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Seattle Restaurant Ejects Customer Wearing Google Glass

ChrisL said:
See my post #167. Are you going to ban loud talkers too? What about people who blow their noses? That is the MOST rude and disgusting thing to do inside of a restaurant IMO. How about we ban the nose blowers? :lol:
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How about loud children. That is what I want gone when I eat out.
 
ChrisL said:
Cops are public servants. Customers in restaurants are not. :roll:
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They are still people you are recording and video taping. You are still doing it in an attempt to get a "gotcha" moment or worse.
 
CRUE CAB said:
How about loud children. That is what I want gone when I eat out.
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I actually heard of a restaurant that banned children. I don't think that's illegal either, to have an adults only restaurant, but they might lose a lot of customers because of that.
 
CRUE CAB said:
They are still people you are recording and video taping. You are still doing it in an attempt to get a "gotcha" moment or worse.
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It doesn't matter. During the course of their duties as public servants who are basically OUR employees, we do have the right to watch and record their actions. These customers are not being paid by taxpayer money and are not on the job.
 
ChrisL said:
I actually heard of a restaurant that banned children. I don't think that's illegal either, to have an adults only restaurant, but they might lose a lot of customers because of that.
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May gain a lot of customers. Not everyone thinks its funny to watch your child run around a restaurant screaming at the top of their lungs.
 
jmotivator said:
I was at a Christmas fair last night with one of my daughters and it was rather loud. I tried to carry on a conversation with her at the petting Zoo but really couldn't understand a word she was saying. When we got home I played back the video I have taken with my phone at the petting zoo and was amazed that while neither of us could hear each other the phone clearly recorded both sides of the conversation. It went something like this:

Me: "What kind of Animal are you petting?"
Her: "It's a Llama."
Me: "No, I think that is a Llama."
Her: "Oh, I thought it was a Llama."
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Some mics can be very good at capturing something if the source is close to the mic and the background noise is further away

The angle of the sounds, relative to the mic, can also have an effect
 
ChrisL said:
It doesn't matter. During the course of their duties as public servants who are basically OUR employees, we do have the right to watch and record their actions. These customers are not being paid by taxpayer money and are not on the job.
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Yea, I heard that one a bunch. "You work for me". Yea, no I don't.
 
CRUE CAB said:
Yea, I heard that one a bunch. "You work for me". Yea, no I don't.
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Public servants who work for any level of government and who are paid for their work via tax money work for the people. The tax payers are the customer, you are the provider/supplier.
 
Ockham said:
Public servants who work for any level of government and who are paid for their work via tax money work for the people. The tax payers are the customer, you are the provider/supplier.
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Yea, no. Not really. Then Obama works for me and I want him fired.
 
jmotivator said:
I was at a Christmas fair last night with one of my daughters and it was rather loud. I tried to carry on a conversation with her at the petting Zoo but really couldn't understand a word she was saying. When we got home I played back the video I had taken with my phone at the petting zoo and was amazed that while neither of us could hear each other the phone clearly recorded both sides of the conversation. It went something like this:

Me: "What kind of Animal are you petting?"
Her: "It's a Llama."
Me: "No, I think that is a Llama."
Her: "Oh, I thought it was a Llama."
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Ring ring.
"Hello?"
"Hi, I'm the NSA aide assigned to assist you. Your daughter was in fact petting a Llama, what you were looking at was actually an Alpaca. Great recording, by the way!"
"Thanks!"
 
sangha said:
Some mics can be very good at capturing something if the source is close to the mic and the background noise is further away

The angle of the sounds, relative to the mic, can also have an effect
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It's all in the quality of the hardware, of course. I skype regularly with other people, and the difference in mic and camera technology is phenomenal. I can't hear them if they go off camera, whereas they can hear me clearly no matter where I am in the room. As long as the hardware in your smart phone is good enough then sky's the limit, really.
 
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Ockham said:
What other reason exists for wearing them? Did the article state he was NOT filming?
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I think they have apps like smart phones - so he could've been reading the news. People generally don't get told to put a newspaper away.

The customer was a douche, but I think the business owner is fighting an unwinnable battle. You won't even know someone is using a smart device in the near future so how can this be enforced?
 
Ben K. said:
I think they have apps like smart phones - so he could've been reading the news. People generally don't get told to put a newspaper away.

The customer was a douche, but I think the business owner is fighting an unwinnable battle. You won't even know someone is using a smart device in the near future so how can this be enforced?
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That was actually my point. Right or wrong the owner is farting into a hurricane.
 
Cardinal said:
That was actually my point. Right or wrong, the owner is farting into a hurricane.
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The owner is not denying people with smart devices he's denying a person with a specific smart device - Google glasses. If the owner wants to fart in the wind, he should be allowed to and either he prospers or does not given that decision. The market decides. Hell, he could market and advertise his establishment as a "device free zone" to distinguish it from his competitors where people can go and actually talk to each other instead of stare and tap on their smart phones.
 
Cardinal said:
That was actually my point. Right or wrong the owner is farting into a hurricane.
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Indeed. It's a creepy future ahead of us, but the ability to record everything that happens to us is pretty much going to be a necessity. I can't think of any career where you wouldn't be nigh obligated to have that ability. It's a race to the botom for privacy, but I don't see how this can be regulated.
 
Peter Grimm said:
No doubt filming someone without their knowledge etc is creepy, but at some point we have to acknowledge and face reality, which is that the technology is getting do small, inconspicuous , and integrated in to our lives that at some point you will no longer be able to stop it.

