Bollox. I've already had this problem with a plate reader where the back end system had my license incorrectly flagged as suspended.
You showed the current registration and the problem was solved, yes? Your problem is different than a human calling in your plate and being told your plate was suspended exactly how?
You're totally ignoring the implications of incorrect data and the security of that data and the constitutional impacts such as the right to travel.
I covered the implication of an incorrect false positive, which is no different than a current false positive.
This has nothing to do with the "right to travel".
The cops already rely a lot on facial recognition -- the "we've seen this guy before" kind.
There are four cases.
1. Facial recognition correctly identifies person as non-criminal. End of problem.
2. Facial recognition correctly identifies person as criminal. End of problem.
3. Facial recognition INcorrectly identifies person as criminal. Person uses normal identification on the spot to correct problem. Again, end of problem.
4. Facial recognition INcorrectly identifies person as criminal but they have no identification on them. This is the alleged problem, right? BUT -- the cop has already used wetware recognition to create suspicion as to the person's identity. If the person cannot correct the identification on the spot they may be detained. Which is exactly the same outcome as when computerized FR fails. No difference.
If everyone is allowed fake accounts, then I am fine with law enforcement being able to impersonate.
Good. Then you are fine with them doing this, and the discussion is moot.
Allowing disproportionate power to the government is just as bad as to the corporations,
The government ALWAYS has "disproportionate power". Do you think I have the right to force you to pay taxes to ME? Do you think I have the right to pull you over for speeding? Do you think I have the right to walk into court and get a search warrant to look around your house for stuff? Really?
and cap the receiver end of the cable with a 50-ohm resistor,
At the frequencies used by GPS systems, a 50 ohm resistor will likely not appear as a 50 ohm impedance. A 50 ohm GPS antenna will also likely not appear like a 50 ohm resistor at DC. In fact, if the antenna is active (internal amplifier powered by DC on the antenna cable) the receiver can easily determine a fault when the antenna is replaced by a 50 ohm resistor. Even just a simple crossed-loop GPS antenna will have close to 0 ohms impedance at DC, and the receiver can easily detect the difference.
You bought an Amazon-branded device intended to deal with Amazon content and you are surprised that it tries to communicate with Amazon on a regular basis? This is how it checks for new content, for one thing. That's the same reason why the Nook app starts services that check with B&N every so often. It's functionality that most people want, because most people want to know when new content is available without having to run the app every hour or day or even week. It's why good email clients have a poll option, too.
It's a shame that people here are so devoid of context that they think the correct answer to the question is to not have an Alexa device at all. That's the OBVIOUS answer, which means maybe they aren't getting the actual question. The actual question is not "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings", it is "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings without losing the functionality that the user paid for."
Would we like a car analogy? Answering the question "how do I keep my car from pulling to the left when I apply the brakes" with "don't apply the brakes", "don't drive that car", or "don't own a car" is ridiculous. The correct answer is "have your brake system checked". It should be obvious that the person asking such a question doesn't want to lose the functionality of having and using a car, but wants to know how to solve a specific problem while using it.
Of course, we now have more than 50% of the responses parroting the "don't own one" or similar variants, which is useless in context. The most useless ones are those whose answers apply to devices that have already been bought and paid for, as if giving Amazon the money in exchange for no service was ok. "Buy one, hit it with a sledgehammer". (Of course the "buy one" part is implicit, since you can't do the latter without the former.)
Just last week, I had an ambulance, sirens and lights going, coming up behind me.
Why does an ambulance have lights if the law requires that everyone be able to hear their siren? Oh, wait, the law doesn't require that.
I pulled over and watched the idiot behind me, possibly this same person,
Yeah, right.
This is why driving with earbuds blocking your ears should be punished as distracted driving.
Except it isn't distracted driving. It is ALREADY punishable by the existing failure to yield laws, and by impaired driving laws. We do not need YET ANOTHER law when the existing ones are not being enforced.
That ambulance driver had a co-driver who was almost certainly on the radio to the public safety dispatchers who are on the radio to law enforcement, and that car almost certainly became the target of an ATL (attempt to locate) and his license plate number entered the CAD (computer automated dispatch) record for further action.
You don't know what happened to that driver later but you'll assume it was nothing, just like you hypothesize it was the same guy as in this story. You don't even know WHY the guy behind you didn't stop, but you'll assume it was because he had earbuds in his ears and couldn't hear. To you, that means we need more laws to prevent specific things that might not even have occurred.
