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Microsoft Gadget Keeps Record of Your Life
Posted by
michael
on Fri Mar 05, 2004 09:43 AM
from the unexamined-life-not-worth-living-etc.-etc. dept.
from the unexamined-life-not-worth-living-etc.-etc. dept.
An anonymous reader writes "SenseCam, touted as a visual diary of sorts by Microsoft Corp., is designed to be worn around the neck and take up to 2,000 images a 12-hour day automatically. The prototype responds to changes such as bright lights and sudden movements and might one day even respond to other stimuli such as heart rate or skin temperature -- to track medical problems as easily as to record a Hawaiian vacation."
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Microsoft Gadget Keeps Record of Your Life
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Strange days (Score:5, Interesting)
Get a life (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Get a life (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.dasmegabyte.org/ | Last Journal: Tuesday June 22 2004, @11:41PM)
I keep all my photos online [dasmegabyte.org] (I've got about 3200). I only take maybe 100-200 a month and am really bad about posting them.
There are people -- friends I haven't seen in forever, ex-coworkers, and even people who only know me from friggin' slashdot -- who only ever communicate with me to ask when I'm updating the site. People love it. And I lead a pretty boring life! Can you imagine if somebody interesting (like, say, a cop, a rock singer, Linus Torvalds) started posting a massive visual blog of their entire day?
Re:Strange days (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.shokk.com/blog/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 02 2003, @10:39PM)
Oh no-not the In-Laws Hawaiian Vacation! (Score:5, Funny)
You missed- Hi dear, how was your day? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.ocean7motel.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 07 2007, @07:50AM)
Re:You missed- Hi dear, how was your day? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://shortcircuit.us/ | Last Journal: Sunday October 14, @02:01AM)
I only really see this being useful for teenagers and people whose companies don't depend on secrecy at their level.
Re:You missed- Hi dear, how was your day? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/)
Yeah, like nobody ever made money from selling tech to teenage Japanese girls. Who do you think bought all those camera phones and sent all those DOCOMO messages?
I don't think there would be a problem finding a market for this. Also if you look at the pictures it would be pretty easy to hide. Looks to me like it would fit in a breast pocket fairly easily.
So I would expect there would be objections to folk taking them into movie theatres and such.
Re:Oh no-not the In-Laws Hawaiian Vacation! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Difficult to understand online manual.. (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.grub.net/blog/index.html | Last Journal: Wednesday June 27, @08:48AM)
WOW! This does sound fascinating but I hope it comes with a better manual, the info from MS' page info doesn't even explain what type of batteries it requires:
Maybe I need more coffee this fine morning...
Electronic probation tether (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Electronic probation tether (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just for crooks.
Imagine having to wear one of these things as a condition of probation.
Or as a condition of employment.
Imagine having to wear it 24x7 to prove that you're not doing anything "bad," as in "bad in the eyes of someone who holds power over you."
Imagine being accused of being "bad" because you _won't_ wear such a device 24x7.
And you were worried about having to pee in a cup.
Oh boy, I can't wait! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.networkmirror.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday July 05, @04:34PM)
Zip through (Score:5, Insightful)
From The Artical:
"Perhaps weeks or months later, she might have zipped through them to figure out when she last saw a particular colleague or what bottle of wine she had been drinking that night."
Two THOUSAND pictures a day? ZIP through them?
This thing looks larger than my Cybershot-U (which much better pictures than what I saw on Microsoft's site from it), and seems like it would require a _lot_ of work to constantly maintain and keep organized the hundreds to thousands of photos taken everyday. Let alone time to download them on a regular basis... There are defiently some cool things on that Microsoft page though, this just isn't one of them =P
Show of hands (Score:5, Insightful)
While I can see the interest in a gadget like SenseCam, how many of you believe that it will be turned into spyware by a large number of people almost immediately?
We've already seen some of the negative effects of putting cameras into cell phones: Guys snipping pictures up skirts in bars, etc.. You also hear about pictures being taken by witnesses of license plates on cars used in crimes, but not as often. These events don't occur very often because people still have to actually take the picture, and that takes time and coordination, and also because cell phone cameras suck so bad.
But let's give people a very, very easy way to take pictures of whatever is in front of them. What happens? People go looking for interesting things to stand in front of. Other people are interesting, especially when they're doing something out of the ordinary. Or something wrong.
Because the SenseCam people don't have a BatPhone, they don't know where the interesting people are minute-to-minute. They take their cameras and just start hanging around places. The cameras take lots of pictures. Later, the pictures get reviewed. Many get deleted, some are saved, some are posted to the Internet as some kind of video blog.
Slashdot readers can take it from there.
Re:Show of hands (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.wavetheory.org/)
Negative ?? [taxthatass.com] ; )
Some things... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://gbookcards.com/)
Re:Some things... (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday December 08 2006, @04:28PM)
If I come across anyone using this near me.. (Score:5, Funny)
They'll either go away or turn the gadget off. Freaks
keep track of all my editing (Score:4, Funny)
(http://validate.sf.net/)
This would put me in an asylum (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Thursday January 10 2002, @10:55AM)
Monday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Tuesday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Wednesday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Thursday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Friday: go to work ass early. sit in cube. go home.
