Christopher S. Little's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the favorite-my-favorites dept
This week's Favorites post comes from Christopher S. Little, who usually goes by another name in the comments, but didn't want us to face any sort of trademark threats...
I've been given the honor of writing up my favorite posts of the week, and what a week it's been. I was asked on Tuesday and even then I knew I'd have a problem picking just a few. It took a lot of thinking, but I did find myself coming back to a few again and again.
First up is Monday's post about the Supreme Court finally weighing in on the laws requiring stores to not sell violent games to minors. Now, I understand why some people want these laws, but it's not the government's place to say. It's the job of the parent to say yes or no to the child not the government's. I'm also very happy to see that the judges realized that gaming is not any more different from movies than movies were from books. I do remember Lord of the Flies being more disturbing than Grand Theft Auto. Too bad California is going to try again.
Second on my list is Capcom deciding that they don't want you to play again from the beginning. One of my hobbies is video games (collecting, learning the history) so this one hits close to home. I don't know much about this game, but I expect it's setup like Portal. You have missions and once you beat the first one you unlock the second and so forth. Well, that's not too bad for you, but what about the next guy? What about the guy ten or twenty years from now trying to catch up on the history of this great game he just got into called Resident Evil 22 (or whatever)? The odds of finding an unused copy that far in the future are slim. On top of that, add the feeling that you can't really show you did those things. You can't show your friend that you deleted your game and come back a few days later with it 100% completed. With that hanging over your head even actually doing it yourself feels cheapened.
Third is the Google+ beta. I'll usually give anything Google at least one try, but their past social networks were underwhelming. So I was a little suprised to not only see Mike posting about it but liking it as well. That was enough to make me take a second look. Then he pointed out the Circles function and how you can easily delete your account. Apparently both those functions exist in Facebook, but are so hard to get to that I didn't even know they existed. I admit, I may have been played by Google. Once I saw that they got so overloaded with requests they had to stop accepting them, it piqued my interests. As Marcus Carab pointed out, who ever heard of Google running out of resources?
I have to give an honorable mention to the string of Righthaven posts that show the disaster that is their legal strategy. It's good to not only see the suits be smacked down, but also to see that claims are being filed against them. There need to be easier ways to enforce the consequences for abuses like this.
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should be
it piqued my interest.
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Hey, leave him alone. He's already feeling "a little suppressed" as it is.
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It's not up to me to find this interesting
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Im quite suppressedas well !!!!
Do worry, that happens to everyone who posts here on techdirt.
It's a very suppressing place !!!
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They can always go "See, he's more off the rails than us! That makes us legit then, right?!?!?"
darryl is almost as crucial as Masnick in the new environment for these people...
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Oh, wait...
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95+ year copy protection lengths is strong evidence that IP maximists are off the rails, these absurd laws wouldn't get passed if those proposing them (some of which comment here) didn't hold such an absurd viewpoint.
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There's nothing special about darryl. The IP industry is full of people like him. It breeds them.
Abolish IP.
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Idiots come a dime a dozen and IP mostly exists as a results of selfish and incompetent bureaucrats and selfish monopolists that are too meritless to compete in a free market and so they want their profits freely handed to them, without doing any work or making any effort, in the form of monopoly rents.
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For pet projects?
Should I name gmail when it first came out?
Likely it's not so much resources from the company, so much as resources for the project. Failing that, it could also be that they have far exceeded the group size they wanted for testing purposes, and it would be expensive to run some of the analysis programs with too much more info being created. Still figuring out what's noise and what's signal, right?
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Basically if it does not spin instand and easy money for google in add revinue, they will drop it like a hot brick.
Google X (remember that one ?)
Google catalog
Google video player
Google web accelerator
Google answers (Google why can't you do anything ?)
Google coupons
google voice search
Google viewer
Google checkout
Orkut
Chrome
Google wave
Android
open source
but to name but a few...
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sugi wa ketsu kara chi wo deteiru. nani koto wo wakaranai.
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What you should be focusing on is that they have a lot of projects that they try. And they learn from mistakes.
I, however, was talking about an entirely different issue.
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typos
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so who said I was 'correcting' him ? I thought it was the correct word to use!
You might be right Mike, but I do not claim to 'make a living' from writing. You and your ilk do.
I am just making comment, I am simply the comsumer of your 'product', and as a comsumer, I have a certain expectation from you.
If you fail to meet that expectation, I have every right to express that.
You on the other hand NEED ME :), and my ilk, you have a financial interest in meeting my expectation and to meet the expectation of all your readers.
I PAY YOU, by taking the time to come here and ready your 'product', if you are producing a 'shoddy' product, then I is up to me as the consumer to inform you that you're products does not 'conform', and therefore you have failed the first basic tennant of business.
