When they have 300,000 miles in southern California during rush hour with no accidents, then I'll be impressed. How many of those miles were on controlled tracks?
Since they're only licensed to drive in Nevada, a better question would be how many of those miles were gathered in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert.
I want to know about interference between cars. I've only see one self-driving car tested at a time. If there's hundreds within visual range of each other are their radar and laser sensors going to have much more noise?
With hundreds of self-driving cars everywhere, then they may even be able to save on gas by flocking together and save on wind resistance and save on stopping time by sharing gas and Slurpees at high speeds.
And of course, fewer sensors would have to operate that way, only the car in front would have to scan far off in the front, and only the car in the back would have to scan the rear.
"Hacker" is a loaded term. It might not be fair, but that is the fact of the matter. As such "Hacker Highschool" is doomed to attract everything from raised eyebrows to terminology-holy-wars.
The term is not all that bad, so they're bound to have more than a few parents interested in it.
Plus, it's a term that will get the high school a fair share of free publicity for it. Branding-wise, I think they made the right call. A "computer programming high school" or a "computer science high school" simply would never attract the same level of attention.
I cringe when I apply for jobs using it as I know bad guys use it as well but I have to work right?
Why? Do you apply for jobs in the 'casual encounters' section? Or did you use to apply for jobs in the section that got removed last year?
In craigslist's official section for jobs, the fee is $75.00 per post and per category, so I'd say that makes that section a bit safer than the other non-real estate non-jobs sections where posting is completely free.
And why? Because it now also searches Google. No mention of Google Voice Search.
Now, who's making stuff up? Siri doesn't use Google results according to this SEO.
The second article is basically just the video from the first.
My bad. I lost the original article I wanted to link to. That article contained about a dozen questions where Woz compared the iPhone Siri against Google Voice Search.
Here is a completely different article with the same kind of test. This one is not performed by Woz but Gizmodo, but it's actually much more comprehensive with 1600 questions! Enjoy.
1600-Question Test Shows How Bad Siri Really Is Jesus Diaz
Pitting Google search against Siri using a monster 1600-question test shows how useful Siri really is: not at all. Google answered correctly 86 percent of the time. Siri achieved just 68 percent accuracy. At that point, it's not much better than a crystal ball.
We knew that Siri isn't very good. But this intense test shows just how ridiculous the gimmicky voice assistant could be. The fact is that even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been saying this since the day Apple introduced the iPhone 4S with Siri. It just sucks. Siri as an independent product, before Apple acquired it, the Woz told us at the Gizmodo Gallery:
It was really accurate, but now it's full of marketing-driven answers that are not correct.
How bad is it now? Here are some good examples from the test, which was conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, a character who is well-known for his pro-Apple view of the tech world:
When did the movie Cinderella come out? Responded with a movie theater search on Yelp.
What spices are in Lasagna? Responded with a Yelp search with lasagna on the menu.
I want to go to Lake Superior? Responded with directions to the company Lake Superior X-Ray.
Clearly, Woz is right: Apple's version of Siri is tainted because it's marketing driven, giving preference to commercial sites like Yelp or companies over actual, useful results.
Of course, you can argue that Siri is labeled as beta by Apple. But, to Woz's point, how did it end up being worse than it was as a standalone app available at the App Store? The one Apple bought when Steve Jobs was still running the company?
Which brings me back to a earlier point. Jobs' authorized biography says that he was at diminished capacity when Siri was being tested, too weak to come into the office. He only tried the current form of Siri at his last board meeting. He briefly played with it and, understandably given the moment, didn't show much interest. That was it. It's hard to believe that he would have let software with 68% accuracy to ever be installed in a shipping product.
A new version of Siri is coming in the new iOS 6. It looks a lot more useful, but I just hope that Apple ditches the commercialism in favor of giving the answers you actually need. [Fortune]
Question: what the heck are you going to be "searching" for when offline?
Apps, Contacts, phone numbers, addresses, geolocations (yes, even geolocations on a map through offline google maps, or some other offline map third party application).
Word definitions, word translations, documents, employee directory, list of free wifi hotspots, static bus schedules, etc. (yes, basically any content from third party developers that want to set the flag includeInGlobalSearch to "true")
Voice search has been on Android for about three years now. Just because IOS users are finally getting it does not make it news.
