My initial reaction to this article is that the google's "confession" is highly suspect. I suspect Putin could have afforded a MUCH larger investment in what now looks like a decapitation strike against the US.
Mostly I'm laughing at how slow I was to realize "Don't be evil" had become a joke. The current motto might be "All your attention are belong to us." However it all comes down to a religious issue:
There is no gawd but profit, and the google is gawd's true prophet.
Of course the joke is that ALL the giant soulless corporations think the same thing. According to Fortune for 2016, the main prophets of profit are Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some gamblers (AKA various financial organizations playing games with other people's money). Amusingly enough, Trump's laundry receipts for dirty rubles don't count as real profits.
Constructive suggestion time? Seems such a waste on today's Slashdot, but:
Solution involves reputation. Use the public information about us that the corporations are already collecting, hoarding, and hiding and make it usable by US for OUR purposes, not just for secret manipulations to sell toothpaste and political candidates. DSAUPR, atAJG.
If it were 5 mod points divided 2-2-1, then the percentages should be 40-40-20, so it must mean something else. Maybe it's just the fundamental brokenness of the moderation system that is driving Slashdot down?
Not at all. Assuming he aimed in roughly the right direction the bullet might well have killed someone in the crowd or in some random room of the hotel. I'm assuming that the victim crowd's guns had deliberately been taken away, but it sickens me to imagine the carnage if the lone gunman had been able to trigger a shooting spree among the victims shooting every which way at each other because everyone else is shooting a gun, too.
Cue the insane laughter from the 32nd floor wafting over the carnage.
Rather amusing that what actually stopped the gunman was the smoke detector. So now we have to expect the next madman with guns to make sure he starts shooting from someplace without a smoke detector.
As usual, the moderation system is broken. Insightful, not funny. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a proper moderation system would penalize the karma of anyone who moderated your comment funny.
However, a perfect moderation system would allow for a taste of no-penalty funny mods after sufficient insight. From the way Slashdot reports it, I'm guessing you actually got two funny mods, one insightful, and one offtopic mod from some troll whose negative karma should have eliminated his mod points long ago.
We now return you to your irregularly scheduled American tragedy.
Yeah, so let's ignore the problems and hope they go away. Problems like too many guns too easily obtained by too many people who shouldn't have the guns, whether or not those people also have drones.
I remember that someone wrote a supposedly purely fictional book BEFORE 9/11 that speculated on hijacked planes used as flying bombs. Maybe if the big dick Cheney had read that book and taken it a bit seriously then airport security could have been improved before 9/11 happened. Or maybe not.
I don't know if any of the actual 9/11 terrorists did read that book and got the idea that way. Doesn't actually matter, since the possibility existed and they certainly could have come up with the same idea on their own. In that case the book is only the existence proof that the idea was possible for someone to come up with.
So now we should start ignoring he problem of genetically engineered bioweapons. We could make a bet, but the problem is that neither of us will be around to collect or pay up after that idea gets properly instantiated.
Even for today's Slashdot, that was a remarkably low-insight comment to get an insightful moderation. There are constructive approaches to consider, but at this point, why bother?
Anyone else speculating that the downtime was a Russian hacker response to the nasty topic?
Would the paid Russian trolls please raise their keyboards so we can take a count?
Actually I had a substantive response when I discovered the down-state of Slashdot. Let me see if I can recover those notes...
[...] I just stopped by [this other system] because Slashdot is down and I was looking for possible explanations. Now I'm wondering if the invalid certificate might have been part of an attack that has mostly shutdown the website (to "offline" mode, whatever that is). One possible scenario: Attackers triggered a revocation of the valid certificate to exploit a vulnerability of the obsolete one? Or perhaps to access a vulnerability using a new faked certificate? Or perhaps the fake new certificate came first, and what we are seeing now is due to Slashdot's successful revocation of the fake?
So I obviously have no real idea about means or opportunity, but I can speculate farther on motivation. One of the hot stories on Slashdot was about Russians hacking the election. (I wanted to add a comment about "Will the paid Russian trolls please raise their keyboards so we can get a count?")
Oh yeah, the real punchline. I actually found out Slashdot was down because I was trying to visit Slashdot to look up an old comment I wrote about ways to improve Slashdot. Or should I add the meta-joke that the same ancient idea is still visible on [this other system]... The tail-eating snake has reached his own neck?
These days I just hope that General Kelly can keep #PresidentTweety from reading any of these discussions. Might make Trump apoplectic. In simplified Trump-speak, the Donald might throw another hissy fit.
