AlwaysOn columnist Rafe Needleman called IntelliTxt "pretty bad news" from an ethics standpoint "because it blurs the line between editorial content, which readers should expect to be free of commercial influence, and advertising, which we know is paid-for and biased."
People are only interested in viewpoints they agree with. They don't care about the credibility of the source. They don't want the truth, they want to believe they are right. Publications are only concerned with readership and the readers aren't concerned with credibility. So, while IntelliTxt ads may damage a publications credibility, it won't affect its readership. And if confusing people into reading an ad increases their bottom line, credibility loses.
Your bafflement is entirely because you attribute both these opinions with one entity when, in fact, there are a great number of people here who don't always hold the same views.
Slashdot has no opinion. The readers of Slashdot have many opinions. Simply because you read them both in the same place does not mean everyone believes them both.
If however, you can find someone who does believe both, you should probably address your comments to them.
My point about the mechanical system is that it is suboptimal, simply because it is mechanical. Paper is much more flexible.
It was suboptimal because of its design. Simply being mechanical is not the reason it was suboptimal. The butterfly ballot in Florida was only slightly more mechanical than pencil and paper (which is, by the way, a mechanical process). The only real difference was that the mechanism restricted where you could make the mark. Had it been designed correctly, it would likely be more reliable than pen and paper.
And yes, I think that a system based on judgement calls is more secure and more accurate than an electronic system. It is easy to know how large a problem mistaken votes are, you simply count how many ballots were considered "questionable" and had to go in for a second check.
An electronic system can drastically reduce the number of questionable votes in the first place so that no judgement call (which, by definition, is subjective) is needed.
With an electronic system, a mistake looks no different from an intentional vote.
With a paper system, a mistake looks no different from an intentional vote. If the voter selects the wrong candidate, the person reading the vote has no way to know whether the vote was intentional. An electronic system could at least ask the voter "are you sure?" and reduce the number of mistakes.
A dubious vote, on the other hand, is one where it is not immediately apparent what the voter's selection was. The electronic system would eliminate this completely.
Experience shows that with paper ballots there are very few mistaken or dubious votes.
Cite, please.
In case an election is really close, and those votes might actually matter, you simply count very very carefully.
How do you count a dubious vote carefully? It is entirely up to the judgement of the person interpreting it. He has no other way to know what the intended vote was. Couldn't his political leanings, consciously or not, affect his judgement? And if more than one person interprets it to combat bias, what if they disagree?
The machine is a one-size-fits-all for all elections. It is completely mechanical, and as such it is not reconfigurable.
Your point being what?
And yes, there will be incorrectly filled ballots. That is where humans make judgement calls. Humans are pretty good at that, except when you force them to obey hard rules.
So, in other words, you advocating a system where not only if you get it wrong on the first try your vote is discounted, but the rules by which they are discounted change based on who's making the call. And you think this is more secure and more accurate than an electronic system?
However, who's to say that the US Constitution is some magically ordained super-document that is completely infallible and utterly trustworthy?
Few are suggesting that the Constitution is infallible. Most are suggesting that if the Constitution, the document which created our system of government, says something, we should at least look at why they wrote it that way.
It was written by men. Smart men, true, but still just men. It's great to have a common root for our legal/government practices, and to keep a (relatively) clear and concise record, but why this continual return to "the Constitution from 225 years ago says so!"? If we dropped some of the stigma around the Constitution, it could be _changed_ and actually be a living document that helps the US develop into the future.
The Constitution has been changed, 27 times in fact, since it's initial inception. It is a living, growing document.
Noone sane would format the ballot that way, except to fit the constraints of the machine.
Someone presumably sane designed the machine that way, the sole purpose of which was to make it easier to punch out the holes. If they can design a machine so poorly, what makes you think they won't do it with a paper ballot? Even if they design the ballot perfectly, some people will still fill it out incorrectly. What then? Throw the vote out because the voter didn't get it right in one try?
Then their vote is invalid, and you throw it away.
So then every vote isn't important. Then why are we bothering at all? If we're willing to throw out whole votes simply because they went outside the lines, what do we care if the system is secure? If we're throwing them away anyway, what does it matter if someone steals a few?
