egftechman 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: More States Get Dumb, Introduce Laws Requiring ID Verification To Access Porn

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2023 @ 01:05pm

    Apparently this year's NFL championship game's halftime show was pornographic https://sports.yahoo.com/rihannas-halftime-show-reportedly-drew-most-of-the-fccs-103-complaints-about-super-bowl-lvii-broadcast-153858765.html

  • On the post: More States Get Dumb, Introduce Laws Requiring ID Verification To Access Porn

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2023 @ 12:26pm

    Exactly

    What is the definition of porn. I remember one local school district where the students were blocked out of the official anatomy curriculum online textbook at school because their filters determined it to be inappropriate. (scarier that since the school district of about 2500 students had no tech people on staff and outsourced everything, it took weeks to resolve that)

  • On the post: More States Get Dumb, Introduce Laws Requiring ID Verification To Access Porn

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2023 @ 12:22pm

    Will wikimedia commons require ID?

    search favorite porn terms in wikimediacommons and one can find quite a bit.. How about 'lingerie' pictures in etsy? Do state laws apply to sites hosted outside the state? A good way to kids to learn how to tunnel their traffic through ssh, VPNs, and learn all about proxy server settings...I remember always on the lookout for open proxy servers back in the 1990s so I could get around a corporate firewall and traffic logging, and also using a shell account included in my home isp service to do ssh tunnels to my ISP to get around filters...nothing preventing kids today from using multiple free DigitalOcean trials and AWS free tiers and doing the same without spending a dime.

  • On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

    egftechman ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2023 @ 09:38am

    Exactly what happens with minimum wage

    "Conservatives: LET THE FREE MARKET DECIDE Free market: decides Conservatives: this is outRAGEOUS" Yep..This is exactly the conversation on local talk radio over the years... Conservatives in 2012: "There shouldn't be a minimum wage, let the market decide wages" Market: needs to pay fast food workers $15/hour to find enough help to stay open Conservatives in 2019: "I say McDonald offering $15/hour, You can't pay burger flippers that much"

  • On the post: Bad News For The Internet: Congress Looking To Sneak In Dangerous ‘Save The Kids!’ Internet Bill Into Year-End Omnibus

    egftechman ( profile ), 17 Nov, 2022 @ 02:38pm

    Who determines

    Who determines what is appropriate for children?

  • On the post: Conspiracy Channel OAN Tries To Survive Using Over The Air Antennas

    egftechman ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2022 @ 06:38am

    Only one thing will matter to broadcaster pitch

    As long as OAN stays within the FCC rules for content over public airwaves (no Janet Jackson incidents), the only thing most FCC broadcast license holders (the broadcasters) will look at is what kind of revenue can adding the network give them. Are they able to sell it locally (are there local ad insertion breaks and will the local sales staff be able to sell the channel), do they get revenue sharing from the national ads, will OAN simply buy the time on their channel?

  • On the post: ‘Dozens’ Of Broadband Providers Ripped Off Low Income COVID Relief Program, FCC Says

    egftechman ( profile ), 19 Sep, 2022 @ 08:36am

    You don't say

    Offer lots of money with very little oversight and greedy people will abuse it? Could have never predicted that.

  • On the post: Colorado Residents Lose Control Of Their ‘Smart’ Thermostats, Swelter In 88 Degree Heat

    egftechman ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 12:01pm

    Things would have to be pretty dire to drop frequency by a detectable amount on a consumer electronics device (to get that accuracy you need test equipment with TCXOs, etc.), and the idea would be to control devices BEFORE that the frequency starts dropping.

  • On the post: Colorado Residents Lose Control Of Their ‘Smart’ Thermostats, Swelter In 88 Degree Heat

    egftechman ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 11:57am

    Do you have a citation for that?

    I say that first hand as a electric distribution utility operator. Everyone cooling their house down in late afternoon (16:00 was just an arbitrary time I picked, around the time people start coming home from work/school and the thermostat senses there are people in the home) add to the late afternoon peak that already "organically" occurs, from the overlap of people doing things at home and businesses still running. When peak generation needs to be dispatched quickly, it comes from thing like gas turbines and diesel engines, which add to emissions produces by electricity generation.

  • On the post: Colorado Residents Lose Control Of Their ‘Smart’ Thermostats, Swelter In 88 Degree Heat

    egftechman ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 08:04am

    People who use the phrase “back in the day” should be punched.
    As my high school social studies teach would say..Those who fail to study and learn from history will be repeating it.

  • On the post: Colorado Residents Lose Control Of Their ‘Smart’ Thermostats, Swelter In 88 Degree Heat

    egftechman ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 08:02am

    RE: This isn't new

    Rural electric coops in North Dakota and Minnesota have been doing this since the 1970s as a way to manage demand peaks to save wholesale costs and also encourage electric appliances so they can pay for the miles of lines between customers. In fact, the municipal electric utility I work for used to install time clocks on certain loads in exchange for bill credits in the 1970s. That moved to remotely controlled relays (via power line carrier messages) in the 1980s and now is part of the meter mesh network.

