Display System That Knows Who You Are 79
lee1 writes "New Scientist
reports on an 'interactive computer display that keeps track of multiple users by differentiating between their touch'. The system consists of a touch-sensitive screen that can be operated by several users simultaneously. When a user touches the screen an electrical signal is sent through their body and picked up by a receiver located in their chair, telling a computer precisely where the screen was touched and by whom. Applications could include system access control, safer vehicle controls, and smarter videogames. The bottom line, in the words of one of the inventors: 'If the controls know who is operating them, they can behave appropriately.' The movie
even has funkier than average background music."
Bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Bad idea... (Score:5, Funny)
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were telecommuting or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of bedroom eyes, a habit of muttering to yourself, anything that carried with it the suggestion of looking at b00bies, or having something to hide from HR. In any case, to sport wood at the office, was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Cubespeak: pantcrime."
- Little Sister, 1985
Re:Bad idea... (Score:1)
Re:Bad idea... (Score:1)
Re:Bad idea... (Score:1)
Re:Bad idea... (Score:2)
Re:Bad idea... (Score:2)
Grab.
Re:Bad idea... (Score:1)
Sigh (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sigh (Score:1)
(That's obviously "Problem Exists Between Screen And Chair")
-WS
Re:Sigh (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Re:Sigh (Score:2)
Re:Sigh (Score:3, Informative)
Turn your badge in at the door, sir/ma'am.
Re:Sigh (Score:1)
Re:Sigh (Score:1)
It's. "It's".
The Musical Chairs Problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the chair would also need to be able to read the RFID tag implanted in your butt to solve the Musical Chairs Problem.
Re:The Musical Chairs Problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The Musical Chairs Problem (Score:1)
But yeah, the stylus idea makes a lot more sense. Especially if you were to use this in a meeting as a sort of whiteboard thing for a presenter.
Re:The Musical Chairs Problem (Score:2, Funny)
Give that man an Insightful mod!
Re:The Musical Chairs Problem (Score:1)
The chair problem (Score:2)
You're right. Having the user sitting in a chair is going to be the key problem. Specially some companies are going to run out of chairs, due to someone high in the hierachy keeping throwing said chairs, because he want to f*cking kill some other competing company.
...TIMEOUT. Detector not responding, please check connection and try again.
Touch screen : detected.
Chair detector :
In
Re:The Musical Chairs Problem (Score:2, Funny)
Why are you people so pessimist? They have no need for such invasive measures... I think they're just going to use something similar to an anal probe, for which everyone already have a proper receiver. Actually, it seems like a pretty good idea, just think about it. It's universal, not limited to humans - maybe soon we can see fish using touch screens. Wicked, eh? Some may even get extra pleasure from using it, besides the joy of using a touch screen, that is - I'm p
Great! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)
*FZZZZT*
*THUMP*
Re:Great! (Score:2)
Depending on the voltage, you may not even feel a thing. Do you feel anything when you use a touch screen?
Even if the voltage is high, as long as the electric does not travel thru your heart, you are fine.
Re:Great! (Score:2)
Your heart lives in your upper torso. This may cause even more potent issues for left handed users.
Keep your fingers off (Score:5, Funny)
Re:OK, I'll be the first to say it (Score:2, Funny)
User: That's not mine. It's his.
Computer: Is that supposed to make me feel better?
So, umm... (Score:1)
Re:So, umm... (Score:1)
Re:So, umm... (Score:2)
Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:2)
You dont need the expensive monitor with some cool technology.. just install linux for the blue screen problem!
Re:Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:1, Funny)
Does it come in Caffeine Free Diet Cherry Vanilla Strawberry Swirl Cream of Wheat Dr. Pepper flavor? With a twist of lemon?
Re:Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:1)
Re:Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:1)
No, better a screen that tells him to keep his hands where it can see them. :-)
Re:Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:1)
Re:Now the computer knows who hit it (Score:2)
Wait until Sony gets a hold of this.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oy vey.
