Newspapers have always filtered (or "censored" in your parlance) reader comments.
What, did you think the editorial page printed every single letter they received from readers? No, they filtered out the obvious garbage and tin foil hattery, not to mention the ones eith [sic] poor spelling and grammar. There was never a "golden age" of lofty free discussion in for-profit papers -- there has always been editorial control.
Was this an ideal system? No, particularly if you had an editor (or an owner (*cough*Hearst*cough)) with a political agenda. However, the utter absence of editorial control has led to the septic tanks we have now.
So. Some people are using your PC to mine cryptocurrency for someone else's benefit.
That's what it took? That's what had to happen for you idiots to finally realize that indiscriminately loading and running code from a constellation of reputation-less sources is -- and always was -- a FUCKING STUPID IDEA?!?!!
A modern cell phone takes great quality photos that are good enough for well over 95% of the population in over 95% of circumstances.
That would be the 95% of the population who have never used an actual camera, of course....
Hello. Pentax K-S2 owner here, with five lenses (only three of which I regularly use).
I'm on your side -- I think cell phone cameras are atrocious. The ergonomics are terrible, the sensor is tiny and noisy (though admittedly improving all the time), the lenses are short, the aperture is effectively fixed so you have no control over depth of field (you have to fake it in software), and rolling shutter is the rule of the day. There are various kluges around these shortcomings, but they are just that -- kluges.
That said... 95% of people don't care, and can't be made to care. All they want is something to take snapshots. This is why the market for point-and-shoot digital cameras is disappearing. Cell phones absolutely crush them on features (larger screen, larger storage, built-in network connectivity, etc.) and have long been their equal in image quality. If you want something to take snapshots, your cell phone is absolutely the way to go.
However, if you want to get in to photography, then you'll need something better. Alas, there just don't seem to be that many people looking to do that.
Dear Equifax Executive and Marketing/Communications Staff:
You're all fired, for cause, effective immediately. Concordant with a for-cause firing, any and all severance benefits are rendered null and void. Surrender all company property, including cell phones and computers, to HR immediately. Please collect your personal effects; security will be instructed to escort you off company property no later than 18:00 EDT.
This study saw some traffic on the Book of Faces last night. I'm not trained in the field of sociology, but between me and my sweetie we were able to spot massive flaws in what will almost certainly be revealed to be a complete piece of shit.
First off, what they claim to have created is tantamount to computer-assisted phrenology -- long since debunked and tossed on the scrapheap of superstition.
The most obvious flaw appears here, starting on line 208:
Facial images. We obtained facial images from public profiles posted on a U.S. dating website. We recorded 130,741 images of 36,630 men and 170,360 images of 38,593 women between the ages of 18 and 40, who reported their location as the U.S. Gay and heterosexual people were represented in equal numbers. Their sexual orientation was established based on the gender of the partners that they were looking for (according to their profiles). [emphasis mine]
*headdesk*
Leaving aside the gigantic issues presented by self-reporting and self-selecting samples, these idiots failed to account for a common practice among hetero women on dating sites, which is to falsely claim to be seeking other women as a means to reduce or eliminate an onslaught of tacky propositions from clueless het-boys.
Other glaring flaws include:
All subjects caucasian.
No attempt made to account for (or even acknowledge the existence of) bisexuality, transgendered individuals, or asexuals, the latter of whom likely wouldn't be on a dating site.
No attempt made to account for economic status and history (wealthier people ~= healthier, affecting physiognomy).
No attempt made to account for cosmetic surgery or other such treatments.
An actual sociologist could probably identify dozens of other flaws, any one of which would be fatal to the work.
I would undertake to create a similar piece of software that tries to identify criminals from photographs, and use police mugshots to train it. Surprise! Black people are more likely to be criminals! GIGO.
Frankly, I think they should have taken their theme from the closing paragraphs of their paper: "We created a digital phrenologist out of deep neural networks and other off-the-shelf parts that coughs up results that seem relevant and meaningful to the layman, when in fact they're utter garbage." That would have been a good paper.
Perhaps we can indeed learn new things by letting a DNN stare at human faces. But IMHO this paper is utterly valueless in identifying what those might be. GIGO.
Not that I disbelieve you, but could you furnish a couple of examples? I can't recall seeing a Web site that refused to work when accessed via Incognito mode.
