Atkray's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the theme-o'-the-week dept
This week's favorites post come from Atkray.
I get asked about it, so for those who wonder, Atkray combines the ATK
from the motorcycle company, not the rocket engine manufacturer, with Ray my given name. I am grateful for this opportunity to give back a little and hope that my reflections on the past week will be of value or entertainment to some of you.
By Sunday night, I find that I have stared at the favorites, the most insightful, and funny posts long enough. Consequently, by Monday morning I am ready to see what the new week brings. This week I skipped the first post and went straight to the monkeys writing Shakespeare. I was a tad disappointed to see the output was not what I expected and for some reason the side note about the real monkeys typing mostly the letter "s" and then urinating on the keyboards left me wondering if, for the sake of authenticity, it is necessary to program the virtual monkey to do the same. Unfortunately, the comments deteriorated to personal attacks rather quickly before changing to a most interesting discussion of infinite and near infinite. I can see monkeys writing Shakespeare becoming the next folding@home.
Behaving more like monkeys than officers, NYPD kicked off what became the theme for the week, cops being caught on video and lying.
Building on that theme, on Tuesday we had the Canadians getting involved with a face-tasing, as well as the bonus multi-angle feature of the Wall Street incident from Monday. On Wednesday the police in Chicago felt left out, so we got the story of cops disrupting funeral processions and then lying about it. I really enjoyed the position put forth by an AC that it is only a small percentage of the cops that are bad so we shouldn’t worry. On Thursday, the entire state of Illinois joined the theme and decided to appeal a ruling that filming police is protected by that pesky old Constitution. Of course allowing the focus to shift westward is unacceptable to New Yorkers so they started rounding up people with cameras and hauling them off in the paddy wagon, prompting an epic comment from Dark Helmet (widely rumored to live in or around Chicago) that made me go digging through old boxes so I could watch Ghostbusters again. Friday returned back to Illinois with the story of a guy being threatened with a felony and 15 years in jail for filming a traffic stop.
It is a rare week when we don’t get more news from Righthaven, and I find it entertaining to see the Karma boomerang in action -- although it appears that even the judges involved may be feeling a little pity for Righthaven and the beating it is taking.
The seemingly inevitable arrival of the police state was shown to us by officials at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where officials decided to censor a professor by misunderstanding (totally) a poster he put up. Nice to see that freedom of thought and expression won’t be interfering with the indoctrinations. This story was my favorite of the week with the second poster the professor put up making me literally laugh out loud.
I was disappointed to see Governor Moonbeam (disclosure: I lived in the state when he and Linda were an item) has the opportunity to help out the citizens by protecting their 4th Amendment rights on traffic stops, but appears to be bought and paid for by the law enforcement lobbyists.
The news that Direct TV sees that the prices Hollywood dictates are not the prices customers are willing to pay gave me a glimmer of hope. But then Time Warner's belief that no one is cutting the cord snapped me back to reality. Even the little old ladies in my neighborhood are talking about dropping cable.
The Friday afternoon downer that (as expected) the US will be signing ACTA still wasn’t enough to overcome the unexpected surprise that at least 2 Senators on the Judiciary Committee believe that TOS violations should not be a crime. I fired off another email to Senator Hatch telling him to listen to his colleagues, but figure I’ll get another form letter in about 3 weeks.
I want to close with an observation. Mike posted about a conference and mentioned a discount for TD readers. It was a nice gesture and the conference may appeal to visitors here. As can be expected, the usual group of ACs promptly chimed in with derogatory remarks and personal attacks. This is common and as mentioned here is not indicative of all ACs. Mike undergoes daily personal attacks by those who seem incapable of expressing themselves in an articulate and adult manner. Others are frequently attacked as well. Those attacking resort to third-grade playground bully tactics and run away when confronted. They truly are cowards. To those who insist on trying to degrade Techdirt, you only show others your true colors. I appreciate when someone with an opposing view brings a valid and well thought out disagreement, but unfortunately that seems to be an increasingly rare event. To those who do, I thank you. While I may not agree with you, at least I can respect you and should I meet you in person I would enjoy sitting down over lunch and having a conversation... You keep all ACs from being painted with the broadbrush of trolling.
