Christopher S. Little's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the favorite-my-favorites dept
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.
Re:
Does anyone know of anywhere on their site that says that? I've been keeping a list of gaming companies that allow monetization of gaming videos, but I want to have a page I can point at. The surprising one on the list is Blizzard Interactive.
Re: Re: Re: I don't need your consent .....
"No respectable ad agency will buy photos for ads without waivers."
That's a CYA kind of thing. Lawsuits are a bitch, even frivolous lawsuits. I've been in commercials without signing a waver. In fact, I was recorded without my knowledge and didn't even know about the commercial until it aired.
Re: Re: Re:
Speaking from the point of view of justice (something you may or may not be failure with), it's not AC's job to prove that you're innocent. It's not my job, nor is it your job. We, all of us, are not responsible to prove that you're innocent.
You want to know who is responsible to prove anything? The Attorney General. It's his responsibility to prove that you did do something. And it's his responsibility to prove that terrorists are somehow using something that everyone knows how to get for free to fund their actions.
This isn't about terrorism. This, and most things on this blog, is about justice. And justice isn't just about punishing the guilty, it's about protecting the innocent. The innocent are far, far more important then the guilty.
Re: Re:
"And I agree with her assessment, BTW."
I agree as well. Pornography is legalized prostitution. The only difference between me and her is I don't think prostitution should be illegal in the first place. Granted, I am assuming that Julie thinks both porn and prostitution should be illegal.
Re: Re: Unions R not needed -- NO, clearly ARE!
I agree that unions were useful. As you said, they got us the 40 hour work week, overtime pay, sick leave, and the like. They also got us one more thing that you and quite a few others seem to overlook; labor laws. The 40 hour work week is a law, overtime compensation (not necessarily pay) is a law.
Today unions seem to be all about taking massive amounts of money from those they supposedly protect (e.g. insanely high union dues) and screwing over anyone and everyone they can (e.g. the Hostess thing).
There may be legitimate unions, they may even have a place in modern society; but every time I've read about unions or dealt with them, they or on the morally wrong side of the argument.
Re: Re: No unusual
" Funny how you ignore the thing that apparently started the whole mess (Victory not paying its artists, among other misdeeds), and go straight to blaming the band's attempt to bring the label's practices to light"
Horse With No Name is just following the Star Trek rules of temporal mechanics. Sometimes effect can precede cause.
Victory didn't pay Streetlight because Streetlight was going to call Victory out over them not paying what was owed. You see?
Yeah, that episode of Voyager didn't make any damn sense to me ether.
Damn you Pavlov
"Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,"
I learned something a while ago about phobias. I have a phobia of bugs, anything with more then four legs freaks me out. I was able to ignore it until I accepted the fact that I had a phobia. Now I can't go anywhere near the damn things. Accepting that I had the fear and using it as an excuse to not do things nurtured the fear and turned it into something much worse.
The same can be seen when dealing with pets that fear loud noises. If your dog gets freaked out by thunder and you coddle it, the dog thinks that thunder is truly a thing to be feared (and the barking at the thunder gets worse). But if you ignore the thunder and treat the dog like normal, the dog learns not to fear the thunder.
If we over react to children playing with pencils, we teach all children around that anything can be a threat. This is something they will take into adulthood and affect their lives, their jobs, and their families.
This isn't just putting something on these two boy's records, this is teaching everyone in that school that even the smallest thing should be treated with zero understanding, zero forgiveness, and maximum reaction.
Re: Re: Re: Re: What I really want...I have watched a pedestrian try to walk in front of a 40 ton lorry whilst talking to their wife. However in ju,ping back they tossed the phone into the traffic, and by the time it stopped pin balling between vehicles i
As you point out, this is already a risk. Why ban something because it can be used like this. Why not just bitch slap them with current reckless driving laws.
You ban the technology just because it can be abused, you remove the possibility of using it to become a safer driver. A HUD would help people be safer drivers as they wouldn't have to take their eyes off the road as often.
(untitled comment)
"he proudly states that the city has not been attacked by terrorists since the 9/11 tragedy"
And I have a rock here that keeps away tigers. Don't believe me? Do you see any tigers around? Now what are my offers? $10 from the large balding man in the white shirt.
(untitled comment)
It's a system that detects what address you type into the address bar and give you a warning if that address is associated with a "bad" site?
Prior Art: Firefox/Chrome. If you type in an address to a website that has been reported to have malware, it will warn you.
Re: Re: Re:
"and learn what it means to live in society."
Punishment for eternity over something done during the years that one is scientifically proven to be an idiot? That's not society, that's barbaric.
You also have no problems over the public sale of a minor's record without the consent of the guardian or minor? You are a barbarian.
Re:
Well, considering how the algorithm works, there are two possible parties responsible.
1) The many people who search for that particular combination of words
2) The person who allegedly really slandered the guy
Take your pick.
Re: Re: Re: Yet again, The Rich are the problem.
"if a couple 'nice' ones got tossed in by mistake, well, they don't lose too much sleep over us 99% getting fucked over, i won't lost too much over a couple rich pukes being sacrificed for the good of 99%.."
It's this kind of thinking that causes the crap you rally against. Being so willing to sacrifice the innocent to get back at the guilty. We must stop terrorists so we put up with sexual harassment at the airports. We want to stop overeating so we must ban all large soda. We have been slighted by the rich so kill them all.
Isn't it this kind of thinking that caused the Dark Ages, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and the Holocaust? Someone must be punished and to hell with the collateral damage.
Re: Keepin' it classy, minion.
Blue didn't use one single "bad" word in his entire post, yet the quote "This is our fucking city, and nobody's going to dictate our freedom." holds infinity more maturity.
Re: What the fuck happened to TechDirt?
Why should anyone look up scientific research or get expert opinions on the subject? The Supreme Court says that fining cable channels for fleeting expletives is a violation of the First Amendment. End of story. No need to give the other side equal time. They're wrong and they need to be told in no uncertain terms.
Re: Re: Re:
They do make them. I know DD-WRT routers (just google it and you'll find the page) can do it, but it's complicated.
Re: Because GOT CAUGHT EARLY and stopped!
Blue, you are a raving lunatic. I think that's all that needs to be said. Everyone else can easily see the problems in your arguments, and since you're willfully blind to your own flaws, there's no point in me arguing them.
Re:
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to leave WiFi open. Sharing the connection with friends without having to worry about remembering the key. Older technology compatibility (don't know if it's just me, but my new access point won't let me use WEP and my old tech won't use WPA). There's also the fact that WEP and WPA can be cracked easily and it's probably better to focus on internal security.
Re: Like a moth to the flame...
"There are a lot of pictures of this species around the web, are they sure its the same individual in both pictures?"
If it's not the same picture, it's the same moth. But that begs the question, what if it is a different picture, but is the same moth? Does the copyright claim still exist?
If I take a picture of a building that looks almost identical to another picture of the same building, is it infringement?
Re: Your headline is an outright lie he said no such thing
Oh look, the return of Angry Dude. Or have you been back and I just missed it?