Microsoft's New AI Mistakenly Identifies Photos, Ignores Hitler (mashable.com) 214
An anonymous reader writes: Microsoft's newest online AI, CaptionBot, tries to identify what's in an uploaded photo, using two recognition APIs recently released by Microsoft Cognitive Services for app developers-- "Computer Vision" and "Emotion". But while Microsoft brags that their AI "can understand thousands of objects, as well as the relationships between them," bloggers are also sharing funny examples of CaptionBot's many mistakes. While it correctly identified Bea Arthur, Ozzy Osbourne and Joan Jett, and a movie poster with Arnold Schwarzenegger, it mistakenly identified Gene Simmons of KISS as "a woman in a red jacket...sitting on a motorcycle," described a wedding dress as "a cat wearing a tie," mistook Michelle Obama for a cellphone, and described one man's Twitter avatar as "a close up of two giraffes near a tree."
But CNNMoney reports that the AI is apparently programmed to ignore all images of Hitler and other Nazi symbolism (as well as Osama bin Laden), reporting that Microsoft's AI "often came back with 'I really can't describe the picture' and a confused emoji. It did, however, identify other Nazi leaders like Joseph Mengele and Joseph Goebbels."
But CNNMoney reports that the AI is apparently programmed to ignore all images of Hitler and other Nazi symbolism (as well as Osama bin Laden), reporting that Microsoft's AI "often came back with 'I really can't describe the picture' and a confused emoji. It did, however, identify other Nazi leaders like Joseph Mengele and Joseph Goebbels."
I'd say (Score:5, Funny)
They don't want another nazi-bot
Re:I'd say (Score:5, Funny)
Computers are inherently racist because they don't understand what it's like being black.
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I'm white, therefore I can not understand what it's like being black.
Does that make me racist, a computer, or both?
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If feminist speeches are any indicator, extrapolating from that it would mean you're racist, a computer and must stop eating melons.
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Darn. I like melons.
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Sorry dude, it's the law. A white guy must be racist and any guy must be misogynist. Took me a while to get used to it but once you're accustomed to being a racist woman hater it's not that bad. I can't shave with a straight razor anymore 'cause I fear I might off that asshole, but that's a small price to pay to fit into the politically correct paradigm again.
Re:I'd say (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet I'm a white guy who doesn't seem to run into accusations of either racism or chauvinism. It makes me wonder if all the people who complain about being harassed by the politically correct hordes are, in fact, the innocent victims they try to present themselves as.
Your bravery is an inspiration to us all.
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And according to the fundamentalists, we're all hell-bound sinners or worse. The same strategy applies to dealing with any fundamentalist: ignore them except to mock. Complaining about it just means you're indirectly taking their message to heart.
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Guys guys guys .... can't we just be both?
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Quite fitting, the whole shit has taken on religious proportions anyway, it's become a substitute religion for those that can't get enough of arbitrary statements and nonsensical accusations.
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And yet it seems only SOME men are actually accused of such things.
I play video games and occasionally watch movies. So there must be some other variable to account for these differences in our experiences.
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Nah, that's enough. Actually, you're a man, that's allegedly already enough. But you watch movies and play games, so you simply have to be.
Don't you watch any feminist videos, dude? Seriously, do it, great entertainment.
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All I could think of while reading this screed was "Old Man Yells at Cloud" [kym-cdn.com]. Really, your pareidolia is just reaching crazy levels. It's like you're staring that picture which resembles either a vase or two faces in profile, and frothing with yourself about which one to believe in. Relax, take a step back, and you'll realize it's just a picture you can walk away from. Do your work and make your money and leave politics to other people. You've never mentioned any real repercussions to any of the "errors" you
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Anon, I think you nailed the issue. Having to keep your racist, sexist bullshit to yourself because people call you out if you try to spread it is what all this whining is ultimately about. My heart bleeds for your plight.
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Except for IBM mainframes. [ibm.com] Support diversity, buy IBM mainframes!
Oh, wait...
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I have a black computer, you insensitive clod.
Always wanted to have a black one work for me. Oddly, though, if the workload gets higher it just starts to hum. Wonder if I have to whip it to make it sing.
(Hey, what, that was no racist joke. On a scale from black to white, this was Mexican. Tops)
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> On a scale from black to white, this was Mexican.
Does that mean you keep it clean? You know, maybe Spic-n-Span clean? I guess, maybe, if you had liquid cooling and there was some condensation then it could have a wet back?
On a more serious note, if I were into putting bumper stickers on my cars (and I am not - not now, I did when I was younger and didn't care about keeping them) I'd seriously consider getting a bumper sticker that says, "Jesus is my gardener." Yeah, it'd piss off all sorts of people.
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No, no, you must self-classify in a government document according to some arbitrary race classification and make that your identity. It makes this country of ours so much fairer and so unlike South Africa during Apartheid.
