John85851 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1635)

• On the post: Supreme Court Asked To Determine Whether A Drug Dog Touching A Car With Its Paws Violates The Fourth Amendment

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2023 @ 01:17pm

  What happens if it's you?

  Let's say a drug-sniffing dog has a positive alert on your car. The police then arrest you on suspicion of having drugs. You then spend a weekend in jail, and you might have to pay a few thousand dollars for bail. You then may lose your job because you've been accused of being a drug user. Then you have to pay tens of thousand dollars for a criminal defense lawyer. But then in the end, the lawyer is able to have the evidence thrown out, and the court rules that you never had drugs in the first place, so you're not a drug user. And look, you're completely innocent! But isn't it a good thing that the police arrested you and put you through all this cost and inconvenience since they should treat everyone as criminals?

• On the post: G/O Media Gives Another Crash Course On Perils Of Replacing Human Journalists With Half-Baked ‘AI’

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2023 @ 10:53am

  I don't blame AI for making mistakes

  I really don't blame AI for making mistakes with Gizmodo's articles since even I have a hard time parsing their article click bait headlines and sentences. What can an AI really do with "Major Ashoka Star Wars cameo you definitely missed at the five minute mark". Who's "Major Ashoka"? How did "Star Wars" make a cameo appearance?

• On the post: South Dakota Looks Like It Might Be The Next State Asked To Explain Its Stupid Vanity Plate Laws To A Federal Court

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2023 @ 01:57pm

  Yes, but how much money does the DMV get for personalized plates? Even if it's a few hundred thousand dollars, they may not be so quick to cancel personalized plates and give up that income.

• On the post: Rudy Giuliani On The Hook For $120,000 In Legal Fees In Libel Suit He Already Admitted (In Court!) He Lost

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2023 @ 11:13am

  Trump will save the day!

  The judgement and fine don't matter because President Trump will arrive any second now, pardon Rudy, and save the day! Just you wait and see! Trump will make everything right so his loyal followers won't have to suffer their fate. I wish that was sarcasm, but I really wonder if people like Rudy believe it. Could this be why he doesn't care about openly admitting he defamed someone?

• On the post: Florida Prison Confiscates Newspapers After Deciding Puzzle Game Might Be A Way To Send ‘Coded Messages’

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2023 @ 11:34am

  Coded messages

  I've seen plenty of movies and TV shows were the bad guys send coded message to inmates by using the classified sections of the newspaper. The classified ad looks innocent to everyone, but the crook can decode the message and plan his escape. I guess the prison staff watch too much TV and never considered that no one uses newspapers to send coded messages, never mind using the classified ads.

• On the post: Push To Strip Fox’s Broadcast License Over Election Lies Gains New Momentum

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2023 @ 05:24am

  I think I'm missing the point

  What does pulling the license of a FOX affiliate in one city have to do with stopping the lies from FOX News? I'm sure that affiliate spends more time broadcasting FOX TV shows than the news. Okay, sure, pulling the license of one affiliate in one city could lead to pulling of licenses in other cities. But again, what's the point if these channels are mostly showing TV shows? The real problem is the flagship FOX News cable channel, which the FCC can't touch. After all, how many people get their GOP news from a local affiliate compared to the cable channel?

• On the post: Paramount DMCAs ‘Star Trek’ Fan Project, Apparently Deaf To The History Of ‘Star Trek’

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2023 @ 05:04am

  Playing devil's advocate

  Here's another argument: people pay Paramount for the ability to make and sell licensed Star Trek stuff. They have to go through legal clearance to make sure the Star Trek property is treated with respect. Then someone comes along and makes a big book without authorization and gets a lot of attention for it. How does this make the people who paid for a license feel? Why did they need to pay when other people can write a book without needing a license? Okay, sure, this book was given away for free, but still.

• On the post: The Pillow Guy Unveils Nonsensical Plan To ‘Monitor’ Imagined Election Fraud With Drones

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2023 @ 10:53am

  This starts with a false premise

  Whenever someone like Lindell starts talking about stopping "election fraud", every single person in the room should demand proof of this "fraud". There have meetings many, many studies and investigations showing there was no widespread fraud in the previous elections. Maybe there was some fraud here and there, but again, it wasn't enough to change the results. So if there's no significant voter fraud, we need to ask why anyone wants to prevent something that doesn't exist. Instead, the media gives this guy attention for his novel idea, and even people here are talking about the technical specifics about why it work work. It won't work because there was no voter fraud in the first place.

• On the post: Sexy Sandwiches: PornHub Goes After Kebab Shop Over Signs, Logos

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2023 @ 12:19pm

  Copying logo styles

  I think there's a case to be made about intentionally copying another company's logo and font style. Is it legal? Like people are saying, of course it is, as long as the companies are different. But is it right and ethical to take someone else's branding and apply it to your own company? Would Disney sue me if I used the distinctive Disney font in my company's branding? You know, the font that everyone associates with Disney, but which I'm using to get more attention simply because of the font's association with Disney?

• On the post: Techdirt Has Again Been Removed From Bing And (Mostly) DuckDuckGo

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2023 @ 05:26am

  Why did it happen?

  We're you able to get ahold of anyone to explain why the site was delisted? Is it really just an "oops" or is there a person setting the search results to not return the site? And of course, there's the usual statement: if it's happening to a site as large as yours, who else is this happening to?

