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|  | | | | When TiVo Thinks You're Gay | | | | | found on The Wall Street Journal
written by profwhat, edited by John (Plastic) [ read unedited ]
posted Wed 27 Nov 6:14am | | | | |
 | "You've heard of TiVo, the personal digital video recorder. It tries to figure out your tastes by looking at what you like to record, and then recommends other programs along similar lines. So, what does it say about you when your TiVo decides that you are gay? After Mike Binder recorded a movie about a man whose wife becomes bisexual, his TiVo started recording large amounts of gay programming. Binder tried to set the TiVo straight, and recorded the Playboy Channel and MTV's spring break bikini coverage. It worked, but his wife was disturbed. Binder eventually incorporated the incident into a script for an episode of The King of Queens, a show he appears in," profwhat writes. "Basil Iwanyk, a film studio executive in Los Angeles and self-described 'straightest guy on earth' ran into a similar problem. He tried to persuade his TiVo that he was not gay by recording a large number of manly World War II documentaries and films. Now, apparently, the TiVo thinks he is a Nazi: 'It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich,' Iwanyk says.
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| | | "Other problems arise. After one user gave 'thumbs down' to religious programming, TiVo decided he wanted to see movies about homicides. Another user had a TiVo that mysteriously assumed he wanted Korean news programs. He gave thumbs down to anything Korean, so his TiVo started recording Chinese news instead."
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[ more plastic... ] |
| | | | | | | 1. I feel their pain... | | | | by rantor |  | | | at Wed 27 Nov 7:10am | score of 3 funny | | | | | | |
I understand how bad being labeled something you aren't - gay, Nazi, gay Nazi - can feel. Just yesterday I went to Netflix and it suggested that deep down I would enjoy "Another Stakeout."
Remember, there's nothing more damning than being labeled a fan of the "Stakeout" movies. It's one of the few minority groups in the US that has NO equal rights protection.
With good cause.
At the final shot he won the war, after losing every battle.
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| | | | | | | | 3. What's Wrong with Mice? | | | | by perrin |  | | | at Wed 27 Nov 7:26am | score of 2 clever | | | | | | |
All right, I can see how some people wouldn't understand how preferences are predicted through data mining ("But I don't even speak Polish, and I haven't been obsessed with children dressed as rabbits for years!").
However:
Dawn Freeman, 23, a tax analyst in Lexington, Ky., has bought lowbrow videos, such as "American Pie," from Amazon.com. But she was aghast when the site suggested Tom Green's gross-out performance in "Road Trip."
"I thought, 'I know I don't like high cinema, but have I really reached the point where I'd like to watch Tom Green lick a mouse?"
Oh dear lord. (If you haven't seen American Pie, it features a guy unknowingly drinking sperm, a guy having sex with a pie that his mom baked, etc.)
I wonder if Ms. Freeman was incredibly irritating to interview, and making her look like a moron is the reporter's revenge. Perhaps her other quotes made sense.
********
I love the first line from paragraph seven of the WSJ article. It's now my sig.
"How very strange that would feel, to be so well understood."
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| | | | | | 57. Re: What's Wrong with Mice? | | | | by snarkism |  | | | at Wed 27 Nov 4:52pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 7 | | | | | |
This is disturbing. I know Plasticians read and watch a wide range of material, but the fact that you guys actually know who these actors are and what these films are ... leaves me somewhat unsettled.
snarkism
That's using your ass.
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| | | | | | 4. Watching shows "off the record" | | | | by zhwj0119 | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 7:51am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
How about this: Introduce a setting so that TiVo still collects data on me for its own personal use, but I can choose what goes into my profile. If I want to watch a "Videodrome" (for example)and have it not change my current taste metric, I can set an "off the record" setting.
This would also be useful if some other person, say, housesat while I was away. I would be the same person when I came back, as far as my relationship with TiVo went.
zh---
If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself. --A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
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| | | | | | 9. Re: Watching shows "off the record" | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 9:17am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 4 | | | | | |
How about this: Introduce a setting so that TiVo still collects data on me for its own personal use, but I can choose what goes into my profile. If I want to watch a "Videodrome" (for example)and have it not change my current taste metric, I can set an "off the record" setting.