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But my computer is black. Black case, Black edition motherboard and black edition processor.
I even installed http://www.blacklablinux.org/ [blacklablinux.org] to be sure it was completely black.
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Well, older IDE hard drives did have a master/slave relationship.
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in /. sarcasm needs to be captioned.
since not only so called AI but even human intelligence fails here.
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Rachel Dolezal Bot
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Black Americans commit a vastly larger number of crimes than any other demographic.
"Commit"? Or are they disproportionately stopped and searched? Are blacks and whites prosecuted with equal vigor and under the same charges for the same transgressions? The a lot of little factors sum up to "commit" data, one way or the other.
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It's safe to say that people that live in, or frequent, poor communities are disproportionately stopped and searched.
It's sad that many black people live in these communities for the sake of rejecting what they perceive as 'white culture' aka, 'education'.
Education and success are not white attributes, or every trailer court would be a castle. Everyone seems to forget that the Good Reverend Martin Luther King Junior was also the Good *Doctor*, Martin Luther King Junior. When black people stop rejecting educ
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FTFY.
Even Dr. King lived in relatively shitty neighborhoods compared to his white PhD counterparts. He lived in Sweet Auburn because he was not allowed by the white establishment to live
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Also reminds me of the Coca-Cola image generator that had a big blacklist [theatlantic.com] of words you couldn't put in the captions. Here the AI is writing the captions, but seems a similar blacklist idea.
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This is true. I'm part black and I'm hung like a wild-studded gerbil. And I don't mean ¼" from the ground. :( Ah well... The missus says he's cute. Then he spits at her.
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Is it me or would a blacklist for words that are associated with a racist regime be hilarious?
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Of course they don't want another Tay, but the fun thing is that apparently is *does* recognize Hitler and then refuses to say anything at all about the picture. Otherwise the bot would just say "a portrait photo of a man", or "a man with a toothbrush mustache". Compare with the last example in TFA when the bot takes a very cluttered image and somewhat correctly identifies it as not exceedingly happy people sitting at tables.
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I did Nazi that coming...
*is not proud of his behavior*
PhB.B.B.B.B.B (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's AI keeps embarrassing them. It's like they thought their corporate image problem from being a ham-handed OS monopoly wasn't big enough: they needed to automate gaffes.
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Microsoft's AI keeps embarrassing them. It's like they thought their corporate image problem from being a ham-handed OS monopoly wasn't big enough: they needed to automate gaffes.
Just think of it as the first steps of a new thing. Be interesting to see this develop
Re:PhB.B.B.B.B.B (Score:4, Insightful)
That's what an "A.I." made of lookup tables or pattern matching a pile of data does. I really cannot understand why they are putting this stuff forward as if it is ready to be more than just a more complicated "Eliza" toy.
Use it to look stuff up ot have simple questions and answers - fine. Use it to have a conversation and expect perfect results - not a chance.
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This.
I wish they'd stop calling this stuff A.I. it's simple pattern recognition. There is no such thing as an AI that has any kind of comprehension and it doesn't look like there will be any time soon.
And this stuff will likely be driving cars and trucks, I want to know every detail of how it can fail beyond the obvious ie that it can't tell the difference between a dress and a cat or a face and two giraffes etc.
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It's fairly primitive at this point, of course, but please do explain how this is fundamentally different form how living things perceive visual information and why this is not AI.
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We have a vastly superior knowledge of items in images and videos, we understand information about colours, materials, living things, the way physics interacts with these things, what's flammable, floatable, destructible, cheap expensive, natural, man made and countless more attributes. We understand these things, we don't just attributes words to them when we don't even comprehend the meaning of those words.
Look at Eliza bots, they basically talk meaningless gibberish, sometimes they get lucky like a human
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AFAIK, so is human intelligence, that's why you spent years being a useless drooling slob.
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Put up or shut up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft's AI keeps embarrassing them. It's like they thought their corporate image problem from being a ham-handed OS monopoly wasn't big enough: they needed to automate gaffes.
It is trivially easy to get a instant mod-up on Slashdot by pointing to the Microsoft's AI's occasional mistakes and not its successes. But most of the time Microsoft's AI seems to be getting it right. If you have something better, put it up where we can see it.
Re:Put up or shut up. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google - AlphaGo, a computer that wins at Go
Microsoft - Tay, a racist chatbot
Is there really a comparison? Even if Microsoft has some decent technology, they're definitely losing on the marketing front, they are making themselves look like dancing monkey cousins.
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Even if Microsoft has some decent technology, they're definitely losing on the marketing front, they are making themselves look like dancing monkey cousins.
That's just because they are just that [youtube.com].
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I bet one of those AIs would pass a Turing test [wikipedia.org]—and not the one that can win at Jeopardy or beat a Go champion.
