Christopher S. Little's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
This week’s Favorites post comes from Christopher S. Little, who usually goes by another name in the comments, but didn’t want us to face any sort of trademark threats…
I’ve been given the honor of writing up my favorite posts of the week, and what a week it’s been. I was asked on Tuesday and even then I knew I’d have a problem picking just a few. It took a lot of thinking, but I did find myself coming back to a few again and again.
First up is Monday’s post about the Supreme Court finally weighing in on the laws requiring stores to not sell violent games to minors. Now, I understand why some people want these laws, but it’s not the government’s place to say. It’s the job of the parent to say yes or no to the child not the government’s. I’m also very happy to see that the judges realized that gaming is not any more different from movies than movies were from books. I do remember Lord of the Flies being more disturbing than Grand Theft Auto. Too bad California is going to try again.
Second on my list is Capcom deciding that they don’t want you to play again from the beginning. One of my hobbies is video games (collecting, learning the history) so this one hits close to home. I don’t know much about this game, but I expect it’s setup like Portal. You have missions and once you beat the first one you unlock the second and so forth. Well, that’s not too bad for you, but what about the next guy? What about the guy ten or twenty years from now trying to catch up on the history of this great game he just got into called Resident Evil 22 (or whatever)? The odds of finding an unused copy that far in the future are slim. On top of that, add the feeling that you can’t really show you did those things. You can’t show your friend that you deleted your game and come back a few days later with it 100% completed. With that hanging over your head even actually doing it yourself feels cheapened.
Third is the Google+ beta. I’ll usually give anything Google at least one try, but their past social networks were underwhelming. So I was a little suprised to not only see Mike posting about it but liking it as well. That was enough to make me take a second look. Then he pointed out the Circles function and how you can easily delete your account. Apparently both those functions exist in Facebook, but are so hard to get to that I didn’t even know they existed. I admit, I may have been played by Google. Once I saw that they got so overloaded with requests they had to stop accepting them, it piqued my interests. As Marcus Carab pointed out, who ever heard of Google running out of resources?
I have to give an honorable mention to the string of Righthaven posts that show the disaster that is their legal strategy. It’s good to not only see the suits be smacked down, but also to see that claims are being filed against them. There need to be easier ways to enforce the consequences for abuses like this.
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At first I thought it was another creative Scottish insult that has nothing to do with Frito Lay, so I googled it. Apparently it's a reference to Glenn Beck covering his face in Cheeto dust to look more like Trump. So it seems the others are right, it's a reference to his insane tan.
I wonder if still being able to boot to Yellow Dog Linux on my PS3 is enough for them to give me my $55. Hay, Steam Summer Sale is suppose to start today, that $55 could get me like 10 games. Assuming, of course, this isn't just for a $55 voucher for Sony's online currency.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Mixed feelings
One, it is physically impossible to remove all guns in the US. The Second Amendment, lobbyists, already established illegal supply lines, citizens refusing to give up their weapons, cops refusing to give up their "safety", I could go on. It ain't going to happen, trying to make it happen just takes time, money, and energy away from potentially finding another solution.
Two, there are other countries out there with lots of guns and no mass shooting issue. That suggests that the issue is not with the guns, but with the people. Magically removing all guns might stem the tide, but it's not going to stop.
So quit bitching about guns, find the source of the problem, and solve it. It ain't as easy as shouting "BAN GUNS" and doing absolutely nothing productive, but it at least would be going in the right direction.
Re: Re: Re: Opening up libel laws
Clark had to get martial law passed by the senate before he could dissolve the senate. So if Trump tries to get martial law passed, then bunker in, the Shadows are coming.
Re: Is this how it starts...?
"will this agreement be what they point to that starts the snowball?"
No, of course not. Historians won't exist. Revisionists will.
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You're missing the point. Who this person is, what the picture is, or what the harassment is about doesn't matter. The point of the article is to point out a misuse of the DMCA and to show a clear example why extending the notice and takedown system to harassment is idiotic.
The only reason there's even that much detail in the article is to show that this is a real thing happening, not a hypothetical situation that people could just shrug off.
