Christopher Best 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Substack CEO Chris Best Doesn’t Realize He’s Just Become The Nazi Bar

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2023 @ 09:15pm

    Been Years Since I Logged In Here

    But I did just to say for some reason I really hope this CEO shuts up and gets out of the news. For some reason.

  • On the post: North Carolina Passes An Entirely Misguided Restore Campus Free Speech Act

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 10 Aug, 2017 @ 01:57pm

    Re:

    Hmm, serves me right for not using the preview button to remember HTML is no longer supported.

  • On the post: North Carolina Passes An Entirely Misguided Restore Campus Free Speech Act

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 10 Aug, 2017 @ 01:38pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    https://www.popehat.com/2016/06/11/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-the-first-amendment/

  • On the post: North Carolina Passes An Entirely Misguided Restore Campus Free Speech Act

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 10 Aug, 2017 @ 01:56pm

    <EM>Does anyone imagine that polling the nation's universities on this question would result in some schools saying, "Meh, free expression isn't that big a deal"?</EM>

    Yes, as some already have. I wouldn't expect most to say it, but when pressed on details I wouldn't be surprised to find a majority of public universities actually not supporting free expression. FIRE exists for a reason.

    <EM>If some tiny college group wants to invite a controversial speaker to campus to speak, where 90% of the campus doesn't want them anywhere near the campus, the administration is simply supposed to keep its hands tied?</EM>

    YES. Why would you advocate otherwise?

    <EM>Punishing "shout-downs"? That's a pretty bald-faced acknowledgement that this bill will curb the free speech of students in favor of the free speech of invited speakers. In other words, this bill cuts in only one direction: students that are paying to attend school now have less speech rights than guests invited onto the campus.</EM>

    Depends on what's meant by shout-downs. If hecklers are inside a venue AND disturbing the ability of others to hear the speaker they've showed up to hear, then they should be removed. If they're outside of the venue (and NOT physically preventing people from attending), they shouldn't be subject to any punishment.

    As far as a committee calling out Universities for not actively protecting speech rights of invited speakers--consider times in history where the police turned their backs (or even took an active part) and allowed crowds to commit crimes against the disfavored. For example, the police being complicit in beatings of the Freedom Riders. There are definitely cases recently where Universities have abdicated their responsibility to keep the peace (e.g. Berkeley). I'm not sure what the right thing, if anything, is to do about this, but threatening funding seems to be a go-to way for legislatures to get compliance out of entities they don't directly control...

  • On the post: Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 02 May, 2017 @ 02:58pm

    Re: Re: Zillow = bad

    Yeah, across the highway from my house were dozens of abandoned bank owned properties, while a few blocks over was a neighborhood of McMansions. Just averaging out the recent sale prices (and not providing error bars) was practically worthless.

    Yes the house five lots down went for 1/3 of what we were asking for, but that's because the family got foreclosed and it sat abandoned for over a year and got trashed. Using that as a data point to determine what a well taken care of house is worth because it's nearby and you (incorrectly) think it has the same number of bedrooms is stupid.

  • On the post: Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 02 May, 2017 @ 02:49pm

    Re: Re: Zillow = bad

    Great. Glad it's easier now, assuming those links actually do anything.

    On the other hand, why is the onus on me (someone who doesn't use their damn site) to fix their info for them?

  • On the post: Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 02 May, 2017 @ 10:08am

    Re: Re: Zillow = bad

    Actually my house had been re-assessed the previous year, so I don't think that was the problem.

  • On the post: Zillow Sued By Homeowner Because Its Estimate Is Lower Than The Seller Wants To Sell The House For

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 02 May, 2017 @ 09:39am

    Zillow = bad

    Having had recent experience with Zillow, they're awful. They often have blatantly incorrect information about a property (like how many bedrooms my house had) and don't have any interest it seems in correcting it. People seem to assume that whatever Zillow estimates a rental price should be is a number the homeowner put on the site, as well, then assume that you're trying to do some sort of bait and switch when you tell them a different number.

    Considering how awful they seem to be at estimating things, I'd rather they didn't do it, but a lawsuit doesn't seem to be the right way to go about it...

  • On the post: Paul Hansmeier Argues Convicting Him Of Fraud Would Seriously Damage The Judicial System

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2017 @ 12:27pm

    Like the old saying...

    When the facts are against you, pound the law

    When the law is against you, pound the facts

    When both are against you, pound the table

  • On the post: Garage Door Opener Company Bricks Customer Hardware After Negative Review

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2017 @ 10:12am

    Why in God's Name...

    Would you connect a device to the Internet that can crush you?

