That's a really interesting story, and brings up how positive of a teaching lesson such things can be. Sometimes I feel like the most valuable lessons I got in school were in the range and scope of arbitrariness, defensiveness and spinelessness of authority—and also how much a single act can sometimes leave them sputtering.
Police departments have proven unable to reform themselves. There really seems to be nothing that could possibly work other than firing absolutely everyone and starting again from scratch, including barring anyone who was employed in law enforcement from ever working in law enforcement again. Sure, that's a pretty drastic measure, but so is taking human life for no goddamn reason.
A harsh lesson to stay away from proprietary software
The lesson is as clear as it is stark and unforgiving: never deal with proprietary software if you can possibly avoid it. Our lives are so filled with the products of corporations that we take this state as natural and safe; it is not natural, and we are not safe, they will crush us without hesitation if it serves their interests even in the most oblique or minimal ways.
And as long as they remain the only games in town that people think can be played, they’ll have nothing to fear in being so ruthless because they know their customers believe they have no choice. So don't encourage their power, don't support it, no matter how "convenient" it might seem at the time.
Definitely using RSS myself. Specifically, Nextcloud News on my own Nextcloud instance, with native clients synced to that on my mobile devices and even one on my e-reader! Looking forwards to sitting out on bright summer days and reading Techdirt :D
That would be a decent theory, but it seemed to be that all new streams were lower quality and staying so, and then abruptly all of those streams released since the change went back to the previous quality level:
Amazon appear to assign a version or profile to the published encode being served to the end user. The past seven days, this value has changed for newer streams compared to the older streams. As of a few hours ago, the profile assigned to streams released in the past week now returns the same value as the older streams. This is also reflected in the overall size of the files.
I suppose we won't know for sure until more new streams are posted, but it seems to me more like they were testing out going over to a lower quality simply for bandwidth/cost/etc reasons and they've walked that back a bit.
Sure, if I'm willing to break the law—using a VPN in this way is arguably an unauthorized access of a computer system and thus technically could be prosecuted as a felony under the CFAA. It's actually one of the rare instances where copyright infringement is the lesser crime ;) so I could just hop over to a torrent site and download the whole episode.
Anyways I was never claiming there weren't ways I could watch it, just pointing out that sadly there are a lot of existing barriers in the web already where connections are not at all agnostic as to soirce and destination, and it's unfortunate that rather than getting better we're going to be getting worse. The implicit lesson is that the next few years are probably going to often be a cat and mouse game between major corporations and people attempting to get around their restrictions, even moreso than it already is.
Well sure, it would have been better as legislation, but Wheeler wasn't a legislator, he was a regulator, so he (eventually) made the best *regulatory* move he could make.
I do wonder to what degree it was that he was initially trying to please the industry bigs like Verizon by making weak compromised regulatory decisions, and then when they took him to court anyways and the court said "you definitely can't do it this way, but you definitely could and arguably should do it via Title II" he went "fuckit, I guess that's what I'm doing then 'cause those fuckers at Verizon apparently hate me anyways."
I do wish we had *full* Net Neutrality and I could actually watch that video up here in Canada, but Bell Media owns the streaming rights to HBO shows up here. I also can't get HBO without getting a cable package because as Bell Media is also a cable TV provider it's another carrot or stick (depending on how you look at it) so they haven't made HBO Now or any equivalent available . . .
Alas, of course, instead of making things better we're going from an imperfect internet and heading at full speed towards a cyberpunk dystopian one.
Yeah, my own website readership is strongly gated by whether a site has comments or not. Actually, the only one I read these days that doesn't is The Outline.
I'm only halfway through the second part, so not quite yet at listening to this episode, but awesome to see a "crossover" between probably the two best tech podcasts out there! (Albeit in very different ways.)
I *wish* he was a Nixon-republican, but he seems dead set on essentially doing away with one of the most important government agencies, the EPA, which was created by the Nixon administration.
Fansubs are also a great counterexample the the tired "but if people aren't monetarily reimbursed, they won't work!" trope that underlies many very negative political and economic philosophies, including copyright maximalism.
My flatmate's PC wasn't capable of running the game, so I was letting him use my most powerful tower when he felt like. As soon as this stuff came out, I uninstalled the game, deleted Capcom.sys (which required rebooting the computer, since it stays in use even after Street Fighter 5 is closed...), and have had to ban it from being reinstalled because like hell I'm trusting Capcom now.
