Copyright misuse has such sweeping legal implications that an appeals court will be reluctant to apply it to a common movie industry practice.
Would an appeals court be more concerned about the 'legal implications' aspect or the 'movie industry practice' aspect? I suspect the latter. And even if it is 'sweeping legal implications', I translate this as 'we've let copyright abuse continue, grow, and thrive for too long because we were lazy, corrupt, or disinterested. Now even we can see that it needs to be reined in, but we're scared senseless of the shitstorm that would result from pulling down the festering dungheap we've allowed to grow so high, so we'll continue to do nothing'.
All well and good to say "horse and buggy" jobs disappeared 100 years ago, you will be fine.
There are two key differences that will make a stark impact:
1. Lowered standard of education
2. Faster pace of technological advancement - demanding constant upskilling
I would argue that there is a third difference - concentration of wealth. Yes, that has also happened before. But now, the most common and most powerful corrective mechanism - revolution - is ever more unlikely and ever less possible. It's more unlikely because all those 'factory drones' you mention below are so thoroughly distracted and mollified by 'bread-and-circuses' so omnipresent that they might as well be the air we breathe. It's less possible because of the concentration of wealth, which is another way of saying 'concentration of power'. Today, any attempt at revolution that truly threatens the oligarchy, will be discovered and disarmed before it gets anywhere near to being executed.
The problem here is that our edumacation factories have been designed to create good factory drones, and to help some rise above and get the tools to lead. We are all becoming leaders in our own right with automation. Delegation is a challenge where by the time everything has been explained, you are faster to have done it yourself, unless of course, if you have seen the movie before.
That 'problem' you mention was in fact put in place as a solution, on this continent by the industrialists, and in earlier times in other places by various entities that strove for power and worked hard to enforce their own visions of social order. Look up John Taylor Gatto's 'The Underground History of American Education' - it's now available as a free PDF download. I'm quite sure the current 'powers that be' still consider the education system as their own personal mechanism for continuing to subjugate the populace and justifying it as noblesse oblige.
Every 5 years, the reset button is pressed, and everything starts from scratch again. Although the educational frameworks are changing, it will take at least another 30-40 years for that change to realistically bear fruit.
I also think those optimists who expect our system to magically evolve ever more job opportunities are missing a key point. Our current economy assumes an open system with limitless room and resources for growth. It's not, and we're slowly being forced to admit that in the face of global warming, resource scarcity, ocean pollution that we may never be able to reverse, and increasing extinction of both plants and animals. The physical realities of the world over the next century will make mere survival the top priority; everyone will be too busy just surviving to think about 'jobs', perhaps even the point-one-percenters.
They have big, expensive heat presses that seal a lid on top of it so you can carry it in a plastic bag and later puncture that lid with the included plastic straw. This move completely destroys their business model, and they have invested heavily in the equipment.
It doesn't have to destroy it. With a slight cultural shift, people will get into the habit of carrying their own re-usable straws with the necessary profile on the piercing end to puncture the lid. And the drink stands will sell the straws, at a price high enough to strongly encourage re-use.
Maybe instead of that they'll extend their backdooring practices to their new eSIM technology. Although there's probably no need - the concept sounds like a hacker's wet dream even without any of Intel's hubris-driven on-purpose security holes.
... this testing does not irritate or harm the robot.
To a surprising extent, the language we use is a determiner of both our conceptions, and our perceptions. We really need to break this habit of attributing feelings, (e.g. "irritation"), to robots. Even the choice of the word "harm" over something more neutral, (such as "damage"), reinforces a kind of magical thinking akin to religious belief - and we can't afford to indulge in this particular brand of magical thinking. Especially not when the entity isn't a figment of our imaginations, (such as a god), but rather a tangible member of a class of objects moving faster and faster towards autonomy and uncontrolled, independent action. We need to regard these things as attack dogs; we need to keep them leashed, and we must never come to regard them as pets or, even worse, family members.
We should also be crafting laws around any technology that might successfully masquerade as human. Any such devices should be required to display prominent and unambiguous indications that they aren't human, and penalties for not meeting that requirement should be swift and harsh. We're building a minefield around ourselves, and we need to wake up and start marking clear paths out of it.
