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User: davecb

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  1. Re:It doesn't scale on FBI Completes New Face Recognition System · · Score: 1

    You can have 99.999 accuracy, and if the number of comparisons is (N choose 2), then the probability is (N chose 2) * 0.00001, which will be (really huge number * 0.00001) which is (merely huge number).

    I don't care how good or bad the implementation is, it has to have more 9's to the right of the decimal than I have zeroes to the left in the number of people, N. That's a known hard problem in computer science (;-))

    --dave
    [And yes, Siemens was getting crappy even then, but that isn't the problem that the FBI has to solve]

  2. Re:Good luck on Logitech Aims To Control the Smart Home · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Fortunately my android already has apps for all the things I own which have "smarts". I plan to keep it that way by buying small apps from small developers.

  3. It doesn't scale on FBI Completes New Face Recognition System · · Score: 1

    We do this in Canada too, and it works where the number of people you're trying to recognize is small. The "birthday paradox"* says that if you're comparing 23 people, you have a 50% chance of a match. You have to multiply this by the error rate (usually much less than 2%) of a facial match program to get the false-positive rate, but it's still huge.

    The German federal security service tried out Siemen's facial matcher years ago, found it had a low error rate... and was completely useless!

    When you had hundreds of criminals to look for in thousands of airport passengers a day, it was directing insane numbers of people to the "capture the terrorist" queue (;-))

    --dave
    [*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem]

  4. Re:Contacting BBC, via VPN on BBC: ISPs Should Assume VPN Users Are Pirates · · Score: 1

    Ok, done!

  5. Re:Headline that asks a question on Is It Time To Split Linux Distros In Two? · · Score: 2

    A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  6. Re:Force of Law on Ask Slashdot: What To Do About Repeated Internet Overbilling? · · Score: 1

    Engage a lawyer familiar with class actions *before* speaking to the police. You're an individual engaging in trial by battle with a huge company, and you need someone with the same degree of hitting power on your side before you start. They can advise on what's most effective in your jurisdiction. In Canada, the fraud squad is effective against enemies of moderate size. I don't see case law from them going after companies the size of a small country (;-))

  7. Re:Why is Canada greyed out? on A Horrifying Interactive Map of Global Internet Censorship · · Score: 1

    The whole country is a secret: the government of the day suffered a hostile takeover by space aliens masquerading a toupees. Just have a look at any picture of the PM (;-))

  8. Re:If they really want to help the situation... on Memo to Users: SpamCop Winding Down Webmail Service · · Score: 1

    Yes: it's a problem that needs to be attacked from several directions at once, including psycological: what drives people to read and buy products from spammers?

  9. Re:Linux Cgroups are a good subset of this on Linux Needs Resource Management For Complex Workloads · · Score: 3, Informative

    The only thing mainframes have that Unix/Linux Resource Managers lack is "goal mode". I can't set a TPS target and have resources automatically allocated to stay at or above the target. I *can* create minimum guarantees for CPU, memory and I/O bandwidth on Linux, BSD and the Unixes. I just have to manage the performance myself, by changing the minimums.

  10. Re:Maybe, maybe not. on Obama Administration Says the World's Servers Are Ours · · Score: 4, Informative

    The criteria is "the company that has the power to demand the data, has to do so if ordered by their country's courts". This probably dates back to the 16th century or earlier. Some time around the Hanseatic League...

    A Canadian company with data in Outer Mongolia has to produce the data if it can. If the Outer Mongols prohibit the Canadian company from demanding it normally, the Canadians can't be ordered to produce it, because the data isn't in the Canadian company's control. If they allow it to be demanded normally, a Canadian court can get it. They have to do it via the Mongolian branch, they can't just issue court orders in Mongolia.

    Your suspicion is correct: a Canadian company that controls data in the U.S. can indeed be ordered by a Canadian court to produce it .

    --dave

  11. Re:Stop throwing good money after bad. on The Pentagon's $399 Billion Plane To Nowhere · · Score: 1

    Canada's government of the day is using it as a money-sink. Our requirements are for a twin-engine, long-range, non-stealthy aircraft with a moderate ground-support capability, such as the F-18 Hornet we now use. They rejected the newer super hornet, and so I fear the entire programme exists only to soak up money they don't want to spend on the priorities of the other parties...

  12. Re:Idiots... on Parents Mobilize Against States' Student Data Mining · · Score: 1

    It's obvious: children are prey and parents will be happy with other adults targeting them in new and interesting ways.

  13. Re:No Bid Contracts! on Canada Poised To Buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 JSFs · · Score: 1

    I was thinking about replacing the leaders, actually. Their party need to choose a new PM, real soon!

    --dave
    [How about the Pirate party?]

  14. Re:No Bid Contracts! on Canada Poised To Buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 JSFs · · Score: 1

    Most the members of the Conservative Party are not a majority of former Reform Party members any more....

