Google Glass: What's With All the Hate?

An anonymous reader writes "Techcrunch takes a look at why so many people seem to make fun of Google Glass. From the article: 'Google Glass isn't even on sale yet and there is already a noticeable backlash against Google's first experiment in wearable computing. It's odd to see a product that was greeted with so much hype a year ago endure the love-hate cycle so quickly – even though there are only a few thousand units in the wild. Sure, we've done our share to popularize "glasshole" as a way to describe its users, but the backlash seems to go beyond the usual insidery tech circles.'"

Comments

Something It Isn't

[Jane Q. Public]

Maybe because it isn't so much "wearable computing" as it is "wearable Google-centric media player"???

Re:Something It Isn't

[Jane Q. Public]

s/media player/media device

Re:Something It Isn't

[peragrin]

More along the lines of wearable google centric real time yelp.

I don't like google glass of one reason. I hate advertisers why would I want ads transmitted to me just because I walked by a store?

Oh that isn't a feature of glass yet? just wait it will come right along with the face recognition.

Glass doesn't solve much. Most people don't need a heads up display. It will be heavily dependent on your limited mobile bandwidth. At least when people hold up their cell phone you can tell when they are recording you. With Google glass you won't be able to tell at a glance.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Architect_sasyr]

I've spent the last 8 months wearing a pair of sunglasses that contain a camera in the bridge, mostly because I see lots of stupid drivers on the road, but also because google glass has been coming along. I'm careful to remove the SD card fairly regularly, but in that 8 months only 3 people have questioned my very chunky glasses with half cm buttons on the left side.

People don't care about privacy, not until it's the "creepy" guy staring at them instead of the average guy.

Re:Something It Isn't

[AmiMoJo]

Media playback seems to be one of the least demonstrated functions. The mains ones are the camera and notifications. I think it's the camera that has people most upset because when someone wearing Glass looks at you they are pointing it right in your face and you have no way of knowing if it is turned on and streaming live over the internet to other people or being recorded.

I can see Glass being massive for porn and voyeurism. We had better get the etiquette of removing it before entering the locker room sorted out pretty quickly. Are people going to take it off when entering the men's lavatory too?

Re:Something It Isn't

[peragrin]

I would be willing to bet that if you started telling people you were recording them that you would quickly find your self in the creepy category. Depending on the crowd and location it wouldn't surprise me to find out if you get the crap beaten out of you too.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. It's a wearable Google-centric CAMERA. Even bevore they released it, there is allready software for face-recognition in the cloud. This IS to cause problems, not everyone want's their face in a book, let alone in google face-recognition database.

Re:Something It Isn't

[AmiMoJo]

So when do you stop recording? In public toilets? If you are in earshot of a private conversation in a restaurant?

Use of secret cameras in public places, especially places where people expect some privacy, is illegal in many places. You need to be careful.

Re:Something It Isn't

[asmkm22]

I'm sure people would care more about your creepy glasses if they new what they were. Most people aren't really going to equate chunky glasses with hidden cameras, so of course no one seemed to have minded yours.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem.

It's not that Glass looks weird.

It's the idea that everyone and everything may soon be recorded, tagged with facial recognition data, stamped with GPS data, and floated off to the internet forever.

Wearable computing may have some exciting uses, but it ultimately portends the end of most of what privacy remains from government and others.

That is what people are reacting against.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a motel, and I have hidden cameras in every room. I've been doing this for three years, and not once has anyone complained. This whole privacy issue is way overblown; obviously people just don't care.

Re:Something It Isn't

[tripleevenfall]

Exactly.

When you live under a government that will hack reporters' computers and secretly seize their phone records simply for doing their jobs, when they willingly and admittedly use government arms to persecute people who have qualms about their agenda - why wouldn't we believe that Glass could turn anyone into their watchful, ground based drones?

You don't think the DOJ, the executive branch, or anyone else in government would not have the capability or would stop short of hacking these internet-connected devices?

Why would we place more faith in those who prove themselves to be less trustworthy the more power we give them?

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

So recording someone is bad, but beating the crap out of someone is socially acceptable? Do you see tourists with cameras getting punched in the face often?

Seems to me a case of assault like you describe should be videoed.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Razgorov Prikazka]

We had better get the etiquette of removing it before entering the locker room sorted out pretty quickly. Are people going to take it off when entering the men's lavatory too?

They are probably not taking it off. And if I am in the lavatory I dont mind you coming in. I dont mind anyone coming in. Its a lavatroy for crying out loud! However, I would mind if one came in with the power to transmit it to the rest of the world and any NEO with a broadband connection, for it will stay there FOREVER! The web has no issues with Alsheimer disease, it doesn't forget anything when it gets older. So, that is where I draw the line.

I might have a crack in my crystal sphere, but I predict you this: The same people that are going to be glassholes will be the same people who now say:
  - I don't need alcohol to have a good time...
  - I have no secrets to anyone, privacy is for creeps...
  - If you hate my googleglasses so much, you probably have something to hide! Are you a muzzy / nazi / pedo / terrorist / socialist???
  - My kids never have bruises...
  - "...and then I came home and kissed my wife goodnight" at the end of each story they tell.

So, you might want to consider the following:
  - stop being around boring people
  - Only be around the ones that are bro enough to sniff coke from a whore together with you. Even if she is 60 and missing a leg. And an arm.
  - Punch the suckers in the face till your hand starts to hurt, who are about to sniff coke from a 60 years old Thai whore with one arm and one leg, together with you while having the glasses on. They are bro's, but with a learning disability. They have to learn... You are the teacher!

Or at least that is my plan!

Re:Something It Isn't

[AmiMoJo]

A public toilet is a public place. You have an expectation of privacy in there. Ditto the locker room at the gym.

Re:Something It Isn't

[crutchy]

or maybe people don't like the idea of being a walking advertising billboard for google... oh hang on morons have been doing that with their clothing for years... yeah i dunno it doesn't make much sense... oh hang on... maybe people are starting to make sense... mmmm...... naah

Re: Something It Isn't

[arth1]

So recording someone is bad, but beating the crap out of someone is socially acceptable? Do you see tourists with cameras getting punched in the face often?

It's not having the camera that's a problem, it's taking picture of people without their permission or knowledge.
In many Western countries, a tourist who took pictures of people against their wishes or knowledge would be breaking the law, and would get off easy if a policeman accidentally dropped and stepped on the camera instead of making an arrest.
Take a picture of someone's child or wife with a hidden camera, and a punch to the face would be the least you could expect.
This is one of many reasons why American tourists are so despised - they seldom read up on and follow the rules of the society they visit, and do things like taking pictures of people without asking.
Did you wonder why Japanese cameras and cell phones have a loud clicking "camera" sound? Because of the expectation of privacy, and the right to know when you're being taken a picture of.

Yes, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in public places. Like the pissoir - it's public, but that doesn't mean you can hang over the wall and take pictures of John Thomases. Or rigging up a camera to take a picture of everyone who enters a crossdressing bar. That might float in parts of the US, but hardly anywhere else.
In general, you ask for and obtain permission before taking any picture that can identify someone. Google Glass violates this.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

Uh, no. A gym is a privately owned establishment. It is not public unless it is a taxpayer-funded gym owned by the governemtn. A bathroom is inside of a privately-owned establishment. The exception would be a public building like a courthouse. No clue what the law is there, but I'm thinking, since people get arrested for cameras in bathrooms, and this is easily googleable, that there are laws against that. Specific laws for specific situations.

Anyway, you need to understand what words mean before you try to use them. "Public" in the context of "public toilet" is not the same as "public" in the context of the law. People use it to mean "toilet not in my house". It's not public. Taco Bell is a private establishment. The toilet in taco bell is privately owned by Taco Bell. The street in front of my house is public. The courthouse is public. The town square is public. Golds Gym is not. A private establishment open to the public is still private. Basic concepts here. You need to do some serious catch-up homework.

Re:Something It Isn't

[skegg]

I agree, the general public isn't as paranoid about privacy as many are here on Slashdot:
I've spent the last 8 months filming up women's skirts using a secret, hidden camera built into my shoe. Not one woman has complained yet.

I find people don't care about privacy, not until it's the "creepy" guy staring at them instead of the average guy filming them without their knowledge.

Re:Something It Isn't

[war4peace]

A public toilet IS indeed a public place. A gym locker room isn't, as long as it belongs to a private entity.
A private company can take CCTV footage wherever they want on their premises as long as they have visible warnings that that's happening. Also, a private company can ban certain electronic devices or behaviors on their premises (think "no smoking" or "no video capture").
There are quite a few toilets, elevators, churches running 24/7 CCTV. They're indeed not placed for full frontal view of your wiener while you take a piss, but that's outside the scope of the conversation. As a matter of fact, it's difficult to even find a good restaurant or any store with no CCTV.

All those are good candidates for uploading footage on the Internet (LiveLeak thrives on such occurrences, as a matter of fact). But you're bothered by Google Glasses. Seriously? Come on...

Re: Something It Isn't

[Pubstar]

Actually the clicking sound for cameras on cellphones where put there to try to stop people from taking up skirt photos of women on the subway.

Re: Something It Isn't

[arth1]

In other words, taking pictures of people in public without their knowledge.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Dr Max]

and while we are at it, it's not even a very good implementation. Why a big un-hindged metal bar with a little pathetic screen in the corner? go back to the drawing board Google, this is pathetic (i could have bought that, or even made it my self 5-10 years ago).

Re:Something It Isn't

[Pubstar]

Damn it. I already posted in here and can't mod you up for that post, so this reply is going to have to do.

Re: Something It Isn't

[funkylovemonkey]

Except, no, that isn't the case, at least not in the United States. Neither is it in the case in Canada nor the United Kingdom. You have no expectation of privacy when you're in public, and unless someone tries to resell the image as part of stock photography or something you cannot stop them. You do have an expectation of privacy in a restroom, but no court is going to say you have an expectation of privacy walking in a park. And if a policeman did take my camera and destroy it, I would have action against that police officer. That is absolutely not legal and neither does a police officer have any right to make you stop taking pictures in public. There are exceptions, like military bases, federal buildings, or many private owned areas (like a football stadium), but for the most part you can take as many pictures of whoever you want in public areas and it does not violate the law.

Re:Something It Isn't

[JJP]

you mean /smedia player/spying device

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

So you're saying people would "understand" the assault, like when a drug dealer caps someone who scratches his ride? So long as you don't mean "fair enough, he had it coming". Because to me at least, incidental video capture, creepy stalking, and physical assault are all widely separated on the scales of acceptability.

Re:Something It Isn't

[aamcf]

This is exactly why there is backlash against things like Google Glass. Just because there is no law against it doesn't mean that it is a socially acceptable thing to do.

Re:Something It Isn't

[DJRumpy]

The difference here is that it isn't readily obvious if a person is being recorded. it adds a whole new range of 'creepy' to this gear. If you see someone holding a phone, they typically hold it in an almost horizontal fashion as they look down to navigate or browse. If you find someone holding a phone in front of them in a vertical fashion, it would be immediately obvious that they are recording or taking a photo. Glasses turns on the display, which could easily just be someone browsing, or doing any number of other activities. It's the fact that these could become mainstream, and could easily cloak that people are taking photos or videos with their target being unaware of what's going on. Only a fool states that only those doing something illegal have nothing to hide. EVERYONE has something to hide, be that a nasty habit of picking your nose, buying RID at the pharmacy, throwing Chicks with Dicks out in your trash, staring at your brothers wife's ass at the family reunion and having it uploaded afterwards, picking up HIV drugs at the pharmacy, etc. All of these things are potentially in the public view, but they are typically not readily available to be recorded an uploaded to youtube at the whim of a total stranger looking for 'likes' or a few laughs.

People have a certain expectation of privacy even in public, where a potentially live camera removes all doubt, and it can be uploaded to the net, which NEVER forgets.

Is it really that hard to understand why there is so much hate? Public surveillance is totally different in that the common public doesn't typically access it, and it's typically not available to upload on a whim to the net where it could potentially live forever.

Re:Something It Isn't

[deanklear]

When a private corporation gives in to all government demands, that's not a non-sequitor. At this point it's an accepted reality that the USG has positioned itself to access any private corporation's data on any private citizen without even applying for a warrant.

As internet accessible recording devices become more and more prevalent, there will be a literal panopticon of information available, and do you think government's won't attempt to exploit that?

Getting into the scale of things, right now I could conceivably still live without the internet at home, or know that if I turn my phone off and leave all GPS devices at home, I can take a walk without the government tracking me. As soon as there is a critical mass of Glass type devices out in public, there is practically no chance that I could walk to a location without the government being able to track me down.

Look at the Boston Marathon bombings. They weren't tracked by anything other than photos taken by the public and a handful of CCTV feeds. Imagine if one quarter of people in that crowd had a Glass type device on their face, and the government continued to have the right to access our devices without our permission. What do you think will happen?

Expecting the government to abuse their power is a rational position, especially involving a company that the government routinely forces information from.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

So why do you not have the same backlash against camcorders? Or cell phones that can record video? Or Go Pro cameras? Or cameras in general, since most cameras can record video nowadays. (Or perhaps I should ask about social acceptance instead of backlash.)

At one time it was socially unacceptable to be seen dating someone of another race, or to breastfeed, or to kiss the same sex. Is not social acceptance just another form of Tyranny Of The Majority?

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

Tourists snap pictures of Times Square - and thousands of people - daily, without permission. Teenagers take videos of each other - and passers-by - at malls & nightclubs and we don't object, though it's pretty likely those shots are getting uploaded to Facebook or YouTube.

What most of us object to is a lens following us around and staring fixedly at us, and if a tourist or teenager or Glass-user did that, most of us would demand they stop. But only a psychopath would punch a tourist or teenager in the face for anything less than extreme provocation, and certainly not for just using their camera as you were nearby.

Re:Something It Isn't

[DJRumpy]

You're making the false assumption that the government would need to 'hack' a device or get a warrant. Google glasses provides the ability to simply upload it into the public domain. In other words, there would be little reason for a warrant. They could at some point, tap into any persons public life, relatively easy with face recognition software, and by scraping what's publicly available on the internet.

Re:Something It Isn't

[imsabbel]

No. My problem is that it is wearable recording device.

I LOVE the idea of augemented reality. But google glass turnes the whole direction around: Instead of getting information TO the user, it is designed to collect as much information as possible for google.

In the same direction, if somebody using google glass looks at you, that doesn't mean that he might find your facebook and GET info about you - instead he is actively taking part on tracking your movements and reporting them back to google.

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

ATMs are on private property

Most pictures taken in public will capture private property. That doesn't make them illegal and subject to different laws.
What matters is the reasonable expectation of privacy. It's not a difficult concept, really. It protects you from people taking upskirt photographs even in public places, and in most civil law countries, also from having photographed without knowledge or consent.

and I am right. You are wrong.

Your polemic skills are just astounding. How can I possibly argue against such a master?

Re: Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

In Italy, it's bad form to take someone's picture without permission, and they often don't give permission. Like every other country, some Italians are kind of tough.

Japanese tourists take pictures everywhere they go.

Japanese tourists go to Italy.

Result ....

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

A private company can take CCTV footage wherever they want on their premises as long as they have visible warnings that that's happening

And that's the catch right there - you have to give people notice that you are going to record them, so they have a choice to opt out. Clandestine recording is different. Even in my own private bathroom, I can't use hidden cameras to record visitors. What matters isn't whether it's private property or not, but people's reasonable expectation of privacy.

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

There are different definitions of "private" and "public" for different purposes under various laws.

For example, under the civil rights laws of the 1960s and 1970s, places of public accommodation were forbidden from discriminating on the basis of race. That would include hotels, Woolworth lunch counters, public and private schools, places of employment, etc. Some of these restrictions were limited to places involved in interstate commerce.

"Public" doesn't mean "government". A courtroom is a public place. The judge's chambers are private. Zucotti Park was privately owned, but open to the public.

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

That's the problem with having common law instead of civil law in a nutshell. In countries where civil law is in effect, judges can interpret the intent of the law on a case-by-case basis, without laying down the letter of the law.

And trust me, a reasonable expectation of privacy is respected and protected in most countries. It doesn't have to be specified that upskirt photographies specifically are illegal - when a reasonable expectation of privacy is violated, there's a crime. Which, yes, makes many American tourists criminals as they snap pictures at cafes and parks without asking.

Re: Something It Isn't

[NatasRevol]

incidental video capture, creepy stalking, and physical assault are all widely separated on the scales of acceptability.

And there's your answer to the headline.

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

That Wikipedia entry looks like it was original research by a non-lawyer based on a bunch of Google searches and books written for non-lawyers.

For one thing, legal expectations of privacy vary from state to state.

There are public places with no right to privacy, and so many exceptions that you can't make general statements. The right to privacy is like swiss cheese.

Photographers know this very well. They can take photos in a public place and publish them under some circumstances, but not under other circumstances.

One photographer took a photo of a black man dressed in a business suit with a briefcase walking through Grand Central Station. The New York Times magazine published it on the cover to illustrate a story on "The Black Middle Class." He sued and won, complaining that it subjected him to ridicule and invaded his right to privacy and right to control his own image.

Another photographer set up an automatic camera on 42nd St., took photos of people walking by, blew them up as large-format portraits, exhibited them in an art gallery and included them in a published gallery catalog. A subject sued him, charging that his right to privacy was violated. The judge ruled that he was in a public place, and should have been prepared to be photographed. If they used his photo on an advertisement or a peanut butter jar, the courts might have come to a different conclusion.

Another example of the right to privacy is the right to have an abortion. Now, I feel pretty strongly that a woman should have an absolute right to decide whether or not she has an abortion. But I read Roe v. Wade several times and, while I'm glad of the outcome, I don't see where the right to privacy comes from or how they applied it to that case. They seemed to have pulled a rabbit out of a hat. Yes, people have sex in private, and use contraceptives in private. But people also use heroin in private. People buy and sell heroin in private. Why doesn't the same right to privacy extend to selling heroin?

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

Hidden cameras in every motel room and nobody complains? Hard for me to believe.

A woman stays at your motel and gets undressed to take a bath, and she doesn't care about the hidden cameras? Not the women I know.

I've seen cases of people who were convicted of crimes for installing hidden cameras in their bathrooms to photograph women. In one case the guy was photographing an au pair. He served jail time. It must be illegal.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

I am no fan of Google Glass because it's nothing more than a worthless gimmick, but how is it any more of a "spying device" than a camera?

Re: Something It Isn't

[westlake]

Except, no, that isn't the case, at least not in the United States. Neither is it in the case in Canada nor the United Kingdom. You have no expectation of privacy when you're in public, and unless someone tries to resell the image as part of stock photography or something you cannot stop them.

You are not, however, obliged to welcome the intruder warmly.

There are ways to make it perfectly clear that he is unwanted, ways to obstruct him without the threat of violence.

Re:Something It Isn't

[R3d M3rcury]

I hate advertisers why would I want ads transmitted to me just because I walked by a store?

Well, it somewhat depends. And this may be one of those interesting things we discover--what is the tolerance for such things?

For example, I'm walking over to my friend's house. I have a destination and a time that I have to be there. I agree that the last thing I want is to have ads pop up as I walk past various stores on my way there--"10% discount on French Fries Today!" "Check out our Monet reproductions!" "Get Laid!"

Okay, the last one I might file away for later research.

On the other hand, I like the idea that I could walk into an area with lots of restaurants and be able to pull up information about a restaurant by just looking at it, including the fact that they have 10% discount on French Fries today.

In some ways, I'm not too worried about the first example because, if it did that, I wouldn't buy Google Glass. So Google gets nothing out of me. But if Google can come up with a way to present the information--including advertising--in a way that I don't find annoying, then I might buy a pair.

Re:Something It Isn't

[cas2000]

it's not happening to them (you know, fat chicks complain about lecherous young men... because they're not looking at them).

you were doing so well up until this point. not particularly informative or interesting, but not completely pointless and stupid either.

but this is just idiot baying-pack misogyny.

"fat chicks" don't complain about lecherous young men "not looking at them" - they complain about them treating them like shit, insulting them for no reason, expecting them to suck their cocks "just because they're fat so shouldn't be fussy", groping and assaulting them, and occasionally raping them for being fat and unsympathetic characters unlikely to prevail in a court-case.

most "fat chicks" would like nothing better than to be left alone to get on with their lives in peace without being spat on or worse by creepy arseholes like you.

Re:Something It Isn't

[cas2000]

you're right. realising that most people are stupid is depressing.

it explains a lot about the world and how it got to be such a fucked-up mess, and leads to the inescapable conclustion that the species is doomed (and probably not worth saving, anyway)

ignorance isn't bliss, though....it's just ignorance.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

You're equivocating "publish" with "publish for money", but yes. Things are more nuanced if you go into the details more. Being able to publish for money has [somewhat] little to do with being able to record/photograph for yourself.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

...which makes me glad to be in a freer country. At least with respect to those remaining freedoms that haven't been pissed on.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Paradise Pete]

Like turning away from a camera - that doesn't give you the right to run around and take a picture from the other side; the person has announced that he does not want to be taken pictures of.

That's surprising. Do you have a source for that?

Re: Something It Isn't

[number17]

You're right, but there are certain things that cross the line like standing outside the girls washroom at the park and video taping everybody going in and out. You're in a public place taping, but its not socially acceptable. Especially if its 10 year olds going in and out.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Alex Belits]

You have to visibly hold a camera in front of you, to record.
I am sure, people would be just as much against a line of handbags or lapel pins with built-in cameras.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Paradise Pete]

Bill Gates said that people would not need more than a few Kb to use a PC back in the day. Google Glass is just the beginning.

The "someone else was wrong about something else" argument is not a compelling one.

Re:Something It Isn't

[number17]

As I said above, what if it's outside a public park washroom and you are videotaping 10 year olds going in and out. Technically you are outside in a public place, but its not socially acceptable.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

But it would be legal.

You do have an expectation of privacy in any bathroom, at least. (That's good. No poop cam.)

Re:Something It Isn't

[sqrt(2)]

Indeed. I hate Google Glass because it's just a portal to Google's services right in front of your eye. When they combine a HUD display in a decent form factor, and Glass isn't far off in that regard, with acceptable battery life (think Kindle, not iPhone) and a true general purpose, user-programmable computer, then I'll be interested. Until then, these are just expensive toys which charge you for the pleasure of having a telescreen attached to your head siphoning off data and feeding you back commercial messages from the highest bidder.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Austerity Empowers]

Maybe because it isn't so much "wearable computing" as it is "wearable Google-centric media player"???

It isn't so much that it is a "wearable Google-centric media player", it is that it is not a "wearable Apple-centric media player". Apple doesn't like to be one upped. No doubt they have a similar project, and are not releasing it because it has not met their standards of readiness, but it always seems to boil down to "Apple marketing hasn't told us we want it yet".

Sure, people are legitimately worried about privacy, but that ship sailed years ago.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thoth]

So again, private companies recording stuff is bad because *mumble mumble* the government?

It just seems like you have a MISPLACED anger/concern. You are apparently totally fine with these corps recording whatever and whenever they want, but at the same time that they aren't powerful enough to resist government requests?

As for your fear about abuse of power - what the heck do you think will happen if corporations ARE powerful enough to resist government requests for video feeds? You think they are going to self regulate and make you happy? Hint: they'll throw your ass under the bus for another dollar of profit.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Alex Belits]

Why such obsession with the government? As bad as US government is, I have more trust in the worst of the government than the best of private businesses. Government at least has to be corrupt or controlled by nutty ideologues to be irresponsible (granted, this is often the case). But businesses have just as much power and none of the responsibility to begin with. Whatever responsibility they may have, is imposed by the government.

So no, as uncomfortable it may make me feel, I would rather trust a cop standing on a street corner with a camera pointing at me, than Google with storing recording of absolutely everything everywhere. And I like plenty of things that Google does.

Re:Something It Isn't

[war4peace]

Here's what. If someone polls people after they exit a building asking them whether there are CCTVs in that building, I bet they won't be able to tell.
This whole "privacy" thing is mostly an american thing. "Don't touch me", "get off my lawn" and such. You have a "my stuff" culture that's intriguing to me. How did it become so prevalent? What's triggering such aggressive behavior towards anything that threatens your privacy, even in theory?

Re:Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

People don't care about privacy, not until it's the "creepy" guy staring at them instead of the average guy.

Congratulations citizen! you may now claim the title of "Creepy".

Re:Something It Isn't

[rlh100]

criminal != privacy.

When some uses heroin they are breaking the law. I probably can not sell a picture of someone shooting up without their permission (privacy). But the courts can use that picture to prove an activity by a person (criminal).

Re:Something It Isn't

[Altrag]

I imagine if they could find the person who recorded that, some legal fucks would be given. Whether they'd amount to anything is another story, but you can be sure that Anniston's lawyers would at least be pursuing civil remedies even if criminal charges were somehow deemed inapplicable.

Of course celebrities in general have to have a lower reasonable expectation of privacy due to their status.. I doubt that's encoded in law anywhere as it would be discriminatory but a judge would likely have the thought in his mind somewhere along the way.

The one thing you absolutely need in order to punish a perpetrator though is you know.. the perp. Doesn't really matter who's laws you're running under if you don't know who to punish you can't punish them.

Of course, I'm excluding places where the rule of law is "if you don't come forward we'll just decimate your entire town" and similar such extremes.

Also note that the publishers generally get off the hook due to freedom of the press combined with their ability to protect sources. So any publisher with a penchant for pictures of questionable legal status just has get the word out that they're willing to pay and will protect their sources.. as long as they don't explicitly solicit the material they're mostly safe and can in turn give a reasonable guarantee of safety to whatever source happen to show up with goodies.

Or something like that -- I certainly don't know the exact wording of the relevant laws, never mind any regional differences.. but as a general overview that seems to be how things work in a lot of places (if not most) where freedom of the press is a thing.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Luckyo]

Wearable spy device with indexing network that would make Stasi agents cream their pants is more like it.

Re:Something It Isn't

[deanklear]

So again, private companies recording stuff is bad because *mumble mumble* the government?

When the government has immediate and easy access to Google's data, and Google is recording more and more data every day about everyone, the government will have immediate and easy access to more data. There's no mumbling involved, unless you count the gag orders the DOJ has placed on everyone about their broad wiretapping programs.