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One of these things us not like the other. (Score:2)
IBM - Watson, a computer that can win at Jeopardy
Google - AlphaGo, a computer that wins at Go
Microsoft - Tay, a racist chatbot
Jeopardy is a trivia game.
Key words and phrases to which you respond with a factoid. To be fun and playable for the audience the boundaries of this "universe" have to be quite small.
Go is a game which is played with perfect information and clearly defined rules. It is a fascinating problem in its own right but it is not the same problem as recognizing a face or an object in a purely arbitrary setting.
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Go is a game which is played with perfect information and clearly defined rules. It is a fascinating problem in its own right but it is not the same problem as recognizing a face or an object in a purely arbitrary setting.
And yet playing the game took longer to solve than image recognition.
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Image recognition is not solved.
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IBM - Watson, a computer that can win at Jeopardy
Google - AlphaGo, a computer that wins at Go
Microsoft - Tay, a racist chatbot
Is there really a comparison?
Understanding natural language.
Playing a logic game with prediction to gain a winning move.
Interacting with humans and identifying images without external influence.
You're right on one thing there is absolutely no comparison. The ability to do one has absolutely zero bearing on the ability to do another.
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No. Interacting with computers is one of the easiest things to get a human to do. The opposite is nothing more than regurgitating predetermined responses ... by a human.
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Interacting with computers is one of the easiest things to get a human to do.
Yes, that is exactly what I said.
Let's end this right here and now (Score:2)
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. [wikipedia.org]
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That's something Hitler would have said! You Nazi!
AI is just not ready. (Score:2)
Re:AI is just not ready. (Score:4, Interesting)
We're not there yet but this effort by Microsoft is, IMHO, as smart as a mouse.
Mice are pretty smart, I'd argue that the current AIs are at insect level of "intelligence".
What's obvious from these results is that the AI has no idea what it's looking at. This is typical for a trained neural net: it finds the best matching pattern in an image, and maps that to one of its output categories. It makes no difference between a random black and white blob, and a penguin, so long as they match the pattern.
A mouse, and true AI, will have spatial understanding. It will (intuitively) know that the images represent objects in space, and will be able to recreate a coarse 3D model of what they see. Then they will break down the scene in basic features, and identify it based on those features. It might say: hey, these blobs remind me of a penguin, but will never say that they *are* a penguin, because the blob will miss the beak and eyes and flippers and feet.
Basically, what we have now are the neural nets we already had 50 years ago, only on much faster hardware, combined with a bot and a web search engine. It's basically ELIZA on steroids, but still a long long way from actual intelligence.
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Mice are pretty smart, I'd argue that the current AIs are at insect level of "intelligence".
Maybe.....this just looks like a probabilistic classifier, insects are capable of more than that.
Basically, what we have now are the neural nets we already had 50 years ago,
That's going a little too far: 50 years ago people were experimenting with perceptrons. The networks we use now are more advanced than that in capabilities.
"An operating system suitable for critical servers (Score:2)
The most ridiculous might be what Microsoft's AI describes an "an operating system suitable for mission critical servers". Or maybe that was Microsoft Marketing, not Microsoft AI. Either way.
I never thought this tumblr would be relevant... (Score:2)
All for legal reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is easily solved by telling the software "if you think it is Hitler, you say you don't recognise it". There was a case a while ago where some photo analysis software mistook a woman for a gorilla. Highly embarrassing for everyone involved.
I would think that software makers would nowadays add precautions to make particularly embarrassing mistakes less likely. (Mistaking a gorilla for a woman is no big deal, the other way round it's very bad).
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This is probably the best explanation for the whole mess.
Should've thought of it myself. If anything makes no sense, it's probably legal related.
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Or, false positives or not, they just don't want to have anything to do with Hitler. Especially after Tay.
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Personally, I don't think that identifying hitler is a problem.... per se. it's adding contect that I would discourage. For example if it said "Hey! That's Adolf Hitler, I think he's a swell guy." I'd have a problem with that. On the other hand with blocking Hitler images, what are they going to do with Charlie Chaplin?
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... unless you are a gorilla.
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a) Statisticians actually formally discuss these as type 1 and type 2 errors. The chance of rejecting a true hypothesis and failing to reject a false hypothesis is typically taken into account in the beginning of your analysis.
b) This is a non-trivial task. Sure, if you have a limited scope (we want our planes not to crash, so err on the side of something that is safer than required) it's easy. But in this case, it changes. "Find me a photo of hitler" is bad if it finds a woman who desperately needs to wax,
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Why is mistaking a woman for a gorilla bad
Try telling one that those pants make her look fat and see what a living hell life can be.
Let The Dissembling Begin (Score:2)
Did we learn nothing from the time we made HAL lie?
--
I think so Brain. But why do I have to wear this itchy & scratchy toothbrush on my upper lip?
Only Hitler? (Score:3)
One wonders which caption it would put on goatse?
