Slashdot Mirror
Camera Phone As High-precision Scanner
christchurch writes "The software, developed by NEC and the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) in Japan, goes further than existing cellphone camera technology by allowing entire documents to be scanned simply by sweeping the phone across the page. As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns."
"Nothing to see here, move along"
:)
Is that irony?
This sounds like those 60s spy movies where they would use the miniature tie-camera to take spy photos
This isn't new; I've seen James Bond copy pages by photographing them with one of those tiny cameras. This is only different in that it's digital, and built into a cellphone.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Bah.
+5 Insightful, really!
the copyright issue is a non-issue contrived for the story, there really is nothing to it
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
According to NEC, their software is designed to sound an alarm when being used, to avoid any copyright conflicts. The company claims that any attempts to mute the device somehow or plug in headphones will not affect the audibility of this alarm.
I can understand their reason for doing that, but that doesn't really endear me to using mobile phones 'as portable faxes or scanners that can be used any time'. I personally feel kind of awkward when my phone's camera makes that little clicky noise. I don't think i would ever use it if it sounded an alarm.
So now kids can write a note, then scan it, then phone it to their friend? Good, I was getting sick of people smsing me notes of little ascii pr0n.
New, improved, never-jamming zipper for use in trousers/jeans has been developed, which takes only 2s to take your pants off, and it is causing rape concerns.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Now Companys will actually have a reason to be worried about camera phones...
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
Give me a break. How can this be a threat to copyright? It's no different than someone snapping a picture of something now. There have ALWAYS been high-resolution scanners...thin ones now too!
This smells a lot like when people were all upset that cd's were getting 'too cheap' and nobody was going to buy another CD. Well...maybe that KINDA happened.
My
you may notice that any copyright quotes don't even seem to be related to the phone!
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
Copyright concerns?? How about industrial espionage concerns. Seems a little more important.
Now the spys can get away with saying: "Copy what? I'm calling my mother!"
-Digital Madman
A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
"as reported, DRM/Insidious Computing technology
will prevent lawful uses by the true owners of products. It is causing copyright concerns."
copyright gives you the right to use a copyrighted product in any way you choose. the original agreement was for copyright law to be law only. that means it is up to the courts and the legal system to decide if there has been infringement. technical methods to prevent lawful use is an infringement itself.
from my point of view, any product that prevents you using your purchased product in a lawful manner (everything except distribution), results in the immediate revocation of the company's copyright priviledges.
you want DRM/Insidious Computing, fine. but in doing so, you forfeit your copyright protections. that means it becomes in essence, a trade secret. if someone cracks the protec^H^prevention scheme, then they can legally and ethically release all of the information for free into the public domain.
now all we need are some reasonable judges and congre^H^H(well you can't have everything...)who won't listen to steamboat willie's copyright cartel.
Science : Proprietary , Knowledge : Open Source
Maybe they should be worried about these new fangled photocopier thingymajigs.
This is another nail in the coffin of corporate's insane fantasy of "copyright is our right to deprive the public of their rights", leading them to try to push DRM and anti-fair-use legislation.
Looking at them reminds me of a drowning man trying to grab at anything to stay afloat. Unfortunately, they're more like the infamous 800 lb. gorilla-octopus which is making it unpleasant for me to live during their death throes.
Sounds really fucking annoying. Can you imagine any time you need to scan a page or text an alarm sounds. Either it won't be loud enough to alert people across a bookstore (and what will they do if they are alerted?) or it will be loud enough to annoy nearby persons and make even legitamate uses (say in a buisness meeting recording documents passed around) problematic.
How long do you think it will be before a competitor cellphone company comes out with a phone with the feature or just 'oversight' which allows this to be easily disabled?
Besides the entire idea is really stupid. Clicking to get one page of text is hardly the big scary threat that publishing companies need to be wary about. If the magazine is good enough to buy in the first place it will have many interesting articles and that will be too annoying to scan in a bookstore for a couple dollars.
I mean be realistic here plenty of people buy text copies just because they don't like reading online. The real problem that faces paper publishers is the rise of e-readers and the same threat that faces the music industry.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Regarding of the copy right concern, I think it is just quite the same as taking the pictures by common digital camera, or maybe using video enabled digital camera.
