I think if your look at your existing TOS this would be spelled out as not allowed, so legal or not, they could drop you if it became obvious. Of course, that will disappear from Comcast's agreement once this gets implemented.
A lot of comcast routers already come set up with a guest account. These are on a separate Vnet, and "can't" access your stuff. (Can't until someone hackes it that is). And, previously, you couldn't access this unless the home owner gave you their guest password.
Now they are going to make that last bit un-necessary for users that opt in. I think its a great idea, as long as its fully firewalled.
But still you would think they have to affect your bandwidth. And a gamer or downloader of large files might notice. Personally I would seldom be inconvenienced by this unless it started to seriously eat into my speed.
[Facial recognition software] will probably NEVER achieve the reliability standard of a fingerprint, let alone DNA.
Fingerprint matching has no "reliability standard" to speak of, and is likely far less reliable than you may have been led to believe.
Actually, its far more reliable than you have been led to believe.
Its just that the numbering system was only intended to allow a computer sort of likely candidates for manual inspection, but because manual inspection takes some time and training, some jurisdictions will go just by the numeric analysis, and further they will accept fewer and fewer actual features to match, especially when partial prints are all they have.
Defense lawyers delight in bringing in their own fingerprint expert and showing up the state, especially when its as easy as showing the jury two full sets of prints. Things become very obvious very quickly.
Really? Where do you live where this is the practice?
Doesn't happen around here. There is no "rounding up". In fact they go out of their way not to round up anyone unless they have some pretty solid leads. False arrest suits are expensive. If they don't have enough for a warrant they would be pretty stupid to drag everyone in for questioning.
Washington state. In Washington, and actually in most states, if your license says prescription lenses then you have to wear them for your photo, othewise you have a choice. No glasses rules at all for Passports, other than no dark sunglasses.
I think its fairly obvious the police know its not reliable.
Can you name even one CONVICTION where the only evidence was an automated photo match? Can you name even one ARREST where the only basis was an automated photo match?
This. The false positive rate simply makes FR useless for identifying any Joe Random from a street scene. You'd be surprised how often FR will match males to females and totally different looking people who happen to have similar measurements.
However, if a security cam at a bank robbery can facially match 300 different people to the crook, one of whom is Joe Random, and Joe has a record of robbery, you can be fairly certain Joe floats to the top of the list of people of interest.
It would be telling if every person in the database could request to know exactly how many times their records were a hit on ANY search. You could then compare that to the number of times you were actually contacted by police.
Yes, and have the distance between you eyes adjusted, lower your nose, change the bridge of your nose, and sink your cheek bones, flatten your forehead, pin your ears back, and lower them as well, change your jaw line. Photo recognition software could care less about hair color and beards.
The state of the art in Facial Recognition software has a long way to go. At best it can be used to give the police a list of people to look at, and certainly not a list of people to arrest.
There is a lot of false positives. I've tried several off the shelf packages, as well as the FR built into Google's Picasa. (surprisingly good). Most of these have significant problems of false positives. My sisters look nothing alike, yet two of the commercial products and Picasa always confuse them, presumably based on facial measurement.
A great deal of the false positives would be weeded out by the police just looking at the pictures, People are so much better at this than machines.
The only abuse of this I can see is if you are summoned to appear or hauled in kicking and screaming based ONLY on some automated FR software match. But FR will probably NEVER achieve the reliability standard of a fingerprint, let alone DNA.
So I feel confident that such pictorial drag-netting wouldn't be allowed by the courts. *Cough*. Sure I do.
Yup, it's not like the clothing could be washed & dried in a public laundromat and the next fifty people to use it become suspects.
Well the detectives investigating the crime scene will pick up quite a load of this DNA too. So any random person they choose to get off the streets and puff up their arrest record will be tagged as the detectives grab them and cuff them. And sure enough, the tags will match.
Ah, at last someone gets to the crux of the matter.
You still have to find the perp via some other means.
Then take DNA samples and process those. But wait, you also have to sequester every cop who visited the crime scene and not let them touch any evidence for weeks on end. And not just the evidence from one crime scene, but all the crime scenes using this technology. Once the cops set foot on the premises they too will be tagged. As well as their wives and co-workers that come in contact with their uniforms, objects they handled, and any perps they happen to apprehend.
Your average burglary detective would spread the DNA from several recent robberies to every suspect they hauled in. Would do wonders for their arrest rates. *cough*.
So the DNA taging system builds a web of uselessness around itself, which spreads wider daily, while at the same time provides not a single additional clue to help you catch the thief.
And I don't believe that bit about being hard to wash off either. After all, if you can sample it by simply using a swab, how tightly can it be bound?
