Fred McTaker 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Perhaps The Real Problem With Newspapers Is All That Extra Overhead…

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2009 @ 06:13pm

    Re: Unions

    The "Worker UNIONS" you blame are a direct and natural result of the main layer of fat in the traditional news industry: Industrial Mass News production, and the resulting treatment of workers as replaceable chattel. I generally consider myself fairly libertarian, but when Corporatist "Conservatives" and "Libertarians" rattle on about the bane of Unions, I just think it's their own fault and they deserve every problem Unions create for them. Corporatists made the political will for Unions possible, via their extreme disregard for the labor that makes their business operations possible. I'm no Communist, in that I think a means for equitable reimbursement for value improvements in any given line of business are possible within the bounds of Secular Democratic Capitalism (yes there are many forms of non-Democratic capitalism, usually called Fascism, or China), with the help of government-enforced accounting transparency. But I also think any industry 'plagued' by Unions deserves everything Unions impose on them, because it was their own unethical behavior that provoked unionization. Treat your most valuable assets like loyal employees correctly, and you wont get the same problems. Any business under 'threat' of unionization should concentrate on the same problems the Unions are attempting to solve, rather than setting up the Unions as straw-men for baseless and counter-productive attacks on their own staff.

  • On the post: AT&T, Google Spat Over Google Voice Blocked Calls Is Important… But Totally Misses The Point

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2009 @ 03:30am

    Re:

    "you think the government can pay to have fiber put in?"

    Yes, I do. What most people don't realize, especially Anonymous Cowards, is that taxes don't just go to government. When government grants any kind of monopoly to a corporation, that is a tax that you pay directly to that corporation, but they get to call it a "fee" instead of a tax. Governments often give them part of their tax money as well, in the form of a "subsidy." They both try to hide that fact that our tax dollars are going to private profits, by claiming these monopolies are a "service", as if they were optional. Let's take a survey of how many people think "services" like water, electricity, roads, insurance, health, and phones are "optional". If there are above 20% of people who think these things are seriously optional, and still maintain full-time employment, then I'll stop calling them taxes.

    I would rather have these taxes go to elected representatives and public servants, not local monopoly CEOs. I would rather have my ISP taxes spent in ways I can vote on. Right now we have what I call "taxation without representation." Does that ring a bell?

  • On the post: Patent Holder Takes A Second Crack At Toyota Over Hybrid Technology

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2009 @ 03:08am

    Re: Re: Re: License? What License?

    You're full of crap. Name the researchers that "pointed out that many inventions would never have existed without the existence of patents". I would like to laugh at them for claiming "X would have never existed without Y", and still calling themselves researchers (certainly this broad supposition proves their "research" has no scientific merit). That is, unless they had a time machine. Then I want to see the time machine.

  • On the post: Google Destroyed Missent Bank Info Email Unopened… As More Legal Questions Are Raised

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2009 @ 02:28am

    Re: Why are they emailing such information?

    @dwind: Your statement carries the assumption that physical mail is any more secure than electronic messaging, and that assumption is false. There's plenty of ways to surreptitiously read both mediums, without either the sender or receiver knowing about it. Faxes and phones can also be tapped, and thus are equally insecure. The only safe form of communication is encrypted messaging, where the receiver has exclusive access to the primary key. PGP and SSL are the standard methods, and can be applied to any medium, though they are applied most easily to email and web communications.

  • On the post: Google Destroyed Missent Bank Info Email Unopened… As More Legal Questions Are Raised

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2009 @ 02:04am

    Re: Re:

    "1. DO NOT use Google for ANY sensitive email at all period - I have already changed my bank over to another email address - my ISP."

    Ha! If you trust your ISP any more than Google, then you fail at life. The point is not to send ANY unencrypted confidential data over insecure (read: ALL) lines. Anything short of end-to-end encryption can't be considered confidential. If you think your ISP wont go into CYA mode the moment they get a court order, you're bound for disappointment.

    "2. Avoid that bank at all costs"

    The is the real lesson to be learned. You can't fault any business for following court orders. You can only fault the business who distributes confidential information willy-nilly over insecure means.

    You can't blame IE for that spyware you click-installed, you can't blame email for that drunken rant to your ex, and for the same reasons no one can blame Google for anything that happened in this Bank vs. Doe case.

