I've thought of this before myself, and also imagined how cool it would be if it were possible to keep this information as meta data within the image's file itself.
It's done. The jpeg format has EXIF(Exchangeable Image File) information.
Here's a page on it, and here's the
actual EXIF spec (pdf). Check pg 62 for the GPS field info.
EXIF has fields for a wealth of information on settings, equipment, lighting, date/time, etc. Basically everything you could ever want to know about an image. This also includes a whole set of GPS fields, including lat, lon, alt, gps tag version, which satelites were used, speed of GPS unit, direction of image, and much more. Also has open comment/user defined fields, so you can put your own info in there for any purpose you want.
So the data format is there, you just gotta find the equipment to populate it. Another post mentions some Nikon equipment that does this; I'd be interested to hear which of the GPS fields it records for you.
The best I've seen is the
Office of Register General of India (ORGI), the Indian census. It's obvious how ORGI is pronounced, and it is the most commonly used term for their census organization. The best part is that the folks there use the term all the time, yet don't realize the humor in it.
There's no mention of what I consider to be the most interesting possibility: the ability to "see" the non-visible parts of the spectrum. With something like this you could have sensors to detect infrared, ultraviolet, microwave, etc., and display it as an overlay. Depending on what you were doing you could adjust what parts of the spectrum were shown in your display. That would so totally rock. I can think of tons of uses for it, and technically is seems more feasible than most of the apps described in the article.
What really happened is that doubleclick couldn't make money in private industry, so they targetted the people who were willing to pay good money for that information. They got a multi-billion dollar contract from NSA to continue and improve their profiling, provided they stop sharing the results with anyone else. So now all their activities are highly classified, and they have established a cover, or front business, to explain why they still exist. But you didn't hear it from me... oh crap, who is that banging on my door ---- and someone's remotely taken control of my computer ---- IT'S NOT TRUE, HONEST! I MADE IT UP! I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!!!!! AAAaaaaaaaaaa........
Until spamming is a thing of the past and data-mining is illegal or so uncommon that nobody does it any more, then personalization just won't work in a big way.
You are taking a limited view of personalization, really just as it applies to websites, but it's much bigger than that. You already have trust relationships with many companies and organizations: your employer, your bank, your credit card company, your lawyer, cpa, realtor, insurance agent, the IRS, etc. The list is long.
All of these people/companies/whatever have some of your sensitive personal information. You trust them with it. It's in their best interest to use it to serve you better, in ways that do not annoy you, or betray your trust. This extends to websites, too, but in that case there is much less incentive for people to establish trust relationships. Of course there are many different levels of trust. I'm not too worried about secrets like "prefers/. with no icons" leaking out.
As someone who's been shopping HDTV's, satellite receivers, and Tivo type things, this sounds very interesting, but there is no mention of HDTV signals. It seems foolish to me to build something like this without handling HD signals. There are currently combo DirecTV/HD boxes, and DirecTV/Tivo's, but no DirecTV/HD/Tivo. This thing could have tried to fill that gap, among others, but it looks like they didn't. Guess it's mostly vapor and PR at this point anyway, so there's no point in getting depressed.:-(
I'm with you on this. I have no problem with my kid seeing naked people, but the violence that's on tv during primetime is way too much for him. I'd like to see a better rating system for the various media (tv, movies, games, music), with different scales for different
things. Like rate from 1-5 each on nudity, sex, violence, and language. That would give you some
real information to work with in judging the suitability of programming.
I just saw LOTR, rated PG-13,
(here on imdb)
last week, and lots of parents brought their kids. We were sitting next to a woman and her 6 yr old daughter. I think that movie was a seriously traumatic experience for that kid. And yet sirens (here on imdb) was rated R for people running around naked, and barely even any sex. I'd take my 3 yr old to that any day.
but what about the Internet Connection Firewall???
on
WinXP Security Flaw
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Now Windows XP offers strong security to home computer users through Internet Connection Firewall protection, which makes your information, computers, and family data safer from intruders as soon as you start using Windows XP.
Here's the one I can't believe:
#30 Deer Hunter 364,000 unique users.
I'm going to give away the secret to winning right here:
1) Be sure to get at least three six-packs on the way to the stand. You can't win without them.
2) Make sure Bubba drinks more of them than you.
3) Piss into Bubba's box of ammo to prevent him from getting a deer.
4) Tell Bubba you're headed into town for more beer.