Re:Wait until Sony gets a hold of this.... (Score:2)
Conversely, it does allow for portable licensing, and could function as a new form of Biometric access. Imagine double-tapping a desktop shortcut to with your finger, and it will automatically recognize you and log in under your account. When you get up and leave, someone else could double-tap the same shortcut, and would be logged in under their a
Re:Wait until Sony gets a hold of this.... (Score:2)
* With HILARIOUS RESULTS
Hmm. On the topic of Weekend at Bernie's, IMDB [imdb.com] rates it as 5.5 out of 10 stars, and it only grossed 30.2 million [imdb.com] in the US.One could say that the movie is neither hilarious nor has results.
Re:Wait until Sony gets a hold of this.... (Score:2)
Re:Wait until Sony gets a hold of this.... (Score:2)
When a user touches the screen an electrical signal is sent through their body and picked up by a receiver located in their chair
so it doesn't differentiate between different people sitting at the chair on front of the computer - only between 2 people on different chairs.
Re:Wait until Sony gets a hold of this.... (Score:2)
HAL: I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave
Bill: For the last time, my name's Bill!
HAL: Suuure it is.
Re:Crappy prototype picture (Score:2)
Warning Stickers (Score:4, Funny)
This has been on Slashdot before. (Score:3, Informative)
It's from the same group [merl.com] that brought you this [slashdot.org] project [slashdot.org].
Re:This has been on Slashdot before. (Score:1)
Funky music (Score:2, Interesting)
contact (Score:1)
I can't see a "no pants" rule becoming corporate policy anytime soon...
Not a great example movie (Score:3, Insightful)
Definitely we can see that multiple input works, but that has been shown within the last year or two already, so that is nothing new.
You would think that if the major new feature is this user detection, they would have used different colors for the different users, or found some other method to really show off that it doing one thing for one user (resizing/moving windows for instance), while doing something else for the other user (scrolling through a window, selecting options in a different window, etc.).
And what was with the staged beverage spill. For a technology demo that was pretty weird.
I did find it ironic that the entire demo was done in XP, but they used Apple's website as their demo material.
Re:Not a great example movie (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, DiamondTouch is not really new. It is already a product which you can buy today! The article in New Scientist was originally going to focus on DT Controls, which is very new. It uses the same idenity
Re:Not a great example movie (Score:2)
That one example could have worked, except both people interacting are basically doing the exact same thing with their own box. As such we have no idea if the system really works, or if it has errors and is passing one person's input to the wrong box as the result to a casual observer would be the same. Now if one person was changing the box shape only, while the other person moved theirs only, and the shot showed their hands doing those action
Re:Not a great example movie (Score:1)
1)
2) Notice that neither the pop nor the touching while he was cleaning had an effect. Having multiple seperate inputs may not be that usefull. However, having a computer that your brother can't mash buttons crashing you into a wall is nice
Not really new, but stil cool (Score:2)
It's a pretty cool system subject to some limitations. People that I know that used it reported that bumping into each other confused the system (although the ability to form human chains and have multiple people in contact using the system together in various weird ways was the subject of a recent CHI paper). The inability to get up and move around makes it less appealing.
It's not really clear to me that having to sit in particular pla
Mod up the music! (Score:1)
"bigbrother"? baloney (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with ascertaining your identity, and this time you didn't even have to RTFA to figure that out.
BTW, the Jeff Han mentioned in TFA has a site where you can see a much [nyu.edu]
Finally, something to kill the joke... (Score:1)
Now you actually can have the computer tell you that. Well I just can't wait to start telling my computer users this... "Yeah, the error is between the keyboard and chair.... no seriously, its you... stop touching the computer, and it wont break."
But then, we have always been able to say that... just now we can have the computer tell the user this. Then confirm it. Oh my job gets easier... Thanks Merl.
Only the Display can find out if... (Score:2)
Pretty lame demonstration (Score:1)
Re:Pretty lame demonstration (Score:2)
Technical details of the screen (Score:2)
http://www.merl.com/projects/DiamondTouch/DTflier
I wanted to post the specs itself, but thanks Adobe for continuously messing up their product: the copied text is put in the clipboard buffer backwards.
Dupe? (Score:1)
Anyone else thinking... (Score:1)
2.) Add survailance webcam
3.) Broadcast
4.) Profit!!
Reminds me of Jeff Hans amazing Multitouch video (Score:2)
"Multi-Touch Interaction Research
"Bi-manual, multi-point, and multi-user input on graphical interaction surfaces"