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Apple Camera Patent Lets External Transmitters Disable Features
sticks_us writes with news of an Apple patent application, recently published by the USPTO, for an on-board camera system that would include circuitry for processing external infrared signals. The data received from these signals could then be used to present information to the user of the device, or even to modify the device's operation.
"For example, an infrared emitter could be located in areas where picture or video capture is prohibited, and the emitter could generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands to disable the recording functions of devices. An electronic device could then receive the infrared signals, decode the data and temporarily disable the device's recording function based on the command. ... In some embodiments, a device may apply a watermark to detected images as an alternative to completely disabling a recording function."
Apple has tapped into a pretty nice market there. They'll make quite a bit just selling portable IR transmitters that cops can wear on their belts--for when our boys in blue need to enforce a little extra discouragement on handcuffed perps and don't want to deal with any pesky pinkos filming or taking pictures.
Not only that, but by holding the patent, they stand to make a fortune when the government decides to make it mandatory in all new cameras.
That Steve Jobs is nothing if not a money-making machine. I bet he'll have every college student in the U.S. lined up around the block to buy one of these "enhanced" cameras. He's like one of those Bond villians who comes up with a plan that's undeniably horrific and evil, but also damned creative and ingenious.
Meanwhile the old Bond villian, Bill Gates, is off fighting AIDS in Africa. Guess that's like when Jaws became a good guy in Moonraker.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Now all I have to do is not buy an iphone and I'm sure to not get this incredibly stupid "feature". Of course they'll probably just license it for a quarter a camera or something and other companies will trip over themselves to implement it and we'll all pay for the pleasure of having a less useful device.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I guess I'll be submitting a patent for a phone case with an IR filter for the camera.
I am frequently baffled by some of the stuff that Apple gets away with patenting. In this case, the patent described would(to my layman's inspection) appear to be a mere subset of Microsoft's (equally odious and sinister) 2008 "Digital Manners" patent, except that that patent covered a much broader range of possible prohibition/settings propagation media, and a much more generic set of possible commands.
Give external control over over a non-networked part of my device to a thrid party? with any intent? HELL NO. Really. If mankind buys such devices without thought... May the gods be merciful on us all.
when the government decides to make it mandatory in all new cameras
Oh and everyone will be forced to change their current camera? I don't think so.
Yet they'd never be more than one IR cut filter away from a lawsuit.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Electrical tape over infrared sensor.
Why limit this patent to infrared? Seems like someone could do the same thing with bluetooth or even WiFi and then you would no longer need to be concerned about line of site issues. You know, like someone holding their hand between the infrared transmitter and their device and then snapping photos as they please.
The is no reason for this dangerous feature to be included in a device that I purchase. That could get someone killed. Take some pics of some criminal activity and post it online, then the pic rats you out like a cheep stool pigeon. Then youâ(TM)re pushing up daisies.
nuff said
Hope is the currency of fools
First Apple censors their App Store. Now they're facilitating at-source-proactive censorship of media.
What's next? A new iOS upgrade that translates any "subversive" conversations or texts into state-approved rhetoric?
For example, an infrared emitter could be located in areas where picture or video capture is prohibited, and the emitter could generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands to disable the recording functions of devices.
I thought we agreed that DRM [on the client side] is broken by design?
It would only be a matter of time before everyone had a camera with this feature. My guess is that it will never be mandatory, but that companies will do it to appease the Justice Department (see: laser printer watermarking).
Palm trees and 8
so cover the infared port....it needs a line of sight, no port for the infared signal no problem...
Would celebrating the release of this "feature" onto the commercial market with a variant of Apple's classic 'Think Different' posters featuring Rodney King, the Gitmo dog-leash guy, and similar?
This'll be perfect for following scared women at night, and disabling their ability to make calls/send texts/take a picture.
And sure cops will have their flashing lights stopping pictures being taken of them.
Can't think why I'd want a camera that would do this. The small ability to get meta data about something I'm taking a piccy of is far outweighed by the negative uses.
Go go masking tape.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
The billions of existing cameras will continue to ignore such external commands, so the only way to enforce this is to make all of those illegal. That might fly in North Korea, but in the Western world? I know dystopian views are popular here, but I just don't see this happening.
Even individual companies are going to have a hard time, e.g. a movie theatre isn't going to be able to reliably distinguish between cameras with and without this feature, so they'll still ban all cameras.
laser printer watermarking
That's the first thing I thought of when I read the summary. That's not even required by law, but just TRY to find a color printer that doesn't have this "feature."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
We will make one MILLION dollars with these "remote" "controls" !
Considering that most people aren't going to carry a standalone camera to document police brutality/corruption, and most people tend to upgrade their cell phone every few years, a law would prove pretty devastating.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ach, sentence malformed: strike '?' and append "be pointed or merely tasteless?"
Is embedding the ID code of the camera in every photo taken so officials can find out who is taking which photos. If it doesn't exist already it's less than five years out.
Leave it to humans to decide whether or not to abide by "no photography" rules, not technical measures. The perfect example of why this is a bad idea to implement at all is ongoing in the Middle East right now.
Of course, IR filters are well-known and there would be innumerable other ways to disable it. This is DRM on the client side. Good luck with that.
It's just adding to the plethora of patents Apple can use in it's Patent Big Stick. And someone at Apple gets to do Patent++ on their CV. I have noticed over the years that for some baffling reason some Americans like to boast about the number of patents assigned in their name.
This is a nice feature for people that work at classified sites where you can't bring your phone into the building because it has a camera on it.
Hey maybe I'm being ridiculous hating on Apple. This comes out and suddenly I'm back in 1984!
Just don't forget to put a tasteful and elegant "iCensored" logo at the bottom, in a pleasant Apple Garamond font.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
That was my first thought, as well. But a closer look at the patent shows that they are using the camera sensor itself as the IR receiver. If you tape over it to block the IR datastream , you can't take any pictures with it anyway.
What is needed is a filter that blocks IR, but passes visible light.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
A decent camera last way longer than the average printer.
There is actually a very good market for this invention: Plenty of companies have places where they don't want any photos being taken (how many people post here "I can't buy a MacBook because of the built-in camera hahaha stupid Apple!!!"), so all you need is a little transmitter in the room, and everyone with the proper device can come in. It will take a while, but at some point certain places will only allow you to use a computer or phone if it has no camera, or if it is an Apple product.
