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Microsoft To Ban 'Offensive Language' From Skype, Xbox, Office and Other Services (csoonline.com)
According to Microsoft's new Terms of Services agreement, you could get banned for "offensive language," resulting in the termination of your Gold Membership and/or any Microsoft account balances. The changes go into effect on May 1. CSO Online reports: [I]f you and a significant other are getting hot and heavy via Skype, you better watch your language and any nudity because that, too, can get you banned. The ban hammer could also fall if Cortana is listening at the wrong moment or if documents and files hosted on Microsoft services violate Microsoft's amended terms. But how would Microsoft even know if you had truly been "offensive?" Well, that part falls under Code of Conduct Enforcement, which states, "When investigating alleged violations of these Terms, Microsoft reserves the right to review Your Content in order to resolve the issue." Microsoft did add, "However, we cannot monitor the entire Services and make no attempt to do so." I'm not sure that will make you feel better, as another portion states that Microsoft "may also block delivery of a communication (like email, file sharing or instant message) to or from the Services in an effort to enforce these Terms or we may remove or refuse to publish Your Content for any reason."
Really, who uses offensive language on Skype?
The web was built on porn; remove it at your peril. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
What is offensive is subjective... and some times culture based.
To me the word Microsoft is extremely offensive. So they should block that one right away!
What business would risk putting their documents on One Drive / Office with these terms?
No sane business would.
Between Windows 10 and now this, Microsoft is over for the business world. Over.
Please define "Offensive".
Audience matters. What offends one audience, won't offend another.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You can't, actually, do that on /., which rejects Cyrillic characters outright. But on most sites and with most applications you can replace the characters common between Latin and Cyrillic with those from the latter in the offensive words, and it will defeat today's filters. Of course, the censors will wise up to the technique eventually, but for now it works...
Not even your target will see it, screaming internally at his inability to call you "an asshole" in response, while enraged over your ability to use the terms like that with impunity.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So, Microsoft is admitting that they can read or watch and listen to encrypted connections. Well, with "Legal Intercept" we knew that for some time. I banned Microsoft from my PC years ago in favor of Linux (KDE Neon on Btrfs). If you don't want MS to be your nanny then its time you moved to Linux as well.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
"Cortana listening at the wrong moment"?? That's so wrong on several levels.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
There is always IRC.
What I want to know is how they plan to censor office. Am I not going to be allowed to write certain words into my office documents?
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
to not use Microsoft product.
Spam, with no content but "Hey, check this out", and a link to goatse or something stored on OneDrive. They're saying this to give themselves cover when they nuke porno-spammers.
Any online cloud storage place that lets you share links to your content is infested with this. It's absolutely rampant, along with links to virus-infected documents, images of 419 scam letters, etc. It's the latest dodge to avoid spam filters.
Now, if they actually do start playing the eavesdropping Mrs. Grundy with peoples' Skype conversations, then we have another issue. But I really doubt that's going to happen. As someone else said, it's probably going to require a complaint about the content they're hosting to trigger action.
This year marks another interesting milestone, another Linux desktop install and attempt to try to 'survive' without Windows. It's doable now, there's enough gaming choices for native Linux and plenty of emulation available to get a rich fulfilling gamer setup on Linux, at last. And in the nick of time, last fucking thing I need is my frickin' operating system telling me what I can and cannot type, look at, send and receive. Outrageous.
Still running a dual booting box, but, Windows 10 is seeing very little use now that I've got Linux taking over it's duties and doing a fine job too!
The point of posting? Try Linux. Start with Mint if you're frightened of Linux. It's plenty easy to use, as easy as Windows most of the time. Microsoft has pulled a lot of really dirty stunts over the years. This latest is the straw that breaks this camel. Done, finished. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gunna go play some SimCity 4 which runs fantastic on wine and Linux, flawless.
Real time speech to text is old tech. Just have a list of banned words, terms, names and look up the words used.
One wrong word and the account stops.
Images as files can be checksum to see if they are banned.
New images that should be reported can be automatically detected.
No more games and no desktop computer log in once that online account is detected and reported.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
With FOSTA passing they don't have much of a choice-- they're potentially liable anyway. I understand why the're hedging bets on their services.
I'm curious to see if Slashdot has to start censoring posts to avoid prosecution under FOSTA. With all the GNAA and other troll/shit-posting occurring here, it could come to where posts are delayed while they are examined for possibly-"offensive" content like libertarian/conservative views. (as if most aren't already down-modded by the 50-cent armies employed by the Left)
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
I remember when folks on Slashdot weren't convinced that every phone conversation in the US was recorded, translated to text, and the text indexed and searched for keywords in real-time. Snowden settled that argument. Seems a bit naive to assume that skype conversations don't get the same treatment - heck, if MS is doing it, it would just be part of the servers.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
the "sex trafficking" laws. There are cam girls and whatnot that sell private shows, guess what some of them use? Yea. Microsoft's enemies (Facebook/Google/Apple) helped back this bill.
There's a lot of "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN@)(*#)$*" bullshit with this. This is how free speech dies, passing laws based on knee jerks that make people, or in this instance, platforms self-censor rather than repealing the 1st amendment.