Use existing laws for existing violations. Don't make stuff up that doesn't fit, and stop making specious excuses for adding more laws to the vast litany of what already exists.
The law is written that way precisely to stop dickheads from pulling this shit then weaseling out of it.
The law is written in a way precisely to define the act that creates the offense. HOLDING. He was not holding anything. Thus he cannot be guilty of "holding a device in a position where it could be used". The state of the battery is actually irrelevant.
When you get behind the wheelof a car you are a danger to others.
If you want to define "get behind the wheel of a car" as a criminal offense, please do so. Until then, you cannot convict someone of random crimes just because you're an ass who thinks others are a danger to you.
"Since the earbuds were part of the electronic device and since the earbuds were in the defendant's ears, it necessarily follows that the defendant was holding the device (or part of the device) in a position in which it could be used, i.e. his ears."
No, I think fraud would be a reason to press charges.
And all errors on an electronic charge are fraud.
I can do math on the numbers I am told I will have taken from my account...
Of course you can. And then you find out that the number they told you wasn't the number that came out. Or they didn't tell you the number they took out until the statement arrives. You do realize that automatic payments are done that way, don't you?
and I'm not going to authorize someone to take money from my account unless they do tell me in advance
And now we're back at your specific banking arrangements and how smart you are. My comment was about generic banks and generic poor people, not you specifically. Go back and read what I first wrote and look for where I mentioned you. You won't find it.
yes, I won't know about it until after it happens,
This is EXACTLY that I said and EXACTLY what you are arguing with me about. Please stop. You've just made my point.
This has only ever happened to me once in my life, and apparently it was the result of a keyboarding error on their end.
FRAUD! FRAUD! Shut the business down! Oh, wait, that's your claim, not mine. One complaint to shut them down, right?
A deaf person and a hearing person should both use all of their available senses.
Ok. But not using one of your senses is not "distracted", it's "impaired". Nobody is convicted of distracted driving when they drive drunk, for example.
Convicting someone of distracted driving when they are actually guilty of impaired driving is not how the law is supposed to work. Otherwise, why do we have so many different laws? Why not just convict people of "breaking some law", instead of being required to specify what law is being broken? The judge could have changed the charges and been spot on, but he chose to create a stupid and nonsensical precedent that needs to be overturned, and should result in the conviction being reversed. Putting earbuds in your ears is "holding" a phone, is nonsense. Is there any significant difference between what this guy did and someone who just puts earbuds (unconnected to anything) in his ears? The impairment is the same but according to this judge he's not "holding" a phone so cannot be guilty of this distracted driving law.
The current notation is bullshit. It looks like standard algebra and people try to manipulate the symbols as such.
And that's why they call it "learning calculus" instead of "coming up with calculus all on your own". Not understanding how something works or what the terms mean can lead to horrible results.
because the old way ways "you can treat the derivative as a fraction,
Except the second derivative notion isn't a fraction. It's a way of writing "the second derivative of Y with respect to X" in a short form. Not all '/' create "fractions". Unless, of course, you want to argue that I'm putting a lot of "< divided by quote>" fractions in my/. postings.
The error is not in the notation, it's in the inability to overload the / operator when dealing with more complex and abstract mathematical concepts. It's like not being able to differentiate between "e as a variable" and "e as a constant". Do you ever think the the mass of an object times the speed of light squared is equal to ~2.718? Einstein says so, it must be true.
You might not have noticed that I specifically said that I have an account that does *NOT* charge any usage fees per transaction...
And you might not have noticed that I wasn't talking about your specific banking arrangements, and that I don't care about your specific banking arrangements. You might also not have noticed that I was not talking about transaction fees, but NON-transaction fees -- fees for NOT using a debit card. No, actually, it's not "might not have noticed", you completely ignored that.
so there are no "hidden" charges.
An "inactive account fee" that I was not told about when I created the account is both a "non-transaction fee" and hidden. While the transfer fee was for a transaction, since it was not revealed until it was taken out of the account, that means it is hidden. While it's nice that your specific bank doesn't do that to you, it is irrelevant in the long run because too many banks DO.
No... I know how much money I have because I can do math.
You don't know how much your payment actually turned out to be until you see the statement that tells you how much was taken out of your account. It has nothing to do with the ability to "do math". You can't do math on numbers you don't know.