• On the post: Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2023 @ 11:45am

  Also...

  DeSantis also removed a Democratic district attorney about a year ago for similar reasons. But this time, this district attorney is an African American woman that was voted in by about 2/3 of the vote. It's my hope that DeSantis will get a lot of push back over this, even if all the (white) Republicans are falling all over themselves to suck up to him. You know, how all Republicans suck up to Trump to get the support of his base. But the bottom line is that Republican politicians have no problem doing corrupt things since they know they'll never be held accountable. Even Trump is walking free after 2 impeachment and 4 criminal indictments.

• On the post: Streaming Providers Dead Set On Becoming The Shitty Traditional Cable TV Companies They Once Disrupted

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2023 @ 08:44am

  "the stock price is not a measure of the quality of the business or its management." I really wish Wall Street and investors/ speculators would learn this lesson, which I would have thought they learned 20 years ago with the dotcom bubble. If you don't remember, there were internet companies with a stock market valuation 2 or 3 times higher than IBM or Ford even though they didn't offer a product! Yet their stock soared because people thought the company had a good idea. And even today, how many internet companies are propped up by a high stock value even though they're not making a profit? Um, if a company can't make a profit after a few years, then theyres something wrong with the business, marketing, or management, and the company doesn't deserve a high stock value.

• On the post: Politico’s Weird Celebration Of 1st Amendment Violations When It Comes To Adult Content

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 11 Aug, 2023 @ 01:25pm

  If we're violating the constitution

  If we're violating the constitution, why don't we enact more gun control laws? Why is it okay to violate the first amendment and not the second? Why are people so determined to support the second amendment after so many school shootings yet they don't support the first amendment for adult websites? One of these is a national safety issue and the other is a moral panic.

• On the post: FCC Hits Robocall Scammers With $300 Million Fine That Still Somehow Means Nothing

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2023 @ 01:07pm

  These are also excellent ideas but 2x and 3x of $0 is still $0. In other words, the FTC could find the scammers guilty and fine them a million dollars and 50 years in jail, but: 1) Good luck linking the spoofed and disconnected numbers to a real company. 2) Good luck finding the owners of the company after it's been shut down after making a billion calls 3) And then if the FTC finds the company and if they find the owners, good luck enforcing any judgement against them since they're probably in India or China. The better way to stop robocalls is to fine the US carriers that keep connecting the calls. If a call screening app labels the number as a scam and if there are 100 reports about the number being a scam, why in the world is the carrier letting the call go through?

• On the post: Fox News Faces Headaches As Cord Cutting Kills Off Its Artificially Inflated Subscriber Totals

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 17 Jul, 2023 @ 06:57am

  I also watch Spectrum news every so often. And you're right that it's boring. But news is supposed to be boring! News is NOT supposed to be entertainment and it's not supposed to create hysterical emotions. Sure, you might get upset about a news story or you might want to take action, but real news doesn't create a "those other people are terrible" attitude.

• On the post: TSA Rolling Out ‘Voluntary’ Facial Recognition Program To Another 400 Domestic Airports

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2023 @ 10:51am

  And a 3% failure rate may be acceptable for small sample sizes of only a few people, but what happens when this program is rolled out to all travelers and now we're talking about 10 million people? Is it really acceptable that out of 10 million people, 300,000 are not identified correctly and treated as terrorists?

• On the post: Disney Deletes Months Old Film From Disney Plus, Ostensibly For More Tax Benefits

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 11 Jul, 2023 @ 05:33am

  What about the cast and crew?

  I mentioned this in a similar article about the same issue, but how will this affect the actual cast and crew working on these projects? At what point will they stop working with Disney or Paramount because their creations are disappearing. Yes, they get paid by Disney to make a movie or TV show, but part of the reason to make these things is so people enjoy it. Plus, removing movies and TV shows just seems tone deaf in the middle of a writers and actors strike, where the point of the strike is to negotiate over licensing fees. Disney is basically saying, you want to negotiate over licensing fees? Well, now we're removing the show, so there are no fees to be paid at all.

• On the post: Paramount The Latest To Pull Titles From Paramount Plus Streaming Catalog For A Tax Cut And To Skimp On Paying Residuals

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2023 @ 07:45am

  How does this affect creators?

  If you were part of the crew that worked on Batgirl, and it got canceled, would you continue working with Warner Bros? And if you were part of the crew that worked on Willow, would you continue working with Disney? Or does this even matter, since there are probably plenty of people who would jump at the chance to make a major project for any of these studios? Or is it time for the cast and crew to sign a different contract with the studio that says their project must be available to the public for a certain length of time?

• On the post: Possible Reasons Why YouTube Has Given Up Trying To Police 2020 Election Misinfo

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2023 @ 01:30pm

  The World Health Organization recently said the COVID pandemic is over, so it may not be long until YouTube thinks COVID misinformation no longer matters.

• On the post: Federal Judge Rules Tennessee Anti-Drag Law Unconstitutional

  

  John85851 ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2023 @ 01:18pm

  Grooming as a dog whistle

  Is the word "grooming" now a dog whistle phrase? Whenever I read stories like this, there are always people quick to say that drag queens or people in the LGBT are "grooming" kids. Grooming them for what, exactly? To be more open minded about other viewpoints in life? To be entertained by men in dresses, which goes back to Milton Berle and long before? Yet passing laws against drag queens is definitely grooming kids to be close minded and bigoted.

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