Roger Strong 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (3460)

• On the post: Netflix Bows Out Of Cannes After Festival Tells Streaming Services To Get Off Its Lawn

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 02:47pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  Cannes changed their own rules to comply with the law.

  Really? The law also makes it illegal to judge the merit of a streamed movie for 36 months?

• On the post: Netflix Bows Out Of Cannes After Festival Tells Streaming Services To Get Off Its Lawn

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 11:16am

  Re:

  Note: I apologise to anyone who can't get the clicking noises out of their heads.

• On the post: California Bill Could Introduce A Constitutionally Questionable 'Right To Be Forgotten' In The US

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 07:41am

  Re: winston chruchill just rolled over in his grave

  That would be Santayana, not Churchill.
  
  And that's being optimistic. The potential for misuse of this law has me more worried about a variation of the saying:
  
  "Those who would repeat the past must control the teaching of history."
  - Frank Herbert, Dune
  
  "Right to be forgotten" laws are how you would do it.

• On the post: Canadian Government Leaning Towards A Right To Be Forgotten It Can Enforce Anywhere In The World

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 05:55am

  Re: Re: yet another "feelings" law in Canada

  They have unironically referred to themselves as the "natural ruling party".

  You probably also believe that US Democrats were the ones calling Obama "the anointed one."

• On the post: Netflix Bows Out Of Cannes After Festival Tells Streaming Services To Get Off Its Lawn

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 11:08am

  ...requiring a 36-month delay between theatrical release and streaming availability.

  Do ANY movies with a wide release meet this criteria these days?

  ...this was all about ensuring high festival standards.

  "Bad news. The 'LEGO Trump and Stormy' movie won't be on Netflix for three years."

• On the post: Canadian Government Leaning Towards A Right To Be Forgotten It Can Enforce Anywhere In The World

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 12:32am

  Re: Re: NO similarity between gov't and civil suit!

  No doubt he's talking about arresting officials in Google's Canadian operations.
  
  Much like how in the late 1990s Germany arrested a local CompuServe official over porn on Usenet, and Yahoo received legal threats from France over sales of Nazi memorabilia in the US.

• On the post: California Bill Could Introduce A Constitutionally Questionable 'Right To Be Forgotten' In The US

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 07:08am

  Most credit checks are done through the web sites of Equifax and other private companies. Could someone with bad credit demand that their information be removed from these "edge providers?" Or how about databases of problem tenants and landlords?
  
  (I'll bet that the former gets a specific exemption written into the law, but the latter does not.)
  
  I don't know how daycare centers and others do background checks on the mental health of prospective employees, but I'll bet that in at least some cases private databases are involved. Now with handy web-based lookups.

• On the post: Canadian Government Leaning Towards A Right To Be Forgotten It Can Enforce Anywhere In The World

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 11:18pm

  Re: yet another "feelings" law in Canada

  How did Canada end up with so many laws that basically criminalize hurting someone's feelings?

  As in the US - SESTA for example - bad laws get passed with good intentions. So Canada passed some "hate speech" laws over a decade ago. But what the Breitbart crowd tends not to mention is that those laws got neutered a decade ago when tested in court.

  Maybe Jordan Peterson should....

  Look. The US and other countries have those who insist that the instant you grant rights to women or LGBTQ folks, you live in a totalitarian regime where you'll be arrested for using the wrong gender pronouns. They're dismissed as delusional morons, and the arrests don't happen. Canada is no different.

• On the post: FTC Suddenly Remembers 'Warranty Void If Removed' Stickers Are Illegal, Sends Out Stern Letters To Manufacturers

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 02:36pm

  Re: Re: Think Geek t-shirt

  Well, any tinkerer will have opened something up and made things worse at least once.

  And some devices will always get a really bad iFixit score.

• On the post: MPAA Report Shows How The Internet Is Saving The Film Industry, Not Destroying It

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 01:09pm

  Re:

  Whoa. Based on that description, I hope it's not too late to keep the entertainment industry out of federal politics.

• On the post: Again, Algorithms Suck At Determining 'Bad' Content, Often To Hilarious Degrees

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2018 @ 12:25pm

  Re:

  Of course one has to question why humanity has such a problem with penises and vaginas.

  Sanity self-preservation. If everything about the Stormy Daniels affair and other Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations were allowed on TV news - from detailed descriptions to infographics to computer animation - this Presidency would resemble Call of Cthulhu.