Trump's frequent hissy fits just embarrass all of us and make Putin laugh. Actually, a severe seizure could kill him, and I think Pence could be an even worse leading occupant (insofar as Pence's brain seems to be made of lead).
Oh yeah. About the story. Trump knows nothing, NOTHING. Sergeant Schultz would be so proud.
"Hey, Donald. They ain't disrespecting the flag. They're disrespecting YOU."
Really dumb question, but it got me to search for funny or insightful comments, since it's a target rich environment for both. Not surprised to be disappointed in the search, but it's early so I can pretend to be hopeful they'll appear later, eh? It's not like the editors (owners? secret masters?) of today's Slashdot would pick a story in hopes of starting a flame war.
A more meaningful question would be something along the lines of "Do the restrictions of strongly typed languages actually produce better programs?" or "Are the most productive programmers more or less productive when using strongly typed languages?" or "Does the prevalence of average and below programmers justify the use of restrictive and strongly typed languages?" Lots of others come to mind, though my own interest is more philosophic in the conflict between languages that try to drive programmers towards a best solution (which also tend to be strongly typed) versus languages that take a more neutral position towards ANY solution that works (thus fostering more open-ended creativity).
Hint of an answer? I think the quest for a best solution is good, but I doubt it exists in most cases. Are the best quests quixotic?
I think your "future" has already arrive on the Apple website. If you get too negative, then your comment will be blocked. I think it's based on automatic sentiment analysis, but there might be a personalized element there, based on my prior negative comments. Most of them involved annoying problems with the voice dictation. I posted a longer description elsewhere in this discussion, but your comment was the only one to mention censorship.
The Apple website (on several occasions) rejects my negative comments. Usually I'll be trying to describe my problem and the context, but at some point I apparently become too negative and the Apple website says it can't save the draft, and once that happens, whatever I've written cannot be posted. Doesn't seem possible to undo or reset the flag, whatever it is.
Has anyone else experienced this? If you are asking a question or making a comment in the Apple "Discussions", but your tone becomes too negative, then your comment suddenly becomes unpublishable? I suppose it could be based on human moderation, but I know that some of the sentiment analysis systems are becoming powerful enough to do it automatically without expensive and clumsy human beings in the loop.
Details of my most recent experience at https://slashdot.org/journal/2..., but this isn't the first time I've seen it. I think Apple has decided they need to control the tone of discussions or no one will pay $1,000 for their latest and greatest iPhone.
I feel like a sucker rising to the bait again, but...
How about if you, as an OSS programmer, prepared a description of the work you are going to do, how much money you feel you should be paid for doing that work, and the criteria by which the success of your work would be evaluated? Then people who want you to do the work could buy "charity auction shares" in your project, and if enough people agree, then you get the money, and afterwards (according to the schedule and budget included in your project proposal), the results would be available to the world. (Don't want to run your own project? A proposal for a larger project should certainly include funding to hire additional programmers.)
Oh! You say you are not an expert in preparing project proposals or managing projects? You're just a good programmer, eh? Well that's why the "charity share brokerage" (CSB) should help with the expertise of making sure that the project proposals are complete and feasible. The CSB would also be responsible for trying to reach prospective donors and for evaluating the results in accord with those success criteria. They should also maintain the website where the donors can look over all the projects they'd supported, see what nice results they'd helped, and thereby be motivated to donate more money for other projects.
This idea differs from all of the crowdfunding websites that I know of by limiting the donations to clearly defined projects and by focusing on accountability and results. The CSB would earn a tithe from funded projects by providing real project management support, whereas all of the crowdfunding websites I've studied just take the money and run away.
By the way, the same mechanism can easily be adapted to handle the ongoing costs incurred by projects that have already completed their development goals. One obvious way is to ask the people who want to use the project's product or service to help donate for the ongoing costs, with special incentives if the current ongoing-cost project expires before the next one is fully funded.
LoDSAUPR, atAJG. However, at this point it would take a bit of doing to convince me that you're sincere, and more doing than that to convince me of your power to implement. I don't think there are many such people left on today's Slashdot.
According to information on the Equifax website, which I trust not at all, my information should have been too old and should have been deleted. I am inclined to side with you and strongly presume they do have some information about me, but right now the strongest "claim" is that my information (if they have any) was not specifically included in the data that was stolen (which is also calling for a generous assumption that they fully understand the scope of their breach).
Of course the problem is not limited to Equifax or even the credit reporting agencies. The underlying problem is ALL of the soulless inhuman corporations exploiting our little persons.