As for being billed the wrong amount... first of all, the machine expects me to acknowledge the amount I'm paying before I do anything.
"Direct payment" covers a large number of operations. Not all of them include "machines".
then I can show the receipt to my bank when I discover the discrepancy,
And that's after the payment has been made -- which is what I wrote. And you claimed cannot happen.
It's not worth their time to bother to try because all it takes is one person to complain and their business is over.
Oh my God. You actually think an incorrect charge would be reason to close down a business. How naive.
Judge might have done him, and taxpayers, a favor by not looking into phone records to determine if the dude was lying.
Why would convicting someone of something without bothering to look into the facts be doing him a favor?
TFS makes a statement of fact, not a guess. The battery was dead. Not "he claimed the battery was dead."
That's why the law is written as it is.
The law is written the way it is to deal with the distraction of operation a cell phone while driving. He wasn't operating a cell phone while driving, therefore he cannot be guilty of the crime he was convicted of. The judge is a goofball for trying to claim that having earbuds in your ears is somehow operating or holding a phone.
Many state outlaw driving with an earplug in both ears,
You cannot have "many state". You cannot put an earplug in both ears. You can put earplugS in both ears, however. Doing so is not considered "distracted" and not punished under distracted driving laws like this Canadian judge did.
It's also silly, since being able to hear is not a requirement to drive. Why would not being able to hear be a crime, if you can legally drive without being able to hear?
Maybe the judge was thinking, "Do we let distracted drivers use the dead battery defense?
Well, if the battery is dead, why not? And more important, if the device is NOT BEING HELD AT ALL, then that's the only "defense" necessary.
At least in Oregon. The law here is that hand-free operation is permitted. This was a case of hands-free operation, whether the battery was dead or not.
Fun fact: deaf people can drive in Virginia. All other states that I know of, too. Punishing people for not having a capability that is OPTIONAL is simply wrong.
If the idiot judge wanted to convict someone of driving while impaired, he could have done that. "Distracted" is patent nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
... on the other hand, it would be a pretty poor encyclopedia store that didn't have at least a representation of Fuji-san.
Well, of course. But that store is unlikely to be on Mt. Fuji, now is it?
Bollox. I've already had this problem with a plate reader where the back end system had my license incorrectly flagged as suspended.
You showed the current registration and the problem was solved, yes? Your problem is different than a human calling in your plate and being told your plate was suspended exactly how?
You're totally ignoring the implications of incorrect data and the security of that data and the constitutional impacts such as the right to travel.
I covered the implication of an incorrect false positive, which is no different than a current false positive.
This has nothing to do with the "right to travel".
There are four cases.
1. Facial recognition correctly identifies person as non-criminal. End of problem.
2. Facial recognition correctly identifies person as criminal. End of problem.
3. Facial recognition INcorrectly identifies person as criminal. Person uses normal identification on the spot to correct problem. Again, end of problem.
4. Facial recognition INcorrectly identifies person as criminal but they have no identification on them. This is the alleged problem, right? BUT -- the cop has already used wetware recognition to create suspicion as to the person's identity. If the person cannot correct the identification on the spot they may be detained. Which is exactly the same outcome as when computerized FR fails. No difference.
Buy an encyclopedia on Mount Fuji.
I doubt that Mt. Fuji has many encyclopedia stores.
If everyone is allowed fake accounts, then I am fine with law enforcement being able to impersonate.
Good. Then you are fine with them doing this, and the discussion is moot.
Allowing disproportionate power to the government is just as bad as to the corporations,
The government ALWAYS has "disproportionate power". Do you think I have the right to force you to pay taxes to ME? Do you think I have the right to pull you over for speeding? Do you think I have the right to walk into court and get a search warrant to look around your house for stuff? Really?
If the cops are able to avoid doing so, there's a reason.
Yeah, maybe because uploading a DL isn't a requirement?
and cap the receiver end of the cable with a 50-ohm resistor,
At the frequencies used by GPS systems, a 50 ohm resistor will likely not appear as a 50 ohm impedance. A 50 ohm GPS antenna will also likely not appear like a 50 ohm resistor at DC. In fact, if the antenna is active (internal amplifier powered by DC on the antenna cable) the receiver can easily determine a fault when the antenna is replaced by a 50 ohm resistor. Even just a simple crossed-loop GPS antenna will have close to 0 ohms impedance at DC, and the receiver can easily detect the difference.
a right-leaning prankster with "authority" as defined by the European Parliament decides to send out mass demands for removal of far-leftist content
While I might agree that C-SPAN leans left, I'm fascinated to hear that you think the entire Gutenberg collection is "far-leftist content".
