Slashdot Mirror
When Profiling Goes Wrong
huskymo writes "This morning's Wall Street Journal is carrying a funny story on TiVo and Amazon's automatic customer profiling. As most Slashdot readers probably know, TiVo keeps track of which programs you record and--if you haven't told it not to--records other programs it thinks you'd like. The article describes users that TiVo's mistaken for Korean, for gay, even for "a pregnant gay man.""
Funny as hell.
Maybe this is another form of Slashdot advertising? I wonder if the WSJ pays them to link to the occasional story. ;-)
There aren't hundreds of posts bashing TiVo for profiling. Oh wait, that's because people can't even pretend to read the article because it requires a SUBSCRIPTION! heh.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
You need a fucking paid subscription to read this article. Why even bother submitting it to Slashdot, as most certainly a large majority of its readers don't have a paid subscription.
I know we aren't supposed to read the article, but I figured this would be funny, so I... clicked the link! Imagine my (lack of) surprise when the article was displayed on my screen! This is my work machine, I just wiped the cookies yesterday, and I do not subscribe to WSJ Online. The only cookie on it is my /. login. What gives? Was the link changed or you people can't even be bothered with an extra click?
Karma: Incomprehensible (Mostly affected by posting at +5, reading at -1, and metamoderating everything unfair.)