Andrew 's BestNetTech Comments

Latest Comments (36)

• On the post: Boston Globe Posts Hilarious Fact-Challenged Interview About Regulating Google, Without Any Acknowledgement Of Errors

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2018 @ 11:37am

  The link to the article is:

  https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2018/06/14/how-you-regulate-tech-company/AzsdPubwCxaZyiuy6u0m3L/story.html
  
  It really is as bad as it looks, chock full of glaring idiocies and complete nonsense with no grounding in reality or the law or anything.
  
  The title is "How do you Regulate a Tech Company". It's a shame, because there are so many reasonable ideas on how to intelligently regulate tech companies to curb some problems. None of those reasonable ideas find a home in this article though, so don't even bother looking.
  
  But then, this same newspaper had an editorial a few days ago calling for Google to be broken up, because "Google accounts for about 90 percent of all Internet searches; by any honest assessment, it holds a monopoly at the very gateway to information in the modern world." Sigh.....

• On the post: Crowdfunded OpenSCHUFA Project Wants To Reverse-Engineer Germany's Main Credit-Scoring Algorithm

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2018 @ 07:11am

  Let's use VI

  :1,$s/Germany/United States/g

• On the post: YouTube Shows Dennis Prager's Claim Of Discrimination Against Conservatives Is Laughable

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 14 Mar, 2018 @ 12:00pm

  A slight double standard

  Aren't these many of the same people who whine about "violent games" and internet stuff harming our youth?

• On the post: UK's New 'Extremist Content' Filter Will Probably Just End Up Clogged With Innocuous Content

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2018 @ 10:23am

  Where to even begin

  I guess the place to begin is the *claim* that it is 94% effective with 99.995% accuracy. What's the background of ASI Data Sciences in doing research like this? What are the actual numbers? What was the test methodology? Was the training set composed solely of people being beheaded and cats playing piano?
  
  Next up is the false positive failure, already discussed at length. And the lack of transparency in the algorithm itself, the human review process and the apparently non-existent appeal process.
  
  We can segue into what the uses of this program will be next? Hate speech? Political speech? Civil Rights speech? If only it could be taught to take down videos of cats playing piano.
  
  I'd say it's a solution in search of a problem, but it's not at all clear it's even a solution. At least it was only 600K british pounds, so it's not like it was real money (that's a comment on the 600K, not the british pounds!)

• On the post: Canadian Supreme Court Says It's Fine To Censor The Global Internet; Authoritarians & Hollywood Cheer…

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 28 Jun, 2017 @ 01:30pm

  Once again, people forget that "google" != "the internet". Just because one search engine doesn't show listings for a particular site doesn't make that site vanish.
  
  Not that the court should have done anything at all, but wouldn't going after the hosting company been better? Or, you know, maybe the company actually doing something wrong (Datalink)?

• On the post: Cable Industry Quietly Shelves Its Bogus Plan To Make Cable Boxes Cheaper, More Competitive

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2017 @ 07:16am

  Re: "the industry makes $21 million annually in rental fees" -- From 100 or so million subscribers, you're hot on 20 CENTS a year?

  It's a typo. The figure (as widely reported everywhere) is in fact $21 Billion dollars. Insert Dr Evil pinky-pointing smirk here?

• On the post: The Chilling Effects Of A SLAPP Suit: My Story

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2017 @ 11:00am

  UMDNJ already had email

  I worked at UMDNJ (technically CMDNJ at the time), both in Newark and Piscataway in 1978 as a software engineer. We already had email at the time, plain old Arpanet email provided through Rutgers University (which we shared a campus with, because we were originally Rutgers Medical School, then CMDNJ up until 1981).
  
  I'm not sure what this new email program was, but I never heard of it and never used it. I had my rutgers[.edu] address, which if I recall was only one '!' away from decvax.

• On the post: Comcast Under Fire For Using Bullshit Fees To Covertly Raise Rates

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 01 May, 2017 @ 09:27am

  Re: This does and will keep happening,..

  Back in 2001, Spring started charging "Property Tax Recovery Fee" on all their phone bills.... so this has been going on for a while.

