Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the this-story-has-morals dept

Another week done, another bunch of great comments. Topping the insightful list this week was an awesome comment from Richard providing some great historical perspective on how the retail industry learned how making life more convenient for customers — even if it makes it easier to illegally get things — actually has helped the bottom line massively. And this is a point that the legacy content players still don’t get:

Real Physical shops have been moving in the opposite direction. 100 years ago you went into a shop and had to ask for each item from an assistant. It meant you could never shoplift – but it was expensive and time consuming. SO the shops put the stuff on the customer’s side of the counter – and you collected it and took it to the assistant before paying. This was quicker – and even though it was now more possible to steal (though not that easy because the assistant could see the whole shop) the shops still felt that it was worth it overall for the increased sales and reduced payroll.

Next came the supermarket – which streamlined the process even further – though it did make shoplifting easier – but guess what – the shops still found it was better for them and swallowed the losses in return for more sales and lower wage costs.

Finally we progressed to the system in my local Waitrose – where the store lets you do the scanning and only checks up on you once in a blue moon. Now stealing would be even easier – and can even be done accidentally – but the store still thinks it’s worthwhile for them.

Moral of the story ?

Trust your customers – just like the MPAA don’t.

Coming in second is a comment from the Infamous Joe, responding to the news that some law enforcement officials had asked Google to remove a video that showed police brutality. Joe suggested a “little known fact”

The most effective way to stop videos of police brutality getting online is for the police to not brutalize people.

They should try that first.

For editor’s choice, we’ve got two comments responding to the same comment from someone claiming that the “wild west” era of the internet is over. Zachary Knight responded by pointing out his preference:

I would rather have a wild west of an internet than a soviet America ruled internet any day.

While an Anonymous Coward provided an excellent history lesson:

The wild west days of America were about pioneering, establishing society and government. It was the forming of America and a time of great expansion and growth.

It’s telling that you refer to the wild west as a bad thing.

Over on the funny side, we once again see a bunch of winning comments from anonymous users. No wonder so many other sites ban anonymous commenters. You wouldn’t want them being all funny and stuff. The top vote-getter presented his or her theory on government:

Governments are like diapers, then need to be changed periodically, and for the same reason.

The second place vote getter, also anonymous, was also responding to silly government decisions — this time a California politician who tried to ban raves (after attending one for “research purposes”) by outlawing people sucking on pacifiers or carrying stuff animals at events on state property (you really have to see the video on that post for her stern “no pacifiers!” exclamation). Our anonymous commenters thought through the unintended consequences:

So will we see babies at state events patted down and their pacifiers confiscated now? Will small children be tazed for carrying around their dangerous stuffed animals and spreading rave culture? This is a perfect example of why politicians need to wait for the drugs from their ‘research’ to wear off before writing legislation.

For editor’s choice, I have to admit that fogbugzd’s comment explaining how he messes with Apple fanboys who claim that everyone just copies things from Apple, made me laugh — because it’s just subtle enough that some people will miss the joke entirely, which only makes it funnier.

There were a lot of things that other companies have “preemptively copied” from Apple. The most recent example I can think of are drop-down notifications which Android had the audacity to copy from Apple a few years before Apple put them in IOS 5. (I work with a bunch of Apple fan-boys who are always citing things that Windows/Android/RIM have copied from Apple. Sometimes those are things that Apple copied, and I refer to the phenomenon as “preemptively copying from Apple.” So far they haven’t caught on to what I mean by preemptive copying.)

And, finally, yet another anonymous coward explaining to use just why Righthaven seems to keep on losing:

The judge is just attempting to help Righthaven. It is offering them guidance on future legal battles. Please stop with these smear campaigns.

I expect we’ll see more such guidance in the coming weeks.