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376

General Software Discussion / Re: Et Tu, CCleaner! - Sod off, CCleaner.

« Last post by IainB on September 09, 2018, 02:06 AM »

Having shelled out for a CCleaner Pro licence some time back, after using the $FREE version for years, I was singularly unimpressed when Avast-Piriform (the developers) started to implement the persistent snooping functionality. Sure, the user could disable it, after a fashion, but next update (or sooner) it was mysteriously "re-enabled" at StartUp, ha-ha.
They had simply gone too far to deserve the user's trust anymore and they will regret it. It seems to have backfired on them already, so they are now belatedly apparently overtly walking back the spyware aspects that they had earlier deliberately introduced so covertly.

Anyway, on the principle of "once bitten, twice shy" and "can't trust 'em", I promptly added the unreliable CCleaner software process(es)to my ProcessTamer "Force Kill" list, so that the only time CCleaner can run now is if/when I have disabled ProcessTamer first.
ProcessTamer is running all the time otherwise, and is very reliable, successfully annihilating inefficient, or persistenly nosy annoyware processes from Microsoft, Avast-Piriform and others.
ProcessTamer really does help the user to run a tight ship.   

377

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! - catch a rabbit contest.

« Last post by IainB on September 08, 2018, 06:33 PM »

Agency heads of MI5, the CIA and the KGB are having a competition and meet on neutral ground, on the edge of a big German forest.

The contest is as follows: each of their parties should catch a rabbit, using their espionage skills. The party that manages to catch the rabbit the quickest, wins.

First, the MI5 agents head for the forest. When they emerge eight hours later, they carry a live rabbit in a cage. “We posted lookouts around the forest, and after spotting the rabbit, we shadowed it until it showed us his hideout, we then just placed the cage over the entrance and waited for the rabbit to fall in our trap. Neat and simple.”

The CIA team enters the forest and emerges four hours later, holding a rabbit carcass which seems to have been shot and badly beaten several times. “We used satellite surveillance to acquire our target, but during the tracking, the subject tried to escape, so we had to use drastic measures. Still counts.” Nobody objects.

Now, it was the KGB’s turn. The four agents disappear into the forest, and return after only an hour. But they are not carrying a rabbit, but hold a bear between two of the agents. The bear is badly bruised, has a limp and keeps head held down, looking at the ground. Absently, he mumbles “I am a rabbit. My parents were both rabbits.”

378

General Software Discussion / Re: MS OneNote - OCR quality in OneNote v. ABBY Screenshot Reader.

« Last post by IainB on September 04, 2018, 11:40 PM »

Interesting real-world comparison of typical OCR quality in OneNote v. ABBY SR (Screenshot Reader): (text from the image is in the spoiler below the image)

Spoiler

Text selected, OCRed and copied to Clipboard using ABBY SR (Screenshot Reader) and as pasted:
   (areas with errors highlighted)
   ________________________________
   SUKPLUSIRONICS IRVING LTD
   520 QUEEN ST
   AUCKLAND
   PHONE 09 302 0608
   fHANKS POR SHOPPING WITH US
   GST NO. 53-638-449
   25/08/201/ 16:2/ 000000*3648
   0001 WY
   1> 29.50
   BAMiRIES $29.50
   CASH
   \>2S 50
   _________________________________
   The quality/accuracy of OCR isn't bad, considering the poor state of the receipt.
   
   The pasted output is usable AS-IS, with minimal manual corrections needed.
   
   Already OCRed and searchable text in OneNote selected and copied to Clipboard using OneNote tool and as pasted:
   (areas with errors highlighted)
   ________________________________
   SURPLUSIRONICS
   520 QUEEN sl
   AUCKLAND
   PHONE 09 30?
   THANKS FOR SHOPPING WITH US
   NO. 53-638-449
   000000#364d
   25/08/2011 1b: 21
   
   THANKS FOR SHOPPING WITH US
   GST NO 53 - 638- 449
   
   25 08 2017 16:27 000000 # 36 48
   
   1 X 29 50
   BATTERIES
   $29 50
   
   CASH $ 29 50
   
   0001 WY
   
   29. bo
   BATTERIES
   
   CASH
   
   $29.50
   _________________________________
   The quality/accuracy of OCR isn't bad, considering the poor state of the receipt.
   The nature of the scattered/duplicated pasted output makes it not very usable without quite a bit of manual correction.