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Just tested: "I am not really confident, but I think it's a man holding a cat."
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I've heard many names for it... "cat" wasn't one of them.
What does that mean for CAPTCHAs? (Score:2)
As soon as this bot goes live, will we only get to see Hitler pics to solve CAPTChAs so the botters don't get in?
The societal consequences of slightly shoddy AI (Score:2)
All kinds of AI have teething pains, during which the problems are obvious and comical (the Apple Newton's handwriting recognition being a case in point). At the same time, the achievements of modern AI are amazing--but also troubling.
When I compare AI as envisioned in the 1950s--Isaac Asimov's Multivac, or his robots, perhaps--the assumption was that AI would be closely similar to human intelligence. For example, it was implicit that robots would answer questions by actually understanding them. What we are
Thats ridiculous (Score:2)
Even if we don't like what he did, Hitler did actually exist and is a significant character in world history,
If we choose to ignore history we're doomed to make the same mistakes again.
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Look at Donald Trump... We already are.
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Thats how I feel about Hilary. Out of them all, she's by far the scariest psychopath.
Greyscale = giraffes (Score:3)
Joseph Mengele wasn't a Nazi Leader (Score:2)
He was just a low-level "researcher" in a KZ that got notorious because he killed so many people in so many different gruesome ways (and enough of his subjects still survived the ordeal to tell the story).
His superior back in Berlin more or less continued his career after the war - mostly because he systematically destroyed most documents that could proof a connection with the notorious experiments (once it was obvious that the war wasn't going to end well for Germany) and because Mengele himself had fled
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Re:Digital unintelligence (Score:4, Insightful)
Both Microsoft and Google's varieties are rather fun.
The key to CaptionBot is to feed it lots of images, and always give 1 star when it's spot on and 5 when it's most ridiculously wrong. Over time, it "improves".
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I dunno, never bothered me enough to ask. But since this idea is your brainchild, why don't you do the scientific thing and experiment with it and report your findings instead of the religion thing and just asking about it to believe whatever someone tells you that is written in a book.
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TL;DR: Stop using the word psychopath to describe assholes, you cretins.
Hmm... I feel a nerd-rage at the misuse of the word "cretin" coming on....
1/2 of /. readers say AI will take their job (Score:5, Funny)
I'm reminded that about half of Slashdotters are afraid that AI like this will put them out of a job soon. The other half of Slashdotters can tell the difference between a cell phone and the first lady, so they won't be replaced by Microsoft software.
On the other hand, 15% of Slashdot readers can't tell the difference between Obama and Hitler, with this AI can do so.
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I'm reminded that about half of Slashdotters are afraid that AI like this will put them out of a job soon. The other half of Slashdotters can tell the difference between a cell phone and the first lady, so they won't be replaced by Microsoft software.
When it comes to replacing human workers with an AI, the opinions of the technically literate are irrelevant. All that matters is whether the maker of the AI can convince a company's leadership that employing the AI will save them money.
If competence were really the determining factor in deciding whether to replace human workers with automated systems, do you really think most companies would've replaced their human telephone operators with the now-ubiquitous automated phone tree software?
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On the other hand, 15% of Slashdot readers can't tell the difference between Obama and Hitler, with this AI can do so.
You think this is a good or a bad thing?
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The fear of being replaced by a computer, by an intelligent machine, is hardly new. Back in the late 50s and early 60s there were even movies and televisions shows that touched on the topic of being replaced by the "Big Brain." At the time, of course, computers were literally taking quite a few tasks away from humans. Like always, many of us short-sighted humans didn't stop to realize that this would be creating other jobs and would require less menial/repetitive labor.
I don't remember if it was a movie or
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Then you can't read. No one is saying that it'll be soon, but if you've been looking at the fast pace of improvement in the last decade you would realize AI is going to have massive social and economical implications.
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Additionally, that whole 'dress color' kerfuffle shows that image recognition can be a difficult task even for the human brain...which has been specifically designed and built over thousands of years to do that very thing.
I think it shows that some colors display differently on different monitors.
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Well - it recognised Joseph Mengele, although describing him as a "Nazi leader" is ridiculous.
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If it was a pic of you and the AI would say "Oh, that's Adolf", how'd you feel?
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Better than being identified as a phone or giraffe.
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Nah, twice in a row is bad style.
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Ignoring is not actually a term that I'd use when describing Nazis. In fact, if they'd just ignored those they hated then there probably wouldn't have needed to be a giant FUCKING WAR because of their behavior. Slaughtering millions and bombing other people's property into rubble is not exactly "ignoring." Unless, of course, you've got a very different definition of ignoring than I do.
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Cut him some slack. He's upset the none of the preachers wanted to molest him. It has jaded him for life.
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You don't suspect that has already happened? I mean look at some of these posts explaining the flaws or any MS blunder.