More precisely, FreeNAS can use RAID controllers, but the docs expressly and strenuously discourage their use. ZFS wants direct access to the bare drives so that it can manage block allocation and error recovery itself.
The President is under no obligation to listen to you. Ignoring constituents is rather poor form, but it's not illegal or unconstitutional, any more than it is illegal or unconstitutional for current or past Presidents to ignore emails, phone calls, or written correspondence.
I suspect we're going to be having this same fight over Li-Ion batteries as well.
Anyone who's tried shopping for a replacement battery for their laptop or camera knows what a cesspool that market is. Some of them are indeed ethical and trying to build a reputation. But there are hundreds of off-brand vendors of "refurbished," "remanufactured," or "compatible" batteries, which invariably turn out to be crap. Good luck telling the difference when shopping on Amazon.
3a. Who the bloody hell told him it's his business how many friends and family I have over to watch a goddamned movie!? Bugger off!
The following story is apocryphal; I haven't seen an authoritative reference for it.
It seems that, ages ago, before the emergence of the Betamax and VHS VCRs, Ampex developed a consumer video playback deck that had no rewind function, and no easy physical access to the spindles that would allow a user to rewind the tape themselves. The idea was that the consumer would rent the video from a store, take it home and watch it. If they wanted to watch it again, they had to take it back to the store, where they would pay again to rent the video, and the store would rewind the tape on a special rig. Essentially Pay-Per-View home video, but with all the infrastructure costs borne by the user.
Ampex presented the idea to $(A_HOLLYWOOD_STUDIO) to see if they might be on board with the idea. They liked it as far as it went, but then one Extremely Successful Executive asked, "What if there's more than one person in the room?"
"...Sorry?"
"What if there's more than one person in the room watching the movie? How do you charge for those viewers?"
"Uh, we don't. Not with this setup."
The studio thanked them very civilly for their time, but indicated they had no interest.
A couple years later, Sony comes out with the Betamax, and Hollywood shits a brick.
These patent submissions make it seem like they're trying to count the number of viewers in the room, so they can charge "admission" for them. I'm sure $(A_HOLLYWOOD_STUDIO) is absolutely giddy at the possibility of clawing back all that money that got "left on the table" back in the 1970's...
Spoken like a true Fountainhead-thumping Objectivist:
If you aren't good enough to deserve a favorable contract, why should someone better lend you their merit?
Fine. I have contacted all your underwriters and canceled all your insurance policies. I fail to see why my safer driving and healthy diet should inure to your benefit.
You say "cheese grater" semi-sarcastically, but I rather liked that box. It was very well designed, solid, easy to get in to, and plenty of expansion. Its only real drawback was that it was heavy.
Hey, Apple! If you're really interested in maintaining control of the HW design -- and I mean in a meaningful way, not the cheeseball gee-whiz pretentious way where indicator LEDs are entirely absent because they disrupt the "line" of the machine -- then may I suggest you start selling... Motherboards. Yes, design a motherboard you're happy with, then stick it in an anti-static bag alongside an OS X DVD. The owner can then add their preferred CPU, RAM (quad-channel DDR4, natch), and GPU, and put the whole thing in a case that meets their needs. Hell, you'll probably be able to squeeze even higher margins out of the thing, since you won't have to design or build custom casework, which can get kinda spendy.
Here in the San Francisco bay area, AT&T has been running an ad for the last couple months or so on one of those electronic billboards advertising gigabit fiber service.
Well, if they're actually offering it somewhere on the peninsula, I have no idea where, because every time I check on their site, they claim it's not yet available in my area, despite the fact that I've seen their trucks running around the area apparently putting up new cabling of some sort. Google seems to have gotten bored with Google Fiber, so I'm not holding my breath for them anymore. In fact, the only ISP I know is offering gigabit fiber service in the bay area is Sonic.net, in a very slow, limited roll-out.
MST3K pays a license fee for the movies they use. Indeed, a significant chunk of the money they crowdsourced for Season 11 went toward obtaining licenses.
I'll let you in on a little secret: As you can see from the Kickstarter page, people who contributed at a certain level and above were granted access to downloadable copies of the entire season -- all fourteen episodes.
