PopeRatzo 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: Bike Lights

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 29 Dec, 2013 @ 07:58am

    Re: Signaling with cycle gloves

    It's still just a horrible idea to create a product that violates standards that have long been the norm in bicycling.

    You wanna do something, but arrows left and right BOTH on the left glove. Now, you use the standard arm signals for turning and the device senses the position of the arm and produces the correctly directioned arrow. And when you make the universal signal for STOP, which is the left arm extended 90 degrees elbow bend DOWN, palm backward, a light on the palm glows red.

    There may be a useful novelty product in here somewhere, but this ain't it. It's like creating a newe kind of calculator, but the button with the plus sign actually subtracts and the button with the division symbol actually gives you a square root.

  • On the post: Pitch Perfect Satire: NSA Intercepted Children's Letters To Santa

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2013 @ 05:55am

    obligatory

    If those kids haven't done anything wrong, they've got nothing to worry about.

  • On the post: YouTube's Merry Christmas: Letting Large Music Publishers Steal Money From Guy Singing Public Domain Christmas Carol

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2013 @ 04:42am

    obsolete concept

    There is no longer such a thing as "public domain".

    It all belongs to them now.

  • On the post: Defense Department Privatizes Giant Public Domain Media Archive

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 23 Dec, 2013 @ 05:04pm

    lines being drawn

    The government sees us as the enemy. Every one of us.

  • On the post: Santa Claus Is Coming To Town… And EMI Is Keeping The Copyright

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2013 @ 03:34pm

    J Fred Coots

    I just want to point out that J Fred Coots, the author of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", was one of the great songwriters in the history of the genre known as the "Great American Songbook".

    Jazz musicians would know the name from the lead sheets to "You Go to My Head" and "For All We Know" and pop aficionados would recognize, "Love Letters in the Sand", which were just a few of Coots' great songs.

    He's said to have written "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" in just ten minutes. That was in the Tin Pan Alley days when songwriters were expected to churn out popular tunes. Generations of jazz musicians used those tunes as frameworks for their improvisations, including Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown and countless others.

    J Fred Coots isn't put in the same category as greats like Jimmy Van Heusen, Harry Warren or Cole Porter, whose songs every jazz musician is expected to know, but he sure was a talent.

  • On the post: 'Lawyer' For Wang-Handled Santa Tries To Stifle Reports About Santa's Wang-Handling

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2013 @ 06:30pm

    Heartwarming Xmas Story

    Now this is the reason for the season.

  • On the post: Judge Says NSA Bulk Metadata Collection Likely Unconstitutional, Issues Injunction

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2013 @ 02:17pm

    government contractors & corporate sovereignty

    Let's see how long it takes Keith Alexander and the corporate contractors who are getting rich off NSA data collecting to tell this judge where he can stick his injunction.

    The judge probably just made their list.

  • On the post: Lawsuit Claims Accidental Google Search Led To Years Of Government Investigation And Harrassment

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2013 @ 06:30am

    can't say

    I no longer believe there are things that the United States government "would never do".

    I've seen too many of those things happen in my lifetime. I remember my dad, a WWII vet, telling me that the US "would never torture a prisoner", and "would never assassinate" or "doesn't target civilians" or "doesn't spy on Americans who haven't committed a crime" or...

    I never dismiss out of hand any outrageous assertion about our government's (or some private contractor's) misbehavior.

  • On the post: If You're An American Who Believes In The 4th Amendment, You Have No Excuse Not To Sign This Petition

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2013 @ 01:40pm

    Re:

    You don't have to rely on the NSA not breaking the law. This law could give an entirely new cause of action to groups like the ACLU and EFF to have the courts stop the NSA.

    And, the law goes well beyond just the NSA, but I guess you k now that already. If fifteen seconds is too much for you to spend on this, then nothing is going to convince you. You probably aren't the kind of people the petitioners are trying to reach.

    I'm guessing there's not much you'd spend your time on that didn't directly involve the welfare of your own pink (almost certainly) butt.

  • On the post: Newest Leak Shows NSA, GCHQ Infiltrated World Of Warcraft, Second Life

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 09 Dec, 2013 @ 02:00pm

    Re: The joy of work

    But it's a government agency, with all kinds of money to spend
    Private contractors are doing most of the work.

    So remember, it's not just "the government" collecting all that information. It's private corporations, who have other non-government clients that might have their own uses for that information.

