Interesting, yet kind of scary...

John Moore over at Brand Autopsy posts this tidbit of information.

This quote says it all:

By its own count, Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, made by NCR, at its Bentonville headquarters. To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to the experts

HOLY FREAKIN' CRAP!!! That's a lot of FREAKIN' DATA. Now that I have stopped hyperventilating, remember my post on identity theft and the comment from Drake who pointed out how easy it is for employees to steal financial information and then make their own credit cards based on that information.
My point here isn't that companies take personal information. They do. The point is that aggregation of personal data is becoming more of a reality every day. This, in my mind, is a scary thing and that as consumers we must demand for better security and accountability from the companies taking our information. I am hoping that at some point companies will actually realize this and move to make our data more secure, but with story after story of identity theft, I can't but help feel disenheartened. So again, keep track of your credit card records and shred everything. While at it, if you hear of a congressional bill that will secure OUR personal information let your congressperson know that you support it. That hasn't happened, yet but if it does you can find out about here.

Second, something you should be aware of. Read this here from Buzzmachine. In course you are wondering who writes... err copies... the complaint letters check out this and this. Jeff Jarvis is right to be scared and wondering why more people aren't talking about free speech issues. Don't kid yourself and think that we are not seeing a chilling effect on free speech. We are. The Federal Communications Commission has set out a new course on deciding on what you and I can listen to and watch. As Jeff points out, the FCC based its fine against Fox based on three (3) complaints. This means that 3 people have effectively decided what 260 million people can watch. My thought is that personal responsibility has eroded so much, that the government thinks they need to decide what I read, listen to, and watch. That for me is unacceptable. I'm an educated adult who can choose what to consume. Does this mean that I think 6 year olds should be listening to Howard Stern? No I don't, but don't these children have parents ? I know if I was that young and tried to listen to it, well it wouldn't have been fun for me in the Hilty household. Time to climb down from my soapbox.

All I'm asking for here is that you take some time and check out what Jeff wrote above. You can come to your own conclusions.

Update: Some further thoughts over at IPTAblog.

Further update: Check out this. I guess pick your poison, Wal-Mart or Microsoft.