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Technology

The Factoid 110

Posted by justin++ from the wrl-strikes-again dept.
that guy writes "TIME Digital has a story about the Factoid, a next-generation "minimal PDA" being developed by Compaq. You carry it everywhere, and it remembers every fact you encounter. " I think that thing, along with the Itsy, is really realy cool. I'd even be willing to submit myself to beta testing! Anyone care to speculate on what could happen if something like this ever became somewhat widespread?
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The Factiod

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  • Aha, but then, their factoid database would have to match with yours. And presumably, you can't break into both databases.

    Are friends allowed to be alibi for each other?

  • They state their goal, "This goal implies recording every sound and every sight encountered." And, "These facts are small, say 200 bytes."

    Even assuming they have the appropriate sensors for recording sight and sound, condensing that high-bandwidth information into tiny (let alone tiny and "highly compressible") factoids is far beyond the processing power available to such a very small package. Moreover, algorithms to symbolically represent such data are a very open (unsolved) research problem.

    For human speech, for example, voice (who it is) and speech (what they're saying) recognition algorithms need to be applied. Beyond the intensive processor requirements for such recognition, my understanding of a factoid is that you would want the information "Joe said he liked Star Wars, Episode I" instead of Joe's long-winded comments. Such generalization requires a highly developed artificial intelligence -- one that doesn't exist present day.

    Video is orders of magnitude more processor intensive and an enormously more open research problem.

    Creating a Factoid requires enormous processing power and a Jane-level computer intelligence. As others have been saying, the best Factoid we can manage right now would be one that exchanges digital business cards and get-rich-quick schemes. At least it's some fun science fiction.
  • Specifically, my Licq history files.. One is over a megabyte, a couple of others are over 100k.. And I'm a pretty passive ICQ user.

    It's kind of interesting. If I want to find out if a friend of mine has seen the movie "The Matrix" and I think that we talked about it, then I can just do a "grep Matrix ~/.licq/xxxxxx.history" to find out. It's easier than writing a diary. bleah.
  • Most digital recording devices (digital audio recorders, digital still cameras, digital camcorders, PDAs, and GPS devices) already timestamp, and you can correlate the timestamps to put things together into a coherent timeline.

    When it comes to broadcasting and receiving information, that's also already happening. IR and local wireless protocols are being standardized. Sun, Motorola, and 3com were demonstrating lots of little devices that would communicate with one another, exchanging that kind of information, and doing so in a vendor neutral, platform independent manner.

    Other systems that exist in this space are IBM's Personal Area Network (PAN), various pens that record information and can read barcode, broches and other jewelry that exchange information among wearers (and alert their wearers to compatible interests), etc.

    The Motorola pagers (2000x) was particularly impressive: in addition to a pager, it contained a Java VM, fast IR links, and could exchange objects and applets with pilots and desktops.

    An obsessive desire to record one's own life, however, will probably not be the motivating factor (and has somewhat worrisome legal implications). But there are possible business uses.

    The big issues with this are:

    • really standardizing the protocols and content types
    • deploying the infrastructure
    • reducing the size of the devices and increasing battery lifetime
    • find commercial motivators for both producers and consumers of information.

    The "Factoid" seems like a variation on these themes. But as the PalmPilot has shown, the right variation on an existing theme at the right point in time can win big.

  • Oh data, mine... (dbl entendre for slashers w/o coffee++)

    I've often thought about the concept of a 'complete record'.

    Essentially having access to such data and the ability to analyse it in (more or less) real
    time (by more and more powerful computers) changes the nature of life to one
    where one's 'next step' can be 'forecasted' (probabilities of future
    action/reaction based on historical data).

    A good look at the whole notion of 'complete record' is one's on historical
    email archive. If you're a 'keeper' (someone who keeps all your mail) then
    one day you'll have the ability to (very) easily mine your data. Frankly, I
    keep all the junk mail I get in hopes of using it to populate an anti-spam
    thingi...

    But there lies the rub with 'complete record' (really any level of keeping a
    lot of history) -- that is what do you really want to do with it? Short
    term utility can be very high (where did I go today again?) but long term is low
    (where did I see that picasso painting 25 years ago?).

    What could be interesting is an algorithm to ascertain the utility of data
    based on age and other factors.

    IMHO



  • Consider me guilty (by association) of using a PDA to remember things I should. I use my Palm III (nicknamed "Erwin") to remember all my appointments and obligations, as I'm sure many of you out there do. Currently, it is also storing various bits and pieces of ideas I have from time to time.

    End result? I can't remember even the next day's schedule. Memories? Sure, I have them. (And I can recall them easily.) But I have no sense of temporal "location" anymore. ("What day is it, anyway?")

    How long until PDA's like this start collecting not only my schedule and the ideas I come up with on the spur of the moment, but also the encounters in a day (like the above-mentioned "Factoid") and perhaps even the quirks of personality? How long until I (or anyone) become dependent on it? (Will I refer to my Palm 2K to find out if I like to use parentheses? Perhaps on the basis of past usage?)