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"Any malware found in a vehicle should be treated as evidence of attempted murder by default"
And this is why Tim's comment "Self-driving cars are an inevitability" is wrong. Just like how people's fears of Google Glass killed the product, people's fears of self driving cars will kill that as well. Seriously, how many people will be willing to get a self driving car if they're worried about other people assaulting them out of fear?
Re: Denying a Trademark doesn't violate rights
You are vary wrong about this. It's not just about rights, it's about giving preferential treatment based on arbitrary morality. Why should the Redskins have a harder time dealing with knock-offs when other, equally or more vulgar trademarks get government protection?
So the choice is remove all trademarks or quit limiting them based on arbitrary morality.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
And thus the reason why cable TV is hemorrhaging subscribers. We're forced to pay for cable boxes if we want the higher channels, but as you say we're not starved for alternatives. As much as you might want to keep to the delusion, cable is dying. If anything, opening up the set top box market would help cable as more people might be willing to have one.
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Eh. I could see it. I've seen TV shows reach the upper 5 digits in seeders from just one source. Adding two more digits across all the sources is possible. The show is popular, cable TV is annoying, and AMC's website is a steaming pile of ass. I could see 1.27 million people being pissed off enough to pirate it.
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"Don't the major cable companies offer online TV streaming?"
So your argument is that we shouldn't have set top box competition because cable companies offer online streaming if you already pay for the higher channels and already pay for a set top box?
"There are also cable cards."
That require a set top box to work because the higher channels are encrypted to force you to pay for a set top box.
Re: My dream...
That's not a limitation of the hardware, it's a limitation of software. Remember, they sent men to the moon with similar power to a calculator watch, but they did it without Start buttons or solitaire. Think about all the fancy your OS has and think about how much faster it would run without all that stuff that just looks pretty or you outright just don't use.
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But that's just talking about buildings or bridges or highways. It says nothing about statues. I don't doubt that in the US the laws for bridges and the laws for statues are completely different.
Re: Too bad...
That's the point. More people are willing to fight for the courageous rebels. Throw accusations like "child pornography" into the mix and far fewer people are willing to stand up.
It shows an inherent flaw in public opinion. It's the exact reason why our court systems were created. Too bad the court system has lost track of that purpose.
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Fun fact: In Firefox there is a checkbox "Play DRM Content" that's disabled by default.
I don't doubt that there will be addons like NoScript and AdBlock that let you white list websites for DRMed content, and I don't doubt that there will be addons to completely bypass the DRM as well.
I hope the W3C understand what they're getting into. The companies that are requesting DRM in HTML5 will be coming back to the W3C at least once a week to update the DRM because the previous version has been cracked.
Re: What TOR is
TOR and VPNs may use encryption, but in the cases referenced here, don't use it to hide the traffic itself, only it's origin. Once the traffic gets past the last TOR node or the VPN end point, it's broadcast in the clear. They're not designed to hide what you're surfing, only where you're surfing from.
That's something I hadn't thought of. Ripping a new back door into encryption would do irreparable damage, opening new security flaws. Hackers wouldn't even need to target the official backdoor, they can just go after the cracks around it.
The list just keeps growing, doesn't it.
The Google commercial says "there are about 2 billion, 500 million heartbeats in a lifetime." Part of the Book's subtitle is "the next 2 billion heartbeats of your life". Since the author is insisting Google directly copied his subtitle, then we can assume he agrees with the numbers.
So if there are 2,500,000,000 heartbeats in a lifetime and the book is for your future 2,000,000,000 heartbeats, does that mean it's a children's book? That cover doesn't look like it would draw too many five year olds.
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They don't even do that any more. The first thing DD-WRT does is make you set the username and password. They even go one step further and hide the username.
Still the only router software that I've ever seen that requires setting the password. All others, professional or residential, have default passwords that can be found by a simple Google search.
Re: Thank you for addressing this.
Apple wouldn't be building a backdoor into the encryption. It would be building a backdoor into the other security features in iOS. The vulnerability you speak of is only a way to install the backdoor. The hacking tool would be the software the FBI already has to brute force the password.
Tech lingo is a bitch, I hope that helped.