It just seems like you have a MISPLACED anger/concern. You are apparently totally fine with these corps recording whatever and whenever they want, but at the same time that they aren't powerful enough to resist government requests?

I don't believe Google Glass is required by the company to always record everything and report it back to them, but that does happen to be its function when it is being used. If a customer decides to use a device that records everything about them that is sent and then analyzed by private company, that's really not my concern unless it empowers the government to have another avenue for shredding the 4th Amendment. The reality of the NSA wiretapping scandals and the concern of overreach of the government using National Security Letters to cast a wide net using dubious forms of probable cause is well known. I shouldn't have to go over it unless you are totally incapable of using a search engine.

As for your fear about abuse of power - what the heck do you think will happen if corporations ARE powerful enough to resist government requests for video feeds? You think they are going to self regulate and make you happy? Hint: they'll throw your ass under the bus for another dollar of profit.

Corporations shouldn't have to be powerful enough to to head-to-head against the government if the government is respecting the 4th Amendment and using transparent legal means to acquire information about suspects of crimes. Getting into self-regulation is a red herring because the problem isn't with government regulation. The problem is that the government is abusing its power by pressuring private corporations to hand over data, so it's logical to assume that more data in the hands of Google -- which already releases information and account access to the government -- means more data in the hands of the government.

Over the last four years, the government's requests for electronic and physical surveillance have steadily increased after a brief decline in 2008 and 2009, with a total of 1,856 applications in 2012. However, the truly shocking number is how many times it applied for Section 215 orders, also known as business records requests, which as far as we know give the government extremely broad authority to access "any tangible thing," including sensitive information such as financial records, medical records, and even library records.

Last year, the government made 212 applications to the FISC under Section 215, over 94 percent of which the court found it necessary to modify â" 200 to be exact. This is up from 205 in 2011, which may not seem like a huge difference, but consider that in 2009 the FBI made only 21 requests and the FISC modified just 9.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/theyre-watching-fbi-business-records-requests-jump-900

Re:Something It Isn't

[SeaFox]

People don't care about privacy, not until it's the "creepy" guy staring at them instead of the average guy.

Lots of things are subjective like that when they shouldn't be. Like how sexual harassment is only a problem at work when it's the janitor or some geeky engineer, but women are okay with it when it's some hunky co-worker. It's inappropriate regardless of who's doing it, though.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Altrag]

People buy and sell heroin in private.

I would hesitate to make that claim. They might find a dark alley to reduce the chances that someone will stumble over them, but its still a "public" alley in the sense that you're just playing the odds of someone not walking by -- there's no guarantee or restriction of such a fact.

Oppose that to having sex in your (legitimately) private bedroom. If someone (who doesn't live with you..) unexpectedly enters your bedroom while you're getting it on, you've probably got bigger problems than whether they saw you naked. Namely the fact that they had to break into your house and probably have more nefarious plans than voyeurism.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

So recording someone is bad, but beating the crap out of someone is socially acceptable?

Never. But if someone goes into a bar wearing these things, they might expect some response. Kind of like someone peeoing in your teenage daughter's window at night. You aren't supposed to beat th eguy up, but the perv shouldn't be all that surprised when it happens.

Do you see tourists with cameras getting punched in the face often?

Seems to me a case of assault like you describe should be videoed.

Its all a matter of context, which you seem to be blurring. I'll bet I'm in hundreds of tourist photos, and no doubt some have been posted on the internet. I was there, they were there, no harm done. I could care less. I suspect most people could care less.

But there are places in this world where people have some expection if not of total privacy, of at least not having their every action recorded for posting to the internet.

If I am out for a quiet evening with my wife at a bar or restaurant, I emphatically do not want our presence recorded, except for the restaurant or bar's security cameras, which are there for my protection, and nothing of which is used unless a crime has been committed.

Even if a person is having some issues, and discussing it with a bartender, that should not be recorded.

People who are "flirts" might be forced to change their way. My better half is one of those. It's perfectly harmless, but imagine the repercussions among people who want to find issues.

That people would find it odd that Google Glass is getting a lot of hate is pretty silly. It means that suddenly, we will have to completely change our behavior. Not all of us want our private lives posted for the world to see. Some folks want to rhapsodize about their bowel movements on Facebook, but in no way is that normal for most of humanity.

As for beating people up? Nahh, What I would propose is that if some jerk comes in wearing a Google glass, that several bar patrons come over to his table, stand with their backs to him or her, and ruin the evening by cooperating. The Glasshole can post their videos of people's backs.

But if they get beat up, not many will shed a tear. It will probably be a mark of status for Glassholes to have a little rectangular scar over thei eye.

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

The point I was making was that the Supreme Court created a right to privacy in the bedroom, and then derived the right to an abortion (up to viability, but not after) from that right to privacy.

I don't understand how they derived the right to an abortion from the right to privacy. I don't think it's logical. I think it was a political decision. (Even the Republicans, including Richard Nixon, supported the right to abortion around that time.) But that's the Supreme Court's decision, and that's now the law.

Even lawyers can't depend on logic to predict court and ultimately Supreme Court decisions. Much less can non-lawyers use logic to figure out what the law is.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

you were doing so well up until this point. not particularly informative or interesting, but not completely pointless and stupid either.

but this is just idiot baying-pack misogyny.

This is veering off topic, but your misogny remark to the OP is right on target.

There are men, and more than just a few, who like women who are not slender. Most all women are beautiful, and if a woman doesn't fit one man's version of attractive, there are others who do.

Re:Something It Isn't

[interkin3tic]

I don't like google glass of one reason. I hate advertisers why would I want ads transmitted to me just because I walked by a store? Oh that isn't a feature of glass yet? just wait it will come right along with the face recognition.

So you hate it for a feature you're not even sure is a feature?

I'm not going to say it's unreasonable to expect that is going to be a thing, but Jesus, this is news for nerds. Can't we find real reasons to hate something without resorting to inventing features that we WILL hate?

Re:Something It Isn't

[ceoyoyo]

Where do you live that they don't have public toilets??

Re:Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

So why do you not have the same backlash against camcorders? Or cell phones that can record video?

If people are in a private bar, and someone whips out their cell or camcorder, and starts recording everyone in the place, you can bet the response will be the same as with Google glass.

Even more, wiht the other technology, it is pretty obvious when the user is recording. They point it at you. but is that creepy perv in the corner staring at you, or are they recording with their Glass?

At one time it was socially unacceptable to be seen dating someone of another race, or to breastfeed, or to kiss the same sex. Is not social acceptance just another form of Tyranny Of The Majority?

You are so off base as to make me wonder if you aren't just trolling here. Because there are people who still fly into a rage if they see a person dating someone of another race. There are people who still do violence and even kill people who are gay. There are people who might use their Google Glass to video and post their evidence to promote violence against those who might have the "moral ineptitude" to practice such activities.People do not need 24/7 stalking.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

Last I checked, Oregon had to pass a law (in the past couple of years) specifically prohibiting upskirt photographs because, specifically, you are wrong. Google it if you don't believe me.

Sheesh! If women don't want upskirt photos of their underwear, they can just foil those pervs by not wearing any.

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

In New York City I've seen people order a "delivery" of marijuana to their homes. A hippie shows up, comes into their home, closes the door behind him, and makes the sale, just like delivering a pizza. They can order cocaine and heroin the same way.

Mayor Giuliani promised to get the drug dealers off the streets. He did. They used to sell drugs in the parks. No longer. People who sold drugs in public were quickly arrested.

I don't even know of any dark alleys in Manhattan. Houses are built right next to each other. I think that when TV police shows have drug deals in dark alleys, they shoot them in a studio.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

Shut up and take my vote!

Re:Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I have a pen camera that I don't have to hold out to record with. I have a harness for my GoPro that doesn't require me to hold it out in front. I have a pair of sunglasses with a camera built in that doesn't require me to hold it out. I can even record on my phone without anyone knowing because it just looks like I'm using my phone.

People who are "concerned" about this are just a bunch of whiny bitches with too much time on their hands. They need to worry about what they are doing, not what other people are doing.

Re:Something It Isn't

[poetmatt]

it has benefits just as much as problems.

imagine if a cop knows he is being recorded by an unknown number of devices. You think he's still going to try to abuse a situation?

Re: Something It Isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think a powerful corporation is as dangerous as a corrupt government; you've watched blade runner once too often. Hint, one has access to military weapons and the ability to write laws.

Re:Something It Isn't

[chihowa]

He's not being serious. He's lampooning the GP's comment that since nobody complained about his secret hidden camera glasses, then clearly nobody cares about privacy. He's right to mock him for that argument, too, as it is ridiculous.

Re:Something It Isn't

[bratwiz]

You got it in one. I think somehow the notion of "All Google, All the Time" just sort of grates on people. I know there are times that I wish Google would take a long walk off a short pier-- and I *like* Google. They're just too nosy and pushy and pervasive-- sometimes I just want a BREAK from Google and it just seems like they go out of their way to not take the hint.

Re:Something It Isn't

[bratwiz]

Yes, except the government and most large businesses will make it off-limits to wear the glasses on their premises, making it, in effect, a one-way data stream-- about you, to them. So it isn't really like it's leveling the playing field. Sure, there will be the odd case here and there where someone catches a government worker or a corporate CEO doing something they shouldn't oughta, but most of the time, it will be them, watching you. And to top it off, they're gonna show you some pretty pictures, a game, give you directions and maybe show you a porno-- and you're going to be paying THEM for the privilege of them getting to watch you. And you wondered why they were hiring all those PhD types...

Re:Something It Isn't

[bratwiz]

Welcome to the future, ain't it grand??

Re:Something It Isn't

[Penguinisto]

Maybe it's just me or my experiences seeing it, but I think it's because the only folks wearing them so far have the air and appearance of utter douchenozzles.

(I spent last week in SanFran, and saw about half a dozen of them...)

Re:Something It Isn't

[shutdown -p now]

It sounds like it could be easily tackled by mandating any such recording devices to have a standardized outside-facing indicator (e.g. blinking purple LED) that can be used to tell at a glance whether the person using it is recording you at any particular moment.

Re: Something It Isn't

[socode]

...and the other is a corrupt government?

Re:Something It Isn't

[Alex Belits]

Really? I have a pen camera that I don't have to hold out to record with.

Yes, you do unless you want to record the floor.

I have a harness for my GoPro that doesn't require me to hold it out in front.

Those cameras are easily visible, and if they weren't there would be just as much backlash against them.

I have a pair of sunglasses with a camera built in that doesn't require me to hold it out.

And using those is considered just as bad than any other kind of recording.

I can even record on my phone without anyone knowing because it just looks like I'm using my phone.

No you can't, phones are designed to make cameras absolutely blatantly obvious. If they weren't, there would be a lot of places where they would be banned.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

Really not sure where you're getting that idea from. You don't really think it's doing always-on geotagged facial recognition or something, do you? Can you imagine what that'd do to the battery life?

IF the user took a photo of your face (i.e. by staring in your face in public), and IF he geotagged it and uploaded it to Google+, and IF Google's facial recognition was turned on for that account, and (a really big) IF their facial recognition routines were good enough to pick you specifically out of the hundreds of millions of faces that are stored in their secret Evil DataVaults... then they get a single data point for the momentary location of one random person, woohoo. Your own phone in your pocket would probably tell them far more than that, if they cared, and your telco certainly could. If you're concerned about privacy to that level, then there are bigger things to worry about today than what future versions of Glass may one day finally be able to do practically.

On another note, when I first saw your sig (years ago) it led me onto a series of books I enjoyed immensely, so thanks for that :-)

Re:Something It Isn't

[indeterminator]

People video me in with their hidden cameras because I'm paranoid. Also, taking an image of me damages mhy soul.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

Oh, I absolutely agree that there are places people don't want to be videoed, and that would be why you don't see people whipping out their SLR or cellphone and videoing you there. It would be rude at the least. So why do you assume that any/all Glass users will be doing exactly that whenever you see one? Just because they could? If someone actually wanted to do that, there are far cheaper, more effective and less obvious ways than using a facially-mounted lens that lights up whenever you take a shot.

And even if they did - like, say, someone at the next table is using a camcorder to video their kid's birthday party. Would you object to that? Would you object if they were doing it with Glass instead? Doesn't seem to bother you if you're in random tourist photos, even if they're on the internet. Does it matter what device takes them?

It's like people are assuming that a) all Glass owners will be rude and intrusive enough to record everyone everywhere for the hell of it, rather than just the things they themselves are interested in, b) their Glass units will have enough battery and storage to allow that, c) all that video is simultaneously being geotagged and uploaded to Google's endless storage banks in their evil volcano lair, and d) Google's quantum facial recognisers will pick you out, staple your face & location to your SSN and forward it on to the IRS so they can audit you for taking your gf out to dinner on a company expense. Oh, and they'll automatically email that shot of you picking your nose to your mother as well.

Sheesh, Steve Mann never got this much backlash, and he actually was doing a), b) and most of c) as well.

Re:Something It Isn't

[pantaril]

Is it really that hard to understand why there is so much hate? Public surveillance is totally different in that the common public doesn't typically access it, and it's typically not available to upload on a whim to the net where it could potentially live forever.

You privacy concerns are certainly valid but it's still hard to understand the hate. The hate will acomplish nothing in the long term as it is basicaly hate toward technological progress. You cannot stop technological progress. Better try to prepare for it now. For example don't "like" the video of someone picking his nose/ass next time you see it on the internet but tell the uploader he is an idiot.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Nbrevu]

Some corporations (for example Blackwater, now known as Academi) do have access to military weapons. And sufficiently wealthy corporations (including the military ones) do have the de facto ability to write laws via lobbying, and have done so for a long time.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Nbrevu]

Very different, actually, and it's a matter of degree. What google glass introduces is a constant surveillance, eerily close to the third episode of Black Mirror.

That said, I'd love it if everyone stopped permanently carrying cameras (this includes smartphones) with themselves, although I may be relatively alone about that.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

The better question is why do you care if they are recording you? Security does that all the time. So do satellites. That's the root of the animosity. This abject fear that people will record you. Most people are clueless about editing video. Yea, you are in the mall today. You know that your cell phone transmits that info while its on regardless of the settings. Thats how it works.
So google knows well I am. All android phones tell Google that. Nothing has changed. Anyone who has a phone tell Google/apple, their provider and the givt where they are while its on. Security footage recording you anywhere its on.
Yet an individual with a low grade people of tech which is basically a smart phone taped to their forehead walks by and its OMG IM BEING ABUSED? Seriously?! You lost that ability when the IPhone came out.It was given up voluntarily.
Glass scares people because it forces them to realize that have no control over their image or privacy. Its privacy's grave-marker, and we gave Apple the gun first.
Sure glass will fail and all this teaches everyone is that you can't be public about it. If I truly want a picture or video of you I can get it in a public place without you knowing. I have never had that desire. I don't expect to.
I expect most people will delete all that raw video.
As for Google using it, what else is new. Of course it will be used for marketing. We live in a capitalistic society. Business need to know what we do so they know what to sell. Is it wrong? that's a moral question. Our generation will be just like the one that saw the advent of radio, the advent of rock music, the advent of cable tv, and the internet. In 30 yrs everyone will wear their phone because it wont be a phone. It will be an earpiece and a glass screen. We wont drive either because the car will do it via gps. We will ride along. Will we be less free? Yes. We right now are less free than our fathers and them before us.
We are less because we willing give up privacy for sake of convenience. Then we complain about those who go off the grid.
So next time you complain about glass or its decendants remember that phone in your pocket or purse. Remember the security camera above your head and smile.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

which is why we have laws.

Re:Something It Isn't

[cas2000]

Lighten up on the defensiveness. Some "fat chicks" are indeed like that.

and some men are rapists, a tiny percentage (but much larger than the percentage of fat chicks who want to be abused or just ogled by complete strangers) - does that justify regarding all men as being rapists?

So no, it's not misogyny, it happens.

when it's said of an entire class of people ("fat chicks") instead of a particular individual who has that psychological fuckup or saying that a particular individual must have that fuckup just because she fits your classification of a fat chick, then YES, it is misogyny. same as saying all men are rapists is misandry, and saying all black men are crack-smoking gangsters is racism, or saying all americans are gun-loving psychopaths (the 0.0001% who prefer knives make that a racist statement :) .

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

This is the problem.

It's not that Glass looks weird.

It's the idea that everyone and everything may soon be recorded, tagged with facial recognition data, stamped with GPS data, and floated off to the internet forever.

Wearable computing may have some exciting uses, but it ultimately portends the end of most of what privacy remains from government and others.

That is what people are reacting against.

Soon? IS! Airports have security cameras with sound. Coffee shops have cameras even grocery stores have cameras. your phone marked your position right now, even if gps is off (cell tower triangulation) everyone and everything is being recorded, tagged with facial recognition data, stamped with GPS data, and floated off to the internet forever. People like 4chan and anonymous can call it up. How do you think those football players in OHio got arrested and charged. Their information was out on the net already. All glass does is remind everyone its already dead. When glass fails, the next one will come in quietly and without fanfare. The deed will be done and Orwell will be right. The only thing wrong is we are our own big brother.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

You can't follow because you are unwilling to accept that its true because that is horrific to you. I do computing. Its true and horrifying. Glass isnt a viable product, its a corn cob tossed into the pigpen to see the level of squealing so the real product can be made and introduced without it.

Re:Something It Isn't

[easyTree]

As usual, the slashdot maximum score of five proves hopelessly inadequate. Why not remove the limit ?

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

So you are saying that you want to be able to get away with things are are criminal or socially unacceptable without recrimination? As for Public surveillance is totally different in that the common public doesn't typically access it, and it's typically not available to upload on a whim to the net where it could potentially live forever. You want me to give you the links to all the public serveillance that is viewable on the internet? http://cryptogasm.com/webcams/webcam.php?id=20104
Thats one of 1000s. Its isnt creepy. You think its creepy because you were brought up that way. If you got a migrane everytime you went to drink coffee you never would.
No one SHOULD have anything to hide. Because certain things that society has deemed creepy shouldnt be creepy. This will break people of it. What it boils doen't to is self control. You don't want to be judged for that a nasty habit of picking your nose or buying RID at the pharmacy or throwing Chicks with Dicks out in your trash, (seriously you use LGBT as an example of bad?) staring at your brothers wife's ass at the family reunion and having it uploaded afterwards, picking up HIV drugs at the pharmacy, etc
None of those things posted should be creepy. Really. They are normal things. The problem is prejudice. Glass reveals that. Creepy = fear and prejudice.

Re: Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

yep because they gave up the right when they stepped out into the public.Only caviat is selling the image. If you are videoing for the purpose of sale, you have to inform them because then can sue if you dont so most do.
So really your statement doesn't exist as everyone acknowledges the taking of pictures is acceptable the moment they exit their front door.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Dr_Barnowl]

And who do you think they deploy the weapons and write the laws for? It's still government for the people - the legal persons that corporations claim to be.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

no such thing as a secret camera. unknown to you. But when you walk into a store and see all those black half spheres in the ceiling. They have sound now too.
So to repeat: No secret cameras no expectation of privacy anyway that is considered public (federal buildings [airports], arenas and military bases are not). So no need. This is the problem. Laws have changed.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

upskirts are illegal because of its purpose. I don't need to spell that out. A camera in the bathroom is there not to catch you f***ing the servers or you significant other its there to prevent theft. Same as a locker room camera. You dont think Gyms have them? You sign a waiver in your contract that says you are aware you are being videotaped foe the purposes of security and it will be cloud stored for the use in court cases. Reasonable expectation of privacy is dead. Its like separate bathrooms for non whites in Alabama. It exists but being legislated out of existance long ago.

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

let me guess its for security and unless someone damages the room or engages in illegal activities there the footage is never viewed and remains in a secure location?

Re:Something It Isn't

[hlavac]

The scary thing is when this gets inevitably misused, user will not have control over when it's recording/tagging people or not. When you are in area around a "person of interest" it will get taken over.

Re:Something It Isn't

[technos]

I've done jobs that required me to carry a non-camera phone. Simply proving that the camera was non-functional was good enough to keep my shiny smart-phone. Remove the back panel, apply a bit of electrical tape between the camera module and the external cover and Bob's your uncle.

The worst I ever had to do was take apart the vendor firmware and replace the camera binary with another application, then fudge a checksum somewhere and document the entire process. That company was super paranoid, but it saved me carrying a WinCE PDA, Palm PDA, three cables and a dumb-phone, plus chargers for each of them.

Just wipe the camera APK in a provable way and tell them to shove off.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Hypotensive]

Just because something is not (yet) against the law does not mean it's socially acceptable.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Blrfl]

Google isn't bound by the Constitution.

Re:Something It Isn't

[DJRumpy]

Just because technology makes a thing possible, doesn't mean it should be done. You seem to have forgotten that. There are often moral dilemmas associated with new technologies. Society hasn't put the proper expectations around this one, or looked at another way, the 'hate' is exactly that; an expectation that the technology needs to change to become acceptable to the public.

Re:Something It Isn't

[rastos1]

Look at the Boston Marathon bombings. They weren't tracked by anything other than photos taken by the public and a handful of CCTV feeds. Imagine if one quarter of people in that crowd had a Glass type device on their face, and the government continued to have the right to access our devices without our permission. What do you think will happen?

They would have tracked down the perpetrators in half the time?

Not that I disagree with your worries on privacy invasion, but ... that was a bad example.

Re: Something It Isn't

[serviscope_minor]

Quite.

There seems to be this odd assumption that just because you have no particular expectation of privacy in public, it's entirely reasonable that every move is filmed, uploaded to the internet, indexed and archived in perpetuity.

There's a massive difference and all the social norms and laws and even assumptions about privacy predate such possibilities.

This is also not about being against "progress" as some have claimed: it's been perfectly possible to have hidden cameras for years for people sufficiently dedicated. I like having all this stuff on my phone. I like being able to photograph and film stuff on a whim and I do not mind others doing so.

Re:Something It Isn't

[serviscope_minor]

So why do you not have the same backlash against camcorders?

You have to take active action to go and use a cell phone or camcorder to record stuff. Not only that, but it's also pretty obvious.

Next time you're out, to a bar, restaurant, etc and try recording everything that you do, and see how other people react. Everythning. Film your friends, acquantainces, random people you meet, waiting staff, absoloutely everything.

The thing is: there is a difference between being caught in an incidental recording and having a significant fraction of people recording everything. The latter means that every move of yours will be recorded, geotagged, possibly tagged with your face and name (eventually), indexed, and then stored in perpetuity.

Most people do not like the idea of the latter yet have no problem with people videoing and taking pictures of stuff in general. I can understand that since I agree.

Is not social acceptance just another form of Tyranny Of The Majority?

It's also not socially acceptable to smear shit all over public benches. Just because something is not socially acceptable, does not mean it should be.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

Google Glass isn't recording everything all the time. You have to tell it to. And it only has the battery life to do that for about 3 hours.

You talk about obvious, but what about hidden cameras? What about cellphones (like the one that caught Romney being himself)? It seems to me that GG is more above board than what is already out there.

[You didn't answer my question about social acceptance, so I guess that part of our convo is a dead end.]

Re:Something It Isn't

[garutnivore]

One photographer took a photo of a black man dressed in a business suit with a briefcase walking through Grand Central Station. The New York Times magazine published it on the cover to illustrate a story on "The Black Middle Class." He sued and won, complaining that it subjected him to ridicule and invaded his right to privacy and right to control his own image.

Another photographer set up an automatic camera on 42nd St., took photos of people walking by, blew them up as large-format portraits, exhibited them in an art gallery and included them in a published gallery catalog. A subject sued him, charging that his right to privacy was violated. The judge ruled that he was in a public place, and should have been prepared to be photographed. If they used his photo on an advertisement or a peanut butter jar, the courts might have come to a different conclusion.

Do you have references for these two cases? If yes, please provide them.

Re:Something It Isn't

[serviscope_minor]

You have to tell it to. And it only has the battery life to do that for about 3 hours.

And when it does, it films indiscriminantly giving no indication.

You talk about obvious, but what about hidden cameras?

They are illegal in many places, so yes there has been a legal backlash against that kind of thing.

What about cellphones (like the one that caught Romney being himself)?

I think I already answered that, but possibly in a reply in a different subthread. Generally the use is obvious and people do not go round indiscriminantly fimling everything, geotagging tagging it and uploading it. I think if you held up a phone and filmed everyone you came across then no, people would not be happy.

You didn't answer my question about social acceptance,

Please feel free to restate. I thought you were suggesting that it was merely a question of social accpetance as many things not socially acceptable in the past have become so.

I would counter that many things continue to be socially unacceptable and will probably remain so forever for good reasons.

Whether this is one remains to be seen.

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

The one thing you absolutely need in order to punish a perpetrator though is you know.. the perp. Doesn't really matter who's laws you're running under if you don't know who to punish you can't punish them.

This is not, strictly, true. There is what's called collective punishment, which most of us frown upon. Or, at least, claim we do.
It appears to be okay when a drill sergeant meters it out after finding a live round on the parade grounds, or an entire school class is detained because they don't know who sharpie marked the headmaster's car.
Or when it's mild and classified as a countermeasure (like speed limits which punish all drivers, not just the reckless ones).
Or when an ally routinely do reprisals against the family of dead perpetrators - that's kosher.

But except from all those, sure, you need a perpetrator to punish. If you live in a society with a punitive justice system and not a correctional one, of course.

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

You sign a waiver in your contract that says you are aware you are being videotaped foe the purposes of security and it will be cloud stored for the use in court cases. Reasonable expectation of privacy is dead.

No, reasonable expectation of privacy is very much alive.
That's exactly why you have to sign the waiver. And you can still sue them if they post that footage on dem interwebs for everyone to see. Even when you know you are being filmed, it doesn't mean you give up all your expectation of privacy. You still expect the footage only to be used for the stated purpose, i.e. to deter and solve crime, and expect them to respect your privacy otherwise.

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

You're equivocating "publish" with "publish for money", but yes. Things are more nuanced if you go into the details more. Being able to publish for money has [somewhat] little to do with being able to record/photograph for yourself.

And posting on an internet site that makes money from the posts through advertising (i.e. Google/YouTube) seems to me to be solidly in the second category.

