DB 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (653)

• On the post: DailyDirt: Food Shortages

  

  DB ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 10:16pm

  Yes, there is plenty of food.
  
  No, we don't need to starve ourselves to feed the world.
  
  Every place there is a widespread lack of food, it's caused by politics or war preventing the food from reaching the people.
  
  Sub-Sahara Africa? Relief food rots at the dock, while tribes are starved for control in 'civil wars' that look more like genocide. North Korea? The wealthy, productive South is well fed just a few miles away.
  
  When I've tried to track down the claims that most of the food produced is 'wasted', it's usually repeating someone that misinterprets or deliberately misreads the numbers, or uses a definition of 'wasted' that isn't what you expect.
  
  As an example, most of the food you eat is 'wasted'. If you reduced your food intake to the point of almost starving, your body will use the food it has more efficiently. You'll be miserable, ineffective, and you'll be obsessed with food. Do you want to use that definition of 'wasted' to justify putting most of humanity in that condition? If so, there was extensive research on the subject in Axis concentration camps during WWII. 600 calories per day will keep most people alive, but over 900 calories is needed for them to do labor that isn't physically intensive.

• On the post: Prenda's Mark Lutz Doesn't Show Up In Two Key Cases, Has A Reason But Won't Share Because People Might Discuss It

  

  DB ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 07:49pm

  There seems to be an assumption that Lutz will be filing a declaration about what happened, and that there will be a future hearing that Lutz must attend.
  
  I don't see that in the record.
  
  Prenda applied for leave to file a sealed statement/excuse about why Lutz didn't show, and a sealed affidavit. The court said neither wouldn't be sealed, and an affidavit wouldn't substitute because cross examination couldn't be conducted.
  
  Prenda isn't going to file an excuse (e.g. "week long bender, but now staying at my sponsor's house") if it doesn't get an uncontested affidavit on the record.

• On the post: Prenda's Mark Lutz Doesn't Show Up In Two Key Cases, Has A Reason But Won't Share Because People Might Discuss It

  

  DB ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 06:50pm

  It's more likely that he was "tired and emotional".

• On the post: Prenda's Mark Lutz Doesn't Show Up In Two Key Cases, Has A Reason But Won't Share Because People Might Discuss It

  

  DB ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 04:24pm

  A added note: Notice that the only natural person originally associated with AF Holdings was a mystery 'Alan Cooper' with an Arizona address associated with Steele. That started falling apart at the beginning of 2013. Prenda couldn't very well have the real Minnesota Cooper deposed, so they threw attorney Hansmeier up as the corporate representative.
  
  Using Hansmeier was _great_ idea. He wasted 8 hours with non-answers, making it obvious that further efforts would be an expensive dead end. It was so effective that it left no doubt as to where the bodies were. But even saying nothing risks revealing info. With no time to construct a back-story, Hansmeier used Lutz's name in the deposition. That may have been a spur-of-the-moment decision, or forced by circumstances -- they simply didn't have any other person to use.
  
  From that point on Lutz was doomed to be the front man, not just the "1099" corporate representative that didn't know where his own poorly-signed check was from.

• On the post: Prenda's Mark Lutz Doesn't Show Up In Two Key Cases, Has A Reason But Won't Share Because People Might Discuss It

  

  DB ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 03:47pm

  Lutz is more of a bill collector for Duffy's law firm rather than a paralegal or corporate executive. Pretty much "telephone muscle". Evidence suggests that Duffy hired him during a rough period where Lutz was fighting DUIs and arrests for driving with a suspended license -- some of those warrants are still outstanding.
  
  Lutz continued his telephone role when Duffy (AKA Prenda Law) bought into Steele and Hansmeier's shake-down scheme. For the cases Prenda pursued directly (which meant that didn't have to split proceeds with local attorneys), Lutz was often the one on the phone making threats to cost the targets 'everything they owned' in legal fees if they didn't settle.
  
  Lutz was only presented as a corporate figurehead when the Prenda lawyers had to pretend there was an actual client. They couldn't put up a lawyer, as that would be quickly found out. But even then Prenda couldn't rely on Lutz and always had to have support sitting behind him, whispering answers in his ear. (Quite literally in the Florida case.)
  
