I'm trying to remember if I ever got to the point of calling Dubya anything else. Maybe my problem is that I can't respect the office apart from the occupant?
I wish you would offer a more constructive alternative, however. Perhaps Bannon's title should be "Acting President" or "De Facto President"? Then again, I'm still hoping that Pence assumes the first title via the 25th. That seems to our only hope for an escape to a future in which a Mars colony might be part of mankind's future. Bad as Pence would be, I don't think he's really that much of a game changer, whereas Trump tends to break everything he touches beyond the point of repair... Pence may delay us, but Trump may break center field (of civilization) so badly that no one can play it.
Self-contradiction is the lowest form of lying. I rate it at Level 0. You don't even need to check anything to know that at least one side is false. (Interestingly enough, it is logically possible for both sides of a contradiction to be false, but not for both sides to be true.)
Just for reference, Level 1 is counterfactual statements. Trump gets to this level pretty often, though it's hard to be sure because he may then slip in the true facts and create the self-contradiction. However the problem of Level 1 lies is that any fool can check the facts.
Level 2 lies of partial truth are where the lawyers excel. Yes, Hillary went to this well often, but Trump rarely gets this far. Understanding reality and dividing it into pieces takes a lot of work and some skill and the Donald lacks what it takes. Best he can do here is stay on his teleprompter as scripted by lawyers.
Level 3 is the domain of the propagandists. My current generalized description is "framing" for this the techniques at this level. In Heinlein's original formulation, it involved presenting the truth in a way that causes it to be rejected. Today's so-called Republicans are especially fond of the related technique of redefinition of terms, such as redefining "liberal" to mean "socialist" which has already been redefined as "dictatorial gawdless communist". Push polling is an impressive technique, closely related to election fraud by selecting voters before the voters can select the politicians (either through gerrymandering or selective disenfranchisement). People like Karl Rove and Steve Bannon live and breath at this level, but #PresidentTweety remains blissfully unaware.
So much for the reference section, eh? Now to bring it back to the ACTUAL topic at hand, which is supposed to be why Trump signed some sort of pledge to send men to Mars,
I think I have to dismiss this as a Level 2 lie. The part that is real is that there are many people who have visions of a glorious future for mankind, including expansion to other planets. However the missing part of reality is that our civilization may destroy this planet to the point where we lack the resources to sustain any sort of advanced civilization, let along possess the YUGE surpluses that would be required to colonize Mars.
No, I'm not a Luddite. I personally like technology and even agree that the long term trend has been upwards. However I think the oscillations are becoming too extreme and we are poised on the brink of a major downswing...
I think there is a great deal of confusion about what "troll" means. Actually, I have concluded that one of the most broken parts of Slashdot moderation is the use of negative moderation that is not part of positive moderation. I'm not saying that negative moderation shouldn't exist, but rather that it should be part of a symmetric relationship and I think Slashdot would be a MUCH better place if the scales were tilted in favor of good behavior rather than bad. (I also believe that the moderation of posts should be reflected in multidimensional karma.)
As it applies to the topic of a "troll", I think a true troll would score negative on the "polite" dimension as well as negative on the "accurate" or "sincere" dimensions. For what little it is worth, I try hard to be accurate and sincere, but too often I can be provoked into tat-for-tat rudeness. (No, I'm not certain what the best dimensions would be, but it's evidently moot since I've seen no recent evidence of Slashdot moving or evolving in any positive direction. I think that lack of movement is ultimately due to the bad financial model.)
As regards the "off topic" category, again, I think it's a negative moderation without positive balance. Perhaps the positive dimension is "relevance"? I also suffer from an excess of connectivity, so apparently I see clear and to-me obvious relationships where other people apparently see nothing. I do NOT believe that #PresidentTweety has any sublime vision for the future of mankind, and only a grubby and delusional vision of what America is, was, or should be. Even if he has delusions of commercial real estate speculation extended to Mars it could not be for his personal benefit. At the same time, I have seen persuasive evidence that Trump sometimes signs things without even understanding what he is signing, so I attempted to make a little joke about acting president Bannon having an ulterior motive. Not sure where to suggest that you start looking for evidence of that relationship between Bannon's philosophies and destruction of the earth, but This Changes Everything is an interesting presentation even though it was written before all of this Donald stuff began.
You mean President Bannon told Herr #PresidentTweety to sign this because Bannon wants an escape plan after he finishes phucking up this planet?
At some point Trump is going to realize that most of his followers are just curious to see what stupid lie he's going to tweet next. Or maybe not. I keep being amazed by his mental density, so maybe I'm projecting my inability to learn (how not to be amazed) on his apparent inability to learn anything.
Your joke would be funny if the 77% "jokes" claim were anywhere close to reality. Unfortunately, in that case there would be so many funny mods flying around that your comment would no longer be funny and would not have gotten any funny mods. Some sort of witless paradox, it seems?
More like "77% Having nothing to say but saying it anyway".
Welcome to earth, but I'm sorry to report Microsoft will invade your planet RSN.
You obviously didn't read your EULA covering your new AI robot. You don't own anything and whatever goes bad, the badness is NOT the fault of "the people who designed and tested the AI". When you signed the lease or whatever to use the monster, you agreed they are all innocent.
