Clipmarks | 90s Clips

How Spam is Improving AI

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:10:15 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: interesting

How Spam is Improving AI

Anti-spam puzzles are helping researchers develop smarter algorithms.

Cats v. Dogs: A project called Asirra uses photographs of cats and dogs to distinguish between humans and computers. Normally, it is a difficult task for computers, but a new algorithm can correctly classify the images 87 percent of the time.
Credit: Microsoft

Those pesky visual puzzles that have to be completed each time you sign up for a Web mail account or post a comment to a blog are under attack. It's not just from spam-spewing computers or hackers, though; it's also from researchers who are using anti-spam puzzles to develop smarter, more humanlike algorithms.

Known as CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart), these puzzles were developed in the late '90s

program capable of completing the textual CAPTCHAs used to protect Microsoft's Hotmail, MSN, and Windows Live services with a success rate of 60 percent

it's significant

computer

attack thousands

Tags: ai, computer

Nobel Laureate Yunus: 'Capitalism has degenerated into a casino'

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 04:44:13 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks:

these castles don't exist at all. That was the point at which the financial system collapsed."

Also true during the '90s tech boom and bust with all that betting on little companies not even worth the paper their IPOs were written on. And let's not forget all the employees working like slaves for promises. Oh when will we learn?

Clip Source: current.com

Interview with Nobel Laureate in Economics Muhammad Yunus. A few excerpts:

"Today's capitalism has degenerated into a casino. The financial markets are propelled by greed. Speculation has reached catastrophic proportions."

"The fundamental difference is that our business is very connected to the real economy. When we provide a loan of $200, that money will go to buy a cow somewhere. If we lend $100, someone will maybe buy some chickens. In other words, the money goes to something with concrete value. Finance and the real economy have to be connected. In the US, the financial system has completely split off from the real economy. Castles were built in the sky, and suddenly people realized that these castles don't exist at all. That was the point at which the financial system collapsed."

CNN TruthSquad on McCain, Keating 5

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:46:46 GMT

clipped by: reeds
clipper's remarks: McCain was cozy with the notorious Charles Keating, resulting in the S&L Crisis of the late 80's / early 90's, and subsequently a congressional ethics investigation and reprimand for McCain.

Clip Source: www.keatingeconomics.com

[Video]

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

Today, John McCain is the only major party presidential nominee in US history to have been rebuked, censured or otherwise admonished after a Congressional ethics investigation.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis

Tags: politics, fact_check

Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:09:42 GMT

clipped by: zizzy
clipper's remarks: Share this video with everyone you can.

Clip Source: www.keatingeconomics.com

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today's credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain's judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history

[Video]

Downloads: .MOV (148.5MB) | .MP4 (29.5MB)

Keating Economics

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 07:43:18 GMT

clipped by: keeth

Clip Source: www.keatingeconomics.com

Keating Economics: The Making of a Financial Crisis

[Video]

Tags: keating, economics, john, mccain, 5, five

The Keating 5

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 04:43:01 GMT

clipped by: conches
clipper's remarks: Tit for tat.

Clip Source: www.keatingeconomics.com

Keating Economics: The Making of a Financial Crisis

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

Palin Goes After Obama-Ayers Connection

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:27:36 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Gov. Sarah Palin unleashed a new attack on Sen. Barack Obama, accusing him of "palling around with terrorists" for his association with former 1960s radical William Ayers. The Obama campaign immediately denounced the attack as "shameless" and "offensive."

"Americans need to know this."

Palin cited a front-page article in today’s New York Times that explored the ties between Obama and Ayers. Obama had served on a charity board with Ayers in Chicago during the mid-90s, and Ayers was present at an organizing meeting in 1995 to kick off Obama's first election campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

"There has been a lot of interest in what I read, and what I read lately well, was reading my copy of today’s New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago," Palin said. "OK, now I get to bring this up not to pick a fight, but it was there in the New York Times, so we're gonna talk about it.

Clip Source: blogs.abcnews.com

Palin for the first time raised Obama’s connection to Ayers, one of the founding members of the Weather Underground, a '60s radical group that took credit for bombing attacks around the country, including explosions set off at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

"Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,"

"And it turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who according to the New York Times, and are they ever wrong, according to the New York Times was a domestic terrorist and part of a group of that, quote, pushed a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol," Palin continued. "Wow. These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. This is not a man who sees America as I see America, OK?"

Tags: new york times, obama/ayers front page article, gov palin at fundraiser

Paul Rudd for Super Nintendo

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:57:06 GMT

clipped by: pcmkrfn

Clip Source: www.cracked.com

Paul Rudd for Super Nintendo

Role: The "Cool" Early '90s Teen

Synopsis: Thanks to the infamous "Care Bear Backlash" of the late '80s, by the time 1990 rolled around, anything marketed to kids had to be "edgy." Here, the notoriously family-friendly (read: "square") Nintendo enlists a young Paul Rudd to shake up that wholesome image for their latest product, the "Nintendo Super-Happy, Fun-Time Game Box" (working title).

Bottom Line: Considering Rudd hasn't dropped below four levels of ironic detachment since 1995, his wide-eyed amazement at his surroundings (Trench coats! Smoke machines! SimCity!) seems less than sincere in retrospect. It's not exactly Rudd's fault, either-even to our young, pre-Clueless eyes, this ad stunk of cheese.

Bonus Moment: The cryptic "New Zelda and Football to come" disclaimer at the end of the ad.

[Video]

Hot offspring!