However, throughout the entire production and post-production process, Joel has sent out updates to all the Kickstarter backers explaining that, if MST3K proves successful, Netflix may pick it up for another season. But in order for that to happen, Netflix needs to see that the viewing numbers would support such an investment. Therefore, he has firmly but respectfully asked backers not to share their downloadable copies with anyone. Since you claim that no torrents of the season are available, it would appear his request has, so far, been honored.
...Which is, kind of, y'know, what we've been saying the model should be all this time, right? Respect the artist's work and wishes? Well, so far, it looks like that's what's happening, so he can keep doing it.
You are in seriously [sic] need of some perspective.
I *HAVE* perspective, you twit.
I was around when Canter and Siegel "discovered" spamming, and suddenly the burden of deflecting what became billions of unwanted, exploitative, obnoxious emails fell upon the end-users, the people least equipped to deal with it. (And no, spam is by no means a, "solved problem," or a large chunk of Barracuda Networks' business would no longer exist.)
I was around when that chowderhead Brendan Eich kluged JavaScript into Netscape and fscking enabled it by default, even though the massive problems with macro viruses in Microsoft Word in the years prior clearly showed what that would lead to. Now we have scripts being uncritically yanked in from thousands of sources, rampaging around in our browsers looking for any datum they can exploit to our disadvantage.
Mark my words: If BK and its ad agency aren't smacked for this, hard, it will get worse very quickly. Every media source will become an attack vector. And sophists such as you will dryly intone, "Get better security," fully aware that that aphorism will solve nothing.
And lest you think I'm merely a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade: I, too, can be a smug shit about this. I have never trusted cookies or JavaScript, keep my browsers thoroughly nerfed, and I use a console-based mail reader. The result is I have only moderate patience for people victimized by advertising, malware, or phishing. The tools are there; they have but to learn how to use them. Don't even cost nothin'. But there is a boundary when you stop being a Clever Clogs for making the other guy's computer unexpectedly go beep and you become an active exploiter and victimizer of the weak and ignorant.
If you had a gun in your house that went off every time someone on tv said "shoot" would you blame the film maker?
If the filmmaker put "Shoot" in the film with the express intention of making my gun go off -- even after I took affirmative steps to keep it from happening -- then... YES. I would unhesitatingly toss their ass in prison for negligent firearm discharge and/or sue them for everything they've got.
Sophistry such as yours is what led to this problem. Leaving your front door unlocked does not absolve a thief from stealing or misappropriating your property. While your insurance carrier may have something to say about how much of the loss they'll cover, the fact of the theft is not erased; the thief will still be charged with a crime.
Burger King made unauthorized use of computing resources that did not belong to them. In this respect, they are no different from any other spammer or purveyor of malware, and their act should be regarded in that light. Computer intrusion laws are fairly clear on this point: Only the system's owner gets to decide what constitutes authorized use. Abusing weak security in the name of delivering a fscking TV ad cannot by any reasonable, honest measure be described as authorized, and Burger King's actions both before and after the fact likewise cannot be said to be inadvertent or accidental.
Slashdot Mirror
What, did you think the editorial page printed every single letter they received from readers? No, they filtered out the obvious garbage and tin foil hattery, not to mention the ones eith [sic] poor spelling and grammar. There was never a "golden age" of lofty free discussion in for-profit papers -- there has always been editorial control.
Was this an ideal system? No, particularly if you had an editor (or an owner (*cough*Hearst*cough)) with a political agenda. However, the utter absence of editorial control has led to the septic tanks we have now.
That's what it took? That's what had to happen for you idiots to finally realize that indiscriminately loading and running code from a constellation of reputation-less sources is -- and always was -- a FUCKING STUPID IDEA?!?!!
Here. Install it. Use it.
Hello. Pentax K-S2 owner here, with five lenses (only three of which I regularly use).
I'm on your side -- I think cell phone cameras are atrocious. The ergonomics are terrible, the sensor is tiny and noisy (though admittedly improving all the time), the lenses are short, the aperture is effectively fixed so you have no control over depth of field (you have to fake it in software), and rolling shutter is the rule of the day. There are various kluges around these shortcomings, but they are just that -- kluges.
That said... 95% of people don't care, and can't be made to care. All they want is something to take snapshots. This is why the market for point-and-shoot digital cameras is disappearing. Cell phones absolutely crush them on features (larger screen, larger storage, built-in network connectivity, etc.) and have long been their equal in image quality. If you want something to take snapshots, your cell phone is absolutely the way to go.
