Face-recognition systems assume the opposite: you are a wanted criminal and only a null result on their database search proves you are NOT, in fact, a criminal.
Errr, WRONG. Face-recognition systems try to find matches from their criminal database. They don't ASSUME anything.
It's like that guy I watched on the Travel channel who works free-lance for casinos in Vegas. He has photographic memory, and remembers the faces of the people caught cheating in casinos. He drives around in his car, and the casino people feed suspected cheater photos to him wirelessly. He looks at the pic, and tells them if he was caught cheating before.
The memory guy hasn't proven the gambler is cheating -- he just flags that person as a higher possibility than the others, and they keep a closer eye on the guy.
I have a right to expect that I am assumed to be an innocent civilian until proven otherwise.
You do have that right. Some cameras with face-recognition software haven't taken that away. The only thing that can take it away is mis-use of the technology. For example, picking up every match from the database, and taking them downtown to the local precinct for questioning, without some other mitigating factors.
These things should be ruled unconstitutional.
It is not unconstitutional for you to be brought into a police precinct for questioning. And if you are wrongfully harassed, you have steps you can take to fight back.
IANAL, of course
Oh, of course...
Paul Festa -- not MSNBC
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
No "editorial bias" here
Note that the article was written by Paul Festa of CNET News.com. As soon as I read that article yesterday on CNET (about the upcoming release, with the same wording), I sent him a letter and CC'd Jai Singh (Editor-in-Chief) about it.
Paul Festa has been, throughout the browser wars, firmly on the side of Microsoft. At least, that's the opinion you tend to get after reading his articles.
He also has no memory of history. Here is an excerpt from my letter to him:
Paul writes, "Whether Netscape 6.1 can rally the Netscape faithful remains to be seen. While Netscape 6 encountered first delays and then scathing reviews, Microsoft assembled an overwhelming lead in the browser market."
You know Paul, that sounds strangely familiar. Those that forget history are "doomed" to repeat it. To add a little integrity to your article, you might also point out that the same was true in reverse when Microsoft started out with MSIE: Their first versions received scathing reviews (was usually LAUGHED at), while Netscape
assembled an overwhelming lead in the browser market.
Let CNET know you don't like his biased reporting by emailing their editors.
And just so you don't think I'm some crazy, "Netscape loyalist," I actually use MSIE throughout the day and like it.
instead of ads just popping up you'll be redirected to a competitor's site?
I'm all for keeping the net legislation free, but heres a place where only a law can help.
This is exactly the problem with the US: Let's outlaw everything distasteful, right?
THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!
Well, the simple fact is people CHOSE to run this software. Therefore, they can CHOOSE to uninstall it! Gator can then CHOOSE to continue with this bullshit tactic, after which they will probably go out of business.
It's called a FREE market, and no more laws are needed!
Unless something is being taken by force -- a time where you have no choice in the matter -- then no laws are needed. We have too many laws.
Abortion, The Death Penalty, Legalization of Marijuana, Whether a Software company can integrate a web browser and an OS. Which os these sounds LEAST important?
Why, I think a better question would be, "Which of these is actually pending review by the Supreme Court?" The answer to that one would be, ahhh yes, the Microsoft case.
"Why waste the Supreme Courts time with such MULE-SHIT. Oh well, money talks, bullshit walks.
Well which is it, MULE-SHIT or bullshit?
Regardless, the Supreme Court wasn't put in place so that individuals get to decide what is important to them. The Supreme Court will decide what is and is not important enough to hear. Just because Microsoft wants it to be heard does not mean it will be accepted, so I don't really understand how your "money talks, bullshit walks" statement applies. (Unless you are trying to contradict yourself by pointing out that the Supreme Court will tell bullshit cases to walk?)
So in general, HOW THE FUCK DID THIS GET MODDED UP???
How hard is it to do a search of your own website for "Curl"?
Re:If this can't break Microsoft's back nothing wi
on
Code Red Back For More
·
· Score: 2
The licensing issue is irrelevant too. If my microwave catches fire, I can sue somebody. If my custom-built house collapses, I can sue somebody. If my shotgun explodes, I can sue somebody.
First of all, the question is not IF you can sue SOMEBODY. You can ALWAYS sue somebody. The question is, does your case stand a chance in hell of being won?
