I downloaded my data in 2-GB pieces. One of the mysteries is that the last two pieces were in total less than 2 GB. Each of the pieces contains a number of folders, many of which have the same names. There is only one index.html file in the last piece, but it does not work the same way as the Facebook archive you can download. I've been poking at the data in various ways, but so far haven't been able to make hide nor hair of it.
Perhaps it will be helpful to consider another version? This one is from IBM and is called personality insights: https://personality-insights-d... The link is already old, but it gives you about 15 dimensions of personality based on text you wrote. I recommend using the "Body of Text" tab for most control. There's also a kind of radar display of about 70 dimensions grouped into various categories.
I think I agree with you as far as you went, but in that case part of the information I am asking about is the context to interpret the shape of the categorization space and where I am within it. That is also in terms of the relationships to the parts of my data that contributed to my location and to the accuracy of that location. The google can reveal a lot about the space without exposing any of the individuals within it.
Perhaps a more concrete example will help? For example, can the google look at the vectors of spouses to assess how well their marriages are liable to work? Just asking for a friend, since I'm pretty sure my wife would NOT let me look at her data. She'll barely tell me when breakfast is ready.
Uh? Are you saying that they are hiding it by sending it to me? If so, then what I am seeking could be rephrased along those lines. Right now it looks like I have a gigantic pile of data that's even messier than my actual life, which is saying something.
Uh? What question are you trying to answer? And how does that question relate to any of the questions I posed? At first I thought you were trying to say something about derived data, but now I have no idea...
However, one of the categories of data I was looking for was data about me from other sources. For example, in terms of marketing my data to the advertisers, such external data as my credit history would seem to be highly relevant. Perhaps I can find my credit report somewhere in there?
In the original questions I left out one of the peculiarities I already discovered. A lot of "my" data that the google sent me was actually links to other places where I had posted things. In other cases the links seemed completely unrelated to me, as with a Google Play app to some game I don't believe I've ever downloaded or played.
Glad to see you got the insightful mod you deserved, but I was too busy to respond and now it's too late, so this is just an ACK. Much more could be said on the topic, but you've helped motivate me to approach it from a fresh perspective.
Can't decide if it's a good thing or not because my main exposure to shortened links is when the spamming scammers use them to disguise their drive-by attack websites. Anyone ready to vouch for this new approach (or reproach it)?
By the way, I've never understood the abuse of shortened links. If they wanted to stop the abuse, the solution is quite obvious. When the abuse is reported, they would take over the link and permanently repoint it at the worst website for the spamming scammer. For example, rather than direct the suckers to the scammer's website, the repointed shortened URL could point to a police website warning against the danger of clicking on mysterious links. The more spam the scammer sends, the worse for the scam.
Or am I just too paranoid and suspicious? The story got me to check the upgrade history, which showed nothing for the last few weeks, but that got me to check for upgrades, which has triggered a download and installation for KB4089848... Can't see exactly what it is in the middle of the upgrade, but if I don't come back afterwards, "Arrgh, the got me!"
But it is close to April, as in April Fool's day... And yet, that actually appears to be an authentic Microsoft website and the MSA does include the actual word "offensive" and MS is not known for its corporate sense of humor. Right now I'm leaning the other way, that it is for real, as in real crazy.
I'm really straining my brain for some way to interpret this as reasonable. Maybe it's a new make-work project to avoid firing people? From a company that used to have a policy of continuously firing the bottom-ranked people? Now Microsoft will just assign them to offensive-language-checking and they will sit around for 8 hours a day reviewing the complaints of "offensive" language? You have to admit that (1) It's a bottomless pit, and (2) They won't have to fire anyone because they'll all quit. Yeah, there will be one Guinness record holder who actually likes the work and wants to defend his world record, but the rest of them will soon be gone.
Let me offer a suggestion to actually do this in a sane fashion. It involves my old fantasy of EPR (Earned Public Reputation). As I've noted before, this should be a multidimensional concept, and the basic idea to to save time by favoring the nice people and filtering the un-nice people. If the default setting is just slightly positive, then most of the trolls and sock puppets are already banished to their private limbo, but let's consider the simple dimension of "politeness" and how it works with real people. If someone says something rude or offensive, then you would be able to rate that comment as negative on the "politeness" dimension, citing the rude comment as evidence.
