Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass • Hacker News Board

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#171

Post by einhverfr » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 1:55 AM UTC

heyrhett wrote: post #29

reso wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's well within reason. If you were assaulted by a cashier at McDonald's, would you just ignore it and continue on? I'm pretty sure I would try and get the perpetrators fired and possibly charged, and have the company pay for any damages to my property.

I agree, he is well within reason to get a lawyer and sue the pants off of McDonald's in civil court if his case is accurate as he describes it. He's not asking for that though. What he basically wants is a public apology and for McDonald's to FIX his glasses. This is laughable. Notice how all aspects of this story point to how awesome his glasses are: "they help with a medical condition", "having them fixed is more…

If you ask for that first, and don't get it, it also adds more bite to a suit later.

The infamous hot coffee MacDonalds case involved a woman who had first asked MacDonalds (or that franchise, not sure) to pay her medical bills (around 20 grand iirc for extensive second and third degree burns) and they refused. It was only after that when she sued, got a list of other complaints about the temperature and won a large judgement (reduced on appeal).

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#172

Post by rdl » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 1:55 AM UTC

jholman wrote: post #148

rdl wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that fails Ockham's razor. I worked for Steve Mann about 15 years ago. Calling him the father of wearable computing is an understatement -- he was the father before it was even possible to create, and yet managed to make it happen essentially on his own a decade or more before it should have existed -- the JFK Apollo of wearables out of his own pocket. However, he is probably not the least suspicious person w…

Tearing up someone's documentation is never an "honest ignorant understanding by some worried people". Dr Mann also says P1 "angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head", which is also not consistent with an honest mistake.

More likely started as reasonable concern (or at least plausibly understandable), compounded with ignorance and machismo into stupidity and wrongness.

McDonalds should apologize, but I don't think it was a conspiracy.

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#173

Post by robomartin » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 1:57 AM UTC

rpedroso wrote: post #146

robomartin wrote: post #126

> but I could use some help and advice as to how to resolve this matter This is bound to not be popular on HN, but, so be it. First bit of advice: Don't be such a dork. Respect others, their space and privacy. People don't want cameras pointed at them all the time. You might. I certainly don't. You can't just walk-up to people wearing a bunch of hardware and not expect a variety of reactions. If someone asks you to t…

> People don't want cameras pointed at them all the time. As he explains in the article, the camera does not (when functioning properly) store anything permanently. His photos were only possible when the computer stopped overwriting the buffered images. I don't think that's an invasion of privacy. Not being familiar with the device, they might not have known that, but that's hardly justification to assault someone. A…

Not one person being "scanned" would know what the rig is for. It is the responsibility of the wearer to communicate this and ask permission when entering private spaces.

A museum or a public place is a different story. If museum security has an issue then you either leave or take it off.

Even in public there's the concept of decorum. Let's say you have a teenage daughter who is also attractive and some guy stars to follow you a few feet in fron while recording her on video. While probably legal in most parts of the world this behavior is almost guaranteed to cause the videographer a lot of trouble, and rightly so.

Then there are other invasion-of-privacy type issues like people who choose to smoke in public. I recently had the experience of having dinner with my family in the outdoor dining area of a restaurant when a group of youngsters sat at the table next to us and started to smoke. They showed total disregard for the fact that we were being forced to inhale their smoke, even my young kids. We had been there for an hour, they just showed up and we were engulfed in a cloud of smoke. Legal? Yes? Incredibly rude and inconsiderate? Absolutely!

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#174

Post by olalonde » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:10 AM UTC

arandomJohn wrote: post #138

pg wrote: post #26

No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it. The way the employees behaved is consistent with…

Nonsense. I took a camera phone photo at a McD's in Hong Kong earlier this year and several employees freaked out and they all came over to ask me to delete it. Are ALL the stores with no-photo policies mafia fronts?

What did you take a picture of? I remember taking a video of several people sleeping in the back of a Hong Kong (Central) McDonald's and nothing happened. Perhaps no employee saw me?

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#175

Post by TheAmazingIdiot » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:11 AM UTC

Complete aside - Comment about posted pictures from Digital Eye Glass

I noticed from his posted pictures (labelled as Possible Witness 2) http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RnoG7dHRDjY/UASnGzPFkSI/AAAAAAAAAD...

