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

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

#241

Post by alister » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 5:49 AM UTC

drrotmos wrote: post #71

While this incident is terrible, there's one thing Dr. Mann doesn't make entirely clear in the article. The contact information for McDonald's France is quite easily found at http://www.mcdonalds.fr/contacts . It's not an e-mail address, but rather a phone number, but the way the article is written it's not at all clear if he's tried to contact them by their publicly available phone number?

He says that he tried to call, and his statement looks clear to me:

> I also tried calling the main number, at mcdonands.com: 1-800-244-6227, but got a voice recording that was totally unintelligible (very loud and distorted), and it appears this number does not work.

I tried the number just now, and in fact, it is exactly as he describes: you get a loud distorted unintelligible message for a 3-4 seconds and then it hangs up.

As Dr. Mann is likely calling from Canada, as I also am, it occurred to me that this particular 800 number might not work from Canada. Some USA-based 800 numbers work, and some don't -- it depends on the calling area that the 800-number subscriber wants to pay for.

Listening to the message a second time, I think that I can make out words about the "calling area", which would indicate why it's not working.

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

#242

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 5:51 AM UTC

Schwolop wrote: post #161

ChuckMcM wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, the guy is a frickin' genius! All I know is we have three things: 1) A patent for the 'eyetrap' issued in 2003 with another 8 years or so to run. 2) A huge company with > $100B in the bank who has made a big publicity play betting on their technology that, on the surface clearly infringes. 3) No statements either from either party that a license is in place. In fact the Google Glass page should say "this…

The technology used in eyetrap and Google's glasses is sufficiently different that I doubt the eyetrap patent is really being infringed by Google. I doubt Steve has the money or desire to take Google to court anyway, and probably holds the patent as a defensive measure against himself being sued by someone like Google.

Sort of FYI, plaintiff lawyers in the US may choose to work on a contingency basis if they think there is a big payoff at the end, no cost to the plaintiff, just let them sue on your behalf and they are off to the races.

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

#243

Post by acavailhez » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 5:52 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…

Little background here (I'm French and grew up in Paris):

MacDonald's branding in France are really different in France than it is in the US, especially in Paris. Food is quite tasty, meat is fairly good, and even the colors are different: the flashy red/yellow has been replaced by a classy green/black two years ago.

And this specific MacDonald's is one of the biggest and best located in Paris (Champs Elysées)

Money laundering may have been a plausible explanation for a random US MacDonald's, it's really far fetched for this one.

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

#244

Post by lsc » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 5:54 AM UTC

ktizo wrote: post #221

lsc wrote: post #209

Seems to me like he needs to implement a Stephenson style panic button - In Snow Crash, at one point YT used a special button on her phone to summon help from other couriers. It'd be easy enough to implement technically; when I hit the panic button it notifies all listeners of my location; listeners configure how far away they want reports. (perhaps taking reports from further away from people with higher reputation…

It would be fantastic to be able to summon the MIT wearables division in an emergency. Surely one of them has built a Gundam by now. http://www.wearcam.org/computing.html/borgs_outside_medialab...

hah. yeah. but I think the most powerful thing (and this could be implemented with cellphones) is just being able to summon witnesses, esp. witnesses with cameras.

It seems that these days wars are more about how it looks in the media than about killing as many of the other guys as you can. Just knowing that they are being watched, I think, would prevent most violent crime.

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

#245

Post by tspiteri » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 5:56 AM UTC

datalus wrote: post #189

Go to Paris. Eat at a McDonald's. o_O

Maybe it's a fast meal at midday when there are still places to go, and a good meal in the evening to wind down.

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

#246

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 5:59 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #73

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…

A much more plausible explanation of a story posted by a newly created account to a popular tech aggregator about a technology which competes with (and possibly pre-dates) Google Glass, with a picture of Google Glass on the same page, is that a patent [1] suit is about to break out. A cynic might think they were trying to harvest accesses from internal to Google IP addresses so that as of today they could show 'knowa…

And other stuff that raises flags for me.

First the original article was deep-linked into the eyetap.org site. Which is to say it didn't appear as a link on the front page, in fact I didn't find any inlinks to it until this story broke and those are from blogs etc. And it was posted by an account created to post that one link on HN (not like Dr. Mann or someone who regularly participates here stumbled across it and tried to link it.)

Now if Dr. Mann had a running blog about life as a cyborg or his thoughts on wearable computing, and this just happened to come up in that blog as "Oh the saddest thing happened ..." then it might feel more natural. It has since been converted to a one-entry wordpress blog.

As I've said elsewhere, we'll see what the next steps are. Eyetap has certainly gotten a lot of publicity out of the deal so I expect the press will follow up on any fallout here as well.

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

#247

Post by Karunamon » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:00 AM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #235

pg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This explanation is so uncharitable it crosses over into implausible. It's not "the easy part" to get random McDonald's employees to behave as extremely as this.

Well if McD have a policy of not allowing photography of their staff in their outlets then it's easy. McD worker: "sorry sir you can't take pictures or video of our staff" person with recording device: "I'm not taking any pictures this is a medical device" worker: "it looks rather like a Google glass recording device; you were recording the servers at the counter just now weren't you, I'm afraid you'll have to leave"…

Well the first problem there is putting your hands on another person. In America that's begging for at least law hilarity if not worse.

Oh, and not to mention they tore his paperwork up.

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

#248

Post by chris_wot » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:01 AM UTC

waffle_ss wrote: post #147

AsylumWarden wrote: post #12

Wow, sorry to hear about the assault and damage to your property. That is quite a way to wreck an otherwise pleasant vacation. I will say that I am glad to hear that I am not the only one to have been treated in a rather hostile manner at a McDonald's in Paris. My wife and I went there on vacation a few years back. My wife was filming my clumsy handling of the french language as she made me order (she is actually qui…

There must be something in the water there because we had eggs thrown at us from an upper floor apartment walking down some sidewalk in Paris (I guess our speaking English to one another was offensive?). We always spoke French when interacting with francophones. Visiting the more rural places in France was pleasant though, and the people were more friendly.

Parisians are famed for their rudeness. Whether that is fair I cannot judge, when I went there we didn't seem to have any problems!

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

#249

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:02 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #136

ChuckMcM wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, the guy is a frickin' genius! All I know is we have three things: 1) A patent for the 'eyetrap' issued in 2003 with another 8 years or so to run. 2) A huge company with > $100B in the bank who has made a big publicity play betting on their technology that, on the surface clearly infringes. 3) No statements either from either party that a license is in place. In fact the Google Glass page should say "this…

>A huge company with > $100B in the bank Google doesn't have > $100B in the bank (citation: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=goog+Balance+Sheet ). You are probably thinking of Apple.

Your right they have been spending big chunks of late (I believe the Motorola deal recently closed so that 12B check had to clear the bank eventually).

I continue to believe that Google is perceived to be a 'high value' target by offensive litigators.

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

#250

Post by zalew » Tue, Jul 17, 2012, 6:04 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…

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