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User: pinkwarhol

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  1. Re:FedBizOpps on Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying · · Score: 1

    thanks, but I'm not finding anything.

    however, a google search turns up that, whatever the grant was, the money's being used for a bunch of privacy-related research, and a lot of the fruits-of-research are publicly available.

    does this mean that army research contracts are like senate bills - a list of fundings/grants awarded as a group?

  2. Re:Where Are the Recall Rates? on Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying · · Score: 1

    Acquisti (NSF grant) had almost $400,000 for his last project, also 'privacy' related.
    http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0713361
    (the more current info about this grant isn't up on nsf.gov yet)

    anyone know how to find army contracting info?

  3. Re:Where Are the Recall Rates? on Cloud-Powered Facial Recognition Is Terrifying · · Score: 2

    Right now I bet if you were to snap pictures of 10,000 people, you would incorrectly classify at least 100 of them...

    thats only a 1% error... is that supposed to make me feel more comfortable? Sounds like the technology works pretty well, pragmatically...
    Anyway, sounds mildly-moderately threatening to general privacy. Who's paying for this?

    FTFA, grants from:
    National Science Foundation, grant # 0713361
    US Army Research Office, contract # DAAD190210389

    How much?

  4. Re:And thus the gullible managers who ignored IT.. on Amazon Outage Shows Limits of Failover 'Zones' · · Score: 1

    this reminds me of pynchon lyrics... it's perfectly in the spirit.

  5. Re:Scarier is wiretap on White House Wants New Copyright Law Crackdown · · Score: 1

    First of all, "That is why in certain areas where the law is framed in terms of "consumer protection" actual individuals have no standing to claim damages or bring lawsuits against "offending parties"." what? Do you have examples or anything to bring this sentence into some kind of context, instead of just anti-corporate ranting? (not that I'm against anti-corporate ranting!)

    I would agree that a major difference between illegal streaming and counterfeit distribution is the consumer as victim. But I'm making the case that it is easy to define illegal streaming as distributing counterfeit goods - in a legal/legislative sense - ESPECIALLY because both political parties in the US serve the wrong masters (namely corporations) . As I said in a different thread in this article, a main purpose for the existence of governments is to protect commerce (er... the ONLY purpose for the current US government), and I would argue that anti-counterfeit laws exist and are mainly for the protection of producers, not consumers.

  6. Re:Civil law, not criminal law. on White House Wants New Copyright Law Crackdown · · Score: 1

    From wikipedia/copyright_infringement: "Article 61 of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) requires that signatory countries establish criminal procedures and penalties in cases of "willful trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy on a commercial scale".[4]"

    Whatever your personal feelings on copyright enforcement, a primary purpose of governments is to protect commerce. As the TRIPS quotation shows, governments besides the US have agreed that copyright piracy is a criminal offense.

    Although I do think the "commercial scale" clause is an important one.

  7. Re:Scarier is wiretap on White House Wants New Copyright Law Crackdown · · Score: 1

    From TFA: "Under federal law, wiretaps may only be conducted in investigations of serious crimes..."

    In most countries, manufacturing and selling counterfeit goods ARE series crimes, and considering that many sites that stream media-content (legally or otherwise) make money through advertising, it makes sense to define illegal streaming as distributing counterfeit goods. Although wiretapping and felonies are scary enforcement tactics, why should "counterfeit" content distribution online be any different than the 'real world' version?

  8. Um... on Research Inches Toward Processor-Specific Malware · · Score: 1




    Glad to hear someone's working on this...

  9. Re:This has always been one of my gripes on Introducing Students To the World of Open Source · · Score: 1

    loose write-it-as-we-go-along specification

    sounds horrible...
    don't you just end up with a hodge-podge of functionality, with no unity to the whole at the end?

  10. Re:This has always been one of my gripes on Introducing Students To the World of Open Source · · Score: 1

    I'm a CS student at ODU (virginia, US) and we have (almost) exactly this as our "capstone" CS course. It's two semesters: the first is software specs, development timeline, funding, that sort of thing; and the second is a kind of semi-implementation. As far as I know, the implementation is done by the same group of students though.

    I can see a benefit of a different group doing the implementation, though - when using someone else's specs, it makes you aware of deficiencies in communication, both in the to-be-impemented specs and your personally written ones.