I assume you don't know any photographer.
Stop buying Apple crap, you freedom hating/indifferent morons.
Only Ben Affleck can stop the Moonraper...
Oh, sorry. wrong movie.
Put the transmitter on a garter and Paris Hilton and her friends would then be free to exit vehicles w/o giving the paparazzi another bonus shot.
Don't most daylight digital cameras already have IR filters on them? That's why when you look closely at a digital camera lens, it has a dark reddish tint to it. I've tried using IR light to convert a webcam into a nighttime camera and it never goes well unless i feel like tearing the camera apart and removing the filter. (which on MOST cameras, is a severe pita)
But without that filter, the IR light overwhelms the sensor during the daytime, so it's required for daytime use. I just bought a camera that has daytime/nighttime mode, and it swings a red IR filter into place in front of the CCD for daytime operation.
Sooooo my question is, just how effective is this system going to be if there's an IR filter in place? Now I realize it doesn't completely cut out the IR - I can for example see the blinky light on my remote in my webcam, but it's brightness is greatly reduced.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
What if the camera senses that the IR receiver is covered (by not sensing "sufficient background noise" and disables recording as a "safety" measure?
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
Their view is that the phone/device doesn't really belong to you in any real sense.
You may have bought it, and thus own the physical form, but they only let you use the software, thus it does what they want, not what you want.
Oh, and by the way, they effectively won't let you remove their software and load your own software on it. (Updates that brick hacked devices for example.)
That attitude takes tethering to the level of a steel chain.
But we aren't talking about "decent" cameras here. Most people get a new cellphone every couple years.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
But most of those videos/photos that show bad stuff aren't done by professional photographers. They're done by average citizens holding up their smartphones. Just think of what this kind of technology would have done if the Libyan/Yemeni/Egyptian/Tunsian/Syrian/etc. governments had been able to deploy it in the streets of their cities.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
step by step
Steve Jobs is currently CEO of Apple. Bill Gates is no longer CEO of Microsoft. Maybe you should wait and see what Jobs does when he leaves Apple, instead of trying to equate the charity work of a retired executive to that of a full-time one?
There is a reason police brutality is often documented by cell phones: they are always there.
Plz make borg picture for Jobs and put halo around Gates borg. kthxbai
The only practical (not Big Brother scary) use I can think of for this is for use in government & top secret locations. I have friends who work at defense sites or contractors & the phones they're allowed to have on site are *very* limited. If they have a camera, they're not allowed in or it has to be physically disabled (IE: broken). Period. There are not a whole lot of choices for camera-less phones anymore that have any useful capabilities, so I know that they would love this prospect. They'd be able to have an unaltered/unbroken device that is practical in today's world, yet still comply with the security demands of their job. And that's pretty much it. I can only see it being abused in almost every other way.
Of course, as an optical signaling mechanisim, there is absolutely no way this type of mechanisim could be by-passed or worked-around... Right?
Ken
Well I'm glad I still have my two film cameras, no infrared sensor in them just infrared film.
Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted.
I assume you don't know any photographer.
Yes, because if he knew any photographer(s), he would know that most people carry standalone cameras. Did that make sense to you when you wrote it?
I could see this being implemented first in movie theaters or even concerts to prevent bootleg copies.
So what happens once government regulators convince all manufacturers of new cameras and new smartphones to implement this? It's already happened to color printers, which add yellow steganographic identifiers to any color print to help trace counterfeit bank notes. Don't like it? Don't buy a printer.
Implement IR filter - Are you sure you want to do that?
Since the sensor will probably be integrated with the CCD, as it may already have IR sensors (auto-focus signaling), then filtering IR could break auto-focus.
Apple's new iEvil Bit will make it easier than ever to [CENSORED BY RIAA INFRA-RED CODEC].
-kgj
What's the point of making this feature if some people will still be able to circumvent it? Just to annoy the masses? People who want to show videos/photos of bad stuff won't be bothered at all.
This summer, only Ben Affleck can protect our craters...
JULY 2011
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Seeing as how an IR Filter only costs about $25 for a real, 46mm lens, This technology is dead in the water. Anyone who wants to circumvent it just needs to cough up a few bucks for some IR filtiring film and put it in front of the camera lens.
The only practical (not Big Brother scary) use I can think of for this is for use in government & top secret locations
The obvious application is to put an infrared signal onto movie screens, so that a guy with a video camera can't pirate a movie on opening night.
Just put an IR filter in front of the lens, or a tape on the detector..
hahah yeah okay, right. lets see, where do we begin. How about unintended consequences? You bet.
Or "whoops, your phone didn't receive the signal to re-enable the feature when it left", let alone other issues that would possibly make this questionable or only work on apple phones. Think that won't happen?
Here is a list of printers that do and do not include the watermark...
Ken
unless its all in ONE chip, any hardware guy worth his salt could open a laptop (etc) and bypass this.
now, once you start talking about making this a 'secure camera', you'll lose sales since no intelligent person will want any part of this 'you countrol MY camera' stuff.
apple fanboys will still buy but the rest of us will walk away from this, shaking our heads in disbelief.
many of us don't trust the 'software controlled' cameras to stay off; now we would have to worry about the exact opposite: we WANT a photo but the system 'software controlled' US and said 'no'.
the last thing I want is some machine saying 'no thanks, mr. human; I don't feel up to taking photos today.'
FUCK THAT.
(and fuck apple, too, while we're at it)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The odds of someone filming police brutality etc.. it generally isn't planned and recorded by someone with a full sized video camera, it's usually caught by some ordinary joe who discretely used his cellphone camera to take a clip.
Sorry, Charlie don't surf and Steve don't do charity.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's a clever idea. I won't begrudge them the patent. I'm even kind of in favor of it; it's kind of a robots.txt file for the real world.
But, like robots.txt, clients (cameras) should treat it as advisory only and be free to ignore it. I certainly wouldn't buy a camera in which it couldn't be disabled. It's way too open to abuse. Not just in prohibiting photos in random public venues, but I can easily imagine advertisers jumping on this. For the price of an IR transmitter you can stuff a watermark into everyone's cameras whenever they're taking a photo near your storefront, billboard, or any random place you can conceal a transmitter. As a photographer, even if your camera ignored such signals you'd probably have a problem taking any pictures In popular tourist areas with the IR glare imposed by advertisers.
