Michael’s Techdirt Profile

On the post: If You Stand On One Leg, Twist Yourself Around And Squint Into This Light… The US Is #1 In Broadband. Maybe

Michael ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2009 @ 07:57am

SMS is stoneage

SMS is pretty much pager service for cell phones. I had to get one of those plans because it's what the corporations shove everyone in to here, but why wouldn't I want an Internet connection and a CHOICE of service instead? We still have this broken model of not separating platform and service.

On the post: Can A Link, By Itself, Be Copyright Infringement?

Michael ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2009 @ 11:26am

Legality?

I'm divided on this my self.

There are straw-men arguments that can be made but really look at the real facts. A link is just a pointer to where information of some kind -may- exist.

Does knowing that information may be somewhere violate laws? It shouldn't.

Does telling someone else that information might be at a location you know about violate laws? I don't see how it should.

Does getting information that has been granted a temporary monopoly on duplication by your government from someplace violate laws? It probably does.

A more interesting question: If you download something without knowing what it is, and find out it's something you didn't want, (and delete it) have you violated the law?

Que sensational but somewhat plausible example:

What if that automatically happens when you open an HTML email? Which some foreign group looking to cause disruption sent out through a spam-bot net so that hundreds of thousands of innocent people would 1) see child porn. 2) be logged as having seen said porn before the server was scheduled to be raided.

(The above argument is why I default to plain text email.)

On the post: Mileage Tax Idea Going National…

Michael ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2009 @ 06:58am

Re: Re: Failed tax models

The problem with that idea however is that in many areas rush hour is longer than an hour. It's a general period of overload that folds back on it's self and can last for quite a few hours.

Flextime can help a little, but making it easier to relocate without loosing investment on housing would be a far better alternative than any of this.

Of course the best alternative would be to eliminate the need to drive when not necessary by pushing telecommuting some of the time (Maybe every other week, or half weeks or something).

On the post: Congress Wants WiFi Owners To Keep Log Files For 2 Years… For The Children

Michael ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2009 @ 11:14pm

Unconstitutional in the US?

Is there some law that allows the government to record the name and time of every person walking on the side walk, or through a given area in a shopping mall?

Isn't this unconstitutional by the fact that anonymity is a part of free speech (1st amendment), and you are innocent until proven guilty, and also the right of protection from unreasonable search and seizure (4th amendment), as well as a few sections of the 5th amendment of the constitution relating to due process.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights#Text_of_the_Bill_of_Rights

On the post: Cable Companies Negotiating To Control What TV Shows You Can Watch Online

Michael ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2009 @ 10:56pm

Re: paying for "content"

It sure sounds like you missed that channel. However isn't channel 4 in Seattle an OTA station? Why should Dish have to pay extra to carry that to viewers in your area? I could understand an argument if they were also providing it to other areas, however even then it sounds like Dish would be adding VALUE to advertisers which should make it either free or even cut Dish in on some of the new profit opportunities.

On the post: Will The Supreme Court Give Steinbeck's Heirs Back The Rights To Some Of His Works?

Michael ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2009 @ 10:47pm

Shorter simpler copyrights

Clearly this shows that we need shorter, simpler copyrights. I don't know what a good period of time would be, but I should think that 25 years is well more than sufficient incentive to produce and publish a work. Most items of old didn't even have PRINT runs that lasted for that duration of time (Yes I'm arguing from casual observation; except for recognized classics, which have probably already sold a bundle of copies, how hard has it been to find an old book you wanted?).

If 25 years of monopoly on your work isn't long enough, who do you think you are? If someone else has a similar idea and publishes it than the market seems to have good competition, 'rip offs' should be decided in the court of public opinion, infractions of that nature will either sell because they are a superior product (which should therefore win on merit), or cost those involved for trying to rip off consumers. It is literally the copying part, not the similarity part, which harms the market and incentive.

On the post: Maybe The DTV Transition Delay Wasn't Such A Bad Idea

Michael ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2009 @ 10:37pm

Drugs or Weapons, pick one.

Clearly he should not have weapons and drugs at the same time. He should pick one, and lock the other away. Behind a puzzle lock for the guns, and the drugs behind a lock that requires some key component of the guns.

On the post: How Reporters Contribute To Misconceptions About Patent Lawsuits

Michael ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2009 @ 10:34pm

Call patents what they are, an artifical restriction.

I believe this wording is most likely accurate:

Apple is accused of using the same/a similar idea that Picsel was awarded a patent for.

I think in the vast majority of cases the volume of information and patents has passed the point where we get meaningful returns on 'protecting' (locking up) ideas which we would all probably benefit more from having published directly in to public domain or at the very least being trade secret.

I also agree with other previous Techdirt articles that note about the disparity in areas where NDAs were allowed versus those where they were not. The free exchange of people and ideas enriches, not diminishes, the whole.

Alone we are worth less than we are combined; in fact combined we are worth more than the sum of our singular selves. It is diversity, variety and different viewpoints which lead to the exploration and selection of more optimal paths.