    I don't think they ever were: it's the leadership that's ex-Reform, and who has been acting in direct contradiction to what they espouse to their electors.

  15. Re:No Bid Contracts! on Canada Poised To Buy 65 Lockheed Martin F-35 JSFs · · Score: 1

    I fear that corruption is starting to set in: the ex-Reform members who lead the current federal government used to hatewasting money. Now they're pissing it away it like drunken sailors.

    Time for a change: either the party replaces the PM, or the voters replace the party.

  16. Niggle: one polices one's monopolies and crooks on Hundreds of Cities Wired With Fiber, But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unusable · · Score: 1

    Actually one "polices" them rather than "regulating" them. It's called the "police power of the state", and refers to a lot more than the cops. Anything that gets you dragged in front of a magistrate or board who can punish you is policing

    Regulation is a technical term for bylaw-like legislation, is misleading as heck, and historically is a term that lots of people in the 'States and Canada viscerally hate.

  17. Sure, if the idea is to overturn laws on US-EU Trade Agreement Gains Exaggerated, Say 41 Consumer Groups, Economist · · Score: 1

    It's an excellent reason to lie, if the lies will help remove legal protections against the deal's sponsors. Dr Evil would strongly approve!

  18. Re:Isn't this classic anti-trust fodder on Amazon Confirms Hachette Spat Is To "Get a Better Deal" · · Score: 1

    My publisher has such a site and sells DAISY, ePub, Mobi and PDF directly. They cannot sell them via Amazon, however. The Amazon site sells only a kindle-specific variant.

    The fact that someone as major as O'Reilly has to deal with Amazon, at a price disadvantage and with significant limitations on what they're allowed to sell is typical of a monopoly, or an oligopoly with one leading member and the others doing price- and policy-following.

    Monopolies are barely legal in Canada (where I am), but oligopolies and price-following are winked at. Very occasionally the government or courts will whack a leading oligopolist, but only if they are enraging the whole cell-phone-using population. Arguably they're a criminal conspiracy in restraint of trade, but as they only communicate their evil plans with each via press releases, the "secret" part of conspiracy is technically absent (;-))

  19. Re:Not illegal on Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Publishers · · Score: 1

    In the Excited States, they have to have something like 83% of the market

  20. Re:Not illegal on Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Publishers · · Score: 1

    The US used to have such laws, having suffered from significant monopoly problems in the past. It may be illegal in Canada, but it's arguably illegal everywhere else. If you sell houses in Chatham, you can't refuse to sell a house built by Bill Green, nor refuse to sell a house to Chan Hin Poon, even if you think Bill is an idiot and you hate anyone Chinese (;-))

    Nor can you ask Bill for a kickback.

  21. Re:same old 1980s service on a new pole, sure on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    The approvals are for "add a new wire to all the poles in East Bumsquat county, with component sizes the same or smaller that standard F", rather than approval for houses. They're issued to companies who pull and maintain the wires and pay fees according to another preapproved schedule for large areas, typically a county or a region like "the south shore of Nova Scotia". If you want to pay a different fee, that takes a meeting. And, as I said, the original approvals took months of boring meetings, there and in Ontario.

  22. Re:or nine years sooner on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 1

    Provinces vary: the first permission to hang cable TV on Ontario Hydro poles took months and months, but subsequent ones got rubber-stamped at subsequent monthly meetings. Nova Scotia, on the other hand, reputedly turns them around in a few days, unless you ask for something that requires a meeting.

  23. Re:Hedge on Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes · · Score: 2

    Someone had to bootstrap it, and Google stepped up, for their own normal benefit. In other locations, and after some years in the current ones, Google can offer to hand the physical fibre and the things it hooks to, to the local utility company. That moves the fibre itself into a being a common carrier, and probably a regulated monopoly if the local laws require.

  24. Cisco s moving to Toronto, as previously announced on Cisco Complains To Obama About NSA Adding Spyware To Routers · · Score: 1

    Waterloo and Ottawa have more computer scientists. but Tranna has the manufacturing infrastructure, so Cisco's announced that they're moving significant parts of the company there. The first phase is $100 million, out of a $4-billion investment in Ontario. and roughly 1,700 jobs. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

    Besides, many people fear CSE less than they do the NSA. After all, Canada's only been caught spying on Brazil, while the US was found spying on everyone on the planet (;-))

  25. So A/B test it and let the users decide! on Did Mozilla Have No Choice But To Add DRM To Firefox? · · Score: 2

    Let the default download of a new firefox randonly select either with- or without-DRM. Cound the number of times the same user goes back and selects a non-default browser from a list that explicitly says whether they have DRM or not.

    Done well, no-one will even notice.

    In this experiment, I expect the null hypothesis will be "no-one cares", and will win (:-))