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When Personalization Runs Amuck 198

Posted by Hemos from the swf-or-not dept.
pamar writes "According to this article from the Wall Street Journal, your TiVo could definitely get the wrong impression about your interests, or even your sexual preferences. And what you need to do to get "a clean slate"? Most of the users who have been "targeted" by TiVo usually try to "correct" the profiling by showing an abnormal interest in something wildly different." Yep, it's a dupe.
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When Personalization Runs Amuck More

When Personalization Runs Amuck

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  • Deja vu (Score:1, Troll)

    by stevenbdjr ( 539653 )
    Are the editors out to lunch today? This is a duplicate from a day or two ago.

  • Its getting just like TV around here (Score:5, Funny)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:27PM (#4776361)
    All repeats and no Firefly.

  • So? (Score:2, Informative)

    by rtphokie ( 518490 )
    No really, so? My TiVo goes a little against my normal interests from time to time in what it records for me in it's "suggestions" section. Doesn't bother me a bit. Doesn't take up any space really since those are the first programs that are deleted when space is needed for what I've told it to record.
  • if TIVOs regularly record the same show twice from different sources.
    • a lameness/repeat/rerun filter in them..looks like it's time to REVISE the slashcodethis time...except this time the editors should get something like this when they try to repost the article:

      "Whoa there cowboy! Looks liek you are trying to repost URL that has already been posted on /.. You will have to wait 2 minutes to do that :)"

      No seriously slashcode should have something like a 3 day history underneath the post article that will check and tell the "reporters" if there are any similarities between text or if anu URLs have been previously used....
      • That would help, but I don't think it would cure the problem. If the original story has a link to the register and the repost has a link to news.com, then it's not going to be kicked up. I'd exclude noise words in the summary, and do an automatic search on the rest, and display the top matches. A search on "Tivo" and "profiling" does display the two matches in this case, and so does "face" and "transplant" in the other example.

  • Duplicate story (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:29PM (#4776381) Homepage
    Slashdot covered this two days ago. The editors aren't reading their own output again.

    Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program. [google.com]

    • And this brings an intersting point: if the editors themselves don't read their own page, then why should we?

      I don't want to be harsh or rude, and I like my daily fix of /. like most people in here, or else we wouldn't come back, but these repeated stories are appearing more and more on the front page. Today we have what? Two already? /. editors, please do like we do: read the main page regularly before posting new stories!

    • Re:Duplicate story (Score:4, Funny)

      by Jucius Maximus ( 229128 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:53PM (#4776511) Journal
      "Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program [news.google.com] ."

      Clearly, there's nobody at OSDN owns one of these [thinkgeek.com] or we wouldn't have such slip-ups on slashdot :-)

      • No, they just sell [thinkgeek.com] them.

        A month or so later we were Slashdotted. And promptly thereafter ThinkGeek was acquired by the good folks at Andover.Net who have since been acquired by the great folks at VA Software. Andover.Net then became OSDN which is the central entry point for the Open Source community's favorite web sites such as ThinkGeek (hey that's us!), slashdot.org, linux.com, sourceforge.net, and freshmeat.net.
      • Clearly, there's nobody at OSDN owns one of these [thinkgeek.com] or we wouldn't have such slip-ups on slashdot :-)

        Heh. Before clicking on the link, I figured it had to be a computer :)
    • Good point.

      This subsection may be of more specialised interest to people here [google.com]

      I come here to read the comments, and put up with old and duplicates as par for the course:-)

    • Re:Duplicate story (Score:4, Funny)

      by CaseyB ( 1105 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @04:30PM (#4776647)
      I heard once that you could do a fairly accurate job of predicting the weather (better than official meteorological reports, at the time) by just stating that the weather would be the same as the current day.

      Now you can predict the stories on slashdot the same way.

    • Funny how that is the subject of this [msn.com] article on Slate right now - not sure if you had read it.

    • Re:Duplicate story (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @05:16PM (#4776839) Journal

      I secretly hope Taco forgets he is married already and prompty proposes to his now-wife again on slashdot with another nice dupe.

    • Slashdot covered this two days ago. The editors aren't reading their own output again.
      Remember, incompetent editors, you can be replaced by a program. [google.com]

      (For those lacking humor, this is supposed to be funny).

  • Read The Manual! (Score:5, Informative)

    by stevelup ( 445596 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:30PM (#4776389)
    All you have to do is go into the system setup menu and select "Reset Thumb Data".

    It will forget everything it ever might have thought about you...