And to be frank, it's not just other people you need to be worried about, it's your government as well. Look at the NSA thing . That's not an aberration, that's the brave new world. You think you're anonymous online? Think again.

So the question is, do we bitch and complain about it, or do we adapt and thrive. I vote adapt and thrive.

Technology is normally a good thing but it does have a tendency to change the world. Violently, even brutally sometimes, but if history has taught us one thing it's never be on the wrong side on the fence when it comes to embracing a sweeping new technology.
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Sorry, I don't give up freedoms so easily. I come from a generation that had family and friends die because some were too giving of their freedom to those who wished to abuse it. History should remind you that "adapting and thriving" can, without diligence, lead to containment and erosion of liberty.

And just to be clear, not all techological advancements lead to society thriving. Many would argue that lots of current technological advancements have led to decay. I'd put the Google Glass right up there in the category of useless toy ripe for abusive use.
 
Cardinal said:
It's all in the quality of the hardware, of course. I skype regularly with other people, and the difference in mic and camera technology is phenomenal. I can't hear them if they go off camera, whereas they can hear me clearly no matter where I am in the room. As long as the hardware in your smart phone is good enough then sky's the limit, really.
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That's not entirely true. Different mics will pick up different sounds differently, depending on the mics characteristics.

Cardioid mics and hyper-cardioid mics are directional. They will not pick up off-axis sounds as loudly as on-axis sounds. Omni-directional mics will pick up sounds equally well, regardless of direction and so they are more likely to pick up background noise in an environment where the noise is coming from all directions.

Then there's the proximity effect, which causes some mics to boost the bass in sounds that are close to the mics diaphragm. This can either clarify or muddy the intelligibility of the signal depending on how close the sound is to the diaphragm.

And then there are the acoustics of the room you're in.

However, you do have a point. Better mics do a better job of accurately capturing the sound that hits the diaphragm, while cheap mics have some level of distortion inherent in their design.
 
Ockham said:
The owner is not denying people with smart devices he's denying a person with a specific smart device - Google glasses. If the owner wants to fart in the wind, he should be allowed to and either he prospers or does not given that decision. The market decides. Hell, he could market and advertise his establishment as a "device free zone" to distinguish it from his competitors where people can go and actually talk to each other instead of stare and tap on their smart phones.
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He wants to prevent people from using smart devices from recording his other patrons, but he's focusing only on one device to the exclusion of all the others that can do it just as well. The only way he could pull off his goal is to, as you say, make his establishment a device free zone. Lots of luck with that one: the ability to regularly check your email and be available to phone calls all the time is so prevalent now that only a decreasing minority of people would be left who would be willing to eat there anymore (read: really really old people).

Look, I understand where the owner is coming from. The Google Glasses are super creepy and when I see a couple on a date just staring at their phones the whole evening it's sad as hell, but as a business decision the owner just really wasn't thinking his through.

One of the only times I can think of where an establishment making a no-device rule would be theaters, where using a smart phone necessitates pissing everyone else off (and which, incidentally, is a component in why fewer people go to the movies these days).
 
sangha said:
That's not entirely true. Different mics will pick up different sounds differently, depending on the mics characteristics.

Cardioid mics and hyper-cardioid mics are directional. They will not pick up off-axis sounds as loudly as on-axis sounds. Omni-directional mics will pick up sounds equally well, regardless of direction and so they are more likely to pick up background noise in an environment where the noise is coming from all directions.

Then there's the proximity effect, which causes some mics to boost the bass in sounds that are close to the mics diaphragm. This can either clarify or muddy the intelligibility of the signal depending on how close the sound is to the diaphragm.

And then there are the acoustics of the room you're in.

However, you do have a point. Better mics do a better job of accurately capturing the sound that hits the diaphragm, while cheap mics have some level of distortion inherent in their design.
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Interesting.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Sorry, I don't give up freedoms so easily. I come from a generation that had family and friends die because some were too giving of their freedom to those who wished to abuse it. History should remind you that "adapting and thriving" can, without diligence, lead to containment and erosion of liberty.

And just to be clear, not all techological advancements lead to society thriving. Many would argue that lots of current technological advancements have led to decay. I'd put the Google Glass right up there in the category of useless toy ripe for abusive use.
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I'm actually struggling to think of examples where we've decisively rejected a technology for the good of 'society'. Personally I love the idea of Google Glass and an increasingly interconnected world. The possibility we're just beginning to scrape looks more and more fantastic every day.
 
Cardinal said:
Interesting.
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Another point that I left out - microphones are "dumb". All they do is translate the sounds that cause the diaphragm to vibrate into an electronic signal. They can not and do not give precedence to any specific sound.

The human mind, however, can focus on a sound and ignore (to some extent) the other sounds.
 
Ben K. said:
Indeed. It's a creepy future ahead of us, but the ability to record everything that happens to us is pretty much going to be a necessity. I can't think of any career where you wouldn't be nigh obligated to have that ability. It's a race to the botom for privacy, but I don't see how this can be regulated.
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Man, tell me about. I have to turn off around ten features on my browser and download fifteen more add-ons to it just so the next person using my computer doesn't see that I've been researching how to deal with an ingrown toenail.
 
Cardinal said:
Man, tell me about. I have to turn off around ten features on my browser and download fifteen more add-ons to it just so the next person using my computer doesn't see that I've been researching how to deal with an ingrown toenail.
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That's because you're an old fuddy-duddy

If you were a kid, you'd be setting up a toenail cam.
 
CanadaJohn said:
Not much of an analogy, in my opinion.
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No kidding - Google glasses cannot strip you of multiple rights while pummeling you into a coma while laying helpless on the ground.
 
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