Secondly, who would we sue if Linux was found to have a serious flaw like the one in IIS? Don't you dare say the flaw would be fixed, because the flaw in IIS has already been patched, about 2 months ago, well before Code Red came out.
Yikes... their opening sentence does not bode well for the technical content in the rest of the article...
"IT WAS NOT IMMEDIATELY clear if the new worm was a variant of Code Red or just a nastier copycat..."
Mmmkay...
Re:If this can't break Microsoft's back nothing wi
on
Code Red Back For More
·
· Score: 2
Unlike a car that explodes to a design flaw, software that explodes due to a design flaw seems to be immune to the civil justice system.
You left out some key facts:
- Operating systems are more complex than cars.
- Operating systems don't require a license to be operated.
Re:It's not safe to install IIS while on a network
on
Code Red Back For More
·
· Score: 2
Solution, never ever have your box plugged into the network while installing a Windows server. Only plug it in after all patches, service packs, and hot fixes have been applied first.
Interesting dilemma... how exactly are these people going to get the patches to be installed with the system unplugged? Microsoft is going to have to release a patch CD.
Microsoft has repeatedly been bitten by watchdog groups, and often changes their behavior because of it. Apparantly you need an example. How about the recent Smart Tags issue? Everyone got in a tizzy, and Microsoft pulled it, even though I feel the problem wasn't as bad as it was made out to be.
MS has a monopoly and they can do whatever they damned well please. They have 30 billion in cash for chrissake they can buy the entire congress and have change left over to buy the president. Oh I forgot they already bought the president and the attorney general nevermind
Uhhhh yeah. ok.
Re:Something that should happen more often.
on
Code Red Back For More
·
· Score: 3, Redundant
Modify the code red code to apply the security patch to the vulnerable IIS servers and reboot the system? While this is potentially destructive to your system (I'm told -- MS security patches and all that) it would pretty well take care of this problem...
Nah, this will just make the sysadmins even lazier.
SysAdmin #1: Dude, your NT machines are all infected with Code Red!
SysAdmin #2: I know! I'm just waiting for for them to be infected with the fix... should be any day now...
If he was writting in C and using asm for the most preformance intensive functions as is now standard practice for the non lazy (who know their target platform and optimize for it)it would not be such a chore.
Damn... that's the first time I've seen someone who programs in C/C++ tell someone who programs in ASM that he's lazy. What balls, man! Way to go!;-)
Re:Be made a lot of good choices and still they're
on
Be Buyout Looms Closer
·
· Score: 2
It could have ensured that the current situation, the exact one developers feared, would never happen. If you have access to the guts of the system, even if Be Inc. vanishes you can still carry on. People are a lot more willing to develop for a live platform than a dead one, and in the traditional sense open source platforms do not die. They may have very few users and developers, but those few are free to do what they wish. That's why Open Source attracts so many people. It was obvious that Be would not uproot Microsoft Windows, and until it did that it was not a safe platform to work on.
Oh wise one, please explain how Apple has been able to get developers for MacOS X?
They are not going to topple Microsoft any more than Be. The parts of their system that are important to most developers are not open source.
Be had a nice base of developers. What they did not have was people buying the OS. Had the playing field been level when they really got rolling about 5 years ago, then it might be a different story. Linux eroding MS on the server front, BeOS/MacOS eroding Windows on the desktop front. Instead, we all know the story, Microsoft controls the OEM's.
This is just another method to determine what things are installed on your computer. They couldn't get away with HD scan uploads, so now they upload what's installed on your computer - but only when it crashes.
I realize this is blasphemy to say this, but I seriously doubt Microsoft would be stupid enough to risk the fallout that would occur if people's crash dumps were anything more than anonymous.
There is just no way in hell they are going to have your computer send them anything more than the crash dump and system configuration data. Not your personal data.
I know you paranoids will think of a million different ways that Microsoft can try to tie this data to you personally ("They can record my IP address," "They can match up my name and location to caller ID," etc). But the fact is, the watchdogs are going to be all over this, and it would be suicide for them to try it.
As an example, whenever you are setting up Windows Update, they make it very clear that they are only sending system configuration data (which you can view), and not anything personally identifiable. They realize people are paranoid about that, and when the screen first loads, it says something like "checking your system configuration -- this is done without sending anything to Microsoft."
Meanwhile, *checks* yes, Be's own press page hasn't been updated since May 17. No help there...