    Mind you, expecting journalists to read the instruction manual before making wild statements is of course too much to ask...
  • It is like flashback thanksgiving around here! Here [slashdot.org] is the original, if you are interested... The orginial story was posted under "It's Funny...Laugh"

    Different posters, different slant - now THAT'S funny!

  • Dupe!! (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Maddog Batty ( 112434 )
    Hemos, try the following:
    http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=tivo [slashdot.org]

    Its not that difficult to find dupes....

    The old story is here [slashdot.org], it was only two days ago.
  • The Slashdot editors clearly are in the Thanksgiving spirit: Two duplicate stories today so far; one more, and we have a turkey!

    But the question is, will they have a perfect 300?

  • Auto-replay (Score:1, Redundant)

    by dagg ( 153577 )
    The last /. article is here: Previously on /. [slashdot.org]
    --

    What Tivo doesn't know... [tilegarden.com]

  • First my girlfriend judges me... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:32PM (#4776407)
    ...now my TV is doing the same. At least the TiVo can't leave and take half my stuff! Hah!
  • I am forgetful, it keeps playing the same news clips from cnn every two or three days... (sound familiar?)

  • That sounded anti-TiVo (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the suggestions is part of the reason I bought the TiVo. And it's not like it goes out and overwrites what you told it to record. Whatever you tell it to do will always happen before what the TiVo thinks. What's nice is that if you have extra space and the TiVo isn't recording something then it might go out and look for re-runs or something similar.. It's not like you'll come home and everything you told it to record will be gone and in it's place will be a bunch of stuff you don't want.

  • my tivo is getting a face transplant (Score:4, Funny)

    by baryon351 ( 626717 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:34PM (#4776419)
    It appears when your thumb info is incorrect on your tivo, it'll search out the WRONG face donor, and you'll get one you never really wanted.

    Slashdot Editor spokeswoman Ellen Feiss said "It was a really good face... My tivo devoured it. Then I got a transplant and it wasn't as good".

    Stay tuned tomorrow for more adventures of Punxatawny Phil, as ground hog day continues on Slashdot.
  • Oh brilliant, not 20 posts to this story, and 99% of em are "Hey its another one!". Made me laff. Keep up the good work slashdot editors!

  • Slashdot Personalization (Score:4, Funny)

    by cybermage ( 112274 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:35PM (#4776424) Homepage Journal
    Is there a setting in preferences to filter out duplicates?

    • Re:Slashdot Personalization (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fweeky ( 41046 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @04:19PM (#4776609) Homepage
      Is there a setting in preferences to filter out duplicates?

      Could do.

      Instead of editors (*cough*) just adding "yeah, it's a dupe" at the end of the article, they could set a "Dupe" flag on the story; you set your prefs to remove them, and you're sorted. Of course, there would be a short period where it would be displayed, but it's either that, some dupe detection on submit, or less incompetence.
      • An alternative could be to have the submission queue viewer automatically search for all the links in a story in the archive. If there's a match, display a link to the story for the editor to test.
        • Yeah,

          But then your slashdot preference might accidentally be cross connected to your Tivo, watching several programs at once. The Tivo doesn't care, it just watches the TV, it doesn't actually have to believe what it's watching.

          So after a frantic day of your SlashDot preferences simultaneously believing the Good is Bad, Black is White, and that God needs a lot of money sent to a certain PO Box, it will develop a fault.

          (With apologies to Douglas Adams)

    • They could create a "Replay" section and whenever they feel like publishing the same story again they could put it there. This way they could even put it in the front page and nobody would have reason to complaim...
  • Is there some way to personalise /. to avoid seeing duplicates? Now that would be useful.
    • This could be a good idea to **cough*cough** force people into subscribing. If you subscribe you get to ignore all these dupes and all those redundant posts like "ummm yeah d000000d i reckon 'em pages r repeati'n 'emselves. Now me gotta go'n shoot sommat the preceedin' post was funny, not flamy :), and dooont ye forgit that

  • My SlashDot Keeps Recording TiVo Articles (Score:5, Funny)

    by loggia ( 309962 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:35PM (#4776427)
    For some reason, my SlashDot recording preferences are off. It keeps thinking I am really into TiVo articles.
    • Yeah, I get the same thing, Except my slashdot also thinks I need a face transplant. I guess the system is taking shots from my webcam and recommending articles that might be of interest. Oh well, have to wait a few years for that facial transplant. Until then, I'll put up with being ugly....

  • ...all over again.

