MBraedley 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (91) comment rss

  • On the post: NBC's Delayed Telecasts Show A Company Living In The Last Century

    MBraedley ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2010 @ 06:47am

    Contrast with Canadian Coverage

    With three full time English and one or two full time French broadcasters, along with a number of part time specialty broadcasters, showing mostly live coverage, Canadians can watch pretty much any event featuring a Canadian live on TV, and if they can't do that, they can watch it live online. Yes, there's a lot of fluff on CTV (Olympic Morning is basically four or five hours of fluff before the events start each day), but there's a balance struck between live coverage, important highlights, and the human aspect (interviews with the athletes, short biopics, etc) that even CBC, who had done numerous Olympics before CTV was picked for this year, would be hard pressed to beat.

    Compare this to NBC, where they aren't showing any live coverage (as far as I can tell), are only streaming hockey and curling online (because no American will ever want to watch something online [/sarcasm]), and are already crowding out their Olympic coverage with other useless programming (an hour and a half or more of evening news each night, and I think I saw Oprah listed last night). Yes, CTV does show the news each night, but then you just switch over to TSN or SportsNet.

    NBC needs to be showing the events live throughout the day, even if nobody's watching, and then in the evening can show a compressed version consisting of Americans, top qualifiers, and medal favourites. You don't need to show the full two qualifying runs of each boarder in the half pipe competition before showing the semis and finals, yet NBC seems to think that you do.

    Suffice it to say that I'll stick with the Canadian broadcasters, even if it means missing some events live, even if it means I have to stream it at work, even if I have to sit through delays due to weather, timing equipment, or spectators making sounds similar to the starter's whistle.

  • On the post: EMI Tries Fake Word Of Mouth Campaign To Promote Ok Go

    MBraedley ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2010 @ 11:01am

    You can embed the video

    You just have to go to Vimeo to do it. They don't have the ridiculous licensing agreement with EMI that YouTube does. Ok Go hates to have to use them, since they have a much (much much) smaller market share than YouTube has.

  • On the post: Once Again: The iiNet Decision Did Not Make Unauthorized Downloading Legit

    MBraedley ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2010 @ 10:47am

    Just to play devils advocate, WRT your comment after the first quote, "Free access to the internet" could be construed as Free (as in speech) access and not Free (as in beer) access. The former is how I initially read it.

  • On the post: Online Gaming Store Lowers Prices 75%, Sees Sales Shoot Up 5500%

    MBraedley ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2010 @ 05:08pm

    Re: These stats align with my buying habits

    As did I. I still haven't played some of the titles I've purchased during that sale. Others have only gotten the obligatory 1 hour. So many games to play, so little time to play them all. Valve should be taken as a model business when it comes to sales.

  • On the post: NBC Continues To Do The Exact Wrong Thing When It Comes To The Olympics Online

    MBraedley ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2010 @ 01:07pm

    NBC sure knows how to cater to their customers

    Too bad all the customers they're catering to are in Canada. There are only a handful of places in the US that will pay close attention to the hockey, and most of the US (if not all of it) will not watch any curling, except through 10 second updates.

    Maybe this has something to do with the fee for carriage issue going on here in Canada. NBC sucking up to the Canadian broadcasters by essentially saying that they'll carry content Canadians will enjoy. (This despite the fact that I can't stand most of the play by play hockey announcers for the American networks, and that they've even started hiring Canadians to do it for them.)

  • On the post: Microsoft Exec Calls For 'Driver's License For The Internet'

    MBraedley ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2010 @ 11:25am

    Re: You need a DRIVER's license because

    You beat me to it.

    A drivers license is to prove that you have the skill to not hurt someone else. It says nothing about hurting yourself (although it is implied).

  • On the post: Court Says U Of Southern California Only One Who Can Use USC; Sorry U Of South Carolina

    MBraedley ( profile ), 03 Feb, 2010 @ 10:06am

    All they (either one) need to do is change it to UofSC.

  • On the post: Of Course Most Content Shared On BitTorrent Infringes; But That's Meaningless

    MBraedley ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2010 @ 06:17am

    Re: They don't see the market

    Wow, plain text fail. That fake ad quote should read "This (network) torrent is brought to you by (sponsor). Remember, (sponsor) is (slogan)!"

  • On the post: Of Course Most Content Shared On BitTorrent Infringes; But That's Meaningless

    MBraedley ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2010 @ 06:07am

    They don't see the market

    I've been saying for years now (admittedly only to my friends and family) that if the networks offered legitimate, high quality torrents, I would use those instead of other sources. As long as they were free, didn't have DRM, and were available when the show aired, I'd have no problem with them. I could stand a "This torrent is brought to you by . Remember, is !" and maybe some other ads. Why would I prefer this to my current situation? I could easily set up RSS feeds and not worry about downloading a bad version. I wouldn't have to wait until the next morning to start downloading an episode. And I could drop at least my HD cable subscription.

    Sure, you're going to see people take these torrents, rip out the ads, and upload them to other sites, but for most people, what the networks would provide would be more than enough. Unfortunately, the networks are just too blinded by the current state of "piracy" to see that doing this could reduce it and make them more money. Hmm, making it easier for someone to pirate your content might actually make you more money.

  • On the post: Wait, Who Wants A Proprietary, Locked Down Device That Limits What You Can Do?