Maybe you could try inserting words into your documents and try to pass them up as typos. Sure, your cunter-arguments won't be the breasts, but at least you'll have fun.
#DeleteFacebook
Just about the only thing I wonder when I see a story like this is "How the hell is Microsoft still even in business at this point?" Who is propping them up? Isn't everyone using GNU/Linux (or Macs) now? What business is stupid enough to be using Microsoft Office or any other of their crappy software at this point? What government is so careless with their taxpayer's revenue that they can afford to waste it, squander it really, on trash software that causes more problems than it solves? Especially when there are better, free alternatives to everything Microsoft makes? The appropriate response in the future to any story having anything to do with Microsoft should be, "who?"
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
And that's why they've been unsuccessful so far, only succeeding in pissing off customers.
English isn't the only language in the world, you know.
In Romanian, "cum" is a very common set of letters and has absolutely no offensive meaning. Alone, those letters mean "how". There's also the word "precum" meaning "just like" or "similarly to".
In the Philippines, "porn" is a common part of the name. There are people called "Wanaporn", "Siriporn", "Pornsak", etc.
India has lots of names containing "Shit" in them, I had a colleague called "Sumana Shit".
I'm currently playing a mobile game which replaces "cum" in chat by stars, it's very difficult to talk to another Romanian player because of the constant "***" showing up instead of words.
Furthermore, people always find new and creative ways of slightly changing words so that a human can understand what's being said but automatic matching has no chance. "Fkc y00" or "Sk me ck" for example.
So yeah, I could say it IS rocket science. Actually, rocket science is more likely to succeed.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Progressives are *NOT* liberals.
Sorry, what I meant was "analyzed for this purpose" but my brain ate the full meaning of what I wanted to say.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
It would never work. There's an endless number of ways text can be changed to fool automatic matching, same with images. Add some fuzziness to the image in certain areas, change a letter here and a letter there and you're good.
The list of bannable words would expand so much that it would drive normal people away because they won't be able to talk to each other anymore.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
That ECHELON https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... would be so complex for any computer system ever.
It was a nice talking point by the military–industrial complex.
Now every word used is compared in real time to a ban list and the user gets removed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If you use any offensive language anywhere on or near your computer, or store files that have offensive contents, or do anything that's offensive to someone somewhere without even using a computer, Microsoft will withdraw your Windows 10 license and erase all your... I mean _their_, who are we kidding after all... files.
Yeah, this AI revolution will be so great... Only yesterday having automated nannies watching over everyone's shoulders and approving, or disapproving, their behaviour seemed like a dystopian future. Now it seems like it has become a dystopian _now_...
We could go international (until they improve the algorithms). One of the best swears is Serbian (swearing champions of Europe - Serbia, Hungary, Bulgaria), immortalized in the movie Underground where it is used against both the Nazi and the UN "peace keepers" 50 years later - "Mamku im/ti iebem fashistichku". No translation I have seen gives it justice - the official one is "fucking Fascist motherfucker(s)" but it actually is a promise/intention/desire to fuck the mothers of the fascists (swearing on mother is the ultimate offense; only old folks swear on God or disease in our part of the world).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here - it's what he says just before nutting the UN blue beret (no subs, sorry, you can watch the full version with subs - it is a great movie actually)
All Slavic languages are similar, so the "bad words" are understood by all of us. Some, like "putka" (pussy, cunt) will be recognized by (some) Westerners, like the Spaniards or the French (puta); still, imagine the hilarity in Eastern Europe around the name Vladimir Putin (only the Russians differ slightly here - "pizda" is their word - used in Lord of War for instance). Another recognized one is "hui" which is a dick and of course "eba, ebane" - to fuck.
The Hungarians are a special case. First, their language is of course very different from all (apart from Finish). They swear like crazy! They say "horse dick" with the same ease we say "shit". Hungarians laugh hysterically during the scene in Blade runner when Gaff approaches Deckard at the food joint, he calls him "hey, horse dick!". Olmos was given the task to assemble futuristic, metropolitan blended language (like in Clockwork Orange) so he came up with that :)
The Hungarans are the only ones I am aware off that blended fucking and God in a one swear - the most offensive one there translates literally as "I will fuck your Jesus".
Now, finally I have to announce that I will not be able to use any censored products, since I am genetically disadvantaged (hey, another victim category for the neo-Marxists to protect) - my four grandparents come from four different countries and three of those are the above mentioned champion swearers (the last quarter is Romanian which is not much better). So I can't help it but fuck their fascist mothers....with a horse dick ;)
You said "built" which implies in this case historic perspective. Neither Internet nor WWW was "built" on porn. Being a media, not matter what was the original purpose, it is of course immediately used for sharing various sort of crap, be it porn, be it catz, or cute babies (yes, there was a time on the Internet, when cute babies were as popular as cute pets, nowadays of course, a human degraded so much and so suddenly that the only feeling that a human being can feel looking at a picture of a cute baby is a criminal sexual desire to devour the child. O, humanity.).
"Used a lot for" != "built".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.