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Old Dinosaur, New Tricks

May 2, 2015 future Comments Off on Old Dinosaur, New Tricks

http://gizmodo.com/its-microsoft-build-day-2-live-streaming-hot-1701224950

What the h*ll, Microsoft!

After dancing the dance of the dinosaur’s graveyard for decades now, you give us this.  The HoloLens.

There are a metric *ss-load of VR devices and Apps in the works right now.  Everyone is hunting the killer app (I think VR App companies outnumber hardware companies by, like, 20 to 1).  Everyone is hunting the one cool thing that will finally make VR and AR mainstream products.

Microsoft may have done just that.

The key difference in what Microsoft is pitching is not the one coolest game you’ll ever play (like Magic Leap’s video) or the ultra-minimal camera on ur face (the public perception of Google’s Glass).  Instead they are showing us an integrated world.  They are pitching a lifestyle, one limited to inside your home to be sure, but a functioning, useful product that integrates your screens with your life.  You have the option of attaching stuff to your walls, to having apps and objects appear and disappear in-situ, rather than carrying them with you all the time.

And I think this is the big perceptual difference.  Having VR elements situationally popping into and out of existence requires a kind of constant mental engagement.  It makes you want to put the headset down and go to the kitchen for a soda, just to get a break from all the micro-attentions.  But by having those apps and objects stay static, have them fully integrate with the environment around you, like actual physical objects, you give the user the ability to walk away at any time, then come back to find everything where they left it.  It allows the VR to be a part of your life, rather than a novelty item.

The very fine line

April 27, 2015 future, Writing Comments Off on The very fine line

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150420/05585630727/fbi-united-airlines-shoot-messenger-after-security-researcher-discovers-vulnerabilities-airplane-computer-system.shtml

The above caught my attention the other day, in part because I have an ongoing fascination with transitional spaces.  Those grey areas which aren’t quite “good guy” and not quite “bad guy”.  Most of the ones I encounter are legal grey spaces (rather than moral ones).  A law or a rule has been placed in place that is ignored if the rulebreaker is working for the greater good, and enforced when the rulebreaker is operating with malicious intent.  Needless to say, this kind of inconsistent enforcement can become a problem, especially if clear secondary boundaries are not set.

Take (as a similar example) the bounties that companies like MSFT and Facebook place on finding security holes in their software.  There are potential criminal penalties for finding and exploiting these holes, but if you find one and are the first one to report it (I’m over simplifying here, I’m aware) there is often a bounty awarded.  In both cases, the act of hacking the software is technically illegal (again, oversimplifying), but the company chooses to reward one instance and persecute another (which makes sense, right?  One hack is by a good-guy, helping to make the software more secure, the other is the bad guy, exploiting the hack for personal gain).

But because of these inconsistencies, the laws get hard to enforce.  Law enforcement and the corporate interests may not align.  Hackers and crackers may switch hats with regularity, working on “white hat” projects and “black hat” projects simultaneously or in turn, depending where their interests lie and because of this, law enforcement tends to regard most (if not all) of them with equal suspicion, leading to incidents like the one above.

 

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