Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the brevity-is-the-soul-of... dept

We've got a big batch of short ones for you this week, with most of the best comments taking the form of tactically deployed one-or-two-liners. On the insightful side, the top comment comes from Tim Cushing's extremely popular post about the mouse that required an internet connection. Lots of people have compared that situation to DRM, even though it isn't really the same thing at all, which prompted JamesF to ask what this tells us about DRM itself:

Dear content industry. You've actually managed to make DRM mean "Anything the manufacturer does that screws the customer over". Are you getting the hint yet?

(I think the correct answer is that some got the hint a long time ago, while others would still ignore it even if disembodied fingers wrote it on their wall.)

In second place, and not far behind in the votes, we've got the very first comment from the same post. Miff saw one key lesson to be learned here:

The solution is to return the mouse/keyboard and get Logitech instead.

I'm no mouse expert, but others can feel free to challenge Miff in the comments, and perhaps we'll get a battle royal of the peripheral manufacturers.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we'll throw in a few longer comments to even things out. Up first we've got mudlock on our post about the civil liberty failings of both US political parties, providing an interesting historical comparison:

Sometimes, knowing history will help you to repeat it.

In 1852, both parties sucked badly on the #1 civil liberties issue of the day, slavery. The difference then, was it was the #1 issue, period, of the day. Factions in both parties, the Whigs and the Democrats, had strong, vocal supporters, and both parties had bitter internal arguments on the issue. That year, the Whigs cracked and began to disband. By 1856, a new party, founded on this one issue, had risen; the Republicans.

Anti-slavery Democrats fled their party to join the Republicans; pro-slavery former-Whigs muddle about but eventually ended up as Democrats (because it's a two party system, so what else can you do?)

Up next we've got a comment from our post about Cat Power's recent non-literal bankruptcy and the Atlantic Wire's sorry attempt to claim that proves there's no money in indie music. John Fenderson decided to apply the same deductive method elsewhere:

Mainstream label-based rock has failed. I can tell because of the following list of people who went bankrupt:

Billy Joel
Chaka Khan
Cyndi Lauper
Dee Snyder
George Clinton
Goo Goo Dolls
Isaac Hayes
Jerry Lee Lewis
Marvin Gaye
MC Hammer
Michael Jackson
Mick Fleetwood
Run DMC
Ted Nugent
Tom Petty
Wayne newton
Willie Nelson
... and many, many more

Wolfgang Mozart went bankrupt as well, but he predates the music system by a couple of years.

In fact, since lots of people have gone bankrupt in any industry you can name, one might conclude that there's no point in doing anything. Feels good to be off the hook like that.

Now, over to the funny side of things, and back to the ultra-short comments! I'm sure nobody will be surprised to learn that the top comment came from our post about Pfizer losing its Viagra patent in Canada. Nor will they be surprised to learn that said comment came from our resident dick-joke factory, Dark Helmet. He lobbied for an additional line to be added to the post:

"Cases like this are why some experts recommend that if you experience a patent for more than 4 years, you should see a physician."

(Also, prolonged use of patents may result in dependency.)

In second place, we've got a comment from our post on the latest news in the patent war between Motorola and Apple. Timlash got a bit jealous after hearing Apple's claims of irreparable harm:

I wish my company could suffer "irreparable harm" and still carry a market cap of $553 billion.

But don't you see? If Motorola would just stop competing, it could be even higher!

For editor's choice, we'll head back over to our post about civil liberties in political platforms (or the lack thereof). One commenter suggested that your only choice is to vote for the lesser evil, but an anonymous response suggested a third option:

Why vote for the lesser evil?

VOTE CTHULHU!

And, finally, because I love a good Canada joke when it's even vaguely more creative than "igloos, um, mounties", we've got Michael on our post about a 9-year-old girl's football video being taken down for containing unlicensed music. A Canadian commenter noted that the revised video was geoblocked in Canada, and Michael diagnosed the problem:

It's actually blocked because it isn't hockey.

Yup. That's how ContentID works up here. See you tomorrow folks!

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