Not an Electronic Rodent’s Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1,470)

• On the post: Court Shelves Washington State Law That Would Turn Service Providers Into Criminals Based On Their Users' Behavior

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Jul 2012 @ 10:12am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Politicians Love Censorship

  yet they oppose a simple age verification to ensure that those being advertised are over 18.

  Much like DRM, age verification is a fiction. Unless the proposal is for every potential advertiser to provide genetic samples that can be age verified (and I can think of a dozen ways around that too), then I'm not sure how a such a system would help, other than to give the appearance of "doing something about the problem" without the rather more costly solution of paying for enough professional law enforcement to be able to try.

• On the post: Alex Day Sells Half A Million Songs By Breaking All The 'Rules'

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Jul 2012 @ 9:45am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  *crickets*

• On the post: Alex Day Sells Half A Million Songs By Breaking All The 'Rules'

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 29 Jul 2012 @ 9:30am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re:

  Definitely in my top 5 nominees for the "troll of the decade" award... +1 internets to you sir.

• On the post: If You Go To The Olympics, You Can Bring Your iPhone Or Android Phone... But You Better Not Tether

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2012 @ 3:39pm

  
  

  Well they could....

  It's pretty easy to hide a MiFi. And turning your phone into a hotspot and slipping it back into a pocket would make it almost impossible to detect.

  Well yes and no... depending on the venue wifi, you can detect the signal and localise it (tho probably not pinpoint it's true). And what they could do is have extra access points set to supress "rogue" signals.... that's legal in private venues, but far as I know not in public spaces, but hey, when have the olympics ever let that stop them?

• On the post: If You Go To The Olympics, You Can Bring Your iPhone Or Android Phone... But You Better Not Tether

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2012 @ 3:35pm

  
  

  Re:

  I can imagine a stand full of people with several hundred of them all tossing out wifi would cause that 2.5ghz range to get mighty noisy.

  Meh... actually it's more the other way round... WiFi and bluetooth performance, being relatively low power, tends to suck badly in an environment with loads of RF noise like that.

• On the post: If You Go To The Olympics, You Can Bring Your iPhone Or Android Phone... But You Better Not Tether

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2012 @ 3:31pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Excitement

  Amen to that.. try living here

• On the post: Press Speculates Batman Shooter Must Have Played Video Games; They're Right: He Loved Guitar Hero

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 25 Jul 2012 @ 11:34am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  And do you know how many Swiss men between 20 and 30 have a firearm at home? ALL OF THEM!

  Yeah, but the Swiss would never shoot someone - make the place too messy. Alternatively, maybe it's because the regulations for obtaining one are reasonably strict, as is the requirement for safety training including requalification and there are rules about what you can own and where/how you can carry them... but I'm just guessing. Oh, and I think you meant almost all of them.

• On the post: Press Speculates Batman Shooter Must Have Played Video Games; They're Right: He Loved Guitar Hero

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 24 Jul 2012 @ 2:57pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  My point is your blaming the tool not the person

  I'm not blaming anything, nor do I think firearms should be banned. The way I see it, some level of control is just simple logic. To what extent that should be I'm not even going to pretend to be qualified to answer, but my reason suggests it's probably at least a bit more control than goes on in the US at the moment.
  
  

  Ban guns and they use bows, ban bows and they use blowguns, ban blowguns and they use throwing stars,

  All those things are true, but however you slice it (and again I'm not suggesting a ban or anywhere close), a firearm is about the most efficient tool for killing things available to the general populous anywhere and all the other things you mentioned;
  a/ Require more skill to use
  b/ are typically less dangerous to the user (I'd lay a reasonable wager the number of people that have shot themselves with a bow and arrow by proportion of users is waaay lower than gun owners and the number of accidental deaths from any of those even more so)
  c/ are way less efficient at killing lots of people at once.
  
  Firearms are naturally more dangerous because they are efficient and simple to use almost without skill. Yes I know it's a tool and there are plenty of legitimate uses... sport even quite apart from hunting/protection from animals in the wild. You say you're safer with a gun? Fine.. you probably know how to use one safely... so do I as it happens as well as enjoying doing so. Perhaps then a start on "gun control" and reducing gun deaths might be as simple as education and a few madatory safety requirements?

• On the post: Press Speculates Batman Shooter Must Have Played Video Games; They're Right: He Loved Guitar Hero

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 24 Jul 2012 @ 10:57am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  I agree. Looking at the top 8 countries for gun deaths per capita, half do not allow citizens to carry guns.

  Er, yeah... but they are pretty much the bottom 4 of the "top 8" and mostly places where organised crime or civil unrest or both are a problem. And I'm not convinced Zimbabwe really counts as a place where you're not allowed to own guns, whatever the "law" says :-P
  
  Also, if you want to be picky, the "top 8" are mostly central/south american and the next 8 are mostly eastern european.... with the US nestled right in the middle there.
  
  Does this prove anything one way or another? Hardly... just saying you can spin a stat like that any way you want. Especially when "can own guns" on that chart isn't further qualified. The UK for example is down as "can own guns" but it's a damn-sight harder to do so than, say, the US (or France for that matter) and highly limited on where/how then can be stored/used.
  
