M. Alan Thomas II 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2013 @ 07:18am

    Quote attribution

    That line's come in a variety of forms with a variety of attributions; see http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/20/news-suppress/ for variations and analysis.

  • On the post: Latest Leak: UK Spies Tap Internet Cables, Collect Nearly Everything With Little Oversight, Then Shares It With NSA

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2013 @ 06:34pm

    Well, at least most communications traveling by transatlantic cable are probably international in nature. That's . . . something. Not much, but something.

  • On the post: Despite Spending $50 Billion Per Year In R&D, Pharma's New Drugs Less Effective Than Drugs Developed 40 Years Ago

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2013 @ 01:18am

    Re: Re:

    Well, it might be from a four-year-old article in Wired:

    It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time.

    It's not that the old meds are getting weaker, drug developers say. It's as if the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger.
    http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect

  • On the post: Researcher Tries To Connect Violence And Video Games During Murder Trial; Gets Destroyed During Cross Examination

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2013 @ 06:45am

    Typo

    Right after the second blockquote, you call Craig "Chris."

  • On the post: Retired Lt. Col.: Violent Media Has Bred A Generation Of Killers

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 21 May, 2013 @ 11:20am

    Re: Ummmm 9/11

    He's counting events only in those specific years, not "grouping" nearby years.

  • On the post: Copyright Holders Will Define Details Of UK's Orphan Works Bill, But Not The Public

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 15 May, 2013 @ 02:51am

    Not a single advocate for the public? Is the Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance so different from its U.S. counterpart?

    (My answer: Not as far as I can tell.)

    I'm less sure where The National Archives and the National Museum Directors' Council fall on that spectrum, but speaking as a librarian, I'd usually consider those allied professions and assume a similar pro-public-access-to-information ethic.

  • On the post: Lobbyists, Politicians And USTR Planning A 'Rally' To Show 'Strong Support' For TAFTA

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2013 @ 12:03am

    Re:

    The Chamber of Commerce isn't going to be the target of any government budget cuts because it's not a government agency.

  • On the post: What I Learned About My Own Daily Life From The Latest North Korean Propaganda Video

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2013 @ 05:56pm

    Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington of Virginia commanded our armies throughout and to the successful termination of our Revolutionary War; Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington presided over the convention that formulated our Constitution; Whereas Lieutenant General George Washington twice served as President of the United States of America; and Whereas it is considered fitting and proper that no officer of the United States Army should outrank Lieutenant General George Washington on the Army list; Now, therefore, be it

    Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That

    (a) for purposes of subsection (b) of this section only, the grade of General of the Armies of the United States is established, such grade to have rank and precedence over all other grades of the Army, past or present.

    (b) The President is authorized and requested to appoint George Washington posthumously to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, such appointment to take effect on July 4, 1976.
    Approved October 11, 1976.
    Public Law 94-479

  • On the post: People Who Have Actually Heard of the Supreme Court Don't Like It Very Much

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2013 @ 03:55pm

    And by "don't like it very much" we mean "mostly (52%) like it, with a 5:3 favorable?unfavorable ratio." Which compares favorably with both the President and Congress.

    These are only bad numbers by historical comparison, which I don't think justifies the more absolute headline.

  • On the post: Should We Be Measuring Happiness As An Economic Measure?

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2013 @ 11:40pm

    Three points:

    (1) I'm not sure that there's any such thing as a "happiness drug"?even antidepressants don't really work that way?but I take your point.

    (2) Your objections seem to assume that such an index would measure present-day happiness; they don't seem to respond to the question of what happens if a big-picture metric is chosen.

    (3) The best argument for why we might choose a short-term metric is that we already effectively do so with snap polls, approval polls, "Do you think the country is headed in the right direction?" polls, and obvious short-term-profit-long-term-loss choices being made by government, but that simply invites the question of to what degree a designated metric would exacerbate a problem that arguably already exists in substantially similar form.

    Not that I'm arguing in favor of such an index, mind you; I just think that this argument is perhaps missing some elements of the big picture itself.

  • On the post: The DVR That Watches You Back: Verizon Applies For 'Ambient Action' Detecting Device Patent

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2012 @ 10:10pm

    Sleeping?

    "A traditional targeted advertising system fails to account for what the user is doing (e.g., eating, interacting with another user, sleeping, etc.)."

    Wait, sleeping? What ads do they think I should be watching when I'm asleep? Are they going for subliminal advertising or just jacking up the volume to make me wake up?

  • On the post: Here's The Proposal The FCC Says Doesn't Exist To Move Network Diagnostics To Proprietary Servers

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 21 Jul, 2012 @ 01:28am

    Vint made a relatively absolute claim that I'm not sure is so absolute in the proposal. You're right that the proposal does seem to be designed to allow for the later back-door removal of M-Lab from the scheme (subject to replacement by another "research platform," which is not defined in the document but does seem to be inherently opposed to ISP ownership), but it doesn't require that. It does say that "The above approach will allow us to use 'on-net' results in the future as our primary data source for reports"; however, it also states fairly clearly that the off-net data (including research platforms) must keep being used in case the ISP's internal numbers are off, in which case the ISP's internal numbers can be discarded. I'm afraid that I have to side with Henning Schulzrinne in rejecting any reading of the proposal as absolutely replacing M-Lab.

    Oh, and SamKnows wants sudo rights on every ISP-owned test server so they can check why the ISP's suddenly giving them bad data. I like that idea.

  • On the post: Research Shows: You Don't Need Patents To Disclose Information

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 28 Jun, 2012 @ 12:10am

    Michael Burstein does seem to be saying that patents are a way of solving the problem, so it's not like they're useless. I imagine that, reformed, they will probably be the best solution for a certain class of cases, although I must admit to not being expert enough to identify specifically what that would be. (I think Burstein would like to see more research into that question.)

  • On the post: Canada Has Hidden Microphones In Airports Recording Conversations

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2012 @ 01:51pm

    Re: Re: It's an airport.

    It's not that I think that this is necessarily going to be usefully increased vigilance?I'm quite happy to accept increased risk of dying if I can do so with a clean conscience?but I also don't think that I have much expectation of privacy in this context to begin with. Useless boondoggles that only cost me taxes just aren't what I come to Techdirt to complain about.

  • On the post: Canada Has Hidden Microphones In Airports Recording Conversations

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2012 @ 08:23pm

    It's an airport.

    An airport is a public space where I could (presumably) legally record the people around me. While that in and of itself doesn't make it okay for the government to monitor it, it's also not what I would call a public forum; it's a transportation hub, not somewhere I go for a quick political rant. Indeed, for decades now airports have been high-security (i.e., monitored) areas where we know that certain talk (e.g., jokes about bombs) is forbidden.

    To put it another way: This does not change my basic understanding of the world that airports are bad places to go when you want to talk about how much you hate the government and wish everyone would just die.

  • On the post: Westlaw And Lexis-Nexis Sued AGAIN Over Claims That They're Infringing On Copyrights Of Legal Filings Themselves

    M. Alan Thomas II ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2012 @ 06:38am

    Plan B: Policy change

    While it is true that to date the exemption to copyright for court opinions has been carefully kept unavailable to court filings, it is worth noting that this position might have occurred only as a result of there being no successful challenges to the de facto public domain status of the filings. As even state court opinions are normally uncopyrightable as matter of policy, the result of a successful suit might simply be a quick policy fix to restore the status quo ante.