Rather_Notsay 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Twenty-Five Years Since The Challenger Explosion

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 28 Jan, 2011 @ 02:29pm

    EXTRA!

    Shows what an old fossil I am, compared to the average TechDirt reader. I was working at the Space Shuttle plant in Downey, California. It was like a death in the family. Reporters were hanging around the canteen across the street, trying to grab a quote.

    I still have the special edition of the Long Beach Press-Telegram. That was the only time I've ever seen a newspaper with "EXTRA". But there was no newsboy shouting "Read all about it!" There's no reason to expect that there ever will be again.

    And, yes, when you play around with large quantities of highly energetic chemicals you're bound to get burned sooner or later. That does not mean that the Challenger accident wasn't avoidable. The evidence that they had entered a dangerous situation was there. The Thiokol engineers understood why that particular launch was much more dangerous than the previous ones. They did a miserable job of communicating it. See their presentation in "The Challenger Launch Decision" by Dianne Vaughn and tell me with a straight face that you would have done anything different. I have presented their charts to a senior level engineering class as a textbook example of a rotten presentation. All that soft and squishy stuff sometimes matters.

  • On the post: Company That Makes Wristbands With Holograms Forced To Admit That Their Scientific Claims Are Bunk

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 05 Jan, 2011 @ 03:00pm

    Re: Re:

    My shark-repellent anklets are three easy payments of $39.95 and they're 100% effective! If you get your legs eaten off we'll give you your money back! And if you call now I'll double the order at no extra charge.**

    But seriously, folks, at what point do we stop trying to protect stupid people from themselves? I get mad when I see stupid scams like this one, but is it because I really care about the poor stupid people, or am I just envious because I didn't think of it (and have enough gumption to execute it) first?




    * Sole recourse is refund of the price paid, less shipping and handling.
    ** You just pay shipping and handling of three easy payments of $39.95 per extra unit shipped.

  • On the post: If A Book Editor Drastically Changes A Book, Would Publishing The Originals Be Fair Use?

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2010 @ 06:23am

    Every draft is a copyrighted work

    Can you imagine it, if this is allowed everyone and their dog will be pulling out old drafts of their works and claiming they are different to the finished version, therefore they have the right to take that bite they have allready [sic] had.

    Since EVERYTHING is automatically copyrighted even if the author doesn't ask for a copyright, there's strong justification to claim that every draft is a copyrighted work, completely independent of any other.

    The original author might have transferred the copyright of the finished work to the publisher, but unless he also explicitly transferred all the drafts they presumably belong to his estate.

  • On the post: Perfect 10 Loses Again, As Court Says DMCA Notices Need To Be Properly Filed

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 29 Jul, 2010 @ 03:39pm

    What's so hard?

    I just don't understand what's so hard about filing a DMCA notice. If I was, say, in charge of copyright control for Warner Brothers, I would, every morning, go to Google, type in "Bugs Bunny" find all the posted videos of copyrighted Bugs Bunny cartoons, check to see that they really were infringing, paste the URL into a standard form letter, and email it off to the relevant site. Google would be my friend. They're doing all the hard work of finding all this infringing stuff for me, I just have to cut an paste. It wouldn't take someone of my skill to do this, I could get a low paid flunky to do it, it's that easy. Heck, I could get illegal aliens or people living in countries with extremely low pay levels to do it.

    There's an expense involved in that, tis true, but if the sale of Bugs Bunny cartoons don't generate enough revenue to pay a flunky in Pakistan to search on Google for unauthorized copies, one wonders why the copyright is worth enforcing at all.

  • On the post: Mobile Phone Operator Lobbyists Say No Laws Necessary To Prevent 'Bill Shock'

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2010 @ 11:44am

    Monthly cap

    The simple thing is that when you sign up you specify a monthly cap.

    This is just like when you put a cap on the amount you can take out each day with your ATM card. You hit the monthly cap, your phone doesn't provide any more optional services.

    Every honest provider should be happy with this without being forced to. It keeps customers from getting mad at them for surprise bills. The crooks won't like it, but that's what regulation is supposed to do.

  • On the post: Pork Board Admits It Knows Unicorns Don't Exist, But Claims It Doesn't Matter

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2010 @ 07:29am

    Pork?

    I thought cat was the other white meat.

  • On the post: Script Kiddie Botnet Operators Ask For Jobs From Security Company That Shut Them Down

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2010 @ 07:14pm

    Great Reward

    instead of booting the kids out he proposed to them that if they could keep others from bothering the customers those kids would have free pass to play what they wanted

    So it sounds like, "Behave yourself and we'll treat you like everyone else. Be a threatening ass and we'll give you free stuff." That used to be known as extortion, but maybe I'm such an outdated fossil that I just don't understand the hip new world.