• On the post: San Diego Airport Says Recording TSA Gropings Is An Arrestible Offense?

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2010 @ 11:09am

  Film?

  What's "film"? I'm imagining an awesome loophole exists here. Keep a spare can of 35mm film in your pocket to hand over?

• On the post: Another ISP Fighting US Copyright Group Subpoenas; Why Aren't More ISPs Protecting Your Privacy?

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2010 @ 08:47am

  Comcast policy

  According to Comcast's Privacy page:

  "We make every reasonable effort to protect subscriber privacy as described in this notice. Nevertheless, we may be required by law to disclose personally identifiable information or individually identifiable CPNI about a subscriber. These disclosures may be made with or without the subscriber’s consent, and with or without notice, in compliance with the terms of valid legal process such as a subpoena, court order, or search warrant.

  For subscribers to our high-speed Internet and phone services, the Cable Act requires Comcast to disclose personally identifiable information and individually identifiable CPNI to a private third party in response to a court order, and we are required to notify the subscriber of the court order. The Cable Act requires us to disclose personally identifiable information and individually identifiable CPNI about subscribers to high-speed Internet and phone services to a government entity in response to a subpoena, court order, or search warrant, for example. We are usually prohibited from notifying the subscriber of any disclosure of personally identifiable information to a government entity by the terms of the subpoena, court order, or search warrant."

• On the post: Brooklyn Law School No Fan Of Due Process; Apparently Handing Names Over To MPAA [Updated]

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2009 @ 08:36am

  Violating their own terms of service

  The letter points to the terms of service (TOS) for using the network at the school. However, they are violating their own TOS at least twice:
  
  "You will not allow access to your account, including revealing user names, passwords, and other identifiers, to any unauthorized person." - I'd say the MPAA investigator is an unauthorized person
  
  "Privacy Notice:
  Brooklyn Law School takes privacy seriously. In general, we will not disclose or sell your data to third parties, except as required by law or judicial action, or as explicitly given permission by you. Brooklyn Law School is a not-for-profit educational institution; therefore, the disclosure of most of your data is governed by Federal Law."
  
  There is no law or judicial action here, so they are prevented by federal law from disclosing the information to the MPAA.

• On the post: Chamber Of Commerce Uses DMCA Claim Against Yes Men Prank Site

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2009 @ 06:35am

  A new "test"?

  "the site is most certainly not an obvious parody. It's designed to look real"

  Does that mean we have to change to a "moron in a hurry with no sense of humor" test?

• On the post: PRS's Latest Trick: Demanding Money From Shop Assistant Who Was Singing At Work

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2009 @ 01:26pm

  Has anyone looked at the "fees"?

  I actually surfed PRS's website (wow, talk about doublespeak!), and found what the fees are for a small shop to have a radio playing.
  
  It can easily add up to $1000-2000 per year for even a moderate sized shop. Just so they can have a radio playing a little music.
  
  And their FAQ on "Are you using commercial music" starts off with: "Despite what you might think, it is likely that you ARE using commercial music."
  
  It's just amazing how completely blindered these people are.

• On the post: Gartner Finally Realizes That Social Networking At Work Isn't Evil

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2009 @ 06:39am

  Some companies embrace these sites

  Our company has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and a few other sites, and actively encourages employees to participate. So not everyone just thinks of them as time wasters.

• On the post: Twitter, WordPress, Ning & GoDaddy All Sued In Mistargeted Lawsuit Over Defamation

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 05 Aug, 2009 @ 08:52am

  There are sanctions

  Look up "rule 11 sanctions".... I don't know why these aren't applied more often, especially to cases like this.

• On the post: Hacking The Friendly Skies In Boeing's New 787

  

  Andrew ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2008 @ 11:27am

  Re: VLANs, perhaps?

  And these switches are routinely broken, too. If there are two separate networks, there is no need whatsoever for there to *be* a switch connecting them, that's the point. Two separate sets of wires for two separate networks. Actually, more like 4 sets of wires; the avionics network is probably already triple-redundant anyway.