The sole purpose of the ballot is to register the voter's choice. It isn't a bloody test. If voting is important, then ensuring the vote is valid is important. If voting isn't important, then neither is keeping the votes secure. How can you claim that tampering with a vote is unacceptable but it's okay to throw them out?
The second hole down did not correspond to the second candidate down on the left side, but the first candidate on the right side. That is what confused people. See here. Have the same ballot marked with a pen and you have the same problem.
You do not need to validate the voter on the ballot at all.
You misunderstand. I am talking about verifying the voter's intentions on the ballot, which was another problem in the Florida election, but happens all over. If the voter's intentions aren't clear, the vote is invalid. I am using "validate" as in "validate the input", ie. confirm the choice with the voter if it isn't clear. You can't do that with a paper ballot and maintain voter anonymity.
Florida wasn't a "paper" system either; it was a complex semi-mechanical solution which just happened to involve a peice of paper.
One of the problems in Florida was because the ballot was layed out poorly and people punched the wrong hole. That problem would still exist if the same ballot was filled out with a pen.
There is a modern America facsination with complex, semi-working "solutions" to a problem that doesn't exist.
A paper ballot cannot be validated without violating voter anonymity. I'd say that is a problem that most definitely exists.
Use a pencil, damnit!
Pencil marks can be changed. Most pencils even come equipped with the device to remove the mark on the other end.
Because, no matter how carefully you design the ballot, some will fill it out in such a way that it is impossible to know who they voted for. People are also subjective. What one person deems as a valid vote another may not. Computers, on the other hand, are exceptionally good at counting things constitently and validating input.
In a recent UK parliamentary election the winner had a majority of three votes. Would you trust an electronic system that gave this result, with no possibility of a recount?
Of course not. But it is entirely possible to have an electronic voting system that does allow for recounts. People, including the experts, are condemning electronic voting as a whole simply because the first generation of these machines have big problems. This is no more than presenting the single worst implementation as evidence that the idea can't work.
Electronic Voting is a solution in search of a problem.
Paper ballots have no problems? *cough* Florida *cough*
One of the biggest problems with paper ballots is validation. It is near impossible to verify the voter's intent without destroying voter anonymity. Machines can be very useful for validating the voter's intent without violating his anonymity. Consider what would have happened in the last presidential election if the voter could have been asked "Did you really mean to vote for Buchanan?"
I would have placed the blame squarely on all of the admins out there who allowed their systems to be compromised by the worms in the first place.
I find it amusing that you place the blame on the people who failed to fix the exploit and not the people that created the exploit in the first place or the people who exploited it.
Yes, admins have a duty to secure their systems, but to suggest that the exploit itself and the people who used it are somehow not at fault is ridiculous.
You're the only one who thinks "darting eyes" indicates a criminal.
I never said it did. In fact, if read my original post, I was challenging the assertion the parent made that "darting eyes" was a good indication of criminal or suspicious behavor.
The rest of us think "darting eyes" may possibly belong to a criminal, but most likely a normal person doing something out of ordinary.
If it's most likely not a criminal, then how good an indicator is it? And you have still not shown that darting eyes is indicative of suspicious behavior at all, let alone worthy of specifically looking for it.
If an idiot like you is in charge and the camera zaps every suspiciously behaving individual with a deadly laser, then yes, it's bad.
Would you like to point out exactly where I said this was the case before calling me an idiot for thinking so?
But in reality, the system will just alert the human operator about it, the human will take a quick look, see a horny man and move on. This is a Good Thing because it does a first-level triage for the human, without which the operator would have to check every person all the time.
So he can completely ignore the person actively engaging in criminal behavior that didn't happen to dart his eyes first? And I'm the idiot...
I just spoke to a friend of mine in law-enforcement, and he said suspicious behavior relating to the eyes is l"ooking up and to the right." Something about you doing that naturally when accessing some part of the brain.
There are plenty of non-suspicious reasons to look up and to the right.
The letter to the Senate didn't make the voluntary nature of this system clear. Thanks for the link.
