Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the funny-ha-ha dept

This week the voting was extra close, with the top six comments all coming amazingly tight to each other in votes. But sneaking into the winner's circle was an anonymous commenter responding to the story of a ridiculous company claiming that its facial recognition software could determine if you were a terrorist or a criminal with amazing accuracy. Our anonymous commenter explained how that might actually be true:

Given the rather low percentages of terrorists out there

I could get a system that would have a remarkable level of accuracy. Just simply have it claim everyone it sees to be a non-terrorist. Assuming that you have 1 terrorist in ten thousand, that would immediately give me 99.99% accurate. More than good enough to get lots of $$$ from fools. But if they insist on reporting something other than "everyone is OK", then I could randomly select one scapegoat per ten thousand and reduce my accuracy to 99.98%. Still a quite acceptable level of performance.

Sneaky. In second place, a commenter named DOlz responded to the troubling ruling over remastered songs getting a new copyright by noting how it will be abused:

So in a few years instead of Disney once again getting a copyright extension, they’ll just remaster those old cartoons every 95 years.

For editor's choice, we'll start with Anonymous Anonymous Coward responding to Eric Holder now claiming that Ed Snowden performed a "public service," while still insisting Snowden should go to jail. AAC tried to explain the logic at play:

Truth therein Lies

The lying liar (Government) is upset because the thruthy thruther (Snowden and/or other whistle-blowers) spilled the beans, but go on to say that they like their chili without beans, so it's OK, but the truth is, truth needs to go to jail because the beans got spilled, even though we don't add them to the dish...um...erm...something like that.

The judge can tell, even though he is not allowed to notice, so chili lovers who like beans should look for a giant beanstalk. Look up...no more up...a little higher!

The Government lies to everyone and calls that intelligence, but gets upset when the truth of that comes out, and calls that treason. That is more than just a double standard, maybe it is just another lying lie.

Getting power is easy, maintaining power is harder, controlling power is the most difficult.

And then we've got another anonymous commenter paraphrasing Upton Sinclair in responding to Oracle's lead lawyer insisting the fair use ruling over Java APIs in the Oracle v. Google case would kill open source software, by noting:

It is difficult to get people to understand something, when their salary depends upon their not understanding it.

That's an oldie, but a goodie, as an Oracle CEO once said, while on the stand at this particular trial.

Moving on to the funny side of the ledger, first place goes to JD, responding to the weird, factually challenged oped in the NY Times claiming that creating real competition in the set top box space would somehow be an unfair gift to Google. JD brought a little reality to the situation:

CableCo ghost stories

CableCo: "And in this hellish landscape the FCC is trying to foist upon you, YOUR LISTINGS WILL BE ON GOOGLE SEARCH, AND YOUR HARDWARE AND UX WILL BE CREATED BY APPLE!!"

Consumer: "Oh .... oh god ...."

CableCo: "I know, right?"

Consumer: "I never thought this day would come..."

CableCo: "But with some luck it doesn't ha.."

Consumer: "... DEAR GOD ALMIGHTY, THERE'S A GOVERNMENT AGENCY LOOKING OUT FOR ME!! HALLELUJAH! How can I help make this happen?"

CableCo: "...."

In second place, we've got Anonmylous responding to a bad ruling saying that requiring companies to warn users of bad people on their services doesn't break Section 230 of the CDA. Anonmylous has a suggested warning for sites:

Welcome to The Internet! We'd like to take a moment to caution you before you begin that just like in the real world, we have rapists, thugs, thieves, con artists, grifters, junkies, pushers, hookers, murderers, pedophiles, and all manner of people who will seek to take advantage of your naivete and ignorance and trust.

Please keep this in mind in all dealings and interactions you may have with others while visiting. Thank you and look out behind you, he's got a knife!

For editor's choice, we've got Anonymous Coward (R) responding to the story of how coach Jose Mourinho faced some difficulty getting a new job after his prior team had received a trademark on his name. The comment suggested a proven alternative:

No problem! From now on he'll just go as The coach formerly known as Jose Mourinho.

Or did some trademark that to?

*Looks up at the sky*

And finally, on a story about an author needing to sue a publisher over what counted as a "sale" vs. what counted as a "license" in order to properly count royalties, a commenter named Zem pointed out that a certain organization maybe should have been focused on this issue rather than other quixotic battles:

If only there was an organization, or guild, that stood up for author's rights.

If only!

That's all for this week folks.