Fake Call Centers in India Scam Americans Of Millions
I denounce this racist spin for advancing the hillbilly prejudice against brown people as rapis..., err, never mind, scammers. This advances the othering and contributes to building of evil walls instead of welcoming bridges.
Obviously, specifying the criminals' country of origin, sex and gender-identity (not the same!!!!) as well as religion or skin-color, is racist.
(Unless, of course, they are White Christian males.)
"I was a critic of the previous administration for those occasions in which I felt they had violated our values and I came in [to office] with a healthy scepticism about how our various programmes were structured," Obama told the press conference in Berlin's chancellery. But, he added, having examined how the US intelligence services were operating: "I'm confident that at this point we have struck the appropriate balance".
The rules of the debate are the same — whoever is making an affirmative statement is "on the hook" to substantiate it, when challenged. Here is an example of this common-sense rule codified.
you have no evidence whatsoever to support your side
I carefully craft my posts to avoid making statements that may require substantiation I would be too lazy to provide. I wish, more people followed that principle...
government officials/councilmen/legislators that usually had personal vendettas against rude/aggressive drivers
This makes no sense at all. Red light cameras don't fight rudeness or aggressiveness, whoever (dis)likes it. They fight illegal activity.
both sides like the extra clarity
That's exactly why I blame Democracy. Although objectively traffic cameras aren't any worse than an equal number of police officers would've been, we the people hate them for their efficiency and wanted them removed so that we don't get caught quite so often. We do like police body-cameras, hence those get wider and wider spread.
the authors of the study found a statistically significant, but still smaller, reduction in angle and turning injury crashes by 15 percent, as well as 'a statistically significant increase of 22 percent in rear-end injury collisions.
In other words, the cameras reduced the number of violations they were meant to reduce by 15%.
They also made a different violation — failure to keep safe distance — more dangerous. But they didn't cause anybody to drive too close — I'm not sure, it is fair to blame cameras for that. People would hit the breaks (increasing the danger of being rear-ended) by seeing a live officer just as well, there is nothing camera-specific about these findings.
Once again, if running a red light is something worth fighting, then we should be fighting it. If such fights ought to be weighted against the risk of other problems — let's acknowledge that and adjust our laws to reflect it.
And here are links to the actual studies
All appear to suffer from the same problem — blaming cameras for consequences of drivers' behavior...
The story is not about PIN-numbers, but rather about those additional 3-digits of the "security code" on the back (usually) of your card, which are increasingly required for transactions, where the vendor's representative (such as cashier) can not verify the card personally.
Sorry, that's not evidence of abuse. There is evidence of people — demos (in Greek) — unhappy with the cameras. Proving abuse is much harder.
Moreover, the people receiving fines — and a camera can issue many more tickets than a police officer — would be most unhappy without any abuse whatsoever. A perfectly functional red-light camera, operated in full accordance with rules and laws, would be a source of much unhappiness anyway.
They do not make the observation that the city rigged the yellow lights to be impractically short
A city could do that without a camera. Indeed, there are credible reports of cities rigging speed-limits that way — some more outrageous than others. Small-town governments always had an incentive to prosecute out-of-town folks for every infraction — for such drivers do not vote in local elections — while letting the locals through with a warning or without even being stopped.
Cameras — too stupid (or "impartial") to distinguish — interfered with that approach, fining locals, who represent the majority of drivers, along with out-of-towners and -staters. And that is, most likely, why they've been pulled back... Hence my blaming of Democracy.
First of all, an obviously incorrect statement in the write-up:
a method for making stolen cards useless
TFA — correctly — says, that "stealing" the card's number is useless (as if, interestingly, information can be stolen at all). The write-up is factually wrong — these new cards remain just as useful to the thieves as the old ones were.
Perhaps more importantly, how strong is the algorithm used to generate these numbers? If it proves easy to predict — and history is littered with examples of fine security principles defeated by lousy implementations — the problem of it being possible to use a card without holding it in one's hands is not really solved...
If it's not true, there wold be no statistical difference between the average rating of incentivized and regular reviews.
False.
Some incentivized reviews are biased. Maybe, even many of them. But biased does not mean fake either and, as I said, not all of them are even necessarily biased.
Summary says these incentivized reviews were "overwhelmingly biased in favor of the product"
Yes, and this may very well be true. But it does not mean, they are fake — the semantic differences are important.
significant deviation between the two averages. So yeah the incentivized reviews are for all intents and purposes fake.
Unless reviewers are picked blindly and randomly, as the Vine program promises to do, an incentivized reviewer will always weight the integrity of his review against the chances of ever being offered free stuff again.