This would be used in (at least) three ways. First, (from your perspective as an identity earning a reputation) if you are massively and repeatedly impolite, then that might tip your overall EPR into the bit bucket. Second, (as a reader) if you are easily offended by offensive language, then you could increase the weighting on that specific dimension of "politeness", and just stop seeing the offensive people (even if they have favorable reputations in other dimensions). Third, (as an earner of EPR) if you want to become more polite, then you can check your own rating on the politeness dimension and tone your rudeness down a bit.
BtW, the EPR should be linked to the data, and the data should age over time, with more recent comments and interactions counting more heavily than older ones. Lots of detailed suggestions available upon polite request, but I must warn you that I've been thinking about this topic for some years... I even have suggested solutions for the problem of inherently biased dimensions, where "politeness" might be an example. (Hint: How can you get people to report positive politeness when it is normally taken for granted?)
You forgot the <sarcasm> tags and you were apparently taken literally in some way?
I think that censorship is insane and offensive language is sometimes the only or at least the best way to express certain emotional states or to show sincerity. Right now I'm still reserving judgment because I think the story is quite likely an early April Fool's joke. (The problem with that theory is why pick Microsoft? A cunning selection of the highly improbable target of the joke to make it seem credible?)
Let me try to clarify that the CSB (Charity Share Brokerage) (as I envision it) would earn its commission or tithe by providing valuable services far beyond handling the money. Most importantly, the CSB has to develop expertise in project management at an auditing level. Or you might prefer to describe it as adult supervision, though that should remind you of venture capitalists, who (at that point) are usually in the process of hijacking innovations for profit maximization as they cash out. However the charity share brokerage should have a dual philosophy of cost recovery and making the world better, not cancerous profit maximization. The CSB is going to have a lot of experience with projects and the people who are actually implementing them and what happened to the projects, and the reputation of the CSB is itself linked to how well the projects succeed.
Thank you [javaman235] for fielding that somewhat misdirected response. Hard for me to be sufficiently polite to such. I will go ahead and add the citation to Our Final Invention by James Barrat.
I'm still failing to communicate, but I think it's because of the limited time and you haven't read earlier context...
Short answer: The success criteria need to be clear in the project proposal. For the example of creating a prototype for a new product, the success criteria must include something along the lines of: "We want to develop a product that can be mass produced at a price of $X starting next Y." In terms of making such predictions as part of the success criteria, assessing the size of the market is one of the key data points.
...And I doubt that the one is going to be American.
The argument that you [SuperKendall (who I generally agree with)] is making is only partly applicable here. The long-term trend has definitely been for things to get better, but we only live on the short term. I think this time the short-term oscillations are going to go too negative, because the competition is accelerating and making the oscillations too violent. So I'm changing the Subject: a bit...
While I think that India and maybe Japan are dark horse candidates, I think there is only going to be one winner, and it won't be America. There are three fundamental weaknesses:
(1) Leadership. Divisive and selfish (even narcissistic) and wannabe dictatorial versus competent and strong and experienced dictatorial.
(2) Defenses. As in the US has no meaningful defenses against cyber-aggression while the Chinese (in particular) are thinking both ways.
(3) Changed my mind. I've decided not to state this one in public yet. Perhaps ever? Feel free to guess, but I doubt you can get it, even though...
The prediction I will make in public is that AI harnessed for competition is an extremely serious threat. If a competition-driven AI gets loose in the world, then its highest priority will almost surely be to neutralize any competitive threats, starting with other AIs. Doesn't really matter what form of competition it puts first, but right now it looks to be profit or national defense.
You seem quite confused, or maybe you can't understand what I'm saying. I am certainly NOT suggesting that our personal data is not valuable. What I am saying is that our personal interests are not (under the current economic models) congruent with the profit-driven interests of the corporate cancers that are harvesting our personal data and USING OUR OWN DATA AGAINST US.