As usual, this stuff just hurts the legitimate users.
On the post: High School Student's Speech About Campus Sexual Assault Gets Widespread Attention After School Cuts Her Mic
Re: lawsuits can be educational
On the post: CBP Sued For Seizing $41,000 From Airline Passenger, Then Refusing To Give It Back Unless She Promised Not To Sue
Re: Re: "They're government agents, of course they're always right."
On the post: Cops 'Help' Naked, Possibly-Suicidal Schizophrenic Man By Tasing Him To Death
Fire them all and start from scratch
Police departments have proven unable to reform themselves. There really seems to be nothing that could possibly work other than firing absolutely everyone and starting again from scratch, including barring anyone who was employed in law enforcement from ever working in law enforcement again. Sure, that's a pretty drastic measure, but so is taking human life for no goddamn reason.
On the post: How Microsoft Convinced Clueless Judges To Send A Man To Jail For Copying Software It Gives Out For Free
A harsh lesson to stay away from proprietary software
And as long as they remain the only games in town that people think can be played, they’ll have nothing to fear in being so ruthless because they know their customers believe they have no choice. So don't encourage their power, don't support it, no matter how "convenient" it might seem at the time.
On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 164: Getting News Without Social Media
Re:
On the post: It's Thanks To The Pirate Community That Amazon's Attempt To Degrade Its Streaming Service Is Now Public
Re: Wondering...
That would be a decent theory, but it seemed to be that all new streams were lower quality and staying so, and then abruptly all of those streams released since the change went back to the previous quality level:
I suppose we won't know for sure until more new streams are posted, but it seems to me more like they were testing out going over to a lower quality simply for bandwidth/cost/etc reasons and they've walked that back a bit.
On the post: It's Thanks To The Pirate Community That Amazon's Attempt To Degrade Its Streaming Service Is Now Public
Re:
Are . . . are you from the past?
On the post: Shocker: FOIA Request Shows Yet Another Core Justification For Repealing Net Neutrality Was Bullshit
Re: Re: Re: John Oliver YouTube video
Anyways I was never claiming there weren't ways I could watch it, just pointing out that sadly there are a lot of existing barriers in the web already where connections are not at all agnostic as to soirce and destination, and it's unfortunate that rather than getting better we're going to be getting worse. The implicit lesson is that the next few years are probably going to often be a cat and mouse game between major corporations and people attempting to get around their restrictions, even moreso than it already is.
On the post: Shocker: FOIA Request Shows Yet Another Core Justification For Repealing Net Neutrality Was Bullshit
Re: re-writing history?
I do wonder to what degree it was that he was initially trying to please the industry bigs like Verizon by making weak compromised regulatory decisions, and then when they took him to court anyways and the court said "you definitely can't do it this way, but you definitely could and arguably should do it via Title II" he went "fuckit, I guess that's what I'm doing then 'cause those fuckers at Verizon apparently hate me anyways."
On the post: Shocker: FOIA Request Shows Yet Another Core Justification For Repealing Net Neutrality Was Bullshit
Re: John Oliver YouTube video
Alas, of course, instead of making things better we're going from an imperfect internet and heading at full speed towards a cyberpunk dystopian one.
On the post: Al Jazeera Gives A 'Voice To The Voiceless' By Killing News Comments
Re: Re: Downgrading commentary
On the post: Al Jazeera Gives A 'Voice To The Voiceless' By Killing News Comments
Re: vote with mouse button
On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 133: These Scammers Picked The Wrong Guy
On the post: Streisand Effect Helps Sci-Hub To Acquire Almost All Scholarly Literature, Dooms Traditional Academic Publishing
Mirroring?
On the post: Senate's Latest Attack On Backpage Will Be Massively Counterproductive, Create Tremendous Harm
Surprising lack of Kamala Harris
On the post: Trump Fires FBI Director Comey
Re: Re: Damaged goods
On the post: Dutch Court Rules That Freely Given Fan-Subtitles Are Copyright Infringement
On the post: CIA Leak Shows Mobile Phones Vulnerable, Not Encryption
Re:
On the post: Vice President Fails To Demand An FBI Investigation After His Private Email Account Is Hacked
Re: Re: Re: "Fails To Demand"? -- "I can only assume"?
On the post: Capcom Releases DRM For Street Fighter 5, Promptly Rolls It Back When It Screws Legitimate Customers
And now my flatmate can't play the game anymore
As usual, this stuff just hurts the legitimate users.
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