It would help if you were on the right page (the press release page, not the "Be in the news" page), which was updated a few days ago with the employee news:
http://www.be.com/press/pressreleases/
Be's recent financial reports indicate that revenues are up over 600 percent. Thus proving that 600% of nothing is still, well, nothing.
In light of this recent discovery, I say we tell Sony/AOL/Palm that Be's profits soared 50,000% in the past year!
Gain some technology and eliminate a potential competitor for 'pocket change' (Be is worth about $20 million).
Errr, yeah right. Where do people come up with these numbers? Oh right, you're multiplying their share value times the number of total shares of stock. You do realize this is a meaningless number, right? Be does not have to sell for that amount, since no one (but Be) would be in a position to hold all stock.
Not that BeIA poses a big threat to QNX's offering.
Well now your bitterness is just showing... BeIA certainly competes head to head with QNX in internet appliances.
...Yet [defecating on developers is] EXACTLY what they've been doing for the last 2 years...
Funny... I thought they were trying to survive? It's pretty selfish of you to criticize a company that re-focuses so that they can SURVIVE. It's not like they were swimming in money, and decided to give developers the shaft. They're RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. They NEED MONEY. They had to do something. The IA market shift allowed them to reduce their cash burn, and focus on a market where they could sell to OEM's instead of the public. That's probably cheaper.
I myself would rather them survive, make money, and THEN go back to BeOS development. Not focus on BeOS development until death.
Metricom is having an auction of everything they own, including their 15 wired cities and patents. Presumably a company could come in and get the whole shebang for a relatively cheap price.
They currently have 50,000 customers, most of which are at high-speed.
Are they losing money every month? If so, WHY? If not, why couldn't a company come in, buy their assets from auction, and start making money?
Seems like you'd be buying a "ready-made" business, filling a need (until 3G becomes wide spread, anyway). You wouldn't have the debt that buried Metricom.
So any Metricom employees care to explain what went wrong?
Slashdot Mirror
If a woman couldn't correctly ID someone she knew, how can the police expect an automated system to do the same?
Are you really serious? So the measure of how accurate a computer can be expected to be will be measured against humans?
If a man can't correctly multiply 1.05 * 57 / 123456 * 3443823.1231, in his head, how can we expect an automated system to do the same?
Do you see how your thinking is flawed?
Face-recognition systems assume the opposite: you are a wanted criminal and only a null result on their database search proves you are NOT, in fact, a criminal.
Errr, WRONG. Face-recognition systems try to find matches from their criminal database. They don't ASSUME anything.
It's like that guy I watched on the Travel channel who works free-lance for casinos in Vegas. He has photographic memory, and remembers the faces of the people caught cheating in casinos. He drives around in his car, and the casino people feed suspected cheater photos to him wirelessly. He looks at the pic, and tells them if he was caught cheating before.
The memory guy hasn't proven the gambler is cheating -- he just flags that person as a higher possibility than the others, and they keep a closer eye on the guy.
I have a right to expect that I am assumed to be an innocent civilian until proven otherwise.
You do have that right. Some cameras with face-recognition software haven't taken that away. The only thing that can take it away is mis-use of the technology. For example, picking up every match from the database, and taking them downtown to the local precinct for questioning, without some other mitigating factors.
These things should be ruled unconstitutional.
It is not unconstitutional for you to be brought into a police precinct for questioning. And if you are wrongfully harassed, you have steps you can take to fight back.
IANAL, of course
Oh, of course...
Note that the article was written by Paul Festa of CNET News.com. As soon as I read that article yesterday on CNET (about the upcoming release, with the same wording), I sent him a letter and CC'd Jai Singh (Editor-in-Chief) about it.
Paul Festa has been, throughout the browser wars, firmly on the side of Microsoft. At least, that's the opinion you tend to get after reading his articles.
He also has no memory of history. Here is an excerpt from my letter to him:
Let CNET know you don't like his biased reporting by emailing their editors.
And just so you don't think I'm some crazy, "Netscape loyalist," I actually use MSIE throughout the day and like it.
Yeah, but how do we know you're the REAL Bruce Perens?
One thing I will say it this: the Mac GUI feels faster to me than the Explorer Shell on Win2K...
Wow. Now if that ain't the most scientific, convincing benchmark I've ever heard, may I go blind!
To pare a phrase.
I once heard Julia Childs "pare a phrase." She was preparing a fruity dessert, and stated in all seriousness:
(In your best Julia Childs voice...)