I don't really have much time this morning, but let me try an elevator pitch for an example: Imagine an email intermediary that holds your personal information and auctions blocks of attention (to protect the individual data) to legitimate companies with goods and services to sell. Such an email company would have a strongly vested interest in protecting your personal information to protect their own position in the exchanges. You would have a vested interest in providing more data, but it would be your decision if the extra money from increasing the value of the auctions you're involved in would be worth revealing more data. At the same time, the email intermediary would have a strongly vested interest to kill the spam to protect the value of the legitimate email they are benefiting from...
Hmm... The primary linkage to the original story is the need for better financial models?
Anyway, as it applies in the crowd funding case, I think it would make much more sense to fund prototypes. If it's a valuable product (or service (including software)) that can be marketed on a rational basis, then the focus should be on proving the concept. The donors can be compensated by (1) Knowing they are helping the product get to market faster, (2) Helping assess the real demand for the product, and (3) Special incentives, just as a raffle for the prototypes, discounts when it goes into production, or maybe just being the first to be allowed to buy the product. (The prototypes may well become historical artifacts with special value, but I personally wouldn't want to buy the first production models since there are still going to be some bugs, even if the project plan included proper testing.)
I think the charity share brokerage should be earning its tithe by project evaluation in addition to the support for planning and funding.
Annoying. I wasn't paying attention. Here is the corrected last paragraph:
The corporate cancers don't actually think or feel, but they are programmed to act on the creed "There is no gawd but profit, and <the corporation> must become gawd's #1 prophet." Doesn't matter much if <the corporation> is Apple (2017), Amazon, the google (AKA Alphabet), Microsoft, some gigantic bank or brokerage, or even the Trump so-called Organization.
You're right that this discussion is becoming pointless, but I think that may be symptomatic of the communications breakdowns of the Internet. Perhaps we should try to start again, but I also suspect you don't read much, so we probably can't find a mutually agreeable starting place. For example, have you read The Shallows?
I actually feel like I suffered a kind of zen collapse a few years ago and now I tend to see everything on top of everything else. The things that are simply are, but I don't feel any attachment to them or even to the time in which they exist, existed, or will exist. Where things could be different, then the direction of time's arrow has to be considered. If conditions could become better, then there is is something wrong with the the way things are. If you prefer that wording, then a problem has been discovered in terms of its solution. If things could become worse, then that potential future state could be regarded as a problem and the objective is to avert the negative change.
The meaning of "good" is a funny question, but my sig is about one of the things that I regard as good. The corporate cancers are programmed to reduce choice and freedom in pursuit of larger profits, and I regard that as a kind of problem. I think that the inhuman corporations are currently running amok as they seek to solve a fake problem. There is no infinite amount of profit that could satisfy their driving equations for profit maximization. I think the better state of affairs would be to increase freedom, for example by changing the tax system to tax profits progressively based on market share, with the simple objective of insuring that every market offers at least 3 to 5 meaningful choices. At the same time, REAL competition is a good thing and should be encouraged, but it should be fair, regulated, and even constrained so we don't have to constantly live on the edges of starvation and bankruptcy.
The corporate cancers don't actually think or feel, but they are programmed to act on the creed "There is no gawd but profit, and must become gawd's #1 prophet." Doesn't matter much if is Apple (2017), Amazon, the google (AKA Alphabet), Microsoft, some gigantic bank or brokerage, or even the Trump so-called Organization.
I'm convinced that you were quite correct about 184564 and again I wish that Slashdot were able to enhance karma to become a proper form of EPR (Earned Public Reputation). It's possible that 184564 would still be visible to me, but I doubt it. (I think Slashdot cannot evolve in such a positive direction because the financial model is too borken (sic).)
I agree, and that is because Kickstarter's own business model is so badly broken. Because they are paid based on the money donated, of course they want more donations. Because they make no guarantee about the success of the projects, of course they don't care whether or not the projects succeed.
I'm advocating a substantially different form of crowd funding where accountability for success is baked into the cake. I actually call it a "charity share brokerage", and may even have gotten to that label before I ever heard of Kickstarter.
Unfortunately, I'm a pure solutions researcher in the same sense as pure mathematician. I have no executive skills or real interest in whether the solutions (no matter how obvious) actually get implemented in the messy real world. Sufficient to me that the solution has been discovered. Not to say that this charity share brokerage is "the solution" to anything, but I do feel like it is the best approach to a solution I've come up with. Defining the problem is actually more difficult, but it has to do with the misalignment of economic models with more important objectives, such as the maximization of good time.
