fogbugzd 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: Not Quite Google Glass

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2015 @ 08:55am

    It sounds a lot like the design philosophy of pebble watches. It doesn't try do do everything. Battery life is still an issue.

    This plus a Raspberry PI could be an interesting combination.

  • On the post: Internet Industry Hate Taken To Insane Levels: Ridiculous Proposals To 'Nationalize' Successful Internet Companies

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2014 @ 08:19am

    Big tech companies are disruptive. That makes them unpopular with older, established companies who are not happy that their reign is threatened.

  • On the post: Emails Show Cozy Relationship Between Comcast Execs And DOJ Antitrust Folks; Party Invitation Blocked By 'Rules Folks'

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2014 @ 10:51am

    Does anyone else remember Obama's pledge not to employ lobbyists? I don't remember the details. It was long, long ago and apparently in a galaxy far, far away.

    It does seem that our new Corporate Overlords seem like friendly folk. At least we've got that going for us.

  • On the post: As All Its Big Trade Agreements Grind To An Awkward Halt, Canada Aims To Make TPP Even More Secretive

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2014 @ 11:01pm

    The backers of the trade agreements should learn from their failures in this round. Allowing governments and third party "stakeholders" to be involved in the negotiations causes far too many problems. In the future the major corporations should work out the details among themselves. Then have fast track approval put the agreements into effect. Governments and citizens can see the contents after the agreements are ratified and become law. This would cut out the arguing and angst and give about the same results as the current system.

  • On the post: Australian Police Confiscate Pastafarian Man's Guns Because He Posed For His ID Card Wearing A Colander

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2014 @ 06:32am

    Re: As a holder of a ThD...

    No Pastafarian has ever used his religion as a reason to bomb an abortion clinic or fly an airplane into a building.

  • On the post: Verizon Math Strikes Again: Promises 2 Years Of Free Data Access To Chromebook Users; Delivers Just 1

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2014 @ 08:40am

    Wonderful. Class action. That means that the lawyers will make a fortune. Customers will probably get something like a $10 credit toward the purchase of a new data plan from Verizon.

  • On the post: Eric Cantor's Surprising Primary Loss May Spell Trouble For The NSA

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 11 Jun, 2014 @ 07:27am

    You should feel free to spin it any way you want. Every political pundit out there is reading this set of tea leaves to say whatever they want.

  • On the post: Zombie Apocalypse? The Pentagon Has A Plan

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 15 May, 2014 @ 05:49am

    I used to work in city government. We had a history of being hit by tornadoes, and we took disaster planning and disaster drills very seriously. Most of the disaster drills involved tornadoes. We got hit with a couple of real disasters that were not tornadoes when I was there. It turns out that the tornado drills had provided us with experience in any type of disaster, even if it wasn't remotely related to what we had trained for.

    The lesson I learned was that it was important to train for disasters, and it didn't really matter what type of disaster you were planning for. Many skills, especially communications, will come into play in any disaster. We developed contacts with other agencies, we collected maps and information resources. My first year there we discovered we had a shortage of barricades for blocking streets. A few years later we discovered that even though we had bought barricades, they had been loaned to another city after that city had a disaster and we had not gotten the barricades back.

    I think training or planning for zombies or space aliens or anything else is perfectly fine. In any type of disaster there are going to be similar issues you have to think about -- communications, evacuations, traffic and crowd control, emergency housing, distributing food and water, and medical community support. The important thing is to plan and train for disasters. The Zombie Apocalypse may sound frivolous, but it forces the participants to think and exercise their response skills. If it is a bit bizarre it is also going to force the participants to think a bit outside the box.

  • On the post: US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' Patent To Amazon

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 08 May, 2014 @ 04:43am

    At first I was surprised that the patent omitted the phrase "one click" of the camera. Then I realized they already had a patent on that part of the process.

  • On the post: Medialink Threatens Customer With Lawsuit For Writing A Negative Amazon Review

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 07 May, 2014 @ 08:07am

    Lots of people rely heavily on Amazon reviews. The comments are a great asset for Amazon. Sometimes I even check the Amazon reviews before buying in a brick and mortar. Last week I was doing that and ended up just buying the item from Amazon because they had a brand that I liked better than anything I was finding locally.

    Amazon really can't afford to have companies like this damage the reputation of its review system. It will be interesting to see if they take any action on this particular situation.

  • On the post: Larry Lessig Launches Crowdfunded SuperPAC To Try To End SuperPACs

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 01 May, 2014 @ 09:42am

    It sounds like he is channeling his inner Steven Colbert.

  • On the post: DOJ Morality Police May Be Behind Chase Closing Bank Accounts Of Adult Film Actors

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 01 May, 2014 @ 06:21am

    The feds are probably just practicing. Once they get the kinks out of the system, get the banks used the closing accounts on request, and get precedents set to "protect the children" then they can go after the real targets. Suspected copyright infringers are probably next. Then they can move on to political dissent.

