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Company Designs "Big Brother Chip"
Taco Cowboy writes "Here comes a chip that can pinpoint you in-door and out, it can even tell others on which floor of a building you are located. It's the Broadcom 4752 chip. It takes signals from global navigation satellites, cell phone towers, and Wi-Fi hot spots, coupled with input from gyroscopes, accelerometers, step counters, and altimeters The company calls abilities like this 'ubiquitous navigation,' and the idea is that it will enable a new kind of e-commerce predicated on the fact that shopkeepers will know the moment you walk by their front door, or when you are looking at a particular product, and can offer you coupons at that instant."
When you say "coupons" I hear "pushy advertisements."
I have the hiccups.
Time for tinfoil overalls.
At least it will be a shiny future.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
My trusty OLD Nokia 6150 from 1998 to the rescue :P
you have the chip on you - otherwise, piss off
How long until these chips are mandatory for "our own safety"?
I have walk thru scanners that can be installed at the doorway to your retail establishment that, upon walking through, will determine how much money you have on you in cash and credit, and then will place a gold necklace with a dollar sign around your neck, with the thickest chains and largest jewelry placed upon visitors with the most money. What I DON'T do is track you around the store. That would be a violation of privacy.
The "one-stop-shopping" nature of the chip is chilling. Consider, Broadcom has seen enough of a market to warrant developing a sophisticated device, the stated purpose of which is to determine it's position and "phone home" with that information. Worse yet, it will also phone in all the personal details about you that it has access to, so that those "coupons" can be quickly crafted. If that's not scary enough, consider that also available to any given "shop keeper", is a list of all the other shops you've visited, and when. Still not bugged enough? Think about this technology in the hands of entities far more dangerous than merchants; law enforcement, for example.
seems like a power hog with all the radios in it also there are building where the cell phone signal is poor and GPS may not work in them as well.
Japanese mobile phones have had this for a while. Personal navigation apps that can guide you through underground stations and inside buildings using wifi and accelerometers when GPS is unavailable.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Was this funded by retailers or just another piss poor attempt to implement another good big brother idea. It never ceases to amaze me how many people get conned into this type of technology. Mind you if you are female and blonde; you will accept this with open arms and cannot resist a discount on those pair of new shoes.
It also reminds me of the old joke " Two Blondes walked in to a shop. You would have thought one of them would have seen it"
All cows eat grass!
Growing up in the 80s, living through the boom times of the 90s, and looking back today. What I used to think was was a path to freedom and salvation of the intellectual variety, I now see as our oppression. Slavery of a new type. Step by step we are sealing our own doom while at the same time handing over the keys to a new elite. The social consolidation is giving rise to the new aristocrats.
I really hope I'm wrong.
Life is not for the lazy.
wet a towel and wrap it round your head.
then get your ass to Mars.
My wife accidentally ran my new passport with its RFID tag through the washing machine. I still get through customs. The existence of the chips does not make them infallible.
Gently reply
Just lower your damn price!
for using my data communications processing service ?
ii have costs, electricity, device wear and tear, commercial reading services ?
you thought i was just giving you that data for free ? think again chump
This is an improved GPS chip, allowing a phone to pinpoint its location even when GPS is spotty.
Shopkeepers won't get the data, even if the phone companies would be allowed to sell location data cause there is no ROI: not enough people will have such a chip to even make it worthwhile. Neither do they need data that detailed. As some other poster already wrote: they'd rather know how much money the customer has, not where he is right now. Both, the have not and the billionaire can watch the same Mercedes 600SL or Smart car with their phone in their pocket. Doesn't tell the shopowner who can actually afford the luxury car.
What can happen is that the government subpoenas the telco location data for a subscribe just like they do now and that the better accuracy helps them to pinpoint the location of the subscribe better. This can be used for "OMG evil gubmint!" or it can be used, probably a lot less of course, for finding a missing person e.g. inside an avalanche.
Of course without deliberately wrong sensationalism like this, the pagehits aren't coming.
Why would i want this chip? And who would put in their products? Will it not make the products less appealing?