Voice search without a working a internet connection is really the main Voice Search functionality that Android has introduced in the Jellybeans.1 release. I think many iPhone users, including the guy that submitted this story, missed that part during the Google I/O demo.
And no, iOS Siri can not work offline, at least as far as I know.
Google voice search is just an alternative entry method for the standard search. It is hardly a strategic counter to the more AI-driven approach (ok, quasi-AI) that Siri represents.
Are you kidding me? It's not even a contest. Comparing Google Voice Search to Siri is just like comparing Google Search to Yahoo Search (the Yahoo Search of 10 years ago). Even Steve Wozniak says that Google voice search is vastly superior to Siri (even long before Gingerbread came out, he was saying stuff like that, now Google voice search can be used offline in addition to what it can already do online, and in that time, Siri has only been getting worse with even more commercial answers to non-commercially based queries).
Also, the idea of launching specific intents/actions on a phone instead of launching just a web page is an idea that Google pioneered long ago, that Apple just recently imitated.
And it does little to address either the vertical search gap presented by Yelp, or the "diagonal" functionality gap that Siri addresses by smoothly integrating with your other iOS apps like text message, alarm or calendar.
But Google Voice Search does also search through the internal content/actions of your phone at the same time as the Internet. It did that for a while now (that's why I can't comprehend how Apple even got a patent on a similar idea).
Interesting blog post, but you didn't say the level of bandwidth your place in Italy was subscribing to, nor the amount of money you were paying for your proxy/VPN service in New York. The StrongVPN service says it starts at $7 a month. Did you really only pay $7, or did you get one of their better packages? Also, is that starting rate $7 their true base price, or would I have to get locked into a contract for 2 years in order to get that rate?
I'm asking because I have family in the UK, and I'd rather not lose some of the streaming video services I'm already paying for in the US when I'm just staying in the UK for a few weeks.
Of course sometimes you can just set the X-Forwarded-For attribute in your browser to an IP address inside the country. A fair amount of web servers are set up to blindly trust it. A lot cheaper than a proxy when it works.
There are lots of free open proxies too, but that doesn't mean they're reliable or stable.
I realize your solution is free as well, but is it really more reliable than hunting around for free open proxies?
Personally, I'd consider this anonymous speech only if the "shills" themselves had been trying to be anonymous, or if the shills themselves had been representing the fact that the speech they were conveying was an advertisement coming from some anonymous sponsor.
In other words, if a paid "shill" really did use their own identity and their own personal/professional fame to misrepresent the fact your talking points was coming from them, and not you, then I'd say the corporation did a lot more than just try to anonymize its speech.
Also, I'm not sure this order from the judge will uncover all the paid shills out there. Many corporations use PR firms and ad agencies, and then those agencies are probably the ones that farm out the work to professional shills and journalists. And unfortunately, the judge's order doesn't seem to require those paid PR firms or ad agencies to disclose the paid consultants they've themselves hired.
If you choose to use Youtube (or Geocities) to find NASA content, you my get lucky and find what you are looking for, but if so, it's just lucky coincidence.
Sorry, but for me, on my slow dsl connection, I'll still trust Youtube over most other official hosting sites. Hulu, Netflix, and Youtube are really the three video hosting sites that work for me as intended. It really doesn't matter how big a budget those other sites have, many of them still don't know how to stream video correctly for people with slower speeds.
Of course, I wasn't interested in this NASA video, so I'm not really your target audience, but for me at least, I've had so many bad experiences with other video sites, it will take a lot more than one incident, even if it was an incident on a video that I actually cared about, to put Youtube in the same category as Geocities.
15 years ago I was programming in BASIC, and doing some C++, after a serious car accident barely making it out alive, my memory went to crud. I have no recolection of how to do anything in either of those languages any more.
15 years? Seriously! You're giving yourself way too much credit.
Personally, it just takes me 15 days to forget a computer language, no head injury required. Plus, I usually only really know one computer language at a time (when I have to use other languages at the same time, I just cut and paste a lot).
If you want to rehabilitate your memory, quit your job, and get another one (hopefully, a different type of job, but one that you're still able to get, and one that pays the bills). I'm being serious here. Changing routines is best. Also while we're at it, changing employers is also the best for career advancement.
