Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the cops-and-photographers dept
When a theater chain announced plans to bring TSA-style security to the movies with bag and purse searches, it sounded stupid. But to Johan it sounded suspicious, leading to our most insightful comment this week:
My guess that this is a disguised attempt at catching outside food and drink to boost concession stand sales. Just say you're looking out for customer's safety and at the same time remove the contraband twizzlers.
Next, after a photographer attempted to sue over the use of his photo by a map company — despite that use perfectly adhering to the Creative Commons license he chose — Arthur Moore won second place for insightful by pointing out just how counterproductive the whole ordeal was:
The worst thing is the photographer wasted a perfectly good opportunity. Instead of companies seeing that his work was good enough to be used commercially, they'll now see him as someone who is willing to frivolously attack anyone who does more than look at his work.
For our first editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got a comment from a photographer expanding on that point. Marcel de Jong discusses the benefits of sharing your work for free:
Most of my photos are released under CC-BY, a decision I didn't take lightly. And some of them have been used in commercial settings (there's a webshop selling fridge magnets of photos of mine, and several have appeared in magazines and online articles (including one in a cracked.com article)). It just makes for a more interesting line on my resume: "Internationally published photographer" instead of "Hobbyist fool with a camera".
I'd love to have one of my photos used as the cover of a book/map. I'd buy a copy of that, instantly, or at first ask if I could get one for free.
Next, since it wouldn't be a week in 2015 without a story of police misbehaviour, we turn to one such example in which a woman caught an officer beating a handcuffed suspect only to have him attempt to prevent her from recording the incident. One commenter pointed out that we should all really be using software that uploads the videos to the cloud as they are shot, so that you can tell an officer there's no way to delete the recording, but Rekrul had his own idea:
No, don't tell them that it's automatically backed up online. Let them think the recording is gone so that they can file their bogus report. Then once they've lied in their official statement, release the recording and prove that they lied.
Over on the funny side, we surprisingly start out on that same not-so-funny story, but only because That One Guy latched on to the quote that "guns don’t belong in the hands of children" and provided a response that scored nearly as many insightful votes as it did funny ones:
I actually agree wholeheartedly with this, and it's nice of them to finally admit it. Mind, a little odd that he describes the police as 'children' in his statement, but I suppose a group that regularly throws tantrums when they don't get their way does rather fit the definition.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to replace my irony meter, given it seems to have exploded for some reason.
For second place, we head to the story about Jeb Bush's campaign against "creating" encryption, leading one commenter to wonder if he realizes that encryption already exists and is in heavy use around the world. In response, an anonymous commenter paraphrased his requests:
"Stop making all this math guys!"
For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with a response to Xerox's decision to start region-locking ink cartridges. This seemed like a terrible idea, but one anonymous commenter saw a lot of sense in it:
Regional ink markets just make good sense.
Ink sold in Iowa, for instance, can be sold as 'corn-based'. Markup: 25%.
Ink sold in Nebraska can be sold as 'pigshit-based'. Markup: 32%.
Ink sold in India can be backfilled with mercury and other cost-effective fillers and sold as 'Murican!' Markup: 13%.
Zip code based micro-regions are important in areas like Washington, D.C. Ink destined for the DOJ requires the thick 'Redacto-Blend'. Markup: 325%, while ink going to Congress requires the much thinner 'printed-on-a-tissue-of-lies' blend. Markup: 600%.
Yes, ink markets are important, not only for specific customer needs, or "customer needs hahahaha", but for the much more relevant 'where-are-we-going-to-get-the-money-for-our-Caribbean-conferences' requirements.
Ink: because the world runs on chumps not knowing any better.
Finally, we've got a nice and simple response from Baron von Robber to the folks at Ashley Madison, who are still trying to abuse the DMCA to hide the devastating data leaks:
Dear Avid Life Media,
I hear pissing into the wind will help too.
That's all for this week, folks!
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Oh, mere readers can't beat minion's hysterical: "[Russia is] "pumping the internet full of toxic disinformation 24 hours a day"!!!
Every day now I wonder if Techdirt isn't a subsidiary of The Onion, or a full-scale experiment in AI re-writing.
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Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
https://pirates-forum.org/Thread-TPP-Likely-To-Force-Canada-To-Repeal-Local-Data-Protection -Laws
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Anonymous Coward's Theory of Forum Post Insanity
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Re: Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
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Re: Re: Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
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Re: Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
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Re: Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
I think in reality, Mike's last words would be "Not even the NSA can retain my data where I am going!" but I'm sure they'd be working on it.
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Re: Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
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Of course, he's failed to notice that with all the secrecy and subsequent scrutiny dogging the process, he might not even get to have his supposed magic bullet either.
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Re: Re: Death of Pi rate M ike after exemplary freebooting. Confirmed after 30 days. Sad and grisly last log entry on Jul 21, 2015, 23:33 pm:
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