I'm not understanding how this works better than a $0.50 mirror.
I'm not understanding how it can be as reliable as a $0.50 mirror. Also, if one of my mirrors breaks, the remaining two can partially cover the deficiency. If the electronics goes down, I'm blind to what's behind me without looking over my shoulder.
Then there's the whole hackability aspect. I can see the headlines right now.
... 3. "Bing" is the famous and most liked character of Friends...
Then they should have called it "Chandler". They could have used that instead of Cortana. Not only would they be differentiating themselves by having a male voice for their assistant, they would also have a single name by which to call all of their assistant's functions, just as Google does.
In any case, to say that Microsoft has improved its reputation means that this CNET contributor is either completely out of touch with current reality, or is being paid to shill for Microsoft.
Not to mention that their market share figures seem inflated. I can't speak for other countries - but if their share in Canada was as high as 17%, surely I'd know at least one person who uses Bing. I don't. Besides, their OS defaults to Edge or IE, and THOSE default to Bing. So even if their figures were true, that would hardly be an indication of an improved reputation. In fact, it seems rather embarrassing.
Maybe those figures aren't based on search traffic volume. Maybe they're based on the number of people who use Bing at least once during a year, as a percentage of the total number of search engine users in that year. That's the only way I can see those percentages being anything other than pure fiction.
The downside is when I visit friends or co-workers who use "air freshener", it's like having to endure a teargas attack. And going anywhere near the soap aisle in the grocery store is a total non-starter. X.X
We've gone mostly unscented in our house too. After my wife's spontaneous pneumothorax almost a decade ago, most scents cause her discomfort, and many will trigger a debilitating asthma attack. Like you, she can't go down the household cleaning aisle in the supermarket. and she can no longer pump her own gas.
I'm OK with the cleaning aisle, but the scented laundry products that many people uses make it very uncomfortable to be within 5 to 10 feet of them. Also going outside when one of our neighbours is drying clothes that have been washed in that crap is just disgusting. And don't get me started on perfume and cologne. Especially when I get it on my hands while I'm pumping gas, or taste it on my bagel because some unthinking git at the donut shop just HAD to 'smell good' while preparing my fucking breakfast.
I always laugh at the air freshener commercials that mention people being 'nose blind'. Guess what, assholes - the crap you push is probably responsible for the vast majority of 'nose blindness' in the developed world.
Primarily? No. But I enjoy gaming. And my privacy. What now?
Your privacy? That was pretty much gone loooong ago. Now they've come to take away ANY control you may have left over your computing experience, so they can subject you to constant propaganda-laced exhortations to conform, to consume, to rent-to-not-own, and to trust your entire to the Cloud and the corporations. In general, they're doing everything possible to get you to give up your autonomy and your ability to think critically. They haven't achieved that goal yet, but they are getting ever closer, and the writing's on the wall. But go on ahead and enjoy those games! Or, alternatively, you might consider that having to use Windows makes those games cost WAY more than the sticker price. Like, maybe, your soul...
Somebody could make quite a bit of money selling 'Ajit Pai' string puppets, along with recordings of the advertising jingles of the big ISP's. "Make the FCC dance just like Verizon does" is one possible advertising slogan for the next fad toy. I'll bet Amazon could sell truckloads of them - especially if the toy comes with instructions for making the puppet bend over and spread its cheeks.
How does the algorithm do with drunk people? Can it tell the difference between them and children?
I was wondering about something similar, but my thoughts turned to those with Parkinson's, MS, nerve damage, or any of the probably dozens of other physical conditions which might make a responsible adult seem like a child to this latest algorithm du jour. Tech "developers" need to Just. Fucking. STOP! with all the excessively-clever-yet-pointless-and-inconvenient minor "improvements" to everything that has or might have a GUI. Go INVENT something fer chrissake, instead of doing the technological equivalent of figuring out how to determine the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin!
and the team that was losing broke out the old-time straw brooms. Not because they're better in any way, but because they tend to leave debris on the ice that might mess up subsequent shots, aka 'the other team'. It was a bit controversial and the sportscasters discussed the strategy, which is how I knew what was going on. I'm guessing those old brooms have now been outlawed.