And that's not to mention assholes who would set up concealed transmitters for laughs. Imagine the hilarity messing with someone's holiday snaps, intermittently disabling flash and other features, or writing obscenities into the watermarks. Why, it'd be almost as much fun as running around CES with a TV-B-Gone.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
On the lens maybe. These new cameras would not have IR filters on the "disable port" used for receiving external commands.
I do wonder though, if the idea is to equip airports, monuments, police officers, etc. with "No Photography!" broadcasters, would not a valid response be for journalists to start carrying "First Amendment" jammers?
I wonder about that sort of thing.
Okay, in the civilian world, there is a kind of precedent -- we are required to buy insurance to drive our cars. (Though technically, "proof of financial responsibility" is required and that can come in the form of a very large bank account balance in many states.)
So this infrared censorship signal would be a feature that would seem to require mandatory compliance from device manufacturers to be effective or useful to government interests. So what happens when compliance is mandatory and it still requires a patent license to comply? It just doesn't seem fair or right to me. And this is especially true when there would be only one "vendor" of whatever you are required to buy. Even in the case of auto insurance, you can select who you are insured with.
I was thinking of the lawsuits on Apple, and the U.S. D.O.J. when a newspaper says, "Freedom of the Press."
Yes. Through planned obsolescence, your camera will die two days after the warranty runs out. Buying an old camera will be like buying a normal-flow toilet.
easy. IR messages are not processed via the lense/CCD. External IR reader anywhere else on the front of the camera, just like the mic, and some camera's, the rangefinder.
This is far more likely a concession to the MPAA, etc., than the law enforcement industry--though the latter will surely be able to take advantage of it. In the states bills are presented purely for the benefit of corporations. (http://www.newser.com/story/119941/bill-may-make-sharing-netflix-log-in-illegal-in.html)
What is the benefit to the customer?
My Android phone will be protected from this feature because Apple has a patient on it. So only iPhones will get to use this.
This is wonderful.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I remember a time when patents were used to protect inventions that enhanced our life. Hell, I remember a time when Apple was a company that focused on making products that were easier to use. Now they seem to be focusing on ways to prohibit you from using your device the way in which you'd like. From their perspective, this makes sense. As they expand their business to include media distribution (iTunes) and advertising (iAds), they can no longer focus solely on the experience of the end user. They need to make concessions to appease content creation companies and advertising customers. Many of these concessions will require limiting what the end user is capable of doing with their device.
But not all hope is lost. Based on the success of Apple, many other tech companies have learned just how important it is to develop interfaces that are easier and more enjoyable to use. No longer are we stuck with the attitude that users need to stop whining about quirky interfaces and just use the hacked-together interface which is "good enough". Hopefully these companies will pick up where Apple left off. Given the success of Android devices, I'd say that things aren't looking too bad.
So I guess someone IS working on the supposed "how do we disable all these people from taking videos of stuff we don't want problem" after all.
I can think of many a federal and state agency that would love to beta test those IR video disablers, though very few that actually need it.
Not too much unlike some of the currency anti-counterfeiting tech in printers, only this is way more broad.
While this may seem to be a draconian measure to limit an individual's ability to record environments and events, such as sporting events, sensitive government installations and the like (I imagine Jobs will have all of R&D in all Apple locations prohibited since he is so paranoid about corporate spying), it's most troubling potential application is to turn ON the camera and use this with the GPS chip and wireless capabilities to spy on individual citizens. Sounds like a capability which placed in the wrong hands that could eliminate personal privacy.
just remove the IR signal
http://www.thorlabs.us/thorProduct.cfm?partNumber=FES0750
My TV had this capability since the 1980s.
I don't see how this is different than any other remote control.
That was my first thought as well. But how are the security goons going to distinguish between e.g. the 2010 Macbook Pro which doesn't have this feature, and the externally identical 2011 MBP which does? Or the iPhone 4.1 with, and the yPhone Chinese clone without? Etc. for all devices on the market.
With $10 in parts from Radio Shack, you'll never get a ticket from one of those pesky Red Light cameras again.
Don't most daylight digital cameras already have IR filters on them?
All of them, otherwise the colors will be off.
That's why when you look closely at a digital camera lens, it has a dark reddish tint to it.
That is not the filter, it is for reducing/cutting glass reflection. The filter is located in front of the sensor and it appears green in some angles
Sooooo my question is, just how effective is this system going to be if there's an IR filter in place? Now I realize it doesn't completely cut out the IR - I can for example see the blinky light on my remote in my webcam, but it's brightness is greatly reduced.
The ir does not need to be received by the camera sensor, it can be received by a second sensor.
It is an Apple watermark...
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
with a piece of my patented tape!
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
What if their intentions are the opposite. Patent a piece of technology you'll never use (or want) to keep others from trying to market it. I would never want a camera that did this... thus any company that would come out with a camera like this, Apple could always go to court and get an injunction to keep them from bringing it to market.
Just an idea..
This won't work unless legislation is passed mandating all cameras be equipped with this technology. I don't see this happening. Perhaps it may have some application to generate a copyright warning in the event some professional photographer is about to snap some rights restricted material. But the market for that is so slim I don't see it being implemented.
Now what would work is to extend this technology to tag objects with meta data. Snap a photo of an interesting building for example and it gets tagged with the architect's name, owner or leasing contact info. If you can offer this as a neat feature worth having, the DRM could be added on.
Have gnu, will travel.
RTFA
Please kill yourself.
ridiculously easy to disable though, in most probability. and IR? what the fuck are they thinking. an apple engineer was sitting at home using a remote control and thought "hey wouldn't it be nice if I could disable peoples cameras so they couldn't photo my ugly face?". just use big uv and ir lights and fuck up the photos that way, at least that works. meanwhile elsewhere, IRDA is really deprecated. but no government on earth can roll back the already plentiful real, good cameras. and while at it, they could already just do an app for iphone that would look for blinking lights that transmit the "NO PHOTO" in morse to disable the camera, but who would really like that app?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Handful of IRLEDs and an adruino and suddenly I'm invisible to all forms of digital imaging.