Nobody uses multcast because it won't handle on demand viewing, and since the WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY seems lost on you, the control over local caching is EXACTLY why new entries to the market, like Intel, are essentially frozen out.
There is no reason you have to pay for $50 bucks to EACH provider if you mandate cafeteria pricing of each channel. Less than a Penny per day per channel would become the norm.
But more to the point, bundling all on-demand video on top of the TCP/IP internet is probably not sustainable. A separate stream for each viewer in the household is simply more bandwidth than the internet can handle well. Do the math. You can't even handle that on the local links, let along the national backbones.
We really would be better finding another (parallel) solution. A separate stream might make sense if it could be served from each cable system's head end controllers, but running the numbers says you can't serve this from Hulu central across our existing internet.
>If maintained in a coordinated way, what's the advantage of literally running five cables in the same trench, instead of running one cable but having it owned by a neutral entity, like a municipality or regulated utility, which sells access on equal terms?
This!.
Allowing cable companies to own/be content providers was a huge mistake. One it will take years to overcome. ] It was a stupid mistake.
Local loop ownership by municipalities might work. but I would expect the religious wackos and budget cutters would ruin that in short order. Something along the lines of a new Public Utility District with specific legal protections and firewalled from political entities is needed.
But in the mean time, pulling multiple fiber to the neighborhood (if not actually to each house) is not that unreasonable. You can multiplex several signals onto the premises fiber from the local junction or switch providers on a whim.
Intel's larger problem will be that as soon as it is widely recognized by the public and the press that their set-top boxes have build in cameras and microphones their market will dry up instantly. There is already a bill in congress to put a stop to this sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
I think if your look at your existing TOS this would be spelled out as not allowed, so legal or not, they could drop you if it became obvious.
Of course, that will disappear from Comcast's agreement once this gets implemented.
A lot of comcast routers already come set up with a guest account. These are on a separate Vnet, and "can't" access your stuff. (Can't until someone hackes it that is). And, previously, you couldn't access this unless the home owner gave you their guest password.
Now they are going to make that last bit un-necessary for users that opt in.
I think its a great idea, as long as its fully firewalled.
But still you would think they have to affect your bandwidth. And a gamer or downloader of large files might notice.
Personally I would seldom be inconvenienced by this unless it started to seriously eat into my speed.
I also suggest opening one's mouth a little while keeping the lips closed (thus giving the effect of elongating the head). Hey, it all helps.
And you know this HOW?
I wager they don't sell much of that software when their competitors do so much better.
[Facial recognition software] will probably NEVER achieve the reliability standard of a fingerprint, let alone DNA.
Fingerprint matching has no "reliability standard" to speak of, and is likely far less reliable than you may have been led to believe.
Actually, its far more reliable than you have been led to believe.
Its just that the numbering system was only intended to allow a computer sort of likely
candidates for manual inspection, but because manual inspection takes some time
and training, some jurisdictions will go just by the numeric analysis, and further
they will accept fewer and fewer actual features to match, especially when partial
prints are all they have.
Defense lawyers delight in bringing in their own fingerprint expert and showing up
the state, especially when its as easy as showing the jury two full sets of
prints. Things become very obvious very quickly.
Really? Where do you live where this is the practice?
Doesn't happen around here. There is no "rounding up". In fact they go out of their way not to round up anyone unless they
have some pretty solid leads. False arrest suits are expensive. If they don't have enough for a warrant they would
be pretty stupid to drag everyone in for questioning.
Washington state.
In Washington, and actually in most states, if your license says prescription lenses then you have to wear them
for your photo, othewise you have a choice. No glasses rules at all for Passports, other than no dark sunglasses.
You might be able to vote a Mayor or a Sheriff out of office.
But you can't vote a patrolman or a deputy or a detective out of office.
The top is replaceable. But largely powerless.
That is why you can't wear glasses when you have your photo taken..
/me: looks at drivers licence and Passport Photo.
Notices glasses worn in both, and both are very recent.
Calls bullshit on you
I think its fairly obvious the police know its not reliable.
Can you name even one CONVICTION where the only evidence was an automated photo match?
Can you name even one ARREST where the only basis was an automated photo match?
This.
The false positive rate simply makes FR useless for identifying any Joe Random from a street scene.
You'd be surprised how often FR will match males to females and totally different looking people who happen to have similar measurements.
However, if a security cam at a bank robbery can facially match 300 different people to the crook, one of whom is Joe Random, and Joe has a record of robbery, you can be fairly certain Joe floats to the top of the list of people of interest.
It would be telling if every person in the database could request to know exactly how many times their records were a hit on ANY search.
You could then compare that to the number of times you were actually contacted by police.
You can vote cops out of office? Who Knew!?