    ...And if we ever get widely-used PDA's that are wired for the Internet, there's also the possibility that the above-mentioned encounters will occur between devices, and not humans.

    Yes, using a PDA has made my life a lot less stressful, as I haven't missed any appointments or events in the past few months, with minimal effort. ("Did I remember to pack Erwin? Yes? Good...") It is a bit more to carry, but I usually don't carry much else anyway. Doubtless, future devices will become much less obtrusive.

    Intriguing, yes?

    -W-
  • Exactly! Unless these people have some sort magically powerful PIM up their sleeve, I can't imagine how this could work...What would be cool is if you could associate clues with facts and then look up by clue....
  • Then you just go home, look at your database, and work out where they've taken your factoid :) After all, it'd still be transmitting it's data back to YOUR home. Hmm, it'd probably even tell you the address of the person who had it when they walked into their house..

    You're assuming that the thief is after stealing the hardware, not the data. Borrow the device, suck the data out, replace the device. The victim doesn't know a theft has happened - until the blackmail demand rolls in). Or get a court order to force you to hand it over, whichever is easier in the situation.

    The problem with these kinds of technologies is how they can be abused, both technical and legal safeguards need to be in place.

    'course, I've got no idea what technical safeguards are in place with the currant crop, I'll bet it's not enough, though. It never is.

  • dya ever wonder what an animal that's been tagged feels like...?
  • That quote is from 1984, it was spoken by O'Brian as he is torturing Winston.

    "Imagine a boot stomping on a human face, for ever. That is the future."
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:

    the NSA is funneling money to Compaq on this project.

    Even if they're not, this is scary. I don't want anyone to know what I do every second of my life.

    What if these things become mandatory? You could be persecuted and finally prosecuted simply because you met or just passed on the street someone who committed a crime.

    eg.

    Federal Prosecutor(FP):"Did you or did you not pass Timothy McVeigh on Main Street in Buttville Idaho while walking north on the west side of the street at 3:44PM on 04/01/1995?"

    Me:"No, I don't think so."

    FP:"AHA! Let the record show that the defendant DID walk past Timothy McVeigh on the date in question and he even said 'excuse me' after he stepped on his shoe. This was their secret code for 'everything is fine, now go blow up the damned building!' This defendant was the mastermind of the conspiracy which killed 168 people including little babies."

    This is another way to open pandora's box of privacy elimination!

    As if eschelon isn't bad enough. Not only do they want to be able to track any one of us, they want to be able to track ALL of us.

    LK
  • Well, they already said the info would be encrypted, which pretty much makes it useless to steal. it'd be more of a DOS attack than personal data theft. The device would erase whatever it had in its memory, so if the signals were intercepted the data would never get to your house. What I want to know is how it gets the info. Where do these "facts" come from? You can't just say "other factoids" because how did the THEY get the info? There must be some kind of input device somewhere.

    Crashing the server is a whole other story.

    -=Cozmo=-

  • The problem with this is that they're drawing the wrong conclusions. Yes, people are buying things that let them record stuff. The point DEC is missing is that, currently, people only record THINGS *THEY* CONSIDER IMPORTANT. You don't find people walking around making digital voice memos of everything they see.

    This Factoid thing has the premise that *everything* is important. If it's being broadcast by a Factoid, it must be important, therefore you must want it stored away at home, permanently.

    And more importantly, what *you* think is important is irrelevant. You have a Factoid device, You Will Accept This Very Important Announcement Of A Drastic Price Reduction On Adult Diapers This Week Only At Walgreens.

    (For example.)

    What I would find more useful would be a factoid squelcher, which would remove useless factoids from my awareness. Cigarette billboards, GONE! TV show ads, GONE!

  • Back before I lost my time machine (I lent it to a friend next year, and he didn't return it), I was reading a thread about something like this in alt.shenanigans [alt.shenanigans]. A lot of factoid shens are based on the idea of stealing someone's factoid. One of the really fun shens is to switch two peoples' factoids, so that they log their factoids to each others' home computers. And they usually don't even notice that it happened until the next time that they browse the database at home. ("Hey, my database says I was at a NAMBLA meeting when I distinctly remember being at church!")

    One of the alt.shenanigans regulars mentioned that he thinks factoid-switching this is actually too dangerous and destructive to qualify as a light-hearted shen. His position was that, since factoid databases are admissable in courts (and can even be siezed without a warrant if the cops mention drugs on your arrest report), you could get someone into some serious trouble if someone committed a crime while carrying someone else's factoid. That posted was pretty upset that factoids had ever taken off, in spite of their prank potential.

    My favorite factoid shen (crossposted to rec.pets.cats) was when someone put his factoid on his cat's flea collar for a week.

    Another alt.shenanigans thread was about how some jerk was going around with a jammer that blocked fact broadcasts. *sigh*

    One of the things that annoyed me about playing with factoids (this was posted to alt.destroy.microsoft instead of alt.shenanigans, so sorry if this is off-topic) was that a lot of the fact broadcasters weren't sending their facts in standard form. (Sort of analogous to people posting HTML messages to Usenet or sending documents in MS-Word format, back in the 1990s.) When I got home and went to browse my day's facts, I found that I had to use the Microsoft factoid reader. Clever how they gave out their software free to the broadcasters and managed to turn that into a monopoly on the readers. Everyone was expecting them to do the opposite, so it fooled a lot of people.

