Pitabred 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (242) comment rss

  • On the post: Is Destroying A Hard Drive On A Work Issued Computer The Equivalent Of Hacking Or Fraud?

    Pitabred ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2011 @ 09:02am

    Re: Re: Re: Not very good at his job

    I assume you personally burn every receipt you have, too? Shredding them can let someone put them back together.

    There is such a thing as too paranoid. A nice multi-pass wipe on a modern drive will make all but maybe a few bytes recoverable, and you won't be able to do anything with those. Context matters.

  • On the post: DOOM No Longer Considered Harmful To Children In Germany, Allowed Into The Country

    Pitabred ( profile ), 02 Sep, 2011 @ 02:31pm

    Re:

    I find the concept of "protecting" children from experiences odd. You should be giving safe ways to have experiences, not protecting them from experiencing things. Otherwise you're basically kicking a lot of 18 year old emotional toddlers out of the house to sink or swim, and a lot of them will sink.

  • On the post: Secretly Snapping Naked Pics Of The Woman Who Ended Up With A Stolen Laptop Might Just Be Illegal

    Pitabred ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2011 @ 09:19am

    Re: Re:

    I thought she was a 53 year old schoolteacher? I can't say I'd spend any more than the minimum number of man-seconds required with that...

  • On the post: Secretly Snapping Naked Pics Of The Woman Who Ended Up With A Stolen Laptop Might Just Be Illegal

    Pitabred ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2011 @ 09:15am

    Re: Why isn't the PD being sued as well?

    I don't know if Absolute Software needs to take the fall, but the police definitely do. I don't think that the accessing of the pictures should be illegal. There needs to be a way to tie a specific person to the use of the computer, because we all know from various Bittorrent lawsuits and such that an IP address isn't identification by itself.

    If Absolute Software had blacked out the nudity, they may have been accused of tampering with evidence in the defense. So they sent the evidence unmodified to the police. Sounds perfectly reasonable, and it should still preserve her privacy as much as is warranted. The police could have kept the original on file and printed out an edited one. Or Absolute could have done the same, but it's not really their job to do so. It IS the job of the police to do that, though. Where things got out of hand was the officers having the printout and saying the shit they did while arresting her. Abusing their position as law-enforcement personnel to further their moral agenda well outside of the law.

  • On the post: ISP Sued For Revealing Info On US-Based Critic Of Thai Laws

    Pitabred ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2011 @ 09:09am

    Re:

    Just because other countries are worse doesn't mean that Thailand should get kudos for "not being as bad". That line of reasoning only leads to destruction, because you only have to be a little better than someone else in some way.

    We run into that problem here in the US, too. We say people need freedom of speech, but don't like it when people say things we don't like and demand that it be taken down, and justify it by saying "it's not as bad as X country!". It's hypocritical when the US does it and is destructive to free speech as a whole. Don't fall into the same trap. Moral relativism is bullshit.

  • On the post: ISP Sued For Revealing Info On US-Based Critic Of Thai Laws

    Pitabred ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2011 @ 09:05am

    Re:

    You can tell Thailand to go pound sand if you want to, all day long. Just make sure you don't subsequently go there yourself, because then that does put you in their jurisdiction and damned if they'll use it.

  • On the post: ISP Sued For Revealing Info On US-Based Critic Of Thai Laws

    Pitabred ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2011 @ 09:02am

    Re: Re: Dangling? = Mike's slap-dash, no-edit writing.

    Mike didn't write that. It's a direct quote. You can tell because the couple paragraphs there were in italics and indented.

    Really... you would think that people would be sure they were literate enough to understand the conventions of the posting before criticizing the writing of others, if for no other reason than to properly direct their snark.

  • On the post: ISP Sued For Revealing Info On US-Based Critic Of Thai Laws

    Pitabred ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2011 @ 08:59am

    Re: The King and I?

    The thing is, what Hoover did was illegal. It happens, but that doesn't make it legal. What the Thai government is doing is perfectly within their laws, and the laws are immoral.

    Just because people do shitty things doesn't make it excusable. What makes this more unconscionable than what Hoover did is that it's enshrined in law.

  • On the post: Pakistan Officially Bans All Encryption Online

    Pitabred ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2011 @ 11:12am

    Re: Re: Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb

    It's a cake of stupidity

  • On the post: US Copyright Group, Hurt Locker Producers Sue Dead Man & Others Unlikely To Have Infringed

    Pitabred ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2011 @ 08:56am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    ...why? I like having an open, unencrypted, bandwidth limited access point for my family and friends and neighbors. Easier for them to connect to, anybody can use it and I don't have to worry about them being on the same network as my computers. Everybody wins.

    Oh, you mean there must be no legitimate reason for unencrypted wifi, right?

  • On the post: Court Slams Righthaven (Again); Refuses To Let It Back Into Democratic Underground Case

    Pitabred ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2011 @ 03:23pm

    Re: Don't give up...

