Thomas Jones’s Comments

• May 27th, 2011 @ 5:04am

  Re: I love this!

  on Seismologists Tried For Manslaughter Due To Earthquake
  Yes there are morons everywhere, but American culture and attitudes produces an extra loud and visible kind. That's why Americans have the reputation they do.
• May 27th, 2011 @ 4:58am

  Re: Re: Re: Can we sue

  on Seismologists Tried For Manslaughter Due To Earthquake
  I think Jimbaux was being sarcastic too, just less obviously... although it is difficult to tell true crazy from sarcasm
• May 17th, 2011 @ 11:40am

  Re: Re: Re:

  on Police Claim That Allowing People To Film Them In Public Creates 'Chilling Effects'
  Some companies like to sue you for using their trademarks... they would probably not win such a lawsuit, but they are expensive to fight.
• May 10th, 2011 @ 8:54am

  Re:

  on Dan Bull Auctioning Off A Custom Song On eBay
  He also does songs based on ideas submitted by people who don't play, but they are generally shorter and you don't really get any control over the song, and there's no guarantee he'll make it.
  
  Basically the entire point of the site is that he makes songs based on your ideas.
• May 10th, 2011 @ 8:51am

  (untitled comment)

  on Dan Bull Auctioning Off A Custom Song On eBay
  There's a guy in Toronto who's been selling the creation of new songs for a long time: http://songstowearpantsto.com/
  
  Unfortunately a while ago he started charging for downloads to some of his older songs, but you can still commission a new song from him.
• Apr 26th, 2011 @ 12:55pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Google Loses Patent Case Filed By Patent Attorney Who Was Helping Fight Patent Excesses
  Only you can't tax Linux this way... due to the GPL, in the FSF's position it's implicit in the license that you can't distribute unless you can pass on all the same terms you have. They count patents as part of that (it's not in the GPL as written but they feel that it's implied by it's terms, GPL3 makes this explicit, but Linux is not under GPL3).
  
  I'd link to the position but I don't remember where I saw it.
  
  Basically it means that anyone who wants to distribute Linux would need to get a patent license that covers everyone they give it to and anyone further down the chain, in other words it would effectively cover every Linux user and distributor there is. If they can't get that they can't distribute. (Or so says the FSF, for GPL3 this is definitely the case since they made it that way on purpose)
  
  I'm curious has Bedrock ever used Linux, if so have they ever done something that could count as distributing it? If so they may have given everyone the right to use Linux.
  
  (Note this implicit patent thing would only cover stuff that could be a derivative work of the software in question so they could still troll proprietary companies)
• Apr 26th, 2011 @ 12:41pm

  Re: Precincts Reported

  on Canadians Face Fines & Jail Time If They Tweet Election Result News Prior To West Coast Poll Closings
  That may be, but you don't need complete results to get a very very very accurate idea of which way a riding went, usually they just call it based on partial counts from some polling stations (and later announce if it went differently than it seem initially)
• Apr 26th, 2011 @ 12:35pm

  Re: Re: One simple solution

  on Canadians Face Fines & Jail Time If They Tweet Election Result News Prior To West Coast Poll Closings
  Yes people's opinions are that easily swayed, it's a known fact about people in general I don't think it's really necessary to do a study specifically with respect to elections.
  
  We know people will regard things the perceive as popular more favorably that then would otherwise, and it's fairly obvious there's a strong possibility early results could influence people who are on the fence.
  
  I don't have any specific studies to reference with respect to people's decision making so maybe someone with better research skills could go looking for one that talks about this sort of thing.