Rather_Notsay 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Facebook Trading Near Its IPO Price Means It Was Priced Right, Not That It Was A Disaster

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 21 May, 2012 @ 01:20pm

    Re:

    So what it means is the investment banks got shafted this time. Pardon me while I wipe away a tear.

    But as the unpopular AC sort of implied, that won't happen again. The banks will low ball the next IPO, so they can go back to shafting the startups as God intended them to do. Those yachts don't pay for themselves.

  • On the post: FTC To Monitor MySpace And/Or Empty Space For 20 Years

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 10 May, 2012 @ 12:37pm

    In other news, it's reported that brake components used in certain 1953 Studebaker Starliners could rust when exposed to road salt, and NHTSA has ordered a recall.

  • On the post: What Do You Get When You Strip Patent Illustrations From All Context?

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2012 @ 06:47am

    Innovative Fish Processing Factory

    The last one is for a fish processing plant. In this case it's an assembly line in reverse. The traditional assembly line moves the work to the workers. In this one the workers ride by the work station on rail cars and perform the process rather than moving the fish, which can cause damage to the product. The worker depicted in the figure is whacking the fish on the head with a mallet. Other workers will ride by and behead, skin, and fillet, each applying his/her particular expertise while minimizing movement of the product.

  • On the post: To Read All Of The Privacy Policies You Encounter, You'd Need To Take A Month Off From Work Each Year

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 23 Apr, 2012 @ 12:07pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Communists own the house and let you live in it as long as you behave. Fascists let you own the house, and let you live in it as long as you behave.

  • On the post: Fight Is On Between Oracle And Google Over Java API Copyrights

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2012 @ 08:12am

    Copyright logic

    They're not trying to copyright logic, they're claiming that Google's specific implementation of this logic is so similar to Oracle's that it must have been copied.

    But as someone else implied, if "arrayLen", "fromIndex", and "toIndex" is the unique intellectual property of Oracle, every undergraduate CS and engineering student in the country needs to be expelled from college for flagrant plagarism. These are obvious names, good names because they're descriptive. If the originals were "pdqux536", "asdlfkj15" and "uklji191" and Google's were the same, Oracle might have an argument. But they weren't, so they don't.

  • On the post: If Publishers Can't Cover Their Costs With $10 Ebooks, Then They Deserve To Go Out Of Business

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 05:49pm

    Pricing by cost

    In the real world, if the price doesn't exceed the marginal production cost the company goes out of business fast. If it doesn't exceed cost by enough to cover the fixed costs it goes out of business slowly, and nobody wants to get into that line. But if it exceeds it by too much somebody else is going to move in and take the business away. The only way that someone can sell for far more than the marginal production cost for an extended period is by enforcing some sort of broken market employing barriers to entry.

    The publishers keep telling us how we should be happy to pay far more than the marginal production cost because we have to pay all their sunk costs, which manage to be far more than the marginal production cost. It's been my life experience that whenever I hear that I know that I'm in for one of those encounters where the vast majority of the satisfaction is going to accrue to the more powerful.

    If you want an example of what goes wrong when you start thinking in terms of price by cost, look at the aerospace/defense world. The government wants everything to be as cheap as possible, so they are only willing to pay "cost" plus a small margin. Because of that the contractors spend their time figuring out how to make everything a cost that they can pass on to the purchaser, rather than figuring out how to take cost out so they get to keep the difference between the sale price and the total cost. Does anyone think that ANYTHING in the cost plus world is reasonably priced?

  • On the post: Why Netflix Never Implemented The Algorithm That Won The Netflix $1 Million Challenge

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2012 @ 06:40am

    I think they have it nailed.

    They describe my behavior exactly. My DVD list had a bunch of deep, culturally significant things I would like to be able to say I've seen. Sometimes they would sit around for a month before we sent them back unwatched. Now whenever I want ten minutes of thoughtless pleasure I just slap on an episode of "Shaun the Sheep."

    I usually watch them one skit at a time. I hope they don't take partially watched to be evidence that I don't like it, it's just that that sort of comedy is better in small doses.

  • On the post: Open Textbook Startup Sued For Allegedly Copying 'Distinctive Selection, Arrangement, and Presentation' Of Facts From Existing Titles

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2012 @ 07:17am

    Re: Re: Well known practice in software

    A legal open source would be something produced in a clean room, like when Compaq duplicated the functions of the IBM bios using people who had never seen the code for the original. Copying the original down to using pictures of bears to illustrate the same concept is much closer to copying than to creating an original work.

    I'm afraid that, despite their noble intentions, Defendant has screwed the pooch.

  • On the post: There Are So Many Ways Machines Can Hurt You… And There Are Warning Stickers For Them All

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2012 @ 06:31am

    Folly

    The folly of trying to make anything foolproof, since fools are so clever. But not, apparently, clever enough to learn to read, since warnings now have to be in pictures.

    Seriously, one can only absorb so much information. Silly warning lables warning of improbable or obvious danger crowds out real warnings that users need to be made aware of. You ever read your ladder? I gave up and went back to something easier and less depressing, like Moby Dick.

  • On the post: Bradley Manning Formally Charged; Defers Plea

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 05:38pm

    Spare me the Bradley Manning as hero crap.

    When you make an agreement, you stick to it. When you voluntarily sign up to get a security clearance, you agree not to reveal the information you received as a result of having that clearance. Not even if doing so would make you feel good.