So I wonder if this is primarily just a clever application of photostitching, or if they actually use superresolution techniques to generate a high-quality image.
Either way, neat hack. But the latter would definitely be the neat*er* hack.
a bananaphone camera
consider this patent. Mouse/scanner or the ability to purchase this Pen Scanner or god forbid instead of using the phone the person turned around and used the Xeorox. *sigh*
No it's more a case of someone shouting "Quick close the barn doors the horses have all left!"
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Isn't it amazing that everytime a new technology that provides a convience to the average consumer is immediately labeled as a device for theft and mischief. Let's be honest, is someone really going to sit in a book store and start scanning a 300 page novel? Or even a 50 page magazine. Of course not. Regardless, I'm betting they'll embed some sort of DRM system into this. I mean, they put it in printer cartridges, might as well do that here too.
I love it when a story in the Hardware section starts with the words "The software...".
My other comment is funny
So people want to save how much by reading one story?
I guess if they can afford this type of mobile phone, they can afford a connection on their mobile phone...
seriously the shift in society when every mobile phone has a dcent connection will be great - why EVER buy a newspaper? combine low cost roll out screens with a connection, and has the printing press finally met its match?
compare any newspaper with news.google.com and news.bbc.co.uk
specialist newspaper? they probably already give it away for free on their website.
data plans are too costly - what is the cheapest data plan around?
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.. but at least in teh company I used to work for, they banned only CAMERA phone... ;-) And. of course, no powered-on cellphones in really sensitive areas...
Paul
For the 4 billion people that don't have a cellphone yet to annoy me with, they finally have a reason to get one after they find things like drinkable water, electricity, and food... the killer app. Theft!
You could just TAKE THE BOOK. Geez.
Who is this person still using paper anyway?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns.
Really? It only takes one second to photograph an A4 size page with a film camera. Even worse, I hear that anyone can make a film camera with just a cardboard box and a pin. We'd better keep an eye out for info-terrorists running around with Improvised Photographic Devices!
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
I dont use libraries a lot, although i did recently, and i just realised i forgot about my overdue book again!!! DOH!
Could this technology make libraries obsolete, or at least, get rid of any lines? Why bother actualy borowing a book now, when you can scan just the pages you want, instead of photocopying them and be done with it! Great idea! Saves the tree's too!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
So, according to the article, we will see this commercially around 2008-2010.
Justin Rattner tells us that in 2015, we should expect to see real-time super-resolution from cell cameras. That is, the ability to pick up several frames, and figure out more about the image, in real time, just based on the offsetting from holding a camera with a minute unconscious shake. (The problem is parallelizable, and 2015's x10-x100 core systems should take care of it.)
We already have the software to construct models & textures, after some rendering, from video footage.
If we could do real-time super-resolution in 2015, then it makes sense to me that, with some processing time, cell phone cameras in 2015 will render 3D-model textures and models. If the 4G network is around by then, (and it should be,) we could very well see instead that the data is sent to more powerful processing arrays elsewhere, (ie, on your home computers, or on Google's computers) and rendered into models in real-time. 4G is around 20Mb, perhaps 3G at 3Mb is enough to transmit low-grade video capture in real-time; Enough to make our 3D models in real time as well.
Presently, the OCR cameras require some rendering time. That requirement will clearly be gone by 2015; The cameras will automatically OCR text that is identified on-screen. (Perhaps the alarm will be a constant chirping buzz, whenever you use it?)
As a side note: Perhaps Google maps of the future will learn about what street names go to what streets, simply by recognizing and reading the sign posts.
What do you want to bet Google's going to get video footage of every city, and crank it into full-on 3D models? You better believe it. I'm betting on 2015, tops. (Who knows; I wouldn't be shocked if they weren't cranking on their Seattle footage now.)
We should also expect, I think, that the public will assemble it's own models from public footage. Volunteers will capture footage with their cell phones (or, if they are showing off, sophisticated digital video recordsers,) and feed it to a public free culture grid, which will churn out 3D models and textures for distribution and retrieval.
Is there a flaw in my reasoning? Are these outlandish thoughts for 2015? No! You can't have your Flying Car! Down boy! Retrain your imagination! Yes, people have predicted the future before; read about NISTEP's 1970's predictions for 1990-2000.