  • On the post: See, The Palm Pre Can Be Offered For Free

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2009 @ 01:48am

    Nokia N900

    Watch for the Nokia N900 soon. Their developer base will be anyone who programs anything for Linux, and is willing to do a Hildon port for the GUI. Otherwise, Maemo isn't very different from Ubuntu.

  • On the post: Doctors In Tennessee Have Been Faxing Patient Info To The Wrong Place For Years

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2009 @ 01:35am

    Re:

    I noticed the obvious parallels to the Bank vs. Gmail vs. Doe story as well. I wasn't going to repeat myself, but Mike's last line about confidential information going over fax lines got me riled up again. The problem isn't just that the fax went to the wrong place. The bigger problem is that every phone line and exchange involved in those faxes had access to the same confidential information. Anyone with the right phone tap or phone equipment access at the right time has full access to that same confidential information, without anyone else necessarily knowing about it, even when it does go to the correct receiver.

    To all you technophobe bureaucrat idiots who want the convenience of modern communications without any of the responsibility: no communications medium can EVER be considered truly confidential unless it is encrypted, and only then when the receiver has exclusive access to the primary key. If you don't understand simple terms like PGP and SSL, you should assume all your communications can be tapped and recorded, by anyone at all who has a reason to care. If you are responsible for any confidentiality in any exchange, and you don't use end-to-end encryption in that exchange, you have failed and deserve to be sued. Criminal negligence should be the least of the charges brought against you, especially if you operate in a bank or hospital.

    Phones can be tapped and recorded by anyone with determination and half a brain. Email is like a postcard -- everyone with any equipment involved in the message hand-offs can read it clear as day. Anyone with access to the lines in between can tap and record the email, just as easily as a phone conversation. In real space, envelopes can be seen through, opened and closed, without anyone on either end knowing about it. Fingerprint dust can even pick up traces of the ink writing that touched the sides of the envelope, well after the letter has been taken out. Anyone with any physical or visual access to writing can copy it with impunity, until the medium containing the writing is thoroughly destroyed. Trash belongs to no one, and can be read by anyone. Faxes are no more secure than phone conversations -- they can be tapped, recorded, and replayed with impunity. Very little sophistication is required in the process. Your cell phone is even easier to tap -- it can be tapped by anyone in radio receiver range of the same cell tower as you, with the right equipment (which just requires money, not intelligence).

    The most sophisticated aspect of comms taps, like the ones the NSA has on the entire world, is automated message post-processing. The only thing that separates the NSA from anyone with any electronics knowledge is the ability to filter through billions of communications, based on keywords (via email, OCR, or automated transcription/translation), and voice print recognition, all without any human involvement. That is the feature that allows them to tap a single trunk at a single AT&T office, and still get nearly every trans-national communication ever made, without needing to tap or control every individual ISP. They can break weak encryption, and good encryption just slows them down. In essence, their only real advantage is the sheer magnitude of their processing resources. Otherwise spying is easy, and anyone can do it.

  • On the post: AT&T, Google Spat Over Google Voice Blocked Calls Is Important… But Totally Misses The Point

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 28 Sep, 2009 @ 01:30am

    Re:

    There are plenty of free conference call services, including those that are handled entirely in VoIP space, and thus don't involve any telco charges whatsoever. Google should just direct you to one of those. Google Voice already supports Gizmo VoIP accounts as a call-in option, and Gizmo VoIP already has a similar free conference call service.

    AT&T is just whining because they want to keep their telco monopoly cake and don't want to share, neither with the rural telcos nor Google.

  • On the post: AT&T, Google Spat Over Google Voice Blocked Calls Is Important… But Totally Misses The Point

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 28 Sep, 2009 @ 01:22am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Thanks to the AC for the link to the older article on this subject! It's amazing to me that this was a prominent problem with telco regulation, appearing in WSJ articles 2 years ago in October 2007, yet it still hasn't been properly addressed to this day.

    On benefiting rural customers: that argument is a load of bunk. The rural telcos have large one-time costs initially in infrastructure roll-out, but if they did it right then that cost is paid for early, within the first year or two. Then they continue raking in the cash well over their maintenance costs, after the build-out was already paid for, by bilking both the rural consumer via monopoly subscription rates, and the remote outbound telcos via termination fees. These fees are called monopoly rents, and these telcos are exhibiting standard rent-seeking behavior, and such fees are never good for anyone except the monopoly owner.