  • I have to agree, wholeheartedly! This looks like the forerunner to an age where not only does everybody have only a 2 minute attention span, but no memory capacity to boot. People are already becomming more lazy by the day.

    My other problem with this idea is that it will be severely abused just like everything else on the Net or in the modernized world. Just think - now you can have people push advertisements at you in even more ways. How many of these facts will be useful to anyone?? I think not many at all. Mostly it will be one more receptable for marketing firms to shove something that you do not need up in your face(or in your home "facts" database).

    I can see it now:

    FACT: Pepsi - choice of a new generation
    FACT: Coke - Even better than the real thing
    FACT: Burger King - we flame broil unlike McD's
    FACT: McD's - Billy Clinton eats here
    FACT: Hey baby, look here for a thrill!!
    FACT: Sex links in your inbox for free!!
    FACT: Get rich quick with no money down...

    hmm... looks kinda like my email boxes and most usenet newsgroups. PLEASE come up with a better idea than just another way to allow people to fill our time and lives with useless garbage.
  • I believe the intent here is to have fact broadcasters, such as stores broadcasting wares for sale, crosswalks broadcasting signal conditions, etc. Not advertising so much as facts; 200 bytes isn't enough for glamor, "just the facts, ma'am." Presumably your home server could analyze them and tell you about good prices you just passed up, or even do it real time in the factoid. Suppose you were looking for a new pair of shoes, and passed a store with the shoes you want at a good price. It would alert you, and as you enter the store, it would also alert the store, and possibly you could have the shoes waiting to try on.

    But I may be getting this confused with a different project, the name of which I have forgotten.

    --
  • Crashing

    1. Waste the processor
    Start scripting things like:
    Enhance model of the model of the world in terms of all facts collected and apply to all other facts known to mankind. Report findings. Repeat.

    Enhance intelligibility of speech in crowds:
    Take it to Woodstock which will probably start to happen every year soon. Tell it keep track of sound and relate it to every other sound and then relate that to the complete history of sounds recorded and tell it to try to understand what everyone is saying.
    2. Waste the space
    Point the camera at the PreVue channel while shaking it to record as much information from every angle possible. Then tell it to review that information while reviewing the reviewing of its reviewing.

    A case of hyper self-conscious introversion will reduce the thing to catatonia.

    Afterwards you can throw it out.
  • Aside from the possible spam and privacy problems, if the use of such a device became widespread, peoples' natural memory capacity would only degrade further. We would be even more dependent on a technological device to replace our own brains' functions.

    Also, will such a device really make our lives less stressful? It's just one more thing to tote around and protect along with our notebooks, PDAs, wallets, keys, etc. etc.

    I'm certainly not anti-technology, but we should really consider what a world would be like with a lot of these new toys in it.
  • The idea is that the devices themselves will transmit a block of information as well. So if you run across someone else who has one, you'll swap factoids, as it were.
  • Now it all makes sense.

    Hardware hackers any ideas?
  • Why? 'Cos mine will run linux. And will do what I tell it to do. Like the rest of my computing hardware and technology. I use it to make my life better, but I'm (reasonably) certain I run it and not the other way around.

    My Factoid:

    -- Collects bizcards of everyone I ever met.
    This means no more flipping thru the huge company stack'o'bizcard fun for the one I need. And yes, Mark, this means your frikkin' bizcard database (lovingly coded & entered by hand) is obsolete :)
    -- Remembers what I did today
    So I can check stuff off my list.
    -- Can pick up important announcements
    but since I filter it will only keep the ones i think are important. So my friends' factoids could tell mine what's being planned, but I can ignore the specials at WalMart.
    -- Runs Linux
    And crashes M$ Factoids, especially those that want marketing data from me :)

    Those guys at WRL are just cool.

    Remember. Your hardware can only screw you over if you let The Man tell it what to do. Which is why we tell it what to do ourselves.

    Tho that would be an impressively minimal linux system ... I guess not reallly any different than a PC-on-a-SIMM...

    -------

    "Now look in that big clustered computer and find the 1GHz Alpha 21264 that says `Badass Mutherfucker' on the heatsink. That's my badass mutherfucker."
    --- Seen on a Valley bumper sticker
  • This really reminds me of a book, called 'This Perfect Day', by Ira Levin. There people are forced to wear devices like them on a bracelet.

    Imagine the possibilities of a shrunk version: they implant it at birth. Then organisations (not neccerarily the government, but that's a likely candidate), can trace wherever you go and whoever you are with. This really scares me.

    I will never betatest this baby. Never!
  • This thing is cool, but, as most have suggested, privacy could really be blown away. I am glad to see the guy is at least THINKING about this stuff while he is designing it instead of just bringing it to market willy nilly.

