A Dan 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The Video Game Industry Joins The Lawsuit To Save Net Neutrality

    A Dan ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 02:59pm

    Makes sense to me

    There's no way I'd be okay with Fortnite downloading weekly 1.5 GB patches, or downloading games which run around 30 GB, if I have a monthly cap I have to worry about running into. The game industry needs net neutrality, particular the prohibition of throttling and caps, in order for people to bother with electronic purchases and downloads. Expensive, slow, and metered connections may not kill mainstream gaming, but they'll certainly maim it.

  • On the post: Teenager Reports Laughable Flaw In Budapest Transit Authority's Ticketing System And Is Promptly Arrested

    A Dan ( profile ), 30 Jul, 2017 @ 01:26pm

    Re: "More ethical"

    That's not really an option, because then you don't know if there's also server-side validation of the price (which there should be) which would render the bug meaningless. If the price the website thinks it costs is completely ignored, there's no bug to report. The only way to figure out if a bug exists is to try it.

    You could argue that the person should have tested it at a slightly increased price, but that would mean he'd have to be planning to use the ticket. Spending $.20 on a ticket which won't be used is similar to buying a ticket which will be used at $.20 more than the ticket price. He spent money to test the flaw, he didn't steal money to test the flaw.

  • On the post: Comcast Expands Usage Caps, Still Pretending This Is A Neccessary Trial Where Consumer Opinion Matters

    A Dan ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 08:25am

    Where it really starts to add up

    Naturally, the things they don't talk to you about are the things that really add up. With games it isn't the gameplay that takes up large amounts of bandwidth, it's the installation. A few Xbox One games (like the handful that come free each month with Xbox Live Gold) really start to eat away at that allotment.

    Remember that one reason there was such pushback on Microsoft's attempt to kill physical discs was that we don't all have high-bandwidth plans with unlimited data to get our games.

  • On the post: Sony Locks Up The PSN Account Of A Man Named 'Jihad' Because You'll Never Guess Why

    A Dan ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2016 @ 08:08am

    Names and terrorism

    I'm surprised this wasn't already mentioned, but some college friends named their daughter Isis (after the Egyptian goddess) before all this Islamic State stuff happened. It wouldn't surprise me if people with that name start running into issues like this.

    Also in the interesting camp, my girlfriend's name is Renee. When she got her computer, Windows wouldn't let her set up a user account with her name, because it said her name contained profanity. She was able to set it up with a nickname, but it was very frustrating. We were never able to figure out what profane word was involved.

  • On the post: Anti-Piracy Informant Who Thought He Was A Paid Informant Sues Adobe For Not Paying Him

    A Dan ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2016 @ 11:21am

    Who Reports Piracy

    My assumption has always been that the typical informants are disgruntled employees looking to scorch some earth after departure. A quick Google search points to several articles claiming this to be the case.

    http://zbrella.com/financial-risk-never-considered-software-piracy/

  • On the post: Putin's Internet Propaganda War Is Much Bigger And Weirder Than You Think, Now Extending Into The States

    A Dan ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2015 @ 12:15pm

    Is this typical now?

    I see an army of non-logged-in posts, so that you can't really tell if any of them are the same person or see any kind of historical trends. I suppose this is part of why a bunch of sites have gotten rid of anonymous postings - at least with pseudonyms, even if someone has a bunch of separate ones, you can keep track of reputation somewhat.

    How do we foster good anonymous or pseudonymous discourse in the face of these kinds of attacks? Add "verified" accounts? There must be a way.

  • On the post: Google Rejects Postal For Google Play Store Due To Violence; GTA Games Still Available For Purchase

    A Dan ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2015 @ 01:17pm

    Re:

    There was a study I read about a while (a few years?) ago about violence and video games. What they discovered was that it wasn't violent games that caused people to respond aggressively/violently, it was frustrating games. I wish I could find the link, but some simple Googling isn't turning it up.

    Basically, I think the experimental evidence has shown that your comment is correct.

  • On the post: IRS Finally Examines Backup Tapes, Recovers 30,000 'Missing' Lois Lerner Emails

    A Dan ( profile ), 25 Nov, 2014 @ 09:11am

    What a coincidence

    Well, now that we're past the mid-term elections, it's a much more convenient time to have potentially-incriminating or emails come out. They have almost 2 full years to do damage control before the next election.

  • On the post: Behind The Veil Part 5: Comcast Metrics For All Employees As Simple As ABC, Always Be Closing

    A Dan ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2014 @ 03:01pm

    Typo

    In a manner consistent with, not manor (unless I'm missing a pun).

  • On the post: What Makes You Tell Others About Techdirt?

    A Dan ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2014 @ 10:17am

    More mainstream articles

    There are a few criteria that really determine whether I send someone a link to a story.

    1. Does it have a simple, obvious explanation which differs from other sites? Things like "No, [country] didn't really just [kill/embrace] net neutrality" or "No, [country] didn't just abolish software patents" are useful to send to people, because they tend to put the whole situation in perspective with background and an update for where we currently are.

