Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Gadget Keeps Record of Your Life
An anonymous reader writes "SenseCam, touted as a visual diary of sorts by Microsoft Corp., is designed to be worn around the neck and take up to 2,000 images a 12-hour day automatically. The prototype responds to changes such as bright lights and sudden movements and might one day even respond to other stimuli such as heart rate or skin temperature -- to track medical problems as easily as to record a Hawaiian vacation."
"Strange days" anyone? Can users sell thier "Record of Your Life recordings"? Can "Record of Your Life recordings" be held against you in a court of law?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Does this mean I will have to sit through all (2000 * 2 * 7) = 28,000 pictures from my jerk-wad Brother-In-Law's boring one week Hawaiian vacation? Talk about a death wish.
WOW! This does sound fascinating but I hope it comes with a better manual, the info from MS' page info doesn't even explain what type of batteries it requires:
Maybe I need more coffee this fine morning...
Trolling is a art,
This is like one of those electronic probation tether things for crooks, but it reports back to Bill Gates instead of to the courts.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If I wear one of these and my PDA wristwatch at the same time, I'll be getting more @ss than a toilet seat.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
From The Artical:
"Perhaps weeks or months later, she might have zipped through them to figure out when she last saw a particular colleague or what bottle of wine she had been drinking that night."
Two THOUSAND pictures a day? ZIP through them?
This thing looks larger than my Cybershot-U (which much better pictures than what I saw on Microsoft's site from it), and seems like it would require a _lot_ of work to constantly maintain and keep organized the hundreds to thousands of photos taken everyday. Let alone time to download them on a regular basis... There are defiently some cool things on that Microsoft page though, this just isn't one of them =P
While I can see the interest in a gadget like SenseCam, how many of you believe that it will be turned into spyware by a large number of people almost immediately?
We've already seen some of the negative effects of putting cameras into cell phones: Guys snipping pictures up skirts in bars, etc.. You also hear about pictures being taken by witnesses of license plates on cars used in crimes, but not as often. These events don't occur very often because people still have to actually take the picture, and that takes time and coordination, and also because cell phone cameras suck so bad.
But let's give people a very, very easy way to take pictures of whatever is in front of them. What happens? People go looking for interesting things to stand in front of. Other people are interesting, especially when they're doing something out of the ordinary. Or something wrong.
Because the SenseCam people don't have a BatPhone, they don't know where the interesting people are minute-to-minute. They take their cameras and just start hanging around places. The cameras take lots of pictures. Later, the pictures get reviewed. Many get deleted, some are saved, some are posted to the Internet as some kind of video blog.
Slashdot readers can take it from there.
all your life are belong to us
There are some things that I just don't want Microsoft to see in my daily routines. Some of which occur in front of my computer...
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
the communications relvolution is slowly becoming a digital prison
Never underestimate the logical power of sarcasm
If I come across anyone using this near me.. I will punch them in the face. That, or bring out a large camera with flash and continually photograph them every moment they're talking to me
They'll either go away or turn the gadget off. Freaks
If an alarm clock woke you because there were good traffic conditions at the time wouldn't everyone else's clock wake them up too at the same time and thus create a traffic jam? Maybe we should instead focus on better traffic route design or better mass transit methods?
___ Shout Central - Crushes your nuts!
first MS Word keeps track of all of my editing and now another MS gadgt keeps track of my life. That can't be too good. Maybe we need to buy one of these for SCO lawyers.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
recording your whole day +100 flamy.
microsoft +100 flamy more.
seriously, there could be some serious privacy concerns if you fuck this up.
as a sidenote, not that hard to do with tech available from shelf(a nice small cam, perhaps with extra battery, and a 4gb flash..).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
"hehe. I used Grokster to download 120 people's lives, and now my hard drive is full of them."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Let's replay my week using my nifty new SenseCam:
Monday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Tuesday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Wednesday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Thursday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Friday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Weekend: sit in front of computer and take recursive pictures of self.
Omigosh!! It would be hard to live in denial with one of these things =)
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
The millions of blogs out there didn't clog searches up nearly enough, now maybe we can fill google image search with the hundreds of thousands of pictures that will now go along with the description of "got up this morning, had breakfast, went out of the front door..."
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
it captures VGA sized pics.. how well can it grab handwritten notes or (as I read in another article) a bottle of wine well enough that you can ID it?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
... "what a nice place to hide a bomb" when he saw that huge flowerpot in that fisheye picture? Set the timer to some convenient time between 8h49 and 9h11, when the microserfs are coming in for work, and blammo! install red splash!
I don't think this is the first time something like this has came around, but now that Microsoft is pushing it, it might just take off.
I really like the idea of this. There's so many times I wish I had a camera for a certain moment, or to embarass someone later.