  • On the post: The Stupidity Of Installing Bloatware That No One Uses… And Everyone Hates

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2014 @ 07:26am

    I bought a Nexus directly from Google because I loathe bloatware. I was furious that it came with HP printer software. To add insult to injury it updates very frequently.

  • On the post: The Cost Of Permission Culture: Or Why Netflix Streaming Library Sucks Compared To Its DVD Library

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2014 @ 08:44am

    It is easy to see why the movie and recording industries are in love with the windowing model.
    *It used to work so well and was extremely profitable.
    *The careers of many industry executives was built around clever manipulation of the windowing model.

    Those are very powerful reasons for keeping something around. Of course, there are some downsides:
    *Windowing does not make nearly as much sense give a global internet
    *It is no longer as profitable as it used to be. In fact, it is probably reducing profits.
    *It encourages piracy.
    *Its existence may threaten the survival of the industry in its current form.

    For inbred corporate insiders, none of those reasons are good enough to change a way of doing business that you know and love.

  • On the post: Innocence Of Muslims Actress Says Court Should Ignore Copyright Office Rejecting Her Copyright Claim

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2014 @ 08:05am

    Re: Re: This is...

    >Hopefully it will land on a judge who understands the implications of letting Garcia have her way.

    Given the current state of affairs, I have slim hope of any currently sitting judge understanding copyright or the implications of bad copyright rulings. However, there is a very good chance the judge will be an ex-MPAA attorney, and I'm sure the MPAA wants this ruling to go away as quickly as possible.

  • On the post: Building A More Decentralized Internet: It's Happening Faster Than People Realize

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2014 @ 02:25am

    >>One of the things that you will see, if you study the history of innovation, is that this is exactly how it always happens. The early projects may have some minor successes here and there, but are littered with failures. But the amazing thing about a rapidly changing world where people are doing things in a decentralized and open way is that each of those failures only contributes to the knowledge for future projects, in which more and more people are testing more and more things, getting closer to hitting that point in the "innovator's dilemma" curve, where the new systems actually serve people's needs much better than the old way.

    This is exactly why software patents are such a terrible idea. The whole process breaks down if the first person patents the idea. The chances of real progress are greatly diminished if the first person gets a patent. With the patent office and East District of Texas finding that it is OK to patent general ideas the situation is even worse because someone will be likely to patent the original idea in some vague form and never even bother to produce the essential first failure. Yes, it is probably unfair that later innovators eventually reap most of the profits from early essential failures, but that is the price of progress. And in fairness, even those early failures were almost certainly produced on the backs of other, more distant failures.

    I singled out software patents as being especially bad, but that is mainly because the pace of software innovation can be so rapid in the absence of software patents. "Design patents" are another case where the patent system blocks innovation, or as the constitution says, promoting progress in the arts and sciences. In practice, most patents are bad because they stifle progress which is the opposite of the purpose stated in the US Constitution.

  • On the post: Microsoft-Sponsored Study Says Problems Caused By Using Windows Software Will Cost Businesses $500 Billion In 2014

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2014 @ 04:42am

    The concept of the "Year of the Linux Desktop" is something of a running joke in the open source community. It is to the point where no one in the Linux community will dare declare next year as the Year of the Linux Desktop.

    But honestly, the time has finally arrived when we really need a year of the Linux desktop. The technologically challenged should probably be running Linux Mint with a Cinnamon desktop instead of Windows. Linux in any GUI form would keep our grandparents out of many of their computer troubles. The more technologically proficient can find a version of Linux that will meet their needs and preferences.

  • On the post: Hollywood Hires New Person To Make Same Old Mistakes In Fighting Against The Future

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2014 @ 07:08am

    >>any time you see someone insisting that "the answer" to dealing with widespread infringement is "more education," you know that you're dealing with someone who is either ignorant, or not particularly serious concerning the issue.

    The third alternative: Someone has figured out a way to make a healthy salary from pandering to the IP industry and their fears of the copyright boogeyman.

    In retrospect, I should have gone into the snakeoil business years ago.

  • On the post: Animator Sues Disney For Allegedly Ripping Off Her Short Film For Its 'Frozen' Trailer

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2014 @ 05:30am

    This could be interesting. If Disney wins it could set some nice precedents about copying ideas as opposed to actual expression. Could we please get a ruling that says "A moose is not rabbit?"

    I suspect Disney will go for a settlement rather than risking a winning a case that might weaken copyright.

  • On the post: Judge Otis Wright Slams 'Made Up' Government 'Plot' Designed To Ensnare Gullible Poor People

    fogbugzd ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2014 @ 08:26am

    I have noticed a disturbing trend that some parts of the government trying to criminalize poverty. Meanwhile other parts of government are promoting policies that increase number of people forced to live in poverty.

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