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Writing Messages In Empty Space With GPS
meiocyte writes: "This New Scientist story about leaving messages in empty space seems very cool. You upload a message (or perhaps a picture, audio clip, etc.), it gets tagged with your GPS coordinates, and then anyone else who goes there gets to see/hear it. Every GPS-resolvable parcel of empty space will have its own web site!" Combine this with user-forums, and restaurant ratings could take on a whole new dimension. Update: 01/20 23:28 GMT by T : Oops -- looks like I duped Michael. Sorry.
about a month ago?
Great - we can get spammed on GPS as well... Just imagine someone like a soda manufacturer buying a stretch of highway for a month, for example. If you use GPS navigation in your car, you'll get incessant harping about how thirsty you are, and how that particular brand of soda apparently makes your life better in one way or another.
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Oh great, now every other block I walk down with my GPS gear in Seattle, I get bombarded with porno. It could be worse than SPAM!
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
Yar ho ho, maybe i can use it to hide my Mp3/divx booty! X marks the spot. Kinda wierd how history repeats itself (in a way)
Carpe meam simiam!
Ugh, there are some places where i would really rather not have a video clip of previous activities, imagine getting a new room at uni halls or a hotel or something... eyugggh.
I can see it now... Random baseball diamonds around the world:
All your base are belong to us..
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
You think the web is already litigious? Wait until you see companies claiming they "own" the rights to certain property.
Like Disneyowning all comment space in/around/driving to Disneyland and using that to squelch any warnings about, say, a child getting his foot caught in a ride.
And food-lovers could post messages outside a restaurant door, giving subsequent visitors an instant endorsement-or a warning to take their custom elsewhere.
Does anyone really think this has a chance? Or isn't it more likely the restaurant owner will sue anyone who posts disparaging messages for libel and slander while at the same time posting 1000 comments extolling the virtues of the food.
The FBI will scream bloody murder about terrorists arranging targets or drug dealers arranding drop off points.
As useful as this idea is, I can't see any possiblility of it existing in the US of A. After all, the Internet is non-coporial and there are still giant bitch-slap fights over companies thinking that some completely unrelated (but similarly named) website in on their turf, when the Internet is actually linked with turf it'll open up Pandora's legal retainer.
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
And like most technologies, the first mainstream use will quickly turn into spam.
Just like searching for "Middle East" will get you pr0n, you'll get ads for restaurants 30 miles away.
------
Today's Top Deals
I saw this a month or so ago, and remember thinking at the time that I was worried about the S/N ratio of this 'empty space' around me ...
.. *grin*
I'd hate to walk around every corner and get an X10 Popup
Groove Salad -- a nicely chilled plate of ambient grooves and beats.
Pinning messages in mid-air, using the location's Global Positioning System (GPS) reference, could become the next craze in communications. The messages are not actually kept in the air: they're stored on an Internet page. But that page's Web address is linked to coordinates on the Earth's surface, rather than a person or organisation. As you move about, a GPS receiver in your mobile phone or PDA will check to see if a message has been posted on the website for that particular spot.
I don't see why we would want to force the Internet into the reality sphere.
Of course, GPS scavenger hunts are fun, but what would this be used for?
Advertisements.
It's not useful for community-rating or for espionage because everything there is not in the air, but on the Internet. And all GPS data goes through a small network of satellites, so if you stop in the middle of a playground in Bethesda, MD. the spies may not see your message, but they know you stopped there if they have access to GPS data, or at least know the last coordinates you took.
So what it's useful for is e-biz and advertising. I don't think its worth exchanging our privacy for this advertising. I don't want everyone to have to carry a GPS phone, which has so many other security caveats, in order to plug into a new layer of advertising.
Goat sex free since 2001
This sounds like an interesting idea, but there are some issues to work out. For instance, how large a space can a message take up? Should all messages be limited to a set amount of space, say a circle 10 meters in diameter, or could individual message sizes be tailored to match the requirements of each message? And how are overlapping messages going to be resolved? Does the first message posted get priority, the latest message posted, or could the user choose from a menu to see all of them?
Furthermore, the issue of time limits needs to be addressed--I don't want messages from three years ago clogging up the system. Perhaps each message should be limited to a month or two, maybe more or less depending on how popular the service gets.
int lat = 0;
int long = 0;
while(1) {
for(lat = 0; lat < 360; lat++) {
for(long = 0; long < 360; long++) {
GPS_printf(lat, long, "ALL YOUR COORDINATES ARE BELONG TO US!!!\n");
}
}
}
So their going to let me store what i want on their servers for free as long as i am in the 6 meter area or so i can access it how much exactly can i store?
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
The idea was that students could tag places as they saw fit.
You can read more about the projects here, and here.
Communications technology is supposed to bring information to you. This seems kind of backwards to me. And what's that business about restaurant reviews? With this system you would have to actually go to the restaurant before hearing/reading the review. Again, why not retrieve that information from home?
and think of the implications this will have on our society.
Imagine, being able to walk to the store and stop at a certain corner, with the latest porn pics waiting there in a metphysical state, waiting for us to view.
More seriously though, what type of legal implications can arrise?
Can we think about laws for spamming invisible space BEFORE we allow everyone to do it.
I'd hate walk to a corner looking for the latest Christina Aguilera(sp?) video and being told I quality for Viagara and that if I stand in that spot for 3 more minutes I can get a university diploma.
I'm sure that you'd be able to surf any point in this geospace from anywhere for most purposes. Exceptions might be "geocache" treasure hunts where the promoters actually want you to do real travel.
The thing that is interesting with this concept is it actually rivels the "WEB" as we know it. The web has enhanced our lives in many ways, but in other ways it has abandoned us or even never became what we wanted it to due to the speed barrier that we are STILL fighting.
... go with their new toys on tops of mountains to see/hear what others have done and share their moments together..
This concept is awesome, people will want to get out
The web right now is at an awful state. Thousands of abandoned sites, efnet sites closing down due to script kiddies and channel take over wars, etc.. it's becoming a very boring ghost town that not even google can keep up with.