And be careful not to take refuge in computer games. I'm not saying this is the case here, but I've met my share of gamers who wanted to be computer game programmers. Of course, it stands to reason that a game programmer will have played computer games and that many programmers got into programming precisely because of computer games. The only problem I see is that many people that are heavily into computer games think they're going to find a way out of their game addiction, by making computer games, which unfortunately is not the way I'm seeing things happening these days.
One problem is that games are getting so sophisticated now, that the gap between the emotional pay off of playing a game vs. the emotional pay off of actually making a game is becoming much wider, and if my theory is correct, a heavy gamer would be unwittingly conditioning himself to become a poor learner and an impatient computer programmer by continuously playing computer games.
Which is to say, don't give up on your goal of making computer games, but if by any chance, you're heavily into playing computer games. Quit for a while. Get some other hobbies. Unplug yourself from the internet, even from Slashdot. Take a night class or two. And of course, get yourself into programming once again. Programming is certainly not the same as playing, and it comes with much smaller and less frequent emotional pay off's.
How can you be absolutely sure they are not back-doored?
The same way that we can absolutely be sure that you're not a pedophile. We just can't.
It's nothing personal. It's just that proving a negative can be really difficult at times. Until we know more, let me suggest that we don't let you near any children, as a just to be safe, we really don't know, precautionary measure.
"Okay, you are in a hurry, we understand that. We will give you half of your temporary password over the phone and fax the other half to your nearest Apple Store or Notary Public. Bring your drivers' license or passport with you. If you use a Notary, they will charge a fee which you will have to pay."
"Listen I'm in Istanbul (or where ever), I've just been robbed. They took everything, including my wallet!!! I don't know if there is an Apple Store around here. Please help me mitigate the damage before they get access to my emails and my bank accounts through my iPad (I was in the middle of using my iPad so the screen wasn't locked). "
Now, I'm not saying this is the script they used, most likely not. I'm sure the hacker used a much better one, probably one that's based on the hard-earned experience and real world testing of thousands of other hackers and scam artists that came before him.
I'm just saying that it takes excellent ongoing training to make sure none of your staff gets bamboozled by this kind of scenario. Hard coded corporate rules and security manuals are all well and good for 99% of the scenarios that come up during the normal course of business hours. But what happens if someone tells you a very plausible story and tells you they could very well die if you don't give them access to their account. Most likely that scenario is not listed in your security manual, and the manual prevents you from disclosing their account information, but it's not the first time, nor the last time, that a customer service representative will ignore the poorly written manual that came from above, and use their own personal judgement to make a quick decision on the spot for the perceived welfare of the caller.
The poster says he was contacted by someone who says he is the hacker. Nothing was confirmed about AppleCare involvement, though it is a possibility - especially if the hacker knows his victim.
You didn't read until the end. The guy posted an update long before you even posted your comment.
But the best part? The INSANE posts to the original article:
The guy needs a better crowdsourced moderation system.
Obviously, the guy is a popular blogger. That's probably why there is so much noise in the comments.
I'm not trying to blame him for the comments he has, I'm just suggesting that now that he's getting so much more traffic, that he should consider moving to a different blogging platform that allows him to still accept anonymous comments, but with better up_voting/down_voting/visibility controls at the very least.
Also to avoid the kind of misunderstandings like the one you just made, this blogger should really post his most current updates at the very top of his posts and in reverse chronological order, and not at the bottom (with just one or two edits in the middle of his posts). Most people just scan a few paragraphs, they do not read everything.
My neighbor is not a native English speaker, he doesn't read English very well, and he's the least likely to fight back when somebody scams him because on one hand he doesn't know it's even possible to fight back and on the other hand he doesn't have a good support network (unless you count me, and personally, I'm not too keen on doing his paperwork for him).
I do agree, that his rate seems to be a bit inflated, especially if he has an ongoing relationship with his client.
But "Robert Half"? What is that? Some kind of Temp agency? Do their Temps come with their own CD/DVDs? USB backup drives? Will they come with their own rescue/toolkit USB sticks? Or will the Temp have to Google his way out of your predicament? And will the Temp have to rely on you for finding your installation CDs/DVDs?
And every time you call this Robert Half agency, will the same exact person show up? After all, you'll be handing out some of your passwords to that person and if you're like most business people, you'll probably be leaving them unattended and unsupervised for at least a few hours.
Despite the markup, wouldn't it be just safer to hire someone you've previously hired in the past? Or hire someone who comes highly recommended from your business friends?