    I have to say that I'm not really looking forward to this class. I probably won't be that interested in the group project, and the whole focus seems to be business-oriented... and while I want to develop software (that I'm interested in), I don't want to deal with the business end so much. Yes, INB4 comments about my naivety and such, but what is your advice on what I should try to get out of (focus on) in this dream-class of yours?

  11. Re:All the way to the insane asylum. on Truthy Project Uncovers Political Astroturfing On Twitter · · Score: 1

    We have to find some form of currency that is tied to the actual value of the goods in the market.

    If you did some research, you'd find at least a couple of alternatives (not saying you don't have any in mind). Unfortunately, they kinda break the current corporate/global system...

  12. Re:This. on Beware the Garden of Steven · · Score: 1

    The moment it becomes even difficult to do my daily job on a Mac is the day I go to Linux permanently...

    I whole-heartedly concur. I have an imac as my desktop, basically so it's reliable and I don't have to mess with it, and run linux mint on an asus netbook. I run linux because a) I'm a CS student, and running *nix is a valuable educational experience, and b) it was a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a macbook when I began to need a laptop. After a year or two of experience, I think I would feel comfortable switching to a linux distro on the desktop, and I would have the ability to do that with minimal hassle.

    However, that's the main difference between most ./ 'ers and the average mac user. If all apple products became locked down like the iphone/ipad, a disgruntled average user would be a lot more *locked* into just having to deal with it, because of the hassle/cost involved in the move to a different OS and/or hardware. Just because it's a viable option for hybrid mac/linux users doesn't mean that Apple won't switch to this type of software/hardware model out of fear that there will be a sudden mass exodus from OSX.

  13. the best link I have.... on Benoit Mandelbrot Dies At 85 · · Score: 1

    http://thinkorthwim.com/2010/02/12/mathematical-porn

    if you take the time to watch till the end, its worth your while....

  14. Re:Why civil? Fraud is a crime on Judge Approves $100 Million Dell Settlement · · Score: 1

    Fraud IS a felony... and *that's* why it's different than 'blatant theft'. I'm wondering the same thing OP.

  15. Re:Why civil? Fraud is a crime on Judge Approves $100 Million Dell Settlement · · Score: 1

    When I "steal" digital music (and get caught) I too must pay a hefty fine... with no jail time. Why should Dell be treated differently?

  16. Re:Sick of lawsuits on Baumgartner's Daredevil Parachute Jump From Space Put On Hold · · Score: 1

    >>can we get a public vetting vote?

    In a day and age where almost everyone forms their opinion based on PR, media spin, and un-verified internet article claims, this idea sounds just as ridiculous.

    C'mon, a platform of "Change"? Really, that's a political platform? (and I'm NOT particularly anti-Obama)

    How did this get modded to 'Insightful'?

  17. the easy way vs. the hard on Word Processors — One Writer's Further Retreat · · Score: 1

    I've noticed that many people often seem almost personally offended by others explicitly choosing to not use some popular modern technology...

    Most people don't understand Luddite-type choices. We (Americans at least) live in a culture with an emphasis on automative (er...sic) technology to "make life easier". And while the argument is often made that the omnipresent devices and inventions that make our lives easier are time-saving technologies that allow us to trade work for more free time to spend on family-and-friends/leisure activities, I feel that they mostly just allow us to live in a kind of 'automatic pilot'. By this I mean that "the hard way", which often takes longer and requires more of our attention or labor, forces us into making deliberate and conscious decisions about the hows and whys of our activities. I value this 'deliberateness' because it makes me live in the present moment, fully aware.

    For example, I have been riding a bicycle (also fixed...but that's neither here nor there) 9 miles to school daily, and around town with trips of similar distance for a couple of years now, and yet still have friends that know it's my personal choice try to pick me up and give me rides. Sometimes when the bike transporation comes up in conversation I feel like I have to tell people that I DO own a car, I just choose to ride the bike, and not solely or even primarily for monetary reasons. What it comes down to for me is that my lifestyle and feel form my personal world/community context have been fundamentally transformed by this discipline. When I ride I am much more aware of the area I'm traversing, the people I'm passing, the energy it takes to get me from here to there. (which has really changed my relationship to food.) And when I do drive, it's not an automatic activity that I take for granted. Instead I'm aware of the costs, environmentally, monetarily, and otherwise, that I almost never thought about when I drove as my primary means of transportation.

    This is just one example, but if you try something similar - taking the hard way instead of the easier technology-assisted way - I believe this aspect of 'deliberateness' will become very apparent.

    (and yeah, I understand a bicycle is a piece of technology.)