catsmoke 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (51)

• On the post: Content Moderation Case Study: Twitter Acts To Remove Accounts For Violating The Terms Of Service By Buying/Selling Engagement (March 2018)

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2020 @ 10:42pm

  Why pay to re-tweet?

  I’m unable to divine why Person A would pay money to Person B so that Person B would perform the service of taking a tweet written by Person C (who has no previous relationship with Person A, and whose tweets would not seem to have any applicability to the goals of Person A) and sharing that tweet with a large audience.

  If Person C had written a tweet that had said “Send money to my bank account #1234567” and Person A happened to have access to that bank account, then I could see Person A wanting to broadcast that tweet as widely as possible. But it’s unlikely such a situation would arise.

  Is the explanation that the tweet is some re-usable cash-grab instrument? I can imagine something such as “If you like this tweet, then send $50 to bank account #8901234” but there is no tweet that is such an effective tool, it cannot be imitated. So why would there be a need for Person A to steal a tweet from Person C, for dissemination by Person B?

  It doesn’t seem to make sense.

• On the post: Twitter About To Be Hit With A ~$250 Million Fine For Using Your Two Factor Authentication Phone Numbers/Emails For Marketing

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2020 @ 02:22am

  Re: Parable Time

  I couldn't help it. I'm a scorpion!

  What is the reasoning behind this so-called parable? It makes no sense. Does the illustration mean to imply that some bad actors should be excused for their wrongdoing, due to their inherent wicked natures? That’s a blaming-the-victim paradigm. I’ve heard this parable over and over again, during my lifetime, and it’s always seemed to be pure foolishness.

• On the post: CDT First Out The Gate In Suing To Block Donald Trump's Silly Executive Order On Section 230

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2020 @ 03:10am

  Hope

  CDT has...many success stories behind it. Hopefully this is another one.

  The Complaint filed by CDT seems well-reasoned and well-spoken.

  Experienced attorneys will conduct the defense, but on what basis? Trump’s argumentation is shadow-boxing. He dances in circles, attacking nothing. If he had half a brain, he’d be dangerous.

• On the post: If The NY Times Doesn't Publish My OpEd On Why James Bennet Is An Incompetent Dweeb, It Must Hate Free Speech

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2020 @ 02:47am

  Rolling

  Cotton sits in the Class 2* seat of my ancestor James Henderson Berry, who represented Arkansas in the US Senate from 1885 until 1907.

  He shames me, and all Arkansans.

  *but not 2nd class!

• On the post: Fans Port Mario 64 To PC And Make It Way Better, So Of Course Nintendo Is Trying To Nuke The Project

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 08 May, 2020 @ 05:04am

  Substance (1990)

  It's hard to imagine that threat [to Nintendo revenue] is anything substantial.

  When someone values $1 more than they value their own arm, then their idea of a “substantial threat to revenue” might surprise you.

• On the post: Tracfone Made Up "Fictitious" Users To Defraud Taxpayers, FCC

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2020 @ 05:46am

  Re: Obamaphone Fraud

  Fining a shady telecom $6 mil for the telecom's attempt to sucker $1.2 mil out of the program.

  Tracfone did not “attempt to sucker $1.2M out of the project.” Tracfone paid back $1.2M of the Lifeline money it had illegally collected. That $1.2M was a small portion of Tracfone’s total theft. The proposed $6M fine is based on evidence collected on Tracfone’s misdeeds in states (Florida and Texas), over the second half of 2018. But in 2018, Tracfone was paid Lifeline money for the entire year, for 42 states. Given the population of Florida and Texas, and assuming that those remaining 40 states have an average share (relative to the US total) of the cell phone market, then we can estimate that the $6M fine is based on about 10% of Tracfone’s illicit Lifeline gains in 2018. (Florida and Texas combining for 50M people, out of the 42 Tracfone-covered states having an estimated 269M people, and the fine only addressing one-half year of Tracfone’s illegal Lifeline gains in those two states where evidence was collected.) Based on this alone, Tracfone probably deserved a $60M fine, for their 2018 violations. It is preposterous to maintain Tracfone is facing a potential fine that is five times as large as the amount Tracfone illegally acquired through the Lifeline program. The $6M fine is a pittance, next to Tracfone’s career illegal Lifelife haul.

