artp 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (212) comment rss

  • On the post: UK Announces New Crime Unit Focusing Solely On IP Crimes

    artp ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2013 @ 10:11am

    So "torrential" was intentional?

    Good thing that you pointed that out to me, or I would have suspected an editing error.

    My use of alliteration between torrential and intentional was not only intentional but recursive!

    I just wanted to note that the quality of a pun is measured by the length of time between the end of the pun and the groan that follows it. The longer the pause, the better the pun. Which is why puns are not humor. ;-)

  • On the post: University Of California's Latest Plan: Privatize Knowledge, Take Out Lots Of Patents — Profit!

    artp ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2013 @ 10:05am

    But under Newco, decisions about the fate of academic research will be taken away from university employees and faculty, and put in the hands of a powerful board of businesspeople who will be separate from the university. ... It also will have control over how to spend public funds on these activities.

    ...

    Newco's proponents contend that the 501(c) 3 entity will bring much-needed private-sector experience to the task of commercializing university inventions.


    So the taxpayers pay for the research, then they pay for the costs of privatizing the knowledge through the 501(c) 3, then they pay again to license the technology that they already paid for ... twice!

    Third time's the charm!

    The 501(c) 3 is the kicker for me, especially combining it with "a powerful board of businesspeople". That makes my head hurt just thinking about it. What's not to like for a greed-merchant?

  • On the post: WIPO: Informal Economy Innovates In The Absence Of Intellectual Monopolies

    artp ( profile ), 18 Jun, 2013 @ 08:14pm

    Lead, follow or get out of the way.

    And the monopolies aren't doing any of them. They don't have to. They are monopolies.

    As a friend of mine once said when told that he wouldn't be satisfied if he had the world on a string, "Gold string!"

  • On the post: DHS Says Agent 'Hunches' Trump Citizens' Rights In Searching Your Computer At The Border

    artp ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2013 @ 11:27am

    Operational needs?

    And despite the "need" to waive civil rights, the DHS has still not stopped any terrorist plots. So what exactly is this "need" that they speak of, and how does it relate to IMPROVING my situation?

  • On the post: Student Wins Intel Science Fair; Threatened With Patent Infringement Claims For Patent Not Yet Granted

    artp ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 10:54am

    Yup! Seriously lame

    If your technology is threatened by a high school science fair project, perhaps it's time for a new CTO? Or just fold the tent and quit embarrassing yourself?

  • On the post: Good Question: Why Is Eric Holder In Charge Of Investigation Of Eric Holder Spying On Journalists?

    artp ( profile ), 28 May, 2013 @ 08:39pm

    Re: Re: Don't trust politicians!

    I agree completely.

    There is the infamous claim that voting for anything but the two major parties is "wasting your vote".

    So to those who follow this advice, how are you feeling about the value of your vote now? Perhaps voting for those minor (!) parties isn't wasted after all. I mean, if we got this out of not "wasting our votes", then how much worse can it get?

    The system is only broken because we don't want to put the time into investigating candidates' positions, and because we keep voting for those who are buying their seats. Perhaps it's time to quit voting for those with big campaign chests.

    It's up to us to make it work, and it begins with our research of who to vote for based on the positions that they stand for, AND the integrity of the candidate. Political integrity. Find me a person that you can't dig up some dirt on, and I'll find you a stolen identity.

  • On the post: Guy Sues Twitter For Taking Away His Twitter Handle

    artp ( profile ), 24 May, 2013 @ 01:36pm

    Trademarked place names

    There are a LOT of trademarks that include place names. It hasn't stopped the Post Office. Yet. But it has stopped many small business owners from identifying themselves with their location. That is something that is so common across the world that it is - and should be - taken for granted. Unless someone sues you for it first.

    It makes no more sense than copyrighting numbers or single letters.

