LCD Display/Image Capture Device

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?"

Comments

So much for privacy

[wakeboard]

That opens up an interesting question, can some one exploite this to see what you are doing at your desk?

ie picking your nose =]

I just want

[scorp1us]

To be able to position a webcam from computer A in front of a monitor from computer B, and reverse it. So each camera is looking at each other's monitor.

Then I want to display crap on the screen which then gets interpreted as data (Imagine a 4x4 checkerboard, black=0, white=1, so each screen displays 16 bits at a time)

Now use this to bridge two networks.

Questions: How many cells can be fit on a monitor?
How fast can you change/read the data?
Ideally if your webcam is 320x200, you could get 64kbits per flash. If you can use 4 colors instead of two, you're upto ISDN speeds...

Re:I just want

[scorp1us]

Well at the last place I worked, I worked for R&D, and we were always at odds with IT. They wouldn't let us put this one computer on the network because it was leased, and not under our configuration control. But it was in the same room as a computer that was. They even faced each other... and then my idea was born. You can even fan-out to multiple networks or fan-in. I think it'd be damn cool to walkinto a room full of flashing monitors.

It could wind up looking like the screens in the matrix, where you could see: "That was a UDP packet, and this is an ARP request..." ;-)

Good ideas w/ good intentions = Patriot Act LCD

[adzoox]

Good ideas w/ good intentions = Patriot Act LCD

The Patriot Act had good intentions but has the effect of erasing a lot our rights.

Think of how a technology like this could be pushed by the insurance and government law enforcement agencies in the future.

Insurance companies could require that all new car windsheilds and rear view mirrors, all TVs, all laptops have this "camera LCD" installed. Then if we also have cars, houses, etc ... that have networks required for software as Oracle CEO Larry Ellison sees it, I suppose the "device" (wisndshield, TV, laptop) once reported stolen would email a picture of the theif to the police and the owner. What a boom to forensics! But what a total erasing of privacy.

Then I suppose this could be hacked and teens could REALLY get REAL live webcams of "certain activities" from TVs in bedrooms. Hotels would monitor sleeping activities. Insurance companies monitor driving habits. (already tried with GPS in Alamo rental cars) Are you using that cell phone without a hands free?

Are you smoking and not telling the insurance company?

Truely 1984 wasn't satire!

Sounds more like a Kiosk thing

[ianscot]

Maybe the costs for this wouldn't be more than a separate monitor and scanner? Those two items are basically commodity priced right now, for most people's uses anyway. The combo screen would need to be pretty cheap to compete.

We have maybe, maybe 15 copies for several hundred people right now, and a few flatbed scanners around the office here. There's no shortage. I can see some new applications, and all -- potentially conferencing, and people would scan to OCR stuff more (if affordable OCR would work for the things they want to use it on) -- but would these really cost out, if those are the selling points?

Easier to see this at public kiosk sort of things -- "hold up your coupon, please" and other cooler variations on touch-screen I/O applications. There the cost difference doesn't seem like a lot next to the convenience of the combined screen/reader. Seems like that'd be the first place to run into it...

Re:1984

[Judg3]

Ah, you mean this chapter. And indeed, it's almost true now:

"Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away
about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The
telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston
made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover,
so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque
commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of
knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on
what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was
guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But
at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to
live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every
sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement
scrutinized."