5) Drive on Rt. 17
6) Hit the deer that jumps out near mile marker 248.
7) Put the deer in the back of the truck.
8) Return home, leaving Bubba on the stand.
9) Victory!! You bagged more deer than Bubba!
Laziness, Impatience, and Hubris
on
Happy Birthday Perl!
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Here are a bunch of interesting conversations with Larry Wall: http://paulagordon.com/shows/wall/
Also, this would be a good time to remember the principles of good programming:
LAZINESS: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer.
IMPATIENCE: The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least that pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer.
HUBRIS: Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer.
Re:Constitutional Law pays off
on
Patented Seeds
·
· Score: 2
After digging around some I found some good links on "Terminator Genes". And a 1999 statement by Monsanto "making a public commitment not to commercialize sterile seed technologies". So I should revise my above statement to say companies similar to Monsanto, but supposedly not including Monsanto.
Here are some links:
http://www.ucsusa.org/Gene/w98.biobit.html
http://www.victoryseeds.com/news/terminator_gene.h tml
http://dhushara.tripod.com/book/genes/genaug/mar28.htm
http://dhushara.tripod.com/book/genes/genaug/term1.htm#anchor1346545
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe/daily/19990118/ 01855425.html
http://www.law.harvard.edu/Academic_Affairs/course pages/tfisher/terminator.html
http://www.biotech-info.net/monsanto_vows.html
http://www.purefood.org/Patent/termgene.cfm
Re:Constitutional Law pays off
on
Patented Seeds
·
· Score: 2
...Farmers can replant their seed...
An interesting aspect of this is that companies like
Monsanto
are putting "terminator genes" into their GM seeds which cause the next generation of the seed to be non-viable. This prevents farmers from growing from their own seed, effectively forcing them to buy new seed every year.
It's easy to draw parallels between this and companies that prevent you from copying their media even though it would be legal under the Fair Use standard.
It smells sneaky and devious to me, but I guess
they have a right to do what they want with their
own Intellectual Property. If you don't like the terms you don't have to buy it.
Re:It's not "pouring tons of money"
on
Patented Seeds
·
· Score: 2
Patents aren't about new discoveries. They are about money. The first to "invent" something completely new deserves a patent. However, being the first to patent something that nature created does not deserve a patent.
You are right about what patents *should* be for.
You'd think that the "prior art" and "non-obvious" restrictions on patents would prevent such absurdities from happening.
"we've been growing that rice for 1000 years" = prior art!!!!
Sigh, but basing anything on the assumption that the PTO has one damn lick of sense is not very realistic these days. I'm submitting my patent application for
hydrogen hydroxide
.
There is also
Helios, a high altitude unmanned aircraft powered by solar and fuel cell and designed to stay in flight for days or months.
Could be used as an "atmospheric satelite."
The new tools like XPath and XQuery are pretty useful, but do you know of any tool that reads in XML and then allows you to access it via standard SQL? I know it would be a bit of a stretch to make it fit the SQL model, but I think it would be very useful, as lots of people out there are used to using SQL. Anybody doing this?
Interesting point, but think about this:
this little stunt got all the critics talking about something MS could easily reverse, instead of talking about Win XP. It's a beautiful, no cost distraction to focus critical attention away from the really big coup. Classic misdirection.
And I believe it's intentional. When it comes to marketing and PR, MS is ten steps ahead of everyone.
A transmission system that requires the person sending the message to know exactly where the submarine is kind of defeats the entire purpose of having submarines in the first place.
Not only that, but if the enemy had enough passive sonar out there listening they might be able to collect enough data on this message to determine where it was "focused", giving away the location of the sub.
Here's the McMaster Motor
site
complete with a little
animation of the
engine.
Looking at it helps me understand the way it works. I don't know if this will ever come to fruition, but I sure hope it does. Even if it doesn't, he's a revolutionary thinker with a significant record of success, and deserves our praise and respect for that.
You're right, of course, but what counts is *perceived* lost revenues. The record company is running an experiment, and sales and returns data is about all they have to go on.
We want them to come to the conclusion that when they do this they lose potential revenues. Most of us wouldn't buy it anyway, so we're faking them out, but there's a kernal of truth to the message, too. If it were an album we were interested in we'd still avoid the copy protected version. We have to choose to be heard where we know they are listening.
So you don't like N'Synch?
Don't let that stop you from helping!!