Weekend: sit in front of computer and take recursive pictures of self.
Omigosh!! It would be hard to live in denial with one of these things =)
oh good (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see how it can live up to expectations (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.ocean7motel.com/ | Last Journal: Monday May 07 2007, @07:50AM)
So when the latest virus... (Score:5, Funny)
But...they will pledge to restore it to the point before the attack.
Re:Security (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://theunfunnytruth.ytmnd.com/)
Re:Security (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean your attacker has a record of where you've been that day, including a picture of your car and your house.
Why would an attacker let you keep the camera that just took his picture? In order to function, it must have a clear view of your surroundings. Hiding it in your pocket sort of defeats the purpose. Hiding it in your purse (with a peep hole) means it gets stolen along with the purse.Reminds me of Battle Royale (Score:5, Funny)
Will next version include a small explosive to keep you from doing bad things like watching DVDs in Linux?
wow (Score:3, Funny)
(Last Journal: Friday September 20 2002, @02:12PM)
About last night (Score:5, Funny)
I thought they already had this (Score:3, Funny)
(http://lxer.com/module/forums/t/23168/ | Last Journal: Monday January 23 2006, @06:32PM)
I like it (Score:3, Funny)
(http://www.ultraviolence.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/)
'Solution' in search of a problem to apply to? (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://montemplar.deviantart.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 29 2006, @06:17AM)
-MT.
Snow Crash? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.darkmilieu.org/ | Last Journal: Monday November 21 2005, @04:14PM)
Microsoft Gadget Keeps Record of Your Life (Score:5, Funny)
Old news - Recording device. (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Basically a small recorder that broadcasted a RFID, and would record that of others.
This would result in a log of every RFID tag you came across, remember what books you looked at, which people you saw.
The privacy issue pointed that out too.
Collage? (Score:3, Interesting)
Been there, done that (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.unternet.org/)
In 2001 I paddled the Yukon from Whitehorse (Canada) to Emmonak (Alaska, at the mouth of the river) in a 17 ft. canoe. To document the experience without too much hassle, I built a solar-powered waterproof computer out of a Virgin WebPlayer (remember those?) and some assorted electronic parts. The machine was/is equipped with a VGA webcam, which took pictures with regular intervals or when ordered to do so (whichever came first). It could also do motion tracking, snapping shots of passing animals etc. It could also record sound if needed. All of that was stored on two 20 GB notebook harddrives inside the machine. I mentioned the project on /. in this posting [slashdot.org].
Had I still had my webserver (...no broadband where I now live, in Sweden...) those pictures would be visible for all to see. The camera was attached with a velcro strip to my hat, or sometimes to the canoe. It contains a microphone as well, so it could also record sounds (a function I did not use at the time). The whole setup worked fine, right until a leak in the camera's waterproofing and a subsequent rainy week smudged the CCD sensor. Pictures were blurry after that...
Of course I'm not the only one who has done things like this. There is a lot of 'prior art' in this field.
Sleeping while driving? (Score:5, Funny)
Great, now I can catch some sleep on the way to work. The Sensecam will wake me up before I cause an accident
Needs lots and lots of meta-data (Score:3, Interesting)
Upload not only pictures but also meta-data to your PC at night and have software that generates a log of what you did that day. The privacy issues are a little scary, but (like video cameras today) you could just disallow them in buildings/situations you don't want to be photographed. Technology is just a tool... its how you use it... blah blah blah...
Just what everyone wants to see... (Score:4, Funny)
new microsoft patent (Score:3, Funny)
microsoft has patented all the information
about your life. If you should need
to communicate any facts abour your
existence please get microsoft approval first.
Damned Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
(http://iamleeg.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday June 15 2005, @07:40PM)
Yet another example of how Microsoft refuse to interoperate - I'm a UNIX hacker and my days have 24 hours in them, as required by ISO 8601. What annoys me is that so many people use MS stuff that they'll start thinking that days are supposed to be 12 hours long, and that everyone doing it the old 24-hour way is just being belligerent.
Ob Python quote: (Score:3, Funny)
I can see the logic behind this gadget, though. MS is already like a metaphorical albatross/millstone around the neck already, so why not go the whole hog and do it for real?
Microsoft "innovation" (Score:3, Funny)
Paradox? (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you therefore not end up spending your entire life reviewing those previous events in your life? To the point where you end up reviewing yourself reviewing previous events?
On the other hand, if you record all the events in your life for future generations, wouldn't those future generations care nothing about 99.99% of what you did?
Sure, I'd love to see a visual record of the battles of Alexander the Great but I'm not sure I'd give a damn about what time his daily bowel movements were or whether he liked his meat rare or well-done.