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Man Physically Assaulted At McDonald's For Wearing Digital Eye Glasses
RockoW writes "Steve Mann, a long-time researcher of computer vision systems, (i.e. Augmented reality, Digital Eyeglass) had an incident at a McDonald's in Paris, France. He was assaulted by three men during his visit to get food with his family. They had a problem with his digital eye glasses and tried to take them off his head. 'The eyeglass is permanently attached and does not come off my skull without special tools.' The men also tore up Mann's documentation and a letter from his doctor explaining the device's use. Fortunately, the rough treatment of the device caused it to keep recent images in its memory, instead of quickly overwriting them, so Dr. Mann has pictures of the men who assaulted him."
It's important to clarify (as I had to RTFA to realise this), that he claims he was assaulted by 3 employees of McDonalds
This wasn't a random assault by other customers at some shady McDonalds at 3AM, nor was it an assault by a typical skinhead -- from the photos the alleged perpetrators were McDonalds Management.
He's not the first person to claim McDonalds staff in France assault their customers.
Man travels to France. Chooses to eat at McDonald's. Seriously. Then COMPLAINS he gets beaten up!
This is how it starts. The first blows in the war between Augmented Humans and the Naturals.
Keep humanity free from machines!
Be pure, be vigilant, behave!
yes, this is probably fake, why didnt he went to the police and press charge? Why didnt he called the police and identified those persons? bullshit, this is
From the article:
I also contacted the Embassy, Consulate, Police, etc., without much luck.
Him being a foreigner, I'm frankly not too surprised that the police were not helpful.
He tried to order a Quarter Pounder with cheese and refused to call it a Royale with cheese.
Clearly it was his own fault...
Can't believe some of the comments so far. This guy has been strapping computers to his body for 34 years, by his own count. He's been on slashdot many times in the past, and had run-ins with airport security a couple of times before:
http://it.slashdot.org/story/02/03/14/2051228/airport-security-vs-cyborg-steve-mann
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/01/10/05/2237200/a-computer-display-in-ordinary-sunglasses
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/00/08/08/1256229/more-on-the-linux-wrist-watch
So it's very unlikely to be a fake. According to the article, he's contacted the police and Mcdonalds' with out any response. Based on his past experience with these types of situations, I think he knows exactly what he is doing in seeking some publicity.
The conclusion from the reddit thread on this incident was that the attackers were McDonalds employees, and were reacting against community oposition to a McDonalds in that location. Apparently there are issues with local people using cameras to collect evidence and the McDonalds have a hair trigger response to that activity.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Actually the fucking French can be quite fun, in particular the females. It's the non-fucking French that you want to stay away from.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
He is the guy who INVENTED wearable computing and all the technology behind Project Glass.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Wow. Useful information. I was quite curious as to what the motivation might have been behind the behavior and I was less concerned about "who" or what "types" of who did the assault and property damage.
And now I see what was behind it. These guys were ALL seemingly of middle-eastern origins but that's NOT the issue. I think the more important issue was that they were defending something. I find it quite likely that these men had some stake in the success of their business and felt they were defending it in some way. Ethnicity or origins are not quite relevant to the story unless you are interested in painting a picture suggesting that "X people are violent" which is true... X people are violent... hell *I* am violent... or I have been until I learned to chill a bit more. The issue is what motivates violence.
And the motivation becomes more clear. They saw this guy as an assault on their unofficial camera ban and wanted the camera removed. Let's not go into the stpudity of trying to conceal truth as revealed by photons bouncing off of objects.
If someone physically is present in Paris and still goes to McDonalds to get his meal, then he deservers to be assaulted :)
If it is true that Arabs or blacks are responsible for most of the violence in Paris (I do not know if it is true) than it is a fact. If it is a fact, it is not a racism to mention it.
Racist would hate all Arabs or black.
Racist would never approve his child marrying an Arab or black.
But free man can talk about facts without being racist.
Personally, I like Arabs and their culture and as far as I know, they have nothing to do with the incident.
McDonald's France is mostly a branding entity, and that the restaurants themselves are franchised. Most of the restaurants are small limited-liability, self-owned enterprises that lease out the brand, inner organization + recipes, and general appearance. They do have a deep, continued relationship with the brand itself, through the regular auditing, the training of employees and the management courses provided along with the branding. The branding entity does own some corporate restaurants, and apparently the Champs Elysées venue is among them, so this contact information may not be useless in this particular case.
As a side-note, a simple web search turned out this french newspaper article about the director of this particular restaurant, Khader Aissani, who happens to look closely like the "perpetrator 1" identified in the original article's photos.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
And based on my past experience, as a french citizen, of being assaulted and turning to the Police for help, I find his claims of getting no useful response completely realistic and plausible.