I can just imagine, a couple month ago in Afghanistan, if the terrorists had some way to store a message...
....
In A.D. 2001
War had begun.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the plane
Operator: We get bombed
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your caves are belong to us
Cats: You are on the way to destruction
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time
Cats: HA HA HA HA
Captain: Take off every 'Qaeda'
Captain: You know what you doing
Captain: Move 'Qaeda'
Captain: For great explosion
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
The article talks about how every cell phone in the USA will have embedded GPS, the government justifying it by claiming that its needed for emergency services. We all know the real reason for GPS to be in every cell phone
Does anyone else see a disturbing trend here? GPS receivers are as small as a dime now. Imagine the police attaching one to the car of a suspect. Technology providing yet another way for our rights to be violated.
Reality has a liberal bias
..if most people were intelligent and responsible, but personally I don't feel like accessing it at some point in the woods during a camping trip and seeing that someone took a shit where I'm pitching my tent.
I will basically degenerate into graffiti that needs no physical object to exist, "I wuz here" messages written in empty space.
Still a cool idea though.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
So where are all these $100 typical GPS receivers everyone seems to be talking about? They seem to start at $120 and go up from there.
To avoid seeing this message again, always shut down your computer properly by selecting Shut Down from the Start Menu.
This has been floating around on other tech lists for a while. There is a descent article on HP's site about the technology and their envisioned application here.
Kilroy was here?
So you go to the Grand Canyon or whatever and for the next 3 hours you are busy checking out peoples web sites and downloading pictures from the people that have been there before.
Next you look around upload you pic and it's dark. Oh well you will just have to come back tomorow to look at the canyon!
I remember seeing this about a month back. A repeat, perhaps? If you can find it, please reply and post!
Everything is mainstream now.
This sure could get rid of speed traps, once the "Speed Trap Registry" guys get into the act and start inserting snarling Chief Wiggum icons at appropriate places alongside the road.
This is the kind of thing that works perfectly in theory, where many, many things work. In real life though, it's going to require some serious social engineering to be used the right way. Perhaps the moderation system on Slashdot will be the seed that one day determines how something like this runs.
I would, however be interested now in seeing the slightly less interactive version of this, where users can submit comments to be approved. Provided that only users (human beings), and not corporations can take advantage of this.
There is a difference between Coca-Cola buying a stretch of freeway space to bombard you with SPAM, and the owner of a restaurant posting specials once a day.
I don't like this at all... Currently, this sounds like a bucket of hype without the technical possibility of making a system like this actually work.
So, every parcel of space will have a website, eh? And where, pray tell, will these gajillions of websites be stored? Or, more likely, will each parcel of "space"--meaning its coordinates--be mapped to DNS? If so, this sounds just like the stupid idea a year or two ago of mapping peoples' phone numbers to DNS. (It's exactly the opposite of what you want to do. If you want to find a particular person's website, why not make use of the new .name TLD and use the person's full name?) Combine that with the current abuse of the DNS system, and the ongoing violations of its original design, and you have a big mess. (The ongoing violations are as follows: Every company or d00d out there gets the same domain name registered under .com, .net, .org, .this, .that, and whatever other .'s there are out there. The correct way to do this is by subdividing everything by two-letter country codes, as was originally intended, so that the address space won't get all jumbled up like it is now, thanks to the current mess.)
In other words, this sounds like just one more way to send SPAM. Oh well.
This is true. The most travelled parts of the new web would be the most travelled parts of the world. I can think of a million and one random fun uses for this. For example, going and sitting under my favorite tree in the City Park and composing poetry, then just leaving it there. Or imagine someone comes up with something really interesting, one of those catch everyone's attention for a few seconds things(like All-Your-Base). Then they post it somewhere, like on the sidewalk of the main street in their city. Within half an hour, there are dozens of people trying to cram within a few meters of this spot to check it out. Then some clever person reposts it a few blocks over, and so on...
lysergically yours
The biggest question on my mind is who will own the space where these messages are left? Will I own the cubicle area in my office building? Will my company? Will they allow me to use it? What if I use it for advertising something I'm working on outside of work?
Who will own the space outside the restaurant? You and I? The public? What if someone who hates the restaurant owner leaves nasty, misleading messages in that space outside the place -- does the owner have recourse? Who does he go to? HP?
Who's message will have a higher priority? Mine? Yours? Your mom's? Will it be based on age? Date posted? Will bots come out posting the latest or the highest rated note for that particular GPS location? Will a Slashdot-like moderation system need to be implemented to sort out the crap/flamebaits/trolls from the insightful/interesting/funny notes?
Are the notes time dependant? "I just left a doosey in here!" near a public toilet -- does that stay until someone else posts, or only 5 minutes?
I wonder if the real estate agents will start selling the space with the house/commercial property, or if they will sell it separately.
It will be interesting to see.
TossableDigits.com: Temporary Phone Numb
People aren't "writing messages" into the GPS system (I'm still astounded at how many people totally misunderstand GPS. Almost everyone who sees my GPS asks me what the `subscription' to it costs, or if I'm concerned that they're "tracking" me: People don't understand that GPS, as a base technology, is completely passive and is just the triangulation [What is it called when it's among 12 points?] of a ping from 12 points). Basically you could do something like this by making a website that took longitude/latitude, and you find the closest record to their point and send it as the response: It's neither brilliant, nor amazing, but it is an obvious merging of technologies, and it's localizing the net (which is a fantastic thing not only for the user experience, but also truly for advertising).
Advertisers will be using it a heck of a lot more than regular people... first time that restaurant finds out somebody is posting magic notes, they'll have a repeater drown it out with what they want to say.
I think it's saying something more about the current state of things than the future that the first thing that people have to say about this is "What about the spam?"
But as for the idea itself: I can't see this being a universal thing. A million people leaving a million messages about, say, the new ride at Six Flags? Who wants to read all that?
I really couldn't care less about what John Q. Public has to say about the state of the restrooms in the Burger King I'm stopping at off the freeway. There's a reason I stopped peering into AOL chat rooms: Most people have nothing important to say, but still they say it anyways.