It's already illegal in Ohio to operate a camera phone (or any other video camera) in a movie theater, even in the lobby. For that matter, this applies in any business where a copyrighted work is being shown - such as Wal-Mart if they're showing movies on their TVs. You don't even have to record from the copyrighted material to get arrested and charged - just turn on the record function and you're guilty (and it's a felony on the second offense). What's more, the business owner is allowed to detain you until the police arrive.
You're not seriously telling me that photographic copying is a surprise to these people?
I'm sorry, but consumer-level digital computers are 30 years old. Electronic computing in general is at least 60 years old. Photography is over 160 years old. If you haven't figured out by now that Copying Happens, then you're a complete, blithering idiot. Seriously. Grow the hell up now; the world isn't going to stop for you, and the ulcer you save may be your own.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
According to NEC, their software is designed to sound an alarm when being used, to avoid any copyright conflicts. The company claims that any attempts to mute the device somehow or plug in headphones will not affect the audibility of this alarm.
ISSUE
The audible alarm may be bypassed by removing the device from which it makes sound.
PROOF
1) Open case
2) Slice wire going to speaker
3) Take pictures of secret documents
4) Close case
IMPLICATIONS
You'll somehow be thrown in jail by the DMCA and your entire family somehow destroyed by the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism measures.
ISSUING AUTHORITY
Common sense.
from the article:
According to NEC, their software is designed to sound an alarm when being used, to avoid any copyright conflicts.
Doesn't look like a non-issue to me. Sounding an alarm when I use their product? Excuse me?? Technology is driving us toward a turning point in the history of sharing ideas. Eventually people are going to question whether the benefits of intellectual property rights laws are worth the enormous costs of enforcing them. For that to happen, ordinary people who normally wouldn't understand let alone care about intellectual property issues are going to have to get really annoyed by the enforcment. Personally I think building a little electronic conscience into every media device to tell people they're committing immoral acts is a great way to start turning that tide.
I thought of it only last week, of course, I didn't patent it. Bugger. So pick my brain for prior art.
But I figured that I could more rapidly, and non-destructively scan my dead-wood collection of books if I could use the USB Cam attached to my computer. Much faster than a flatbed scanner.
You would need an algorithm that ensures that you can scan the whole page as you hold the camera, stitching the parts together, and ignoring things outside the page area. Then feed the result into an OCR routine to get a text version.
Most (nearly) books are high contrast, black on white (or yellowish depending on book age) so the page boundaries shouldn't be too hard to detect.
Now make a nice little programme to wrap this in, and you can "quickly" convert your favorite books into a format that can be read on a PDA, most of which will never be realised in any usefull digital form anyway.
Plan B was just to use a digital camera to fotograph each page, and then feed the memory card into the OCR algorithm. Probably a lot easier.
This seems to be an idea along very similar lines; I predict that we reach the pre-MP3 stage for books very soon now (when it took 10+ minutes to encode a single CD track on a P90) Camera's are everywhere, and you can probably download a half-decent (for European scripts) OCR library for the hard work.
I sincerely hope so, as I would like my dead-wood to be as accessible as my music collection. (and to be honest, the dead wood is just gathering dust, wheras on my PDA i might actually get to re-read them in the train)
Now back to reality....
Well, then, if commercial developers don't even want to make money (i.e. only come up with creepy copyright considerations rather than a business case) on a feature that is most useful in academia, this looks (so much rather than: sounds ;-)) like the right (scientifically challenging and quite possibly unpatentable) project to refine in the next open-source Summer of Code. Apply early, and BTW you'd "beta" have an early version ready by the start of this term. ;-/ Coming soon to a SourceForge near you I guess...
What if someone invents a device that can hook up to your brain and can digitally transfer images and video and audio? Not that it's realistic, but I know they've hooked up cameras to kind of see what a cat's brain "sees" so maybe it's not such an impossibility.
I'm just wondering when it will get to the point that you have to have your memory wiped MIB style after watching a movie so that you don't distribute what you've seen and violate those precious copyrights.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I live in Japan, and I've seen no bans on camera phones in magazine stores or elsewhere. Every single Japanese person owns one and takes it everywhere.