The failure in this system is going to be the lack of a clear line indicating what is covered by the license and what is not. The two possibilities I can see are people will buy the license with the misconception that it does cover everything (although it could be argued that the rights holders who aren't being compensated for the downloads are at least at partial fault for not taking advantage of the system), or people will simply not buy the license because it doesn't cover everything. Of the two, I think the former is much more likely.
The system I had envisioned from the Senate letter was a compulsory licensing scheme where anyone who wanted to be a distributor could be, thereby opening a market for online music distribution that couldn't be held hostage by the recording industry. The recording industry has a vested interest in seeing online music distribution fail because it makes them obsolete. Asking them to help make that happen is unreasonable. Asking people to pay for a license that doesn't cover everything and doesn't make it clear what isn't covered puts an unfair burden on them. For the most part, people are downloading music because it is incredibly easy to do. Making that voluntarily harder won't solve anything.
You're right. The letter to the Senate doesn't say anything about it being voluntary and compares it to broadcast radio, which is compulsory. This is where it will fail since music delivery over the internet makes the current rights holders (the recording industry for the most part) obsolete.
All downloaders are only trying to avoid paying? I don't know. Most? Absolutely.
I have to disagree with this. I'm only counting people who would have bought the album except for the availability of the download. Downloading by people who wouldn't have bought it even without the download shouldn't count because there's no lost sale. There are also people who download and buy it anyway. Then there are those who download songs you can't buy anymore, so again, no lost sale. And those who download songs that are in the public domain or that the rights holders have given permission to distribute freely. You also have to consider how many of these people who do download to avoid buying a whole album for one or two songs would pay for the songs if they had the option.
Have you ever tried to sell anything via "voluntary" payment? I have. The vast majority won't pay if they don't have to.
The difference is that copyright infringement is illegal. If people have the choice of paying a reasonable license to obtain it legally or breaking the law, most will choose the legal route.
For starters, it's hinged on the notion that rightsholders will voluntarily license,
They're suggesting a compulsory license, much like the one used in radio. That's on purpose to prevent the very thing you are apparently concerned with.
and that downloaders will voluntarily pay.
If the license is reasonable, why wouldn't they? To suggest otherwise is assuming all downloaders are only trying to avoid paying for it. That simply isn't true.
The big music companies can't be forced to block-license their output. They do it for radio stations because it's in their interest to have their songs played in a context where a) large numbers of people can hear them, and b) if their song isn't playing, someone else's would be.
Actually they can. The recording industry fought the compulsory licenses instituted for radio because they lost some control. It was in the consumer's best interest to have the compulsory licenses so the radio stations couldn't be held hostage by the recording industry. The same thing with cable television. Broadcast television programs have a compulsory license when shown on cable. That was to prevent the broadcast stations from being able to kill the CATV market by making the licenses too high.
The same situation exists here. If the licenses are not compulsory, the recording industry can simply make the licenses so high that it's cheaper to buy a CD and thus protect their business model.
How can you possibly think that learning to send a robot to Mars and back won't help us when it comes time to send people there?
Because robots don't need food, water, oxygen, heat, waste services, light or to come back. In short, their requirements are entirely different from humans'. Robots can be constructed to survive the elements of space. Humans cannot. The solutions put forth by robotic space flight will rarely translate into human space flight.
When it's that easy, you can't even call it social engineering. It's just social nudging, and people are ready to fall for it.
Just to put the 28% number into perspective, I'd like to see a study on how many people click links that say "Click here to install a virus on your computer".
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt it. They haven't added up with movie ratings or CD labels in all the years people have been jizzing in their tinfoil over those subjects.
The big difference being that movie and album ratings are voluntary, not required by law, and that most video games already carry a voluntary rating.
AlwaysOn columnist Rafe Needleman called IntelliTxt "pretty bad news" from an ethics standpoint "because it blurs the line between editorial content, which readers should expect to be free of commercial influence, and advertising, which we know is paid-for and biased."
People are only interested in viewpoints they agree with. They don't care about the credibility of the source. They don't want the truth, they want to believe they are right. Publications are only concerned with readership and the readers aren't concerned with credibility. So, while IntelliTxt ads may damage a publications credibility, it won't affect its readership. And if confusing people into reading an ad increases their bottom line, credibility loses.