Mostly I believe that you don't have many or perhaps any personal contacts in the google these days. Actually, I lost mine around the time I started to figure out what the google had evolved into. Two or three years ago? The links were cut so quickly that I actually suspected I got put on some sort of enemies list of people not to fraternize with...
I suppose my old friends shouldn't have told me about the attention thing? In the form of a joke, I put it as "All your attention are belong to the google." Or perhaps you could read some of the books about the google, such as Work Rules!, What Would Google Do? (assuming it was published?), How Google Works, Google by Auletta, Planet Google, The Google Model, Dogfight, The Google Story, or The Search? That's roughly in order of relevance to this topic. I've read others, too, but they seem less relevant. Perhaps I should add some citations for books about Facebook, Twitter, and more general philosophy and computer security?
Seems to me like pursuing this discussion is pointless, but perhaps that's because we've been sucked down a distracting wormhole? The real issue is the abuse of our personal information, and it doesn't really matter if Facebook or the google are doing it directly, or they are playing shell game with the abuse by selling or loaning or giving the data to some other entity for the abusive uses. Actually, in terms of protecting their reputations, I think corporate cancers often prefer such tactics.
Actually, the funniest joke may be #PresidentTweety's delusion that he's not the puppet?
That's almost exactly what happened to Diaspora, and there are other examples. It's also called feeping creaturitis in the Hacker's Dictionary.
I think it's much better to make sure the original project is completely planned as well as possible BEFORE starting work. If the increment of work for the project is clear and there are also clear success criteria, then all the other pieces are ready to fall into place. Obviously you can't plan perfectly, but the budget, resources, and schedule should all be considered as carefully as possible. There should even be some funding reserved for contingencies. In the case of a software development project, testing should be part of the plan, and I also think they should reserve some funds for compensating outside contributors who work on the code, though the primary contributors should basically be treated as contractors or employees.
I actually think it would be better to bring more people into the project as supporters rather than just taking extra money. For example, let's say the project budget is $300,000 and with $10 charity shares you need to sell 30,000 shares. If you quickly get that many supporters and the project is committed, then you can still continue selling the shares, but the price per share will go down. Let's say it's limited to 60,000 donors. If the project sells out the second time, the per share price will be only $5, but you know that there is serious demand for the project and you also have twice as many people who are vested in the success of the project and who you can ask about the next steps. Such a highly desired should obviously be accelerated if possible. For example, if the start date was originally planned in June, maybe you can jump the start date to May.
Sticking with the planned budget cuts out the jackpot effect that makes Kickstarter such a crazy place. It won't be a matter of striking it rich, but just doing the job for the money that was agreed to as payment for the work. I think the people implementing project should basically be paid at market rates, but with a discount for getting more control over the work they are doing.
You're not thinking it through. If we were paying the google to protect our privacy, then the google would have an actual incentive to do it, but the money is coming from corporate cancers that want to have it all. The only concern of the corporate cancers is creating the image that our privacy is being protected.
There are some alternative financial models that would give the google an actual vested interest in protecting our information. However now the google has a vested interest in NOT changing economic models.
Kind of unclear, but I'd still give you the informative mod if I ever saw a mod point to give. Main item was the MeWe, which I'll research next.
However for now I'll expand on the Diaspora reference. You mentioned it, as did the OP. The basic idea was good, but it was indirectly killed by the bad economic model. So many people liked the idea when it appeared on Kickstarter that the project was way TOO successful. The over-funding caused them to try to rescale the project, and it basically died. I also think the pressure of the unexpected success probably contributed to the suicide of the young visionary behind the project, but that's hard to prove.
However in terms of solutions, I think the pretty obvious solution is to change and limit the projects. When the funding is reached, STOP. Implement the first step under the first project plan and then consider the next steps.
Could say more, but called to dinner... Jya, mata.
