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Satellites Spy On Black Friday Shoppers
MojoKid writes "Those satellites in space don't just take spy pictures. On this Black Friday 2010, they actually took pictures of you, and your rush to Black Friday shopping deals. The research is being done to see what consumer demand this year means for retail stocks. The trend, so far, has been favorable. The companies involved in this are Remote Sensing Metrics and Digital Globe. Remote Sensing Metrics is a Chicago-based consulting firm that analyzes the satellite imagery. In turn, it purchases those images from Colorado-based company Digital Globe, which operates its own satellites."
Stores with product X for price Y have crowd patterns like Z
to stay away from the mindless consumerism that defines today's society.
My immediate family and I don't buy presents for any of the "holiday seasons". We offer ourselves things of no merchant value, such as poems, good time and love.
Whenever I go to town, I see people moving from shop to shop like drones, trying hard to figure out what they're going to buy next. We used to be like that, but we aren't anymore. We use money to live (food, basic transportation, reasonable housing) and our hands and heads for entertainment.
I and us older folks messed up. I am very sorry you may never know what freedom really is. ld
The spelling and grammar police can kiss my ass
Digital Globe has a flikr feed at http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitalglobe-imagery/
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
They mocked me for staying at home, making aluminum foil hats and slathering my naked body with turkey gravy, but who's laughing now?!?
The only surefire protection against Microsoft infections is abstinence. - The Onion
So you are telling me that a group of people renowned for hiding in parent's basement with the technological knowledge to shop online willing went out into the deathtrap that was black friday.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I am moderately surprised that the fairly low-resolution data you would get from a visual surveillance satellite(ie. you can tell how full the parking lot is on Black Friday. How many people are there to buy el-cheapo crap to satisfy their Christmas obligations without going further into debt, and how many are there to pick up toys just because they can? Can you tell the difference between my 'Insignia' brand bottom-of-the-barrel-but-good-enough-to-watch-football-with-my-browskies LCD TV and a top of the line cinemaphile disposable-income-eater of similar size just by the box, from space?), even with sophisticated machine vision algorithms or more analysts than the National Reconnaissance Office, would be competitive with consumer metrics available from other sources.
I'm guessing that most Black Friday purchases are not made with cash and the ones that are are probably comparatively small and could be estimated just by putting a few flunkies near a statistically relevant sample of checkout lines. This would mean that any of the major credit/debit card guys should have a much better, and much more machine readable, trace on consumer spending. Retailers, of course, many of whom are publically traded and nearing the end of their fiscal year, obviously know what they sold; and I'm guessing that the guys in the shipping sector know reasonably well how much stuff had to be shlepped from the pacific rim to refill Wally World after the event.
Pictures from space have been a given for years now; they just seem like a sloppy source of data compared to all the others that already exist...
....but who's buying?
Stick Men
I am moderately surprised that the fairly low-resolution data you would get from a visual surveillance satellite(ie. you can tell how full the parking lot is on Black Friday. How many people are there to buy el-cheapo crap to satisfy their Christmas obligations without going further into debt, and how many are there to pick up toys just because they can? Can you tell the difference between my 'Insignia' brand bottom-of-the-barrel-but-good-enough-to-watch-football-with-my-browskies LCD TV and a top of the line cinemaphile disposable-income-eater of similar size just by the box, from space?), even with sophisticated machine vision algorithms or more analysts than the National Reconnaissance Office, would be competitive with consumer metrics available from other sources.
I have personally seen non-classified photos from reconnaissance satellites where I could clearly read street signs and license plates.
I can't speak to the value of such photos for marketing information, but I can attest to the quality of the images themselves.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
This is available the next day. It's not as if they won't refine their estimates once better information becomes available.
- Unless of course you want to know how well your competitor is doing.
Friday morning you park your car at the mall, then take the bus home and hide.
I have personally seen non-classified photos from reconnaissance satellites where I could clearly read street signs and license plates.
Those couldn't have been from satellites, it would require a huge mirror to be able to clearly read anything like a street sign or a license plate. Those photos were more likely from something like a plane.
Personally I do like the premise the OP advances. Instead of getting more stuff of little to no real value, they are making memories that will last longer than any item made of fiber, metal, or inorganic hydrocarbon compounds.
That's until the Alzheimer's kicks in. Then you'll be sad indeed you invested so little in Star Wars figures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Can you tell the difference between my 'Insignia' brand bottom-of-the-barrel-but-good-enough-to-watch-football-with-my-browskies LCD TV and a top of the line cinemaphile disposable-income-eater of similar size just by the box, from space?)
If it's a big enough TV, then yes, yes we can.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Consumerism can be mindless. But it can also be very thoughtful. And that, to me, is when it's just as good as something like a poem.