This would also be useful if some other person, say, housesat while I was away. I would be the same person when I came back, as far as my relationship with TiVo went.
My understanding is that unless you rate a program on your Tivo (give it tumbs up or thumbs down), it doesn't use anything else to make suggestions. It does, however, automatically give anything you explicitly record 1 thumb up, so sometimes if you record something, and its crap, you need to make sure you get rid of that free thumb up.
Either way, I don't think its recommendations are any better or any worse than any other personalization system I've seen. It certainly seems to work better than Amazon's at least.
I can see where you wouldn't want it to know you've watched Videodrome though... yeesh. Wait, Blondie gets kinda naked in that flick though, doesn't she?
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | 12. Personal Profile vs. Professional Profile | | | | by LadyHermit | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 9:43am | score of 1.5 funny | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
Imagine my horror when, after ordering this book, I then order a book for work, at work with a coworker in the office. What pops up, but Amazon's helpful recommendations based on my one and only purchase thus far, The Good Girls Guide to Bad Girl Sex
Me: Um...er...I don't know how that could have been suggested!!
Male coworker: Riiiigghht.
some people don't know enough to know that they just don't get it
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| | | | | 18. Re: Watching shows "off the record" | | | | by tomaxxamot | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:40am | score of 1.5 informative | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
Blondie gets kinda naked in that flick though, doesn't she?
Yeah, but it isn't really a sexy kind of naked - she burns her breast with a cigarette and has sex with James Woods. This is all before James Woods finds a vagina growing in his stomach and proceeds to pull handguns out of it.
There's something sort of prescient about Videodrome's plot in this discussion though - "I believe that television is the retina of the mind's eye", anyone?
Spread the News - the Ego has Landed.
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| | | | | 62. Re: Watching shows "off the record" | | | | by zhwj0119 | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 7:04pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
It does, however, automatically give anything you explicitly record 1 thumb up, so sometimes if you record something, and its crap, you need to make sure you get rid of that free thumb up.
That's the problem, though. If I go back and give it thumbs down, then TiVo will swing the other way. The article has people paranoid about their ratings actually causing strange results by giving a bunch of things thumbs down. I just want to ignore it altogether, even if I record it.
zh---
If I had known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself. --A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
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| | | | | 19. You think THAT'S embarrassing? | | | | by Greg_Ace | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:44am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 12 | | | | | |
True story: I looked up a jazz album recently on Amazon - a jazz album - and based on that it's recommendations for me were Britney's and Christina Aguilera's latest CDs. Oh, the humanity!!
Doesn't exactly instill confidence in the "personalization" process....
Reason notwithstanding, the universe continued unabated.
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| | | | | 33. Re: Watching shows "off the record" | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 12:54pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 18 | | | | | |
Oh yeah, that's right... I had tried of erase my memories of that movie. Its up there with Blue Velvet as one of the most uncomfortable movies I've ever sat through.
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | 72. Re: Watching shows "off the record" | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Thu 28 Nov 10:43am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 62 | | | | | |
That's the problem, though. If I go back and give it thumbs down, then TiVo will swing the other way. If you don't like the show and merely want it eliminated from your ratings process, you can take away the thumbs-up without giving it a thumbs-down: I do this all the time when friends ask me to record stuff for them.
Moreover, no one show should have that major an impact on Tivo's suggestions unless you have given ratings to insufficiently few shows. If you haven't given it enough data to work with, it extrapolates badly based on what little you've told it. The quick and easy way to handle this is, one a day for about a week, channel surf and quickly rate every show that's on (unless you're really unsure about one). Very soon you'll find Tivo's suggestions improve.
These people who decide things like "it's decided I'm gay and I'm not so I'll overcompensate" are being dumb - they're just screwing it up in the other direction. The thing to do is try to give it enough information that it can find balance, not to try to consciously direct it to a specific goal.
End of line.
