A movie review that contains plat elements, stills, quotes, and even clips is a derivative work.
It's perfectly legal, under fair use. (as a critical work)
Being derivative has no bearing on whether or not it is fair use.
Fan subbing, is an "accessibility" transformation, and should be a fair use work, especially if it is produced non-commericially and distributed for free, separately from the copy protected film.
Yes, "I can't afford to invest in my future" is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Heh. The number one rule of smart investing is diversification. For the average middle class family to buy a 2nd house (and not just some small affordable rental income property in the suburbs... it pretty much has to be "downtown" to be much of a draw to airbnb guests...
Then you are tying up 100,000 to 200,000 just in the down payment; and taking on a large 2nd mortgage.
If your net worth is say, 500,000; and half of that is in your primary residence, would you put the rest all in one stock? even a blue-chip? Of course not! And putting it all into one single property, in the same city you live... that's just asking for trouble.
But that's what it would take... minimum just for a reasonable downpayment on a hot commodity condo downtown in these cities. Plus you are taking on a huge debt load that you're going to need nearly constant tenants to cover.
No, you need a net worth of 1.5M+ before it starts making sense to considering buying a 2nd property in a market like that.
There's LOTs of middle class people with net worths under a million dollars.
People who are renting aren't middle class? Graduated university, got a decent job, single, renting a condo or apartment in the city near where they work, living comfortably and saving money every month, but don't have a hundred thousand in cash for a down payment... or who would prefer to rent to stay more mobile, maybe even living with a roomate 90's 'Friends' style and don't want the commitment of a joint mortgage with those people... etc.
OR maybe their on a short term contract, so it doesn't make sense to buy a home.
That's not the working poor, and that's not 'dumb asses' either.
Chickens are frequently fed soybean meal so maybe they drew the wrong conclusions from DNA tests...
Yet the chicken meat at Wendy's, McDonalds, A&W... etc were all 85%+ chicken DNA. Only the chicken meat from subway was 50% chicken DNA.
The lab also was so surprised by the Subway results, that they did the test over again with completely new samples BEFORE publishing... and got the same results.
Why can't the middle class also buy up condos/homes and put them on AirBNB?
Get a clue... the middle class lacks the free money to buy an extra house just to rent out. Many in the middle class are often themselves renting because they don't have the free money to buy even a house for themselves, nevermind a spare one to rent out... meanwhile they are being evicted from those rentals so the owner can rent it by the day more lucratively on sites like airbnb.
Your solution to them being kicked out their rental to make room for airbnb, is to buy 2 houses; so that they too can benefit from airbnb!
What are you trying to preserve in the event of nuclear holocaust?
Are you a librarian concerned about preserving humanities knowledge through another dark age? Or are you concerned about preserving the Xena fan fiction you were writing?
The former might consider hard copy and tapes in out of the way bunkers... the latter probably has more pressing things to worry about...
Which doesn't exonerate BK at all, any more than an open unlocked front door exonerates an intruder.
Yes and no. I mean, I think you are right. But there are fatal flaws in your analogy.
An unlocked open door with no signage or markings forbidding entry... is it illegal to enter? That gets to be a grey area. In most places to be charged with trespassing without clear signage and barriers to entry you would have to be asked to leave before you can be charged with trespassing. (not all jurisdictions are the same... but this is the most usual case).
Your -home- is a little more protected, with precedents that raise the bar to entering one's home. So not all open doors are equal.
Now, suppose that someone came to your front door, said 'please open the door', and your door opened. A reasonable person would say that amounts to consent -- where you opened the door, or whether you installed a voice activated device to open the door upon request. Sure you can ask them to leave, and if they don't they are tresspassing. But they didn't walk in, they didn't do anything to your door... they *asked*, and the door opened.
And that, to me, is what puts BK in a unique situation. Their commercial made a request, and not just an abstract request the way a PC requests a file via HTTP, or the way a laptop asks to join a wifi access point... it made a plain old verbal request in a the most natural and human understood way possible.
I think it's problematic to criminalize that. The whole notion of consent requires that I be able to ask for consent without that itself being criminal. If it had said, "call now for your free sample" that shouldn't be criminal... its up to you to decide to call now or not. It's clearly BK's intent that you call now, but it's absurd to characterize that as anything but a request.
Here, they intended to trigger any device that within earshot to perform an action. But at the end of the stay... they just asked. I don't think they are entirely in the right here... but at the same time, I think its kind of on you if you have a device setup to listen and do whatever commands it hears.