Now, video would also be cool, but probably less feasible.
So when the latest virus attacks MSFT systems, your life will stop until they can issue a patch. :-)
But...they will pledge to restore it to the point before the attack.
This is a great thing for personal security. If you get mugged or robbed, rape or such you have a picture of your attacker. I can see this being marketed this way
Monitoring device around you neck?
Will next version include a small explosive to keep you from doing bad things like watching DVDs in Linux?
Invention for the sake of invention is occasionally a boon for later developments, and very occasionally is immediately useful.
Developing hardware that the public doesn't need, hasn't requested or hasn't even dreamed about could most likely be described as a waste of resources. The worst by-porduct of invention of this type is that the marketeers will 'invent' a market for junk like this and forcibly sell it to a gullible percentage of tech consumers.
While millions are spent developing such wonderful creations... I STILL DON'T HAVE MY FLYING CAR!!!!!
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
P.S. Yes, I know... People who trade freedom for security.. Blah-blah-blah
...talk about your all-time record-setting case of spyware!
Wearing one of those things should be grounds for an ass-whuppin'...as much as riding a Segway on the sidewalk should be. Technology seems to be following people's feelings -- "I don't care if it's the rules, it's more convenient for me!"
blog |
...novel, "Mainfold Time"? That one was virtually indestructible, and was meant for children, so it will be interesting to see if MS's device can stand up to daily use.
libertarianswag.com
Every time Microsoft announce a new gadget I see them trying to define a new platform where they can sell OS licenses. Does anyone really want to reboot their jewelry every few days because it has a memory leak?
But seriously, what happens when people start to wear cameras all the time? Saunas, changing rooms, neighbour's teenage daughter undressi... Oops, I did not mean to be standing in that direction. Sometimes the things we see are best kept private.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
OK, now put all this news together: Microsoft life camera, the Japanese robot, the neuron/silicon chips, the powered exoskeleton, ...
Maybe the Slashdot graphic of Bill Gates as a Borg is not so far off.
"Were do you want to be assimilated today?"
Adds new meaning to "Blue Screen of Death"
this thing would be great on those days you have really, really bad diarrhea.
free online diet tracking.
Does he do that little pinky-thingy like Dr. Evil?
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
To have them uploaded via bluetooth/wireless, so you could have a web-cam running of your vacation.. so I could have my background updated everytime theres a new snap shot.. and again, a treatment on a bad sci-fi movie as you watch your loved one being kidnapped and executed while on vacation.
meh
Check it out yer damn self- here-
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Imagine....
a Beowulf cluster of these!
wait, on second thought, don't.
This gadget brings a whole new meaning to:
Microsoft. Where Do You Want to Go Today?
averted if everyone wore these?
It would be interesting to see how this could curtail gun use if people knew they were always on camera.
I've often thought I'd like to see a constitutional amendment for a right to record one's life, mainly a/v from themselves such as this.
Police brutality would be strongly curtailed, I'd suspect.
Finally, someone might get some good, triangulat-able UFO videos/footage!
FThorn
For a long time, think about full motion video (once they figure out power and storage) people thinking they are being video taped won't lie as often, you can settle arguments "what was said" crimes are recorded and those special moments, you know the ones you wish you had a picture of but didn't think about at the time.
Maybe even help you remember where you left your keys =)
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my hea Stop: 0X0000000A (0X00000000, 0X00000002, 0X00000001, 0X80448BF6)
IRQL_NOT_LESS OR EQUAL
Adress 80448BF6 base at 80400000, DateStamp
3d366b8b - ntoskrnl.exe
Beginning dump of a bunch of really unimportant crap
This will go great with my new 16 lb. Notebook. Got any more crap you want me to cary around... how bout that kitchen sink?
The first image is a striking 275(ish)k, all for a 75x75 image.
Good thing that this is not a technology company.... hey, wait....
---
WWJD? JWRTFM!
I can see this as easily being banned in buildings with sensitive material, like military schools, and certainly business meatings and production floors.
I only really see this being useful for teenagers and people whose companies don't depend on secrecy at their level.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
I know this is a MS product with potential privacy concerns, and therefore likely to get slammed into the ground around here, but it raises some interesting notions that keep gnawing at me when I see tourists literally just walking around Times Square with a video camera.
What is the inherent value in recording your life in such minute detail? Isn't that what our memory is supposed to be for? What happens to your life when it becomes about recording your life? Is that a meta-life? What about recording yourself watching earlier recorded activities? Is it possible to become consumed with recording your life that you stop living it?
M$ had a record of your life? isn't that what you sign over in the licence agreement?
Some software money can't buy. For everything else there's Micros~1
Doubleplusungood!