Re:Something It Isn't

[arth1]

This whole "privacy" thing is mostly an american thing. "Don't touch me", "get off my lawn" and such. You have a "my stuff" culture that's intriguing to me. How did it become so prevalent? What's triggering such aggressive behavior towards anything that threatens your privacy, even in theory?

No, it isn't mostly an American thing. The right to privacy is far more ingrained in other Western cultures than US and UK culture. As an example, the right to privacy often trumps the right to free speech in Western countries, and newspapers do not publish the names or pictures of crime suspects or witnesses. And companies are restricted in what data they can collect on people, even public data - they have to justify their collection, and take measures to not collect more than they need (remember Google being fined heavily for their drive-by WiFi capturing? It wasn't just for the capture, but also the subsequent storage.)
All in all, the US is probably the Western countries where the individual has the least amount of protection of his privacy and anonymity.

Re: Something It Isn't

[arth1]

So really your statement doesn't exist as everyone acknowledges the taking of pictures is acceptable the moment they exit their front door.

No, we most certainly do not. If the law won't protect me, my fist will.

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

a quick google search did it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=EYAnJEMZGn8C&pg=PA116&lpg=PA116&dq=photograph+new+york+times+magazine+black+middle+class+sued&source=bl&ots=XNi0u7VRJ1&sig=ODCfecF6uiGCBIH4fzZ97SgTbk0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=jaikUaGPO5TH0gGY2YEw&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=photograph%20new%20york%20times%20magazine%20black%20middle%20class%20sued&f=false

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/arts/17iht-lorca.html?pagewanted=all

Re:Something It Isn't

[fbobraga]

I can even record on my phone without anyone knowing because it just looks like I'm using my phone.

No you can't, phones are designed to make cameras absolutely blatantly obvious. If they weren't, there would be a lot of places where they would be banned.

You misunderstood "record": audio/sound is the talk-about, in the case

Re:Something It Isn't

[datavirtue]

I think it involves the net backlash forming over all social media. I get the sense that social media is leaving a bad taste in peoples' mouths (professionals, or career minded at least) and they are starting to pull back--Google Glass is another aspect of this or is at least viewed as such. An invasion, one too many.

Re:Something It Isn't

[war4peace]

I wasn't thinking about law-enforced privacy, but rather what the usual citizen thinks about it.
In Europe, governments are all up in arms on privacy issues, but the usual citizen rarely gives a rat's ass. In the US, it seems like it's quite the other way around.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Stripe7]

If this has a face recognition system app built into it. See your wife, it brings up anniversaries, birthdays etc.. See a congressman, it brings up a list of all the corporations/organizations that fund him and a list of his voting record. See a random stranger, bring up criminal records if any, etc..

Re:Something It Isn't

[datavirtue]

Why don't we break this down? Does anyone NEED Google Glass? People needed the iPhone in order to better communicate and have access to information and control their environment. What will GG bring us? What need does it fill? Good luck making this "cool."

Re: Something It Isn't

[datavirtue]

You aren't supposed to beat th eguy up

What kind of world do we live in when you're not supposed to beat the shit out of some perv peeping in your daughter's window?

Re:Something It Isn't

[ClioCJS]

Seems, but isn't.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ceoyoyo]

You should get out more. You mentioned parks and stadiums. There are lots of public buildings other than courthouses, including government offices, public bus terminals, subway stations, community centres, museums, fire halls, police stations, military installations including ships and aircraft, public universities (which in many countries are virtually all of them), and public schools. Lots of cities also have public toilets downtown and in tourist areas. Also, related to gyms, here in Canada we don't have many public weight gyms but most community pools are publicly owned, as well as many tennis courts, baseball/football/soccer/etc. fields, arenas, curling rinks and rec centres. Fitness and recreation facilities that are part of schools and universities are also frequently publicly owned.

Also, toilets and changing facilities located on private property but that are intended for customer use, such as the bathroom in Subway, may be governed by laws that are essentially the same as for actual public toilets with minor exceptions.

Re:Something It Isn't

[LDAPMAN]

A business MAY be corrupt and controlled by ideologues. The government is ALWAYS corrupt and controlled by ideologues.

Re:Something It Isn't

[boristdog]

Really? I have a pen camera that I don't have to hold out to record with.

Yes, you do unless you want to record the floor.

Mine video pen works fine clipped into my pocket. Of course, it makes me look like an even bigger nerd, but it is an inconspicuous way to shoot video.

Re:Something It Isn't

[minstrelmike]

If this has a face recognition system app built into it. See your wife, it brings up anniversaries, birthdays etc.. See a congressman, it brings up a list of all the corporations/organizations that fund him and a list of his voting record. See a random stranger, bring up criminal records if any, etc..

See, that's the problem, That's the way it _would_ work.
What we citizens need is if we see a Congressman, it brings up his criminal record and when we see a random stranger, it brings up the corporations funding him, saving you from salesmen and other overly-friendly types.

Re:Something It Isn't

[BasilBrush]

Look at the Boston Marathon bombings. They weren't tracked by anything other than photos taken by the public and a handful of CCTV feeds. Imagine if one quarter of people in that crowd had a Glass type device on their face, and the government continued to have the right to access our devices without our permission. What do you think will happen?

You're obviously trying to lead people to something. But the most obvious reply to your leading question is "they'll catch terrorists quicker". Presumably not the direction you wanted to head.

Re:Something It Isn't

[BasilBrush]

imagine if a cop knows he is being recorded by an unknown number of devices. You think he's still going to try to abuse a situation?

The usual thing up to now is for the cop to take any camera phones in as evidence. Or to detain the photographer on suspicion of terrorism charges.

So much easier to make the latter seem acceptable when the camera is semi covert. "He had a camera hidden in his glasses, he MUST have been doing surveillance for terrorism."

Re:Something It Isn't

[servant]

This weekend I re-watched minority report. ... It is an over-exaggeration of the google glasses concept, but yea, it is creepy and intrusive technology. Some will buy in but I would prefer to have the OPTION to opt in or out.

Re:Something It Isn't

[LM-Els]

That would work, if that light was non-breakable. But my guess is that a very simple break in a tiny connection is enough to not have the blinking light anymore.
Still, even with the blinking light: total stranger starts recording you. What do you do? Ignore, behave your best, so that if it is uploaded to YouTube you won't look a fool? Or do you address the total stranger and ask him to stop recording, only so you'll be in a YouTube video called "people who don't like my glasses"?

Re:Something It Isn't

[LM-Els]

None of those things posted should be creepy. Really. They are normal things. The problem is prejudice.

We don't all live in San Francisco where nobody ever thinks negatively of any other person based on that person's beliefs, customs, or sexual preferences or quirks.

There are so many examples where GG is bad without necessarily being creepy.
Not every gay person is ready to come out of the closet to his friends / family before they (publicly, but in a city where they don't know anyone) kiss their boy-/girlfriend. Not everyone buying HIV drugs wants their church pastor to know they need that stuff. Heck, not even everybody wants YouTube to show the world what brand of condoms they're buying.

And yes, LGBT stuff is a good example of something not everybody is comfortable with sharing with the world. It's not that it's bad, it's that not everybody agrees on that and not everybody is ready to go public with it. And in some countries (as I said, we're not all in SF) it's actually dangerous to go public with stuff like that.

Public surveillance cameras showing their content online is not a good thing, but at least those cameras are not 1 meter away from your face, and also have a lot less image quality than what GG will have.

Glass reveals that. Creepy = fear and prejudice.

Glass reveals it, yes. But it doesn't remove it. And that's the problem with using GG.
Or at least one of the problems. Even if nobody ever was prejudiced about anything, then it's still ignoring my right to privacy.

Re:Something It Isn't

[LM-Els]

You're not alone in that.

Re: Something It Isn't

[LM-Els]

someone at the next table is using a camcorder to video their kid's birthday party. Would you object to that? Would you object if they were doing it with Glass instead?

I wouldn't object, but I would try to stay out of the frame, and not look at the family, and not say anything, and certainly not say 'congratulations' or anything.

You see, if someone is holding a camera, pointing it at the little boy or girl's happy face as they blow out the candles, I can say "hurray" with the rest of the restaurant, and clap my hands, and I know only the sound will be in the video. It's a private moment, shared in public, but the subject of the video is, and remains, the little kid.
With GG, the moment I say something, the user will look up to see where the sound comes from, and voila, I'm in the center of his focus.

It's not that the person wants to upload my face to the internet, it's that the glasses are on his face, and film everything he looks at.
That's huge and uncomfortable difference between GG and a regular camera.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Sarius64]

Yep, until some cop you piss off confiscates the Google Glass because you are recording him. Try getting that out of the evidence locker in under two years.

Re:Something It Isn't

[shutdown -p now]

That would work, if that light was non-breakable. But my guess is that a very simple break in a tiny connection is enough to not have the blinking light anymore.

Are you implying that people would deliberately break it? That would be illegal and result in a fine if reported.

Still, even with the blinking light: total stranger starts recording you. What do you do?

Same exact thing you do today when someone whips out a smartphone or a camera and starts recording you.

Re: Something It Isn't

[cwsumner]

... There are exceptions, like military bases, federal buildings, or many private owned areas (like a football stadium), but for the most part you can take as many pictures of whoever you want in public areas and it does not violate the law.

Except, nowdays any public area can be a terget of terrorists, so taking pictures in any area can get you in trouble with US Homeland Security!

Re:Something It Isn't

[Darth Twon]

Except that a simple visual indicator could be easily bypassed... How would you enforce that?

Re:Something It Isn't

[shutdown -p now]

You fine people when they are discovered wearing the device with a non-working indicator. Same as you deal with people who drive cars with non-working stop lights or turn signals.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Sarius64]

Cops regularly confiscate $1,000 from people because they could be using the money for drug trafficking. It costs you two years of time and lawyer fees to get that back, ergo people usually walk away from the money. You find this hard to imagine that some police force will not accuse people of recording them to simply be an ass?

Re:Something It Isn't

[Darth Twon]

Though it would appear to not be recording if the light didn't work. You can see a car turn with or without the indicator, but can you tell if Google Glass is recording with or without that light?

Re:Something It Isn't

[shutdown -p now]

You can't. The idea is that the potential of being caught accidentally and heftily fined would be a sufficient deterrent for most to not fiddle with it in the first place.

Re:Something It Isn't

[ultracosm]

Loss of privacy is not due to overreach on the part of anonymous and malicious government agents, but of ubiquitous marketing offices of multinational corporations. Yes, the government can get into the act too, but there are a few protections against some of that, while there are almost none against corporate interests.

Or, look at it another way: why shouldn't the government get the same access the multinationals have to our private information? Sure its creepy to think of an anonymous government bureaucrat spying on me, but no more so than the marketing division of Big Corporation, Inc, or the teenage geek down the street.

In other words, let's not turn this into a rage against State tyranny. Let's just train our kids in, and demand from our suppliers, tools that prevent 'them', whoever they are, from spying on us, or from adding anything they want to a widely available database used for correlating financial records or facial recognition or whatever.

Re:Something It Isn't

[BasilBrush]

Of course they do. It's ridiculous that cops should object to being filmed. They film us.

But they do object. And they're going to object to Google Glass.

I also object. And there's no public interest argument for filming me.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Mab_Mass]

A business MAY be held accountable to the public. The government will ALWAYS be held accountable to the public.

Neither is a good option, but I'd rather take the one that can be forced into transparency.

Re:Something It Isn't

[rhalstead]

Vertical's the way I hold one to dial.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

Oh, I absolutely agree that there are places people don't want to be videoed, and that would be why you don't see people whipping out their SLR or cellphone and videoing you there. It would be rude at the least. So why do you assume that any/all Glass users will be doing exactly that whenever you see one? Just because they could?

It's all in the context. A person outside gives me no pause. If they catch me scratching my backside or picling my noe, well, that's just my lack of manners. In say, a McDonalds, I would be a little wary. But in a bar, or nice restaurant, I'm getting really suspicious of th eperson wearning their Google Glass. Those are places to socialize. Those are places that people go to find friends for the evening, even, and that is an activity that is by no means illegal, but might prove embarassing.

Let us use an example from my professional life. I have traveled with a co-worker in the past, a female, who is a big flirt, and we as you might expect, would eat dinner together. The conversation often got a little racy. She didn't like our supervisor at all, and would at times make comments to that effect. Should our prattle be uploaded to the world by some Glasshole that thinks it's a hoot?

In other words, should society at large be forced to watch what they say, to second guess themselves, because som Glasshole asshole wants to record it?

Great bloody fucking hemorrhoids, let's resurrect East Germany while we're at it!

And even if they did - like, say, someone at the next table is using a camcorder to video their kid's birthday party. Would you object to that?

That happens all the time. Part of my job was making photos and video's. When we were in a restaraunt or Bar for a function, I would identify myself as such, and the owner or manager was always accomodating. I find it odd that you can equate a party, where it is expected to have cameras, and a quiet evening out, where there is not only no expectation, but a person entering private not public property, and considering it their right to video people who do not want to be videoed, in that private establishment.

For like it or not, if I see someone with a Google Glass looking at me, I'll march up to the owner, and tell them of my suspicions. If they allow the person to continue on their private property, I will leave, and never come back. As a person who regularly tips approaching 100 percent, you can bet that the establishments I go to pay attention to me.

You have the right to video me as much as you want in public. In private, you do not. Pretty simple. If you don't like it, that is most regrettable.

There is a remarkable similarity in attitude between Glassholes and the parents of undisciplined children, who go into restaurants or bars, and expect that all the other patrons will find their screaming brats - who run around the restaurant, messing with other patrons, and making total nuisances out of themselves - to find their offspring as charming and precocious as they do.

The owner is then faced with a dillemma, that of banning the families with the brats, or have all their other customers go away. For the bratty family comes in, usually tips 5 percent, and would soon be one of hte few patrons in the place, leading to the place going out of business.

But just as with Glassholes, they cannot understand why everyone else finds them a nuisance.

To put it as nicely as possible, No one wants their evening fucked up. If it is so awesome to sit around making covert videos of other people, open up a restaraunt where Google Glass is mandatory.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

You aren't supposed to beat th eguy up

What kind of world do we live in when you're not supposed to beat the shit out of some perv peeping in your daughter's window?

I didn't say you wouldn't. But you are supposed to allow punishment to be meted out by the legal system. We aren't supposed to be vigilantes.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

How long until a better looking, more successful, better smelling, etc. dude responds to her harmless flirting? Just sayin'.

It's been 36 years so far.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Ol Olsoc]

> If people are in a private bar, and someone whips out their cell or camcorder, and starts recording everyone in the place, you can bet the response will be the same as with Google glass.

But is that going to happen when Google Glasses are available? Do you honestly see everyone with a pair of GGs videoing everything and dumping it on Facebook/twitter/vine/Google+?

I forsee some people doing that. I forsee people stifling their conversation when they see someone wearing a pair of these. The world is full of stupid people, people who have been fired for posting missives about how they hate their boss, people who have bragged about crimes they have committed, people who have posted photos/videos of themselves doing really odd things. People who are just plain mean, and enjoy the trouble they can cause.

That isn't everyone. But it is certainly enough.

I don't, I think this is a complete none-issue.

Good for you. A whole lot of us do think it is an issue.

Re:Something It Isn't

[AK Marc]

I don't see where the right to privacy comes from

So you believe that you have no rights, unless granted by the government? Then what's the point of Amendments 9 and 10?

Re:Something It Isn't

[suutar]

on the one hand, that's easily defeated. On the other hand, adding a widget to a phone to allow recording while the main phone is approximately horizontal wouldn't be difficult or terribly obtrusive, so that's also easily defeated, but takes more investment... sounds like overall it could be almost as useful as the horizontal phone indication, but harder to tell if it's been defeated. *shrug*

Re:Something It Isn't

[oreiasecaman]

Way to miss a joke huh

Re:Something It Isn't

[Darth Twon]

Oh yeah, I absolutely agree, though its not 'most' that I'm worried about.

Re:Something It Isn't

[shutdown -p now]

Well, someone who is specifically bent on recording everything around them would just come up with a device that allows to do so covertly - plenty of such already exist, so it's not a problem created or worsened by Glass. There isn't much that we can do about that (again, other than making it illegal to record without warning and hope that potential punishment will serve as a deterrent). We could also go after people if they ever post those recordings online, and it is clear that recording is covert.

Re:Something It Isn't

[AK Marc]

However, I would mind if one came in with the power to transmit it to the rest of the world and any NEO with a broadband connection, for it will stay there FOREVER!

So you don't mind if someone has an SD-based lapel pin camera and uploads it that night, but if someone walks in with Google Glass on and powered off, you'll get all bent out of shape?

Re:Something It Isn't

[AK Marc]

The current version is commercial free and does not send anything you don't tell it to send. Your complaints are about future functionality explicitly excluded from current features.

Re:Something It Isn't

[Altrag]

Oh yeah I never meant to imply that -ALL- drug deals are made in dark alleys. I know it also happens in private residences and the riskier the deal the more likely it is to be kept as far out of sight as possible, but I would hazard to guess that in terms of individual transactions, most of them are more casual than a door-to-door delivery.

I'd probably guess that the larger majority aren't even terribly "private" in the dark alley sense -- most are probably just grabbing single hit or two at a party or concert or other such event where there's probably a bunch of other people in close proximity (who probably don't care cause most of them will be doing the same, but that's not the point here..)

Re:Something It Isn't

[Altrag]

Yes. My following sentence specifically mentioned collective punishment (though I used a fairly extreme example to be sure, the point was made.)

Re:Something It Isn't

[thunderclap]

That's just it. We don't have a RIGHT to Privacy. We have the privilege of privilege. Nowhere in the Constitution says people have an explicit right to privacy. Yes it was assumed then. You could say that quartering soldiers was that. Yet neither hold water. We have to accept that those days are gone. Don't do anything you wouldn't want know publically. Privacy as we knew it is gone whether we like it or not. Glass is the avalanche near the summit not the valley floor..

Re:Something It Isn't

[LM-Els]

Why do Americans always assume their Constitution is everything?
For one, most of the world is not the US, and the US Constitution is still a US thing, not applicable to the rest of the world.
Second, there are more laws that just the Consitution, and there is certainly a right to privacy. Even in the US.

Incidentally, look at this map, and see the countries with "endemic surveillance". I remember times when Americans were anti-communist and the KGB were the bad guys.
(also I find it sad that there's only one place on the whole map that has a little bit of green in it)

Re:Something It Isn't

[nbauman]

That's the elastic clause. But no one could have looked at the 9th and 10th Amendments in 1791 and concluded that they implied a right to abortion.

They say that there are other unenumerated rights, but they don't say what those unenumerated rights are.

It seems clear to me that the right to an abortion is so necessary to the running of a modern, liveable society. It seems so obvious that it's not necessary to explicitly say it.

It's like saying, "Where in the text of the Constitution does it say that you have a right to breathe free air?" It doesn't say that because it's obvious.

However, to other people it seems just as obvious that abortion is a crime.

On one level, there's no logic to it. You have people on both sides saying, "It just seems logical to me," and hiring lawyers to make logical arguments.

Re:Something It Isn't

[pantaril]

Just because technology makes a thing possible, doesn't mean it should be done.

So how would you prevent it? Would you ban manufacturing of small cameras which can be embedded into glasses or other parts of clothing and used for recording? Or would you ban the posibbility to upload such recordings annonymously on the internet?

Both of those solutions would cause many undesired side effects and would be not worth it in my opinion. The only solution i'd be willing to accept is one which doesn't hamper the legitimate use and development of related technologies in any way.

Sometimes it's just unrealistic to bend new technology to our current legal system. Look at copyright VS digital distribution methods. Copyright causes much more problems that it realy solves.

Don't missunderstand me, as a weed smoker i'm also worried about diminishing privacy in recent years. But in this particular case i don't see any viable way to oppose it. And if we realy can't oppose it, the only remaining course of action is to adapt (e.g. change the law so i wouldn't care if someone records me smoking joint on my balcony:)

Re:Something It Isn't

[DJRumpy]

Any number of things could be done. It could emit a low pitch noise, it could be given a very obvious glow (some suggested a pin light led type indicator but those can be easily hidden).

They could also just ban them in certain places, like pharmacies, bathrooms, etc.

Re: Something It Isn't

[bloodhawk]

I am not saying it is right or acceptable. but yes people WILL understand why the assault occurred, no they won't agree with it and certainly won't condone it but such is life, if you do rude invasive in your face things to people you are going to find some will snap at you, some will do so verbally and I am sure a small percentage will do so violently. The world is not a perfect place, there are plenty of perfectly legal things you can do that are likely to get you beaten, robbed, raped or murdered, pretending otherwise is simply inviting yourself to a shorter life.

Re:Something It Isn't

[AK Marc]

They say that there are other unenumerated rights, but they don't say what those unenumerated rights are.

It would have been more convenient if they enumerated our unenumerated rights. Then we'd be sure to never accidentally have more rights than the government grants us.

On one level, there's no logic to it. You have people on both sides saying, "It just seems logical to me," and hiring lawyers to make logical arguments.

Yes. It's an emotional/religious issue. Logic only counts in proving it in a legal sense, but even that is a veiled emotional plea to those hearing it.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

"Rude invasive in your face things" like wear a Glass headset in your vicinity? Maybe even take a picture or video of a friend or landmark that happens to include you briefly in the background? Yeah, totally worth a beating.

Maybe you understand how committing such a heinous act as wearing a device with a lens instead of carrying it is inviting a shorter life; I don't.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

I appreciate the in-depth response, as I'm still coming to grips with this concern some people have. And let me say clearly, I also don't want someone with a camera of any sort videoing me, specifically, in a private place (wouldn't be that comfortable with them following me around in a public place either).

What I still don't understand is the automatic assumption that any Glass user you see is not only always videoing everything they happen to glance at, but that they would bother to focus on you.

The former is highly unlikely, due not only to the battery expiring in a couple of hours, but because very few people care to record all the random crap they glance at, every single place they go. What would you do with all that boring video? Isn't it far more likely that people would only want to record significant moments - special events, friends, maybe a quick glance around a restaurant for context, then focusing on something they actually know and find interesting?

The other point is the apparent belief that a Glass user in particular is likely to point their lens and stare for extended times at all the complete strangers around them. That would be rude as you say, regardless of what sort of camera you use (or even without one) - so why do you think "Glassholes" would invariably lack such ordinary politeness? Because of their choice of technology? Surely if someone actually wanted to video people around them, they'd be far more likely to choose something a heck of a lot less visible than Glass?

I get that there's a potential for a Glasshole to rudely invade people's privacy in the way you are concerned about, just like anyone with a camera or smartphone or keychain camcorder, or even a bored security guard watching a surveillance camera. I don't get why people think it's so much more likely for someone wearing Glass to do this than anyone else. Particularly as it'd be so much more obvious with this weird Glass thing on your face. Glass does have a few other uses besides recording things.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

OK, I can just about understand that - fear of being accidentally captured by an inadvertent glance.

But still, even if the wearer happened to glance up at you specifically (out of the rest of the restaurant also saying "hurray"), to the extent where they moved their head to point directly at you rather than just a flick of the eyeballs - they still wouldn't linger on you. You'd appear as a slightly blurred figure for less than a second. And still nobody watching the video would care; they want to see little Timmy's big grin, not some random stranger in the background.

Would that really be so bad? Is it so different from accidentally appearing in the frame of one of last week's LiveLeak videos, or being glanced at by a security guard in the local mall's recording room?

Re:Something It Isn't

[Paradise Pete]

you're right. realising that most people are stupid is depressing.

But even the smart people are not really all that bright. I've been lucky enough to be smart enough to make a good living using my brain. But I do stupid things all the time. So do you, I'll bet. Even the very smartest people do. If people were truly smart I'd be scrubbing toilets for a living.

Re: Something It Isn't

[Namarrgon]

None of which is specific to Glass.

Re:Something It Isn't

[MikeBabcock]

The police get paid to arrest people and look like they're being competent.

Google gets paid to provide a service to its users to the advertisers have someone to sell product to.

The people I want the police to catch are already good enough at not doing what they do in front of cameras ... the essentially innocent people who look like they might be doing something bad but are easy to catch? They'll be on camera.

Re:Something It Isn't

[MikeBabcock]

I see very few reasons to fix Glass and a number of reasons to fix the way we police ...

Re: Something It Isn't

[MikeBabcock]

Actually the stall isn't public, its private, it has a door -- you have an expectation of privacy.

If you're walking down the street you don't.

Re:Something It Isn't

[MikeBabcock]

whooosh

Re:Something It Isn't

[MikeBabcock]

I see walking GPS and transit stop announcements ... other people see porn and voyeurism.

Sometimes I suspect the perspective reflects the individual more than the technology.

Well now

[Dunbal]

I can think of a few reasons. A device whose sole purpose is to bombard you with ads, which can be used to track you, which destroys the privacy of anyone around you, and that costs well over $1000 and that Google thinks it still retains the ownership of it? No thanks.

Re:Well now

[Joce640k]

Take the hate for bluetooth earpieces, multiply it by 1000 because now nobody even wants you to look in their direction.

That's Glass. May it die.

Smartphones do everything useful that glass does but you can put them away in your pocket. Winner.

Re:Well now

[lesincompetent]

[...]which destroys the privacy of anyone around you [...]

Spot on. That's the main issue with me. And don't tell me "oh but we've got smartphones already".
Glass is a whole new level of invasivity.

Re:Well now

[White Flame]

He chooses what to post on to the internet. If somebody wearing Glass walks up to you, your property, or your workplace, you have no choice in the matter as to which of your activities gets uploaded to Google.

Re:Well now

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Be a HAPPY Cyborg! Join the collective! Google borgs are HAPPY borgs! Share and enjoy.

Re:Well now

[Maudib]

On the ad front, people said the same thing about android. I haven't ever obtrusive ads. Same thing with gmail and search, they are there, but entirely to the side.

Frankly this sort of advertising is far less intrusive then most offline advertising. Consider the omni-present ads on busses and taxis and billboards, the flood of intrusive ads on TV and radio. I would far prefer to substitute those for google's approach: show me something I might actually want in a very unobtrusive fashion.