    Google deserves no blame here. If anything, the FCC should react to AT&T's complaints by fixing the telco monopoly problem, including the big one created by AT&T. Telcos in general pay for the infrastructure once, but get paid for it several times over, way over and above any actual maintenance costs. Lets just make them government contractors instead: hire them to build the Internet "Highway" and "Surface Streets" to our homes. Once those high-bandwidth "roads" are built, they only get paid for basic route maintenance, and nothing more. No more vertical integration, where they get to charge monopoly toll fees for audio or video, or data streams of any form. Anyone should be able to use their delivery services on these bandwidth "roads". These "roads" shouldn't belong to the builders after they are already built and paid for -- they belong to the public. Abolish the telco monopoly tolls.

  • On the post: Obama Finally Appoints IP Czar… Puts It In The Wrong Department

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 28 Sep, 2009 @ 12:54am

    Started with Clinton

    Most of the reasons people complain about the Obama Administration and Democrats more generally are pure B.S., based more on [sub]conscious racism than any sane reading of the facts; but this is one area where even I have a problem with current Whitehouse policy. They are continuing the long and false premise of the [Bill] Clinton Whitehouse, that somehow the USA can't advance on economic and structural superiority alone, and thus they have to browbeat foreign nations into accepting and paying for false Idea Properties, in unequal (in the USA's favor) exchange for real [scarce] goods and services. The funny thing is, the world is already kicking our collective asses in terms of IP claim rates. If they wanted to make "Fair Trade" international economics into a game of exchanging made-up properties for real ones, they already lost that game.

    Basically, they see the fallacy of "Fair Trade" as it currently exists, and seek to fix it by forcing China and other backwards societies to agree to cane all their street media vendors, on behalf of the good ol' US of A. I'm surprised we haven't heard any reports of A/V media pirates being waterboarded until they admit they love the DMCA, yet.

  • On the post: Bank Sends Confidential Email To Wrong Address, Hauls Google To Court To Figure Out Who Got The Email

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2009 @ 11:25am

    Re:

    For future reference, this legal notice trumps everyone else's legal footers:

    By sending an email to any of my addresses, or any lists that I am subscribed to, you are agreeing that:

    1. I am by definition, "the intended recipient"
    2. All information in the email is mine to do with as I see fit and make such financial profit, political mileage, or good joke as it lends itself to. In particular, I may quote it ruthlessly.
    3. I may take the contents as representing the views of your company.
    4. This overrides any disclaimer or statement of confidentiality that may be included on your message.
    5. Even if you only see this legal notice once, it still applies to all our communications.
    6. Unless the email is both signed and encrypted via PGP, with public/private key pairs that can only be attributed to two distinct owners, the real sender and recipient can never be determined with any certainty. All legal representations about any plain-text email are
    thus null and void, including this one.
    7. All hate mail will automatically be forwarded to please.arrest.me@fbi.gov

    Loosely derived from:
    http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.588844.18


    To all Banks, everywhere: if the message isn't PGP encrypted using the intended recipients' Public Key(s), you can't be sure they will be the only readers. EMAIL IS NOT A MEDIUM FOR SENSITIVE INFORMATION, EVER. Email a link to an HTTPS/SSL encrypted site, and require secure authentication. You can't fix a breach afterwards, especially if you committed the breach.

  • On the post: Patent Holder Takes A Second Crack At Toyota Over Hybrid Technology

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2009 @ 01:08pm

    Re: License? What License?

    "patents will drive more parallel innovation and perhaps someone else will find a better system."

    The whole "parallel innovation" argument for patents is baseless. There is no evidence suggesting that parallel innovations didn't already happen without patents. There is proof that patents stifle incremental innovations -- where a good thing is made better by someone other than the original item inventor. Patents don't only grant monopolies over ideas -- they grant monopolies over all derivative, corollary, and additive ideas as well. That creates much more harm than any "parallel innovation" can counter.

  • On the post: Patent Holder Takes A Second Crack At Toyota Over Hybrid Technology

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2009 @ 01:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Any Examples?

    Patent lawyers read patents. Everyone else avoids reading them, because if a court proves you both read a patent and violated it, the penalties are much bigger than if you just violated it without knowing. This is one area where law codifies privilege to ignorance.