Sure it'll help me "to figure out when [I] last saw a particular colleague or what bottle of wine [I] had been drinking that night" but will it help me figure out where I am, who this person is beside me and what kind of tequila got me here?
I saw on a PBS Documentary of MIT kids doing this LONG before MS "Came up" with the idea!
I was going to post a rant about how this would destroy privacy, allow big Brother to watch over us, threaten the entire civilized world, and be a excellent tool to oppress people. And what happens if your boss finds out about it? Walla, a time and attendance system your boss can use to prove you are where you say you are.
Then I thought: hang on. We could use this in a better way. Let's stick one of these to all UK and US politicians' and police officers head with an audio feed and display all the footage on the Internet with a 72-hour delay. Bwahaha!
"As a writer / novelist you might want to spellcheck your sig.
A company called Videolife has a more primitive, but essentially the same thing, in the early 90s.
For a thought of what this means, I think this is in Dan Simmons "Hyperion" series (I don't recall whether it was this one or Tad Williams' Otherworld series, and I don't have access to either at this time:-/). Think of lots of people tied to the web recording everything that happens around them and instantly publishing it on the web. An almost instant police state with the police just having to do a quick search on the web for any reported crime.
Put on your tinfoil hat now!
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
It's called Passport
until they take this thing and use it to photograph the rape for their sick, twisited pleasure. I don't think that this is a good marketing scheme for these.
/me/ buy one. Of course, I do have a tendency to over estimate the sanity of the average tech consumer (which is sad, because they must be buying, in droves, all kinds of stupid shit or companies would not continue to make them).
In fact, I don't think there is any way to market these things that'd make
you don't THINK you have anything to hide...
now I am not paranoid by any means, but to think that everything about you can be public information without any dangers is utter folly!
for one: SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER
what about credit card numbers, bank statements, taxes, ANYTHING
plus just because you "don't have anything to hide" doesn't affect the right to privacy that we as americans enjoy...even if someone is a criminal, the potential Big Brother risks STILL violate his civil rights...
i don't have anything to hide, but i still don't want to be followed
i believe in my rights as guaranteed by the US Constitution
however, if you CHOOSE to allow yourself to be tracked...well, i have no quarrel with that
if it was forced, however...
Now you're gonna get busted for pirating other people's copyrighted lives.
This should be fitted with night vision technology...for "safety"
Give one to Paris Hilton to test out.
I encrypted my life and now I've forgotten the password and can't get my life back.
all the hot chicks i see when walking around the campus i work at i can now record for prosperity and keep for later ..uh... analysis, instead of trying to remember them all. bring it to market ASAP!!
While we're on the subject of military schools, this morning as I drove in to work, I saw one of the cadets running into this academy with a yellow flag.
I'm assuming this is some kind of a military ritual, but to me it looked like the episode from Red Vs Blue where the rookie gets the Blue's flag.
All I could think of was "Allright he got the Yellow's flag."
Ahh, looks like another slow friday...
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
That was my impression, from reading the article in question.
-MT.
-MT.
I'm sure lots of minimum wage hour employers would welcome this..
Welcome Wally World Employees..
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
>>...responds to changes such as bright lights and sudden movements...
well let's see, this comes from Microsoft (apparently much hated around here, imagine that.)
I wonder how it would respond to a sudden movement, of...say... it being smashed against the wall?
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
Reminds me of Snow Crash, whereas ubergeeks wore equipmemnt that recorded EVERYTHING, w/ the hopes that someone would want to buy a peice of their data.
Awesome!
Cheap vacations without leaving the comfort of your home!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
For those who missed the link, or didn't even read the article before posting, here's a list of other hardware MS Research is (or has been) working on. Stick to software, guys!
You mean Windows XP?
I hate sigs.
Microsoft just went up two notches on my mental karma monitor.
Aargl
feeling....weird.....
They are going to have to keep track of how many times I reboot windows in a life time. Not sure the product has a big enough database.
It's funny. Laugh!
more disk space please...terabyte of hard disk would be fine for now.
Big Brither uses aside, this could be a good thing for the military, border patrol, TSA, etc. Instead of security cameras (or in addition to I should say...so I will), employees at probable crime jobs/locations such as banks, 7-11, et al. could use such devices to capture additional information (perhaps in addition to videa, audio as well).
/. would show up in the images. Of course we would counter by taking a picture of a Word document or a vi editor (of correct scale of course) and sticking in front of the camera.
Now of course you could have an employer that makes you wear one one you come to work and turn it in at the end of the day. Makes you wonder how many times
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
If you stand next to me with one of those things in a public restroom be prepared that I'll flush it.
