vegetaman 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (216) comment rss

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Never Get Involved In A Land War In Asia…?

    vegetaman ( profile ), 29 Dec, 2011 @ 05:15pm

    But only slightly less well known is this:

    Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!

  • On the post: Major Labels, RIAA, Homeland Security All Spotted 'Pirating' Works

    vegetaman ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2011 @ 07:37pm

    Re:

    Trolls need not bother to look for information when they can just wave their hand and make up their own "facts".

  • On the post: Big Entertainment Companies Issuing Wrongful YouTube Claims On Public Domain Works

    vegetaman ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2011 @ 07:32pm

    Re:

    "You can trust us THIS time... We PROMISE!"

  • On the post: SOPA Is So Bad, Political Cartoonist Comes Out Of Retirement To Create New Comics Warning About It

    vegetaman ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2011 @ 07:29pm

    Re: Great.

    These are great. Hopefully he keeps it up.

  • On the post: Apple Abuses Patent System Again To Obstruct W3C Open Standard

    vegetaman ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2011 @ 06:29pm

    Apple
    Open

    Pick one.

  • On the post: RIAA Boss Tries To Defend SOPA & PIPA To The NY Times

    vegetaman ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2011 @ 04:54am

    ...

    "we don?t agree that the proposed bills in Congress could ?stymie legitimate speech.? To the contrary, the bills are specifically designed to focus on the worst of the worst sites whose model is predicated on theft."

    [citation needed]

  • On the post: Should Shield Laws Protect Journalists? Or Journalism?

    vegetaman ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 08:59am

    Re: The Press Is No One

    I was always of the impression that "freedom of the press" and shield laws were to protect individuals. I probably won't articulate this point well, but do we really think the founding fathers meant it to be about 'big media corporations' and 'payrolled journalists' as opposed to the every day bloke who has some facts/opinions or reliable information that they believe should be heard? Were our state lawmakers blind to this when they came up with these shield laws? Aren't we all "journalists" at some point in time in one way or another?

  • On the post: Paul Vixie: SOPA/PIPA Would Be Good For My Business, But I'm Still Against It

    vegetaman ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2011 @ 08:12pm

    Yet again...

    "It's okay, we can do whatever we want with our legislation... Then that pesky tech world with all of that there interconnected series of tubes can figure out how to make it work."

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    vegetaman ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2011 @ 03:14pm

    Always classy.

    I can see how this "Report as terrorist" button will work... It will probably let ICE take the site down after the first report -- then you have to pay money to fight it, no matter how unjustified it was. Months of legal hoops and lawyers to deal with.

    The only thing I see happening if it does get implemented is that I could see sites like 4chan having a field day trolling with this... I can just see the floodgates of internet "terrorist report clicker trolls" do their worst to take sites down just for kicks (and easier than doing DDOS attacks probably, too).

    But I forgot, there is no way this feature would be abused, because we live in a land of sunshine and happy thoughts. It would be used to stop terrorists. Won't we please just think of the children?

  • On the post: MPAA Pretends To Capitulate On SOPA, Will Offer Changes For 'Legitimate Concerns'

    vegetaman ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2011 @ 08:22pm

    Well, that's great...

    There are some specific phrases (or rather, 'loaded terms') to always watch out for when dealing with elected officials, such as "we are listening to legitimate concerns" or "this is some common sense legislation" and my personal favorite, "this legislation will not be abused or used for any nefarious purposes."

    Because, you know... Sunshine, Rainbows and Chocolate Unicorns!

  • On the post: The Annotated Version Of Viacom's Employees Begging The Gov't To Censor The Internet To Save SpongeBob

    vegetaman ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2011 @ 04:09pm

    Not endorsing piracy...

    I am not endorsing piracy -- this is just an observation -- but I sure as hell don't see the MTV Video Music Awards available as a DVD on the internet. Is there actually a LEGAL means to see it, short of having managed to DVR or tape it when it aired?

    Something about not serving your (would be) customers springs to mind, since apparently they think people want to keep watching it...

    Full disclosure: This information was gleaned as per a twenty second Google search, which is time out of my life that I'll never get back.

  • On the post: Ubuntu's Self-Appointed Benevolent Dictator For Life: 'Whole Patent System Is A Sham'

    vegetaman ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2011 @ 03:59pm

    Re: Re: Re: They take more than they give.

    I have no gripe with Ubuntu. I started out with Slackware 9.1 or so back in early/mid-2000... After going crazy with that for awhile, I finally settled on what I believe was Ubuntu 5.04. I followed it up through 6.06 and finally quit upgrading around 9.04 (starting to get a few issues with my older hardware on my Linux box). My Linux box got me through 4 years of college and I never felt any more limited by Ubuntu than any other distro I tried (newer Slackware, openSUSE, Fedora, RedHat, Mint, DSL, etc.). Plus, I couldn't beat the 6-month release schedule, either, and I participated in many of the alphas/betas of new versions. Fun times; unsure why you're bagging on them so hard?

  • On the post: WSJ The Latest Mainstream Press To Run Anti-SOPA/PIPA Opinion Piece

    vegetaman ( profile ), 28 Nov, 2011 @ 03:48pm

    Oooh... I like this part.

    One thing that seems a mission impossible is having laws keep up with the pace of change on the Internet.

    Or having politicians even try to keep up with the technology that they are looking at blindly approving sweeping legislation over...?

  • On the post: Kansas Governor Apologizes After Staff Gets High School Student In Trouble For Tweet About The Governor

    vegetaman ( profile ), 28 Nov, 2011 @ 03:46pm

    Well...

    Is it really a school's place to tell a student they need to apologize to a political figure for political statements they make on twitter?

    Hint: The answer is no.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    vegetaman ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2011 @ 03:33pm

    Probably cause...

    Congresspersons will vote for SOPA or Protect IP probably cause they're being paid for it.

    #amidoingthisrite?

  • On the post: Potential Patent Infringement Threatens To Doom Highly Anticipated Open Source Project

    vegetaman ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2011 @ 03:43pm

    See, the patent system encourages innovation!

    See, the patent system does encourage innovation!

    Now John Carmack has to innovate a way to get around a patent somebody else filed on an idea he managed to independently discover around the same time.

    /sarcasm

    (Seriously though, John Carmack is awesome in my book. Open source software all the way!)