On the privacy front, your argument is straw-man. Privacy is already destroyed, constant surveillance is the norm now that literally everyone is carrying at least one camera. Glass may well improve the situation by reminding people of that.

Re:Well now

[Savage-Rabbit]

Take the hate for bluetooth earpieces, multiply it by 1000 because now nobody even wants you to look in their direction.

Bluetooth earpieces are so annoying because for a lot of people that wear them phone conversations seem to outweigh face to face conversations in importance.

Re:Well now

[Sir_Sri]

While those are all legitimate points, the 'google retaining ownership' part may change when it becomes a consumer product. Right now it's in a testing phase, so google owning it makes sense. Whether they stick with that plan for commercial release will be harder to say.

Broadly I think is the question of what can google glass add that won't be a giant privacy invasion. You don't particularly need ads, some other company could just try and sell a device. But the ability to discretely record a video or take a picture anywhere is bad enough with cell phones and private investigator cameras wearable glasses just adds a new level to that. Just sticking your cell phone screen in front of your face isn't much of a problem, but to go beyond that its impossible for the data gathered to not represent a serious privacy threat (insofar as cell phone tracking isn't already).

Re:Well now

[lesincompetent]

I know exactly how to preserve my privacy on the net. I know exactly what the various online services know about me. That's because I have control over my data, for a broad definition of data.
The moment you take away control from me it's over.
I can concede you that's already happening with smartphones: (even though i still don't have one) my friends are leaking data about me.
Glass would be immensely worse.

Re:Well now

[Alomex]

Take the hate for bluetooth earpieces,

Bluetooth earpieces are incredibly useful. They readily tag the "people I do not want to talk to" set.

Re:Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

If somebody with any camera walks up to you, your property, or your workplace, you have no choice in the matter as well. The only difference here is that Google Glass isn't meant to be a camera but a display with a computer inside of it.

Re:Well now

[cduffy]

He chooses what to post on to the internet. If somebody wearing Glass walks up to you, your property, or your workplace, you have no choice in the matter as to which of your activities gets uploaded to Google.

So what? If you're in a public place, you had no expectation of privacy to start with... and a world where you did, where people are prevented from photography in public by virtue of needing to get permissions from every single person near them, is no world I'd want to live in at all.

This is probably just a matter of valuing things differently; I value a person's right to record things which happen around them in public more than I wish to grant a new right not to be recorded in public places (thereby allowing any single member of the multitude present in a crowd to restrict the entirety of the masses nearby).

Re:Well now

[ArcherB]

He chooses what to post on to the internet. If somebody wearing Glass walks up to you, your property, or your workplace, you have no choice in the matter as to which of your activities gets uploaded to Google.

First, if someone walks up to your property, you may firmly order them to leave. If someone walks up to your workplace wearing one... well, so what. Ask him to take a picture of the camera in the corner that is already filming everything you do. If it still bothers you, take it up with whoever is in charge. And although you didn't mention it, if it bothers you when someone wears on in public, you should already be bothered. Google "public web cam" for just a small smidgen of cameras that already out there, recording your movements 24/7.

Also, Glass is not filming ALL the time. The user has to turn it on. It's also not automatically uploaded to Google unless the user tells it to, and even then it's not made public, again, unless the user makes it public.

Finally, it's not like Glass is a hidden camera. You know it's there and with an LED, you know when it's recording. Stop making excuses to hate things other people enjoy.

Re:Well now

[jopsen]

I can think of a few reasons. A device whose sole purpose is to bombard you with ads...

I think Glass is a good idea... But at least give them the benefit of the doubt when they've clearly said, it won't do ads...

In any event, it's a toy... I don't mind Google experimenting... I seriously doubt they'll get this one right :)

Let worry about potential problems, when they become relevant. I'm fairly confident the EU has the backbone required to protect my privacy, should it come to that.
So why not chill?

Re:Well now

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I bet the Goog would love that. All dissenters silenced because complaining about their privacy policies in public is what, public? Yes, you have made the entire internet marginally stupider.

Re: Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

You DO realize he was being sarcastic?

Or is that why you're so upset?

Re:Well now

[pjr.cc]

wow, talk about mis-informed...

First, google has said ad's are fobidden on glass... secondly, "well over a $1000" was for the dev version, the production version is rumoured to weigh in around ~$500 (rumoured being the appropriate word)...

But, if you bothered reading, both these things have been made abundantly clear and if you knew even a single thing about host most dev type stuff happens with hardware like this, the initial dev releases are almost always expensive compared to their later production cousins... but then, again, this is common knowledge to anyone who's been alive more then 15 years (have u even heard of economies of scale or simple things such as this?)... I honestly dont get how such a stupid post gets "3, insightful", but then again, welcome to slashdot right?

Yeah, im being deliberately insulting, but if your going to make such a retarded, fud-based and false post, you deserve no less...

Re:Well now

[ADRA]

The only thing I see from an earpiece user is the initial "Is this guy bat crazy" look, but then you get it and go back to normal. I could say the same thing about people who wear baggy jeans below their butts, or people wearing wrestling T-shits. Its a style that leads to stereotypes. Can I be assumed to be a creepy uber nerd for wearing glass? You may draw that line, but I wouldn't. They have a value use case for some, and that alone dictates that with a better industrial design could at least be a small scale success.

Would I line up and get em even if they looked like great streamlined sunglasses? No, I don't see enough VALUE in it (unless they get to maybe the $100 price point), but that doesn't mean I'd consider them creepy or extremely intrusive. I -would- like to see an illuminated LED on the glass when it's recording (prior to a picture being taken) though. The perceived creepy vs. reality of being recorded is a vast chasm, and a tiny LED would help defend the device's perceived inadequacies.

Re:Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

Long ago, when I was in school, beepers were for gits. People would mock the beeper wearers. "Har har, he thinks he's as important as a doctor."

Then cellphones arrived. People mocked those too. "Har har, he thinks he's so important that he can't use a pay telephone like the rest of us."

Same with portable computers, compact discs, laptops, smart phones. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the first people who tooled around in horseless carriages were mocked. Oh that's right, they were.

Glass is a new thing. It gives some of us something that we can feel superior about when mocking those who pioneer new technology. I used to feel the same way when everyone started using Linux (and I really have been using it over 15 years). I'm really finished with Luddism. Embrace technology or become a dinosaur.

Re:Well now

[ClioCJS]

I like how you make a strawman out of declaring the device's sole purpose. It's about as convincing as the people who say twitter is solely for telling people what you ate or that you pooped.

Re:Well now

[houghi]

which destroys the privacy of anyone around you

This. And the worst part is that it is handed over on a platter to a marketing company.
No matter that I don't want one, others will have one and track me.

Re:Well now

[O('_')O_Bush]

You are purposefully misrepresenting the arguments.

People in public are screaming about how they want control over their own privacy (posting in a public forum means I allow that information and opinion to be public, instead of, say, Google choosing what should be public or private about me) not that they want absolute privacy (asinine interpretation of the vernacular, but one you've chosen to use as an assertion to fit your contradiction).

Re:Well now

[ToastedRhino]

I think this touches on what is, in fact, the much bigger issue facing society today. While it's true that what you do in a public place is, by definition, a public act, the consequences of such an act have changed dramatically over the last few years. There is a tremendous difference between someone doing something stupid in public that is seen by maybe 10-100 people and then shared via word of mouth and someone doing something in public that is video taped and posted on the internet for countless millions to see. If I'm walking down the street and trip and fall and a few people see me that's going to be embarrassing, but it will be nowhere near as embarrassing as if my tripping and falling is recorded and ends up on YouTube.

The barriers to spontaneous recording like this have continued to fall, but barriers do still remain. If I see something happening on the streets right now I have to take out my phone (or camera), launch the camera app (which has become much easier), and begin recording. With glass, all I have to do is say something like, "OK Glass, record video" (or whatever the actual command is). This significantly lowers the barrier to capturing almost anything. There are certainly advantages to this when you're recording someone you're close to or who has consented to your recording (think capturing your kids first steps), but there are also tremendous disadvantages when it comes to privacy and strangers.

People on either side who are pretending that this is a simple issue are mistaken. Painting the issue as black and white, either everything is allowed or nothing is, ignores the intricacies of what's being discussed. Glass introduces an entirely new layer of complexity to the privacy debate that is separate from (but certainly related to) the debate about public webcams and government surveillance. I personally think that it's a good thing that people are at least thinking about these issues, as in the past they have largely been ignored. Maybe we can now start to return to an era where we appreciate the importance of privacy once again. The rules have to catch up to technology at some point.

Re:Well now

[Somebody Is Using My]

I agree.

I love the idea of "Glass". I'm just wary of the Google part.

Because, let's face it; I think most of us geeks would love to have a HUD that can display any information we need right in front of us without the need for a laptop, tablet or cellphone. There's been many a time I've been somewhere and wished I could just look up some information but didn't have access to a compute (and looking up anything on a phone is frustrating and agonizing). Glass is a step in the direction I want to go (retinal digital implants are next ;-)

What I don't like is Google's - or any major corporation's - involvement, because they will do everything they can to monetize my transactions with the Internet. They'll plaster everything with advertisements and data-mine my searches to create creepy profiles on me.

Get me a glasses-mounted HUD with a dumb connection to the Internet and I'll be happy. Oh, and if you disable the ability to upload videos and pictures to the Internet, then everyone else will be happy too.

Re:Well now

[BasilBrush]

He's choosing what he posts, and he's doing it under a pseudonym with nothing to link it to his real life. So thing like the invasion of privacy that Google Glass is at all.

Re:Well now

[Luminous]

I think this calls for a social experiment. Walk down the street with a camcorder (very obvious that you are recording) and see how people react. Walk down the same street, same time of day with a smartphone but act like you are using it for navigation (obfuscating the recording but the smartphone is up at a level that could be recording). See how people react in both cases.

As a person who has done a lot of video work in public locations, it is rare to have someone jump out of the line of sight of the camera. I've never had anyone try to hide when I use a smartphone.

Of course, I could also build a little hidey pocket to record people with the smartphone without them knowing at all. I guess that would be even MORE of an invasion of privacy, right?

Re:Well now

[Minwee]

You need to get out and read more books. If you had, you might have spotted the reference.

Also -- and I am only saying this because I care -- there are a lot of decaffeinated brands on the market today that are just as tasty as the real thing.

Re:Well now

[Luminous]

Good thing they don't make tiny cameras that are essentially invisible because that would really be an issue, wouldn't it. We'd probably pass all sorts of laws to protect against that kind of invasion of privacy.

Re: Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

From third parties, yes. Now find a quote from Google saying that *they* won't be inserting ads eventually, if the concept survives (which it won't). Difficulty: Google has made no such statement because it wouldn't be true.

Re: Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't said that. They've said third parties are forbidden from inserting their own ads. *Big* difference. Google just doesn't want a competitor on its hardware. Ads *will* come if Glass ever becomes widely adopted.

Re:Well now

[Belial6]

That really is a stereo type that, like many stereo types, had a foundation in truth, but has long since lost it's validity. People really like to hang on to stereo types though.

Re: Well now

[Anonymous Coward]

Third party ads are forbidden. First party ads aren't. If you believe Google will block itself from its primary moneymaker, I have a bridge you will also believe I can sell you.

Re:Well now

[misterooga]

Out of curiosity, if I'm standing on the street wearing the Glass, will I be in trouble for recording what's happening over the fence into, say, your house?

And what if the said fence is one of those wire type that's basically see-thru?

Re:Well now

[ArcherB]

No, that's only if they're on your property.

Right. That is exactly what I said.

Which might reassure the person wearing the glasses that he has some control. It does nothing to reassure other people. They're already called Glassholes for a reason. And nobody trusts assholes.

So someone is an asshole because they have the ability to record a video of you? I hate to tell you this, but everyone you see has the ability to record a video of you; EVERYONE! And you may not even know they have a camera.

I think part of the problem here is that people are afraid that things they do in public will be made public. Do people not know that things they do in public is already public? If you are worried about it being on youtube and your brainfart becoming your YouTube Moment, relax, odds are people don't find you that interesting. Nothing against you personally. Nearly all of us are extremely boring people. Only a few are interesting enough to watch and they are already on YouTube.

Re:Well now

[Belial6]

If you run into your ex-girlfriend while in public, there is no real problem. No harm, no foul. It was a chance meeting. If you run into your ex-girlfriend at every single public place you ever go, it is a problem. Your favorite restaurant, your doctor's office, in front of your new girlfriends house, outside your new girlfriend's children's school. This would be very bad and deserving of complaint even though they are all in public places.

The complaint about being photographed and filmed pervasively in public is like complaining that you are being stalked by an ex-girlfriend.

Re:Well now

[ArcadeMan]

Share and enjoy?

SHARE AND ENJOY?!

But I don't want to become an elevator!

Re:Well now

[ArcadeMan]

So when someone tells me to go fuck myself, they're only being nice and trying to tell me I'm sexually frustrated?

And all these times I thought they were jerks!

Re:Well now

[BlackPignouf]

and that costs well over $1000

You have to pay for those???
I'd rather be an official google employee with a streetview backpack.

Re:Well now

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

others will have one and track me.

You are not that interesting. Get over yourself.
Also I expect Glass will be a big steaming pile of fail. I can see several technical uses for a device like this. Doing a repair and having the diagram of the device you are repairing visable. Could be useful. How about an Ikea furniture app, that warns you before you put a dowel into a screw hole.
People walking down the street wearing google glass? I doubt I will ever see it.

Re:Well now

[oPless]

I think google has already mentioned that the glass part will be glowing when the device is activated.

This is more than a good enough clue tbqf.

Re:Well now

[Cigarra]

It's been done. I give you Surveillance Camera Man (hilarious to watch btw)

Re:Well now

[BasilBrush]

Right. That is exactly what I said.

No. Walking up to your property is not the same thing as walking on your property.

So someone is an asshole because they have the ability to record a video of you? I hate to tell you this, but everyone you see has the ability to record a video of you; EVERYONE! And you may not even know they have a camera.

Classic strawman. No, people don't think people who own video cameras are assholes. They thing people who relish the idea of wearing them on their face are assholes.

Much the same as people don't consider people with mobiles phones to be assholes, but do consider people who constantly walk around with bluetooth headsets in their ears to be assholes.

I think part of the problem here is that people are afraid that things they do in public will be made public.

There's a bit of that. But mostly people just don't like assholes. And pointing a video camera back in someone's face then they are perhaps trying to communicate with you is an assholeish thing to do. It would be with a camcorder. It's more so when it's essentially glued to your face.

Of course if it turns out that Glass users have the common curtesy to always remove the glasses when they interact with people, it'll be less of a problem. But I guarantee you people who think Glass is a geed idea are the kind of socially inept types that wouldn't have a clue what makes for decent social graces.

Re:Well now

[Riceballsan]

Well there is the hypothetical future. IE say facial recognition, you are walking drunkenly down the street, some other person who doesn't know you is also walking down the street filming something else (or hell lets make up a hypothetical orwellion the cameras always record now), and you are caught in the background throwing up on a fire hydrant. Facial recognition technology tags you... and puts you up there. 3 weeks later, you have a job interview and part of HR's roll now involves running a quick search of videos you are tagged in, and checking a few things out...

Now admitted, this hypothetical is pretty extreme, pretty improbable, and downright silly in parts not that every piece of it isn't possible within the next decade or so, but that in addition to being possible, the ramification of it also involve at minimum 400 videos involving you getting tagged and uploaded on a monthly basis. The only real danger that exists in that stage, is the obsessive stalkers, actually being able to follow you for miles and years without even violating a restraining order.

Re:Well now

[Razgorov Prikazka]

Bluetooth earpieces are incredibly useful. They readily tag the "people I do not want to talk to" set.

You mean like an earmark? :-)
I Agree bro! Now lets sniff some coke from the tiddies of a 60 year old Thai whore with an arm and a leg missing ;-)

Re:Well now

[msobkow]

That is NOT true in many jurisdictions. You have to get people's permission before you take pictures of them.

Even Google had to blur out people in their StreetView footage.

Glass doesn't do that.

Re:Well now

[unkiereamus]

Smartphones do everything useful that glass does but you can put them away in your pocket. Winner.

I disagree. I, for one, am incredibly excited to see Glass come to market. There's a need in my life that Glass can fill that my smartphone can't.

I ride a motorcycle, while I'm on the road, I can't pull up google maps, or check to see what that alert sound was (assuming I even hear it). Now, there are a variety of clamps that you can use to mount your smartphone to the handlebars, but those don't work for me for a few reasons, first: I live in New Mexico, in direct sunlight I can't see shit on my screen, and the glare off of it would be...problematic. Second, the roads I frequently use don't really allow for taking your hands off the handles...which incidentally means that those same roads would do their damndest to shake the phone out of the clamp. And finally, I ride what amounts to a 5/4 scale dirt bike, the notion of rigidly mounting my expensive and delicate piece of electronics to something that bounces and vibrates quite that much doesn't please me.

Now, the flip side of this is that I'm a Paramedic, while I'm at work, the camera would make wearing the Glass basically completely verboten. I'd probably be happier with the product if it wasn't there, but then I'd be just as happy if my phone didn't have a camera either, and I know lots of people who consider the camera in their phone to be a killer feature, I, being an adult, have learned that not every product is designed specifically for me, and if I want a product for the features I like, I often have to take the features I don't along with them.

As for someone else who complained about the ads popping up, either in the initial release or down the line, First, see what I said above about being an adult, some people like that shit, don't ask me why. But, more importantly, the chances of there not being a custom ROM that explicitly addresses such concerns is effectively nil.

Re:Well now

[skegg]

Do you honestly not see the difference between what we've had in the past, and where we're heading in the future?

You seem to have very strong principles.
Would you go up to a group of bikies at some truck stop and start filming them with a camcorder?
What if some elderly, incontinent person soiled themselves: would you video that and upload it to YouTube?

Hidden cameras have existed for years, but they're rarely used. Where they've been used outside of investigations / security services, it's been by individuals who most would consider to be socially dysfunctional. (I'll say it bluntly: perverts !)

Google Glass takes us into new territory in a single leap.

Re:Well now

[socceroos]

...I sense that APK is lurking nearby....

Re:Well now

[fyngyrz]

Fine, take the camera out, and no one will object.

Re:Well now

[TapeCutter]

Is it "mocking" to genuinely believe google glasses and shoe phones are gimmicks pioneered by Maxwell Smart?

Re:Well now

[nbauman]

Mod parent up. Street View is a very good example.

Re:Well now

[SerpentMage]

You really think google is going to help you on your motorbike? I am going to say, nope, not going to happen. Google glass works on the concept of talking to it. Great idea with the wind going through your hair, helmet, and the noise made by the microphone.

You talk about very bumpy and hard roads. Do you really think that the glasses will stay put? I used to do sports with glasses until at age 16 (30 years ago) I switched to contacts. Let me give you a surprise. Glasses or anything else does not stay put unless it is bolted to your head. And even then they shift. Imagine you driving along and the google glasses shifting a bit. What then? You said you can't take your hands off the handlebar!

Google glass has a solution set, but it is very narrow...

Re:Well now

[nbauman]

The movie Milk, about Harvey Milk, starts off with a camera filming somebody in a gay bar circa 1960. The guy in the bar throws a drink at the camera.

Re:Well now

[SerpentMage]

Actually yes you will be in trouble. You are recording on private property and people can have an expectation of privacy. Ever heard of peeping tom laws? Voyeurism? eehhh not allowed!!!

Re:Well now

[cduffy]

You are recording on private property and people can have an expectation of privacy.

It's more complex than that. Have a "privacy fence", where it takes some effort to see through? Yup, expectation of privacy. Have a chain-link fence which can be seen through from public land? Not in any state I've lived in, no.

Re:Well now

[unkiereamus]

As for the first point, it's a fair concern. However, there's already a solution on the market for that, active noise canceling microphones, in fact, my helmet has a hard mount for one built in. I've never used one myself, but from what I understand, they work rather well, though not perfectly, as the wind noise is rather, though not perfectly steady. Whether or not the remaining noise is enough to overcome the STT tech, I don't know, but I'm hoping not, with, I think, some reasonable justification, given the ability of google voice to comprehend me when I'm in an ambulance (which has a huge and noisy diesel engine) doing 90 MPH without a noise canceling headset. I'm reasonably sure that by spending a fair bit of time doing training, it will understand me tolerably well, at least over the crucial commends. Even if not, though, there's still use to it, if I can just set the google maps up before I start riding, and have it scroll any alerts across the top (which I believe I've seen "screenshots" of it doing, but I can't find right now), that will absolutely fill my need.

The second point, however, doesn't have much to say for itself. As it stands, I wear two different kinds of glasses while I ride. First are my corrective lenses, which I wear when my contacts are acting up, those just stay in place, between the ear hooks and the pressure that the helmet places on the side of my head, they don't move. The second, and more common, are a pair of cheap sunglasses, wince they have more or less straight bows, they do move some, but probably not enough to be irritating were they providing a HUD. Admittedly, though, the Glass is likely to be much heavier, and thus will move more...so it's probably fortuitous that I've already solved that problem by putting a couple of wedges/shims that are mounted to the faceplate (not visor) that comfortably hold them in place.

Here's the one you missed that's a much bigger concern than either of the points you raised...will Glass fit under my helmet without requiring modifications that will compromise the safety of the helmet? God I hope so, but there's really no way of telling until they hit the market and I can try both on at the same time.

Re:Well now

[cas2000]

There's a need in my life that Glass can fill that my smartphone can't.

you misspelt want

I ride a motorcycle, while I'm on the road, I can't pull up google maps, or check to see what that alert sound was (assuming I even hear it).

when you're on the road, you should be paying attention to the road, not to a screen, not to alert sounds from your e-devices, and not to phone calls.

if you need to look at a map or take/make a phone call, stop at the side of the road first.

at least on a bike your momentary distractions are more likely to kill yourself than others, but you're still placing others at unneccessary risk. pedestrians don't want or need you and your bike plowing into them at 60 K or more, and whle it may seem at times like car drivers want to kill you, they really don't want you messing up their paint-work.

Re: Well now

[cduffy]

So hey, I'm shoving this camera in your face so ten years from now you can be turned down for a job because you might do today that can be taken out of context. But why all the hate?

Dunno. Personally, I'm all for personal responsibility -- if I do something in public today that'd get me turned down for a job in ten years, that's 100% my own damned fault.

Ubiquitous cameras help keep honest people honest, and help get people who aren't honest caught. If some asshat runs me off the road on my (very, very well-lit) bicycle, I damned well want there to be a record showing (1) their license plate, and (2) me being my usual, exceedingly law-abiding, conscientious self. If someone breaks into my condo? Record. If someone picks a fight, and I need to show that self-defense was justified? Record. If someone was merely an asshat? Well, that's fair game too.

Keep in mind, too, that if everyone is getting the same kind of record built up about them, then small infractions aren't such a big thing. If everyone is a drunk asshat at a party every so often, or does a bit of political baiting, then evidence of that happening doesn't really matter -- as long as it's equal-opportunity public record, then employers &c. will be forced to compromise on hiring people whose indiscretions aren't so bad.

So -- if shoving a camera in your face is something you hate, maybe you should think long and hard about the way you behave in public.

Re:Well now

[cas2000]

uploading photos to the internet IS publishing. that's not even legal grey-area.

and it's not hard to argue that photos being auto-submitted to face recognition databases on the net is publishing too.

that IS a grey area at the moment, but it won't be long until it's being argued in court cases around the world - the matter will be decided there or in legislatures above them.

Re:Well now

[cas2000]

if it bothers you when someone wears on in public, you should already be bothered. Google "public web cam" for just a small smidgen of cameras that already out there, recording your movements 24/7.

that's what bothers people - it reminds them that they're being recorded nearly all the time. they don't want to be reminded, they want to keep their illusion of privacy.

also, many people believe (rightly or wrongly) that CCTV cameras are a necessary evil because they help prevent shoplifting, deter thieves, and help catch criminals (e.g. a CCTV camera in a shop window identified the rapist who murdered a young woman only a few kilometres from where I live a few years - he probably wouldn't have been caught otherwise). they don't accord the same "necessary evil" status to cameras used by individuals, they see it as a frivolous techno-toy with no benefit to them or to society.

personally, i don't agree that CCTVs are a necessary evil - i think that they are not worth the loss of privacy or anonymity (one of the benefits of living in a city IS anonymity - you don't have your neighbours knowing about every thing that happens in your life as you do in a small town). But i'm clearly in the minority on this issue.

Re:Well now

[thoth]

It is simple, from the viewpoint of private businesses - they'll just post noticed and waivers that say "we aren't responsible for video recording somebody else does". Kind of like the generic "not responsible for theft" at coat checks, and so on.

They aren't going to care, aren't going to get into enforcing laws, and will generally offload everything and say if A records B on these premises, your legal fight is with A and not us at all. Leave if you don't like this policy.

Re:Well now

[unkiereamus]

I'll grant you the need/want thing, I should know better than to engage in inexactitudes of language.

As far as the distraction issue, it all comes down to a matter of prioritization. There are times I absolutely cannot take my eyes off the road ahead of me, when I'm going through blind curves or cresting hills, when I'm moving through an intersection, when I'm moving through a zone of merging, when I'm in a residential neighborhood filled with suicidal children (all children are suicidal), or any number of other situations in which the potential for rapidly changing road hazards exists. There are times when I absolutely can take my eyes off the road for a second, for example, when I'm on a long straightaway, without any vehicles close to me or I'm sitting at a stoplight, with no one coming up behind me any time soon. Currently I use that time to check my blind spots, check my speed to make sure I haven't creeped up further over the limit than I'm comfortable betting the police won't stop me (I never need to look at my speedometer to determine whether or not I'm driving at a safe speed.), check my odometer and figure out how much fuel I have, and after everything has been done, and I have some time before I need to repeat any of it, I'll look around at the scenery...why shouldn't I wedge check the map and read any alerts in there, especially given that doing either one leaves the roadway in my peripheral vision, which, for example checking my blind spots doesn't?

Re:Well now

[joshuaobrien]

Suddenly the Guy Fawkes masks don't look so bad.

Re: Well now

[Grygus]

That doesn't make sense in the long run; if the result is that ubiquitous, then the stigma will become less severe. It is difficult to achieve widespread notoriety in a world where everyone is posted online, all the time - witness the lengths YouTube attention whores have to go to already, and you'll see that someone recording you eating like a pig at Uno's just won't be newsworthy at all.