  • On the post: European Commission Desperately Tries To Justify Inclusion Of Corporate Sovereignty In TAFTA/TTIP; Fails Dismally

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2013 @ 08:09am

    Re: Re: syllogism

    i) The agreements are unnecessary because the governments of these countries don't have a history of undermining investments with new laws.

    ii) The agreements are counterproductive because they raise in the investor's mind the thought that there could be a problem where previously he had ignored the possibility.

    iii) The agreements are pointless because everyone knows that the country in question will find a way to ignore them if push comes to shove (cf the treatment of UK and Antiguan internet gambling companies in the US)


    This is important. It's not as if there has been no investment in the countries trying to ratify this obnoxious treaty. Amazing, the entitled mentality of the corporate elite.

  • On the post: TPP Defenders Take To The Internet To Deliver Official Talking Points; Inadvertently Confirm Opponents' Worst Fears

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2013 @ 04:56pm

    Re: Re:

    It's too late to stop this. The only thing left now is civil disobedience on a mass scale. The elite are, for some reason, always afraid of large scale social unrest. That's why they try to attack these movements in the cradle, like they did Occupy.

    There are no "political" solutions to stopping TPP and other "agreements" like it. At this point, we can only do our best to get in the way.

    But remember, "getting in the way" worked back in the early part of the 20th century. We saw the rise of organized labor and the growing influence of the middle class, and the entire New Deal because elites were worried about the Great Unwashed showing up on their front lawns and getting in the way.

  • On the post: Obama's Response To Too Much Secrecy About Surveillance… Is More Secrecy

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2013 @ 08:11pm

    Re: Obama's legacy...

    Heck, it's even worse than Reagan's.

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Safe Until Proven Harmful

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2013 @ 03:23pm

    toast and coffee

    The worst part of the FDA is that they tell us to "limit our intake" of things we didn't know existed until just now.

    Acrylamide is dangerous, we are told, and it appears in toast and coffee. Yet, we are not being told to avoid toast and coffee. In fact, there has been for the past year one article after the other telling us that coffee is beneficial.

    Maybe the FDA would be helped by being an agency actually tasked with looking out for peoples' health in regard to food and drugs, rather than an agency looking out for what's best for industry. Until they stop trying to run from their role as a natural antagonist of the food and drug industries, they will not be useful to us.

  • On the post: FBI Stops Responding To The Most Prolific FOIA Filer, Because He Might Actually Learn Something

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2013 @ 07:54pm

    Re: Re: His next step...

    Or training on how to give FBI officials lie detector tests.

  • On the post: FBI Stops Responding To The Most Prolific FOIA Filer, Because He Might Actually Learn Something

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2013 @ 07:52pm

    Re: It pays to look both ways before crossing irony street

    #1 Internet Comment of the Day.

  • On the post: Boston PD Drops Ridiculous Felony Charges Against Carlos Miller And Taylor Hardy

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2013 @ 07:49pm

    unbelievable

    The Boston PD is claiming that a conversation with a governmental PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICER is private. How can any public official claim that any conversation they have with a citizen regarding PUBLIC business is private? We have paid for that conversation with our taxes, and the person who is having the conversation with this PUBLIC official wants the conversation to be PUBLIC.

    Our government has really lost its mind. They really believe that they're supposed to be in charge. And this in Boston, where some of the guys who wrote the Constitution actually walked the streets. They must be turning over in their graves.

    It is time for civil disobedience.

  • On the post: List Of Targets FBI Supposedly Asked Jeremy Hammond To Crack Revealed

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 18 Nov, 2013 @ 07:43pm

    That's the truth

    No, hangon, Plesk is a US company, he should report it *publicly* to ensure its really fixed.


    There it is. Our only hope for a future without a tyrannical corporate surveillance state is that lots of heroic whistleblowers step forward.

    If there are any people out there with information like this, please step forward and make your information public. You are the only chance we have left.

  • On the post: Divine Approval: That Time When The Vatican Pirated Video Games

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 17 Nov, 2013 @ 06:11am

    Father Mackie

    You don't even want to know about how much pr0n gets downloaded at the Vatican.

  • On the post: Candidate For Colorado Legislature Proudly Abuses YouTube's Copyright Complaint System To Kill Account Of Activists Who Mocked Him

    PopeRatzo ( profile ), 10 Nov, 2013 @ 02:55pm

    Re: Re:

    This story has absolutely nothing to do with "legislation, laws, court proceedings or anything like that".

    This was a decision made by Google, nothing else. There was no lawsuit or court proceeding that this Rev Klingenschmitt could have brought that would not have been summarily dismissed by the first judge who got within 3 feet of it.

    It is entirely Google's fault for not looking into these false claims of copyright infringement and simply shutting down an account of someone who has done nothing wrong.

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