Not certain if you were asking for this list, but in short form: (1) We should have control over our personal information, (2) Those parts of our personal information that have become public should be visible to ALL of the public (including ourselves). (3) I'd be willing to help pay for such privacy-improved systems.
Turns out I was looking at it from the "wrong" perspective, but with the hints from the article, I was able to figure out that clicking on "Enroll" button at https://www.equifaxsecurity201... will partly answer my first question. It doesn't actually say whether or not they have a dossier on me, but it does say that they, the wise and inscrutable people owned by the soulless monster Equifax, currently believe my personal information was not included in the big data breach and theft that they know about.
Still don't trust Equifax enough to follow up on the rest of the scam, in spite of the recommendation from the Fortune link. First year's free, eh? How much trouble to make the bills go away next year?
Should I rehash my fundamental principles of personal information protection? On Slashdot?
I actually decided to take action on this fiasco. I decided to try to find out if Equifax has a file on me and if so, was my file leaked. If those questions get positive answers, then I might need to do something. Spent a long time searching, mostly on the Equifax website, but also tried email, webform, chat, and was willing to try a voice call, too. Got NOTHING so far. It's almost like the Equifax people want to pretend there's no problem here.
I think what's bugging me most about this abuse of personal information is that I don't get to join in. Let's take the case of you, whoever you are. Should I pay any attention to your comments? What is your reputation really like? Companies like Equifax have assembled comprehensive dossiers on you, but I can't even get a short summary for preemptive filtering. Hey, if a troll has no credit history at all, then why should I pretend the troll exists? Why should my supposedly valuable time be wasted by a sock puppet when a quick background check of his credit history would prove there's no one there?
Now about that aggregation and display of public reputation on websites such as Slashdot... Karma hurts, don't it?
Oh yeah. Forgot one bit. Please don't forget to let me know if I can do anything to help put Equifax into bankruptcy. Phone my congress-critters? Join a lawsuit? Tweet? The sky's the limit, unlike my own credit rating.
At least a couple of the funny mods were slightly merited, but I'm pretty baffled by the "insightful" on this one. Something about the financial model of Slashdot? What's to say beyond "It's broken"? Maybe some deeper insightful suggestion on how to improve it?
So after scanning all of the "funny" and "insightful" comments, I did another round of searches for relevance and eventually wound up back at your post for the "personal" embedded in "personally". As of now, it's the only match in the visible part of the largish discussion. Not impressive. Especially since I think you're wrong about the 'not "stuff that matters"' part of it. How would you know? Which leads to my personal involvement...
I actually decided to take action on this fiasco. I decided to try to find out if Equifax has a file on me and if so, was my file leaked. If those questions get positive answers, then I might need to do something. Spent a long time searching, mostly on the Equifax website. Got NOTHING. It's almost like the Equifax people want to pretend there's no problem here.
What's bugging me more and more about this abuse of personal information stuff is that I don't get to join in. Let's take the case of you, hrbmstr. Should I pay any attention to your comments? What is your reputation really like? Companies like Equifax have assembled comprehensive dossiers on you, but I can't even get a short summary for preemptive filtering. Hey, if a troll has no credit history at all, then why should I pretend the troll exists and why should my time be wasted?
I believe yours [MachineShedFred's] is the most insightful comment in the entire large discussion, so it is noteworthy that you (so far) have received no mods for insight. I admit I searched backwards, looking for the "google" keyword rather than "insightful". However, after I reflected on my joke about upsetting the apple cart, I realized that the insight here HAS to be centered around the google as the explanation for Apple's action.
There were a couple of weak-kneed defenses of the google. Their fundamental weakness was that google doesn't mind if a few people opt out of cookie-land as long as the default is cookies, cookies, everywhere (along with the related advertising that makes the google's profits possible). It's rather similar to the divide-and-conquer strategy that the so-called Republicans used to destroy public education in America (so they could cultivate that bumper crop of Trump-voting mushrooms). They left a few good schools behind so the people who actually cared could hope THEIR kids might get one of those slots in a good school while the lion's share of the students went to obedience schools you wouldn't send your dog to. In this case, the google is willing to allow the escape of the few people who care that much about their privacy. Their only concern is that the lion's share of Internet surfers accept the devil's bargain of privacy for "free" websites, including the google's own websites.
Which is where your unmoderated comment fits in. This is a war to be the biggest, baddest motherphucker in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, just like they taught me in boot camp. We were supposed to be fighting for truth, beauty, and the American way of life, but Apple and the google just want bigger profits, and each of the inhuman corporate monsters would gladly destroy the other for a nickel more in profits.