In the same way a TV show that records a cast member clapping... if that turns your lights on and off... that's on you. Even if the TV show did it as a 4th wall breaking prank (ie they intended to trigger any clappers in range).
You set up a listening device in your house that responds to voice commands. You then turned the TV on. These are two unconnected things. By turning on the TV, you do not intend to activate the device
Suppose you set up a motion sensor to detect theives in your yard and set it up to take a photo and upload it to the cloud whenever it was triggered.
Then you bought a decorative windmill and placed it in your yard within sight of the sensor. These are two unconnected things. By installing the wind mill you presumably did not intend to activate the motion sensor and fill your cloud drive with pictures of your windmill every time the wind blew.
But it is nobodies fault but your own that this happened.
"Google presumably did not intend the device to be used to respond to TV shows"
But it makes no effort and has no apparent effort to differentiate between my voice, a recording of my voice, someone elses voice, a recording of someone elses voice... and when you set this up, just like the motion activated camera... this should have been obvious to the point that you should take some ownership of the fallout. A pissed off neighbor yelling at his google device loud enough to be heard by yours will set yours off too...
This its not merely bad security... it is 'no attempt at security whatsoever'.
""Mr. Trumpâ(TM)s policy is a return to the one followed by presidents who preceded Mr. Obama." (NYT). No mention of that in the summary."
vs
" White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy..."
Hints: "the Obama-era policy" means a policy introduced in the Obama administration.
And if Trump had created a completely new policy, it would not have been a 'reversal'. A reversal of direction implies going back where you came from.
It should be fairly reasonable to anyone without a bag of hammers standing in for a brain that *reversing* a policy Obama instituted defaults to a return to the previous policy. aka... the policy followed by presidents who preceded Obama.
Yes, its not as explicit as coming out and saying it, but its a SUMMARY, if it included every explicit detail of the full article it would not be a summary. So the summary implied a detail that was made explicit in the full article... so what was your problem?
"I do. Every time. If you don't, that's on you. Not on Amazon."
When you place with an order on amazon via a browser? Or when you place it entirely with the Alexa voice assistant without even looking at a screen?
I suspect you were talking about the former, and if you read my post, I was talking about the latter.
People like you probably don't even use voice assistants like Alexa to place orders. I know I don't. But the people who do are the people who do use one-click ordering, and don't confirm their cart.
"They manipulated my 'computer' from far way through sound waves to do their bidding, on purpose, repeatedly."
When you turn your computer on, and navigate to a webpage, the remote computer, through the internet sends files to your PC that manipulates what is displayed on your computer to show you what it wants to show you. Are they hacking your computer?
What if they send you video file and it starts playing? what if they send you some javascript (and you've enabled javascript) and a little program runs on your computer inside the browser sandbox all nice and proper? Are they hacking your computer?
Presumably this is ok, because you turned on your computer and requested that it do this?
Well.. didn't you also purchase this google thing, with an always on microphone, and set it up on the internet set to obey any commands it recognized? And then you put this thing within earshot of your TV with the volume turned up loud enough to ensure it could hear it?
And they didn't 'hack' you. They didn't run an exploit, overflow a buffer, or escape from the sandbox. They issued a request... literally a verbal request, in plain english. And your system was setup to audibly play their content, to listen to anything audible, and consent to anything it recognized.
Are you sure you aren't a little bit responsible here?
As always, It's all about intent right? What did BK intend? They wanted to get your device to play you a 2ndary ad. Nobody disputes that.
What exactly did "you" intend? When you setup an always listening device within earshot of your TV set to obey any audio command that it recognized? You did THAT? but simultaneously didn't intend for it do things the TV said?
I mean, i don't want to blame the victim; but this isn't a girl wearing provocative clothing getting assaulted.
This is a girl wearing provocative clothing, simply being approached and politely asked for a photo. The fact that she's gone and rigged her phone to always be listening and to automatically send photos of herself naked to anyone who asks for a photo is really on her. Maybe she only "intended" her boyfriend to get pictures? Well, sorry, that's not the system she setup.
child: Alexa... get me a dollhouse... Alexa: dollhouse added to cart!...5 hours later... you: Alexa... order paper towels. Alexa: paper towels added added to cart! you: complete order. pin 1234.