• On the post: DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Dump Microsoft Case, Let It Use New CLOUD Act To Demand Overseas Data

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2018 @ 03:46pm

  Re: Stop treating computers as a neitherworld..

  Governments like power too. Including the ability to set interest rates and other monetary policy.
  
  Which is why for all the "Amero by 2005! er, 2008! er, 2010!" claims, the conspiritards never did find any government plan for it or any elected official in any government who wanted it.

• On the post: DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Dump Microsoft Case, Let It Use New CLOUD Act To Demand Overseas Data

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2018 @ 02:43pm

  Re: Re:

  First they'd split the company into "cloud" (Azure, Office 365) and "edge" (Windows, devices) divisions. So that the cloud division could be spun off or relocated overseas.

• On the post: Yet Another Court Says Victims Don't Need SESTA/FOSTA To Go After Backpage

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2018 @ 01:50pm

  Re: Re: Re: Sane people cannot fight against this stuff

  Remember National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and his son, also on Trump's transition team? Both of them along with Alex Jones broadcasting delusional PizzaGate claims? Leading to one of their followers shooting up the restaurant with an AR-15? Flynn Jr. is complaining on Twitter about the lack of violence against the Parkland students. Add that to Alex Jones, Fox News, the NRA, various Republican officials and more calling the students traitors, communists, and more. With lies about ripping up the Constitution, false flag operations and more. That's a whole lot of influential people demanding that Somebody Do Something about those students. Given how their followers have recently answered their calls - from neo-Nazi marches and attacks to the PizzaGate shooting - a large police presence is justified.

• On the post: Working Futures: The Nature Of Work Is Changing – Let's Help Get It Right

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2018 @ 09:02am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Pessimists?

  As I said, an experiment. Guaranteed annual income is indeed a form of basic income.

• On the post: Working Futures: The Nature Of Work Is Changing – Let's Help Get It Right

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2018 @ 11:46pm

  Re: Re: Re: Pessimists?

  As a kid I lived in Dauphin, Manitoba for a couple years while their Basic Income experiment was running in the '70s. I even hadn't heard of the program until a couple years ago when the internet discovered it, so I asked my mom about it. Our neighbor was in the program. Her husband was killed in a rollover car accident, leaving her to raise two kids alone.

• On the post: Working Futures: The Nature Of Work Is Changing – Let's Help Get It Right

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2018 @ 12:49pm

  Re: Pessimists?

  That sounds a lot like optimism. It's 40+ hours a week more free time

  Back in the early '80s, one of my high school teachers was into predictions very much like what this article talks about. He told us that in the '90s, the five-day work week would be outlawed. More and more women were entering the workforce and automation was making less workers more productive. The five-day work week would HAVE TO go; otherwise society would have to accept high unemployment and no job security. The reality of course is that employers had no problem whatsoever with high unemployment and no job security. Career full time jobs have been replaced with contract and part-time jobs, people working multiple jobs just to get by. You'll get your "40+ hours a week more free time", but it won't come with food and shelter.

• On the post: Working Futures: The Nature Of Work Is Changing – Let's Help Get It Right

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2018 @ 12:36pm

  Re: No Liberty

  There is already a war happening for 3d printing

  That revolution seems to have stalled. You can't even print a usable tea cup. (Hot tea will melt one type of plastic, and the other is toxic. Both are porous because of how they're printed and will leak.) Being able to print a simple electric tea kettle - with wiring and heating element in addition to the plastic bits - no electronics - isn't even on the horizon.

• On the post: Not Everything Needs Copyright: Lawyers Flip Out That Photos Taken By AI May Be Public Domain

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2018 @ 08:35am

  Re: Clipped to shirt pocket

  It won't just be sporting events. There's space tourism for example. SpaceX just ran into a law that makes it illegal to put cameras on their second stages and spacecraft without licencing from NOAA. For national security of course. Apparently the footage from the Falcon Heavy's Starman launch was technically illegal. Small hand-held cameras are exempt, so NOAA won't go ballistic when GoPro-toting tourists on Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic spacecraft, er, go ballistic. But if they clamp the GoPro to a window? That's a paddlin'. Perhaps an AI-controlled camera would shift the blame.

• On the post: Not Everything Needs Copyright: Lawyers Flip Out That Photos Taken By AI May Be Public Domain

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2018 @ 08:15am

  Re: Intelligence Test

  That depends on whether the monkey has protected the rights to the photo via a sovereign immunity deal with the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe.

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