blaktron 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (611)

• On the post: Chia Cryptocurrency, Started By BitTorrent Creator Bram Cohen, Engaging In Obnoxiously Bogus Trademark Bullying

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2021 @ 09:56am

  this is not how i wanted to get my name in your blog again

  maybe next time i can just do another "best of the week" post?

• On the post: Are Apple, Google, Microsoft And Mozilla Helping Governments Carry Out Man-In-The-Middle Attacks?

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2014 @ 01:24pm

  I'm pretty sure that a) Chrome and IE both use the Windows cert store, and b) if CNNIC was included as a trusted root, it would only be trusted for .cn path, because its not in the trust chain for .com or .ca or .gov or whatever.
  
  Oh, and c) in Windows 8.1 at least there is no sign of CNNIC
  
  Just sayin'

• On the post: Lena Dunham Once Again Threatens Lawsuit Over An Interpretation Of Her Book That She Doesn't Like

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 05 Nov, 2014 @ 11:38am

  Re: Legally

  Yeah, no. In many places, under the law, you would be considered a moron.

• On the post: Blogger Defends Outing Politician Trolling His Comments

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2014 @ 06:32am

  Re: Re: Blogger owned the information

  So the guys expectations were wrong, and he got burned? So its the site's fault? You said it yourself, it was due to an expectation. Expectation can be false. There was absolutely NO duty for Blog of Arizona to keep this guy' identity secret. Just like Mike has no duty to anyone but himself when it comes to our identities.
  
  If he had wanted to ensure his anonymity he should have protected his identity. He did not. He merely did not expose it deliberately. There is a BIG difference, and the fault lies with him, not the blog.

• On the post: Blogger Defends Outing Politician Trolling His Comments

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2014 @ 05:25am

  Blogger owned the information

  People are anonymous on blogs because they are allowed to be by the owner of the site. End of story. Don't want your racist leanings public? Don't give that information to someone! End of story.
  
  You guys are attributing to a blogger the sacred trust that we carry with a lawyer or doctor. Which is insane. He had absolutely no duty to this guy to keep his name secret, and I'm not sure why anyone thinks he did? So strange.
  
  Was there anything on his site explicitly stating that anonymous comments would never be exposed? Did he sign an NDA? No? Then buzz off, Blog of Arizona is 100% correct in what they did.

• On the post: Prosecutors In 'Sexting' Case Apparently Obtained Search Warrant To Photograph Teen's Penis

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2014 @ 11:13am

  Conspiracy to manufacture child pornography. Get those sickos out of public 'service'.

• On the post: This Week In Techdirt History

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2014 @ 09:40am

  Re: Re:

  Heh this is what brought me here as a reader initially.

• On the post: Looks Like Sprint Did Challenge FISC Order For Call Data, Asked If It Was Serious

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 14 May, 2014 @ 03:24pm

  It's only a lie if they don't follow through on their threats. See: Qwest.

• On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses… And Everyone Hates

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2014 @ 05:50am

  Re:

  Its been 20 years of bloatware with no end in sight. I wish I could believe you when you say "eventually". But I don't.

• On the post: Telecom Musical Chairs: Regulators And Lobbyists Swap Roles, Everyone Wins! (Except The Public)

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2014 @ 05:56am

  It should be illegal to use knowledge and skills funded by the public to lobby on behalf of corporations, since that is a direct conflict in use of public funds.
  
  And they don't need laws to do it, just better contracts.

• On the post: Court Says DOJ Must Release Memo That Justifies Drone Killing Of US Citizen

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2014 @ 05:36am

  I wouldn't worry that politicians will stop bragging about their powers, so I suspect this decision will hold firm in the future, unless its overturned.

• On the post: Canadian 'Digital Privacy' Bill Actually Puts Everyone's Privacy At Risk; Will Be A Boon To Trolls

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2014 @ 05:40pm

  Umm the scariest part to me is the 'about to commit' provision. This provision does sure no one can hide behind privacy laws to fight whistleblowers, so that's good.

• On the post: A Look Back In Techdirt History

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2014 @ 05:40pm

  Yo, what clan did you play TFC with?

• On the post: Heartbleed Bug In OpenSSL Makes It Worse Than No Encryption At All

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 01:43pm

  Re: Re:

  What? I think its pretty clear that anyone using Apache does so at their own peril now. Why is it moronic to assume that administrators interested in their users security will let go of ideology and begin using IIS.

• On the post: Heartbleed Bug In OpenSSL Makes It Worse Than No Encryption At All

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 04:09am

  A year of NSA revelations, 2 major POSIX security flaws and not a peep about CryptoAPI. However it shakes out with IIS, the debate about open vs closed source security is close to being settled for good.

• On the post: Kudos: Microsoft Changes Policy, Promises Not To Inspect Customers' Content

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2014 @ 06:26am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Recheck facts

  Do you apply for a warrant before conducting a search of your own hard drive? Because legally that's what MS did.

• On the post: Kudos: Microsoft Changes Policy, Promises Not To Inspect Customers' Content

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2014 @ 04:44am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Recheck facts

  Companies and people hand over evidence all the time without a warrant, so I'm not sure what your point is. A warrant is for an unauthorized search. This search was already authorized.
  
  I really don't understand why this group would rather have cops searching through Hotmail than MS. Seems that every other story about the government searching emails has this site up in arms, but when MS does it you run back to the government. So weird.

• On the post: Kudos: Microsoft Changes Policy, Promises Not To Inspect Customers' Content

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2014 @ 05:58pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Recheck facts

  Basically, yes, but its a massive gulf right now. Some organizations can get away with it because of their skillsets, but its hard to sustain and they have trouble hiring.
  
  The U of A where I worked has a large OSS infrastructure, that I helped manage, and its hard to hire good people to support it. They manage it, but it would be impossible to scale it out to the desktop for 800 end user IT people, 10 000 staff and 45 000 students in the computer labs. In contrast, the EA agreement is only low 7 figures for all their MS licensing.
  
  Its changing, and it will likely be a completely different ballgame in 10 years, but its not really a contest at my level.

• On the post: Kudos: Microsoft Changes Policy, Promises Not To Inspect Customers' Content

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2014 @ 05:50pm

  Re:

  After attacking Mike over one thing, I have to step in here and defend him. He is a friend of the general public, not Google. It's just that in a lot of ways Google has aligned incentives with the public because their business model is public trust (to a large degree). Microsoft's interests are aligned with their Enterprise customers and OEMs where the bulk of their revenues come from. So it might look like he's a Google supporter, but really issue by issue he agrees with them more often than MS.
  
  This is changing as Google becomes more attracted to Enterprise revenues (very stable), and MS becomes more consumer focused. As their incentives drift towards each other their behavior will become more similar and Mike will hate on them equally (or cash twice the shill checks as you seem to think)

• On the post: Kudos: Microsoft Changes Policy, Promises Not To Inspect Customers' Content

  

  blaktron ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2014 @ 05:43pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Recheck facts

  That's a fair point, but I'm not 100% sure its a better solution. I think they already hand over too much information to law enforcement. Microsoft at least has an incentive to only look at pertinent information and to scrub it when they're done. Law enforcement has no such incentive. I think the obvious solution is a neutral 3rd party or a Cloud Services regulatory board to handle sensitive issues like this.
  
  I think a lot of the outrage towards this is because people don't understand how big a deal this is to Microsoft's biggest customers, both OEMs and EAs. They had to do something, and they did, they just didn't have a good solution on hand and guessed wrong.

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