Android Scans DVD Bar Codes, Downloads Movies 181
cars writes "Remember how you can scan any bar code with an android phone and it will tell you where to find that product for cheaper? A new Android application called BarTor (formerly ScanTorrent) can scan any DVD bar code and then signals either uTorrent or Vuze on your PC to download the movie from BitTorrent. How long do you think this will last?" Other features include purchase opportunities on barcode lookup, Google base product lookup, and site-level filtering.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
to people who don't want to pay for a movie? GLWT.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Funny)
I assume there will be a cracked version out shortly.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect a lot of people download movies rather than paying for them because $30 for a movie is just not viable.
People may well buy that application for $2.99, because $2.99 is a reasonable price for a little phone application.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
If $30 for a movie is unreasonable to you, there are plenty of other ways to see the movie without violating the law. You could go rent it at Blockbuster. Or you could get a Netflix account and get it there. There's no particular reason you need a permanent copy of the movie to call your own, especially if it "probably sucks".
There are a lot of excuses as to why people download movies rather than renting them, but they're all pretty suspect.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:4, Funny)
> What's wrong with waiting a whole four days and then buying the book yourself?
The buying.
> Or, waiting a few days longer and borrowing a used copy from a friend?
The waiting.
> Or, waiting a few days longer and buying a used copy via eBay?
The buying.
> Or, borrowing a copy from your local library when they have it?
The waiting.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Interesting)
I kinda wish you had logged in. You gave the first respectable list of reasons to pirate this site has ever seen, without succumbing to the temptation to make it look noble. I commend your honesty, even in the face of your cowardice.
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I don't believe in logging in.
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Huh. The whining.
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
People spend $30 at Starbucks in a week pretty easily, spend probably half an hour or so in line (presuming 10 visits to Starbucks at $3 each visit, 5 minutes in the store). Many still think that $30 (or even $15) for 1.5 to 3 hours of entertainment, no matter how bad it is, is too much.
And Starbucks, IMO, isn't even all that great coffee.
There are a lot of excuses as to why people download movies rather than renting them, but they're all pretty suspect.
IMO, very true. Seems one of the more common ones is "Well if I like it, I'll buy it." Apparently, we only have to pay for what we use if we like it. Try doing that at a restaurant, hehe.
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Oh.. ohh.. let me solve:
Coffe is a addictive drug?
Did I win the jackpot?
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Been there, done that.
"Waiter, this steak tastes like shit. Get your boss out here so I can tell him I refuse to pay."
Incredibly enough, the manager usually comes, and unless he thinks you're simply trying to scam a free meal, he'll usually apologize and offer to get you something else. If you decline, the demand of 'no charge' is typically accepted.
Then again, resturants are an intensely consumer-driven industry where a good or bad review makes a difference, and they know it.
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Did I read this correctly? You are equating going to Starbucks as the same thing as watching a movie? Since we're on the subject of comparing totally different things, I fill up my car with gas about every two weeks for ab
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The point is spending money on something not necessary (coffee, especially Starbucks branded, is not necessary), not money -> hours necessarily. Point with the Starbucks thing was actually that people are willing to pay more money than its worth (IMO, of course) AND wait in line for X amount of time.
I was not attempting to say that everyone who pirates movies also drinks coffee. However, I'm pretty sure some of the poeple that drink Starbucks coffee, epsecially with all the techies that go there, also
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Fuck coffee. Caffeine pills. Cents on the dollar; less variability in dosage; and easier on your stomach to boot.
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I fill up my car with gas about every two weeks for about $30 after about 5 hours worth of driving. At those rates, 2 hour movies ought to cost $12, and a 1.5 hour movie ought to cost $9. A flight from Seattle to New York (about 6 hours) ought to cost $35, but more if it's non-stop. Since all forms of entertainment are the same, a 3 minute song on iTunes should now cost $0.30.
I know you were being sarcastic, but except for the airline ticket, all the prices you quoted seem to be right on, IMO. I'd pay $150 for a 6 hour flight.
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If you pay $30 for a movie and watch it only once, you are an -idiot-.
For your $30, you get more than 3 hours... You get 3 hours times however many times you watch it. For a good movie, I expect to want to watch it 5 or more times over the next 5 years.
So if you look at it like that, then renting it for $2 a pop is a good deal, and you don't have to worry about losing it in the mean time... Or floods... Or fires... Or...
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I go to starbucks for the "buy a small coffee, stay in a comfy chair with free electricity and wifi for hours" promotion
Re:Charging 2.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
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If the meal is godawful, often they'll compensate you at a restaurant. Ditto on a bug in it or something like that.