I love this idea, and I've been waiting for this...now I can get some of my nights out memory back. There are so many things that have happened at 4 in the morning that I fail to remember, and this is the perfect thing! We'll have to change Homer's quote to:
"The cause and solution to all of life's problems: alcohol and a camera."
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
wow, your logic is the same as the 9/11 hijackers ...scary
If I ever see people start carrying one of these, I'll start carrying a can of black spray paint.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Terrible idea, and one of the many reasons that MS sucks.
s ecam.sourceforge.net. net
Oh, BTW, I set up a few project pages....
http://opensensecam.sourceforge.net
http://gen
http://kensecam.sourceforge
Everything's still in the planning stages, but contribute what you can.
I'm glad to see Microsoft is endeavouring into something that actually retains it data. As my Pocket PC likes to lock up and periodically reboot itself. I can't keep data on there.
Isn't this similar to a slashdot story of about 2 years ago?
Basically a small recorder that broadcasted a RFID, and would record that of others.
This would result in a log of every RFID tag you came across, remember what books you looked at, which people you saw.
The privacy issue pointed that out too.
Okay. The first day on my vacation, what I did on my summer vacation, the first day on my vacation, I woke up. Then, I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore.
...Then I got a job, keeping people from hanging out in front of the drugstore.
The second day on my summer vacation, I woke up, then I went downtown to look for a job. Then I hung out in front of the drugstore.
The third day on my summer vacation, I woke up. Then I went downtown to look for a job...
The fourth day on my...
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
...and sends it to Microsoft
Yet Another Web Site
stimuli such as heart rate or skin temperature screw that; then everytime i walk by the woman i have the hots for its gonna snap a pick; and then when im forced to put them all on my blog (the setup of which is required to justify such a device) she'll know. then her bf will pound the snot out of me. Greeeaaaaatttt.
meet your eyes.
If you wear one of these, make sure you read the EULA. It'd be just like Microsoft to add rights limitations around the stored content. You don't want to get sued for copryright violation every time you look in the mirror. Your life - DRM-ed.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Two words: "Abner Louima"
My other machine is a lever.
It sounds like the parent poster is a cop.
That's great and all .. but let me know when they come up with a dream recorder. Then I'll finally have a way to prove to my wife exactly how much fun we can have on a moon bounce with a can of processed cheese, some Saran wrap and a swim suit model.
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
The MPAA will surely try to keep you from wearing it into a movie theater.
For myself at least... "Print Screen"
Yeah, like nobody ever made money from selling tech to teenage Japanese girls. Who do you think bought all those camera phones and sent all those DOCOMO messages?
I don't think there would be a problem finding a market for this. Also if you look at the pictures it would be pretty easy to hide. Looks to me like it would fit in a breast pocket fairly easily.
So I would expect there would be objections to folk taking them into movie theatres and such.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
You know those pictures that are a compilation of thousands of pictures? One could use these to do that. BTW, does anyone know of a program to make one of those collage pictures?
Could this device be the next step in tracking criminals on house arrest, or tracking parolee where-abouts? What types of applications might be possible when you can tell where a person has been all day, or while they were on a work-release program? Could this provide law enforcement with further accountability than the 'ankle-bracelet'?
All images are uploaded to Redmond where a team of publicists searches diligently for the guinea pig to produce EdTV 2.
In 2001 I paddled the Yukon from Whitehorse (Canada) to Emmonak (Alaska, at the mouth of the river) in a 17 ft. canoe. To document the experience without too much hassle, I built a solar-powered waterproof computer out of a Virgin WebPlayer (remember those?) and some assorted electronic parts. The machine was/is equipped with a VGA webcam, which took pictures with regular intervals or when ordered to do so (whichever came first). It could also do motion tracking, snapping shots of passing animals etc. It could also record sound if needed. All of that was stored on two 20 GB notebook harddrives inside the machine. I mentioned the project on /. in this posting.
Had I still had my webserver (...no broadband where I now live, in Sweden...) those pictures would be visible for all to see. The camera was attached with a velcro strip to my hat, or sometimes to the canoe. It contains a microphone as well, so it could also record sounds (a function I did not use at the time). The whole setup worked fine, right until a leak in the camera's waterproofing and a subsequent rainy week smudged the CCD sensor. Pictures were blurry after that...
Of course I'm not the only one who has done things like this. There is a lot of 'prior art' in this field.
--frank[at]unternet.org
We bug ourselves.
Forget the up skirt stuff...if this technology had been around long ago, we'd know for sure who shot first.
This has the potential to fill up more hard drives with more boring material than ever before! It will make most Blogs look comparatively fascinating.
Great, now I can catch some sleep on the way to work. The Sensecam will wake me up before I cause an accident
It's a nice way to record your mate, isn't it ?
