Pseudonym 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: FBI Continues To Foil Its Own Devised Terrorist Plots

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 10:09pm

    Re:

    So why didn't Daoud do this?

    Hell, why do some young African-American kids join gangs instead of turning them in to the cops?

    Could it be that Daoud was disenfranchised from the wider society, perhaps due to the hard time that Muslim people have thanks to all the paranoia, and so was ripe for exploitation by any group who offered him friendship and inclusion?

    By the way, if someone approached you with plans to bomb something, you might not turn them into the FBI if they had a history of being two-faced with your community on multiple occasions? If you thought there was a significant risk that by doing the right thing you could get arrested on trumped-up charges and threatened that if you didn't become an overseas agent in a war zone they would make your life a living hell, would you honestly do it?

    I don't know about you, but I'd have to think long and hard about it, and I have the benefit of being white, almost 40, educated and middle class. (Oh, and I don't live in the US, which is another distinct advantage.) I don't know what chance someone in Daoud's position would have.

  • On the post: FBI Continues To Foil Its Own Devised Terrorist Plots

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 09:53pm

    Re: Way to make up fake facts to suit yr own strawman...

    What are the FBI supposed to do exactly to deal with people like this?

    As I noted elsewhere, if this were any other young person at risk for getting mixed up in a life of crime, we would try to steer them away from that.

    First off, this approach is a hell of a lot cheaper. Secondly, it maximises our chances of gaining a productive member of society. Thirdly, it gives us an opportunity to build bridges with the community in which that person finds themselves. All we lose is the opportunity to say "look, we foiled a terror plot that we created". Sounds like win-win-win to me.

  • On the post: FBI Continues To Foil Its Own Devised Terrorist Plots

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2012 @ 09:43pm

    Re: The FBI is now the terrorist organization...

    Once again, imagine if the FBI did this with crimes other than terrorism.

    Suppose that some young, poor, lonely, disenfranchised kid sees other people selling drugs and thinking that might be a way out. So the FBI forms a fake gang for the kid to join, provides him with a circle of "friends" (all FBI or informants), gives him some fake drugs, and arrests him just as he tries to sell them to a fake customer (also FBI).

    Ridiculous, right?

    It is a fundamental principle of modern policing, supported by decades of sound research, that the best way to stop a crime is to make sure it never happens in the first place.
    If there is some segment of the population who are at risk of entering a life of crime, you need to steer them away from it, not towards it!

    This kid could have become a life-changing social worker or activist, working with and advocating for the people in his community who grew up like him. But that will never happen, because he now knows he can never trust the authorities who betrayed him.

  • On the post: Boston Shuts Down Uber Because Massachusetts Doesn't Approve Of The GPS

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 14 Aug, 2012 @ 05:35pm

    Re: Re: Hold on a sec, this is rational

    I don't know the answer to the moral question, but the legal situation is unambiguous: It is the government's job to set weights and measures. It's in the constitution.

  • On the post: Video Of Dotcom Raid Revealed, As NZ Police Admit It Was 'Over The Top'

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2012 @ 06:13pm

    Re: Words Fail

    It wasn't just copyright infringement. It was a Mega Conspiracy!

  • On the post: Even The Sex At The Olympics Is Sponsored

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2012 @ 05:39pm

    Re: Memo:

    You should be aware that among the athletes, taking as many condoms as you can is a tradition. The vast majority don't get used in the village.

  • On the post: Truth In Erroring: IETF Proposal Includes New 451 Censorship Error Code

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 25 Jul, 2012 @ 09:45pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Yes. I'd have about 1-2 seconds of pun-level amusement at the IETF's wiseassery first, rather than just going straight to calling the ones man-in-the-middle-ing me cockbiting fucktards.

    For all the good it will do. Said cockbiting fucktards generally don't read Techdirt or your personal blog.

    If you said it to their face, on the other hand...

    More seriously, I very much want to know the difference between error codes 403 and 451. In the former case, I'm not allowed in your house because you didn't want to let me in and you wanted to tell me not to try again. In the latter case, it's because you fear that Cato the Elder will take away your horse if you allow me in.

  • On the post: Senate Not Concerned About How Often NSA Spies On Americans, But Very Concerned That It Built Open Source Software To Do So

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2012 @ 05:05pm

    Re: Re: What Restrictions does the Apache License place on code?

    Yes. Anything the NSA writes is public domain, but there's nothing that prevents them from donating that public domain code to the Apache project and them slapping a copyright notice on any modified version they maintain or release.

  • On the post: In The Patent Battle Over Speech Devices, The Real 'Irreparable Harm' Is A Child Losing Her Only Voice

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2012 @ 06:38pm

    Re: Re: Re: I don't get it...

    Proview.

  • On the post: Chuck Close Succeeds In Stifling A Creative Homage… But Only For Another 100 Years Or So!

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2012 @ 06:18pm

    Re:

    You may have missed this detail, where Close lays out his real reason:

    I must fight you because if I know of your project, and do nothing to exercise my legal rights, that will put me in a position where I can?t fight the next, even more egregious usage of my copyrighted image and use of my name.