I should have absolutely no trouble at all being invited into the brotherhood of bots. I frequently spend 4 or 5 minutes trying to prove that I'm a human, and I don't always succeed.
The folks at Google who infected the Web with reCaptcha should DIAF.
If Zuckerberg wants that much information in that much detail, then I assume he's at least contemplating running for office. Given his fortune, his profile, and the phenomenon of having Trump as president, then I also assume that the Zuck has his eye on the Presidency.
We've had celebrities in politics before - Reagan, Franken, Schwarzenegger, et al - but Trump really broke the mold by aiming for, and landing, the highest office in the land without having held any lower office. Recently there were rumors that Oprah might make a grab for that particular brass ring. She said she had no plans to do so, but the idea of having Presidents with no prior political experience seems to be in the air now. Even though Zuckerberg isn't quite a celebrity in the usual sense, he has a pretty high profile. So I'm left wondering if he might try to make a beeline for the Oval Office.
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I think it's exciting that the political same-old-same-old, the glad-handing and back-scratching and favour trading and partisanship and all that goes along with them, might be challenged and forced to change at least a little bit for the better. On the other hand, the only people who can afford to even attempt a short circuiting of the normal political process are, like Zuckerberg, so rich and successful, and so out of touch with everyday reality, that they might be worse than the back-biting politicians who clawed their way up the ranks.
Streamtuner and Streamripper is the answer for music on USB memory sticks and SD cards. For the extremely lazy with 24/7 online capability, there is https://www.internet-radio.com...
Sure - if you have tin ears and the crappy audio systems that usually go along with them. But some of us actually listen to music as a primary activity, rather than just having it on as party music or background noise. For that kind of listening, streaming quality just doesn't cut it.
And for those of you who insist that 320K mp3's are indistinguishable from lossless, I can short-circuit that whole conversation with one word - "gapless". Unless the mp3 is a single file containing a whole album, then classical music, live albums, and other albums in which the music plays continuously across track boundaries, sound like shit no matter how good the inherent sound quality is. Flac files play as gapless, and mp3 files don't - unless you're talking about some cheesy crossfade that actually makes things worse. So for a lot of the music some of us listen to, mp3 would be unacceptable even if the inherent sound quality was indistinguishable from lossless.
The patent broadly describes two techniques. The first calls for transmitting a snippet of a commercial to Echo devices before it airs. Then the Echo can compare live commands to the acoustic fingerprint of the snippet to determine whether the commands are authentic. The second tactic describes how a commercial itself could transmit an inaudible acoustic signal to tell Alexa to ignore its wake word.
'Acoustic fingerprint' comparison is used all the time to search sites like Youtube for rights violations. And transmitting an audible signal to tell an electronic device to do or not do something has been around for decades. So these examples of prior art are suddenly new and patentable 'because Alexa'? Gimme a break! Can there be any better indication of how thoroughly the patent system is broken?
Providing a free software upgrade vs scamming people out of money for absolutely nothing? Yeah totally comparable.
Providing a forced and unwanted "free" software upgrade which is in many ways a downgrade, vs scamming people out of money for absolutely nothing? Yeah, you're right - they're not all that comparable. The scammers who only take your money are a finite drain on your resources, while the lingering pain, privacy invasion, and theft of your time represented by Windows 10 just goes on and on and on...
With all the bullshit Microsoft pulled to both manipulate and coerce users into upgrading to their rented-spyware-posing-as-an-OS, this is really rich. OTOH I kinda get it, from the organized-crime / extortionist view that says "get offa my turf, punk!"
The implicit assumption in TFS is that EVERYONE is on Facebook. I'm not, and many people here are not. Just stop with the BS Kool-Aid dreams that suggest being plugged into FB is as natural and necessary as having air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat.
Slashdot Mirror
I've heard of "impacted feces", but never "impacted people"...
Copyright misuse has such sweeping legal implications that an appeals court will be reluctant to apply it to a common movie industry practice.