Blogs like Prochronisms look at 'historical changes in language by algorithmically checking historical TV shows and movies.' They utilize tools like Google Ngram viewer to bust Mad Men, for example, for using terms or phrases in dialogue that didn't yet exist.
Really, no offense (ok, maybe a little offense), but this comes across (to me anyways) as slightly... sad. It's one thing if you are looking up a fact about the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere last year. But this is another thing completely. I think Ratatouille actually put it quite well:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy...
You make a good point.
But I believe the Prochronisms blog was only included in Hugh Pickens list only because it makes for an interesting bit of trivia, not because it supports Pickens main thesis (about lies and half-truths) in any way.
The Prochronisms guy for instance seems to have no interest in making those anachronisms go away. He's just interested in the analysis. And from one of his quotes below, he seems to imply that only the Daily Mail and other media outlets are interested in making those types of discrepancies an issue.
Digital humanists like to talk about what insights about the past big data can bring. So in that spirit, let me talk about Downton Abbey for a minute. The show's popularity has led many nitpickers to draft up lists of mistakes. [...] the Daily Mail even managed to cast the errors as a sort of scandal.
So if anyone is sad in my opinion, I don't think it's the Prochronisms guy, it's more the news outlets like the Daily Mail and potentially other nitpickers who imply by their criticisms that they actually want something to be done about those anachronisms.
I sent an email to sales@steam.com that bounced back and then I forwarded to webmaster@steam.com
I told them that I would not give up my rights as an american to have a jury of my peers, and since I notified them of that I would then accept the altered terms of the EULA based on that statement.
Good, now you just need to convince one other person to do the same, and when the time comes for a class action lawsuit -- you may be able to have at least one other person in your class.
So, can I upload my music, have it upgraded and tagged by Amazon, then download the improved MP3s and quit the service?
Yes, you can do that if you want, but since they make you prepay for the entire year -- the joke will be on you if you quit their service after just 24 hours.
Slashdot Mirror
When they have 300,000 miles in southern California during rush hour with no accidents, then I'll be impressed. How many of those miles were on controlled tracks?
Since they're only licensed to drive in Nevada, a better question would be how many of those miles were gathered in the middle of nowhere in the Mojave Desert.
I want to know about interference between cars. I've only see one self-driving car tested at a time. If there's hundreds within visual range of each other are their radar and laser sensors going to have much more noise?
With hundreds of self-driving cars everywhere, then they may even be able to save on gas by flocking together and save on wind resistance and save on stopping time by sharing gas and Slurpees at high speeds.
And of course, fewer sensors would have to operate that way, only the car in front would have to scan far off in the front, and only the car in the back would have to scan the rear.
"Hacker" is a loaded term. It might not be fair, but that is the fact of the matter. As such "Hacker Highschool" is doomed to attract everything from raised eyebrows to terminology-holy-wars.
The term is not all that bad, so they're bound to have more than a few parents interested in it.
Plus, it's a term that will get the high school a fair share of free publicity for it. Branding-wise, I think they made the right call. A "computer programming high school" or a "computer science high school" simply would never attract the same level of attention.
I cringe when I apply for jobs using it as I know bad guys use it as well but I have to work right?
Why? Do you apply for jobs in the 'casual encounters' section? Or did you use to apply for jobs in the section that got removed last year?
In craigslist's official section for jobs, the fee is $75.00 per post and per category, so I'd say that makes that section a bit safer than the other non-real estate non-jobs sections where posting is completely free.
And why? Because it now also searches Google. No mention of Google Voice Search.
Now, who's making stuff up? Siri doesn't use Google results according to this SEO.
The second article is basically just the video from the first.
My bad. I lost the original article I wanted to link to. That article contained about a dozen questions where Woz compared the iPhone Siri against Google Voice Search.
Here is a completely different article with the same kind of test. This one is not performed by Woz but Gizmodo, but it's actually much more comprehensive with 1600 questions! Enjoy.
1600-Question Test Shows How Bad Siri Really Is
Jesus Diaz
Pitting Google search against Siri using a monster 1600-question test shows how useful Siri really is: not at all. Google answered correctly 86 percent of the time. Siri achieved just 68 percent accuracy. At that point, it's not much better than a crystal ball.
We knew that Siri isn't very good. But this intense test shows just how ridiculous the gimmicky voice assistant could be.