Of course, if there were a moderation system implemented-- rating the comments-- like on Slashdot, it could be interesting. But a system like that would take even longer to set up, and I can't see anybody interested in doing it. It would take the resources of a major investor to get this off the ground, and I may be short-sighted, but I'm not sure where the profit could be had.
File this one under "nifty in theory."
There would end up being multiple layers of "geocyberspace" at the beginning. You'd connect to the network of your choice. Cyberspace connected to geographic space... spot.com ?
Imagine Lonely Planey, Whole Earth, and others getting into it. Eventually MSN and all the others are into it.
(At the end, you get a spot.com dieoff... the Infoseeks and Pets.com type guys vanish, and Time Warner and Microsoft and Disney move in. Yeah that MSN geospace is kind of cool, but for some reason there are blank wholes where Disney properties are located.)
At the Grand Canyon:
Buy Grand Canyon keychains!
At the Bank:
Make free money! Refinance now!
In residential areas:
(picture of sexy girl) Enlarge your penis now!
At Disney World:
Visit the gift shop now!
are drooling so hard right now that they're wetting their pants over this. Onstar already does something similar and can bet that this will only be used to spam us while walking around. And can anyone explain why onstar uses Batman as its spokes person? Makes no sense to me.
Would you rather that they used the Riddler as a spokesman?
Remember them?
This will attract the same kind of lawsuits.
euroderf (whose /. account got hacked,
and nobody at /. answers my damn email)
Yeah, well for this to work, your cell-phone/GPS would have to report your location to a central point. I know of quite some people who would love THAT!
Not for me, thank you, I'd rather keep my privacy.
Once again the trees of penury have crowded out the forest of freedom and democracy. Once again the need to slosh throught the thicket of misinformation, carving out a trail of truth, comes about.
For many businesses, it will be a marketing dream come true. Retailers will be falling over themselves to bombard people passing their doors with targeted come-ons... But it will also work the other way round, enabling you to find what you want.
In other words: rejoice! Not only will it businesses be able to bombard you with ads, consumers will have even more opportunity to be immersed in the advertiing they love so much! Huzzah!
But the prospect of every place on Earth being crammed with invisible electronic notes, ...conjures the spectre of an information traffic jam... Crouch isn't unduly worried... It is largely a question of managing hardware and being very careful about balancing loads between servers
In other words, the problem isn't the intellectual moise pollution of a million billion advertisements floating in the air, the problem is potential server loads and lag times! Well, I for one COULD NOT CARE LESS how long the latest Pizza Hut jingle takes to download on my cell phone!!
I REALLY like this part:A universal open messaging system also raises questions about privacy and the reliability of information. Unscrupulous merchants may attach scurrilous messages about their competitors... Crouch and his colleagues... say the prototypes they are running will help them deal with the problems of privacy and security.
That is too funny. Obviously, the "scurrilous" messages referred too will also include any "sublvertive", anti-establishment, or otherwise non-mainstream (read non business-related) messages. It will be interesting the hail of lawsuits that result when dstrong, free geeks attempt to use this system for their own purposes...
And finally, this howler: There are some very simple mechanisms that can restrict who gets to post you a message, and who gets to read the ones you write, they say. You could, for instance, join a paid service that would scrutinise messages and guarantee their authenticity and usefulness
Oh man, that is TOOOO FUUUNNNNYYY!!! You have to PAY to not receive SPAM on your GPS! It seems the right to not be constantly harrassed by nuisance mesages is now for sale to the highest bidder.
This usiness of buying and selling the air is just madness.It's almost enough to make you wonder if federal regulation might mot be a good thing. I do, however, have faith that strong, free geeks will discover ways to divert this wave of greed-induced information diaorrhea.
Nothing really new here, except for tying the information into a web server rather than a local DB.
The concept certainly has its uses. For example, an aviation GPS system linked to a digital elevation model of the terrain will warn you if you're currently flying at an altitude lower than some of the rocks in the area. That can be helpful. Ditto for warning about restricted airspace, or dangerous areas while backpacking or boating (eg old mine shafts, possible dangerous concentrations of volcanic gasses, old toxic waste dumps, etc, etc.)
The web connection allows for dynamic updating of the data, which is cool, it also means you don't need to carry the whole database around with you.
Of course the advertising/spam aspect is a real down side. And just wait till they start building the stuff into everything: do you really want your digital camera telling you there's a Kodak Picture Point coming up?
-- Alastair
Just imagine if this were free.... goatse.cx links are just the beginning!
I percieve the system to be an open message board, but more intrusive and perhaps more relevant/tied to the real world.
Like slashdot, I think that the system would be used to post a hell of a lot of crap, ASCII art spam etc.... but with some nuggets.
Where slashdot suceeds is that users can moderate, metamoderate and filter out the crap. Unless this system is capable of similar checks, it would be doomed to failure as it filled with garbage and then spammed everone with it....
Long live CoolTown. Long live CTNotes. Long live Alistair Mann!!!
-- Mike
Here's another wonderful application of it. When you drive by a billboard, it displays an advertisement for a product that the advertisers think you will like based on your surfing habits.
Quite possible, if the GPS-related device is uploading some sort of personal identifier into the system.
It could be useful for ecommerce activities such as automating transactions. If each item in the GAP were tagged with some unique induction loop activated chip you could walk up to a kiosk with a pair of jeans and your GPS phone and then utilize an online wallet service (probably paypal or visa) to help you pay for the transaction.
Of course, this is exactly the kind of thing that bluetooth is supposed to provide. I'd be curious to see this technology used in Japan. They, afterall, seem to have the support for mobile commerce and communications.
IMHO The closest thing we might have in The States to this kind of ecommerce currently is Speedpass. The adoption patterns for Exonn-Mobil's Speed Pass are what you would expect: heavy usage by fleet vehicles and heavy among brand-loyal consumers. There is no inscentive for anyone else. Until these kinds of payment methods become accepted by the public at large there will be little desire by retailers to confuse the payment process. We'll probably get there in ten or twenty years.
Here's another thought:
.GPS top level domain? Will all of the these locational web sites be browsable through the web as we know it?