I didn't see any reference to this in the first article (and as a good slashdotter, I haven't looked at the second, Microsoft one yet), but clearly to "zip through" 1000s of pictures, you need to store tons of meta-data for each one. GPS-like location for outdoors, trianglation based on 802.11 access points for indoors???, maybe you could enable yours to transfer a digital business card to other people's sense-cam at the push of a button, so another part of the meta-data would be who you were talking to.
Upload not only pictures but also meta-data to your PC at night and have software that generates a log of what you did that day. The privacy issues are a little scary, but (like video cameras today) you could just disallow them in buildings/situations you don't want to be photographed. Technology is just a tool... its how you use it... blah blah blah...
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1009127.html
Too bad it's being developped by the $EVIL_EMPIRE, otherwise it would be a k001 gadget...
Scientists reach breakthrough with their invention of a health monitor. The device measures stimuli such as heart rate or skin temperature, and has no other silly features such as being a cell phone with a camera, being a game platform and a phone, being a watch and a calculator, being a watch and a USB memory key, being a phone and a PDA, being a X and a Y and a Z, ...
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Why not? And how else do we know you were really using the john?
The question was: what's her name and address?
Its called Final Cut, where Robin Williams plays a man who after you die edits together the highlight film of your life for your funeral. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ Tagline:Every moment of your life recorded. Would you live it differently? Hell I wouldnt be as naked as often ;)
Trix are for kids!
Two thousand views of my PC monitor.
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
I've held some very, very freaky parties (read: MDMA & swinging couples) that this thing would have been great for.
Posting anon cause ya'll wouldn't believe me anyhow.
You left out strip clubs, bunny ranches, seedy motels, visits to your neighbor's wife, and the entire city of Las Vegas.
I'm just thinking practically here.
This is similar to the invention in the book "The Truth Machine". (A great book btw) In that book, some people lived "recorded lives" where everything was saved. The book's invention was even neater in that it stored sound and video. All the info was beamed wirelessly off the device. Great for times when you are worried about someone mugging you or something. So, you cross this with a camera phone and you got a recored life!
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
Have we really become so vain?
"Never tell me the odds"
is a camcorder-quality minicam that fits into, say, a pair of prescription or sun glasses, which can record digitally for a couple of hours; if nothing interesting happened, you can delete the data in a snap, and start the cycle over again.
next time you see something interesting happening suddenly, you can press the save button, then run to your computer, transfer the footage and share it on the internet.
I've been thinking on a video based thing like this for sometime...
A way to document important moments in our lifes that we didn't see coming, like the moment we met our soul mates, the first time our children did something that might become their way on life, etc.
Medical/Legal benefits for it's use could be found too.
But I wouldn't use it without encryption!
First SCO Sues a Linux user, now Microsoft makes a product that doesn't crash every hour.
How gullible do the Slashdot editors think we are?
The ______ Agenda
This is news for NERDS, remember? We don't have lives.
:-P
{teen1 dons new Microsoft Personal Datalogger}
Teen1: W00T! Check my l33t PDL. It'll record all the uder stuff we do tonight.
Teen2 and 3: Whoa! Awesome, dude!
Teen1: Alright, everyone got their paint-ball guns?
Teen2: Hell, Yeah!
Teen3: Locked and loaded!
Teen1: Sweet! I'll drive.
Clippy PDL: It looks like you're about to raise hell in your neighborhood! Would you like me to:
-Phone Angry Man Smith and have him step outside so as you can get a better shot at him?
-Automatically search for unsecured wireless networks and e-mail them home for you?
-Record all your nights activities to be used against you in a court of law?
In the spirit of bio companies before them,
microsoft has patented all the information
about your life. If you should need
to communicate any facts abour your
existence please get microsoft approval first.
A better comparison would be Earth, by David Brin. In one tiny aspect of a huge book, America's growing retired population reclaims the streets by sitting outside with netcams aimed at anything interesting. Everything from jaywalking and youthful hijinks to car crashes gets recorded and submitted as evidence not by big brother, but by we the people ...
Seriously, this device sounds cool. I would rather have audio though (audio & video would be awesome).
How great would it be to have no doubt and refute those claims people are always making about "I told you this or that". My ex-wife/girlfriend/client would finally get put in their place!
That, or I finally realize that they in fact did tell me and I'm just in my Asperger's world thinking about the latest code I added to some project.
Either way it would be fun.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I'm picturing the stereotypical japanese tourist wearing a flowered hawaiian shirt, sunglasses, flip flops, and a funny hat on vacation, however, instead of the 6lb 35mm hanging from their necks they can carry this.
2,000 automated pictures a day? That's about how many photos they take per day on vacation without automation, right?
