With an active smartphone in your pocket, you are uniquely identifiable by definition — the MAC-addresses of your WiFi and Bluetooth chips betray you. It may be just a bit more difficult to obtain the IMEI from your phone's conversations with the cell-towers. Not to decipher the context of your SMSes and voice-conversations — that'd be illegal and impractical — but simply to keep track of your movements.
Will these systems know your name? You only need to slip up once, allowing to tie your phone to your name (and your cellular provider has the link already). Perhaps more importantly, they don't need to know your name to peddle wares to you — they just need to know, where you are going with any frequency.
Customer photos aren't uploaded to said system.
As I already said, not for very long. The ever-Increasing wireless bandwidth will make real-time uploads of such images to the cloud practical... But these are not even necessary to identify you...
Also, your link implies that the cameras use local storage
Not for very long. As soon as a smart criminal or two take the recorder along with the driver's money at the end of a ride, the next generation of such cameras will be hailing "instant uploading of videos to the cloud". And the cabbies will upgrade. They are upgrading already — credit card acceptance by taxis is rising. Though cash still remains an option, that too may be on its way out.
At any rate, I can accept the opposition based on privacy — even if I still think, you are naive, if you think, paying cash in a taxi is substantially beneficial to your privacy. But anything based on the supposed "illegality" of Uber/Lyft is just nonsense.
And taxi companies are taxi companies -- they're not into selling your data to marketeering filth
Unless you turn off and disable your smart phone, when you enter a cab, tracking you personally is already easy — and will become more so, when the new generation of taxi equipment is adopted. To Uber, Lyft, or traditional taxis (as well as to any retailer, policeman, or passer-by) the WiFi and Bluetooth radios in your phone already uniquely identify you... Crap, it is already happening.
His objection (sincere or sarcastic) was not the diminishment of anonimity, but simply the alleged illegality.
they accept cash. Cash = anonymity
Not quite... Many taxi companies keep record of where each ride originated and ended. And many (most?) take at least a picture of the passenger, if not a video of him. Such video-equipment is a booming business.
Of course, Uber and others are doing it too. Get used to it — with very few exceptions, whatever can be legally perceived, can also be legally recorded...
Sane companies manage to comply with the law and provide a safe and welcoming work environment by gently discouraging contentious speech.
Maybe. This does not contradict my point, however. Which is that the "Social Justice" busybodies have found a way for the government to prosecute people saying disagreeable things — without obviously violating the letter of First Amendment, even if blatantly violating its spirit.
Even if Google, in particular, is a willing participant, and would've been doing the same things without the threat of governmental prosecution, the very existence of the threat is an outrage.
Unfortunately, none of the links you are providing support your claim — that cartoon depictions of Blacks as gorillas has contributed to their likelihood of being mistreated. Your repeated references to "Jim Crow", show your being completely misguided. Jim Crow laws were a feature of the Democrat-dominated Southern States, where former slave-owners still held power. For someone accusing the opponent of ignorance, your using "jim crow" and "racism" interchangeably is especially wrong.
Whether it is or not, you connected a watermelon-eating gorilla depicted in a cartoon with the high likelihood of a Black getting raped and/or murdered as a result of asking for police protection. It is that connection, that I find ridiculous — and which you would not (cannot!) substantiate with any actual citations.
You are welcome to cite the actual historical facts of which you find me ignorant. The above statement is offensively condescending and indicative of your lack of any specific arguments.
Yes, when these were depicted, rape, murder, lynching, & beating were all potential outcomes if blacks complained.
Citations? Citations supporting your implied claim, that such outcomes were not merely potential, but likely — and that the cartoon-depictions increased/contributed to the said likelihood.
The reality of jim crow was ugly.
Jim Crow laws are fully irrelevant to our subthread — these laws did not deny Blacks police protection, nor have the cartoons you found offensive made in the formerly Confederate states, where these laws were in effect. Please, stay on topic.
The reality of racism is ugly and violent.
It being ugly does not mean it was widespread. And it being widespread does not mean, a programmer today must apologize for his algorithm's failure to reliably distinguish between Homo Sapiens and other hominids. It certainly is a feature worth improving or a bug worth fixing, but it certainly is not a manifestation of racism or even of "insensitivity".
The more you read and hear about these problems, the more you realize, employers simply should not care about these things. Whether an engineer, a train-dispatcher, or a secretary is a racist or a feminist is irrelevant — what matters is whether or not they do a good job.
And employers do not want to care either — it is an expensive minefield, gravely dangerous no matter what you do.
However, the Illiberals laws and practices force them into policing employee conduct. Our Illiberal overlords, themselves restrained from regulating speech, manage to compel employers into such policing with the overhanging threats of prosecutions for "hostile work environment.
