Jon Renaut 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: More Than Half Of All People Want To Ditch Their Cable Provider, If Only They Could

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2014 @ 10:25am

    Re: Re: Re: sounds like a Comcast-sponsored study

    Ah, ok, that makes more sense.

    I was on the phone with Verizon last night talking about FIOS service at a house where I'm one of the property managers and they were similarly clueless, though not that pushy. She didn't even flinch when I told her I was going to cancel service completely after they lied about what my bill would be.

    Even where there is competition (I can switch to Comcast there), no one seems to have any incentive to compete.

  • On the post: More Than Half Of All People Want To Ditch Their Cable Provider, If Only They Could

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2014 @ 09:26am

    Re: sounds like a Comcast-sponsored study

    I've lived in Washington DC for about 7 years and, up until maybe a year ago, Comcast was the only choice for broadband except for Verizon DSL which I wouldn't consider an effective alternative.

    Also, if Comcast was messing with the numbers, wouldn't they have messed with them the other way? Showing how great the competition is and how lovely it is that so many people chose Comcast?

  • On the post: DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 15 May, 2014 @ 10:34am

    Re: Re: Maybe reasonable

    I don't disagree with you. When you make assumptions that lead to ridiculous conclusions, it usually means your assumptions are wrong. But it doesn't necessarily mean that your process in getting from assumptions to conclusions was wrong.

  • On the post: DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 15 May, 2014 @ 10:33am

    Re: Re: Maybe reasonable

    The only way that interpretation works is if you look at non-citizens as non-people

    Unfortunately that's exactly what we do.

    Didn't Mike mention a week or three back that the Constitution is pretty careful to use "citizen" most of the time, but sometimes uses "people"? As in, some parts are deliberately meant to apply just to citizens, and some to all people? This is a reasonable distinction to make, as certainly citizens should have some rights not granted to all people.

    But if that's the case, and the 4th Amendment says "people", then it's pretty clear it's meant to apply to everyone.

  • On the post: DOJ Says Americans Have No 4th Amendment Protections At All When They Communicate With Foreigners

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 15 May, 2014 @ 10:06am

    Maybe reasonable

    I'm not a lawyer, though I married one and seem to spend most of my time with them.

    If you take it as fact that non-citizens have no 4th Amendment rights, then saying something to a non-citizen is essentially equivalent to putting it in plain sight.

    Let's say your neighbor is murdered. They find him chopped up into little pieces. It's horrible. They naturally knock on your door to see if you heard anything. If you answer the door holding an axe, covered in blood from head to toe, you have put out in the open that you are very likely the crazy person who murdered the neighbor. If you answer the door in a clean shirt and politely answer their questions, they will have to find some evidence and get a warrant to go find the bloody axe you shoved in the coat closet.

    So telling something to a person who has no 4th Amendment protection is basically the same thing. You have taken something that you could have kept "hidden" where a warrant is needed to access it, and put it out in the open where anyone can discover it.

    Since this is a pretty horrible result, I think we ought to go back and look at the assumptions that got us here. But given those assumptions as fact, I don't think this is an unreasonable conclusion.

  • On the post: ICE Rejects My Request To Waive FOIA Fees 'Because .' Yes, 'Because .'

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2014 @ 09:09am

    Incompetence over malice?

    It looks to me like she's got some program that generates that document and she just left the "because" field blank. Or, given ICE's understanding of computers, the program just ate the reason and spit out a blank.

  • On the post: CIA: We Only Spied On Senate Intelligence Committee Because They Took Classified Documents That Prove We're Liars

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2014 @ 09:50am

    When you start grasping at procedural straws to make an investigation go away, it makes it kind of hard to believe that you aren't hiding something.

  • On the post: Former NSA Official Claims Snowden Set Agency Back A Decade, Tells Putin To 'Return' Whistleblower

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2014 @ 12:09pm

    Nice SEO

    I think the first part of their URL slug pretty well summarizes the content of the piece.

    bs-ed-nsa-israel-20140303,0,1683316.story

  • On the post: U2 Manager Paul McGuinness: Google Should 'Take Down' Sites And 'Keep Them Down'

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 07 Feb, 2014 @ 03:59am

    "U2" is a really short word and probably shouldn't be used in Google's algorithms at all.

  • On the post: South Carolina Senator Aims To Criminalize The Recording Of Criminal Activity

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2014 @ 09:23am

    What if you intentionally commit a crime in front of a camera operated by someone else that you know to be streaming live?

    Is that covered under "conspire to produce or create"? Because I wouldn't read it that way, though I'm not a lawyer.

  • On the post: The Greatest Response To A Cease And Desist Letter, Probably Written While Drunk

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 31 Dec, 2013 @ 06:35am

    Trademark?

    I didn't realize Starbucks owned that word. I thought it was the generic term for "sh***y high-calorie milkshake that may contain coffee-like flavoring".

  • On the post: Blogger Offers To Pimp Restaurants If They Feed Her And Her Family Food And Drinks

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2013 @ 11:04am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello, pot?