They're saying it would be great for merchants to know where you are but I'd actually have to carry it and keep it charged for it to work. So it has to offer me a benefit and instant coupons or getting bombarded by ads isn't a good selling point.
A better application for this would be urban GPS. A big problem with current GPS is that it doesn't work in dense urban cities. Try to use GPS in New York... it's almost useless. First off, you're underground half the time. Second, even when you're above ground you tend to be amongst big buildings that obscure the sky. However, I get great cellphone reception pretty much anywhere in New York and wifi hotspots are pretty ubiquitous even if they're mostly locked. If your mobile navigation could make use of other static radio signals for navigation then GPS would work deep within the urban jungle. And THAT is valuable.
The pitch of "oh merchants can predict your location" is asinine. if you wanted to sell the tracking feature then I suppose this would work for tracking boxes. After all, existing tracking technology that relies on GPS won't work in warehouses, underground, or even inside of industrial shipping containers. But something that could triangulate cell towers should work just about damn near anywhere there is "civilization"...
All and all, a neat little chip and I wish it well. Whoever is coming up with the applications for it needs to be smacked around a little with a frozen trout.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
All that jazz just to give you coupons? Rube Goldberg lives on.
We have 2012. Only retards leave their house to do shopping.
The whole idea of ...is like.. the past, dude..
1) taking a shower
2) getting dressed
3) putting shoes on
4) driving a bike, car, tram
5) get into a shop
6) chose from the little they have to offer
7) standing in line
8) paying for the products you chose
9) leaving shop
10) getting home
11) shit doesn't work
12) back to 4)..
education is expensive... so we better tag stupid people with chips.. because we want to know where they are and what they are doing...
http://obex.parallax.com/objects/713/ Here it is, open source and open design, to boot.
I don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy walking down the street. I have it in my home, or another person's home if I trust that person. Expecting that stores and service providers will give me this same courtesy is foolishness. It also seems that if I turn off my cell phone and laptop, I'll be invisible to this magic chip as well. Only the shadow knows.
The Comercial world already invades our privacy and lives enough as it is. insurance companies track your driving, and lets not forget the government stormtroopers that will track you down anytime they don't like you talking about a specific subject.
And for all of those that think "You have nothing to hide if your not doing anything wrong", remember the Jews said the same thing in Nazi Germany and look where they ended up.
Time to take extreme measures and block all unauthorized communications such as your cell phone (and its hidden apps), and your credit cards, and ID, your car, and anything else you can think of. You will need to test your shielding also.
seems like a power hog with all the radios in it also there are building where the cell phone signal is poor and GPS may not work in them as well.
Yes, but it's also got gyroscopes, accelerometers, step counters, and altimeters -- though I suppose you could be dancing a jig in a hyperbaric chamber with high vibration somewhere in that building with poor mobile and GPS signals?
Why malls? The hardware seems to be great! The chip might provide better navigation, it has more input sources which any sane implementation can turn into higher accuracy, with better availability & faster response times.
It just needs an on/off switch for the beacon or a broadcast-nothing mode to address privacy concerns.
Radio receivers? I thought they in themselves were cheap (power wise). I thought it was the transmitters that were power hungry, I think receivers will be fine.
Never happened. True story.
Unless they're implanting this fucking chip in you, the big brother implication of this chip is pretty much bullshit.
It has one damn good application - reliable navigation, indoors and out. Suppose you've just arrived in Montreal and don't know a thing about the place, but you want to hit up Schwartz's for the sandwich and a pickle that everyone's told you to try. Now your phone can direct you to the nearest subway station, direct you to the correct platform so you don't take the train in the wrong direction, tell you when to get off the train, transfer you to a bus, and drop you off for some kosher deliciousness without having to ask anyone for directions. (Which in Montreal, will either get you told off in French, or you'll end up getting directed to the "club with the best girls" instead of where you want to go..)
I could see this working as it does in some films, but eventually, just like with anything else, the "Ooh shiny!" factor wears off, and people will tune them (ads, discount offers, etc) out the same way we do regular ads, rough language on TV (compared to what was allowed a few decades ago in the US), and so on. Not that it won't have an effect at all, but our passive filters will adapt.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Wrong. Receiving costs about as much as transmitting (power wise).
