Steve Tarzia writes "A research group at Northwestern University and University of Michigan has released open-source display power-management software that uses a new user presence detection technique. The goal is to shut off the display immediately when the user leaves the computer rather than using slow and error-prone mouse/keyboard activity timeouts. Surprisingly, the mic and speakers of many laptop computers are sensitive to ultrasonic frequencies. Those frequencies can be used to silently probe the laptop's physical environment. This software is based on research published at the UbiComp2009 conference. A Windows binary and source code for Windows and Linux are available for download."
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that. I rather don't have the computer know if I'm walking near it or not. But it seems we're heading in to this "everyone, and every machine, knows where you are" every day. Thank god I'm already old and not born in to this shit.
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that.
I find it doesn't. My PC at work has to be configured to require a password be entered on exiting the screensaver, and my password has to be quite complex. If I'm working on something that's not the PC (yeah, we still use paper for things) for longer than the minute, I've got to enter my password to carry on, which is irritating.
It's less irritating when it kicks in when I'm reading or watching a video or something, but I'd still prefer it not to, and I really don't see the privacy angle on this. It's no idea where I am, just that there's something in front of it.
But, generally, I don't have much of a problem with my computer knowing all sorts of stuff about me, it's what it tells to who that I concern myself with.
I use blueproximity on ubuntu. Set the distance and it works pretty well to lock (and unlock) my computer when I am away. The unlock could, I'm sure, be easily spoofed, so if you were in a high-sensitivity location you might want to disable the second half of this software.
I would suggest that if you were in a high-sensitivity location you shouldn't have this software at all. Because, all it would take is for someone to keep your desktop from locking when you walk away by spoofing your bluetooth connection.
Your privacy concerns are valid... however think of the applications for this tech.
Your instant messenger will know when your available or not. Your phone system could direct your calls to you mobile if your away from the desk.
Proximity may also be important break for the future of voice activated computing. If the computer knows your there, it can listen, and when you leave it ignores any sounds.
I think there will be applications for this tech far beyond pc's, especially once it becomes common.
I'm thinking of a sentient computer system in the basement watching humans move around on a huge floor plan that it has of the building, with sonar coverage shaded.. every computer in the building acting as an active sonar sensor.. every movement into and out of thru hallways counted to track how many people are in each area..
Your instant messenger will know when your available or not. Your phone system could direct your calls to you mobile if your away from the desk.
I think this is EXACTLY what he is concerned with. Do you realize how much information you tell others in the world about you with JUST your IM status? Do you realize how easy it is to use this simple bit of information already to plot crimes? Give me a week of watching little more than the IM status of active IMs and twitterers and I can pretty much tell you wher
IM status can be set manually so if you are concerned about privacy... set it manually. Not to mention just because your SYSTEM knows things about you doesn't mean you must pass it on to any app, especially networked ones. Your system knows all sorts of things that it doesn't readily share.
Believe it or not people can determine all sorts of things about you IRL just by watching too. In fact, IRL, you are way more prone to being tracked and monitored than online. Imagine, someone can see you leave your house, go in, steal shit, and leave all by watching you. We need to fix that bug IRL asap.
I can't believe the level of unjust paranoia you are experiencing. The fact is if people care enough to track you, they will be able to. It doesn't matter if you have a laptop that turns off when you leave it or not. Also, how does a 5 minute delay from a regular inactivity time out differ from this so much that this tech is all of the sudden dangerous. It seems to me like people can be monitored via IM just as easy right now as if this was being widely used, just with a tad bit more 'false present' status existing.
Also, how does a 5 minute delay from a regular inactivity time out differ from this so much that this tech is all of the sudden dangerous. It seems to me like people can be monitored via IM just as easy right now as if this was being widely used, just with a tad bit more 'false present' status existing.
Because 5 minutes is the maximum amount of time I can be outside before I get scared of the big ball of fire in the sky and have to run back in. If the crooks think I'm home that whole time, I'll always be safe.
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that.
Er not really. You need to set it to long enough that it doesn't time out every time you read a page of text (unless you just like idly dragging the mouse around while reading... i don't). Yet you want it short enough that it provides power savings. The LCD screen is a big power hog in a laptop. Being able to turn it off instantly as soon as you walk away, and turn back on when you sit back down, would be the best of both worlds of power savings and
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that.
