Slashback: Stupidity, Telebastardy, Fast Search

Slashback tonight with updates and corrections on Overture's Fast Search acquisition (overstated in a previous story), sex.com's sordid adventures in California, the ongoing struggle involving telemarketers vs. your privacy, and more -- read on for the details. Just the parts that matter. Peter Gorman of FastSearch writes:

"I read your Overture/FAST story on Slashdot and wanted to make a clarification.

Your headline implies that Overture is completely acquiring FAST. This is completely incorrect. Overture has only acquired FAST's Internet business unit assets, which includes FAST WebSearch, FAST PartnerSite and FAST's popular search site, AlltheWeb.com."

Thanks for the correction, Peter.

Isn't that the stuff that sells? icantblvitsnotbutter writes "In what looks like a scoop, The Register has an article covering the latest in the ongoing battle between Gary Kremen and VeriSign. The High Court of California has rejected a request to consider the legal issue of whether a domain can legally be deemed as property. This is a huge help for (relatively) money-strapped Kremen, whose opponent VeriSign was evidently using the request as a delaying tactic. VeriSign previously had breathlessly warned that a wrong decision would 'cripple the Internet'."

And they made such a pleasant version of Debian, too ... robmered writes "Three years after receiving US$135M in cash from Microsoft, and one and a half years after Xandros bought Corel's Linux assets, The Age is reporting that Corel has finally removed all Linux software from its website. The end of an era, or a margin note in history? The Age thinks the former, but the strength of Open Office, Gimp and numerous desktop environment efforts seem to indicate that the Linux bandwagon will roll on regardless."

Certainly, I would like to talk at length about your business proposal. Would you like to know my fees in advance? KC7GR writes "There's an article running at DMNews about a company called Castel, Inc. that has, supposedly, developed software that can be used by automated dialing equipment to bypass a TeleZapper, or similar SIT generators, and get through to your phone no matter what.

It is also claimed that the software can deliver any type of text or phone number to a recipient's caller ID box, no matter if it's true or false, and that it can also bypass the anti-telemarketer blocks made available by some telephone companies, such as SBC and Qwest.

Granted, this software is not cheap (about $2,700.00 per calling position, apparently), and Castel is quick to claim that they created this stuff primarily for collection agencies to help them get through to deadbeats who use TeleZappers. Does anyone here really think that'll stop telemarketers from using the same crap, just because they can?"

Brevity is one antidote to stupidity. Yoda2 writes "Here is Part II of the Salon story on the Loebner Prize that Slashdot covered yesterday."

Comments

Caller ID faking...

[MacGoldstein]

Is that not illegal yet?

I'm curious...

[SubliminalLove]

I worked as a telemarketer once... for a week. I got paid full time for my training and then bailed and got a new job before ever making a call. So I know nothing about the industry.

I'm curious, how long do you think it would take a telemarketing company to pay off the huge chunk of change they'd require to buy enough copies of this program to outfit their entire outfit? As I recall, there were several hundred stations at the place I worked.

~SL

Re:I'm curious...

[iabervon]

The feature of ignoring TeleZapper is probably not useful to telemarketters, because anyone with a TeleZapper who gets a call from a telemarketter is likely to pissed and hang up (or be pissed and yell at the person). People tend to be nice to telemarketters because they don't want to be rude, but will probably feel that the telemarketter is being rude if the call goes through a TeleZapper.

The thing evidentally can reduce the dead air before the caller is connected, which could help them avoid getting hung up on before they start talking.

It also can set the caller ID. People block based on lack of caller ID, but telemarketters could leave caller ID enabled if they really cared; the issue is mainly that they don't want people to call them back at the call center (they want people to call the client's number), but people rarely call telemarketters back anyway. The fact that they don't provide caller ID information suggests that they aren't really trying to reach people who don't want to be reached. They're mainly going after people who can be convinced over the phone to buy stuff, and these people generally answer the phone when it rings.

Faking callers id's always possible.

[Monkeyman334]

If you have your own phone switch, you can send out any caller id you want. It's not authoritative, never has been. It's about the same as a reply-to address in email. It's a shame the poster didn't buy Kevin Mitnick's book after it was mentioned on slashdot so many times, because he does cover caller id spoofing for social engineering on people who do think caller id is a secure way to id the caller.

Caller ID was already compromised...

[unicorn]

I'm in charge of the phones, among other things here at the office. And our Nortel switch can already transmit whatever the owner wants, for CID info, according to the company that handles our maitenance contract. The tech told me that it's childishly simple to change it to almost anything.

And this system, is several years old.

Not in Texas (forged caller id)

[parc]

In Texas, law explicitly requires callers to identify themselves in CallerID with a phone number the business can be reached at (NOT attached to an autodialer), or if the equipment is not capable of presenting a number, they must state their company name and callback number in the first 30 seconds of a call.