Would an appeals court be more concerned about the 'legal implications' aspect or the 'movie industry practice' aspect? I suspect the latter. And even if it is 'sweeping legal implications', I translate this as 'we've let copyright abuse continue, grow, and thrive for too long because we were lazy, corrupt, or disinterested. Now even we can see that it needs to be reined in, but we're scared senseless of the shitstorm that would result from pulling down the festering dungheap we've allowed to grow so high, so we'll continue to do nothing'.
All well and good to say "horse and buggy" jobs disappeared 100 years ago, you will be fine. There are two key differences that will make a stark impact: 1. Lowered standard of education 2. Faster pace of technological advancement - demanding constant upskilling
I would argue that there is a third difference - concentration of wealth. Yes, that has also happened before. But now, the most common and most powerful corrective mechanism - revolution - is ever more unlikely and ever less possible. It's more unlikely because all those 'factory drones' you mention below are so thoroughly distracted and mollified by 'bread-and-circuses' so omnipresent that they might as well be the air we breathe. It's less possible because of the concentration of wealth, which is another way of saying 'concentration of power'. Today, any attempt at revolution that truly threatens the oligarchy, will be discovered and disarmed before it gets anywhere near to being executed.
The problem here is that our edumacation factories have been designed to create good factory drones, and to help some rise above and get the tools to lead. We are all becoming leaders in our own right with automation. Delegation is a challenge where by the time everything has been explained, you are faster to have done it yourself, unless of course, if you have seen the movie before.
That 'problem' you mention was in fact put in place as a solution, on this continent by the industrialists, and in earlier times in other places by various entities that strove for power and worked hard to enforce their own visions of social order. Look up John Taylor Gatto's 'The Underground History of American Education' - it's now available as a free PDF download. I'm quite sure the current 'powers that be' still consider the education system as their own personal mechanism for continuing to subjugate the populace and justifying it as noblesse oblige.
Every 5 years, the reset button is pressed, and everything starts from scratch again. Although the educational frameworks are changing, it will take at least another 30-40 years for that change to realistically bear fruit.
I also think those optimists who expect our system to magically evolve ever more job opportunities are missing a key point. Our current economy assumes an open system with limitless room and resources for growth. It's not, and we're slowly being forced to admit that in the face of global warming, resource scarcity, ocean pollution that we may never be able to reverse, and increasing extinction of both plants and animals. The physical realities of the world over the next century will make mere survival the top priority; everyone will be too busy just surviving to think about 'jobs', perhaps even the point-one-percenters.
Doh! I totally missed the 'disposable cup' part of the equation. Please excuse my Homer moment - it's been a long day...
They have big, expensive heat presses that seal a lid on top of it so you can carry it in a plastic bag and later puncture that lid with the included plastic straw. This move completely destroys their business model, and they have invested heavily in the equipment.
It doesn't have to destroy it. With a slight cultural shift, people will get into the habit of carrying their own re-usable straws with the necessary profile on the piercing end to puncture the lid. And the drink stands will sell the straws, at a price high enough to strongly encourage re-use.
When will they be shipping non-backdoored CPUs?
Maybe instead of that they'll extend their backdooring practices to their new eSIM technology. Although there's probably no need - the concept sounds like a hacker's wet dream even without any of Intel's hubris-driven on-purpose security holes.
... this testing does not irritate or harm the robot.
To a surprising extent, the language we use is a determiner of both our conceptions, and our perceptions. We really need to break this habit of attributing feelings, (e.g. "irritation"), to robots. Even the choice of the word "harm" over something more neutral, (such as "damage"), reinforces a kind of magical thinking akin to religious belief - and we can't afford to indulge in this particular brand of magical thinking. Especially not when the entity isn't a figment of our imaginations, (such as a god), but rather a tangible member of a class of objects moving faster and faster towards autonomy and uncontrolled, independent action. We need to regard these things as attack dogs; we need to keep them leashed, and we must never come to regard them as pets or, even worse, family members.
We should also be crafting laws around any technology that might successfully masquerade as human. Any such devices should be required to display prominent and unambiguous indications that they aren't human, and penalties for not meeting that requirement should be swift and harsh. We're building a minefield around ourselves, and we need to wake up and start marking clear paths out of it.
I'm not understanding how this works better than a $0.50 mirror.