Alexa: Thanks for your order of paper towels and a dollhouse.
you: wtf?
Sure you could ask alexa to laboriously read your cart back to you... but nobody does. This is amazon... 1 click ordering. Nobody looks at their cart, or confirms there address, or even confirms their order.
next question being, how is this not "unauthorized use of a computer system"?
You going to sue the neighbors when they slam their door and it activates your clapper and turns off all your lights?
Your the fool who setup a totally unsecured voice activated box next to a TV setup to play audio you don't control.
For what it's worth, I agree BK shouldn't be doing this; but on some level I think BK should get an award for generating awareness about "yet another" massive IoT security flaw, by getting your device to talk about Whoppers.
And what happens when some indie band includes ok google commands on their net album.
The notion that an audio clip of a simple sentence is a 'viable' hack is absurd. It simply exposes a defective product design for what it is.
BK isn't going to be the last to exploit this, and some of the other parties are going to be doing much narrower targeted and more damaging, even truly criminal attacks; google can't fingerprint and block them all, nor can it retaliate against them all.
Yup. I missed those although i alluded a bit to them getting hacked.
I also missed that obsolescence angle... that the door lock in a house built in 1950 still works fine, but your new IoT lock probably won't be compatible with the next generation or 3's 'hub' (within 5-10 years), the old app that came with the old hub won't work your new phone... the app that works with your new phone won't work with old hub; the old hub and the new hub won't work with eachother... etc etc etc...
You can say, "Alexa, goodnight," and all the lights turn off, the tv turns off, any electronics turn off, the AC adjusts, and Alexa makes sure the doors are locked and reports their state.
And then you change your wifi password and spend 3 days chasing down random things you forgot about.
Then the over priced door lock breaks, and you don't even notice for 3 months. It mean... it says it was locking and unlockng but the bolt wasn't moving.
Then some sensor flakes out and turns your heat off. And worse, you turn it on manually... and then it promptly gets signaled to turn off a few seconds later. And your not home... and your wife has to unplug the nest to stop it from shutting the heat off until you can get home to figure out what is wrong.
Meanwhile the asshole kids next door figured out how to take remote control of your smart TV...
While watching tv, you can use Alexa to pause, play, skip forward/backward, and change the volume, etc.
Unless you turn it up to high by accident and Alexa can't hear you telling it to turn it back down.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
And then your son storms upstairs pissed that you screwed up his guild raid with your bullshit... again.
With Alexa, you can control anything the Logitech Harmony Elite can control. So, anything with IR and many WIFI controlled devices.
Yeah, I have one of those. I love it. But its also pretty fallible. It'll end up on the wrong TV input, it'll get its states mixed up 'toggle power' on the wrong thing or put the HTPC which was awake to sleep when i select it. No big deal, tap tap tap... problem fixed. I really don't want to talk to it... or have 3 people in the room all trying to fix it by issuing voice commands.
Once you can trigger events across your home with your voice and not just turn on a light, you just can't go back.
Yeah, lets come back to this one.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
I pretty much guarantee you that you spent more time setting that mode up, then I'd ever get back using it.
And THAT is where home automation is at. Its a great toy for the person who WANTS to play with it; who enjoys spending hours setting up programs they'll only use twice. Who enjoys debugging all the glitches. Who's ok when a power surge blows $500 worth of smart light bulbs. Who doesn't mind doing a firmware upgrade on his front door lock.
But for the average person, no, its not like caller id. Caller id is simple and just works. And when it fails, it just says unknown number and you have to pick up the call to find out who it is or let it go to voice mail. Home automation is a rube-goldberg machine that is a lot of fun if you like building and maintaining rube goldberg machines -- but its not practical and it frequently fails in pretty spectacular ways.
I am enraged at how our tax dollars have been abused by our governments (both Liberal and Conservative), and politicians in particular.
Of course you are, when you get down to brass tacks there's a ton of waste, and lots of inefficiency and ineffective programs. If you look at a large corporation they are pretty awful too... its hard to run a big organization lean and efficient. Its especially hard to run a big organization the size of the government efficiently that doesn't even have profitability its overriding raison d'etre.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a way to "make things right" here in Canada. And nobody here seems to be particularly concerned. The head in the sand mentality is pretty ingrained in Canadian culture, we are very complacent.
