Atkray's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
from the theme-o'-the-week dept
This week's favorites post come from Atkray.
I get asked about it, so for those who wonder, Atkray combines the ATK
from the motorcycle company, not the rocket engine manufacturer, with Ray my given name. I am grateful for this opportunity to give back a little and hope that my reflections on the past week will be of value or entertainment to some of you.
By Sunday night, I find that I have stared at the favorites, the most insightful, and funny posts long enough. Consequently, by Monday morning I am ready to see what the new week brings. This week I skipped the first post and went straight to the monkeys writing Shakespeare. I was a tad disappointed to see the output was not what I expected and for some reason the side note about the real monkeys typing mostly the letter "s" and then urinating on the keyboards left me wondering if, for the sake of authenticity, it is necessary to program the virtual monkey to do the same. Unfortunately, the comments deteriorated to personal attacks rather quickly before changing to a most interesting discussion of infinite and near infinite. I can see monkeys writing Shakespeare becoming the next folding@home.
Behaving more like monkeys than officers, NYPD kicked off what became the theme for the week, cops being caught on video and lying.
Building on that theme, on Tuesday we had the Canadians getting involved with a face-tasing, as well as the bonus multi-angle feature of the Wall Street incident from Monday. On Wednesday the police in Chicago felt left out, so we got the story of cops disrupting funeral processions and then lying about it. I really enjoyed the position put forth by an AC that it is only a small percentage of the cops that are bad so we shouldn’t worry. On Thursday, the entire state of Illinois joined the theme and decided to appeal a ruling that filming police is protected by that pesky old Constitution. Of course allowing the focus to shift westward is unacceptable to New Yorkers so they started rounding up people with cameras and hauling them off in the paddy wagon, prompting an epic comment from Dark Helmet (widely rumored to live in or around Chicago) that made me go digging through old boxes so I could watch Ghostbusters again. Friday returned back to Illinois with the story of a guy being threatened with a felony and 15 years in jail for filming a traffic stop.
It is a rare week when we don’t get more news from Righthaven, and I find it entertaining to see the Karma boomerang in action -- although it appears that even the judges involved may be feeling a little pity for Righthaven and the beating it is taking.
The seemingly inevitable arrival of the police state was shown to us by officials at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, where officials decided to censor a professor by misunderstanding (totally) a poster he put up. Nice to see that freedom of thought and expression won’t be interfering with the indoctrinations. This story was my favorite of the week with the second poster the professor put up making me literally laugh out loud.
I was disappointed to see Governor Moonbeam (disclosure: I lived in the state when he and Linda were an item) has the opportunity to help out the citizens by protecting their 4th Amendment rights on traffic stops, but appears to be bought and paid for by the law enforcement lobbyists.
The news that Direct TV sees that the prices Hollywood dictates are not the prices customers are willing to pay gave me a glimmer of hope. But then Time Warner's belief that no one is cutting the cord snapped me back to reality. Even the little old ladies in my neighborhood are talking about dropping cable.
The Friday afternoon downer that (as expected) the US will be signing ACTA still wasn’t enough to overcome the unexpected surprise that at least 2 Senators on the Judiciary Committee believe that TOS violations should not be a crime. I fired off another email to Senator Hatch telling him to listen to his colleagues, but figure I’ll get another form letter in about 3 weeks.
I want to close with an observation. Mike posted about a conference and mentioned a discount for TD readers. It was a nice gesture and the conference may appeal to visitors here. As can be expected, the usual group of ACs promptly chimed in with derogatory remarks and personal attacks. This is common and as mentioned here is not indicative of all ACs. Mike undergoes daily personal attacks by those who seem incapable of expressing themselves in an articulate and adult manner. Others are frequently attacked as well. Those attacking resort to third-grade playground bully tactics and run away when confronted. They truly are cowards. To those who insist on trying to degrade Techdirt, you only show others your true colors. I appreciate when someone with an opposing view brings a valid and well thought out disagreement, but unfortunately that seems to be an increasingly rare event. To those who do, I thank you. While I may not agree with you, at least I can respect you and should I meet you in person I would enjoy sitting down over lunch and having a conversation... You keep all ACs from being painted with the broadbrush of trolling.