Your bafflement is entirely because you attribute both these opinions with one entity when, in fact, there are a great number of people here who don't always hold the same views.
Slashdot has no opinion. The readers of Slashdot have many opinions. Simply because you read them both in the same place does not mean everyone believes them both.
If however, you can find someone who does believe both, you should probably address your comments to them.
My point about the mechanical system is that it is suboptimal, simply because it is mechanical. Paper is much more flexible.
It was suboptimal because of its design. Simply being mechanical is not the reason it was suboptimal. The butterfly ballot in Florida was only slightly more mechanical than pencil and paper (which is, by the way, a mechanical process). The only real difference was that the mechanism restricted where you could make the mark. Had it been designed correctly, it would likely be more reliable than pen and paper.
And yes, I think that a system based on judgement calls is more secure and more accurate than an electronic system. It is easy to know how large a problem mistaken votes are, you simply count how many ballots were considered "questionable" and had to go in for a second check.
An electronic system can drastically reduce the number of questionable votes in the first place so that no judgement call (which, by definition, is subjective) is needed.
With an electronic system, a mistake looks no different from an intentional vote.
With a paper system, a mistake looks no different from an intentional vote. If the voter selects the wrong candidate, the person reading the vote has no way to know whether the vote was intentional. An electronic system could at least ask the voter "are you sure?" and reduce the number of mistakes.
A dubious vote, on the other hand, is one where it is not immediately apparent what the voter's selection was. The electronic system would eliminate this completely.
Experience shows that with paper ballots there are very few mistaken or dubious votes.
Cite, please.
In case an election is really close, and those votes might actually matter, you simply count very very carefully.
How do you count a dubious vote carefully? It is entirely up to the judgement of the person interpreting it. He has no other way to know what the intended vote was. Couldn't his political leanings, consciously or not, affect his judgement? And if more than one person interprets it to combat bias, what if they disagree?
The machine is a one-size-fits-all for all elections. It is completely mechanical, and as such it is not reconfigurable.
Your point being what?
And yes, there will be incorrectly filled ballots. That is where humans make judgement calls. Humans are pretty good at that, except when you force them to obey hard rules.
So, in other words, you advocating a system where not only if you get it wrong on the first try your vote is discounted, but the rules by which they are discounted change based on who's making the call. And you think this is more secure and more accurate than an electronic system?
However, who's to say that the US Constitution is some magically ordained super-document that is completely infallible and utterly trustworthy?
Few are suggesting that the Constitution is infallible. Most are suggesting that if the Constitution, the document which created our system of government, says something, we should at least look at why they wrote it that way.
It was written by men. Smart men, true, but still just men. It's great to have a common root for our legal/government practices, and to keep a (relatively) clear and concise record, but why this continual return to "the Constitution from 225 years ago says so!"? If we dropped some of the stigma around the Constitution, it could be _changed_ and actually be a living document that helps the US develop into the future.
The Constitution has been changed, 27 times in fact, since it's initial inception. It is a living, growing document.
Noone sane would format the ballot that way, except to fit the constraints of the machine.
Someone presumably sane designed the machine that way, the sole purpose of which was to make it easier to punch out the holes. If they can design a machine so poorly, what makes you think they won't do it with a paper ballot? Even if they design the ballot perfectly, some people will still fill it out incorrectly. What then? Throw the vote out because the voter didn't get it right in one try?
Then their vote is invalid, and you throw it away.
So then every vote isn't important. Then why are we bothering at all? If we're willing to throw out whole votes simply because they went outside the lines, what do we care if the system is secure? If we're throwing them away anyway, what does it matter if someone steals a few?
The sole purpose of the ballot is to register the voter's choice. It isn't a bloody test. If voting is important, then ensuring the vote is valid is important. If voting isn't important, then neither is keeping the votes secure. How can you claim that tampering with a vote is unacceptable but it's okay to throw them out?
You would not have had the "alignment" problem.
The second hole down did not correspond to the second candidate down on the left side, but the first candidate on the right side. That is what confused people. See here. Have the same ballot marked with a pen and you have the same problem.