Actually, it doesn't. What if I'm watching a movie with mplayer from the bed? (Yes, Vista starts up indexing and screen savers based on keyboard and mouse input. It sucks.)
Of course, ultrasonic won't solve this. Who the fuck said I can only use my computer if I'm sitting in front of it? So now if I'm running an overnight batch job, the CPU and I/O are up for grabs?
Thank god I'm already old and not born in to this shit.
So what do you do about the period of time between when you stop typing and walk away, and when the computer times out and locks the system down.
Too short of a time out and it annoys the piss out of you everytime it locks the machine while you compose a thought in your head, which means you get distracted, lose the thought and have to start over.
Too long of a time out and when you walk away, I walk up and own you.
For most people, the longer timeout isn't a big concern, they aren't really doing anything THAT
But it seems we're heading in to this "everyone, and every machine, knows where you are" every day. Thank god I'm already old and not born in to this shit.
It's okay, just make friends with your new laptopian overlord and you two should get on just fine.
granting an application access to the microphone should really be some security feature in the OS. By far none of the Windows, Linux, Mac or BSD are doing it
You're right about Windows, and I don't know about Mac. But BSD and Linux have had this for as long as they've had audio recording. For example, on my FreeBSD desktop:
$ ls -l/dev/dsp* crw-rw---- 1 root wheel 0, 106 Oct 14 23:57/dev/dsp0.0
A program must be running as root or group wheel to record audio. In this case, I could whitelist apps by setting the group owner to wheel and setting the SGID bit. I'd probably create a seperate audio group if I cared about recording permissions and had a mic connected. You can get even more granularity with ACLs.
How would you suggest turning off a laptop mic? No hardware switch to do so (unless you've a BIOS option to do it, which I doubt). You could disable the sound card in device manager, but then you've no audio. Seems a valid security issue - nothing stopping an app turning it up in the mixer and recording...
Don't know if I type slow, think slow, or both, but one of my pet annoyances is when the screen saver kicks-in as I'm staring at the screen in thought (sure I know how to set it, but I am not always in front of my own PC, and oft away and then back a lot through the day).
If this will simply tell the OS, hold on, he's sitting there doing something, I'd find it a pretty neat idea.
I, too, often find myself looking at a screen for extended periods of time without touching the mouse or keyboard, while I, ah... read the articles. Nothing ruins a good article more than having the screen saver start up right as you are about to finish.
I, too, often find myself looking at a screen for extended periods of time without touching the mouse or keyboard, while I, ah... read the articles. Nothing ruins a good article more than having the screen saver start up right as you are about to finish.
That's funny, the exact same thing happens to me when I'm watching porn.
Yes, I know this was intended as a humorous remark, and yes I get the joke (please refrain from any "woosh" comments), but in all seriousness, this actually is an issue for X11 based systems.
Due to a poor design choice in X11, applications can see when the mouse moves but can not see button press events in other applications. One result of this is that screensavers can't detect a mouse wheel. Thus, if you're scrolling through a long article, the mouse wheel events aren't seen, the screensaver considers yo
Don't time your screensaver so aggressively. Turning the screen off after just a few minutes is useless and just puts unnecessary strain on the backlight (which takes only a limited number of power cycles, unless it is LED).
I use Ampsoft's Screen Saver Control [ampsoft.net] to manually put the screen into power saving mode with Win+P (and the standard Win+L to lock the screen, if I think that's necessary). I have set the power saving mode to kick in after 2 hours of inactivity otherwise.
I wonder how fine of a resolution is possible with a setup like this with generic microphones and speakers. Maybe it would be possible to use this as a biometric lock on a computer system. It could function as a facial recognition check using the ultrasound picture or series of pictures of your face. Lighting wouldn't affect it and someone couldn't simply use a picture of you to try and fool the camera. Even a bust of your face wouldn't work the same unless it accurately simulated your bone structure and flesh.
Yes, because your generic PC speakers and mics which are in different configurations on every model of laptop out there are made to produce images.
What this will give you is 'there is something large near me, approximately X far away from this computer. Where X is somewhere near about the average distance between the user and the speakers and the user and the mic.