I say it's a fake problem because it has no solution. Always a bigger number for the next profit.
Apple thinks they have a winning jujitsu strategy here. I still say they are upsetting their own apple cart, though their motives are an interesting mix of short-sighted pursuit of profit and the actually good idea of protecting human privacy and freedom, per my sig. Too bad none them understand the sig, and probably not you, either.
Really hard to imagine what was supposed to be insightful about that wannabe tweet.
Anyway, if Apple is doing the right thing, it must be for the wrong reason. More likely it isn't even the right thing, but just a confusing slight of hand of some sort. Not like Apple would upset the apple cart that made them the most profitable inhuman corporate monster on the planet.
Remember: There is no gawd but profit, and HIS prophets are Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some big gamblers. I'm lumping the big banks and other financial gamesters under winning "gamblers" there. This list of profit's prophets for 2016 courtesy Fortune.
Capitalism? Long dead. All hail corporate cancerism and Pope Apple the First, Last, and Infinite.
Now a word from our sponsors! This joke has been brought to you by...
I think that much of your concern would be addressed with a "maturity filter", even though it is a relatively trivial aspect of the public reputation. A new identity is young, and I'm willing to wait a month or two for it to mature and develop a ripe reputation--at the expense of people who are more tolerant of newbies than I usually want to be.
Actually, I would prefer a mixed mode if it were possible. I'd be willing to see top-level comments from newbies, at least most of the time, but I don't want any personal replies from possible sock puppets. If some new identity (or possibly annoying identity for other reputation-related reasons) wants to reply to me, there should be a warning that I won't see that reply, and if they insist on replying anyway (instead of going to the top level of the discussion or replying instead to someone who is willing to listen to them), then that reply would get a special preface, something like "Insincere reply not sincerely intended as part of any discussion."
I should go look at Stack Exchange again. Pretty sure I've looked at it in the past, but I don't seem to have any record of actually joining the system. From your description, it sounds like they give too much reputational credit to newbies for my tastes. In contrast, I think Reddit goes too far in the other direction.
Sounds like a bit of a request for more information and a suggestion about the direction of the information you seek?
I think that by making the reputation-source-data available (via links on the analysis page), you can prevent the trolls from gaming the system. You would be able to apply various algorithms to detect trolls and even networks of sock puppets, basically by using the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon approach. Legitimate people would eventually link to legitimate people you actually know, while sock puppets would only link to each other. Not absolutely, but I think the different degrees of connectivity would be sufficient to separate them.
Essentially I'm arguing for an improved filtering using for OUR purposes the same kind of information that soulless corporations like the google are already using against us and to manipulate us. Not sure how the filtering could become more effective than that?
Not sure who he ["Mate"] was, but it seemed to be a bit of extraneous and rather dull-witted trollage that, as I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, ought to be rendered invisible by the troll himself. I don't care about the public masturbation of the trolls. I simply prefer not to see it, and I speculate that many other people would agree if that were a feature of any discussion board. (The civility-promotion system of the Denver Post sounds like an interesting step in the right direction.)
However I wonder about your [serviscope_minor's] usage of "wow" in a context that seems to call for some synonym of "wrote".
Intanetto Koukoku no Himitsu (In proper Unicode: (No!)) is a children's comic book explaining the yummy goodness and secrets of Internet advertising. Actually it's volume 129 of an excellent series, where each volume is sponsored by a major company in some industry. I still fondly remember the first volume, secrets of hamburgers, sponsored by McDonald's. No drama (yet) in volume 129, but #1 had some great drama about the first local McDonald's. Another mysterious classic involved the suppressed secrets of home-delivery pizza (#13) and the secrets of toilet design manufacture (#22). The superpowers of pickled plums (#114) may have been the best of last year's.
Should be a point of embarrassment, but I've read every volume. They publish about 10 new volumes each year, and I'm still keeping up. They seem to be slowing down, with only 8 volumes so far this year, compared to 17 in 2016.
NOT available via Amazon. I count that as a plus, but that's another long, sad story of corporate cancerism and EVIL.
Can I interest you in a cup of public-reputation-based proactive filtering? Wouldn't you rather spend your time with nice people, perhaps with a tilt in favor of people who have even better reputations than your own?
Slashdot Mirror
My initial reaction to this article is that the google's "confession" is highly suspect. I suspect Putin could have afforded a MUCH larger investment in what now looks like a decapitation strike against the US.