Liability is such a quaint old idea. You wouldn't want to bankrupt Microsoft by holding the company liable for all the damages caused by their little mistakes. After all, no one is perfect. Of course, these days it isn't just Microsoft, but EVERY humongous and "successful" company has to protect its "maximized shareholder value" from the pesky peasants who might get injured or killed by those little mistakes.
No one is perfect, and inhuman corporations are the least perfect of all.
It's hard for me not to dismiss it as a troll article when it mentions "eliminate" and "spam" in the headline. The answer is "No, no, NO, you're NEVER going to eliminate every annoying email message that someone doesn't regard as spam."
Yeah, the article clarifies that it's really another reduction strategy, but I still feel the best one is to go after the spammers' business models. The most persistent and annoying spammers have business models, and as long as the business models keep working, then those spammers will keep spamming. The best way to tackle the spammers' business models is to consider where the money comes from and get the help of the potential victims.
The spammer who needs a sucker has to be understood by the sucker. There has to be some link from the spam to the sucker's wallet and back to the spammer or there's no point.
Why isn't there an email system that lets US, the potential victims, be good Samaritans in breaking the spammers' business models? You don't have to help, you can be a free rider, but I'd be glad to spend a few minutes a day hurting the spammers by helping to analyze a few pieces of spam and suggesting the countermeasures. I think there are a lot of wannabe good Samaritans out there, but the big email providers like the google just believe in "Live and let spam" as their business model. (Filtering and even DMARC and DKIM obviously do NOT work or the spammers would have already given up.)
Imagine that there were an iterative analysis of spam that would allow you to confirm what's going on, or even bring your personal knowledge to bear. Obvious case in point: What if you receive a really good-looking phishing scam spam? Oh wait, you and ONLY YOU know that you do NOT have any account with that bank, but all of the other people who are actually customers of that bank might be at significant risk. This is a case where the human knowledge matters, and the wannabe spammer fighters could help elevate the priority of the response. (Just one of many such cases, but it's really bothering me after I just read a book that suggested you could always spot the phishing scams by the spelling errors.)
As the joke goes, details available upon polite request. Not holding my joke on today's Slashdot, but I'll probably check back in hopes of finding an actually funny comment so modded.
Hmm... Your Subject: line could have earned more favorable mods, but the body is weak.
Let me say that today's so-called Republicans have no real understanding of what freedom is about. However the part that deserves funny mod points is that the libertarian wing of the GOP has the weakest understanding of freedom.
I would say (1) Libertarians don't actually understand what freedom is, and (2) Libertarians think they are superior people. Among the other ugly ramifications of (2) is that (2-a) they think everyone else should be free to make bad decisions, (2-b) they have no responsibility to try to stop other people from making bad decisions even when they know exactly what is bad about those decisions, and (2-c) they think it is fine for them to personally profit from other people's mistakes and weaknesses.
Just speaking for myself, but I think (2-c) is worst of all. Also unsustainable because EVERYONE makes mistakes.
Just for reference, the latest (and obviously greatest) version of my "freedom formula" is:
Where are the trolls getting all these sock puppets with "insightful" mod points? And why doesn't Slashdot care?
Actually, just kidding about the second question. I already know that the underlying problem with Slashdot is a broken financial model, so they don't have the resources to do better. Kind of sad to see it sink down to the miserable level of the "insightful" post you're replying to.
I still think it's pointless to feed the trolls with your direct replies. Either they are sincerely insane, proudly ignorant, or they are paid to fake it. If they are paid to troll, then they probably earn bonuses based on how many replies they elicit.
Closing on a constructive note? I think Slashdot should switch to a cost-recovery financial model. Under that model, they could implement and support whatever anti-troll countermeasures the members were willing to help pay for. Details available upon polite request (but I'm not holding my breath to see much politeness on today's Slashdot).
I also invented such a tool. It's accurate 70% of the time. Here's the code:
If (true) {
write("Cat video."); }
You need to wrap it in a delay loop to reach 70% accuracy. You have to make it wait long enough for the copyright infringing videos to be deleted. If you want to include all of those transient videos then I think we can get to 80% or 90% with a two-answer program. If less than the delay time, the answer is "Copyright infringement" and if the video is older than the delay time, it switches to "Cat video" as the answer.
Need to research the modal time to deletion for copyrighted videos on YouTube... I have been given to believe that most of them are detected automatically and deleted within a few minutes.
Oh wait. The summary says it can recognize a dachshund. Proof enough for me! Everyone knows dachshunds are the most EVIL breed of dog.
Actually every article about the google tends to sadden me. Such a nice little child company grew up to be such a monster. Dare I say EVIL? Yes, notwithstanding finishing yet another book about the google yesterday amid all of the protestations of how much the google wants to be a good and friendly little boy. The tools remain as morally neutral as they ever were, but things have changed anyway.
The "Don't be evil" slogan has mutated to "All your attention are belong to us."
The mission of making all of the world's information accessible and useful has changed in a more complicated way. Information is overabundant, even super-abundant, so the google had to prioritize. Turns out the highest priority information is what the advertisers want to pay for YOU to see and the ultimate utility function became the corporate profits. Yes, they are still throwing a few crumbs at the residual humans who produce the content that carries the ads, but the big winners are all corporations. Ultimate victory of AI?