Making things right to your satisfaction would require that:
a) there were known solutions to various management and resource allocation problems. This doesn't exist. Nobody's "figured it out". Too much committee oversight and consensus decision making and things grind to a halt; the more you streamline things, the more corruption sets in due to the lack of oversight. A panel spends 6 months studying an issue and makes no dramatic actions and the problem isn't solved... you put one guy in charge and now its resolved in 10 minutes but even odds he just awarded the contract to his brother with a big kickback and his brother wasn't qualified to do the work. At the end of the day Canada has a relatively effective system; yeah things move far too slow, there is far too much waste, there is too much corruption, etc etc...but there is no known solution to that. It sucks and we can make improvements, but there is no "solution". Government isn't a solved problem that Canada has just failed to implement properly. Its an unsolved problem that Canada is doing better at than most. I'm open to there being LOTS of room for improvement... but nobody has it figured out, nor even how to effectively manage making changes.
And b) we would have to agree on what 'right' even is. That will never happen either. We have half a dozen political parties with pretty varied platforms... i think a lot of spending on the arts is a complete waste; for some people its a sacred cow... and yet I do support spending on the arts... while others think it should just be cut completely. We aren't going to reduce all 'waste' because we can't even agree on what a lot of the waste is.
Maybe this will cut down a little on spam and clickbait?
Or maybe it will ramp it up, since now they have to get 10,000 views... and the best way to do that is with spam, clickbait, and maybe even some outright clickfraud.
if I ask google for music, it just plays the music from google music (granted you need to have a subscription)
So your argument is that it doesn't upsell you for a service you are paying a google a monthly subscription for?
Got it... so if you already use Bing search and bing maps, and Edge, and Office 365 and Azure and Windows Defender, and Windows 10 Pro, then Cortana doesn't try upselling or converting you to MS services? Sweet.
I think your right, its ultimately a positive thing to see Bannon removed.
However, the fact that Trump only trusts his family is a huge problem. It might "work" in a private family company; but it is fundamentally at odds with how government should be.
IMO There should be laws in place to prevent such nepotism -- because the bond of family is a counter force to transparency and integrity with respect to their obligation to represent the public interest etc.
Hell, many corporations for example have policies prohibiting too much nepotism -- preventing direct reports from being family members, etc. Because it's well documented that loyalty and favortism within the family bond frequently is at odds with their obligations corporate interests.
Trump running the whitehouse like a family business... will ultimately only serves trum; not the public interest.
Know what treats everyone equally, regardless of their 'means'? A bullet.
Ooooh... big deal.
So does kleenex, and scissors, and the moon, and lice, and the pacific ocean, and spaghetti, and alligators... and every other inanimate object ever, along with all plants, and all non-human animals too.
Its really only a subset of people who treat people with 'means' any differently.
"Only on slashdot are we presented with an example of a startup giving complete control of rental housing pricing to the renters"
How do you figure? The landlord can still reject anyone they don't like, they won't be forced to rent below their 'reserve price' if they don't want to. All it does is pit renters directly against each other not only to "qualify" but now you'll have to compete by offering more money too.
Meanwhile the company is not just offering this as a service for a flat fee or even a percentage of the rental -- they want a residual income stream for as long as the rental goes on.
You know what adding another middleman to the deal means? It means the prices go up. Period. Further, it complicates the ability to even negotiate rent with the landlord in the future, since this company is now sitting in the middle taking a piece of each months rent for doing fuck all beyond extracting a higher rate from you in the first place.
So yeah.. if you are a renter this is pretty much awful. If you are landlord, it's not necessarily too bad, although most landlords aren't going to be keen to see any money flowing to this company month after month that they think should be going to them. I mean... all it should take is "another startup" that charges a flat 25$ fee with no bullshit residuals to kill these guys outright. Wonder if that will happen? Or will they get total market capture like MLS for property sales, and then not using the system becomes a disadvantage.
Slashdot Mirror
A movie review that contains plat elements, stills, quotes, and even clips is a derivative work.
It's perfectly legal, under fair use. (as a critical work)
Being derivative has no bearing on whether or not it is fair use.
Fan subbing, is an "accessibility" transformation, and should be a fair use work, especially if it is produced non-commericially and distributed for free, separately from the copy protected film.
"Oh good, then people renting suburban homes are practically immune to being evicted by owners who want to turn them into Airbnb rentals."
Depends exactly how "suburban". Far enough away from amenities, and public transit etc, then yeah... airbnb people aren't remotely as interested.
