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Sky Deutschland Considering Using Bone Conduction To Force Ads On Train Riders
KindMind writes "Sky Deutschland is considering a proposal to use bone conduction to broadcast ads to train riders. The idea is that the riders rest their heads against a part of the train, like the train window, and then bone conduction would broadcast ads directly into their ears."
n/t
I was thinking of using bone fragmentation to help my local railway planners understand how I feel about their ossified asininity.
...the incident of violent vandalism aboard trams and trains rose exponentially after the introduction of technology that, to paraphrase a gibbering offender led away in a straight jacket, '...puts goddamn voices in your head..." Advertisers are calling it a new age in advertising and psychotropic drug manufacturers report a boom in sales. More at 11...
We need a new right - the right NOT to be advertised to.
I'm sick of being a product.. I mean, ok the old model of Television and Radio where you the viewer gets something of value (the programming/entertainment) without directly paying for it, then it's a reasonable tradeoff that it's paid for by advertising
However, when you're paying for a train fare, you've paid for the transit... it's not like you're given the option of "pay full price to not be subjected to adversising, or get a discount for being advertised to"
I know I'm unrealistic, but damnit I'm sick of being monetized against my will.
The Digital Sorceress
When the voices in your head are trying to sell you something, there might be bigger problems.
treppaning.
to paraphrase a gibbering offender led away in a straight jacket
As opposed to a gay jacket?
I guess they will have to outlaw pillows or rolling up your sweater to use as a headrest.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
once someone figures out how to hack into the ad server all kinds of chaos and hilarity can ensue, Ja?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
However, when you're paying for a train fare, you've paid for the transit
No, you've paid for half the transit. Advertisers paid for the other half. It's little different from newspapers or pay television.
Ah, trains, a safe haven for travelers for decades, now the science of pushing crap on people who don't want it has invaded your vestibules.
I road on Amtrak years ago and could not for the life of me understand why the bar car had an announcer, who broadcast throughout the train, in a voice not unlike a Harley Davidson exhaust tube by your ear, what wonderful deals they still had on drinks ... at 10 PM.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Seems that the world is turning into Futurama. Where are our hypnotoads and drunken robots burping fire?
I thought people might find these links amusing in this context...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_road
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_0aAIwcE7A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soKeog0miwk
Sky is a pay-TV company, not a train company...
Good luck with that. Feet and butt tend to be not only softer tissue but also (by law or regulation) covered by clothing.
Why not just go full Clockwork Orange and strap us down and pry our eyes open and force us to watch ads?
Ironically any product forced on me using this bone conduction method will just piss me off so much that it will leave me deliberately avoiding that product.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Reminds me of this scene from TNG.
sig: sauer
You know what would be great, is if leaning my head against a window in a plane (or train) would, the fullest extent possible, emit a nose canceling signal that would cancel out engine noise from whatever I was traveling in.
Just throwing the idea out there in case some company would like positive, instead of negative, PR.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I know that after a long day at the factory (air-conditioned office), I occasionally like to nod off on the train.
Not only would this be a great annoyance, and kill my after-work nap, it seems like a massive invasion of privacy and personal space. I hate advertisements as much as the next bloke, but I do understand the reasoning behind it. But this just seems to cross a line that we don't want to cross. Not to go all 1984-paranoid here, but transmitting messages via bone conduction right into our heads is a bit concerning. Not to mention a great trigger device for paranoid schizophrenia....
Bad idea.
Time to use pillows.
*BARF
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Scissors or a pocket knife, snip, and ... quiet.
If they can conduct through the feet or the butt, they'll get a wider audience!
Personally, I'm tired enough of people talking out of their asses.
The last thing I need is for them to start talking into mine!
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Fry: So you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams?
Leela: Of course.
Fry: But, how is that possible?
Farnsworth: It's very simple. The ad gets into your brain just like this liquid gets into this egg. [He holds up an egg and injects it with liquid. The egg explodes, covering him and Leela in yolk.] Although, in reality, it's not liquid, but gamma radiation.
Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?
Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!
Koans and fables for the software engineer
So I guess the operating idea here is that the people you WANT to be broadcasting ads to are the ones who are demonstrably trying to get some sleep?
Do they think that doing so will make people MORE likely to buy their advertised products? They may be in for a rude shock.
It's the best thing for crazy people since Blue Tooth headsets. Those allowed us to assume that you're talking to another person, even if you're talking to the elves who shine your shoes.