    I didn't read her email as entitled. A bit slimy, and undoubtedly exaggerating how good her offer is, but that's pretty standard marketing. She said, "I'll give you X in exchange for Y". It may be a good deal, it may not be, but she sent it to multiple restaurants when only one could take the offer, so clearly she expected some to turn her down. That doesn't seem entitled, that seems like she was covering her bases.

    I really do appreciate the work you do towards sustainable business models on the internet, both for other industries and yourselves. It's one of the main things that's made me a regular reader for five plus years, and why I continue to be a regular reader. Techdirt was a huge inspiration for me in trying to start my own business.

    And I don't dislike them for no other reason than they're sponsored. After reading some number of sponsored posts and noticing that I didn't like any of them, I came to the conclusion that it was not worth my time to read any more of them.

  • On the post: Blogger Offers To Pimp Restaurants If They Feed Her And Her Family Food And Drinks

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2013 @ 10:02am

    Re: Re: Hello, pot?

    Don't remember a specific post. It's normally not a post about batteries, just thrown in along the way. Something along the lines of "I depend on batteries for my laptop/phone/whatever, and these are really good and relatively inexpensive".

  • On the post: Blogger Offers To Pimp Restaurants If They Feed Her And Her Family Food And Drinks

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2013 @ 09:54am

    Re: Re: Hello, pot?

    So the real difference is the blogger is the one asking, while in the case of sponsored posts it's the company coming to the blog? I don't see that as a really meaningful distinction.

    I used to read every article here. Now as soon as I see "sponsored", I move on. I have not yet read one that I enjoyed or found interesting. The one you linked is better than average, but I still would have skipped it.

    And I won't argue that you don't do a better job of this than other sites. But is that really the goal? To do something better than all the people who do it really badly?

  • On the post: Blogger Offers To Pimp Restaurants If They Feed Her And Her Family Food And Drinks

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2013 @ 06:11am

    Hello, pot?

    How is this different from the "Sponsored Posts" on Techdirt? They're usually unreadable crap, a marketing flyer thinly-disguised as a blog post. It's nice that you make it really clear that they're sponsored so I can skip over them and save the six seconds of reading time it would otherwise take me to realize they were garbage.

    Her email maybe could have been worded a with a little less slime, but for how many marketing emails is that NOT true?

    It is generally obvious when someone is being paid vs honestly cares about the products. Like when Mike talks about batteries - he might be getting free ones, I don't know, but he's built up a level of trust so that I believe him when he says they're great.

  • On the post: Insanity: PayPal Freezes Mailpile's Account, Demands Excessive Info To Get Access

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2013 @ 10:33am

    Paypal for business is terrible

    I had a bad experience with them, too, though luckily they only had $2 of my money. I signed up for a business account, was verified in all of a few minutes, set up the website, then did a test transaction. They instantly locked my account. I tried to get it unlocked, and they told me my business model violated their terms of service.

    It sure appeared to me that they set things up to get that first month's payment out of everyone without any sort of verification, but the moment you actually USE the account they would do an actual review. I gave them an overview of the business model from the beginning, but they clearly didn't look at it until I did the test transaction.

    To make it even better, they told me the only way to close the account was to unlock it. To unlock it, I would have to change my business model and then they'd reconsider.

    Paypal is great for paying people on eBay. Beyond that, stay away.

  • On the post: Once Again, Media Jumps On Violent Video Games Before Knowing The Facts

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2013 @ 06:55am

    This is why we should all carry guns!

    As usual, gun violence could certainly have been prevented if only the victim had been carrying a gun, too!

    Oh, wait...

  • On the post: FBI Paid Off Wikileaks Insider To Be An Informant: Imagine If It Was The NY Times

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2013 @ 12:45pm

    Making assumptions

    Isn't it only "way, way beyond what's appropriate" if you assume the opposite of the position that the FBI/DOJ have taken?

    That is, if you don't treat Wikileaks as a media organization (and I agree with your reasoning that it is, but that's not the point), then paying an informant to get insider information is just something that the FBI does.

  • On the post: How Much Would It Cost To Store All US Phone Calls Made In A Year?

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2013 @ 07:05pm

    This is government, remember

    There are a ton of hidden costs that most people won't see. The NSA may be different, but a certain government agency that I happen to work for has some ridiculous IT security policies that prevent anyone from using any technology that might be considered modern, efficient, or useful.

    The difference between "the cost to store and manage the data" and "the cost for a dozen Oracle licenses because we're inherently terrified of open source" is many millions of dollars.

  • On the post: Maybe E*Trade Should Stop Giving Four-Year Contracts To Its CEOs

    Jon Renaut ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2013 @ 04:46am

    Cross back, please

    I don't want to tell you how to run your site (well, okay, maybe a little), but stuff like this is not why I come to Techdirt. The fact that there's essentially no discussion on this post suggests that I'm not alone. I read this post expecting it to make a point eventually, but it never did.

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