379

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"- map of Paris and the Metro.

« Last post by IainB on September 04, 2018, 05:34 PM »

I just stumbled upon this really great map of Paris and the Metro (click on link)
I had some fun hunting down Harry's New York Bar (Paris) at 5, Rue Daunou, between the Avenue de l'Opéra and the Rue de la Paix. I recall that the beer there was great when I last went there, some years back.

The website http://www.acme.com where I found the map is worth a look as well. Lots of interesting software (maybe mostly Linux-related, I think).

380

General Software Discussion / 2018-08-31 - Hiring UX Designers 2018

« Last post by IainB on September 02, 2018, 06:32 AM »

I posted this on the off-chance that it might be of interest to some DC developers or others they may know: (pass it on)
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Hiring UX Designers 2018
tags: Uncategorized, Work
Glen Lipka
I am settling into my new position at Treasure Data. The people have been great. Currently, I have one immediate open head count, plus more coming soon. If you are interested in working with me, please let me know via LinkedIn. Here are some good things to know:

We are going to use Figma, although FramerX looks intriguing
Treasure Data is a B2B application, not a mobile game
These are my informal levels for designers
These are some of my previous design principles
We love people who are curious, engaged, and creative
Junior, mid-level, senior are all possible
Speaking Japanese is actually a cool bonus
We are in Mountain View, CA – Remote is possible, but you have to be great
Spectacular benefits package
There is a cute, friendly dog in the office
Ten seems like a nice round number, right?

What else can I tell you about me or the company? The team is small now, but will grow pretty significantly in the coming 2 years. Ask me anything.

If you know someone you respect, please pass this along.

Copied from: bq | Glen Lipka (LBW) - <http://commadot.com/hiring-ux-designers-2018/>

381

Living Room / Re: DC on Discord :O

« Last post by IainB on September 01, 2018, 07:11 PM »

From the Discord Terms of Service:

RULES OF CONDUCT AND USAGE
... As an example, you agree not to use the Service in order to:

• post, upload, transmit or otherwise disseminate information that is obscene, indecent, vulgar, pornographic, sexual or otherwise objectionable as outlined in our Community Guidelines;
• defame, libel, ridicule, mock, stalk, threaten, harass, intimidate or abuse anyone;
• upload or transmit (or attempt to upload or transmit) files that contain viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots, corrupted files or data, or any other similar software or programs that may damage the operation of the Service or other users' computers;
• violate the contractual, personal, intellectual property or other rights of any party including using, uploading, transmitting, distributing, or otherwise making available any information made available through the Service in any manner that infringes any copyright, trademark, patent, trade secret, or other right of any party (including rights of privacy or publicity);
• attempt to obtain passwords or other private information from other members;
• improperly use support channels or complaint buttons to make false reports to us;
• develop, distribute, or publicly inform other members of "auto" software programs, "macro" software programs or other "cheat utility" software program or applications in violation of the applicable license agreements;
• exploit, distribute or publicly inform other members of any game error, miscue or bug which gives an unintended advantage; or violate any applicable laws or regulations, or promote or encourage any illegal activity including, but not limited to, hacking, cracking or distribution of counterfeit software, or cheats or hacks for the Service.

Copied from: Discord - Terms of Service - <https://discordapp.com/terms>

Huh. Killjoys.

382

Living Room / Re: good Videos: Survival - Digging a well and producing potable water.