That is, yeah, much as we hate it, it is legal for you to say what you want to say. We can neither fine nor imprison you for saying it, sadly. But we can force your employer to fire you instead, and that's almost as good.
Thus, arguing whether or not Google "has a right" to decide what to do, is completely bogus. Whatever the personal opinions of the company's executives, their hand is forced. Forced by the busybodies, who've shredded the First Amendment.
Cisco researchers found that malware leaves recognisable traces even in encrypted traffic.
"Malware" can't be the only thing... Can the same algorithms not be used to detect bomb-making instructions, racism, and counter-revolutionary activities?
If the slight variations in temperature make 99% of hatching (identify as) female, the entire species would've died out through Ice Age, when 99% of them became males instead...
The wildest accusations made by the believers of the Global Warming is that it is only a few degrees warmer now than it was 100 years ago. If that's enough to threaten the turtles today, how did they survive the ice ages of the past?
Whether comparison with gorilla really was used to demean someone shall not play into our usage of it.
Only an obtuse idiot would allow evil racists to dictate his own vocabulary. Thatâ(TM)s one.
Back to computers, apes are very close to us both genetically and in appearance. For an algorithm to mistake specimens of the two species is not at all racist.
For an excercise, I challenge you to solve a problem thatâ(TM)s even simpler - to humans - describe, in English, how to distinguish a cat from a dog...
That gorillas and black software developers are not in the same category?
Of course, they are in a multitude of the same categories together:
mammals
hominids
omnivorous.
The above applies to all races, but the skin color adds one more common category for Blacks. Big deal.
Somehow being called a "gorilla" is deemed offensive, which is patently ridiculous. Black panthers was fine, but gorilla is bad? Seriously? And because it is considered bad — irrationally — by someone, we can't have Google's image-recognition to work — they without special-casing? And they must continue to apologize for something?
If there are reason to believe criminal acts are happening and people refuse to co-operate with legal requests the material can and will be confiscated. It isn't punishment nor harassment - it's called an investigation.
Sure. But what Opportunist proposed is the deliberate confiscation of the suspected computers. Every time, multiple times:
We'll take all the computers in your office. No evidence? Guess we'll return next week when you bought new equipment.
That is abuse of process — Opportunist suggests, the weekly confiscations of the new equipment be used as punishment because the prosecutors can not prove any actual wrongdoing.
It never cease to amaze me that people don't understand basics and instead push forward legal arguments that aren't generally even internally consistent.
It never ceases to amaze me, how people illiterate in multiple senses of the word can still live seemingly fulfilling lives and are not only allowed outside without minders, but make Internet-postings even on sites purporting to attract intelligence.
Whether or not Uber is breaking laws, those laws should not exist. If I can give you a ride, I can also ask you for money — and we both can use the Internet to arrange the meeting and the payment-transaction. No one is forced to work for Uber and no one is compelled to use them either.
FairTest, a Boston-based organization that has been pushing back against America's testing regime since 1985, announced that the number of colleges that are test-optional has now surpassed 1,000
Whether or not they should, the reason the can do this is the absence of governmental control of the admission policies.
That government is best, which governs least. We all better remember this principle next time we think something we like ought to be mandatory or something we dislike — banned.
The original term, which you yourself quoted, was "effectively disenfranchise", not just disenfranchise.
First of all, thank you for admitting, no actual disenfranchisement has taken place — and sjbe, with his appeals to "definitions", is wrong.
Now, about "effectively disenfranchising"... Everyone living in a State where one party has an overwhelming majority is already "effectively disenfranchised". Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, your vote in NY, for example, does not matter — you are effectively disenfranchised.
Same is true about polities lesser than States. As long as our voting is based on geography, the only way to give the minority-supporters any voice at all is with the district-carving like this. Yes, I'm sure, it could get ridiculous at times. But there is nothing automatically wrong about it either — and it certainly is not about "disenfranchising".
Gerrymandering by definition disenfranchises some group of people
No such thing in the actual, you know, definition.
Whenever you make someone's vote effectively meaningless that is the very definition of disenfranchisement
No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:
Disfranchisement (also called disenfranchisement) is the revocation of the right of suffrage (the right to vote) of a person or group of people, or through practices, prevention of a person exercising the right to vote.
The "effectively meaningless" part is your attempt to redefine the term to mean, what you want it to mean. You are arguing semantics — incorrectly.
My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.
Slashdot Mirror
More naiveté. An illegal immigrant can get a credit card, not a problem...
Your naiveté is touching. We already know, how easy it is to uniquely identify you just by your web-browser. And that's something you can control somewhat.