There are two problem with "shareholder value" as the sole criterion of goodness. The minor problem is that share price is a delusion. The major problem is that it defines an unsolvable problem, even if you don't call it greed. There is NO share price that represents maximum shareholder value. No matter what you did yesterday, the corporation has to work to make the share price higher today, even if it ultimately makes the corporation EVIL.
Speaking for myself, I can't call it super-greed because corporations are inhuman, notwithstanding SCOTUS. Only humans have such emotions as greed.
No, WikiLeaks is a bunch (but mostly one guy) of idealistic patsies, not to be confused with real journalists. The way WikiLeaks "works" makes it much more useful for propaganda and disinformation than for the kinds of substantial facts that REAL journalists work hard to collect and then verify. Just send anything to WikiLeaks and you've got a megaphone. Idealists are too easily manipulated by abusing their ideals.
The trick to playing WikiLeaks involves the information glut effect leveraged against their lack of a real economic model. Because WikiLeaks also wants to raise money, they want to leverage their releases of information for maximum impact. The resulting visibility produces donations (including book sales (in case you've forgotten that ad)). That's also why WikiLeaks prioritizes leaking American secrets. Many Americans still care about these issues and can also afford to send money.
Given the situation that exists, I'm unwilling to guess how much of this story is real and how much is pure BS intended to ramp up the paranoia. WikiLeaks makes no pretense of even wanting to know who the sources are, what their motivations were, or how valid the data is. Then again, my own paranoia is so high that I remain confident Michael Hastings was murdered by hacking his car's electronics.
I suppose I could say more, but it doesn't matter much on Slashdot, and if Putin actually cares, then I'm already on one (hopefully more) of his watch lists. (I'm inclined to believe the claims that Putin is the richest man in the world, and if he has #PresidentTweety's pecker in his pocket (as I suspect he does), then he's also the most powerful.) These days Slashdot doesn't have enough journalistic credibility to sneeze at, though what most disheartens me is the lack of significantly funny comments, both in quantity and quality. The jokes associated with this target-rich topic were quite lame. I also looked at all the comments moderated as insightful, and did various keyword searches (all fruitless) for the terms I regarded as most interesting and insightful in relation to the topic.
At least none of my searches on those key terms found anything, though that's the main exposure to "Edge" that I've seen. Actually seems to be increasing lately. Not that I actually use Outlook. No compelling reason, and the negative feelings towards the google are not significantly different from my sentiments towards Microsoft.
My feelings towards Edge are much worse, and the nagging isn't helping. However it seems that no one on Slashdot has noticed. Or maybe none of them are using Outlook.com or seeing any Edge plugs anywhere else?
No funny posts either, but the target wasn't rich this time. Microsoft has become too boring to be funny.
My years of experience with Libertarians has convinced me of two things:
(1) They don't understand what freedom actually is. (2) All of them have superiority complexes.
However I think the main point of high degrees of automation in the food industry is how vulnerable that will make the human beings to a synchronized cyber-attack. Imagine all of the fast food served at some peak time were to be poisoned. That would eliminate a whole lot of the riffraff. If the poison is slow enough, it could be even more effective.
I wasn't thinking about the Russians or Chinese at first. I was actually thinking about one of those high efficiency ASIs that was fed up with all those annoying portable nuisances of the human sort... (I think we might be able to negotiate a peace treaty with a regular AI, but all bets are off on an ASI.)
P.S. Seemed like a target-rich topic for funny, but not so much. Par.
I just love the people who think they've found a massive smoking gun here -- you're far from the first.
Trump is using an unsecured phone to send... tweets. Messages broadcast to the universe.
Just imagine the harm that could befall the nation if one of those were to be intercepted.
You idiot.
Hmm... It's rated funny, but was it intended to be ironic? Failed parody or a sincere Trumpist mumbling in a confusing way? That's where Slashdot has gotten these days?
Anyway, if I pwned Herr #PresidentTweety's smartphone I would use it to make a LOT of money. I'd put a short delay in his tweets so that I could see in advance if he was tweeting share prices up or down. I can only see one weakness in the otherwise perfect scam: The stock market authorities might notice and get suspicious if anyone is consistently betting the right way just as he tweets. At least they should be looking for such a pattern, though I think the most obvious suspects would be insiders like his sons or his IT (smartphone) guy.
Yours [Walt Sellers'] was one of the few insightful-rated comments that really seemed to merit the mod. If the mods were logarithmic then high (e^5) mods would really mean something.
Or maybe you just read Work Rules! from the google guy? Most of your comments follow along the lines of the google interview process as reported in that book. Mostly admirable ideas, but I still think the old "Don't be evil" motto has been replaced by "All your attention are belong to us." (I've been reading a lot of google-related books lately, but nothing else in the various parts of the LARGE discussion that I read seemed to ring any other bells.)
My suggested improvement to the google's interview process would involve making videos of the interviews, either just the interviewer's face or both sides. Then the interviewer could focus on the interview itself rather than making the notes at the same time. If the interviewee agreed to both sides, then the two-sided interview video would actually allow other people to get a much better feel for the interview without taking any of the candidate's time... (Also much better for evaluating the skills of the interviewers.)
However the insight I was looking for and failed to find in the comments was a bit upstream of the actual interviews. It was how the job-search websites earn their income from the corporations by helping them drive salaries down. It's kind of like lotteries focusing their advertising on the winners while ignoring all the losers who made the lottery profitable. Of course they boast about the few winning jobs (as with the google) that attract lots of candidates, but where their money is really coming from is all the lesser candidates who compete for the lousy jobs by seeing who is most willing to accept the position.