You do not need to validate the voter on the ballot at all.
You misunderstand. I am talking about verifying the voter's intentions on the ballot, which was another problem in the Florida election, but happens all over. If the voter's intentions aren't clear, the vote is invalid. I am using "validate" as in "validate the input", ie. confirm the choice with the voter if it isn't clear. You can't do that with a paper ballot and maintain voter anonymity.
Florida wasn't a "paper" system either; it was a complex semi-mechanical solution which just happened to involve a peice of paper.
One of the problems in Florida was because the ballot was layed out poorly and people punched the wrong hole. That problem would still exist if the same ballot was filled out with a pen.
There is a modern America facsination with complex, semi-working "solutions" to a problem that doesn't exist.
A paper ballot cannot be validated without violating voter anonymity. I'd say that is a problem that most definitely exists.
Use a pencil, damnit!
Pencil marks can be changed. Most pencils even come equipped with the device to remove the mark on the other end.
What's wrong with a piece of paper and a pencil?
Because, no matter how carefully you design the ballot, some will fill it out in such a way that it is impossible to know who they voted for. People are also subjective. What one person deems as a valid vote another may not. Computers, on the other hand, are exceptionally good at counting things constitently and validating input.
In a recent UK parliamentary election the winner had a majority of three votes. Would you trust an electronic system that gave this result, with no possibility of a recount?
Of course not. But it is entirely possible to have an electronic voting system that does allow for recounts. People, including the experts, are condemning electronic voting as a whole simply because the first generation of these machines have big problems. This is no more than presenting the single worst implementation as evidence that the idea can't work.
Electronic Voting is a solution in search of a problem.
Paper ballots have no problems? *cough* Florida *cough*
One of the biggest problems with paper ballots is validation. It is near impossible to verify the voter's intent without destroying voter anonymity. Machines can be very useful for validating the voter's intent without violating his anonymity. Consider what would have happened in the last presidential election if the voter could have been asked "Did you really mean to vote for Buchanan?"
I would have placed the blame squarely on all of the admins out there who allowed their systems to be compromised by the worms in the first place.
I find it amusing that you place the blame on the people who failed to fix the exploit and not the people that created the exploit in the first place or the people who exploited it.
Yes, admins have a duty to secure their systems, but to suggest that the exploit itself and the people who used it are somehow not at fault is ridiculous.
It's probably not possible to write a set of laws that isn't subject to abusive exploitation by people who want to leech off the system.
But it is possible to write the laws so they don't actively encourage leeching off the system.
You're the only one who thinks "darting eyes" indicates a criminal.
I never said it did. In fact, if read my original post, I was challenging the assertion the parent made that "darting eyes" was a good indication of criminal or suspicious behavor.
The rest of us think "darting eyes" may possibly belong to a criminal, but most likely a normal person doing something out of ordinary.
If it's most likely not a criminal, then how good an indicator is it? And you have still not shown that darting eyes is indicative of suspicious behavior at all, let alone worthy of specifically looking for it.
If an idiot like you is in charge and the camera zaps every suspiciously behaving individual with a deadly laser, then yes, it's bad.
Would you like to point out exactly where I said this was the case before calling me an idiot for thinking so?
But in reality, the system will just alert the human operator about it, the human will take a quick look, see a horny man and move on. This is a Good Thing because it does a first-level triage for the human, without which the operator would have to check every person all the time.
So he can completely ignore the person actively engaging in criminal behavior that didn't happen to dart his eyes first? And I'm the idiot...
Neurolinguistic Programming talks about all that stuff with eye movements and accessing cues.
You might also want to see this.
I just spoke to a friend of mine in law-enforcement, and he said suspicious behavior relating to the eyes is l"ooking up and to the right." Something about you doing that naturally when accessing some part of the brain.
There are plenty of non-suspicious reasons to look up and to the right.
I'm sure someone could Google it...
Why don't you? It's your argument.
Just the ones that are darting from person to person, or back and forth looking for cops.
Or scanning the crowd looking for someone they're meeting. What, exactly, about "darting eyes" indicates criminal or suspicious behavior?
