Ray Trygstad 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (93) comment rss

  • On the post: The Washington Post Fires Its Last Black Opinion Columnist For Directly Quoting A Bigot

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2025 @ 03:27pm

    Substack…

    While Substack may have hosted racists and white supremacists, they also host our #1 political truth teller and documentation, Professor Heather Cox Richardson, and staunch anti-Trumpian commentator Jay Kuo. They perhaps actually seem to believe in real free speech, a novel concept these days, I know.

  • On the post: Italian Public Prosecutor Says Project Gutenberg's Collection Of Public Domain Books Must Be Blocked For Copyright Infringement

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2020 @ 11:27pm

    Interesting

    I was wondering where AvaxHome had gotten off to...now I know.

  • On the post: The Death Of Google Reader And The Rise Of Silos

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2018 @ 01:16pm

    Google Reader was my constant homepage until they killed it. It did exactly what I wanted it to do. I’m with Andy in mourning it’s passing.
    Google+ also killed off my favorite blog, John Walkenbach’s J-Walk Blog, (which had one of the most amazing online communities going) by luring John to Google+. Most of the wonderful community he’d built just drifted away; it was too hard to follow Google+ as a platform at the time.

  • On the post: Artist Files Completely Frivolous Copyright Lawsuit Against The NRA For Briefly Showing Public Sculpture In Stupid Video

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2018 @ 05:16pm

    Things about the Bean worth noting

    First, I agree with everything said in this article about how rediculous both this lawsuit and the ongoing behavior of Anish Kapoor vis-a-vis the Bean is.

    But while it is true that Chicagoans mock the the Bean, we also love the Bean. And one of the Bean’s greatest features cannot really be adequately photographed, which is being inside the Bean and experiencing the amazing reflective interior topology that Kapoor has created. It’s well worth a visit to the Bean. I wouldn’t urge anyone to come to Chicago just to see the Bean, but if you’re here anyway it is something you shouldn’t miss.

    If I ever commission a piece of public art—pretty bloody unlikely, mind you—I will either require FULL rights be included, or the art to be contractually placed under an irrevocable CC0 Creative Commons license.

  • On the post: There Is No Going Dark: Another Vendor Selling Tool That Cracks All iPhones

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2018 @ 01:28pm

    Has Apple bought one?

    There’s the real question...has Apple bought one of these things?

  • On the post: Macy's, The Department Store Chain, Forces A Tiny Hair Salon In Scotland To Change Its Name

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2018 @ 03:44pm

    Re: Too bad they’re not named Macy

    I should have said, too bad their surname is not Macy...

  • On the post: Macy's, The Department Store Chain, Forces A Tiny Hair Salon In Scotland To Change Its Name

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2018 @ 03:37pm

    Too bad they’re not named Macy

    In Scotland, your name cannot be taken from you in trade if it is trademarked otherwise. If your name is McDonald and you want to open a sandwich shop and call it McDonald’s in Scotland, the huge multinational trademark bully could not do a damned thing about it.

  • On the post: Nice Officials Say They'll Sue Internet Users Who Share Photos Of French Fashion Police Fining Women In Burkinis

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2016 @ 07:56pm

    Nuns?

    If the issue IS religious garb on the beach, are they going to make nuns strip at gunpoint? Hmmmm...

  • On the post: FBI: Clinton 'Should Have Known' Private Email Server 'No Way To Handle Classified Info', But No Charges Will Be Sought

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2016 @ 02:09pm

    Being stupid and dishonest is no crime...

    ...if you are a senior political appointee. If you are a member of the U.S. Armed Forces, being stupid and dishonest resulting in mishandling of classified material is ALWAYS a crime. I saw a junior officer's career end over the destruction of several hundred secret documents without documentation. Everyone agreed that they had almost certainly gone into a burn bag and were destroyed, but without the record of the destruction the Classified Material Custodian was still responsible to produce those documents and he could not. No malice, genuine error, but as often happens in the service, the officer was allowed to resign his commission in lieu of a court martial. As a junior officer and squadron Classified Material Custodian, I actually received a non-punitive Letter of Reprimand for a missing confidential document that later turned up in the Executive Officer's helmet bag. (No, they didn't apologize or rescind my letter.)

