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: Re: Re: Computer Fraud and Abuse
Google isn't involved, but I can understand where AC's confusion comes from.
"While the reporters claim to have discovered the data with a simple Google search, the firms' lawyer claims they used "automated" means..."
Referencing the company Google and then the telco firm without the name can be confusing. High school level reading skills are required to properly understand that without having to read it two or three times.
Isn't there something missing?
I admit I'm not an experienced web admin, I only run a few IIS web servers. Do other web servers not have the most basic of security that's built directly into IIS? I can set a folder to require a password to access and that would go for any file in that folder even if the file was accessed directly. This would stop anyone from accessing any file including Google's spider. I won't even go into their lack of the basic use of robot.txt
For right now, I'm going to hold off judgement on the possible actions against the reporters, but shouldn't there be an extra line to this article? Something along the lines of "TerraCom and YourTel are under investigation for gross negligence."
Re: Well, at least there's some resistance here to spying.
You were so close to being logical, but you just had to drop it to make jabs at Google.
Now if we ignore your constant, insane ravings against Google, you're right. We already have laws that could cover this, and laws against destroying things that happen to be flying over your house.
Added bonus: when I read this story a few days ago, that article went out of it's way to mention the drone's camera was pointed in the window. That runs afoul of laws that even cover cameras not on your property.
Re:
You have made no such challenge. You've just bitched and moaned like you normally do when proven wrong.
AJ, let me give you some advice. You're never going to convince anyone to join your side by making insane arguments like you do. If you want to get people to agree with you, you may want to use some logic every now and then.
Re:
"I'd like to own the money I earned by my labor instead of having it stolen by the government before I even see my check."
Yeah, we can do that. Everything that the tax money pays for (roads, sidewalks, street lights, police, firemen) will from this day forth be payed for by you directly.
Re:
"for fear someone out there might take offense"
That's not the problem, vary few people are going to be that whiny five year old. The big problem comes from the college administration. They're going to be so worried about someone being offended and losing their government money (or even worse, them getting sued) that they'll go above and beyond to avoid it. If anything overheard by staff can be taken as offensive (even if you have to bang your head against the wall to do it), they'll react as if their lives were destroyed by it.
Re:
This is the English language spoken by Americans. As Penn and Teller put it; "every plural noun means 'tits'"
So, in the attempt to get ahead of the game and not offend anyone, I offer this following phrase:
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.