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Anyone Can Buy Google Glass April 15
An anonymous reader writes "Starting at 9 a.m. ET on April 15 anyone in the US will be able to buy Google Glass for one day. From the article: 'This is the first time the device has been available to the general public. So far, the face-mounted computers have been sold only to Google "Explorers," the company's name for early adopters. At first only developers could buy Glass, but Google slowly expanded the program to include regular people. Some were hand-picked, others applied to be Explorers through Google contests by sharing what cool projects they would do if they had Glass.'"
I'm often an early adopter of technology, but I'm not interested in this type of product until it's far more unobtrusive and obvious. I can perhaps see a time when having a HUD built into my glasses might be useful, and sure there are times when I wish I could snap a picture of something more quickly than I can by pulling out my phone, but I'm not about to pay $1500 for what amounts to a barely beta product. I won't even go into my concerns about all the data Google already gets from us.
This one day sale stunt is just that, a stunt. They are testing the waters and trying to stimulate demand.
Hooray for artificial scarcity!
Went to glass.com and gglass.com and have to say I am surprised for this product they purchased neither domain.
How many of these land on ebay? Does Google have a way to prevent that? (not interested, so no I didn't read the bloody linked article)
"Oh crap, we're running low on cash! We need more monies! Quick, let people spend $1500 for some tech from us!"
Yeah, I'm interested, but at that cost (plus more for me since I wear regular glasses and need special frames and new lenses, etc) it's not really worth it. :|
And how about we quit acting like this is the end of privacy and not CCTVs or the NSA.
Google Glass may not bring about the end of privacy, but it's part of the problem. This is proprietary garbage, so you don't even know what it's doing. Anyone who buys it is a damn fool.
And how about we quit acting like this is the end of privacy and not CCTVs or the NSA.
So, ignore it and maybe it will go away? I don't think that's going to be effective.
Google glass seems like a really cool technology to me. It's weird that I have to qualify that statement with "and I mean this unironically."
And I cannot wait to see people who kick the shift out of glassholes facing legal consequences for thinking that they somehow have a right to enforce what they believe on others through violence.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Translation: "This is how you advertise a product as elitist." or "Shh, mobile enabled VR & AR gear does not exist yet!"
Sorry, don't care Google. I'll just keep developing for the 3D VR and AR gear I already use daily with my smart-phone, rather than pay for the over-priced less capable system Google's selling. When Google finally gets around to pushing out a run of hardware that is publicly accessible then I might port some software I personally use in my business to the platform it if it's not completely shit, and there is a market share to warrant the expenditure. I'm not holding my breath for something that is little more than vapor-ware.
Besides, that initial rejection of 3rd party apps for glass really turned me off, it seems they got the message but it doesn't bode well. Will I be able to use Glass apps with the Oculus Rift, or MS or Sony's offering, or Vuzix or True Player Gear, or the other umpteen hundred VR and AR headsets, many of which I've been using since the 90's when Quake and Descent came out, which STILL didn't attract a market? I don't think hardware should be tied to software, or that software should be tied to hardware needlessly. If that's the route Google wants then they can go fuck themselves. I already have AR and VR headsets for Android, and they work with iOS, Linux and Windows too.
Release a product or don't. This carrot dangling makes the Glass team seem like a bunch of incompetent self-important elitist sperglords.
"Hey, look what I bought. I used my tax refu--"
And the next thing he knew, he woke up in an alley. His wallet, keys, phone and shoes were missing. For the life of him, he could not figure out why they didn't take his cool new toy.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So I wonder if any of these people actually did any of the "cool projects" they claimed, or did they just pose around, with their newly aquired status (or otherwise) symbols.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
And how about we quit acting like this is the end of privacy and not CCTVs or the NSA.
That's weird. I didn't realize because X and Y are worse on a continuum of bad things, it means Z is somehow A-OK!
I hate the NSA and it's intrusions. I hate CCTV and the casual police state. Oh, and I hate Google Glass and its commercialization of the surveillance state.
See? Is that so hard?
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Being an anonymous coward is bad enough but I don't want to be a glasshole.
Google Glass may not bring about the end of privacy, but it's part of the problem. This is proprietary garbage, so you don't even know what it's doing. Anyone who buys it is a damn fool.
You aren't a damn fool just because you've bought one. Buying one just means you are curious and somewhat affluent. The "damn fool" part only kicks in if the thing is on and being worn while, say, doing Internet banking. As a teacher, I could see this being very beneficial to something like distance instruction, as it would be much more liberating than either teaching on a single whiteboard or depending on a third party camera person.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
And I cannot wait to see people who kick the shift out of glassholes facing legal consequences for thinking that they somehow have a right to enforce what they believe on others through violence.