Now when you hear voices on the train, that'll be perfectly normal too.
I can't wait to have Monsters Inc (C) projected onto my retinas at inopportune times. Then spontaneous startled reactions and screaming for no apparent reason will be socially acceptable behavior.
I believe this is all part of some UN Convention and/or the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's a conspiracy and if you don't believe that you're a sheeple. Yep. The Internet's part of it too. This paragraph is perfectly normal on the Internet. 2nd best thing for crazy people, ever.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Feet are not made to be used on asphalt or metal floors.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 21st century?"
Fry: Well sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio, and in magazines, and movies, and at ball games... and on buses and milk cartons and t-shirts, and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams, no siree.
Meet new people, and kill them.
I remember time when i you heard voices in your head, men with white coats came and locked you away for treatment. I wonder now if those were just government conspiracy to remove unwanted individuals from public.
"Sky is a pay-TV company, not a train company..."
It will never happen anyway. The German Railway Company is even unable to keep the air conditioning working in summer nor the heating in winter, much less such a sophisticated advertisement method.
It's a running joke that ain't funny anymore, because it happens every fucking year.
How do you say "conduct THIS" in nazi?
In all seriousness, I haven't paid active attention to advertising in any form for years - I tune it right out. I fast forward past TV ads, I block most internet ads and don't click the ones that get past. When I want to buy something, I'll go look at products in stores. When an ad DOES come to my attention, it's almost always because its loud, visually jarring, or just obnoxiously stupid. In that case, I put that brand on the "never buy" list. Overall effectiveness of the ads is therefore in the negative numbers, and I'm sure I'm not the only person with this perception.
To me, advertising is like the cold war: Everyone is afraid to stop building H-bombs (or running ads) for fear the other side will get ahead. Stop it all, and a parasitic drain on society ends.
And as for bone conduction, has anyone seriously looked into this? I mean, seriously-seriously, because this tech came and went with mood rings, because at best the sound is muddier than a stereotypical airport PA system.
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
I'm going to assume a lot of us thought of Futurama when we read (skimmed) that article summary.
It will never happen anyway. The German Railway Company is even unable to keep the air conditioning working in summer nor the heating in winter, much less such a sophisticated advertisement method. It's a running joke that ain't funny anymore, because it happens every fucking year.
Though to be fair, they do occasionally manage to have the heating running on full power in the summer and the air conditioning in the middle of winter...
The Angels have the Phone Box
Sounds like a great scheme for keeping the train windows clean from people's greasy hair.
... apparently means "Brilliant!" if your a marketer....
Just fucking brilliant!
Have gnu, will travel.
Sit in the front seat.
I come here for the love
Passengers in a plane or train would each experience slightly different noise, with slightly different phases.
I know how noise canceling devices work. But the engine vibrations occur at a known spot at a fixed distance from every seat and are essentially constant for long periods. You could easily calculate for each window the exact offset wave required, a much simpler job than normal noise-cancelling devices have (which have to deal with any potential noise from all over that does not come from a steady source). Then you just feed the wave required for each window, which are isolated. It's not like they don't have to do the same thing with the ads, each pane requires a separate source.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But the engine vibrations occur at a known spot at a fixed distance from every seat and are essentially constant for long periods.
That's a good point. I imagine that could work for gross cancellation of noise, especially at lower frequencies, but I still think there'd be too much variability at higher frequencies. For example, at 2 kHz, the wavelength is about 17 cm. Hence, if you are 9 cm away from the 'optimal' position, you'd be totally out of phase, and the noise would be worse. Obviously this precision is even more important for higher frequencies.
True enough. But if you calculated it for the rear edge of every window, it would work really well I think on an airplane (since your head would be resting against the window and sliding back until the rear of the window well held your head up)
I agree whole-scale cancellation of noise that way is not feasible, but just a general reduction of the constant engine noise would be a boon.
Train track noise would I guess probably be too irregular for this to work, now that I think about it...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Also, now I think about it a bit more, I think the phase difference between ears is also enough to make this unfeasible for higher frequencies. But yes, I agree that it should be possible (and useful) to cancel the low-frequency engine noise.
Okay, so we've a got a proposal. Where do we pitch it?
Part of me is pleased by the fact that German trains can be as shit as UK ones. DB (technically DB Netze, I guess) seems to be better at maintaining infrastructure than Network Rail, at least.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.