If the way that this works is that a "web page" is being created on HP(or whoever) servers for each spot the first time someone posts there. This "new" web is basically just an extension of the old web. Will we end up with a new
Basically, if i want to know what people are saying about my favorite restaurant/movie theatre/porno shop/whatever, do i have to actually go there or can i just plug the latitude and longitude into my web browser while sitting at home?
lysergically yours
how soon before companies start trying to own their coords.
you cant say anything negative about this location!
Click here!
I hate pseudo-intellectuals [like yourself]. Posts like this make me glad I go to an institute of technology and not American or NYU, where I would have to listen to uninformed ranting against "the system" from hemp-smoking persons like yourself. In conclusion, never post here again. Thank you.
As you drive home from Disneyland, all you see is billboards telling you where to develop your film full of Disney pictures.
That should be:
for(lat = -90; lat 90; lat++) {
I'll excuse the longitude, although I'd suggest -180 to 180.
Hey don't do so many gravity bong hits before you decide to post. Trying to use as many 25 cent words as you can afford also makes you look like a faux-intellectual wanna-be. Not to mention your paranoid, condescending tone really works against whatever points (and I'm not sure what that point really is) you're trying to make.
Finally if you really fancy yourself as being intelligent and sophisticated, please learn to check your spelling. Now go back to eating your Ben & Jerry's and reading High Times.
For example, an aviation GPS system linked to a digital elevation model of the terrain will warn you if you're currently flying at an altitude lower than some of the rocks in the area. That can be helpful
If this environment is compatible with Quake, then a simple NOCLIP command makes those rocks harmless. You fly right through them!
So now when we wander over pristine territory we can get inundated with "first post" messages from the usual cretins. At least they'll be wandering around the planet with GPS units and will have less time to infest slashdot. Maybe we can look forward to the occasional 'first post' adventurer getting eaten by a wild animal.
round is me.
:)
Sorry.
I wish Slashdot let me search by URL
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Whenever I see an ad pop up in front of me, I'll just whip out my faithful mirror, and send the beam back to its source, thereby destroying the nasty sattelite that created the spam.
Why don't we have an ipv6 subnet that is allocated for the purpose of GPS-coordinate based 'websites'?
Ever need an online dictionary?
Following the French experience with Minitel...
(22-25 cm + 180-185 cm + 70-75 kg + blue + dark brown) != 0
10m SE Notre Dame 020122:2230
This seems to be taking geocaching to the next level. Geocaching is a GPS treasure hunt. People leave little tupperware containers and ammo boxes full of trinkets, disposable cameras and a notepad at specified coordinates then report those coordinates to geocaching.com in order for other people to find them, write down who they are and when they were there and take something from the cache and leave something of their own. It is something to do with your GPS recvr and the family - and its fun :)
Provided that only users (human beings), and not corporations can take advantage of this.
Corporations are made up of human beings. There is nothing to be gained by censorship. Also, when you get down to it, all "corporate" speech is really something performed/said/created by human individuals. I'd love to see the criteria by which you choose to censor some but not others, eh Her Adolf?
There is a difference between Coca-Cola buying a stretch of freeway space to bombard you with SPAM, and the owner of a restaurant posting specials once a day.
What difference? You mean that you dislike one kind of spam and like the other?
Wasn't Douglas Adam's trying to work out something like this?
GPS has an accuracy of around ~5 feet so in order to ensure that a message was delivered to any particular spot, one would need to broadcast the message for a radius of 5 ft around the destination spot. This means that at most, messages would have to have a 5 ft buffer. In order to make it give atleast, a 50-50 chance of encounter the message within the buffer space, the message would need to be broadcast for a space with a radius of about 12.5 ft. Add the 5 ft buffer and you end up with a circle with a diameter of 35 ft.
So, I don't think you'll see a new message every couple feet. 35ft blocks are pretty big, and statistically, that would still only give you a 50-50 chance of actually hearing the message.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Think about it....ICANN or whovever telling the real homeless people to "move along" and give up the cyber squat address!
I love the irony of this....some bum with a shopping cart and a small PalmVII "cyber squatting" in front of the new Seahawks stadium with disparaging remarks for all passers by.....
These new homeless cyber squatters could collect change through "Pay-Pal" and use it to order "Night-train" without ever leaving their corner!
I imagine there would be the usual trouble with "agressive websites" that go a little further than just asking for you to "one-click" a bottle of MD-20/20 for them. And how about the targeted demographics for attractive female passers-by....What would these new cyber-homeless use for cookies?
Oh the fun it would be!
What I wonder is how, if this comes about, the phone companies will handle it. On the one side it would be *nice* to be able to cram commercial junk into consumers orifices, as provided by the highest bidder, but on the other hand if the system is completely devoid of any kind of filter, consumer acceptance will be zero (imagine *not* being able to shut it off ... *shudder*). The commercial opportunity of the era ... and they just can't ... quite ... grasp ... it.
I say (and I've said it before) - I'd set my filter to "Kevin Bacon", just for the insider-joke value.
yes, we have no bananas
In the HCI research community, there is actually quite a lot of work similar to this. It's generally refered as situationally aware, or context senstiive computing. The philosophy involves giving information systems about thier surroundings (location, time of day, tempurature, and even some other higher level abstract stuff like social context - in a meeting, etc.) in an effort to drive or moderate infromation delivery to the user. Of course, the military has been very interested in this kind of technology for a while now because the applciation to wearble devices on soldiers in the battle field are obvious.
That is why they had to kill Douglas Adams.
Just imagine. You've been invited to a party, and you haven't had a date in 6 years. Now, thanks to technology, you can program the ether to give the appearance that you have a beautiful brunette with you.
And if you can keep people from talking to her, none will be all the wiser.
Also, this technology (along with the appropriate subscriptions and filters) could be used for "Augmented Reality", such as that described in the February 2002 issue of Popular Science.
Now there's an interesting benefit.. err... effect of using a cell phone.