    Rewarding computer intruders for their criminal behavior is the same thing. There's already this weird romantic notion that an acceptable career path is commit some break ins, get caught, profess remorse, then clean up as security consultant. How much illegal behavior are we supposed to put up with from misunderstood kiddies working on their long term career goals?

    Maybe not shoot them, but they certainly shouldn't be rewarded. I sure wouldn't want them in my shop.

  • On the post: How Monetary Rewards Can Demotivate Creative Works

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2010 @ 06:35pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: creativity and money

    "Ultimately we might NOT want more Mozarts, Einsteins, and Shakespeares because they are viewed as isolated geniuses.

    Good point. In my one horse town we have a great civic theater. No big stars, just local people being creative for fun. Mostly they put on shows that have been written by someone far away and part of the copyright system, so they have to pay fees.

    There are locals who can and do write scripts. They rarely get produced because of a perception that a big name show that everyone has heard of is necessary to bring in the audiences.

    As the copyright maximalization industry gets to be bigger and bigger jerks about things, why not tell them all to shove off and do everything on the locally. That's more fun on multiple levels. When people see that there's an opportunity to have their script produced, they'll produce more scripts. If I could take someone's almost good play and mash it to suit a new audience, that would be even more production.

    All without getting paid any more than the actors do, which is nothing.

  • On the post: How Monetary Rewards Can Demotivate Creative Works

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2010 @ 09:53am

    I could go on all day

    Amazing discussion. I have so many examples of why the guy is right I could write all day. For free, even. Anonymously!

    I'm a regular blood donor. Why do I waste an hour and put up with the pain for a cookie and a juice box? I'm not sure. Sometimes it's worse; sometimes I do platelet pheresis. That's two hours, I have to get up at 5:30 on a Saturday, and I feel goofy all day. Why don't I go to the plasma center and get, what is it, thirty bucks? If they gave me ten bucks at the Red Cross would they get me to do it more? I'm pretty sure the answer is no, I would do it less.

    In the late '80s I saw a segment on the news of a guy who worked in a screw factory in the Soviet Union. He was working his *** off making screws. At the end of the day he was going to get paid in a useless currency that wouldn't buy much. But still he made screws. He believed in what he was doing.

    My business is aerospace/defense. People used to get really pumped up about doing that kind of work. Now it's drudgery. The interesting backward results I see is that the more they try to control costs, the more expensive everything gets. The more they try to reduce mistakes, the more mistakes they get. The more they try to get people "engaged" (yeah, my company uses that term) the more cynical they get.

    Cost control is a pretty good example of how it works. Take a bunch of motivated, intelligent engineers and tell them the best ones, the technical leaders, that they have to be cost managers. They don't want to do it, they want to make things.

    Management tries to use the argument that "it all pays the same" whether you're designing circuits or doing Mickey Mouse bean counting. Even though they have a hard time articulating the concept, everyone knows that's not true. The smart people dig in their heels and either refuse to do it, or do it badly, or maneuver to get out of it.

    What happens next is the "incentives" route. They reward with (at least the prospect of) promotions and pay to those willing to do the bean counting. The ones who take this offer are invariably the ambitious but not so talented ones. The people who are motivated by personal gain are exactly the worst people you want in positions of leadership, but that's what you get.

    That doesn't mean that money is never a motivator. We often get into scrums over paid overtime. People get ordered to work some test over nights or on weekends, or work all weekend because somebody over-promised on a delivery date, etc. When that happens people are seriously counter-motivated by the notion of doing it for free. After seeing it plenty of times I think that's more a matter of recognition of the value of the sacrifice being made than the cash itself.

  • On the post: T-Mobile Claiming '4G Speeds' To Pretend It's Offering 4G

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 26 May, 2010 @ 07:01am

    Lose Upt to 300 Pounds on the Margarine Diet!!!

    You could lose up to 300 pounds on the Margarine Diet!*
    Zero grams of trans-fats per serving!+

    * Losing 300 pounds is possible if you eat one serving of margarine and run a full marathon every day, and if you started out weighing 600 pounds or more.

    + One serving is 500 mg, which contains 0.499 g of trans fats, which rounds down to zero.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Says Antitrust Law Applies To The NFL; No Exclusive Licensing Allowed

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 25 May, 2010 @ 06:20am

    Re: MLB Properties

    Good point. Baseball might not be interstate commerce, but selling shirts certainly is, whether or not they have MLB team logos on them.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Says Antitrust Law Applies To The NFL; No Exclusive Licensing Allowed

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 24 May, 2010 @ 06:08pm

    Baseball no different

    Because of a Supreme Court ruling long ago, (FEDERAL BASEBALL CLUB V. NATIONAL LEAGUE, 259 U. S. 200 (1922)) Major League Baseball is "not commerce", therefore exempt from anti-trust. This decision was made in a quaint time when the Federal Government didn't think they ruled everything. Subsequent rulings, more in line with modern conception of an all-powerful Federal Government with no limits, decreed that everyone one else is commerce. The NFL swung for the fences (threw a hail Mary?) trying to extend anti-trust to themselves and everyone else, instead got their heads handed to them.