This conflict of interest is why I vote down such reviews automatically — with prejudice and annoyance — and I'm glad, Amazon is fighting this practice.
The write-up equates "incentivized" with "fake" and that's just not true. A conflict of interest is a challenge, but does not automatically invalidate the result — otherwise any politician promising things like "ending poverty" should be run out of town as a faker, for he obviously has a conflict of interest between his promise today and his next election.
That said, I too tend to discount those — reviews and politicians — and vote them down.
Saudi Arabia remains a very rich country. Its subsidized citizens are obscenely rich, but even the non-citizens are doing rather well. It has, for example, a large population of Indians, who, despite having no prospect of citizenship, like their salaries much better there, than in their own reasonably free country.
For another example, it had a large contingent of Arabs from Palestine until 1991 (when the fools celebrated Saddam Hussein's invasion into Kuwait and were summarily expelled by the Saudis over it). They too preferred Saudi Arabia over the more secular destinations (like most other Arab countries).
It's the same with the hosting providers that give rack space and network connectivity to these sites.
Indeed. Once a wrong-doer using their services is identified, CloudFare — and all other enablers, including the ISP — can be expected to stop the enabling.
Unless, of course, you don't think, the "alleged pirates" are doing anything wrong, do you?
Even if they didn't, someone else would
Yeah, there is no point in vegetarianism: if I don't eat this steak, somebody else would. And a great defense for a contract killer too — if I haven't shot this guy, they would've hired someone else to kill him.
A week ago you were defending boycott of Mozilla over Brendan Eich's "homophobia" — now you are claiming, a boycott can not be effective?
I think CloudFlare's comments are accurate, but I'm no expert.
I'll play an expert. CloudFlare are lying. Though it is correct, that "a simple DNS reconfiguration" would allow the pirates to continue to exist, their bandwidth requirements will go much higher and they would not be able to do as much damage to the intellectual property owners.
Think, for example, of banks blocking money-laundering — it does not stop whatever activity generates the criminals' profits. But it makes the criminals' lives (much) harder.
The reaction and attitudes of Slashdot and other crowds will, once again, boil down to those towards the original activity. People frowning on copyright infringement will denounce CloudFlare. Others will celebrate the pirates getting off for a while longer.
But technically CloudFlare's arguments are bullshit — and they know it.
Slashdot Mirror
Just as the oppressed Blacks can not themselves be racist, women can not possibly be sexist.
Blaming America is always good Karma — as if we invented Universal Jurisdiction. I presume, Belgium prosecuting Israelis for war crimes committed by Lebanese in a war, to which Belgium was never a party, was Ok with you?
I denounce this racist spin for advancing the hillbilly prejudice against brown people as rapis..., err, never mind, scammers. This advances the othering and contributes to building of evil walls instead of welcoming bridges.
Obviously, specifying the criminals' country of origin, sex and gender-identity (not the same!!!!) as well as religion or skin-color, is racist.
(Unless, of course, they are White Christian males.)
No way. Obama assured the world back in 2013, NSA does not spy on ordinary citizens either:
And he never told a lie...
Do try — in the future — to finish reading the earlier post before replying to it.
The rules of the debate are the same — whoever is making an affirmative statement is "on the hook" to substantiate it, when challenged. Here is an example of this common-sense rule codified.
I carefully craft my posts to avoid making statements that may require substantiation I would be too lazy to provide. I wish, more people followed that principle...
And yet, most of Slashdot disagrees, that information can be stolen: you still have your copy of that file you accuse me of "stealing", don't you?
I too find the argument ridiculous, but it is so wide-spread, I mock it at any opportunity.
This makes no sense at all. Red light cameras don't fight rudeness or aggressiveness, whoever (dis)likes it. They fight illegal activity.
That's exactly why I blame Democracy. Although objectively traffic cameras aren't any worse than an equal number of police officers would've been, we the people hate them for their efficiency and wanted them removed so that we don't get caught quite so often. We do like police body-cameras, hence those get wider and wider spread.
From your link:
In other words, the cameras reduced the number of violations they were meant to reduce by 15%.
They also made a different violation — failure to keep safe distance — more dangerous. But they didn't cause anybody to drive too close — I'm not sure, it is fair to blame cameras for that. People would hit the breaks (increasing the danger of being rear-ended) by seeing a live officer just as well, there is nothing camera-specific about these findings.
Once again, if running a red light is something worth fighting, then we should be fighting it. If such fights ought to be weighted against the risk of other problems — let's acknowledge that and adjust our laws to reflect it.
All appear to suffer from the same problem — blaming cameras for consequences of drivers' behavior...