If someone ACTUALLY wanted to implement this tech, they'd just stop putting the IR unit on laptops in weird places such as the front edge or the
I agree that a webcam would do a far better job than speakers and mic, but they couldn't use body heat to do it.
Although a ccd or cmos sensor in a webcam, or most any other digicam, is sensitive to IR as you mention, it is not sensitive to the thermal IR of body heat. Most digital cams are capable of IR sensitivity out to about 1um, if you remove their IR-cut filter. The human body with a skin surface temp of about 305 Kelvin emits most of its IR energy at a wavelength about 10x longer than this, or 9.5um
Asus ships the software you're describing with laptops they sell; it came on mine. It takes a bunch of snapshots of your face through the webcam (you're supposed to rotate your head) and then if it sees your face at the login screen, it logs you in.
Asus ships the software you're describing with laptops they sell; it came on mine. It takes a bunch of snapshots of your face through the webcam (you're supposed to rotate your head) and then if it sees your face at the login screen, it logs you in.
So all I need to log on to your computer is a lifesize photo of you, or alternately, your severed head?
This wouldn't work with headphones plugged into the computer unless you can get the laptop's built in speakers working independantly (it can do it, old Ubuntu 7.10 had them on separate mixer controls on my laptop). But desktop users usually have their powered speakers off when using headphones.
Does anyone have an idea on how to solve that? You could put out ultrasonic sound through the headphones that get blocked when used, but it could damage your hearing depending on how loud it needs to be to get picked up by the microphone.
Personally, I went back to just using ALSA + internal alsa mixer. That kinda sucked (couldn't get it to consistently mix, particularly with Flash, and it would frequently result in poor quality crap while doing so), so...
I went back to what I was doing a decade ago: use ESD (wherever possible). I suppose I could use JACK or something else, but it does a good enough job and I'm not continually irritated with alsa dying outright due to different things vying for -whatever-.
And dimmer switches, cordless drill battery charges, and even a really annoying slice of whatever frequency god damn bats chatter at. In short, my super power is above average HF hearing. Hooray for me...
Now, I like this idea, it's neat, I just really hope it operates well over 18khz so my head does not explode all Scanners style when I walk into a room full of laptops.
Dimmer switches buzz at 50/60Hz (with lots of metallic-sounding harmonics). Everyone hears those. Better designed ones make less noise. Battery chargers and power adapters in general (of any kind) either buzz at 50/60Hz (transformer based) or at a higher frequency (switching type). Poorly designed switching converters might operate in the audible range - I have a few that can definitely be heard. Most good ones are well above 20Khz. CRT TVs operate at ~15Khz; I hear those too. CRT monitors operate well abov
I have a simple solution to that problem. I used to have similar problems (though not as bad) - the 15KHz whistle of the old color TVs used to bug me. But during my misspent youth I spent several years listening to lots of loud music - 10 feet from the speakers at rock concerts, etc. Now, other than a constant ringing in my ears, I'm fine! And I no longer hear HF audio, so no more annoying whistles for me:D Try it, soon you'll be as deaf as Pete Townsend!
How will this benefit the general user though? There are many times that I get up but still want my laptop to be running for example, I can leave a music player on, hook up my laptop to a projector to play a movie, or a load of other things that this would prevent from happening.
It would be nice if they would make the software license clear. Even if just to say that "this is government sponsored and so available for copying with no restrictions". Also at the bottom of the page they say '"Windows" is a registered trademark of the Microsoft Corporation.' but forget to mention that Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
You got that backwards. What they should do is deleting the remark about Windows. Anyone succumbing to the (tm) crap should have their head examined. Every time somebody writes "registered trademark", god kills a kitten. It's true. Between us, we just killed two. No, I'm not going to write it again.
Now someone is going to say legal blahblah necessary blahblah. But there is something wrong if fear of a big corporation is making you write that kind of kitten-lethal nonsense every time you mention a product ma
...tie power savings to the manual screen lock feature. In Windows, the WindowsKey+L locks the workstation. It would be great if a second or two after the workstation is locked, the monitor turns off and the drives spin down. That would provide good power savings and avoid the problem of having to determine whether or not the user really wants their workstation to conserve energy.
