
And it was only in February that Emma Brady discovered her husband was divorcing her when he updated his Facebook status to: "Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady."
Are people who leave themselves so exposed on Facebook merely careless? Or does the liberating new medium of social networking allow them to deliberately tell their spouses that they have had enough without having the courage to look them in the eyes?
Perhaps, though, Facebook might use this phenomenon to advertise its own power. The site should create a special group: the Facebook Disconnects group. It would bring together all those whose marriages that ended because of wall posts and the like, thereby showing how Facebook relationships are more powerful than any out there in the dumb ole' analog, touchy-feely world.
That way, advertisers might finally realize that it's better to put all of their money into digital relationships on Facebook rather than into those quaintly ancient TV spots.
The more Verizon and AT&T trade unseasonal greetings over their respective 3G networks, the more collateral damage seems to be inflicted on the iPhone. Yes, Verizon has itself made jokes about the iPhone being a "misfit toy". However, on Saturday, Seth Meyers of "Saturday Night Live" dedicated 16 seconds of his Weekend Update to a joke about, yes, truly, the iPhone.
Here is the precise text: "It was reported this week that Google would soon launch its own cell phone as a challenge to the iPhone. Also a challenge to the iPhone? Making phone calls." Cue much laughter.
Before Apple devotees could regain their breath, the 16-second clip soared around the Web as if it were new evidence of global warming. More than 140,000 people viewed it on YouTube before NBC Universal mentioned that it, um, owned the rights to the clip.
I have therefore embedded the whole of Saturday night's live extravaganza, which I obtained from NBC's own site. The 16-second iPhone bombshell hits just after the 37-minute mark.
I know many will be distressed that Meyers makes no mention of AT&T. Save for some folks at AT&T, where they are still allegedly mulling what to do about the company's sponsorship of alleged serial sexter, Tiger Woods.