  • Turkey and the Slashdot Editors (Score:3, Informative)

    by pgrote ( 68235 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:35PM (#4776434) Homepage
    It's Thanksgiving. Let's cut these guys a break. Sure, there have been two dupes today with one of them still on the front page.

    As amazing as it seems there is a reason for this. Eating turkey can affect your cognitive skills. Not only does it make you sleepy [ivillagehealth.com], but it can make you miss things that you read.
  • It's very hard to create a composite sketch of people based on behaviour (too narrow). But, you'd be suprised how easy it is to make this same sketch from spatial data.

    I work for a rather large GIS software company, and one of our larger clients is responsible for most of the dead tree junkmail you get in your mailbox. How do they figure out that you would likely buy a Lexus/are looking to refinance your mortgage/want to join a health club?

    simple... PRISM [claritas.com]

    put your zip code in there and see how accurately your spending/watching habits are reflected. Perhaps TiVo should ditch their "personal" profiling for regional profiling.

    • Oh, christ. Are you sure this isn't a joke? My ZIP code brought up this doozy:

      Inner Cities
      Inner-City, Single Parent Families
      Age group: Under 18, 18-34
      Blue-Collar/Service
      Household income: 16,500
      1.86% of U.S. households belong to this PRIZM Cluster.

      This PRIZM Cluster is most likely to...
      Buy baby food
      Buy soul/r&b/black music
      Pay bills by phone
      Watch pay-per-view sports
      Read National Enquirer

      This PRIZM Cluster lives in neighborhoods like...

      Detroit, MI
      Hyde Park, IL
      Morningside, NY

      Somebody needs to tell the PRIZM people about this little thing called the "urban renaissance." Downtown areas aren't all ghettos these days.
    • This is what I got for the Emeryville, CA area code. It's somewhat accurate, but it's missing a couple of smaller demographic clusters.

      47 Inner Cities
      Inner-City, Single Parent Families
      Age group: Under 18, 18-34
      Blue-Collar/Service
      Household income: 16,500
      1.86% of U.S. households belong to this PRIZM Cluster.
      This PRIZM Cluster is most likely to...
      Buy baby food
      Buy soul/r&b/black music
      Pay bills by phone
      Watch pay-per-view sports
      Read National Enquirer

      30 Mid-City Mix
      African-American Singles & Families
      Age group: Under 18, 25-34
      White-Collar/Service
      Household income: 35,000
      1.09% of U.S. households belong to this PRIZM Cluster.
      This PRIZM Cluster is most likely to...
      Use 3-way calling feature
      Shop at T.J. Maxx
      Drink Pepsi Free
      Watch Nightline
      Read Muscle and Fitness

      8 Young Literati
      Upscale Urban Singles & Couples
      Age group: 25-44
      Professional
      Household income: 63,400
      0.92% of U.S. households belong to this PRIZM Cluster.
      This PRIZM Cluster is most likely to...
      Plan for large purchases
      Take vitamins
      Use a discount broker
      Watch Bravo
      Read GQ

      6 Urban Gold Coast
      Elite Urban Singles
      Age group: 45-64
      Professional
      Household income: 73,500
      0.57% of U.S. households belong to this PRIZM Cluster.
      This PRIZM Cluster is most likely to...
      Attend the theater
      Use olive oil
      Bank online
      Watch Mystery
      Read Self
  • I order a porn movie for a friend.

    TiVo starts recommending porn......

    Girlfriend comes home to playboy channel........

    I come home to redneck style vasectomy.......

    (And just for shits and grins)
    PROFIT!!!!
  • ...um, all over again.
  • It keeps on thinking that we want to read the same article on gay pregnant TiVo users... :)

  • Hire me! (Score:3)

    by Anarchofascist ( 4820 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:41PM (#4776458) Homepage Journal
    I'll read slashdot for you, and make sure there are no story repeats. I ask only for $65,000 a year.
    • Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." -- Mathew 10:34

      I'm pretty sure you're going to hell for misspelling "Matthew."

      • Re:Hire me! (Score:2, Funny)

        by alias ( 4178 )
        Well, let's keep this in context. He is looking for an editorial position at slashdot...

        I'm pretty sure you're going to hell for misspelling "Matthew."

        Looks to me like he'd fit right in! ;-)


    • Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." -- Mathew 10:34

      Ironic that someone who wants a proofing job misspelled "Matthew".

  • The personalization algorythems aren't all that smart, and don't have very much information to work on, anyway. So, they work a little bit, but people anthroporphise the personalizations, and get worked up about not much.

    (My tastes and moods vary so much I mostly get random stuff, so these are rarely useful to me.)