    The Court has said they're not going to change the not commerce ruling. It's up to Congress. It's long past time for them to fix this quirk in the law.

  • On the post: Could You Replace Copyrights And Patents With A Fairness-Based Legal Liability?

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 24 May, 2010 @ 08:22am

    I think the big problem is that the content industries have started to think of unauthorized use as an offense rather than a use. They think of their works as their children and feel the need to protect them from the evil doers of the world. Injunctive relief feeds the control freaks.

    It would be a big step to simply recognize would be that the value of the protected content is only a small fraction of the value of the product sold. Even if it's an enabling patent central to the operation of the device, it's still not more than a few percent of the total value of the device. Or for that matter, a recorded song track is still only a small fraction of the value of the sale.

  • On the post: Samsung Sues Satirist, Claiming Criminal Defamation, Over Satirical Column Poking Fun At Samsung

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 11 May, 2010 @ 10:41am

    Who knew?

    Wow, I didn't even know Samsung was involved in such dirty deals. I'm glad they brought my attention to the matter.

  • On the post: Newspapers' Revenue Plan: If Lots Of People Used To Give Us A Little, We'll Now Get A Few People To Give Us A Lot!

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 20 Apr, 2010 @ 06:29am

    Comparable value

    How much do they charge a car dealer for an equal amount of space? I bet it ain't $450. That's how you figure out whether they are charging a reasonable rate or dancing on graves.

  • On the post: The NUMMI Cargo Cult: Ideas Are Easy, Execution Is Hard

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2010 @ 07:54pm

    There's No Substitute for Caring

    I heard the TAL story too. It's just like everything: there's no substitute for the people on the front line caring.

    Old Fremont: workers didn't care, cars were ****. New Fremont: workers (the same ones!) care, cars are good. Old Van Nuys: workers didn't care, cars were ****. New Van Nuys: all the trimmings, but workers didn't care, cars were still ****.

    How do you make the workers care? I'm not sure. Firing a few of them might occasionally help, because sometimes it's the only to make it clear that management cares about producing quality products, too. But it's certainly not the answer. A terror culture doesn't lend itself to caring about the final product.

    Adding Lean/Six Sigma/Total Quality/Management Fad of the Week certainly doesn't help, either. I've seen them all come and go. Everybody in the trenches can see that it's just another bull**** bureaucracy getting in the way. There's always going to be a point of decision, where there's a choice between caring about the product and paying homage to the FOTW. Choose to pay homage and you survive; care and you get reamed. It doesn't take long to learn that lesson.

    In my industry discussions about quality usually go something like this:

    Management: We care about quality. We've implemented a new quality initiative and established an entire quality organization to show how much we care about quality.
    Engineer: I need a week that's not in the original schedule to figure out how to do this right.
    M: We don't care that much about quality.

    Pretty soon, you learn not to argue about it.

  • On the post: If Amateur Photographers Are As Good As Professionals, Then We Can All Be Professional Photographers

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2010 @ 04:29pm

    I think a better discussion of the 10,000 hours concept is at http://norvig.com/21-days.html

  • On the post: If Amateur Photographers Are As Good As Professionals, Then We Can All Be Professional Photographers

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2010 @ 04:19pm

    Amateur Golfers Ruin the Sport!

    All those amateur golfers are flooding the market with golf talent, thus making it impossible for the professionals to make a living.

    These days the best professional golfers have to get by on a single private jet and yachts that rarely exceed 200 feet.

  • On the post: Paywall/Open Debate Applied To University Education As Well

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2010 @ 06:30am

    Spend time on useful stuff

    In the typical course (K-college) there is an immense pressure to "cover the material". This results in an instructor standing in front of the class talking too fast so the students can transfer the contents of the professor's notebook to their notebook.

    I've been on both sides of the lectern. This method is spectacularly ineffective, but we keep doing it because we've always done it that way.

    Wouldn't it be great if the students could have a copy of the instructor's notebook in advance, so the instructor could spend time explaining what it means and how to use it? Wouldn't it be great for instructors if they could freely adapt available information rather than re-inventing it for every class?

    Nah! Who would want to pay to attend an institution when it gives away all its valuable secret stuff for free? Who would want to listen to an instructor who just plagiarizes stuff from the internet?

    Now get back to work. You have a standardized test to pass.

  • On the post: North Face Lawyers Try To Drag South Butt Family Through The Mud

    Rather_Notsay ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2010 @ 03:43pm

    Re: Re: Dang

    I'd never heard of the South Butt before. But now that I have ...

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