If we take your approach towards the burden of proof, any defendant rejecting his guilt would have to present evidence of his innocence.
Thus your approach is incorrect. Fail.
The story is not about PIN-numbers, but rather about those additional 3-digits of the "security code" on the back (usually) of your card, which are increasingly required for transactions, where the vendor's representative (such as cashier) can not verify the card personally.
Sorry, that's not evidence of abuse. There is evidence of people — demos (in Greek) — unhappy with the cameras. Proving abuse is much harder.
Moreover, the people receiving fines — and a camera can issue many more tickets than a police officer — would be most unhappy without any abuse whatsoever. A perfectly functional red-light camera, operated in full accordance with rules and laws, would be a source of much unhappiness anyway.
A city could do that without a camera. Indeed, there are credible reports of cities rigging speed-limits that way — some more outrageous than others. Small-town governments always had an incentive to prosecute out-of-town folks for every infraction — for such drivers do not vote in local elections — while letting the locals through with a warning or without even being stopped.
Cameras — too stupid (or "impartial") to distinguish — interfered with that approach, fining locals, who represent the majority of drivers, along with out-of-towners and -staters. And that is, most likely, why they've been pulled back... Hence my blaming of Democracy.
TFA — correctly — says, that "stealing" the card's number is useless (as if, interestingly, information can be stolen at all). The write-up is factually wrong — these new cards remain just as useful to the thieves as the old ones were.
Perhaps more importantly, how strong is the algorithm used to generate these numbers? If it proves easy to predict — and history is littered with examples of fine security principles defeated by lousy implementations — the problem of it being possible to use a card without holding it in one's hands is not really solved...
Up yours. Which of my claims do wish to see substantiated with a citation?
Irrelevant. If they fight what needs fighting — and do it cheaper than other methods — than we should be using them.
Citation missing.
All cameras are impartial.
Citation missing.
Police cameras — good. Red-light cameras — bad...
False.
Some incentivized reviews are biased. Maybe, even many of them. But biased does not mean fake either and, as I said, not all of them are even necessarily biased.
Yes, and this may very well be true. But it does not mean, they are fake — the semantic differences are important.
Statistically, Blacks commit disproportionately more violent crimes, than Whites. Are you going to claim, Blacks "are for all intents and purposes" criminal?
Unless reviewers are picked blindly and randomly, as the Vine program promises to do, an incentivized reviewer will always weight the integrity of his review against the chances of ever being offered free stuff again.
This conflict of interest is why I vote down such reviews automatically — with prejudice and annoyance — and I'm glad, Amazon is fighting this practice.
The write-up equates "incentivized" with "fake" and that's just not true. A conflict of interest is a challenge, but does not automatically invalidate the result — otherwise any politician promising things like "ending poverty" should be run out of town as a faker, for he obviously has a conflict of interest between his promise today and his next election.
That said, I too tend to discount those — reviews and politicians — and vote them down.
That argument certainly worked for a vast number of people, yes. And Saudis aren't even that evil...
Saudi Arabia remains a very rich country. Its subsidized citizens are obscenely rich, but even the non-citizens are doing rather well. It has, for example, a large population of Indians, who, despite having no prospect of citizenship, like their salaries much better there, than in their own reasonably free country.
For another example, it had a large contingent of Arabs from Palestine until 1991 (when the fools celebrated Saddam Hussein's invasion into Kuwait and were summarily expelled by the Saudis over it). They too preferred Saudi Arabia over the more secular destinations (like most other Arab countries).
One of the more hilarious typos for sure...
Indeed. Once a wrong-doer using their services is identified, CloudFare — and all other enablers, including the ISP — can be expected to stop the enabling.
Unless, of course, you don't think, the "alleged pirates" are doing anything wrong, do you?
Yeah, there is no point in vegetarianism: if I don't eat this steak, somebody else would. And a great defense for a contract killer too — if I haven't shot this guy, they would've hired someone else to kill him.
A week ago you were defending boycott of Mozilla over Brendan Eich's "homophobia" — now you are claiming, a boycott can not be effective?
I'll play an expert. CloudFlare are lying. Though it is correct, that "a simple DNS reconfiguration" would allow the pirates to continue to exist, their bandwidth requirements will go much higher and they would not be able to do as much damage to the intellectual property owners.
Think, for example, of banks blocking money-laundering — it does not stop whatever activity generates the criminals' profits. But it makes the criminals' lives (much) harder.
The reaction and attitudes of Slashdot and other crowds will, once again, boil down to those towards the original activity. People frowning on copyright infringement will denounce CloudFlare. Others will celebrate the pirates getting off for a while longer.
But technically CloudFlare's arguments are bullshit — and they know it.