    I live in rural Amana, Iowa. If I start a busimess, I can't call it Amana Widget Central, because The Amana Society has the word "Amana" trademarked. It was first used when their commune came to Iowa in 1856. The word itself comes from the Bible - Amana is a place in the Golan Heights in Lebanon. When the corporation was formed in 1932, it acquired all property, separate from the church.

    Now that was fine as long as Amana's boundaries were coexistent with the land owned by the Society. But later on, the Post Office redistricted and gave my family's farm an address of Amana.

    This has been tested in court by a business in the village of Amana. They lost.

    The law needs to be loosened up. Who should be able to own a place name?

  • On the post: How Low Can Drones Go?

    artp ( profile ), 22 May, 2013 @ 09:56am

    Re: Precedents.

    Hot air balloons.

    They are mostly seen serenely floating high in the sky. But they have to take off and land without any control of which direction they are going. And when they get in a competition, all bets are off.

    If a hot air balloon gets above the tree line, the wind takes them where it wants to - same with terrain. I have seen a hot air balloon going up a ravine with half the air bag showing and none of the gondola. The same balloon was following a cow that was running for her life, kicking up her heels over rough terrain, with the occupants shouting "Nice cow! It's OK, cow!"

    I have a friend who had an electric fence knocked over by a hot air balloon. He had to put things back to rights before his cattle got out.

    But hot air balloons, as well as Bambizilla, have great public images. It's like attacking motherhood and apple pie if you complain about them.

    To the commenters who wanted to shoot the drone and beat up the operator, it's a natural reaction. Resist it with everything you've got. Assault is based on what the other person perceives, not on what you do. And if you get charged, then your property is at risk. It's entirely backwards, but so is much of the US legal scenery.

  • On the post: Why Even Good Hospitals And Doctors Are An Obstacle To Better, Cheaper Healthcare

    artp ( profile ), 21 May, 2013 @ 05:00am

    Wrong target. Medicare is insurance

    So, once again, it is the insurance companies that are holding back better health care.

    Isn't Medicare an insurance program?

  • On the post: Restaurant's Facebook Goes Nuclear Over Reviews & Gordon Ramsay; Owners Cry Hack

    artp ( profile ), 15 May, 2013 @ 07:07pm

    I didn't think it was possible

    There is someone who makes Gordon Ramsey look reasonable.

    I would never put up with his abuse, but then I don't own a restaurant, or even understand why he thinks his style of cooking is the only right one. You'd never keep a family happy with his attitude. Good thing he isn't a Mom.

  • On the post: MPAA Freaks Out: Insists That Having To Consider Fair Use Before Filing A DMCA Takedown Would Be Crazy

    artp ( profile ), 13 May, 2013 @ 09:28am

    Re: Once again

    Just because they can't tell the difference doesn't mean that it should go to an impartial third party (judge sitting in courtroom) for determination of infringement. The **AA knows! [Cue Shadow music.]

  • On the post: MPAA Freaks Out: Insists That Having To Consider Fair Use Before Filing A DMCA Takedown Would Be Crazy

    artp ( profile ), 13 May, 2013 @ 09:31am

    threatens to cause significant harms that Congress could not possibly have intended.

    Translation:
    That's not what we told them to do!

  • On the post: John Steele: I'm Just A 'Business Development' Guy Who Has Nothing To Do With These Lawsuits

    artp ( profile ), 10 May, 2013 @ 02:09pm

    Speaking of dignity

    My irony meter broke.

    There needs to be discovery done on exactly when, where, and how much Mr. Steele has been exposed to dignity. He sure doesn't have any personal experience with it.

  • On the post: Who Would You Rather Trust: Bankers Or Regulators?

    artp ( profile ), 10 May, 2013 @ 09:33am

    If reputation of a bank is important...

    If banks value their reputation and want to protect it, then...

    How do you explain how Bank of America still exists?

    Apparently there are still enough people without scruples willing to trade with them that they can still stick around to stick it to the rest of us. :-(

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Can Computers Grade Written Essays?

    artp ( profile ), 09 May, 2013 @ 07:55pm

    Depends

    Can a student turn in a computer-generated paper that is written to the grading algorithm?