HAHA i peed in my pants that was so funny
You duped Michael? I thought dupe only worked on file descriptors! Why the hell didn't somebody tell me about this sooner...I've been putting up with a long-distance relationship for way too long, I'm duping my girlfriend!
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
Hah... mindflash! Imagine a Novel on this thing!
... haunted houses - you have to be in the house between sunset and sunrise to read that bit ... the cliffs the herione falls off - you have to be there to read that bit ... the location of the vanilla needle - you have to be there, and gaze up to the stars to read that bit
:)
Endless possibilities
I see a big market for GPS spoofers
yes, we have no bananas
May I suggest you do some more research on you subject?
i n/ reproduction.htm
"Like most birds, the reproductive cycle before the courting displays. Once individuals acquire mates, the pair initiates copulations after a series of displays. The reproductive structures in penguins do not differ extensively from those of other avian families. All birds reproduce sexually: males transfer sperm to the female through the cloaca. During copulation, the event of contact between the two cloacas is known as the cloaca kiss."
http://www.bergen.org/Smithsonian/HumboldtPengu
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
Think about it:
All postings to this GPS system get moderated (and then the moderations get meta-moderated of course). The higher a message is modded, the higher priority it is, or perhaps the more space it occupies.
Hook this into Freenet. One of the issues I have found with Freenet is the UI is miserserable. The one thing going for this is the obvoiusness of how to use it.
Using Freenet would provide the ability to post things objectively without fear of legal reprisal. Pop in a easy "Do Not Serve" filter so people aren't barraged with spam, and it could be useful without being obnoxious.
Is this the end yet?...How 'bout now...how 'bout now...how 'bout now?
Many of you think that this would just be when you are at the point the GPS system has "tagged" . Rather I precieve this as an oppurtunity to have interavtive maps. Imagine you are visiting a city. Rather than having to look on the internet to find hotels and attractions you could visit a GPS mapping site and you could simply click on the hotel and go to its GPS web site. A global interavtive map that allows you to surf the world. Now just imagine you are driving down the highway and you pull out your PDA, that has built in GPS and this new technology imbedded into it. You want to go to a resturant and as you pass by them you check out their web pages on your PDA. Now you are on your way to visit some friends, but you forget your friends husbands name. hmmm pull out your interactive map click on their house and look at their web site. The possibilities for tourism are endless. Technology is advancing to the wireless age and this would be a huge step in that direction.
I hope there'd be a way to turn these off. Otherwise you drive through a large city and GPS msgs will be going off everywhere.
"Eat at Joes!"
"Clothing 50% off!"
"Sale sale sale!!"
-DrkShadow
Your phone company might offer one as a premie for use with the phone. Of course it would likely have all of the restrictions that a phone company would impose (basically no content but for hotlinks to merchants and a few public services websites.)
Your local mainstream and alternative papers might offer their own with reviews and schedules and of course links. Stand in front of a bus stop and see its schedule, wander in front of a theater and see the show times and buy them with a click. Walk into a store and you can look up their advert or just get dumped to their website (or whoever paid for those coordinates on that database.)
Business and schools would use these to tag their own space. There'd likely be an IS database with notes on the hardware closet one is next to, directions for following a cable run through the building. University students would doubtless have their own databases with tips for which corners are good for sex and that the pizza in that cafe is rumored to have rat bits.
Credit cards would likely love these. Use Amex and you'd have access to the Amex database listing only merchants who take their cards and likely a copy of the Zagats guide or something.
Sure lots of graffiti could be a problem in some public databases, as with intrusive or inappropriate advertising. That's why I expect to see multiple databases with some sort of pruning or content enforcement mechanism (heck, /. moderation for tags.) The same as the web the useful ones would flourish, the others wither away, and need to find a funding source.
We've already seen something like this for the web. I've lost track of their names but a few years ago there was a spate of plugins that would allow folks to annotate webpages. If you had BrandA plugin when you went to a webpage with a note "attached" it could appear superimposed. They weren't actually on the webpage but served from the plugin's host database and left by other visitors. There was much outcry but what really killed the whole thing was the graffiti.
However I expect that there are ways around the graffiti problem (paying folks to keep the database clean or even moderation, and of course commercial ones) and we could see space tagging work be a breakthrough product for phones.
My own list of dream apps:
- Restaurant reviews from the local papers
- Traffic news relevant to my location
- Public transit schedules from where I'm standing or the nearest station/stop with estimated times & delay notification
- Find the nearest ATM on my network
- Browse the website of the store I'm in and easily jump to their competition down the street's website
- Advertise my need for a cab to my location and see who shows up first
- Maintain a list of personal notes attached to places: Where we first kissed, the salesperson I liked here was "Sue" etc.
- Share notes with my friends & family: The chocolate mousse in this place is gelatinous...
- Stand outside a bar or sit on a train and look up if anyone I like has listed themselves as being nearby (by their choice on our circle-of-friends tagsite.)
Again, these wouldn't all be in big public databases but in a variety, some general public others subscription and some private.I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The message automatically disappears when I leave the proximity of the tagged object, I'd support this. Just like any advertising, I'd avoid obnoxious areas. Conversely, I'd be more likely to visit locations that I got free stuff. Simple consumerism.
Now you can get black market stuff/drugs without halving to visit a dealer or them halving to know you. You walk arround with your cell phone (perpaid for privacy, of course, and with it's own stash of digital cash) When you get near the drug drop, it will indicate you are in a buying area and will allow you to put your digital cash in escro, upon payment you will get detailed instructions of how to get the stash and you will be prompted to release escro upon inspection.
For insurance measure, the stash could be connected to an acid/poison/ink discharge device triggered by it's own cellphone that would destroy the commodity if not approved.
Just a thought.
GPS coupled web sites could be "very interesting" . . .
1) How about multiple channels individuals could choose to ignore or select based on their interests or needs.
2) Individuals could each annotate GPS locations themselves. (Doable now by anyone with a web site. and a GPS or just a list of locations.) Individuals could then register some location URLs (GPS_RLs) with a central (Inter-dimensional) agency to allow select sharing. (Hyper Buddy Lists?)