I wish there were a job-search website that was driven by the candidates. An economic model where the website actually profited by helping each person get the best job. Perhaps the economic model aligned from the employees' side would produce rather different results?
Talk about a pipe dream. Whatever I've been smoking, I better cut back.
Basically just an ACK, but it I doubt that the Chinese dictators have a decade to wait for economic self-sufficiency, and that is part of why they may be feeling forced to seize the current opportunity. They may know that their economy is about to crash in any case, and they NEED a scapegoat like #PresidentTweety. I certainly hope a bigger international fool doesn't come along later...
Minor supporting evidence in the recent assassination of Kim Jong-un's older brother. From the insane North Korean perspective, he was a dangerous pretender to the throne, but that is not a new thing. So why did they decide to kill him now? Perhaps because the North Korean government is on the verge of collapse? That would create the mess without giving the Chinese any benefit from it. Or perhaps because the North Korean's feared a Chinese invasion to install a puppet? The older brother could have been a good one, though I still doubt the Chinese want more involvement with North Korea no matter who is in charge there...
I still think my scenario is plausible, and the warm weather is coming soon...
The death option should not be discounted, though I'm really not eager to discuss it. However, I don't feel any confidence in his doctor's first OR second assessments of #PresidentTweety's medical condition. You probably heard the 'healthiest individual ever' thing, but more recently he say something like 'if he dies, he dies'. He could be quite ill and would keel over before admitting it.
The other threat is because of Trump's desire to be unpredictable. I think that means who could do something so unpredictable that he disrupts the best efforts of the Secret Service and get himself shot in the process. It's not like there's any shortage of guns around if he creates the opportunity.
My (repeated and ignored) suggestion would be a maturity filter. A kill list can handle long-lived trolls, but the maturity filter would deal with the fresh sock puppets. It should be an option, but I'd set mine for about 2 months as the youngest identity I could see.
I think it should also include a self-debasing feature. If a troll (or disposable sock puppet) replies to someone who won't see it, there would be a warning first, and if the warning is ignored, the comment would get a prefix warning like "Not a sincere reply, since [ID] was notified this comment is not visible to the ostensible recipient."
(I'm not doing a good job of putting my Slashdot affairs in order before departing...)
You got me to wondering. Maybe it was PENCE who blackmailed #PresidentTweety on this one? I didn't think Pence was that smart or vicious, but maybe he's insanely ambitious to go with his religious extremism? Might even be setting the stage for playing the 25th?
You got modded as a "troll"? I'd give you a "funny" if I ever saw the inside of a mod point, but I think it just shows how many trolls have sock puppets with mod points. Me thinks they are about to lose this skirmish, even if some of them are working for Putin...
Anyway, #PresidentTweety is SO tied to technology that he's always fair game on Slashdot. In most ways his rise to success is a story of abuse of our favorite technologies. Not talking so much about his stock-market-disrupting Twitter account or the viral rumor mill of Facebook as the skilled electronic warfare of the fake news sites, especially the one Bannon came from.
Related technical question: Google News is supposed to have an option to reduce the visibility of bogus news sites. And yet that one keeps showing up. Can anyone explain how? Are they bribing Google to ignore the users' preferences? Or maybe the uniqueness of the BS stories somehow bypasses the preferences? His evil minions are doing something so the fake news story scores high as a story that should appear in the top stories on Google News even though there is no other source for it?
General Michael Flynn's tenure as NSA adviser is the shortest in US history (24 days).
Does Flynn's brief "defense" quality as "alternative facts" yet, or is there some sort of requirement in #PresidentTweety's White House for Kellyanne Conway to say it first? After all, she merely said Trump had "full confidence" in Flynn about an hour before he resigned. Or maybe she'll tell us it isn't a real resignation now?
Oh, I just hope her embarrassment and humiliation is so extreme that the Donald fires her next. Then maybe the pressure will roll the rest of the way up his trousers and he'll go completely nuts so they can exorcise him with the 25th.
I need some more popcorn, but if anyone does start a pool on Trump's departure from DC, I'm going to have to move my date forward. I was expecting him to last long enough for China (AKA Jhina) to invade Taiwan (and North Korea). I was also expecting him to get Bill-Cosby-ed first, too, but I'm doubting he'll last long enough for that.
Maybe the funniest part (for very humorless values of "funny") is that the increasing chaos in DC may be better for Putin than any other outcome. Discredit American democracy? Why stop there? More like blow up the entire federal government.
(*sigh* Hard to put my Slashdot affairs in order when such an amusing story appears.)
Judging by the replies, the effort of drafting that comment was clearly wasted, especially the effort of carefully balancing my examples. I wonder if it would have helped to include "You, yourself, are Suspect 4"?
However, right now I am in the process of putting my Slashdot affairs in order for another hiatus, perhaps permanent, so this is basically a boilerplate response drafted for the pending replies. (It's just that none of the replies pending on this comment seem to merit as much as the boilerplate.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm trying to remember if I ever got to the point of calling Dubya anything else. Maybe my problem is that I can't respect the office apart from the occupant?