  It should have been predictable that Lutz wouldn't show in San Francisco. Or voluntarily in any case or deposition. Prenda can't allow him to be questioned without limiting the questions and rehearsing the answers.

• On the post: Texas Deputy Sues 911 Caller For Not 'Adequately Warning' Him Of Potential Danger Or 'Making The Premises Safe'

  

  DB ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2013 @ 11:10am

  "you are completely wrong. 99.999999% of the population"
  
  Apparently we have a really weird sample of world population. Because most people here think *you* are wrong.
  
  The only sensible way to calculate "1/4 the temperature" is converting to a zero-based scale, and then converting back. You don't need to use Kelvin, but pretty much everyone with a science education would use it.

• On the post: What NSA Transparency Looks Like: [Redacted]

  

  DB ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2013 @ 03:53pm

  "have shared so much with us"
  
  Don't you mean "have shared the complete list of abuses with us"?

• On the post: Why Trader Joe's Suing Pirate Joe's May Be Bad News For Ownership

  

  DB ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2013 @ 03:17pm

  One detail that I didn't understand was the comment about perishable good having stronger or different trademark protection.
  
  Is there a cite to this?
  
  If 'Trader Joes' can exist in the same region as 'Farmer Joes', I don't see how 'Pirate Joe' can create any confusion. The standard is 'reasonable person', not 'easily confused (it's my job) lawyer'.

• On the post: Gun Runner Uses Instagram Account To Sabotage Own Criminal Enterprise, And Bloomberg Still Thinks It's A Win For Stop And Frisk

  

  DB ( profile ), 27 Aug, 2013 @ 12:17pm

  Errrmmm, didn't that quote prove S-n-F fails?

  That phone transcript just showed that real criminals can and do easily evade stop-n-frisk.
  Even ones that are so dumb they post their criminal enterprise online.
  
  It also helps me understand why the program is so offensive. If you can afford a car, you can pretty much avoid being subjected to 'random' searches.

• On the post: Ed Snowden Covered His Tracks Well; How Many Other NSA Staffers Did The Same?

  

  DB ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2013 @ 10:53am

  The press stories were written for a non-technical audience. The congressional briefings were probably at the same level.
  
  It's likely that searches were done through a designated application, which produced the logs and audit trail. If you didn't use that application, no logs were produced.
  
  This approach is pretty much required with massive databases. Imagine a 1TB database is on a network file system, and the whole database needs to be scanned to get possible matches. You can record the query, which is probably a single line of text, you can record the results, which could be millions of records with an unexpectedly loose search, or you can record ever block read, which would be a very large list of every block in the file.
  
  So it may be that the possible set of compromised files is every one that his machine had access to.

• On the post: Guantanamo Bay Authorities Ban Solzhenitsyn's 'The Gulag Archipelago'

  

  DB ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2013 @ 06:02am

  Shutting down the extra-judicial prison at Guantanamo Bay was one of Obama's campaign promises.
  
  Once he came into office, that promise was abandoned.

• On the post: AP Claims Copyright Over Manning's Request For Pardon

  

  DB ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2013 @ 03:19pm

  Automated addition of copyright claims is pretty common in computer programs.
  
  An egregious case was /bin/true in Unix. It can be implemented as an zero-length file, but was originally implemented as a single blank line. Almost every commercial Unix took this empty file and tacked on a copyright notice. Some had up to five notices.
  
  I always hoped that there would be a court ruling that such blatant automated blind copyright claims made all similar claims invalid. Copyright is only properly applied to creative work. An mechanically added claim is the opposite of that.

• On the post: Dumb Criminal Tries To Pass Off Ice Blocks As iPads For Fun And Profit

  

  DB ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2013 @ 03:22pm

  Misunderstood 'dry ice'

  My guess is that the planned scam was sending blocks of dry ice that weighed the same as a packaged ipad. The originating post office would weigh the package, affix postage based the weight, and insure as specified.
  
  When it arrived at the destination, the dry ice would have sublimated with no evidence remaining. The recipient would open the box at the post office, and immediately file a claim, with the original weight and much lighter empty box as evidence that the contents were stolen en route.
  
  It's a workable plan, if you get all of the proof points right. But... using regular ice... wow, you missed the point.