Entries Tagged 'Followup' ↓

The NFL has changed its mind, and will now no longer persecute churches that want to show the big game on a big screen television for their parishioners.

In a letter to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league would not object to live showings of the Super Bowl by religious organizations, regardless of the size of the screen.

A story in The Washington Post about evangelical churches that were forced to cancel planned Super Bowl parties because they were afraid of lawsuits from the NFL stirred up quite a bit of of protest on Capitol Hill and among many conservative politicians.

The league had previously said that organizations that hosted public viewings of its games on television screens larger than 55 inches violated its copyright. Sports bars were exempted.

Last year, the league sent letters to at least two churches advising them of this policy.

Yesterday, Hatch praised the NFL decision and released a statement that said, “Many families want to enjoy the Super Bowl in a group atmosphere - but obviously aren’t going to take their kids to a sports bar.”

A couple of days ago, we reported that California had been thinking of mandating government control of residential thermostats (read original article). Due to public outcry over the proposal, it has been dropped, and instead, utilities will work on possible voluntary programs by which customers could request a utility or government-controlled device.

New building-efficiency standards drawn up by the California Energy Commission would have required new buildings to include remote-controlled thermostats that could allow public utilities to control a building’s air-conditioning or heating thermostat setpoints during power emergencies.

When public opinion turned out to be unfavorable towards the new standards, officials backpedaled and said the regulation would be revised so that the devices would still be required, but could be configured so that customers could override outside control by utilities.

This was still not enough for the public, so the agency has now announcing that the proposed remote-controlled thermostats will be dropped entirely from their next edition of Building Efficiency Standards.

Talk about quick action on the part of Sears - less than one full day after news that their ManageMyHome.com website allowed access to any Sears customer’s prior purchase history, the retailer has fixed that “feature” of the site.

 Sears disabled the “Find your products” section after it was pointed out on several popular blogs and websites (this one, of course, The Consumerist, Digg, and others). Privacy advocates also wrote articles of their own, saying that fraudsters could use information provided by the site to scam Sears customers.

Sears issued the following statement:

“We take our customers’ privacy concerns very seriously. As a result, we have turned off the ability to view a customer’s purchase history on Manage My Home until we can implement a validation process that will restrict access by unauthorized third parties.”

This oversight was actually a violation of Sears’ very own online privacy policy. That policy doesn’t allow the company to share users’ purchase history with the general public. Ben Edelman, a professor at Harvard Business School, blogged about this fact yesterday.

The man tasered by a Utah Highway Patrol officer (read our initial story) spoke out on CNN about the experience. He tells the reporter that he initially thought the taser was a real gun, and feared for his life and the safety of his family.

Watch the video on CNN