:)
What's more, it's common practice for people here to go to the book store or magazine rack and just stand there reading the magazines without buying them.
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
If people are taking pictures of the page rather than paying for the physical page, then chances are that they believe you are overcharging for the page! Reduce your price, or add some incentive (with every newspaper, get a free small coffee or a medium latte for $1.00) and maybe people won't photograph it!
But no, rather than getting innovative, the industries are trying to hang on for dear life... Eventually they'll die, and be replaced with someone who does get it... And society will benefit from the increase in material...
I can do the same with my digital camera or even with an analogue one or a tape video recorder: it is just a matter of making it easier and pocket size.
Publishers should find a way to make information media "read once" like electronic paper.
Or disallow people from reading a book with any electronic equipment at hand!
Technology is a two-edges blade: it makes things easier to companies as well as to people.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
In my lifetime, I can see having a calculator built in, sound recorder, video recorder, and brain interfaces.
t ml/)
(Today monkeys can control robotic arms over the internet miles away with brain signals. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2000/monkeys-1206.h
What happens when I go to a concert listening live, then choose to replay/relive it at anytime, just as good as the first time. Or tell someone about the show digitally.
The law will have a bit of an issue keeping up.
There will be downsides also...I.E. hit with a virus forcing us to watch Richard Simmons for 30 seconds every hour until we can get a patch from a buddy.
Life will be changing. Soon
No one person can control technology, however, we can guide where it takes us.
I would be quite interested in hearing about any software that does bar-code scanning using the mobiles camera.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Nice comparison several people are making with film cameras here. I'm sure this would work for copying an article to read on the train, provided your journey takes an hour and a half, and the train has a one hour photo lab in first class.
Similarly, photocopiers? Yeah, you just need an extension cord, sneak it up to the newsstand, and hit copy when nobody's looking.
Making up copyright concerns before the device is even released? Nope. Camera phones are already being used to copy articles, so if an improved text-recognition function is being added to phones, it's only reasonable to consider the consequences.
Fair use? Doesn't look like it to me. Extracting a portion of a work for criticism or satire, yes. Because "It's my right to be entertained for free", no.
The stupid alarm feature is the result of NEC protecting itself from its users.
Next time some industry relying on copyright goes asking for stricter legislation, they have all they need to prove the sky is falling in. If people want fairer copyright, that means completely boycotting those that oppose it - simply not paying for their stuff only makes their argument stronger.
Autostitch/autopano/autopano-sift, along with Panorama Tools, PTAssembler, PTGui or Hugin (open source!) makes it possible to take a bunch of images, and automatically detect which sets of images can be merged into panoramas/photo-mosaics.
Using any of them on a set of partial scans can be used to regenerate the original page.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
In Japan, all new mobile phones are required to make a sound when taking photos (and since the average Japanese upgrades their phone every 6 months, that now includes nearly every phone in use). This alerts all people nearby that the user is taking the photo (though this really has more to do with the men taking candid photos of the schoolgirls). Needless to say, my Japanese phone makes a shutter sound even when it's on silent mode.
Somebody must have posted this but...
As reported, an A4 sized page takes only 3 to 5 seconds to scan, and it is causing copyright concerns.
Obviously, these people have not heard of companies named Xerox, Canon or Konica. These companies make machines that can copy documents at lightning speed!
My new cellphone (Sony Ericsson D750i) has a 2MP camera. That gives a resolution of about 130dpi for an A4 page. That's enough to copy pages without any stitching. In fact, since my scanner has a 40 seconds warm-up phase, I started doing photocopying with my phone. It's simply faster and the quality is good enough for me.
My library has a notice about the copyright above the photocopiers.
If we could do real-time super-resolution in 2015, then it makes sense to me that, with some processing time, cell phone cameras in 2015 will render 3D-model textures and models.
The ensuing arguments about "stealing" IP will be interesting once this feature is combined with 3D printers.
For ground-truthing geographic data, I've wondered if we could put cameras + GPS + small computer and large HDD on a vehicle. Building 3D models, reading street signs, driving instructions (stops/no right turn, parking, etc...).
