Austin 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (90)

• On the post: EFF Slams Righthaven CEO For Pretending He Can Ignore Court Orders

  

  Austin ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2012 @ 10:44am

  Dollars

  Just want to add one footnote to the EFF's argument here. I am a certified paralegal and I work in a law firm. We handle civil corporate litigation mostly, a few big cases for small companies, and we typically pay for deposition transcripts "out of pocket" and often hold the bag on them for 2-3 months waiting on our clients to pay us.
  
  That said, the EFF is quite correct - even full-day 8+ hour depositions rarely run over $1,000. Granted, the deposition itself is an extra expense, and clients must pay for attorney's travel time (though we usually have them at our office to save our clients money, actually.) But the transcript itself is seldom over $1,000. If Righthaven has been paying Mr. Mangano over $2,000 a month, then yes, $1,000 for a transcript is a perfectly reasonable expense to expect them to pay.

• On the post: NYTimes OpEd Explains Why Infringement Isn't Theft

  

  Austin ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2012 @ 11:25am

  Wrong Word

  I have to disagree with this. The problem isn't the misappropriation of the word "theft" but rather the word "property." An idea is not property. It isn't. I don't care what judge or tycoon or even what common man decided that an idea, or any other intangible thing, is property, but he, she, or they were and still are wrong. IF they were correct that an idea has the potential to be property - to be owned by a single person or entity at the exclusivity of everyone else - then yes, theft is the RIGHT word because property CAN be stolen, and the crime of stealing property is called Theft.
  
  So no, the use of the word theft is not the problem here. The real culprit of this word crime is the word property. Once we fix the error of people thinking they can OWN a THOUGHT, then it cannot be stolen as it is no longer a single person or entity's holding to be stolen.
  
  Aim for the head guys. Kill it, and the whole beast dies.

• On the post: Wanted: The Truck Driver Who Lost His Job Due To File Sharing

  

  Austin ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2012 @ 05:33pm

  His name is Steve

  He is a 49 year old truck driver and a friend of mine. He has a 17 year old daughter, who is a fan of Justin Beiber. After LEGALLY purchasing a song by Beiber on iTunes, she discovered that some fat cat studio executive had determined that she should not be able to convert the song she just LEGALLY PURCHASED into a ringtone for her phone. As a result, she then pirated a copy of the SAME SONG SHE JUST BOUGHT so that she could make it into a ringtone, and after doing so, deleted the pirated song.
  
  Unfortunately, she did all of this on a company laptop that belonged to the trucking company Steve was working for at the time. They got an ISP letter about the pirated song, and Steve got fired. Fortunately, he now hauls race cars making almost 19 times as much PER MILE as his previous job and now has 2 computers of his own, including one for his daughter.
  
  So yes, piracy has cost a truck driver his job. Is this what the MPAA intended? Obviously not. But eh, you weren't very specific Mike. What did I win?

• On the post: Finnish Act Lets The Public Send Bills To Parliament, Volunteer Group Makes It Easy

  

  Austin ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2012 @ 09:34am

  Removing the Middleman

  First let me say I agree that this is an excellent step in the right direction.
  
  Now back in the real world...the problem is that any corporation with at least 50,000 employees can now DIRECTLY write their own laws. I'm not sure how many, if any companies in Finland have this many people (I would assume there must be at least a hand full), but honestly they could probably get by with 30,000 employees plus family members.
  
  At least the old system required this be done through expensive lobbyists. Now the process of company written laws can be opened up directly to the companies
  
  But yeah, the tiny little non-cynical optimist in me loves this idea.

• On the post: Court Confirms Police Don't Need A Warrant To Do A Limited Search Of A Mobile Phone

  

  Austin ( profile ), 09 Mar, 2012 @ 09:13am

  No. Fucking No. Just No.

  You wanna know my problem with this? Math.
  
