Eponymous Coward 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Court Shuts Down NYPD's Argument That When Searching For Black Male Suspects, Any Black Male Will Do

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 28 May, 2015 @ 07:38am

    Re: Re: Re:

    You're thinking of Blackstone's formulation, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"

    It places a much higher value on preservation of rights, as it should be.

  • On the post: Court Shuts Down NYPD's Argument That When Searching For Black Male Suspects, Any Black Male Will Do

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 28 May, 2015 @ 07:33am

    Re:

    Ooh, Worst-Case Scenario, the Home Version, I love this game!! My turn.

    What happens when, in case 1 or 2, the cop performing the search is too busy violating his oath and the citizen's rights to notice the bug meteor that is heading their way? His diverted attention allows the meteor to continue unimpeded, and when it strikes the ground it vaporizes 3 million soup kitchen workers and one very unfortunate alpaca named Constance. Sadly, the illegally detained citizen was a super scientist who was seconds from finishing his anti-meteor shield, and had he been able to get to his lab on time we would have been spared this horrible, alpaca-rending fate.

    I'll always win this game, because your vision of unreality is too limted.

  • On the post: President Obama Rolls Back Some Police Militarization… Police Flip Out

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 20 May, 2015 @ 06:17am

    Re: Not Enough

    .30 caliber machine guns, cluster bombs, and landmines are still good to go, folks. Protestors on Main Street? It's MOAB time!!!

  • On the post: Border Patrol Agents Tase Woman For Refusing To Cooperate With Their Bogus Search

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 May, 2015 @ 09:36am

    Re:

    Nope. Reacting firmly and, if need be, aggressively, to police overreach lets them know right up front that the interaction isn't going to be dictated by them.

    Let the civil servants be civil. A person who is within their rights and doesn't want to be bothered should be commended for giving overreach the finger.

    I will commend the police in the second video for doing their jobs properly and not acting like I completely expected them to.

  • On the post: Apple Trying To Kill Off Spotify's Free Tier; DOJ Now Investigating For Antitrust

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 05 May, 2015 @ 09:53am

    Re:

    Once upon a time, I got an iPod. It was shiny and new, held a lot of music, and the earbuds were both physically and acoustically painful, appealing to my masochistic streak.

    One day, I wanted to plug my iPod into my work computer to listen to some tunes through my powered speakers. iTunes, which I had installed on my work computer expressly for this purpose, told me I'd need to wipe my iPod if I wanted to pair it with my work computer. According to Apple, I didn't own the music I'd bought through iTunes, not even the music I'd ripped from my own CDs and put on my iPod, as I couldn't use it as I wished.

    That night I downloaded dopisp, closed and uninstalled iTunes, and never looked back. I lived happily ever after.

  • On the post: President Obama Signs Executive Order Saying That Now He's Going To Be Really Mad If He Catches Someone Cyberattacking Us

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2015 @ 09:56am

    Re:

    Considering the level of data theft (err, "gathering") that the NSA has accomplished, along with their physically tampering with hardware, insisting on backdoors in otherwise secure systems, etc., I would say that we know where this order should first be applied.

    We have met the enemy, and they are us.

  • On the post: Government Pays $18k To Journalists Whose Tank Plant Photos It Deleted

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2015 @ 12:01pm

    Re: Re: Re: $18,000, pfah!

    Wouldn't surprise me if the Blade refused to engage its own legal team beyond the absolute minimum and let the RCfFotP do the heavy lifting.
    So, "donated".

  • On the post: Government Pays $18k To Journalists Whose Tank Plant Photos It Deleted

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2015 @ 07:28am

    Re: $18,000, pfah!

    In a stunning show of generosity (seriously, I'm in Toledo and the Block family isn't known for their largesse), none of the settlement monies are going toward legal fees. $5K to be donated to the Reporters' Committee for Freedom of the Press, the remainder split between the plaintiffs.

  • On the post: Texas Lawmaker Wants To Make It Illegal To Film Cops From Less Than 25 Feet Away

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2015 @ 06:21am

    Re:

    Thank you, Walter.

  • On the post: Bell's Brewery Goes After Craft Brewer Over Trademark It Barely Uses & Hasn't Registered

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2015 @ 06:09am

    Re: Vote with Your Wallet

    Right there with you. I think they get a disproportionate amount of love for the quality that they produce. Founders' beats them at every turn.

    They just lost the small amount of business that they had from me.

  • On the post: Government Pays $18k To Journalists Whose Tank Plant Photos It Deleted

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2015 @ 05:55am

    I'll volunteer to be next

    My father worked at the GD plant in Lima for several years in the 80's, and carried a security clearance as he worked on the armor systems. Each year they'd host a family day at the plant, including tours, demonstrations, and completed tanks set out to check out and walk around. There were plenty of cameras around, and I remember taking a number of pics myself.