Mostly I'm laughing at how slow I was to realize "Don't be evil" had become a joke. The current motto might be "All your attention are belong to us." However it all comes down to a religious issue:
There is no gawd but profit, and the google is gawd's true prophet.
Of course the joke is that ALL the giant soulless corporations think the same thing. According to Fortune for 2016, the main prophets of profit are Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some gamblers (AKA various financial organizations playing games with other people's money). Amusingly enough, Trump's laundry receipts for dirty rubles don't count as real profits.
Constructive suggestion time? Seems such a waste on today's Slashdot, but:
Solution involves reputation. Use the public information about us that the corporations are already collecting, hoarding, and hiding and make it usable by US for OUR purposes, not just for secret manipulations to sell toothpaste and political candidates. DSAUPR, atAJG.
Certainly deserved the insightful mod, but what the hell does this report of your moderation mean?
Moderation +2 30% Insightful 30% Interesting 10% Flamebait
If it were 5 mod points divided 2-2-1, then the percentages should be 40-40-20, so it must mean something else. Maybe it's just the fundamental brokenness of the moderation system that is driving Slashdot down?
Not at all. Assuming he aimed in roughly the right direction the bullet might well have killed someone in the crowd or in some random room of the hotel. I'm assuming that the victim crowd's guns had deliberately been taken away, but it sickens me to imagine the carnage if the lone gunman had been able to trigger a shooting spree among the victims shooting every which way at each other because everyone else is shooting a gun, too.
Cue the insane laughter from the 32nd floor wafting over the carnage.
Rather amusing that what actually stopped the gunman was the smoke detector. So now we have to expect the next madman with guns to make sure he starts shooting from someplace without a smoke detector.
As usual, the moderation system is broken. Insightful, not funny. In fact, I would go so far as to say that a proper moderation system would penalize the karma of anyone who moderated your comment funny.
However, a perfect moderation system would allow for a taste of no-penalty funny mods after sufficient insight. From the way Slashdot reports it, I'm guessing you actually got two funny mods, one insightful, and one offtopic mod from some troll whose negative karma should have eliminated his mod points long ago.
We now return you to your irregularly scheduled American tragedy.
Yeah, so let's ignore the problems and hope they go away. Problems like too many guns too easily obtained by too many people who shouldn't have the guns, whether or not those people also have drones.
I remember that someone wrote a supposedly purely fictional book BEFORE 9/11 that speculated on hijacked planes used as flying bombs. Maybe if the big dick Cheney had read that book and taken it a bit seriously then airport security could have been improved before 9/11 happened. Or maybe not.
I don't know if any of the actual 9/11 terrorists did read that book and got the idea that way. Doesn't actually matter, since the possibility existed and they certainly could have come up with the same idea on their own. In that case the book is only the existence proof that the idea was possible for someone to come up with.
So now we should start ignoring he problem of genetically engineered bioweapons. We could make a bet, but the problem is that neither of us will be around to collect or pay up after that idea gets properly instantiated.
Even for today's Slashdot, that was a remarkably low-insight comment to get an insightful moderation. There are constructive approaches to consider, but at this point, why bother?
Anyone else speculating that the downtime was a Russian hacker response to the nasty topic?
Would the paid Russian trolls please raise their keyboards so we can take a count?
Actually I had a substantive response when I discovered the down-state of Slashdot. Let me see if I can recover those notes...
[...] I just stopped by [this other system] because Slashdot is down and I was looking for possible explanations. Now I'm wondering if the invalid certificate might have been part of an attack that has mostly shutdown the website (to "offline" mode, whatever that is). One possible scenario: Attackers triggered a revocation of the valid certificate to exploit a vulnerability of the obsolete one? Or perhaps to access a vulnerability using a new faked certificate? Or perhaps the fake new certificate came first, and what we are seeing now is due to Slashdot's successful revocation of the fake?
So I obviously have no real idea about means or opportunity, but I can speculate farther on motivation. One of the hot stories on Slashdot was about Russians hacking the election. (I wanted to add a comment about "Will the paid Russian trolls please raise their keyboards so we can get a count?")
Oh yeah, the real punchline. I actually found out Slashdot was down because I was trying to visit Slashdot to look up an old comment I wrote about ways to improve Slashdot. Or should I add the meta-joke that the same ancient idea is still visible on [this other system]... The tail-eating snake has reached his own neck?
These days I just hope that General Kelly can keep #PresidentTweety from reading any of these discussions. Might make Trump apoplectic. In simplified Trump-speak, the Donald might throw another hissy fit.