« Last post by IainB on August 28, 2018, 07:19 PM »

Very interesting and beautifully done: Primitive technology: searching for groundwater and water filter (water well and tank) full

383

General Software Discussion / Re: Listary 6

« Last post by IainB on August 28, 2018, 11:04 AM »

@Tuxman:
Where you write:

Ha! I find it amazing that I'm not the only one around who can't understand why the solution to performance problems is to just throw more hardware at it...
_______________________________

-Tuxman (August 27, 2018, 04:41 PM)

I suspect that you're far from being alone in this. The trouble seems to be that, whilst writing elegant resource-efficient code may have been a kind of ideal, it was not - for whatever reason - necessarily a practice/consideration that was taught or encouraged in programming 101. So it was less likely to be a design objective. Maybe it was pragmatic. At the same time, the level of complexity and OS subsystem compartmentalisation has tended to increase, making it difficult/impossible  to simplify/rationalise code in any event. One suspects that this probably could have resulted - in part at least - in the generation of an awful lot of unplanned fat bloated software, with often perhaps redundant/unneeded (by the user) functionality. However the latter might, for example (say) usefully fulfil some tangential marketing objective far removed from original user requirements, or be something that the developers might have bolted on as they thought it was simply "a good idea" or a lazy shortcut (for themselves) at the time.
You can arguably sometimes see this when you make comparisons between different systems or software or versions of software products that tend to overlap in functionality.

On efficiency of resource utilisation, I never made a note of Listary's disk or RAM or CPU utilisation, but, after checking just now, FARR seems to take:
Disk: approx. 12.5Mb in its root folder (not counting the plugins and associated apps).
RAM: varies intermittently, roughly 20 - 35Mb, depending on how it is configured and what it is doing.
CPU: varies intermittently, roughly 0-5%, depending on what it is doing.

Not sure how that might compare with Listary, or even whether it would be relevant to make such a comparison (being two somewhat similar, but different things).

384

Screenshot Captor / Re: capture two screens in one

« Last post by IainB on August 27, 2018, 10:05 AM »

Yes, as @mouser suggests, you could put them side-by-side as a single image, as here, using various software, including ScreenshotCaptor (though I did this using MS OneNote by putting them into a Table and saving the Table as an image):



Or you could pack them both sequentially into a single .TIF file, as the one below, which I did using irfanview (.a TIF file can contain multiple images):
NB: This latter file cannot display correctly in the DC Forum. I saved it with a .PNG extension, as the DC Forum is apparently unable to handle .TIF image files for upload. If you download it and rename the extension back to .TIF it should work OK. If you try to open it with Irfanview, then Irfanview will tell you that it is a mis-named .TIF file and ask you whether you want to rename it).

385

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft OneNote - audio search and languages.

« Last post by IainB on August 25, 2018, 11:51 AM »

@dantheman:
You ask:

While the theme is still "hot"...
Does this audio/video search feature work for non-English languages?
(do not hesitate to let me know if it is better for further questions to post at the aforementioned thread).

-dantheman (August 24, 2018, 08:31 AM)

Good question!   
 - and certainly good that you asked it in this forum, as the answer is both relevant and informative and it relates to other ON voice-related issues (e.g., generating transcripts) which have puzzled me for some time.

I didn't have an answer - as I have only needed/used English audio for searches, though I do have some French audio (songs) in ON in .mp3 files.
So, I did a duckduckgo.com search using the terms: Onenote audio search works in what languages?

Bingo! The first item in the search results list was:
(Partially copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images, with some notes/emphasis being mine.)

OneNote Audio Search &amp; Audio Search Languages
Daniel EscapaOctober 10, 2006 <-- Note the date! This technology has been around for years.
...
... Olya might want to comment more on this as she is the owner of audio search but I also wanted to mention which languages are supported:

• English
• Japanese
• Chinese Traditional
• Chinese Simplified
• Korean
• German
• French
• Spanish
• Italian

... (read it all at the link).
Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/descapa/2006/10/10/onenote-audio-search-amp-audio-search-languages/

That's just the bit about languages - to answer your question. The rest of that post was rather interesting too and also the other search results in the list, including for example:

• 2nd.: Search notes in OneNote
  
  
• 3rd.: ONENOTE : can't search inside my AUDIO registrations ...
  