Thank you to Mike for this opportunity to share.
QUICK!!!!!!
Someone send the contact information for Jonathan Monsarrat to Amy's Baking Company.
Re: Get AARP involved?
Alternatively, the AARP could register .licensedpharmacy
Re:
I have all of them synced automatically to Skydrive.
I would hope that the FBI involvement leads to two things.
1: Prosecution of those responsible for the death of David Silva.
2: Prosecution of those responsible for issuing death threats against any of the suspects.
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Maybe this is just a consequence of the health care ruling. They think they can tax us for anything now.
Duh. They are paid more because the work harder
Fighting pirates is hard work, not everyone can do it.
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With each new development the Prenda saga becomes more and more like a Scooby Doo episode.
I fully expect that at the end this all, Steele will be screaming how he would have gotten away with it, if it hadn't been for those meddling kids.
Re: Re: WALL OF TEXT is Mike's homage to stupid lawyers.
You really give him more than he deserves with your post, but After reading it I can see why you felt you had to.
Well done.
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"It's a pretty simple equation: if you, say, get 10 subscribers for $2/month, that's $20/month. That's not that much money. If you can make more than that in advertising, then you're better off advertising."
And if you can sell those 10 subscriber's eyeballs looking at the screen to 100 advertisers over the course of that month, advertising will always make more.
People will subscribe to a channel as a one off. If they pay for a month of a show they will watch all of that show that the channel as to offer and then drop it and move to a different channel.
This decision may be partially based off the claims that people want Ala-cart pricing on cable. The truth is if cable allowed that then hundreds of channels would not be supported.
As much as I dislike advertising, the drive of advertisers to push their product to people will always be stronger than the desire of individuals to part with their hard earned income. Advertising works to pay for content delivery because of this. I don't know if it always will, but I don't see subscriptions being the replacement. If they were crazy eyed Glenn Beck would be happy to be on the Internet only, instead of trying to get cable and satellite carriers to pick up his ... umm content.
Re:
The kid was shot in the thigh. If the bullet just went in flesh, then the wound would be like a puncture wound and might not have even bled very much.
It states in the original article the boy was up and walking around.
The 14 year old was shot by a 24 year old who lives in the same house. I suspect mom may have realized the 24 year old was going to jail if she went to the hospital, she may not have wanted that.
As mentioned previously, cost of hospital visit.
There are many understandable reasons she may have been reluctant to go to the hospital. Not that she was justified, but I believe it is understandable.
Re:
Now the decision to bring Google Fiber to Austin makes sense.
Re: Search or Ruse? (to KillerCool, #8)
So you have just proven that Aereo is a legit business.
TYVM
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It looks like Jacques Nazaire forgot to pack a parachute when he got on the Prenda flight to fantasy land. Now that he sees it is not headed where he thought it was he is desperately working the controls.
He will continue on board...all the way to the crash site.
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Bethanne Bradshaw needs to write on the blackboard 1000 times...
Conflating a pencil with a weapon only serves to create fear uncertainty and doubt in the elementary school student body population.
Re: Not holding my breath...
I'm with you.
Mike stating he is going to take the optimistic approach makes me cringe in fear.
Missing the point
The takeaway from this is obvious.
Too many great inventions are slipping through without being patented, therefore the system is too hard.
We need to make patents more like copyright. Automatically applied to every invention and make them last until the last of the inventors offspring have died.
Re:
^^This^^
Re: Re: Re: Well...
Thanks for rubbing our noses in that.
Re: Re:
Not being that keen on movies I went with Amazon so I can get stuff shipped faster and watch Red Dwarf. Consequently, because I was bored and it was there, I watched Iron Man 2 and Ghost Protocol. 2 movies I never would have watched otherwise.
It was convenient and involved no additional cost (mental or monetary).
Re: Price: value, plus a sum for the wear and tear...
"You'd all do well to read his Devil's Dictionary"
Since I have seen several of his quotes over the year and find them interesting, I took you up on that and hit the free Kindle version on Amazon.
Thanks Blue.
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On the bright side it looks like the drummer has at least figured out it is a job. Maybe one day they will start to treat it like one.