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I actually just make it myself. I've even gotten into a small amount of coffee roasting, it's pretty fun and tastes much different when you actually get fresh (i.e., roasted 5 minutes ago) coffee. And real cream.
I go to Starbucks probably once every two months, and most coffee expenditures for me are for beans (either green or roasted, depending on the status of my roaster) and milk and/or cream...
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so far, the only movies i've pirated are ones I saw in the theater and wanted to see again. I would find a cam version and watch it, sometimes a couple of times. I then will usually buy the DVD. When there is a movie that I like it is purely convince for me to download it, but then I am someone who can enjoy watching the same movie several times. I know many people who can only stand to see a movie once.
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so far, the only movies i've pirated...
Yarr matey! You too?
These modern iron ships are so hard to conquer. But we arr harrderr! Rrright? ARRRR!
P.S.: You got infected with **AA bullshit. Please disinfect yourself. [vincentchow.net] And hand over your geek card too. Just to be sure.
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I think you didn't get much past #1 in the definition.
Please check #4. That is the definition I was intending.
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pirate [reference.com]
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"For electronic and audio-visual media, unauthorized reproduction and distribution is occasionally referred to as piracy (an early reference was made by Daniel Defoe in 1703 when he said of his novel True-born Englishman : "Its being Printed again and again, by Pyrates"[2]). The practice of labeling the act of infringement as "piracy" actually predates copyright itself. Even prior to the 1709 enactment of the Statute of Anne, generally recognized as the first copyright law, the Stationers' Company of London
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He also didn't provide an alternative... ... that I've copyright infringed... ... that I've infringed copyright upon... ... that i copied without permission under questionable circumstances...
??? GP, please clarify the corrections needed to his sentence
Not that it matters...most of us aren't typing all that crap ;p
Maybe we will just use the alternate definition... :)
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Maybe not, but it really shows an unfulfilled need. Wouldn't it be cool if there were an app that did the same for a legal service such as Netflix? Maybe we should stop trying to demonize the way people use technology and adopt similar uses for legal activity. It just shows that consumers have and want greater control of their media. Content providers can adopt and change, or suffer at the hands of consumer ingenuity.
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How about this excuse: Just another way to stick it to the man.
To hell with these large media corporations, their DRM, their lobbying to buy my government, their longstanding battle against *my* fair use rights, and their generally customer unfriendly policies.
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Redbox. Can't beat $1 rental at the grocery store. (Between that, netflix, and gamefly - blockbuster will probably go out of business in 5 years).
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I like redbox too, but their selection (by necessity I guess, since it's just a little box) is just horrible. I still go to Blockbuster if I want a movie right now and redbox doesn't have it. Of course, that's probably too small a niche for a company with the overhead Blockbuster has to survive in.
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If $30 for a movie is unreasonable to you, there are plenty of other ways to see the movie without violating the law. You could go rent it at Blockbuster. Or you could get a Netflix account and get it there.
Or you can go to ThePirateBay which is certainly the best option.
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the subtitles. Lot of people out there want to see movies but the ones they want to see haven't sub-titles for the country where they live.
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If you don't want to pay what it costs, don't watch it. Wait for it to show up on TV for free. But it is not a valid justification for violating the copyright. The price point of when you start to violate copyright ($0.00 for some, more for others) does not make you any different or better.
Song of the South (Score:2)
If you don't want to pay what it costs, don't watch it. Wait for it to show up on TV for free.If you don't want to pay what it costs, don't watch it. Wait for it to show up on TV for free.
I want to watch the film Song of the South legitimately. The copyright owner has declined to authorize the broadcast of the film or the sale of copies on DVD, and I'm not willing to pay over $17 billion for a majority stake in the copyright owner. What's the next step?
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It is the property of whoever owns the copy right. IF they choose not to share it, you don't get to. It is theirs, not yours. You do not have a right to something they created, and/or purchased the rights to.
Bad analogy time:
I do not have a "right" to watch your home movies. Just because you refuse to let me, does not give me the right to break into your house and watch them.
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Really bad analogy: in that case, he would have been breaking in the guy's home (violating private property) and watching private footage (violating privacy), no of which applies in this case, as AFAIK P2P sharing doesn't require house breaking, and a movie displayed in cinemas all over the US is hardly private, so who is he hurting?
Remember, we are not law-abiding robots. Humans made the laws, and they are subject to changes. Law breaking is not an ethical argument, as the laws follow the people's ethic co
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Does it matter? Why does someone have to be hurt?
