Brooders.net

Last time we noticed it Traffic Wardens with headmounted Cameras.

Now this time it’s actually the police.

The article Britain to arm bobbies with helmet cams goes into detail:

LONDON — Britain is taking its surveillance to a new level, strapping video cameras to the helmets of its famed bobbies — a move the government says will cut down on paperwork and help prosecute criminals. By providing dramatic footage of victims, suspects and witnesses, judges and jurors will be able to “see and hear the incident through the eyes and ears of the officer at the scene,” Minister of State for Security Tony McNulty said.

I guess this raises similiar questions to the traffic wardens:

1. Will this change the bevahiour of the officers for the better? They know are being watched.
2. In the case of more people’s “word” against the police .. would this video be the ultimate truth ?
3. Would there be an over-reliance on video evidence
4. Who watches the watchers? - Does the public have the right to film the police in the same manner
5. Would a criminal who’d been caught on film resort to extreme violence to destroy the video filming gear and hurt the officer in the progress?

I am not sure the “always on” cop, knowing they’re recording in the public eye, is a good thing. What problem is it solving, reducing paperwork or collecting evidence? I wonder how many things could be taken out of context? Does a defendent have the right for the material to be played in full? Would it be allowed to be edited?

( Via Oreillynet - UK Rolls Out Police Headcams )

Sounds like a tabloid newspaper heading, but it’s kind of true.

The athlete they are talking about is Oscar Pistorius. He’s a double amputee with special leg extensions which allow him to run (and different ones to walk day to day).

Other Relevant articles:

• Double-amputee to compete in Norwich Union Grand Prix 400m @ ESPN
• Why ‘Blade Runner’ has sport on edge of a moral dilemma @ Scotsman

According to Wikipedia the record for 400m Mens is 43.18 seconds.

Oscar Pistorius record is 46.56 seconds.

I think that’s pretty fast.

So the dilemma is whether his “shoes” give him an unfair advantage. From the ESPN article:

Pistorius was given permission to race in able-bodied races by the International Association of Athletics Federations last month but still faces a struggle to take the step up to Olympic level amid claims the curved blades he runs on create an unfair advantage.

Who would have thought that an amputee with special running shoes might have an advantage?

( Via Cyborg runner set to compete against able-bodied athletes @ Sentient Developments )

Most of the time we never really think about technology we’ve been using for a long time. The BBC article The man who invented the cash machine, takes a step back to look at the first ATMs.

This is a classic, about the first ATM “cards”:

Plastic cards had not been invented, so Mr Shepherd-Barron’s machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.

The machine detected it, then matched the cheque against a Pin number.

But why only four digits?

One by-product of inventing the first cash machine was the concept of the Pin number.

Mr Shepherd-Barron came up with the idea when he realised that he could remember his six-figure army number. But he decided to check that with his wife, Caroline.

“Over the kitchen table, she said she could only remember four figures, so because of her, four figures became the world standard,” he laughs.

Mind you, some banks use 6 digits .. but as mentioned in the comments on Schneiers post (link below) maybe other banks don’t know how to use the extra digits?

So .. how many digits can people remember? I guess with four digits .. there only a 3 in 10,000 chance of guessing it before the card gets swallowed by the ATM .. that’s not too bad. So could most people memorise a 5 or 6 digit PIN to make it more secure?

( Via Why an ATM PIN Has Four Digits - Shneier )

Tea from an Empty Cup was a weird read. I made the mistake of reading Dervish is digital first, which is set after this one.

Pat Cadigan has an interesting style, as with “Dervish is Digital”, most of the book is spent with the characters immersed in the virtual world. So some things are just weird. She viewed the whole cyberspace/metaverse thing in a different light to William Gibson’s Neuromancer or Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. But her term of choice is Artificial Reality.

Quick Plot Summary:
Detective Konstantin is investigating mysterious deaths where online people are being killed in their private AR booths with no evidence of a murderer. No surveillance footage or witnesses see these odd murders. These online experiences range from games, to bizarre fetishes and in this case the reconstruction of memories. There are some who believe that Old Japan is being rebuilt in AR and be restored to it’s former glory, but a young man dies trying to give access to this virtual place.

Blurb from Amazon

The hazards of Artificial Reality are spilling into the real world–people vanish and solitary gamers are found slain in sealed AR booths. The young woman Yuki, child of a Japan destroyed before her birth, enters AR as the new assistant to the mysterious celebrity Joy Flower, but with her own agenda: to find Tom Iguchi, her missing beloved, who never was her lover but had been one of Joy’s Boyz. The hard-boiled homicide detective Dore Konstantin stalks the virtual streets of post-Apocalyptic Noo Yawk Sitty seeking a serial killer who may have murdered eight gamers from inside AR itself. But how do you find missing or hidden persons in a world where nothing is as it seems?

I didn’t really like it. I think I found it a bit confusing in place. Dervish is digital is a better read ( I rated it 8 / 10 ), although she may have just gotten into the groove with her original idea of AR. Artificial Reality in this book involves special body suits which simulate sensations such as pleasure, pain, falling, wind etc couple with a Head Mounted Display (HMD) to visually see and hear the world. Still an interesting near future look at any sort of immersive environment, it’s halfway between the Metaverse and Cyberspace.

In both of these books there is the hint of a “Ghost in the Machine”. If someone has an avatar online and they die, what happens to it?

Another thing that I don’t like is the whole concept of billable time. Yes, sure it would cost something to use this virtual world.. but the focus that everyone seems to be paying a lot of money to be in AR just gets a bit tired. Maybe in the context of 10 years ago that would have been accurate, but now virtual worlds don’t cost that much (e.g. Second Life, World of Warcraft - monthly fee + bandwidth).

This book definitely fits in the Cyberpunk category due to it’s cyberspace/AR/Metaverse thing, and the commentary on technology’s impact on society. I do think however, her ideas of people in the future thinking that AR is all that’s important is probably relevant. In a post scarcity world .. what is the meaning of life?

And if you can fly through the sky, get abducted by aliens, have sex with anything, experience a whole lot of things that are possible or too expensive in reality .. why wouldn’t you want to spend all your time there?

Rating: 6/10