• On the post: Netflix Seeks Cancellation Of "Choose Your Own Adventure" Trademark

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 29 Feb, 2020 @ 10:54pm

  Re: Chose His Owned Ad Venture

  I’ll also add that the books are, without fail, letdowns. The works usually feature imaginative, detailed setups, without any well-developed conclusions, no matter the choices made by the reader. Incongruous diabolus ex machina endings litter every volume: Aliens are prone to appear, to kidnap the protagonist and instantly quash the story, in any time, place, or setting. The worlds of the narratives are internally inconsistent: An important element of the setting (for example, in its world, is magic real?) may fluctuate between different states, from page to page. As a whole, the books have little artistic merit. They are poorly-thought-out failures, especially in the wildly varying tones of their varying narrative branches, in which one “choice” leads to a conclusion which is an absurd joke, and its alternative “choice” leads to a grim death. I do not recommend the series. It may serve a critical young reader as fodder for analysis of a promising concept which never fulfills its potential. Otherwise, it is best avoided.

• On the post: Netflix Seeks Cancellation Of "Choose Your Own Adventure" Trademark

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 29 Feb, 2020 @ 10:36pm

  Chose His Owned Ad Venture

  As a reader who purchased Choose Your Own Adventure books soon after their first publication, and who was undoubtedly in the publisher’s target demographic, and as someone who has had a lifelong communion with American books and publishing, I must say that my perception and understanding of Choose Your Own Adventure has been, since the late 1970s, that the phrase was specific to one book series by one publisher, and a product that, in my experience, always had the features of a distinct, consistent marketing design.

  There were imitators, over the years, and the idea of letting the reader continue along chosen branches of a narrative path is a basic idea.

  And to my recall, the expression “choose your own adventure” rarely is found in pop culture sources. It is more of a scarcely-found in-joke than a universal meme.

  I’m personally dead-set opposed to the tactics used by “[t]rademark bullies looking for a payday” and I wholeheartedly agree that those bullies “should more often have to at least face the risk of losing their trademarks entirely.”

  “Intellectual property” is an oxymoron. Private property is a bane of mankind. Nevertheless, in my world, the idea of Choose Your Own Adventure has never had a generic or recurring general meaning. The concept is simple, and has been imitated, but that phrase and the trappings and livery of the original book series are a cultural artifact that is discrete, unique, and distinct.

• On the post: SmileDirectClub Is Trying To Silence Criticism By Tying Refunds To Non-Disparagement Agreements

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2020 @ 12:51pm

  For how long? For—how long?

  It's pretty much just fine print extortion.

  Which is pretty much a felony. Pretty much time to put some of these corporate criminals into prison.

  America is a race-to-the-bottom realm of consumer exploitation. We must destroy every principle and punish every agent of profits-over-people ideology.

• On the post: Techdirt 2019: The Stats.

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2020 @ 02:58am

  Re: Well, I saw this one coming…

  someone comes in out of nowhere with a claim that human DNA from aborted fetuses is in vaccines, and that somehow “causes gender identity disorder”

  Someone who probably denies the fluidity of gender identity is saying that gender identity fluidity is caused by vaccines. If whoever made this claim does possess both opinions at the same time, then they are—even now—doubtlessly suffering an existential crisis, racked by throes of cognitive dissonance.

• On the post: Academic Publishers Get Their Wish: DOJ Investigating Sci-Hub Founder For Alleged Ties To Russian Intelligence

  

  catsmoke ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2020 @ 12:14am

  Admission denied

  Do “admit to” and “not deny” have the same meaning?

  Do I admit to everything that I do not deny?