Yes, "I can't afford to invest in my future" is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Heh. The number one rule of smart investing is diversification. For the average middle class family to buy a 2nd house (and not just some small affordable rental income property in the suburbs... it pretty much has to be "downtown" to be much of a draw to airbnb guests...
Then you are tying up 100,000 to 200,000 just in the down payment; and taking on a large 2nd mortgage.
If your net worth is say, 500,000; and half of that is in your primary residence, would you put the rest all in one stock? even a blue-chip? Of course not! And putting it all into one single property, in the same city you live... that's just asking for trouble.
But that's what it would take... minimum just for a reasonable downpayment on a hot commodity condo downtown in these cities. Plus you are taking on a huge debt load that you're going to need nearly constant tenants to cover.
No, you need a net worth of 1.5M+ before it starts making sense to considering buying a 2nd property in a market like that.
There's LOTs of middle class people with net worths under a million dollars.
Those people aren't in the middle class.
People who are renting aren't middle class? Graduated university, got a decent job, single, renting a condo or apartment in the city near where they work, living comfortably and saving money every month, but don't have a hundred thousand in cash for a down payment... or who would prefer to rent to stay more mobile, maybe even living with a roomate 90's 'Friends' style and don't want the commitment of a joint mortgage with those people... etc.
OR maybe their on a short term contract, so it doesn't make sense to buy a home.
That's not the working poor, and that's not 'dumb asses' either.
Chickens are frequently fed soybean meal so maybe they drew the wrong conclusions from DNA tests...
Yet the chicken meat at Wendy's, McDonalds, A&W... etc were all 85%+ chicken DNA. Only the chicken meat from subway was 50% chicken DNA.
The lab also was so surprised by the Subway results, that they did the test over again with completely new samples BEFORE publishing... and got the same results.
Why can't the middle class also buy up condos/homes and put them on AirBNB?
Get a clue... the middle class lacks the free money to buy an extra house just to rent out. Many in the middle class are often themselves renting because they don't have the free money to buy even a house for themselves, nevermind a spare one to rent out... meanwhile they are being evicted from those rentals so the owner can rent it by the day more lucratively on sites like airbnb.
Your solution to them being kicked out their rental to make room for airbnb, is to buy 2 houses; so that they too can benefit from airbnb!
"Let them eat cake!" am i right?
What if Russia nukes the whole of USA?
What are you trying to preserve in the event of nuclear holocaust?
Are you a librarian concerned about preserving humanities knowledge through another dark age? Or are you concerned about preserving the Xena fan fiction you were writing?
The former might consider hard copy and tapes in out of the way bunkers... the latter probably has more pressing things to worry about...
Which doesn't exonerate BK at all, any more than an open unlocked front door exonerates an intruder.
Yes and no. I mean, I think you are right. But there are fatal flaws in your analogy.
An unlocked open door with no signage or markings forbidding entry... is it illegal to enter? That gets to be a grey area. In most places to be charged with trespassing without clear signage and barriers to entry you would have to be asked to leave before you can be charged with trespassing. (not all jurisdictions are the same... but this is the most usual case).
Your -home- is a little more protected, with precedents that raise the bar to entering one's home. So not all open doors are equal.
Now, suppose that someone came to your front door, said 'please open the door', and your door opened. A reasonable person would say that amounts to consent -- where you opened the door, or whether you installed a voice activated device to open the door upon request. Sure you can ask them to leave, and if they don't they are tresspassing. But they didn't walk in, they didn't do anything to your door... they *asked*, and the door opened.
And that, to me, is what puts BK in a unique situation. Their commercial made a request, and not just an abstract request the way a PC requests a file via HTTP, or the way a laptop asks to join a wifi access point... it made a plain old verbal request in a the most natural and human understood way possible.
I think it's problematic to criminalize that. The whole notion of consent requires that I be able to ask for consent without that itself being criminal. If it had said, "call now for your free sample" that shouldn't be criminal ... its up to you to decide to call now or not. It's clearly BK's intent that you call now, but it's absurd to characterize that as anything but a request.
Here, they intended to trigger any device that within earshot to perform an action. But at the end of the stay... they just asked. I don't think they are entirely in the right here... but at the same time, I think its kind of on you if you have a device setup to listen and do whatever commands it hears.
In the same way a TV show that records a cast member clapping... if that turns your lights on and off... that's on you. Even if the TV show did it as a 4th wall breaking prank (ie they intended to trigger any clappers in range).