Trump's frequent hissy fits just embarrass all of us and make Putin laugh. Actually, a severe seizure could kill him, and I think Pence could be an even worse leading occupant (insofar as Pence's brain seems to be made of lead).
Oh yeah. About the story. Trump knows nothing, NOTHING. Sergeant Schultz would be so proud.
"Hey, Donald. They ain't disrespecting the flag. They're disrespecting YOU."
General Kelly better tighten up the leash.
Really dumb question, but it got me to search for funny or insightful comments, since it's a target rich environment for both. Not surprised to be disappointed in the search, but it's early so I can pretend to be hopeful they'll appear later, eh? It's not like the editors (owners? secret masters?) of today's Slashdot would pick a story in hopes of starting a flame war.
A more meaningful question would be something along the lines of "Do the restrictions of strongly typed languages actually produce better programs?" or "Are the most productive programmers more or less productive when using strongly typed languages?" or "Does the prevalence of average and below programmers justify the use of restrictive and strongly typed languages?" Lots of others come to mind, though my own interest is more philosophic in the conflict between languages that try to drive programmers towards a best solution (which also tend to be strongly typed) versus languages that take a more neutral position towards ANY solution that works (thus fostering more open-ended creativity).
Hint of an answer? I think the quest for a best solution is good, but I doubt it exists in most cases. Are the best quests quixotic?
I think your "future" has already arrive on the Apple website. If you get too negative, then your comment will be blocked. I think it's based on automatic sentiment analysis, but there might be a personalized element there, based on my prior negative comments. Most of them involved annoying problems with the voice dictation. I posted a longer description elsewhere in this discussion, but your comment was the only one to mention censorship.
The Apple website (on several occasions) rejects my negative comments. Usually I'll be trying to describe my problem and the context, but at some point I apparently become too negative and the Apple website says it can't save the draft, and once that happens, whatever I've written cannot be posted. Doesn't seem possible to undo or reset the flag, whatever it is.
Has anyone else experienced this? If you are asking a question or making a comment in the Apple "Discussions", but your tone becomes too negative, then your comment suddenly becomes unpublishable? I suppose it could be based on human moderation, but I know that some of the sentiment analysis systems are becoming powerful enough to do it automatically without expensive and clumsy human beings in the loop.
Details of my most recent experience at https://slashdot.org/journal/2..., but this isn't the first time I've seen it. I think Apple has decided they need to control the tone of discussions or no one will pay $1,000 for their latest and greatest iPhone.
The game designer I knew (not that well) back in Austin?
I feel like a sucker rising to the bait again, but...
How about if you, as an OSS programmer, prepared a description of the work you are going to do, how much money you feel you should be paid for doing that work, and the criteria by which the success of your work would be evaluated? Then people who want you to do the work could buy "charity auction shares" in your project, and if enough people agree, then you get the money, and afterwards (according to the schedule and budget included in your project proposal), the results would be available to the world. (Don't want to run your own project? A proposal for a larger project should certainly include funding to hire additional programmers.)
Oh! You say you are not an expert in preparing project proposals or managing projects? You're just a good programmer, eh? Well that's why the "charity share brokerage" (CSB) should help with the expertise of making sure that the project proposals are complete and feasible. The CSB would also be responsible for trying to reach prospective donors and for evaluating the results in accord with those success criteria. They should also maintain the website where the donors can look over all the projects they'd supported, see what nice results they'd helped, and thereby be motivated to donate more money for other projects.
This idea differs from all of the crowdfunding websites that I know of by limiting the donations to clearly defined projects and by focusing on accountability and results. The CSB would earn a tithe from funded projects by providing real project management support, whereas all of the crowdfunding websites I've studied just take the money and run away.
By the way, the same mechanism can easily be adapted to handle the ongoing costs incurred by projects that have already completed their development goals. One obvious way is to ask the people who want to use the project's product or service to help donate for the ongoing costs, with special incentives if the current ongoing-cost project expires before the next one is fully funded.
LoDSAUPR, atAJG. However, at this point it would take a bit of doing to convince me that you're sincere, and more doing than that to convince me of your power to implement. I don't think there are many such people left on today's Slashdot.
According to information on the Equifax website, which I trust not at all, my information should have been too old and should have been deleted. I am inclined to side with you and strongly presume they do have some information about me, but right now the strongest "claim" is that my information (if they have any) was not specifically included in the data that was stolen (which is also calling for a generous assumption that they fully understand the scope of their breach).
Of course the problem is not limited to Equifax or even the credit reporting agencies. The underlying problem is ALL of the soulless inhuman corporations exploiting our little persons.
