PopeRatzo 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Astoundingly Bad Reporting On Ed Snowden: Claims He Said The Exact Opposite Of What He Said

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2014 @ 11:03am

    mouthpieces

    Twenty-first century mainstream journalism is all about protecting the powerful. It's probably why they're having their lunch eaten by independent media outlets online.

  • On the post: Finally, Someone Acts Like An Adult: District Attorney Drops Charges Against Bullied Teen Who Recorded His Tormentors

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2014 @ 06:51pm

    dumb statement

    but naming laws after people often indicates the new law is a bad one


    That's a dumb statement. There may have been dumb laws that were named after someone, but they're being named for someone didn't "indicate" anything.

    There are also instances of good laws named after people. It's a way of getting public support for legislation, nothing more.

  • On the post: Bracket Watch: EA Upset Early, Comcast Beats Monsanto For 'Worst Company' Award

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 08:04pm

    Re: Re:

    "patented seed"

    That just sounds so wrong on its face. Patented seed...

    I'm pretty sure that just those two words make Monsanto the most evil company in the world. Because they weren't making enough money selling bug spray. They had to own the rights to food, too. Who wants to bet they're working on "patented water"?

  • On the post: Bracket Watch: EA Upset Early, Comcast Beats Monsanto For 'Worst Company' Award

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 08:00pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    You see, this is the sort of ignorance I have to deal with everyday


    Does it pay well? If you "have to deal" with "this sort of ignorance" "every day" it sounds like a job to me. Why not step out and tell us about it instead of posting as an anonymous coward. Are they hiring? I'm pretty sure I can suppress my morals and be a paid troll if the money's right.

    Do you have any other accounts besides Monsanto, or do they keep you busy enough putting out fires on the internet?

  • On the post: Bracket Watch: EA Upset Early, Comcast Beats Monsanto For 'Worst Company' Award

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 07:55pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Monsanto is also attacking democracy. Read this little story about one small Oregon county, home to a growing and profitable organic farming industry, that wants to ban GMO planting just in their own community. This is a small, rural place and Monsanto has already spent a million dollars trying to defeat this incentive.

    https://kobi5.com/news/politics/item/money-pouring-in-for-local-gmo-ban-campaign.html?category_id=15

    I suppose you don't care about multi-national corporations buying local elections, either. They've got their product in the ground from coast-to-coast, but they just can't countenance that there's one little place that wants to decide for themselves.

    Monsanto is as evil as a company can get.

  • On the post: Bracket Watch: EA Upset Early, Comcast Beats Monsanto For 'Worst Company' Award

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 07:49pm

    Re:

    Tell that to the neighboring organic farmer who's crop has been pollinated by Monsanto's "better living through chemistry" seeds and end up having to destroy their entire yield unless they want to pay Monsanto's license fees for a product they didn't even want.

    Not even bugs want to eat Monsanto crops, and bugs'll eat anything. And you really, really don't want a company owning the rights to food. If you can't see what a bad idea that is, then you're a little dizzy.

  • On the post: 'Bay Of Tweets Invasion' Legitimizes Nearly Every Crackpot Anti-US Claim From Dictators Around The Globe

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2014 @ 12:47pm

    Re:

    Nah. The US has been doing stupid stuff in regard to Cuba for more than half a century.

    Remember trying to assassinate Castro by sending him exploding cigars? Or trying to make his beard fall out?

    Seriously. For the US, Cuba is like that one old girlfriend, who isn't even all that hot, who can push your buttons to the point that if you run into her at a coffee shop, within 48 hours you'll end up faced down naked on her front lawn crying your eyes out. Drunk and pleading with her to come back to you or you'll jump in front of a speeding semi.

  • On the post: 'Bay Of Tweets Invasion' Legitimizes Nearly Every Crackpot Anti-US Claim From Dictators Around The Globe

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2014 @ 12:43pm

    Re: Re: Combined with the Snowden leaks...

    The reason you're not hearing about the US government working with extraterrestrials from the Snowden leaks is because Edward Snowden is in on it!

  • On the post: 'Bay Of Tweets Invasion' Legitimizes Nearly Every Crackpot Anti-US Claim From Dictators Around The Globe

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2014 @ 12:42pm

    Re: Re: Combined with the Snowden leaks...

    Nein! Nein, nein, nein, nein! It's all Obama's fault. The US intelligence agencies had a spotless record until Obama got in and started bowing to the ayatollahs.

    And Obama isn't even patriotic enough to have these foreign dictators assassinated, like the One True Leader, Ronald Reagan would have.

    He wants to Twitter them instead, which as we all know, is like assassination TIMES TEN!

  • On the post: Survey: 27% Think A Gigabyte Is a Type Of South American Insect [Update: Or Not]

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 15 Mar, 2014 @ 02:03pm

    That's nothing. More than 60% of people think that "an Apple" is something you eat.

    Oh wait...

  • On the post: Newcastle Might Win The S**** B*** Ad Championship With An Ad It Didn't Make And Can't Afford To Buy

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 28 Jan, 2014 @ 07:21pm

    Re:

    Comic relief? After all, what's funnier than a bunch of grown men in short pants running around throwing themselves to the ground writhing in pain every time an opposing player looks at them funny?

    Americans just let you Europeans call your little game "football" because we get such a big laugh every time we hear you say it. Europeans will say, "We're watching football" while on the screen there's a bunch of Madonna's backup dancers prancing around kicking a little ball back and forth while the people in the stadium tear each other apart like jackals. Just hysterical.

  • On the post: Newcastle Might Win The S**** B*** Ad Championship With An Ad It Didn't Make And Can't Afford To Buy

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 28 Jan, 2014 @ 07:15pm

    Re: Re: The NFL sux

    College football is a huge part of the problem
    This, exactly. It's why I'm very interested to see what shakes out of this attempt by Northwestern football players to unionize.