It would break the mapping oligopoly - at least for that range of uses. Unfortunately, it seems to be insanely difficult right now to extract all that data.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
What if people had these two round things in their head that could "organically" transfer images to a self-contained "super computer" located somewhere above their arms and shoulders. And what if, instead of taking pictures of the magazines with phones, these horrid people read all the good magazine articles and then put the magazine back on the stand, unpurchased!
And what if some book stores facilitated this copyright theft by putting big comfy chairs and couches all about the establishment?
If you think prohibition and the drug war were/are bad, wait until the copyright war swings into full gear. The jack-booted DEA agents kicking in the wrong door by mistake is bad enough, but the copyright police aren't going to have that problem...because virtually EVERYONE violates copyright law in some form or fashion.
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
The alarm will be on a level similar to this
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27924
Interesting, I was looking for this technology for years, so I am glad it is finally becoming a reality. I can only assume it can only scan small items given the size of a cell phone, so what would really be cool is a wand that extends to scan standard pages, now that would be worth it.
Fight Back against BIG OIL http://Gas-Scam.com
This sounds like those 60s spy movies where they would use the miniature tie-camera to take spy photos
Or the "serious" ones where they used the Minox with the focus-string to copy documents - just like the real spys did.
After WWII japanese industry at first was synonymous with cheap, shoddy, stamped-metal goods. This went on for a decade or more. But as they got their industry built back up they began to make some quality goods. One of the first things to be made in production were inexpensive cameras with high-quality optics.
Back in the '60s there was a stereotype: The crowd of Japanese tourists with cameras, photographing everything: Stop signs, park benches, flowers, door knockers, etc. The impression was that photography was a fad in Japan, fueled by the availability of the good cameras and film.
In those days industries gave tours of their facilities as a PR thing, letting anybody who wanted see how things were made: Cars, steel, plastic parts, electronic devices, cerial, you name it. Of course the ubiquitous half-busload of vacationing Japanese would take the tours.
Shortly thereafter a host of japanese industries - auto, plastic, electronic, cerial, you name it - upgraded their processes. You might think it was just the inevitable "convergent evolution" of good engineering. But an exact clone of the Rice Crispies shot tower?
Turns out that, regardless of whether the fad itself was a put-on or an honest social phenomenon, Japanese industrial spys had taken advantage of it for corporate espionage.
And very effective corporate espionage: Japan went from a producer of cheap stamped-metal toys and cheap quality cameras to an industrial powerhouse. They became the dominant producer of automobiles and consumer electronics, to name just two major industries where the US HAD been the leader. The US steel industry and much of the manufacturing that used its output, meanwhile, became the "Rust Belt".
And US companies (such as Kellogs) stopped giving the plant tours that HAD been major tourist attractions for their localities. (With the result that a couple generations in the US have now grown up with negligible understanding of the internals of industrial mass production, one factor contributing to a their profound distrust of corporations.)
Now we have had cellphones with a built-in camera as a standard component for several years (until they're deployed ubiquitously), and news of document scanner software for the cameras. Sounds to me like a similar fad and a similar opportunity.
Ok, so it makes a noise. And YOU can't disable the noise. But I'm sure that there will soon appear a hack that will disable the noise. (If nothing else, the "cute" ones that use a recorded camera shutter for pictures and whatever they pick for a scanner function will play them from a table. So make a modified firmware load with an empty table, or a hidden extra menu option to select an table entry containing silence for the prefered sound.)
But if I take off my tinfoil hat I start to wonder: WHY do cellphones have cameras? Did YOU ask for your cellphone to have a camera? Did you WANT your cellphone to have a camera? Did you have a USE for your cellphone to have a camera?
Or did it suddenly appear, despite the added expense, on a consumer item in a cost-sensitve, highly competitive, industry?
Dominated by manufacturers in places like Japan... B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I recently submitted a blurb to slashdot about the upcomming release of the Stix fonts and the fact that they are asking for feedback on the license right now. I was nonthreatening, so it got rejected of course. So now I'm considering a rewrite mentioning "License" in the title and some BS about YRO and copyrighting the very fonts your documents are created with. I think /. would be interested in these new fonts, and also interested in the license terms. It's unfortunate that it takes a line of fearmongering to get a story accepted these days. How about if several readers try to submit this one with various slants ;-)
Take a look at Semacode, which is a 2d encoding standard for URLs, and decoding software for Symbian phones that can automagically load the URL into the phone's browser.