  Number of people who have committed terrorist acts, both foreign and domestic, including in war zones such as Iraq, since 2001: less than 8,000. Note that this is a very GENEROUS estimate, based on the Pentagon's PR data. Internal DOD data (posed on Wikileaks) puts this closer to 3,000.
  
  Number of people who's private information, as a result of being stored in a "secure government database" has been leaked to the public as a result of Anon and Wikileaks alone: over 80,000. This is from a single hack alone, actually, of which there have been several dozen since 2006.
  
  Sorry, but no, you can NOT have access to this data, because you can NOT be trusted to keep it secure. If that means 50% more terrorists get through, fine, I live in middle-of-nowhere, Alabama and don't give a flying shit if 5 civilians in a metropolitan area die at the hands of a raging lunatic. I can live with that. What I cannot live with is me, those 5 poor bastards, and the other 357,000,000+ Americans being subjected to the police-state-of-the-month so that we MIGHT, MAYBE, POSSIBLY, KINDA, SORTA stop the raging lunatic from doing what he's probably gonna do, and get away with, regardless. What is private is PRIVATE and I do NOT trust the government (and the lowest bidder) to keep it that way, even if they do try to.
  
  In the words of Benjamin Franklin (yanno, one of those "founding fathers" people keep throwing around so much) "He who would sacrifice liberty for security deserves neither." I don't know about the rest of the witless-idiot American public, but I would NEVER sacrifice my rights, my fellow citizen's rights, nor the lives of over 5,000 soldiers, just so I could save a few dozen civilians who, frankly, if they'd pay more attention to the world around them instead of burying their nose in their iPhone, could've probably saved themselves.

• On the post: Ubisoft Cuts Off Legit Players With DRM Server Migration; Pirates Play On

  

  Austin ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2012 @ 01:09pm

  This is why I bought C&C4...then Pirated it.

  I'm a big fan of the entire Command & Conquer franchise. I bought the first Red Alert when I was 8, and it was the first game I ever played (ok, besides MathRabbit). It's what got me hooked on the whole RTS genre, and why I now own a copy of every C&C game, as well as both Supreme Commanders and all 3 Warcraft games with expansions. And Starcraft too.
  
  That said, before I uninstalled C&C4 (because it's not really an RTS game as much as EA would like to claim it is) I bought it. Once I started playing, I rapidly discovered that, even offline in a singleplayer skirmish match, I had to sink 2-3 days into "leveling up" before I could use all the units. And this is supposed to be an RTS game. Seriously.
  
  My normal practice is to pirate a game, try it for no more than 2 weeks (14 day trial, just like everyone used to offer anyway) and either buy it, or make myself uninstall it. However, C&C4 was a very large download, and the series has always been my favorite, so like an idiot I bought it anyway. After the cannot-build-more-than-basic-infantry problem, I pirated it (or rather an offline max-level fake server) and used that to play it for a few days before I finally decided that C&C4 simply isnt an RTS game.
  
  But the moral of the story? Online DRM made me pirate the game, even after I bought it.
  
  (Sorry this is not the best example of the problem, as this was more a feature issue than DRM, but by using the crack it actually dircumvents the DRM too. Go figure.)

• On the post: Judge Says Americans Can Be Forced To Decrypt Laptops

  

  Austin ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2012 @ 04:22am

  Wrong Analogy

  The correct analogy here is a locked safe.
  
  Courts have held that a suspect is NOT required to hand over the keys to a safe. They have ALSO held that the same suspect is also NOT required to unlock the safe for the police. The distinction between giving the authorities your password or simply decrypting the files for them is the same - if one is considered unlawful, so too should the other be.
  
  And beyond that, this should be protected under the 4th amendment, regardless of whether or not it violates the 5th. This is about as damn well "unreasonable" as a search can possibly be.
  