Slashdot Mirror
I downloaded my data in 2-GB pieces. One of the mysteries is that the last two pieces were in total less than 2 GB. Each of the pieces contains a number of folders, many of which have the same names. There is only one index.html file in the last piece, but it does not work the same way as the Facebook archive you can download. I've been poking at the data in various ways, but so far haven't been able to make hide nor hair of it.
Perhaps it will be helpful to consider another version? This one is from IBM and is called personality insights: https://personality-insights-d... The link is already old, but it gives you about 15 dimensions of personality based on text you wrote. I recommend using the "Body of Text" tab for most control. There's also a kind of radar display of about 70 dimensions grouped into various categories.
I think I agree with you as far as you went, but in that case part of the information I am asking about is the context to interpret the shape of the categorization space and where I am within it. That is also in terms of the relationships to the parts of my data that contributed to my location and to the accuracy of that location. The google can reveal a lot about the space without exposing any of the individuals within it.
Perhaps a more concrete example will help? For example, can the google look at the vectors of spouses to assess how well their marriages are liable to work? Just asking for a friend, since I'm pretty sure my wife would NOT let me look at her data. She'll barely tell me when breakfast is ready.
Uh? Are you saying that they are hiding it by sending it to me? If so, then what I am seeking could be rephrased along those lines. Right now it looks like I have a gigantic pile of data that's even messier than my actual life, which is saying something.
Uh? What question are you trying to answer? And how does that question relate to any of the questions I posed? At first I thought you were trying to say something about derived data, but now I have no idea...
However, one of the categories of data I was looking for was data about me from other sources. For example, in terms of marketing my data to the advertisers, such external data as my credit history would seem to be highly relevant. Perhaps I can find my credit report somewhere in there?
In the original questions I left out one of the peculiarities I already discovered. A lot of "my" data that the google sent me was actually links to other places where I had posted things. In other cases the links seemed completely unrelated to me, as with a Google Play app to some game I don't believe I've ever downloaded or played.
So here is a link to the derivative topic: https://slashdot.org/journal/3...
I actually wrote an Ask Slashdot version, too, which was apparently put on the front page by one editor before the next one nuked it.
Glad to see you got the insightful mod you deserved, but I was too busy to respond and now it's too late, so this is just an ACK. Much more could be said on the topic, but you've helped motivate me to approach it from a fresh perspective.
Can't decide if it's a good thing or not because my main exposure to shortened links is when the spamming scammers use them to disguise their drive-by attack websites. Anyone ready to vouch for this new approach (or reproach it)?
By the way, I've never understood the abuse of shortened links. If they wanted to stop the abuse, the solution is quite obvious. When the abuse is reported, they would take over the link and permanently repoint it at the worst website for the spamming scammer. For example, rather than direct the suckers to the scammer's website, the repointed shortened URL could point to a police website warning against the danger of clicking on mysterious links. The more spam the scammer sends, the worse for the scam.
Or am I just too paranoid and suspicious? The story got me to check the upgrade history, which showed nothing for the last few weeks, but that got me to check for upgrades, which has triggered a download and installation for KB4089848... Can't see exactly what it is in the middle of the upgrade, but if I don't come back afterwards, "Arrgh, the got me!"
No it's not, September child.
But it is close to April, as in April Fool's day... And yet, that actually appears to be an authentic Microsoft website and the MSA does include the actual word "offensive" and MS is not known for its corporate sense of humor. Right now I'm leaning the other way, that it is for real, as in real crazy.
I'm really straining my brain for some way to interpret this as reasonable. Maybe it's a new make-work project to avoid firing people? From a company that used to have a policy of continuously firing the bottom-ranked people? Now Microsoft will just assign them to offensive-language-checking and they will sit around for 8 hours a day reviewing the complaints of "offensive" language? You have to admit that (1) It's a bottomless pit, and (2) They won't have to fire anyone because they'll all quit. Yeah, there will be one Guinness record holder who actually likes the work and wants to defend his world record, but the rest of them will soon be gone.
Let me offer a suggestion to actually do this in a sane fashion. It involves my old fantasy of EPR (Earned Public Reputation). As I've noted before, this should be a multidimensional concept, and the basic idea to to save time by favoring the nice people and filtering the un-nice people. If the default setting is just slightly positive, then most of the trolls and sock puppets are already banished to their private limbo, but let's consider the simple dimension of "politeness" and how it works with real people. If someone says something rude or offensive, then you would be able to rate that comment as negative on the "politeness" dimension, citing the rude comment as evidence.