"Now here I have a pair of pared pears..."
I just say no to:
1. JavaScript
2. Java
3. Shockwave
4. Flash
5. ActiveX
6. The Cutting Edge
7. Planned Obsolesence
8. Useful websites
That's right, there ARE websites that use JavaScript/Java to make their sites more useful.
The site I maintain at work uses JavaScript for good, not evil...
instead of ads just popping up you'll be redirected to a competitor's site?
I'm all for keeping the net legislation free, but heres a place where only a law can help.
This is exactly the problem with the US: Let's outlaw everything distasteful, right?
THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!
Well, the simple fact is people CHOSE to run this software. Therefore, they can CHOOSE to uninstall it! Gator can then CHOOSE to continue with this bullshit tactic, after which they will probably go out of business.
It's called a FREE market, and no more laws are needed!
Unless something is being taken by force -- a time where you have no choice in the matter -- then no laws are needed. We have too many laws.
Abortion, The Death Penalty, Legalization of Marijuana, Whether a Software company can integrate a web browser and an OS. Which os these sounds LEAST important?
Why, I think a better question would be, "Which of these is actually pending review by the Supreme Court?" The answer to that one would be, ahhh yes, the Microsoft case.
"Why waste the Supreme Courts time with such MULE-SHIT. Oh well, money talks, bullshit walks.
Well which is it, MULE-SHIT or bullshit?
Regardless, the Supreme Court wasn't put in place so that individuals get to decide what is important to them. The Supreme Court will decide what is and is not important enough to hear. Just because Microsoft wants it to be heard does not mean it will be accepted, so I don't really understand how your "money talks, bullshit walks" statement applies. (Unless you are trying to contradict yourself by pointing out that the Supreme Court will tell bullshit cases to walk?)
So in general, HOW THE FUCK DID THIS GET MODDED UP???
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/06/133524 1&mode=thread
How hard is it to do a search of your own website for "Curl"?
The licensing issue is irrelevant too. If my microwave catches fire, I can sue somebody. If my custom-built house collapses, I can sue somebody. If my shotgun explodes, I can sue somebody.
First of all, the question is not IF you can sue SOMEBODY. You can ALWAYS sue somebody. The question is, does your case stand a chance in hell of being won?
Secondly, who would we sue if Linux was found to have a serious flaw like the one in IIS? Don't you dare say the flaw would be fixed, because the flaw in IIS has already been patched, about 2 months ago, well before Code Red came out.
Yikes... their opening sentence does not bode well for the technical content in the rest of the article...
"IT WAS NOT IMMEDIATELY clear if the new worm was a variant of Code Red or just a nastier copycat..."
Mmmkay...
Unlike a car that explodes to a design flaw, software that explodes due to a design flaw seems to be immune to the civil justice system.
You left out some key facts:
- Operating systems are more complex than cars.
- Operating systems don't require a license to be operated.
Solution, never ever have your box plugged into the network while installing a Windows server. Only plug it in after all patches, service packs, and hot fixes have been applied first.
Interesting dilemma... how exactly are these people going to get the patches to be installed with the system unplugged? Microsoft is going to have to release a patch CD.
The entire justice system can't touch MS
How did they win their recent case against MS?
but they will be afraid of watchdogs
Microsoft has repeatedly been bitten by watchdog groups, and often changes their behavior because of it. Apparantly you need an example. How about the recent Smart Tags issue? Everyone got in a tizzy, and Microsoft pulled it, even though I feel the problem wasn't as bad as it was made out to be.
MS has a monopoly and they can do whatever they damned well please. They have 30 billion in cash for chrissake they can buy the entire congress and have change left over to buy the president. Oh I forgot they already bought the president and the attorney general nevermind
Uhhhh yeah. ok.
Ha ha, that was funny! Of course we know worms never infect unix or open source systems !
Modify the code red code to apply the security patch to the vulnerable IIS servers and reboot the system? While this is potentially destructive to your system (I'm told -- MS security patches and all that) it would pretty well take care of this problem...
Nah, this will just make the sysadmins even lazier.
SysAdmin #1: Dude, your NT machines are all infected with Code Red!
SysAdmin #2: I know! I'm just waiting for for them to be infected with the fix... should be any day now...