It's a shame that people here are so devoid of context that they think the correct answer to the question is to not have an Alexa device at all. That's the OBVIOUS answer, which means maybe they aren't getting the actual question. The actual question is not "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings", it is "how to stop Amazon from listening to your recordings without losing the functionality that the user paid for."
Would we like a car analogy? Answering the question "how do I keep my car from pulling to the left when I apply the brakes" with "don't apply the brakes", "don't drive that car", or "don't own a car" is ridiculous. The correct answer is "have your brake system checked". It should be obvious that the person asking such a question doesn't want to lose the functionality of having and using a car, but wants to know how to solve a specific problem while using it.
Of course, we now have more than 50% of the responses parroting the "don't own one" or similar variants, which is useless in context. The most useless ones are those whose answers apply to devices that have already been bought and paid for, as if giving Amazon the money in exchange for no service was ok. "Buy one, hit it with a sledgehammer". (Of course the "buy one" part is implicit, since you can't do the latter without the former.)
Just last week, I had an ambulance, sirens and lights going, coming up behind me.
Why does an ambulance have lights if the law requires that everyone be able to hear their siren? Oh, wait, the law doesn't require that.
I pulled over and watched the idiot behind me, possibly this same person,
Yeah, right.
This is why driving with earbuds blocking your ears should be punished as distracted driving.
Except it isn't distracted driving. It is ALREADY punishable by the existing failure to yield laws, and by impaired driving laws. We do not need YET ANOTHER law when the existing ones are not being enforced.
That ambulance driver had a co-driver who was almost certainly on the radio to the public safety dispatchers who are on the radio to law enforcement, and that car almost certainly became the target of an ATL (attempt to locate) and his license plate number entered the CAD (computer automated dispatch) record for further action.
You don't know what happened to that driver later but you'll assume it was nothing, just like you hypothesize it was the same guy as in this story. You don't even know WHY the guy behind you didn't stop, but you'll assume it was because he had earbuds in his ears and couldn't hear. To you, that means we need more laws to prevent specific things that might not even have occurred.
Use existing laws for existing violations. Don't make stuff up that doesn't fit, and stop making specious excuses for adding more laws to the vast litany of what already exists.
The law is written that way precisely to stop dickheads from pulling this shit then weaseling out of it.
The law is written in a way precisely to define the act that creates the offense. HOLDING. He was not holding anything. Thus he cannot be guilty of "holding a device in a position where it could be used". The state of the battery is actually irrelevant.
When you get behind the wheelof a car you are a danger to others.
If you want to define "get behind the wheel of a car" as a criminal offense, please do so. Until then, you cannot convict someone of random crimes just because you're an ass who thinks others are a danger to you.
the judge followed, not created precedent.
This statement creates a new precedent:
Dumb canuck.
No, I think fraud would be a reason to press charges.
And all errors on an electronic charge are fraud.
I can do math on the numbers I am told I will have taken from my account...
Of course you can. And then you find out that the number they told you wasn't the number that came out. Or they didn't tell you the number they took out until the statement arrives. You do realize that automatic payments are done that way, don't you?
and I'm not going to authorize someone to take money from my account unless they do tell me in advance
And now we're back at your specific banking arrangements and how smart you are. My comment was about generic banks and generic poor people, not you specifically. Go back and read what I first wrote and look for where I mentioned you. You won't find it.
yes, I won't know about it until after it happens,
This is EXACTLY that I said and EXACTLY what you are arguing with me about. Please stop. You've just made my point.
This has only ever happened to me once in my life, and apparently it was the result of a keyboarding error on their end.
FRAUD! FRAUD! Shut the business down! Oh, wait, that's your claim, not mine. One complaint to shut them down, right?
(i.e., you have to multiply both sides by dx,
I cannot remember EVER having to multiply "both sides" of anything by "dx" to do an integration. Maybe "new math" forces this.
A deaf person and a hearing person should both use all of their available senses.
Ok. But not using one of your senses is not "distracted", it's "impaired". Nobody is convicted of distracted driving when they drive drunk, for example.