This is something I really need to look at in more detail. If you try astrophotography with a lot of digital cameras, you'll find that the H-alpha wavelength (around 650nm, red) is greatly diminished by the filter. However, an IR LED (peak wavelength about 960nm) shows up brightly in digital photos taken on the same camera. It seems more sensible to include a short-pass filter as they are cheaper to manufacture but perhaps they are band-pass? Just a thought; may be totally off here.
Well, whatever camera would be on the receiving end of this digital gag signal could be outfitted with a separate IR receiver ... which would subsequently be taped over or conveniently covered by some protective shell.
Ah, the geek "If it isn't absolutely 100% foolproof it's completely useless!!" mentality.
Governments love people like you.
No sig today...
OK, I can buy that there could be a detector in a location other than the lens. However, people would figure out what location on the camera needs to be covered in order to take pictures in unapproved places.
I'm pretty sure the people the created this patent put a little more thought into this than you.
Sorry, that's a DMCA violation, circumventing a copy protection device.
Just wait till everyone starts carrying the IR "no camera" devices, rendering ALL camera's useless all the time.
The problem with technology is that for every action there is an opposite reaction, that is often greater that the intended one. Call it a corollary to the Streisand Effect.
Imagine for a minute that someone develops low cost "camera jammer" that does what is proposed and all the asshats of the world just start carrying them all the time, everywhere. It would mean that the camera wouldn't take any pictures anywhere. Of course they would make a law preventing anyone from owning such a device except for official government purposes, granting even more power to a tyrannical government. We are slowly becoming slaves to the state and our elected slave masters.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Each member of the engineering staff, at any engineering oriented corporation, is highly motivated to patent something - anything. So long as it has a whiff of possible application, it will go into the mill, if for no other reason than to prevent some other company from patenting it. This patent could be just such. This infrared communications port is only practical if the end-user has opted to allow it. As pointed out several times in this forum, simple filters should easily defeat it.
I also suspect, based on the concert anti-bootlegging example in the patent disclosure, it is a shiny concept to dangle in front of the RIAA cats, that has no real effect. On the other hand, when the end-user chooses to let it work, there might well be some enhanced reality applications.
It is true that DVD players "evolved" from not having geographical restrictions to having built in limits, simply by an industry wide agreement. Similarly, it would be interesting if industry wide agreements lead to built in camera overrides. But whereas the DVD player manufacturers were dependent on the goodwill of the media producers, the camera manufacturers are not. The RIAA and friends may be able to push on devices that are both cameras and players, but the manufacturers of pure photo and video recorders will have no reason to bend to such demands, in the absence of laws, of course. Make sure now, before it even gets started, that your congressman knows that there are lines not to be crossed.
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
On the other hand, might as well patent it, even if you have no intention of using it. Apple does that a lot. Comes up with an idea, patents it, and then never uses it. But it does ensure that anyone who DOES use it, owes Apple a chunk of change.
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
I can testify that planned obsolescence of cameras is already happening. I have a working digital camera from about 1998/1999 era. I still have original cd w/ the drivers and software. It was designed for use w/ windows 98 via a USB cable. It also worked fine with windows 2000/xp. When I built my most current machine w/ windows 7 pro on it, I could not get the camera to work with windows 7. After finding documentation both by Microsoft and Kodak that stated in no uncertain terms that this camera amongst many others would not be supported, I wrote to kodak asking for help (I had nothing to lose), I got a form letter basically saying they were more interested in their newer models. I ended up having to purchase a 3rd party card reader to read the old card that it uses in order to pull pictures off of it.
I foresee some very scary circumstances coming out of this patent from the US dictatorship err *cough* government. I realize there would be ways to stop infrared feeds from getting into a camera that has this technology enabled but the masses won't bother or care.
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
Right?
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
I assume the IR receiver will be on the body somewhere. The IR filter you are talking about is in the lens-to-ccd path.
3rd party infrared filter. Presto.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Just put an infrared lens filter in front of the camera. I'm sure Jobs will bribe his way into a patent on those to or pay some politician to make them illegal.
Oh, yeah, I can't possibly think of any ways this can be abused... /snarkasm
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The police will LOVE this!
What the article doesn't mention is Apple's rumored R&D into the Smart Phone Taser. At the push of a button a [insert tyrannical abuser of power] can activate a taser function to safely disable any [ insert enemy of the state (ie. terrorist, activist, single mother ripping MP3's)] holding the phone or storing the phone in their pocket. The codes to activate the taser function will be stored online behind a secure unhackable firewall only accessible to government authorities and copyright enforcement companies with a paid subscription. Analysts expect Apple's stock to double after the prototype is demonstrated at the Crowd Control Conference this fall.
You're not thinking about it right. This is to enhance your life. No longer do you need be concerned about accidentally taking copyrighted pictures of your kids school play, or your S.O./friend smiling and laughing at your favourite band's biggest ever gig. You'll also not need to worry about accidentally getting the cops or security guards in the background of your picture by mistake. Gone are the days of "who the f... is that" and the sheer terror is invokes in it's unknowing victims.
Of course, that's all assuming you buy apple products. Using that hacked barbie camera is probably a far safer idea ;-)
Man, what a supremely perfect set of analogies. You sir, are a hero.
Step #1: Locate IR sensor
Step #2: Cover sensor with duct/masking/electrical tape in the color of your choice.
Actually, I recommend using tin foil tape, just to be extra secure. Might even improve iPhone reception... who knows?
When do we get to see a borg-Jobs icon used on slashdot?
I can testify that planned obsolescence of cameras is already happening. I have a working digital camera from about 1998/1999 era. ... I ended up having to purchase a 3rd party card reader to read the old card that it uses in order to pull pictures off of it.
Not supporting a device after 12-13 years isn't "planned obsolescence" it's regular obsolescence. There's no way that Microsoft/device manufacturers could find the time or money to support every legacy item. It just isn't feasible. Plus, if you could solve your problem with a card reader there really isn't much reason to worry. It's a pretty common way to access images from a camera.
Isn't Jehovah the ancient hebrew god of genocide and capital punishment?