    Bradley Manning took information that he agreed not to release, then released it. Simply to pump his own ego. He deserves to pay the price.

    The weeniest of wieners are the ones who engage in "civil disobedience" then claim that they shouldn't take the lumps for their acts.

  • On the post: How The Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 08:40am

    Re: Re: G.E.A.R.

    I think that can get you death by stoning. I'll take two points, two flats, and a packet of gravel.

  • On the post: Getting Past The Uncanny Valley In Targeted Advertising

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2012 @ 04:50pm

    Where nobody knows you're name

    The denizens of Cheers might want to drink where everybody knows their names, but I prefer to shop where nobody knows my name. If they don't have my personal data, they can't abuse it.

    That's why I won't go into a Kroger for any reason. They pretty much demand that you hand over your identity to shop there. I just don't think it's worth it to save fifteen cents on a can of peas.It's kind of hard to avoid them because they like to buy out local chains, leaving them the same on the outside while they turn them into Krogers on the inside. Kind of like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

  • On the post: Kodak Planning To File For Bankruptcy In Order To Sell Off Its Patents

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2012 @ 07:30am

    Re: Kodak,one more company destroyed by piracy.

    It's the freetards, mostly. They post a picture of the Grand Canyon on the interwebs, then I don't have to go to the Grand Canyon and take my own Kodachromes.

    Google and Wikipedia should be taxed to support Kodak, General Motors, and American Airlines, all of whom suffer from this disturbing state of affairs.

  • On the post: Apple May Get To Remove Obvious Features From Android

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 22 Dec, 2011 @ 02:17pm

    This is technology?

    Is anyone but me offended by the usage here:

    "We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours."

    Technology is knowing how to build high temperature jet engine turbine blades. Putting a switch on the airplane's control panel that says "on/off" is a feature, not technology.

    Lawyers like to puff up the importance of features by calling them technology, but it ain't so, no matter how many times they say it.

  • On the post: More People Realizing That The FBI's 'Big Wins' Are In Stopping Its Own Made Up Terror Plots

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 03 Dec, 2011 @ 03:48am

    Re: Re: Possible Rationale

    I'm a potential embezzler. It's just that I'm not in a position of trust in an organization with a lot of loose cash. If only the FBI would remove that logistical barrier ...

  • On the post: More People Realizing That The FBI's 'Big Wins' Are In Stopping Its Own Made Up Terror Plots

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 02 Dec, 2011 @ 02:18pm

    "It may be tough to find a sympathetic court, considering many of those involved did effectively say they would take part in an attack. But if every part of it was orchestrated and paid for by the FBI... "

    Then that's pretty much the definition of entrapment.

    "The act of government agents or officials that induces a person to commit a crime he or she is not previously disposed to commit."

    Going down to Crack Avenue in ragged jeans and asking to buy a rock is not, however, entrapment. Offering to finance a distribution network and seeing who you can get to join you gang is. See John Delorean. "Without the government, there would be no crime."

  • On the post: Dentist Forced Patient To Sign Away Future Copyright On Any Online Review; Then Billed Him $100/Day For Negative Reviews

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2011 @ 05:43pm

    Wouldn't have seemed so bad

    On doctorbase, there are three reviews total. Two are glowing, praising the dentist for high quality of service. Then there's one person hacked off about the price. Followed by a very detailed rebuttal by the office manager.

    So given that I would conclude that this is a posh service, and one patient seemed to have wanted something less expensive. All in all, a fairly favorable impression of the dentist. Not somebody I would go to, but then I'm a cheapskate, too.

    So now, after the publicity generated by the lawsuit, this looks like the dentist from Hell. Somebody I wouldn't want to be within a mile of. I think I'll cross the street if I ever need to walk past the Chrysler building.

  • On the post: US Postal Service Sends Postage Due Bill To Guy Who Put Block Party Invites Into Neighbors' Mailboxes

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2011 @ 08:45am

    Re: Re: Who owns mailboxes?

    We once got a bizarre memo at work stating that if we sent a letter by FedEx, but it wasn't urgent, we had to put it in another envelope inside the FedEx envelope and put a USPS stamp on it.

    That's right, you can send a letter by FedEx if it's urgent, since that's not covered by the USPS monopoly. If it's not urgent, they will graciously let FedEx deliver it (at their full price) but it has to have a stamp on it, too.

    I suspect the compliance rate was near 100%. (plus or minus 1.)

  • On the post: New US Postal Service Ad Campaign: Email Sucks, So Mail Stuff Instead

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2011 @ 08:33am

    Talking Points

    In my town in the last few weeks there was a postal worker rally for the post office. I've noticed that there's a standard talking point about why the post office can't be cut: poor people in rural areas need to get their prescription drugs by mail, and if there was no Saturday delivery they would have to wait all the way until Monday to get them.

    Unless, of course, they planned ahead and ordered them one day earlier.

    When I pointed this out on the news site carrying the original article, a very well prepared troll accused me of trying to cut his great aunt who didn't like email off from the world.

    So it looks like there's a whole campaign going on to keep a bureaucracy in power, complete with astroturf protest rallies and web presence.

  • On the post: UK 'Superinjunction' Bans Anyone From Identifying Plaintiff In Libel Case

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2011 @ 02:30pm

    Re: Superinjunction?

    Next will be the super-duper-injunction, which will forbid you from even thinking about it. Anyone who ponders whether or not the subject in question is an embezzling pervert will have to strike himself in the face with construction lumber.

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