With an active smartphone in your pocket, you are uniquely identifiable by definition — the MAC-addresses of your WiFi and Bluetooth chips betray you. It may be just a bit more difficult to obtain the IMEI from your phone's conversations with the cell-towers. Not to decipher the context of your SMSes and voice-conversations — that'd be illegal and impractical — but simply to keep track of your movements.
Will these systems know your name? You only need to slip up once, allowing to tie your phone to your name (and your cellular provider has the link already). Perhaps more importantly, they don't need to know your name to peddle wares to you — they just need to know, where you are going with any frequency.
As I already said, not for very long. The ever-Increasing wireless bandwidth will make real-time uploads of such images to the cloud practical... But these are not even necessary to identify you...
Not for very long. As soon as a smart criminal or two take the recorder along with the driver's money at the end of a ride, the next generation of such cameras will be hailing "instant uploading of videos to the cloud". And the cabbies will upgrade. They are upgrading already — credit card acceptance by taxis is rising. Though cash still remains an option, that too may be on its way out.
BTW, cities like New York have required data-collection from taxis for years — and now require the same from Uber/Lyft as well. Scandals like this will, no doubt, happen again.
At any rate, I can accept the opposition based on privacy — even if I still think, you are naive, if you think, paying cash in a taxi is substantially beneficial to your privacy. But anything based on the supposed "illegality" of Uber/Lyft is just nonsense.
Unless you turn off and disable your smart phone, when you enter a cab, tracking you personally is already easy — and will become more so, when the new generation of taxi equipment is adopted. To Uber, Lyft, or traditional taxis (as well as to any retailer, policeman, or passer-by) the WiFi and Bluetooth radios in your phone already uniquely identify you... Crap, it is already happening.
May as well ride Lyft and save money...
You are not 110010001000, are you?
His objection (sincere or sarcastic) was not the diminishment of anonimity, but simply the alleged illegality.
Not quite... Many taxi companies keep record of where each ride originated and ended. And many (most?) take at least a picture of the passenger, if not a video of him. Such video-equipment is a booming business.
Of course, Uber and others are doing it too. Get used to it — with very few exceptions, whatever can be legally perceived, can also be legally recorded...
Maybe. This does not contradict my point, however. Which is that the "Social Justice" busybodies have found a way for the government to prosecute people saying disagreeable things — without obviously violating the letter of First Amendment, even if blatantly violating its spirit.
Even if Google, in particular, is a willing participant, and would've been doing the same things without the threat of governmental prosecution, the very existence of the threat is an outrage.
A rant replete with equal parts baseless accusations and grammatical errors. A perfect final self-destruct for a failing argument. Thank you!
Unfortunately, none of the links you are providing support your claim — that cartoon depictions of Blacks as gorillas has contributed to their likelihood of being mistreated. Your repeated references to "Jim Crow", show your being completely misguided. Jim Crow laws were a feature of the Democrat-dominated Southern States, where former slave-owners still held power. For someone accusing the opponent of ignorance, your using "jim crow" and "racism" interchangeably is especially wrong.
The Betty Boop cartoon was created by a Jewish immigrant from Austria living in California. He never owned a slave and his encounters with racism, if any, would all have been on the receiving end.
Whether it is or not, you connected a watermelon-eating gorilla depicted in a cartoon with the high likelihood of a Black getting raped and/or murdered as a result of asking for police protection. It is that connection, that I find ridiculous — and which you would not (cannot!) substantiate with any actual citations.
It is a problem for your employer. It is not (should not be) a matter for the Attorney General to address.
Yes, it may well be reasonable. Whether it is or not, however, should be up to your employer, not the government.
You are welcome to cite the actual historical facts of which you find me ignorant. The above statement is offensively condescending and indicative of your lack of any specific arguments.
Citations? Citations supporting your implied claim, that such outcomes were not merely potential, but likely — and that the cartoon-depictions increased/contributed to the said likelihood.
Jim Crow laws are fully irrelevant to our subthread — these laws did not deny Blacks police protection, nor have the cartoons you found offensive made in the formerly Confederate states, where these laws were in effect. Please, stay on topic.
It being ugly does not mean it was widespread. And it being widespread does not mean, a programmer today must apologize for his algorithm's failure to reliably distinguish between Homo Sapiens and other hominids. It certainly is a feature worth improving or a bug worth fixing, but it certainly is not a manifestation of racism or even of "insensitivity".
The more you read and hear about these problems, the more you realize, employers simply should not care about these things. Whether an engineer, a train-dispatcher, or a secretary is a racist or a feminist is irrelevant — what matters is whether or not they do a good job.
And employers do not want to care either — it is an expensive minefield, gravely dangerous no matter what you do.
