Lorpius Prime 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (61)

• On the post: Iraqi Government Shutters Television Stations It Doesn't Like

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 09 May, 2013 @ 01:40am

  Re: Are you surprised?

  Which networks is the US shutting down?

• On the post: Doctors Call Out Novartis For Insane Pricing On Cancer Drug

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 03 May, 2013 @ 08:01pm

  Re:

  10-year inflation of 25% would mean a price change from $30,000 to $37,500.
  
  I don't think that's the issue.

• On the post: What New-Style Trade Agreements Are Really About (Hint: It's Not Trade)

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2013 @ 09:17pm

  Please be careful with this.

  That Brodwin article attacks "special interest giveaways" in one paragraph, and then bemoans the fact that such trade deals would forbid such provisions as the "Buy American" law in the very next. I'm not sure if that's willfull blindness or he truly doesn't realize the hypocrisy.
  
  I'm sympathetic to Techdirt's concerns with trade deals' promotion of insane IP regulations and the lack of transparency. But I worry that y'all are letting that concern push you into alliance with old-style protectionist populism.

• On the post: DOJ Wants To Be Able To Fine Tech Companies Who Don't Let It Wiretap Your Communications

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2013 @ 03:30pm

  I don't know what you're so worried about, the cooperation is obviously entirely voluntary; companies aren't forced to do anything. If they don't wish to cooperate, they can simply choose to pay the fines instead.

• On the post: EU Free Trade Agreements With India And Canada Grind To A Halt

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2013 @ 09:38pm

  I can dream.

  Maybe... maybe if enough of the regional FTAs fail, our governments will finally suck it up and get back to working on the Doha round for the entire WTO?

• On the post: CISPA Sponsor Claims Opposition Is '14 Year Olds In Their Basement'

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2013 @ 02:37pm

  It's also insulting on a fourth level, Mr. Masnick: 14 year olds don't deserve to have their opinions and concerns dismissed out of hand, even if they do express them from basements.

• On the post: TMZ Accused Of Placing Hidden Mics In Courtroom

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2013 @ 04:15pm

  As a technology enthusiast, I pretty much assume that surveillance technology will soon be good enough to make this kind of thing possible regardless of what sort of countermeasures a court could take. Or at least, good enough that effective countermeasures will be prohibitively expensive.
  
  So I wonder if the legal system can adapt to a world where keeping many privileged communications actually secret is impossible. I certainly hope so, as I don't think we can rely on bad actors to be shamed into good behavior by folks like Mr. Geigner telling them that "the judicial process is simply too important to kneecap."

• On the post: Belgium: We Want To Be The Champagne Of Chocolate

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2013 @ 08:32pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  So approval is granted to manufacturers anywhere based on neutral judgments?

• On the post: Belgium: We Want To Be The Champagne Of Chocolate

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2013 @ 08:25pm

  Re:

  If a non-Hungarian winemaker creates a wine up to the very same standards, should they still not be allowed to call it tokaji?

• On the post: Online Polish Loses Some Of Its Polish

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2013 @ 12:20am

  Hmm

  Perhaps I'm alone, but I feel that a single common language among all humans is worth the death of all other languages. And the internet certainly seems to have the potential to take us there.

• On the post: NJ Gubenatorial Candidate Speaks Out Against Six Strikes: ISP Shouldn't Decide What You Can Download

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2013 @ 03:32pm

  Re:

  And we all know that once government decisions are made, they can never be changed, so we should never try.

• On the post: Prison Sponsor Tries To Delete Wikipedia Information After Sponsoring NCAA Football Stadium

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2013 @ 07:08pm

  That's bad rap, Mr. Geiger, not bad wrap. It refers to a criminal's "rap sheet" list of crimes. Which I guess would actually make it great choice of phrase for this post, even.

• On the post: The Many Motivations Of Movie Piracy (Notably Absent: 'I Want Everything For Free')

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2013 @ 12:56pm

  Auugghh

  Why is that data presented as a line graph?

• On the post: The Real Story Behind 'Super WiFi' And The Fight Over Spectrum; It's Not What You Read Yesterday

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2013 @ 06:03am

  Still there's a lesson here: people would love to see the government create an actual national free public WiFi network. I wonder if any of our representatives or agency directors managed to pick up on that subtext.

• On the post: China Tries To Block Encrypted Traffic

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2012 @ 07:34pm

  >Fighting against encryption is a game that can't be won in the long term.
  
  Although I'd certainly like this to be true, I'm not convinced it really is. Certainly the cat-and-mouse game seems likely to continue indefinitely, but it seems to me that simple nature will always favor the people trying to discover and decrypt information, and not the people trying to keep information hidden and secret.

• On the post: Corruption Laundering: The Art Of Manipulating Regulations To Block Innovation

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2012 @ 02:28pm

  Re: Re: Re: *Gasp*

  The idea that Americans don't have any control over their politicians is a useful excuse for people who can't be bothered to actually involve themselves in the political process.

• On the post: Teen Hacker Banned From The Internet For Six Years

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 09 Nov, 2012 @ 08:41pm

  At the very least, the part about turning over user-names and passwords sounds like a violation of the fifth amendment to me.

• On the post: Ridiculous: Vietnam Sentences Musicians To Jail For Songs That Protest Government Actions

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 05 Nov, 2012 @ 03:59am

  Really?

  This story seems like a bad fit for Techdirt. My impression is that it's only here because these people published their dissent online. But the fact that they used the internet is incidental to their imprisonment: Vietnam oppresses all opposition, net-savvy or not. It's absolutely a tragedy, but it's not a new one for the Vietnamese.
  
  I don't know, maybe it'd be more appropriate to play up the hypocrisy of the US criticism of these arrests given the US' own treatment of online dissent (in the form of information leaks) lately. But as it is, it's just kind of an awkward story for this blog.

• On the post: Bait & Switch: Buy A Lifetime Account For As Long As We Exist Or Until We Get Tired Of You

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 17 Aug, 2012 @ 03:50pm

  Re: So, what's new?

  Usually companies have to go through bankruptcy filings to get out of agreements like that. This seems to be just a plain old breach of contract.

• On the post: Canadian Cities Looking To Opt-Out Of CETA Rather Than Get Roped Into An ACTA-Like Situation

  

  Lorpius Prime ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2012 @ 02:49am

  Re: Re: Re: Sigh

  Jane Jacobs may have been an insightful activist, but she was not an economist, and she did not somehow invalidate all of macroeconomics or overturn centuries of experience supporting comparative advantage theory in favor of import substitution.
  
  Trying to prop up a municipal economy at the expense of the rest of the world just screws over the consumers in your city while limiting total wealth and opportunity.

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