Re:Well now

[vux984]

Bluetooth earpieces are so annoying because for a lot of people that wear them phone conversations seem to outweigh face to face conversations in importance.

And now, instead of just having something they find more important to listen to, while facing you, they'll have something more important to look at while they are facing you too.

Re:Well now

[mr_visible]

You're giving people too much credit around perceived privacy issues.

I'd wager that most of the hate is because (1) you'll draw unwanted attention to yourself by wearing a silly-looking device on your face and (2) because you'll draw unwanted attention to yourself by TALKING TO YOUR GLASSES.

Until this becomes the norm, and [celebrity of the moment] is wearing them, people won't want to put themselves out there in public like that.

Re:Well now

[chihowa]

On the ad front, people said the same thing about android. I haven't ever obtrusive ads.

The Maps app is pretty bad about this. When working on a phone with limited screen real estate, having any of the screen taken up by ads is obnoxious as hell.

And generally, Googles creepy tendrils run very deep into Android.

Re: Well now

[Altrag]

if I do something in public today that'd get me turned down for a job in ten years, that's 100% my own damned fault.

To a degree yes. The big problem is when you do something stupid at 16 when you aren't thinking about ten years in the future (and the law in many places even considers you unfit to make serious decisions, for better or worse!) Then at 26 when you're done college and looking at getting out on your own.. maybe start a family (if you don't already have one) and some potential employer finds that old picture.

Sure you can say "you don't want to work for them anyway" but when its a choice of putting up with an asswad or not eating that week/month well.. that's not much of a choice for most people. Some people don't have options (or at least can't pull them together before they run out of savings.)

if everyone is getting the same kind of record built up about them, then small infractions aren't such a big thing

I generally subscribe to this as well but its unfortunately not universally applicable. Celebrities and public officials in particular are held to a much much higher standard than the rest of us without much regard for the fact that they're just as human as we all are and sometimes fall to temptation too. It (usually) doesn't affect their job performance, but we still get all up in arms for relatively minor infractions that we laugh off when its our friends (or even ourselves.)

Regardless of how "common" it is, if someone decides that they need to smear you for some reason (prevent you from getting a job.. excuse to fire you.. getting the president impeached.. whatever..) and all of your past sins are available for anyone to view well.. you're just making their lives easier. Never mind the concoction that could likely be made with video editing software to help take things out of context!

Re:Well now

[Skinny Rav]

With glass, all I have to do is say something like, "OK Glass, record video" (or whatever the actual command is).

Well, I would call someone wearing smartglasses and saying "OK Glass, record video" at least as conspicuous as someone taking a smartphone out of a pocket and recording. Wait a decade or so when it will be possible to communicate with wearable computers without speaking.

Re:Well now

[serviscope_minor]

Now, there are a variety of clamps that you can use to mount your smartphone to the handlebars, but those don't work for me for a few reasons, first: I live in New Mexico, in direct sunlight I can't see shit on my screen, and the glare off of it would be...problematic.

In the NM sun, the light from google glasses will be just as washed out as a cellphone screen. Seriously, nothing works out there. It is hell's own job trying to do field work since you have to spend most of your time trying to shade the screen of whatever device you're using. And even then you need the brightness on full which kills battery life.

I've tried older glases in the UK sun and they were bad enough.

Anyway, one barely needs a map driving round NM, since there's approximately 3 roads anyway. And the directions are pretty simple, e.g. if you're in Espanola, keep driving as fast as possible untul you're not in Espanola any more.

Re:Well now

[MachineShedFred]

I'm assuming that when you are riding your motorcycle, that you are wearing a helmet.

The last thing you want right in front of your eyes is something that can break into sharp pieces, rattling around inside your helmet, should it be used for something other than wind protection.

Think about it for a second please. It's the same concept as what I've told a friend that likes to ride with a handgun in his jacket inside pocket - what is that piece of steel going to do to your ribs, should you land on it?

Re:Well now

[MachineShedFred]

Frankly this sort of advertising is far less intrusive then most offline advertising. Consider the omni-present ads on busses and taxis and billboards, the flood of intrusive ads on TV and radio. I would far prefer to substitute those for google's approach: show me something I might actually want in a very unobtrusive fashion.

Except it's additive - you get both at the same time. It's not like Glass magically makes the other outdoor advertising / broadcast media advertising go away. You just get more of the same.

Re:Well now

[Krojack]

and that Google thinks it still retains the ownership of it?

I'm going to assume you never ever EVER beta tested anything in your life.

Re:Well now

[AK Marc]

It's ad free, can't track you (it relies on connections to a phone to provide location, and doesn't independently include location tracking), and does nothing to the privacy of those around you unless you tell it to (like any phone or camera today). Your complaints are petty and demonstrate a lack of knowledge about what it is.

Re:Well now

[AK Marc]

I've used headsets on a bike, and they were mostly usable, but very hard to get on correctly and well positioned. Inside a helmet, it's not that bad.

I've never had an issue with my sunglasses adjusting while riding. For one, your body is a massive shocl/vibration absorber. For two, the helmet essentially pinches your ears around the frames, cementing them into place.

Re: Well now

[cduffy]

Never mind the concoction that could likely be made with video editing software to help take things out of context!

...which behooves you to have your own, unedited footage with which to set the record straight.

I'm all for a surveillance society, so long as it's equal-opportunity. If only the powerful have access to the footage, that's 1984; if everyone has their own (read: under their ownership, to be released or withheld as they see fit barring court order) record of everything that happens whenever they're in a public space -- ideally a non-repudiable, tamper-evident one (something cryptography makes possible), I'd call that a step towards a utopia.

Re:Well now

[AK Marc]

It is hillarious. He is the reason so many people hate Google Glass. He was doing it to deliberately annoy people and catch their reactions. You might as well prove people hate plastic by hanging a plastic phallus on the outside of your pants, as if it's sticking out naturally, and barge into classrooms with classes in progress. Ooooh look, everyone hates plastic. No, everyone hates douchebags. Giving a douchbag something doesn't change that.

Re:Well now

[cduffy]

uploading photos to the internet IS publishing. that's not even legal grey-area.

Pardon? I store (encrypted) backups online. I'm sure as hell not publishing them to the world.

If that's not the case, please cite sources.

Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember people walking around talking to themselves? Remember the "I'm not talking to you, I'm on the phone" hand gesture?

It combined being rude with wearing a dorky looking apparatus.

And that's what Google Glass is.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ArcadeMan]

http://www.politicsworldwide.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/ruby_rod.jpg

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[icebike]

Remember people walking around talking to themselves? Remember the "I'm not talking to you, I'm on the phone" hand gesture? It combined being rude with wearing a dorky looking apparatus. And that's what Google Glass is.

Yes, we all remember that, and it took exactly One exposure for people to realize that Bluetooth made a lot of sense in some situations, and didn't impact the privacy of others around the user.

When you whip out your camera and photograph my desk or back I am forewarned, and have time to rare back with the haymaker that will surely be your next experience. But there is no defense against people walking into your store, your office, your meeting wearing Google Glass.

Bluetooth affected only the wearer. The camera in google glass attempts to make everyone near it fair game.

Its odd that Eric Schmidt just a few days ago worried about Privacy in a world of Drones, yet his company is pushing a product to make everyone Google's Drone.

We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.
Either that or remove the camera. 95% of everything Glass was designed to do can be done without the camera.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[tftp]

We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.

Those LEDs can be easily covered with black paint, black tape, or simply drilled out and destroyed. LEDs are not visible in bright daylight conditions. You cannot see LEDs in crowd.

Even if you do see the LED, what can you do about it? If a person is so self-centered to activate the camera in public, do you think your humble request will make him stop? If you take the issue into your own hands, that would be illegal.

The only good solution to GG problem is to remove the camera at the design stage. A camera is not needed for the wearer, really - there are very few daily experiences that we want to record and relive. If you are expecting an interesting situation - say, when you are skiing down a slope - you can always wear a headband with a single-purpose HD camera that records 30 fps onto an SD card, so that you have your movie right away, and in the desired resolution. For everything else, like walking down the street and coming across a police who works on another Rodney King, there is the phone.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[irving47]

I can only imagine how badly retailers are going to hate it. They don't want you photographing in their stores as it is with cell phones...
I wonder how long before there's a glass app (if that's what they call it) that just scans your camera input for bar codes and qr codes at all times.. As soon as it sees one, it runs the bar code through amazon to get cheaper prices for you. Yeah it already exists on the iphone.. But I'll bet they will hate it even more. I wouldn't be surprised to see more calls for cell phone jammers or RF-blocking paint.

In short, I think 99.9% of the hate will be all about the cameras. Especially if there's a workaround to turn off any indicator light that it's active.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[icebike]

I generally agree, the LEDs are at best a giveaway that the clown wearing them is being a douche. Put them concentric with the lens and it would make them harder to destroy.

But most of all, I agree the device does not need a camera at all. With GPS and compass the device knows where you are and what you are looking at, even in the boondocks, so it could give you directions, show you near by stores and the nearest gas station, all without a camera.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Sloppy]

When you whip out your camera and photograph my desk or back I am forewarned, and have time to rare back with the haymaker that will surely be your next experience. But there is no defense against people walking into your store, your office, your meeting wearing Google Glass.

This is what I totally don't get. Of course there's a defense against this stuff: the same defense you'd use if you saw a camera crew walk in with a giant WPIG news camera. If your cow-orker attented a meeting with a handheld camcorder always pointed at your face, you really wouldn't say anything?

What you don't have as good a defense against, is the in-the-wild-for-many-years miniature cameras with basically the same intrusion capabilities as Google Glass, except that they're less overtly displayed. Ten or fifteen years ago (actually much longer ago, but around turn-of-century is when it all got really cheap, I think) was the time to rage against this tech, not now.

But ok, rage on. Better late than never, if GG starts the debate which should have been. But flaming this particular product for something for which it's not even a real example of the problem (since GG is both relatively obtrusive (you see it) and relatively expensive ($1500)) seems kind of lame.

We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.

The funny thing is that you might actually get something like that for the next revision of GG. But you're never going to get it in general; you'll never be able to feel like it's something you can rely on. Cameras are going to be recording you, without the slightest visual or audible signal. It's probably already happening.

Take it from a guy who often wears a hat when he's outside. I don't have gear in there but you'd be crazy to take my word for it. I could have some gear in there, and you'd never know. There are people out there with backbacks, purses, shirt pockets, bulky coats .. it's over, I think. This would be a great time to be a voyeuristic perv, and GG doesn't really have anything to do with it, other than riding the same cheap components wave.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

I want the camera to facial-recognize people and put their names over their heads, because I am bad with names. But people like you are too busy whining to even think of the positive applications. (Same thing for translating foreign languages would be nice too, then I could actually order at my local establishments.)

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ADRA]

At least in the US, there's is no law that says you can't be filmed in public places (distribution is another matter). If you want to talk about people abusing glass, fuck glass. There's off the shelf speciality products that can record your every move more covertly than this tool will ever do. So what exactly is your problem with this product specifically? You should've lobbies your local politicians years ago. Just kill the photography industry entirely, and we can all knit our whicker baskets in peace.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[barc0001]

Get over it. If you're out in public you have no privacy. Any time you go to the store you're captured in dozens of camera views even before you make it into the parking lot.

"But there is no defense against people walking into your store,"

When I walk into your store, you're already videotaping ME, why should you have a problem if I level the playing field?

It's the difference between a surveillance society (which we already have) and a sousveillance society. Already we can be held to account by those running the cameras, but those in power are desperately trying to make sure we can't hold them accountable by the same means:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-kern-beating-fbi-20130515,0,760051,full.story

I think if you're out in public, it's fair game. If you don't want guests coming into your residence or a private function wearing it, tell them to take it off. It's like shoes.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Mathness]

We should demand "recording" LEDs indicating when cell phone cameras are on, and the same for Google Glass.

Or even better, have the feature only available after the user have used a vuvuzela for 5 minutes and it must be used during the recording as well. :p

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[icebike]

When I walk into your store, you're already videotaping ME, why should you have a problem if I level the playing field?

Because the store isn't "casing" you for the planned robbery. The store isn't going to stuff your wallet down their pants and walk away.

There is really no point in arguing with people who can't see this difference, and justify everybody recording everybody else whenever they want just because its legal. Such people have already slipped over the edge of civil behavior. Your desire to be an ass really can't be justified by the fact that others engage in asshatery. Its something you've adopted all by yourself.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[barc0001]

What's stopping someone who wants to "case" the place from wearing these:

http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/product/stylish+glasses+hidden+camera.do?sortby=bestSellers&from=fn

They're only 1/6 the price of Glass at current and undetectable at a glance. What's your plan for stopping these? A sign on the door?

"justify everybody recording everybody else whenever they want just because its legal"

Again, exactly the same thing can be said about the cameras in your shop, the ATM camera that also overlooks the street, the cameras you have under your awning pointing at the sidewalk, cameras in the condo lobby, the underground parking lot, the restaurant you ate at last night, the cameras on light poles, the cameras in cop cars, dash cams, etc.

If you don't want to be videoed, I suggest never leaving the house. At least Glass gives the common courtesy of being clearly visible as opposed to all the concealed cameras we're exposed to daily.

"everybody recording everybody else whenever they want just because its legal"

And this is the other interesting part of the whole debate. Seeing as battery life and storage space are still concerns, Glass won't be recording 99% of the time. And frankly, *you're not that interesting, so why the fuck would I spend precious resources to record your boring ass?* The camera's there in case something interesting happens.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[tftp]

There's off the shelf speciality products that can record your every move more covertly than this tool will ever do. So what exactly is your problem with this product specifically?

A specialized product costs a lot, requires skills to use, and won't be used against you without a good reason. If there is a good reason, you will be filmed and you won't know that.

A mass market product is cheap, requires no skill to use, and can be used against you for no reason and at any time. You will be immersed in the field of GG wearers, and you cannot identify any one of them that films you specifically; chances are that they are all filming you from time to time - not targeting you, of course. Human eyes have a limited zone of sharp vision - just a few degrees. Cameras have better lenses, and their sensors are good everywhere. Your activities will be captured from many points. Since GG streams video to the mothership, you have no idea how this video will be used, and by who. You can bet dollars to donuts that every TLA in the country is lining up to get a private feed of that video.

In other words, you are proposing to allow every kid in the country to carry a deadly knife just because, in theory, some of these kids can spend a lot of money and get a handgun.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

Douchey response. I'm not talking about a "handful" of "friends" and "associates". I'm talking about everyone I've ever been introduced to. For most people, that is over 1,000 people. When you start a new job and go to a big meeting full of people from other companies, do you memorize all their first and last names in one introduction? Great job. Not all of us have that ability. Some of us have disabilities that make it hard to recognize people.

Names and addresses and habits? Douchebag. That was never said. Go fuck your strawman somewhere else.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ADRA]

Maybe you don't understand the technology. The battery is a POS and its lucky to stay on for 10 seconds when the user isn't actively engaging it, and even then the charge won't last a day. The laws of physics are against your inherent fear of random boogy-men tapping in and recording your every move (at least for the foreseeable future).

So are you afraid of:
1. A company having access to the images
2. Someone (everyone) deciding to FILM YOU
3. Law enforcement someone knowing who / when / where a person was wearing glass at a moment in time at a location in the world in order to capture your picture

I just don't get your rampant paranoia, sorry.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[tftp]

Names and addresses and habits? Douchebag. That was never said.

Never said but always presumed. This is one of "selling points" of GG. It has no keyboard, but it is trivial to run a search on a name automatically and put it up in a corner.

I'm not talking about a "handful" of "friends" and "associates". I'm talking about everyone I've ever been introduced to. For most people, that is over 1,000 people.

Stupid me. I didn't realize that you want superhuman abilities.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[tftp]

The battery is a POS and its lucky to stay on for 10 seconds when the user isn't actively engaging it, and even then the charge won't last a day.

That's exactly how a disruptive idea is introduced. First you declare it to be harmless because of technical limitations or high cost. The society grudgingly accepts that. Then the technology improves, and the device becomes really dangerous - but it is already part of the society, with its own net of addicts and abusers. Opiates began as an exotic Asian treat that is available only to chosen few; read how the Count of Monte Cristo used them.

I just don't get your rampant paranoia, sorry.

You aren't a sysadmin, then :-)

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Belial6]

I always find it funny when stores have a sign saying no photos, and other signs that have QR codes on them. Stores don't know what they want.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

By definition, an ability that requires a mobile computing device would be something superhuman.

Calling people on a cellphone is something you cannot do without an assisted advice. It is superhuman. Normal humans can't have conversations with people 1000 miles away.

You've split hairs into a corner. It's amusing.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[tftp]

Ability to communicate over long distances did change the world - it was a disruptive technology, and it was not instantly accepted. Some (Amish) are still refusing it.

However telecommunication only gave you an additional ability. It took nothing from you. If you don't want to be disturbed, have no phone at home.

GG does give the wearer new abilities, just like it was with telephone users. However everyone else loses their privilege to be not seen, not recognized; to be forgotten. They cannot do anything to change that because GG users are ignoring their wishes. This thread is an excellent illustration of this problem.

GG users can go against the wishes of polite and honest people for a while. However there is a large subculture of people (we call them criminals and gangs) who do not get all that excited about being recorded. You think iPhone robberies are a bad thing? You have seen nothing yet. An iPhone can be carried in a pocket; good luck with carrying a GG that way. What will a gang do if you show up on "their turf" with a GG? Will they suddenly become model citizens?

There will be also a massive pushback (an outright prohibition) of GG in businesses. This is an ideal spy device, in case it's not obvious. Showing up at a research facility with GG would be a firing offense. Today you have to surrender your phones and cameras before entering a classified facility. Tomorrow you will not be allowed to wear a GG inside of most businesses. Even wearing a GG at a common garage may be not welcome because it may record something that the mechanic can regret later on. We all make mistakes; taping them is not something we appreciate.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

Your GG arguments apply to cameras as well. They are not new arguments. They are not GG arguments. They are camera arguments. I'd moderate it off topic if I were a mod.

Cameras are not allowed in many businesses. Including the secure facility I sometimes visit. Your business examples are just that: camera examples. They are not GG examples.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[simplerThanPossible]

Apparently in Japan, legislation requires that camera-like devices make a camera-like noise when used. So smartphones in Japan sound like a camera when you take a pic.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Darinbob]

Yes, I think Google Glass is essentially a symbol for everything everyone sane hates about the social media era. It's narcissistic, it's trendy (thus hateful), it's all about socializing, it's wearable computing (thus idiotic), hipster's like it, it has no practical purpose except marketing, etc.

Ie, if you hate twitter chances that hate also heads towards Google Glass too; if you think twitter is a great leap forward for humanity chances are you probably think Google Glass is a neat idea.

Google Glass is the rallying point for people tired of the trend.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[icebike]

Bullshit, stores don't care if your comparison shop. In fact many of them put free wifi in for their patrons.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[laughingcoyote]

At least in the US, jamming done by private entities is illegal. The RF paint? Maybe, but I can't imagine shoppers being too happy about going to a place their devices don't work. If I found out a store were doing that intentionally, I'd probably not return.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[icebike]

Hahaha "recording" LEDs...ever heard of black electrical tape? or maybe even a black marker. that would fix your LED pretty quick

Yeah, because wearing a Google Glass isn't geeky enough, you are going to walk around with electrical tape on it.
I'm sure no one would notice.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Altrag]

And frankly, *you're not that interesting, so why the fuck would I spend precious resources to record your boring ass?* The camera's there in case something interesting happens.

Problem is, times that you start considering me interesting have a bad habit of being the very times I least want to be caught on permanent record.. at least for a large portion of the various values of 'you' and 'I'. A large chunk of Youtube exists because of that phenomenon!

Me walking down the street normally? No one cares. Me drunk off my ass and serenading a lamp post? That shit's worth recording! Guess which one I'd regret when my boss finds it online?

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[JaredOfEuropa]

[...]yet his company is pushing a product to make everyone Google's Drone.
[...]
Either that or remove the camera. 95% of everything Glass was designed to do can be done without the camera.

Making us into Google's drones is part of the design.

But you're kind of right: I was worried when I learned that Google would be doing the first mass market "AR" device, and disappointed that it doesn't really do AR; it just provides a camera, HUD, and notifications. And presumably collects data for Google while sending us ads.

A real AR device under control of the user would be able to blank out ads in billboards etc, or replace them with pleasant pictures... now there's a nice application.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[strikethree]

I want the camera to facial-recognize people and put their names over their heads, because I am bad with names.

I kind of like that idea. I do not like that I will be geo-tagged, recorded, and all of it uploaded to some corporations servers.

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[ClioCJS]

It would only do that if I chose to make it do that...

Re:Remember Bluetooth Ear Pieces?

[Krojack]

Remember people walking around talking to themselves? Remember the "I'm not talking to you, I'm on the phone" hand gesture?

It combined being rude with wearing a dorky looking apparatus.

I never understood how standing in a subway or on a public street talking on your bluetooth was rude. Now talking on it while also standing in line ordering something at McDonalds, that's rude.

'Simple really...

[cayenne8]

It is the always on, always front recording feature that bothers most people.

We're on camera ENOUGH already....I think a lot of people that aren't even that privacy conscious even are concerned about so many live feeds going to Google (or anyone for that matter, since the govt. will have free access to it too).

JUst my $0.02.

Re:'Simple really...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's also why I think a lot of people with these are going to get told to remove them or face risk of bodily harm.

Feel free to give away your privacy, but stay the fuck away from mine.

Re:'Simple really...

[spire3661]

What do you do in the future when people have robotic eyes? Wearable cameras aren't going away anytime soon. Google Glass is the very tiny tip of a huge iceberg. Assume you are being recorded at all times outside of your home. You may not like it, but it is a reality we live in.

Re:'Simple really...

[ThorGod]

I would agree with you. But I don't. If everything's recorded then effectively nothing's recorded. Sure, all those cameras might be able to pin point exactly where you are at any given moment...but who cares to find out? Who's going to expend all the resources (cpu cycles, MONEY) to track you down? It'd be unfeasible to do that for everyone so only select few people could even be potential targets. And you're not one of those people. Sorry, but you're just not special enough to warrant searching through thousands and thousands of hours of video to find.

Re:'Simple really...

[icebike]

It is the always on, always front recording feature that bothers most people

To be fair, it isn't always on, but you can't tell when it is recording, or taking still shots.
So the only defense is to ban them on private property, even public areas of private property.

I think that Glass has its place, but without the cameras.

Re:'Simple really...

[cheekyjohnson]

And you're not one of those people.

Right. It's other people who will be abused, so who cares! As long as it's not me...

Re:'Simple really...

[tftp]

Sorry, but you're just not special enough to warrant searching through thousands and thousands of hours of video to find.

Walk within a mile from the murder scene that you aren't even aware of. This will quickly make you special enough. The police will find all the resources needed to sift through GG footage of everyone near the scene. If you look like someone on a grainy video, the police computers will select you as a suspect, and you will be taken in for questioning. You better have an alibi for 10:45am on Tuesday three weeks ago, and I hope you have ideal memory, so that none of your answers to the police are wrong even in a slightest way.

There is also a video "Don't talk to the police" on YouTube. There the prof explains how your innocent actions and your "best recollection" answer to a question can get you convicted.

Re:'Simple really...

[sjvn]

Ah, it's not always on.

Re:'Simple really...

[Gregg Alan]

Where do you get the idea that it's always on and streaming to google? Glass is aggressive about power savings.

I had a chance to try Glass last week in Chicago and I believe that the owner stated around 3ish hours of battery life for non-stop video recording. You COULD attach a USB cable while wearing them and keep a battery in your pocket.

Look at it this way: If Google had developed a new battery technology that fit in the current Glass profile AND was 'always on, always front recording' then Google would have much bigger news than just Glass itself.

Re:'Simple really...

[tlhIngan]

I would agree with you. But I don't. If everything's recorded then effectively nothing's recorded. Sure, all those cameras might be able to pin point exactly where you are at any given moment...but who cares to find out? Who's going to expend all the resources (cpu cycles, MONEY) to track you down? It'd be unfeasible to do that for everyone so only select few people could even be potential targets. And you're not one of those people. Sorry, but you're just not special enough to warrant searching through thousands and thousands of hours of video to find.

Google has patents on recognizing people based on faces and clothes. They also have an interest in gathering information on you to give you relevant ads (on the "light" end of surveillance).

But it's only a matter of time before people (could be police, government, insurance agents, nosy neighbours, ex-spouses, etc) pick up an interest in your whereabouts and doings/

"See? That no-good ex husband of mine just came out of bar - like the drunken idiot he is. I'm glad I got rid of him".

Or

"Why is ThorGod shopping for steaks, chips, and pop? He obviously has an unhealthy lifestyle, better raise his health insurance".

With video proof, as well.

Now imagine what fun one could have if the information was able to be Googled? Whether it be a potential mate, a friend, an employer, or whatever, and having your whereabouts and what you do all neatly showing up in the Google results. With pictures and video to help identify as well.

Oh and you really end up in the "if you have nothing to hide" side of the argument. Problem is, most people DO like to keep some secrets. There's probably a few of us who are completely truthfully honest with everyone, but most people tend to not want others to know everything about their lives, including their porn collection, their political and religious views, and other "mind your own business" type of information.

Re:'Simple really...

[friedmud]

Google Glass actually _helps_ here. If you were wearing one then you can show them exactly where you were at that time....

This is essentially "counter" surveillance that can prove all sorts of stuff about your innocence.

Have you seen all of the videos of Russion car dashcams? Do you know why they have those? To _protect_ themselves from the police (and other drivers).

The principle is the same here...

Re:'Simple really...

[Fri13]

There has been made studies how people react when they are being captured to be stored in specific location.

People reactions were totally different depending the way of capturing the moment.

When a artists paint or drawed a situation with good accuracy of the person, people kept it as honor to be captured there.

When a photographer toke a big size camera (architecture camera) on tripod and focused the camera etc 15 minutes and finally got a shot, most people felt it was honorable and not bad to be captured to that location.