    I'm betting they'll realize as soon as they start getting slapped with penalties for frivolous lawsuits, and perhaps contempt of court. They haven't shown a whole lot of good judgement so far, so one can hope...

    Who am I kidding. They won't stop until they're forced to.

  • On the post: Samsung Cites 2001: A Space Odyssey As Prior Art For Tablet Design

    Pitabred ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2011 @ 02:41pm

    Re: Re: Re: Prior Art in Art

    Do you think that might also have been a function of limited technology back then, too? Or... dare I say it... the style at the time? Just like I'm no longer wearing Hammer pants, I don't want my tablet to look like it was designed in the 80's, either.

  • On the post: 'What Idiot Wrote The Patent That Might Invalidate Software Patents? Oh, Wait, That Was Me'

    Pitabred ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2011 @ 10:26am

    Re: Can anyone please give an example

    I'm in this boat. Copyright, sure. That's natural. But patents?

    The main thing would be an "independent invention" defense. If someone else comes up with something that could be covered by your patent without looking at your patent, you really don't deserve one because that means whatever you "invented" was really just "innovated" and evolutionary, and the result of a natural progression.

  • On the post: Public Health Official Forced To Shut Up On Twitter, Blog For Daring To Speak Honestly

    Pitabred ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2011 @ 04:51pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Er... my bad. That was supposed to be a reply to the great grandparent comment :( Sorry!

  • On the post: Public Health Official Forced To Shut Up On Twitter, Blog For Daring To Speak Honestly

    Pitabred ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2011 @ 04:50pm

    Re: Re:

    You feel free to not vaccinate your children, and the rest of society should feel free to keep you quarantined so you can't spread disease.

    Have you ever read about Typhoid Mary? She was a real person. The same kind of asshole that you are.

  • On the post: Public Health Official Forced To Shut Up On Twitter, Blog For Daring To Speak Honestly

    Pitabred ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2011 @ 04:49pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    You are exactly the type of person that benefits from widespread vaccination. There are some people with legitimate issues. The vast majority of us don't have them. The rest of us need to get vaccinated to protect those of you who actually do have a problem.

    The people who choose not because of autism or some vague "toxin" argument to are simply selfish and stupid.

  • On the post: Public Health Official Forced To Shut Up On Twitter, Blog For Daring To Speak Honestly

    Pitabred ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2011 @ 04:45pm

    Re: Re: They'll come

    You realize that "big pharma" barely profits from most vaccines, and the main reason they still make them is because the government protects them from litigation with a special fund? http://www.hrsa.gov/vaccinecompensation/index.html

    Vaccines are a GOOD thing. They're a way to train your immune system to fight diseases without you actually having to catch said disease. And they're highly safe and effective, if you actually take the time to check out the science.

    Go ask someone who is crippled from polio whether they'd rather have been vaccinated or not. Or an infant in an ICU with whooping cough. Or a kid with measles. I really think that this whole anti-vaccination kick is because people have no clue about how horrific the diseases we're inoculated against can be.

    http://www.vaccineinformation.org/pertuss/photos.asp
    http://www.vaccineinformation.org/measles/photos.asp
    http://www.vaccineinformation.org/polio/photos.asp
    http://www.vaccineinformation.org/rubella/photos.asp

    Go ahead. Look at all of those photos. Look at the abject terror in the eyes of chose children. And tell me that the infinitesimally small number of people that have adverse reactions to vaccines is worse than that. Don't say that it can't happen here... we stop getting vaccinated and it DOES happen here.

    /rant

  • On the post: Can A Computer Pick Out Fake Online Reviews When Humans Can't?

    Pitabred ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2011 @ 04:26pm

    Re: There are other ways to do this...

    What if a company tells it's employees to go home at night and write a positive review for them? Not sure how all your fancy filtering would stop that, because every employee would likely pass all of those tests you set up. At least if you didn't make it to block all kinds of legitimate feedback.

  • On the post: Is Copyright a Moral Imperative?

    Pitabred ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2011 @ 07:56am

    Moral imperative?

    Moral imperatives shouldn't be enshrined in law. Morals like "no murder" should be laws because they affect other people. Copyright? It's just a government handout, and research is showing that it doesn't actually increase the total amount of culture available to people, so it's basically contrary to the purpose of a government like ours which is to theoretically make laws to benefit ALL of the citizens, not just a select few. But then you have lobbying...

    Er, am I ranting to the choir? I think I need more coffee before responding to a story like this...

  • On the post: Court Says No Harm, No Foul With Flash Cookies

    Pitabred ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2011 @ 04:06pm

    Re: Where

    You should read more about the issue. There's really nothing you can do to block those cookies, not without basically removing all plugins and turning off all scripts and so on.

    http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/07/undeletable-cookie/
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_cookie

Next >>