  
• 4th.: Audio transcriptions and annotations with OneNote
  

  Let's say for example that you have a voice recording that you made using a dedicated recorder and want to put a transcription of it into OneNote (maybe in support of meeting minutes and other notes). ...
  ,,, Follow Richard's instructions to set up your audio input for speech. In OneNote, place the insertion point on the page where you want the text to appear. Using the speech TIP (available on Tablet PC or Vista), set the dictation mode ON. Here's where to find some of these settings on a Tablet PC (use the settings in order 1, 2, 3): ...
  ... Now play back the audio as you would normally. Voilà, text appears in OneNote that is vaguely similar to a transcription (see caveat above). ...
  ... If you want to use recordings made in OneNote, be aware that the default recording quality for OneNote is not meant for speech recognition. We use a voice codec and bit rate/sample rate designed to compress spoken word audio as small as can be while still usable by human beings. In OneNote 2007 we increased the settings slightly to make audio search work better, but speech recognition (transcription) requires a much higher level of quality. ...
  ... To set up your future recordings in OneNote to be transcribable, first go to Tools/Options/Audio and Video. Switch the codec to Windows Media Audio 9.1 Professional. If this isn't available consider downloading the latest set of codec for Windows Media (should come with WM Player 10). Otherwise just pick the highest settings available (e.g. 44Khz, 440kbps) for now - you can experiment with lower settings later. ...
  Source: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/chris_pratley/2006/03/16/audio-transcriptions-and-annotations-with-onenote/
  

386

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Polywick Story Server

« Last post by IainB on August 23, 2018, 09:31 PM »

But the InfoQube learning curve is still as daunting as ever.

-pulphero (August 23, 2018, 07:44 PM)

It may seem daunting, but getting good use out of Ecco would seem to necessitate that you have an Ecco mechanic on hand to follow you around everywhere, to support Ecco's kludgy idiosyncrasies.
Six of one and half a dozen of the other.

387

Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately

« Last post by IainB on August 23, 2018, 12:14 PM »

@Shades:

The movie Upgrade was very entertaining indeed. Still, 5 stars (out of a maximum of of five) is in my point of view too much. 3.5 to 4 stars would be better. Story line and acting was solid, but not great. However, how the movie was shot, that was very well done. Which is why I'm hovering between 3.5 to 4 stars.
Having said the above, as a SciFi fan, you definitely should see Upgrade. It won't disappoint.

-Shades (August 23, 2018, 10:54 AM)

Yes, it probably won't disappoint SF fans. It had a good story.
Star rating is always likely to be subjective, of course. I was going to grade it lower than 5, but when it showed itself as simply rather good and entertaining "What if...?" SF, I bumped it up. If I had to use the FastForward button on my VLC media player for any movie, then I would downgrade it.
To explain: I'm a rather impatient viewer and begrudge spending my cognitive surplus on reading garbage (so I skim and speed-read wherever possible) or watching inferior movies. In my view, many/most movies seem to be inferior. So the inevitable FastForwarding results in the rating being reduced. With Upgrade, there was rarely a dull moment and I even used the Back button a few times, just to review how/what they had done.
Sometimes I come across a gem of a movie that bears repeated viewing - e.g., 2001 - Space Odyssey, or Amelie - because once is simply not enough.

388

Living Room / Black Ribbon Day (23rd August).

« Last post by IainB on August 23, 2018, 10:56 AM »

Just thought I'd spare a thought for those who perished, lest we forget:

Today (August 23) is Black Ribbon Day, Anniversary of the Communist-Nazi Pact.
Every year, August 23 marks Black Ribbon Day, a day of remembrance for the victims of Soviet communism and Nazi tyranny in Europe. It marks the anniversary of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, whereby Hitler and Stalin conspired to carve Europe into two twin totalitarian superpowers.
State collectivism in both its nationalist and internationalist forms waged unprecedented horror and misery on millions of people. From the concentration camps to the gulags, we will remember them…
- Guido Fawkes

European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism
The European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism, known as the Black Ribbon Day in some countries, which is observed on 23 August, is the international remembrance day for victims of totalitarian ideologies, specifically totalitarian communist regimes, Stalinism, Nazism and fascism.More at Wikipedia

Observed by: European Union, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Canada, United States and other countries
Significance: Day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
Date: 23 August
- Wikipedia

389

General Software Discussion / Re: Microsoft OneNote - experiential Tips & Tricks - audio and transcripts

« Last post by IainB on August 23, 2018, 09:44 AM »