"Do the right things, RIGHT first time, every time"
I am sure Mike, that you would be upset if you purchased a brand new car, and you crash it on the first drive, and when you go back to the car manufacturer and tell them what happened the say.
"it is your fault, you are just a shit driver" or "what do you think we are, someone not capable of making a mistake every now and again ?".... we'll yes, if you claim it is your 'job' to provide that service, and expect your clients to PAY for your services..
BTW if it was a 'typo' was the original word went to be 'surpressed' to 'depressed' or a mangle of surprised and depressed ? or distressed, or seducted or deducted?
So you use a spellchecker !!! big deal, dont make out that somehow all you commenters are excellent spellers and well as world experts on every aspect of the law from every country, and every detail about how the 'internet' works, and of course you understand ALL technology.
(and you can use a spellchecker !!!!! )
(tell me when to be impressed, or surpressed, or dispersed or whatever you are trying to say )..
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http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper-blame-t he-governme/
People are paying in Europe $6 bucks if you only want email and such, but never will happen in the U.S. with the actual laws in place, further it is getting so easy to transfer big files in other places that soon maybe nobody will want to connect to turtle servers in the U.S..
Heck I got a call from my ISP telling me that they want to upgrade my fiber(100Mb) to 200Mb for free WTF?! more impressive my bill will go down $10 bucks F. F. F. this can't be right :)
It can't be for free can't it? those freetards are destroying the world :)
If I was in the States then I would have a real broadband connection with speeds of UP TO 24Mb paying $50 dollars from AT&T
http://www.att.com/u-verse/shop/index.jsp?wtSlotClick=1-0061H0-0-1&shopFilterId=5000 01#fbid=5mqHBQ7HegK.
Not 200Mb up and down for $50, no Sir that is just for freetards.
I don't even want to mention Verizon FiOS LoL
Quote:
Source: http://www22.verizon.com/Residential/Bundles/Landing/fiosinternet_ultimate/fiosinternet_ultimate.htm
For only $195 folks.
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that's my guess anyway.
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The U.K. regulated the industry and it worked, Canada copied just the unbundling thing but not the other stuff to support that and it is a complete fail, Japan owns the infra-structure through NTT and it is a success so is France with a mixed approach, Australia is going to own the basic infra-structure and do like Japan.
The thing about owning the basic infra-structure is that you got the private sector to complain loudly about if it is abused, the real problem seems to be that the infra-structure and the service part must be divorced for it to have the right balance either physically or through laws.
So another alternative could be to outlaw big infra-structure owner companies to deal with the public directly they most go through another independent company that asks them for service. But that would be unproven.
The basic thing is that the infra-structure must be divorced from the service front or it doesn't work that well and it is proven in at leas a dozen countries by now.
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However, you should look into LightSquared. They are the upstart that is making a lot of waves with satellite broadband, and it's starting to pay off.
Other note, Ars Technica is talking about 80$ hi speed internet. (I'm lazy right now, so no links...)
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LightSquared used to be called Skyterra and has been offering expensive, crappy satellite internet service since at least 1995. The changed their name in an attempt to loose their reputation. Recently, they've finally realized that their satellite approach doesn't work so well and have started partnering with cell phone companies to resell cell based connectivity.
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So they always offer these cheaper promotional offers to new subscribers, in hopes of attracting new customers that previously didn't have cable, satellite, or broadband Internet, and once you're comfortable with having such service, they jack the prices up.
If you're a new customer, they treat you much better in terms of repairs and setup. They'll come to your house and configure everything for you, if something goes wrong they'll come over and fix it. Not for long term customers. Long term customers are treated like dirt. They don't have much where else to go. New customers often didn't have anything to start out with and so, without the promotional, they could very likely continue without cable or satellite.
It's ridiculous. The U.S. completely and utterly lacks any form of competition or consumer friendly regulation when it comes to anything and so the consumer gets systematically scammed. Continuing customers are treated worse than new customers. This is unheard of in other countries. Other countries respect their long term customers in order to build lasting customer relationships. Not the U.S. because the government only seeks to grant big corporations practically unregulated monopolies and when customers have no where else to go, service providers can treat them like dirt.
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You make me sick. :P
I live in the US and I can get maximum 'up to' 20Mbps (yes, small 'b') for ~$60 US. From a choice of two (count 'em _TWO_) providers.
/rant
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Why do we let them get away with this? Why don't we protest our corrupt government and make them repeal their government established monopolies.
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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110323/03470413596/if-att-puts-meter-your-broadband-that-m eter-is-grossly-inaccurate-is-that-meter-really-there.shtml
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But as usual I am left wondering if those posting comments ever do more than express and lecture anonymously or via contrived names on threads like the one above.
Sure it's great to display your depth of knowledge or opinion in safe places. Might even make some feel like they are doing what they can.
Meanwhile reality marches to a different tune.
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