Didn't I have this idea like 3 years ago?!? It's still in it's idea form it seems though. I have not seen any device implementations of this... (or standards for it either. It better be a non-propietary standard (ie, TCP/IP, HTTP) too!!! or else...)
fag screw you good luck selling it :) hehe no that wasnt me slashdot is not a place to advertise
There is a resturaunt called hobies in cupertino ca where m$ talked about overthrowing netscape. Go to eat there and see this image on your GPS.
http://images.slashdot.org/topics/topicms.gif
Localizing content is great. And while we need to worry about spam issues, the benefits will outweight the disadvantages. I forsee a selection of content available, including the old standby Zagat reviews, etc. If there is a filtering, moderation, or some other sort of preference for content this will be an amazing tool.
Groove Salad -- a nicely chilled plate of ambient grooves and beats.
If so, this sounds just like the stupid idea a year or two ago of mapping peoples' phone numbers to DNS. (It's exactly the opposite of what you want to do. If you want to find a particular person's website, why not make use of the new .name TLD and use the person's full name?)
How about because two different people can have the same name, while no two people can have the same phone number? If you use names then you're just asking for domain wars all over again. This is, I think, one of the biggest failings of the Domain Name System with respect to the modern Internet: no two people or organizations can have the same name, at least and get equal recognition. Especially now that we have Google, I don't really see much of a problem with switching back to a numbered system (maybe not IP addresses, since you can't move those around, but some similar system with arbitrarily assigned numbers). After all, telephone books served us quite well back in the day...
Mod the parent up! It is an excellent example of what will happen with this system. Do you really want to be backpacking through the wilderness, find a wonderfull view and whip out your GPS to track the coordinates so you can tell your friends...only to find "FIRST POST" blasting across your display? I don't think so.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Maybe that should be a new feature of slashcode. An automatic searcher thingy that would look for similiar articles and warn the editor that is a similiar article and allow them to view it. It would search on URL's keywords and title.
I'm a nerd. I'll admit that -- I use Linux, my home is designed around a network, etc., but all for what I work on. But I don't need toys. I don't have a TV, a DVD player, or DSL. And I don't have a cell phone. I don't need one. I certainly don't need a GPS-enabled cell phone... maps and common sense tell me where I am. I can't even begin to fathom why I'd want to pay good money to carry around a GPS-enabled advertising device. This is just another example of technology being used to create false material needs -- the desire to consume surplus goods -- to raise our personal expenditures and consolidate our lives as individuals, as consumers, and as instruments. The notion that I would pay to carry around a telephone that would spout advertisements based on my location is worse than absurd -- it's insulting.
Yeah, I can see how this can now put ads in all the right places. This is a Great Idea (tm). They dont even have any real applications for it yet, thats just opening the door for ads to step in. I can see myself stepping up to the urinal, unzipping, looking down and suddenly hearing in my ear "EXTEND YOUR PENIS SIZE BY 6 INCHES!!!"
... does McDonalds own all the co-ordinates in a certain area around all its buildings, or can Hungry Jacks (the Australian version of Burger King I guess), fill all the airspace with its own ads? There is one for the law-talkin' guys.
... I suppose the only plus is that you arent forced to hear it ... everything else about it just screams free-to-air-SPAM ...
And imagine all the hassles with who 'owns' what co-ordinates
As if we arent bombarded with enough visual and aural stimulation as it is, most of it brain numbing ads
Does anyone have anymore information on this?
why not implement a system like everything2 + gps?
One of the big problems other posters seem to have is the possibility for space to be turned into spam. However, Once this idea takes hold there are going to be a zillion different companies who will provide these services. There will be companies who filter messages, and those that don't. Those that permit commercial advertising, those that don't. The possibilities are endless. And since if you belong to one "GPS-messaging ISP" you can't read other people's messages, obviously a service will appear which connects multiple services' databases for the ultimate spamming experience.
The only potential downfall of this system is if HP keeps a stranglehold on this patent (I assume there will be one...) That's the only thing that I can see that could truly wreck this plan because nothing mentioned above would apply.
I honestly don't see how this could NOT catch on. Even the example first given in the article ("imagine approaching the teacher's desk") would be a great use for this!
Imagine when some company comes out with a pair of sunglasses or something that acts as a HUD so that you can see all the messages floating in the air. Now that would be cool.
Check out confluence.org, where people can post photos and descriptions of every long. lat. combination on the globe.
"You walk up to the teacher's desk with a little practical joke in mind. Your mobile phone suddenly bleeps," and you realise that you forgot to set it on vibrate. Now, since the teacher is in such a bad mood, she confiscates your fone. To make matters worse, she glances at the display and reads the message. Then she proceeds to send you and the poster to the office.
Bummer...
...Or it could be another one of those pesky schemes from Big Brother to tag where we travel!
RedHat/7.2 is a fucking piece of shit! First, something explodes which causes all the man pages to segfault! "groff: troff: Segmentation fault" each time! Oh, what a wonderful OS! Then, it crashes when I try to upgrade the groff RPMs! The fucking process got stuck in "D" uninterruptable-sleep status, not even kill-9'able! What a flaming piece of shit!
Now, all of this happens after a 10-day ordeal trying to just get it (and 7.1) to install without problems there! (FTP errors, can't get the fucking network card module loaded, disk errors, vmlinuz crashing on boot, etc.)! Oh, what a wonderfully stable OS! Definitely ready for the desktop! Can you imagine your grandmother trying to figure out what the installer meant by "Error -2147483630 reading header: cpio: failed - Success" !?!?
RedHat/7.2: Perfect for AOL! What a flaming heap of monkey shit!
Can GPS resolve elevation/altitude as well as longitude/latitude?
All this person is doing is presenting an opposing viewpoint. Are moderators really so one-dimensional that, in their own little candy-coated world, there isn't anything bad about attaching messages to GPS locations? Seriously, there's the potential for this technology to be really cool, but, like JanneM said, there's also the possibility of it being misused, or used for purposes other than what some of us would like (such as advertising.) Are moderators so stupid as to consider this opposing viewpoint "Flamebait"? Are we all supposed to blow our load in the comments to this (and every other) story about how neat-o keen this tech is, and squash all opposing viewpoints, no matter how cogent the argument?