  • On the post: Colorado Residents Lose Control Of Their ‘Smart’ Thermostats, Swelter In 88 Degree Heat

    egftechman ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 07:55am

    EXACTLY

    In fact, smart thermostats without utility directives actually add emissions and grid instability. If everyone has their smart thermostats cool down their house before they come home from work, all of a sudden there is a large number of air conditioners (or electric heat in winter time) at 4:00 PM, which is coincident with the "natural" daily peak demand period, causing more "dirty" peak generation to be used and stressing transmission systems.

  • On the post: Colorado Residents Lose Control Of Their ‘Smart’ Thermostats, Swelter In 88 Degree Heat

    egftechman ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 07:15am

    They didn't lose control of their thermostats

    They signed up for a program with their utility where they get an incentive to allow the utility to control their AC during peak demand periods. It's called Demand Side Management (DSM), Load Management (LM), or Demand Response (DR) depending on utility. Essentially instead of dispatching x watts of gas turbines or diesel engines (i.e. generation that can be quickly turned on/off) to meet the peak demand, x watts of load is shed to meet current generation capability. They did not have their air conditioners turned off, but rather they were set to 78-80 degrees F for the few hours. This was the first time they had this level of control in 6 years. Not as dire as they are making it out to be. I implement, operate, and maintain such systems for an electric utility. We don't currently have a smart thermostat program but do offer air conditioning and water heating programs where install a remotely controlled relay and we cycle the load during high demand periods (so only like 25% of them are active at any one moment), and our customers seldom notice we are even controlling. I wonder how many of Xcel's customers would have noticed if there wasn't a message on their thermostat.

  • On the post: U.S. Appeals Court Affirms Disney Win Against Evel Knievel Estate Over Toy Story Character

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 08:51am

    Hate to say it...

    I hate to say it, but I have to be on Disney's side on this one. How may fictional characters are developed taking traits from real people? Pretty secure to say most of them. If the set precedent that anyone can sue for being an "inspiration" for all or part of a fictional character, it will stop creation of new literature, screenplays, etc.. There are 7 billion people on this earth, to create a truly original character that has zero likeness to any of them would be an impossible feat.

  • On the post: HBO Max And Sesame Street Highlight The Stupidity Of Mindless Media Megamergers

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 08:39am

    They do realize those are the products they are selling?

    The whole idea of services like HBO+ is to sell access to shows and episodes they own rights to, correct? So if they cut out access to shows and episodes, they've just cut a selling point to consumers. Next quarter, they'll be confused as to why subscriptions are dropping...

  • On the post: HBO Max And Sesame Street Highlight The Stupidity Of Mindless Media Megamergers

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 08:31am

    Exactly...

    yea..the whole electronic communications infrastructure thing that made the original AT&T is going the way of the buggy whip...oh wait...You mean they could have stuck to that and still been one of the largest, most profitable companies in the world? They've actually lost money trying to broaden their business beyond their core? Has to be a team of MBAs behind that...

  • On the post: HBO Max And Sesame Street Highlight The Stupidity Of Mindless Media Megamergers

    egftechman ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 08:24am

    "growth for growth’s sake"

    "growth for growth’s sake" That has killed more companies than anything. Instead of sticking to their core business and doing it well, after MBAs (who usually are clueless to the core business, even though they'll say they are "experts" in that sector) take over it all becomes about quarter over quarter gains and making news on the financial pages, especially after a company becomes publicly traded in our automated, daytrading era..

  • On the post: Biden Broadband Event Showcases Why U.S. Telecom Policy, Press Coverage Is So Broken

    egftechman ( profile ), 13 May, 2022 @ 06:44am

    No mention of...

    No mention of the billions of taxpayer money essentially given to the major telecoms on the promise to build out fiber to the premise going back to the 1990s, and the telecoms not following through...rolling out things like DSL instead and pocketing the remainder of the cash for C-suite bonuses and not replacing aging infrastructure. - cable in the ground or on a pole has a lifespan of about 50 years, by the 1990s, a good portion of that was well beyond that at that time and still hasn't been replaced today. One of our business partners has a T-1 line coming into our operations center, and the last time it went down, it took the CenturyLink tech over a day to find two good pairs back to the CO, about a mile away (partner still won't do a VPN off our redundant fiber connection to a CLEC, with a WISP and cable backups).

  • On the post: OAN Throws A Hissy Fit After Being Axed By AT&T, DirecTV

    egftechman ( profile ), 25 Jan, 2022 @ 07:05am

    Why does OAN care?

    They keep picking on the "main stream media", isn't ATT, etal. part of what they are against?
    Pretty much every TV sold today is a "smart" TV, why don't they throw all their eggs into direct streaming and encourage people to dump traditional media distribution entirely?

  • On the post: Google, NBC Bring Dumb Cable TV Blackout Feuds To Streaming

    egftechman ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2021 @ 09:38am

    Local NBC Station

    Would all NBC affiliates be removed from YTTV or just the owned and operated ones?

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