The Japanese are going to LOOOOVE this.
Yes, you do. We know about you and those Sunday underwear ads. Oh, and are you familiar with the idea of voting booths, at all?...
The argument that only people who have something to hide will object to a given intrusion on our privacy has been made to justify basically every kind of civil rights-trashing fishing expedition out there. John Ashcroft used it to smirk at people's worries over his right to go through our library records, if you recall. (Paraphrased: "Pshaw! We don't care about what you're reading at the library. Unless, that is, you have something to hide..." Followed by ominous laughter, of course, as Ashcroft anointed himself with enough Crisco for another month's holy work.)
You may have noticed that UPS verifies that you're not just fishing for shipping numbers, in a few different ways. They're working to prevent abuse of that online system. Industrial espionage, anyone? Ford won't use "Brown" if they think Toyota can watch their packages moving around.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
There was a time, long ago, when you needed more than a vague idea of where a restaurant was and its phone number before you left your apartment to get some food. Today, though, we just expect that we'll call them with our cell if we get lost along the way. I've forgotten how I used to plan to meet people before cell phones made that problem trivial.
In some tomorrow, when wearing this (or something like it--it sure doesn't have to be MS!), it'll become natural to turn to your personal digital recorder to assist you to remember any fact or detail, and then we'll all find it hard to believe that we were able to do without it.
This has always been my personal gripe about PDAs, and I wonder if other people feel the same way. They're great until you realize how much time you spend recording your information, and most often, the cost of taking the time to use the PDA is more than the benefit of having the info recorded. This is why I think this technology will succeed--because it drives the cost of recording information, in terms of time distracted and cognitive burden, to zip.
I mean... it sucks... but it's not a "medical problem". Per se.
(*aww crap*)
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"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
"One reason being that I don't do anything I have to hide."
- monitoring-while-talking-into-microphones-as-impla nts-monitor-their-vitals"A IMTV..for...not so short..
For fuck's sake, is there some godwin-ish law written somewhere that can be invoked when some twit says this???!?!
If not..I'll state one...how's this:
BB's law:
Once anyone mentions any of the following;
1-"They have nothing to hide"
2-"Only bad people have something to hide"
3-"Concern for privacy=uncaught criminal"
Then they have officially lost whatever arguement they were trying to make.
How's that?
Oh, and they should be thereafter referred to people who "live-naked-in-transparent-houses-under-24hr-cctv
or..LNITHU24HCCTVMWTIM
Yet another example of how Microsoft refuse to interoperate - I'm a UNIX hacker and my days have 24 hours in them, as required by ISO 8601. What annoys me is that so many people use MS stuff that they'll start thinking that days are supposed to be 12 hours long, and that everyone doing it the old 24-hour way is just being belligerent.
Interestingly enough, this was one of the applications Steve Mann would talk about for his wearcam. The theory was that a sudden increase in pulse rate, body-temperature, etc., would indicate an unexpected event - either good or bad (ie.- a mugging, an accident, or seeing fireworks). If you tied the camera to these responses, and it automatically took pictures, you'd have a record of all those times that "I wish I had a camera" comes up. Would be handy for criminal prosecution as well (in the case of the mugging). In his case, the images would be wirelessly transmitted to a base station though, so that even if the camera was taken or destroyed, the record would still exist. He's been talking about something like this for years now, and I believe even had some very rudimentary prototypes (ie.- a pulse reader, and a band around the chest to catch a sudden inhalation of breath).
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Many philosophers and science fiction writers have dealt with topic of perfect memory and/or eternal life. They explore the idea that the human psyche is fragile and cant deal with eons of emotions and experiences. Forgetting can be a release. The Dune series has people who crazy seeing all memories of their ancestors. Some of Ann Rice's immortal vampires go catonic or commit suicide. Several religions have myths that the dead forget- Greek souls drink from the river of forgetfulness; reincarnated Hindu souls general dont rememer past lives as not to be overwhelmed by them.
I know that at least in Germany you need permission to photograph a person who is not a prominent member of public life. Same for recording spoken words.
...to porn videos. This should also reduce the cost of producing, as you no longer need to pay people to be camera men, though perhaps they never got paid to begin with, and in fact the porn stars and camera men are on rotation.
Gives a whole new meaning to 'blue screen of death'
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Brian Clarkson was doing this years ago at MIT, and was even interviewed by Alan Alda for a PBS show I saw.
Violating DMCA and copyright by publishing their error messages....
You might end up in jail and slashdot will get closed down.
(Wife and poolboy have wandered offscreen.)
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
//Girlfriend/sexlife is not accessible. Network Path not found. You may not have permissions to use this network resource. Please contact your system adminitrator.
