It's just amazing that simple common sense is completely null & void in todays society......let alone for the people whom are assigned to protect a "leader" of this country. Of course this makes perfect sense when you cut loose 5 of the most dangerous terrorists in exchange for a traitor, AND at the same time not help out an unjustly incarcerated decorated Marine who's been in a Mexican jail for the past two months........bizarre times we live in.
http://www.cnet.com/news/secret-service-seeks-sarcasm-detecting-software/
 
 
 
Decorated Marine story: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/31/wh-petition-to-free-marine-tahmooressi-from-mexico-prison-get-100k-online/

So, once they have this software, then all the terrorists need to do is communicate sarcastically and they won't get caught? 
 
Why don't they just use this meter?
 

Seems to me they just want to be able to automate discerning people being sarcastic from people who might be a legitimate threat to the people they are assigned to protect.
 
I don't see the issue.
 
Now if only I had SW to automate detecting people conflating every news story, no matter how irrelevant, with whatever petty political axes they have to grind with people who have an actual point.

Can we have some "No Honestly It's Fine" authenticity certifying software for men?

drewfx1
Now if only I had SW to automate detecting people conflating every news story, no matter how irrelevant, with whatever petty political axes they have to grind with people who have an actual point.

you don't need software for that, just browse to your favourite mainstream news site...

I have some firmware they can use...
 
Generally, GEs don't get sarcasm and it makes them mad. The tolerance of the tolerance police... is really low.
Probably half of the GEs work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
 
J

drewfx1
 
Now if only I had SW to automate detecting people conflating every news story, no matter how irrelevant, with whatever petty political axes they have to grind with people who have an actual point.

It amazes me how comments on almost every story I see on the web will include personal political opinions stated as "fact". I can't even go to sports sites without reading a bunch of comments about how "[insert hated political figure] is destroying the country followed by a bunch of regurgitated rhetoric from fox(for right-wing nuts)/huffingtonpost(for left-wing nuts).  I have no idea if this guy is a traitor or not. I'm sure if this happened under Bush the right would praise the move and the left would pan the move.  Just the nature of modern American politics.
 
  Considering how much territory there is to cover on the web, I'm sure there is much done via automation and if this helps to weed out some of the false positives, I don't see the big deal either.

Wait.  Let me get this straight.  There's no app for sarcasm?   

We can't even invent anti-virus software that doesn't raise false positives. Human communication is vastly more complex and variable. They'll not only need a sarcasm detector, but also an exaggeration meter, a satire alarm and an exhaustive colloquialism/slang/emoticon/typo translator.
 
For myself, I just prefer to randomly insert one of the monitored phrases on a regular basis. If everybody did that, they'd have to give up in frustration. Wouldn't they?
 
Anthrax
Megadeth
Slayer
 
Ding! Ding! Ding! Alert!

Drewfx makes me laugh.