I wish you would offer a more constructive alternative, however. Perhaps Bannon's title should be "Acting President" or "De Facto President"? Then again, I'm still hoping that Pence assumes the first title via the 25th. That seems to our only hope for an escape to a future in which a Mars colony might be part of mankind's future. Bad as Pence would be, I don't think he's really that much of a game changer, whereas Trump tends to break everything he touches beyond the point of repair... Pence may delay us, but Trump may break center field (of civilization) so badly that no one can play it.
*sigh* I still hate typos, and they still slip through Preview too often. *sigh*
s/this the techniques/the techniques/
Self-contradiction is the lowest form of lying. I rate it at Level 0. You don't even need to check anything to know that at least one side is false. (Interestingly enough, it is logically possible for both sides of a contradiction to be false, but not for both sides to be true.)
Just for reference, Level 1 is counterfactual statements. Trump gets to this level pretty often, though it's hard to be sure because he may then slip in the true facts and create the self-contradiction. However the problem of Level 1 lies is that any fool can check the facts.
Level 2 lies of partial truth are where the lawyers excel. Yes, Hillary went to this well often, but Trump rarely gets this far. Understanding reality and dividing it into pieces takes a lot of work and some skill and the Donald lacks what it takes. Best he can do here is stay on his teleprompter as scripted by lawyers.
Level 3 is the domain of the propagandists. My current generalized description is "framing" for this the techniques at this level. In Heinlein's original formulation, it involved presenting the truth in a way that causes it to be rejected. Today's so-called Republicans are especially fond of the related technique of redefinition of terms, such as redefining "liberal" to mean "socialist" which has already been redefined as "dictatorial gawdless communist". Push polling is an impressive technique, closely related to election fraud by selecting voters before the voters can select the politicians (either through gerrymandering or selective disenfranchisement). People like Karl Rove and Steve Bannon live and breath at this level, but #PresidentTweety remains blissfully unaware.
So much for the reference section, eh? Now to bring it back to the ACTUAL topic at hand, which is supposed to be why Trump signed some sort of pledge to send men to Mars,
I think I have to dismiss this as a Level 2 lie. The part that is real is that there are many people who have visions of a glorious future for mankind, including expansion to other planets. However the missing part of reality is that our civilization may destroy this planet to the point where we lack the resources to sustain any sort of advanced civilization, let along possess the YUGE surpluses that would be required to colonize Mars.
No, I'm not a Luddite. I personally like technology and even agree that the long term trend has been upwards. However I think the oscillations are becoming too extreme and we are poised on the brink of a major downswing...
I think there is a great deal of confusion about what "troll" means. Actually, I have concluded that one of the most broken parts of Slashdot moderation is the use of negative moderation that is not part of positive moderation. I'm not saying that negative moderation shouldn't exist, but rather that it should be part of a symmetric relationship and I think Slashdot would be a MUCH better place if the scales were tilted in favor of good behavior rather than bad. (I also believe that the moderation of posts should be reflected in multidimensional karma.)
As it applies to the topic of a "troll", I think a true troll would score negative on the "polite" dimension as well as negative on the "accurate" or "sincere" dimensions. For what little it is worth, I try hard to be accurate and sincere, but too often I can be provoked into tat-for-tat rudeness. (No, I'm not certain what the best dimensions would be, but it's evidently moot since I've seen no recent evidence of Slashdot moving or evolving in any positive direction. I think that lack of movement is ultimately due to the bad financial model.)
As regards the "off topic" category, again, I think it's a negative moderation without positive balance. Perhaps the positive dimension is "relevance"? I also suffer from an excess of connectivity, so apparently I see clear and to-me obvious relationships where other people apparently see nothing. I do NOT believe that #PresidentTweety has any sublime vision for the future of mankind, and only a grubby and delusional vision of what America is, was, or should be. Even if he has delusions of commercial real estate speculation extended to Mars it could not be for his personal benefit. At the same time, I have seen persuasive evidence that Trump sometimes signs things without even understanding what he is signing, so I attempted to make a little joke about acting president Bannon having an ulterior motive. Not sure where to suggest that you start looking for evidence of that relationship between Bannon's philosophies and destruction of the earth, but This Changes Everything is an interesting presentation even though it was written before all of this Donald stuff began.
The devil is in the details.
You mean President Bannon told Herr #PresidentTweety to sign this because Bannon wants an escape plan after he finishes phucking up this planet?
At some point Trump is going to realize that most of his followers are just curious to see what stupid lie he's going to tweet next. Or maybe not. I keep being amazed by his mental density, so maybe I'm projecting my inability to learn (how not to be amazed) on his apparent inability to learn anything.
Your joke would be funny if the 77% "jokes" claim were anywhere close to reality. Unfortunately, in that case there would be so many funny mods flying around that your comment would no longer be funny and would not have gotten any funny mods. Some sort of witless paradox, it seems?
More like "77% Having nothing to say but saying it anyway".
The people who designed and tested the AI.
What is so novel about that?
Welcome to earth, but I'm sorry to report Microsoft will invade your planet RSN.
You obviously didn't read your EULA covering your new AI robot. You don't own anything and whatever goes bad, the badness is NOT the fault of "the people who designed and tested the AI". When you signed the lease or whatever to use the monster, you agreed they are all innocent.