However, once this incident becomes more widely known in french-language blogs and media, it'll quickly attract a lot of attention and will probably elicit an official (outraged) reaction of McDonald's France, and maybe cause a few interviews of politicians trying to look like they're concerned. That's how it works here.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Où sont mes points de modération quand j'en ai besoin ?
There is actually a traditional french solution to this problem : Burn down McDonalds.
I'm disappointed that no McDonalds were burned while I lived in Paris. Where is their sense of patriotism?
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
There is a solution that didn't quite make it out of beta, but seems to be the answer.
Let's give France back to Germany and apologize for the Normandy Beach misunderstanding.
And it's on: famous french blogger Maitre Eolas relayed the news much earlier this morning (does the guy even sleep ?), which then was picked up by L'Express (national newspaper) half an hour ago. It will be all over french social networks for the next couple days. Apparently the restaurant is not owned by McDonald's, it is a franchise owned by the limited-liability society Elyrest.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
Based on the pictures kindly provided in TFA, they were all boring-looking caucasians in generic 'knowledge worker' garb(complete with outward-facing photo-ID badge on belt in the case of the mental giant who decided to assault the guy with the camera attached to his head while wearing photo ID...)
While I recognize the (statistically, perhaps, er, 'tentitatively validated') American reflex to assume that 'assaulted' and 'mcdonalds' in the same sentence signals a wacky story about the violence of the degenerate classes, it appears that the French golden arches crowd is slightly different...
It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here.
Only if you've augmented your vision
Unfortunately they'd retaliate by giving America back to England and apologizing for the whole revolution misunderstanding.
And believe me, nobody wants an English-inspired McDonalds.
Why do people say "minorities" instead of "non-white" or "darker-skinned people"? In some areas, these people are not "minorities" and yet are still referred to as such.
I wish people would get over politics and political correctness to get to the real meaning. How many times will "mentally retarded" be redefined before people give up with the name changing? How many name changes for "negro" will we have to suffer before people just let the thing being labeled define itself? (What I mean about mentally retarded is that we don't "say that" now... it's special, challenged and even gifted. Their classes were "special education" and "life skills" and all that. And about negro? "Nigger" is more of a reflection on the lack of education of the user than the people labelled. But "colored people"? As in NAACP? Or the original negro as in UNCF (United Negro College Fund)? And "African-American"? Wholly crap! They aren't African! They are just American because they were born here *and* usually not %100 black!)
Sorry... I just don't think it's enough to say "why can't we all just get along?"
The underlying question is why, for the love of all that is good in this world, would you eat at a McDonald's in France?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
It was his own mistake to take the Vision Enhancement as his first augmentation. Should have chosen Microfibral Muscle or at least Speed Enhancement first.
So what?
"We do not want you to film our business, employees, or customers. Since you say you cannot stop, you have to leave now or we will have the police escort you out."
There was absolutely no need to physically touch him to do this. I cannot imagine Mann would refuse to leave if they had made those objections known.
I don't care what the prior history is unless it includes Mann literally making threats of physical violence against them if they didn't serve him his Royale avec frommage.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
They confine THEMSELVES! It is exactly the same here in Germany. The Muslim popular stays in their own areas. They choose not to integrate.
I spent a few weeks working in Japan. I picked up a newsletter for British expats, which included an article about where to get the best British-style roast dinner in Tokyo. One weekend I went to visit a British friend who'd been living in Tokyo for a few years, and I mentioned that article to him. "I can't imagine why you'd come to Japan, where there's all this amazing Japanese food, and then go to these lengths to get a British meal, and spend time with British people"
And he said "well, you know, after the first couple of months, you just want a taste of home, and to hang out with people who speak your language and understand your cultural reference points."
And, put like that, I understood what he meant.
Ghettos come about for (at least) two reasons:
- People want to be near people who share their culture
- People live where they can afford to live
I do believe integration should be encouraged - but in a slow and steady manner. Making sure that schools all contain a natural ethnic mixture would be a good start.
only an American could be so racist.
Colonial Africa would beg to differ.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Huh, remind me to never visit the UK. No wonder muggings happen so much there. Here in the US we carry handguns. If you mug somebody, you get shot in self defense.
As a European I'm going to have to show a bit of prejudice here and say that you really shouldn't encourage the Germans. It's still a running joke around here that any day now all those German tourists that show up every summer are going to pull out machine guns and start annexing stuff again.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Also based on my experience as a French citizen, I want to share that France is deeply culturally conservative. It is extremely frowned upon to deviate from the norm. To give you an idea, I once wore, for fun, a Fedora at my high-school in Paris. I had rocks thrown at me for that.
\u262D = \u5350
Why would they need machine guns? The power of their economy and stranglehold on the Euro seems to be doing the trick this time around.
Never start vast projects with half-vast ideas.