    I would love to see big-money collegiate athletics to disappear, forcing the NFL to create a professional minor league the way baseball has.

    Big money college football programs are purely about exploitation. This pretend "amateurism" that forces student athletes to hide every nickel they make from the fame while bringing millions to the institution. And they're all one injury away from being tossed away like used kleenix and one concussion away from a ruined life.

    I used to be a big fan of college athletics and a big booster for my alma mater, but some switch has turned in me over the past decade, and now I simply am unable to enjoy any big money college athletics any more. It actually sickens me. May this effort by the NW'ern students cause people to finally figure out what the NCAA really is, and hopefully cause that plantation to finally disappear.

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: Nixie Tube And Oscilloscope Clocks

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2014 @ 03:30pm

    Kickstarter's mixed legacy

    While Kickstarter is a great idea for niche items that would never be made via normal funding methods, Kickstarter has been a disaster for gaming. It's turned into a way for game developers to generate income without any risk (or apparently, without completing an actual game). It's led directly to the "early access" phenomenon of games being released in early alpha form. As far as I can tell, the number of "early access" games that have actually been completed and are available as finished, professional games is very tiny compared to the number of Kickstarted game projects.

    Worse, it's induced professional game developers and even some pretty big companies to go the Kickstarter route, which is kind of insulting, especially considering they rarely result in an actual game.

    I don't have a problem with people asking for charity, but if you want my money so you can manufacture something, you should be prepared to sell me stock and include me in the profits. If you want people to donate so you can make something, by all means go ahead. But it's the risk that appears to be a necessity to quality consumer products.

    2013 was one of the worst years for video games, despite the release of two next-gen consoles and computer hardware being more powerful than ever. I attribute the lack of great games in part to the Kickstarter effect.

  • On the post: SXSW Threatens YXYY With Trademark Infringement

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2014 @ 05:49am

    advice

    First, let me say that SXSW was most certainly "better back before everyone knew about it." There is absolutely no doubt about that. Especially before every marketing company found out about it and turned it into a giant shopping mall with goatees and tattoos. I don't mind the goatees and tattoos, but the marketing is nauseating. It's like a cross between Las Vegas, Disneyworld and a Renaissance Faire for people trying to sell you some awful shit. Oh, and mix Mardi Gras (the commercial one) in there too because everyone's throwing beads at you, except those beads take your email and personal information and then send you advertising forever.

    That's first.

    Second, SXSW, you really don't want to go down this road. Your hipness is predicated on the notion that you are not mainstream. And nothing is more mainstream than some corporate jagoff sending some microscopic competitor a cease and desist letter for no other reason but to screw with them.

    SXSW is in danger of becoming Branson, Missouri for aging people with bad tattoos and piercings.

  • On the post: Does The Fast Track Authority Bill Guarantee That Corporate Sovereignty Will Be One-Sided And Unfair?

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2014 @ 06:01am

    Re: short answer

    How do you function with such a short attention span?

  • On the post: Ellen Degeneres: Pirate Enabler? Her Watermarked Copy Of 'Walter Mitty' Leaks Online

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2014 @ 05:59am

    Could be anything

    What if she just tossed it into the trash and her housekeeper picked it up and brought it home and her son saw what it was and put up a torrent?

    I mean, come on. When we buy a DVD are we now on the hook for making sure it is disposed of in a secure way so nobody can ever copy it? I'm sure that's in the Trans Pacific Partnership.

    I've dumped tons of copywritten material in the garbage over the years (including a fair amount of my own). I don't believe I'm responsible for anything that happens to it after I drop it in my wastebin.

  • On the post: Court Decision Exempts Secret Memo From FOIA, Sets Stage For Future Secret Laws To Go Unchallenged

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2014 @ 08:11pm

    Re: smh

    About thirty-four years ago.

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: Rubber Band Guns

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2014 @ 12:06pm

    Kickstart this

    Rule of thumb: If you're trying to make money off your rubber band gun, you're probably a douche.

    Any non-douche who invents a decent rubber band gun would put the design on the internet so anyone can 3D print their own.

    I'm starting to hate the very idea of kickstarter. If your idea is worthwhile, you shouldn't need charity. It's why God invented the selling of shares of stock. I hate the beggy nature of kickstarter, where you're supposed to give someone money on the promise, no takes-backsies, that you might someday produce the product and that if you give extra money, you're going to get moral starbursts from the twenty-something who's paypal account it is.

    Just look at the damage that kickstarter has done to the gaming world. Nobody can finish a game any more and a ton of really crappy games with wonderful trailers have flooded the market. Every game that looks decent is coming out in the fourth quarter of "next year" and now established companies, who goddamnit should be able to raise the capital are starting to hold out their cups, too. And not one game of the first order has been produced out of kickstarter origins.

  • On the post: NSA's Personal Propagandist For CBS Officially Takes Counterterrorism Job Everyone Knew He Was Getting

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 30 Dec, 2013 @ 07:47am

    endgame

    This will not end well.

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: Bike Lights

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 29 Dec, 2013 @ 07:58am

    Re: Signaling with cycle gloves

    It's still just a horrible idea to create a product that violates standards that have long been the norm in bicycling.

    You wanna do something, but arrows left and right BOTH on the left glove. Now, you use the standard arm signals for turning and the device senses the position of the arm and produces the correctly directioned arrow. And when you make the universal signal for STOP, which is the left arm extended 90 degrees elbow bend DOWN, palm backward, a light on the palm glows red.

    There may be a useful novelty product in here somewhere, but this ain't it. It's like creating a newe kind of calculator, but the button with the plus sign actually subtracts and the button with the division symbol actually gives you a square root.

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