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Viral 'I'm Not a Cat' Filter Is Decades-Old Software (bbc.com) 38

Posted by BeauHD from the old-is-new-again dept.
Footage of a Texan lawyer denying he was a cat as he appeared with a feline filter on a live call was created using a decades-old piece of software pre-installed on some Dell laptops. The BBC reports: The Live Cam Avatar software was also available for people to download. It is not clear how the lawyer found himself speaking through the face of a worried-looking cat. But it seems even in its heyday, there was a history of people becoming trapped as the avatar and finding it hard to remove.

One, ChemBark, describes in a blog how he appeared "as a sad kitten" during a job interview via Skype. "I started frantically scrolling down all of the menus in Skype, trying to remedy the situation," he writes. Tweeting now the filter is back in the news, he says it "was the default setting on Dell's webcam software." Another blog, written in 2010, offers a detailed explanation of how to remove "the stupid white cat." The company behind the filter, Reallusion, described it as a "customizable emotive facial animation that gives you much more fun that the conventional video chatting." Reallusion now provides sophisticated real-time 3D animation software -- but the cat filter seems no longer to be available in its online shop.
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Viral 'I'm Not a Cat' Filter Is Decades-Old Software More

Viral 'I'm Not a Cat' Filter Is Decades-Old Software

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  • The lawyer says: "I'm not a cat" (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Best quote ever!

  • I want the rest of the story. It was his secretary's computer. Does this mean they're doing legal work with no computers, and he borrowed an old laptop that hadn't been used in years?

    So he doesn't do any legal research at all? He just wings it, and types out some BS filings on an electric typewriter?

    • Maybe the work computers are somehow restricted?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well this is Alpine, Texas. You would understand if you had ever been there...
    • My suspicion is that he has a decent laptop, but doesn't really know how to use it. His secretary has the old, hand-me-down laptop because that's how lawyers think about their secretaries. He didn't know how to set things up on his laptop, so he had his secretary do it. She set everything up, but had never used the webcam before. Hilarity ensued.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        My suspicion is that he has a decent laptop, but doesn't really know how to use it.

        No, in that case he would be a doctor.

    • Re:LOL (Score:4, Informative)

      by Known Nutter ( 988758 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @06:52PM (#61049010)
      The Cattorney explains briefly...

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE4Fierod1Q

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Calydor ( 739835 )

      Maybe the laptop is used daily for various tasks, just never video conferencing before now?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfm3 ( 830843 )
      In my experience, the lawyers I've known tend to not be a very tech savvy bunch. Could be that they have come to prefer paper for CYA or record-keeping reasons... or, maybe it's a generational thing - after all, many of the more experienced lawyers I've known are older, and they tend to be the ones who are more apt to avoid technology and insist on paper everything.

      Another group that's just as bad is real estate agents. Not too long ago, for instance, we worked with one (the seller's agent) who insisted o

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cusco ( 717999 )

        Not very tech savvy? That's the understatement of the week. The IBM salescritter sold my mom's bosses an AS400 with Word Perfect as a networked word processor well after Windows for Workgroups and NT 3.51 had made networking easy.

    • Some people use desktops which don't have built in webcams.

  • Only the best news here on Slashdot

  • I don't believe my lawyer (Score:5, Funny)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @07:08PM (#61049052) Homepage Journal

    I think he may be a cat.

  • Decades old? Like we used to do video conferencing on our webcams back in 1998? The fuck, you are an idiot
  • He said he was using his legal assistant’s computer in his office and believes her daughter may have swapped in the filter before he logged on. Since the start of the pandemic, Texas courts have held more than 1 million virtual hearings, leaving [Judge] Ferguson often in charge of guiding others through technical difficulties, he said. “That’s part of my job now in the pandemic — to fix everything that can go wrong,” he said. The 394th Judicial District has no IT department,

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cusco ( 717999 )

      The 394th Judicial District has no IT department

      And every script kiddie reading that just started keyboarding . . .

  • The video clearly states that anyone caught recording is guilty of contempt of court and subject to a $500 fine.

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