  Anyhow...if the defendant was asked to have over a disk - still encrypted - with the files on it, that is legal. After that, the police are free to take as much time as they like (should be around 2,000 years with a strong password and good algorithm) and try to crack it themselves. This is like saying they can seize the safe and have a locksmith try to open it for them. Legally, they can do this. But compelling the suspect and/or defendant to make their case for them? Pretty damn unreasonable.

• On the post: PATRIOT Act Continues To Harm US Businesses: BAE Refuses To Use MS Cloud Over PATRIOT Act Fears

  

  Austin ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2011 @ 05:08pm

  The Other Side of Responsibility

  The problem with the PATRIOT Act is the fact that it's a 1-way street. It's worded such that all Due Process can be thrown out on a whim, and that's not good, but that's not the problem. The issue is that, after a citizen's rights have been trampled on, they have no recourse, even after the fact. Many, many democracies around the world have a similar model to the patriot act - a guilty until proven innocent model, if you will - but the difference is that at least you are given a reasonable chance to prove yourself innocent soon after arrest. The burden of proof may be on you, but at least you DO have the oppritunity. With the PATRIOT Act, if you are arrested as a "terrorist" and it turns out somebody jumped the gun and has no evidence against you, you don't ever have to be given the oppritunity to defend yourself. You could languish in prison - official or unofficial - for YEARS while your bills go unpaid, your family goes uninformed, your job, house, insurance, and even memories of your childrens lives are all lost to time. And then, once you get out and anre finally released back to the absolute shamble of a life you have left, what do you get? You get to sue the government, even if you can identify who took you, and then have a judge rule that you were taken legally under the PATRIOT Act and have no legal recourse. So now you can add a $25,000 legal bill to your lack-of-a-life.
  
  Abolishing the Act is the best course of action, but if we can't do that, here's an idea: a federal fund to cover the costs, financially at least, of rebuilding your whole fucking life after you get out if no charges are files against you. Based upon your most recent tax return, adjusted for inflating, etc, enough to fund at least 2 years of your previous life without a job.
  
  That, or rather than spending the untold millions on a system like this, we could just go back to the constitution that worked so well for over 270 years. Just a thought.

• On the post: Apple Continues To Insist Only It Can Use An Apple In A Logo; Threatens Small German Cafe

  

  Austin ( profile ), 24 Oct, 2011 @ 09:30am

  There's actually a fair claim here

  But not by Apple. Take the second logo, remove the stem, and rotate it 90 degrees clockwise. Looks practically identical to the LG logo. I'm not saying that anyone could get a latte confused with a smartphone, mind you, but if the cafe has in-house computers with stickers on them, I could see a potential claim there. Far reaching and somewhat bogus, but at least it'd have SOME legal merit to a point. As for Apple having an anywhere-near-valid claim on ANY of this, obviously not.
  
  I do find this funny though. I saw a few specials over the weekend on the late Mr. Jobs. I noticed that several - at least 4 or 5 different people - said he had more or less total reverence for the Beatles. For a Beatles fan, he had one hell of a lawsuit going against Apple Records for several years. Doesn't sound like what a fan would do to me. Maybe an artist or a studio, but not a fan. Of course, the truth is Steve wasn't an "innovator" as everyone in the popular media is saying now. Steve Jobs was a master iterator. He couldn't invent an original concept if his life depended on it, but when it came to taking the work of others and improving upon it, nobody did better. Well, that and marketing. I swear to god I spent the last 10 years just waiting on the day when Steve would stand up and introduce iShit, a turd that was painted white and doesn't smell. The sad thing is, he could've totally pulled it off - and sold millions of handfuls of shit. Literally. Don't get me wrong, I respect him for that.
  
  But still. For someone who talked about innovation, his actual genius was iteration. For someone who loved the Beatles, he sure seemed to hate them in a courtroom. For someone who kept hocking a bunch of "fastest" computers, he never did actually release a single system that was top of the line. Ever. But eh, it was white and metal and "cool" so who cares about actual performance, right?
  