He's also the god of giving people a second, third, ..., 490th chance (Matt 18:22) provided they choose to accept it and learn from their mistakes. See examples of God's undeserved kindness in the biblical continuity all the way back to Cain. Instead of killing Cain on the spot, Jehovah told him to sin no more and gave him a mark of protection.
now, once you start talking about making this a 'secure camera', you'll lose sales since no intelligent person will want any part of this 'you countrol MY camera' stuff.
apple fanboys will still buy but the rest of us will walk away from this, shaking our heads in disbelief.
Yep, nothing to worry about, this will fail just like Apple's awful walled-gardon iOS devices never got off the ground and WGA caused a mass exodus from Windows.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
What have you got for this one? It doesn't get much more blatantly evil than this.
With some electrical tape if it's infrared.
This is the first post I have seen in this thread that actually gets what Apple is trying to do here. It's not for digital cameras - Apple doesn't make those and the companies that do have no incentive whatsoever to license a patent from them to do this.
It's for Apple iDevices - iPads, iPhones, iPods - with cameras. You can't take anything with a camera into courts, various government facilities, some concert venues or events etc. which means leaving your phone or tablet behind... but if businesses/governments recognize this system as "good enough" security against unauthorized photos, Apple mobiles will be the one kind that are allowed through the metal detector, ticket queue or other security checkpoint. The only thing that surprises me about this development is that Apple has never really cared about what businesses wanted in the past, so I'm not sure why they seem to be starting now.
"95% of all Slashdot
unless its all in ONE chip, any hardware guy worth his salt could open a laptop (etc) and bypass this.
Would it really take a hardware hack to allow the camera to work. Couldn't you just blast a bunch of IR yourself into the room and jam their signal. It could either be a very strong continuous IR source, or possibly a random IR noise signal. I think it would be hard for the camera to read the shut down signal if it was getting a bunch of noise with it. This would allow everyone's camera to start working while not requiring you to modify your camera and loose the warranty.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
I would guess that the encoding is something similar to the modulation on IR remotes - a high-frequency square wave ORed with a lower-frequency serial bitstream. If that is the case, then you can completly jam the system by just transmitting a countering signal - a IR LED modulated with a square at the same frequency. Your way is easier, but my way works no matter how much they tamperproof the sensor.
That's an easy counter-countermeasure. Just have the camera measure the ambient infrared on the sensor too. If it's almost nothing, then it's probably safe to assume the sensor has been covered up.
I can still imagine ways to jam the jammer, like transmitting a sufficiently bright IR modulated on the same frequency from a seperate device, but it's in the 'some geekyness required' level. Any first-year EE student could throw one together, but the average person on the street couldn't.
Aren't the filters on Infra-Red receivers and transmitters red to allow only IR to travel through them? I would have thought you'd use a blueish colored filter to block IR.
I've had my HP Laserjet 1200 for 9 years now and it's using the original toner cartridge. During that time I have purchased 3 digital cameras.
Camera technology is advancing much faster than printer technology.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
When will you be able to buy an IR filter for this to disable this functionality?
This isn't exactly "not 100% foolproof" -- it can be defeated by a piece of tape.
But keep cheerleading those who want to tell you when and how to use your devices. Corporations love people like you.
Just put an IR filter in front of the lens, or a tape on the detector..
This is detectable. When you are in a room that is lit, there is always some infrared light. If you place an IR filter on the lens, there will be no IR light.
The camera can also, when no signal is detected, emit a modulated IR signal which will be reflected off the subject back to the camera. If the amount of IR received is 0, or the camera can't see its own IR reflection, then it acts as if the no picture signal is received.
So assuming that Apple gets this patent, what then? Would only Apple phones allow recording to be disabled, in which case the simple workaround would be to own a non-Apple phone? Or do they expect all other manufacturers to give them royalties? It seems more likely that manufacturers of other phones would market the lack of such a "feature" as a benefit.
The very act of patenting this method defeats the purpose for which it supposedly serves. If I am a theater owner or amusement park operator, why would I bother paying to implement a technology that is only going to work with a subset of phones?
Using an IR filter is often the preferred way to protect your lenses (low cost, helps for long range photography), so I guess most photographer would refuse to buy such cameras if it was not to work because you are protecting it..
Who needs auto focus, anyway?
Am I the only one who thought of William Gibson's "Zero History"? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_History) This post instantly made me think of "the world's ugliest shirt." (I'm trying to avoid spoiling it for anyone, but this is a wonderful plot device.)
The advantage of a card reader is that it doesn't drain the batteries. And, if you're lucky enough to have the right kind of camera, you can use a card reader to hack the firmware.
I like the idea of using Infrared as an Out of Band (OOB) channel. It can be used to provide a caption for photos like they show in a museum. I could see a cheap new product that you can clip on to things that transmits a IR beacon of information. Perhaps to direct pizza drivers and invited party guests to your house.
Why not use IR to label your own artwork on the wall. There seem like alot of interesting uses for this captioning. Of course, advertisers seem to be the main users of QR codes. And having The Authorities decide what you can and can not film is ugly.
This is how the Apple IR remote already works. The only thing new here really is that they are expanding the command set to things like "DISABLE RECORD" and whatnot.
I like the idea of using Infrared as an Out of Band (OOB) channel. It can be used to provide a caption for photos like they show in a museum. I could see a cheap new product that you can clip on to things that transmits a IR beacon of information. Perhaps to direct pizza drivers and invited party guests to your house.
Why not use IR to label your own artwork on the wall. There seem like alot of interesting uses for this captioning. Of course, advertisers seem to be the main users of QR codes. And having The Authorities decide what you can and can not film is ugly.
IR camera jammers... useful for:
(1) Celebrities, to protect their image, help prevent members of the public/paparazzi from snapping their dealings on film
(2) Streakers/Nudists
(3) Museums, any place where professional photography occurs, to force you to buy the pictures instead of taking your own.
(4) Festivals, Sporting events, other occasions of public gathering; to ensure rights protection for the official photographers.
(5) Women to carry around who are concerned about stalkers/upskirters
(6) TSA/Police/Private security firms, concerned about event visitors taking pictures of something that might reveal sensitive information -- like where the exit is located, or what the inside of a building looks like, who is getting the enhanced pat down
(7) Burglars/thieves/muggers/etc, all the smartphones/webcam/ATM/CCTVs jammed, so they can do the act with impunity without their face being seen, and without risk of winding up on Youtube....