"violating private property" & "violating privacy"
Isn't violating a copyright the same as violating someone property and their privacy? Isnt what they own their private property that they can choose to share with you or not? removing the breaking into your home part, what makes your home videos any more private then someone else's movie or music?
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Isn't violating a copyright the same as violating someone property and their privacy?
The constitution of the country where Disney is headquartered states that copyright exists "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts". If a film has already been widely exhibited to the general public, how does withholding the sale of copies in the same manner as other films that have been similarly exhibited "promote [] Progress"?
Isnt what they own their private property that they can choose to share with you or not?
Disney made that choice decades ago when it released Song of the South in theaters.
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Sure, you can give rare cases where it could, but in raelity, it's just you wanting to watch stuff for free.
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If you can't afford something, then you don't get it. If you don't think it's a good value, then don't buy it.
You are not owed a movie.
and what movie costs 30 bucks?
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How about using sensible figures? It's hard to respect an opinion when they are backed up with the sloppy use of facts, or exaggeration.
For one, if a movie really sucks, why even download it? It's a paper-thin excuse to justify the activity. It's not hard to look at the rotten tomato score or a couple reviews to see that it's not worth the money or the bandwidth.
Most movies that I've seen for sale don't cost $30 at a typical store unless you're buying a special edition (fancy package, extra discs, bonus
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Yeah, but if they don't want it, or they can't afford it, what makes you think they deserve it?
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I don't buy DVDs, but I don't pirate them either. The net effect to the producers/sellers in 0. No profit or loss. Now suppose that I, in a act of pure thievery, downloaded a *copy* of a DVD. What's the new net effect to the producers/sellers?
Yes, exactly.
Now, the question is: if I had a machine that could make a duplicated of a car without affecting the original, would it be thievery?
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I think you misunderstood the parent poster.
If he had a machine that could duplicate a car without affecting the original, he wouldn't be paying for engineering time of anyone, because the end product he's copying (the car) is already finished.
And no, even in that case it would not be thievery in my opinion, although the automakers would probably want to argue patent infringement and would send an army of lobbyists to washington to outlaw such duplication machines...
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So, I should pay for the "parts", the "energy" to make the copy and the "engineering"/development time. The "parts", in this case is disk space, which I have paid for. The "energy" is my bandwidth/CPU (which I have also paid for) and bandwidth/CPU from the guy who is sharing with me and donates that to me.
So now, who can I pay the guys that really made the content (read: artists) without having to pay for the "parts" nor the "energy" (read: sucking companies) ?
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Now that the idea is out there though, I'd imagine that the code could be easily reimplemented and the same functionality achieved with a FOSS app.
If that makes it out there than all hope of squashing it is gone. They can kill a company, but not an idea (see Napster. Sure they're gone, but P2P is just a common as ever, because it's a hell of an idea and people like it).
Killing Android (Score:2)
They may not be able to kill an idea, but they CAN kill the platform.
IMHO, these kinds of "screw the man" applications only serve to tanish the image of the Android platform. And remember, you need a network on which to run an Android phone, and in the US that means Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.
Corporate America at its finest. And if they decide that only hackers, ripoff artists, freeloaders, and other "troublemakers" are using Android, they'll drop it like a hot potato and never look back...
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Corporate America at its finest. And if they decide that only hackers, ripoff artists, freeloaders, and other "troublemakers" are using Android, they'll drop it like a hot potato and never look back...
You're neglecting to factor in corporate greed. You see, while some cell phone companies have some vested interest in media distribution, many do not. Cricket, for example (and they're by far not the only one) doesn't really give a damn whether or not people are pirating movies or not. They're not in that business, so it doesn't hurt them. What they care about is whether they are making THEIR money. As such, if all the other carries drop the platform, then there creates a niche for a carrier that WILL
Phone sold separately (Score:2)
you need a network on which to run an Android phone, and in the US that means Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.
I thought a multi-band GSM phone with no subsidy lock could operate with any GSM network's SIM card. Am I mistaken?
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Are you kidding?
Did I miss the /sarcasm somewhere?
This will be the shining light for Android. An open platform will show the true desires of the majority population. If everyone felt the same way about 'piracy' then it wouldn't happen on anything approaching it's current scale. Unfortunately the laws are in conflict with the desires of the general public.
Offer up something like this, i see a lot of people jumping on it and it bringing a lot of popularity from those who purchase phones and apps. Sure the
Android... (Score:5, Funny)
For a moment, I thought that they were saying that Lt. Cmdr. Data was now using BitTorrent.