    MBraedley ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2010 @ 05:45pm

    I'll probably get one

    Why? Well for a little more than the cost of a smart phone w/o a contract, I can have a device that I'll actually enjoy surfing the web with. Sure, my next phone will probably be a smart phone, but that's nearly a year away, since the cancellation fee is even worse here than anything that AT&T and Verizon charges. Also, I don't own a notebook. Never have. I just don't think it fits in well with what I'd use such a device for, namely surfing the web, reading pdf magazines, and other rather menial tasks, when my desktop accomplishes them just as well. I've contemplated getting a convertible (tablet laptop that is) in the past, and for the most part enjoyed the experience with a customers convertible while working as a tech, but the touch interface (namely using only a stylus) didn't impress me enough. With Apple's multi-touch capabilities, it becomes much more attractive. For me, without a smart phone or a laptop, this device is almost exactly what I'm looking for, and after jail-breaking or 3rd party firmware, most likely will be exactly what I'm looking for.

  • On the post: Zuckerberg: People Are Comfortable Without Privacy, So We Threw Them All Over The Cliff

    MBraedley ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2010 @ 09:44am

    Mark Zuckerberg must not understand his own platform

    Facebook isn't (and never was) about micro-blogging. Yes it has status updates, but few people update that nearly as often as they would tweet. Facebook is more about the people you interact with on a daily basis and people that you'd like to keep in touch with (or at least it's supposed to), while twitter, at least for anyone with a public account, is meant for broadcasting yourself to the world, 140 characters at a time. Yes, there are overlaps in the uses of both services (for instance, I've seen one of my friends use Twitter as a pseudo IM client), but in the overlapping uses, there's drastically different expectations of privacy and audience members.

    As an addendum, I have a Facebook account, but not a Twitter account. The primary reason being that I have very few friends who use Twitter, but more importantly because I have no desire to have an open account that everyone can see but nobody reads.

  • On the post: Canada Also Getting Pushed By EU On Ridiculous Copyright Policies

    MBraedley ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2009 @ 10:33am

    Resale Rights

    If I've been reading the various articles on this correctly, I think I can say I understand the reasoning behind implementing resale rights. I can't say I agree with them, however.

    As far as I can tell, the primary reason behind implementing resale rights is that physical art typically appreciates in value. Therefore, the artist should receive a cut of that appreciation. However, as Ars Technica points out, the housing market (in general) appreciates, yet construction workers don't expect a cut of that appreciation when a house is sold.

  • On the post: SOCAN Wants To Charge Buskers Performance Fees

    MBraedley ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2009 @ 12:40pm

    Re:

    Stephen Harper got elected.

  • On the post: Spamming Patent Tossed Out As Obvious

    MBraedley ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2009 @ 09:23am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I actually didn't mean for that to come off as sounding angry. More patronizing than anything.

  • On the post: Spamming Patent Tossed Out As Obvious

    MBraedley ( profile ), 04 Dec, 2009 @ 07:50am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Please learn to use the shift key, as there are two of them on your keyboard. Also, more use of the 'o' 'n' and 'e' keys would be appreciated.

  • On the post: Calling For An Independent Invention Defense In Patents

    MBraedley ( profile ), 24 Nov, 2009 @ 11:16am

    He notes that about the only reason most are against this idea is that they realize it would put a lot of patent lawyers out of work.

    And this is a bad thing because...?

  • On the post: IMAX Sues Cinemark For Building Competing System… While Being An IMAX Customer

    MBraedley ( profile ), 24 Nov, 2009 @ 05:53am

    Re: Which IMAX?

    This concerns the Canadian based IMAX Corporation. The slightly larger screen still uses, AFAIK, 35mm film, although it may use 70mm in standard direction (IMAX uses 70mm film in transverse direction).

  • On the post: Facebook As Your Alibi

    MBraedley ( profile ), 13 Nov, 2009 @ 05:32am

    Re:

    In addition to the fact that this introduces reasonable doubt, the prosecution would have to prove that he did not in fact make the update. Other than verifying his location at the time the update was made (did he make an in-person credit card or debit purchase, etc), there's virtually no way to do that.

  • On the post: TV Broadcasters Suing Songwriters' Org SESAC Over Pricing Power

    MBraedley ( profile ), 13 Nov, 2009 @ 05:26am

    Re:

    The only issue is that in some cases, it's simply not possible to cleanly extract all of the music, while leaving the dialog and other sound effects intact. In general, the audio is mixed down well before it leaves the production studio, meaning you can't do a simple "delete from audio where track = 'music'".

  • On the post: Convicted German Murderer Wants His Conviction Erased From Wikipedia

    MBraedley ( profile ), 11 Nov, 2009 @ 10:57am

    Re:

    If he ever gets out of jail and goes looking for a job, his potential employers will probably do a google search on him, and when that search turns up a murder conviction, then they may think twice. This assumes of course that the company is stupid enough to not do a criminal background check first. Without his name plastered over the wiki and other sites, it's possible that he could squeak by with this fact being less known. If he's actually innocent (unlikely, but possible), then there's the potential that these sites won't be updated to clear his name.

    Having said all that, do I think he should get his way? No, but that doesn't mean I don't understand his reasoning.

Next >>