I can see the logic behind this gadget, though. MS is already like a metaphorical albatross/millstone around the neck already, so why not go the whole hog and do it for real?
You must think in Russian.
Hey, cool! Microsoft "invented" a time-lapse camera!
Prior art... the GavCam!
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
Around my neck, there is a jewel learning to be me... Still a few steps before getting Greg Egan's Jewel!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Piffle ! Aldous Huxley's "Feelies". Arthur Clarke's book "Imperial Earth" had a brief meeting with a couple who were 'Tapeworms', equipped with a device exactly like M$'s "that recorded everything they saw and heard, as if they did not exist without it". I wonder if anyone is looking at Prior Art ? (at least Clarke got credit for GeoSats).
I find it interesting that people are so paranoid about this.
It's probably just because it's a Microsoft product.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy, but that doesn't make the basic concept of this device intrinsicly bad.
This thing is basically a really gimped up version of the camera aspect of wearable computers. The wearable computer guys have long been touting the benefits of assited memory and they've also gone to some lengths to address the associated privacy concernes.
You could, for instance, upload all of the images immediately to your home computer via and encrypted wireless connection. Then you only release them when you want to.
hand them the keys to our lifes and say "Please monitor and punish my every move". Damn bloody M$, Somebody tell them i dont have amnesia.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I probably should post this AC, but then I'd forget having posted it and not be able to keep track. Case in point.
Microsoft's evil plan
"...and certainly business meatings..."
Man, it sounds like your job is a lot more fun than mine. All we get is cake when it's someone's birthday...
Microsoft, that is...being open about recording my life. :-)
I wonder if it bluescreens
... this is the pic of me going to camp, oh this is the part where I setup a fire ... bluescreen ... bluescreen ... oh and here is me leaving camp ... oh another blue screen
... it would be cool having blue screens on my photo album. ... no it wouldn't
Oh
oh well
wait
Solosoft.org - Your Online Resource to Nothing
The Creator / process of evolution (delete where applicable) has already endowed me with an organic device called a "brain". While I doubt this organ has been stamped with a "Copyright Microsoft Corp." logo, it has served me well for over four decades.
Sure, sometimes it's a little slow, particularly in the mornings, and doesn't always retrieve stored data quite as quickly as I might like but it's mine, paid for and has contents available under an Open Source license - i.e. anyone who wants a description of what's held in it is generally welcome to it. Oh, and it never Blue Screens...
Quite frankly, I quite like the fact that it's there doing the job it does. It gives me connectivity to 5 important sensory inputs that I can sometimes enhance with manual devices like cameras (to provide visual enhancements to my stored memory) and headphones (to focus my mind on very specific sound stimulations).
Yes, it's limited sometimes. I cannot always remember where I've met someone before or what a person's name is but at that point, I can kick in my in-built communications mode and go find out the information I need for myself. That's because I'm sentient and adaptable and capable of making decisions for myself, you see.
In summary, please rest assured that if and when I feel I have the need for handing over some or all of my existing thought processes into the arms of a mega-corporation, I'm afraid it's unlikely to be Microsoft.
No doubt your marketing department will offer this replacement to me as "Brain XP" or "Mindows Longhorn" but I'm afraid I'll be forced to stick with good old "Brain v1.0" - it may be slow, a bland grey colour and possibly a little bloated but it rarely lies, believes in choice and freedom and never needs a Service Pack.
Thank you for your time.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I've been looking for something like this for a few years now, but just for sound. I often forget things and I wish sometimes I could replay everything I heard at a certain time of day.
This would eliminate a lot of arguments in my life and it would also make meeting go more smoothly what with everyone knowing there was a record we could refer to if necesary.
The device should be smart enough to realize that keyboards clicking aren't worth recording and have some kind of interface (maybe once the file is uploaded) where you can skip to a particular time of day.
Also, if you haven't uploaded, it should go into a tivo-like continuous loop, constantly recording the most recent n hours. But with hard-drive sizes now, and with silence skipping, you should be able to get several, several days worth up on a ipod-style gadget.
Cheers,
Paul
The real Paul Vallee is slashdot userid 2192, and, what do you mean it's not cool to point out your low userid?
"Later that day, Williams could have used those pictures to figure out where she'd left her car keys, or to show a friend the sweater she saw in a window."
I keep a video diary, ~1-2 hours daily or more as needed, and i know that's not how it'd work... i'd like to see her find her keys in those 2000pics/day
MSFT will record my life... where do I sign up?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Would you therefore not end up spending your entire life reviewing those previous events in your life? To the point where you end up reviewing yourself reviewing previous events?
On the other hand, if you record all the events in your life for future generations, wouldn't those future generations care nothing about 99.99% of what you did?