Wait, yes, we are. Slashdot needs two (and only two) moderation categories: +1 Groupthink, and -1 Thoughtcrime.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Now you just hang an advert for a website outside a building's exit...
I don't know about you'all, but the first thing that occurred to me was that for this to really take off, IPv6 would become that much more necessary. Now you could address 30ft cubes in the 3D bioshpere with unique IPs? We would pretty quickly run out of IPv4, I would think.
--
$tar -xvf
Now we'll have a bunch of morons driving around writing "Prist Frost" and linking to a certain Christmas Islands domain.... Wonderful.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Send an encrypted message, but use the GPS coordinates as the key!.. send an encrypted message "Go where I cut my foot badly as a child"... wow, I can almost read the spy novel, you get to use locations that only two people know about... walk around taking coordinates, and then later send messages usingthose coordinates as keys.
meh
Forget email spam and banner ads. Enter the new era. Enter the era of GPS Ads! Anytime! Everywhere!
I did not see anybody use that term. Did I make it up and will be in all the 2030 Cyber History books for being the first to use it?
Well, let me dream.
Table-ized A.I.
this is the scariest sentence in this article:
All cellphones
made in the US now have to include some form of locator technology so that
they can be tracked by emergency services.
what is that? "emergency services" my ass. my guess is that this is another fbi spyware requirement.
why is there no uproar over this? what happened? how did this law get passed, if it is one? who let it go through?
This sounds like a really cool idea but you know what evil government will get to govern who gets what space and what they get to say? Also I'm a little confused as to won't this potentially fill up the planet and you won't be able to move five inches eventually without getting spammed? Everyone lock their closets right now so no one can use that space. You'll thank me when your closet is the only spam free zone in your house.
Visit BobtheKing.com it's perhaps the best thing I've ever made to waste your time with.
What we need is a moderation system for shitty drivers (i.e. the 90 year blind, crippled, and deaf paraplegic who drives a "boat" from the 70's - or fuckin teenie-boppers on cell phones. . )
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Cheers, Joshua
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
Unless you are outside with a direct shot at 3 or more GPS satellites, your device will not know where it is.
This is a problem for the US cell companies that are trying to integrate positioning technology into their cell phones as per an FCC mandate (which had a deadline of Oct 2001, but was extended for 4 more years because the phone companies said they could not do it yet.)
There are other approaches to establishing location, such as interpolating timing signals from various cell towers, but as far as I know none of those has been implemented in the USA yet.
GPS in the city will be spotty for some time. And if the bus stop has a thick roof over it, you will not get a schedule sitting under it.
In light of recent terrorist activities, I can see something like this being misused by the government. Think about it. Every electronic device you buy has a small built in GPS unit (could be placed in cell phones which almost everyone has). Units each have a unique serial number that is registered to your name when you purchase the item.
Now everywhere you go that your electronic device has power (regardless of if it is on) a little digital marker is left behind at each individual GPS location.
I know this sounds far fetched, but I'm just laying out all possibilities.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
old news.
http://wherehoo.media.mit.edu/
I mean, sure, it may have application somewhere...
but is everyone going to have a PDA with a full time net connection & GPS, as well as audio/video capability? Because until we do, this is hype.
And even then.. how hard is this? IF said device exists.. this is TRIVIAL. THey make it sound like 'new technology. It's not new.. it's OBVIOUS
I'm sure someone has patented this great idea too.
Everyone in your wagon has died. Would you like to write your epitaph?
That's what they should do with this technology.
Actually, now that I think of it, if people could hook up to different forums with this device, i.e., Appalachian Trail forums, I think this could be mighty useful. For example "Note: at this location don't climb up the ridge; take the trail by the brook instead."
This sig provides no comical value.
What about the viruses?
Hi! How are you?
I meet you at these coordinates in order to have your advice.
See you later! Thanks
int lat = 0;
int long = 0;
while(1) {
for(lat = -90; lat < 90; lat++) {
for(long = 0; long < 360; long++) {
GPS_printf(lat, long, "ALL YOUR COORDINATES ARE BELONG TO US!!!\n");
}
}
}
*Pauses Metal Gear Solid 2 This same sort of message placement can be cloned by using around 25 infared lights, a few mirrors, and cigarette smoke to show the lights.
- ufcker.com -
"I farted here, 4:37pm CST, 11/06/02...enjoy!"
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
for(;;)
for(int lat=0;lat360;lat++)
for(int long=0;long360;long++)
GPS_printf(lat,long, "ALL YOUR COORDINATES ARE BELONG TO US!!!\n");
Remember those books with the instructions, written by someone who has too much time on their hands, to go to this page and that, and sends the reader in circles. Would it be fun to post on the GSP: go tho this cordinate and when you get there, it says go to this cordinate.
Ok, so I can read a review of a restaurant I'm already sitting at. Ummm, great. By the time, I'm in the place I'm ready to make my own review. I'm not going to go walking around finding a place to eat. I'm going to figure it out first.
On the other hand, it will be useful as a tour guide. Assuming of course we have our nice 3G device to pull down the info we need without it costing a fortune.
One last thing. GPS is accurrate to 50'. So, I'm in location A, and I get information about location B across the street, due to a glitch. That's not too helpful. Is it likely that the military will allow us to have more accurate devices? My fingers aren't crossed.
Often in Error, Never in Doubt.
Everyone (well not everyone but a few) seems to think this will just become a GPRs SPAM channle.. Seens everyone can post a message, we would get SPAM haninging around in the air.. I dont beleave in this senario, think off Slashdot.. everyone can post here, and most SPAM are filtered out by the actualy readers. Why wouldnt it work for this to?
I always wanted to do this but with RF (or similar) tags. The advantage of my system would be that moving objects would be tagged- people, cars etc. Then you would have not one website devoted to it but a whole new way of tying meatspace to cyberspace.