(8) Cheating spouses who don't want to be caught
(9) Any public entertainment venue - Concert halls, Auditoriums, Play Houses, Sports Amphitheaters, Stadiums, Movie Theaters, Opera Houses, Dance Studios. To protect publicity rights of the venue.
(10) Criminals/Terrorists/etc, to keep as many details of their acts a secret as long as possible
Indeed... I can see a very large market for the IR blocking device.
In the future we will be under such control from the devices people buy and the companies that still OWN AND CONTROL them that we won't be able to take a shit without proper permission.
This tech is useless without a monetization plan. It will simply be more juice to move people to competitors' products when they learn their Apple camera is no longer that useful. It needs to be a combined effort that all smart device manufacturers simultaneously turn on, and they all need a standard monetization framework, so they all profit.... otherwise it will just be competitive pressure, that will hurt them all, or not let the restrictions be adopted.
Instead of designing a technology to involve merely blocking.... Apple should have provided a system where the camera would be loaded with details about the 'registered owner' of the event / thing being photographed. So they could charge the Apple customer $1.99 a photo with a small commission paid to the museum/theatre/venue/event owner.
And apply DRM of 'event owner' 's choice.
Also, instead of using IR as a control plane, they could use the 3G network to provide data about 'restricted photo' locations near the user's location, with possibly checksums. And use GPS as the primary data channel for loading restrictions, with IR as a backup way of providing location services data to the device.
That is the IR sensors can transmit packets that identify location of the sensor (GPS coordinates), and a copy of Apple's digitally authenticated "restriction zones" table and 'direction restricted'/compass data for a 100 mile radius. GPS and cell tower location data are harder to avoid/spoof because they are more integral to the device operation. You cannot simply put a piece of foil over your phone's antenna or jam GPS and expect everything to still work. IR sensors are easily tampered with or fooled.
There's also a possibility of using the network to load more details about restrictions, such as orientation, maybe some simple litmus tests, so the phone can perform image processing to determine if the thing being photographed is the restrictive object, or a more restricted object that requires a higher price to be paid for the user to take a DRM-shielded photo only viewable on their device and authorized computers for their Apple ID.
No doubt common "screw with Apple cameras" IR patterns will be added to a future iteration of the TV-B-Gone device...
I haven't read the application, but if the pattern somehow encodes the "watermark" (as opposed to just signalling one of a set of pre-installed watermarks on the camera) pranksters could have all KINDS of fun adding watermarks of ASCII-art porn, Blu-Ray decryption keys, profane graffiti, etc. to photos taken by people in an area.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
We just had a Supreme Court decision that allows for citizens to record police while performing their duties. This technology flies in the face of police accountability. To turn a routine line back on the orginators "If you(police) are doing nothing wrong, then you(police) have nothing to worry about."
Whatever method is used to disable/block the IR signal from effecting the camera, it must be on by default. Let's be honest, the most useful videos ever recorded are done so because the user has a camera easily accessible. From Rodney King to Epic Beard Man. Videos shot, spur of the moment have been the citizens most useful tool to establish fact from what appears in other reports.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Two things come to mind:
Is this not censorship?
Why would you not be able to entirely disable it...with a piece of strategically placed electrical tape?
While I am at it though...why is it against the law in numerous states, to video/photgraph/record law officers, during the the performance of their duties in public places...and yet the ubiquitous street cameras are allowed?
If the law officers are acting within the realm of legal and responsible actions, why is any recoding of the events, even able to be considered an illegal act?
Move over George Orwell...and say hello to big brother.
I believe you are thinking of a UV filter.
And I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids and that single piece of electrical tape on that camera...
LOL yeah I was thinking of this one for my second post =) Their utilities has declined as the now common cameras are not sensitive to the UVs anymore.
IR Pass Through filters are the ones used to obtain those nice winter looking trees.
IR Cut Off filters are used to prevent the sensor from being overloaded, and usually there`s one already being used.
You can pry my LaserJet 4M from my cold, dead biceps (to heavy to pick up with my hands).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
For that matter how can it distinguish between any compliant device and one that isn't due to jailbreaking or any other user modifications (including the aforementioned tape)? The fact is that once companies trust the system to work, it will be trivial for someone to bypass it simply by presenting what appears to be a compliant device and entering the premises and using it to take pictures to their hearts content. Not to mention you could buy a secret lapel or pen camera easily.
The bottom line is that organizations, like courts, offices, concerts, etc, that would be best served by this technology would only find it valuable if it were guaranteed to work, and very hard to bypass and easy to catch when being bypassed, none of which this tech solves. Worse, it can give a false sense of security and open an organization up to worse vulnerabilities.
At the end of the day, banning devices from entering is the only solution they can reasonably try to implement, and they'd end up having to use both the technology as well as the ban anyway. So what's the point?
Only thing a camera jammer is good for is killing the rights and liberties of common folk.
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
I think this is a wonderful idea:
Dear Stupid America,
Now whenever someone says "Please, no flash photography", for the sake of the performers/animals/whatever, you are FORCED to listen. You dumb fucking retards.
Love,
The Rest of the World.
Just don't forget to put a tasteful and elegant "iCensored" logo at the bottom, in a pleasant Apple Garamond font.
I think they would have to step out of their comfort zone and call it "uCensored" to make sense in this situation.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Active autofocus (either IR or ultrasound) usually provides lower quality focus than passive systems. Cameras might have a focus assist in low light, but then it usually requires you to be quite close to the subject. Anyway =)
It's for Apple iDevices - iPads, iPhones, iPods - with cameras. You can't take anything with a camera into courts, various government facilities, some concert venues or events etc. which means leaving your phone or tablet behind... but if businesses/governments recognize this system as "good enough" security against unauthorized photos, Apple mobiles will be the one kind that are allowed through the metal detector, ticket queue or other security checkpoint.
