"a telemarketer might have usefull information on a new product."
Huh? Telemarketers never have good products. Telemarketers only ever sell products that need to be sold via "the numbers game" (ie. You throw enough mud at a wall and some of it will stick).
The simple answer is to get yourself a domain, then when "bigcorp" asks you for an email address you tell them "bigcorp@yourdomain.com". That makes it real easy to see who's abusing and who to block.
As for a phone...get caller ID. If it's not a number you recognize and you're not expecting a call then don't answer. They'll soon get bored and/or mark you as somebody who's not home during the day.
OTOH, yes, everything should be opt-in and there should be a national list of numbers which advertisers are not allowed to call.
If a product is still making millions then who should be earning money?
a) The guy who originally recorded it or b) A bunch of media machines who sit around waiting to pounce on "old" works and exploit them to hell and back (eg. TV-advertised compilations) without paying guy (a) a penny? How about radio stations with paid advertising? Should they be able to use it for free?
To me at least, (b) is the devil. At the moment, copyright law is the only thing stopping (b) from happening.
You could argue that not-for-profit home copying should be allowed after a certain number of years, but no copyright at all? No thanks.
"Read heavily distorted text on random patterned backgrounds with added noise and geometric figures drawn across it"
My real problem with the proposal is with the false positives. There's no clear feedback to let a user know *why* he's not being allowed into the system, it's just that the machine doesn't like the look of him.
I disagree. I don't think there's anything terribly un-mimicable about the way humans interact with web pages.
Besides, have you considered the effect of false positives (which will be many)?
With a captcha it's a black/white decision and people know why they passed/failed.
In the world being proposed in the article people will have to sit dejectedly wiggling their mouse while a web page decides if they're human or not based on some unknown criteria. Pass or fail? It's up to the machine.
After two or three sessions of this people will be running away screaming from your web pages.
Textures can be disk-resident for software rendering. With caching it won't make much difference to rendering time (scan-line rendering rendering has very coherent memory access patterns - not random access).
a) They're proprietary and need special players to play.
b) Said player is the worst media player in history.
c) Said player also tries to take over my entire machine. It installs an iPod sync service even though I haven't got an iPod. It replaces all the multimedia mime types in all my browsers and refuses to let go - reconfiguring the browsers on every reboot (does Firefox really need itunes plugin to display a JPG file?)
d) All that just to watch a video file? Seriously? No thanks.
PS: Any digital camera makers who think.mov is a good video format, take note. Also any webmaster who thinks.mov is a good format for web page viewing because "it works on a Mac".
PPS: Yes, I've heard of quicktimealt but I want the.mov format to die (see above).
This trial was a jury trial and juries aren't very good at technical details, mostly it's the lawyer with the best hair/suit that wins and you can be sure the RIAA spent a fortune on theirs.
...and they only just noticed? You'd think they'd have spotted this trend a few years ago.
It doesn't really prove much either way, things fluctuate.
The only two things we know for sure are that CO2 is related to temperature and that man is busy dumping CO2 into the air like there's no tomorrow (and also chopping down CO2-absorbers so he can breed billions of cows which produce even worse gases).
2+2=?
Short time ice growth or not, I'm still betting the answer to that is '4'.
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What legitimate calls are made without an ID?
It's not as if the mystery person wouldn't be revealed if you picked up the handset...
Same thing - no number, no answer.
"a telemarketer might have usefull information on a new product."
Huh? Telemarketers never have good products. Telemarketers only ever sell products that need to be sold via "the numbers game" (ie. You throw enough mud at a wall and some of it will stick).
The simple answer is to get yourself a domain, then when "bigcorp" asks you for an email address you tell them "bigcorp@yourdomain.com". That makes it real easy to see who's abusing and who to block.
As for a phone...get caller ID. If it's not a number you recognize and you're not expecting a call then don't answer. They'll soon get bored and/or mark you as somebody who's not home during the day.
OTOH, yes, everything should be opt-in and there should be a national list of numbers which advertisers are not allowed to call.
What about the people in the other car she hit?
Has poor Mr. Catsouras got anything to say about that?
If you can't set a good example, at least be a horrible warning.
With pics.