    One thing I think could solve a lot of the problems everyone is bringing up is for the user to have to interact with it in order for the details to be received/transmitted, much like I do now with my Palm IIIx and the business card on it.

    Say I want to remember some sign I saw... let me go up to the sign and swipe my doohickey across it to pick up the factoid.

    Or say I am in a bar and some beautiful (but very strange) woman wants my phone number. Let me be the one to decide if I should be able to send her my real phone number or some pay phone down the street. Heck, even let me decide whether I am shown as a medical doctor or a garbage man. I mean, ya gotta impress SOME people :)

    My luck though I would factoid that I was a garbage man to some woman who had a thing for smelly guys....
  • but keep it the hell away from me.
  • Sure, the idea of the factoid is great, but there's nothing to stop worthless information from ending up in your collection. In fact, what this really becomes is a little WWW. You'd walk past a building in a city and a hundred little ads would be shoved into your Factoid, while maybe one would be an actually worthwhile piece of information about something relevant to what you're doing.

    The Factoid isn't going anywhere anytime soon. It's just a bad model for information sharing, plain and simple. The whole world of Factoids would inevitably become swamped with advertising and all the other crap that we've become acustomed to in EVERY other free network in the work (i.e. Radio, Television, the Internet).

  • . Borrow the device, suck the data out, replace the device. The victim doesn't know a theft has happened - until the blackmail demand rolls in). Or get a court order to force you to hand it over, whichever is easier in the situation.

    Both of these scenarios assume that the portable unit carries all the data. If this became really wide-spread, your Factoid would hold 5-15 minutes worth of stuff before dumping it. Hardly worth stealing.


    ...phil
  • Subpoenaed for what? The last 30 minutes worth of stuff it picked up before I dumped it?


    ...phil
  • My big problem with this is that it is passive and depends on someone else thinking some fact is "worthy" of being broadcast to everyone who walks nearby some location.

    Possibly useful applications:
    • Tourist spots, which dump a bit of information to you reminding you all about your visit
    Pretty short list, but maybe my imagination just isn't moving very fast this early in the morning.

    Most likely uses (most of these were pointed out in previous articles)
    • Advertising
    • Make money fast schemes
    • Advertising
    • 'Assistant Bombers' that try to dump as many messages as possible to your assistant in as short a time as possible

    Overall, this is doomed to failure unless people have some sort of filtering mechanism that isn't intrusive. This is sort of like the Usenet brought into the real world. :P
  • hmmm
    let me see I live in the UK and my GSM phone uses 900Mhz. Could get crazy.

    Sigh the problems of worldwide radio access...


    Martin
  • Or not. Consider the lawyers at Microsoft who probably wish that email was not archived, or the White House advisory staffwhich tries to write down and record as little as possible to avoid the evidence being subpoenaed.

    Remember that there are lawyers are on both sides of every case and that hard facts, even if exculpatory in the matter at hand, are often embarrassing or damaging in other ways.
    --
  • > NSA, not CIA
    whatever...
  • Actually, implantable devices have already been developed for livestock. Early versions are rather primitive, but eventually the animal's complete history will be stored on the device, and you'll be able to get the complete up to the second cost of raising that animal by scanning it.
  • That's some funny stuff. And suprisingly good technical writing as well.
    --
  • First we get everyone used to collecting factoids and storing them in a remote though accessible location. There will follow a push to make everyones databases available, and trials, contract disputes, etc. will become little more than ceremonial as all the facts will be laid out for everyone to see.

    The technology improves so that more data is collected until every experience is recorded to the ultimate detail. ("Mr Jones, you say that you did not cheat on your wife. And yet on May 21 at 11:03am, EST, you visited Joey's Happy House. At 11:15 Mary Juicy entered your personal space and at 11:26 there was a sharp rise in your heartbeat and hormonal output which would indicate an orgasm.")

    The final and ultimate innovation will be the introduction of viable neural interfaces. Everything I do and feel is recorded and stored in a central location. Want to climb Mt. Everest, but you're paralyzed from the neck down? No problem, access the database for the life recording of someone who has and experience their climb. We'll see the whole world networked as one huge mind. The Collective. Learning will be a thing of the past as everyone will know everything. Genetically engineered people will be raised to be 'clusters', nothing more than computing power in limp lifeless bodies.

    Privacy is dead, because everyone knows everything about you and you know everything about everyone else. Prejudice is dead, because how can you PREjudge someone when you know everything about them. Conflict and injustice are dead, because people will not be able to distance themselves from and redefine other people as sub-human. Is it heaven, or hell?
  • And now there scanners all all around the country: your dog ran away. Turn on your computer, ask where Fido is and the answer comes: he's on 2nd street. Happy happy, joy joy.

    Then your drivers license is fitted out with such a device. You'll have to have it with you, or your car won't start. You're traced whereever you go, how long you drive, and taxes are adapted acordingly.

    Next you need to have it at school to get your grades, at the library to get books, at the supermarket to pay, everywhere. Why not put it in you at birth?

    It's only two steps away...

