From its beginnings, the Hard Drive has leveled the playing field for all files. Everday files can have their content read by thousands, even millions of processes.
The Coalition of Unused Files believes that the desktop is a crucial engine for personal and economic growth. They are working together to urge System Admins to preserve IDE Neutrality, the First Amendment for the Desktop Hard Drive that ensures that the Desktop remains open to innovation and progress.
With the profusion of them, and PayPal's constant warnings that they would never ask for such information it's still amazing how many people will fall for this
The profusion meaning that more people are getting these, which explains why more people are falling for them.
You'll only read the constant warnings if you're a frequent PayPal user. I assume that most of the people who are caught in these schemes are infrequent PayPal users, like myself, who only created a PayPal account to buy a certain item off of eBay.
I don't get much spam, but I did start getting these phishing e-mails last year, and the first time I got one I admit I was taken: I was told that my PayPal account username had been repeatedly used with the incorrect password, and that I should log in for some reason (obviously, I wasn't thinking). Fortunately, a few things prevented me from actually giving away any useful information: the credit card that I had originally registered with PayPal was from a bank that I no longer use, and I completely forgot my username and password (and the Hotmail account I had used when I registered needed to be re-activated, so it took me a few days before I was able to access my account directly through the site.
It was a close call, and I felt pretty stupid, but it was mostly due to the fact that I really never received any spam through that e-mail account. All that account seems to receive, spam-wise, is PayPal phishing scams and bogus stock tips. Must be some flaw in the university spam filter.
especially as the spoofs get more slick and sophisticated.
So it's really not so amazing that people fall for this when the spoofs are slick and sophisticated.
Yet another example of how teenagers have few rights in the United States.
Psychologists are quite far from coming to a consensus on how the content of video games influences adolescent behavior or mental health, yet American legislators act as if they have conclusive proof.
Shouldn't a 14 year old be able to decide if he or she is ready to play a violent game?
Obviously they need to hook up with the College Bookstore Monopoly and just re-sell the same game media over and over at the same price.
That's a good point that you raise, although I might add that the re-selling of college textbooks typically does not provide any revenue to the publisher, and certainly none to the authors. Textbook authors are notoriously underpaid, textbooks are notoriously overpriced, and a big reason is re-selling. It's a great business for college bookstores, but not for publishers.
It's an interesting parallel though. If this keeps up, there is the potential that both used game prices and new game prices will both rise (as has happened with college textbooks - they're incredily expensive even when bought used!). In the end, that would obviously be bad for consumers.
This might be avoided, though, because games are fundamentally different than textbooks. Lots of people (sometimes me - I bought Dragon Quest VIII full-price because of the irresistable buzz) want the newest games, and will be willing to pay full-price even when cheaper alternatives sit on the shelves. Textbook companies can only release so many new editions (they need the writers - who are professors - to help, and to endorse the new edition by actually using it, which requires changing lectures, notes, etc), so old copies start building up fast, and students have absolutely no desire to get the newest copies if perfectly fine used ones are on the shelves for $5 less.
Of course, everyone knows a college kid will pay a ridiculous amount for some cool tech swag, but will scrimp and save on school supplies and books (and beer).
The event prompted talk-show hosts and newspaper columnists in Boston to lash out at Newton officials, arguing that they acted irresponsibly and could have jeopardized people's lives. But Mr. Cohen said he had also received many positive comments from people all over the country supporting his actions.
Regardless of whether this is news, it is important that the Newton officials get our support. You're right: the librarian did not act in an extraordinary manner. But these are extraordinary times, and public opinion is not necessarily on her side. I am happy to see Slashdotters affirming her decision to stand up for privacy.
Language acquisition is a lot more than speech recognition, of course. Speech production and speech comprehension are a big part, and likely much more complex. The poster is claiming that the development of a speech to text tool would aid language acquisition research because it would aid in transcription, which is a big part of the research. Those transcriptions may be used to train neural networks, but those neural networks are very far from what anyone would call an accurate model of language acquisition or human speech recognition. The transcriptions are also used as qualitative and quantitative data for linguists and psychologists interested in cognitive development.
Additionally, just because a useful algorithm is developed to parse a speech signal into symbols, that doesn't mean that's the way humans do it. Deep Blue might seem to play chess like a human, but it doesn't really play chess like a human, does it?