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| | | | | 76. Re: Personal Profile vs. Professional Profile | | | | by LadyHermit | | | | at Thu 28 Nov 5:55pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 64 | | | | | |
This is nothing, I posted some rather revealing info on Plastic a while ago that I intended to post anonymously. Silly me -- forgot to click the damn box.
some people don't know enough to know that they just don't get it
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| | | | | | 5. Oh the horror! | | | | by tantric bushido boy | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 8:09am | score of 1.5 intriguing | | | | | | |
On the lighter side of the disturbing Nazi programming is that if Mr. Iwanyk ever wants to replicate Ian McKellen's performance in Apt Pupil, he'll have plenty of reference material.
Personally, I don't think that's too bad. Being Indian myself, could you imagine what might happen if my parents were to watch Bollywood programming?
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| | | | | | 6. I feel their pain | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 8:41am | score of 1.5 | | | | | | |
I've had some similar things happen with my Tivo.. it started recording Univision programs for a while, which is odd, since I don't speak Spanish. You record one episode of Malto Mario and it things you want every crappy Martha Stewart show for some reason. I gave Citizen Kane 3 thumbs up, and suddenly it starts recording every showing of Bewitched (I assume because Agnes Moorehead appeared in both).
Still, it comes up with some good stuff once in a while. Even without the suggestions if someone put a gun to my head and was wither going to take my Tivo, or take my TV and replace it with a 13" B&W and leave the Tivo... well, I'd force myself to get used to the black and white TV. I think I'd chew my own arm off before I went back to watching TV live.
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | | 8. Learning From Amazon | | | | by Djerrid | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 9:05am | score of 2 informative | | | | | | |
Amazon.com gives you recomendations based on what items you have viewed, put on your wishlist or bought. It also gies you the opportunity to tweak what it dishes out to you:
Improve Your Recommendations
Are recommended items not quite on target? Tell us more about your interests:
Edit your Amazon history
Select your Favorite Areas
Rate items you own
Does TiVo also have any of these options?
'In cases of major discrepancy, it's always reality that's got it wrong.' -Douglas Adams
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| | | | | | 44. Re: Learning From Amazon | | | | by Ozymandias | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 3:07pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 8 | | | | | |
With TIVO you can rate any show with up to three thumbs up or down. You can view what shows in the future TIVO thinks you will like, and rate those. And I believe you can view your history, and rate categories, but you have to use the backdoors.
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| | | | | | | 26. I respectfully disagree. | | | | by MAYORBOB | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 11:27am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 10 | | | | | |
It is not Arli$$ horrible. I have watched an occasional episode of Arli$$ and I have been known to have passed a guffaw or a chortle.
I would place Binder's series in the same dreadful category of "Sex and the City". What could be more awful than a comedy which isn't funny?
Tending to final details.
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| | | | | | 11. The ugly. Definitely the ugly. | | | | by phenry | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 9:37am | score of 3 brilliant | | | | | | |
Shortly after I got my TiVo, I used it to record The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. From this, it decided I therefore want to watch EVERY WESTERN EVER MADE . A year and a half later I'm still occassionally seeing Westerns pop up in the suggestions list. I'm not the only person who's encountered this, either.
If we can't design an algorithm that can figure out that I don't want to watch old episodes of The Rifleman, what makes John Poindexter think he can design one to figure out if I'm a terrorist from my credit card records?
phh | Away for 3 years and still in the karma top 50! Woo hoo!
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| | | | | | 13. Is there something wrong with that? | | | | by maml | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 9:58am | score of 1 compelling | | | | | | |
So your TiVo is recording gay oriented entertainment for you, big deal, you don't have to watch it. Though some of it might be good, and you might learn something.
If he hadn't gone overboard trying to correct it, it would have "straightened" out in a while without distrubing his wife.
Homophobes are so annoying.
I've blocked AI. I'm happier now.
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| | | | | | 20. Are We Getting the Real Story? | | | | by perrin | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:55am | score of 3.5 funny | | in reply to comment 13 | | | | | |
His wife, however, was taken aback when she saw all the half-naked women he was ordering through TiVo. He told her those women meant nothing to him: "I'm just counterprogramming because TiVo thinks I'm gay."
My first impression was that this guy got busted by his wife recording a bunch of bikini-clad women, and quickly came up with this pathetically lame excuse.