When a photographer used a pocket camera, people started to feel little shy and simply turned their head or avoided being in shot other way but it was not so negative that people would get angry or something.

But when a photographer toke photo with DSLR, hell got easily loose. People get angry, they wanted to avoid situation more often and even asked photographer to delete pictures. Same situation with smartphones happened than with DSLR, it was felt to be intrusion to your privacy in the public place.

It is not about the capturing the moment, it is about what can be done with the picture what people don't notice being so hateful.

Example, no one really cares CCD camera being on street, as people know no one search those videos and if someone is watching a live feed, it is propably a single guard who has dozens of monitors a front of him/her.
No one cares if artist is capturing the moment because people trust the artists to get a good picture and it is possible presented somewhere on art gallery sometime or after decades in some book or something.
When it comes to pocket cameras, people felt that it is more like a "turists" or "family shot" because it is the familiar usage of pocket cameras, pictures gets in the photoalbum at someones home etc.
But when it comes to DSLR, it is status for professionality, someone is making money and has possibility to sell the picture to news papers or some other publicication where lots of people see it and people don't want to end up on news paper page or in somekind ad.
And when it comes to smartphones (phonecameras) it is a real threat because people know the picture can be sent at that moment to someone else, someone can be spying about them and the image can be shared quickly to lot of people.People have heard about school bullies and people taking snapshots in swimming pools etc and have very negative feelings about smartphones in public places.

So what is the Google Glass situation?
I believe if such studies and tests would be done with Google Glass included, it would bring same reaction as smartphones.
But there would happen same thing as with smarphones, it is slowly accepted to happen around you but be limited. As some point when the Google Glasses gets more familiar to people, they accept them as they do the smartphones and tablets.
Still they do not want to get in nasty situation in someones youtube video or something, what is probable why there will come requirement that Google Glass has a brigth red led blingking top of the corner so everyone around you can see that you are recording and when taking a picture it would pulse couple times with somekind "Click" sound.

It would easy peoples reaction as they can avoid the situation and turn their head if wanted without feeling same as people push camera phones front of them or hold it toward them as it is after all, person is looking directly toward you with glasses.

Re:'Simple really...

[ThorGod]

Google Glass actually _helps_ here. If you were wearing one then you can show them exactly where you were at that time....

This is essentially "counter" surveillance that can prove all sorts of stuff about your innocence.

Have you seen all of the videos of Russion car dashcams? Do you know why they have those? To _protect_ themselves from the police (and other drivers).

The principle is the same here...

You need some mod points

Re:'Simple really...

[Belial6]

Speak for yourself. All it takes is dating the wrong girl, parking in the wrong spot, or making the wrong political statement at a party to become the target of people with enough resources to start tracking you for the purpose of causing you trouble.

Searching thousands of hours of video is quickly becoming a trivial process.

Re:'Simple really...

[tftp]

Google Glass actually _helps_ here. If you were wearing one then you can show them exactly where you were at that time....

No, it does not do that. All it does is showing exactly where your GG was at that time. That makes a huge difference in court. A GG footage will never be accepted as evidence unless there is a way to prove identity - say, two GG that film each other.

Even that could be used only if the video was streamed in real time and timestamped by a 3rd party (Google HQ would be good enough.) If the video is locally recorded, forget it - the date and the time can be manipulated. It also will be a cool science project to take the GG apart and connect the SSD camera to an external recording device. This way a GG could be fed false video. For example, you could get a fake alibi by being filmed at a certain place (true place and time, confirmed by GPS) at a certain date (false - you were there a day before, but the hacked GG was fed yesterday's bits into today's live feed.) It only takes one such hack, made by only one person, to invalidate, in court's eyes, all recordings made by all users.

Besides, it just sounds ugly that we have to tape ourselves to protect us from false accusations. There are many small violations of law happening all the time - speeding by 3 mph over, jaywalking, not fully stopping at stop signs, and so on. Most of that is not dangerous. But if GG collects enough evidence, it's all prosecutable. Do you want to live in a Panopticon?

Dashcams are helpful if you want to present your side of the story. However there is a million dollar difference - the SD cards that these dashcams record onto are not streamed in real time to the cloud. They are simply overwritten after some number of hours. They forget. The GG forgets nothing.

Re:'Simple really...

[period3]

In a democracy, we can decide we don't want it. e.g. no selling of wearable cameras.

I don't know where you live, but "robotic eyes" is not the world I live in. Nor is being recorded at "all times". CCTVs are common, but they aren't everywhere -- and more importantly, they aren't posting footage to youtube. (although some are)

The world we live in is what we decide to make it, and there's no reason we need to acquiesce to this crap.

Re:'Simple really...

[spire3661]

But we dont live in a Democracy, we live in a Democratic REPUBLIC. If you wish to ban all wearable cameras, you are going to need a straight up constitutional amendment to do that, and I wish you luck. The world YOU advocate (might makes right) is far worse then having wearable cameras everywhere.

Re:'Simple really...

[ColdWetDog]

Funny, I thought they were for taking cool pictures of meteors.

Re:'Simple really...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's silly. It's like people who think crosswalk laws mean drivers can see around corners and stop instantaneously. (That's why the laws generally require the pedestrian to make sure he is seen and to make his intentions to cross clear.) People have stopped even looking as they cross the street.

Human laws cannot change reality. You've been fine with being recorded pretty much everyone for 30+ years. Even more so in the last decade. You can make all the laws you want, but if such laws are effective at all, it just means governments and bad guys will have abilities you've disallowed yourself from having.

Nothing is going to stop this short of a Butlerian Jihad type response. Sorry, but that's just not worth it.

Re:'Simple really...

[readingaccount]

Indeed. You can't stop progress (progress as in new technology, not necessarily what's best for humanity). Better to just accept what will happen will happen and not worry too much about it.

And no, I'm not being sarcastic. You really think you can fight change? You can certainly try, but too many people take too long to realize that you can only win some battles, but you'll never win the war.

Re:'Simple really...

[marcosdumay]

In a democracy, we can decide we don't want it.

Well, in a society of people, no you can't. It dosen't matter if it's a democracy or the most tyranical government on Earth, no society can ban some product people want.

But who knows what can be done in a society of cyborgs...

Re:'Simple really...

[bingoUV]

The GG forgets nothing

Typically, it forgets everything immediately, as it doesn't record by default.

It also "forgets" in the sense that upload to Google is not default, nor necessary.

You might say that about "Google", that it forgets nothing once it knows about something. That statement is reasonably true. But GG is not the same as Google.

Dork appeal

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they make the wearer look like a dork (not a geek or even a nerd).

I rank it right up there with Beats headphones.

Re:Dork appeal

[ArcherB]

Because they make the wearer look like a dork (not a geek or even a nerd).

I rank it right up there with Beats headphones.

So? Why would YOU hate a device that makes ME look like a dork? Why do you care what I look like?

Re:Dork appeal

[GrBear]

Same reason why some get disturbed seeing people with piercings all over their face and giant holes in their ears lobes I'd imagine.

Re:Dork appeal

[thrich81]

Don't know why you got modded down -- you are probably right that some people won't take it well and will feel they can take the law into their own hands to express their disapproval. This is a case where handgun concealed carry and 'Stand Your Ground' laws become handy. And with Google Glass you can quickly check the details of the laws in the jursidiction you will be walking around in so your story will be straight when the authorities come to investigate!

Re: Dork appeal

[d'baba]

Because you are sometimes in my field of vision and it is impolite to laugh.

Re:Dork appeal

[bloodhawk]

If you took the time to quickly check the law using google glass you have just given prosectors evidence that you commited pre-meditated murder.

Re:Dork appeal

[Bob9113]

Why do you care what I look like?

Why do you care what I think you look like?

Re:Dork appeal

[smellotron]

...some people won't take it well and will feel they can take the law into their own hands to express their disapproval. This is a case where handgun concealed carry and 'Stand Your Ground' laws become handy.

I expect the most common response of this sort would be an attempt to destroy the equipment: rip the glasses off of the rude person's face, and then smash them. The legal cost of beating the living shit out of the glass-wearer is too high for most people to consider. But you are advocating for the glass-wearers to carry firearms to defend their legally—but clearly not socially—acceptable behavior? Man, talk about escalation.

Re:Dork appeal

[thrich81]

Ok to all who jumped on me, I was being a bit facetious in my reply, hence the exclamation point, but ... if there is a real danger of someone being beaten up just for a legal but not socially popular act then we either need an effective, real-time police presence to prevent it or people really do need to defend themselves, I notice you said the cost of beating the glass wearer is too high for MOST people to consider. No difference in this case from looking "gay" or "not white enough", etc, all socially unacceptable acts which got people beaten up or worse in certain times and places. I don't want to be the guy they name a law after in memory of my gruesome demise.

Re:Dork appeal

[thrich81]

Damn, when I said "not white enough" was not socially popular, I meant it was a division made by the racists at the time and they decided it was "not socially acceptable" for people they didn't like to be in certain places, not that it is or was really "socially not popular". You know what I 'm trying to say here...

Re:Dork appeal

[mevets]

A cringing shock of recognition perhaps? It is uncomfortable to be faced with a faux pas you could have made, but for the grace of some external influence. A spouse with taste, a sarcastic teenager or being unable to afford it; to cite a few examples.

I think the same process feeds both homophobia and RIcky Gervais comedies.

Let's see....

[mark-t]

1. It makes you look like a cyborg. The fact that one would do this to their own appearance willingly puts a person so many sigma beyond what is expected in societal norms that it produces an insinctive negative reaction.

2. Being wearable, it conveys an "always on" notion, that many people find troublesome because although in theory, it does not invade their privacy any more than a person with a cell phone camera can, unlike a hand-held camera, there are no obvious gestures or poses that a utilizer of this technology will typically employ that tells casual observers in an immediately recognizable way that the technology is being utilized. Looking for an LED light is all very well and good, but human beings didn't evolve to look at LED's to tell them what was around them... we evolved to interpret body language.

3. It's simply far too easy to imagine people using this while they are walking or driving and thus paying insufficient attention to their surroundings to effectively navigate, potentially posing a danger to themselves and others around them.

4. It's always been socially cool to mock something that's new and different.

Re:Let's see....

[icebike]

1) It need not look any different than a normal pair of glasses. The version being show is a prototype, not a mass market version.

2) This is the main point I believe.

3) Having a Heads Up Display hasn't affected Aircraft pilots, and if done right, it won't affect drivers. You would see transparent information about speed and your next turn that would not interfere with driving.

4) Not really. Only when the new and different affects other people. Not seeing anyone mock a prosthesis for amputees

Re:Let's see....

[F. Lynx Pardinus]

"It's always been socially cool to mock something that's new and different."
Really? What other new technologies have been mocked? Smartphones? DVD players? Walkmans? Game consoles?

Re:Let's see....

[ClioCJS]

Wait... Cyborgs aren't cool??

Re:Let's see....

[mark-t]

Walkmans and cell phones, when they first hit the market. Yes.

Re:Let's see....

[mark-t]

Aircraft pilots aren't using the aircraft's heads up display to check their friends' latest facebook updates, or waste hours watching cat videos on youtube.

Re:Let's see....

[ClioCJS]

great strawman

Re:Let's see....

[mark-t]

Tell me that's not what the average person would be doing with this kind of technology.

Re:Let's see....

[mark-t]

I'm not anti-cellphone

But it's simply an unfortunate reality that average person is simply not intelligent enough, or else too consumed with whatever it is that they happen to want at that exact moment and without regard for the future, to utilize this kind of technology productively without creating very real dangers to themselves or others. I think the very fact that people would even *think* that, for example, trying to text somebody while driving in traffic might be an okay thing to do should testify to the validity of the notion.

Re:Let's see....

[ClioCJS]

I agree, but if we live by the rules of the stupid, then we would not be permitted to leave the house without wearing a helmet. Bad apples doing something with X is no reason to disallow X. I see the same mentality with drugs, guns, and now 3-D printers (And GG).

Re:Let's see....

[mark-t]

I have not once ever suggested that any of the reasons that I gave should ever be a legitimate reason to banish the technology, only arguably justifiable reasons to perhaps have some uncomfortable anxieties about it

Re:Let's see....

[ClioCJS]

Then we might have finally found our common ground :)

Re:Let's see....

[marcosdumay]

Besides the cell phones and walkman, that msrk-t already pointed, yes, video games.

Thus, from a list of 4 gadgets that you choosed because you assumed were safe, you got 3 that were mocked when they were new.

I paid thousands of GBPs...

[Richard_at_work]

And underwent surgery in order to get rid of glasses as they were the worst annoyance in my life - so there's no chance of me using this product.

People don't realise just how much these things are going to negatively affect you - you are going to be cleaning them all the time, they are going to cause irritation and issue with our hair and the side of your head, they are going to range from being unnoticeable to unignorable literally in minutes all throuout the day.

That's my take on it all. The wearable aspect is just a poor substitute for what we have been "promised" in fiction, so until it brings the positives without the negatives that I already went to great lengths to avoid, I'm not buying into it.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[ThorGod]

I'm laughing so hard. I've worn glasses since I was in fifth grade, and they've never once "hindered" my hairline. There's been mild irritation here and there, but nothing I'd pay thousands nor even hundreds of dollars to allay.

Now the migraines I've suffered...those I'd pay thousands to get rid of permanently.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[dadelbunts]

Or people will just shave the sides of their heads. Its a time honored cyberpunk look.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[misexistentialist]

You mean like sunglasses? But I'm sure Google will eventually offer you a surgical option for thousands of GBPs!

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[johnny cashed]

Well, I need them even if my vision was 20/20. Keeps stuff from flying into my eyes. They're called safety glasses. Sexier than an eye patch, for most of us.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[djlowe]

Hi,

In my opinion, you've completely missed the mark, upmods notwithstanding, and here's why:

And underwent surgery in order to get rid of glasses as they were the worst annoyance in my life [1] - so there's no chance of me using this product [2].

Of course, Google Glass has NOTHING at all to do with vision correction, per se... so, this objection is a complete non sequitor, due to its irrelevance.

People don't realise just how much these things are going to negatively affect you

they are going to cause irritation and issue with our hair

Not irritation with our hair, Precious! ANYTHING but that!

and the side of your head

Which side? Not the right side, Precious!

That's my take on it all. The wearable aspect is just a poor substitute for what we have been "promised" in fiction.

And, what, exactly, is that? Have we ever been promised good hair, non-irritated hair, somewhere in fiction? If not, I suppose that I'm fortunate: None of the glasses I've ever worn have irritated my hair, and, I suppose, at this late date, I'm fortunate that I still HAVE hair, which remains unirritated, despite the ongoing presence of glasses, Google or otherwise.

Regards, mostly in jest,

dj

Notes:

[1] Trust me, I understand: I've worn glasses since I was 4 years old, and, now, at age 48, I've had to adopt progressive bifocals. However, my objections to Google Glass have NOTHING at all to do with my having to wear corrective lenses in general.

[2] I'll never use it, because of the privacy issues involved.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[misterooga]

Try checking your teeth (in particular wisdom teeth). Next thing I checked for my killer-migraines was my glasses frames. After some rough encounter with little folks (of the progeny kind), they were indeed too tight due to my failed attempt to fix them.

YMMV.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[PCM2]

you are going to be cleaning them all the time

Google Glass doesn't have lenses. You can attach lenses to act as sunglasses, or if you need prescription lenses, but most people will just wear the frames.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[ThorGod]

I've been diagnosed and followed by a neurologist for migraines and I'm current on my vision Rx. It's not my glasses nor my wisdom teeth (inoperable, btw), sadly.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Eye patch is way sexier. Just ask your mom.

Re:I paid thousands of GBPs...

[hypergreatthing]

Yeah, when i saw the video promo for it a year ago i thought it was a totally different product. I get the video camera, but i thought it would be more geared towards augmented reality. And for that i thought it would be cool enough to wear glasses.

The current implementation is just a small lcd screen a few inches from the eyes. How awful. Totally not worth it.

In a few years, if someone projects a display from the inside of the glasses to the inner lense to display over what the person sees, that will be the google glass i had anticipated. I could see myself using that. As well as flexible displays on contact lenses. That's the ultimate "glass" device.

This? Sounds like a fad. It would be cool if it replaced cell phones, but it sounds like it's just a bad concept.

welcome to the 21st century!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is because this is one of the first outwardly visible examples of the future we have created. Glass may fail as a product. Still, the technology of the internet is already in the material world, and no longer limited to computer console devices we must interact with willfully. There will be a value war that will be played out in coming years. Either we throw away the entire internet (not going to happen), or we leave behind our historical ideals on many things, most notably privacy.

Glasses are always so popular

[obarthelemy]

red and blue 3D glasses
2K-ish "monitor glasses
2010's 3D glasses
glasses in general, especially when young

everyones loves them so much ! why all the sudden, incomprehensible hate towards Google Glass ? I was SO looking forward to wearing glasses AT LAST !

It's what it might do

[aamcf]

At the moment Google Glass can't do very much, but it is only a matter of time before it does more.

I have mild face blindness, and it would be fantastically useful for me to have a pair of glasses that could identify who I was talking to.

Equally well, it would make life very difficult for me if other people had similar glasses. I run a website that is considered objectionable to some people. If everyone could recognise me every time I went out to buy milk, it would be very difficult for me to live anything like a normal life.

The passive-aggressive nature of social networks would be magnified if they were in any way integrated with Google Glass or indeed any wearable computer.

Re:It's what it might do

[adolf]

It's been said before, but I'll repeat it:

There's lots of CCTV out there already. Much of it is totally unprotected by even a password, let alone any attempt at real security.

And now you're worried about the Feds? FFS. Where were you last week? Was your head stuck in the sand?

It doesn't even make any sense

[Meditato]

"Google Glass is scary because it's easier to record others!"

You have a cellphone in your pocket capable of doing just that, and pinhole surveillance cameras have existed forever anyway.

"Google Glass is scary because GPS!"

Your cellphone doesn't even need an active GPS setting in order to be tracked. As an Android App developer, I can just use a Network Location Provider and triangulate your position to within 100-1000 meters. If you have a cellphone, you're being tracked just as easily as with Glass.

"Google Glass is scary because it might serve me ads!"

That's from an early video parody of Glass. Ads are against Google's guidelines.

"Google Glass is scary because they're trying to get us to depend on it, then sneakily put in ads and spyware!"

Even if they do that, we've already got the dumped firmware for Glass. Just run a custom ROM on it.

"Google Glass is scary because some pseudo-libertarian tech journalist told me to be scared!"

Oh ok, I guess that explains the inconsistency in your position. Funny how all these former pro-corporate tech gossip douchebags are suddenly worried about your rights. Where were they 10 years ago? And for that matter, where were you?

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Osgeld]

"Ads are against Google's guidelines."

Ad's are Google's primary revenue stream

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[anthony_greer]

as I said in another reply in this story, ads were not found on the early days of FM, Cable TV and even iphone apps...give it 18 months, there will be google adsense glass edition - the share holders will revolt if this doesn't happen...

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[RoTNCoRE]

And for that matter, where were you?

I was 10 years old you insensitive clod! Not really, but many of the people upset with this might be. 10 years is a long time in tech.

The difference is in the buy in. Cellphones track the user. They bought into that, and do everyday when they carry one. It is also difficult to use a cell camera surreptitiously - it's fairly obvious what you are doing holding it stiff armed at a weird angle.

The glasses track outwardly, and within a few generations will likely be indistinguishable from regular prescription glasses. You think ads being against Google policy is a good thing? Then where is the revenue play? The analytics and data collected about what you are looking at. When you look at me wearing the glasses, I am the target being collected, sold and profited from.

On the flip side, imagine the value of advertising billboards when Google can literally quantify eyeball time, and location - and they create a bidding process similar to their search ad words for physical location based ads? Pupil dilation in response to stimulus? Google's revenue isn't from search, it is from ads. If Google can analyze involuntary responses like pupil dilation in the aggregate (or heartbeat via camera - see Xbox One announcement), imagine how powerful their advertising campaigns and data would be. And to top it off they convinced you to buy the probe...

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[ClioCJS]

Pretty sure the $1,500 price tag will be the revenue stream for glass.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Meditato]

This comes across as a really contrived set of objections, for a number of reasons.

First of all, all the "they're reading my mind, man" objections can be put to rest with a custom ROM, as I already addressed. Same goes for cellphones.

Second, the "outward tracking" objection is naturally limited by battery power and user consent.

Third, you haven't really described how the basic capabilities differ from a cellphone. Yes, there's a cosmetic difference. But cellphones already accelerometers and tilt sensors- they can tell which direction you are facing and what position your body is in. The "outward tracking" distinction is superficial.

I'm not really a huge Glass fanatic, but these really just come across as whining from conspiracy theorists. Sure it could track your vitals. No, it won't unless you let it, otherwise every major government and data protection agency in the world will eat Google alive. Can you even imagine the EU fine?

Leave out the "slippery slope" objections until you've actually got evidence that such an undertaking would even be economical in the face of the coming ad bubble burst and the government fines.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Em Adespoton]

Glass is scary because it is always on, and integrates the internet into real life. Most people are not the same in person that they are online, and Glass will flag this dual-life syndrome to anyone wearing them.

So basically, what's scary is not so much that it lets people be more tightly integrated with the internet, but that it lets the internet be more tightly integrated with society. People probably wouldn't be too upset with Glass if it was an offline device, or even if it was streaming everything it saw to some online site -- what scares people is the tight integration that leaves no loopholes for anonymity online or offline, and removes the ability for you to be a slightly different person when people can't "see" you.

Even if Glass doesn't live up to all this, this capability is what scares people. The fear is that suddenly, every interaction you've ever had online is instantly available to every. person. in. the. room. with. you. Everyone looking at you knows all about that post you made about LOLcats 10 years ago. They know about the school recital where your wardrobe malfunction was photographed and put online. They can see all the things your less privacy conscious friends have been saying about you. You can no longer don a new persona by entering a new social setting -- Glass potentially levels the playing field so that there is only ONE social setting, ever.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[WaffleMonster]

You have a cellphone in your pocket capable of doing just that, and pinhole surveillance cameras have existed forever anyway.

Making surveillance society worse is not a feature or justification.

Your cellphone doesn't even need an active GPS setting in order to be tracked. As an Android App developer, I can just use a Network Location Provider and triangulate your position to within 100-1000 meters. If you have a cellphone, you're being tracked just as easily as with Glass.

More of the same batshit insane reasoning. We can stalk you anyway so what will a little more and a little easier hurt?

That's from an early video parody of Glass. Ads are against Google's guidelines.

Google isn't evil either...they said so!!

Even if they do that, we've already got the dumped firmware for Glass. Just run a custom ROM on it.

Good luck finding anyone to care enough to try.

Google Glass is scary because some pseudo-libertarian tech journalist told me to be scared!

Oh ok, I guess that explains the inconsistency in your position. Funny how all these former pro-corporate tech gossip douchebags are suddenly worried about your rights. Where were they 10 years ago? And for that matter, where were you?

Strawmen, Douchebags... what I would not give for a slashdot killfile.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[AtariDatacenter]

Technically possible, but I'm sure, not practical. Even more so when you consider that the ads can be embedded in the applications. By contrast, consider how practical it would be to install a custom ROM on a iPhone and remove all the ads?

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Anubis IV]

"Google Glass is scary because it's easier to record others!"

You have a cellphone in your pocket capable of doing just that, and pinhole surveillance cameras have existed forever anyway.

That COMPLETELY misses the point.

Today, whether with a smartphone or a pinhole camera, someone needs to act with intent and make preparations in advance if they want to record surreptitiously. Most of us aren't worried about those people, since we don't do anything interesting enough to warrant that sort of effort.

The people I'm worried about are the thoughtless types who ignore their dinner companions while they tweet and check status updates. With Glass, however, that sort of thoughtless behavior can impact others more directly. Instead of merely being rude by ignoring others, now their failure to consider others' feelings can result in their making something public that their friend may have wanted to keep private. With a smartphone, it's easy to spot someone who is recording and then have a quick conversation to remind them that you're a person and would appreciate not having your life on display for the whole Internet to see. With Glass, you don't get that opportunity.

Or consider a typical situation where you're out to dinner with a group of friends and friends-of-friends, with the topic of the conversation turning to $controversial_subject. Now, imagine that you point out the error in a friend-of-a-friend's reasoning through the use of a nuanced argument. You made a valid point and it's clear to everyone there what you meant, but that friend-of-a-friend is none too happy that you corrected him in front of the others, and he's all too eager to share a "Get a load of this bigot/racist/etc." video featuring a clip of your nuanced argument taken out of context. Neither a smartphone nor a pinhole camera would allow him to do that, since normal people don't carry pinhole cameras around, and he'd be shut down by everyone else there if he whipped out his cell phone to record.

If we all had to constantly guard what we're saying just as carefully as politicians or CEOs in an interview in order to make sure that it couldn't become a soundbite used against us, we'd be miserable. Even if it doesn't happen regularly, the fact that it can happen virtually at any time without notice means that it's cause for justified paranoia and distrust aimed at Glass and anyone wearing it.

As for the rest of the stuff you said, even as an anti-Glass person, I agree with you that most of the rest of those are invalid concerns. The only other one that concerns me is Google tracking the user more easily, but that doesn't impact me, since I have no intention of being a Glass user.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Osgeld]

you know nothing about how to pack that much power in the form factor

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Osgeld]

average consumer doesnt even know what a rom is let alone a custom one

thanks for playing

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[ClioCJS]

wut

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Osgeld]

think about it, eventually you will figure it out

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[ClioCJS]

You overestimate me :D

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[kannibal_klown]

I agree with most of your post. Cellphones and security cameras already cover most of the issues that people have with Glass.

But, there is one minor difference with "Google Glass is scary because it's easier to record others!"

You have to figure, yes... there are creepy jerks out there taking pics and video with pinhole cameras and such. But most optimists assume that the percentage of that is small. And it's easy to avoid being in many (though not all) cellphone snapshots. You see someone holding the phone a certain way and avoid them / turn your back / etc.

With people wearing Google Glass... it's like they are always walking around and holding them in front of them as if they might be taking pictures. Being in that scenario is a little distracting if they're aimed towards you. Obviously they're NOT taking constant real-time video or whatever (not enough battery life) but you're wondering "are they doing it NOW, are they doing it NOW, etc."

