drteknikal’s Techdirt Profile

drteknikal

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  • Nov 2nd, 2009 @ 10:57am

    gotta love default judgements

    Absurd, but when you fail to appear, it becomes your fault most of the time. Anyone want to explain what happens on appeal of a default judgement? What are grounds for appeal, and can you contest findings of fact?
  • May 18th, 2005 @ 1:43pm

    seems obvious if you know where you're going

    Although it does seem idiotic not to have any controls in the elevator. As long as you could add a stop by entering your floor after you got in the elevator, I'd be OK with it.
  • May 5th, 2005 @ 10:02am

    wait for the backlash

    Just as others have complained that the published start time should be when the movie starts, not when the "show" starts, you will now see others complain about missing previews because the published time was after the previews started.

    The comment that everyone understands how these things work is apt. Since everyone, even those protesting, know the drill, why change? So the opposite set of loonies can have their day in the sun, of course.

    A better idea would be to invoke the past. Pad the previews and commercials with short films, and you give people a reason to show up early.
  • May 3rd, 2005 @ 8:57am

    Re: from the article

    It is wierd in the sense that the statement is factually and legally inaccurate. RTFA.
  • Apr 20th, 2005 @ 6:39am

    In this case, why matters

    I applaud them for honoring the offers. It may not have been legally required, but they get a PR bonanza for the price of a few airline seats. I am much more likely to give my business to a company that does the right thing by its customers than a company that sticks to the letter of the law even if it means offending customers.

    "The customer is always right." Wherever possible, businesses should apply this rule. Screw up and charge them too much? Pay them back. Screw up and charge them too little? Eat the costs and bask in the PR limelight.

    No, they probably didn't need to honor the deals. But when honoring the deals gets you positive publicity that you couldn't buy, why not?
  • Apr 7th, 2005 @ 10:31am

    Re: Lotus Notes != eMail

    Yes, I have. Although it has been several years, I used to be a Notes administrator, and was trained and certified on several versions up to Domino.

    To clarify, I meant the "relational database" comment in a non-technical way, and should have chosen my words better. Maybe "replicated" would have been a better choice. I wasn't so much trying to describe how it worked internally, but to contrast it with Exchange. As was pointed out, Exchange is a mail server, Notes is a database, and the clients blur the distinctions.

    My main point was that to use Notes for email abasent any other compelling reason for Notes is silly, as is directly comparing Notes and Exchange as similar. If you consider Notes and Exchange to be in the same category, you're missing most of the advantages of both products, or evaluating one in terms of the other.
  • Apr 7th, 2005 @ 7:33am

    apples and oranges

    There's an underlying assumption that Notes is an email product. That's inaccurate. Notes is more of a distributed relational database with email functionality.

    Many companies bought Notes with big ideas about groupware projects, but fewer ended up with anything worth having. I worked with multiple companies who bought Notes because they "knew they needed it" but werent' sure what for. Worse, after making these ponderous purchases, many felt they had to standardize on Notes as their mail platform.

    I've always said that Notes was a good product if you needed what it did and actually used it. I've also always said that you should never implement Notes without a very good reason, a mission-critical application, and an understanding of what living in the Notes environment really means. Unless you have a primary application in Notes that you will always need to be running, it's probably a bad idea to make Notes your email environment.

    The interesting thing is that it didn't start out this way. Microsoft had bought an email product (Network Courier) and so had Lotus (cc:Mail). Lotus introduced Notes as a groupware product, and Microsoft responded by beefing up what turned into Exchange and bundling Outlook. The thing is that what Lotus called groupware and what Microsoft called groupware couldn't have been more different. Strangely, now that Notes appears to be making its fade, it comes down to messaging, and Exchange wins.

    Funny, it seems we forgot what the point was.
  • Mar 21st, 2005 @ 9:04am

    ban interactive training and online manuals, too

    These games are simplistic, and intended to help novice users devlop their mouse skills and hand-eye coordination. I understand prohibiting them in a production environment, but this is trivial to do by policy, and doesn't require legislation.

    The legislation will also prevent the legitimate uses regardless of the context. We should extend this by making sure that no user is allowed to spend any time learning to use their system -- remove the interactive training and online documentation as well.
  • Mar 8th, 2005 @ 10:23am

    more libertarian than liberal

    I'd have to take issue with the characterization of MSNBC as liberal. Compared to Fox News, maybe, but that's unfair. Over time, MSNBC has drifted more in the direction of conservative libertarians. I'm not sure how any network with Pat Buchannan can be considered liberal.

    If you consider the political landscape to be a plane, not a line, you'll find that in addition to the axis running from liberal to conservative, there's another running from authoritarian to libertarian. Fox News is more authoritarian than conservative, but neither liberal nor libertarian.