I'm not understanding how it can be as reliable as a $0.50 mirror. Also, if one of my mirrors breaks, the remaining two can partially cover the deficiency. If the electronics goes down, I'm blind to what's behind me without looking over my shoulder.
Then there's the whole hackability aspect. I can see the headlines right now.
... 3. "Bing" is the famous and most liked character of Friends ...
Then they should have called it "Chandler". They could have used that instead of Cortana. Not only would they be differentiating themselves by having a male voice for their assistant, they would also have a single name by which to call all of their assistant's functions, just as Google does.
In any case, to say that Microsoft has improved its reputation means that this CNET contributor is either completely out of touch with current reality, or is being paid to shill for Microsoft.
Not to mention that their market share figures seem inflated. I can't speak for other countries - but if their share in Canada was as high as 17%, surely I'd know at least one person who uses Bing. I don't. Besides, their OS defaults to Edge or IE, and THOSE default to Bing. So even if their figures were true, that would hardly be an indication of an improved reputation. In fact, it seems rather embarrassing.
Maybe those figures aren't based on search traffic volume. Maybe they're based on the number of people who use Bing at least once during a year, as a percentage of the total number of search engine users in that year. That's the only way I can see those percentages being anything other than pure fiction.
The downside is when I visit friends or co-workers who use "air freshener", it's like having to endure a teargas attack. And going anywhere near the soap aisle in the grocery store is a total non-starter. X.X
We've gone mostly unscented in our house too. After my wife's spontaneous pneumothorax almost a decade ago, most scents cause her discomfort, and many will trigger a debilitating asthma attack. Like you, she can't go down the household cleaning aisle in the supermarket. and she can no longer pump her own gas.
I'm OK with the cleaning aisle, but the scented laundry products that many people uses make it very uncomfortable to be within 5 to 10 feet of them. Also going outside when one of our neighbours is drying clothes that have been washed in that crap is just disgusting. And don't get me started on perfume and cologne. Especially when I get it on my hands while I'm pumping gas, or taste it on my bagel because some unthinking git at the donut shop just HAD to 'smell good' while preparing my fucking breakfast.
I always laugh at the air freshener commercials that mention people being 'nose blind'. Guess what, assholes - the crap you push is probably responsible for the vast majority of 'nose blindness' in the developed world.
Primarily? No. But I enjoy gaming. And my privacy. What now?
Your privacy? That was pretty much gone loooong ago. Now they've come to take away ANY control you may have left over your computing experience, so they can subject you to constant propaganda-laced exhortations to conform, to consume, to rent-to-not-own, and to trust your entire to the Cloud and the corporations. In general, they're doing everything possible to get you to give up your autonomy and your ability to think critically. They haven't achieved that goal yet, but they are getting ever closer, and the writing's on the wall. But go on ahead and enjoy those games! Or, alternatively, you might consider that having to use Windows makes those games cost WAY more than the sticker price. Like, maybe, your soul ...
You can make it secure, or you can make it so the government has access. You can't have both, and it's largely fascists and assholes who demand it.
One minor quibble - I think you meant to say "fascists and other assholes". Otherwise, the reference to 'assholes' is redundant.
Somebody could make quite a bit of money selling 'Ajit Pai' string puppets, along with recordings of the advertising jingles of the big ISP's. "Make the FCC dance just like Verizon does" is one possible advertising slogan for the next fad toy. I'll bet Amazon could sell truckloads of them - especially if the toy comes with instructions for making the puppet bend over and spread its cheeks.
How does the algorithm do with drunk people? Can it tell the difference between them and children?
I was wondering about something similar, but my thoughts turned to those with Parkinson's, MS, nerve damage, or any of the probably dozens of other physical conditions which might make a responsible adult seem like a child to this latest algorithm du jour. Tech "developers" need to Just. Fucking. STOP! with all the excessively-clever-yet-pointless-and-inconvenient minor "improvements" to everything that has or might have a GUI. Go INVENT something fer chrissake, instead of doing the technological equivalent of figuring out how to determine the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin!
and the team that was losing broke out the old-time straw brooms. Not because they're better in any way, but because they tend to leave debris on the ice that might mess up subsequent shots, aka 'the other team'. It was a bit controversial and the sportscasters discussed the strategy, which is how I knew what was going on. I'm guessing those old brooms have now been outlawed.
