I've found in a lot of cases that when people complain about "technical terms" and "geek talk", it usually turns out to be phrases used by suits, not techs.
So include a factor for inherent self-assurance which does not match reality. It could take into account a speaker's history of statements vs real-world data, and one for amount of time spent in the public eye. To get a high probability score, a speaker would have to have a long record of making accurate statements.
It might even be possible to give them different ratings for different topics. Someone could be incredibly accurate about their area of expertise, but completely off-target in others. There might also be indicators of how likely they were to make stuff up out of whole cloth, whether they tended to tell the whole truth (or just a known percentage), and whether their previous statements tended to hold up over time.
"Yeah, Senator Brickbat's pretty accurate on pollution and parks, but has no clue when it comes to poverty. Her remarks on paper production tend to be mostly true for about 12 months, but her pond preservation stuff doesn't tend to kick in until the five-year mark."
In fact, given sufficient numbers of politicians who are known to speak in certain patterns of truth, falsehood, and complete reality disconnection on certain subjects, it might even be possible to compensate, cross-check, and determine what's most likely to be actually true across the board.
Don't just limit it to politicians, either. Test the traditional media, superbloggers, and interested parties, and not just from the local area. Overseas organisations can often provide surprising insights and data points about local matters.
Sure, some of the historical analysis won't be able to be performed in real time, but it'll color any future statements from the same source and be a way to identify patterns of astroturfing, spamming, spruiking, pitching, agenda pushing and the like.
This doesn't mean I can't invent the teleporter and make squillions from everyone who *does* use one.
The first thing I'll buy will be a huge chunk of land with a little house in the middle and NO FRIGGING TELEPORTERS. I'll be the only guy not neighbours with everyone else on the planet.
One question - how the flying foozberries can software be inherently illegal? It's a pattern of ones and zeroes - essentially, a really large number. Someone gonna make math illegal? (Insert Dubya joke here.)
It's what you *do* with the tools you have that may be illegal. Degrade someone else's service or data? That's about the only pure cybercrime I can think of. Everything else generally requires an external source of (possibly illegally obtained) input or is just shouting ones and zeros into the abyss and listening for echoes.
- we have a new excuse for legalising illegal wiretapping and making it mandatory for Americans' PCs to spy on their owners! Because if we don't, those strangely elusive terrorists will have won. Again.
There are ways to slow down the process. One that I saw from the sidelines was the 'business case and budget' model. If a developer or department wanted to use the corporate standard, they got free setup, free support, free or very cheap resources, and if it broke someone else had to fix it.
If they wanted to do their own thing, they had to write up a business case saying why their method was better. Almost any half-competent case was accepted, but it was amazing how many requests for 200 copies of Krazy Karl's Software-O-Matic died aborning because the requester apparently didn't consider it so much better that they'd be prepared to hack out a four-page writeup explaining the pros and cons.
The other side of the equation was budget and support. If they bought something non-corporate-approved, they got zero support, had to handle all the running costs, problems and third-party liaison themselves, were responsible for fixing it if it broke, and if it caused problems for any other department the IT area could confiscate their baby and toss it in the dumpster.
Of course, they could get around this by asking that Krazy Karl's Software-O-Matic be made a corporate standard. THAT was a process which involved months of testing against the SOE, required extremely detailed business cases which were actually scrutinzed by beancounters, and more red tape than any five projects.
But, y'know, not technically impossible. It's just that even the most vehement evangelists for Krazy Karl tended to lose their enthusiasm when presented with the relevant stack of paperwork and timeframes that included the next couple of business quarters.
From a helpdesk perspective, it was great. We never had to tell a developer 'no', we just had to point them to the intranet page which detailed their options and then hang up before they got far enough into the small print to realise they were boned.
Except that when people see a screen with an ad on it, they block it from their conciousness or look away, thus missing anything else that might come up on that screen.
I can't wait for reality-overlay sunglasses with built-in adblockers.
I simply make myself as financially toxic to all telemarketers as possible. I waste their time. I try and get the caller to quit their job, or at least break them to the point where they are less efficient. I've dreamed up assorted CTI/hardware nationally-networked tarpits for the sole purpose of making telemarketing unviable.
Telemarketing, along with spamming and door-to-door religion, has a business model which involves exploiting and damaging the normal social interaction model for profit at the expense of the general public. I have no qualms whatsoever about exploiting them right back for maximum damage.
We can just flood the Chinese market with cheap videocameras and satellite uplinks. All we need is somewhere that can produce huge amounts of cheap electronics - oh.
Of course not. You don't think Activation was designed to actually be secure, do you? It was designed to annoy enough of the genuine customers to make them think that the Authorities Were On The Case. Kind of like airport security.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought most of the internet consisted of pink, breast-aware sites already?
My next SL home is going to be New York.
And how much of it is Marketingmumble?
I've found in a lot of cases that when people complain about "technical terms" and "geek talk", it usually turns out to be phrases used by suits, not techs.