    2. Does it need community knowledge? If a story has a lot of snide references to past stories, I will often avoid sending it to people. I recognize your meaning, but they will not. Talking about how something has been thoroughly "debunked" in the past is not always convincing. I don't want them to be put off and think the site is just a self-reinforcing single-narrative perspective. Anything that says "nobody said" typically falls into that same bucket. You may not have said it, but that doesn't mean nobody did.

    3. Does it have useful links to past stories? The lists of when things happened in the past, often included as several links-as-words in a sentence, are actually really useful for developing background.

    So it looks like the things that I am most likely to send people are stories that help build background on an issue without needing community involvement of any kind. I like the site, but I want anything I send to people to be as objective, informative, and professional as possible.

  • On the post: Language School's Blogger Fired For Writing A Post On Homophones; Director Fears Association With 'Gay Sex'

    A Dan ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2014 @ 10:41am

    Reminds me of another absurd reaction

    This is similar to the ignorant reaction when some high-profile people have used the word "niggardly", but it's even more absurd since "homophone" is a word in common usage. These people should not be running a language school.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Should Touch Typing Replace Cursive?

    A Dan ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2014 @ 08:38am

    Re:

    That paragraph was a nightmare. I took the test in 2003 or 2004, and even then most of us didn't know how to form several of the letters (because we hadn't used cursive in years). It took about half an hour for the single classroom's worth of kids to copy that paragraph. The proctor eventually told us to just make it up if we didn't know letters.

  • On the post: US Government Begins Rollout Of Its 'Driver's License For The Internet'

    A Dan ( profile ), 05 May, 2014 @ 12:56pm

    Re: Online ID

    Please spread this around anywhere you feel the message would be better-received than our "beware the government" message - The mark of the beast has staved off a USA national ID and RFID tracking of students, to some extent. Maybe it can help with this as well.

  • On the post: Boston Bombing Suspect Avoided CIA, FBI Because His Last Name Was Misspelled In DHS Database

    A Dan ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2014 @ 12:34pm

    Re:

    They're probably doing an exact match against the machine-readable zone at the bottom of the passport page. Since those are read extremely reliably by machines and have guaranteed transliterations, it's not really necessary to have that kind of matching - you know exactly the letters you need to be looking for.

    The likely issue is that the person entering the data didn't realize the spelling would be different between his typical name spelling and his MRZ name spelling. So, despite being correct, the data entered was not what it needed to be.

  • On the post: Boston Bombing Suspect Avoided CIA, FBI Because His Last Name Was Misspelled In DHS Database

    A Dan ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2014 @ 12:29pm

    Re:

    The worst is that it's not even a misspelling, it's just a slightly different transliteration of his name. It's like how '?' should be considered equal to both 'ss' and 'sz' if you're doing a good job. Their name matching was obviously not done well.

  • On the post: NSA Defender Rep. Mike Pompeo Attacks SXSW With Ignorant Misleading Diatribe For Having Ed Snowden Speak

    A Dan ( profile ), 10 Mar, 2014 @ 08:15am

    Re: I think someone needs to do more proofreading

    Beat me to it - typo in the article, using "pubic" instead of "public".

  • On the post: Luddites Are Almost Always Wrong: Technology Rarely Destroys Jobs

    A Dan ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2013 @ 09:25am

    ... So Far

    This is true at this time. I hope I am not alone in hoping that some day technology truly does destroy jobs. In my ideal world, "jobs" are not be necessary. If we can automate away our needs, everyone can do what they choose to do, instead of being forced into a job in order for themselves (and the economy) to survive.

    Yes, there are social changes necessary. I hope someday, due to advances in technology, they will happen. Jobs are a necessary evil, not something we should idealize.

  • On the post: NSA May Not Be Collecting Your Location Data From Telco Dragnet… Because It Gets It From Your GPS

    A Dan ( profile ), 30 Sep, 2013 @ 10:04am

    Re: Re:

    My first thought was OnStar as well. I would bet they have all of the data from it.

  • On the post: Microsoft's Great Patent Application: Xbox Achievements For Watching Advertising

    A Dan ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 06:29am

    Different types of "points"

    There are 2 different types of points on the Xbox. 1 is "achievement points" or "gamerscore", and the other is "Microsoft points". Microsoft points are what you can use to buy stuff. Achievement points are what you earn for completing pieces of games, and aren't actually used for anything (they're basically just an aggregate high score for yourself.)

    I would assume that this would reward you with Microsoft points, not achievement points. They already do something similar with small rewards through their Xbox Live Rewards program, which rewards you with Microsoft points for completing their survey each month; this sounds like a logical expansion on that program.

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

    A Dan ( profile ), 15 May, 2013 @ 03:38pm

    Hater!

    Timothy Geigner, you are a Hater!

    (I'm sure you were already a sinner.)

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