OK, so I've got a device in my pocket - a cellphone, call it a tablet, whatever - and as I walk through the mall it vibrates with special offers from each retailer I pass in front of - how long do I leave this "feature" enabled? Two, three stores? The fact that the device is "smart" and will deduce from my facebook status of "single" and that I'm male that I'm not interested in offers from Yankee Candle, Bed, Bath and Beyond or Victoria's Secret doesn't really help much...
It will be the most disabled "feature" on personal devices, and will sink any product where the device is subsidised by the alerts.
I see a great market in the "I've fallen and I can't get up" device market - concerned children will buy them for their elderly parents who are still living independently, and let's not forget the "where's my kid" market segment, but this location-based direct marketing is a dumb idea. period.
Ken
Samsung Galaxy II does the GPS / Wi-Fi geolocation bit. Google put together a list of all the WiFi hotspots in the world and uses that to augment GPS. Makes me wonder whether these phones are calling home with all the WiFi zones they have detected.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
While this all sounds good and true. The article takes BC's statement of WiFi integration allowed as WiFi integration provided. This is just a multi-constellation GNSS chip. It MAY have an engine to make use of WiFi / Cell tower integrated to the chip, but it doesn't have the DB, so, in short, already been done elsewhere (can anyone say iPhone?).
What this does do is make it less power consuming than most other chips, so that is nice... but aside from that... PR speak.
Sweet! I am so getting into the tinfoil overall business. Just think of all the people who would care about this very issue! Oh wait...
If I could mod you up past 5/funny, I would. Thanks for making us laugh.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. -- Willam Blake
Your 6150 can't provide the FCC-mandated support for 911 geolocation so any US carrier detecting it in their network will ban its IMEI to avoid being fined by the FCC.
Funny how they "can't" ban stolen phones to protect their customers but they can do it to protect their own pocketbook...
LOL -> http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2773441&cid=39617909 hahahahahahaha
How does this benefit the end user?
Of course you won't give your geolocation information away for free. You will continue to trade it for the services provided by your phone's Google Navigation app like you do today.
You *did* read the google nav app's current terms of service that say you agree to give your geolocation data to Google even when your phobe's GPS is disabled, right??
Get ready for the "bite my shiny tinfoil ass" Futurama jokes.
And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
I thought, I thought, I think I'm wrong :).
I promise to never make this mistake again.
Hmmm, seems my thoughts and reality are, well, different :)... I've always believed (I don't know why) that transmitting cost orders of magnitude more energy than receiving radio waves.. I'm sure this is a common misconception, anyone care to explain why it's not true?
Never happened. True story.
Yeah, there's no way this can be used for ill.
I'd rather them give me an app that scans barcodes and gives me the best deal / price. That way I can also receive their competitors coupons.
Oh wait, that exists.
No, I do NOT want EXTRA ways to be BOMBARDED EVERYWHERE I GO WITH UR CHITTY OVERPRICED MERCHANDISE.
It has nothing to do with coupons to save you money, either. If they could be promised a way to advertise fake low prices to you instantly then they would raise the prices and the 'coupon' price would be regular price. They just want a new excuse to throw ads in your face nonstop about their products.
I've worked in stores that put things 'on sale' and their price actually goes up. It also has a false original price too. Maybe when it was brand new it was that prices months ago but it certainly wasn't before the sale.
Why is it that everything has to be pitched as a new and better way to do advertising? Is it just because marketers have no imagination and all want to be the next Google, or is it that marketing has gotten so out of control that it wags the dog now? Maybe all the ad supported stuff on the Internet has allowed salesmen to finally take over the world.
Nifty but are we talking 10 meter accuracy? 10 meters could mean the difference between Hot Dog on a Stick and Sbarro.
This sounds wrong...so take AM/FM radio...let's say I have some multi-megawatt station. All my listeners need multi-megawatt pocket radios to listen?
Or are you high?
and I really want one of these to mount to a name tag....
and I am not the only one with these desires.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
IQ is an average, not a median.
therefore half the population is not necessarily under 100,
their aggregate score on the other hand........
