THEY LIVE!

THEY LIVE!

41m.jpgOne of my favorite Sci-Fi movies of all time is THEY LIVE, directed by John Carpenter. It stared wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper, a construction worker who finds a pair of glasses that reveals messages on signs along with creepy aliens walking among us bent on taking over. Looks like a company called SeeFree is making a pair of glasses that will “block” ads using USB based glasses. I emailed them to find out more (and to see if they’re for real, seems unlikely). If they are, I totally will insert those creepy THEY LIVE messages over all the blocked ads.

0 thoughts on “THEY LIVE!

  1. blatherskyte says:

    If they’re not real, you could always induce the best line of the film..”I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And, I’m all outta bubblegum”.

  2. philliptorrone says:

    that’s awesome. thanks for reminding me about that, i’m going to use that the next time the situation presents itself!

    cheers,
    pt

  3. NessieVL says:

    There was a guy at MIT who made his own glasses that did this. He’d replace the billboards with pictures of trees and flowers.

  4. NessieVL says:

    I think this is the guy

  5. ladyada says:

    SeeFree is (clear to me, at least) total BS. Its probably an art project or similar. The closest existing thing would be the eyetap system (mann’s research platform)

    the movie was, however, inspiration for the privacy enhanced glasses which do work (although only in constrained situations) :)

    (obligatory showoff: I did sucessfully build completely-containted (no computer necessary) glasses that can detect and block out televisions as part of my thesis which had similar but more ‘realistic’ objectives)

  6. wbeaty says:

    Make a set of these “They Live” goggles. They actually do work, although to human eyes the “special” billboards and t-shirts appear totally black. And a bright sunny day is required. They’re based on the dark blue dyes which are nearly transparent in the near-IR. A couple of layers of Congo Blue and Primary Red will appear black to your eyes, but they have an IR passband. Refit your eyes for IR vision? Or just make some black signboards which contain rude messages that only an IR camera will notice.

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