From today’s Daily Telegraph: ‘Safety fear swats store’s Mosquito’. “A supermarket has been ordered to switch off a device aimed at combating anti-social behaviour because of concerns about human rights and health and safety…
All posts filed under “Design with Intent”
Making criminals
An interesting quote for a Friday afternoon, from Ayn Rand’s 1957 Atlas Shrugged:
The fight back: Refill ‘er up
Via MAKE – printer cartridge refilling stations are about to become a lot more widespread in major store chains in the US, such as Walgreens and OfficeMax (as opposed to the existing Cartridge World-type refill stores).
An astounding quote on the Mosquito
Following the update on the Mosquito story, i.e. that it is to be switched off at a shop in Newport after questions were raised about human rights issues, the BBC story ‘Anti-gang noise box switched off’ carries an astounding quote from Compound Security, the manufacturers:
The fight back: Defeating cartridge expiry
Via Boing Boing (& thanks too to Jeremy Tirrell for alerting me), a very useful piece of free software from the SSC Localization Group which allows the user to get round a variety of architectures of control designed into Epson printer cartridges, including:
BBspot – New Starforce DRM Uses CD Made from Plastic Explosives
From the always excellent BBspot: ‘New Starforce DRM Uses CD Made from Plastic Explosives’. “Not only does this protect the software from being copied, but it also prevents the copier from ever copying anything again. If we’re lucky we’ll also take out his hacker brother […]
Philips: You MUST watch these adverts
Via Jack Yan’s excellent Persuader Blog, news of a patent application filed by Philips which would prevent television viewers either changing channel during commercial breaks, or fast-forwarding through the adverts when watching recorded shows.
‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’
Via Boing Boing, ‘Researchers develop prototype system to thwart unwanted video and still photography’, news from Georgia Tech of a system that scans and finds the CCDs of digital imaging equipment and shines bright light (or a laser) into them in order to flood them […]
Welcome : About this site
Increasingly, many products are being designed with features that intentionally restrict the way the user can behave, or enforce certain modes of behaviour. The same intentions are also evident in the design of many systems and environments. This site aims–with readers’ input–to examine and analyse […]
Interesting quote from Ted Nelson
Just looking up something else, I stumbled across this quote from Ted Nelson. From ‘Ted’s ComParadigm in OneLiners’: “A frying-pan is technology. All human artifacts are technology. But beware anybody who uses this term. Like “maturity” and “reality” and “progress”, the word “technology” has an […]