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Yeah. They are going to spend a fortune to give everyone a percentage point or two off an item.
Wrong. They are going to continue to spend piss-pots full of your money (and give you back 3% of the 100% of your money that they took, in order to fool you into thinking you got a deal (people are easily fooled), when in fact your were reamed by them.
Then they will take the 90% of the balance of your excess money to profits, to give the owners/shareholders (you know, the real customers) more profit and the other 10% of your money (remember, it is you who pays the extra costs - they take profit) and use it to lure other like-minded suckers with alleged "deals" (as in: "hey kid, have some free crack").
It's just one of hundreds of tricks up their devious sleeves.
Why not save the money and JUST LOWER THE PRICE OF THE ITEM.
Because its a mind-game that has fuck-all to do with giving the money supplier (remember: that's YOU) a break.
Game-playing is such a superior way to fool people into letting them be screwed. Businesses give it to you. And they always get their rewards out of you, their "sugar-daddy"(/ies).
But they always give it to you "up the ass" and leave you broke, busted and feeling like you've been reamed in the end (LOL - an inadvertent "double-entendre").
It's called "capitalism".
Like the dimwit said "keep shoppin', folks".
And pick up some Prep-H while you're out spendin' up a storm.
So... THAT explains why folks are always depicted wearing shiny jumpsuits in those old sci-fi shows!!! Downright prophetic.
The Digital Sorceress
Serious question: Why?
Is it some sort of Machiavellian thing? Is there an actual reason for it?
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
If it were just AM it would be different. Today's radio protocols require keeping a lot of oscillations going and a lot of math/analog processing to properly discard noise. (Both sides need crypto math, but the receiver side has to deal with actually filtering the coherent signal out of the babble, while the transmitter at worst just needs to find the right MIMO beamforming, do a simple encode, and pump it through the air.)
The majority of access points use far more of the power budget for the software/OS than they do driving the antenna.
Someone had to do it.
and I really want one of these to mount to a name tag....
and I am not the only one with these desires.
Starfleet badge.
..... spam works! I know, I know, but it always has and it always will.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It's not actually a big brother chip unless it reads your thoughts too.
since there won't be any brick and mortar stores left by the time they get it working.
to the type of personally directed public advertising seen in Minority Report, but at least they aren't using eye scans to do it. Privacy is gone. Embrace the technology and use it to your advantage. No one is forcing you to buy anything at gunpoint. You still have the last word over your wallet when it comes to consumer product purchases.
... which tells me that you don't understand how a loss leader works. The idea is that coupons identify products that will be sold with little or no profit, and often even at a loss but are used to get customers in the store where they will inevitably purchase other items, as well as making impulse purchases. If store A has a product for $10.00 and store B has a coupon for the same product at $9.00 you would hopefully buy the item from store B rather than concluding that $10.00 is the better deal because no coupon is involved. Of course, YMMV ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
As I posted only weeks ago, this means that even if you turn off your phone, or the GPS tracking, or even walk under a radio shield of some kind, the phone will extrapolate where you are based on your last verified map-pin by using solid state gyroscope, clock, and 3-axis accelerometer. The only need for radio will be to correct inevitable errors.
Turning off the bloody phone, or "turning off the GPS", or putting it in a steel box, or perhaps even removing the user-accessible battery (there'll be a backup, guaranteed) won't stop it from tracking you. Sales my tired soul, this is DHS tracking.
Have the carriers actually implemented e911? Last I heard anything they had obtained an indefinite waiver for it, since they all claimed it was too expensive to implement and wouldn't work anyway.
This chip is a terrorist wet dream. Imagine blowing a package up exactly were you want it inside the building without any remote control or a line of sight. Priceless!
Time for tinfoil overalls.
At least it will be a shiny future.
Great!!! I can finally dress my astronaut suit without looking awkward in the streets. I'm looking forward for that future.
Minority Report, here we come!