This isn't an iPhone (Score:5, Funny)
You can install apps that aren't blessed by the Hand of Steve. This app might not stay on the store, but it sure won't go away...now where is my Windows Mobile version?
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This app might not stay on the store, but it sure won't go away.
Cydia ftw ;)
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Cool app, but where are the android users? We've been looking at mobile smartphone development for our products and android isn't a blip on the radar. Our big internal debate was whether to support blackberry or iPhone first. Why? We're in a college town. The demographic we're targeting either have an iPhone or a Blackberry. And it is surprisingly evenly split. We have yet to see a single Android phone in the wild.
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Umm, you would rather enter the barcode manually to search for a movie torrent in an app than to enter the name of the movie in a search? May I ask why? Is there something I am missing?
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You could also enter the name of the movie into your phone, and poof. Done.
I would think typing the name of the movie would be easier than typing a barcode. A barcode is a random string of at least 11 digits or so, where a movie name should be fairly easy to hold in your head while you type it into your phone.
Green Bases is the place to be (Score:2)
I would think typing the name of the movie would be easier than typing a barcode. A barcode is a random string of at least 11 digits or so, where a movie name should be fairly easy to hold in your head while you type it into your phone.
One can enter a 13-digit EAN blind, using the DTMF key-clicks to let you know when you've miskeyed it. T9, on the other hand, needs a lot of manual cleaning up after it: Green Acres isn't spelled Green Bases.
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HTH.
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Don't all the Android phones have physical qwerty keyboards? I would think typing a movie name would be easier, because you would have to lift up the movie, look at the barcode while typing it in and checking to make sure you got it exactly right. The name of the movie could just be remembered for a second while you type it in.
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Damn it, my personal windows filter must have prevented me from seeing that it was a windows mobile phone. Although it still seems like too much work to have to enter a barcode, I can at least understand now the motivation behind not wanting to enter the name of the movie.
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They charge you for it? (Score:5, Interesting)
If the MPAA didn't hatch this idea, I bet they wish they would have.
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Actually, there are mods (http://leechermods.blogspot.com/2007/01/azureus-2502-shu-mod-ddj-hack-223185.html) to disable the uploading while enabling downloading.
Err...uh...2 days, 6 hours, 23 minutes 38 seconds? (Score:3, Funny)
"How long do you think this will last?"
If there is a market and people are willing (think iTunesVideo) then I'm sure it won't take long for the MPAA to start suing.
You know, in the old days we had to go to the theater (oops, sorry, that's theatre for our friends across the pond) and sit with 200 of our closest friends to watch a movie. And we liked it that way.
Damned kids and your fancy technogoogle phones.
What's next? Video texting?
Re:Err...uh...2 days, 6 hours, 23 minutes 38 secon (Score:5, Funny)
What's next? Video texting?
Been there. Done that, old man. We're now onto Googlefacevidtweettubing.
Everybody's doing it.
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IANAL, but application hosting in another country would only be sufficient if it was a free app so he could remain anonymous. As he receives money for it, he can still be prosecuted.
Quality? (Score:5, Interesting)
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The application is not made for instant gratification, you're still downloading the torrent on a dedicated, static IP machine that has its uTorrent/Vuze apis exposed via the web.
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You may be interested in Handbrake. It transcodes DVDs for various formats.
Can target various mobile formats. Now available on Ubuntu (now with a GUI), Windows, and OS X.
I can't get behind it... (Score:2)
... well maybe I can. The reality is that if I am in a store that sells whatever it is I am interested in seeing, chances are good that I am prepared to buy it. There are rare moments, however, where I might just be curious about it and will want to preview it.
Still, this sounds like a commercial opportunity for media distributors everywhere. If I am curious enough to just want to preview something, that application could easily be modified to indicate my interest in seeing it online somewhere at which p
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Because what a movie pirate needs is a bigger p (Score:2)
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A bit paranoid, but then again a small amount of paranoia is healthy in this day and age.
I wouldn't have thought they would be able to do a blanket search and start adding money to peoples phone bills though. The phone companies would fight it for a start; they would be the ones pissing off their customers. Generally, communication providers have been resistant to freedom-infringing moves from content providers unless the communication provider is also in the business of content providing (i.e. Virgin).
How long do I think this will last? (Score:2)
Well, probably only about...5...4...3...2...
I don't remember the name of the movie but (Score:2)
now all I have to do is draw the bar code and scan!