The idea behind Semacode is to tie URLs to places, for things like self-guided city tours, etc.
Now students don't have to steal test from the professors office, all you have to do is scan it in and read it later! God bless technology!
My software never has bugs.
It just develops random features.
Just buy a license to show MTV or something on a screen and stick it anywhere you don't want people taking pictures.
I forget what 8 was for.
Print media in the US is a half-trillion dollar industry. It's not glamourous, but it makes all other media industries look like a total joke.
Consider even just the tiny textbook portion...the 16.7 million college students in the US spending $150-$400 per semester on course books is more revenue than Hollywood's entire summer lineup. From Harry Potter to the New York times to People Magazine, you are looking at more money than Jack Valenti ever knew existed. Music and movies are just background noise in comparison.
So far, the print industry has largely ignored the squabbling because people still prefer to read stuff printed on dead trees. It only takes one product designer with a good idea to change that.
When people start preferring to sit down with an ebook, that's when the real chaos will start. Everything so far is nothing more than the opening act.
In order to allow a cell phone to have any focus on such close objects such as a piece of paper, they'll need to implement autofocus in the camera or provide a macro lens accessory like Nokia has. If they simply altered the optics so they could clearly show close objects, it would ruin the camera's capability to take pictures. Another option would be to use a very high resolution/high speed camera, allow the target to be placed further away within the phone's focal range.
The copyright owners are bitching about people scanning their content without paying for it. If they were any good at creating value, instead of just clamping down as toll takers, they'd use this innovation to get ahead of the wave. We already have magazines sold on newsstands in shrinkwrap to prevent pageflipping without purchase (as usual, pornographers are more in touch with the market than anyone else). Some magazines include CD-ROMs in the bag to encourage purchase. Why don't publishers publish each issue as a brochure, a glorified "table of contents"?
Just the cover, without the actual content. With a barcode for phones to scan, which downloads the content to the phone for a fee (and maybe postal mails a hardcopy). Printed articles can be stored behind the counter, pulled from a box when a customer hands over the "cover" from a rack in the store. That maximizes display space, prevents other pilferage.
And moves these paper publishers further into "ebooks", where they can figure out how to make us read their crap without having to kill so many trees (which will cut costs while increasing readership). Especially since magazine content is time-sensitive, they're in a terrific position to harness the free distribution among networked readers, while the passage of time forces people to get new content all the time.
If they spent as much time innovating as they do whining and hating their customers, we'd all be a lot better informed, and they'd be even richer. Why should I do all the work, and have all the fun?
--
make install -not war
Though I agree that this is a very interesting and telling, observation, it overlooks a couple other factors in post-war Japanese industrial success.
1) The Japanese adopted the statistical process control methods of Western Electric developed by Edwards Deming. In the '80s, the Japanese were eating Detroit's lunch by producing higher quality cars using these methods.
2) The Japanese industrial base was severely damaged by WW2 bombing and all those factories were rebuilt according to state-of-the-art designs. Once the rebuilding expense was amortized, this gave them a competitive advantage.
I recall from History class that "unicausal" explanation of historical trends are generally inferior to multicausal explanations.
Imagine, you are blind.
and you want to read a book.
wait for the book on tape? braille edition? have someone read it to you? how about having someTHING read it to you.
wave the device over the book/legal document/postal mail; it automatically scans, merges, converts to machine readable text, then text-to-speach.
and heck, have it translate languages at the same time. both written and spoken.
You are contrcting for a University at a Department of Energy facility, and your shiny, new 1000$ phone is confiscated and you lose clearance...
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
The last of 471 words in TFA: NEC and NAIST say they do not plan to commercialise their software for three years.
Not exactly "Comet to Hit Earth in 10 Hours, Wiping Out All Life," is it? Couple of engineers develop a proof of concept and their firms' PHBs insist on the obligatory "can't cause harm" statement. I guess newspaper sellers in Tokyo can breathe a little easier.
And slashdotters can stop hyperventilating, too.
