Michael Brian Bentley’s Comments

• Feb 17th, 2022 @ 8:20pm

  Starlink service is desirous; balance is also (as Mike Bentley)

  on NASA Says 2nd Gen Starlink Satellites Will Cause Headaches For NASA, Hubble
  There are vast areas worldwide that will just never see a cell tower or cable. I've ordered Starlink to be a backup service in case my primary service is interrupted. We've seen multiple-day power outages here several times; for the cell service to be sustained during these, the trucks have to wire utility pole gear with generators; at the same time by using Starlink all I have to do is power my gear with my own resources, I'm not relying on anyone else's power. Starlink is popular right now because of twenty years of exceptionally bad behavior by internet service providers who want their network growth to be funded for them to serve oodles of people. And have government keep competitors out of the market. I speculate here: to fend off some of the angst against Starlink, all Musk need do is buy one of current major providers, and just do what Google started to do and just expand coverage. It would certainly help if he also solved the Starlink satellite albedo problem. Hubble isn't the only thing that will experience streaks in sky image captures. Also, note that Starlink is not the only satellite constellation business interested in hoisting 30,000+ satellites, there's quite the line forming. Starlink wasn't the first either.
• May 25th, 2021 @ 7:00pm

  What managers want to avoid: Zoom meetings

  on Employees Are Feeling Burned Over Broken Work-From-Home Promises As Employers Try To Bring Them Back To The Office

  Management would rather poke their eyes out with ice picks than do more Zoom.

  Development staff could have one or two Zoom meetings a day, but managers spent all their waking hours in Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

  Everyone must return to the office to work.

• Mar 7th, 2016 @ 3:55pm

  (untitled comment)

  on Supreme Court Refuses To Hear Apple's Appeal In eBook Price Fixing Case
  "Meanwhile, even as Apple has now lost the case, it did still succeed in forcing the price of many ebooks much, much higher."
  
  How did it do that? Are the contract terms with the large publishers still incorporating that thing where content pricing on Apple's Bookstore must match the lowest price on Amazon etal?
• Apr 7th, 2012 @ 1:50pm

  Backups?

  on Megaupload Points Out That The Feds Want To Destroy Relevant Evidence In Its Case
  Presumably, backups are included with the rest of the seized assets.
• Feb 23rd, 2012 @ 1:52pm

  East India Company (as Mike Bentley)

  on Real Scarcity Is An Important Part Of A Business Model; Artificial Scarcity Is A Terrible Business Model
  They constrain content availability so that any new content gets the lion's share of eyetracks.
  
  They also constrain new content to specific venues.
  
  To their point of view, they just have to fix the internet to plug up all the distracting uncontrolled sources of illegally provided content. There's a finite amount of money available from the public to pay for entertainment, the content folks want to funnel it all to new releases playing at movie houses first, because that maximizes the revenues for new titles.
  
  If it weren't for that meddling iCEO, music would be using the same success formula today.
• Nov 12th, 2011 @ 11:21am

  It's the followers that the company wants.

  on Company Sues Ex-Employee Because He Kept His Personal Twitter Account & Followers
  The company cannot replicate all those follows itself because it can't force followers to follow one of its other accounts. It can only get followers to voluntarily follow one of its accounts. So since the employee wouldn't surrender the account to the company, the company is forced to sue the employee to gain whatever tangible good will it believes it is owed, the account with all the established follows. The employee did run an account on twitter with the name of the company as part of the name, and in so doing was acting on behalf of the company with that account. The bewildering part of all this is that the employee refused to hand the account over, it hurts the value of the account, and the ex-employee is burning a bridge by not turning it over promptly.
• Jul 30th, 2008 @ 3:31pm

  (untitled comment) (as Mike)

  on We're The US Government, So We Can Ignore Pesky Things Like The DMCA
  Copyright and IP, when inconsistently enforceable, are more a nuisance than a benefit because they offer false promise. If the military adopted a more advantageous policy to reward inventors appropriately, their benefit would likely be tremendous.
• Mar 8th, 2007 @ 12:45pm

  as it was described to me (as Mike Bentley)

  on Reincarnated MovieBeam Goes Out With A Whimper
  The first release of the service was a test in three markets. It was backed up by advertising, and I'm told was well received. The second release of the service was for real, in the 31 largest markets, but for reasons I don't understand they weren't able to advertise, so consequently nobody knew about it. The set top boxes were recently for sale in places like Radio Shack and Best Buy, but nothing about the displays drew customer attention. The business model behind the second, full release of the service was much different than the first. There are bona fide reasons that such a service could thrive in the current market. I expect the company to achieve greater success with more intelligent backing.