  • What if someone stole yours? All you're private thoughts, gone public..
  • It would then soon become mandatory. My boss would know how many times I went to the bathroom. The clerk at the supermarket would know if I'd been to the drug store beforehand. The police officer on the corner would know I'd walked kinda slow on my way to my car. etc.
  • Wow!

    That IS long term thinking. I mean I do my website partly to remember what I was doing and thinking, but this would by _far_ be superior.

    But how would one organize millions (literally) of facts?
  • Yeah this would be neat except for the fact that every step you take is gonna record another "fact" about how "You can make more money in your own home blah" and "Hot sex waiting for you at blah".
    Its a neat concept but it would get abused by advertizers in no time at all.
  • This will be loved my marketers and advertizers, but will be ultimately little use to most people.

    I'm in a relatively narrow intellectual niche for most of my day. I think about Linux, Godel, C++, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and little else for 80% of my time.

    Most marketers hate me because I either see through the tricks, or I'm just plain uninterested.

    I doubt that my fact finder will find facts that I am interested in, so I doubt that this will be useful to me.

  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    So here I am, walking down the street. I see a woman in a green dress: Fact #1: That woman is wearing a green dress. Fact #2: That woman is not wearing a blue dress. Fact #3: That woman is not wearing a red dress. Fact #4: That woman is not wearing a purple dress. ... Fact #N: That being wearing the green dress is a woman. Fact #N+1: That being not wearing the blue dress is a woman. Fact #N+2: That being not wearing the red dress is a woman. ... There is no way to keep track of EVERY fact. (This post is only part facetious, I really would like to know what "every fact" is supposed to mean)
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • to record everything you see and feel. Wouldn't you like to feel again your first date (unless it was not blown up completely!)

    However, I think it's not possible to record all that stuff though non-brain integrated device. We need somehow to listen to our brain-waves, something not possible with even bulkier devices these days. Playback is of course through either some sort of virtual reality directly to our brain. In current implementation (as an external device) it will work only and only if there will be more such devices around, so they will be able to communicate with each other (nice thing to trace people!), and who is gonna pay to put all this bugs on the streets?

    I think it's really cool, but I am afraid I will be too old by the time we have such toys on sale to record anything!



    AtW,
    http://www.investigatio.com [investigatio.com]
  • I first read about this thing about 18 months ago. They apparently have made no progress since then because the page is the same, word-for-word. Consider the problems: - who's sponsoring all these facts? Your "life log" is likely to consist of vending machines advertising their presence. - privacy, as they admit. - my goal in using information technology is to strain out data, not gather more of it (thank you junkbusters.org for getting rid of those annoying blockstackers ;) - suppose my office were over a corner with a broadcaster that's pumping millions of ads a minute? - I really can't imagine what I'd do with all the data. If I wanted a technology that would let me 'check in', I'd prefer something like Sun's Java ring or related tokens. It is interesting to note that we have proof of a human desire in this area, as we already build and buy "remembering" devices. Some example include: voice note recorders, cameras, camcorders, and written memos. All of those are devices that I can use, edit, and review in the field...not the same thing.
  • well.. lawyers would love it...
  • The idea is that your facts are sent only to your personal database, in an encrypted format, so only you know what you were doing. That's the idea, anyway.
  • ... from a technical standpoint. I think it would be a blast to engineer.

    However I know that I sure as heck don't want a database of every advertisement I have ever seen in my life. Ugh! (although some other companies would proabbly love to have it ...) I think of all of that brain space that is already wasted by jingles and other ad crap and it astounds me. and I don't even own a tv. (I can't imagine how much space is wasted by all of you that watch all of that video advertising on a daily basis. shudder)

    Sooooo I sure don't want to start wasting disk space for ad data too ..

    anyway ...
    /dev

  • Hrm... (Score:1)

    by escher ( 3402 )
    Anyone else reminded of the 'gargoyles' from "Snow Crash"?

  • Factoid Spamming (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    So this little device is always in "receive" mode. Always collecting little data packets from other factoids. Then when you get home you can browse all of the factoids of the day. Great. I can just see all of the factoids that I picked up today: "This really works! You too can make millions!" "Freds plumbing-555-1234" Groan. Maybe I should start developing a Factoid Spam Filter right now.

    -
  • Ahh, but it doesn't work that way. It stores truths, not !(truths).

    1 == 1 is a truth.
    1 != 2 is not the same thing.

    Perhaps this will make some sense, perhaps not...I don't know - I'm tired....been doing routing and such all day......*sigh*

  • What I would like to know is how many people that I have come in contact with, like in the last 10 years. How many people in the world have I had almost direct contact with? Plotting that data on a map would be very cool indeed. Seeing interdependancys, etc. Even like a elapsed playback of the last 10 years of your life on a map .. that would be powerfull.