On the post: Massachusetts Wants GPS Driving Tax, Too

Michael ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2009 @ 12:20am

Re: horrible idea

There's another bonus to that as well, raising the gas tax makes it even more costly to operate large, heavy, inefficient vehicles, vehicles which probably wear the roads more anyway.

On the post: Bill Introduced In Pennsylvania To Ban All Portable Gadgets In School

Michael ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2009 @ 12:11am

Are Children Convicts?

It was already starting to get bad when I graduated high-school in 2001, but this is just getting ridiculous.

Locking kids up in rooms with a droning instructor who doesn't engage the class, who's forced to repeat the same material from the beginning of the book that everyone's already received before because there's no national structured curriculum or development plan is silly. The students who are smart will do other work or read ahead in the book to the more interesting stuff. Those who don't want to be there at all and haven't understood the point about history repeating it's self if it's not learned will try to amuse themselves in other ways.

So don't ban the devices or punish the students, fix the curriculum to engage the students.

What I would have loved were projects. Mix it all together. Integrate history, math, science, everything in to a unified structure. Teach the students about what it used to be like before history was written, before there was writing.

Abolish grades entirely, they no longer matter. Instead have conceptual levels. A series of puzzles or a problem that must be solved in order to graduate to the next era for that type of knowledge.

Obviously the program should focus on the parts that were more or less accurate and mention others. Ideally there should be contrast between rational and provable methods and the ideas that were not correct for some reason. In that way the students would be learning why the other ideas don't work.

This type of program would be drastically different than the traditional disconnected, disjointed rote memorization schools use. I believe that any child that wanted to learn, any child that was interested in having fun, would embrace this system. The system would also promote them dynamically, based on what they know and how well they perform.

In higher levels, as we neared more modern times, the problems would get more difficult. They might not even have solutions. In this area the students would be working as part of crowd-sourcing the problem. College would be even harder yet as it would involve official public domain RnD as well as problem research and backing for government research, and advice on directions the country should take.

On the post: Venture Capitalist Explains How Patents Can Be A Tax On Innovation

Michael ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2009 @ 11:44pm

I completely agree:

I think the patent system actively works against its stated purpose ("to promote the progress of science and the useful arts").

I also really want to know, are there any examples of patents which have actually served this purpose, that is to promote the progress of science and/or useful arts. I believe part of the 'deal' is also supposed to be disclosure of the invention so that it will eventually be part of the heritage of knowledge.

Then that evidence should be weighed against the costs in the same field(s) to having patents. Finally, why can't a copy-right; that is the right for me to copy your property, suffice? That should not preclude independent invention or rediscovery. If it's that easy to reproduce or you are willing to spend that much effort for something difficult then it should be obvious (or at least logical) to anyone who believes it is possible.

On the post: Shouldn't Government Transparency Be Included In The Legislative Process… Not Just The Aftermath?

Michael ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2009 @ 08:36am

It's Congress, not Obama

I completely agree that transparency should be a huge part of the process. Yet what many others are saying is correct as well.

It's not Obama, it's congress. Congress is still filled with all the old dogs of Washington DC. The constitution pretty clearly leaves him at the mercy of whatever the legislative body can work out for him to enforce or not.

I am quite hopeful that going forward there will be public accountability for the first time in my life. I don't even mind 'classified' subtotals on the budget either; just let us known when the current expiration date on that information is so the public will know when to re-check that part year's budget.

I'm not so hopeful, but I can dream, that such tools will enable citizens and congresspeople to actually connect and organize so that the peoples true voice can finally coalesce and be heard above the lobbyists. So that when we demand that -congress- is open, transparent, and accountable they obey the will of their bosses, we the people.

On the post: Why The Stimulus Story Isn't Resonating: No Transparency, No Participation

Michael ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2009 @ 12:25am

Solutions

These are non-spending steps the government could enforce to help recovery.

* Require dollars in banks to be backed by open-market values of commodities. This could be interpreted by banks to be literal and they could hold precious metals and jewels. It could be stocks in other companies, it could be futures (which I believe are defined as contracts for delivery of a given quantity of commodity at a pre-determined price on a given date (from a given option of transfer points)).

* When a company 'too big to fail' fails break it up in to classes of assets that make sense on the market (really grade whatever mortgages grouped together as an example) then auction it off over a period of say... 2 weeks. The current second highest bid should be posted every N hours, while the highest bid from the the same time the day before should be posted, or some other way of having an auction which is designed to maximize the final value and thus minimize the reflection of loss to the stockholders of the original company. Their stocks would be converted in to whatever the assets were worth.

* ELIMINATE PATENTS, I have yet to hear of a patent within my lifetime that did more good than harm to the economy.

* LIMIT COPYRIGHT, 10-20 years should be more than sufficient, any longer than that and it should be part of the culture's shared libraries.

