I just renewed my passport. Strangely, they let you submit your own photo and, stranger still, I made sure it looked really horrible just so it wouldn’t stick out because you can never be too careful about being flagged as a smart-ass and target for a full body search.
I had my wife take it, since she’s really good at getting shots of me not smiling (has to do with her trying to frame it in geologic time). Next I went to work with photoshop converting it to black and white (surpisingly still an option), deleting the corporate logo from my shirt, removiving a few shadows under the chin (don’t want to look too bad), etc. The net effect is I look uncomfortable, but in a harmless, law-abiding way.
I got my passport back… without comment … and it has this nifty holograph thingie over the photo which obfuscates the photo, thus my masterful Pshop anti-touchup effort seems to have been wasted. The true test will come next year when I return from vacation…
Debbie wondered why DMV photos usually turn out I think everyone’s assuming the camera used by the DMV is of a type made in this century. I fully expect them to leapfrog technology and do something weirder like face recognition.
I saw Minority Report yesterday and was wondering how feasible/soon the retinal scanning capability would be available. They did a fantastic job of trying to illustrate what the future might look like. One especially creepy part is the tie-in between mass identification and customer relationship management. For example, several times during the movie the character gets scanned then walks by a kiosk that customizes its message for him like "Mr. Yamamoto, I hope you enjoyed the red corduroy Chino pants, we now have a matching Corinthian Leather gloves."
I'm making this example up, but you get the idea. The characters seemed to ignore the messages, which is probably good because they could be really embarrassing: "Mr. Montana, has your male-itching problem improved? We now have Tinactin available in one gallon buckets."
"Ms. Smith, it's almost that time, Midol and pads are on your right."
Or maybe it might not be so bad:
"Good evening, Dennis, did Karen enjoy that ice sculpture of David peeing vodka? Would you like to pre-order one of Leonardo da Vinci shitting chocolate on your shareholders?"
I got my passport back… without comment … and it has this nifty holograph thingie over the photo which obfuscates the photo, thus my masterful Pshop anti-touchup effort seems to have been wasted. The true test will come next year when I return from vacation…
Debbie wondered why DMV photos usually turn out I think everyone’s assuming the camera used by the DMV is of a type made in this century. I fully expect them to leapfrog technology and do something weirder like face recognition.
I saw Minority Report yesterday and was wondering how feasible/soon the retinal scanning capability would be available. They did a fantastic job of trying to illustrate what the future might look like. One especially creepy part is the tie-in between mass identification and customer relationship management. For example, several times during the movie the character gets scanned then walks by a kiosk that customizes its message for him like "Mr. Yamamoto, I hope you enjoyed the red corduroy Chino pants, we now have a matching Corinthian Leather gloves."
I'm making this example up, but you get the idea. The characters seemed to ignore the messages, which is probably good because they could be really embarrassing:
Or maybe it might not be so bad:
.