However, if you want to get in to photography, then you'll need something better. Alas, there just don't seem to be that many people looking to do that.
You're all fired, for cause, effective immediately. Concordant with a for-cause firing, any and all severance benefits are rendered null and void. Surrender all company property, including cell phones and computers, to HR immediately. Please collect your personal effects; security will be instructed to escort you off company property no later than 18:00 EDT.
First off, what they claim to have created is tantamount to computer-assisted phrenology -- long since debunked and tossed on the scrapheap of superstition.
The most obvious flaw appears here, starting on line 208:
*headdesk*
Leaving aside the gigantic issues presented by self-reporting and self-selecting samples, these idiots failed to account for a common practice among hetero women on dating sites, which is to falsely claim to be seeking other women as a means to reduce or eliminate an onslaught of tacky propositions from clueless het-boys.
Other glaring flaws include:
An actual sociologist could probably identify dozens of other flaws, any one of which would be fatal to the work.
I would undertake to create a similar piece of software that tries to identify criminals from photographs, and use police mugshots to train it. Surprise! Black people are more likely to be criminals! GIGO.
Frankly, I think they should have taken their theme from the closing paragraphs of their paper: "We created a digital phrenologist out of deep neural networks and other off-the-shelf parts that coughs up results that seem relevant and meaningful to the layman, when in fact they're utter garbage." That would have been a good paper.
Perhaps we can indeed learn new things by letting a DNN stare at human faces. But IMHO this paper is utterly valueless in identifying what those might be. GIGO.
Oh, yes, just awful. Heaven forfend that the owner of the box be able to get inside and administrate it. Perfectly dreadful.
Not that I disbelieve you, but could you furnish a couple of examples? I can't recall seeing a Web site that refused to work when accessed via Incognito mode.
No. All you need to know about Ajit Pai is that he is the former Associate General Counsel to Verizon.
You quite sure about that? :-)
You're new to this whole Microsoft thing, aint'cha?
More precisely, FreeNAS can use RAID controllers, but the docs expressly and strenuously discourage their use. ZFS wants direct access to the bare drives so that it can manage block allocation and error recovery itself.
The President is under no obligation to listen to you. Ignoring constituents is rather poor form, but it's not illegal or unconstitutional, any more than it is illegal or unconstitutional for current or past Presidents to ignore emails, phone calls, or written correspondence.
Anyone who's tried shopping for a replacement battery for their laptop or camera knows what a cesspool that market is. Some of them are indeed ethical and trying to build a reputation. But there are hundreds of off-brand vendors of "refurbished," "remanufactured," or "compatible" batteries, which invariably turn out to be crap. Good luck telling the difference when shopping on Amazon.
The following story is apocryphal; I haven't seen an authoritative reference for it.
It seems that, ages ago, before the emergence of the Betamax and VHS VCRs, Ampex developed a consumer video playback deck that had no rewind function, and no easy physical access to the spindles that would allow a user to rewind the tape themselves. The idea was that the consumer would rent the video from a store, take it home and watch it. If they wanted to watch it again, they had to take it back to the store, where they would pay again to rent the video, and the store would rewind the tape on a special rig. Essentially Pay-Per-View home video, but with all the infrastructure costs borne by the user.
Ampex presented the idea to $(A_HOLLYWOOD_STUDIO) to see if they might be on board with the idea. They liked it as far as it went, but then one Extremely Successful Executive asked, "What if there's more than one person in the room?"
"...Sorry?"
"What if there's more than one person in the room watching the movie? How do you charge for those viewers?"
"Uh, we don't. Not with this setup."
The studio thanked them very civilly for their time, but indicated they had no interest.
A couple years later, Sony comes out with the Betamax, and Hollywood shits a brick.
These patent submissions make it seem like they're trying to count the number of viewers in the room, so they can charge "admission" for them. I'm sure $(A_HOLLYWOOD_STUDIO) is absolutely giddy at the possibility of clawing back all that money that got "left on the table" back in the 1970's...
[Citation required]
If Alexa is having trouble understanding your "Solar Panels" commands, the voicerec may not be the problem... :-)
Fine. I have contacted all your underwriters and canceled all your insurance policies. I fail to see why my safer driving and healthy diet should inure to your benefit.