In windows the creation data presents in properties the data the file was created and the hour , minutes and seconds.
So I think is possible, to determine in an audio , the hour-minute and second of every moment.
Do you know an audio reproductor that presents the every moment while the audio is playing ?
Best Regards
 

-Contro (August 23, 2018, 07:15 AM)

Go to this DCF discussion: Searching for information in audio notes in OneNote.
MS OneNote users are able to search for decipherable words and phrases in audio clips saved to OneNote. ON starts to index these audio tracks for decipherable spoken words/phrases, as soon as an audio file is saved into ON. It will do this for audio/video files also.  The ON search function will list the indexed Notebook pages with audio file(s) containing the words/phrases being searched for.
Clicking on the audio file (an attachment icon) on the relevant Notebook page will play the audio recording.

Furthermore, if there is also a documented transcript of the audio, under the saved audio file, showing the minutes and seconds of each spoken phrase, then OneNote will move a selector bar down the transcript, line-by line as the audio is playing. If the user clicks on any particular line at any chosen minute/second, then OneNote will immediately jump to and play from that line onwards.

This seemed to be an amazingly powerful set of functionality, one which I literally stumbled upon by chance, not having previously seen it documented anywhere.

-IainB (August 23, 2018, 09:42 AM)

390

General Software Discussion / Re: Audio reproductor to see the date-time of the sound

« Last post by IainB on August 23, 2018, 09:42 AM »

In windows the creation data presents in properties the data the file was created and the hour , minutes and seconds.
So I think is possible, to determine in an audio , the hour-minute and second of every moment.
Do you know an audio reproductor that presents the every moment while the audio is playing ?
Best Regards
 

-Contro (August 23, 2018, 07:15 AM)

Go to this DCF discussion: Searching for information in audio notes in OneNote.
MS OneNote users are able to search for decipherable words and phrases in audio clips saved to OneNote. ON starts to index these audio tracks for decipherable spoken words/phrases, as soon as an audio file is saved into ON. It will do this for audio/video files also.  The ON search function will list the indexed Notebook pages with audio file(s) containing the words/phrases being searched for.
Clicking on the audio file (an attachment icon) on the relevant Notebook page will play the audio recording.

Furthermore, if there is also a documented transcript of the audio, under the saved audio file, showing the minutes and seconds of each spoken phrase, then OneNote will move a selector bar down the transcript, line-by line as the audio is playing. If the user clicks on any particular line at any chosen minute/second, then OneNote will immediately jump to and play from that line onwards.

This seemed to be an amazingly powerful set of functionality, one which I literally stumbled upon by chance, not having previously seen it documented anywhere.

391

Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately

« Last post by IainB on August 23, 2018, 06:41 AM »

I edited my comment above to reflect that the Stars are my personal ratings.

392

Living Room / Re: Movies you've seen lately - 51 in all.

« Last post by IainB on August 22, 2018, 09:53 PM »

51 movies listed, in the format: Name (Year) (Details) X Stars.
A few of them are really quite good (4 and 5 stars).
EDIT: NB: The Stars are my personal ratings.