Liability is such a quaint old idea. You wouldn't want to bankrupt Microsoft by holding the company liable for all the damages caused by their little mistakes. After all, no one is perfect. Of course, these days it isn't just Microsoft, but EVERY humongous and "successful" company has to protect its "maximized shareholder value" from the pesky peasants who might get injured or killed by those little mistakes.
No one is perfect, and inhuman corporations are the least perfect of all.
What are they liable for? Who's liable?
Absolutely nuttin' and absolutely no one.
Only "funny" modded comment? A feeble joke on an obvious spelling error?
Sadness.
It's hard for me not to dismiss it as a troll article when it mentions "eliminate" and "spam" in the headline. The answer is "No, no, NO, you're NEVER going to eliminate every annoying email message that someone doesn't regard as spam."
Yeah, the article clarifies that it's really another reduction strategy, but I still feel the best one is to go after the spammers' business models. The most persistent and annoying spammers have business models, and as long as the business models keep working, then those spammers will keep spamming. The best way to tackle the spammers' business models is to consider where the money comes from and get the help of the potential victims.
The spammer who needs a sucker has to be understood by the sucker. There has to be some link from the spam to the sucker's wallet and back to the spammer or there's no point.
Why isn't there an email system that lets US, the potential victims, be good Samaritans in breaking the spammers' business models? You don't have to help, you can be a free rider, but I'd be glad to spend a few minutes a day hurting the spammers by helping to analyze a few pieces of spam and suggesting the countermeasures. I think there are a lot of wannabe good Samaritans out there, but the big email providers like the google just believe in "Live and let spam" as their business model. (Filtering and even DMARC and DKIM obviously do NOT work or the spammers would have already given up.)
Imagine that there were an iterative analysis of spam that would allow you to confirm what's going on, or even bring your personal knowledge to bear. Obvious case in point: What if you receive a really good-looking phishing scam spam? Oh wait, you and ONLY YOU know that you do NOT have any account with that bank, but all of the other people who are actually customers of that bank might be at significant risk. This is a case where the human knowledge matters, and the wannabe spammer fighters could help elevate the priority of the response. (Just one of many such cases, but it's really bothering me after I just read a book that suggested you could always spot the phishing scams by the spelling errors.)
As the joke goes, details available upon polite request. Not holding my joke on today's Slashdot, but I'll probably check back in hopes of finding an actually funny comment so modded.
Hmm... Your Subject: line could have earned more favorable mods, but the body is weak.
Let me say that today's so-called Republicans have no real understanding of what freedom is about. However the part that deserves funny mod points is that the libertarian wing of the GOP has the weakest understanding of freedom.
I would say (1) Libertarians don't actually understand what freedom is, and (2) Libertarians think they are superior people. Among the other ugly ramifications of (2) is that (2-a) they think everyone else should be free to make bad decisions, (2-b) they have no responsibility to try to stop other people from making bad decisions even when they know exactly what is bad about those decisions, and (2-c) they think it is fine for them to personally profit from other people's mistakes and weaknesses.
Just speaking for myself, but I think (2-c) is worst of all. Also unsustainable because EVERYONE makes mistakes.
Just for reference, the latest (and obviously greatest) version of my "freedom formula" is:
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice{~5} (Beer^4 | Speech | Trade)
Where are the trolls getting all these sock puppets with "insightful" mod points? And why doesn't Slashdot care?
Actually, just kidding about the second question. I already know that the underlying problem with Slashdot is a broken financial model, so they don't have the resources to do better. Kind of sad to see it sink down to the miserable level of the "insightful" post you're replying to.
I still think it's pointless to feed the trolls with your direct replies. Either they are sincerely insane, proudly ignorant, or they are paid to fake it. If they are paid to troll, then they probably earn bonuses based on how many replies they elicit.
Closing on a constructive note? I think Slashdot should switch to a cost-recovery financial model. Under that model, they could implement and support whatever anti-troll countermeasures the members were willing to help pay for. Details available upon polite request (but I'm not holding my breath to see much politeness on today's Slashdot).
I also invented such a tool. It's accurate 70% of the time.
Here's the code:
You need to wrap it in a delay loop to reach 70% accuracy. You have to make it wait long enough for the copyright infringing videos to be deleted. If you want to include all of those transient videos then I think we can get to 80% or 90% with a two-answer program. If less than the delay time, the answer is "Copyright infringement" and if the video is older than the delay time, it switches to "Cat video" as the answer.
Need to research the modal time to deletion for copyrighted videos on YouTube... I have been given to believe that most of them are detected automatically and deleted within a few minutes.
Oh wait. The summary says it can recognize a dachshund. Proof enough for me! Everyone knows dachshunds are the most EVIL breed of dog.
Actually every article about the google tends to sadden me. Such a nice little child company grew up to be such a monster. Dare I say EVIL? Yes, notwithstanding finishing yet another book about the google yesterday amid all of the protestations of how much the google wants to be a good and friendly little boy. The tools remain as morally neutral as they ever were, but things have changed anyway.
The "Don't be evil" slogan has mutated to "All your attention are belong to us."
The mission of making all of the world's information accessible and useful has changed in a more complicated way. Information is overabundant, even super-abundant, so the google had to prioritize. Turns out the highest priority information is what the advertisers want to pay for YOU to see and the ultimate utility function became the corporate profits. Yes, they are still throwing a few crumbs at the residual humans who produce the content that carries the ads, but the big winners are all corporations. Ultimate victory of AI?