This would be used in (at least) three ways. First, (from your perspective as an identity earning a reputation) if you are massively and repeatedly impolite, then that might tip your overall EPR into the bit bucket. Second, (as a reader) if you are easily offended by offensive language, then you could increase the weighting on that specific dimension of "politeness", and just stop seeing the offensive people (even if they have favorable reputations in other dimensions). Third, (as an earner of EPR) if you want to become more polite, then you can check your own rating on the politeness dimension and tone your rudeness down a bit.
BtW, the EPR should be linked to the data, and the data should age over time, with more recent comments and interactions counting more heavily than older ones. Lots of detailed suggestions available upon polite request, but I must warn you that I've been thinking about this topic for some years... I even have suggested solutions for the problem of inherently biased dimensions, where "politeness" might be an example. (Hint: How can you get people to report positive politeness when it is normally taken for granted?)
Really, who uses offensive language on Skype?
You forgot the <sarcasm> tags and you were apparently taken literally in some way?
I think that censorship is insane and offensive language is sometimes the only or at least the best way to express certain emotional states or to show sincerity. Right now I'm still reserving judgment because I think the story is quite likely an early April Fool's joke. (The problem with that theory is why pick Microsoft? A cunning selection of the highly improbable target of the joke to make it seem credible?)
Let me try to clarify that the CSB (Charity Share Brokerage) (as I envision it) would earn its commission or tithe by providing valuable services far beyond handling the money. Most importantly, the CSB has to develop expertise in project management at an auditing level. Or you might prefer to describe it as adult supervision, though that should remind you of venture capitalists, who (at that point) are usually in the process of hijacking innovations for profit maximization as they cash out. However the charity share brokerage should have a dual philosophy of cost recovery and making the world better, not cancerous profit maximization. The CSB is going to have a lot of experience with projects and the people who are actually implementing them and what happened to the projects, and the reputation of the CSB is itself linked to how well the projects succeed.
Thank you [javaman235] for fielding that somewhat misdirected response. Hard for me to be sufficiently polite to such. I will go ahead and add the citation to Our Final Invention by James Barrat.
I'm still failing to communicate, but I think it's because of the limited time and you haven't read earlier context...
Short answer: The success criteria need to be clear in the project proposal. For the example of creating a prototype for a new product, the success criteria must include something along the lines of: "We want to develop a product that can be mass produced at a price of $X starting next Y." In terms of making such predictions as part of the success criteria, assessing the size of the market is one of the key data points.
...And I doubt that the one is going to be American.
The argument that you [SuperKendall (who I generally agree with)] is making is only partly applicable here. The long-term trend has definitely been for things to get better, but we only live on the short term. I think this time the short-term oscillations are going to go too negative, because the competition is accelerating and making the oscillations too violent. So I'm changing the Subject: a bit...
While I think that India and maybe Japan are dark horse candidates, I think there is only going to be one winner, and it won't be America. There are three fundamental weaknesses:
(1) Leadership. Divisive and selfish (even narcissistic) and wannabe dictatorial versus competent and strong and experienced dictatorial.
(2) Defenses. As in the US has no meaningful defenses against cyber-aggression while the Chinese (in particular) are thinking both ways.
(3) Changed my mind. I've decided not to state this one in public yet. Perhaps ever? Feel free to guess, but I doubt you can get it, even though...
The prediction I will make in public is that AI harnessed for competition is an extremely serious threat. If a competition-driven AI gets loose in the world, then its highest priority will almost surely be to neutralize any competitive threats, starting with other AIs. Doesn't really matter what form of competition it puts first, but right now it looks to be profit or national defense.
You seem quite confused, or maybe you can't understand what I'm saying. I am certainly NOT suggesting that our personal data is not valuable. What I am saying is that our personal interests are not (under the current economic models) congruent with the profit-driven interests of the corporate cancers that are harvesting our personal data and USING OUR OWN DATA AGAINST US.