Spoiler

• 2036 Origin Unknown (2018) (SF thriller) 3 Stars
• A Christmas Carol - Scrooge (1951) (B+W classic) 5 Stars
• Aardvark (2017) (comedy drama) 1 Stars
• Avengers Infinity War (2018) 3 Stars
• Bangkok Dangerous (2000) (Thai deaf-mute hitman thriller no English subtitles) 3 Stars
• Bangkok Dangerous (2008) (Nicolas Cage hitman thriller) 3 Stars
• Bangkok Revenge (2011) (Thai-Eng kung fu blood and gore) 3 Stars
• Black Mass (2015) (crime mafia thriller) 5 Stars
• Blade (1998) (vampre killer action) 4 Stars
• Captain Phillips (2013) (True modern piracy drama) 5 Stars
• Contraband (2012) (drugs heist) 2 Stars
• Death Wish (2018) (revenge crime thriller) 3 Stars
• Doctor Strange (2016) (SF magic) 4 Stars
• Extinction (SF Synthetic Androids) 4 Stars
• Gladiator - (2000) (Extended + Remastered) 5 Stars
• Hancock (2008) (SF super-hero comedy-drama) 3 Stars
• I Origins (2014) (SF religio-drama) mystery) 3 Stars
• In Time (2011) (SF time-dated people) 3 Stars
• John Doe - Vigilante (2014) (psycho-political thriller) 5 Stars
• Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (biblical musical) 3 Stars
• Judge Dredd 01 - (original) (1995) 5 Stars
• Judge Dredd 02 - Dredd (2012) 4 Stars
• Law Abiding Citizen (revenge thriller) 4 Stars
• Man on Fire (2004) (crime thriller) 5 Stars
• Once Upon A Time In Venice (2017) (plotless comedy drama) 1 Stars
• Outlander (2008) (SF earth alien monster) 4 Stars
• Perdida (2018) (crime thriller mystery) 4 Stars
• Peter Pan (2003) (fairytale) 3 Stars
• Predestination (2014) (SF time Paradox - Heinlein - All You Zombies) 5 Stars
• Princess Mononoke (1997) (Japanese animation fairy story) 5 Stars
• Raazi (2018) (Indian girl spy drama) 2 Stars
• Rango (2009) (plotless animation) 1 Stars
• REBORN (2016) (Ninja gore humour action) 2 Stars
• Safe (2012) (Hitman thriller) 3 Stars
• Summer Flowers (2018) (Asian love story Eng subtitles) 1 Stars
• Survivor (2015) (terrorist thriller) 2 Stars
• The Age of Adaline (2015) (SF ageless heroine romance) 5 Stars
• The Bank Job (2008) (London bank heist thriller based on true events) 4 Stars
• The BFG - Big Friendly Giant (2016) (Roald Dahl fairytale) 4 Stars
• The Capture (2018) (weak SF-death mystery) 2 Stars
• The Little Broomstick - (Mary and the Witch's Flower) (2017) (animation magic tale) 4 Stars
• The Little Mermaid (2018) (v poor fairytale) 2 Stars
• The Lost Wife of Robert Durst (2017) (True murder story) 4 Stars
• The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015) (spy comedy) 3 Stars
• The Martian (2015) (SF drama) 5 Stars
• The Silence of the Lambs (1991) (psychological thriller) 5 Stars
• The Villainess (2017) (Ninja hitwoman blood + gore) 3 Stars
• Tomb Raider (2018) (tomb garbage) 1 Stars
• Upgrade (2018) (SF - AI implants) 5 Stars
• Vantage Point (2008) (Thriller attempted assassination of POTUS) 3 Stars
• Zama (2017) (seems mindless) 2 Stars

393

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: CLIPBOARD HELP+SPELL LATEST VERSION INFO THREAD - v2.42.0 - Apr 25, 2017

« Last post by IainB on August 22, 2018, 10:44 AM »

@mouser: Just reminding you of 2 outstanding queries, some months later:

Re: CHS latest version thread - feature re table capture/paste (Part 3 of 3).
https://www.donation....msg412816#msg412816
..."Is there any way ... to be able to somehow Paste that little formatted table into a document"?

-IainB (September 16, 2017, 10:14 AM)

I am using CHS v2.42.0
...Are you able to define what are all the conditions under which the "Modified" date/time will be updated?
I would like to understand this behaviour, as it changes the metadata of the clips.
TIA.

-IainB (January 14, 2018, 07:39 PM)

If it's too much trouble to dig up answers to these, then I'd quite understand.
They're not showstoppers for me.

394

Living Room / Re: Privacy - Pandora's box.

« Last post by IainB on August 22, 2018, 10:13 AM »

Mythological basis of the Pandora's box idiom:

According to Hesiod, when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus. Pandora opened a jar left in his care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world.[4] Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope, though it could also have the pessimistic meaning of "deceptive expectation".[5]

From this story has grown the idiom "to open (a) Pandora's box", meaning to do or start something that will cause many unforeseen problems.[6] Its modern, more colloquial equivalent is "to open a can of worms".[7]
Source: https://en.wikipedia...wiki/Pandora%27s_box

The thing about "Pandora's Box" was that the contents (the troubles), when once released into the world as a result of Pandora's curiosity, were enduring and timeless and apparently could never be put back into the box, thus adversely affecting all humankind over time, from that point onwards.