Humans are tool users, and there's nothing wrong with buying tools to use as instruments in having fun and making memories. Which could be literal instruments as a new guitar for a music lover. Or something like a new computer for a parent who doesn't have a good grasp on what to buy. These would seem to come under "consumerism" but can have a lasting impact on happiness and shared memories too.
One think to help this is to reduce the number of people you have to analyze - I have a large extended family that comes together for Christmas, but instead of everyone buying everyone else a present, each family picks two other people to buy gifts for. Christmas for us is mostly about having a good time but it's also enhanced by people getting presents that really move them or mean something to them, because a lot of thought generally goes into each present. And even though we used money to buy them I see nothing wrong with the situation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is anyone else confused here? I thought that Roland died in 2009. Wasn't there a /. article on it?
Yes, the real Roland Piquepaille died almost two years ago. (His real user account was rpiquepa).
The question is, why should we take anyone blatantly misusing someone else's name like that seriously? And no, I don't believe that this user coincidentally has the same real-life name (or chose that user name independently).
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Hedge Funds, Analysts, etc have been analyzing satellite images for years to keep an eye on retail. While interesting, this is by no means anything new.
Yes and no. Its difficult and expensive to get a satellite to image a specific place on a specific date. Most of this sort of work is done by sending up a local flight instructor (they are relatively inexpensive per hour and instrument rated in case of weather) with a photographer as a passenger.
I imagine that companies are not buying this data for information on their own stores (Wal-Mart, for example, can see every transaction at every store in real time), but rather on their competitors' stores. Any large retailer can process their own sales information a million different was in very short order. But getting intel on your competitors can be very valuable. For example, Wal-Mart can use these images to say "at 5am, the average store had 1 car in the parking lot for every 10 square feet of retail space. Target had 1 car for every 14 feet of retail space (also determined by the images)". This could give Wal-Mart a rough sense of their performance versus competitors well in advance of the Q4 earnings release, for instance.
I'd have done the same. Just because someone calls themselves Christian does not mean they actually are.
Do not think that every Christian buys into the (false) "Name-it-and-Claim-It" gospel. It's a garbage presentation of the True Gospel of Jesus Christ.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
So, we're now jumping on the bandwagon where everything is spying? (I know, I must be new here...) Because, what _I_ read was a barebones article (193 words!!!) barely longer than the summary, that basically says they are using imaging of parking lots (and they implied traffic patterns as well) to see how full they are. I might be wrong, but my response is already almost longer than the article which makes it difficult to tell. I say it's a valid approach, spun up via alarmist phrasing to look like a privacy article.
Please, next time you flee in a panic from road surveyors who 'are there to spy on you and determine your vectors', please stay in your lane, because I'm already dealing with enough poor drivers... Deep breath - just because they have eyes pointed in your general direction that does not constitute spying.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
No one seems to comment on the way they represent the data in the bar charts.
If you look at the bars, there seems to be a real big change year after year, as
the commenter says. But if you look at the numbers, they tell a different story.
How does a change from 31% to 35% become a huge improvement ?
People don't learn to read charts, and don't learn to make them.
If they showed the three bars on a scale from 0 to 100%, then you wouldn't be
able to tell the difference, or very slightly.
On this Black Friday 2010, they actually took pictures of you, and your rush to Black Friday shopping deals.
Nope, not me. I NEVER leave the house on Black Friday. I prefer not to be trampled and run down by mindless consumers.
I do my Xmas shopping from the relative safety of my computer and Amazon. Ironically, the government probably knows a lot more about MY shopping habits than those in the satellite images.
i don't like this satellite culture, these mods that see through solid matter are ILLEGAL,to say the least! Let alone all the microwave frequencies that got leaked to the idiot junkies in surveillance by TRAITORS. And I say this 'in the ultrasound' as my stomach grumbles & my machine keeps freezing. ON 28TH DECEMBER 2003 THE MICHIGAN GOVERNOR SIGNED PUBLIC ACTS 256 AND 257 (EFFECTIVE 1/1/04). THESE OUTLAW THE USE OF ANY EM WEAPON ON ANYONE. PENALTY - 15 YEARS-LIFE. over and over and over again... Happy Holidays :)
I guarantee you haven't seen this. Look up the diffraction limit, it makes this basically impossible from orbit.
If you are an economy watcher and armchair economist like I am, the next day to watch is "Black Monday", the first Monday after Thanksgiving. People who only have decent internet at work often place orders on that day. It is dwarfed by "Black Friday", but still interesting to watch. I think it will be up, esp. if there were shortages at the malls due to inventory slashing by the retailers. I can't wait to find out.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I can guarantee that any pictures of me from those satellites were not of me going shopping for Black Friday, since I was at work trying in vain to keep up with the bills. Who the hell has the time and money to go shopping for things for other people who aren't going to appreciate it and will probably take it back after the holidays?
between the areas showing the busiest parking lots. What might that spell?