  Anyhow...as to the topic at hand, no surprise here Mike. Anyone willing to sue their favorite band in the whole wide world clearly has no limits on who they'll sue, or for what.

• On the post: Google Realizing That Its Real Names Policy Is Excessive

  

  Austin ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2011 @ 12:36am

  Alternative Solution

  I'm not actually sure what problem the whole policy is supposed to solve. Presumably, this is to prevent spammers. I mean, it's not meant to prevent anonymity, because practically nothing on Google+ is really "public" anyway, and anonymity is useless in private to begin with. All I can think of here is they're trying to prevent spammers. So...here's a better way:
  
  - Require a random portion (roughly 20% should work) to check a box when adding you as a friend that says "I know who the person behind this account is." If at any point in time the percentage of friends who check this box drops below the required amount, the account will be unable to post more than 1 public posting per day, or to address any private posting to more than a single recipient.
  
  Problem solved. Now can we please, PLEASE get Google Apps support added?! I mean, that's SOOOOOO much more important than this is!

• On the post: Couple Pushes For Law To Limit Photoshopping Models; Because It Hurts Young Girls' Self-Esteem

  

  Austin ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2011 @ 12:13pm

  Re: Re: The problem isn't the ads

  I'm going to run under the vague assumption that you genuinely wish me well and say thanks. After all, if that was your best attempt at sarcasm, you're doing it wrong.
  
  That said, here's a thought experiment to drive my point home:
  
  On a day when it's 69-73 degrees outside and sunny, go to your closet in the morning and pick out your clothes to wear. Don't put much thought into it (yet) but rather just choose whatever first comes to mind. Now go outside and go about your day. No doubt, at some point during your day, you will run across a problem: you need somewhere to store something you're carrying around. Might be your phone, your wallet, a receipt from the store, or a candy bar. Now, in this situation, the weather is good. You're probably wearing shorts. WHY??? It's not hot outside. You could've worn cargo pants and had ample room to store whatever you're now trying to carry in your hand and juggle around. Yes, they're not "cool" or "stylish" but yanno what? They're affordable, and they're the most functional piece of clothing you can wear. From a purely logical standpoint, a pair of cargo pants and a t-shirt with a single breast pocket (if you're a guy) is the best outfit for every possible occasion. They're lightweight, provide good freedom of movement, ample storage capacity (weighted against your waist, which is capable of supporting almost 6 times the dead vertical weight that your back is) and protection against dirt, bugs, or anything else that might otherwise get you dirty. Barring hot days (in which case I'd go with cargo shorts) there is no bad time to wear cargo pants. Why doesn't everyone do that? Simple: because they'd rather do something "cool" than something that makes logical sense. And who creates cool? Lancome, et.al.
  
  As I said before, stop buying this crap and they'll stop selling it, then there won't be any unrealistic expectations to meet in the first place. This is basic logic and economics, folks.

• On the post: God Wants Homeless People To Lobby The FCC To Help The Outcast & Downtrodden AT&T?

  

  Austin ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2011 @ 11:55am

  Logic Escaped

  Am I the only person who realizes you can't vote without an address to register with? How exactly are they going to lose the vote of homeless people...who can't vote because they're homeless???
  
  I mean, I assume some off these people will use the shelter as their address, and some may be registered at the address of family, etc. But certainly, some of these people probably can't even read or write - probably a majority of them - so the threat of not getting a dozen votes here rings pretty hollow, no?

• On the post: Couple Pushes For Law To Limit Photoshopping Models; Because It Hurts Young Girls' Self-Esteem

  

  Austin ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2011 @ 11:26am

  The problem isn't the ads

  It's the consumers. Not the general public, but the people who buy the products these simi-plastic models are hocking. Considering the cost of a model, photographer, graphic artist, and advertising, it's costing Lancome, et.al. in excess of $5,000 per ad to run those, on the cheap end. Yet, they still make money hand over fist. Why? Because those same girls who are having self esteem issues now are turning around and are now purchasing the very products that made them feel bad 10 years ago. You want to combat this? You want to have a revolution where we reject the airbrushed BS image of what a woman is supposed to look like? THEN QUIT BUYING THAT OVERPRICED PAINT THEY'RE SELLING! Problems like this aren't solved via the law. They're solved via the checkbook. Stop buying this crap and they won't have any money to run the damn ads with.
  
