Peet McKimmie 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (243)

• On the post: UK Whistleblowers Highlight The Dangers Of Widespread Police Surveillance/Database

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2010 @ 03:45pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Culture?

  What should happen:
  
  * Someone offends
  * a ticket is issued, creating a deterrent
  * fewer people offend afterwards
  * fewer tickets are issued
  
  What actually happens:
  
  * someone offends
  * a ticket is issued, creating a revenue stream
  * fewer people offend afterwards
  * In order to maintain the revenue stream, stricter interpretations of the law or misleading signage are used to generate more tickets

• On the post: Parked Car Gets Multiple Speed Camera Tickets

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2010 @ 03:41pm

  Re: Visible?

  Actually, in the UK, they make all the cameras highly visible, but don't put film in all of them all of the time. Just having the flash go off is sufficient of a deterrent for most purposes. Up here in the |NE of Scotland, at least a couple of years ago, I'm told that fewer than one camera in three actually had film in it.
  
  (This refers to cameras out in the countryside. The ones in the cities all have film all the time, as they are the real "cash cows".)

• On the post: Parked Car Gets Multiple Speed Camera Tickets

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2010 @ 03:30pm

  Re: Re:

  Cops are not perfect, but they beat cameras.

  
  
  Not just cameras. (Ask Rodney King!)

• On the post: So A Lawyer, A Comedian And An Economist Walk Into A Bar… Copyright, Reputation And Comedy

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2009 @ 10:36am

  Re: Re: Re: Copying is stealing.

  You can't copyright a reciepe.

  
  
  Kentucky Fried Chicken and Coca Cola will have certainly tried.

• On the post: School Tech Guy Fired For Running SETI@Home?

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2009 @ 05:32pm

  It seems like most people at the school district and the writers of the articles linked above don't understand how SETI@Home works, which seems to create an awful lot of confusion.

  The article I saw said that "as well as running SETI@home he was also running some crazily-named software called 'BOINC'...", which showed that the person writing the article didn't have the remotest clue what they were writing about.
  
  (For the terminally uninformed, "BOINC" is SETI@home, or at least the system that it works under, and has been for several years... You can run other projects under the BOINC system, such as protein folding, but it seems he was just doing SETI.)

• On the post: Lily Allen: It's Ok To Sell My Counterfeit CDs, Just Don't Give My Music For Free

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2009 @ 01:46am

  Re: Re: Re: Sweet! I'll never work a day again.

  http://www.archive.org/details/GratefulDead

• On the post: Lily Allen: It's Ok To Sell My Counterfeit CDs, Just Don't Give My Music For Free

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2009 @ 01:39am

  Re:

  The flaw here is that you would have to find someone willing to pay for her work. By insisting you put a cash value on it I suspect she has found the perfect way to stop her work being distributed. She may not be as dumb as she appears.

• On the post: Essayist Writes Popular Essay… Then Sends 'Non-Negotiable' Invoice To Church Who Posts It Online

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 19 Nov, 2009 @ 10:34am

  Re: Re: Anymous Coward

  Amstutz is a TOOL.

• On the post: Apple Tries To Patent Annoying People With Intrusive Advertising That Requires Attention

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2009 @ 07:15am

  Re: Been Done

  Yup. In 1999 I got a free dial-up internet connection that only worked if you gave up the bottom 20% of your screen to advertising.
  
  I connected to dial-up with an old laptop that didn't have a screen and used "Internet Connection Sharing" to pass the bandwidth on to my main machine. Sorted. :-)

• On the post: MPAA Gets Town To Turn Off Free Muni-WiFi Over Single Unauthorized Movie Download

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2009 @ 07:56am

  Re: Re:

  Yup. I guess the call from the top was a message on some lowly tech's answer machine from his boss's boss's boss saying "Do whatever it takes to make sure this never happens again; I don't want to be bothered with the trivia, just get it stopped."

• On the post: Reason To Have A Distinct Ringtone? So You Can Find Your Mobile Phone At The Dump

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 04 Nov, 2009 @ 03:13am

  Re: Re: half an hour?

  "He'd have been buggered if he had it on vibrate only mode... :P"
  
  Nah, he'd just have to be more patient - sit quietly until the seagulls all settled on the landfill, ring it and see where they all took off from suddenly.

• On the post: Smart TVs Know When You Look Away

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2009 @ 04:03am

  Re: Wait a second...

  "When I'm not watching it, there is no display at all because I actually turn the thing off."
  
  Whereas, when I'm not watching mine it's because I'm using it to play a radio channel. If there was a separate off-switch for the picture I would use it, but failing that, this is a reasonable compromise so long as it doesn't kill the sound.

• On the post: Will 'Paranormal Activity' Teach The Movie Industry A Lesson?

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2009 @ 02:02am

  Re:

  "There's just so many ways you can destroy the Eiffel Tower and keep it interesting"
  
  Two words. "Team America". Awesome.

• On the post: A Teaching Moment For Lily Allen [Update: And *Poof* Goes Her Blog]

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2009 @ 06:07am

  Re: Hold on a second...

  "Sounds to me like she downloaded the entire song, then cut out what she didn't want to use."
  
  More likely she ripped them from CDs.

• On the post: Win A Copy Of Kevin Smith's New Book

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2009 @ 03:17pm

  Not worth a book, but...

  It was really amusing to watch him squirm recently when he was being interviewed by Katherine Curtis on "Naked News". He stood up through the whole interview wearing an ankle-length coat, under what I assume were *very* hot lights, while trying to maintain eye contact with her and not let his gaze drift downwards. Priceless.

• On the post: Sneakernet, Pigeonet And The Meaninglessness Of Judging Broadband By Silly Stunts

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2009 @ 05:43am

  Re: Re: Burn Time

  Everyone seems to be assuming that the copying of the data to the USB drive is an overhead only in the case of the pigeon. No-one has considered that the end product may have been intended to be put on the USB drive from the outset, in which case you need to add the time to copy onto the broadband stats.

• On the post: MLB Refuses To Give Permission To Guy To Describe Game To A Friend

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2009 @ 01:58am

  Re: We all should ask for permission

  Yes. Because the outcome we are all trying to achieve is "more lawyers".

• On the post: Why Do Ebooks Cost So Much?

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 21 Aug, 2009 @ 10:58am

  Re: For me, the problem isn't the price

  "Last year my school was considering switching to Kindles for all textbooks. Administrators liked the idea, but the techies on the committee convinced the administration to stay out of the market for now."
  
  fogbuzd, point your techies at this link:
  
  http://www.jinke.com.cn/Compagesql/English/embedpro/prodetail.asp?id=42
  
  I'm pretty sure they'll do a decent quantity discount.

• On the post: Why Does Lego Get To Stop Spinal Tap From Using Lego Video?

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2009 @ 09:49am

  Re: Time was

  "This is why people hate lawyers."
  
  Be fair, it's not the only reason.

• On the post: Home Burglar Returns To Taunt Couple Via Facebook?

  

  Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2009 @ 07:11am

  Re: Where were the cameras?

  Nah, I agree with Headbhang - we need more Camerons... :-)

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