Buy a copy - open it - return it, complaining that it is defective. Hey, you don't even have to listen to it. No cost to you, and they can't resell it after the packaging is open. While you're at it, do it at the most expensive record store around.
Let's see, (# of/.ers) * $15 return = an assload of lost revenues.
Bruce Schneier (of Counterpane) does a good job of sticking up for our rights on this one. He's really been doing a good job of getting the message out. Most articles on this kind of stuff have some good quotes from him. He's a consistent voice of reason. Kudos, Bruce.
ZDNet sure is being tough here. They sure are making a *bold* stand here. When I followed the link the Microsoft Ad for Office XP in the *middle* of the page took up more space than the damn article.
Slashdot Mirror
When I go to your site, don't resize my damn browser window!!
I otherwise would be very interested in the kind of info you have, but that was the end of my browsing on your site.
It's done. The jpeg format has EXIF(Exchangeable Image File) information. Here's a page on it, and here's the actual EXIF spec (pdf). Check pg 62 for the GPS field info.
EXIF has fields for a wealth of information on settings, equipment, lighting, date/time, etc. Basically everything you could ever want to know about an image. This also includes a whole set of GPS fields, including lat, lon, alt, gps tag version, which satelites were used, speed of GPS unit, direction of image, and much more. Also has open comment/user defined fields, so you can put your own info in there for any purpose you want.
So the data format is there, you just gotta find the equipment to populate it. Another post mentions some Nikon equipment that does this; I'd be interested to hear which of the GPS fields it records for you.
What a freaking dork.
After behaving like that, he deserves whatever he gets.
The best I've seen is the Office of Register General of India (ORGI), the Indian census. It's obvious how ORGI is pronounced, and it is the most commonly used term for their census organization. The best part is that the folks there use the term all the time, yet don't realize the humor in it.
There's no mention of what I consider to be the most interesting possibility: the ability to "see" the non-visible parts of the spectrum. With something like this you could have sensors to detect infrared, ultraviolet, microwave, etc., and display it as an overlay. Depending on what you were doing you could adjust what parts of the spectrum were shown in your display. That would so totally rock. I can think of tons of uses for it, and technically is seems more feasible than most of the apps described in the article.
What really happened is that doubleclick couldn't make money in private industry, so they targetted the people who were willing to pay good money for that information. They got a multi-billion dollar contract from NSA to continue and improve their profiling, provided they stop sharing the results with anyone else. So now all their activities are highly classified, and they have established a cover, or front business, to explain why they still exist. But you didn't hear it from me... oh crap, who is that banging on my door ---- and someone's remotely taken control of my computer ---- IT'S NOT TRUE, HONEST! I MADE IT UP! I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!!!!! AAAaaaaaaaaaa........
At last, we can get some light into that thing. I was getting really tired of The Dark Crystal
:-)
You are taking a limited view of personalization, really just as it applies to websites, but it's much bigger than that. You already have trust relationships with many companies and organizations: your employer, your bank, your credit card company, your lawyer, cpa, realtor, insurance agent, the IRS, etc. The list is long.
All of these people/companies/whatever have some of your sensitive personal information. You trust them with it. It's in their best interest to use it to serve you better, in ways that do not annoy you, or betray your trust. This extends to websites, too, but in that case there is much less incentive for people to establish trust relationships. Of course there are many different levels of trust. I'm not too worried about secrets like "prefers /. with no icons" leaking out.
As someone who's been shopping HDTV's, satellite receivers, and Tivo type things, this sounds very interesting, but there is no mention of HDTV signals. It seems foolish to me to build something like this without handling HD signals. There are currently combo DirecTV/HD boxes, and DirecTV/Tivo's, but no DirecTV/HD/Tivo. This thing could have tried to fill that gap, among others, but it looks like they didn't. Guess it's mostly vapor and PR at this point anyway, so there's no point in getting depressed. :-(
I just saw LOTR, rated PG-13, (here on imdb) last week, and lots of parents brought their kids. We were sitting next to a woman and her 6 yr old daughter. I think that movie was a seriously traumatic experience for that kid. And yet sirens (here on imdb) was rated R for people running around naked, and barely even any sex. I'd take my 3 yr old to that any day.
Now Windows XP offers strong security to home computer users through Internet Connection Firewall protection, which makes your information, computers, and family data safer from intruders as soon as you start using Windows XP.