I don't really have much time this morning, but let me try an elevator pitch for an example: Imagine an email intermediary that holds your personal information and auctions blocks of attention (to protect the individual data) to legitimate companies with goods and services to sell. Such an email company would have a strongly vested interest in protecting your personal information to protect their own position in the exchanges. You would have a vested interest in providing more data, but it would be your decision if the extra money from increasing the value of the auctions you're involved in would be worth revealing more data. At the same time, the email intermediary would have a strongly vested interest to kill the spam to protect the value of the legitimate email they are benefiting from...
Hmm... The primary linkage to the original story is the need for better financial models?
Anyway, as it applies in the crowd funding case, I think it would make much more sense to fund prototypes. If it's a valuable product (or service (including software)) that can be marketed on a rational basis, then the focus should be on proving the concept. The donors can be compensated by (1) Knowing they are helping the product get to market faster, (2) Helping assess the real demand for the product, and (3) Special incentives, just as a raffle for the prototypes, discounts when it goes into production, or maybe just being the first to be allowed to buy the product. (The prototypes may well become historical artifacts with special value, but I personally wouldn't want to buy the first production models since there are still going to be some bugs, even if the project plan included proper testing.)
I think the charity share brokerage should be earning its tithe by project evaluation in addition to the support for planning and funding.
Annoying. I wasn't paying attention. Here is the corrected last paragraph:
The corporate cancers don't actually think or feel, but they are programmed to act on the creed "There is no gawd but profit, and <the corporation> must become gawd's #1 prophet." Doesn't matter much if <the corporation> is Apple (2017), Amazon, the google (AKA Alphabet), Microsoft, some gigantic bank or brokerage, or even the Trump so-called Organization.
You're right that this discussion is becoming pointless, but I think that may be symptomatic of the communications breakdowns of the Internet. Perhaps we should try to start again, but I also suspect you don't read much, so we probably can't find a mutually agreeable starting place. For example, have you read The Shallows ?
I actually feel like I suffered a kind of zen collapse a few years ago and now I tend to see everything on top of everything else. The things that are simply are, but I don't feel any attachment to them or even to the time in which they exist, existed, or will exist. Where things could be different, then the direction of time's arrow has to be considered. If conditions could become better, then there is is something wrong with the the way things are. If you prefer that wording, then a problem has been discovered in terms of its solution. If things could become worse, then that potential future state could be regarded as a problem and the objective is to avert the negative change.
The meaning of "good" is a funny question, but my sig is about one of the things that I regard as good. The corporate cancers are programmed to reduce choice and freedom in pursuit of larger profits, and I regard that as a kind of problem. I think that the inhuman corporations are currently running amok as they seek to solve a fake problem. There is no infinite amount of profit that could satisfy their driving equations for profit maximization. I think the better state of affairs would be to increase freedom, for example by changing the tax system to tax profits progressively based on market share, with the simple objective of insuring that every market offers at least 3 to 5 meaningful choices. At the same time, REAL competition is a good thing and should be encouraged, but it should be fair, regulated, and even constrained so we don't have to constantly live on the edges of starvation and bankruptcy.
The corporate cancers don't actually think or feel, but they are programmed to act on the creed "There is no gawd but profit, and must become gawd's #1 prophet." Doesn't matter much if is Apple (2017), Amazon, the google (AKA Alphabet), Microsoft, some gigantic bank or brokerage, or even the Trump so-called Organization.
I'm convinced that you were quite correct about 184564 and again I wish that Slashdot were able to enhance karma to become a proper form of EPR (Earned Public Reputation). It's possible that 184564 would still be visible to me, but I doubt it. (I think Slashdot cannot evolve in such a positive direction because the financial model is too borken (sic).)
Z^-3
I agree, and that is because Kickstarter's own business model is so badly broken. Because they are paid based on the money donated, of course they want more donations. Because they make no guarantee about the success of the projects, of course they don't care whether or not the projects succeed.
I'm advocating a substantially different form of crowd funding where accountability for success is baked into the cake. I actually call it a "charity share brokerage", and may even have gotten to that label before I ever heard of Kickstarter.