"I'm sorry I forgot to take the laundry out of the washing machine, honey, but the dryer thinks I'm a homosexual."
"I would have had dinner ready for you when you got home, baby, but the toaster oven thinks I'm bigoted against Palestinians, and the mixing machine is telling everyone that I don't think women should be allowed to vote."
"How very strange that would feel, to be so well understood."
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| | | | | | 14. "Is there an off switch" try two | | | | by Dvandom | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:03am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
For some reason, the post I made a couple hours ago never showed up. Maybe I hit the preview button a second time instead of submit. Ah well. Hopefully it won't show up after I post this.
Is there a way to turn the feature off, so it only records what you tell it to record? Otherwise, it would seem that somewhere along the line a consortium of stand-up comedians bribed a programmer to make sure TiVo would provide them with new material.
---Dave
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| | | | | | 37. Re: "Is there an off switch" try two | | | | by kcross | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 2:29pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 14 | | | | | |
Yes. You can set it to not record any TiVo suggestions at all. It's a preference.
I actually don't have any TiVo suggestions automatically recorded, since I've never found any suggestions that I'd actually want to watch. (I'm a picky television watcher).
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| | | | | 52. Re: "Is there an off switch" try two | | | | by Kardath | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 4:03pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 37 | | | | | |
I never get suggestion recorded because I have so many season passes that my Tivo is constanly full. For those without Tivo, it will never record over something you asked it to record for a suggestion.
I'm always curious about people who actually have space for suggestions. Isn't the whole point of Tivo to record _every_single_ Simpsons that is broadcast in a given day?
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| | | | | | | 16. Not just TiVo | | | | by Mighty Ponygirl | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:15am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Amazon has decided I'm in the family way.
My coworker had an Amazon wishlist made up for her new child, and so I bought her a few things off of it, and even went so far as to use Amazon's gift service, specifying that the books and sleepers should be sent to her address, but now, whenever I go to Amazon, I am bombarded with product suggestions for baby shit.
I went nuts, clicking on the "not interested" button for every baby item that came along, but Amazon would not get the hint.
I've emailed Amazon explaining to them that I am not in the family way, I don't want recommendations for bouncy seats cluttering up my Amazon home page, and that, frankly, their engine should be a little more intelligent when someone is purchasing an item satisfying someone else's wish list, but shockingly, Amazon has not replied.
I know this is pretty OT, but I just needed to vent.
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| | | | | | 22. Re: Not just TiVo | | | | by Checkers | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 11:13am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 16 | | | | | |
After purchasing one book (a gift) for my fundamentalist Baptist sister, Amazon has decided that I too am a fundie.
It's amusing to see books about lesbian sexuality, transsexualism, and ultra-reactionary Protestant dogma all in the same recommendations list.
"If Plastic was any prettier, I'd have to stick my dick in it." --CaptainLiberal
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| | | | | | 17. Yep... | | | | by n29_w95 | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:28am | score of 2 clever | | | | | | |
My best friend has a two-year old girl. As her duly appointted uncle, I've been spoiling her with little gifts in the mail so often. (Amazon was an easy way to do this.)
At the same time, I was adding to my "definitive collection" of contemporary horror DVDs.
So with my suggestions for H.G. Lewis's "Bucket o' Blood", "1,000 Baby Corpses", and books on Satanism For Dummies... I get suggestions for "fleece jumpers", "Barney Singalong", and those blue, rubber earwax cleaners that one uses to suck the snot out of a kid's nose.
I keep expecting a call from CPS.
---Pie is good!
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| | | | | | | | 36. My TiVo Thinks I'm Japanese | | | | by MiceHead | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 2:07pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Today's Daily Victim has a spoof on this that begins much the same way:
"No no no!" I said. "I don't want my TiVo to think I'm some kind of homophobic jerk. I have an open mind. I'm cool with gay people. I just don't want it thinking that I swing that way. What will it tell the other TiVos? What if my mom comes over and flips on the TV?"
=MiceHead - The Stock Market for the Next 100 Years
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| | | | | | 38. This happened to me, too | | | | by WhosYerDaddy | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 2:39pm | score of 1.5 compelling | | | | | | |
I have no idea what I originally recorded that caused this, but a month or two after setting up my TiVo, I came home to find it had recorded a show I had never heard of..."Queer As Folk." If you're interested in gay porn, you should definitely check out this show. I was initially very shocked...
