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LCD Display/Image Capture Device

Posted by michael on from the telescreen dept.

Jon writes "Remember jokes about clueless newbies trying to fax documents by holding them up to the monitor? Perhaps they were just ahead of their time. Toshiba has developed a combined LCD/optical sensor, according to EETimes. It isn't monitor sized yet, but in a few years, perhaps?"

12 of 213 comments (clear)

  1. disturbing ramifications... by Schwartzboy · · Score: 3, Insightful
    If this does become technically feasible and relatively inexpensive, who wants to make a bet on the display that's commonly hooked up to next generation of office desktop machines?
    Certain companies already monitor their employees to what I believe is an obsessive extent, and the ability to take a "scan" of what's in front of the monitor every X minutes is something I can see being used and abused by the "w3 0wnz j00" philosophy that a lot of businesses have with respect to their employees. Worse yet, look at this technology after a few iterations and a few million dollars, and you've got screen = scanner = webcam.

    In the dark, uncertain future of cubicle dwellers, there will be no need for paranoia...your computer is, in fact, watching you.

    --
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    1. Re:disturbing ramifications... by ichimunki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Um, how hard is it to build a monitor with a built-in webcam, or even to affix one to existing monitors? Or are you trying to say that companies would only do this if they could somehow do it without anyone knowing for sure there was a camera in or on the monitor? Maybe a fixed lens that was not integral to the screen itself would be too easy to cover up with a post-it note. But what good does it do to have a live image of someone sitting at a monitor? Have you ever watched a webcam? It's incredibly dull and not likely to tell the company anything except that their employees loked bored or frustrated most of the time.

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    2. Re:disturbing ramifications... by shekondar · · Score: 2, Insightful
      the ability to take a "scan" of what's in front of the monitor every X minutes is something I can see being used and abused by the "w3 0wnz j00" philosophy that a lot of businesses have with respect to their employees
      I doubt it... a picture of an employee sitting in front of their PC won't tell them anything (how will they know if employee is doing "real work", or looking at pr0n?)

      Keystroke loggers & firewalls are better for watching what employees are really doing, and these have been around for years...

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  2. No sale by Mattygfunk1 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This is solving a problem that has already been solved.

    Faxes around my office are usually printed computer documents that perhaps have a hand written signature. This fits beautifully into the sending slot. Why would anyone want to stand there holding the thing still while they press a button / click a mouse. No way.

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  3. Re:Why? by aflat362 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Why merge the two when they should be mutually exclusive?

    well, a Floppy drive or a cd burner or hard drive are Input and output devices - not a totally new concept to do both I and O on the same device. Given these are all storage medias and a monitor is presentation media - but how many presentation medias are there (I can think of 2) I'd be pretty suprised if there weren't speaker / microphone combos out already.

    and if it worked really well It might be nice to free up that large portion of my desk that the scanner is taking up

    This solution must be somewhat intuitive if people were holding sheets of paper up to the screen trying to fax them.

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  4. Re:Why? by jhines0042 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Video conferencing where you don't have to look anywhere but your monitor?

    How about spying on your workplace? Security people would love to be able to "hide" a security camera in a monitor.

    Of course, to get the kind of depth of field that you would need for those applications you would need to have lenses.

    So lets look somewhere else...

    How about a portable fax machine in your PDA?...

    Or double your PDA as a scanner of text documents?

    I'm sure something cool could be done here!

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  5. Another example why... by StandardCell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...technology for its own sake is a useless technology. Is it any wonder why the high-tech industry has been decimated lately?

  6. Re:Why? by Ponty · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I would be over the moon if I could slide my Newton down a document and scan it. I got a c-pen, but it just isn't worth using. It might be a killer app for PDAs.

  7. Re:Why? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "A monitor is an output device. A scanner (optical reader, whatever) is an input device. Why merge the two when they should be mutually exclusive? "

    Does your keyboard have a caps-lock light?

  8. Not a camera - a scanner by wowbagger · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is not a device that can form an image from an object at a non-trivial distance from the display - this is a device that only images an object placed against it.

    I would expect the primary intent of a device like this would be in a web-pad type device. Picture a clipboard, but thicker. Your customer hands you a printed item (work order, recept, whatever). You place the item face down against the display and push a button on the side. You remove the item from the display, and verify the scan took, then hand the item back to the customer.

    This would no more allow your monitor to image what is going on in the room than putting your flat bed scanner up on edge and leaving the top open would.

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  9. Re:Good ideas w/ good intentions = Patriot Act LCD by American+AC+in+Paris · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Huh. You'd think that this all would have happened with the rise of cheap microcameras. Does your insurance company require you put an X10 camera in your vehicle to take snapshots of potential theives? Does Big Larr' require you to have a webcam connected to your Oracle server? There are thousands of cameras connected to computers--barring Black Helicopter Conspiracy Theories, is there -any- evidence that kiddies are hacking into them en masse?

    All this new product would provide is the fusion of a camera and a monitor into a single device. There already exist many devices that integrate both a viewer-facing camera and a standard LCD into a single compact package. How does a 2-way LCD suddenly catapult us into the nightmare world of Orwell when we could be there with today's technology?

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  10. Re:Jokes? by pete-classic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Actually, the first person I had sex with wanted to marry me. I guess I was a natural.

    Simple ignorance isn't funny. People who are ignorant and totally unwilling to expend any effort in dragging themselves out of their ignorance are hilarious.

    Do you think that Ford gets calls like "Where is the 'go' button?" or "How much gas do I have in my car?" I kind of doubt it, but if they do I hope whoever fields those calls post them on the web!

    -Peter