    If this were to be a sucess it would have to be DIRT cheap at first. Although it's cool I won't be paying a couple hundred dollars just so that I'm the only one in my town with one.
  • I love to read about what different company's research and development offices are doing, but they always seem a little too good to be true. I've seen this one before and, truthfully, I think it sounds like fiction. Someone could have come up with that one while contemplating what they'd like the universe to be. Personally, I think the kind of control governments that chose to utilize that could have is disgusting. However, as a personal memory device that would allow one to look back at what they did that day, it might be useful. If one really needed one of those, they could get a recording device and talk to it about the events of the day, though. Needless to say, Compaq says they never plan to implement the use of these on the market, so we're in luck as far as privacy issues are concerned.

  • Humorous IP Battles (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It would be funny to watch what would happen when people tried to defend their intellectual property in the court room after wearing one of these gizmos for a while. Everything they thought was "their" intellectual property could be proven to be a mere collection of facts they gained elsewhere.
  • Umm. Would you really want to post pictures
    of your keys on the web?
  • It only remembers facts beamed to it from another factoid, and the only interface is through the internet, meaning you have to have some other method of access besides the factoid itself.

    So if it has no interface, who's factoids will be beaming out all these lovely facts for you to receive? How will you tell it which kinds of facts you don't care about? Any system set up to screen out advertisers will soon be circumvented, I'm sure.

    And these 'internet connected factoid servers,' how will your factoid know if it is legitimate or not? Sure, it uses encryption, but 'they' don't have to decrypt your facts to know where you were, and when.

    Thanks, Big Brother, but no thanks.

  • If it had a non-(or switchable)automatic receiver, a small LCD screen (like beeper size), a 'keep' button, the automatic transmission to servers, and a manual transmission over short range of specified info.. Whenever you wanted to remember something (a phone number, an advertisment, an address, etc) you'd hit the receive button, the info would pop up on the LCD, and if you got what you wanted, hit keep.. otherwise it wipes it after a few seconds. Then if you wanted to give the equivalent of a business card, just haul the thing out, hit send and it sends a little sig-type file to them.. now That would be cool.. no worries about spam either, since you could turn off the auto-receiver, or even with it on just not hit keep and let it wipe it out.
    Dreamweaver

  • Factoids (Score:1)

    by Slay ( 1349 )
    From the site:

    ---
    It has no display, no buttons, no microphone, and no speaker.
    ---

    Can someone explain me how something can pick up 'facts', when it has no microphone or other apparent device with which to pick up these 'facts'?

    :)
  • I like gadgets, in general, but I am not too keen on the Factoid ... Yeah, we are already exhibiting "proof of a human desire in this area, as we already build and buy "remembering" devices", but IMO it isn't always a good substitution. We are at risk of losing a lot of real quality memories in our pursuit to record events for future replay - for example in a typical wedding, the bride, groom and family are often so concerned about the videotape turning out well that they can't concentrate on the true moment at hand. What is more precious, the memory of that special day or the VHS version that will gather dust? Even a journal entry is more personal, as it is tinged by the writer's perception of the memory.

    Will we soon all be walking around, clutching our Factoids, frantic if the server is down for fear we will lose a 'moment' from our lives? Yuck.

    YS
  • There's one problem with this thing.

    Not every fact I encounter is relevant.

    However, it's been my experience that people have perfect MEMORIES, just faulty RECALLS (for a number of reasons). No PDAesque device will ever be able to match for relevance. On the other hand, I remember everything that's important to me.

    I'd rather see an ad for a device that subliminally influences people to use their recall to best effect.

  • Yes yes, but the Nazi's ideas, though evil, were on occasion original.
  • There's a reason why some whackos prefer TeX over Word, and why hackers prefer vi over notepad, and for that matter, why (most?) slashdotters prefer unix's over Windows. These are all harder to learn, but they get the job done better.

    Following that argument, I say be more aware. See the little details, and remember them. It's certainly harder to learn, but it will get the job done better than any little device will...and it won't invade your privacy!


  • as in 6 degrees of! You could trace an invention James Burk style! And think about this crackers: if you were willing to be a little technologically naughty, you could get dirt on anyone in the world. The internet has given us all our own fan zine, now we can all have paparazzi stalkers too! A Cowardly New World!!!! ha ha ha ha ha!

    (and if it wasn't solely for the URL, from that picture, I would have assumed the story to be fake)
  • Most of the "useful" information that we gather is through the Internet. Personally, I'd rather have a piece of software let me find that article I read 2 months ago, but I can't remember where. The software wouldn't even have to record the webpages, users would simply set their cache to never erase. It would just take a simple search engine that only searched your cache. Something like this must exist, right? Could someone tell me where to get this? I guess the only problem would be that I use multiple browsers under multiple OS's, so I'd really like a universal place to store the cache is all.
  • So we have to discount any neat technology ideas, just because they might someday be used for advertising?

    "Hello, nose? I really like you but I must spite the face. I know. It's not you, it's me"

    ryan
  • The UK!! Excellent!!
  • What you really need on your widget is a "make the person who sent me this beep" button. When the spammer chirps, you and everybody near you get to pummel them!