What's wrong with a keyboard shortcut key or assigning a function key ? It's a laptop, you probably don't just walk away frequently and leave it unattended. Not anywhere I know anyway.
Activity (Score:2)
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that. I rather don't have the computer know if I'm walking near it or not. But it seems we're heading in to this "everyone, and every machine, knows where you are" every day. Thank god I'm already old and not born in to this shit.
Re:Activity (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it doesn't. My PC at work has to be configured to require a password be entered on exiting the screensaver, and my password has to be quite complex. If I'm working on something that's not the PC (yeah, we still use paper for things) for longer than the minute, I've got to enter my password to carry on, which is irritating.
It's less irritating when it kicks in when I'm reading or watching a video or something, but I'd still prefer it not to, and I really don't see the privacy angle on this. It's no idea where I am, just that there's something in front of it.
But, generally, I don't have much of a problem with my computer knowing all sorts of stuff about me, it's what it tells to who that I concern myself with.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Write a script to move the mouse for you. just a few pixels will do.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Your privacy concerns are valid... however think of the applications for this tech.
Your instant messenger will know when your available or not.
Your phone system could direct your calls to you mobile if your away from the desk.
Proximity may also be important break for the future of voice activated computing. If the computer knows your there, it can listen, and when you leave it ignores any sounds.
I think there will be applications for this tech far beyond pc's, especially once it becomes common.
Re:Activity (Score:5, Interesting)
/+5 Hat of Greed equipped.
Oooh, I'm drooling! Let's see:
$APP detects two people within viewing distance of your monitor. [click here] to upgrade to the appropriate license.
/+5 Hat of Greed unequipped.
/+5 Hat of Stealth equipped.
Oooh, I'm drooling for different reasons. Let's see:
$APP detects additional person approaching monitor. Autominimize firefox://ridiculous.pornsite.com; automaximize firefox://romanticweekendgetawayswiththewife.toshowherhowmuchyouloveher.com.
Whew, that was a close one.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking of a sentient computer system in the basement watching humans move around on a huge floor plan that it has of the building, with sonar coverage shaded.. every computer in the building acting as an active sonar sensor.. every movement into and out of thru hallways counted to track how many people are in each area..
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this is EXACTLY what he is concerned with. Do you realize how much information you tell others in the world about you with JUST your IM status? Do you realize how easy it is to use this simple bit of information already to plot crimes? Give me a week of watching little more than the IM status of active IMs and twitterers and I can pretty much tell you wher
Re:Activity (Score:4, Insightful)
IM status can be set manually so if you are concerned about privacy... set it manually. Not to mention just because your SYSTEM knows things about you doesn't mean you must pass it on to any app, especially networked ones. Your system knows all sorts of things that it doesn't readily share.
Believe it or not people can determine all sorts of things about you IRL just by watching too. In fact, IRL, you are way more prone to being tracked and monitored than online. Imagine, someone can see you leave your house, go in, steal shit, and leave all by watching you. We need to fix that bug IRL asap.
I can't believe the level of unjust paranoia you are experiencing. The fact is if people care enough to track you, they will be able to. It doesn't matter if you have a laptop that turns off when you leave it or not. Also, how does a 5 minute delay from a regular inactivity time out differ from this so much that this tech is all of the sudden dangerous. It seems to me like people can be monitored via IM just as easy right now as if this was being widely used, just with a tad bit more 'false present' status existing.
Parent
Re:Activity (Score:4, Funny)
Also, how does a 5 minute delay from a regular inactivity time out differ from this so much that this tech is all of the sudden dangerous. It seems to me like people can be monitored via IM just as easy right now as if this was being widely used, just with a tad bit more 'false present' status existing.
Because 5 minutes is the maximum amount of time I can be outside before I get scared of the big ball of fire in the sky and have to run back in. If the crooks think I'm home that whole time, I'll always be safe.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that.
Er not really. You need to set it to long enough that it doesn't time out every time you read a page of text (unless you just like idly dragging the mouse around while reading... i don't). Yet you want it short enough that it provides power savings. The LCD screen is a big power hog in a laptop. Being able to turn it off instantly as soon as you walk away, and turn back on when you sit back down, would be the best of both worlds of power savings and
Re: (Score:2)
Read and type into your computer. The computer exploring its environment is new.