  • On the post: Google Working On Micropayment Scheme To Help Newspapers Commit Suicide Faster

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2009 @ 12:19pm

    Re: it's the good kind of conspiracy

    I think it's funny that you bring up the term "charity" sarcastically here. I was just thinking that I hope Google follows through with the micro-payments system, not just because it will give bad newspapers just the right kind of rope to hang themselves with, but also because I think online micro-donations would be a really good option for most charities. I know I would personally spend a lot more on small donations to charities, political groups, and artists than I do with lump donations now.

    I also know first hand the per-transaction fees with most online payment systems makes selling ANYthing online for under $4 really impractical, even when shipping is not a concern. The credit card companies really bilk the small businesses for each transaction. Imagine artists being able to set up their own iTunes-alike stores, selling individual tracks for $1 or less. The lower the barrier to entry on these purchases and donations, for both the consumer and the small site operators, the better.

  • On the post: Wouldn't The Last Thing We Want During A 'Cybersecurity Emergency' Be For The Gov't To Take Over Private Networks?

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2009 @ 06:36pm

    Re:

    An Anonymous Coward with a Conspiracy Theory. Just another day on the Internets.

  • On the post: Wouldn't The Last Thing We Want During A 'Cybersecurity Emergency' Be For The Gov't To Take Over Private Networks?

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2009 @ 02:09am

    Re:

    I saw the same comment on Digg, where apparently the GOP/Libertarian knee-jerk crowd has been having a hissy fit over this. I'm surprised to see the Techdirt crowd is susceptible to the same "death panel" GOP spin BS.

    FTA:
    """This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks. To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a "government shutdown or takeover of the Internet" and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false."""

    An attack is an attack, whether the source is foreign or domestic. Saying the Executive Branch of government doesn't have the authority to take out a network server being used in a cyber-attack, just because it's on a domestic or corporate network, is akin to saying they don't have the right to take out any domestic terrorists caught in the act, just because they're attacking from their own turf. In the case of cyber-attacks, the attack source may not be intentional -- the cause may be a previous infection with a bot, trojan, or worm, but the effect is the same. If any network source is attacking core U.S. network infrastructure, the ability to cut that connection is necessary. Just ask Estonia.

    In any case, this isn't even a finished Bill. Read the actual Bill before jumping to conclusions, as I'm sure Obama will before he signs anything.

  • On the post: Moving To A Single Currency… Or Lots Of Local Currencies?

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2009 @ 07:23pm

    Re: We already have a World-Wide currency

    Gold is a metal, not a currency. Using it as a currency inflates its value, which is a net harm because gold is a really good electrical conductor, so its most efficient use value is demonstrably in the form of electronics. Converting it into exchange trinkets is a total waste of time and energy. Resetting the world to the time when gold was used as an exchange trinket, to track the value of other (possibly less-useful) things, is a horrible idea. Currency with broad public oversight that strictly follows Real Bills Doctrine beats metal value tracking any day.

    If we have any current world-currency, I would argue it's the international electronic currency/market exchange system itself. Different services have different exchange rates and fees, but if you took an average or mean of current exchange rates, you can basically figure out the worth of any one currency via the mean of all currencies it can be converted to, and examples of products and services that it can be "converted" to, at any point in time. This would include conversion to hard goods, like gold, which have conversion values that vary wildly over time. With enough exchange information access, you could automate the calculation, including cross-checks and failsafe calculations. With some exchange markets, you can even pin down value to the second, though expanding the stability time frame would make it more manageable.

    You could make up an imaginary currency based on broad averages in these exchange markets -- let's call it "Mean World Currency" or MWC for short. The only thing keeping it from becoming a real currency is whether one or more exchangers will take it in exchange for another currency, or some asset with equal value. They would have to agree to only "create" more MWC when given another currency or asset of equal current value, and to "destroy" it when converted back to another currency or asset.

    Let's just say all the currency exchangers agreed on some central MWC calculation standard, and agreed to exchange equal MWC amongst themselves freely. A central MWC authority would help arbitrate exchange disagreements, but for the most part MWC standardized exchanges happen naturally without much disruption. Then you could go to any exchange service, convert your local money into MWC for a small fee, and go to any other exchange, and get another locality's currency out for their current MWC exchange rate.