    Maybe someday we'll have an enforceable law about "sending e-mail under false pretenses," kind of like AOL is using in Virginia. If we do, then you set the Factoid protocol up to have an "advertiser" bit. All widgets have an "ignore advertising" flag; anyone spamming without setting the bit gets sued, assuming they make it out of the room alive. Unfortunately, like any other ruleset, the more rules you add in to defeat a loophole, the more loopholes you introduce. Any electronic protocol you end up having to punt to legal protocols gets punted to the most loophole-ridden construct in existence.

    How well would a transmit-through-touch-only version fly? I have seen experimental devices which send faint digital pulses through your skin, which is naturally conductive. So if you had Factoid-touch embedded in your wristwatch (which would also give you a way of displaying the data), all you have to do is shake hands and wait for the beep--you've just exchanged business cards. Add some sort of input device to the watch and you could compose a custom message for your recipient ("meet back here 7pm"), or just choose the right stock message to send (e.g. your home phone number vs. your office pager).

    While a touch device would give you a great deal of protection against spam and evesdropping, the concept would probably go over better in countries with fewer body taboos. On the other hand, you could always just both touch a copper plate or other piece of metal.

    Or even better, download enough information from the person you're necking with to send to your cell-modem, which forwards it to your home computer, which investigates them and sends the results back to you just in time for you to decide whether to go all for it or run screaming from the room .

    --

  • My PDA gives me information quickly when and where I need it. This is, to me, the definition of PDA. The Factoid doesn't do that. Therefore, it doesn't qualify as a PDA. With the Factoid, the information is only available from "the user's home base." Granted, I don't want my PDA carrying around gigabytes of stuff. But what I do want it carrying around, I want to have near-instanteous access to - people's phone numbers, my schedule, my to-do list, etc. It's all about data I need right away, and frankly, I don't need Coke ads right away.

    A PDA without a screen is worse than useless to me. It's useless and a waste of money.

    -Ender
  • Some kind of definable filtering rules might be useful, perhaps based on regexps. If you can define what spam is to a computer (and for i'd say 90% of it all you have to do is look for phrases like "get rich quick" or "hot sex") then you can filter all the b.s. out. This could either be done by the Factoid itself [assuming it has some computing power, which it probably will], by the Factoid server [which will be widespread if the Factoid itself is widespread], or by your own computer. Most efficient place is to do it on the Factoid itself, because it saves storage everywhere.
    Just a thought.
    Besides, by the time this thing is actually out there, maybe someone will have written an AI spam-supression system. heh heh.
  • Okay, that post makes me think of only one thing:
    We are Borg. You will be assimilated into the collective. Your biological and technological differences will be absorbed.
    Resistance is futile.
  • It would only be transmitting data to your home if it's within 30 feet of your home.

    Uh... No. According to the Factoid page, it sends data to your "home base" whenever it finds "an Internet connected Factoid server" within range. If this catches on, the servers could become as ubiquitous as phone cells and data would be sent on almost immediately.

  • exactly. there's no way of distinguishing between useful fact and intrusive advertising, unless you somehow previously trust the information provider... which destroys much of the use of the device in not having to think about it.

    even if you had a little 'accept'/'deny' button for each factoid it would be about as useful as having your browser ask you before it sets a cookie; i.e. not much use at all.

    hmmm, maybe you could do it with CAs (authenticode style), but then all it takes is one spammer to get signed and the whole CA is toast... since i doubt these little devices would have reference to certificate revokation lists with such a short-range antenna.

  • Nope. Giant corporations would _love_ this type of thing. They already listen in on phone conversations, read random emails, install security cameras, and make employees rat on eachother. They'd _love_ this type of tracking device. Remember, the government could give a shit what you do every day, but your PHB (pointy-haired boss), he wants to know where his money is going!
  • That may be the idea, but it won't stay that way for long. Remember that social security numbers were only supposed to be for getting social security benefits when you retire, but now they are tied to almost anything and everything about you. Even though this was explicitly denied in the writing of the social security legislation. Funny how things turn out. I be that if someone commits a crime and this little thing can prove the person was/wasn't at the scene, because there was a fact collected from the place it will be forced out of the database using legal means, encrypted or not. The courts have already made ISP turn over the identities of anonymous users, this is even a less radical step than that. It sounds like the users won't have the keys, but the database owners have the keys. I think it is just a really, really good system for tracking the movements/habits of people who don't know that this data can be used against them. Just wait till marketing people offer this for "free" if they can have some access to the facts you have collected. What you like to see can tell a lot about you.
  • Imagine the day when your wireless PDA acts like a detailed Love-gety [love-gety.com].
  • ...just wait till the first Factoid is subpoena'd.

    Interest in this thing will decline sharply afterwards.
  • or maybe he stole it from someone else. ;-)

    in his first book i think (road ahead) he says that the huge data storage stuff of the future will record every facet of our lives.