However, the Illiberals laws and practices force them into policing employee conduct. Our Illiberal overlords, themselves restrained from regulating speech, manage to compel employers into such policing with the overhanging threats of prosecutions for "hostile work environment.
That is, yeah, much as we hate it, it is legal for you to say what you want to say. We can neither fine nor imprison you for saying it, sadly. But we can force your employer to fire you instead, and that's almost as good.
Thus, arguing whether or not Google "has a right" to decide what to do, is completely bogus. Whatever the personal opinions of the company's executives, their hand is forced. Forced by the busybodies, who've shredded the First Amendment.
"Malware" can't be the only thing... Can the same algorithms not be used to detect bomb-making instructions, racism, and counter-revolutionary activities?
If the slight variations in temperature make 99% of hatching (identify as) female, the entire species would've died out through Ice Age, when 99% of them became males instead...
The wildest accusations made by the believers of the Global Warming is that it is only a few degrees warmer now than it was 100 years ago. If that's enough to threaten the turtles today, how did they survive the ice ages of the past?
As usual, dave420's sole "contribution" to discourse is a personal insult...
Your invocation of "coloring" in vain was racist. Fuck you, racist. Shitposting racist...
Did you really go from a cartoon gorilla eating a watermelon to rape and murder in two paragraphs?..
Whether comparison with gorilla really was used to demean someone shall not play into our usage of it.
Only an obtuse idiot would allow evil racists to dictate his own vocabulary. Thatâ(TM)s one.
Back to computers, apes are very close to us both genetically and in appearance. For an algorithm to mistake specimens of the two species is not at all racist.
For an excercise, I challenge you to solve a problem thatâ(TM)s even simpler - to humans - describe, in English, how to distinguish a cat from a dog...
Of course, they are in a multitude of the same categories together:
The above applies to all races, but the skin color adds one more common category for Blacks. Big deal.
Somehow being called a "gorilla" is deemed offensive, which is patently ridiculous. Black panthers was fine, but gorilla is bad? Seriously? And because it is considered bad — irrationally — by someone, we can't have Google's image-recognition to work — they without special-casing? And they must continue to apologize for something?
Yeah, in the US we prove guilt first — if we can — and then punish accordingly.
As I suspected, you are glad for government engaging in harassment...
This does not even make sense. As don't most of your postings, I might add...
So, you propose we counter the ascent of the increasingly-Capitalist rival by becoming more Socialist ourselves?
Sure. But what Opportunist proposed is the deliberate confiscation of the suspected computers. Every time, multiple times:
That is abuse of process — Opportunist suggests, the weekly confiscations of the new equipment be used as punishment because the prosecutors can not prove any actual wrongdoing.
It never ceases to amaze me, how people illiterate in multiple senses of the word can still live seemingly fulfilling lives and are not only allowed outside without minders, but make Internet-postings even on sites purporting to attract intelligence.
Whether or not Uber is breaking laws, those laws should not exist. If I can give you a ride, I can also ask you for money — and we both can use the Internet to arrange the meeting and the payment-transaction. No one is forced to work for Uber and no one is compelled to use them either.
Major props to Uber for resisting the oppression.
That's called Abuse of Process — when the very mechanism of justice is used to punish those, who can not be proven guilty.
Europe, where citizens celebrate government's harassment...
Whether or not they should, the reason the can do this is the absence of governmental control of the admission policies.
That government is best, which governs least. We all better remember this principle next time we think something we like ought to be mandatory or something we dislike — banned.
First of all, thank you for admitting, no actual disenfranchisement has taken place — and sjbe, with his appeals to "definitions", is wrong.
Now, about "effectively disenfranchising"... Everyone living in a State where one party has an overwhelming majority is already "effectively disenfranchised". Whether you are a Democrat or a Republican, your vote in NY, for example, does not matter — you are effectively disenfranchised.
Same is true about polities lesser than States. As long as our voting is based on geography, the only way to give the minority-supporters any voice at all is with the district-carving like this. Yes, I'm sure, it could get ridiculous at times. But there is nothing automatically wrong about it either — and it certainly is not about "disenfranchising".
TFA seems vague — are one-to-one sessions safe, or are they really groups (of two people) underneath and thus subject to the same problem?
No such thing in the actual, you know, definition .
No, it is not. To disenfranchise is to deny the very right to vote. From your own link:
The "effectively meaningless" part is your attempt to redefine the term to mean, what you want it to mean. You are arguing semantics — incorrectly.
My vote in New York is meaningless, for example, but I am not disenfranchised.
It is not Republicans, who want illegal immigrants counted when allotting Congress seats and other benefits.