Slashdot Mirror
"Not a Mini-Spy"
An Anonymous Coward sent in: "Does a device for audience measurement which "registers what its wearer hears every minute of the day" bother anybody else?" I hope they get paid well for wearing these.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Does this strike anyone as being eerily like the way naturalists will shoot a tranq into some hapless animal and saddle them with a bigass ugly collar around their neck containing a radio reciever?
"Welcome to PBS. Next on Nature, stalking the wild European consumer..."
Theres a product similar to this, the Sony Emarker, its like a little keychain with a button. If you hear a song you like, but don't know what its called, hit the button and then later you put the emarker into a USB slot and it'll tell you what the song was. Unfortunately, it only works in America. I suppose it too could be used to track your listening habits. More Info Here
---
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
Several people have pointed out that a knowing participant cannot give unbiased, impartial data.
Since all of us casual observers know this, It must have occurred to the demographics companies ages ago -
I wonder how many of them have tried intrusive, illegal surveillance of unsuspecting consumers to gather their data.
First, they'd have to identify their target as being 'average' from all outward appearances. Then they hire an undercover team to monitor every move, every purchase, every magazine ad glanced at for more than a second.
The more I think about it, the more likely it seems - here you were, worrying about browser cookies, when some guy who looks like Jean Reno (not Janet Reno, but the guy from that Nat Portman flick, "The Professional",) is lurking in your bushes and going through your trash, seeing if you clip coupons for nasal spray, or buy suspicious amounts of hand lotion...
I suppose there is only one defense - Obfuscate the data! If you think you may be observed, start radically changing your behaviour. If you see an ad for soup on TV, snap into a rain-man-zombie-like state and go directly to the store and buy up 12 cans, all the while chanting "Soup is good food, Soup is good food..." (Better if it's like two in the morning...)
The next day, react violently to the print version of the same ad - scratch out the eyes of all the people in the ad...
That should get them to stop following you.
I'd better go look at ZDNet for a while, to through them off track...
Cheers,
Jim, paranoid in Tokyo
MMDC.NET
-- My Weblog.
First of I suspect this device works by looking for signatures of local radio recievers and recording that. Much like a radar detector but for fm radios.
Second is that this kind of monitoring has a Heisenberg uncertainty principal effect about it. Anytime you measure something you have a risk of changing it. When people know they are being watched, they will behave diferently. A friend of mine has a bar code scaner that some company gave him to measure his spending habits. They give him free "gifts" for sending in data. He has a well equiped kitchen (that I don't think he uses) because most of the gifts are thigns like fancy mixers and other useless kitchen gear. The problem with this is that the company has messed up data on his purchases of things like tosters because he doens't buy them. He buys other things and scans them and then gets the toster for sending in a few hundred bar codes. He has a reputaiton of being cheap, he will go buy a hundred of something he will never use so he can get the bar codes to get something more expensive that he wants. He also scans stuff he is getting for free from some buy-in refund program. All this will do is measure the listening habbits of people who will do what they are told in exchanges for some shiny bits which I guess is just the people that Nelson and clan care about.
Third, I'll get flamed for effect vs affect and I don't care.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
That's like analog wireless right?
How we know is more important than what we know.
... since the people refuse to enter the next store immediately after listenig to the adverts (no supermarketmusic recorded). Because of the low "Go Supermarket Rates" the whole radio-advertising thinks of louder and more annoying advertisements before going belly-up.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
As the article mentions, it identifies the stations itself. I think it's safe to assume that it doesn't have some AI program determining that it probably hears an N'Sync song and that therefore station XYZ is probably on. Presumably it recognizes some humanly inaudible signal sent out by participating stations.
It does not record all sound and download it to a central every week. Apart from the privacy problems, that design simply wouldn't work.
You really can't rely on this, as many/most commercial radios won't play back inaudible sounds, due to either attenuation in the filter or lack of speaker response.
I'm curious to know the answer to this question; someone on this thread proposed having a DSP-based radio compare the microphone's output with the participating radio stations- but that would be an incredibly small AND fast DSP- and those aren't exactly common.
-bugg
Um, that really doesn't answer the question- how does the watch determine WHICH station you are listening to at any given moment? This is certainly either a feat of technology, or something incredibly obvious ;)
-bugg
So, If I'm putting the stones to some chick.. is this thing going to rate my performance too?
"Well, she was really moaning loud there... but it sounded kinda fake... We'll give him a 5.5"
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
Read the article... it also measures body temp and will detect if you're wearing it while sleeping.
[
I don't get it. When it "registers" what its wearer is hearing, what is it doing?
Is it catching an inaudible identifier in the radio signal and making a little electro-note of it? Is it recording samples of the sound around it for later human matching-with-a-big-ass-pie-chart-or-something? Would it know that right now I've got CNN on mute, though what it "hears" is a Frank Zappa record? Does it like porn? Is it Jesus? (Etc.)
Anyone got a better link?
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
What is to prevent users of this thing to just take the watch off? Say they don't want people to know they watch the playboy channel every night from 9-12. Whats to stop them from just removing the watch and leaving it in another room? Or what happens if a person just doesn't wear the watch some days? Doesn't seem that much more accurate to me.
Presumably, if this device allows folks in the mothership to listen in your audio environment so they can try to figure out what station you're watching/listening to, they are also able to hear anything else that's going on too, like, say, um, your conversations?
The next generation of the watch will include a voice option, allowing wearers to announce which newspapers or magazines they are reading while watching TV or listening to the radio.