You set up a listening device in your house that responds to voice commands. You then turned the TV on. These are two unconnected things. By turning on the TV, you do not intend to activate the device
Suppose you set up a motion sensor to detect theives in your yard and set it up to take a photo and upload it to the cloud whenever it was triggered.
Then you bought a decorative windmill and placed it in your yard within sight of the sensor. These are two unconnected things. By installing the wind mill you presumably did not intend to activate the motion sensor and fill your cloud drive with pictures of your windmill every time the wind blew.
But it is nobodies fault but your own that this happened.
"Google presumably did not intend the device to be used to respond to TV shows"
But it makes no effort and has no apparent effort to differentiate between my voice, a recording of my voice, someone elses voice, a recording of someone elses voice... and when you set this up, just like the motion activated camera... this should have been obvious to the point that you should take some ownership of the fallout. A pissed off neighbor yelling at his google device loud enough to be heard by yours will set yours off too...
This its not merely bad security... it is 'no attempt at security whatsoever'.
""Mr. Trumpâ(TM)s policy is a return to the one followed by presidents who preceded Mr. Obama." (NYT). No mention of that in the summary."
vs
" White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision to reverse the Obama-era policy..."
Hints: "the Obama-era policy" means a policy introduced in the Obama administration.
And if Trump had created a completely new policy, it would not have been a 'reversal'. A reversal of direction implies going back where you came from.
It should be fairly reasonable to anyone without a bag of hammers standing in for a brain that *reversing* a policy Obama instituted defaults to a return to the previous policy. aka ... the policy followed by presidents who preceded Obama.
Yes, its not as explicit as coming out and saying it, but its a SUMMARY, if it included every explicit detail of the full article it would not be a summary. So the summary implied a detail that was made explicit in the full article... so what was your problem?
"I do. Every time. If you don't, that's on you. Not on Amazon."
When you place with an order on amazon via a browser? Or when you place it entirely with the Alexa voice assistant without even looking at a screen?
I suspect you were talking about the former, and if you read my post, I was talking about the latter.
People like you probably don't even use voice assistants like Alexa to place orders. I know I don't. But the people who do are the people who do use one-click ordering, and don't confirm their cart.
"They manipulated my 'computer' from far way through sound waves to do their bidding, on purpose, repeatedly."
When you turn your computer on, and navigate to a webpage, the remote computer, through the internet sends files to your PC that manipulates what is displayed on your computer to show you what it wants to show you. Are they hacking your computer?
What if they send you video file and it starts playing? what if they send you some javascript (and you've enabled javascript) and a little program runs on your computer inside the browser sandbox all nice and proper? Are they hacking your computer?
Presumably this is ok, because you turned on your computer and requested that it do this?
Well.. didn't you also purchase this google thing, with an always on microphone, and set it up on the internet set to obey any commands it recognized? And then you put this thing within earshot of your TV with the volume turned up loud enough to ensure it could hear it?
And they didn't 'hack' you. They didn't run an exploit, overflow a buffer, or escape from the sandbox. They issued a request... literally a verbal request, in plain english. And your system was setup to audibly play their content, to listen to anything audible, and consent to anything it recognized.
Are you sure you aren't a little bit responsible here?
As always, It's all about intent right? What did BK intend? They wanted to get your device to play you a 2ndary ad. Nobody disputes that.
What exactly did "you" intend? When you setup an always listening device within earshot of your TV set to obey any audio command that it recognized? You did THAT? but simultaneously didn't intend for it do things the TV said?
I mean, i don't want to blame the victim; but this isn't a girl wearing provocative clothing getting assaulted.
This is a girl wearing provocative clothing, simply being approached and politely asked for a photo. The fact that she's gone and rigged her phone to always be listening and to automatically send photos of herself naked to anyone who asks for a photo is really on her. Maybe she only "intended" her boyfriend to get pictures? Well, sorry, that's not the system she setup.
you "press" order? In a voice activated system?
child: Alexa... get me a dollhouse... ...5 hours later...
Alexa: dollhouse added to cart!
you: Alexa... order paper towels.
Alexa: paper towels added added to cart!
you: complete order. pin 1234.
Alexa: Thanks for your order of paper towels and a dollhouse.
you: wtf?
Sure you could ask alexa to laboriously read your cart back to you... but nobody does. This is amazon... 1 click ordering. Nobody looks at their cart, or confirms there address, or even confirms their order.
next question being, how is this not "unauthorized use of a computer system"?
