ethorad 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (440)

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

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2013 @ 01:54am

  Re:

  I think the "unPresidentable" running mate has been part of the gameplan for years. How else would you explain Quayle?
  
  My guess is it started as an insurance policy after the NSA shot Kennedy ...

• On the post: Blatant Intimidation: Glenn Greenwald's Partner Detained At Heathrow Under Terrorism Law, All His Electronics Seized

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2013 @ 03:58am

  Miranda's rights

  This is the sort of case that could lead to some requirement for the police to ensure that they're not breaching someone's rights when they detain them for questioning on an alleged offence.
  
  If they do, we could name them after Mr Miranda. How does "David rights" sound?

• On the post: Blatant Intimidation: Glenn Greenwald's Partner Detained At Heathrow Under Terrorism Law, All His Electronics Seized

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2013 @ 03:54am

  Miranda is lucky!

  After all, last time the police decided a brazilian was a "terrorist" on no grounds at all, they shot him 8 times as he threateningly sat on a train.
  
  If they try and claim he looked like a terrorist(?), they'll still have difficulty explaining why their questioning focused on Greenwald's reporting, not on any potential terrorist attacks.

• On the post: Cost-Benefit Analysis Of NSA Surveillance Says It's Simply Not Worth It

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2013 @ 08:57am

  Re:

  I think you'd get a call from your local friendly men in black to ask you some serious questions about a post you made on a subversive website

• On the post: NY Times Reveals NSA Searches All Emails In & Out Of The US; Will It Offer Up Its Source For Prosecution?

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2013 @ 01:07am

  Re:

  Wait, I thought that making a temporary copy of something, even if only for a few seconds while you view it and then discard the copy isn't permitted.
  
  Source: RIAA

• On the post: Sen. Feinstein During 'Shield' Law Debate: 'Real' Journalists Draw Salaries

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2013 @ 12:41am

  Re:

  I think Free Speech means anyone can report the news.
  
  Freedom of the Press means that the press should be free of government interference, being intended to act as a watchdog on the government.

• On the post: Pat Robertson: Murder Committed In Video Games Is No Different Than Real Life Murder

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2013 @ 08:30am

  Re: "sins"

  Problem is you are conflating these two items:
  
  - belief in God
  - inability to make a rational voting decision
  
  There are plenty of people around who are religious and yet manage to make a considered decision on who to vote for.
  
  Admittedly there are plenty of people who can't, but then religiousness isn't a defining characteristic. I would argue lack of education is a better filter.

• On the post: Survey: Most Italian Internet Users Think Ignoring Copyright Harms Publishers, But Not Society As A Whole

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2013 @ 03:10am

  Re:

  Well, except for Ellis "Only guilty man in Shawshank" Redding

• On the post: Australian Government Committee Suggests Circumventing Geo-blocking To Combat High Software Prices

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2013 @ 08:04am

  Re: Re: Re: Theft

  Iron Man stars Robert Downey Jr
  
  How did I do on non-sequiturs?

• On the post: Australian Government Committee Suggests Circumventing Geo-blocking To Combat High Software Prices

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2013 @ 08:01am

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  Agree that it might be beyond the control of the end seller (ie Apple in this example), however it's still a business choice by someone (ie the record label). The imposition of geoblocking there is an option, not a necessity.
  
  I take your point on legal restrictions on certain content though - at the risk of invoking Godwin's law, I know various continental Europe countries such as Germany ban Nazi/swastika/Hitler references a lot.

• On the post: Australian Government Committee Suggests Circumventing Geo-blocking To Combat High Software Prices

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2013 @ 04:17am

  Re: Theft

  Charging a different price because you can isn't theft.
  
  A form of price gouging maybe, but not theft.

• On the post: Australian Government Committee Suggests Circumventing Geo-blocking To Combat High Software Prices

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2013 @ 04:14am

  Re: Re:

  I would argue it's not "legal" compliance (and not really necessary)
  
  It's only a necessary business practice because the business has decided to do such a thing by replicating physical distribution networks online.
  
  As such, not necessary, and not legal. It's an option chosen by the various businesses.

• On the post: Australian Government Committee Suggests Circumventing Geo-blocking To Combat High Software Prices

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 31 Jul, 2013 @ 04:11am

  poor excuses!

