Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the company,-meet-crowd dept

Sometimes companies and customers clash, more often than not because the former isn't treating the latter right. Such was the case this week when a UK mobile operator decided to tell users that they don't want unlimited data simply because they aren't maxing out their current data caps. Silverscarcat took most insightful comment of the week (and plenty of funny votes) by offering an analogy to improve on our own:

The real logic is this...

You get a group of people together who are allergic to peanuts and then serve them peanut butter-chocolate pie.

Since none of them eat it, obviously no one wants such a pie.

But that wasn't the big story in Customer Non-Appreciation this week. That honor goes to EA and their fiasco of a launch for the new Sim City game. Though many customers were upset at being unable to play their newly purchased game, Ninja won second most insightful comment of the week by explaining why he doesn't care, and why that's a bad sign for EA:

Good thing I decided I would never buy from EA again a while back. In fact I don't even bother with what they are releasing (ie: don't even download a pirated version).

When pirates are not bothering to pirate your game then you have a problem.

Situations like that one make it all the more worrying that DRM for physical objects may be a lot more common in the near future. While I can understand the reaction of our number one winner this week, silverscarcat, who also racked up plenty of insightful votes on this post with his reaction that DRM should be illegal, the better solution is closer to what Fentex proposed, which makes it our first editor's choice:

It doesn't need to be made illegal, it just doesn't need to be legislated and protected in anyway.

Let it survive or die on it's own merits.

Mikes argument is that as it lessens the value to a purchaser of any transaction it will not succeed in a market where people have options to make more worthwhile transactions.

The problem isn't that any supplier might try it but that legislators attempt to protect them at others expense.

And since the insightful side has been dedicated to chastising bad companies and practices, we'll finish things off with another hall-of-famer: HBO, which has finally realized it should probably make itself available online, around the world (just not at home). The weird part, as nospacesorspecialcharacters pointed out, is that they seemed to think this was some kind of herculean technological undertaking:

We cannae do it captian!

If only there was some kind of technology that could do that today, one that was fast, efficient and possibly peer-to-peer so it didn't tax the bandwidth on their own servers.

Imagine the possibilities if that kind of technology existed?

That bit of snark racked up plenty of funny votes as well as insightful ones, which makes it the perfect transition to the other side of things. When a misheard Will Smith lyric lead to a school going on lockdown and a student being arrested, mattshow won funniest comment of the week by suggesting that justice, in a roundabout way, was served:

The student's use of the theme song is clearly an infringement of the copyright in the Fresh Prince theme song. Even if he wasn't planning to shoot up the school, he still should have been locked up for this outrageous affront to the moral standards held by all hardworking recording industry shills.

But the real comedy is coming tomorrow, when everyone involved in the Prenda debacle has been ordered to show up in court where, among many other things, we may finally learn the identity of Alan Cooper. An anonymous commenter won second funniest comment of the week by musing about how that might go:

And next monday:

Judge: Ok, I have verified that both Alan Coopers are present. Finally this mess is starting to make some sen...

Suddenly, a man bursts through the courtroom door.

Man: Stop this charade. Those two man are impostors!

Judge: Who the hell are you?

Man: My name...is Alan Cooper.

Judge: Aww f***.

It just occurred to me—could Alan Cooper's real name be D.B.? Of course, another anonymous commenter suggested an alternative possibility, winning our first editor's choice for funny:

Would anyone like to give odds that the Judge receives a letter from Alan Coopers mother stating that Alan Cooper cannot attend court due to being sick.

Well, at least that would be confirmation that he exists.

Finally, let's not forget that private entities aren't the only ones who can jerk the public around—the government is good at that too, and to them we dedicate the final editor's choice. When the NSA asked a reporter to delete the photos she had taken of their new facility, another anonymous commenter suggested an appropriate response:

Any chance we could ask the NSA to delete the photos in their possession?

Sounds fair to me, so I'm sure they aren't interested. See you next week, folks (and so will the NSA)!

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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2013 @ 12:15pm

    It just occurred to me...

    EA may have actually figured out a way to do the impossible - stop piracy completely. All they have to do is sufficiently make the product suck to the point that no one is interested in pirating it anyway. Well done EA. Mission Accomplished.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      MrWilson, 10 Mar 2013 @ 12:24pm

      Re: It just occurred to me...

      Kill the patient to cure the disease.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        gnudist, 10 Mar 2013 @ 12:27pm

        Re: Re: It just occurred to me...