You going to sue the neighbors when they slam their door and it activates your clapper and turns off all your lights?
Your the fool who setup a totally unsecured voice activated box next to a TV setup to play audio you don't control.
For what it's worth, I agree BK shouldn't be doing this; but on some level I think BK should get an award for generating awareness about "yet another" massive IoT security flaw, by getting your device to talk about Whoppers.
And what happens when some indie band includes ok google commands on their net album.
The notion that an audio clip of a simple sentence is a 'viable' hack is absurd. It simply exposes a defective product design for what it is.
BK isn't going to be the last to exploit this, and some of the other parties are going to be doing much narrower targeted and more damaging, even truly criminal attacks; google can't fingerprint and block them all, nor can it retaliate against them all.
It has to fix its product. Full stop.
Yup. I missed those although i alluded a bit to them getting hacked.
I also missed that obsolescence angle... that the door lock in a house built in 1950 still works fine, but your new IoT lock probably won't be compatible with the next generation or 3's 'hub' (within 5-10 years), the old app that came with the old hub won't work your new phone... the app that works with your new phone won't work with old hub; the old hub and the new hub won't work with eachother... etc etc etc...
You can say, "Alexa, goodnight," and all the lights turn off, the tv turns off, any electronics turn off, the AC adjusts, and Alexa makes sure the doors are locked and reports their state.
And then you change your wifi password and spend 3 days chasing down random things you forgot about.
Then the over priced door lock breaks, and you don't even notice for 3 months. It mean... it says it was locking and unlockng but the bolt wasn't moving.
Then some sensor flakes out and turns your heat off. And worse, you turn it on manually... and then it promptly gets signaled to turn off a few seconds later. And your not home... and your wife has to unplug the nest to stop it from shutting the heat off until you can get home to figure out what is wrong.
Meanwhile the asshole kids next door figured out how to take remote control of your smart TV...
While watching tv, you can use Alexa to pause, play, skip forward/backward, and change the volume, etc.
Unless you turn it up to high by accident and Alexa can't hear you telling it to turn it back down.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
And then your son storms upstairs pissed that you screwed up his guild raid with your bullshit ... again.
With Alexa, you can control anything the Logitech Harmony Elite can control. So, anything with IR and many WIFI controlled devices.
Yeah, I have one of those. I love it. But its also pretty fallible. It'll end up on the wrong TV input, it'll get its states mixed up 'toggle power' on the wrong thing or put the HTPC which was awake to sleep when i select it. No big deal, tap tap tap... problem fixed. I really don't want to talk to it... or have 3 people in the room all trying to fix it by issuing voice commands.
Once you can trigger events across your home with your voice and not just turn on a light, you just can't go back.
Yeah, lets come back to this one.
You can have home presets, where you can say, "Alexa, it's party time," and all the Hue lights set their colors and brightness, the AC turns adjusts, party music fills the house, and all the TV's in the house turn on and tune in various sports channels.
I pretty much guarantee you that you spent more time setting that mode up, then I'd ever get back using it.
And THAT is where home automation is at. Its a great toy for the person who WANTS to play with it; who enjoys spending hours setting up programs they'll only use twice. Who enjoys debugging all the glitches. Who's ok when a power surge blows $500 worth of smart light bulbs. Who doesn't mind doing a firmware upgrade on his front door lock.
But for the average person, no, its not like caller id. Caller id is simple and just works. And when it fails, it just says unknown number and you have to pick up the call to find out who it is or let it go to voice mail. Home automation is a rube-goldberg machine that is a lot of fun if you like building and maintaining rube goldberg machines -- but its not practical and it frequently fails in pretty spectacular ways.
"Why did they include Agnes McPhail and not Emily Murphy?"
Seems like a weird thing to nit pick about.
Maybe because she advocated Eugenics and compulsory sterilization?
Or maybe because she's one of the Famous Five, and was already present on the 2004 to 2011 Fifty?
I am enraged at how our tax dollars have been abused by our governments (both Liberal and Conservative), and politicians in particular.
Of course you are, when you get down to brass tacks there's a ton of waste, and lots of inefficiency and ineffective programs. If you look at a large corporation they are pretty awful too... its hard to run a big organization lean and efficient. Its especially hard to run a big organization the size of the government efficiently that doesn't even have profitability its overriding raison d'etre.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a way to "make things right" here in Canada. And nobody here seems to be particularly concerned. The head in the sand mentality is pretty ingrained in Canadian culture, we are very complacent.
