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."

Comments

One more reason

[Roland Piquepaille]

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.

Re:One more reason

[Roland Piquepaille]

It's not the number of pixels that represents my car, or the danger (or lack thereof) for my liberties, it's the fact that those who want to sell us things treat us like cattle: our consuming habits are under intense scrutiny all of the time, and we are fed a form of brainwashing called "advertising" as a result of the marketing studies. And the worst is, it works: people consume, consume and consume all the time, and start consuming even more when certain dates come (like Black Friday).

I chose to stop consuming whenever possible, to not be a cattle.

To everyone under 30

[ldconfig]

I and us older folks messed up. I am very sorry you may never know what freedom really is. ld

Re:To everyone under 30

[ffreeloader]

You are now so used to being spied on that you can't even comprehend what the world was like without it.

It was a much friendlier and relaxed place to live. Nobody had the right to sift through your life just to see what they could sell you and the government wasn't into monitoring every move you made and jailing you for the least offense. That was a society that had much more freedom.

I can remember when getting caught lighting up your tires wasn't an automatic reckless driving ticket and a several hundred dollar fine as well as a large increase in your insurance rates. Cops were much more human and forgiving for they remembered what it was like to be young and dumb and weren't out to disrupt your life for your first mistake. Most of them, as long as you didn't try to lie to them, would let you go with a warning even if they caught you making a pretty serious mistake. I've been let walk after burning rubber for half a city block and reaching close to 80mp in a 25mph zone right in front of sheriff's deputy I didn't see. He asked me what happened and I explained it to him: I was showing for a couple of very good looking young women and that it was a first for me to do that in town as my hotrodding and racing was done out of town. My honesty got me a warning instead of a ticket and some time in jail. Try that today and see what happens to you.

You had the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them without being severely punished. If you didn't learn, well, that was your problem and you could expect to have the book thrown at you the second time. During high school most of us used to carry pocket knives and a lot of us had guns in the trunks of our cars because we liked to go plinking after school. I remember pranks such as wiring the urinal drain in the faculty men's bathroom to a Model T coil not getting anyone kicked out of school, and intentional small explosions in chemistry class going unpunished. I also knew a guy who blew a foot deep hole in the football field with a home made pipe bomb who got nothing more than a 2 day suspension. He wasn't hauled off to jail and prosecuted for terrorism. In fact the issue never was reported to the police and this was done inside city limits.

Today's young people don't know what liberty is as we live in a society in which we are watched 24/7 and our liberties are fast disappearing. Not much individual freedom is left even when compared to eras such as the 60's and 70's, let alone the 1800's, but those of you who didn't live in those decades, and aren't students of American history, will never understand what has been lost. It's a paradigm you can't grasp because you've never experienced it.

And people said I was weird

[proverbialcow]

They mocked me for staying at home, making aluminum foil hats and slathering my naked body with turkey gravy, but who's laughing now?!?