Apple is always filing patents for strange and fantastic things that never seem to find their way into actual products. But an application published today details some interesting tech that we could actually see getting jammed into a future iPhone (for better or worse). By pairing an infrared sensor with the camera already on board, portable devices could receive data from transmitters placed, well, wherever. Beyond simply blasting out text and opening links like a glorified QR code, transmitters could disable certain features, such as the camera, to prevent recording at movie theaters and music venues. If completely shutting off the cam seems a bit heavy-handed, watermarks can also be applied to photos identifying businesses or copyrighted content. Some potential uses are a little less Big Brother, like museums beaming information about exhibits to a user’s or launching an audio tour. Obviously third parties would have to get behind the IR push and there’s no guarantee that Apple will put this in a future iProduct. Still, we’re a little worried that the days of blurry YouTube concert videos may be coming to an end.

Apple camera patent could stop smartphone bootleggers in their tracks originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Jun 2011 20:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sharp improves wall display tech
TOKYO – WALLS, ceiling and floors will turn into wall-to-wall imagery with Sharp’s new technology that has minimized the gaps between displays, allowing them to be used like high-tech tiles. The Japanese maker of Aquos flat-panel TVs showed Monday a massive screen like the ones at movie theaters, except that it was made of thirty 60-inch liquid crystal displays mounted next to each other.
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Are there similarities between computer memory and human memory?

Everybody remembers numbers and computers remember numbers. People remember procedures and computers certainly remember procedures. But the other thing that’s still important is that your perception as a human is affected subtly by all this stuff that you can’t quite articulate. You run your life according to all this stuff that’s happened to you. All of your memories affect everything you do whereas with a computer, there’s adaptive software and things, but it’s more literal.

So one of the significant differences between computers and people is the subconscious?

Yes. This business of “Drink Coke,” the thing they would do in movie theaters [in experiments back in the late 1950s]. On some level, that really works. Apparently it has to be an important image. The thing that gets the guys is, you show a naked woman for less than the time you can perceive it, so 1/16th of a second, or about 60 milliseconds. The next image a man is exposed to will be remembered better. If you’re a hunter or if you’re trying to make a decision when driving, you make that decision based on stuff that you can’t quite perceive. So the quality of a computer memory is only as good as the instruments that are feeding it.

So what’s special about how the human brain stores memory?

It’s not how big your brain is. The significant thing is how well the brain is connected. Apparently there is redundancy in memory: You store the same memory in different parts of your brain for accessing at different speeds. That speed would depend on the frequency of use and the importance of the knowledge. If you have a memory, “A burner is hot; do not touch burner,” you might store that in a few places to make sure you have it. It would be very strongly reinforced. Riding a bike is apparently very well fixed. But as the cerebellum degrades with age, so does the quality of those memories. The memories are there, but they’re not as good.

You did an episode of your show covering addiction. What were the key brain issues there?

There are two really striking things. First, whether it’s methamphetamines or alcohol or gambling where there’s no chemical involved or drug involved at all, all the researchers are studying dopamine. Dopamine is this brain chemical that gets to your dopamine receptors and makes you happy. You start doing the addictive behavior to feel good and then your receptors get overloaded with dopamine, then you stop doing the addictive thing and some of the receptors have shut down and you don’t have enough dopamine to feel good. So then you feel bad and go back to the addictive behavior to get more dopamine. The strange thing is that it works with what we think of as uppers and downers and whatever you call gambling—sidewaysers.

Are smartphones and Google going to take the place of our memory?

I don’t think so. If you memorize the periodic table it will speed you up if you’re a chemist, but by and large, the reason you have a periodic table is so that you can store that information outside of your body. That way it frees up some part of your brain to do something else, doesn’t it? Intuitively you want some place [such as your phone] to store phone numbers, so you have that part of your brain to do other tasks.

So you’re saying that even before the iPhone and Google and everything, we were offloading information?

That’s what makes a human a human, if we store information outside our bodies. If you put a blaze on a trail, a stripe of paint or ax chop on a tree, it shows other humans where the trail is. It’s storing information outside of your bodies. It’s the hallmark of being a human. I mean, dogs and other animals mark trees—and I’m all for that—but it isn’t quite the same.

So we’re not going to get stupider as a result of using computers?

Boy, I don’t think so. It’s different skills. For example, I’m so old—here you might say, “How old are you?”

How old are you?

I am so old, I entered engineering school with a slide rule. And I left engineering school with a calculator. I can still use a slide rule but it’s not a skill you especially need anymore. And you can go on and on about these kids today, they don’t know where the decimal point is, back in my day… Fine! But you don’t really need to learn the slide rule. It’s a cool thing, but a calculator is much better.

And now they have an iPhone instead of a TI-whatever.

So the first calculator that almost everybody could afford and had was the SR-50, Texas Instruments SR-50. Do you know what the SR meant? “Slide rule.” It was as good as a slide rule, an SR-50. It was that good. I always say when you see that old black-and-white footage of the rocket on the launch pad and it falls over and explodes, that’s because people had slide rules. Not having the decimal point is a real drawback. You want the decimal point, take it from me.