If he was writting in C and using asm for the most preformance intensive functions as is now standard practice for the non lazy (who know their target platform and optimize for it)it would not be such a chore.
;-)
Damn... that's the first time I've seen someone who programs in C/C++ tell someone who programs in ASM that he's lazy. What balls, man! Way to go!
It could have ensured that the current situation, the exact one developers feared, would never happen. If you have access to the guts of the system, even if Be Inc. vanishes you can still carry on. People are a lot more willing to develop for a live platform than a dead one, and in the traditional sense open source platforms do not die. They may have very few users and developers, but those few are free to do what they wish. That's why Open Source attracts so many people. It was obvious that Be would not uproot Microsoft Windows, and until it did that it was not a safe platform to work on.
Oh wise one, please explain how Apple has been able to get developers for MacOS X?
They are not going to topple Microsoft any more than Be. The parts of their system that are important to most developers are not open source.
Be had a nice base of developers. What they did not have was people buying the OS. Had the playing field been level when they really got rolling about 5 years ago, then it might be a different story. Linux eroding MS on the server front, BeOS/MacOS eroding Windows on the desktop front. Instead, we all know the story, Microsoft controls the OEM's.
This is just another method to determine what things are installed on your computer. They couldn't get away with HD scan uploads, so now they upload what's installed on your computer - but only when it crashes.
I realize this is blasphemy to say this, but I seriously doubt Microsoft would be stupid enough to risk the fallout that would occur if people's crash dumps were anything more than anonymous.
There is just no way in hell they are going to have your computer send them anything more than the crash dump and system configuration data. Not your personal data.
I know you paranoids will think of a million different ways that Microsoft can try to tie this data to you personally ("They can record my IP address," "They can match up my name and location to caller ID," etc). But the fact is, the watchdogs are going to be all over this, and it would be suicide for them to try it.
As an example, whenever you are setting up Windows Update, they make it very clear that they are only sending system configuration data (which you can view), and not anything personally identifiable. They realize people are paranoid about that, and when the screen first loads, it says something like "checking your system configuration -- this is done without sending anything to Microsoft."
They are dumb, but not stupid.
Meanwhile, *checks* yes, Be's own press page hasn't been updated since May 17. No help there...
It would help if you were on the right page (the press release page, not the "Be in the news" page), which was updated a few days ago with the employee news:
http://www.be.com/press/pressreleases/
Be's recent financial reports indicate that revenues are up over 600 percent. Thus proving that 600% of nothing is still, well, nothing.
In light of this recent discovery, I say we tell Sony/AOL/Palm that Be's profits soared 50,000% in the past year!
Gain some technology and eliminate a potential competitor for 'pocket change' (Be is worth about $20 million).
...Yet [defecating on developers is] EXACTLY what they've been doing for the last 2 years...
Errr, yeah right. Where do people come up with these numbers? Oh right, you're multiplying their share value times the number of total shares of stock. You do realize this is a meaningless number, right? Be does not have to sell for that amount, since no one (but Be) would be in a position to hold all stock.
Not that BeIA poses a big threat to QNX's offering.
Well now your bitterness is just showing... BeIA certainly competes head to head with QNX in internet appliances.
Funny... I thought they were trying to survive? It's pretty selfish of you to criticize a company that re-focuses so that they can SURVIVE. It's not like they were swimming in money, and decided to give developers the shaft. They're RUNNING OUT OF MONEY. They NEED MONEY. They had to do something. The IA market shift allowed them to reduce their cash burn, and focus on a market where they could sell to OEM's instead of the public. That's probably cheaper.
I myself would rather them survive, make money, and THEN go back to BeOS development. Not focus on BeOS development until death.
yes you are a karma whore.
Seeing as how my karma is already maxed out, I must not be a whore, but merely a karma slut...
It's dog slow, the imported comments are misattributed, and comment searching is disabled! What were you guys thinking!?
(Just kidding, it looks great so far.)
Metricom is having an auction of everything they own, including their 15 wired cities and patents. Presumably a company could come in and get the whole shebang for a relatively cheap price.
They currently have 50,000 customers, most of which are at high-speed.
Are they losing money every month? If so, WHY? If not, why couldn't a company come in, buy their assets from auction, and start making money?
Seems like you'd be buying a "ready-made" business, filling a need (until 3G becomes wide spread, anyway). You wouldn't have the debt that buried Metricom.
So any Metricom employees care to explain what went wrong?