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
Back in my college years, examinations' correct answers where hung by the professors' door in a crystal-covered cabinet. It wasn't allowed to Xerox them (God knows why) so you had to copy a 10 pages examination by hand, without any table in the middle of a crowd of people doing the same. When cheap digital cameras arrived it was a matter of seconds.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
so I can just point at the underside of a CD, click the shutter button, and have some software read the image and assemble the .iso for me.
Cue La Bamba from Conan:
In the yeeeeeeaaar toooooo thousand.....and fifteen.
what kind of resolution is this camera phone going to have? ocr to be successful
really needs 600 dpi and most current generation phones work on 640 by 480 at best
so would require 1 inch to fill the screen and 20cm is not close enough for that.
even moving around its going to be quite a feat to scan an a4 sized document and ocr it.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Or did it suddenly appear, despite the added expense, on a consumer item in a cost-sensitve, highly competitive, industry?
Dominated by manufacturers in places like Japan...
AFAIK, the cell phone industry has been dominated by three manufacturers, Nokia, Ericsson, and Motorola, none of which is Japanese.
Copyright concerns? Like, umm, a photocopier?
Well no. Stupid is trying to turn every story into an "Us verses THEM" conspiracy. As the other three posters have pointed out. (don't know why they had to? you should have been able to figure it out?) There are other reasons for having a beeping phone. And as the last AC said. It's easy to critisize others for protecting their hard work when you yourself have nothing to lose.
I remeber going into a linrary when I was at high school and writing down passages that I thought I could use in an essay.
Any idea what your error rate was?
--MarkusQ
HP Had a product called Capshare that was a handheld scanner that you could run over a page and then it would put everything together on your PC. It was a great little product, but I don't think they marketed it well. It was perfect for anyone who was doing researcher. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/prodCategory?dl c=en&lc=en&cc=us&product=304005
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
I noticed that while the camera in my Sanyo phone has nice color rendition, its images are always kind of fuzzy. Turns out, when I examined the camera lens, the clear plastic cover over the lens has a slight texture to it, much like a Cokin diffusion filter.
Does anyone know if that was done to deliberately cripple the camera? I've a mind to take some plastic polish and see if I can improve it.
Nice to see these tech companies enabling phones as espionage devices. "Competitor Report - Internal Use Only" - phoned out, gone... etc.
And explain to me why building lobby driods 'mark' me for having a camera, but never touch a soul with a phone that has camera function? Down and away with cell phones.
"I find your lack of foresight disturbing."
-- Darth Mythandros
This really isn't news. Company A didn't forsee company B inventing something that will put company A out of business. Boo Hoo, too bad, so sad. Life goes on. Sure, this is slightly different in that we're talking about copyright issues but the fact of the matter is that technology progresses. Period. This topic isn't open for debate. You cannot contain this phenominon. Just like me, it's a force of nature. P2P and camera phones are here to stay so get used to it.
Adapt or die, baby. Adapt or die.
The company claims that any attempts to mute the device somehow or plug in headphones will not affect the audibility of this alarm.
this is much more impressive than the scanner feature. How is NEC able to defy the basic laws of acoustic physics by making something that has a non-variabile decible level regardless of what you do to the device?
-- btw, I'm not sure the copyright concerns are worth worrying about. I've seen devices cable of doing this sort of thing much faster in libraries for years! no one seems to have cracked down on them yet.
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"Well, looks like we have something to lose here, unless you think there's nothing wrong with imposing a nuissance on hundreds of millions of people merely because a few will use a phone in an illegal manner? "
I would be repeating what the other three posters said if I answered this.
"I'm sorry, but this "hard work" just isn't that valuable to society that we have to go to ridiculous lengths to prevent a few episodes of copying."
If actions speak louder than words, then all that "hard work" is indeed valuable? Valuable enough to purchase, and valuable enough to spread illegally over every distribution method known to man.
If you want to convince others that all the artists "hard work" isn't as valuable as you say? Then prove it by not buying it, and don't accept any illegal copies.
But like I said. When it isn't your "hard work" being infringed on then it is easy to criticize others.
"The copyright owners are bitching about people scanning their content without paying for it."
Blah! Blah! We slashdotters know that only happens in the movies.