I should have absolutely no trouble at all being invited into the brotherhood of bots. I frequently spend 4 or 5 minutes trying to prove that I'm a human, and I don't always succeed.
The folks at Google who infected the Web with reCaptcha should DIAF.
Third party, as in: Alexa, can you tell Siri to...
Laughing out loud! Dammit, where are my mod points when I need them?
If Zuckerberg wants that much information in that much detail, then I assume he's at least contemplating running for office. Given his fortune, his profile, and the phenomenon of having Trump as president, then I also assume that the Zuck has his eye on the Presidency.
We've had celebrities in politics before - Reagan, Franken, Schwarzenegger, et al - but Trump really broke the mold by aiming for, and landing, the highest office in the land without having held any lower office. Recently there were rumors that Oprah might make a grab for that particular brass ring. She said she had no plans to do so, but the idea of having Presidents with no prior political experience seems to be in the air now. Even though Zuckerberg isn't quite a celebrity in the usual sense, he has a pretty high profile. So I'm left wondering if he might try to make a beeline for the Oval Office.
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, I think it's exciting that the political same-old-same-old, the glad-handing and back-scratching and favour trading and partisanship and all that goes along with them, might be challenged and forced to change at least a little bit for the better. On the other hand, the only people who can afford to even attempt a short circuiting of the normal political process are, like Zuckerberg, so rich and successful, and so out of touch with everyday reality, that they might be worse than the back-biting politicians who clawed their way up the ranks.
Streamtuner and Streamripper is the answer for music on USB memory sticks and SD cards. For the extremely lazy with 24/7 online capability, there is https://www.internet-radio.com...
Sure - if you have tin ears and the crappy audio systems that usually go along with them. But some of us actually listen to music as a primary activity, rather than just having it on as party music or background noise. For that kind of listening, streaming quality just doesn't cut it.
And for those of you who insist that 320K mp3's are indistinguishable from lossless, I can short-circuit that whole conversation with one word - "gapless". Unless the mp3 is a single file containing a whole album, then classical music, live albums, and other albums in which the music plays continuously across track boundaries, sound like shit no matter how good the inherent sound quality is. Flac files play as gapless, and mp3 files don't - unless you're talking about some cheesy crossfade that actually makes things worse. So for a lot of the music some of us listen to, mp3 would be unacceptable even if the inherent sound quality was indistinguishable from lossless.
The patent broadly describes two techniques. The first calls for transmitting a snippet of a commercial to Echo devices before it airs. Then the Echo can compare live commands to the acoustic fingerprint of the snippet to determine whether the commands are authentic. The second tactic describes how a commercial itself could transmit an inaudible acoustic signal to tell Alexa to ignore its wake word.
'Acoustic fingerprint' comparison is used all the time to search sites like Youtube for rights violations. And transmitting an audible signal to tell an electronic device to do or not do something has been around for decades. So these examples of prior art are suddenly new and patentable 'because Alexa'? Gimme a break! Can there be any better indication of how thoroughly the patent system is broken?
then you wear machines, and then ...? Then you serve machines.
-- John Brunner
I always thought that last part could just as well have read "Then you become machines".
Providing a free software upgrade vs scamming people out of money for absolutely nothing? Yeah totally comparable.
Providing a forced and unwanted "free" software upgrade which is in many ways a downgrade, vs scamming people out of money for absolutely nothing? Yeah, you're right - they're not all that comparable. The scammers who only take your money are a finite drain on your resources, while the lingering pain, privacy invasion, and theft of your time represented by Windows 10 just goes on and on and on...
With all the bullshit Microsoft pulled to both manipulate and coerce users into upgrading to their rented-spyware-posing-as-an-OS, this is really rich. OTOH I kinda get it, from the organized-crime / extortionist view that says "get offa my turf, punk!"
The implicit assumption in TFS is that EVERYONE is on Facebook. I'm not, and many people here are not. Just stop with the BS Kool-Aid dreams that suggest being plugged into FB is as natural and necessary as having air to breathe, water to drink, and food to eat.