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Smart surveillance systems may soon detect violent behavior
If implanting employees with RFID chips violates practical HR policies, and rolling out eagle-eyed drones to monitor defensive behaviors seems a bit too intrusive, researchers at the University of Texas in Austin are hoping its smart surveillance system can lend a hand in detecting that pent-up rage. The "computer vision system" can reportedly analyze human movements as they occur, and distinguish between "friendly behaviors such as shaking hands, and aggressive actions like punching, pushing," or launching pocket rockets. The hope is that this creation will make the oh-so-platitudinal jobs of security guards even less demanding by alerting those on duty of violent fits automatically, curing the problem of sleeping through a battle royale in the east parking deck. Developers created the baseline by breaking down CCTV films and "examining the interplay of different clusters of pixels in order to classify interactions between individuals." The aptly-dubbed "semantic analysis" allows the software to assign a probability that a particular activity (like exchanging trade secrets) is being observed. While the current system has been "80 percent" accurate in testing, a computer vision guru at the University of Leeds, UK claims that it needs a bit of refinement before loosed in security bunkers, but it could probably thrive when keeping watch over those sure-to-be-tumultuous Wii demo kiosks.
CCTV cams in UK, now with loudspeakers
American civil libertarians would do well to keep out of the UK. Now, on top of the more than 4 million video surveillance cameras blanketing The Kingdom, seven of the 158 CCTV cams in the Northern town of Middlesbrough have been fitted with loudspeakers. Do something "anti-social" and prepare for an earful of reprimand from the camera operators. As Jack Bonner, who manages the system, gloats: 'It is one hell of a deterrent. It's one thing to know that there are CCTV cameras about, but it's quite another when they loudly point out what you have just done wrong." As you might expect, yobs who cease their misanthropics will be acknowledged with a polite "thank you" from our well-mannered special friends. How sweet. And if they continue? Well, it's just a matter of time until the Ministry of Love's robots will be dispatched for collection.[Via Slashdot]
Disney exporting 'Lost' and 'Grey's Anatomy' to China's HDTV station
What's the best way for a new station to fill their airways with quality, high-def programming? Buy someone else's and that is exactly what China's state run HDTV station is doing. China Central Television High-Definition is purchasing the broadcast rights for two of Disney's premier high-def shows: Lost and Grey's Anatomy. This will be the first time that Disney has ever licensed out their programming so you can bet that China paid a bunch of money for these rights.