  • Damnit (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Chester K ( 145560 )
    Slashdot seems to really think I like stories about Tivo... this is the second one the editors have recommended this week!

    *thumbs down**thumbs down**thumbs down*
  • Slashdot editors are using a bot based on TiVo in order to run the stories its readers find most interesting. One feature of this bot is that it scans previously posted articles on Slashdot. Meanwhile TiVo users who have recorded Slashdot posts have returned to find their TiVo boxes "Slashdotted."
  • This article is next [slashdot.org]

    Kisses karma bye-bye as he resubmits this article just to see what happens.....
    • OK, I sent it in....
      Lets see if this applies anymore:
      * Badly worded subjects Check
      * Broken or missing URLs Check
      * Confusing or hysterical sounding writeup It was OK, I guess
      * It might be an old story Double check
      * It might just be a busy day and we've already posted enough stories Riiiight, on thanksgiving?
      * Someone already submitted your story Double Check
      * Your story just might not be interesting! Check, esp since its old news...

      We shall see what happens, heheheh

  • We're getting an awful lot of stories hitting Ars Technica and then showing up on Slashdot days later.

    I really appreciate new and interesting stuff, but if it's already made its run through other blogs, does it really need someone to pick it up from there and rehash it on /. just for cheap "I got a story posted!" thrills?


  • News for Nerds, Repeats for Alzheimers

  • IN SOVIET RUSSIA (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Articles post repeat editors!

  • Scary thought (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @03:53PM (#4776512)
    What if, in the future, companies start requesting the data collected by such "we can guess who and what you are" systems for demographic purposes?

    "Well, according to this data, 25% of our customers are pregnant gay men, and 14% are neo-Nazis with an interest in cooking..."

    But seriously. Something evil tells me that it's only a matter of time before this stuff is taken as the Word of Gord(TM)...
    • Right. If they can screw it up with something as simple as preguessing tv viewing preferences (which I don't care about), imagine how badly they *will* screw it up for stuff that matters and that I do care about.
      That point alone makes the "story" worth a repeat.
  • With repetition like this, who needs Slashbacks?
  • Oh wait, thats how it was before I got the TIVO.

  • BS (Score:1)

    by hpavc ( 129350 )
    tivo doesnt behave like this at all. when it doesnt have a decision making seed it simply takes guesses at what you might want to watch. when a guess it made and you actually watch the programming it simple follows up on it.

    if these people went through their 'tivo suggestions' and actually rated programming they wont have this effect at all.

    also until tivo becomes 'multi-viewer' allowing for multiple people's suggestions a certain level of odd lookups are made.
  • Hey guys don't you realize what's happening? Since it's a holiday they're doing a "Best of /." show due to the lack of meaningful events on the turkey day. Hell, they probably have a script that just plops up a story from a list they have preselected while they're off stuffing their faces and taking naps while watching bad football (and that'd be 'mericun football NOT soccer for all you ferners).
  • Yep, it's a dupe.

    Then why post it...?

  • Do the /. Editors actually read the main page, on any sort of regular basis, or do they throw stories to the wind, and wait for us to flame the hell out of them?
  • It is unfair of you to expect the slashdot editors to work more than 5 minutes a day for their living! Afterall, if they spent 5 seconds checking if each story were a duplicate, or even reading the front page from time to time, it might interrupt their beer and TiVo time!

  • Delete dupes (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Plug ( 14127 )
    Look Slashdot, if you're going to post duplicates, and then edit them a few comments later to say "Yep, it's a dupe", why not just delete the article?

    The discussion has happened and can continue to happen in the original article. A few people will know you fouled up - but who cares, this way everyone knows you fouled up by duping and aren't doing anything remotely editorial at all!

  • Must be a slow news day ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by hero ( 25043 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @04:19PM (#4776610) Journal
    There's been a couple duplicates today, we must really be starved for news.

    I think I'll submit a story...

    "This just in, Chinese scientists, working feverishly for the past decade, have discovered a unique combination of chemicals that when combined with heat produce an explosion able to propel sharp metal objects down a tube at a high velocity. This 'Gun Powder,' as it's being dubbed, is set to revolutionize the battlefield. In other news, Springfling, the world's leading bow and arrow manufacturer, apparently worried about their stock prices, have dubbed the new invention blasphemous, unreliable and claim that it's unlikely to have any effect on the way empires carry out their wars."

    -hero.

  • They're also discussing this over here [slashdot.org].
  • an icon just for duplicate stories?

    how about a duplicate story category?