There's some nasty spherical lensing effects there. I'm noticing that from the signboard on the right middle side. The menuboard should be flat across, with perhaps a deviation of where the signage isnt exactly flush to each other. Also in other pictures, you can see spherical lensing distortion from the corners of walls and ceiling tiles.

I know of libraries that take low compute overhead that compensate for this. And all you need for calibration is a checkerboard of white and black waved around.

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#176

Post by ilamont » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:12 AM UTC

rdl wrote: post #104

pg wrote: post #26

No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it. The way the employees behaved is consistent with…

I think that fails Ockham's razor. I worked for Steve Mann about 15 years ago. Calling him the father of wearable computing is an understatement -- he was the father before it was even possible to create, and yet managed to make it happen essentially on his own a decade or more before it should have existed -- the JFK Apollo of wearables out of his own pocket. However, he is probably not the least suspicious person w…

The incident at Logan airport was big news in Boston in 2007. It involved an MIT undergraduate wearing a piece of art on the front of her shirt that consisted of a circuit board and LED attached to a battery. It freaked out some airport staff, and the Massachusetts State Police came very close to shooting her:

http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#177

Post by patio11 » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:14 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #26

No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it. The way the employees behaved is consistent with…

So if we swap around a few of the particulars -- say, make the guy with the camera black, relocate the scene to the deep South, and then make the three perpetrators good old boys -- a fairly plausible hypothesis would rush to mind, even if it is outside the experience of the typical white American at the typical McDonalds. Mafia fronts certainly exist in the world, but they are probably greatly outnumbered by petty people who, given authority over someone they dislike (+), would abuse it if it were consequence-free.

+ It isn't even necessary to assume that the language barrier or anti-Americanism had anything to do with it. I mean, even in the deep South, a good old boy might try to rip a prosthesis off a black guy's head just because he doesn't like "weird Treky shit."

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#178

Post by westicle » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:15 AM UTC

guard-of-terra wrote: post #57

I believe in the future it would be legal to film everywhere 24x365, and it also will be legal to shoot the bad guys (with weapons, not video) if they did some bad thing AND you film it. And then everybody will behave, because if they don't they might get shot. Sort of a high-tech wild west. (and you don't have to be a hard ball, just trigger the wearable fire response system).

There is a difference between filming in public and private spaces.

In most common-law jurisdictions filming in public is completely legal, even filming an event put on by a private entity (ie a sports game - there is no property in a spectacle). Note also the proliferation of CCTV in public spaces in many countries.

On private property you have the right to set rules and effectively dictate who is welcome and who is trespassing. Hence you can't take a video camera into a theatre etc.

There is a grey area when your public filming infringes on the reasonable expectation of privacy of another person. I doubt anyone here would take too kindly to a stranger following them 24/7 with a video camera.

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#179

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:15 AM UTC

pg wrote: post #26

No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it. The way the employees behaved is consistent with…

[deleted]

Re: Physical assault by McDonald's for wearing Digital Eye Glass

#180

Post by xyzzyz » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 2:21 AM UTC

Foy wrote: post #165

alex_c wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stand corrected - it seems it was electrodes rather than implants. Some interesting comments on the old Slashdot story: http://it.slashdot.org/story/02/03/14/2051228/airport-securi... From reading the New York Times article, it doesn't sound like Mann had any "implants" "forcibly removed". It sounds like they tore electrodes off his body. In other words, they pulled tape off his skin, and it caused bleeding. Unplea…

In regards to that slashdot article's comment, the comparison to watching a movie screen doesn't really explain it for most of us, I think. There was an experiment[1] that had participants wear vision-inverting glasses for a while. Eventually they started seeing everything right-side up through the glasses. In fact, their vision was upside down after they removed the glasses!! Although they re-adjusted after a little…

I have read the cited paper, and seen no mention of what you described to be there:

>As to the relation of the visual field to the observer, the feeling that the field was upside down remained in general throughout the experiment.

>On removing the glasses on the third day, there was no peculiar experience. Normal vision was restored instantaneously and without any disturbance in the natural appearance or position of objects.