Brad Hubbard 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (90) comment rss

  • On the post: Tiny Gamemaker Takes The Right Approach To Giant Zynga Copying Its Game: It Thanks Them

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2012 @ 01:38pm

    Re:

    Sarcasm aside, you make a salient point - most gamers won't know Zynga blatantly copied Nimblebit's game.

    But you know who will know? Investors, and employees. SOMEONE at Zynga knew they copied the other game. Maybe it was the Product Manager, maybe it was the whole team, but you can bet the entire company didn't know.

    And you can also bet that future hires will come across this and stories like it. If I'm good at what I do and want to create original games, Zynga isn't the place for me.

  • On the post: Obama Working To 'Fix' His Relationship With Hollywood

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2012 @ 01:29pm

    Please Remember

    Dear Mr. President,

    Please remember that the very state in which Hollywood resides is arguably the foremost technological hub of the world. More people and more money are involved in that industry than the narrow interpretation of "Entertainment" that Hollywood carries. Yes, they have marketing muscle. But ultimately, they don't drive our country and our planet forward the way that technology does.

    Pissing off technologists is a dangerous and politically fatal move, especially as the Youtube/Facebook/Tumblr/whatever generation begins voting. They will care a lot more if Facebook tells them a bill is bad than if some aging studio exec does.

  • On the post: Dailydirt: GMO Food — You Are What You Eat?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2011 @ 05:26pm

    A little intellectual honesty, now

    Let's be real here - we've been eating genetically modified foods (animals and plants) for the last 6000 years or so. Domestication, selective breeding and cross-breading of species has been a staple of human cultivation of food sources.

    Except now we have people with advanced degrees, selectively modifying genes, instead of randomly cross-breeding species and hoping for the best.

    Cross-breeding gave us killer bees. Genetic modification gave tomatoes that can be grown naturally, without harsh pesticide chemicals because they naturally repel insects.

  • On the post: Can We Just Admit That It's Insane When Microsoft Has A 'Licensing Program' For Someone Else's Products?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2011 @ 10:41am

    Re:

    Microsoft isn't in the habit of suing open source projects, even if they're backed by commercial entities.

    For example, MS never sued Open Office, despite making the assertion it violated 45 patents (many of which may be invalid). Now, if companies like HP started building Open Office-based school machines? Well, MS might step in.

    I think this will be tested when/if the Motorola + Google deal closes, if the existing Motorola + MS license deal doesn't carry forward.

    Source for MS on FOSS Patent Violations: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-free-and-open-source-software-violates-235-microsoft-patents/436

  • On the post: Can We Just Admit That It's Insane When Microsoft Has A 'Licensing Program' For Someone Else's Products?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2011 @ 10:31am

    Re: Why Care?

    I've struggled with this as well. There's obviously not "no evidence" as Mike claims - otherwise these companies wouldn't be settling. There might not be strong evidence, or legally tested evidence, but there's clearly some.

    MS isn't going after tiny devs. These are giant companies with huge legal budgets, they looked at MS's evidence and decided a settlement that both companies felt was fair.

    Would you prefer the Apple approach? Sue in every country, blocking competitors from entering the market, harm consumers, submit fraudulent evidence to courts?

    There are so many other issues in the patent system and tech companies being sleazy, why focus on this so hard? Let it go - you don't need to be angry on the behalf of two companies that are entering into a mutually beneficial business deal.

  • On the post: The Pavlovian Response To Seeing Birthday Announcements On Facebook

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2011 @ 10:24pm

    Re: Work Smarter, not Harder

    Sorry, I didn't make it clear in the original post - I'm not the only one to consider this, and there are many extensions and plugins that do the same thing. Fact is, birthday wishes are something we value to receive but put little thought into sending, so it's unsurprising this person saw so many duplicates. There are fewer than 20 people that I could even roughly guess at their birthday, let alone notice if they moved it every few months.

  • On the post: The Pavlovian Response To Seeing Birthday Announcements On Facebook

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2011 @ 10:20pm

    Work Smarter, not Harder

    So, I outsourced my birthday wishes to the Happy Birthday Extension. There are precious few people I want to write something specific to, but the feeling when you log in and see 200 "yay you're wonderful" messages is important to some people. So I compromised, sending them varying but generic messages, unless I really care about them, in which case it's a three- or four-sentence message about their importance to me.

    http://lifehacker.com/5835409/happybirthday-extension-send-out-b+day-wishes-on-facebook-so-you-dont-have-to

  • On the post: Apple Wins Europe-Wide Blockade Of Samsung Tablets; Guess Which Tablet Apple Is Scared Of Most?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2011 @ 04:06pm

    If you can't compete, litegate

    Apple has shown that they're perfectly willing to use every questionably-legal technique to sell their products. Lie with your ads, "accidentally" misquote competitors numbers, snidely mock rival CEOs and make fun of their english in your product announcements, and now - taking out a competitor (and supplier) for a few months right when their product is gaining steam (and mindshare)?

