All of the comments I see here take a cynical view.
Considering that the discussion involves an insurance company, a cynical view is kind of inevitable.
You can complain about the use, but a tool (in this case a predictive model) is just a tool.
I don't think it's the tool as such which is the problem, but the many, varied, obvious ways in which it could be misused.
So, the poll should have asked "How many flesh-and-blood humans do you see with your eyes and without the aid of a camera or monitor?" or "How many people can you reach out and physically touch at this moment?". IRL, is too broad.
Well, to be fair, when you see "IRL" in an online post it is usually used to refer to someone you are physically communicating with, without the aid of a computer. Although the meaning of the actual words is quite broad, the meaning of the phrase is pretty clear.
But the line can certainly become blurry. I'm sitting next to my friend, who is also online. I just sent him an iChat message - does that mean I'm communicating with him IRL or not?
Also, I think I prefer the original poll to your suggestions. See, if I reached out to touch him I'd probably get a weird look, and if I attempted to conclusively verify that he was indeed flesh and blood I'd get something worse than just a look...
No, I've never done anything bad, officer.
It's all mine, officer.
I recently started pirating.
Until about a year ago, I didn't know how and wasn't interested to learn. Then I found a TV show I liked (haven't liked one since 'Allo 'allo originally aired, so I was pretty happy about that) but it doesn't air where I live. So I found the US based TV station website and tried to buy and download the show. When I had finally registered, given them tons of my personal information, credit card number etc, they refused to let me download anything with the message "This item doesn't ship outside the US". I tried iTunes and one or two other (legal) options with similar results. Then someone told me about torrent and I got everything I wanted pretty quickly and am not planning on looking back anytime soon, thank you very much.
Now, I realize that there may very well be ways I could legally purchase this content, and frankly I'd like to - I really like my show and would prefer it without TV station logos/promos on the screen or the occasional Swedish subtitles, not to mention the risk of low quality or viruses joining in on the download fun. But it's got to the point where it's just too much bother to try to get an American credit card or a VPN client or a full blown fake US identity or whatever it takes to do business with these guys. By the way, I've already emailed them, explained my problem and asked them nicely to please accept my money, and they didn't even deign to reply.
I understand that US TV stations have affiliates and there are contracts and other legal stuff, however, their current business model is actively encouraging their potential customers to learn piracy.
In short, those who claim they are losing by piracy are those who pushed me into learning it in the first place. Thanks guys, there's so much stuff out there I had no idea about!
I suppose it's ironic that they're basing the plant in the one state that people WILL buy with idealism instead of sense.
I don't think it's irony so much as simple practicality.
Tesla has always stated that they wanted to start with sexy, expensive cars and work their way towards full size, affordable cars. The S sedan is a step along the way. And economic downturn or not, there are still plenty of people willing to plonk down $50k for a luxury sedan. I'm quite sure they'll find a few buyers in the SF Bay Area.
I guess I'm wondering more about Facebook than about the users. I'm already thinking of leaving. Facebook, I'm pretty sure, wants us to stay. Thus, they don't want to push the users past the tolerance level, but right now, assuming I'm a prime specimen of the average Joe, we're pretty close.
I'm just confused as to the cost-benefits for Facebook here. Getting a track record for annoying users and badly handling their private data doesn't seem like a good business model to me. That is to say, unless they think they'll just get away with it and nobody will notice or care. But people do, and still they go down that road. Again and again.
From the article, it seems as if this new move is only useful to data miners, not Facebook users. So they're basically screwing with us (I use, albeit sparingly, Facebook).
Facebook's done similar things to user's data before, and we've have had some success in protesting those changes. But I'm getting fed up. I don't want to have to worry about every single time Facebook has some sort of an update, that my personal data is going to be distributed publicly. I've had to change my privacy settings before, where stuff that I previously had private was suddenly public. Now it seems I have no option but to delete part of my profile in order to keep my stuff private.
What I wonder is how long Facebook thinks they'll get away with this until everyone is fed up and leaves?
Oops, this tells me that I should not try to post responses on
I certainly am not on the "just punish" side, and I much prefer criminals, juveniles or older ones, to have all possible resources to make something better of their lives.
My point was (well, was supposed to be) if you and Joe commit a crime, you shouldn't have to endure a heavier punishment for it than Joe just because some computer program has calculated that you are at a higher risk to re-offend than Joe.
If the program doesn't do that, only opens up different resources for the juveniles/offenders to help them, then yeah, I'm all for it. It just sounded like "justice" was going to be meted out according to some probability analysis and that creeped me out.
"May your future be limited only by your dreams." -- Christa McAuliffe