The fact is that even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has been saying this since the day Apple introduced the iPhone 4S with Siri. It just sucks. Siri as an independent product, before Apple acquired it, the Woz told us at the Gizmodo Gallery:
It was really accurate, but now it's full of marketing-driven answers that are not correct.
How bad is it now? Here are some good examples from the test, which was conducted by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, a character who is well-known for his pro-Apple view of the tech world:
When did the movie Cinderella come out? Responded with a movie theater search on Yelp.
What spices are in Lasagna? Responded with a Yelp search with lasagna on the menu.
I want to go to Lake Superior? Responded with directions to the company Lake Superior X-Ray.
Clearly, Woz is right: Apple's version of Siri is tainted because it's marketing driven, giving preference to commercial sites like Yelp or companies over actual, useful results.
Of course, you can argue that Siri is labeled as beta by Apple. But, to Woz's point, how did it end up being worse than it was as a standalone app available at the App Store? The one Apple bought when Steve Jobs was still running the company?
Which brings me back to a earlier point. Jobs' authorized biography says that he was at diminished capacity when Siri was being tested, too weak to come into the office. He only tried the current form of Siri at his last board meeting. He briefly played with it and, understandably given the moment, didn't show much interest. That was it. It's hard to believe that he would have let software with 68% accuracy to ever be installed in a shipping product.
A new version of Siri is coming in the new iOS 6. It looks a lot more useful, but I just hope that Apple ditches the commercialism in favor of giving the answers you actually need. [Fortune]
Question: what the heck are you going to be "searching" for when offline?
Apps, Contacts, phone numbers, addresses, geolocations (yes, even geolocations on a map through offline google maps, or some other offline map third party application).
Word definitions, word translations, documents, employee directory, list of free wifi hotspots, static bus schedules, etc. (yes, basically any content from third party developers that want to set the flag includeInGlobalSearch to "true")
Voice search has been on Android for about three years now.
Just because IOS users are finally getting it does not make it news.
Voice search without a working a internet connection is really the main Voice Search functionality that Android has introduced in the Jellybeans .1 release. I think many iPhone users, including the guy that submitted this story, missed that part during the Google I/O demo.
And no, iOS Siri can not work offline, at least as far as I know.
Google voice search is just an alternative entry method for the standard search. It is hardly a strategic counter to the more AI-driven approach (ok, quasi-AI) that Siri represents.
Are you kidding me? It's not even a contest. Comparing Google Voice Search to Siri is just like comparing Google Search to Yahoo Search (the Yahoo Search of 10 years ago). Even Steve Wozniak says that Google voice search is vastly superior to Siri (even long before Gingerbread came out, he was saying stuff like that, now Google voice search can be used offline in addition to what it can already do online, and in that time, Siri has only been getting worse with even more commercial answers to non-commercially based queries).
Also, the idea of launching specific intents/actions on a phone instead of launching just a web page is an idea that Google pioneered long ago, that Apple just recently imitated.
And it does little to address either the vertical search gap presented by Yelp, or the "diagonal" functionality gap that Siri addresses by smoothly integrating with your other iOS apps like text message, alarm or calendar.
But Google Voice Search does also search through the internal content/actions of your phone at the same time as the Internet. It did that for a while now (that's why I can't comprehend how Apple even got a patent on a similar idea).
Interesting blog post, but you didn't say the level of bandwidth your place in Italy was subscribing to, nor the amount of money you were paying for your proxy/VPN service in New York. The StrongVPN service says it starts at $7 a month. Did you really only pay $7, or did you get one of their better packages? Also, is that starting rate $7 their true base price, or would I have to get locked into a contract for 2 years in order to get that rate?
I'm asking because I have family in the UK, and I'd rather not lose some of the streaming video services I'm already paying for in the US when I'm just staying in the UK for a few weeks.
Of course sometimes you can just set the X-Forwarded-For attribute in your browser to an IP address inside the country. A fair amount of web servers are set up to blindly trust it. A lot cheaper than a proxy when it works.
There are lots of free open proxies too, but that doesn't mean they're reliable or stable.
I realize your solution is free as well, but is it really more reliable than hunting around for free open proxies?
Personally, I'd consider this anonymous speech only if the "shills" themselves had been trying to be anonymous, or if the shills themselves had been representing the fact that the speech they were conveying was an advertisement coming from some anonymous sponsor.