There are two problem with "shareholder value" as the sole criterion of goodness. The minor problem is that share price is a delusion. The major problem is that it defines an unsolvable problem, even if you don't call it greed. There is NO share price that represents maximum shareholder value. No matter what you did yesterday, the corporation has to work to make the share price higher today, even if it ultimately makes the corporation EVIL.
Speaking for myself, I can't call it super-greed because corporations are inhuman, notwithstanding SCOTUS. Only humans have such emotions as greed.
No, WikiLeaks is a bunch (but mostly one guy) of idealistic patsies, not to be confused with real journalists. The way WikiLeaks "works" makes it much more useful for propaganda and disinformation than for the kinds of substantial facts that REAL journalists work hard to collect and then verify. Just send anything to WikiLeaks and you've got a megaphone. Idealists are too easily manipulated by abusing their ideals.
The trick to playing WikiLeaks involves the information glut effect leveraged against their lack of a real economic model. Because WikiLeaks also wants to raise money, they want to leverage their releases of information for maximum impact. The resulting visibility produces donations (including book sales (in case you've forgotten that ad)). That's also why WikiLeaks prioritizes leaking American secrets. Many Americans still care about these issues and can also afford to send money.
Given the situation that exists, I'm unwilling to guess how much of this story is real and how much is pure BS intended to ramp up the paranoia. WikiLeaks makes no pretense of even wanting to know who the sources are, what their motivations were, or how valid the data is. Then again, my own paranoia is so high that I remain confident Michael Hastings was murdered by hacking his car's electronics.
I suppose I could say more, but it doesn't matter much on Slashdot, and if Putin actually cares, then I'm already on one (hopefully more) of his watch lists. (I'm inclined to believe the claims that Putin is the richest man in the world, and if he has #PresidentTweety's pecker in his pocket (as I suspect he does), then he's also the most powerful.) These days Slashdot doesn't have enough journalistic credibility to sneeze at, though what most disheartens me is the lack of significantly funny comments, both in quantity and quality. The jokes associated with this target-rich topic were quite lame. I also looked at all the comments moderated as insightful, and did various keyword searches (all fruitless) for the terms I regarded as most interesting and insightful in relation to the topic.
"So sad," as Herr #PresidentTweety would tweet.
At least none of my searches on those key terms found anything, though that's the main exposure to "Edge" that I've seen. Actually seems to be increasing lately. Not that I actually use Outlook. No compelling reason, and the negative feelings towards the google are not significantly different from my sentiments towards Microsoft.
My feelings towards Edge are much worse, and the nagging isn't helping. However it seems that no one on Slashdot has noticed. Or maybe none of them are using Outlook.com or seeing any Edge plugs anywhere else?
No funny posts either, but the target wasn't rich this time. Microsoft has become too boring to be funny.
My years of experience with Libertarians has convinced me of two things:
(1) They don't understand what freedom actually is.
(2) All of them have superiority complexes.
However I think the main point of high degrees of automation in the food industry is how vulnerable that will make the human beings to a synchronized cyber-attack. Imagine all of the fast food served at some peak time were to be poisoned. That would eliminate a whole lot of the riffraff. If the poison is slow enough, it could be even more effective.
I wasn't thinking about the Russians or Chinese at first. I was actually thinking about one of those high efficiency ASIs that was fed up with all those annoying portable nuisances of the human sort... (I think we might be able to negotiate a peace treaty with a regular AI, but all bets are off on an ASI.)
P.S. Seemed like a target-rich topic for funny, but not so much. Par.
I just love the people who think they've found a massive smoking gun here -- you're far from the first.
Trump is using an unsecured phone to send... tweets. Messages broadcast to the universe.
Just imagine the harm that could befall the nation if one of those were to be intercepted.
You idiot.
Hmm... It's rated funny, but was it intended to be ironic? Failed parody or a sincere Trumpist mumbling in a confusing way? That's where Slashdot has gotten these days?
Anyway, if I pwned Herr #PresidentTweety's smartphone I would use it to make a LOT of money. I'd put a short delay in his tweets so that I could see in advance if he was tweeting share prices up or down. I can only see one weakness in the otherwise perfect scam: The stock market authorities might notice and get suspicious if anyone is consistently betting the right way just as he tweets. At least they should be looking for such a pattern, though I think the most obvious suspects would be insiders like his sons or his IT (smartphone) guy.
Yours [Walt Sellers'] was one of the few insightful-rated comments that really seemed to merit the mod. If the mods were logarithmic then high (e^5) mods would really mean something.
Or maybe you just read Work Rules! from the google guy? Most of your comments follow along the lines of the google interview process as reported in that book. Mostly admirable ideas, but I still think the old "Don't be evil" motto has been replaced by "All your attention are belong to us." (I've been reading a lot of google-related books lately, but nothing else in the various parts of the LARGE discussion that I read seemed to ring any other bells.)
My suggested improvement to the google's interview process would involve making videos of the interviews, either just the interviewer's face or both sides. Then the interviewer could focus on the interview itself rather than making the notes at the same time. If the interviewee agreed to both sides, then the two-sided interview video would actually allow other people to get a much better feel for the interview without taking any of the candidate's time... (Also much better for evaluating the skills of the interviewers.)