Unfortunately, I'm a pure solutions researcher in the same sense as pure mathematician. I have no executive skills or real interest in whether the solutions (no matter how obvious) actually get implemented in the messy real world. Sufficient to me that the solution has been discovered. Not to say that this charity share brokerage is "the solution" to anything, but I do feel like it is the best approach to a solution I've come up with. Defining the problem is actually more difficult, but it has to do with the misalignment of economic models with more important objectives, such as the maximization of good time.
Mostly I believe that you don't have many or perhaps any personal contacts in the google these days. Actually, I lost mine around the time I started to figure out what the google had evolved into. Two or three years ago? The links were cut so quickly that I actually suspected I got put on some sort of enemies list of people not to fraternize with...
I suppose my old friends shouldn't have told me about the attention thing? In the form of a joke, I put it as "All your attention are belong to the google." Or perhaps you could read some of the books about the google, such as Work Rules! , What Would Google Do? (assuming it was published?), How Google Works , Google by Auletta, Planet Google , The Google Model , Dogfight , The Google Story , or The Search ? That's roughly in order of relevance to this topic. I've read others, too, but they seem less relevant. Perhaps I should add some citations for books about Facebook, Twitter, and more general philosophy and computer security?
Seems to me like pursuing this discussion is pointless, but perhaps that's because we've been sucked down a distracting wormhole? The real issue is the abuse of our personal information, and it doesn't really matter if Facebook or the google are doing it directly, or they are playing shell game with the abuse by selling or loaning or giving the data to some other entity for the abusive uses. Actually, in terms of protecting their reputations, I think corporate cancers often prefer such tactics.
Actually, the funniest joke may be #PresidentTweety's delusion that he's not the puppet?
That's almost exactly what happened to Diaspora, and there are other examples. It's also called feeping creaturitis in the Hacker's Dictionary.
I think it's much better to make sure the original project is completely planned as well as possible BEFORE starting work. If the increment of work for the project is clear and there are also clear success criteria, then all the other pieces are ready to fall into place. Obviously you can't plan perfectly, but the budget, resources, and schedule should all be considered as carefully as possible. There should even be some funding reserved for contingencies. In the case of a software development project, testing should be part of the plan, and I also think they should reserve some funds for compensating outside contributors who work on the code, though the primary contributors should basically be treated as contractors or employees.
I actually think it would be better to bring more people into the project as supporters rather than just taking extra money. For example, let's say the project budget is $300,000 and with $10 charity shares you need to sell 30,000 shares. If you quickly get that many supporters and the project is committed, then you can still continue selling the shares, but the price per share will go down. Let's say it's limited to 60,000 donors. If the project sells out the second time, the per share price will be only $5, but you know that there is serious demand for the project and you also have twice as many people who are vested in the success of the project and who you can ask about the next steps. Such a highly desired should obviously be accelerated if possible. For example, if the start date was originally planned in June, maybe you can jump the start date to May.
Sticking with the planned budget cuts out the jackpot effect that makes Kickstarter such a crazy place. It won't be a matter of striking it rich, but just doing the job for the money that was agreed to as payment for the work. I think the people implementing project should basically be paid at market rates, but with a discount for getting more control over the work they are doing.
You're not thinking it through. If we were paying the google to protect our privacy, then the google would have an actual incentive to do it, but the money is coming from corporate cancers that want to have it all. The only concern of the corporate cancers is creating the image that our privacy is being protected.
There are some alternative financial models that would give the google an actual vested interest in protecting our information. However now the google has a vested interest in NOT changing economic models.
Kind of unclear, but I'd still give you the informative mod if I ever saw a mod point to give. Main item was the MeWe, which I'll research next.
However for now I'll expand on the Diaspora reference. You mentioned it, as did the OP. The basic idea was good, but it was indirectly killed by the bad economic model. So many people liked the idea when it appeared on Kickstarter that the project was way TOO successful. The over-funding caused them to try to rescale the project, and it basically died. I also think the pressure of the unexpected success probably contributed to the suicide of the young visionary behind the project, but that's hard to prove.
However in terms of solutions, I think the pretty obvious solution is to change and limit the projects. When the funding is reached, STOP. Implement the first step under the first project plan and then consider the next steps.
Could say more, but called to dinner... Jya, mata.