But congrats to you for finding a fourth engine of tracking that I hadn't yet fully realized - sales. So then all that info is around "to make your shopping experience better". Yet you insightfully put the quotes around "shop keeper" because besides the actual shop keepers, there's tons of room for any two bit mall kiosk operator (I'm not even counting the total fakers) to apply for that info, then they have less obligation to keep up a good name than the big name shops. Then of course are the really sleazy operators, who fake the shop part entirely and social-engineer their way into the data for black hat reasons.
And yes, then that info will be cross sold to the .gov crowd to "help keep us safer from terrorists".
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As much as I dislike the marketing application being discussed for this chip, there are other things it would be great for. As a firefighter, I'd love to have one of these integrated into my gear. Currently if a firefighter goes down and isn't moving, their PASS alarm will sound, so that other firefighters within hearing distance can find them. But what if you fall through a floor in a burning building and get separated from your crew? Wouldn't it be great to automatically transmit to the crews outside not only the fact that you need help, but precisely where that help should be sent? The same could be said for police officers, soldiers, or any other high-risk workers who might suddenly find themselves in need of backup.
Not a problem. They "watched" you walk up to the hyperbaric chamber, so that's not going to help you. "They" aren't stupid, and will have a lot of AI and their own personal experience to figure out why the readings went off into Narnia for a few minutes. In a decade or two, trying to mess with the tracker will be a felony, anyway, if people become too annoyingly successful at beating it. (plasma separator centrifuge would be funny, or a model rocket, or a quad copter, or tying it to a wild wolf... so many options).
So if you ever find the phone of a politician (or another worker for the state security organs) that is equipped with this chip, be sure to leave it in the nearest adult book store.
As someone who has recently implemented a 911 center I can tell you that you're close but mistaken. The carriers have most definitely implemented e911 ... It is most 911 centers that have yet to implement support for e911.
There wasnt a mandate so there just wasn't funding to stand up e911 support at the 911 centers. Not even new ones in major metropolitan areas
From the article, as well as from the preliminary data sheets, this is effectively a better GPS chip, including "sideband" data like GSM towers, known Wifi locations, acceleration data and all that stuff. That's all.
So why do some low-level eggheads immediately cry "wolf" and imagine the worst possible abuse for it?
If you're looking from the ad pov, they'll push ads for anything in 2 miles reach, so it's useless anyway...
OTOH, i should start selling gyroscopic, oil-damped tin foil phone covers... Get them while they're still legal!!!!1!! ;-)
Or, tin-foil-covered rubber ball covers - if you want to mislead THEM, just throw it down a stair and watch it bounce...
Seriously - what's the point?
It is funny though. as they can already pinpoint any cellphone to an accuracy of less than 100m with the technology available from the beginning of cellphones.
And they can do so as soon as it is switched on, they can/and do get the information as soon as you hit dial..
Your tin foil hats will protect you no more! Mwahahahaha!
Tin foil is irrelevant. What is relevant, is:
predicated on the fact that shopkeepers will know the moment you walk by their front door, or when you are looking at a particular product,
Maybe shopkeepers have a higher chance of me buying something if they leave me the fuck alone, and not swarm me like flies in shit "the moment I walk by their front door".
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
staff tracking? like around an amusement park, cruise ship, movie theater or a motel?
if I can see staff members aren't sweeping out theater 5 each night after the middle show but hanging out tiwht the cute blonde in the office? yea.. that's valuable with this kind of tracking...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I guess that makes sense, though I would think video cameras (which are already ubitquitous) would perform the same function, and already be in place.
Also, for some reason, I initially pictured you working at EA or Sony.
Support the EFF and Creative Commons. The war is coming, and they're supporting you...
That i will do my best to avoid. Anytime i get unwelcome ads, i refuse to do business with those companies again and take my money to their competition.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wrong! It takes several minutes for super computers to do the super advanced triangulation math and sound affects associated with it. And if they hang up before the calculations are done the data is lost forever!
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
"We need a program of psychosurgery and political control of our society. The purpose is physical control of the mind. Everyone who deviates from the given norm can be surgically mutilated.
The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective.
Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electrically control the brain. Some day armies and generals will be controlled by electrical stimulation of the brain."
Dr. Jose Delgado
Director of Neuropsychiatry
Yale University Medical School
Congressional Record No. 26, Vol. 118, February 24, 1974