    I don't think Close is "behaving like a scumbag". His central concern is valid. The legal system is so screwed up that Close needs to fight this whether he wants to or not.

    There are certainly faults on both sides; Blake shouldn't, for example, have used Close's name. In Close's mind, this may be the lesser of two evils. It's still evil, but not necessarily scumbag behaviour.

  • On the post: US Gov't And Hollywood Have Turned Kim Dotcom Into A Beloved Cult Hero

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2012 @ 05:29pm

    Re: This can only mean one thing

    I don't know about next year. It took decades for the Larry Flynt movie to be made.

  • On the post: Dear Judge Koh: Competition Is No Reason To Ban A Phone

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2012 @ 06:25pm

    I also happen to think that the lawsuit is frivolous and ridiculous. Having said that, Judge Koh's reasoning is not bizarre. In fact, it makes perfect sense from a legal point of view.

    The point of a TRO is to prevent an uncorrectable harm. If Samsung really has done something wrong (that's a big "if"), and its product shouldn't legally exist, then the fact that it exists as a product will harm those whose products are legal.

    Judge Koh did the logical thing in an insane situation. He may not put it that way, of course, but that's what happened.

  • On the post: James Watson, Co-Discoverer Of DNA's Structure, Says 'Patenting Human Genes Was Lunacy'

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2012 @ 05:36pm

    Re: discoveries

    I thought that was funny too.

    Having said that, the world wide web is a perfect example of an invention which is a remix. Sir Tim freely admits that very little of the underlying technology was fundamentally original. MIME (on which HTTP is based) and SGML (on which HTML is based) were pre-existing standards. He did "invent" the URL/URI (and subsequently apologised for the double slash), but the key innovation was the exact combination of pre-existing technology and the brilliant execution.

  • On the post: A Broken System: Einstein Wouldn't Have Been 'Qualified' To Teach High School Physics

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2012 @ 05:07pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Teachers

    As many others have pointed out in this thread, the best minds don't necessarily have any teaching skills or training. A good physicist has only demonstrated competency in the material. They haven't demonstrated competency in handling a class of pubescent kids who don't necessarily want to be there, or dealing with parents, or any of the other things that teachers do. Giving children information isn't even the majority of what a teacher does.

    Just because you (and by "you" I mean a generic person, not you specifically) have spent a significant proportion of their life in contact with teachers, that doesn't make you an expert on the teaching profession any more than watching a lot of DVD extras makes you an expert film-maker. Teachers have responsibilities to the students, to the parents, to the school, to the government who sets the curriculum guidelines and to society as a whole. Teachers are even expected to be able to spot potential victims of domestic violence these days.

  • On the post: Disappointing: Teller Sues Other Magician For Doing The Same Trick

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 07:23pm

    Re:

    I'm inclined to agree that the distinction between idea and expression carries over more or less directly to magic routines. A sufficiently different act based on the same tricks wouldn't have the same moral problems that a direct copy would.

  • On the post: Disappointing: Teller Sues Other Magician For Doing The Same Trick

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 07:21pm

    Re: Re:

    Penn once said, I forget where, that the only reason for a magician to keep a secret is because it's ugly. Some tricks look magnificent, but the way they're done is ugly and dumb, and a significant proportion of the audience would have a gut anger reaction towards the magician who used such an ugly, stupid, dumb technique to obtain that effect.

  • On the post: The Odd Future Approach: Give Away The Music, Sell Awesome Stuff

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2012 @ 07:36pm

    Re:

    Odd Future is a joke and for all their manufactured for appearances "success" they can barely break into the top 150 when they release a project.

    I don't know anything about them that wasn't in the video above, so forgive my ignorance, but... the top 150 what, exactly? Clearly you can't be referring to album sales, because that's the point of the article. So what is it?

  • On the post: The Odd Future Approach: Give Away The Music, Sell Awesome Stuff

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2012 @ 07:31pm

    Re: Nice and all but

    First off, it's not "some guy". It's hand-made by a member of your favourite band. Moreover, remember that you didn't have to spend 100 pounds on 20 albums worth of music.

  • On the post: A Perspective On The Complexities Of Copyright And Creativity From A Victim Of Infringement

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2012 @ 01:24am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Response to: Calvin on Apr 12th, 2012 @ 4:50pm

    The phrase you used was "demand for attribution". I did not interpret that as meaning a legal requirement.

    Most remixes are, after all, done by fans. They're usually more than happy to put the attribution in if you ask them.

  • On the post: A Perspective On The Complexities Of Copyright And Creativity From A Victim Of Infringement

    Pseudonym ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2012 @ 08:31pm

    Re: Re: Re: Response to: Calvin on Apr 12th, 2012 @ 4:50pm

    I just re-read what I wrote, and I think it's pretty clear that I said nothing even remotely resembling that. What I said was that even if you don't think there should be a legal mandate, the frustration is understandable and justified.

    By the way, even if I did say that, the guilt by association act is stupid. Regardless of how many serial murderers agree that puppies are cute, this does not constitute a valid argument that puppies aren't cute.

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