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:52:23 GMT

clipped by: pcmkrfn

Clip Source: www.cracked.com

Bryce Dallas Howard (Ron Howard)

Odds of Hotness Based on Gene Pool:

Daisy Lowe - (Gavin Rossdale, lead singer of crap '90s band Bush)

Sofia Coppola (Francis Ford Coppola)

Odds of Hotness Based on Gene Pool: Not good at all, but way to overcome the odds, Sofia! The fat, hairy, hideous odds. Luckily, the Oscar-winning gene wasn't connected to the "beaten in the face with an ugly stick" chromosome.

Papa Was a Rolling Stone - Jade & Elizabeth Jagger, Theodora & Alexandra Richards, Leah Wood

Odds of Hotness Based on Gene Pool: Straight 50-50 shot. When horrific, albeit talented, skeleton men with bad teeth and skin like a crocodile's ass seduce hot models, we're never sure how it's gonna turn out. But knowing that gorgeous genes can overcome even Keith Richards' decrepit, heroin-riddled semen proves that Darwin should be taught in schools.

Clip Source: www.cracked.com

Zoe Kravitz (Lenny Kravitz, Lisa Bonet)

Billionaires Who Weren't

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:35:05 GMT

clipped by: Andrew Farrell
clipper's remarks: With all the Web titans on our list of the world's billionaires, it's tempting to think that any intelligent person with a decent tech idea in the late 90s became fabulously rich.

Definitely not the case. For every billion-dollar success there were plenty of eToys and Pets.com.

Clip Source: www.alleyinsider.com

Tech Bubble 1.0 Stars: Where Are They Now?

We're not ready to call the end of the second Internet boom quiet yet. But when we do, we'll be looking for some perspective. For instance, whatever happened to the high-flyers of the last bubble once it deflated?

Good news! We tracked down 36 of them -- from Turkish romantic Mahir “I KISS YOU!!!!!” Çağrı to a search engine founder-turned-cattle rancher, and found that almost all of them have found interesting second acts.

Many now work as venture capitalists or have founded new startups, while others have gone on to some unexpected fields. Find out who has helped cure more than 15,000 people of blindness, and who went to work for the Gap.

Financial Meltdown Explained..! Really..!

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 06:25:41 GMT

clipped by: TJColatrella

Clip Source: www.nowpublic.com

THE FINANCIAL MELTDOWN EXPLAINED !

Today's banking crisis is the THIRD trillion dollar plus

US-caused financial meltdown in the last twenty years.

Each one of these crises came into being through the same basic

mechanism...the fraudulent over-valuing of financial assets by

Wall Street - with a "wink and a nod" (and sometimes a lot more)

from the White House and Congress.

Fraud #1: The so-called "Savings and Loan Crisis" of the late 80s

Fraud #2: The so-called "Tech Bubble" of the late 90s

Fraud #3: The so-called "Credit Crisis" of today

The mechanism of these frauds is simplicity itself...

...Take a shaky financial asset and blow up its value

and then sell as much of it as you can.

In the "Savings and Loan Crisis," the instrument was junk bonds.

In the "Tech Bubble" it was Internet stocks.

In the "Credit Crisis" it was individual mortgages collected

into pools and then re-sold to investors.

Tags: s&l scandal, dot com, junk bonds, sub primes, white house, wall st., bush, paulson, goldman sachs

The Real Culprits - Part One

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 23:05:20 GMT

clipped by: davboz
clipper's remarks: And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."
Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.
And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.

Clip Source: www.ibdeditorials.com

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street's most revered institutions

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making

It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership.

US Banking Crisis Fix Taking Page from Swedish Experience of Early '90s

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:51:41 GMT

clipped by: iulawboy
clipper's remarks: Big risks - but bigger risk if we did nothing.

Clip Source: www.ft.com

the way Sweden acted – and in particular its adoption of the good bank/bad bank model – is highly relevant to the financial system bail-out now being implemented in the US. “Hank and Ben learning Swedish” was how Lombard Street Research headlined its latest piece of research on Friday.

the Swedish banking crisis lay in the credit markets – which were deregulated in 1985 – and in a finance and real estate bubble that eventually collapsed.

Crucial to maintaining confidence was the blanket guarantee for creditors – not shareholders – that Sweden put under the whole banking market in late 1992

After taking over Nordbanken, the state dumped SKr67bn of non-performing loans into a bad bank called Securum.

Securum was given a SKr24bn equity injection and 15 years to dispose of its assets.

Sweden’s response to the crisis meant it cost the taxpayer very little, if anything

Although Sweden originally spent about SKr65bn to shore up the system, it got most of the money back.

Tags: banking crisis, sweden, nationalization, credit

the Greedy rip us off

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 12:38:00 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: worth the read and link to video http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/291.html

Clip Source: papananook.livejournal.com

I encourage you to invest the five minutes it will take to read this. If not, you can skip to the link at the bottom.

*** A short explanation of how we got to where we are Today's banking crisis is the THIRD trillion dollar plus US-caused financial meltdown in the last twenty years.

Each one of these crises came into being through the same basic mechanism...the fraudulent over-valuing of financial assets by Wall Street - with a "wink and a nod" (and sometimes a lot more) from the White House and Congress. The fraudulently valued assets stimulate the economy, impart the illusion of health and then, inevitably, the fraud goes too far and the whole house of card comes painfully crashing back to earth.

The three trillion dollar plus frauds were: Fraud #1: The so-called "Savings and Loan Crisis" of the late 80s Fraud #2: The so-called "Tech Bubble" of the late 90s Fraud #3: The so-called "Credit Crisis" of today

The Real Culprits In The Meltdown

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 00:28:05 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership.

Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck.

As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae [...] looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud.

Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick "The Wall", padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million.

Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.

Clip Source: www.theabsurdreport.com

Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it’s dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it.

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the “trickle-down” economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

Tags: fannie/freddie piggy bank, big government, clinton era, multiculturalism. high-risk subprime, "red-lining"