Not certain if you were asking for this list, but in short form: (1) We should have control over our personal information, (2) Those parts of our personal information that have become public should be visible to ALL of the public (including ourselves). (3) I'd be willing to help pay for such privacy-improved systems.
So pursuing the matter a bit farther led to this link, which finally helped me get a provisional answer to the first question.
http://fortune.com/2017/09/15/...
Turns out I was looking at it from the "wrong" perspective, but with the hints from the article, I was able to figure out that clicking on "Enroll" button at https://www.equifaxsecurity201... will partly answer my first question. It doesn't actually say whether or not they have a dossier on me, but it does say that they, the wise and inscrutable people owned by the soulless monster Equifax, currently believe my personal information was not included in the big data breach and theft that they know about.
Still don't trust Equifax enough to follow up on the rest of the scam, in spite of the recommendation from the Fortune link. First year's free, eh? How much trouble to make the bills go away next year?
Should I rehash my fundamental principles of personal information protection? On Slashdot?
I actually decided to take action on this fiasco. I decided to try to find out if Equifax has a file on me and if so, was my file leaked. If those questions get positive answers, then I might need to do something. Spent a long time searching, mostly on the Equifax website, but also tried email, webform, chat, and was willing to try a voice call, too. Got NOTHING so far. It's almost like the Equifax people want to pretend there's no problem here.
I think what's bugging me most about this abuse of personal information is that I don't get to join in. Let's take the case of you, whoever you are. Should I pay any attention to your comments? What is your reputation really like? Companies like Equifax have assembled comprehensive dossiers on you, but I can't even get a short summary for preemptive filtering. Hey, if a troll has no credit history at all, then why should I pretend the troll exists? Why should my supposedly valuable time be wasted by a sock puppet when a quick background check of his credit history would prove there's no one there?
Now about that aggregation and display of public reputation on websites such as Slashdot... Karma hurts, don't it?
Oh yeah. Forgot one bit. Please don't forget to let me know if I can do anything to help put Equifax into bankruptcy. Phone my congress-critters? Join a lawsuit? Tweet? The sky's the limit, unlike my own credit rating.
At least a couple of the funny mods were slightly merited, but I'm pretty baffled by the "insightful" on this one. Something about the financial model of Slashdot? What's to say beyond "It's broken"? Maybe some deeper insightful suggestion on how to improve it?
So after scanning all of the "funny" and "insightful" comments, I did another round of searches for relevance and eventually wound up back at your post for the "personal" embedded in "personally". As of now, it's the only match in the visible part of the largish discussion. Not impressive. Especially since I think you're wrong about the 'not "stuff that matters"' part of it. How would you know? Which leads to my personal involvement...
I actually decided to take action on this fiasco. I decided to try to find out if Equifax has a file on me and if so, was my file leaked. If those questions get positive answers, then I might need to do something. Spent a long time searching, mostly on the Equifax website. Got NOTHING. It's almost like the Equifax people want to pretend there's no problem here.
What's bugging me more and more about this abuse of personal information stuff is that I don't get to join in. Let's take the case of you, hrbmstr. Should I pay any attention to your comments? What is your reputation really like? Companies like Equifax have assembled comprehensive dossiers on you, but I can't even get a short summary for preemptive filtering. Hey, if a troll has no credit history at all, then why should I pretend the troll exists and why should my time be wasted?
I believe yours [MachineShedFred's] is the most insightful comment in the entire large discussion, so it is noteworthy that you (so far) have received no mods for insight. I admit I searched backwards, looking for the "google" keyword rather than "insightful". However, after I reflected on my joke about upsetting the apple cart, I realized that the insight here HAS to be centered around the google as the explanation for Apple's action.
There were a couple of weak-kneed defenses of the google. Their fundamental weakness was that google doesn't mind if a few people opt out of cookie-land as long as the default is cookies, cookies, everywhere (along with the related advertising that makes the google's profits possible). It's rather similar to the divide-and-conquer strategy that the so-called Republicans used to destroy public education in America (so they could cultivate that bumper crop of Trump-voting mushrooms). They left a few good schools behind so the people who actually cared could hope THEIR kids might get one of those slots in a good school while the lion's share of the students went to obedience schools you wouldn't send your dog to. In this case, the google is willing to allow the escape of the few people who care that much about their privacy. Their only concern is that the lion's share of Internet surfers accept the devil's bargain of privacy for "free" websites, including the google's own websites.