Did you know? (Score:2)
More IT Pros Could Turn To E-Crime In Poor Economy?
Citation (Score:2)
Irony (Score:2)
So are the people that you're ripping off when using this program to download stuff.
Is it some kind of joke that he expects people who pirate stuff to buy an app that lets you pirate stuff?
Dupe? (Score:2)
Or maybe someone commented that someone should make an app like this.
Somewhere out there, (Score:4, Funny)
"download the movie from BitTorrent" (Score:4, Informative)
BitTorrent is not a place. It's a protocol. Correct usage would be "download the movie via BitTorrent".
What the movie business needs to figure out (Score:2)
Contrary to what economists might think - money, property, business, commerce and all these things have no physical basis in reality. They are just sets of rules we collectively (for the most part) abide by. If these rules become useless to us, we can simply discard them and make new ones.
But they become so familiar some people do take them as physically real, and worth something in of themselves. They consider the free exchange of data between citizens as an attack on something, and would do so even if it
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Re:nice (Score:4, Interesting)
The barcode recognition is the biggest feature IMHO. Imagine the apps you could build with a good barcode recognition.
Scan a list of 'to buy'. Sort of a "Wedding registry" but how many times are you out and you see something that looks like a decent product but you want to check reviews? Scan a barcode, dump it into a Google docs document.
The biggest IMHO is "crowd sourcing" grocery lists. So you go to the store and scan in what you're going to buy, punch in the price and it gets added to a database. Use the GPS to determine the store.
Get a few hundred people checking prices and you'll have a fairly accurate database of prices. Then you go home, made a grocery list and have it calculate where the cheapest place to shop is.
Re:nice (Score:5, Informative)
The barcode recognition is the biggest feature IMHO. Imagine the apps you could build with a good barcode recognition.
Scan a list of 'to buy'. Sort of a "Wedding registry" but how many times are you out and you see something that looks like a decent product but you want to check reviews? Scan a barcode, dump it into a Google docs document.
The biggest IMHO is "crowd sourcing" grocery lists. So you go to the store and scan in what you're going to buy, punch in the price and it gets added to a database. Use the GPS to determine the store.
What you describe already exists for Android since pretty much day one: http://www.biggu.com/ [biggu.com]
Re:nice (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest IMHO is "crowd sourcing" grocery lists. So you go to the store and scan in what you're going to buy, punch in the price and it gets added to a database. Use the GPS to determine the store.
Get a few hundred people checking prices and you'll have a fairly accurate database of prices. Then you go home, made a grocery list and have it calculate where the cheapest place to shop is.
The problem with this is this pushes grocery stores to complete solely on price. Selection no longer matters, customer service doesn't matter, just price.
Personally, I see enough of that already. The Internet certainly has the power to transform all purchases into a simple decision based on price while taking all other factors out of it. Then, we will all be shopping at WalMart. Forget about anybody else, they can't compete as effectively on price.
Is that what you really want? Because that is exactly what we are in danger of getting.
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the solution isn't to limit technology, but to encourage non-profit cooperative... at a non-profit grocer all prices can stay rock bottom for even the highest quality goods.
plus, with the national co-op networks in place co-op grocers, and therefor the buyers themselves, can work together to encourage the manufacturers to make better products that cost less than, rather than more than, the crappier products.
[i call this the wall-mart strategy, since they're notorious for successfully setting their own buyin
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How can you say that? If I scan something and I find out no store in a 15-mile radius has that product, won't I buy it immediately?
Seems to me this barcode scanning phenomenon would be better for consumers all around. Stores will have to compete not just on price, but on whatever consumers demand. If you want selection, then choose on selection.
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And because not everybody has the same values, the combined data isn't meaningful beyond a way to measure the lowest common denominator.
The brutal oversimplification of 'econ 101' when applied to real world situations does not generally lead to good outcomes. People are just too complex.
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Just off the top of my head, the use case defense might be for people that want to transcode DVDs that they already own to an electronic format, they can just use the scanner on their own DVDs and the "transcoding" is done automatically in the background and arrives in the next few hours.
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Oh, very nice indeed. You might call it crowdsourcing your transcoding tasks to minimize both wasted computational power and personal time. In fact, I might go so far as to call this a "green" technology for home theater buffs. Oddly enough, I already do this. I don't own a BD drive, but I own the discs. I use the net to download pre-compressed copies that will play on both my media server and popcorn hour. Now, I'm not all good and light; I've probably got 20-30 titles (out of about 400-450) for which I do