Scamming on Purim. That's just low!

While writing the previous post I received an intriguing call.
A female voice, calling me by my full name, asked if I have ever purchased from their store, pronouncing store`s name so fast I could barely understand it.
She then continued telling me that I have been marked in their lists as a VIP customer and eligible for a prize of my choice: silver necklace, exclusive leather purse, or juice squeezer. Yes that's right - a juice squeezer.
Which could be mine only for a small delivery fee of 39.90₪.
Needless to say our conversation ended there.

I guess we will never know whether it was "buy a 5₪ necklace for 40₪" scam or just an attempt to steal someone`s credit card info. But doing this on Purim? Where is the ethics!!!!

Better Place

There this big thing going in Israel and subsequently in Denmark, Australia, US, and some other places - an attempt to convert current transportation infrastructure based on internal combustion engines to EV with renewable-energy in mind.
Besides of the economical and ecological prospects, what interests me the most is the purely technological side of the process.
There is not much information regarding this currently available, however during one of the Q&A sessions Shy (founder of the Better Place) mentions that each car will be equipped with GPS navigation system allowing driver to locate battery swap stations and/or make recharging spot reservation. Which in turn implies that some sort of two-way radio communication will be present.
The obvious question arises: is how well will it come along with personal privacy and will it open new horizons for abuse.
I think it's safe to assume that at least for the earlier steps of the project (counted in years) a statistics will collected about car travelling habits. It's necessary in order to provide a better recharging station coverage. There simply no way to do it efficiently and reliable basing solely on theoretical calculations.
Less likely, but this could also mean that a remote updates will be performed on the vehicle software in order to support newly arising recharging spots - in other words the vehicle's computer will be probably remotely controllable. The same computer in control of the vehicle mechanics.
It's not the possibility of malicious attacks that concerns me, mobile telephony have proved that the means for data transfer over air could be rather reliable (at least against the average hacker, government agencies are a completely different story), but the fact that a vehicle could be remotely controlled. On one hand all this could greatly reduce car theft. On other the idea of someone able to remotely control your vehicle makes one ponder.
In any case there is not much left to wait, according to the schedule full deployment is circa 2012. Will see then how it goes...