  I'm a 24 year old white male living in a college town in Alabama (there's only 2 so start guessing and you'll get it eventually...) I'm also a lifelong geek. If anyone knows the value of inner beauty, it's me. I've been interested in maybe 4 or 5 girls over the past 5 or 6 years. So far, no bites. I have an IQ of 137 and a good job making $12/hour working for my Mom as a paralegal (read: 100% job security) and my own 800 square foot downtown apartment. I weigh 165 pounds and I'm 6'2" and I'm not going to win any contests but god knows I'm better looking on my worst day than half of this god forsaken town is at their own wedding. Yet, I can't get a second glance. But I should expect this. I don't use hair gel, don't use mouthwash, and only shave twice a week. I shower daily and use plain old cheap shampoo and bar soap. I spend maybe $6/month on hygene products and I'm as clean as a motherboard assembly room. Yet, because I don't look like DiCaprio, I'm not worthy of the time of day.
  
  So yeah, we live in a society where first impressions are EVERYTHING (I believe because everyone is too LAZY to actually get to know people these days) and I believe it's the root cause of everything wrong with the country. I mean, JESUS F**KING CHRIST, WE ELECTED ELMER FUDD PRESIDENT BECAUSE WE WANTED TO HAVE A BEER WITH HIM! Even Bill Clinton, who I liked, was elected because he had nice hair and could play the Saxophone. Are you kidding me? Why not just elect Paris Hilton president? I mean, if controlling our nuclear arsenal and passing a new $5,000+ page budget 4 times are such easy jobs and this is all just a goddamn beauty pageant, might as well go all the way, right?
  
  So anyhow...bit of a rant, and sorry about that, but the issue here is not going to be solved by yet more poorly thought out legislation. This is an issue with SOCIETY, not the law, and we need to have SOCIETAL reform, enacted via mutual agreement with each other, and enforced via that wonderful thing we call an economy. Speaking of whicch, in this economy, people can barely afford to pay their power bill every month. Stop buying lip gloss and mineral powder makeup and you may find yourself struggling a lot less to keep your lights on!
  
  As for me? I love geeky chicks anyway, but none of them around here are single, and I'm not the homewrecker type, so for now I'm stuck waiting on the world to change. And no, it's not NEARLY as enjoyable as Mr. Maher makes it sound.

• On the post: Intellectual Ventures Sues Motorola Mobility For Infringement; Guess Who's Trying To Cause Trouble For Google?

  

  Austin ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2011 @ 04:37pm

  In layman's terms...

  The patents are for...
  
  - FTP, SAMBA, HTTP, SFTP, or even just a damn USB cable
  - Projectors. Any kind of projector.
  - Wifi routers. All of them.
  - Any and every smartphone that includes a cradle or dock.
  - The Apple App Store, the Android Market, Synaptic on Linux, any other "app store"
  - Dropbox, the cloud in general.
  
  Isn't there supposed to be some sort of test for, yanno, obviousness? Shouldn't ALL of these patents FAIL that test? Or prior art? Or just the "you've got to be shitting me" test in general?
  
  I mean nevermind the lawsuit. Hell, nevermind the bad patents. In this case, if one patent examiner approved more than one of these patents, someone needs to either fire him, or move the examiner out of his cave to a new residence that has electricity. Seriously, half the issue here is the village IDIOTS working in the USPTO who couldn't take a 10-second glance at this (as I did) and see how blatantly obvious it is that these are BAD PATENTS and SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN GRANTED TO BEGIN WITH! To anyone! Ever!