"If they were any good at creating value, instead of just clamping down as toll takers, they'd use this innovation to get ahead of the wave."
Blah! Blah! Blame the victims.
"We already have magazines sold on newsstands in shrinkwrap to prevent pageflipping without purchase (as usual, pornographers are more in touch with the market than anyone else)."
Blah! Blah! People don't read an entire magazine without purchasing. That's net fiction.
"Some magazines include CD-ROMs in the bag to encourage purchase. Why don't publishers publish each issue as a brochure, a glorified "table of contents"?
Blah! Blah! Break what isn't broke.
"Just the cover, without the actual content. With a barcode for phones to scan, which downloads the content to the phone for a fee (and maybe postal mails a hardcopy)."
Blah! Blah! I'm a geek without enough skill to market all these wonderful slashdot ideas.
"Printed articles can be stored behind the counter, pulled from a box when a customer hands over the "cover" from a rack in the store. That maximizes display space, prevents other pilferage."
Blah! Blah! Bring back the pageturner.
"And moves these paper publishers further into "ebooks", where they can figure out how to make us read their crap without having to kill so many trees (which will cut costs while increasing readership)."
Blah! Blah! Ignore the lessons learned from when music went digital.
"Especially since magazine content is time-sensitive, they're in a terrific position to harness the free distribution among networked readers, while the passage of time forces people to get new content all the time."
Blah! Blah! I don't want to get out of bed in order to get things.
"If they spent as much time innovating as they do whining and hating their customers, we'd all be a lot better informed, and they'd be even richer. Why should I do all the work, and have all the fun?"
Blah! Blah! Let's redefine "customer" so we'll feel better.
I sure hope you're not just a blathering Anonymous copyright holder Coward. Because you're roadkill on the infobahn. Whether or not I respect copyrights, the fact is that most people won't, when copying content is more convenient than using it within archaic customs that relied on tech inadequacy to enforce that copyright. Now that tech makes it so much easier to copy than not to, copyright alone is too flimsy to make many people, eventually most people, act in accordance with it. If well-behaved Japanese are threatening their own corporate content publishers, the world just isn't safe for content protected by copyright alone.
So take your "blame" and your "victim" down the tubes with you. I point out how content owners can actually exercise control without relying on unenforceable rules. How using the new "customs" to their advantage can make everything more convenient, more profitable, less wasteful for every party to the transaction. Suck down your guilt trip, your slavish defense of lazy copyright holders relying on lawyers for innovation. And watch is tears as those who do get with the program excel, profit, and mostly forget lame "temporary artificial monopoly" moralists like you in the swirling mists of capitalist history. Or wipe your eyes, shut your mouth, and watch those who can swing in this new reality get it on. Or maybe just read about it, too late, in next month's "PTO Journal". Pass it on, Anonymous anachronism Coward.
--
make install -not war
What's important isn't the whining of copyright holders that this makes it "too easy" to infringe copyright. What's important is that this is a stunning reminder that for all of human history humankind has worked to make it easier and easier to reproduce and circulate information. Spoken language, written language, block printing, movable type, typewriters, telegraphs, telephones, radio, television, laser printers, file sharing, the internet. It's not about to stop. This should be a wake up call (much like the previous 10 wake-up calls) that copyright based industries need to start thinking about new models. Expecting humanity to stop advancing technology is stupid.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
We've had scanners for years, handheld scanners too, but have you ever copied a real book page-by-page?
I have.
Believe me, it is not something worth doing.
And I honestly don't believe the "blackmarket warez doodez" will suddenly start sending around CDs with lists of books you can get..
Defining Statistics and Social Research
The real mark of shame was "Made In Japan." When I was a kid (60s), Japanese goods were synonymous with cheap and shoddy. I recall playing with toys of flimsy sheet metal and the backside was painted like it was from a recycled tin can. The reputation for making junk must have stung and the Japanese reversed this SO thoroughly, that in 1985 the movie "Back To The Future's" Dr. Brown of 1955 claims the time-machine was made of junk b/c of "made in Japan" on the electronic components. Marty replies that "all the best stuff comes from Japan."
I think that the Post-WW2 experience of Japan and Germany will serve as textbook examples of howto do redevelopment after disaster. I'm proud of how America helped them succeed.