Convicting someone of distracted driving when they are actually guilty of impaired driving is not how the law is supposed to work. Otherwise, why do we have so many different laws? Why not just convict people of "breaking some law", instead of being required to specify what law is being broken? The judge could have changed the charges and been spot on, but he chose to create a stupid and nonsensical precedent that needs to be overturned, and should result in the conviction being reversed. Putting earbuds in your ears is "holding" a phone, is nonsense. Is there any significant difference between what this guy did and someone who just puts earbuds (unconnected to anything) in his ears? The impairment is the same but according to this judge he's not "holding" a phone so cannot be guilty of this distracted driving law.
The current notation is bullshit. It looks like standard algebra and people try to manipulate the symbols as such.
And that's why they call it "learning calculus" instead of "coming up with calculus all on your own". Not understanding how something works or what the terms mean can lead to horrible results.
because the old way ways "you can treat the derivative as a fraction,
Except the second derivative notion isn't a fraction. It's a way of writing "the second derivative of Y with respect to X" in a short form. Not all '/' create "fractions". Unless, of course, you want to argue that I'm putting a lot of "< divided by quote>" fractions in my /. postings.
The error is not in the notation, it's in the inability to overload the / operator when dealing with more complex and abstract mathematical concepts. It's like not being able to differentiate between "e as a variable" and "e as a constant". Do you ever think the the mass of an object times the speed of light squared is equal to ~2.718? Einstein says so, it must be true.
You might not have noticed that I specifically said that I have an account that does *NOT* charge any usage fees per transaction...
And you might not have noticed that I wasn't talking about your specific banking arrangements, and that I don't care about your specific banking arrangements. You might also not have noticed that I was not talking about transaction fees, but NON-transaction fees -- fees for NOT using a debit card. No, actually, it's not "might not have noticed", you completely ignored that.
so there are no "hidden" charges.
An "inactive account fee" that I was not told about when I created the account is both a "non-transaction fee" and hidden. While the transfer fee was for a transaction, since it was not revealed until it was taken out of the account, that means it is hidden. While it's nice that your specific bank doesn't do that to you, it is irrelevant in the long run because too many banks DO.
No... I know how much money I have because I can do math.
You don't know how much your payment actually turned out to be until you see the statement that tells you how much was taken out of your account. It has nothing to do with the ability to "do math". You can't do math on numbers you don't know.
As for being billed the wrong amount... first of all, the machine expects me to acknowledge the amount I'm paying before I do anything.
"Direct payment" covers a large number of operations. Not all of them include "machines".
then I can show the receipt to my bank when I discover the discrepancy,
And that's after the payment has been made -- which is what I wrote. And you claimed cannot happen.
It's not worth their time to bother to try because all it takes is one person to complain and their business is over.
Oh my God. You actually think an incorrect charge would be reason to close down a business. How naive.
Judge might have done him, and taxpayers, a favor by not looking into phone records to determine if the dude was lying.
Why would convicting someone of something without bothering to look into the facts be doing him a favor?
TFS makes a statement of fact, not a guess. The battery was dead. Not "he claimed the battery was dead."
That's why the law is written as it is.
The law is written the way it is to deal with the distraction of operation a cell phone while driving. He wasn't operating a cell phone while driving, therefore he cannot be guilty of the crime he was convicted of. The judge is a goofball for trying to claim that having earbuds in your ears is somehow operating or holding a phone.
Many state outlaw driving with an earplug in both ears,
You cannot have "many state". You cannot put an earplug in both ears. You can put earplugS in both ears, however. Doing so is not considered "distracted" and not punished under distracted driving laws like this Canadian judge did.
It's also silly, since being able to hear is not a requirement to drive. Why would not being able to hear be a crime, if you can legally drive without being able to hear?
Maybe the judge was thinking, "Do we let distracted drivers use the dead battery defense?
Well, if the battery is dead, why not? And more important, if the device is NOT BEING HELD AT ALL, then that's the only "defense" necessary.
At least in Oregon. The law here is that hand-free operation is permitted. This was a case of hands-free operation, whether the battery was dead or not.
Ok, but turn the radio all the way up and it's legal?
More important, be deaf and it is legal. How can not being able to hear be a crime if not being able to hear is optional to get a driver's license?
If the idiot judge wanted to convict someone of driving while impaired, he could have done that. "Distracted" is patent nonsense.
Believing that every store uses facial recognition to track your shopping history is tinfoil hat territory. Loyalty card tracking is known fact.