As has been mentioned, it's too easy to covertly bypass this sort of thing. I'm not sure why Apple is bothering with this idea, but I doubt allowing iWhatevers into censored environments is the real reason.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Bullshit. Don't be so paranoid. This will NEVER see the light of day. Where is the patent on the other half of the system? The part that transmits? I believe this is merely another example of Apple patenting something before anyone else merely to prevent it from being developed. Apple has been patenting things in this mannor for the last 5 years, like... a pair of glasses you mount your iPhone into to make it a HMD. They patented this several years ago, and pretty much killed the development of such a thing by third parties. There are plenty of other examples. Apple is hoarding patents on things that they do not want developed.
The Admin and the Engineer
There is actually a very good market for this invention
Perhaps. But there is an exponentially larger market for subverting such technology... so if the motivation was marketability, they'd be going the other direction. Rest assured, this will never exist (at least not while Apple holds the patent). Apple holds many patents like this... inventions that they do not want developed. I believe Google is doing the same thing with some of their patents.
The Admin and the Engineer
I was thinking the other way around. Every company is going to put one on everything they can so they can put their logo on every picture you take.
Now they seem to be focusing on ways to prohibit you from using your device the way in which you'd like.
Unless they are squatting on the patent to prevent its development... which if you're not a paranoid tinfoil-hatted slashdotter, seems far more likely. Looking at other unused patents in Apple's massive portfolio bears this out.
The Admin and the Engineer
Apple patents the infrared remote control. Film at 11.
http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2010-05-02
Grey's Law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
You're assuming it won't be integrated such that it's in the same sensor or behind the same lens as the optical CCD.
See the article on Ars Technica
Yeah those old HP Laserjets were built to last. They still make good second hand purchases.
The best ideas are common property
It is not regular obsolescence. It is Microsoft rewriting the driver model so that digital media streams are encrypted point-to-point, the Protected Video Path. DRM means a new driver is required for every device, and all your old devices that the manufacturers decided they got all their money out of are now bricked (I have a $600 Alps printer and a $300 Canon scanner that are useless with Windows 7, and it took years for a driver for my digitizing tablet). Still works in Linux distros that were compiled last night though.
Time to ensure you keep an older camera phone handy that has not had any firmware updates and not internet connection lets see apple get round that one they seriously need closing down the really do
Sooooo my question is, just how effective is this system going to be if there's an IR filter in place? Now I realize it doesn't completely cut out the IR - I can for example see the blinky light on my remote in my webcam, but it's brightness is greatly reduced.
Didn't you just answer your own question? For this to work, the transmitter needs to be as strong as an ordinary remote control.
try stopping a camera with a paparazi lens taking a picture from so far away that you don't see him
Actually that's a UV filter...
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Have you looked at the sad state of patents these days? If so, are you sure you're wanting to go with that?
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Looks like iJobs is the guy on the giant movie screen now. I wonder what happens when someone throws a hammer at him?
You only have to mention "Apple" in a patent story, and people go into paranoid rambling mode instead of the usual chanting of "prior art" cries.
Fandroids hate facts.
On the lens maybe. These new cameras would not have IR filters on the "disable port" used for receiving external commands.
Do you actually believe Apple tried to patent an IR remote control for cameras? IOW: RTFA, YAW.
Fandroids hate facts.
...Which isn't what they're doing. I've got a circa-2001 Nokia digicam that works just fine in Windows 7. Your camera may have used some non-standard communication protocol, but mine shows up as a mounted drive (with all the glory of its 64MB memory card)
It's a fairly normal thing not to produce new drivers for old hardware that speaks a non-standard language. Linux has maintainers that do whatever minimal changes are required to keep the old drivers from bit-rot. It doesn't make sense to a company to take the trouble to do that, QA the resulting drivers, and release new drivers for old hardware.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
so all you have to do then is send it a small amount of IR with a small IR LED from behind the cover.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
This, my friend, is what happens when an economy moves from a decentralized market system into a top down command and control economy. The "consumers" aren't the focus of the economy anymore. We're actually the product, governments are their real customers. That's why all major new products are nothing more than data mining devices, and the real profit is from selling said information to governments to do with as they please.
You see, the fools in this country have bought the notion that a "free market system is predatory" hook like and sinker, and now are starting to see just how "free" a top down planned economy is. The new economy is military, surveillence, and "citizen suppression devices". Now that all major companies are de-facto government institutions, who do we think now calls the shots? It's not the people anymore, as their biggest customer wants to use their services to oppress and keep the people down.
You always hear about "robber barons" back in the day, but they never realize that the free-er our economy was, the more beneficial scientific and technological discovery was for mankind.
the emitter could generate infrared signals with encoded data that includes commands to disable the recording functions of devices.
I remember a time when people focused on making things work better and do more things. Now they seem to spend more time on figuring out how to make things not work. At one time, features were good things. Now "new! Improved!" means "less likely to work". Devices are no longer meant to do what the user wants. Devices now are explicitly designed not to do what the user wants, and to take as much of their money as possible.
Lol wow using an infrared signal to turn off cell phones. I'm sure that apple is going to make a fortune selling blocking devices. I can imagine movie theatres, strip clubs, and government agencies all buying this up.
Too bad this is easily circumvented by putting an ir filter on your camera.
Objective achieved: The user can no longer take casual photos.
Just stick an IR filter over the camera lens. Very hard to spot, filters out the blocking signal.
I used to work in computer support/repair and you would be surprised how many people stuck things over the camera on their laptop because they felt uncomfortable being "watched" all the time, even if they knew it was off. Some manufacturers (Acer and ASUS for example) started to include things like a physical on/off switch or a rotating mechanism so you can point the camera away from you. Chilling effects indeed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
http://www.juliusvonbismarck.com/fulgurator/index.html
I believe you are thinking of a UV filter.
Another name for "UV Filter" is clear piece of plastic/polycarbonate.
Because common plastic lens materials filter high-energy UV light and pass lower energy EM.
Anyways... the UV filtering for lens protection is just a harmless side effect, that can also be useful in some outdoors shooting conditions.
http://search.dilbert.com/search?day1=14&mth1=11&yr1=2004&day2=14&mth2=11&yr2=2004&x=29&y=11
Do any cameras even use the IR-based autofocus anymore? With digital, I assume everyone uses the contrast measurement system from the sensor, except for the DSLRs which mostly use phase detection. The IR/ultrasound method dates back from the compact P&S film cameras from the late 80's and 90's.