• On the post: Austin Police Planned… Then Postponed Wardriving Plans In An Attempt To Shutdown Open WiFi

  

  Austin ( profile ), 26 Sep, 2011 @ 07:26am

  Re: It's not illegal, but some people don't understand their exposure

  "Some people leave their wifi open, which is fine, but we've already seen that the behavior can be problematic."
  
  Then it's an education problem. The solution here isn't to police ALL the users, it's to EDUCATE the users who don't know what they're doing. You wanna solve this problem? Require everyone who buys a router at Best Buy to watch a 2 minute tutorial on WEP and/or WPA. Hell, just refer them to one of the countless YouTube videos of someone cracking WEP with Backtrack in under 2 minutes. Problem solved.
  
  Seriously, this is the problem with America. People here think Educations ends at Graduation. Don't get me wrong, I personally believe the US Educational system is badly broken and should be scrapped entirely and recreated from scratch, but that's not the point. The problem here in America is that, at some age, everyone stops learning. People hit 40 or 50 or 60 and they start thinking "I'm old, I'm busy, and some younger person can figure this stuff out for me for $6/hour, so I give up." This mindset has cost more trillions of dollars and more millions of lives than any war in the last 3 centuries. Education should be like healthcare - cradle to grave. The thought that you hit some magical point where you've "paid your dues" and no longer need to learn anything is as insane as thinking "well, I'm 55, so even though everyone else is going to get a Flu Shot, I've had 50 of those things and I'm alright." It's insane.
  
  So rather than passing a law that punishes everyone (or worse, using the police to enforce a misguided viewpoint with zero law to back it up) - including those who actually properly secure a network without WEP/WPA (it can be done!) let's focus on educating those who simply don't have the KNOWLEDGE to do it.
  
  Also, in case someone is wondering, here's my setup:
  
  DSL Modem > Router A > Router B
  
  Router A has no encryption but is configured to allow only 1 wifi connection at a time. My Nintendo DS uses this connection 24/7 unless a friend needs it. Thus, the single slot is always occupied, preventing use by the public. Router B uses WPA, a MAC Filter, a 9 connection limit (the exact number of devices I connect to it), static DHCP, expires leases every 30 minutes, and sends me an email if all previous devices don't reconnect within 5 minutes.
  
  Now, if you don't understand ANY of what I just said, GO EDUCATE YOURSELF. THIS IS INTERNET 101 PEOPLE!

• On the post: Missouri Senate Backs Down, Says Its Okay For Teachers To Friend Students On Facebook

  

  Austin ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2011 @ 12:08pm

  Oh Joy

  So in other words, now we can have parents, students, and teachers fight 20 different, separate policies in multiple school districts across the state instead of a single law that the EFF or ACLU can fund. Way to improve the situation, guys!
  
  I mean sorry but this is NOT good news. This outlandish law was MUCH easier to combat when it was a single law instead of multiple school-district-specific policies.
  
  For once I'm actually happy to be an Alabamian - where we're so damn backasswards that our state congress can't even properly spell Facebook. Can't outlaw what they can't name, right? Right?!

• On the post: Former RIAA Lobbyist, Now Judge, Says Lowest Possible Statutory Damages For Single Case Of Infringement Is $3,430

  

  Austin ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2011 @ 10:26am

  I wish

  As a paralegal working in an actual law firm that does primarily civil corporate contract law, I can say with certainty that at best we get 45% on any given case, and usually 1/3 or even less if by-the-hour. In Alabama, any lawyer asking for more than 45% is pretty much going to be hit with an automatic state bar complaint as this violates the standard in the Rules of Civil Procedure for a "reasonable attorneys fee" so anyhow...yeah, I really wish we could collect 4x the amount of a judgment as Attorney's fee but it ain't happening here. Don't know about other states but this is insane.