With a guy wearing Google Glass in your eye-line... did he just take a pic? Is he taking pics? Is he taking video? etc. I'm now going to be on someone's Facebook page eating an ice cream cone and auto-tagged as Lastname, Firstname?

I'm not saying that it's right to hate them for that. But I can kind of understand the hesitation. It's a little more creepy than simply people owning cellphones if you use the "holding it as a camera 100% of the time" scenario. Just picture it.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Meditato]

I defy you to say that you would be capable or even willing to maintain custom ROMs for all of your associates and family

Most popular custom ROMs come with OTA updaters. There are third-party ROM updaters as well.

Once you've loaded a custom ROM you are excluded from any future automatic updates/security patches.

No you're not. ROM updates merge in the latest security patches.

It's not any different than the current problem with Android fragmentation and custom ROMs. If you follow that logic, it leads to a place nobody wants to be.

You either know very little about custom ROMs or you're not very competent at using them.

Re:It doesn't even make any sense

[Meditato]

Ok, you have been mostly reasonable but this is kind of ridiculous. There is no way that my cell phone in my pocket can tell that I am looking at a specific billboard or building front.

I'm an Android Developer that develops autonomous high-detail locator apps for public transit telemetry systems running Android, but that wouldn't really tell you why I'm right. So I'll describe exactly why you're wrong.

Phone GPS/Network Location Providers can give speed/heading based on the direction and spacing of your last few positions. This tells me what direction you're headed (since most people don't walk backwards), and more importantly, I can use this information to normalize the output from the phone's accelerometer/tilt sensors. So if your phone is sideways in your pocket, my knowledge of your bearing lets me figure out how much the phone is offset from the standard "flat in hand front to back" orientation so that I'll be able to properly interpret the output from your tilt sensors. I'll be able to tell the difference between running and walking, I'll be able to tell when you move your torso relative to your legs.

I can also use wifi networks or network location providers to figure out where you are even if your GPS is off.

You're seriously underestimating the number of sensors on a standard Android device, and the complex inferences that can be drawn about their simple output.

It's very simple actually...

[Begemot]

How would you feel talking to a person wearing this shit?
She might be recording you and posting it to YouTube.

I probably sound like my grandpa, but Google Glass just feels to me creepy and invasive.

There could be some commercial usage of it though, like FedEx finding and signing off a package...

Re:It's very simple actually...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Architecturally, it isn't all that different from a cellphone(because it mostly is one, albeit wrapped around your head); but it's a cellphone without any of the social cues

Sure, a cellphone can be used for recording; but the one that's in your pocket, or sitting on the table, or being used by you to check your twitfeed likely isn't. It's just a matter of geometry: one camera on the back, possibly one on the face of the device. Similarly, it's easy enough for you to use your phone to ignore me; but it's also quite obvious when you do so.

Glass just takes those delightful features and makes "device is turned off; but these glasses don't fold, so I'm storing them on my face" and "device is actively recording and sending to the mothership" and every state in-between functionally indistinguishable. It's the equivalent of somebody holding a cellphone in recording posture, with their finger hovering on the controls, at all times.

Re:It's very simple actually...

[LordLucless]

Sure, a cellphone can be used for recording; but the one that's in your pocket, or sitting on the table, or being used by you to check your twitfeed likely isn't. It's just a matter of geometry: one camera on the back, possibly one on the face of the device.

If I'm reading something off the screen of my device, and am facing your general direction, switching to the video app and slightly adjusting my aim is likely to be able to record you without your notice. You might be able to tell when I'm definitely not recording (my phone's in my pocket) but if it's out, you really have no idea whether I am or not.

Re:It's very simple actually...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's a social cue, not an ironclad assurance(obviously, even cellphones aside, virtually anybody could be wearing a proper covert recording apparatus, which is pretty much 100% undetectable without serious paranoia).

My point was just that "Glass" pushes peoples buttons very differently, despite pretty minimal differences in actual capability, because it presents the social cues of pretty much everything people don't like about cellphone users(except the innane chatter) before you even turn it on. The actual difference in capability is relatively small(we'll see if, in practice, that modest difference does contribute to a greater rate of voyeur-shots with Glass in the EXIF or not; but it isn't a large absolute difference).

It'd be like having cops runnning around waving their sidearms as though they were playing counterstrike... The absolute difference in terms of time-to-shooting is only a few seconds compared to one standing around in idle mode; but it would send a slightly different message.

I'm totally in love with google glasses!

[Adult film producer]

Don't have a pair yet but already have plans to put them to work!

As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter. wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro's cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation. ..."

and

"Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider; these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time. ..."

Glassholes are essentially a late-alpha/early-beta iteration of the Gargoyles from Snow Crash. The people who managed to bring the dickery that was bluetooth earpieces to an even more vital sense, along with just enough camera to get that 'incipient paparazzi' thing going.

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[dadelbunts]

Yea but they are always in the metaverse which is awesome. I would compare this more to the HUDs in Diamond Age, where you were still mainly focused on the "real" world yet had a plethora of information available to you at all times.

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Glassholes. This will be remembered.

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[VortexCortex]

"Three Eyes"

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[citylivin]

You know I really don't get this. Most people have smartphones (i do not) that do all sorts of monitoring already. The only difference here is that with smartphones, all the monitoring is directed at you, the owner of the smartphone. With google glass, it turns it all around. Now the rest of the world is monitored for my benefit using my choice of augmentations.

I view a smartphone, and phones in general, as a distraction of little substance, a tiny window into another world, like squinting down a long laneway, trying to make out some life at the other end. Whereas google glass I imagine it as enhancing what is going on around me. I wouldn't be lost like a zombie playing a game or checking my status update in virtual reality, I would be looking ahead, identifying flowers on a walk in the park, monitoring my bio rhythms or using infrared to see clearly in the dark.

In my mind, I see google glass as looking forward, while smart phones are looking downward. That is why I would jump at the chance for google glass or a bionic eye, but would not touch a smart phone with a ten foot poll. I am no fan of google as a company either, but I will just get a cheap deal extreme knock off when the technology matures.

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Now the rest of the world is monitored for my benefit using my choice of augmentations."

Well, I think we might have helped answer the "Google Glass: What's with all the hate?" question here...

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[LordLucless]

Pretty sure by the end of the book Hiro had made a U-turn and gargoyled himself up.

Re:As quoth Neal Stephenson in 1992...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Pretty sure by the end of the book Hiro had made a U-turn and gargoyled himself up.

It isn't really a u-turn as much as a 'caving in to his geek desire'. He's still in denial about what he has become when YT figures it out, over his protests.

anyone with a brain...

[slashmydots]

Anyone with a brain can tell that this level of mobile computer usage is ridiculous. It's bad for memory, concentration, social skill development, social interactions in general. Nobody should be able to have that much information streaming that quickly whenever they want. Then the stress of battery phobia combined with a growing dependence on the device equals a very stressed out user. It's a very, very stupid idea that's detrimental to humans in general.

It's exactly like Segways. It's convenient and a good idea on the surface but in reality it isn't practical or a good idea at all and it makes the user fat, unhealthy, and causes hip and knee problems. This is a device that seems nice on the surface but actually causes concentration and social problems and likely vision problems too plus an addictive dependence on technology that makes the user unable to function without it.

Re:anyone with a brain...

[VortexCortex]

It's a very, very stupid idea that's detrimental to humans in general.

You look at the evolutionary ladder and think: "I am at the top". I look and see yet more rungs to climb. I am a scientist. If you say these are detrimental, then I will insist that is an untested hypothesis, so long as it is. I share some of your concern, but I'm not arrogant or foolish enough to act on unproven hypotheses...

Re:anyone with a brain...

[shutdown -p now]

Anyone with a brain can tell that this level of mobile computer usage is ridiculous. It's bad for memory, concentration, social skill development, social interactions in general.

Funny, they said all the same exact things about telephone back in the day.

"The future is better than the past. Despite the crapehangers, romanticists, and anti-intellectuals, the world steadily grows better because the human mind, applying itself to environment, makes it better. With hands ... with tools ... with horse sense and science and engineering. Most of these long-haired belittlers can't drive a nail nor use a slide rule. I'd like to invite them into Dr. Twitchell's cage and ship them back to the twelfth century--then let them enjoy it."
- "The Door into Summer", RAH

The people at Google are not stupid.

[TuckerBag]

It will be interesting to see what happens with google glass. Even if they release a product with no camera, the media will still report it as a privacy invading device.

Re:The people at Google are not stupid.

[tftp]

The people at Google are not stupid.

What in the world makes you think so?

Google had made only one major invention, and that invention was of their search infrastructure, and it happened a while ago. It was significant.

However after that happened and Google got larger and richer, most of what they tried quickly crumbles and falls apart. Google Earth (not their invention) and StreetView (Google's invention, AFAIK) are good examples of their later successes, but even there they managed to f. up by recording other people's 802.11 payloads.

I can't remember off the top of my head anything else that Google was successful with. Perhaps Google Translate, though that usually generates comedy material (and is likely based on a COTS backend.) Google also used to have a decent web MUA, but nowadays even OWA is just as good.

Funded by Microsoft and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they could not create something like this.

Re:Funded by Microsoft and Apple

[anthony_greer]

BS, MS and AAPL could do something like this and I would dare say that they both probably have had things like this in their labs for years - I heard speculation of devices like Glass existing in MS research labs 8 years ago - just rumors, but most rumors about MS tend to have a nugget of truth...

Its all about price point, and who will buy it - if they cant productize it in a way that people will like and can afford/justify, they will not go to market. Being that Gogle is an advertising company that uses tech rather than a pure tech company they can make the money up with ads - they say its ad free but so was FM radio at first, so was Cable TV at first and so were apps on the iphone at first...

Re:Funded by Microsoft and Apple

[Osgeld]

no they want someone else to take all the risk

Re:Funded by Microsoft and Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

BS, MS and AAPL could do something like this

While I'd agree with you for Microsoft and Apple, Bethlehem Steel has historically been behind the times when it comes to head-mount computers. Although if they do catch up with the rest of the field I'd certainly assume it would be more durable than what typically comes out of China and Taiwan these days, and they'd probably have a leg up when it comes to integrating with big iron computing.

You almost had it...

[denzacar]

http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=306

Discrimination based on disability

[anthony_greer]

I have had low vision all my life, I deal with it the way most of us do, thick wyw glasses and regular consultation with my eye doctor - this opens the door for those of us in this position to be unwelcome in business meetings, family gatherings or other places where people dont want to be bugged - sure, the curent model is big and goofy, but the first laptops weighed like 12 LBS too - as this tech becomes more and more indistinguishable people will assume that anyone with glasses has it!

The solution, we need a law that google glass, or anything f that sort, needs to have a visible LED, not just when recording, but whenever t is powered on to indcate that the eyeglasses re not just eyeglasses.

Re:Discrimination based on disability

[0xdeadbeef]

Oh, no, here come the "there ought to be a law" types.

You're just gonna have to deal with it, because even if it could be outlawed, the technology will eventually get so good as to be undetectable without a TSA style search.

So for your precious public "privacy", you want to enhance the security theater apparatus to include restaurants and movie theaters. The MPAA will love it.

Re:Fear?

[icebike]

I don't think that's it at all.

Pull the camera out of this device and most objections disappear.

Having helpful information in your view plane could be great in certain situations.

Google Indexing

[mtb_ogre]

Google has expanded from indexing existing information to indexing people. The more you share with Google, the more value you bring to Google in terms of creating marketing value. They can sell more and more targeted advertising based on where you go, who you are with, what stores you frequent, what hobbies you have, how you travel, how much time you spend in specific places, etc. Google Glass is the ultimate extension of that strategy. I would be far more interested in buying a product like this from a company that makes money selling products as opposed to a company focused on extruding as much information from me in order to resell it.

What's up with the asking what's with?

[markdavis]

>"Google Glass: What's With All the Hate?"

Is it that mysterious? Many people have already posted on many sites as to why. If people would stop asking why and start reading some of the answers, maybe they would understand...

It presents major issues with privacy, security, and etiquette. It isn't just dorky, it is rude, creepy, and invasive too. The author and Google (especially the CEO) seems to just completely skirt the entire issue of privacy- not only for the user, but all the hundreds of "victims" around a Glass user, every day. Take out your phone and hold it up in the air, pointed at everyone you pass, meet, talk to, sit next to, and see what kind of reactions ensue. This is nothing like static and unconnected security cameras. Exactly how much private information are we all going to be willing to give Google?

We just went through this: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/05/03/1322242/is-google-glass-too-nerdy-for-the-mainstream

AND

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/04/26/2316211/eric-schmidt-google-glass-critics-afraid-of-change-society-will-adapt

But I guess we have to hash it out every month now :(

This is really simple

[slashmydots]

I don't have a Facebook account. I have a fake name on my Google accounts and Twitter. I don't ever use my real name on forums. I even gave Blizzard a fake name. I take GREAT care to leave my personal life off the internet and preserve my privacy. So now what do we have? Some asshole walking around taking videos or pictures in complete stealth mode with no LED to tell you it's recording or in use. Early adopters are also usually the tech-addicted people that put a picture of everything moderately interesting on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, and Instagram. If I start saying something funny or interesting to a glass user and they stealthy hit record, I don't want that video of myself out on their 1000-friend Facebook page without my knowledge.

For those of you about to say any video recording is public and the law says I can be video recorded at any time in public because that's the reasonable expectation of privacy, you're missing the logic of that. I want some basic privacy so then I guess I'll just never go out in public ever. Wait, no, it would be easier to just make Glass and other covert recording devices illegal everywhere.

Re:This is really simple

[markdavis]

I agree with what you are saying but caution on this part:

>" with no LED to tell you it's recording or in use"

It doesn't matter if there is an LED or not because it will be easy to mask or disable it or just not easy to see. The issue everyone is having is the popularizing of covert and in-your-face video/audio/photo recording.... and worse yet, something that dumps all its crap to a non-personal network.

Like you, I find it totally unacceptable. Cell phones and security cameras are already bad enough, but this is really raising the bar. I have a feeling society is going to draw a line. But we shall see.

My part is this- don't even TRY to talk to me with one of those damn things on your head, or while pointing a video camera or phone or recording device in my face. I don't care if I am at home, in a restaurant, at work, or in a store. It is *RUDE AND UNACCEPTABLE*. I will turn away and leave, probably after informing the perpetrator WHY they are being rude.

Re:This is really simple

[ClioCJS]

You're incredibly naive if you think the government -- and probably some corporations -- don't already have the ability to identify you by your face.

Re:This is really simple

[slashmydots]

They're doing it for a relatively constructive reason compared to some random jackass on the street. They're also not posting my face to their Facebook account (unless I make the FBI's top 10 most wanted but I'm just not quite there yet, lol).

Re:This is really simple

[ClioCJS]

Yes, the government snooping on you is way more constructive. *rolls eyes*

Yes, anyone taking a photo posts it to facebook. *rolls eyes*

That's part of the rub that annoys me with peoples' attitudes about this. When the government surveils you in a way that the entire institution of government has access to, it's okay. If a person posts you to his facebook where 5 other friends might see a thumbnail scroll by, and maybe one will click through and leave a comment.... THE SKY IS FALLING ZOMG PRIVACY VIOLATION. It seems very incongruous to me.

Re:This is really simple

[sbump]

Why is everyone talking about masking or disabling the hypothetical red light. What are you supposed to do if you walk into a cafe and there are 3 or 4 red lights around? And why is it now my responsibility to check? Even it's it's not actually hidden, it's awful.

This too shall pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait until some bright person invents something you can hide away, say in your pocket and it can secretly record a conversation! Then you'll see the privacy guys up in arms! oh... wait.....

How about Google puts a little green LED on them to show when they are indeed recording. Like I know when my laptop webcam is on (and so does my girlfriend sadly..)

Then everyone can shut up about on the thousand of forums complaining about privacy; the same masses that were pushing for such technology. I am a business owner and I honestly cannot wait to get my hands on one, I do believe it will change the way I work. However, it's not going to do much for you if you sit behind a computer screen all day.

Down with Glasses! Your local Amish community awaits!

It's all those wackos that ...

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

freak out when cops get mad about being recorded getting mad about being recorded.

Hate because Its not iGlass

[ThePeices]

All the hate is because it is not made by Apple.

If it was iGlass, the love-in would be tremendous. Of course, if Apple made it, there would be no customer input, no previews, no leaks and no idea the product even existed until after the "one more thing..." moment arrived.

But after that, the store lines would already be forming.

Re:Hate because Its not iGlass

[Goody]

All the hate is because it is not made by Apple. If it was iGlass, the love-in would be tremendous

Apparently you're not on Google+, the big love-in for anything Google, and a land where anything Apple sucks.

People don't treat them like GoPro cameras

[HockeyPuck]

I mountain bike quite a bit and often I'll record my ride with a GoPro for later editing and sharing with my non-mountain biking friends/family. It's pretty much on the entire time I'm riding (2-3hrs).

However...

I don't wear it in the car, the post-ride restaurant, during long breaks, to the bathroom (either in the restaurant or out in the woods).

If I showed up with the GoPro recording in a restaurant, I'd be calmly asked to turn it off. As that is behavior that is clearly not accepted.

Sure pinhole cameras have been around forever, but GoogleGlass will be mainstream, whereas pinhole cameras aren't that common. Plus the modders will come along and put the GoogleGlasses behind a pair of nondescript sunglasses and you'll be able to record (read: blackmail) whoever you want. Your boss tells a dirty joke at work... hello raise.

 

Re:People don't treat them like GoPro cameras

[ClioCJS]

What I got out of your comment was "it's the exact same thing as a GoPro camera".

Re:People don't treat them like GoPro cameras

[westlake]

Your boss tells a dirty joke at work... hello raise.

"Publish and be damned."

If your boss has a spine you will be out on the street in under five minutes.

My Privacy for a pair of Glass!

[fluor2]

KING RICHARD III:
My Privacy! My Privacy! My Privacy for a pair of Google Glass!

Just like with the iPhone back then

[joh]

Anyone around here old enough to remember 2007?

Seriously, hype or hate, people care one way or the other. Let's wait. Well, or feed the hype/hate if you like that better.

Dating

[speedplane]

Have you ever been on a date with someone who leaves their phone on the table and checks it every 30 seconds? Now imagine being on a date with someone but their phone is implanted over their eye and they do not stop checking it at all. Die Google Glass, Die.

Re:Dating

[ClioCJS]

Don't be a douche. Your date can put down her phone as easily as someone can take off their glasses. Stop with intellectual dishonesty. Your complaint would be valid for a surgical implant that can't be turned off.

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

In short, Luddites. People with lots of paranoia and no vision. No one thinks about the hard of hearing guy who can someday soon have real-life closed captioning. No, it's all about how everyone wants to take secret videos of me while I'm in public, as if they couldn't do that already. Never mind the fact that soon enough, if people really want to record everything they see, they'll be able to do it with something that looks like a regular pair of glasses, and you'll never know. Well, I guess that at least means we'll only have to listen to whiny cavemen until the form factor changes.

Re:FUD

[glwtta]

Hype. Image. Bullshit.

Re:FUD

[Luminous]

If people were to rise up with torches and pitchforks over every new product that comes with hype, image, and bullshit we'd have a wonderful Luddite society.

Re:FUD

[Anubis IV]

Indeed, Glass does represent those quite a bit.

Fear: I feel as if I'm constantly being recorded by everyone wearing Glass, since I can't tell when it's on or off.

Uncertainty: I can't tell if they're watching the game or just a bit distracted, since they're not contributing much to the conversation.

Doubt: Are we even capable of having a human conversation while they're constantly being distracted like this?

Oh, wait, you meant that FUD was being used against Glass? Sorry, I thought you meant that it embodied it.

Re:FUD

[glwtta]

Who's rising up? People just got sick of the hype quicker than usual, because there was more of it.

I dont get it either....

[pjr.cc]

A HUD is something i've wanted since ... so long ago i cant even remember when it started, but it was certainly around the time of me owning an amiga 500 and really dont understand the hate factor behind google glass nor where its coming from...

But then, i dont entirely get the bluetooth headset hate either, nor why some people find people talking on mobile phones in public to be a nuisance.

To me, i chalk it up to a single simple thing - hatred of technology and im exactly the opposite of that

The *ONLY* thing i can understand about what might make people dislike the idea of google glass is the camera, thats a feature i can understand people not being happy with.

But then, being able to record people in secret has been a simple thing for quite a long time now and you can do it for not even a fraction of the cost of what google glass is. In reality, at least when i see someone is wearing google glass i know they have a camera pointed at me, but if you've seen a watch, pen, button or any other form of hidden video/audio recording device (available these days for under ~$50) then google glass holds very little to threaten any reasonably intelligent person.

Re:I dont get it either....

[strikethree]

I agree completely that a HUD would be truly freaking awesome. I was quite taken aback when I heard that anything you record automagically gets sent up to Google. *sigh* I guess they have to get their pound of flesh but it makes the device to be something I resent and dislike. Obviously, I will not be purchasing one. :(

NS

[agapeton]

Title fail: You spelled Hype wrong.

Doubt and Context

[Roger W Moore]

People don't care about privacy, not until it's the "creepy" guy staring at them instead of the average guy.

Given your description nobody was aware that they were being recorded. They may have thought that your glasses were strange but it is usually not considered polite to question someone on their choice of glasses just like you would not tend to question someone choice of clothes. That being said I would not care about being recorded walking or driving down a street in public. However take those glasses into the gents or a changing room and I'll not be happy: context is the key. The big difference between Google glasses and a camera phone is that there is no way for anyone to know whether you are recording or not. This is the problem GG: you can easily surreptitiously record.

Re:Doubt and Context

[Architect_sasyr]

Given your description nobody was aware that they were being recorded.

Well, yeah, that's kind of the point - emulate what we've seen of google glass as much as possible (and also be useful when watching morons drive). I made sure to be well aware of the local surveillance rules and all of that, clients are told about the glasses and the possibilities, people are so excited about GG technology that they're not stopping to consider the ramifications. Pretty much anyone who posts on here has thought about them (as is evidenced by the attempted testosterone flowing from some of the other comments) but they're not the general public.

However take those glasses into the gents or a changing room and I'll not be happy: context is the key.

All I see in the news lately is how good Glass is, with lots of comments about the need to be looking directly at the person to take a picture. The public are being calmed before the storm.

Jealousy, most likely. And I'm in that camp myself

[TellarHK]

I'll go on the record saying that as a technology follower and early adopter on a budget, the release strategy for Google Glass has seemed positively elitist. For a product that doesn't cost much to make, and seems suited to a wide variety of use cases, Google did a good job of locking down availability to the degree where only wealthier, "social media" active types or developers were able to get one. The restriction to developers isn't a problem, but the whole "Let's hand these out to people with a lot of followers." thing seems to be an even more advanced play from Apple's book on hanging out items to celebrities likely to show them off in public.

Say whatever you will about the economy and "economic divide", but when technology like this seems to be filtered to a whole new type of "elites" based on likes, tweets and fans... People can get resentful in a hurry. And yes, this probably is some pretty serious projecting.

FUD

[Luminous]

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

Overrated Privacy

[Draasti]

I don't understand why all this concern about privacy "on public places". If you have a problem, why don't you wear a paper-bag?

usefulness disappears as well

[Chirs]

A huge part of the benefit of something like Google Glass is the whole augmented reality thing, which pretty much requires a camera to work at all.

Yes, there are some things you could do without a camera, but it would be vastly inferior device--and besides, nobody will be able to tell if the wearer has a camera or not, so they'll need to assume anything vaguely Glass-like will have a camera and act accordingly.

Re:usefulness disappears as well

[icebike]

Vr works just fine without a camera. In fact a camera is the least reliable Vr instrument compared to the other sensors already built into the average cell phone.

Re:usefulness disappears as well

[Fri13]

Few samples of eye glasses, how long it takes people to believe there is a camera in frames at first glance?

http://www.visiofactory.com/1826/eye-glasses-ray-ban-rb-5162-2262-black-and-pattern.jpg
http://www.selectism.com/files/2012/08/lotho-eyeglasses-2012-26.jpg
http://stantonopticalblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/S84602-Red-Vintage-Cat-Eye-Glasses-large.jpg
http://www.vintagecateyeglasses.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/univis_front.jpg

Think about ones what have more colorful textures and details...

Re:usefulness disappears as well

[gl4ss]

A huge part of the benefit of something like Google Glass is the whole augmented reality thing, which pretty much requires a camera to work at all.

Yes, there are some things you could do without a camera, but it would be vastly inferior device--and besides, nobody will be able to tell if the wearer has a camera or not, so they'll need to assume anything vaguely Glass-like will have a camera and act accordingly.

the camera can't currently be used for jack shits worth of AR so it's pretty irrelevant. need a generation or two of them still.

and notice how there hasn't been scandals about wearable cameras in past years despite them being available.. google just screwed it up by making camera center stage on their glass presentation.

Re:usefulness disappears as well

[icebike]

And your point is?

If people knew you had a camera they would probably throw you down the stairs.
That you have to go to lengths to disguise them simply proves how unwelcome they are.
But hey, thanks for proving my point.

The "why"

[whodunit]

People keep on comparing Glass to bluetooth headsets without actually reflecting on why we hate them. It bears repeating: we hate them because of those several awkward seconds where you try to reply, thinking you're being addressed. The "asshole" part comes when the headset user says something like "hold on, this guy thinks I'm talking to him" or something else that implies you're an idiot for not immediately recognizing the headset. It's embarrassing, and insulting, and dismissive. In short, it takes basic social conventions and protocol and rudely slugs it in the face. Said social conventions, even the customary "good morning" a fuel station clerk greets you with, is lubricant for the social gears of society, and those headset users are sand in the works. It's not the headsets at all - its the people using them that never apologize for the misconceptions they cause, or politely put their conversation on hold when they walk up to a pay window.

Everyone screams and wails about being "recorded in public," which I find hilarious, considering how much we're already recorded, tracked and observed. If you're in public, people can record you freely, and no court of law is going to give a rats ass that somebody was able to SEE you when you went walking around on a public sidewalk. No, the real discomfort comes from having a computer screen between you and the person you're talking to. Google Glass is the first step towards things like augmented reality and other such technologies; but the precedent we've all learned from is the Arrogant Headset Asshole; and so naturally that's the first association we make.

