A Dan 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (623)

• On the post: Far Beyond Filtering: Is The GOP Looking To Shut Down Porn Producers?

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2012 @ 09:27am

  Re:

  What's funny is that the candidate who was saying he would use obscenity laws to go after porn, Santorum, was soundly defeated in the primary. Why would they then take up his crazy stance?

• On the post: Disruption Starts With A Foot In The Door: Amazon's New Data Plan Is Limited But Potentially Revolutionary

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2012 @ 02:16pm

  Re:

  From my kindle over 3g!

• On the post: Disruption Starts With A Foot In The Door: Amazon's New Data Plan Is Limited But Potentially Revolutionary

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2012 @ 02:06pm

  Wrong info

  "Amazon has included mobile data before in its Kindles, but those were strictly for books"
  
  That is incorrect. I have a Kindle with 3G, and it comes with a web browser that works on 3G. They limit the amount of data you can use web browsing per month, but it has it. And it's free (not this price-per-year stuff). I'll attempt to post here from my Kindle in a few minutes.

• On the post: Shocking Revelation: It Isn't The Phone That's Dangerous; It's The Driver

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2012 @ 07:47am

  Typo

  "to break harder" should be "to brake harder"

• On the post: Oxford Professor Says Mankind Is Ethically Obligated To Create Genetically Engineered Babies

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2012 @ 12:01pm

  Science Fiction

  There's a particularly good short story section of Larry Niven's "The Draco Tavern" dealing with this sort of thing.
  
  A species genetically engineers a yeast-style organism that will act as a contraceptive. Unfortunately, the yeast causes complete infertility after a few generations. Since the species failed to limit the changes in a contained experimental area, their entire population is wiped out.
  
  This can obviously be extrapolated to the human population. If we experiment with things like trait selection, we could end up wiping ourselves out because of problems we don't foresee. It would be nice if we'd perform our genetic experiments (with ourselves, our food supply, diseases) in a way that they couldn't completely destroy our species.
  
  No, I'm not a luddite. But we shouldn't turn future humans into bananas, just waiting for a well-suited plague to kill us all.

• On the post: New Documents Show That Feds Share License Plate Scanning Data With Insurance Firms

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2012 @ 07:05am

  Re: Re:

  The same argument you're using is an argument used for spying and throttling/capping of internet connections. It's an attempt to get us to turn on each other instead of the corporations screwing us over. Don't take the bait.

• On the post: Why Targeted Online Political Ads Can Be Dangerous To A Campaign

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2012 @ 02:52pm

  Direct mail

  I find myself far less likely to vote for national candidates that send direct mail. More-local candidates that send direct mail make more sense, since I wouldn't likely know their positions otherwise.
  
  Cases in point:
  
  I get junk mail from "Romney For President" because I'm registered Republican. I would never vote for him for president (though I voted in the primary). They're wasting their money. They even ask you to put your own postage on donation envelopes so they don't have to pay it. That's led me to consider sending it back empty.
  
  My girlfriend gets junk mail from "Obama For President" because she's registered Democrat. All the direct mail they send her talks up his Obamacare and Immigration policies, the two things she most dislikes that he's done. The junk mail has almost let me convince her to vote third-party in the election.
  
  I don't think these political groups know what they're doing as much as they think.

• On the post: Is Being Rich And Arrogant Against The Law? The RIAA & MPAA Seem To Think So

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2012 @ 11:35am

  Re:

  I like "Don't throw stones in glass houses without proper protection."

• On the post: Netflix Provides 'Knock-offs' After Contract With Disney Ends

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2012 @ 07:20am

  Re:

  And Blockbuster. It's always fun to see "Transmorphers" next to "Transformers".

• On the post: The Silencing Of Guy Adams Gives Another Graphical Representation Of The Streisand Effect

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2012 @ 03:27pm

  Streisand Effect

  Once again: seeking to stifle speech online is only likely to give that speech much, much, much more attention.

  
  
  We really don't have any idea how often the censorship is effective; we generally only hear about the cases where it's successfully protested. I would presume that it's effective a lot of the time, or else the "reputation management" companies that do it would be completely out of business.

• On the post: Amazon Hides Classic Free Public Domain Ebooks

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 12:55pm

  Re: Re: Re: Pirate them

  The Subject says "Pirate them"

• On the post: When Every Practical Economic Idea Is Political Suicide, Something's Wrong With Politics

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 11:21am

  Re: Suggestion #5 is utter nonsense

  In the episode, a carbon tax was an example of taxing things that we want to reduce the use of. Think of it separately as energy-usage tax to encourage energy efficiency.

• On the post: When Every Practical Economic Idea Is Political Suicide, Something's Wrong With Politics

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 11:14am

  Re: Hmmm

  That probably isn't on the list because their "broad range of political backgrounds" economists don't agree on it. The things on this list are things that shouldn't be controversial. Our level of military intervention in the rest of the world has always been controversial.

• On the post: Harlequin Authors Sue Publisher Over Creative Royalty Calculations

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 01:55pm

  Re: Re: Thanks for defending the artist for a change

  See this one for the same thing done by the Music Labels:
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml
  
  And this one for Movie Studios:
  http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100708/02510310122.shtml
  
  And now we have book publishers. As it turns out, they're all crooks.

• On the post: Harlequin Authors Sue Publisher Over Creative Royalty Calculations

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2012 @ 01:48pm

  Re: Thanks for defending the artist for a change

  What about all the coverage of Amanda Palmer? Or the older coverage of Kevin Smith? Techdirt loves content creators and hates "gatekeepers". I highly doubt you're actually confused about that.

• On the post: Chuck Close Succeeds In Stifling A Creative Homage… But Only For Another 100 Years Or So!

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2012 @ 09:09am

  Making a new one

  This doesn't seem like it would be a particularly impossible filter to recreate. Anyone want to get Internet-famous?

• On the post: Excerpt From Rob Reid's Year Zero; Plus A Chance To Win The Book

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2012 @ 02:05pm

  Re:

  A more impressive "iPhone trick" would be if they made it stop dropping calls.

• On the post: Excerpt From Rob Reid's Year Zero; Plus A Chance To Win The Book

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2012 @ 01:56pm

  Re: Re: Let the shameful attmepts for votes begin!...

  aliens*
  
  If you're going to pointlessly correct someone, at least do it right!

• On the post: You Don't Own What You Buy, Part 15,332: Cisco Forces Questionable New Firmware On Routers

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2012 @ 02:07pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  But isn't that what "Cloud" means?
  
  (I don't tend to trust cloud services.)

• On the post: You Don't Own What You Buy, Part 15,332: Cisco Forces Questionable New Firmware On Routers

  

  A Dan ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2012 @ 12:52pm

  Re: Re: Re: Eh.

  They come with two versions of firmware: the dd-wrt version and the "User-Friendly" version. I had very poor results with my recently-purchased router, especially compared to my old reliable WHR-G54S.

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