Thank you to Mike for this opportunity to share.
(untitled comment)
The way Under Armor quickly went from a unknown little company to a massive sports brand with their name plastered all over everything has always made me have reservations about the company.....
Now I have confirmation that I should NEVER purchase anything with their name or logo on it.
Re: Re:
Ok I'll bite,
"There are millions upon millions of notices sent, and you guys always focus on a handful of questionable ones. What about the legitimate ones? "
If millions upon millions of them are legit,
and sending these helps _____________(get rid of piracy, get artists what is owed them, etc....)
Then why is it still a problem?
By your own admission those it targets are unpunished.
The fact is DMCA does nothing to accomplish the stated purpose and needs to go away.
.... back on topic, Why doesn't Google just process these requests and let the site owners go after these clowns?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
More like mules of different colors.
Re: space aliens did it
I read on the internet that it was space aliens.
That makes 2 sources....even more true.
Re: Glass Houses
I wondered the same thing and then it hit me...they thought of just removing parts, decided it was obvious and therefore not likely to survive a patent challenge so they concocted a convoluted process to accomplish the same thing by copy and pasting.
Unfortunately for them, thanks to a recent SCOTUS ruling, we know that what they actually created was a duck.
Re: Re: The lesser of two evils
Do you really want AJ to be able to edit?
Re:
Need a legit judiciary before you can attempt that.
(untitled comment)
"Assuming there is still a functioning fourth estate in Utah"
That would be a faulty assumption.
(untitled comment)
The correct thing would be for the account to be forever banned as well as any ad-sense accounts even remotely connected to this account like they do to the unwashed masses.
No review no one to contact.
Tiering is great for storage, not so much for justice.
Figures.....
I just renewed 2 domains with them at the beginning of November. :/
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Remember, that if you want to move up from the TSA these are the types of jobs you are applying for.
Re: Waste of an opportunity
You Sir, have had more that your share of the CWF+RTB koolaid, please step away from the punchbowl.
Re:
The insider shop has the option to silence Techdirt.
$1 mil a day or $100,000,001 a year.
I don't think you could buy the staff to write what you want, they all seem to be afflicted with those pesky ethics things.
Re:
Between this:
"Though, really, I don't want to even bother thinking about the irony of the SLAPP-happy Roca filing an anti-SLAPP against the guy who got the best anti-SLAPP in the country into law"
and you having a hole filled by Roca digging a hole,
my head is about to explode.
Re: I sense a counter-attack
I can't help but thing someone will learn from this and use it as a way to have anything they don't like taken down.
(untitled comment)
If this stands then the next case could well be someone who locks their kid in a cell in the house (remember, the state does this all the time) to keep a troublesome youth from creating liabilities for them.
"I'm sorry your Honor but little Amy is just impossible to control unless we keep her in a cell."
Making parents responsible is an stupid idea, the only way children will learn is if they are held responsible, and feel the consequences of their actions.
Shifting that to the parents accomplishes nothing.
This case is about parents and their parasite attorney trying to extort money, instead of teaching their daughter how to overcome this on her own.
Sadly they are likely to win.
Re: Some simple reasoning is required here
....but where is the part about made out of wood?
Re: Re:
For better or worse, it is looking more and more like the future of journalism is Jon Stewart and TMZ.
There is also the outside chance that Techdirt suddenly starts getting a billion his a day, but I think that is when the mafiaa would use the silence Techdirt option.
Re: Re: Re: Re: General corruption?
You keep spelling criminal wrong.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
...and file sharing is regularly referred to as theft.
Words do matter.
This battle may very well be lost but I agree that calling quad-copters drones is a bad idea.
I suspect most people when they hear drone think of the scene in Bourne Identity where a large plane fires missiles to kill people. (see also Anwar al-Awlaki)