Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the responses,-translations-and-quotations dept

After Comcast got a customer fired by telling his employer that he was lodging customer service complaints, the company's response was weak to say the least. That One Guy won most insightful comment of the week (and racked up quite a few funny votes as well) with a line-by-line translation:

What happened with Mr. O’Rourke's service is completely unacceptable.

'The story got out and we're looking bad(again). That's not how it was supposed to happen.'

Despite our attempts to address Mr. O’Rourke’s issues, we simply dropped the ball and did not make things right.

'We got him fired, that was supposed to shut him up and be the end of it.'

Mr. O’Rourke deserves another apology from us and we’re making this one publicly.

'Absolutely no-one, including me, believes we're sincere of course, but we hope by at least pretending we can just brush this one under the rug.'

We also want to clarify that nobody at Comcast asked for him to be fired.

'Because as long as we don't directly ask that he be fired, it doesn't count.'

Though a cable company getting someone fired is bad, our next post is much worse: a SWAT team shooting a man dead in his own home, which they were raiding on the say-so of an arrested burglar with a bag full of crystal meth. Second place for insightful goes to an anonymous commenter who noted in simple terms just how far over the top the police response was:

The fact that they did not simply walk up to the house with 2 officers and say they had questions about the robbery is sad. They had a perfect reason to be let into the house by the homeowners with no hesitation

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start with another anonymous comment, this time addressing the intelligence community's "if you've got nothing to hide..." argument regarding surveillance:

Intelligence: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

The Public: But you hide everthing.

Intelligence: Yeah, because we're afraid of you! Seeing the public as the main source of trouble in the world is the best way to protect the public.

The Public: Who protects us from you?

Intelligence: Trust us.

Next, simply because I have been enjoying the show and hugely impressed with what he's been doing, our second editor's choice is limbodog's simple shout-out to John Oliver et al:

Let's face it, American news stinks. If it takes these comedians poking fun at our politics to help us understand what's really going on, I'm all for it. Thank you Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and John Oliver!

Over on the funny side, we start out on our post about the response we sent to Roca Labs' demand for a retraction. Adam Steinbaugh took first place when he praised our restraint:

The most remarkable thing here is that the EFF's counsel resisted the urge to file the response I would have sent:

"Dear Mr. Berger and Roca Labs, Inc.:

lol.

love,eff and techdirt and mike"

In crayon, naturally.

In second place, we've got a response to the revelation that Adobe's ebook reader might be spying on the books you read. One anonymous commenter had a thought about that:

They're just checking to see if you're reading 1984.

Wait...

For editor's choice on the funny side, we could easily give a spot straight to FBI Director James Comey for saying "the Internet is the most dangerous parking lot imaginable." But since that's not technically in the running, our first pick goes to Berenerd for his response:

one question....
Since when are parking lots filled with cat videos and trolls?

And, lastly, we actually do have an off-Techdirt comment... by proxy. Anonymous Hero sought a spot by quoting the Washington Post's editorial about smartphone encryption, and I'd say he earned it:

I'm going for funniest techdirt comment of the week
"However, with all their wizardry, perhaps Apple and Google could invent a kind of secure golden key they would retain and use only when a court has approved a search warrant."

That's all for this week, folks!

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