It's a technology that can just as easily be implemented in closed source..
Re: (Score:2)
Mouse/keyboard activity timeout works nicely for that.
Actually, it doesn't. What if I'm watching a movie with mplayer from the bed? (Yes, Vista starts up indexing and screen savers based on keyboard and mouse input. It sucks.)
Of course, ultrasonic won't solve this. Who the fuck said I can only use my computer if I'm sitting in front of it? So now if I'm running an overnight batch job, the CPU and I/O are up for grabs?
Thank god I'm already old and not born in to this shit.
Me too. I'm 23.
Re: (Score:2)
So what do you do about the period of time between when you stop typing and walk away, and when the computer times out and locks the system down.
Too short of a time out and it annoys the piss out of you everytime it locks the machine while you compose a thought in your head, which means you get distracted, lose the thought and have to start over.
Too long of a time out and when you walk away, I walk up and own you.
For most people, the longer timeout isn't a big concern, they aren't really doing anything THAT
Re: (Score:2)
But it seems we're heading in to this "everyone, and every machine, knows where you are" every day. Thank god I'm already old and not born in to this shit.
It's okay, just make friends with your new laptopian overlord and you two should get on just fine.
Re:Activity (Score:4, Informative)
You're right about Windows, and I don't know about Mac. But BSD and Linux have had this for as long as they've had audio recording. For example, on my FreeBSD desktop:
A program must be running as root or group wheel to record audio. In this case, I could whitelist apps by setting the group owner to wheel and setting the SGID bit. I'd probably create a seperate audio group if I cared about recording permissions and had a mic connected. You can get even more granularity with ACLs.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Safe? (Score:3, Funny)
Damn, now PETA is going to bitch about what happens when dolphins use these laptops.
Re:Safe? (Score:5, Funny)
"We can't use that laptop here, this is bat country!"
Parent
Re:Bat Country? (Score:4, Funny)
I use an HP Pavillion dv6, but I'd prefer something with a touchscreen.
Thanks for asking!
Parent
Takes Care of one of my pet peeves (Score:4, Interesting)
If this will simply tell the OS, hold on, he's sitting there doing something, I'd find it a pretty neat idea.
Greg
Re:Takes Care of one of my pet peeves (Score:5, Funny)
I, too, often find myself looking at a screen for extended periods of time without touching the mouse or keyboard, while I, ah... read the articles. Nothing ruins a good article more than having the screen saver start up right as you are about to finish.
Parent
Re:Takes Care of one of my pet peeves (Score:4, Funny)
I, too, often find myself looking at a screen for extended periods of time without touching the mouse or keyboard, while I, ah... read the articles. Nothing ruins a good article more than having the screen saver start up right as you are about to finish.
That's funny, the exact same thing happens to me when I'm watching porn.
Parent
Re:Takes Care of one of my pet peeves (Score:4, Funny)
My God. There's porn on the Internet now?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Due to a poor design choice in X11, applications can see when the mouse moves but can not see button press events in other applications. One result of this is that screensavers can't detect a mouse wheel. Thus, if you're scrolling through a long article, the mouse wheel events aren't seen, the screensaver considers yo
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Takes Care of one of my pet peeves (Score:5, Interesting)
Something like this has been available for KDE for ages, only it uses Bluetooth.
You tell it to listen for your phone - when you leave your desk (presumably with the phone in your pocket/holster/etc.) the screen lock kicks in.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Don't time your screensaver so aggressively. Turning the screen off after just a few minutes is useless and just puts unnecessary strain on the backlight (which takes only a limited number of power cycles, unless it is LED).
I use Ampsoft's Screen Saver Control [ampsoft.net] to manually put the screen into power saving mode with Win+P (and the standard Win+L to lock the screen, if I think that's necessary). I have set the power saving mode to kick in after 2 hours of inactivity otherwise.
I'm still here! (Score:4, Funny)
I'm just asleep, you insensitive clod! (or does it detect snoring?)
A new means for laptop theft protection? (Score:2)
I wonder how... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, because your generic PC speakers and mics which are in different configurations on every model of laptop out there are made to produce images.