  Should guns be controlled? Absolutely! How much? Hell if I know... I think the UK law is stupidly and pointlessly restrictive, the US law stupidly and pointlessly lax, the answer's probably in the middle as usual.
  
  

  “They say that 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people.”
  ― Eddie Izzard
  
  ...if you combine the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark and Australia, you'll get a population roughly the size of the United States. We had 32,000 gun deaths last year, they had 112. Do you think it's because Americans are more homicidal by nature? Or do you think it's because those guys have gun control laws?
  Toby Zeigler (Aaron Sorkin)

• On the post: Press Speculates Batman Shooter Must Have Played Video Games; They're Right: He Loved Guitar Hero

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 24 Jul 2012 @ 10:35am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: G.O.?

  Are you proposing a full psychological evaluation for everyone that wishes to purchase a firearm?

  Well if you wanted to play "Catch 22", from a certain point of view wanting one could pretty much clear that up... after all, there's a pretty good chance if you're going to get shot it's with your own weapon I understand. :-p

• On the post: Does Batman Need Copyright Protection?

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 21 Jul 2012 @ 4:55am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  That you might have to break a different law (anti-circumvention) to perform the legal act doesn't make the underlying act illegal, or piracy.

  Uh huh... and the semantic difference makes it sooooo much better when you get arrested and/or sued for it? Besides, the law and what the studios and labels will assert is the law and sue you for can be different, but if you can't afford the price tag to fight it in court, what's the difference?

• On the post: Users Rise Up To Get YouTube MP3 Downloader Re-Instated

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 20 Jul 2012 @ 11:30am

  
  

  Makes you wonder...

  Every copytroll seems to whine that Youtube is full of videos of cats or something because that's what we'd be left with if the big studios stop making their rubbish..... so what's the problem with capturing cat meows exactly?

• On the post: Couple Arrested For Dancing On NYC Subway Platform

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 20 Jul 2012 @ 10:17am

  
  

  Re: Re: Seems extremely easy to get arrested any more

  estate of the first farter

  At risk of obliquely Godwinning... would that make the US the farterland?

• On the post: Does Batman Need Copyright Protection?

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 20 Jul 2012 @ 10:09am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re:

  I agree, I turn every BlueRay I own into digital copies.

  Of course in any sane world, turning something you own (and presumably bought?) into a digital copy wouldn't be considered "piracy", just like it wasn't before the vastly and stupidly broad "anti-circumvention" provisions.

• On the post: Does Batman Need Copyright Protection?

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 20 Jul 2012 @ 10:05am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  biker mice from mars surely?

• On the post: Chuck Close Succeeds In Stifling A Creative Homage... But Only For Another 100 Years Or So!

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 16 Jul 2012 @ 10:47am

  
  

  Re: Aesthetics

  Artists who do not wish to see
  their art trivialized

  Given the origin of "trivial":
  

  Latin trivialis found everywhere, commonplace,

  
  I can't imagine anything more trivial than art anyway. "Art" is everywhere and potentialy in everything.
  
  More to the point, how does copying a style do anything to the worth of the original art? Is Van Gogh's work made less worthy by someone having themselves painted in the style of his self portrait? To my mind, if art can be "trivialsed" so easily it really can't have been that great in the first place.

• On the post: Chuck Close Succeeds In Stifling A Creative Homage... But Only For Another 100 Years Or So!

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 16 Jul 2012 @ 10:30am

  
  

  Legacy intact...

  Well Mr Close's legacy is definitely far more secure as far as I'm concerned now. After all, up to now when I've seen images like that I've thought, "Well that's a mildly cool way to transform a picture, I wonder who came up with that", without too much interest. From now on though, I'll be able to think "Oh, that's that thing by that guy with his head so far up his own....."

• On the post: Chuck Close Succeeds In Stifling A Creative Homage... But Only For Another 100 Years Or So!

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 16 Jul 2012 @ 10:23am

  
  

  Re: Re: Re: What Whine?

  I assume, he had permission to use

  I wouldn't lay odds either way... after all he's an Artist (capital 'A'), not a "thieving copy merchant" so any use of his of "other people's works" must be transformative and fair use... right?

• On the post: UK Judge: Samsung Wins Over Apple In Patent Dispute Because Its Tablet Isn't As Cool As iPad

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 10 Jul 2012 @ 1:13pm

  
  

  Re: Re: Re:

  Now, while we can say Apple did that first more or less, it was coming anyway once costs came down

  Oh, and forgot to say, prior art is still prior art even if it's expensive - had an IBM "tablet" (convertable laptop with touchscreen) waaaaaaay before the first iPad complete with screen bigger than an iPad

• On the post: UK Judge: Samsung Wins Over Apple In Patent Dispute Because Its Tablet Isn't As Cool As iPad

  

  Not an Electronic Rodent (profile), 10 Jul 2012 @ 1:06pm

  
  

  Re: Re:

  Now, while we can say Apple did that first more or less,

  They did what??? I had...hmmm... 2 phones with large touch screens about the size of an iPhone, the second of which was hi-def and both of these before the first iPhone was released. Apple have rarely, if ever, done anything first they've just done it popular and (if you must) "cool".

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