(Fifty chairwarmers being employed to do a job that would take ten if allowed to do it correctly, five if allowed to hire competent staff.)
Does anybody get gas as cheap as it is in the US?
It might even be possible to give them different ratings for different topics. Someone could be incredibly accurate about their area of expertise, but completely off-target in others. There might also be indicators of how likely they were to make stuff up out of whole cloth, whether they tended to tell the whole truth (or just a known percentage), and whether their previous statements tended to hold up over time.
"Yeah, Senator Brickbat's pretty accurate on pollution and parks, but has no clue when it comes to poverty. Her remarks on paper production tend to be mostly true for about 12 months, but her pond preservation stuff doesn't tend to kick in until the five-year mark."
In fact, given sufficient numbers of politicians who are known to speak in certain patterns of truth, falsehood, and complete reality disconnection on certain subjects, it might even be possible to compensate, cross-check, and determine what's most likely to be actually true across the board.
Don't just limit it to politicians, either. Test the traditional media, superbloggers, and interested parties, and not just from the local area. Overseas organisations can often provide surprising insights and data points about local matters.
Sure, some of the historical analysis won't be able to be performed in real time, but it'll color any future statements from the same source and be a way to identify patterns of astroturfing, spamming, spruiking, pitching, agenda pushing and the like.
I'm gonna tee the datastream and back myself up to disk once a day, in case of fatal accident.
Sure! I'll even discount my services to $50 an hour!
This doesn't mean I can't invent the teleporter and make squillions from everyone who *does* use one. The first thing I'll buy will be a huge chunk of land with a little house in the middle and NO FRIGGING TELEPORTERS. I'll be the only guy not neighbours with everyone else on the planet.
One question - how the flying foozberries can software be inherently illegal? It's a pattern of ones and zeroes - essentially, a really large number. Someone gonna make math illegal? (Insert Dubya joke here.) It's what you *do* with the tools you have that may be illegal. Degrade someone else's service or data? That's about the only pure cybercrime I can think of. Everything else generally requires an external source of (possibly illegally obtained) input or is just shouting ones and zeros into the abyss and listening for echoes.
How many of those immigrants snuck over the southern border to escape intolerable conditions and worse government?
95% of world population still not American. Rest of world says "Ameri-where?"
- we have a new excuse for legalising illegal wiretapping and making it mandatory for Americans' PCs to spy on their owners! Because if we don't, those strangely elusive terrorists will have won. Again.
Yes, but the lag times would be a bitch.
If they wanted to do their own thing, they had to write up a business case saying why their method was better. Almost any half-competent case was accepted, but it was amazing how many requests for 200 copies of Krazy Karl's Software-O-Matic died aborning because the requester apparently didn't consider it so much better that they'd be prepared to hack out a four-page writeup explaining the pros and cons.
The other side of the equation was budget and support. If they bought something non-corporate-approved, they got zero support, had to handle all the running costs, problems and third-party liaison themselves, were responsible for fixing it if it broke, and if it caused problems for any other department the IT area could confiscate their baby and toss it in the dumpster.
Of course, they could get around this by asking that Krazy Karl's Software-O-Matic be made a corporate standard. THAT was a process which involved months of testing against the SOE, required extremely detailed business cases which were actually scrutinzed by beancounters, and more red tape than any five projects.
But, y'know, not technically impossible. It's just that even the most vehement evangelists for Krazy Karl tended to lose their enthusiasm when presented with the relevant stack of paperwork and timeframes that included the next couple of business quarters.
From a helpdesk perspective, it was great. We never had to tell a developer 'no', we just had to point them to the intranet page which detailed their options and then hang up before they got far enough into the small print to realise they were boned.
I can't wait for reality-overlay sunglasses with built-in adblockers.
...but my keyboard just crashed :/
Hmm.
Not really seeing the down side...
And that's just from friendly fire!
It's an advantage to Microsoft if more people get confused and open their wallets, yes?
5,000 support staff to work around the extra bugs 5,000 hackers to remove the DRM and registration requirements 40,000 lawyers
Enterprise shoots first!
I simply make myself as financially toxic to all telemarketers as possible. I waste their time. I try and get the caller to quit their job, or at least break them to the point where they are less efficient. I've dreamed up assorted CTI/hardware nationally-networked tarpits for the sole purpose of making telemarketing unviable. Telemarketing, along with spamming and door-to-door religion, has a business model which involves exploiting and damaging the normal social interaction model for profit at the expense of the general public. I have no qualms whatsoever about exploiting them right back for maximum damage.
We can just flood the Chinese market with cheap videocameras and satellite uplinks. All we need is somewhere that can produce huge amounts of cheap electronics - oh.
Of course not. You don't think Activation was designed to actually be secure, do you? It was designed to annoy enough of the genuine customers to make them think that the Authorities Were On The Case. Kind of like airport security.