And honestly, you may be waiting a while! For there are surely legal consequences for such things, but the police and judges are human and tend to view unexciting assault and battery cases as exactly that.
I mean, seriously, how many people as a percentage actually serve jail time for bar fights? Not many, and there are some serious injuries from those. And let's not forget extenuation - if Peter gets up in the face of the elderly mother of Paul and starts screaming at her for road rage and Paul punches his lights out, Paul may be congratulated by the arresting police officer after he's let off with probation. If Paul claims Peter was harassing him with his Glassholeness Sarah Slocum-style, Paul likely walks with community service.
And let's not forget, the police only have so much manpower and funding. Hell, they can't even muster up enough time here at my hometown to shut down any of the massage parlors for blatant sex trafficking of illegal immigrants. Robberies may take a while to investigate. Do you think police officers, who most likely already view Glassholes in a dim light, are going to be spending much time about finding out who Random Guy A was who punched the Glasshole recording him at a local bar?
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
This Masonic exclusivity bullshit is the exact reason I got turned off of Glass in the first place.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Just meh.
There is no SIM in it. It can't send anything to Google without going through the attached phone. If you don't know what your phone is doing, the glasses don't make a difference.
Learn to love Alaska
Sounds like Google is testing the waters of demand for glass. It would be interesting to see the actual number of glass units sold. My guess it they are using this as an indicator if they should continue to push glass in its current form, abandon the project or make a big change.
the anti-change liberals? Those are "conservatives". That the political area has co-opted and corrupted them doesn't change the non-political meaning. Unless you are bashing Democrats specifically. Unless you are saying you'll be assaulted liberally.
Learn to love Alaska
And a person smugly proclaiming that it is their right to become physically violent in retaliation is any better?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Would that be a hassle with a passle of Masshole Glassholes? Asking for a poet.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
You can ask them to stop... or you can go somewhere that the owner can tell the glasshole to get lost or be charged with trespassing.
When violence becomes the "only recourse" to something that is not, by itself, physically threatening in any way, one may want to consider whether or not there is something already seriously wrong with their own world view.
It's absolutely no different than those who have gone around killing nonbelievers in the name of religion.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Cut out the middleman! Pay me $1499 and I'll punch you in the face direct from the source.
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
"I worked day and night on my taxes. Now that they're done I'm going to give myself the gift of Google Glasses. I deserve it."
Progress as in change, not necessarily as in "moving forward", as that is only defined later, as "forward" is the path to a destination, and until you get to that destination, you don't know if you were going forward or backward at any point in time.
I am old enough to remember the same sorts of arguments against PCs. They were toys for the elite yuppies, and would never be useful for the poorer people.
You are just jealous. Why all the hate?
Learn to love Alaska
Well, that depends. If Glass is cheaper than buying the relevant parts themselves and if taking them apart is doable by the average tinkerer...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm sure you'll have something interesting, worth recording!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
> I see that you are using a gmail account.
Yeah, me too. Didn't pay 1500 bucks for it, though...
How many of these land on ebay?
Anyone planning to sell them on eBay would presumably check the ebay prices first to see how much they can make.
As far as I can tell, Glass is not selling period. I offered a guy $20 to buy one but they didn't bite, so I guess people are not super desperate to discard them yet - but I don't think many in the open period will be buying to resell, there's just no market.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You are just jealous. Why all the hate?
What an i jealous of? Looking like a hipster douche? Nah, not really.
Then leave them alone. They aren't asking to be harassed or insulted.
You could be wearing a jacket with hidden cameras or have it full of spiders or bees. I don't know and I don't care. No reason to get yourself involved with others over things you don't know or want to know.
Reading the reviews from developers who bought and used Google Glass, most of them say the same thing - it's not ready. You need an Android phone, and it's sort of an awkward extension of the phone. There aren't any killer apps for it because the APIs are not ready (it's mostly just popping text messages on the glass). I don't have Google Glass, but that's what I gleamed from the descriptions. The major reasons to get it seem to be for: 1) developers to get a head start on developer (on the belief that it will hit it big on a future rev) 2) journalists so that they can write about it 3) people with $1500 burning a hole in their pocket 4) people who want to brag to their friends (or brag to anonymous people on the Internet because we all know what a great satisfaction that is)
Apple caters to the stylish, the people that matter, people who won't care about the presence/absence of a physical keyboard since they have never owned a smartphone before.