That was my first reaction, and then I remembered that he is a professor living in Kansas. That can't be very pleasant for him. He deserves to mindlessly flame occasionally.
And have you seen the faces on these guys (Dobson, Falwell, et al.)? They're awfully slap-worthy.
Slashdot Mirror
From its beginnings, the Hard Drive has leveled the playing field for all files. Everday files can have their content read by thousands, even millions of processes.
The Coalition of Unused Files believes that the desktop is a crucial engine for personal and economic growth. They are working together to urge System Admins to preserve IDE Neutrality, the First Amendment for the Desktop Hard Drive that ensures that the Desktop remains open to innovation and progress.
With the profusion of them, and PayPal's constant warnings that they would never ask for such information it's still amazing how many people will fall for this
The profusion meaning that more people are getting these, which explains why more people are falling for them.
You'll only read the constant warnings if you're a frequent PayPal user. I assume that most of the people who are caught in these schemes are infrequent PayPal users, like myself, who only created a PayPal account to buy a certain item off of eBay.
I don't get much spam, but I did start getting these phishing e-mails last year, and the first time I got one I admit I was taken: I was told that my PayPal account username had been repeatedly used with the incorrect password, and that I should log in for some reason (obviously, I wasn't thinking). Fortunately, a few things prevented me from actually giving away any useful information: the credit card that I had originally registered with PayPal was from a bank that I no longer use, and I completely forgot my username and password (and the Hotmail account I had used when I registered needed to be re-activated, so it took me a few days before I was able to access my account directly through the site.
It was a close call, and I felt pretty stupid, but it was mostly due to the fact that I really never received any spam through that e-mail account. All that account seems to receive, spam-wise, is PayPal phishing scams and bogus stock tips. Must be some flaw in the university spam filter.
especially as the spoofs get more slick and sophisticated.
So it's really not so amazing that people fall for this when the spoofs are slick and sophisticated.
Shouldn't a 14 year old be able to decide if he or she is ready to play a violent game?
Will this game satisfy my nearly life-long urge to play a game like Starflight (and Starflight 2) again?
That's a good point that you raise, although I might add that the re-selling of college textbooks typically does not provide any revenue to the publisher, and certainly none to the authors. Textbook authors are notoriously underpaid, textbooks are notoriously overpriced, and a big reason is re-selling. It's a great business for college bookstores, but not for publishers.
It's an interesting parallel though. If this keeps up, there is the potential that both used game prices and new game prices will both rise (as has happened with college textbooks - they're incredily expensive even when bought used!). In the end, that would obviously be bad for consumers.
This might be avoided, though, because games are fundamentally different than textbooks. Lots of people (sometimes me - I bought Dragon Quest VIII full-price because of the irresistable buzz) want the newest games, and will be willing to pay full-price even when cheaper alternatives sit on the shelves. Textbook companies can only release so many new editions (they need the writers - who are professors - to help, and to endorse the new edition by actually using it, which requires changing lectures, notes, etc), so old copies start building up fast, and students have absolutely no desire to get the newest copies if perfectly fine used ones are on the shelves for $5 less.
Of course, everyone knows a college kid will pay a ridiculous amount for some cool tech swag, but will scrimp and save on school supplies and books (and beer).
Language acquisition is a lot more than speech recognition, of course. Speech production and speech comprehension are a big part, and likely much more complex. The poster is claiming that the development of a speech to text tool would aid language acquisition research because it would aid in transcription, which is a big part of the research. Those transcriptions may be used to train neural networks, but those neural networks are very far from what anyone would call an accurate model of language acquisition or human speech recognition. The transcriptions are also used as qualitative and quantitative data for linguists and psychologists interested in cognitive development.
Additionally, just because a useful algorithm is developed to parse a speech signal into symbols, that doesn't mean that's the way humans do it. Deep Blue might seem to play chess like a human, but it doesn't really play chess like a human, does it?
and as a fundie I can tell you that you are misunderestimating how fat our faces are!
And have you seen the faces on these guys (Dobson, Falwell, et al.)? They're awfully slap-worthy.
And do I make that check out to "50 Cent" or "Fiddy Cent"?