        Cutting off your head will stop those siffles cold

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        gnudist, 10 Mar 2013 @ 12:45pm

        Re: Re: It just occurred to me...

        Cutting off your head will stop those siffles cold

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2013 @ 2:03pm

        Re: Re: It just occurred to me...

        I got good news and bad news. The good news is that the operation was a success. The bad news is that the patient died.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2013 @ 12:31pm

    'Any chance we could ask the NSA to delete the photos in their possession?'

    even if they agreed to do so, i wonder how many people it would take, working for how long, to achieve this? i reckon ot would be similar to 'how many workers does it take to change a light bulb? 6 to hold the ladder, make the tea etc and 1 to replace the bulb!!!'

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2013 @ 2:08pm

      Re:

      You mean how many of them would it take to type the following?

      rm -rf /*

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        Robert Sund (profile), 11 Mar 2013 @ 8:19am

        Re: Re:

        I knew someone that wrote rm -Rf * .o during his doctorate. The computer responded back that there were no .o files. This puzzled him as he had just compiled some software and were convinced that there would be a lot of those .o files.

        Notice the extra space.
        His line of thought were (erase, all of, the .o) files.
        I believe in backup. It can be a real savior

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2013 @ 8:50am

          Re: Re: Re:

          Some people seem to have to learn about the importance of backups the hard way.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Minimum Waged Shill, 10 Mar 2013 @ 2:02pm

    I'm surprised the other shills did not see my shilfull comments as insightful.

    Also, Mike, the newest shill argument that you still haven't answered (well, it's not really new but I still haven't seen an answer).

    How can this be an opinion blog when sometimes you do journalism and how can it be a journalism blog when you give opinions? The two are mutually exclusive you know. and reporting on something is also mutually exclusive from giving an opinion about it and doing journalism. It's like someone being a teacher and a student at the same time, it's impossible.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2013 @ 2:41pm

      Re:

      The best teachers learn from their students...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      JMT (profile), 10 Mar 2013 @ 6:14pm

      Re:

      "How can this be an opinion blog when sometimes you do journalism..."

      Explain how it can't be an opinion blog if Mike sometimes does journalism.

      "...and how can it be a journalism blog when you give opinions?"

      Who's ever said this was a journalism blog? Not Mike.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Trails (profile), 10 Mar 2013 @ 6:51pm

      Re:

      Successful troll is successful.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Minimum Waged Shill, 10 Mar 2013 @ 7:51pm

        Re: Re:

        No, I'm not a troll .... I'M A SHILL!!! Then again I'm still trying to work out the difference. I suppose a good troll also makes a good shill ... well, I guess some shills are simply paid trolls.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 10 Mar 2013 @ 8:12pm

          Re: Re: Re:

          Consider labelling them under the label of "shitroll".

          link to this | view in chronology ]

          • identicon
            Minimum Waged Shill, 10 Mar 2013 @ 8:19pm

            Re: Re: Re: Re:

            You're just jealous that you can't shill as well as I could

            link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 11 Mar 2013 @ 5:24am

      Re:

      It's like someone being a teacher and a student at the same time, it's impossible.

      No it is not. The teacher that has ceased to learn with his students and with his own mistakes is no longer fit to be a teacher.

      And you seem to be confusing journalists with journalism. Mike may not be a journalist but he can do journalism. And what we see here in TD is bits of journalisms seasoned with TD writers opinions, analyzes and contributions. As with the teacher case both can coexist and mix quite nicely. I'd dare say that some 'opinion blogs' are more credible in their journalism than many known news outfits...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2013 @ 8:47am

        Re: Re:

        Consider the source of the comment. It's MWS. Sarcasm is a given.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 11 Mar 2013 @ 3:24pm

        Re: Re:

        " I'd dare say that some 'opinion blogs' are more credible in their journalism than many known news outfits..."

        The reason is that most of what comes out of mainstream media outlets is not news or journalism but it's propaganda

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Jikap (profile), 11 Mar 2013 @ 10:25am

    Court Fanfics

    You know court cases are starting to be ridiculous when they spawn their own mini-fanfics...

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    crashsuit (profile), 11 Mar 2013 @ 11:47am

    The peanut-butter-pie comment was funny, but taken logically, it bugs me. An allergy isn't analogous at all to cell phone data caps. I apologize if it seems like I'm trying to pick nits, it's just that it really bugs me in the way that crookedly-hung photos bug some people.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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