I don't know about the stylish, since that never applied to me. But it did cater to people who mattered - real people.
For you see, for real people the small physical keyboards SUCKED. They had very tiny hit areas, were sometimes hard to press. They took up a lot of space which meant tiny screens, and if you started typing anything not a-z you were totally screwed buy whatever whacky shifting mechanism that keyboard designed had chased to introduce.
I had use blackberries and a variety of Palm/Windows phone devices before I got the first iPhone, and I was REJOICING that at last a mobile keyboard had reasonably sized keys, and I could type really fast - and also type pure numbers the way God intended, with a giant keypad.
Just because you and a few of your kind didn't like virtual keyboards, does not mean the rest of the world agreed with you - including many very technically astute people.
As they say:
If you find such things unpleasant, then I suggest you develop a taste for forced labor because by the year twenty-twenty all that sneer is going to get you is a slot in the underclass boiling corpses.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perhaps they wanted to clear the decks of all the people selling Explorer invites on eBay (or trying to).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You really don't understand how the real world works, do you? The more likely scenario is that she wasn't going to give him the time of day until she noticed the Glass(es?), at which point she'll be at least interested enough to try to find out if he has millions or is just in the wealthy category. Seriously, the number of people who take issue with Glass elsewhere (i.e. not Slashdot) is exceedingly low. Here people like to paint it as a universally despised technology, but it's not. Also, I'm not entirely certain from your post, but: You do know that Glass doesn't magically render the capability to see women's underwear, right?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You do know that Glass doesn't magically render the capability to see women's underwear, right?
Glad you brought this up. You just saved me from spending $1,500.
> "Then leave them alone. They aren't asking to be harassed or insulted."
Ummmm... strapping a camera to your face and pointing it at people IS asking for hate. Why leave them alone and not harass them? They are NOT leaving YOU alone. They are harassing YOU by pointing a camera at your face without your consent!
You really don't care? You should.
Anyone can buy Google Glasses right now on eBay. The going rate is about $1100. Google Glass "invitations" have been for sale on eBay for months. The going rate is about $50.
As an "exclusive launch", this is a flop. There have been XBox and Sony PSn launches where pre-order prices exceeded list price. Google Glasses are already selling at a discount before the launch. This thing is overpriced. It needs to launch at $995, and that will only hold until Samsung starts shipping.
Like the people all jealous of the hipster douches in the '80s with those PCs. Only a hipster douche would have one.Since you have a computer of some kind to post, you are what you hate. I guess that explains all the hate. You hate yourself, so you have to hate everyone else.
Learn to love Alaska
wow I'm amazed that so many people are sooo desperate to pay a staggering $1500 just for a beta version of a head mounted camera that freaks other people out and makes you look like a twat. I think I'll save $1500 and just duct tape my phone to my forehead.ï
What IS going to be effective? I'd argue that nothing done in relation to google glass, getting upset about it or being cool with it, will revive privacy.
Fair point, but I'd suggest focusing on google glass diverts attention from the other two.
What IS going to be effective? I'd argue that nothing done in relation to google glass, getting upset about it or being cool with it, will revive privacy.
I'd say businesses banning the device on their premises is a good start. Admittedly, I'm not full of ideas - but I'm sure complacency is not the answer.
You may lie all you want, but I remember the anti-yuppy sentiment, and hipsters are the new yuppies. I lived it, that you are too young or too stupid to have known doesn't change reality.
Learn to love Alaska
Ironically wasn't one of Compaq's first PC computers a portable? I wonder if there was any reaction at all to a person carrying around an approximately $3000 USD computer in public. Also, did anyone try to just rip one off?
Filled in all the spaces (not phone, not required) hit sign me up and nothing happened. I'd expected to be taken to another page or some acknowledgment.
It reminds me of Segways and bluetooth headsets. Some technologies simply rub people up the wrong way. They might find themselves a niche to exist in but they're very unlikely to ever enjoy public acceptance.
Surely the glass is half ERROR Redo from start
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
because in the US, April 15th is when income tax return forms are due. On that day many people find out if they are getting a refund of taxes withheld from their paychecks in the previous year. That refund money is often spent on TVs, appliances, etc., and now Google Glass.
You may or may not find its limitations annoying. The two I found annoying are the short battery life 9two hours if using the camera) and relatively slow internet speeds. I expect them these to improve in the NEXT version.
I'm holding out for Google 'Stache.
I am old enough to remember the same sorts of arguments against PCs. They were toys for the elite yuppies, and would never be useful for the poorer people.