Making things right to your satisfaction would require that:
a) there were known solutions to various management and resource allocation problems. This doesn't exist. Nobody's "figured it out". Too much committee oversight and consensus decision making and things grind to a halt; the more you streamline things, the more corruption sets in due to the lack of oversight. A panel spends 6 months studying an issue and makes no dramatic actions and the problem isn't solved... you put one guy in charge and now its resolved in 10 minutes but even odds he just awarded the contract to his brother with a big kickback and his brother wasn't qualified to do the work. At the end of the day Canada has a relatively effective system; yeah things move far too slow, there is far too much waste, there is too much corruption, etc etc...but there is no known solution to that. It sucks and we can make improvements, but there is no "solution". Government isn't a solved problem that Canada has just failed to implement properly. Its an unsolved problem that Canada is doing better at than most. I'm open to there being LOTS of room for improvement... but nobody has it figured out, nor even how to effectively manage making changes.
And b) we would have to agree on what 'right' even is. That will never happen either. We have half a dozen political parties with pretty varied platforms... i think a lot of spending on the arts is a complete waste; for some people its a sacred cow... and yet I do support spending on the arts... while others think it should just be cut completely. We aren't going to reduce all 'waste' because we can't even agree on what a lot of the waste is.
Maybe this will cut down a little on spam and clickbait?
Or maybe it will ramp it up, since now they have to get 10,000 views... and the best way to do that is with spam, clickbait, and maybe even some outright clickfraud.
if I ask google for music, it just plays the music from google music (granted you need to have a subscription)
So your argument is that it doesn't upsell you for a service you are paying a google a monthly subscription for?
Got it... so if you already use Bing search and bing maps, and Edge, and Office 365 and Azure and Windows Defender, and Windows 10 Pro, then Cortana doesn't try upselling or converting you to MS services? Sweet.
wtf
I think your right, its ultimately a positive thing to see Bannon removed.
However, the fact that Trump only trusts his family is a huge problem. It might "work" in a private family company; but it is fundamentally at odds with how government should be.
IMO There should be laws in place to prevent such nepotism -- because the bond of family is a counter force to transparency and integrity with respect to their obligation to represent the public interest etc.
Hell, many corporations for example have policies prohibiting too much nepotism -- preventing direct reports from being family members, etc. Because it's well documented that loyalty and favortism within the family bond frequently is at odds with their obligations corporate interests.
Trump running the whitehouse like a family business... will ultimately only serves trum; not the public interest.
Know what treats everyone equally, regardless of their 'means'? A bullet.
Ooooh... big deal.
So does kleenex, and scissors, and the moon, and lice, and the pacific ocean, and spaghetti, and alligators... and every other inanimate object ever, along with all plants, and all non-human animals too.
Its really only a subset of people who treat people with 'means' any differently.
" whereas if the landlord asks for $700/month and the highest bid is $600, Rentberry gets $25/month from the tenant. "
Or more likely, the landlord will just not rent to anyone at all.
And perhaps re-list a month later at 700. Or... perhaps worst case $625 since he knows some tenants will pay at least that much.
"Only on slashdot are we presented with an example of a startup giving complete control of rental housing pricing to the renters"
How do you figure? The landlord can still reject anyone they don't like, they won't be forced to rent below their 'reserve price' if they don't want to. All it does is pit renters directly against each other not only to "qualify" but now you'll have to compete by offering more money too.
Meanwhile the company is not just offering this as a service for a flat fee or even a percentage of the rental -- they want a residual income stream for as long as the rental goes on.
You know what adding another middleman to the deal means? It means the prices go up. Period. Further, it complicates the ability to even negotiate rent with the landlord in the future, since this company is now sitting in the middle taking a piece of each months rent for doing fuck all beyond extracting a higher rate from you in the first place.
So yeah.. if you are a renter this is pretty much awful. If you are landlord, it's not necessarily too bad, although most landlords aren't going to be keen to see any money flowing to this company month after month that they think should be going to them. I mean... all it should take is "another startup" that charges a flat 25$ fee with no bullshit residuals to kill these guys outright. Wonder if that will happen? Or will they get total market capture like MLS for property sales, and then not using the system becomes a disadvantage.