Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the anonymous-comments-are-insightful dept

First place in the voting for most insightful this week went to an Anonymous Coward (how many times do we need to point out that anonymous commenters can be good too?) who responded to some copyright maximalists bitching that it was somehow unfair that YouTube named them for sending DMCA takedowns. The AC points out that their argument makes no sense:

If you’re embarrassed about sending a takedown notice, stop sending takedown notices. If you truly feel you’re standing up for your copyright, you shouldn’t feel any guilt.

Coming in second was “Another AC” (see note above) talking about New Zealand law enforcement officials trying to defend the “over the top” raid to apprehend Kim Dotcom:

Maybe the most damning part… Is that the main objective was to arrest Kim DotCom to prevent destruction of evidence… except that NZ police had already seized all of MegaUpload’s servers *before* the raid even happened.

Sickening indeed.

For editors choice, we’ll actually go with two more comments from Anonymous Cowards. First up is a response to the same article that the first comment above was responding to. Part of the complaint was that artists were embedding these videos on their own sites, and then they looked silly for having videos of their own music on their own sites showing a takedown notice. As one AC pointed out, why were they embedding videos that they thought were infringing?!?

Any idiot who embeds “illegal” copies of his own videos and then complains when the embeds don’t work after he himself requests them taken down does not deserve the consideration it took to write this article.

And, finally, we have another AC responding to someone bizarrely claiming (contrary to nearly every bit of actual evidence) that used sales harm the sale of new products. The AC pointed out that this argument doesn’t make much sense:

As much as I hate car analogies… you better not be driving around in a used car with that philosophy, or buying used furniture, or accepting it from family or friends. Think of the new sales!!!

Personally, I’m a late adapter and I’m the kind of people the game companies will say “good-bye” to if they continue down their current path. The Wii may be my last console purchase. No console sales = no sales period. I’m not interested in any system that requires an internet connection or that only sells part of a game on disc and makes you download the rest. I don’t care how awesome the graphics are. I won’t buy the damn system new or used!! Eventually something newer and better will come along, the online networks will go down, or the company will just go under, and I’ll be left with a pile of trash that I can’t sell or even throw in the garbage nowadays. I WILL however continue to enjoy my older systems, of which I have plenty, to keep my busy until I’m so old that I’m physically unable to play anymore.

Moving over to the funny side of things, I’m pretty sure this next comment scored better in the voting than any comment ever. If not at the top, it’s very near the top. It was on our story about the Olympics getting upset about non-sponsors’ condoms being used by athletes at the games. Jay made the connection that got many of you to laugh:

Sex in the Olympics…

I have to wonder: do you still get a gold medal if you come in first?

I’ll admit that made me groan, not laugh, but it got the votes.

Coming in second was another Anonymous Coward who responded to another Anonymous Coward who argued (really) that anonymous comments “are a real problem” and “should always be removed” with even “the weakest” of complaints. This other AC highlighted the irony:

Can we remove this comment? It’s anonymous so he doesn’t deserve to get to post things.

For editor’s choice, we’ll start with JMT responding to one of our most regular critics who tried to argue that perhaps the takedown of the NASA video of Curiosity’s landing was legitimate because we don’t know “as a fact” that the video was NASA’s to upload. Yeah. The obvious response:

NASA is pretty sure they put it up. Nobody else has gone to Mars recently. Are you suggesting they’re wrong and it really is someone else’s Mars movies?

And, my final editor’s choice comment of the week is an all around epic win by Vog. You see, Tim Cushing, in one of his posts, posed a hypothetical math question as part of his sarcastic way of denouncing a ridiculous premise:

If a premise leaves the train station [Point A] at 10AM riding a bicycle at 3 mph for the first hour and increasing speed by .25 mph every hour for the first four hours before decelerating at a rate inversely proportionate to the incline of the grade [17%], at what time will the bicyclist’s speed be exactly 1/4 the average flight speed of the Africanized honey bee? Show your work.

Here’s the thing. Vog actually answered the math question. And showed his work.

Assuming top flight speed for a honey bee is 12 – 15 mi/h (www.houstonbeekeepers.org/ahbfaqs.htm) and the average may be represented as 13.5 mi/h;

Assuming the rate of deceleration is, literally as stated, inverse to the grade of 17%, and may be assumed to be in miles per hour squared;

We have:
10 AM – 11 AM: 3 mi/h
11 AM – 12 PM: 3.25 mi/h
12 PM – 1 PM: 3.5 mi/h
1 PM – 2 PM: 3.75 mi/h
2 PM – 3 PM: 4 mi/h

After 3 PM, the velocity in mi/h may be represented as v = 4 mi/h – (1/0.17) mi/h^2 * t, where t is the fraction of the hour since 3 PM.

Using v = 3.375 from (0.25 * 13.5 mi/h), we have:

3.375 = 4 mi/h – 5.882 mi/h^2 * t
t = (4 – 3.375) mi/h / 5.882 mi/h^2
t = 0.10625 h

This decimal is equal to 6 minutes, 22.5 seconds. Thus the answer is 3:06:22.5 PM.

Note to Cushing: you need to come up with more challenging math problems next time.