Just tape an IR filter over it.
Actually most cheap CCDs have an IR filter in front of them anyway because they are sensitive to those wavelengths. You can turn an ordinary webcam into a cheap IR camera by simply removing the filter. Therefore it would be impractical to built it into the CCD, unless you want to mandate more expensive ones.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I remember a time when patents were used to protect inventions that enhanced our life. Hell, I remember a time when Apple was a company that focused on making products that were easier to use. Now they seem to be focusing on ways to prohibit you from using your device the way in which you'd like.
... you know, like illegally recording bootlegs of concerts without the artist's permission!
Your high horse, come off it.
You should think twice about that. I hear those Thrids throw really bangin' parties!
I thought Jobs was a pinko back in the day?
http://10CentMail.com - the Amazon SES app.
So I put a very weak IR emitter on the backside of my IR filter. Or better still, a diffraction grating -- I still get IR light though the filter, but the information is lost. Visible light is not compromised. Either way, trivial to work around... and that's just with a minute of thinking. Well, ok, they're using some kind of TDM encoding scheme, so the diffraction would eliminate any point source, but if you have just one IR source in the image, the signal might still get through.
The other problem is already kind of practical -- how to build an IR sensor that can actually read a point source and not destroy the visible light image. Today's 5Mpixel on 1/4" cell cameras are already diffraction limited at about f2.5, and it's fairly typical for camera makers to use f3 lenses on these. Depending on just where you put the IR, you're already getting some pretty serious blurring. Not to mention the fact that IR has to be filtered before the sensors.
The simplest solution would be to modify the Bayer matrix, probably by adding IR filtered pixels in with the R, G, and B filtered pixels. That's going to hurt photo quality a bit, but hey, it's a cellphone... anyone who thinks it's a replacement for a real camera won't notice. More sophisticated would be a diachroic prism to split off the IR, replacing today's typical IR bandstop filter, but that's not so practical in a tiny device like this.
The on-device IR emitter reflection scheme (basic principle behind the "IR Blaster" used in some STBs to control VCRs, back in the 90s) needs quite a bit of power to deliver a readable signal off random room contents, and that's just in a typical livingroom. This would be totally impractical on a portable device, and it would fail entirely in a large room, much less outdoors.
-Dave Haynie
Some Canon camcorders from the early 2000's used IR ranging in addition to contrast... the idea was that the IR could very quickly come up with a ballpark range, the contrast AF could go there immediately, then slowly seek to attain the final focus.
This is a classic issue with camcorders. On a still camera, you focus as quickly as possible, then snap the photo -- not too much of an issue. But for video, you don't want focus seeking to be visible in the shot. This is why some of the early video modes in P&S still cameras had such bad autofocus; they still used the still algorithms.
-Dave Haynie
Actually, the cellphones all use CMOS sensors, not CCDs. But either way. The single sensor cameras, cheap or very expensive, all have an IR bandstop filter and a Bayer or similar color filter (well, ok, if you're using a Foveon sensor, you don't have the Bayer filter)... these can be the same (eg, the Bayer microfilters also block IR) or not ("night mode" on consumer camcorders is usually achieved by rotating out the IR bandpass filter).
You could add IR sensitivity without any additional expense by altering the Bayer matrix to go RGBI (Red Green Blue IR), with the microfilters being IR blocking and IR passing, as needed. Software, then, would have to ignore the IR pixels, at least outside of "night mode". This would lower the image quality a bit, but hey, it's a consumer camcorder. The pattern might be altered in ways to minimize this, too. For example, Sony's "ClearVid" sensor doesn't use Dr. Bayer's original RGBG pattern, but rotates the sensor 45 degrees, and uses a pattern that's using something like 6x as many green pixels as red or blue. Drop a few IRs in there instead of a few of the greens, and you're be really hard pressed to tell the difference.
Of course, this scheme delivers only a fairly low resolution IR output. I'm sure they want the IR messages time multiplexed, but you'd still need a fairly large emitter to catch it on camera. And they'd have to be spaced well or synchronized, or they'd mess each other up.
The TDM data can obviously be itself detected by a single sensor -- this is how IR remotes work, and I used a slightly more sophisticated version of that once in a gaming robot design. But Apple's scheme is going to require some reasonable localization of the IR sources. After all, if you read the patent, only one of the functions is "no photos"... they also plan to use the IR becons to send information. For example, you're in a museum, you point your camera at an exhibit, and the IR messaging delivers some information (probably akin to a bar code) to let your phone deliver augmented reality information/links about the thing you're pointing at.
-Dave Haynie
This is one big reason that all modern cameras hook to PCs as plain old USB storage class devices, rather than "some custom thing" that you need a private drive for. Also helps eliminate the need for drivers on Windows, Linux, and MacOS (or complaints by those who don't get supported). And of course, even if your old camera uses the terrible old SmartMedia cards, you can still read those. But if you find that a common activity, you really do need a new camera. Digital cameras are great today, and they manufacturers are looking hard for new compelling features. Ten years ago, they pretty much sucked.
Cellphones are different -- they get replaced all the time. They are planned to be obsolescent almost exactly two years from date of purchase (sucks if you're on a Canadian three year contract, but that's pretty much the reality of the situation).
-Dave Haynie
Or, if you're using an Android phone, load a version of the camera app/OS/etc. that doesn't have the "decode IR" function. Oh, wait... won't be an issue for 20 years anyway, since Apple will own the technology until then. Apple's just terrible at establishing public standards (think "Firewire", which is the best they've managed to date), so they'll be the only users. And they'll sell it as an advantage to the iPhone/iPod, since the typical use will be getting messages about the thing you're photographing.
-Dave Haynie
Gates did no charity, either, until Melinda came along. And maybe he started thinking about his legacy -- with all that money, and all he's remembered for is Windows, Office, and the BSOD? Far cooler to say, wipe out Malaria. That kind of cash is the very definition of a superpower... hmmm. All this started about the time he saw "Spiderman", too....
-Dave Haynie
Uh,,, i see Infared and think why not just cover the IR sensor with Tape/some other thing that would block it from picking up signals??
Thats what i did growing up to stop the channel from being changed by my siblings...