Hey, Apple! If you're really interested in maintaining control of the HW design -- and I mean in a meaningful way, not the cheeseball gee-whiz pretentious way where indicator LEDs are entirely absent because they disrupt the "line" of the machine -- then may I suggest you start selling... Motherboards. Yes, design a motherboard you're happy with, then stick it in an anti-static bag alongside an OS X DVD. The owner can then add their preferred CPU, RAM (quad-channel DDR4, natch), and GPU, and put the whole thing in a case that meets their needs. Hell, you'll probably be able to squeeze even higher margins out of the thing, since you won't have to design or build custom casework, which can get kinda spendy.
Here in the San Francisco bay area, AT&T has been running an ad for the last couple months or so on one of those electronic billboards advertising gigabit fiber service. Well, if they're actually offering it somewhere on the peninsula, I have no idea where, because every time I check on their site, they claim it's not yet available in my area, despite the fact that I've seen their trucks running around the area apparently putting up new cabling of some sort. Google seems to have gotten bored with Google Fiber, so I'm not holding my breath for them anymore. In fact, the only ISP I know is offering gigabit fiber service in the bay area is Sonic.net, in a very slow, limited roll-out.
Why do you have Windows hosts on the public-facing Internet??? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT PROFOUNDLY STUPID THING?!???!?
MST3K pays a license fee for the movies they use. Indeed, a significant chunk of the money they crowdsourced for Season 11 went toward obtaining licenses.
However, throughout the entire production and post-production process, Joel has sent out updates to all the Kickstarter backers explaining that, if MST3K proves successful, Netflix may pick it up for another season. But in order for that to happen, Netflix needs to see that the viewing numbers would support such an investment. Therefore, he has firmly but respectfully asked backers not to share their downloadable copies with anyone. Since you claim that no torrents of the season are available, it would appear his request has, so far, been honored.
...Which is, kind of, y'know, what we've been saying the model should be all this time, right? Respect the artist's work and wishes? Well, so far, it looks like that's what's happening, so he can keep doing it.
I *HAVE* perspective, you twit.
I was around when Canter and Siegel "discovered" spamming, and suddenly the burden of deflecting what became billions of unwanted, exploitative, obnoxious emails fell upon the end-users, the people least equipped to deal with it. (And no, spam is by no means a, "solved problem," or a large chunk of Barracuda Networks' business would no longer exist.)
I was around when that chowderhead Brendan Eich kluged JavaScript into Netscape and fscking enabled it by default, even though the massive problems with macro viruses in Microsoft Word in the years prior clearly showed what that would lead to. Now we have scripts being uncritically yanked in from thousands of sources, rampaging around in our browsers looking for any datum they can exploit to our disadvantage.
Mark my words: If BK and its ad agency aren't smacked for this, hard, it will get worse very quickly. Every media source will become an attack vector. And sophists such as you will dryly intone, "Get better security," fully aware that that aphorism will solve nothing.
And lest you think I'm merely a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade: I, too, can be a smug shit about this. I have never trusted cookies or JavaScript, keep my browsers thoroughly nerfed, and I use a console-based mail reader. The result is I have only moderate patience for people victimized by advertising, malware, or phishing. The tools are there; they have but to learn how to use them. Don't even cost nothin'. But there is a boundary when you stop being a Clever Clogs for making the other guy's computer unexpectedly go beep and you become an active exploiter and victimizer of the weak and ignorant.
BK crossed that line. They need to be smacked.
If the filmmaker put "Shoot" in the film with the express intention of making my gun go off -- even after I took affirmative steps to keep it from happening -- then... YES. I would unhesitatingly toss their ass in prison for negligent firearm discharge and/or sue them for everything they've got.
Sophistry such as yours is what led to this problem. Leaving your front door unlocked does not absolve a thief from stealing or misappropriating your property. While your insurance carrier may have something to say about how much of the loss they'll cover, the fact of the theft is not erased; the thief will still be charged with a crime.
Burger King made unauthorized use of computing resources that did not belong to them. In this respect, they are no different from any other spammer or purveyor of malware, and their act should be regarded in that light. Computer intrusion laws are fairly clear on this point: Only the system's owner gets to decide what constitutes authorized use. Abusing weak security in the name of delivering a fscking TV ad cannot by any reasonable, honest measure be described as authorized, and Burger King's actions both before and after the fact likewise cannot be said to be inadvertent or accidental.