Note that by having ANY id, your equipment can obviously present callerID.

For once, Texas has a useful law.

Yet another (mostly) shameless plug...

[Yoda2]

In contrast to the chatterbot quest, I've been working on software to provide computers with a more humanlike understanding of language.

Experience-Based Language Acquisition (EBLA) is an open source software system written in Java that enables a computer to learn simple language from scratch based on visual perception. It is the first "grounded" language system capable of learning both nouns and verbs. Moreover, once EBLA has established a vocabulary, it can perform basic scene analysis to generate descriptions of novel videos.

A more detailed summary is available here and this is the project web site.

Are we supposed to take Salon seriously?

[chazzf]

I've always been intrigued by Salon's output, but I cannot honestly take this article seriously. The author has a very clear pro-Loebner bias that he doesn't even try to conceal. His hostility towards Minsky, Dennett, and the rest of the established academic community is so blatant (and unfounded) that it's embarrassing to read. Take this quote:

Decision sciences, by the simplest possible definition, refers to computerized assistance in resource allocation. An example provided by a press release from MIT announcing the creation of a decision sciences program was "complex computer-based 'passenger yield management' systems and models that the airlines use to adjust pricing of each flight's seats in order to maximize revenue and profitability to the airline." That's a far cry from the bold claims made by A.I. visionaries in decades past. But focusing on such systems has a signal advantage for scientists who have been failing miserably at the Turing test. It gets them off the hook.

And later: In other words, if you read between the lines what you come up with is that one reason "serious" A.I. scientists don't try to mimic human speech anymore is that they discovered they can't do it.

Okay, so he's holding up the academics to ridicule because they abandoned the Turing Test. Why did they abandon the Turing Test. Will, according to the filty academic, it's because: ""The Turing test is not very useful for many A.I. scientists today because they work on projects that have nothing to do with human linguistic performance."

So, the respectable AI people aren't working with the Turing Test because they aren't working with linguistics. Gosh, that seems fairly reasonable to me. I mean, I suppose it's possible that the entire AI academic community, en masse, chose to boycott a hack contest run by an East Coast elite who started the contest because "He's a hedonist who thinks work is an abomination and sloth is our greatest virtue. He got interested in A.I. because he hoped the day would come when robots and A.I.'s could do all the work and people could play all the time." The rich kid wants to play so those damn academics better make me a robot who can bake me a pie. But I digress....

The contest focuses on a field that has been abandoned by current AI research. Why? Because we can't make it work yet. The hardware isn't there yet. So we're doing other stuff. Look at the progress of chess programs, mission-critical systems, UT bots. AI is getting better. A souped-up ELIZA isn't going to confirm that. They attack the AI people for not producing better entries for a contest the AI people don't find valid. Loebner and the author, who are obviously in the same camp, are trying to have it both ways. Bullshit. If Salon wants my money to stay afloat, they'll have to do better than this.

~Chazzf

Re:Are we supposed to take Salon seriously?

[Goldsmith]

Did you read the whole article?

I had the same opinions throughout the first section, but at the end, he points out that the Turing test will likely be won by a program which is no smarter "than a bucket of hammers," and that real AI will come from the academic research.

The main reason he likes Loebner is that he approves of his support of hobbyists and underdogs. At the same time he compares him to (the literary version of) Don Quixote, who was dangerous, silly, unreasonable and idiotic.

At the same time, he appears to dislike the standoffish nature of the academics who appear unable to come to grips with the slow development in their field... whatever, I can understand that. Ivory tower science is not something I'm a big fan of, and I'm a scientest.

My main problem with the article is that this all comes out in the last page. Kind of like "surprise, this is what I REALLY think".

Better than blocking... maybe.

[macX_rocks]

A friend of mine lives in Denver and his phone has a service provided by Qwest (I think he got the service when they were still USWest) that plays a message stating that "this number does not accept solicitations... if you're a solicitor hang up and put this # on do-not-call list, otherwise press 1..." His phone doesn't ring unless the caller presses 1. There is also some legislation in Colorado that states, with a system like that, any solicitor who presses 1 to go through anyway can be sued for something like $10k per incident. My friend tells me there have been very few times when a solicitor comes through (where he then mentions the possible fine and they hang up abruptly).

I wonder why there aren't more phone companies offering such a service and why more states don't back up the disturbances with hefty fines. Maybe the telemarketers' lobbyists are lining pockets... maybe(?).

Re:Er...

[pseudonymouse]

I heard there was a new thing where they call and leave an advertisement on your answering machine. I don't know if that's true, although I have received a fully automated telemarketing call (i.e. the calling party was a recording).

And exactly how profitable would it be to spend $2700/seat for a system to telemarket to people who are going to great lengths to avoid telemarketers? Isn't that paying extra to reach the least profitable demographic? I can see collection agencies being interested, but telemarketers?