    Not trying to be cold or mobid, but has anyone ever compared gate's book to mein kamph (sp?). i mean, a published strategy of how one intends to radically change the world....
  • From a student's perspective, will they be forbidden on tests? What about memorizing things? Will this in the long term replace human brain long term memory?
  • Obviously, it should have an interface to Everything [blockstackers.com]
  • The site doesn't talk about how the other factoids talk with your factoid. If the data is all encrypted and there is just a receiver, in order to send the data you'd need another factoid device that was transmitting your data all the time. If this were to be used as a "virtual automatic businesscard" I would think that they need to have a transmitter and receiver but then there is the problem of getting your information into the factoid. You'd need to have a transmitter on a computer or the like that sent the data to the factoid in a secure (limited to send to only a list of serial numbers in the factoid's database?) fashion. Also, what about the possibility of people overfilling your factoid with junk? Think about it.. You are walking down a busy street and one person has a factoid sending out random data to the factoid. You login to check your database to find out you missed all of the important data you wanted only because someone filled your memory with a bunch of random characters before your data could be uploaded to the server. I also doubt that many of these remote transmitters would be available in the common regions. Although I personally like the idea, I doubt it would go over well with the non-geek types out there.
  • I'll die befour I carry something that tracks me on my way to work. Then to Jack in the Box for lunch. Then back to work. Then back home. Then to Blockbuster and McDonnalds. Then Home. Maybe to the gas station for a pack of cigarettes. And back home. Then It would track me on my way to work.

    My god, I'm stuck in a loop!

    Can someone tell me why on earth would I want to save that again?
  • A reply I got from a friend.

    > I thought it was a spoof to start with but they are SERIOUS! Why would
    > anyone want a "Prattoid" anyway - to accumulate useless information that
    > you never throw away! What we need is an anti-Prattoid that deletes all
    > data it finds on any other Prattoid it comes across!
    > Keep the Universe Pratoid Free!!
    > cheers,
    > Mick


  • How about something closer to CryptNet (?) in The Diamond Age (also by Neal Stephenson). Imagine hundreds or thousands of factoid users, wandering about all day through the city exchanging little packets of data. Sure, it'd take a tad longer for your data to get around, but it'd certainly scramble the path back to you.
  • Minds are bad at remembering. Why should I keep lookup tables in my brain if I can have them on paper? Minds are good at synthesizing. Why do we continue to want to do hammer jobs with screwdrivers? Honing my brain into a finely tuned synthesizing engine would be a lot more useful than remembering what happened on August 1, 1926 (or some other arbitrary meaningless date).

    Sure we're dependent on technology. Like it or not, we live in a technologically advanced and oriented society. Sure, if I got stuck out in the woods and had to keep from getting eaten by large predators, I'd have to develop another skill set post haste, but it seems to me like our modern lifestyle lends itself to technological information storage and organisation. For instance, I'm within arm's reach of a device connected to The Oracle of Infinite Information about 20 hours out of the day (most of the rest, I'm in my car, and I'm working on that part). Why SHOULDN'T I use the Internet as a swap file for my brain?
  • What if someone stole yours? All you're private thoughts, gone public..

    Then you just go home, look at your database, and work out where they've taken your factoid :) After all, it'd still be transmitting it's data back to YOUR home. Hmm, it'd probably even tell you the address of the person who had it when they walked into their house..

  • This goes back to the Lucky's-club-card debacle. While really they are probably not interested in 'you' as an individual, but rather in what people 'like you' do in general. It enables them to focus their advertising... effectively filtering what you see, so you will probably only see things that will appeal to you (as defined by your profile).
    This is a different type of Big Brother attitude. They're not really in it to micromanage your life for you, but rather to max-out your value to them as a consumer. It's all about money in the end, nothing too new.

    The government, on the other hand.. may end up using this information for much more nefarious deeds:
    Prosecutor: And on 4/4/94, did you not buy batteries and a box of bleach from the grocery store..
    Me: Umm.. I dunno..
    Prosecutor: And did you also not unknowingly purchase products such as those which could be potentially mixed into explosives?
    Me: Uhh... excuse me while I move to another planet.
  • I don't see this idea catching on largely because of privacy. think of the impact it would have had on OJ 'save the juice' simpson or bill clinton. the cia banned employees from bringing furby's to their offices. Then if somehow people could break into your database, say you go into a job interview and your monthly trips to the red light district in amsterdam show up, your screwed. you may be able to set up your own equipment to monitor someone's movements. so much for the cliche 'if you don't lie then you dont have to remember anything.'-B
    critisism aside, it is a cool piece of technology. it would be nice if you could take pictures, sounds, etc and imediately dump them to your database at home.
  • The idea seems to be that you don't actually have input, but that external stations input for you.

    Like if you went to the grocery store, and you passed by a display of cereal. The store has full Factoid support. This display says that Corn Flakes are on sale for $2.39 a box, with some silly coupon. Except you aren't there for the Corn Flakes. You need milk. So your factoid records this price for you, and your personal database files and prioritizes this data.

    You get home, and realize that you need Corn Flakes. So your personal db spits out that info and you go to the store and buy Corn Flakes, knowing full well that you have that silly coupon for Corn Flakes.

    This kind of scenario is exciting, at least for me. It seems to me to be an extension of the conscious mind. Stupid inane facts like this would just get filed and prioritized. And when I need them, instant recall.

    Which would spawn a need for some _really_ smart crawlers.

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