Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Counterstrike, Identification, Patenxtortion
False negatives, false positives, anda false sense of assurance. coryboehne writes: "TechNews has a report on the face recognition system installed at the Palm Beach Internation Airport early results of face-recognition surveillance suggest the technology is proving once again to be unreliable.
The ACLU said the first four weeks of testing at the Palm Beach airport showed the technology was "less accurate than a coin toss." The system matched the faces of the volunteers just 455 out of 958 times, or about 47 percent of the time.
Seems to me that this is a controlled environment for the most part, and still they have problems this big? I wonder if this technology will ever be accurate enough to work properly. I suppose the biggest problem is the size of the database that would be necessary to hold the high quality pictures necessary for accurate identification.
However I must admit that I am rather glad that this is'nt working yet as I'm not too sure I even like the idea of being able to digitally locate and track anyone within range of a camera."
This is what's meant by "repeat offender." Audent writes: "Following on from this story on Slashdot about PanIP's nasty habits, InfoWorld is running a story about it all.
To quote from the story about PanIP's boss:
'These lawsuits aren't the first time that PanIP principal Lawrence Lockwood has initiated legal proceedings against companies he felt were infringing his patents. Lockwood filed a lawsuit against American Airlines in 1994, claiming that American's SABREvision airline reservation system infringed on other patents he holds. Lockwood lost the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and then lost again on appeal in 1997.'He's since had a bunch of patents disallowed. He's obviously learned from his earlier 'mistake' and is only going for the smaller companies.
Kick his ass I say. Disclaimer: I work for IDG Comms in New Zealand)."
Temporary sanity. CyberQ writes: "Some news from Germany on the censorship front: Despite demands from prominent politicians the responsible Federal Authority decided today not to ban the sale of Counterstrike to minors [Link in German, use the fish]. This came after weeks of public discussion following a school shooting by a student who apparently trained by playing CS."
That's quite a feat. When that hits 95%, and it's pattern matching Osama Bin Laden, what do you think airport security would do if there's a match?
The problem isn't so much that it only matches successfully 47% of the time, it's that the 47% doesn't appear to be random--the article makes it seem you can make it very likely that you will consistently be missed by the system just by wearing glasses and not looking straight at the camera. Once it's well-understood how to avoid being caught by the system, it's worse than nothing (false sense of security) even if it correctly identifies 95% of people not taking countermeasures.
Not that Osama bin Laden would be on a flight in florida anyway, and remember that identification would not have helped prevent the events of September 11, since we knew who the hijackers were when they walked on the plane, we just didn't know what they had planned.
--
Benjamin Coates
Why does the German government seem to be so inconsistent with censoring/banning games?
Germany has this problem with violence, similar to the US trying to censor "indecent material". You can say "fuck" on German TV without problems.
My guess is that this dates back to WW2; Germans now have this built-in problem with anything related to violence and discrimination.
Quite a while back when the game Carmageddon came out I remember I read in the news that the German version had zombies to replace the people that you could run over in the original.
Actually, the zombies were in the UK version (who do have this violence problem too). In the German version, you had to run over traffic cones. Yes. Traffic cones. No joke.
How is Counterstrike different?
Well, the rationale as far as I understand it is this:
In Carmageddon, the purpose is to mindlessly kill people and get rewarded for it. While Counter-Strike lets you kill people, the focus of the game is on "strategical thinking and communicating in the team". Hey, don't flame me, that's the BPjS' explanation.
... except pro-Nazi things, apparently... and that's the irony, and that's the problem: a faux respect for democratic opinion, unless it is the "wrong" one. I'm not German, and I cannot really prescribe to Germans how to handle this tension in democracy. But I am an American, and without being too jingoistic, I think we get this one right: Allow a free market of ideas. Don't allow the government, or the moral minority, or "the People" to legislate that some ideas are "wrong". Let them all fight it out. Because I believe in democracy and in the basic dignity of humankind (both possibly ludicrous beliefs, but hey...), I also believe that the right and the true will triumph.
This isn't mealy-mouthed bleeding-heart East Coast liberalism. It's a hard-eyed view drawn from the history of a free people: The only cure for darkness is light -- it's never more darkness.