395

Living Room / Re: Privacy (collected references)

« Last post by IainB on August 22, 2018, 05:39 AM »

Following up on the BI comment above: I came across a link to what seemed an interesting viewpoint from the Economist, though from experience I'd suggest taking a pinch of salt with anything they nowadays publish - just in case, like, and especially when prefixed with the ominous religio-politically ideological cliché "Open":
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Open Future
Toward defining privacy expectations in an age of oversharing
Our digital data deserves protection, writes Margot Kaminski, a law professor

Open Future
Aug 16th 2018by MARGOT KAMINSKI
What assurances of privacy do we have in this digital age? Until this year, the quick answer was: effectively none. We share personal data with companies, who in turn share it with other companies and the government, with few if any legal means of individual redress or control. But if 2018 will be remembered as the year of Cambridge Analytica—a British data-mining company that allegedly influenced both British and American elections by targeting voters using personal data—it will also be remembered as the year that privacy law finally started catching up to the Internet.

In America, the “third-party doctrine” has long governed privacy law. This view holds that one can have no privacy expectations in information shared with a third party. The government could obtain a list of phone numbers you called without a warrant, for instance, because you shared that information with a phone company.

This runs counter to most people’s expectations, especially today. Privacy is many things to many people, but one thing it is not is absolute secrecy. We share sensitive information with our doctors; we hold whispered conversations in public places; we rely on practical obscurity even in big cities; and we disclose our most intimate information by text and by email.

Helen Nissenbaum, an ethicist at Cornell University, refers to the foundation of our digital-privacy expectations as “contextual integrity”. When we reveal information in one context, we trust that it won’t pop up to surprise us in another.

Another way to think of it is that we regularly use perceived features of our environments, both physical and social, to manage degrees of disclosure. An email service that uses a mailbox as its logo signals that email will be kept between sender and recipient—just like a regular letter—even if it is in fact stored on a company’s servers.

In June 2018, however, the Supreme Court struck a serious and welcome blow to the third-party doctrine in its Carpenter v. United States ruling. That case asked whether police needed a warrant to access someone’s mobile-phone location data. The Court held that historic mobile-phone location data deserved privacy protections, even if it is shared (often unknowingly) with a mobile-phone service provider.

The Court recognised that what used to be non-sensitive data—a record of your travels through public places—has, in the age of big data, effectively been converted into sensitive information. When gathered en masse and analysed, where someone travels can reveal her religion, health problems, sexual preferences and political affiliations. The Court thus recognised that privacy harms can trigger a wealth of related harms, chilling freedom of speech and freedom of association.

While 2018 brought paradigm shifts to American privacy law, in Europe it brought the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The significance of the GDPR goes beyond the annoying barrage of privacy notices that popped up in May. It establishes enforceable individual transparency and control rights.

But the GDPR’s real impact will be within companies, behind the scenes. Backed by significant penalties for breaches (up to 4% of worldwide annual revenue), the GDPR imposes a series of duties on companies, regardless of whether individuals invoke their privacy rights. It requires companies to articulate legitimate reasons for collecting data; to collect only the data that they need; to design new products in ways that protect individual rights; and sometimes to appoint privacy officers and conduct privacy impact-assessments.

At first glance, the gap between Europe and America still appears enormous. The EU now has the GDPR; America continues to lack comprehensive federal data privacy law, relying instead on a patchwork of consumer protection, state laws, and sector-specific laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

But two recent events have resulted in a surprising array of commonalities: the above-mentioned Carpenter case, and California’s Consumer Privacy Act (CPA), which California passed less than a month after the Carpenter ruling, and which creates an American version of data-protection law.

The California CPA governs not just information that people share directly with companies, but also personal data held by commercial data-brokers. Just as Carpenter suggests that legal protections follow even shared personal data, the CPA imposes transparency and control requirements even on companies that have no direct relationship with consumers. In this way, the CPA represents a shift towards the data protection model embraced in the GDPR. Legal protection travels with the data, regardless of whether or not there is a consumer relationship.