    Then I could just select not have stories from the duplicate story section on my front page...

    OR maybe slashdot doesn't work like that.....

  • Never, ever, let anyone else browse Amazon from your system (especially if you're mad enough to leave their 1-click(TM) shopping switched on). Allowing my sister to browse has so buggered up my music recomendations that I can't find anything worth buying any more. Ugh! Ergh! That terrible sound, I can't get it out of my head... Remind me to do it to her some day...

    Mind you, when people leave their desktops logged in at the office, I sometimes set their Google Language Prefernces [google.co.uk] to Klingon (ja'chuqmeH Usenet ghommeyvaD yInej 'ej yIlegh.) or "Elmer Fudd" (De web owganized by topic into categowies)

  • Slashdot is like TiVO (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrJones ( 4691 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @04:50PM (#4776717) Homepage Journal
    Slashdot thinks that I like TiVO news and keep posting dupes about TiVO news. :-)
    Just kidding
  • True story -- I filled out a bank form years ago with a business partner, Murray, for a bank account. I'm a male, and so is Murray.

    To this day on my credit report I'm married to Murray, along with a half dozen other major errors.

    I never bothered to correct this because being married got me more favorable loan terms.

    Now if these people can't get this basic information correct with forms that I directly fill in, how is Tivo going to get anything near correct when it's just guessing based on what I watch?

  • Slashdot duplicate articles ruined my life !! (Score:4, Funny)

    by deek ( 22697 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @05:10PM (#4776815) Homepage Journal
    I was once a happy and energetic person. I used to love to be involved in life. Whether it was work or play, all my activities were fun and interesting.

    Then I saw my first duplicate Slashdot article.

    The effect was immediate. Life just lost that shine. I'm wandering around now, dazed and confused, exclaiming "Why! Why does Slashdot have to post duplicates!". My sex drive has vanished, my work productivity has become non-existant, my exuberance has all but dried up. All I can be fed up doing these days, is slothing around the house muttering curses against the evilness of duplicated news stories.

    Please consider people like us, Mr. Slashdot editor, the next time you submit a story.

    DeeK
  • If they finger your box and then call you gay?


  • Don't know what kind of tools are available to editors but...but why don't slashdot editors encorperate a bayesian duplicate submission detector in their "editing" process. Perhaps it would help them from spamming their own site?!?!?
  • Second duplicate in a less than three hours from editors.
    Why don't we do the same? Let us repost our comments from the original discussion and see if they get the same moderation.
    Your karma could go up (or down) twice as fast! Or even faster if on second reading moderators get the joke you post!
  • I wish I could convince my Tivo that I don't speak Spanish! About 1/3 of its "automatic" recordings are in Spanish. I have even tried taking the Spanish channels off of the 'Channels You Receive' list and it still seems to record from them.

  • Suggestions for more accuracy (Score:4, Informative)

    by Do not eat ( 594588 ) on Thursday November 28, 2002 @06:22PM (#4777047)
    Got problems with the shows TiVo records as suggestions? Well, try these methods to fix it:

    Edit your "Channels You Receive" to remove channels you aren't interested in at all.

    Look at the "TiVo Suggestions" for upcoming shows and rate them using the thumbs up/dowm method. Give three thumbs-down to major mistakes.

    Take a moment to rate shows it has recorded before deleting them.

    Rate your season passes. TiVo will automatically give anything you record 1 thumb-up. If you've got a season pass for something in a genre, or with actors, you'd typically dislike, rate the season pass with multiple thumbs-down (it'll still be recorded.) Do this as well for the one-off items you record (especially if your recording for guests.)

    If all else fails, punch the reset button. Somewhere in setup you can tell TiVo to start over in building it's profile.

  • When duplication runs amock (Score:5, Funny)

    by FurryFeet ( 562847 ) <(moc.oohay) (ta) (xnaduoj)> on Thursday November 28, 2002 @06:28PM (#4777066)
    Posted by Hemos on Thursday November 28, @02:25PM
    from the glitch-in-the-matrix dept.
    someone writes "According to this article [slashdot.org] from the Slashdot Journal, your Slashdot could definitely get the wrong impression about your interests, or even your need to read a story more than once. And what you need to do to get "a clean slate"? Most of the users who have been "targeted" by Slashdot usually try to "correct" the profiling by posting an abnormal number of flames and ironic remarks. Unfortunately, the only reaction from Slashdot is the remark: "Yep, it's a dupe".
    This story will run again tomorrow, right after the one about the face transplants and before the new Linux kernel patch. Stay tuned

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