If a people is presented with the neo-Nazi thugs and the radical idiocies, and given the chance to honestly evaluate them, and still fall for them... well, there is no power in Heaven or on Earth that keep such a people free. If they cannot be trusted to see through this propaganda, then they cannot possibly be protected from it. And no well-intentioned political elite is ever going to safeguard them from their own democratic process.
People are free, or they are not. They are not made free by the actions of someone else; they are free by the strength of their commitment to freedom. Let the idiots, the racists, the radicals bray and howl. I know that a free and educated people will rise above that, will see them for the sham they are, will cast them back into the darkness and ooze from which they crawled.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I've read Mein Kampf. I went to a prestigious private university in the US where this was required reading in our Western Civilizations course. (In the US, all the top universities force all their students to go through certain "core" classes, which means that engineers have to take humanities courses and poets have to take calculus.) While your culture may remember why Mein Kampf is banned in Germany, ours doesn't. I didn't understand hatred until I read Hitler; I didn't understand racial superiority until I read Nietzsche. To be honest, I still don't quite understand it, but I can now recognize how it starts.
When unemployed programmers post to slashdot to complain about how all the jobs are being taken by Indians with H-1B visas, I recognize the danger. Although I'm extremely pissed at the job market right now, I know I have to control these feelings, which are absolutely no different from those of the French who voted for Le Pen, hoping to ameliorate the "immigration situation."
We are all taught tolerance, but in some cases, intolerance is more moral. Without the free dilution of ideas, how am I supposed to know what to tolerate and what not to tolerate? I may have joined in with those slashdotters complaining about "Indians taking our jobs" had I not read Le Pen recently - remember, I was already pissed. I was, however, able to see how they were putting forth the exact same arguments as Le Pen, and I realized the direction in which they were headed.
You've pointed out that Germans are less likely to stand up for unimpeded speech out of idealism, but rather deal with the issue out of sheer pragmatism. How does one learn hatred? I say it can only come about after immense propaganda and repetition. You do not suddenly go from toleration to hatred by listening to one speech or reading one book; it takes years of "brainwashing," for lack of a better term. When an open-minded people learn to recognize hidden hatred agendas and the same fascist arguments, rather than continue listening, they turn their heads in disgust.
The fascists always use the same arguments and the same methods: they won't tell you about their agenda of hatred outright, at least not right away. First, they instill outrage. They'll start off by demonstrating the "collapse" of a nation, economically and morally. They'll appeal to unemployed and the under-employed. The second step is an appeal to history: they'll explain how great the nation was in the past, and how it's now falling apart. The third and final step is to lay the blame on a minority.
Some examples of these methods: the American white supremacists begin with an anti-affirmitive action agenda. They attempt to show how the qualified are losing jobs to the less-qualified simply out of race. The second step of the American white supremacist is to identify himself with American history: here, you'll find lots of flag-waving. A few years ago, I encountered an advertisement for a KKK rally. What I found particularly of note was that they stated only certain flags would be allowed at the rally, including the flag of the Vatican (Holy See) and the American flag. Their third step involves crime statistics about inner-city black youth. By this point, the agenda is clear.
When slashdot ran that story about the H-1B visas a week ago, I recognized step one. One person in particular was already at step three. I saw the progression and I closed my browser.
Now, from where did I recognize this progression? Did I originally see this in American white supremacist propaganda? Did I see this in Le Pen's anti-immigration ideas?
I originally saw this in Mein Kampf, in the part where Hitler explains his blue-collar days in Vienna. Did the anti-Indian slashdotters read Mein Kampf? I'm willing to wager that they didn't. It didn't take openly fascist literature to plant the start of hatred, but it did take fascist literature for me to recognize it. Read these posts carefully, and then read about Hitler's description of his working days in Vienna, and tell me what you find. It's quite disturbing.
You linked to some of your previous posts which make some interesting points. I'll reciprocrate: this regarding freedom of speech and this regarding the limits of democracy. You'll note from the context that not only are certain people willing to forcefully silence extremists, but they are also willing to forcefully silence those who would disagree with the extremists and yet stand up for the extremists' right/privilege to speak.