    Going further, let's say that the MWC authority decided to allow exchange via printed bills, as well as electronically. Electronic exchange of MWC could happen just like money is "wired" between banks and credit payment services now. Bills could be printed cryptographically with a face MWC value, and a hidden MWC exchange key. That bill's face value could be exchanged to electronic MWC currency, to a bill holder's designated account, at bill key-reveal time. The bill would be destroyed/recycled from there. In between printing and key-reveal, anyone with certified bill-inspection equipment could confirm that the bill value matches face value, and the bill key-guard hasn't been tampered with, and thus exchange it as paper currency. In the era of online banking, the bill-inspection equipment could be almost any trusted computer/smart-device with a camera or other key-guard inspection device. Destruction errors wouldn't be a big issue, as the bills would cease to exist from the exchange database as soon as they are converted at key-reveal time, so really they are "destroyed" more in an electronic/database sense than a physical one. Copies would be worthless, as the key would be hidden behind the key-guard, and made impossible to copy until conversion time. Premature key-guard tampering would constitute destruction without transfer, but the full value would revert to originating account. This would prevent the same value loss from the system that occurs when treasury documents are destroyed before exchange.

    This model doesn't have to be used at a world-wide level. This same model could be used for a national currency exchange with smaller locality currencies. I think currency stability would increase by greater exchange aggregation level, but I'm sure there's some economist who could prove that better than I can. The main point is that you could have both locality and wider currency exchange systems coexisting. The biggest sticking point is consumer confidence in any given currency or exchange system. The U.S. Dollar is losing mine, and a metal standard wouldn't change that at all. You can't survive by eating metal, and the best foods rot too fast to maintain stable valuation. A *stable currency* is better than either for market exchange, no matter if it's made of electrons or paper. Anything else is just reversion to barter.

  • On the post: Is Getting Access To Competitors' Presentations Claiming To Be An Indy Blogger Corp. Espionage?

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2009 @ 03:04pm

    What prevents multi-job holders from being in "The Press"?

    It seems like the world may be moving from factory-model employees to free-lancing and contract work. Short of that, it seems like more people will be doing multiple jobs: their factory-model job during the day, and their small Internet operation at night for example. So at what point do we stop defining people as "Boeing Contractor" or "Freelance Journalist", and start providing a list of all current and former non-private activities, or even hobbies (which become "freelance work" the moment someone pays them for it)?

  • On the post: Federal Courts Sound The Alarm Against RECAP; Worried About PACER Profits

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2009 @ 02:49pm

    Executables can always be altered

    The worry that executables can be altered by nefarious third parties isn't limited to open source applications at all. Plenty of trojans/malware come in the form of altered proprietary (no public source access whatsoever) executables and drivers. This is where the whole term "trojan" came from - short for Trojan Horse, where in this case the horse is made of an application you know and love instead of wood, like Windows drivers or notepad.exe. That's why the open source community advocates cryptographic signing ALL applications, open source or otherwise, so that you can independently confirm that the source and binaries came from a trusted provider. So giving a warning, about confirming that applications came from a trusted source, isn't bad on its own. The assumption that such precautions should only apply to open source applications is complete FUD-mongering.

  • On the post: Patent Office Insider Funnels $500k To Minister

    Fred McTaker ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2009 @ 10:59am

    Re: Re: Re: Corruption?!

    I know sarcasm doesn't translate well to text, but I hoped the combination of '?' and '!' might be a clue. Putting everything in the form of a question should also make it less declarative. I'm glad Chrono got the joke at least. I have that pirates/global-warming chart on a coffee mug, praise noodles.

    As far as questions about causation go, you don't have to look very hard for instances of bribery in the USPTO leading to illicit granting of far reaching monopolies. These include monopolies and Oligopolies that manage to extend beyond the initial patent term, with the help of an outrageous 25-year head start. Lax concerns from regulators like the SEC and FTC, especially about "vertical" market integration and consolidation, also creates a situation where a monopoly in one small part of a market leads to total integrated market control. This case wasn't one of those, as it didn't involve a patent examiner, but it should still help provide a clue to issues inside the USPTO, to those who are less versed in its long and painful history.

    To answer my own question, no one is paid enough to avoid temptation. Temptation has a higher exchange rate than ethics.

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