Sounds kinda nifty to me. As far as the surveillance part, they won't learn that much from me. Guys look at breasts a LOT. Wow. Newsflash.
They won't just know that guys look at breasts a lot. They will know whose breasts you were looking at. Big difference.
The letter to the Senate didn't make the voluntary nature of this system clear. Thanks for the link.
The failure in this system is going to be the lack of a clear line indicating what is covered by the license and what is not. The two possibilities I can see are people will buy the license with the misconception that it does cover everything (although it could be argued that the rights holders who aren't being compensated for the downloads are at least at partial fault for not taking advantage of the system), or people will simply not buy the license because it doesn't cover everything. Of the two, I think the former is much more likely.
The system I had envisioned from the Senate letter was a compulsory licensing scheme where anyone who wanted to be a distributor could be, thereby opening a market for online music distribution that couldn't be held hostage by the recording industry. The recording industry has a vested interest in seeing online music distribution fail because it makes them obsolete. Asking them to help make that happen is unreasonable. Asking people to pay for a license that doesn't cover everything and doesn't make it clear what isn't covered puts an unfair burden on them. For the most part, people are downloading music because it is incredibly easy to do. Making that voluntarily harder won't solve anything.
Nope, it's not compulsory,
You're right. The letter to the Senate doesn't say anything about it being voluntary and compares it to broadcast radio, which is compulsory. This is where it will fail since music delivery over the internet makes the current rights holders (the recording industry for the most part) obsolete.
All downloaders are only trying to avoid paying? I don't know. Most? Absolutely.
I have to disagree with this. I'm only counting people who would have bought the album except for the availability of the download. Downloading by people who wouldn't have bought it even without the download shouldn't count because there's no lost sale. There are also people who download and buy it anyway. Then there are those who download songs you can't buy anymore, so again, no lost sale. And those who download songs that are in the public domain or that the rights holders have given permission to distribute freely. You also have to consider how many of these people who do download to avoid buying a whole album for one or two songs would pay for the songs if they had the option.
Have you ever tried to sell anything via "voluntary" payment? I have. The vast majority won't pay if they don't have to.
The difference is that copyright infringement is illegal. If people have the choice of paying a reasonable license to obtain it legally or breaking the law, most will choose the legal route.
For starters, it's hinged on the notion that rightsholders will voluntarily license,
They're suggesting a compulsory license, much like the one used in radio. That's on purpose to prevent the very thing you are apparently concerned with.
and that downloaders will voluntarily pay.
If the license is reasonable, why wouldn't they? To suggest otherwise is assuming all downloaders are only trying to avoid paying for it. That simply isn't true.
The big music companies can't be forced to block-license their output. They do it for radio stations because it's in their interest to have their songs played in a context where a) large numbers of people can hear them, and b) if their song isn't playing, someone else's would be.
Actually they can. The recording industry fought the compulsory licenses instituted for radio because they lost some control. It was in the consumer's best interest to have the compulsory licenses so the radio stations couldn't be held hostage by the recording industry. The same thing with cable television. Broadcast television programs have a compulsory license when shown on cable. That was to prevent the broadcast stations from being able to kill the CATV market by making the licenses too high.
The same situation exists here. If the licenses are not compulsory, the recording industry can simply make the licenses so high that it's cheaper to buy a CD and thus protect their business model.
How can you possibly think that learning to send a robot to Mars and back won't help us when it comes time to send people there?
Because robots don't need food, water, oxygen, heat, waste services, light or to come back. In short, their requirements are entirely different from humans'. Robots can be constructed to survive the elements of space. Humans cannot. The solutions put forth by robotic space flight will rarely translate into human space flight.
When it's that easy, you can't even call it social engineering. It's just social nudging, and people are ready to fall for it.
Just to put the 28% number into perspective, I'd like to see a study on how many people click links that say "Click here to install a virus on your computer".
If such a virus were to infect you, it clearly points out that you had NOT infact been able to secure your system.
So, if someone breaks into your house, that gives anyone permission to secure it for you?
Besides, even if it happens to have a huge hole or break systems, is it any worse than a worm that does exactly that on purpose.
No, but it's not any better either. Whether it breaks your system intentionally or not, it's still breaking your system.