    Well, that's just Apple.

    What's really upsetting is that there's no cost to Apple for this - if Samsung is later cleared of wrongdoing, the months of lost sales? The'll get no settlement for that. Knocking out a quarter of your competitors sales with bogus patent claims?

  • On the post: Caught With A DUI In New Jersey? You Can Now Blame The Bar That Served You

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2011 @ 04:04pm

    There's a silver lining

    The upside to this is that if New Jersey bars think they might get sued if they let total dickbags get wasted and leave, they might just stop serving them alcohol when they're wasted.

    I'm pretty sure the women of NJ are about to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

  • On the post: The Ridiculous Demands The Record Labels Want For Music Lockers

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2011 @ 03:01pm

    You know who can solve this? Sony!

    Man, I'd love to see Sony (electronics and software) try and implement a service that actually lives up to these rules.

    If you can't do it when you're designing in a vacuum, you shouldn't be allowed to talk about it in public.

  • On the post: France Goes Overboard In Data Retention: Wants User Passwords Retained

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2011 @ 11:37am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Recall - this is the country that sued Google because a bunch of BANKING PASSWORDS were being sent, unencrypted, over open WIFI connections.

    Clearly their laws and practices don't make for good security policy. Maybe it's a culture thing?

    And why would you ever need a user's password? Any decent program has a "become" feature for admins, so you can log in as that user. All the ones I write have it, anyhow.

  • On the post: Groupon Sued For Having Short Expirations On Coupons

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2011 @ 10:48pm

    Re: The suit has merit.

    No, it doesn't.

    If you buy a groupon for $30 for a haircut that normally costs $60, and you let it expire, it's still worth $30, it's just not worth the $60.

    And if it expires and you can't redeem it (say, service no longer offered or something), groupon will refund your money.

    This lawsuit is a pure moneygrab.

  • On the post: Match.com Sued Over Dead/Fake Profiles

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2011 @ 10:39am

    Re: a pertinent link

    I was just about to post this - I love the OK Cupid Data blog - their articles are insightful and they expose you to the actual numbers they're using.

  • On the post: Has The Video Game Industry Surpassed The Military In Driving The Next Wave Of Technological Change?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 03 Jan, 2011 @ 11:44pm

    Outsider's View

    This whole article sounds like it is written by someone who is outside the military, business, and technology worlds. Why and how we're listening to this hermit is beyond me. Sure, if these predictions had been made in the 70s, that'd be one thing, but at this point, it seems like they're pointing to the past.

    That crap about WoW being an example of how DNA traders will work? I'm sorry, haven't ever come across telepresence or Skype, have ya? Amazed groups of people can talk to each other in teamchat? Gee - where do you think VoIP came from? Oh right - military.

    I'm sorry, the whole thing just reeks of someone who's stumbled into technology, never worked at a real company, and goes "Wow, if only we could get these two together!", blissfully unaware that these applications have been developed side-by-side for decades.

  • On the post: Harvard Newspaper Staff Apparently In Need Of A Lesson On Copyright Basics

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 21 Dec, 2010 @ 01:54pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    No, I think that's called re-writing history to mock someone you don't like. Or just blindly quoting Wired (an often embarrassing habit).

    Please read up:
    http://web.archive.org/web/20040603092645/commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore.and.the.Inte1.html

  • On the post: Mainstream Press Seems To Think Fighting For Civil Liberties Is Childish

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2010 @ 11:22am

    Is it that new?

    Our press has always generally agreed with the government. Look back at the "Red Scare" - were newspapers decrying the rounding up of citizens accused of being Communists? No, they were supporting it and applauding every time we "caught one"

  • On the post: Cooks Source Editor Gives First Interview; Says She'll Probably Shut Down The Magazine

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2010 @ 10:33am

    Maybe she deserves it?

    I dunno, after her initial comments of "it happens all the time", etc, I wonder if it's just come out that she's been plagiarizing for years and is worried about being sued.

  • On the post: Texas Sends Amazon $269M Sales Tax Bill; Could Woot Have Pushed Texas Over The Edge?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 03:05pm

    About Woot

    Well, if Woot was collecting/paying sales tax in TX, I'd assume that business unit has continued to do so.

    It'd be interesting how they argued that Woot's presence in TX means that they really do owe taxes back for years where they didn't own Woot.

  • On the post: Texas Sends Amazon $269M Sales Tax Bill; Could Woot Have Pushed Texas Over The Edge?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 03:02pm

    Re: I'm Sad

    I've been a Woot devotee for many years. I've gotten a half dozen or so BoCs, and they really are crap.

    My last one had a baby blanket, child-sized earbuds, crappy COBY headphones, and a pair of USB-powered Wootoff lights.

    You're not missing much, don't worry.

  • On the post: Inflatable Gorilla Sues Google Over Copyright?

    Brad Hubbard ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2010 @ 11:39am

    Free publicity

    Clearly by not suing, they've lost a chance at some free publicity.

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