Hmm

[lightknight]

Probably several different things, combining as one. For starters, the economy has been terrible, and when the economy is terrible, humans act their worst. As such, seeing something like this, a device which costs a fair amount of money, and separates the haves from the have nots...well, there may be some jealousy in play there.

Additionally, there are the privacy concerns brought on by such devices. Camera phones which are occasionally on are different from a device which is seen as always on. It's like having a CC camera mounted to someone's head.

Misconceptions

[Namarrgon]

Scanning these first comments, most of the complaints seem based on their own idea of Glass, or perhaps what they fear future devices may end up as, but not what Glass is today.

For example: It's crap as a media player (sound is poor, video is low-res and washed out) . It's not "always-on recording" or streaming everything to Google, and would rapidly run out of battery if you tried. It does light up when recording or taking pictures, like a regular video camera (and unlike phones or keychain camcorders). And Google specifically forbids ads on the whole platform.

Maybe one day some people will wear devices that are worth the hate, but Glass isn't it. Personally I see it all as another manifestation of the recent anti-Google narrative that's been so carefully constructed (e.g. ask yourself if you'd have the same reaction to "Apple Glass").

Re:Misconceptions

[Chuckstar]

It does not light up like a regular video camera. A regular video camera has a very obvious red LED the turns on when it's recording. Glass does not. Glass just has the screen light up. And you can't necessarily tell the difference between the screen lighting up because it's recording and the screen lighting up because the guy just go an email.

Re:Misconceptions

[war4peace]

Actually I think the hatred reason is a misinformed idea of privacy threat. Quite interesting, given we're arguably talking about people who we'd expect to be informed and tech-savvy.

Re:Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

And Google specifically forbids ads on the whole platform.

Incorrect. Google specifically forbids third party ads on the whole platform. They have also stated that, for now, they aren't placing ads on there.

And if they limit some features - such as locating nearby businesses - to only include Google+ participating businesses - I'm sure they'll claim that's not an ad and is being done for the customer's benefit.

Re: Misconceptions

[Namarrgon]

Right, so that's a future fear, one I can understand and agree with - but it's not an issue today, and it's not an issue for anyone but the wearer.

Re:Misconceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple Glass? I'd have the same sense of dread but an increased notion of inevitability because if it is branded apple it will be bought en mass.

Difference is, of course, Apple hasn't made their fortune based on technology specifically designed to sort and organize things. Though they did have the 1984 commercial, so it would probably be easier to make derogatory jokes.

Re:Misconceptions

[dave420]

Incorrect: It does have a bright "recording" LED on the front which lights up when video or photos are being taken. It would help your argument if you knew what you were complaining about before actually complaining.

Re:Misconceptions

[Namarrgon]

That's a reasonable point. A lit-up Glass may be visually obvious, but not necessarily obvious that it's recording.

So.. if Google simply added a commonly-understood red LED that flashed when actually recording, most of this hysteria about "always-on privacy invasion" would disappear? Sounds like a good fix to me.

Re:Misconceptions

[easyTree]

ask yourself if you'd have the same reaction to "Apple Glass"

Hello? This is slashdot.

if (glass.Flavour == Corporations.Apple) {
    reaction = Reactions.Rage;
    reaction.Strength = Int32.MaxValue;
}

Re:Misconceptions

[MachineShedFred]

Ok great.

Except the product is still an answer to a question nobody asked. It's a solution looking for a problem.

And I would have the same reaction to the same product from any other company. Much like I think the rumored "smart watch" concepts are stupid. We've had variations on that crap since the 90s when everyone didn't have an always-on connection in their pocket; and it's still a flawed concept - people don't need to look at that shit constantly, and when they do need to see it, it takes minimal effort to take the phone you already have out of your pocket.

Re:Misconceptions

[hypergreatthing]

cuz electrical tape is just too hard to cover a red led.

Re:Misconceptions

[Darth Twon]

Personally I see it all as another manifestation of the recent anti-Google narrative that's been so carefully constructed (e.g. ask yourself if you'd have the same reaction to "Apple Glass").

It would probably be called iGlass =P

Re:Misconceptions

[Namarrgon]

Who would be the constructor?

I can think of a couple of candidates.

some sort of evidence for your claim?

Cnet: you're left with no doubt that you're being recorded.

Dashcams

[Namarrgon]

You'd hate Russia. Every single car that goes past IS recording you.

Re:Dashcams

[SerpentMage]

Different again! The cars are recording in loops, and they are recording straight ahead of them. How do I know? My brother lived there 6 years! Also a car going at say 100 KPH is not going to record much of me walking along the road.

Re:Dashcams

[ras]

Yep, I think you have nailed it.

Technology wise, we have been at the point these the Glass haters are so concerned about for a few years now. We are recorded all the time, everywhere. Worried about being recorded when you go down the street - already happens. Worried about being recorded in a shopping mall - already happens. Worried about being record in a club - not only does that happen, where I live they also demand a photo of your ID card as well. Worried about your car's licence plate being tracked via digital number plate recognition - already happens. Worried your purchases being tracked and sold off for marketing companies - already happens. Worried about your photo being surreptitiously taken while using an ATM - already happens. Worried about a video being taken of you as you scan all the sanitary items at the self checkout - already happens. Worried about a marketing company getting hold of a copy of most of the worlds emails and mining them for personal data they can sell off - already happens.

For some reason, although there is nothing unique or special about Google Glass, the 99% of the world who apparently think today will be the same as yesterday have woken up to the fact that 2013 will be nothing like 2003. And they are focusing their rage at Google Glass.

It's all over my friends. Much privacy we used to have is history. All that remains is for you to get used to the fact. If you don't like it, well you are far too late to the party to do anything about it. It's not like haven't been told over and over again this was going to happen. Most notably when Scott McNealy said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.". In a classic case of shooting the messenger, McNealy was roundly criticised for that remark.

Re:Dashcams

[Namarrgon]

Quite true. Recording is looped because 99.9% of recorded video is boring, useless crap that nobody wants to see. Same would apply to any random video that might be recorded just at that moment by a passing Glass user, or a teenager waving a cellphone around.

Of course, if you happened to be doing something unusual and interesting (like getting beaten by police, for example), then anyone nearby with a lens will probably be recording you anyway. And dashcam users (who are recording you automatically) can pull that video out of the loop just as easily. And any nearby security cameras can do the same.

We're surrounded by cameras - what makes a Glass user so much worse? Oh right, it's just a bit too obvious to ignore.

point a video camera at people anywhere

[D1G1T]

Cameras make people uncomfortable. It really is that simple. There will be beatings.

Minority Report

[Dracos]

The creepiest parts of Minority Report isn't the authoritarian wet dream of "pre-crime", it's the ubiquitous nano-targeting of advertising. Making people buy their consent for this, in the form of wearable hardware, is more revenue friendly (and practical given current technology) than installing eye scanners everywhere.

We are finally realizing that Google knows too much about us, hence the backlash. Google Glass represents the subtle difference between "can" and "should", in a passively invasive way.

google fucked up

[gl4ss]

I'm just hatin their crap ass attitude towards developing for it.

which they are having because "omg public backslash from recording!!".. google is themselves creating that backslash. they didn't come up with ar demos which would help you in doing your homework or help you watch baseball or whatever.

it's kind of stupid, because hud could be useful even if it didn't have a camera - but now they have made it pretty much to be just a wearable camera. it's a PR fuckup.

Glass isn't the problem

[Ezecual]

The issues people seem to have with Google Glass and privacy remind me of one of my favorite Einstein quotes: "The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one"

Special glasses imply special needs

[Bananenrepublik]

If someone is wearing unusual glasses, especially if they don't look like their special in an aesthetic or fashionable way, then it is fairly natural to assume that theyre wearing them for medical reasons -- in which case it would probably be rude to ask them about it.

Just for the record: I would ask people to turn of their recording device if they want to keep my company.

Threats to anonymity, privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Google Glass is a nightmare because it removes the last vestiges of anonymity.

Let's say you have a conviction. You walk into McDonald's, and the GG-wearing cashier's face recog app pastes FELON on your forehead. Enjoy your spitburger.

Or, you're trying to have a conversation with [whoever], all the meanwhile someone else is watching you through those glasses and whispering comments in the other party's ear.

What little level playing field is left will go away with technology like this. I suppose its inevitable, but its not good.

Re:Threats to anonymity, privacy

[Krojack]

Then you better wear pantyhose or a ski mask when you go to McDonalds.

If you want to remain anonymous then maybe you shouldn't ever come out of your basement. Have pizza delivered and tell them to leave it on the doorstep and slip the payment through the mail slot. Also, stick to mowing neighbors grass and shoveling snow for your job. Something where you don't have to pay taxes. Don't forget that ski mask when you go out.

Re:Threats to anonymity, privacy

[joleonard1]

The counter to Google Glass *is* Google Ski Mask! It alters your appearance as necessary

Re:Threats to anonymity, privacy

[fyngyrz]

Are you suggesting that peoples photos + criminal records are open to the public? Maybe that is the case where you are from, but I'm quite sure it's not like that in most places.

I'm from the USA; this is a US site. Hence my statement: Yes, they are open to the public. They can be searched by any one, any time. And they are. Employers, insurance companies, dating sites, and a whole host of other institutions do this as a matter of course. You want to do it yourself, google it, and have a party, there's nothing stopping you.

Again, are you trying to suggest that that doesn't already happen???

Yes. Here's the (obvious) difference. Google glass is on your head; its computer is online; it has access to the camera (in some senses, it *is* the camera); from there to indicating who you are is one short burst off to a FR database and one back. Given the capability in general, automating it is likely trivial. That's what's different. Now all manner of information about you is right there, right now, and that too is different. If it turns out that said information is used to create an un-level playing field, this, I suggest, is entirely a bad thing; just as it's use by less intrusive cousins -- employment, insurance, schools -- is destructive and bad for society at large as well as the individual being discriminated against, as are the more individual level problems of spitburgers, personal and family harassment, and the general opportunity to reinvent yourself. In a world where every mistake follows you everywhere, there's going to be a lot of unnecessary pain.

Cuz

[Horshu]

Who wants to walk around being photographed by a bunch of geeked-out versions of Dog the Bounty Hunter?

I wonder how much Apple & M$ are spending agai

[mauriceh]

Obviously it is well in both their interests to oppose it.

TFA is shallow

[wavedeform]

It doesn't address any of the actual privacy concerns, it just says that the current implementation of Google Glass is crappy at actually invading your privacy.

List of obvious reasons

[WaffleMonster]

Wearing wired or bluetooth headphones allows me to hold a voice conversation with my phone or real people, get directions, listen to music, read and write messages and work voice enabled apps while I'm on the go with the damn thing in my pocket out of my way. Whats the use case for wearing glasses and a stupid little screen all the time? What is the benefit? Why should anyone care?

I've seen a few demos on youtube and listened to a few interviews and have yet to hear a cogent reason why I would want to wear one of these things.

I can think of a few reasons not to partake:

Its google count on them to collect all yer shit.
Spy on everything/everyone else.
Fill ur brain with ads.
Mostly unproductive and pointless.
Distracting/dangerous
Makes you look stupid
WiFi only = useless joke

Just human nature

[Joe Tie.]

People freak out over things that are new and different. Even more so for things that impact one's lifestyle. The same thing happened with the ipad. Additionally it has a lot to do with geek culture in general. For as much as techy people like to pat themselves on the back when it comes to standing outside trends, the reality is that it's a remarkably stagnant and brittle subculture that's even more terrified of change than that of the average person.

Simple: More and bloodier car accidents

[maiden_taiwan]

Google Glass will be yet another form of distraction for drivers. By and large, people cannot attend to a close-up display and a far-off traffic situation at the same time. It's a limitation of human attention. The more Google Glass on the road, the more death.

It's an intersection of concerns

[WOOFYGOOFY]

It's an intersection of concerns with facial recognition, tagging and Big Tech's seemingly callous indifference to our privacy , all of that hitting up against our evolutionarily bequeathed intuition that when we walk along in life, we have more than a modicum of privacy amongst strangers. Basically people fast forwarded in their imaginations to (creepy... or otherwise) people using Google Goggles to look at us on the street and download a ton of information about us by matching our face to social media pictures of us or our house to information about us or our license plate to stuff people have said about our driving.

Take a picture of something and start talking about it with everyone quickly becomes take of picture of something which identifies us and start gossiping with strangers about us in even ordinary people's minds.

FB is bad enough. Now we're going to be tagged and bagged as we walk down the street. Hot girl? Who is she? Where does she live? Whoa look as this... DUDE!!!

That kind of thing is fantastically invasive and creepy and it's exactly what will happen because all new technology becomes porn why? because we're monkeys whose chief and overwhelming concern was is and always will be reproducing our genes with the hottest thing we can land in order to maximize our genetic fitness. Even if you don't think that's the reason all new technology becomes porn, the fact is , all new technology becomes porn of some sort , if only gossip porn.

So yeah, that's why people hate Google Goggles.

Google should have, at all times and at all places loudly ferociously and very publicly defended the anonymity of their users come hell or high court subpena.

Instead, they got Eric Schmidt :

http://www.pcworld.com/article/217313/googles_eric_schmidt_ex_ceos_most_memorable_quotes.html

"With Street View, we drive by exactly once, so you can just move." (if you don't like your residence being online)

"I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their questions, ...They want Google to tell them what they should be doing next."

"If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence...we can predict where you are going to go,"

"Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don't have 14 photos of yourself on the Internet?"

"One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market,....And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that."

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place,"

If they were uniquely noted for their commitment to privacy, then maybe people would have trusted them with their faces. As it is, it's too late unwind it all and people are rightly concerned.

Re:It's an intersection of concerns

[Skinny Rav]

You just described a private assisstant. People were entrusting their whole lives, including most intimate details, to selected individuals for ages. And these individuals could cheat on their employers, spread gossips or even blackmail them. This was a significant risk. And yet many people considered this risk smaller than benefits of being able to focus on things important to them, while the assisstant took care of all things mundane. Caveat: personal assistants of this type were extremely expensive. It was not a work assistant, answering phonecalls and arranging meetings 8 (maybe 10) hours a day. These were people living in the same house, sharing lives of their employers.

Fast forward to present and personal assistants become available to almost everyone. Risks are mainly the same: you have to share your life with someone, including intimate details maybe. Difference: instead of a human being you have a piece of software backed by a corporation. So instead of having an individual who could cheat on you, your data becomes a part of a database and you are fed taylored ads (best scenario) or your personal data is sold to the highest bidder and anything may happen (worst scenario). The best scenario does not differ much from having a trusty personal assistant, whom you have to pay, while the worst case scenario is still probably better than being blackmailed by a former assisstant.

So there is risk and there is benefit.

Re:It's an intersection of concerns

[WOOFYGOOFY]

I wish I had mod points. Interesting perspective.

The product ist just so incredibly stupid

[gweihir]

There are enough sane people left to realize that. Nobody needs it, it creates numerous massive legal and social problems, this incarnation does not work well, battery life is low, etc. It just shows (again), that after using page-rank for search Google never had any really good ideas anymore and is now growing desperate. This thing is just as useful or needed as, say, the Windows 8 desktop "innovations".

Re:Glass is a different thing

[SerpentMage]

BEEP wrong...

The problem is that a good chunk of people will be honest, will be straight, and will be socially acceptable. It is the very sizable minority that will not be.

You want a really classical example? Nude beaches! How many pictures are floating around of people on nude beaches? Or how about big boobs, or big butts, or how about "creatures of wallmart", etc. Once Google glass gets reved up this stuff will be small potatoes! This is the problem.

Add in the GPS aspect, and the social network, and things begin to get really creepy! Right now people sit on benches and stare at the world. You don't care because the human mind does not keep all of that information. With google glass that information is at your finger tips. People do people watch!

What part of No don't you understand?

[westlake]

Google Glass is the very tiny tip of a huge iceberg. Assume you are being recorded at all times outside of your home. You may not like it, but it is a reality we live in.

Reality is what we choose to make it. not what the geek tells us it must be.

Hah, hypocrisy.

[MindlessAutomata]

Hmm... filming cops is just fine, it's legally fine because nobody has the expectation of privacy being out in public and the police are not above that!

Google Glass, however, is intrusive--people have the expectation of privacy being out in public!

In terms of dorkiness....

[amacbride]

...it's Segway for your face!

Making the public think about public video rec.

[rlh100]

I think the uproar around google glass is that it is causing the public to think about the privacy implications of possible pervasive video recording of their activities.
This is not a new problem. Ugly video glasses, cellphones with cameras for example. The press attention around these was mostly as an oddity:
"These could be used for . . ."
Google glass is more like ipads and smart phones which became ubiquitous in a very short period of time.

in versus out

[holophrastic]

the original idea of augmented reality was to bring more to life -- more information about your surroundings, more interaction, more history, more detail. But this thing does none of that. Instead, it removes your environment, placing you back into the all-too-familiar calendar/e-mail/message/cat-video world.

I'd love to be sitting on a beach, looking out at the waves, and get information about the height of the waves, the times of the tides, the type of fish swimming beneath the waves, and that poem that poet wrote when he first discovered this beach.

I have zero interest in replacing my view of the beach with my e-mail messages, my friend's recipe for hamburgers, and the thousands of photographs random strangers took of what I can see with my own two eyes in front of me.

Virtual Light

[Grekan]

How is it I never see "Virtual Light" by William Gibson mentioned in conversations like this. An interactive inforich real world is enough to make me think glass is cool.

snow crash gargoyle

[lkcl]

"hiro: you're a fucking gargoyle!"

quote from neal stephenson's book, "snow crash".

Google shuts down everything eventually...

[Mirar]

Google seems to have a tendency to shut down things we depend on and liked (Reader, Talk),
of course there's lots of annoyance in the direction of Google now.

Google Glass seems to be somewhat depending on "the cloud". They'll shut down those services too eventually.

(Beside the obvious privacy and photos-on-the-internet-forever issues.)

Fairly simple, it is fashionable to dislike Google

[knarf]

It is rather fashionable to dislike Google. Google is supposed to be tearing down the fabric of society, stone by stone. Even though several other companies are busily chipping away at the same stones - Facebook, Microsoft, the Social-hype-du-jour, etc - they don't get the type of special attention Google gets.

And now Google presents the penultimate society destroyer, creating a distributed panopticon of world-wide proportions. It is not relevant whether Glass actually will do all the bad stuff the detractors claim. What matters is that Glass is 'proof' of Google's bad intentions.

In a few years, other companies will create their own augmented reality devices. Microsoft will adapt their Kinect 3D-scanner to fit in a pair of spectacles, Apple will do the iGlasses, etc. Microsoft's product will be met with ridicule because it makes you look like those dorks from Weird Science. It will map your environment, helping Microsoft to expand their own mapping efforts to all 'public' areas, inside and out. It won't map your private quarters, unless told to do so by the relevant authorities. Apple's iGlasses will be hailed as the next coming of your favourite prophet, finally it is done right, opening up new markets, just working seamlessly together with the other iTools, how do they do it. Some people might grumble over Apple doing all those bad things which Google Glass was supposed to do but hey, it is their product, they can do with it what they want, if you don't like it, don't buy it - the same argument used to meet criticism on other parts of their walled garden. For some reason the iGlasses don't make you look like a dork, even though they look quite similar to Microsoft's product.

No... it is very simple

[SmallFurryCreature]

BECAUSE I DON'T FRICKING HAVE ONE!!!

Google does this time and time again, they limit early access turning desire into resentment and eventually outright hate.

And it worked SOOO well for google plus and waves. When people heard about it and wanted to use it, they couldn't. When they could, they no longer wanted it and the early users had left because nobody else was using it.

Here is a wakeup call: Google, you are a mega corp, you can't do "start small, then hope you grow" anymore. ANYTHING you launch must be instantly available to 6 billion people or the number of people who can't use your product will obliterate the few who can.

Resistance is futile

[allcoolnameswheretak]

Maybe a hive-mind is the next step in human evolution. Always connected to everyone and the body of human knowledge.

Quick neutralisation of most of the posts here...

[dave420]

1. They are not always recording
2. When they are recording or taking pictures, a bright LED on the front lets you know they're doing that.
3. Recording requires voice or hand gestures, easily noticeable to those around the user.

So either be scared of cellphones and camcorders, or get a new reason to hate Glass.

We'll lose in a generation

[Infestedkudzu]

If we assume this is coming then its just a matter of waiting until us 30 somethings die. Then google will still be around and everyone will accept the new way of life. Think September 2001. I never would have thought people, even the proles, would have wanted the patriot act and other such nonsense but now the 3rd graders are adults and its for our own good.

Re: There's law, and then there's society

[Doghouse13]

What your rights are and what's socially acceptable are two different things. One right that you most definitely don't have in practice is to do whatever you feel like and be treated with social tolerance simply because your behaviour isn't actually illegal. If Google Glass ever actually makes it to market, I certainly wouldn't advise any male wearing a set to go stand outside a primary (US elementary) school at a busy time, for example - I give them 10 minutes tops before the police turn up (and potentially a VERY uncomfortable time once they do).

What's with all the threats of physical violence?

[Oidhche]

It seems like every other comment is saying something like "you better not record me or I'll punch you in the face". Why is it that the first reaction these people have is violence, instead of say, ignoring it, leaving the scene, politely asking the Glass user to stop, or even demanding that he stop? While your arguments against Glass may have merit, you're basically bringing it down to the level of "let's beat up that dorky kid with the glasses".

Because people fear change

[draxil]

Because people fear change! A few years down the line everyone will have one or an iGlass. Personally I can't wait to have a go.

I've scanned the comments on here, given that a lot of opposition seems to consist of tinfoil hat wearers and conspiracy theory nuts (admittedly /. is a bit of a self selecting audience for this kind of thing), I don't think Google have too much to worry about.

perhaps because

[ILongForDarkness]

Even though we know most people have a camera in their pockets all the time these days it is really annoying to have the camera in a ready to fire position at all times. Ever had the press come at you? Imagine any douche in the crowd can decide they want to record anything you do that they might find interesting without the obvious physical queues of pulling a camera out and raising a device. Sure these douches might have a red light on the thing so you can tell but ... do you check every crowd for anything red now?

You ask Why all the hate?

[minstrelmike]

I think Jeff Bezos at Amazon is the reason for all the hatred.

Because it's not Apple

[WillyWanker]

If it were they'd already be lining up at the Apple stores waiting for launch day.

Why the hate . . .

[Kimomaru]

So, there are several very good reasons to not be especially delighted over Google Glass. Number one, it's an enabler for poor etiquette and behavior; ostensibly a person who is using it has a camera on their face at all times, no matter what they're doing. If you don't see a social implication with this, you're not thinking hard enough. Two, it's a reminder of horribly self-absorbed, desperate-for-adulation people who are a wreck and need a device on their face to feel good about themselves. Every person I know who buys an iPhone every year does it not because they need one but because they want a feel-good purchase. It reminds me of one of the last things I did before finally deactivating my Facebook account for good - practically all of my news feed was coming from members of my "friends" list who were in mid-life crises or were attention addicts. When I disabled their posts from my news feed, I stopped getting ANYTHING. These are the types of people who want Google Glass.

You can't build a constructive, intellectual society by focusing on "OMG, look at me". Google Glass caters to desperate people. We already have devices that can surf the net, take pictures, and allow us to communicate in all sorts of ways - a smartphone. And when you're not using it, put it in your pocket or purse and go on with your life if you have one. And if you don't have one, go get one. Don't stick a camera on your face.

Re:Why the hate . . .

[daveime]

Insightful comment, but about 20 years too late. Everything you accuse Google Glass of encouraging has already happened with smartphones.

People you are physically talking to will put YOU on hold while they read that "oh so important" Facebook message.

A group of teens meeting for the evening requires only a table, chairs and a 4-gang socket to charge their bloody devices on. They'll happily sit there for hours at a time NOT looking at each other, but at their iPads.

Idiots in restaurants who HAVE to photograph every starter, main course and sweet and then rush to post them on Facebook, while the meal is still in progress.

People who will happily spend hundreds of dollars on the latest iBrick, not because it's technically superior, but because it will make them "look good" in the coffee shop.

We have reached the most technically "social" generation, and yet at the same time, are the most anti-social bunch of cunts you could ever wish to meet.

And now we'll have to contend with them constantly squinting at their own foreheads, when they should be concentrating on things like driving, or walking in a straight line, or heaven forbid, fucking TALKING to the person they are with.

So like I said, no use in closing the barn door now, the horse has already bolted, careened off down the village and was last seen heading towards the knackers yard.

Re:Why the hate . . .

[Kimomaru]

Too true, mate.

Soon we'll turn in to search robots ourselves

[overmoderated]

The Internet was designed to exchange information, not to wear information.

Google Glass

[Shurshacker]

Now with less G and L.

You all have it all wrong...

[hateflyy]

Glass isn't some fashion statement, or lack there of. Glass isn't some bodily extension or prosthetic. Glass isn't a spy device. It's not a window into another world. While I think some can certainly argue that it can be and/or is all of these things, to me these miss the point. It's a freaking TOOL! Like a phone, or a hammer, a wrench, a cup, a plate, a knife. They have a purpose; whatever you might want that to be at the time. To me it's a tool. You use it to do things to make your life more convenient. It's not some 'cool look at me thing'. If you're using it for that, you're doing it wrong! Also, why in the hell should anyone care or be so judgmental on the likes and dislikes of others? Not enough of a life of your own that you must pass judgment or live vicariously? get off it already...

Why I am not hooked on glasses

[Lord Chaos EOG]

1. I already have glasses, which means I can't use google glasses 2. It can be used by creepy stalkers and pedo's taking pictures and video.

Graft

[gorehog]

They need to give free sets to the relevant reviewers. Their initial program of competition for a chance to buy failed. They inadvertently alienated all the reviewers who wanted one by making them part of the "out" group.

TV

[NewYork]

I believe Google Glass can replace TV in future

Wallstreet

[slash.jit]

It's the WallStreet guys.. They want to make a lot of money on Google shares.

This bully phrase has a whole new meaning...

[jess_wundring]

Are you looking at me?
Are YOU looking at ME?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion