I've got a simple solution. We convince some people to start surveillance-free businesses. I don't know what kind of idiot would actually start a surveillance-free kwikymart, but let's say you can convince someone to do it.
Then we give everyone a choice. You can go where you might be watched and pay the regular price OR you can go to a surveillance-free store and pay 20-50% more. Of course, advertising that you are a surveillance-free store might make it even worse than a standard store and ease the pressure on the other stores.
So if you are fine buying half as much stuff then you can support the surveillance-free effort. But the rest of us will just deal with cameras.
I don't entirely disagree with the sentiment behind this effort, but I believe that it must be directed at the right targets.
Computer science is a young field. We can produce papers and show one result without having to back them up with anything other than our word. _SOME_ computer scientists have the courage to put out their source, but now it sounds like the universities are pressuring them not to.
Biology has a culture such that if you produce a new mutant line and write a paper about your discovery, ANYONE can ask you for your line. If you don't produce it, you will loose any respect you might have built up over the years. How do universities handle this?
Let's just imagine if computer science was this way. If you produce a paper, you had to be willing to give the code. If someone took your code and found it wanton or you were unwilling to give up your code, it would be assumed that you faked it. Ouch! That would suck. It would certainly slow down our field, but I think at some point this should be the case.
This is a styme on Microsoft as they are probably depending on accounting for the full cost of the licencing on the software that they will provide to come up with a huge number for the settlement.
Each machine is probably around $1000, but they will get them for significantly cheaper, but they can install $1000 worth of software on those systems for almost free.
I like RedHat's point. I'd really like to see the actual numbers on this, e.g. the percentage of the settlement that results from hardware versus software expenses. Also, the limited licences are a scam.
It would be news if _ANY_ ISP _DID_ offer support for a completely new OS before even knowing if it has unresolvible conflicts with their system.
I have just installed Win XP and I believe that they will offer support very quickly as it's network services are almost the exact same as its predecessor (Win2000).
This is the best tack I've heard for going after them. They must prove that 50 times the number of complaintants are true opt-in users.
If they produce their list and someone starts checking them one by one, they will only have to do 50*N checks to validate MonsterHuts' claim. Of course, every person on that list who says "Nope. I never opted into MonsterHut's mailing list." will add an additional 50 true opt-in users that must be found.
Since most of their users may have opted into something at some point, but not specifically MonsterHut, they are in serious trouble.
PS. If you are an ISP and someone needs an addendum like that, think very hard whether you want them as customers. Consider an N-complaint per month rate rather than a percentage.
I hate reading these articles because they report meaningless statistics. This article reported that...
Visionics claims its match rate can be more than 99%.
This is a vacuous statement unless you report the false negatives also. I can return 100% of the criminals by returning every one of the pictures as a positive match. Or I can have a very low false positive rate by only returning the most likely match.
Either the reporter is trying to reduce the information he received from Visionics or Visionics is trying to pump up the hype by reporting meaningless statistics.
This doesn't really bother me that much, except that this would be interesting for the discussion here. If, to get 99% hit rate (whatever that means), they have to return a vast majority of the pictures, then they are essentially archiving a vast majority of the people's pictures.
In my experience, face recognition is horrible. If the visionics system is not hundreds of times better than current acedemic systems, it is only a filtering system which would be useless if you had a large set of criminals. So, rather than worrying about the face recognition system, we should concentrate on whether we want the capability to store images of everyone who enters the store.
On that question, I believe that it is the store's right to do whatever it wants. If you don't like it, don't go there. Go to the more expensive store where your rights are respected. People argued strongly against the current surviellance systems that exist in EVERY quickymart in the US, but that industry decided they didn't really care. And that's their right! And some people still don't go in stores with any cameras. And that their right!
EndersGame
Speak with your feet and the world will be a better place.
America's Most Wanted can get a hundred calls about a single show. Almost all of them are similar to this story. Newspapers also get calls about people pictured in random shots. There are only two contentious issues here:
1. The police setup cameras to watch public areas. This has happened in at least two parks in New York City and it was _WELCOMED_ because those who might otherwise have objected would _NEVER_ go to the camera-free park anyways because it was so unsafe. Of course, there were hundreds of people who didn't live there who saw it as crime against humanity, but the local police and local residents care more about whether their daughter's going to get raped coming home from preschool tonight than whether their childrens children are going to live in an Orwellian state.
2. The cameras are hooked up to a computer system that can make the officers job easier. It is sufficient to say that the technology should be welcomed where the task is welcomed. Many people have expressed their distaste towards the mentioned application and I somewhat agree. If it was a sting operation to catch someone in particular, I would be more OK with it.
To sum up, who cares if computers are in the process. The US has to decide soon whether/where it will tolerate this type of observation. If nothing is done, we _WILL_ follow the path of Japan and England allowing surveillance of most major roadways and many public gathering places. (Hmmm. It doesn't sound that bad.)
EndersGame
--
PS. About 86% of New York City is currently under surveillance. It doesn't bother most people because we can't process that much information today, but in a few decades...
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a simple solution. We convince some people to start surveillance-free businesses. I don't know what kind of idiot would actually start a surveillance-free kwikymart, but let's say you can convince someone to do it.
Then we give everyone a choice. You can go where you might be watched and pay the regular price OR you can go to a surveillance-free store and pay 20-50% more. Of course, advertising that you are a surveillance-free store might make it even worse than a standard store and ease the pressure on the other stores.
So if you are fine buying half as much stuff then you can support the surveillance-free effort. But the rest of us will just deal with cameras.
I don't entirely disagree with the sentiment behind this effort, but I believe that it must be directed at the right targets.
It's just a model.
EndersGame
Computer science is a young field. We can produce papers and show one result without having to back them up with anything other than our word. _SOME_ computer scientists have the courage to put out their source, but now it sounds like the universities are pressuring them not to.
Biology has a culture such that if you produce a new mutant line and write a paper about your discovery, ANYONE can ask you for your line. If you don't produce it, you will loose any respect you might have built up over the years. How do universities handle this?
Let's just imagine if computer science was this way. If you produce a paper, you had to be willing to give the code. If someone took your code and found it wanton or you were unwilling to give up your code, it would be assumed that you faked it. Ouch! That would suck. It would certainly slow down our field, but I think at some point this should be the case.
This is a styme on Microsoft as they are probably depending on accounting for the full cost of the licencing on the software that they will provide to come up with a huge number for the settlement.
Each machine is probably around $1000, but they will get them for significantly cheaper, but they can install $1000 worth of software on those systems for almost free.
I like RedHat's point. I'd really like to see the actual numbers on this, e.g. the percentage of the settlement that results from hardware versus software expenses. Also, the limited licences are a scam.
It would be news if _ANY_ ISP _DID_ offer support for a completely new OS before even knowing if it has unresolvible conflicts with their system.
I have just installed Win XP and I believe that they will offer support very quickly as it's network services are almost the exact same as its predecessor (Win2000).
EndersGame
This is the best tack I've heard for going after them. They must prove that 50 times the number of complaintants are true opt-in users.
If they produce their list and someone starts checking them one by one, they will only have to do 50*N checks to validate MonsterHuts' claim. Of course, every person on that list who says "Nope. I never opted into MonsterHut's mailing list." will add an additional 50 true opt-in users that must be found.
Since most of their users may have opted into something at some point, but not specifically MonsterHut, they are in serious trouble.
PS. If you are an ISP and someone needs an addendum like that, think very hard whether you want them as customers. Consider an N-complaint per month rate rather than a percentage.
I hate reading these articles because they report meaningless statistics. This article reported that...
Visionics claims its match rate can be more than 99%.
This is a vacuous statement unless you report the false negatives also. I can return 100% of the criminals by returning every one of the pictures as a positive match. Or I can have a very low false positive rate by only returning the most likely match.
Either the reporter is trying to reduce the information he received from Visionics or Visionics is trying to pump up the hype by reporting meaningless statistics.
This doesn't really bother me that much, except that this would be interesting for the discussion here. If, to get 99% hit rate (whatever that means), they have to return a vast majority of the pictures, then they are essentially archiving a vast majority of the people's pictures.
In my experience, face recognition is horrible. If the visionics system is not hundreds of times better than current acedemic systems, it is only a filtering system which would be useless if you had a large set of criminals. So, rather than worrying about the face recognition system, we should concentrate on whether we want the capability to store images of everyone who enters the store.
On that question, I believe that it is the store's right to do whatever it wants. If you don't like it, don't go there. Go to the more expensive store where your rights are respected. People argued strongly against the current surviellance systems that exist in EVERY quickymart in the US, but that industry decided they didn't really care. And that's their right! And some people still don't go in stores with any cameras. And that their right!
EndersGame
Speak with your feet and the world will be a better place.
America's Most Wanted can get a hundred calls about a single show. Almost all of them are similar to this story. Newspapers also get calls about people pictured in random shots. There are only two contentious issues here: 1. The police setup cameras to watch public areas. This has happened in at least two parks in New York City and it was _WELCOMED_ because those who might otherwise have objected would _NEVER_ go to the camera-free park anyways because it was so unsafe. Of course, there were hundreds of people who didn't live there who saw it as crime against humanity, but the local police and local residents care more about whether their daughter's going to get raped coming home from preschool tonight than whether their childrens children are going to live in an Orwellian state. 2. The cameras are hooked up to a computer system that can make the officers job easier. It is sufficient to say that the technology should be welcomed where the task is welcomed. Many people have expressed their distaste towards the mentioned application and I somewhat agree. If it was a sting operation to catch someone in particular, I would be more OK with it. To sum up, who cares if computers are in the process. The US has to decide soon whether/where it will tolerate this type of observation. If nothing is done, we _WILL_ follow the path of Japan and England allowing surveillance of most major roadways and many public gathering places. (Hmmm. It doesn't sound that bad.) EndersGame -- PS. About 86% of New York City is currently under surveillance. It doesn't bother most people because we can't process that much information today, but in a few decades...