In other words, if a paid "shill" really did use their own identity and their own personal/professional fame to misrepresent the fact your talking points was coming from them, and not you, then I'd say the corporation did a lot more than just try to anonymize its speech.
Also, I'm not sure this order from the judge will uncover all the paid shills out there. Many corporations use PR firms and ad agencies, and then those agencies are probably the ones that farm out the work to professional shills and journalists. And unfortunately, the judge's order doesn't seem to require those paid PR firms or ad agencies to disclose the paid consultants they've themselves hired.
If you choose to use Youtube (or Geocities) to find NASA content, you my get lucky and find what you are looking for, but if so, it's just lucky coincidence.
Sorry, but for me, on my slow dsl connection, I'll still trust Youtube over most other official hosting sites. Hulu, Netflix, and Youtube are really the three video hosting sites that work for me as intended. It really doesn't matter how big a budget those other sites have, many of them still don't know how to stream video correctly for people with slower speeds.
Of course, I wasn't interested in this NASA video, so I'm not really your target audience, but for me at least, I've had so many bad experiences with other video sites, it will take a lot more than one incident, even if it was an incident on a video that I actually cared about, to put Youtube in the same category as Geocities.
15 years ago I was programming in BASIC, and doing some C++, after a serious car accident barely making it out alive, my memory went to crud. I have no recolection of how to do anything in either of those languages any more.
15 years? Seriously! You're giving yourself way too much credit.
Personally, it just takes me 15 days to forget a computer language, no head injury required. Plus, I usually only really know one computer language at a time (when I have to use other languages at the same time, I just cut and paste a lot).
If you want to rehabilitate your memory, quit your job, and get another one (hopefully, a different type of job, but one that you're still able to get, and one that pays the bills). I'm being serious here. Changing routines is best. Also while we're at it, changing employers is also the best for career advancement.
And be careful not to take refuge in computer games. I'm not saying this is the case here, but I've met my share of gamers who wanted to be computer game programmers. Of course, it stands to reason that a game programmer will have played computer games and that many programmers got into programming precisely because of computer games. The only problem I see is that many people that are heavily into computer games think they're going to find a way out of their game addiction, by making computer games, which unfortunately is not the way I'm seeing things happening these days.
One problem is that games are getting so sophisticated now, that the gap between the emotional pay off of playing a game vs. the emotional pay off of actually making a game is becoming much wider, and if my theory is correct, a heavy gamer would be unwittingly conditioning himself to become a poor learner and an impatient computer programmer by continuously playing computer games.
Which is to say, don't give up on your goal of making computer games, but if by any chance, you're heavily into playing computer games. Quit for a while. Get some other hobbies. Unplug yourself from the internet, even from Slashdot. Take a night class or two. And of course, get yourself into programming once again. Programming is certainly not the same as playing, and it comes with much smaller and less frequent emotional pay off's.
How can you be absolutely sure they are not back-doored?
The same way that we can absolutely be sure that you're not a pedophile. We just can't.
It's nothing personal. It's just that proving a negative can be really difficult at times. Until we know more, let me suggest that we don't let you near any children, as a just to be safe, we really don't know, precautionary measure.
"Okay, you are in a hurry, we understand that. We will give you half of your temporary password over the phone and fax the other half to your nearest Apple Store or Notary Public. Bring your drivers' license or passport with you. If you use a Notary, they will charge a fee which you will have to pay."
"Listen I'm in Istanbul (or where ever), I've just been robbed. They took everything, including my wallet!!! I don't know if there is an Apple Store around here. Please help me mitigate the damage before they get access to my emails and my bank accounts through my iPad (I was in the middle of using my iPad so the screen wasn't locked). "
Now, I'm not saying this is the script they used, most likely not. I'm sure the hacker used a much better one, probably one that's based on the hard-earned experience and real world testing of thousands of other hackers and scam artists that came before him.
I'm just saying that it takes excellent ongoing training to make sure none of your staff gets bamboozled by this kind of scenario. Hard coded corporate rules and security manuals are all well and good for 99% of the scenarios that come up during the normal course of business hours. But what happens if someone tells you a very plausible story and tells you they could very well die if you don't give them access to their account. Most likely that scenario is not listed in your security manual, and the manual prevents you from disclosing their account information, but it's not the first time, nor the last time, that a customer service representative will ignore the poorly written manual that came from above, and use their own personal judgement to make a quick decision on the spot for the perceived welfare of the caller.