  What a poor list of excuses they are offering:
  - relative market size. Australian population = 22m, Alaska and Hawaii each around 1m. Are they being charged much more than Australia? In fact only Texas and California have more people than Australia.
  - exchange rates. The 50% comparison is done on USD terms, so there's no exchange rate effect. Maybe a cost of converting currency but between AUD/ASD and on large amounts of money that should be negligible
  - wages. What wages? Most of the software/entertainment is created elsewhere so not impacted by Aus wages, and if it was created locally then an Aus wage effect would hit the price wherever it was sold. Plus I doubt Australians are paid 50% more than Americans ...
  - freight charges. For downloadable software? Plus for physicals ordered online, that should be covered in the shipping cost not the cost of the item. Also it doesn't cost USD20 to ship an individual game costing USD40 to Australia, much less cost that much when you're shipping a crate of them.
  - local sales taxes. Maybe, but sales tax in the US is around 10% say. This would mean sales tax in Aus is around 60%?
  - levies. Unclear what this is?
  - import duties. I think if there was an import duty of 50% on US entertainment, the MPAA and friends would be screaming blue murder by now.
  - maintain separate websites and servers. Really? You don't need to translate anything from the US version. As such it should be much easier to do for Aus than for, say, France where there is a different language. Hell, even the currency has the same name in Aus. For multiplayer games I can see you may want to have local servers to keep ping times down, but that's specialist - plus how about other far flung territories?
  
  Plus Apple's excluse about local copyright holders - how does that impact the price of the same good in US and Aus?
  
  To my mind MS is the most honest one there. Consumers can vote with their wallets by buying elsewhere, for example by buying Apple or Linux machines (the "can't because of geoblocking" is missing the point - you don't vote with your wallet by going to a different branch of the same store, you vote by going to a different store)

• On the post: An Open Letter To UK Porn Minister, David Cameron

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2013 @ 02:57am

  Re: Modern Advertising is the Worst Child Abusing Porn

  plus it's much harder to avoid adverts than it is to avoid pornography.

• On the post: If 'Just Metadata' Isn't An Issue, Why Can't Tech Companies Reveal 'Just Metadata' About NSA Surveillance?

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 19 Jul, 2013 @ 01:17am

  Snowden

  We've already seen their response to people releasing meta-data on their surveillance efforts. They're hounded across the world, pinned down in a Russian airport with sovereign planes grounded to try and find them.

• On the post: Rep. Justin Amash Pushing To Strip The NSA's Funding With An Amendment To The Defense Appropriations Bill

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2013 @ 08:36am

  I have a bad feeling about this ...

  I don't think cutting the NSA's funding will help matters.
  
  It only means they will have to turn to alternative sources of funding. They could try bake sales, but I don't think they have much in the way of cookie ingredients. What they do have is a huge amount of personal data on US citizens - which would be very valuable to any number of companies and ad networks out there.
  
  Think it was bad when the government had the data? It'll only get worse when everyone else gets a copy as well!

• On the post: Anyone Brushing Off NSA Surveillance Because It's 'Just Metadata' Doesn't Know What Metadata Is

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2013 @ 01:07am

  Re: How to explain?

  The official explanation seems to be:
  
  Metadata is data which describes other data and is thus completely harmless. As an example, Snowden didn't release any of the actual data held by the NSA, only information about it - thus he only released metadata which is ... completely ... um ... harmless ... hang on, scratch that. Guys? We need a better explanation!

• On the post: The NSA Turns Everyone Into A 'Threat To National Security' By Instantly Classifying All Data It Scoops Up

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2013 @ 12:59am

  Re:

  If only King George III had listened to his people at the Royal Security Administration and picked up harmless metadata on everyone in Boston we could have avoided a lot of fuss.

• On the post: If Only Ed Snowden Worked On Wall St. He'd Be Free From Prosecution Risk

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 04 Jul, 2013 @ 06:33am

  Re: Re: Is it a Joke

  Quite, Jimmy Saville would beg to disagree with you there.

• On the post: Bolivian President's Jet Rerouted On Suspicions Snowden Could Be On Board; Multi-Country Outrage Ensues

  

  ethorad ( profile ), 03 Jul, 2013 @ 04:18am

  Re:

  Saying that Snowden is forbidden from landing in the UK is quite different to saying he can't even overfly UK airspace.
  
  After all, if the aircraft is currently in Austria - a landlocked country - it can essentially be grounded by other countries.
  
  To my mind, overflight permission for non-military flights should only be denied in carefully controlled circumstances.

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