You know what would be funny? In the next James Bond movie, he should never leave his office. He just sits at his computer the whole time using the internet to track down criminals and solve some huge mystery (like who stole the UC Berkeley laptop with 90,000 alumni, grad students, and past applicant’s social security numbers on it). It’s amazing the things you can do these days without putting much effort in at all (or breaking the law).
Of course, everyone has figured out what to say to your favorite search engine to find what you need but there are other sites that take the ‘search’ concept a lil’ further. This one in particular shocked me a few years ago when I first saw it and it still amazes because the photos were updated since then. Just enter an address of something at http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ , your home for example, and check out the pretty good quality satellite(?) photos you get. It’s scary to think that something up there has just taken pictures of the whole planet. Even getting the cars parked in your driveway. I also found some old pictures of my old neighborhood taken when I was very young and it was cool to see how things had changed over time. This site can also be used for other fun stuff like checking out famous places.
And then there is this site www.zabasearch.com, which shouldn’t exist at all, where you can enter someone’s name and state and get their address, birthday, and phone number for free. Then for $20 you can run a background check on them. It’s supposedly in beta now and goes online TOMORROW (3/31/05). Who knows what their definition of “background check” is? So you thought no one would ever find out about that streaking incident at Lake Havasu? Well, I guess now anyone can. The fee should at least be a little higher to avoid as much abuse of this site as possible. However, I will say that I have heard of some good coming from this. I told someone about zabasearch and they told someone else who was able to find a relative whom they had lost contact with years ago. If only every story ended that way. I also know someone (who will remain nameless, but you know who you are, he he) who uses the site to see how old their friend’s parents are.
Of course I had to search for myself and I didn’t realize there were so many Stanley Joneses out there. All over the nation! Some even with the same middle name as me! But it’s OK, I’m still one-of-a-kind. There are pros and cons to being 1 of many Stanley Joneses. Someone trying to do a background check on me will have to work that much harder to sift through all the Stans and possibly spend more money to get the info. On the flipside, I once did an internet credit report and some of my dad’s (another Stanley Jones) stuff was on my record. I’ve always wanted to name my kids something unique like Indiana Jones and Love Jones, but the way this internet tracking stuff is going, by the time I have kids these names may be too easy to search and background check. So maybe they will be better off just all being named Stanley or some derivative. Someone once suggested the girl’s name ‘Stanielle’ to me as a joke but I actually like it and there are actually other Stanielles out there according to zabasearch. (But I bet they aren’t as beautiful as Stanielle Jones will be.) Anyway, with identity theft and internet searching getting scarier daily, I figure by sharing the same name, my offspring and I would all be able to better protect and continue to build the Stan Jones legacy.
Stanley Jones
By the way, don’t forget to check for the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 at Microsoft.com/downloads later this week! Tell ‘em Stan sent you and get 0% off!