Yes, and have the distance between you eyes adjusted, lower your nose, change the bridge of your nose, and sink your cheek bones, flatten your forehead, pin your ears back, and lower them as well, change your jaw line. Photo recognition software could care less about hair color and beards.
The state of the art in Facial Recognition software has a long way to go.
At best it can be used to give the police a list of people to look at, and certainly not a list of people to arrest.
There is a lot of false positives. I've tried several off the shelf packages, as well as the FR built into Google's Picasa. (surprisingly good).
Most of these have significant problems of false positives. My sisters look nothing alike, yet two of the commercial products and
Picasa always confuse them, presumably based on facial measurement.
A great deal of the false positives would be weeded out by the police just looking at the pictures, People are so much better at this than
machines.
The only abuse of this I can see is if you are summoned to appear or hauled in kicking and screaming based ONLY on some
automated FR software match. But FR will probably NEVER achieve the reliability standard of a fingerprint, let alone DNA.
So I feel confident that such pictorial drag-netting wouldn't be allowed by the courts. *Cough*. Sure I do.
Yup, it's not like the clothing could be washed & dried in a public laundromat and the next fifty people to use it become suspects.
Well the detectives investigating the crime scene will pick up quite a load of this DNA too. So any random person they choose to get off the streets and puff up their arrest record will be tagged as the detectives grab them and cuff them. And sure enough, the tags will match.
Ah, at last someone gets to the crux of the matter.
You still have to find the perp via some other means.
Then take DNA samples and process those. But wait, you also have to sequester every cop who visited the crime scene and not let them touch any evidence for weeks on end. And not just the evidence from one crime scene, but all the crime scenes using this technology. Once the cops set foot on the premises they too will be tagged. As well as their wives and co-workers that come in contact with their uniforms, objects they handled, and any perps they happen to apprehend.
Your average burglary detective would spread the DNA from several recent robberies to every suspect they hauled in. Would do wonders for their arrest rates. *cough*.
So the DNA taging system builds a web of uselessness around itself, which spreads wider daily, while at the same time provides not a single additional clue to help you catch the thief.
And I don't believe that bit about being hard to wash off either. After all, if you can sample it by simply using a swab, how tightly can it be bound?
Pretty sure SCO would give them a license in exchange for all that background funding, don't you think?
Note that the these background funding arrangements to SCO have already been documented. Google will be of help finding these.
Nobody uses multcast because it won't handle on demand viewing, and since the WHOLE POINT OF THE STORY seems lost on you, the control over local caching is EXACTLY why new entries to the market, like Intel, are essentially frozen out.
You have a forest and trees problem, son.
And that's why big cable has veto power over new entries.
The average consumer is smarter than the 15 year old gamer living in his parent's basement.
Really?
You don't need Steam to game on Linux. All you need is for Linux to be more than 2% of the user base.
(the rarely vindicated paranoids
Well clearly YOU need a little more connectivity to current events, but I suspect it is unlikely to come via s special notice from the president.
If someone puts an easy-to-use HDTV-over-internet product together - the cable companies are dead.
If someone puts an easy-to-use HDTV-over-internet product together - the internet itself is dead.
Fixed it for you.
There isn't enough bandwidth on the internet to even remotely handle on demand streams for every viewer.
There is no reason you have to pay for $50 bucks to EACH provider if you mandate cafeteria pricing of each channel.
Less than a Penny per day per channel would become the norm.
But more to the point, bundling all on-demand video on top of the TCP/IP internet is probably not sustainable.
A separate stream for each viewer in the household is simply more bandwidth than the internet can handle well.
Do the math. You can't even handle that on the local links, let along the national backbones.
We really would be better finding another (parallel) solution. A separate stream might make sense if it could
be served from each cable system's head end controllers, but running the numbers says you can't serve this
from Hulu central across our existing internet.
So 5 cables isn't as silly as it sounds.
>If maintained in a coordinated way, what's the advantage of literally running five cables in the same trench, instead of running one cable but having it owned by a neutral entity, like a municipality or regulated utility, which sells access on equal terms?
This!.
Allowing cable companies to own/be content providers was a huge mistake. One it will take years to overcome. ]
It was a stupid mistake.
Local loop ownership by municipalities might work. but I would expect the religious wackos and budget cutters would ruin that
in short order. Something along the lines of a new Public Utility District with specific legal protections and firewalled from political entities
is needed.
But in the mean time, pulling multiple fiber to the neighborhood (if not actually to each house) is not that unreasonable. You can multiplex
several signals onto the premises fiber from the local junction or switch providers on a whim.
Intel's larger problem will be that as soon as it is widely recognized by the public and the press that their set-top boxes have build in cameras and microphones their market will dry up instantly. There is already a bill in congress to put a stop to this sort of thing.