...but now I'm confused. Does the fact that I like "Will & Grace" mean that I'm really not straight?
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| | | | | | 41. Re: This happened to me, too | | | | by shadarr | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 3:00pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 38 | | | | | |
Liking Will & Grace has nothing to do with sexual preference and everything to do with good writing (although personally I think the show should be called Jack & Karen). If on the other hand you find yourself watching the same 2 minute segment of Queer As Folk over and over and over... you may want to re-evaluate which team you're playing for.
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| | | | | | | 43. Spence on TiVo | | | | by logan | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 3:05pm | score of 2 funny | | | | | | |
Last year, I had the opportunity to see Patton Oswalt, who plays Spence on "King of Queens" doing standup. For those of you who've never seen him, you're missing out. The evil little gnome is a genius. He's playing San Francisco this weekend. Trust me, just go.
Patton did about 15 minutes on TiVo, calling it greatest gift he'd ever received. "BETTER THAN THE GIFT OF LIFE!", he'd scream. He went into this profiling issue at great length. Apparently, he'd recorded Xena (aka "The Patton Oswalt Masterbation Hour"), and TiVo began recording everything on TV that had horses.
Seems to me he'd be a great spokesman for TiVo, if only he could stop referring to it as "a VCR run by a rally eager-to-please retarded child". Now THAT'S a slogan that works!
"Spockmate!"
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| | | | | | 45. customer profiling insightful? I think so. | | | | by Jonny 290 | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 3:09pm | score of 2 funny | | | | | | |
Grocery stores are doing this to me already. You ever noticed how some chains are printing out customized coupons on the back of your receipt for use the next time you visit?
After my weekly grocery trip and a purchase of Hot Pockets, mini pizzas, EGM Magazine, Code Red and $0.99 TV dinners, it printed out a bunch of coupons for Clearasil, Vaseline and Slim-Fast. Sigh. The geek life. ;)
here to flip the script and channel your aggressions inside
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| | | | | | 47. Re: customer profiling insightful? I think so. | | | | by WhosYerDaddy | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 3:31pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 45 | | | | | |
My grocery store is now trying to be my mother.
It's a chain with those "club cards" that give you a discount on selected items. The cards also help track the purchase history of the card-holders.
Two months ago, the store let me know that for the rest of the year I would receive 10% off all produce. Its system has noticed that I rarely buy produce, and it apparently wants me to eat my vegetables!
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| | | | | | 54. I have to laugh | | | | by bengalcat | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 4:25pm | score of 2 clever | | | | | | |
Cal me a luddite if you will, but I don't have a Tivo, and I raised my eyebrows quite a bit when my friends started talking about the system in breathless terms. OK, it's a high-capacity VCR. But wait, like Amazon and the grocery store that issues you a discount card in exchange for information about your buying habits, TiVo can also recommend/record stuff for you to watch. Even if, as the company says, personal preferences aren't catalogued for the purpose of being fed back to you in the form of marketing spew, the whole idea of an automated system recommending stuff to me based on what it thinks I want still strikes me as kind of weird, and certainly not something I would seek out. So when I hear folks complaining that the automated recommendations are less than precise, it just strikes me as funny. Really. I'm not making a political point about privacy as much as I am laughing at how surprised people seem to be that this sort of thing would happen.
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| | | | | | | 58. Will this all end up in one Giant database? | | | | by TallOne | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 4:58pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I think with the development of technology more and more people will be put into categories, but who decides what categories we are to go in based off of what we watch or buy? Is all of this information companies are collecting going to be sold and placed into one big database? Will this info end up on our driver's license some day?
If you can perfect this technology, you can make a lot of money, because right now it is very inaccurate.
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| | | | | | 63. This box is a mirror... | | | | by bitter_engineer | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 7:05pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
- What struck me about this story was that the Tivo users were annoyed with being portrayed as part of some stereotypical demographic group, but thought they could 'fight back' by trying to enforce a different, equally flawed stereotype on the program, i.e. "Rednecks must not be gay, therefore by rating how I think a redneck would rate, I can stop with the gay stuff."