    It would take some smarts to do that, too. Neither would be satisfactory.

  • On the post: This Is My Pencil. This Is My Pencil Pretending To Be A Gun. One Is For Writing. One Is For Mandatory Suspensions.

    artp ( profile ), 09 May, 2013 @ 10:08am

    Pencils vs. cell phones

    My imagination is not good enough to figure out how to make a gun out of a cell phone, as a police officer recently declared, but I could make a start at making a gun out of a pencil.

    I'd probably break quite a few before i got the hang of it, though. :-)

    Staples, please send me a gross of pencils!

  • On the post: Why Prenda Has Been Able To Proceed For Years: The Whole Setup Was Too Brazen

    artp ( profile ), 09 May, 2013 @ 08:25am

    A deeper problem

    Wright did a fantastic job. Congrats to him. I wish there were more judges who did this.

    ---
    But -
    The judiciary - and the attorneys - have way too much power. And the actual PEOPLE in the court - plaintiffs, defendants and witnesses - have far too little.

    Having been in courtrooms as plaintiff, defendant and witness, I can tell you that nobody gets to say what they want unless the judges and/or attorneys allow them to say it.

    Plaintiffs and defendants need to be able to tell their story no matter who gets upset about it.

    Attorneys need to be forced to tell the truth, with evidence to back up what they say. No more story-telling. Wrigth did that in this case.

    ---
    When the judges runs into a case where there is ambiguity in the law, they need to send it back to Congress for resolution instead of solving it themselves. Until Congress is forced to be accountable to someone, they will continue to crank out more coral reef instead of building bridges.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Antibiotic Abuse In The Food Industry

    artp ( profile ), 03 May, 2013 @ 07:02pm

    That can't be true, can it?

    Farm Bureau says that antibiotic use does not affect any human diseases, so no worries. It's just more of that radical hippie environmental anti-meat nonsense.

    I wish I could get insurance somewhere else besides Farm Bureau. [Card-carrying Farm Bureau member who doesn't agree with much besides their insurance rates.]

  • On the post: Frankencows: A Complete Misunderstanding Of Science

    artp ( profile ), 02 May, 2013 @ 12:41pm

    Re: Re: It's difficult to discuss this rationally - for everyone

    "because they don't understand how genetics or our food supply works"

    Well, that's the problem in a nutshell, isn't it? NOBODY understands how genetics works - YET! If we understood genetics, then we wouldn't be using terms like "junk DNA", which just describes parts of the gene that we can't attribute any function to - YET!

    We have made great strides in understanding protein folding, but how those different discrete protein folds work together? Not so much.

    And to keep harping on the universally ignored problem - Where is the documentation that GMOs are safe, as is required by the FDA and federal law? Next commment, please address this part of the problem.

    The whole reason for GMOs is that it allows large corporations to do a land-grab of the public domain and sequester our common heritage and support of life itself. All for profit. Profit vs. Life. There is no other reason for it. Or perhaps you would like to quantify just exactly how large this cattle safety problem is that GMOs will solve so that we can do a risk analysis and a cost-benefits analysis to see what it is costing us to throw away the public domain?

    But corporations don't want to wait for the proper scientific investigation to happen with appropriate isolation until the coast is clear. They want to make money off it immediately.

    I am also a Farm Bureau member, and FB is very raucous about the harm caused by "those radicals" who don't want GMOs. So who is spreading the chaos here? Just address the facts, and I'll be happy.

  • On the post: Frankencows: A Complete Misunderstanding Of Science

    artp ( profile ), 02 May, 2013 @ 12:08pm

    Re: Re: It's difficult to discuss this rationally - for everyone

    If patents were about methods, then Percy Schmeiser wouldn't have been sued by Monsanto for planting seeds descended from Monsanto Roundup-Ready plants.

    Next objection?

Next >>