  • On the post: Judge Says FBI Can Hack Computers Without A Warrant Because Computer Users Get Hacked All The Time

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2016 @ 01:19am

    No, actually by this logic it would be "cops in Chicago can shoot people because people in Chicago shoot people all the time."

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: Towards The Future Of Drones

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2015 @ 08:21am

    Counter torque?

    Real helicopter pilot here. With only a single blade, there has to be a counter-torque mechanism to prevent the body of the device from rotating in an opposite direction equally to the blade rpm. That's why helicopters have tails rotors. I don't see any counter-torque mechanism so I do not understand how they are negating the torque from the rotor blade into the body.

  • On the post: TSA Decides Sorority Souvenir Book Carried By Dozens Of Travelers Probably A Bomb

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 04 Aug, 2015 @ 10:46pm

    Re: Must be something more...

    ...aha! A large group of BLACK women. Guess that looks pretty suspicious to the Terminally Stupid Agency.

  • On the post: NYC Mayor De Blasio Realizes His Plan To Kneecap Uber Was A Disaster, Backs Down

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2015 @ 02:16am

    Economic model for cab medallions

    I think I ask this question every time New York cabs come up. What economic model makes it reasonable for folks to pay in the range of $800,000 to a million dollars for an NYC cab medallion? How long do you have to run a cab under the medallion to recoup that? It looks to me like it would have to be several hundred years.

  • On the post: Beyond Freedom Of Information Requests: Freedom Of Code Requests

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2015 @ 08:31am

    Software by Federal employees is in the public domain

    Because of USC 17 Circular 92 Section 105, works prepared by employees of the U.S. Government are in the public domain. When I was the Admin Officer & Information Systems Officer for a large Navy training squadron back in the 80s, the Naval Air Rework Facility in San Diego opened a software shop. They were handing out disks with maintenance management and flight scheduling software at an event on the base as a "free trial", with the caveat that we'd have to pay them if we kept using it. I told them we'd use it if it was any good, but we wouldn't pay them. They told me we had too, that they couldn't produce the software if units didn't pay. I asked if they were all civil service folks writing the code and they said yes, and I pointed out to them that by Federal law, every line of code they wrote was in the public domain. They were a bit taken aback by this as I guess it hadn't occurred to them that this was the case, and finally they came back with "Well, if you don't pay you won't get any support!" To which I replied, "Well if your software and documentation are any good, we won't need any!"

  • On the post: Chief Information Officers Council Proposes HTTPS By Default For All Federal Government Websites

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 18 Mar, 2015 @ 11:40pm

    But will they continue to self-sign?

    Currently most HTTPS Federal web sites use self-signed certificates, which causes browsers to label them as unsafe. I see no issues with the U.S. Government registering as a Certificate Authority (CA), but until they either do that or purchase certificates from registered CAs, this move will actually weaken consumer security by encouraging them to overrule what otherwise is a very sensible warning and limitation.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Mars Is Not A Pleasant Vacation

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2015 @ 08:21am

    Re: The first baby boy born on Mars...

    Ok, I'm old and the name part of my memory no longer functions at peak capacity. Correction: Valentine Michael.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Mars Is Not A Pleasant Vacation

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2015 @ 08:18am

    The first baby boy born on Mars...

    ...would need to be named Michael Valentine [lastname].

    If you don't know why, shame on you; look it up.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Space Explorers Need Your Help…

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 25 Nov, 2014 @ 10:35am

    Not just Open Source...

    ...but in the Public Domain. "A work prepared by an officer or employee" of the federal government "as part of that person's official duties," under section 105 of the Copyright Act, is not entitled to domestic copyright protection under U.S. law, placing it in the public domain. So all code written by Federal employees as part of their job is in the public domain, even better than Open Source.

  • On the post: US Solicitor General, Don Verrilli, Tells Supreme Court That Of Course You Can Infringe On An Invalid Patent

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2014 @ 02:42pm

    Curiouser and curiouser...

    The idea that someone could be guilty of inducing infringement of an invalid patent would seem to be close to the ultimate in Alice-in-Wonderland law.

  • On the post: Massachusetts Ignores 5th Amendment; Says Defendant Can Be Forced To Decrypt His Computer

    Ray Trygstad ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2014 @ 03:16pm

    I see a market opportunity!

    I see a market for an encryption system that will have an alternate self-destruct password, i.e. you agree to enter your password and enter the destruction password. Is this out there already?

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