In geographical terms, GPS has done that too, right? People don’t have to remember anymore.

The US Navy has several people on every ship that can navigate by the stars. They don’t fool with that. Have you ever heard of the electro-magnetic pulse? The US Navy is very sensitive to this failure mode where people explode enough weapons high in the atmosphere and a significant fraction of the satellites are disabled. What are you going to do? You’re a ship at sea in a trackless ocean. Cadets from the Naval Academy know how to navigate by the stars.

It almost makes me think of the book Dune and the mentats, the human computers.

Speaking of human computers, there is a guy named Art Benjamin, he’s a human calculator. He says it’s a skill he learned as a kid. Now he’s a math professor at Harvey Mudd. He can find the square root of a six digit number in a few seconds. Practice.

But is that skill less impressive to kids now because they have computers?

I don’t know, I think it’s pretty impressive. It might be more impressive because it might be that arithmetic is even further from a kid’s everyday experience. I mean, how can you do it as fast as a machine? And I meet so many people who are intimidated by arithmetic.

Thanks to Bill, the one and only Science Guy, for a lively discussion that also touched on global warming, the irresponsible behavior of Glenn Beck, why the internet may prevent another Hitler and how good salmon are at smelling. As always, you can catch his pearls of wisdom—and learn more about his war against ignorance—on his website.

Brain sketch by Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator, used under Creative Commons license

Thanks to Don for his transcription services

Memory [Forever] is our week-long consideration of what it really means when our memories, encoded in bits, flow in a million directions, and might truly live forever. Read more on human memory here.

I love how this is controversial. Sony Pictures (creators of Spider-Man) chairman Michael Lynton has suggested that movie theaters offer healthy snacks in addition to their usual parade of garbage, and people have reacted with blind rage. How dare you tell me how to live my life, you pinko liberal communist! It’s like, really? What is so terrible about not covering your popcorn with metric tons of liquid “butter”?

You would think movie theater owners would go out of their way to make their theaters as welcoming as possible, right? Yes, last year was a record year for Hollywood, but take away Avatar, an outlier if there ever was one, and do the numbers look as hot? Not bloody likely.

If I were a theater owner, I’d make it so that I’d have, yes, plenty of garbage (buttered popcorn, soda, etc.) on hand, but I’d also have fruits and vegetables to cater to the Whole Foods crowd. Can you imagine a small movie theater opening up in Park Slope that has arugula as a snack? I’d be a millionaire!

A selection of the comments that made me laugh…

Hmmmm, watching Terminator 12 eating blueberries. That should pack them in to the theater. I think I’ll wait for the DVD and have my popcorn at home. I hate liberals always telling me how to live my life.

***

is he WANTING to kill of cinema?!

***

He can have my popcorn when he pries it from my cold dead fingers.

***

The sony idiot would make a perfect democrat congressman, one who loves to tell you how to live your life. When will the public quit voting for these morons?

***

You might have already guessed it, but Drudge linked this story, too.

I’m trying to remember the last time I went to a movie theater, and I’m pretty sure it was to see Casino Royale. I picked a Sunday 11am showing, figuring most of the troublemakers would still be hungover. But no! Who should sit next to me but a rather large woman with two bags of popcorn and a soda! What she eats is her business, obviously, but my God in Heaven she was rattling the bag like she was auditioning for Stomp.

3D cinema may be a draw right now, but the minute I break down and say, “Eh, let’s go see Alice in Wonderland” and find that the theater is populated by loud, obnoxious people is the moment I walk right out the door.

And where is it written that you have to eat at all during a movie? Can’t people sit still for two hours without ingesting 18 bags of Milk Duds?

Flickr

Natali Del Conte replaces Justin Yu on today’s show, as he’s out looking for pickles. The name of today’s show refers to the news that William Shatner of “Star Trek” fame will star in CBS’ new sitcom “S**t My Dad Says,” based on the same expletive-filled Twitter phenomenon. We think Jerry Stiller would make a better cranky old man. (By the way, CBS, you own a equally funny podcast/show/Twitter called The 404, available on @the404.)

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(Credit:
CBS/Star Trek)

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(Credit:
Chris L.)

Jeff has a beef with the number of 3D movie theaters out there right now. Apparently, the success of “Avatar” has led a swarm of 3D films to be released, and many theaters aren’t equipped to handle the 3D projections just yet.

Next, we get to Sony building a universal game controller (a la the Logitech Harmony One, but for videogame consoles). We’re not exactly sure how they plan on doing this, or whether it’s useful in any way. We do, however, reminisce a bit about our favorite game controllers. The original Sega Saturn controller is Wilson’s favorite for 2D games. “It melts in your hands,” he says.

Finally, we get to some voice mails, and the racist polar bear on Xbox Live has really taken off as a meme now. We’re encouraging our fans to send in their renditions of this meme. The best ones we will showcase on the show. Maybe a few Photoshoped images? Maybe a few voice mails as the racist polar bear? Send them in to the404 [at] cnet [dot] com or call us at 1-866-404-CNET (2638).

EPISODE 525

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Originally posted at The 404 Podcast