Examples:
1) a dating site. You walk round a nightclub talking to people you like and then hit the restroom where you can use your pda to view their personal details (the tags they wear having been auto-scanned by your pda or a badge you wear)
2) huds on windshields that project icons onto cars- e.g. "reported stolen", different icons for driving offences, maybe one warning icon if the vehicle has been the subject of a "bad driver" report by the public in the last month...
3) a consumer review site that ties into the tags in all new electrical devices so you can hear what reviews say instead of the salesman when in the store
4) security tags so when you are in 2nd hand shops you can see if that used stereo is "hot"
5) warez sites and p2p sharing: you scan an album or video game in a shop and your agent goes off to look for a copy of it on the internet.
Heheh Imagine the possibilities! With this, and the original idea you have to realize that the data- either gps location or tag id is just there- and anyone can set up a system, web site or technology using that data- it wouldn't be controlled by one person, company or group.
graspee
> cast floating letters
You surreptitiously conceal your spell casting.
Floating letters: #
You write your message in the air with your nose and chant 'lentavia lauseita'
You sizzle with magical energy.
A MUD spell come true!
I see a few problems that would be hard to overcome... First, say (as stated in the article) someone left a message in mid-air informing people of a car accident on the expressway. Suppose the average speed on that that road is 75 km/h. In addition, the polling frequency, the protocol, and lags in the devices themselves delay the delivery of the message...
This all suggests that messages must be tagged with a radius as well as a location. On the highway at high speeds, one might need a 1-2 km radius to ensure that the message is delivered before one encounters the accident. On the other hand, one only needs a 1m radius to leave graffiti over the crapper at your local McDonalds.
Now what happens if the highway passes through a city (like Boston's 93) with lots of McDonalds... Will I walk into the men's room and get:
"Accident on 93 North - use left lane...."
"Here I sit all broken-hearted...."
If the restaurant falls within the message radius, I will. Now let's go for the low hanging fruit - the obvious fix-all. Let's tag the messages with a location, a radius, and a speed! It's GPS - calculating speed is easy, right? If I'm walking into McDonalds at 4km/h, I won't get the message intended for cars at 75km/h.
Now not only do people know where I am, but how fast I am going. Cross-reference with a map, and they know what road I'm on. Should I expect to see speeding tickets enclosed in my mobile phone bill? Will Mapquest email me:
"You know Dan, there's a much better route to work..."
Will my local health club text my mobile:
"We noticed you go to McDonalds quite frequently and you're not walking too fast these days..."
Privacy? What privacy?
I like the idea as some kind of Identifier for ships - a ship might post details above itself telling the rest of the world it's name, registration, origins etc. Having this linked to the radar would be excellent - particularly at night - for watchkeepers trying to wake the dog on the other bridge. Make it mandatory, I say.
Ditto for civil aircraft.
Wonder how well it would do as a military IFF (Identify Friend or Foe)?
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Sat in a stall taking a dump....
-And you thought leving a floater was bad enough.
(Although it could be useful..... "Dude, theres no paper")
I could just see the spam at the urinal though
*unzips*
WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER SIX INCHES!!!!!
Moderate: Toilet humour -1
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
More interesting perhaps are location-dependent messages sent out by beacons that transmit information (via Bluetooth or IR) locally--you really have to be physically there to receive the information. And those kinds of systems actually happen to be a little easier to deploy, since handhelds already have IR (and soon Bluetooth) built-in, while GPS is still an expensive option.
Suppose you fly over manhattan with your gps media receiver on. Aren't you going to get a massive overload of data as you pass through so many message locations?
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Great way of leaving dirty jokes in public bathrooms
There is a lot of overlap between the SRI .geo proposal and the stuff in the New Scientist
article.
What I find interesting is that we keep proposing schemes for unifying GIS data but we never seem to find a way to create the incentives to make it happen. Most GIS data are still proprietary, being sold and resold by consulting houses to the original data creators and owners.
...I want to tag people. Or more specifically, their cars. Imagine the view in your windscreen-HUD, that arse who just cut you up gets yet another "Wanker!" sign on his car. And how long does it take him to get the insults off his vehicle? The knock-on effects in considerate driving could be immense.
Make sure you take that GPS device to the used car lot. Rather than kick the tires, you are going to make sure that your used car is not blemished with nasty cyberspace labels earned by the oaf who used to own the car.
How well does GPS know where you are vertically?
I know they say we'll be able to pinpoint our location to 3 metres but is that two dimensional?
Will it tell me which floor I am on in the mall?
Cause if it doesn't, I'm not sure this will work well.
"Sorry, officer. I was driving down the road, and then this X-10 banner ad suddenly filled my windshield. I tried to swerve around it, but I hit the school bus."
I think the "close pop-up window" button on the steering wheel might become much more used than the horn button.
If I were walmart, I'd like to post to a sphere 5 miles around each store telling all who read how great I am.
If I were joe's garage, i'd like to post to a sphere 10 miles wide saying the same.
Presumably some restrictions on the area my message appears will be imposed.
The problem then seems to become I am 10 feet in fron of some restaurant's door that I would like to get info on. Does my phone display the info? Is the message area based on a distance to a point, or distance to a circle's perimeter. If its a distance to a point, shopkeepers would probably choose the front door signage as their point, so as to maximize reach. If I am then standing at the back door of the store, I could get nothing.
A public system like this really only has one use. Advertising.
Sure I can see how some people might want to set up a network using GPS tags for other things like they mentioned in the article but those things are unusable on a public network because they'll be choked out by advertising. Much better to set up a private network with GPS tags relating just to your particular application.
Coding Blog
So I sure hope they don't try to patent this!
Make channels like TV! Messages, can be tied to space but there can be a "lonely planet channel" a "zaget channel" a "p0rn" channel a "advertizing" channel. I think you could have as many of these as you want, and if you want a type of information you go to that channel.
Each channel could be owned or run like a TV or radio station and your fine. You could never use channels, or you could and it gets rid of the grafiti problem "unless you want a grafiti channel". Even a history channel for self guided tours! Was that even hard? Problem solved.
It's an interesting idea, but what's to keep spammers from blanketing the globe with MLM schemes and X10 ads?