This is not to say that Europe and America are converging. For one, the CPA applies only to California residents (although because California is such a big market the law may influence policies for all Americans—referred to in the context of automobile regulations as the “California effect”). America also has a robust, and in some situations increasingly deregulatory, free speech right in the First Amendment that will likely come into conflict with deletion and disclosure rights.

But there is a growing transatlantic consensus emerging on privacy in the digital age. Sharing data no longer obviates privacy. Privacy protections now increasingly travel with personal information, even if that information is something a company has inferred rather than collected. Both legal systems also increasingly recognise that privacy is, perhaps counterintuitively, deeply linked to transparency: people cannot exert control or request remedies if they do not know where their information is going.

Perhaps most significantly, both legal regimes now exhibit a growing awareness of how linked privacy is to other well-recognised legal harms such as chilling effects on free expression or discrimination against individuals. Even if America does not enact a federal privacy law, the age of free data and diminishing data privacy looks to be rapidly ending.

Margot Kaminski is a professor at Colorado Law. She teaches, researches and writes on the intersection of law and technology.

396

Living Room / Re: Privacy - BI Rules?

« Last post by IainB on August 22, 2018, 04:45 AM »

The amusing Black Mirror video above, though artificial, is arguably a prescient comment on the implicit risks inherent in a tendency for "oversharing" and/or "data leakage" in the IT-enabled SNM (Social Network Marketplace) and other personal-data-related databases (e.g., health, insurance, banking, education), where private data that one might have previously perceived as being peculiar and useful/relevant in one context only is subsequently seen to be useful/relevant in another, or maybe many other contexts. These are typically the data connections and interconnections that the SNM operators and data miners would tend to seek/exploit, for financial gain.

When I was contracted in 2003 to get a failed data analysis project back on the rails, I learned quite a lot. It was a complex IT project to implement a BI (Business Intelligence) system and we had to train the users in the application of BI (it's actually quite powerful and hairy stuff) to meet the growing and complex business needs of the power (energy) company who had contracted me into the project recovery role. I learned that what the Defence sector had always taught was true - that all data/information can be interconnected at some stage - and that, for BI, the world could be simply envisaged as one or more universes of dynamic data - each having its own peculiar descriptive and dynamic data model and that, as in the popular SF concept of parallel universes, there was the potential to interlink these data universes (mass aggregations of dynamic data sets), constantly combining/recombining and drawing data from one to the other, enabling the BI analyst to discover data relationships in a way that would probably not have previously been feasible on such a mass scale, using the then prevailing technologies.

Fast forward to 2018, where we can perhaps now better understand why we might have the apparent privacy shambles that we see around us. It was a gold-rush, opportunistic, every man for himself. Presumably the Google/Facebook founders (and others) would have seen it coming. There were little/no regulations to limit or constrain the progress of BI and its application in the field of mass demographics. Now that some regulations have belatedly been or are being implemented, it arguably may be too late anyway - locking the stable door after the horse has bolted; Pandora's box has already been opened.

397

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Polywick Story Server

« Last post by IainB on August 21, 2018, 05:35 PM »

Oh look! Those columns on the yellow note-sheet in the image...
That looks very interesting to me ... like a PIM; like Lotus Agenda.
The only seemingly relevant reference on the 'net that I could find to it was a Twitter presence: https://twitter.com/polywick
 - but that wasn't about a "story" server (which seems to be a story-writing/development tool - e.g., as included in Scrivener).

Why would they set up an account just to prematurely announce it on DC Forum?

398

Living Room / Re: silly humor - straw danger.

« Last post by IainB on August 21, 2018, 08:50 AM »

Be careful out there...

399

Living Room / Re: Privacy - Could you please LIKE me?

« Last post by IainB on August 20, 2018, 06:55 AM »

Could you please LIKE me?
There is a series of short spoofs from "Black Mirror", offering a glimpse of where we might potentially be heading.

400

Living Room / Re: Good links in english to the mathematics a programmer needs

« Last post by IainB on August 20, 2018, 02:11 AM »

O.M.G.

-Ath (August 20, 2018, 01:10 AM)

@Ath discovers religion?