This would be for spooling archival data to, not to stream from. This will have great impact on the NSA's noble desire to keep a living record of all human communications!
The article says that drugs were found during the execution of a warrant, it doesn't say what the warrant was for or how the drugs were found during the execution of the warrant. You can find evidence for other crimes when you execute a warrant, you just can't look it if it's outside the scope of the warrant.
Also, even if the warrant was overbroad, the evidence wouldn't get thrown out as fruit of the tainted tree, because a bad decision by a judge (e.g. grant a bad warrant) won't cause the evidence to become tainted in that way. You can exclude evidence because the police broke the law, but the judge isn't breaking the law just by interpreting it poorly. Or put another way, we don't want the police to have second-guess judges' decisions.
That's not the point, and there are units which address those concerns. The point is, home automation is not "right around the corner", it's here today and it doesn't take a millionaire to have a smart home. The sticking point is not technology nor is it money, it's that people have realized they don't really want that.
The technology you refer to has not changed since 1975.
It is a stretch to call this smarthome technology considering the ban on incandescent bulbs, which completely eliminate X10s ability to dim or fade bulbs (because you are using CFL, and if you use a x10 dimmer on a CFL, you can burn down a house), and writing any sort of logic based on whether the device is on or off is not possible.
Now Insteon supports bi-directional communication and you can determine state, but you are looking at $45 per outlet or switch versus the $8 X10 stuff.
So, yeah, still out of most people's price range, unless you want to settle for over 30 year old technology.
" If a person wants to use the WiSee, she would perform a specific repetition gesture sequence to get access to the receiver. This password concept would also keep the system secure and prevent a neighbor – or hacker – from controlling a device in your home. "
I think he refers to having a system that, using this approach, turns on his shower when he enters it. If this cannot distinguish humans from cats, it would turn on the shower when a cat entered it.
I think that's a bad example. The typical cat would soon learn not to enter the shower.
If the system has enough lag, clever cats might dart in and out before the shower sprayed for a brief bit, so as to get some fresh water (which they like more).
One of my cats has actually done this a couple of times. He walks along the ledge around the bathtub and squeezes past the shower handle, forcing it away from the wall and turning on the water. It's a problem that seems to have solved itself, because it scares the shit out of him and he gets wet.
I think this is where AI comes in -- it should be possible for AI to discern meaningful/non-meaningful movements (based on size, speed, previous state, etc.)