* TRADEMARKS - As far as I know this one isn't really broken as written, just as idiotic corporations like Monster Cable seem to believe they work... Maybe make all legal fees for cases where trademark litigation fails owed by the one who lost? That'd be a good way to apply damages to them as well...

* Infrastructure regulation: Require that all natural monopoly infrastructure be provided by utility companies or directly by the local city/county/state planning as it makes sense AND EXCLUDE THEM FROM PRODUCING WITHIN THE SAME COMPANY. Thus, roads, power-lines, data-cables, and various pipes (Unfortunately the pipes are virtually impossible to segregate, so the sources and end treatment options will largely have to be as they are now) are infrastructure, while the things that they allow to move are quantities to buy from various competing producers. If the local community wants to also build a separate competing power plant, data-service or something else on the platform that's fine, it's separate and on different accounting books.

On the post: The Search For The Elusive Captive Audience Means No More Contemplation?

Michael ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2008 @ 05:59am

Protective 'glasses' like from Snowcrash...

Ah that lovely anti-utopia post economic crash book my science fiction course had me read (so glad I opted for that class).

The basic idea, though modified, is that the glasses would have a combination of HUD and sections that would also vastly darken the incoming light in key areas. If you combine that with a system that either knows viewing angle and ad locations/distances, or one that can recognise ads on the fly, then you can drive the filter to block out that input. Of course that doesn't fix sounds...

On the post: Google Wants Your Medical Records

Michael ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2008 @ 04:25am

PGP/GPG Sign the data, use CD/DVD/Thumbdrive...

Allowing the patient to keep their own records instantly made me think of every portable way of storing data.

I think that would be a great idea, as if you're traveling and need access to your medical data it's all right there.

Unfortunately, it's all right there.

The solution is to use cryptographic tools that are completely open and free. Any GPG is a free (open source) version of the OpenPGP standard. Doctors could sign the portions of the records they create, and the whole thing could be signed encoded to unlock only with the patient's private key.

Now, keeping the private key secure would be an issue, however if this is occurring within an expanded environment, then the data could be encoded using a symmetric key, which is then it's self encoded to only be unlocked with the private key. The tool could then provide or remove that one file, thus authorizing access or not.

On the post: Is A Photograph A Derivative Work Of The Object In The Photo?

Michael ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2008 @ 05:02am

Imagine this world...

They have won.

All sight, all sound,all thought; controlled, protected.
So that we may only see, hear, and think what others want us to.
So that learning its self stops...

On the post: What Happened To The Expected Boom In Airport Security Tech?

Michael ( profile ), 09 Feb, 2008 @ 01:48am

Pretty much the most security I can think of is having the line split up based on gender and age (the very old and young going with special assistants). You'd be required to undress to a single layer of clothing (socks, underwear, t-shirt), be X-rayed, everything else scanned separately. A generic sniff in your area for radiation sources and explosive residue, or other unstable organic compounds. Then you'd have a moment to clean your self back up and proceed.

Oh, you'd also have to do this for everyone.

Anything less, please quit wasting my time and let me carry on my shampoo from home, waterbottles for the southern deserts of north america, etc. I promise, if I see some nut trying to get in to the cockpit, I'll help the crowd 'restrain' them properly.

On the post: Investor Upset That Transmeta Isn't Solely Focused On Suing Companies For Patent Infringement

Michael ( profile ), 08 Feb, 2008 @ 02:27am

Agreed: Transmeta a -very- bad example

There is probably a very short list of reasons Transmeta failed:

1) Semiconductor manufacturing is a very cut-throat business with extremely high barriers (Cleanroom build, tool install and qualification just to name a few) to entry.

2) Intellectual Property issues make it very difficult to find leading edge fabrication partners willing to run your wafers (and you raise entry barriers even higher thanks to the margins on doing so).

3) Those same IP laws make it very difficult to buy access to existing developments at a fair (to all) price, and only the biggest player(s) can afford to have a team develop a replacement in the blind properly.

4) Isn't there some issue about the x86 instruction set where right now only Intel, AMD, and VIA have licenses; I keep hearing AMD's license to it vanishing being one reason no one will buy them/allow them to go in to bankruptcy...

On the post: When Will We Have a Comprehensive National Sneaker Strategy?

Michael ( profile ), 05 Feb, 2008 @ 05:03am

The dumb pipe is the utility.

The dumb pipe is the utility. That's the natural monopoly. Rid all the telcos and such of the annoying task, centralize maintenance, build in proper redundancy. All while having one single network, with common hardware.

The fiber it's self, if selected properly, can likely be used for decades to come, with incremental upgrade and replacement of connecting equipment.

The above posters are correct, buy your bandwidth from the community peering point out.

On the post: Laptop With Data Stolen? Announce It, Give 1-Year Free Credit Monitoring And Move On

Michael ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2008 @ 05:23am

Keep the data secret for a year, sell it?

What's to stop someone from waiting until the company publishes the free credit monitoring, pad that out a little, and sell the data for use after that point. Sure there will be some changed data, but anyone with real cash is still living in the same places with the same profile numbers, right?

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