This is pretty much the plan with Facebook's "Metaverse", right?
Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
31–40 of 75 posts
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#32This reminds me of one of the most heartbreaking projects I've ever stumbled across: http://photorequestsfromsolitary.org
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. I've experienced the Rick & Morty perfectly level space, please don't send me back into the topsy turvy office. Though this all seems a little insensitive to be complaining about our white color concerns when this seems to be an innovative new method to torture inmates for some reason.
“I knew it was a mistake to let them taste happiness.” https://dilbert.com/strip/2021-05-08
Can't say I much care for the man, but when he's right, he's right.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#34I don't recall exactly where I saw it, but I remember reading something where some tech guy "solved" the problems with prison with some nightmarish scheme of solitary confinement, Soylent(tm), and VR that he probably spend all of then minutes thinking through. That was held up an an example of how clueless and unintentionally malevolent tech people can sometimes be when they let their enthusiasm for technological solutions go unchecked by anything else.
So now that might become a real thing, brought to you by one of the shittiest and exploitative companies in existence.
Edit: here's the original article https://medium.com/@shanesnow/how-soylent-and-oculus-could-f... and this might be the critique I read: https://ethanzuckerman.com/2016/06/22/the-worst-thing-i-read...
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#35A brief taste of freedom may be more cruel than kind, though I doubt it's cruel enough to trigger the eighth amendment. On the other hand, it does meet the standard of "unusual". The Pythons pioneered the "comfy chair" torture technique, which was supposed to be a joke. But if got the brief use of a comfy chair then had to go back to a hard bench it would be worse than before.
This is similar to how some homeless people will turn down the offer of a temporary bed. Having a night in a clean bed just makes the following night feel worse. Once you're used to it, it can be easier to live with discomfort, or dull it with booze/drugs.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#36Holy crud, literally everything about this is terrible, from the motivation/phrasing, to the "market" it's a part of, to the followup research about using VR to torture people, to the technical merits of the patent itself. Rare to find an article that so efficiently touches on so many simultaneous points of awfulness. I realize it's only one aspect of the article, but it's tough to talk about patent reform when stuff…
I think it's worse than the patent office rubber stamping everything. They actually don't rubber stamp things that your average, small inventor might try to patent. They seem to always initially reject applications, requiring multiple submissions with small modifications over and over until they relent and grant. This serves to filter out everyone except those with deep pockets and highly paid patent attorneys. When…
Patent examiners are given a relatively limited time/resource budget to examine applications. For that reason they will often reject early as a strategy [ETA: often, in my experience, with very weak "prior art" that basically matches some keywords], then allow more dedicated inventors to revise. This is mainly a filtering strategy, as best I can see. When your attorney quoted you $10K and suggested the patent would eventually be accepted, they were speaking as someone who understood the business and how the process would play out. It's surprising to me that you disregarded their advice and sunk $5K into the process only to walk away. Better to spend nothing than to waste $5K and get nothing from it.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#37Holy crud, literally everything about this is terrible, from the motivation/phrasing, to the "market" it's a part of, to the followup research about using VR to torture people, to the technical merits of the patent itself. Rare to find an article that so efficiently touches on so many simultaneous points of awfulness. I realize it's only one aspect of the article, but it's tough to talk about patent reform when stuff…
Here’s the only silver lining of this: this company, GTL, will likely only ever use this patent in an on-going forever patent war against their arch-rival Securus, which is equally abhorrent in both their business and patenting practices. So in that way, it’s kind of a wash?
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#38This reminds me of one of the most heartbreaking projects I've ever stumbled across: http://photorequestsfromsolitary.org
Is this a thing where inmates in solitary want to see a specific thing, and we take pics of them and send it to them? Or is this an AI training thing?
Edit: This breaks my heart. I found the hand written notes from inmates. One guy just wants to see his kid he doesnt know, one guy wants an aerial shot of his old neighborhood so he can stroll mentally down his street, and another just wants a photo of, as he put it, "A nice looking young lady wit banging body and some tights, shorts, showing that phat ass but able to see her face and pretty eyes at the same time, she can be black or spanish or white it all cool wit me. "
I don't know how serious these folks are, or if they get the photos, but I feel motivated to at least try and indulge a few of them.
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#39Simple Rick's!
Re: Prison Company Patents VR to Give Inmates Brief Taste of Freedom
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's worse than the patent office rubber stamping everything. They actually don't rubber stamp things that your average, small inventor might try to patent. They seem to always initially reject applications, requiring multiple submissions with small modifications over and over until they relent and grant. This serves to filter out everyone except those with deep pockets and highly paid patent attorneys. When…
Patent examiners are given a relatively limited time/resource budget to examine applications. For that reason they will often reject early as a strategy [ETA: often, in my experience, with very weak "prior art" that basically matches some keywords], then allow more dedicated inventors to revise. This is mainly a filtering strategy, as best I can see. When your attorney quoted you $10K and suggested the patent would e…
It's ridiculous that you have to spend $10K to patent your idea. Let's just get rid of all those patent office people and lawyers, and save everyone a lot of time and money.