I guess that helped a lot.
Here's the one I can't believe:
#30 Deer Hunter 364,000 unique users.
I'm going to give away the secret to winning right here:
1) Be sure to get at least three six-packs on the way to the stand. You can't win without them.
2) Make sure Bubba drinks more of them than you.
3) Piss into Bubba's box of ammo to prevent him from getting a deer.
4) Tell Bubba you're headed into town for more beer.
5) Drive on Rt. 17
6) Hit the deer that jumps out near mile marker 248.
7) Put the deer in the back of the truck.
8) Return home, leaving Bubba on the stand.
9) Victory!! You bagged more deer than Bubba!
http://paulagordon.com/shows/wall/
Also, this would be a good time to remember the principles of good programming:
Here are some links: http://www.ucsusa.org/Gene/w98.biobit.htmlh tml
8 .htm
1 .htm#anchor1346545
/ 01855425.html
e pages/tfisher/terminator.html
http://www.victoryseeds.com/news/terminator_gene.
http://dhushara.tripod.com/book/genes/genaug/mar2
http://dhushara.tripod.com/book/genes/genaug/term
http://www.financialexpress.com/fe/daily/19990118
http://www.law.harvard.edu/Academic_Affairs/cours
http://www.biotech-info.net/monsanto_vows.html
http://www.purefood.org/Patent/termgene.cfm
An interesting aspect of this is that companies like Monsanto are putting "terminator genes" into their GM seeds which cause the next generation of the seed to be non-viable. This prevents farmers from growing from their own seed, effectively forcing them to buy new seed every year.
It's easy to draw parallels between this and companies that prevent you from copying their media even though it would be legal under the Fair Use standard.
It smells sneaky and devious to me, but I guess they have a right to do what they want with their own Intellectual Property. If you don't like the terms you don't have to buy it.
You are right about what patents *should* be for. You'd think that the "prior art" and "non-obvious" restrictions on patents would prevent such absurdities from happening.
"we've been growing that rice for 1000 years" = prior art!!!!
Sigh, but basing anything on the assumption that the PTO has one damn lick of sense is not very realistic these days. I'm submitting my patent application for hydrogen hydroxide .
There is also Helios, a high altitude unmanned aircraft powered by solar and fuel cell and designed to stay in flight for days or months. Could be used as an "atmospheric satelite."
The new tools like XPath and XQuery are pretty useful, but do you know of any tool that reads in XML and then allows you to access it via standard SQL? I know it would be a bit of a stretch to make it fit the SQL model, but I think it would be very useful, as lots of people out there are used to using SQL. Anybody doing this?
Interesting point, but think about this: this little stunt got all the critics talking about something MS could easily reverse, instead of talking about Win XP. It's a beautiful, no cost distraction to focus critical attention away from the really big coup. Classic misdirection. And I believe it's intentional. When it comes to marketing and PR, MS is ten steps ahead of everyone.
Not only that, but if the enemy had enough passive sonar out there listening they might be able to collect enough data on this message to determine where it was "focused", giving away the location of the sub.
Looking at it helps me understand the way it works. I don't know if this will ever come to fruition, but I sure hope it does. Even if it doesn't, he's a revolutionary thinker with a significant record of success, and deserves our praise and respect for that.
You're right, of course, but what counts is *perceived* lost revenues. The record company is running an experiment, and sales and returns data is about all they have to go on.
We want them to come to the conclusion that when they do this they lose potential revenues. Most of us wouldn't buy it anyway, so we're faking them out, but there's a kernal of truth to the message, too. If it were an album we were interested in we'd still avoid the copy protected version. We have to choose to be heard where we know they are listening.
So you don't like N'Synch?
/.ers) * $15 return = an assload of lost revenues.
Don't let that stop you from helping!!
Buy a copy - open it - return it, complaining that it is defective. Hey, you don't even have to listen to it. No cost to you, and they can't resell it after the packaging is open. While you're at it, do it at the most expensive record store around.
Let's see, (# of
Bruce Schneier (of Counterpane) does a good job of sticking up for our rights on this one. He's really been doing a good job of getting the message out. Most articles on this kind of stuff have some good quotes from him. He's a consistent voice of reason. Kudos, Bruce.
ZDNet sure is being tough here. They sure are making a *bold* stand here. When I followed the link the Microsoft Ad for Office XP in the *middle* of the page took up more space than the damn article.