  • On the post: Six Journalists Arrested, Charged While Covering Trump Inauguration Protests

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2017 @ 03:05pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    The results are in. Between the three of us... One sees no implication that the article is blaming Trump, stating: "Trump appears to be a man who wants to bring the press to heel, especially in light of the comments made about him during the election. To me the real news it that we allow public officials to abuse power and write it off as a common practice" One only has a problem with the line:

    Whichever the case, we had another first as on the very day of Trump's inauguration, his first day officially as President of the United States, police managed to arrest and charge six journalists for the crime of covering the protests coinciding with the ceremony.
    Stating "calling the arrests 'another first' here kind of makes it sound like this is new for the Trump age, even if he does say this has been happening a lot elsewhere in the article." And then there's me. To play armchair quarterback: I'd of reversed the order of the article. Talk about the arrests, then talk about the fact that oh, by the way, these arrests (and tons of others) were under the 'most transparent administration' in history that constantly paid lip service to the importance of a free press. Finally, point out the new guy has been very public about his disdain for the press and his desire to bring them to heel (to borrow an apt phrase from a coworker), so if you think this is bad, you'd better buckle up... But then again, I make buttons for a living, not write articles, so my thoughts on the matter are of dubious value. ;)

  • On the post: Six Journalists Arrested, Charged While Covering Trump Inauguration Protests

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2017 @ 01:36pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Alrighty, I'll do that. But I'll also do one better and see if I can get the opinion of a coworker or two. I'll get back to you.

    To be fair, this might just be a problem with me. Kinda fed up with bad examples of "Trump so bad!" He's bad enough w/o blaming him for other people's crap...

  • On the post: Six Journalists Arrested, Charged While Covering Trump Inauguration Protests

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2017 @ 01:04pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I wouldn't say it was unfair or inaccurate, just unrelated.

    This is the same banal bullshit that's been happening forever: journalists get swept up in a mass arrest during a riot/protest. Nothing new or special.

    The US Attorney pushing the charges is an Obama appointee. That's probably the only novel thing about this, I suppose: DC is the only city where a Federal prosecutor will end up trying to lock you up journalists who get swept up like this. Normally it'd be a local schmuck (e.g. Carlos Miller is probably on a first-name basis w/ attorneys in the Miami DA's office by now...)

    TL; DR: My real problem is the article conflates "OMG Trump!" with business as usual, giving the implication that this is some new troubling sign of the decline of free speech rights.

  • On the post: South Carolina Senator Wants To Charge Computer Purchasers $20 To Access Internet Porn

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 21 Dec, 2016 @ 10:15am

    Where do you even start? The obvious First Amendment implications? The complete ineffectiveness at attaining its stated goals? The actual impossibility of the mandate (How do you sell a Raspberry Pi with the filter pre-installed? How do you deal with people like me who build their own computers from individual parts? Does some key component become 'the computer' like we pretend a receiver == gun?)?

    Are we sure Chumley isn't some sort of Google Deep Mind AI project that's using a neural network to generate things that look like Bills?

  • On the post: Media Organizations (Correctly) Worry That Rolling Stone Verdict Will Make Saying Sorry Actionable

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2016 @ 12:31pm

    What apology?

    Unless there's an apology I'm not seeing, all I remember was a note from the editor that said "We should've talked to the Fraternity before publishing." Nothing was said about the Dean.

    I could definitely see how a casual reader could read their "apology" and assume that the only thing they should question was whether "Jackie" was raped, but still assume her account of the supposed coverup was credible.

  • On the post: Cops Who Repeatedly Treated Refusal As Consent Watch Their Seized Evidence Vanish

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2016 @ 02:46pm

    Re:

    Yeah, here we go: https://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/11/22/can-kiddies-consent/#comment-138314

  • On the post: Cops Who Repeatedly Treated Refusal As Consent Watch Their Seized Evidence Vanish

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2016 @ 02:44pm

    I remember seeing a note from the defense lawyer saying they had cited the case, but the lower court just ignored it and claimed they hadn't cited anything. I'll see if I can find that...

  • On the post: Sega Takes Potshots At DMCA-Happy Nintendo While Being Cool About Fan Games

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 15 Sep, 2016 @ 04:43pm

    Re: Re: Yeah, about that...

    Funnily enough, copyright strikes don't age out. If they actually go back and get all them removed I'm willing to give them a chance, but until then no dice.

  • On the post: Sega Takes Potshots At DMCA-Happy Nintendo While Being Cool About Fan Games

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2016 @ 04:36pm

    Yeah, about that...

    Except SEGA is pretty notorious for handing out really nasty, frivolous copyright strikes on several YouTube gaming channels who were covering SEGA games, and only removing the strikes from the larger channels after they were called out on it. Last I checked, nothing was done for other users. TotalBiscuit refuses to cover any SEGA games since then.

    Oh hey, TD even covered this:
    https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130323/16493322431/sega-offers-half-hearted-non-apology-massive-youtube-takedown-promises-not-to-do-it-again-with-caveats.shtml

  • On the post: Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Sues Gawker For Pointing Out He Didn't Invent Email

    Christopher Best ( profile ), 11 May, 2016 @ 11:40am

    Re:

    I thought Gozer was the Destroyer?

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