The only thing they know is hardball. They'll do anything, ANYTHING ... except listen to their customers and give them what they're asking for.
If a product is still making millions then who should be earning money?
a) The guy who originally recorded it
or
b) A bunch of media machines who sit around waiting to pounce on "old" works and exploit them to hell and back (eg. TV-advertised compilations) without paying guy (a) a penny? How about radio stations with paid advertising? Should they be able to use it for free?
To me at least, (b) is the devil. At the moment, copyright law is the only thing stopping (b) from happening.
You could argue that not-for-profit home copying should be allowed after a certain number of years, but no copyright at all? No thanks.
Let me waterboarding, sleep deprive, and food-deny you. For a year. See how happy you are.
PS: That's only what they do on record. Remember Abu Ghraib? If what they're doing is legal, whay aren't they doing it on American soil?
PPS: Six-month-old (or even six weeks...) military intelligence is useless and no "confession" extracted under torture is worth anything.
I'd say it's a lot more of a slam-dunk than this:
"Read heavily distorted text on random patterned backgrounds with added noise and geometric figures drawn across it"
My real problem with the proposal is with the false positives. There's no clear feedback to let a user know *why* he's not being allowed into the system, it's just that the machine doesn't like the look of him.
I disagree. I don't think there's anything terribly un-mimicable about the way humans interact with web pages.
Besides, have you considered the effect of false positives (which will be many)?
With a captcha it's a black/white decision and people know why they passed/failed.
In the world being proposed in the article people will have to sit dejectedly wiggling their mouse while a web page decides if they're human or not based on some unknown criteria. Pass or fail? It's up to the machine.
After two or three sessions of this people will be running away screaming from your web pages.
Step 3 is supposed to be: "I left, set up my own company, took their customers and now I'm a billionaire"
How was it an 'improvement'? Seems to me like it would have made things a lot worse.
Textures can be disk-resident for software rendering. With caching it won't make much difference to rendering time (scan-line rendering rendering has very coherent memory access patterns - not random access).
Yep.
Foxit means I can look at a document without going through five minutes of "An update is available!!" first.
Presumably the photo's wouldn't be mugshots, they'd be profiles, semi-profiles, etc.
That bit about "statistical implications of multiple-choice Turing tests"? Whooosh!
I boycott mov files because:
a) They're proprietary and need special players to play.
b) Said player is the worst media player in history.
c) Said player also tries to take over my entire machine. It installs an iPod sync service even though I haven't got an iPod. It replaces all the multimedia mime types in all my browsers and refuses to let go - reconfiguring the browsers on every reboot (does Firefox really need itunes plugin to display a JPG file?)
d) All that just to watch a video file? Seriously? No thanks.
PS: Any digital camera makers who think .mov is a good video format, take note. Also any webmaster who thinks .mov is a good format for web page viewing because "it works on a Mac".
PPS: Yes, I've heard of quicktimealt but I want the .mov format to die (see above).
I'm sure this will be the focus of the appeal.
This trial was a jury trial and juries aren't very good at technical details, mostly it's the lawyer with the best hair/suit that wins and you can be sure the RIAA spent a fortune on theirs.
And don't forget piano rolls, radio, cassette tape, video tape, etc.
Every single one of them was a harbinger of doom according to the music industry. None of them ever were.
How about a "hot or not" test? How good are computers at deciding if somebody is hot or not?
(Yeah, it's a joke, I understand the statistical implications of multiple-choice Turing tests).
Good to see I'm not the only one having trouble reading some of the latest captchas.
It's time for a rethink when the humans start to fail at it.
...and they only just noticed? You'd think they'd have spotted this trend a few years ago.
It doesn't really prove much either way, things fluctuate.
The only two things we know for sure are that CO2 is related to temperature and that man is busy dumping CO2 into the air like there's no tomorrow (and also chopping down CO2-absorbers so he can breed billions of cows which produce even worse gases).
2+2=?
Short time ice growth or not, I'm still betting the answer to that is '4'.
How many "pirates" were foreigners who have no way to buy the game legally even if they wanted to?
The problem with space travel won't be the engines or how to recycle the used food, it'll be all the rocks constantly beating on the hull.
...and the pope is unintentionally catholic and bears unintentionally poo in woods.