And much of this annoyance seems to be based on a deep-seated insecurity. Dawn Freeman was okay with buying American Pie, but the subtly-different Road Trip was seen as beyond the pale, and cartoons were too "sophomoric". Is there any system that could not make these suggestsions for her? The computer knows nothing of embarrassment, only weighted similarity strengths.
- However, I doubt that Tivo's AI really lumps personal preferences by personality, but rather searches a database for material most connected to what has been positively rated. After the man recorded information on world war II, the software just looked for WWII media the user had not seen, which was now probably heavily biased with nazi histories, and flagged it to record.
- I don't think these people would really want an AI system that works the way they think it does, where the box decides you must fit into the "elitist poser" group, and gives you endless recordings of Chocolat and The Thin Red Line. At best, such a system would be insulting to your intelligence, and at worst it would be corruptable, as companies would try to buy suggestions for inclusion in Tivo's "Fundie Group", etc.
- Obviously, Tivo and Amazon ranking programs have a ways to go before they are ready for humans. But this story makes me wonder if humans are ready for ranking programs? I think all of these people would be much happier with their devices if they did not try to fight with the automatic record, but just let it naturally pick up on their preferences, and ignore or downrate silly offers when they are suggested by the box.
Non estat prandium gratuitum
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| | | | | | 67. what tivo really needs... | | | | by neitzert | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:17pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I've had a TiVo for nearly 3 years and experienced many similar, yet not as disturbing, incidents with mine. I think that TiVo needs a 'Never record this #@$!& program again' button. That would fix almost every problem I've had.
All Your IMAP are belong to US
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| | | | | | 69. The Darker Side of TIVO. | | | | by LJ Gould | | | | at Wed 27 Nov 10:47pm | score of 1.5 astute | | | | | | |
Imagine your a middle-aged parent who has a few worries about his son who's not too athletic. When your TIVO starts starts recording Queer as Folk, what are you going to think? What would you do about it?
Even if he's not gay, your suspicions are going to scar him. (There's no more serious blow to most growing straight boy's egos than "Son, are you gay?")
Or what if you're the son, and you know things aren't going so good between mom and dad, and again TIVO starts recording Queer as Folk?
"Is dad gay, mom?" Probably won't help a stressful marriage.
If you really are gay, TIVO can out you.
So if you're a closetted redneck teenager, and your parents have a TIVO, are you going to feel free to watch Queer as Folk, or even Trading Spaces?
What kind of psychological impact would your parents have, ranting and raving about how your TIVO only records that filthy homosexual shit?
Or what kind of physical impact would it have if your redneck parents figured out why that damn thing started reecording those shows and then tried to beat the shit out of you.
EEep I can sit here writing nightmare scenarios all night.....
Jayson - insomnia victim.
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| | | | | | 70. The Funny Side of Amazon. | | | | by jwsellers | | | | at Thu 28 Nov 2:41am | score of 2 funny | | in reply to comment 69 | | | | | |
My brother logged into Amazon on my home computer and forgot to log out. I thought I would help him by giving high ratings to all the gay-themed books I could find.
He didn't notice until the day my parents were visiting him and he decided to show our dad how Amazon's recommendations work. Hilarity ensued.
Or I guess it might have if I hadn't distracted my dad while my brother discovered the shocking truth of just what Amazon thought of him.
"uhh...it's not working right now."
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| | | | | | 75. Just a thought... | | | | by culberda | | | | at Thu 28 Nov 1:22pm | score of 1.5 astute | | | | | | |
If you think about it, and really I only have for the past fifteen minutes or so... These types of association systems would be most innacurate at the beginning, and then gain accuracy over time as the well of data increased.
I'm assuming they decide that someone who watches King of Queens would also like Queer as Folk not only by theme, but also by the association that a whole bunch of other people who watch King of Queens watch queer as folk.
This kind of profiling would become much more accurate given more time, and consequently more data to evaluate.
So... these systems may be annoying now, but if you want them to get better you'll have to live with their "growing" stages.
the quiet loners always blow
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