What this will give you is 'there is something large near me, approximately X far away from this computer. Where X is somewhere near about the average distance between the user and the speakers and the user and the mic.
If someone ACTUALLY wanted to implement this tech, they'd just stop putting the IR unit on laptops in weird places such as the front edge or the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Although a ccd or cmos sensor in a webcam, or most any other digicam, is sensitive to IR as you mention, it is not sensitive to the thermal IR of body heat. Most digital cams are capable of IR sensitivity out to about 1um, if you remove their IR-cut filter. The human body with a skin surface temp of about 305 Kelvin emits most of its IR energy at a wavelength about 10x longer than this, or 9.5um
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Asus ships the software you're describing with laptops they sell; it came on mine. It takes a bunch of snapshots of your face through the webcam (you're supposed to rotate your head) and then if it sees your face at the login screen, it logs you in.
They call it "SmartLogon."
Re:I wonder how... (Score:5, Insightful)
So all I need to log on to your computer is a lifesize photo of you, or alternately, your severed head?
Parent
Headphones (Score:4, Insightful)
This wouldn't work with headphones plugged into the computer unless you can get the laptop's built in speakers working independantly (it can do it, old Ubuntu 7.10 had them on separate mixer controls on my laptop). But desktop users usually have their powered speakers off when using headphones.
Does anyone have an idea on how to solve that? You could put out ultrasonic sound through the headphones that get blocked when used, but it could damage your hearing depending on how loud it needs to be to get picked up by the microphone.
Re:Headphones (Score:5, Funny)
The solution to this, and ALL life's problems is to uninstall pulse audio.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That.
Personally, I went back to just using ALSA + internal alsa mixer. That kinda sucked (couldn't get it to consistently mix, particularly with Flash, and it would frequently result in poor quality crap while doing so), so...
I went back to what I was doing a decade ago: use ESD (wherever possible). I suppose I could use JACK or something else, but it does a good enough job and I'm not continually irritated with alsa dying outright due to different things vying for -whatever-.
I'm one of those people that hears CRT Monitors (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, I like this idea, it's neat, I just really hope it operates well over 18khz so my head does not explode all Scanners style when I walk into a room full of laptops.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Dimmer switches buzz at 50/60Hz (with lots of metallic-sounding harmonics). Everyone hears those. Better designed ones make less noise. Battery chargers and power adapters in general (of any kind) either buzz at 50/60Hz (transformer based) or at a higher frequency (switching type). Poorly designed switching converters might operate in the audible range - I have a few that can definitely be heard. Most good ones are well above 20Khz. CRT TVs operate at ~15Khz; I hear those too. CRT monitors operate well abov
simple solution! (Score:3, Funny)
I have a simple solution to that problem. I used to have similar problems (though not as bad) - the 15KHz whistle of the old color TVs used to bug me. But during my misspent youth I spent several years listening to lots of loud music - 10 feet from the speakers at rock concerts, etc. Now, other than a constant ringing in my ears, I'm fine! And I no longer hear HF audio, so no more annoying whistles for me :D Try it, soon you'll be as deaf as Pete Townsend!
(FYI, the last band I was in used in-ear monito
How will this? (Score:2)
How about a license ; how about saying Linux(tm) (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You got that backwards. What they should do is deleting the remark about Windows. Anyone succumbing to the (tm) crap should have their head examined. Every time somebody writes "registered trademark", god kills a kitten. It's true. Between us, we just killed two. No, I'm not going to write it again.
Now someone is going to say legal blahblah necessary blahblah. But there is something wrong if fear of a big corporation is making you write that kind of kitten-lethal nonsense every time you mention a product ma
A better solution might be to... (Score:2)
...tie power savings to the manual screen lock feature. In Windows, the WindowsKey+L locks the workstation. It would be great if a second or two after the workstation is locked, the monitor turns off and the drives spin down. That would provide good power savings and avoid the problem of having to determine whether or not the user really wants their workstation to conserve energy.
Why ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm just a slave to the machine... (Score:3, Interesting)
So the device in Dark Knight (Score:3, Interesting)
Could be built. Interesting.
Re: (Score:2)
That's Bat-science.