    As the amount of information that 12 year old me gathered is staggeringly superior to what the Blade staff had to surrender, I would like to invite their security staff to come and intimidate me. I'm a bit doughy in spots, so my masculinity could be assailed, and so long as the eventual settlement is large enough I could be coerced to hand over some grainy Polaroids featuring the non-classified assembly areas and proving grounds.

  • On the post: White House Celebrates National Freedom Of Information Day By Making Office Of The Administration Completely UnFOIA-able

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 17 Mar, 2015 @ 06:51am

    Re: Re: Re:

    I wish I could give this more insightful votes. Every four years the office of the president promises the world:
    - I know you've had enough, and you deserve better
    - It's all going to change
    - I will respect you
    - The lying is done
    - No more reading your emails when you aren't looking
    - No more following you when you go out with your friends
    - I know it's OUR money, and I'm going to start treating it like it's OUR money

    Then, once the happy glow of reconciliation fades, the old habits come back and we realize that they never really left.

  • On the post: State Dept. Employees Only Retained .01 Percent Of Emails As FOIA-Able 'Official Records'

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 13 Mar, 2015 @ 07:50am

    The solution

    I believe we now have a worthwhile use for the NSA's Utah data center. They can repurpose the facility to store all the info that our government should be saving, rather than all our info that they should be leaving the hell alone.

    Judging from the track record, government officials can confidently hand over ALL emails, secure in the knowledge that nothing illegal will ever be uncovered once it's sent to Utah.

  • On the post: Down To Just A Few Possibilities: President Obama Either Lied Or Is Ignorant About The NSA

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2013 @ 10:22am

    Re: What abuses, specifically?

    Oh, and when the term "abuse" refers, as in this case, to a violation of the Constitution, it removes a lot of the subjectivity.

    The "they didn't mean to" defense has already been trotted out, like a five year old standing by the broken cookie jar.

  • On the post: Down To Just A Few Possibilities: President Obama Either Lied Or Is Ignorant About The NSA

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2013 @ 10:15am

    Re: What abuses, specifically?

    Abuses like collection of data from US citizens without warrants, violating our Fourth Amendment rights. Thousands of these per year. Abuses like this same data being passed along to numerous government agencies with instructions to 'launder' it so that it's harder to trace the info back to the NSA.

    As to controls, you'll need to do a bit of your own catch-up reading to see how little oversight, much less follow up on abuses, has existed.

    TL;DR... Big stinking piles of abuses, with nothing but shitty damage control from the government.

  • On the post: Released Video From Silva Beating Shows His Last Moments; Video Of Actual Beating Still Missing

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 23 May, 2013 @ 08:04am

    Re:

    It can mean the difference between murder and manslaughter, or between murder and aggravated murder, but in any case the direct actions of LEOs appears to have caused the death of a citizen.

    With pepper spray and tasers readily available, I see this as a complete and utter failure to use the appropriate response to a noncompliant subject. Hell, with 9 of them, they could have just dog-piled onto the guy and subdued him with their sheer weight while someone got cuffs on him. Close enough to strike with a blunt object is close enough to use multiple other tactics to subdue, especially when fully equipped officers are dealing with an unarmed person.

    I truly hope they burn for this savagery.

  • On the post: As Prenda Hearing Nears, We Discover Allan Mooney Has No Clue That He's Listed As Representing Prenda Shell Companies

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2013 @ 11:01am

    Re:

    Well, Steele and Hansmeier have certainly performed a textbook cockup on this case to date. You don't get perfect form like that without some guidance.

  • On the post: SimCity: The Backlash

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2013 @ 07:08am

    Re: Re: Re: To any Frustrated Aussies

    Wow, so that law means that EA can't kill the servers in a few years without a barrage of refund requests?

    If it were me, I'd demand the repair option. Sorry EA, but screw you and turn the servers back on. You broke it, now fix it. Maybe that sort of forced commitment to legacy support would actually get them to rethink this always connected nonsense.

  • On the post: New Hampshire Politicians Want To Make 'Satellite View' On Maps A Criminal Offense

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2013 @ 08:25am

    Re: Man-made objects

    Don't forget sports arenas, furrows in fields, highways, exhaust plumes from industrial sites, canals, retention ponds and reservoirs, dams, airports.

    Gonna need some shitty optics to take aerial photographs without crossing the man...

    Bob Ross in a hot air balloon would be out as well.

  • On the post: Bestselling Author Of Children's Books Accuses Public Libraries Of Stealing His Paychecks

    Eponymous Coward ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2013 @ 12:34pm

    Re:

    Sort of a meta-Quixote there. Tilting at wind, as it were.

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