• On the post: DailyDirt: Back To School Time…

  

  Austin ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2011 @ 12:58am

  Reform Tenure

  I realize this isn't exactly a new idea, but a large chunk of the "bad apples" in education do occur as a result of tenure. That said, rather than abolishing it outright, why not have a "strikes" system in place. That is, after students or parents file (this number is obviously debatable) 5 complaints against a specific teacher in a single school year, their tenure is suspended until the next school year. Thus, any complaints after this temporary suspension are treatesd as though the teacher has no tenure, and is thus easier to fire if they are truly a bad teacher.
  
  Can someone please explain what's wring with this idea?
  
  As a 24 year old typical American, I can say I have dealt with a wide array of teachers. Half were totally average. They cared, but usually more about the subject matter than the students - they knew their material, just not their audience. Of the other half, about 30% were total mooches, and were pty clearly phoning it in 4+ days per week. These people would've made excellent white collat managers, but just aren't cut out for a job that doesn't welcome sociopaths. They kept their head low, got tenure, and shelled out discioplanary infractions on a whim just because they felt like teaching a smaller class that day. The remaining 20% are like my 8th grade science teacher. We had 34 students in that class. I was new of 5 she had on a special curricukum. We'd be given chaoters to read just like the other kids. The next class, she'd ask us each a totally random question, and it was usually very, very specific. No way to skim those answers. If we got them right, we got to spend the class goofing off on a classroom computer that day. However, ALL of us had to get our question right, else we ALL spend the class listening too the lecture. I actually got mine wring twice because some of her lectures where that good, but usually we all made a point of living with 20 minutes of bring text each night because it meant an hour less boredom the next day.
  
  This was an innovative technique she used on then smartest kids in the class. Hiwevwr, it eventually inspired many of my classmates to also study harder. I came back the next year for a visit and she had improved the program. Now, after each test, she chose the top 5 scores to participate in the program rather than a static 5 each year. A month from the end of the achol year, she said her test scores were uip almost 40% overa
  
  In otherwords, she knew her students. She realized that if given a proper incentive, they'd put in the effort. In this case, she had a class full of two kinds of people. Those who wanted to learn, and lost causes. By using laziness as an incentive, she motivated both. In the end, the kids learned more, enjoyed the class more, and I heard the got a raise 2 years later.
  
  Anyhow...badly off topic, but if we'd structure tenure to give an oppritunity to fire the worst teachers, then rehire more teachers like my 8th grade science teacher, I think it'd make the system better for everyone.

• On the post: EA's Origin Service Wants To Exchange Games For Your Personal Data [Updated]

  

  Austin ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2011 @ 01:21am

  Why I pirated Brink

  This reminds me why I pirated Brink a month ago. I. Hate. Steam. As it is literally impossible to buy the DLC without Steam, I took an alternate route. After signing up for a Steam acciunt and purchasing the DLC (I bought the original game itself in a local Best Buy) I then proceeded to illegally torrent the Game and the DLC and install it without Steam. Thus, I was forced to piracy, even though I purchased a totally legal copy of both the game and the DlC, in an effort to avoid the DRM. This is now the 6th time I've done this - purchasing a game then pirating it to avoid DRM - and it's getting really old.
  
  I just hope someone can get ME3 on TPB before it's a month old. I love the Mass Effect series and fully intend to pay good money for ME3, just as I did for ME2 and all the DLC so far. But I'd rather leave the internet outright than have software spying on portions of my system that don't pertain to it.

• On the post: Surprise: Justice Department Says AT&T/T-Mobile Merger Would Be Anticompetitive

  

  Austin ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2011 @ 12:35am

  Thank You DOJ!

  As a happy T-Mobile customer with unlimited bandwidth on my data plan, I would love to personally thank the DoJ for blocking this merger. I'm not a lobbyist, so I can't afford to send you to Napa Valley for the weekend, but please let me know where I can mail one of you a decent bottle of something alcoholic!

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