Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the the-final-frontier dept

This week, we took a look at an interesting question: should the police be able to take control of self-driving cars? One anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week by pointing out one of the key problems with this idea:

The problem is that if the police have the ability to take remote control of a car, then the bad guys will also have that capability, along with secret services, therefore the car should normally avoid collisons with anything, and obey hand signals and visible signal lights..

More Important is giving the occupants the ability to override the automatic system, so that for example they can force the car to drive away from, or even through a hostile crowd. Without that options, it becomes easy for gangs to hijack vehicles, spread out across the road to force the car to stop, and then move in behind the car.

In second place, we've got the result of an exchange on our post about an incoherent anti-Netflix editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The writer's  bizarre comparison to the airline industry prompted one commenter to wonder what point he thought he was making, spurring Michael to offer up an interpretation:

I think he is trying to argue that the airline industry - which is clearly failing, hated by most of it's customers, being propped up by the government, and showing little or no signs of change is a shining example of a good way to run a business.

Oh, I guess that's what the cable industry actually DOES think.

For editor's choice, we start out on our post about the EPA's wrongheaded support of using copyright law to prevent people from tinkering with their cars' software. Ninja expanded on the point that potential dangers are not a reason to prevent modification:

This cannot be emphasized enough. Thinkering with mechanical parts can do a whole world more damage to the environment than anything else. Many people here remove pollution control mechanisms from their trucks because it decreases the consumption by 3-4%. You stop it by having vehicles undergo obligatory auditing or something but not by preventing people to mess with what they own. This is specially true when you are dealing with agriculture equipment where a lot of farmers do their own maintenance and need access to the software because they wouldn't have the funds to pay for maintenance from the company itself.

Next, after we wondered if Danny Rodriguez's Supreme Court win would help prevent any unauthorized searches, That One Guy made a solid case for why it won't  because of a fundamental flaw in the system:

No, it won't, and in fact it won't even slow such searches down. All a cop has to do is claim that they were unaware of the SC ruling, and they'll get to search cars to their heart's content.

So long as police can rely on the 'Good faith exception', they don't have to pay the slightest bit of lip service to what the law actually says, so long as they think they're within the law when they do something(or are willing to lie and claim as such). If anything, the 'good faith exception' provides incentives for cops not knowing the law, as the less they know, the more they can get away with.

For cops, 'Ignorance of the law' is not only a valid excuse in court, it's a desired state.

Over on the funny side, first place goes to a response to Apple's refusal of a court order to decrypt messages for the DOJ.  Ben suggested a rephrasing of the reply:

Apple should respond to the DOJ:
No messages were found responsive to your request
(to paraphrase the DOJ's seemingly favorite response to a FOIA request)
... and since they don't have any decrypted iMessages, it would actually be true.

For second place, we head to our post about Getty Images and its disastrous anti-penguin copyright crusade. One commenter suggested we dub the meme-penguin's successor "Getty Streisand" in honor of the debacle, but an anonymous reply provided an even better moniker:

I prefer Petty Images.

For editor's choice on the funny side, just for fun, we've got a double-serving of Star Trek references of varying obscurity thrown out by our commenters this week. First, after someone invoked a paradox on our post about confidential informants, one anonymous commenter harkened back to the original series episode I, Mudd:

Every cop in Tampa is now standing still, head listing to the left, repeatedly muttering 'Norman, coordinate'.

Next, on a DailyDirt post about the many challenges involved in space elevators, another anonymous commenter showed off his even more encyclopaedic Trek knowledge with  an obscure reference to the Voyager episode Rise:

yeah, like spending time with Neelix in a enclosed space for hours. No thanks, I would rather listen to Harry's latest recital.

That's all for this week, folks!

Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • icon
    Ben (profile), 13 Sep 2015 @ 7:51pm

    Wow

    Just wow. 1st place!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 13 Sep 2015 @ 7:57pm

    Last! (Am I doing this right? I'm not entirely sure I'm doing this right.)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    toyotabedzrock (profile), 13 Sep 2015 @ 9:59pm

    The Voyager episode is called "Rise" not Ride!

    http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Rise_(episode)

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 3:37am

    "Man, the freaking left wing paranoia about trade again on Techdirt. What's the big deal about "secret" negotiations? It ultimately will be made public. Then the duly elected and properly bribed representatives of the people will have a chance to approve or reject. Seems the real beef is that the protectionists don't have anything concrete to demagog right now, which pisses them off."

    Fixed that for you. Or him. Whatever.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 10:00am

    Btw, I forgot to mention.

    Don't some of those treaties have a clause of non-disclosure until 5 years after signing/ratifying the treaty?

    It will ultimately be made public.

    I hope that my grandchildren will be able to see the text.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 10:39am

      Living in hope.

      If any government passes a law, claiming they have to do so because of the treaty, they will have breached the non-disclosure clause; rendering the treaty next to useless.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 14 Sep 2015 @ 10:56am

    Well, they'll say that is because of "international treaties" and will leave up to you to check it out.

    Still, their goal is that people won't be able to protest when the treaty is being ratified. They don't mind having to wait 5 years as long as they get to rape us.


    That, of course, if such a clause is deemed acceptable and no one leaks the text.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.