    MSNBC has tried to find a political identity somewhere between the liberal CNN and the authoritarian FOX. They've managed to be somewhere between unclear and misunderstood.
  • Mar 8th, 2005 @ 10:23am

    more libertarian than liberal

    I'd have to take issue with the characterization of MSNBC as liberal. Compared to Fox News, maybe, but that's unfair. Over time, MSNBC has drifted more in the direction of conservative libertarians. I'm not sure how any network with Pat Buchannan can be considered liberal.
    If you consider the political landscape to be a plane, not a line, you'll find that in addition to the axis running from liberal to conservative, there's another running from authoritarian to libertarian. Fox News is more authoritarian than conservative, but neither liberal nor libertarian.
    MSNBC has tried to find a political identity somewhere between the liberal CNN and the authoritarian FOX. They've managed to be somewhere between unclear and misunderstood.
  • Feb 28th, 2005 @ 7:16am

    makes sense to me

    We sell crap, we take your money, we keep billing you, and if/when you figure it out, we keep on trolling for new suckers. What part of "bottom feeder" did you not understand?
  • Feb 23rd, 2005 @ 7:21am

    Get a temporary restraining order

    The casino should file a motion for a temporary restraining order that prohibits the woman from delivering her baby until the case has been resolved and the casino ad has run for the fully contracted term.

    If they win the suit and she's no longer pregnant, that's also actionable. Should she deliver before the ad has run for the contracted period, she could be sued for breech of contract.
  • Feb 18th, 2005 @ 2:56pm

    compensated endorsement

    My understanding was that the artist had done it at a much lower than usual rate, based on anticipated exposure the artwork would receive. Banking on future revenue is one thing, claiming that the bearer can't show it off on tv is another.

    Presumably, if I got a copyrighted tat, I'd have just about all rights except to use it commercially. You could argue that featuring it in advertising would be commercial use. But since the original intent appears to have been to encourage commercial use to generate exposure for the artist, you'd think that right was implied.
  • Feb 15th, 2005 @ 12:21pm

    Sysco business practices

    Let me preface this by saying that while I have worked for one of Sysco's customers, it was many years ago. Sysco is a big company, far more than food. Think the entire food service industry and hospitality industry, combined.

    There are many cases where you have no choice but to buy from Sysco. For example, when Great Northeast Productions held Phish's city-size festivals at the former Loring Air Force Base, all of their on-site permitted vendors were required (by contract) to purchase everything through their vendor, Sysco. Rent a stall in a food court that Sysco services, and the odds are that you'll have to buy from Sysco.

    I'm not trying to paint a negative picture of Sysco, but to illustrate that many of their customers buy from them because they have to. So if Sysco starts competing with Cisco, they have a great deal of pull over their customers, and even their customers customers. So if you're a Sysco customer, and you want WiFi, Sysco may be able to compel you to buy from them.
  • Feb 10th, 2005 @ 2:54pm

    In a related announcement...

    The Office of Fair Trade has announced a record surplus for the fiscal year, and will remit it to the general fund as soon as it can be repatriated from Nigeria.
  • Feb 3rd, 2005 @ 9:55am

    the 4% solution

    This is bad. Spamming is much cheaper than direct mail, where a 3% return is considered great. So if it's much cheaper, and more effective, I suspect that only 4% of my mail will be legitimate soon.
  • Jan 26th, 2005 @ 10:02am

    sometimes

    There are times when I do my shopping physically, then buy virtually, and times when I do the opposite.

    The first case is usually a matter of inadequate information online, or needing a subjective impression of the physical object, not just its specs. Like needing to know the layout of the jack panel, not just the enumeration of jacks, or seeing how a dynamic picture adjusts to room conditions rather than reading over the algorithms.

    The second case is often reserved for large, heavy objects, or with things I think I might need to return. It's often cheaper to pay a slightly higher price at brick-and-mortar retail than to pay shipping charges for something really heavy. If I think I might have to take something back, especially if it is also big or heavy, I'll look at getting it locally at retail so I can just drive it back if there's a problem.

    Differently put, I think the answer is that price is not the only consideration, there are often logistic issues that influence where to purchase.
  • Oct 29th, 2004 @ 12:33pm

    cells on wheels

    The carriers have mobile cell sites that can be deployed to large events, emergencies, or disasters. It remains to be seen whether they'll do any better servicing random litigants in swing states than they have servicing Phish festivals in the past. It should be easier to provide booster service to an already populated area than to provide service for 100,000+ visitors to what's normally a small town of 2,000 or less.
    Then again, I wonder if the political operatives won't be hauling around cell phone jammers...
  • Oct 15th, 2004 @ 2:18pm

    no way

    There are way too many other things that sensors in my underwear could tell you. Even worse if it keeps transmitting when I'm not in them.

    Me thinks there be privacy issues...
  • Jul 29th, 2004 @ 1:13pm

    selfishness

    IF you accept the Police report, confirmed by one witness and contested by others related to the "victims," the real problem here is selfishness.

    The same problem that makes selfish drivers run down pedestrians in crosswalks after the lights change. The same problem that makes people forget they are not alone in this world, and that the people around them matter, too. Even if their version is correct, they were still disrupting a theatre full of other people because they insisted on talking on the phone.

    IF the Police version of the story is correct, I'd say they were treated fairly. I'd like to be able to mace people for using phones in theatres, or, for that matter, running down people in crosswalks...

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