Sure, I'd love to see a visual record of the battles of Alexander the Great but I'm not sure I'd give a damn about what time his daily bowel movements were or whether he liked his meat rare or well-done.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Yes. Just ask Nixon. He automatically tape recorded everything that was said in his office.
Constitutionaly right to privacy? Where is that?
to share all those pictures.
www.pixory.org
check the sensecam.
Until someone uses it while having, god forbid, SEX!
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
you're having vigorous sex in your bedroom when all of a sudden you see something in the corner
"... ooooo something shiny!!" (in Homer's voice)
and there goes a shot... from your gadget
game over
you look back in your photo gallery... NOTHING - as in NOTHING ever happened.
my blog
Did anyone else think of the embedded computers that monitor your day, described in Rob Sawyer's Neanderthal trilogy? They even mention the same application - remembering where you lost items...
Presumably part of Microsoft's desktop DashBoard-style system that they're hoping will kick Google's ass is an image search engine with image recognition. That's pretty much the only way this toy could be useful. Of course, I'll believe it when I see it working.
...in your car within 10-15 years if you want to have a normal insurance cost or perhaps just to prove in court what happened when someone dented your car. Even while parked on the street it would be guarded against burglary and accidents. Of course, it would have superimposed text with your registration plate, speed and other data. And if the speed of your vehicle exceeds the legal speed of the area (as transmitted to the car), a video clip would go via the nearest signpost WiFi hub to the police.
Welcome to the future.
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
I didn't say they were unlikely to make money. The teenage market succumbs to fads frequently. Possibly to the point of being gullible.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
In Methuselah's Children, the 1940's Robert Heinlein novel, the long-lived Lazarus Long worries about whether or not he'd be able to remember everything if he lived for a thousand years. I think the same topic comes up in The Computer Connection by Alfred Bester, also a novel about immortality.
In Earth Made of Glass John Barnes writes about something called an emblok which was used to store all of a person's memories. Other people could also contribute their memories of a person. If you were killed, the memories could be replayed into the developing brain of a cloned spare. Over time, it would become you again.
I thought Windows kept a record of everything about you and sends it to Redmond?
I remember a 60 Minutes (?) piece from about a year ago done on the projects going on at the MIT Tech Lab. I could swear that one of those projects involved a guy who strapped a video camera to himnself and walked around recording his life for later playback. Although to what purpose, I forget...
The main reason is to record you clicking the "I AGREE" button on all those damn EULAs!
:P
Seriously, though, if you could digitally sign and timestamp these things, they could be pretty good defense. Who cares about DNA, when you can prove you were elsewhere? If only OJ had one of these
For major crimes, the FBI will scour the neighborhood for businesses with security cameras and collect the video tapes. During an average day, how many times are you recorded on video?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Wow, Microsoft's just invented something Steve Mann has been doing for, oh, well over a decade in various forms...
I think this is the most innovative way to implement true Digital Rights Management. Of course, Microsoft would have a patent on this innovative technology.
The camera is susceptible to a variant of the MSBlaster.A virus. Once infected, the camera emails the virus to everyone in your address book, and attempts to connection to SCO.com to purchase linux lincense. After succesfully installing a back door in your ass, the shutter speed of the camera is increased to 10 times it's normal speed. The resulting weight of all the pictures causes a downward motion of the wearers neck, and an upward motion of their ass, wich suspiciously ends up pointing in the direction of either Redmond Washington, or Lindon Utah, depending on what direction SCOX stock is headed.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
I suppose this is just Microsoft's way of finding out once and for all "Where do you want to go today?"
Microsoft appear to be stealing old Ideas from MIT's Media Lab. About the time Thad Starner and his ilk were mounting huge HMDs on thier glasses(6 or 7 years ago), someone wrote a huge database that interfaces to to emacs to track and recall information based on current context with ... future plans to include video and voice recognition in the database. at the time all input was done with one handed twiddler keypads, and you had to keep a typing commentary on your environment
Wow, those "Bachelor(ette)" reality shows will have a field day with this thing! If your wife's lawyer makes you wear one, consider yourself twice as poor as you were yesterday.
Don't know about the rest of you. But I for one won't be buying this in the near future. I know just how much pointless crapola I see every day. I don't need 1,998 pictures to tell me that. Leaving me with two ok to "wow!" pictures.
Not to mention after my 12 hour 2,000 picture day I have to spend an additional 6 hours each night to manually go through the pictures and get rid of the bad ones.
Until you have software that can tell me which of my pictures are good. Or software that will learn what types of pictures I like after I've gone through the 2,000 pictures a few times. I'm not even going to be bothered by this nonsense.
Next!
Why the hell is the parent moderated as flamebait? A bomb doesn't burn with a flame, it explodes!