I'm old enough to remember that isn't true. Nobody argued against h PC. AT first very few people even knew what they were. When I got my first computer I told my boss, and he just didn't understand how a person could own their own computer.
Then gradually affordable home computers came along, and parents bought them for their kids.
Then in time people got PCs on their desks at work, and eventually decided it'd be good to have one at home.
Mobile phones, sure THEY went through the ridiculed "yuppie" stage. But not PCs.
You're clearly pretending to remember things you weren't around for, or having false memories. There was no such anti-yuppy sentiment regarding PCs. Plenty of other hate for yuppies, but not PC related. It didn't happen.
Nobody has proclaimed any such right. Just two things: that people will suffer violence for wearing Google Glass. And that many of us will be amused when that happens.
Pretentious, self-righteous pricks getting punched is just one of those funny things to see.
I'd argue that the people who are doing the punching are no less pretentious *or* self-righteous.... like they have made it their own self-appointed duty to, under threat of physical violence, try to make other people see the world as they do, and have a similar set of priorities and values.
This is different from people killing in the name of religion how, exactly?
And what kind of world is it that you live in that this sort of thing is actually amusing?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Maybe it was regional, but there was definately anti-PC sentiment where I was. Much like "your baby an read' is mocked more recently. A yuppy way of over-indulging your children.
Learn to love Alaska
Someone who is so easily enraged that they would resort to physical violence over what ultimately amounts to a difference in beliefs over an intangible issue like privacy is no better than those who have, in the past, gone around killing nonbelievers in the name of God.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I'd argue that the people who are doing the punching are no less pretentious *or* self-righteous.... like they have made it their own self-appointed duty to, under threat of physical violence, try to make other people see the world as they do, and have a similar set of priorities and values.
No, they are just pissed off by someone thrusting a camera in their face, or not paying attention to the person they are conversing with when they should be.
This is different from people killing in the name of religion how, exactly?
In every way possible. You are beginning to sound hysterical.
And what kind of world is it that you live in that this sort of thing is actually amusing?
This one. For example, Buzz Aldrin punching this jackass is quite funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Some people just deserve a punch.
"Your baby can read" appears to be something that didn't work, and the creators quickly went out of business. That would be worth mocking.
And yes, that was regional, I never saw the product, not the mocking. Whereas PCs were sold round the world, right from the early days.
Completely different from the PC.
I'm not saying that people don't have every right to be pissed off about having their privacy invaded.... I'm saying that when violence is *ever* the defaut response to simply being angry about something that is not physically threatening in any way, shape, or form, then there is already a problem with the emotional maturity of that particular person.
I'd be inclined to not include Buzz Aldrin in that category because the person that he assaulted was physically stalking him, and deliberately creating a situation where Mr. Aldrin did not have the physical freedom to ignore him or walk away (since he and his camera crew simply followed him when he tried). That said, I think Mr. Aldrin should have told them to leave him alone, or he would place harassment charges on them if they tried to follow. It's not like he wouldn't have had a legitimate case against them.
Anyways.... supposedly, human beings are a civilization... so maybe people should try acting civilized. Your neighbor being an asshole should never be any justification for you to be one. See ethical vigilantism (point 12) on the ethics scoreboard.
Also... I'm hysterical how, exactly? Because I compare the threat of so-called "acceptable" violence today that would caused by what ultimately amounts to a mere a difference in beliefs (one person places more value on their privacy than another person places on the same person's privacy) to an example of violence in history over what also fundamentally amounted to a mere difference in beliefs?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Also... I'm hysterical how, exactly? Because I compare the threat of so-called "acceptable" violence today that would caused by what ultimately amounts to a mere a difference in beliefs (one person places more value on their privacy than another person places on the same person's privacy) to an example of violence in history over what also fundamentally amounted to a mere difference in beliefs?
You've moderated it now. Before it was "people killing in the name of religion". Which certainly is different to throwing a punch at someone who's getting in your face. To the point that if you think they are the same, you are being hysterical.
They aren't the same literal acts... but both are violent acts perpetuated solely by a difference in belief. Whether you kill or simply beat up, both are ultimately violent acts spawned from nothing less than the exact same hatred of things that are different.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
both are violent acts perpetuated solely by a difference in belief.
Belief? You're casting the Google Glass user as someone religious?
No, Glass users aren't risking being punched in the face for believing in Glass or believing in Google or whatever. But for being in people's face with a recording device where it isn't wanted, or for showing disrespect by putting a computer screen in-between their eyes and the eyes of the person they are conversing with. It's about rude and inconsiderate behaviour not belief.