Which is where your unmoderated comment fits in. This is a war to be the biggest, baddest motherphucker in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, just like they taught me in boot camp. We were supposed to be fighting for truth, beauty, and the American way of life, but Apple and the google just want bigger profits, and each of the inhuman corporate monsters would gladly destroy the other for a nickel more in profits.
I say it's a fake problem because it has no solution. Always a bigger number for the next profit.
Apple thinks they have a winning jujitsu strategy here. I still say they are upsetting their own apple cart, though their motives are an interesting mix of short-sighted pursuit of profit and the actually good idea of protecting human privacy and freedom, per my sig. Too bad none them understand the sig, and probably not you, either.
Really hard to imagine what was supposed to be insightful about that wannabe tweet.
Anyway, if Apple is doing the right thing, it must be for the wrong reason. More likely it isn't even the right thing, but just a confusing slight of hand of some sort. Not like Apple would upset the apple cart that made them the most profitable inhuman corporate monster on the planet.
Remember: There is no gawd but profit, and HIS prophets are Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some big gamblers. I'm lumping the big banks and other financial gamesters under winning "gamblers" there. This list of profit's prophets for 2016 courtesy Fortune.
Capitalism? Long dead. All hail corporate cancerism and Pope Apple the First, Last, and Infinite.
Now a word from our sponsors! This joke has been brought to you by...
Thanks for the clarification. I sometimes get similar hard-to-explain peculiarities from voice dictation.
I think that much of your concern would be addressed with a "maturity filter", even though it is a relatively trivial aspect of the public reputation. A new identity is young, and I'm willing to wait a month or two for it to mature and develop a ripe reputation--at the expense of people who are more tolerant of newbies than I usually want to be.
Actually, I would prefer a mixed mode if it were possible. I'd be willing to see top-level comments from newbies, at least most of the time, but I don't want any personal replies from possible sock puppets. If some new identity (or possibly annoying identity for other reputation-related reasons) wants to reply to me, there should be a warning that I won't see that reply, and if they insist on replying anyway (instead of going to the top level of the discussion or replying instead to someone who is willing to listen to them), then that reply would get a special preface, something like "Insincere reply not sincerely intended as part of any discussion."
I should go look at Stack Exchange again. Pretty sure I've looked at it in the past, but I don't seem to have any record of actually joining the system. From your description, it sounds like they give too much reputational credit to newbies for my tastes. In contrast, I think Reddit goes too far in the other direction.
Sounds like a bit of a request for more information and a suggestion about the direction of the information you seek?
I think that by making the reputation-source-data available (via links on the analysis page), you can prevent the trolls from gaming the system. You would be able to apply various algorithms to detect trolls and even networks of sock puppets, basically by using the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon approach. Legitimate people would eventually link to legitimate people you actually know, while sock puppets would only link to each other. Not absolutely, but I think the different degrees of connectivity would be sufficient to separate them.
Essentially I'm arguing for an improved filtering using for OUR purposes the same kind of information that soulless corporations like the google are already using against us and to manipulate us. Not sure how the filtering could become more effective than that?
Not sure who he ["Mate"] was, but it seemed to be a bit of extraneous and rather dull-witted trollage that, as I mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, ought to be rendered invisible by the troll himself. I don't care about the public masturbation of the trolls. I simply prefer not to see it, and I speculate that many other people would agree if that were a feature of any discussion board. (The civility-promotion system of the Denver Post sounds like an interesting step in the right direction.)
However I wonder about your [serviscope_minor's] usage of "wow" in a context that seems to call for some synonym of "wrote".
Intanetto Koukoku no Himitsu (In proper Unicode: (No!)) is a children's comic book explaining the yummy goodness and secrets of Internet advertising. Actually it's volume 129 of an excellent series, where each volume is sponsored by a major company in some industry. I still fondly remember the first volume, secrets of hamburgers, sponsored by McDonald's. No drama (yet) in volume 129, but #1 had some great drama about the first local McDonald's. Another mysterious classic involved the suppressed secrets of home-delivery pizza (#13) and the secrets of toilet design manufacture (#22). The superpowers of pickled plums (#114) may have been the best of last year's.
Should be a point of embarrassment, but I've read every volume. They publish about 10 new volumes each year, and I'm still keeping up. They seem to be slowing down, with only 8 volumes so far this year, compared to 17 in 2016.
NOT available via Amazon. I count that as a plus, but that's another long, sad story of corporate cancerism and EVIL.
Can I interest you in a cup of public-reputation-based proactive filtering? Wouldn't you rather spend your time with nice people, perhaps with a tilt in favor of people who have even better reputations than your own?