The poster says he was contacted by someone who says he is the hacker. Nothing was confirmed about AppleCare involvement, though it is a possibility - especially if the hacker knows his victim.
You didn't read until the end. The guy posted an update long before you even posted your comment.
But the best part? The INSANE posts to the original article:
The guy needs a better crowdsourced moderation system.
Obviously, the guy is a popular blogger. That's probably why there is so much noise in the comments.
I'm not trying to blame him for the comments he has, I'm just suggesting that now that he's getting so much more traffic, that he should consider moving to a different blogging platform that allows him to still accept anonymous comments, but with better up_voting/down_voting/visibility controls at the very least.
Also to avoid the kind of misunderstandings like the one you just made, this blogger should really post his most current updates at the very top of his posts and in reverse chronological order, and not at the bottom (with just one or two edits in the middle of his posts). Most people just scan a few paragraphs, they do not read everything.
Honestly, his neighbor sounds like my neighbor.
My neighbor is not a native English speaker, he doesn't read English very well, and he's the least likely to fight back when somebody scams him because on one hand he doesn't know it's even possible to fight back and on the other hand he doesn't have a good support network (unless you count me, and personally, I'm not too keen on doing his paperwork for him).
Thank you. Please keep those posts coming.
I may not be one of the editors, but I find myself making some of the same mistakes the editor made.
I do agree, that his rate seems to be a bit inflated, especially if he has an ongoing relationship with his client.
But "Robert Half"? What is that? Some kind of Temp agency? Do their Temps come with their own CD/DVDs? USB backup drives? Will they come with their own rescue/toolkit USB sticks? Or will the Temp have to Google his way out of your predicament? And will the Temp have to rely on you for finding your installation CDs/DVDs?
And every time you call this Robert Half agency, will the same exact person show up? After all, you'll be handing out some of your passwords to that person and if you're like most business people, you'll probably be leaving them unattended and unsupervised for at least a few hours.
Despite the markup, wouldn't it be just safer to hire someone you've previously hired in the past? Or hire someone who comes highly recommended from your business friends?
Blogs like Prochronisms look at 'historical changes in language by algorithmically checking historical TV shows and movies.' They utilize tools like Google Ngram viewer to bust Mad Men, for example, for using terms or phrases in dialogue that didn't yet exist.
Really, no offense (ok, maybe a little offense), but this comes across (to me anyways) as slightly... sad. It's one thing if you are looking up a fact about the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere last year. But this is another thing completely. I think Ratatouille actually put it quite well:
In many ways, the work of a critic is easy...
You make a good point.
But I believe the Prochronisms blog was only included in Hugh Pickens list only because it makes for an interesting bit of trivia, not because it supports Pickens main thesis (about lies and half-truths) in any way.
The Prochronisms guy for instance seems to have no interest in making those anachronisms go away. He's just interested in the analysis. And from one of his quotes below, he seems to imply that only the Daily Mail and other media outlets are interested in making those types of discrepancies an issue.
Digital humanists like to talk about what insights about the past big data can bring. So in that spirit, let me talk about Downton Abbey for a minute. The show's popularity has led many nitpickers to draft up lists of mistakes. [...] the Daily Mail even managed to cast the errors as a sort of scandal.
So if anyone is sad in my opinion, I don't think it's the Prochronisms guy, it's more the news outlets like the Daily Mail and potentially other nitpickers who imply by their criticisms that they actually want something to be done about those anachronisms.
Oh THANK GOD for Obamacare, now instead of barely making mortgage payments, I can pay for my neighbor's cancer treatments and default on my loans!
Chances are, if someone is using a candidate's name to make a new word out of it, it's probably not going to be positive.
Why couldn't it be both?
I sent an email to sales@steam.com that bounced back and then I forwarded to webmaster@steam.com
I told them that I would not give up my rights as an american to have a jury of my peers, and since I notified them of that I would then accept the altered terms of the EULA based on that statement.
Good, now you just need to convince one other person to do the same, and when the time comes for a class action lawsuit -- you may be able to have at least one other person in your class.
Why don't you just log in and find out.
So, can I upload my music, have it upgraded and tagged by Amazon, then download the improved MP3s and quit the service?
Yes, you can do that if you want, but since they make you prepay for the entire year -- the joke will be on you if you quit their service after just 24 hours.