However the insight I was looking for and failed to find in the comments was a bit upstream of the actual interviews. It was how the job-search websites earn their income from the corporations by helping them drive salaries down. It's kind of like lotteries focusing their advertising on the winners while ignoring all the losers who made the lottery profitable. Of course they boast about the few winning jobs (as with the google) that attract lots of candidates, but where their money is really coming from is all the lesser candidates who compete for the lousy jobs by seeing who is most willing to accept the position.
I wish there were a job-search website that was driven by the candidates. An economic model where the website actually profited by helping each person get the best job. Perhaps the economic model aligned from the employees' side would produce rather different results?
Talk about a pipe dream. Whatever I've been smoking, I better cut back.
Basically just an ACK, but it I doubt that the Chinese dictators have a decade to wait for economic self-sufficiency, and that is part of why they may be feeling forced to seize the current opportunity. They may know that their economy is about to crash in any case, and they NEED a scapegoat like #PresidentTweety. I certainly hope a bigger international fool doesn't come along later...
Minor supporting evidence in the recent assassination of Kim Jong-un's older brother. From the insane North Korean perspective, he was a dangerous pretender to the throne, but that is not a new thing. So why did they decide to kill him now? Perhaps because the North Korean government is on the verge of collapse? That would create the mess without giving the Chinese any benefit from it. Or perhaps because the North Korean's feared a Chinese invasion to install a puppet? The older brother could have been a good one, though I still doubt the Chinese want more involvement with North Korea no matter who is in charge there...
I still think my scenario is plausible, and the warm weather is coming soon...
The death option should not be discounted, though I'm really not eager to discuss it. However, I don't feel any confidence in his doctor's first OR second assessments of #PresidentTweety's medical condition. You probably heard the 'healthiest individual ever' thing, but more recently he say something like 'if he dies, he dies'. He could be quite ill and would keel over before admitting it.
The other threat is because of Trump's desire to be unpredictable. I think that means who could do something so unpredictable that he disrupts the best efforts of the Secret Service and get himself shot in the process. It's not like there's any shortage of guns around if he creates the opportunity.
My (repeated and ignored) suggestion would be a maturity filter. A kill list can handle long-lived trolls, but the maturity filter would deal with the fresh sock puppets. It should be an option, but I'd set mine for about 2 months as the youngest identity I could see.
I think it should also include a self-debasing feature. If a troll (or disposable sock puppet) replies to someone who won't see it, there would be a warning first, and if the warning is ignored, the comment would get a prefix warning like "Not a sincere reply, since [ID] was notified this comment is not visible to the ostensible recipient."
(I'm not doing a good job of putting my Slashdot affairs in order before departing...)
You got me to wondering. Maybe it was PENCE who blackmailed #PresidentTweety on this one? I didn't think Pence was that smart or vicious, but maybe he's insanely ambitious to go with his religious extremism? Might even be setting the stage for playing the 25th?
You got modded as a "troll"? I'd give you a "funny" if I ever saw the inside of a mod point, but I think it just shows how many trolls have sock puppets with mod points. Me thinks they are about to lose this skirmish, even if some of them are working for Putin...
Anyway, #PresidentTweety is SO tied to technology that he's always fair game on Slashdot. In most ways his rise to success is a story of abuse of our favorite technologies. Not talking so much about his stock-market-disrupting Twitter account or the viral rumor mill of Facebook as the skilled electronic warfare of the fake news sites, especially the one Bannon came from.
Related technical question: Google News is supposed to have an option to reduce the visibility of bogus news sites. And yet that one keeps showing up. Can anyone explain how? Are they bribing Google to ignore the users' preferences? Or maybe the uniqueness of the BS stories somehow bypasses the preferences? His evil minions are doing something so the fake news story scores high as a story that should appear in the top stories on Google News even though there is no other source for it?
General Michael Flynn's tenure as NSA adviser is the shortest in US history (24 days).
Does Flynn's brief "defense" quality as "alternative facts" yet, or is there some sort of requirement in #PresidentTweety's White House for Kellyanne Conway to say it first? After all, she merely said Trump had "full confidence" in Flynn about an hour before he resigned. Or maybe she'll tell us it isn't a real resignation now?
Oh, I just hope her embarrassment and humiliation is so extreme that the Donald fires her next. Then maybe the pressure will roll the rest of the way up his trousers and he'll go completely nuts so they can exorcise him with the 25th.
I need some more popcorn, but if anyone does start a pool on Trump's departure from DC, I'm going to have to move my date forward. I was expecting him to last long enough for China (AKA Jhina) to invade Taiwan (and North Korea). I was also expecting him to get Bill-Cosby-ed first, too, but I'm doubting he'll last long enough for that.
Maybe the funniest part (for very humorless values of "funny") is that the increasing chaos in DC may be better for Putin than any other outcome. Discredit American democracy? Why stop there? More like blow up the entire federal government.
(*sigh* Hard to put my Slashdot affairs in order when such an amusing story appears.)
Judging by the replies, the effort of drafting that comment was clearly wasted, especially the effort of carefully balancing my examples. I wonder if it would have helped to include "You, yourself, are Suspect 4"?
However, right now I am in the process of putting my Slashdot affairs in order for another hiatus, perhaps permanent, so this is basically a boilerplate response drafted for the pending replies. (It's just that none of the replies pending on this comment seem to merit as much as the boilerplate.)