Slashdot Mirror
In Japan, a Billboard That Watches You
An anonymous reader writes "At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel, in part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications. It doesn't seek to identify individuals, but it will attempt to figure out how many of the people standing in front of an advertisement are actually looking at it. A second camera, which wasn't fitted at the station but will be when tests begin next month, will take care of estimating how many people are in front of the ad, whether they are looking at it or not."
Let me know when the billboard ads for the personal/cleaning/pleasure toy robots are put up in the mall and they jump out at you while you are walking, yelling, "Buy me!" then that will be pretty damn impressive.
Seriously though, a bit sneaky, but fascinating that they want a headcount of who walks by these marketing ads. I wonder if they realize how numb the public is to this by now? I don't know if there have been studies, but it seems to me, the older you get, the less you want, I could be wrong, I am just speaking from personal experience.
the problem with slippery slope is it's easy to sound right when you just make shit up. that's all slippery slope arguments are, just a made up chain of events without justification or evidence. hence it's got no credibility.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Flippant though you may be, I can only see two outcomes for this -
1. Advertisers realise exactly how much they have trained people to ignore everything around them, no matter how bright or annoying.
2. Advertisements quickly become even more completely based around naked female flesh, because that's the only way they get any attention at all.
These who don't know History are sentenced to repeating it.
The credibility is in past scenarios. Copyright. PATRIOT. Communist revolution.
Slippery Slope scenarios tend to be right.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It isn't that slippery slopes tend to be right it is that you have to plan on the people abusing your system.
Building a device and put a stick of dynamite into it. see what happens, build a web site, even a personal one, and watch how often it gets attacked. If your going to plan for the future you need to think ahead. People abuse the things they are given and don't have responsibility of. So if you give some one unlimited powers with no oversight it will be abused no matter the intentions.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.