Then all we need is a decent speech-to-text algorithm, some storage space, and a search engine, and Real Life can be just like Usenet - everything you say, preserved for eternity, no matter how off-the-cuff or stupid it is.
And just imagine how much the RIAA would salivate over this kind of access - analyze the sounds in your environment, consult your records to see whether your license to hear those sounds is up to date, and send you a bill - or a lawyer - if not.
Can't wait. Sign me up.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Is that considered audience participation? ;)
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
Well, the cost of the watch was listed as $1200. So I wouldn't place it out of reach...
Rate me on picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
Instead of one of those leg locators, that just reports location, you can also tell if the bad guy is planning to rub out the witness.
If a person is on probation, they lose their privacy rights in exchange for the early release which eliminates the privacy problems.
Fight Spammers!
3G phones with built in GPS-
Go to the fcc site and read up on their e911 plan- it says they're going to use the GPS information to track you to send the EMT's out when you make a 911 call.
Reality says, they're going to use it to track you whenever you have your cellphone on. No more need for that tedious police work, eh?
Big Brother won't need to watch, he'll know where you are by your cell phone.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
I'd like to agree that a subpoena/court order would be required, but I remain unconvinced that what you say is correct: a police officer was quoted in yesterday's local paper (Raleigh NC News and Observer) as indicating that it's the police' responsiblity to determine what is reasonable and what is not, and whether a technology is something that is legal for use as an investigative tool, up until a court ruling declares that it is. (He was speaking about thermal imaging.) The officer went on to say "I certainly hope that the Supereme Court rules that use of thermal imaging devices is not a search under the Fourth Amendment." If thermal imaging is okay because it's the heat that escapes the home that they're searching, not in the home, then it's an easy leap to getting anything off the airwaves they please.
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Actually, the initial proposed usage is "innocent enough" But it would be interesting to see what it shows.
Obviously most users of the device would not say that they watch the pron channel, for example. Just a social thing. But this is Australia, where that sort of thing is popular despite the government getting all weirded out about it (such as with internet pron)
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's like some twisted tag and release system for people who have time to listen to the radio. How long before I have to fear a tranquilizer dart and the butt and I wake up with one of these things on?
I wonder what they put those sqelching slapping sounds down as that occur as my heart rate elevates? Will they be listed as "personnal time"?
Papa Legba come and open the gate
Arbitron has already tested their Personal People Meter in Philly. It included a motion detector to make sure you are wearing it and relied on signals embedded in the radio/tv broadcasts to determine what you were 'watching'. Sounds like Neilson's got similar technology in a watch.
Although the article makes it fairly clear, the blurb here skips by it. These wristwatches aren't some government's new plan to keep tabs on naysayers, and as far as I can tell, they don't even record anything. They're given out by Nielsen to voluntary participants... Just like those crazy thingamajigs that hook up to your cable box, to see which channels you watch and how long you watch them. Nielsen doesn't record-and-store the porno videos you pop in late at night, the dongle just keeps track of which cable channels you're flipping to.
Even still, I can't envision a whole lot of people who would be willing to wear these, at least not in the US. The article mentions over 22K Swiss folks wear the thing, seems a bit much. IIRC Nielsen doesn't pay you to participate in the cable ratings program; instead you're just supposed to be honored that they've chosen you. The article doesn't mention any compensation for sporting the "listening watch," so I doubt there's money involved.
Supposedly "Its inbuilt computer then identifies from which radio or television program the sound is coming," but that's a longshot if you ask me. Some stations broadcast their call letters or station name embedded into their programming (if you have a fairly new car stereo, you've probably seen how it displays, say, "ROCK 103" instead of "102.7"). But unless all stations start doing this, I don't see how it's possible for the watch to automagically tie a sound to a station.
Anyone have a photo of one of these puppies?
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
My question is, "will this actually improvethe accuracy of music ratings and perhaps allow artists to recieve the residuals they actually deserve?". There is a Vary good article about the music ratings system, used to determine royalties paid to artists based on the frequency of broadcast of their work on the radio. Will ASCAP and/or BMI adopt this sort of a strategy to do their information gathering? It would be vary promising for such an application. A quick summary of the article I mentioned:It seems that the neilson system could be applied here to much more cost effectively and accurately measure music performance frequency, and doll out royalty fees more fairly.
--CTH
--
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
And that, my friends, it just another job opportunity ;)
- Dan I.
I can see the events reconstructed by one of these watches...
- 7:30 PM radio WRNO (car)
- 8:15 PM disc jockey at Club Vinyl
- 8:47 PM conversation with female acquaintance
- 9:05 PM radio WRNO (car) and conversation
- 10:15 PM Bolero from CD
- 10:27 PM watch taken off
Hmmmm, I wonder if it keeps listening after you take it off too...Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
People will know that they are being observed and can still do these same sorts of things. Seems like this will only give more accurate readings of bad observations.
What happens if you wear this into the bathroom. Will the system think that people are listening to Howard Stern?
I had one until about a month ago. I was rather disturbed by the fact that several parts on the inside had microdot versions of the DMCA on it, and one chip said property of the NSA...
but perhaps I'm just being paranoid.
-EvilMonkeyNinja
a.k.a. Joseph Nicholas Yarbrough
Security Grunt by Day
Programmer by Night
-EvilMonkeyNinja
Mild Mannered Host by Day
Wild Hammered Programmer by Night