SirWired 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Police Use Genealogy Site To Locate Murder Suspect They'd Been Hunting For More Than 30 Years

    SirWired ( profile ), 01 May, 2018 @ 06:47am

    No HIPAA problems at all

    If you submit your DNA to a database whose sole purpose in life is to match you with others who have done the same, there's no HIPAA problems at all for the database doing exactly what you told them to do.

    Now, if you submitted your blood at the Dr's office to have your cholesterol checked, and the lab company took it upon themselves to divert a few drops to put you in a genealogy DB, THAT would be a massive HIPAA violation.

  • On the post: Sprint, T-Mobile Try To Sell The Public On A Job-Killing, Competition Eroding Megamerger

    SirWired ( profile ), 01 May, 2018 @ 08:18am

    LOL, re: the TechDirt acquisition plan

    "And if a deal was inevitable for survival, there's plenty of potential merger partners (from Dish Networks to a major cable company like Charter Spectrum) that could have been pursued without eliminating a major competitor."

    Why would a TV broadcaster or cable company want to buy a cell phone network? How would THAT solve Sprint's problems with it being an uncompetitive network with a shrinking customer base, heavy debt, and no money to fund upgrades?

    Yeah, one of those other companies could bundle phone service with their other services as a promotion, but they could do that today if they chose without actually buying a cell carrier. (Heck, they could even set up their MVNO for minimal cost.) It might make some sense if Sprint were a healthy business not in need of a major capital infusion (driving up the cost of the acquisition by a lot), but they aren't.

    Lastly, I find it hilarious that the "up to 30,000" job cut number is being accepted uncritically, since it makes no sense. (The number was likely developed by somebody that punched some numbers into a hacked-together spreadsheet and didn't actually check Sprint's current employee base to figure out if the estimate passed a sanity check.) TechDirt would never let a telco get away with ludicrous figures like that, but apparently they are perfectly acceptable if they support the narrative TD is sticking to.

  • On the post: In 'N Out Uses A Bullshit Pop-Up Every Five Years Strategy Just To Lock Up Its Australian Trademark

    SirWired ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2018 @ 07:44am

    How is this a "loophole"?

    How is this a "loophole" in the law? Seems to be an explicit fulfillment of the law's requirements, not an end-run around them.

  • On the post: At-Home Dental Appliance Company Sues Website For Having Opinions About Its Products

    SirWired ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2018 @ 06:03am

    Re: Suing Yelp for fun and profit

    Your teeth will thank you. Treatment planning via some selfies and a set of DIY impressions is a horrible idea, and "supervision" via phone calls is even worse. (Real planning involves specialty x-rays, and specialized photos it would be difficult to take on your own.)

    It's a great way to screw up your roots, recede your gums, grind away at your TMJ, and just generally end up with a poor and unstable result.

  • On the post: At-Home Dental Appliance Company Sues Website For Having Opinions About Its Products

    SirWired ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2018 @ 01:12pm

    Their "successes" aren't great

    Somebody in the comments section for that article proudly posted her "success". Gah! Looks like they line up the "Social Six" and slam patients right into retention. That looks nice enough, but if you don't get the molars lined up correctly, the long-term prognosis ain't great.

    And I'm having trouble conceiving of how this "remote supervision" could possibly work. Any orthodontist worth their salt (especially on adults) will take cephalograms and a Panorex to check for root quality, TMJ complications, and get a sense of what the jawbones can accommodate for movement. None of that is going to come with photos. (And speaking of photos, a proper set of diagnostic photos is more involved than just taking selfies... it requires a mirror you stick in your mouth, and some fixtures to stretch your lips and teeth out of the way for a better view.)

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

    SirWired ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2018 @ 09:57am

    This isn't the Right to be Forgotten TD's been complaining about

    This bill appears to mimic GDPR's rules around deleting your own personal data from a company with which you've done business in some form.

    The censorship-promoting Right to Be Forgotten that TD's been (quite correctly) complaining about for a couple years is entirely different.

    I'm not saying that this isn't a bad law (it's certainly sloppily written), but this simply isn't the same RTBF that's been causing all the issues with websearch and press censorship. I think it's important to keep the two separate, as they refer to very different bodies of law.

  • On the post: The Competition-Killing Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Nobody Asked For Is Back On The Menu

    SirWired ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 11:20am

    Errr... wouldn't stopping the merger be interference?

    "If you allow that fear to let government meddle with the market..."

    Wouldn't prohibiting the merger kind of be the definition of the "government meddling with the market"? And wouldn't such an action be due to "fear" of the combination of the two entities?

    Anybody can look at Sprint's cashflow statement and see that there's no plausible way for them to keep going, absent Softbank continuing to pour in cash for no good reason, and with no end in sight.

  • On the post: The Competition-Killing Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Nobody Asked For Is Back On The Menu

    SirWired ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 07:48am

    I'm not seeing the problem

    With a poor network and poor service, it sounds like Sprint isn't much of a competitor now. If the losses continue, SoftBank isn't going to keep putting good money after bad. If they let Sprint go bankrupt, their spectrum will likely be auctioned off to the highest bidder, which might very well be, in large part, AT&T and Verizon.

    If Sprint's going to go under, getting bought by TMo intact seems to be the best of the available options.

  • On the post: The New York Times Tries Something Novel: Listening To And Interacting With Readers

    SirWired ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2018 @ 08:03am

    The NYT comments are VERY limited

    Because of the same problems every other online news comment section had, the NYT cut back their commenting feature significantly a couple years ago. It used to be that every story had commenting ability, and the NYT heavily moderated it. (They rejected one of my comments once for having "damn" in it, but the moderator sent me a personal e-mail explaining why it was rejected, thanked me for my comment history on the site, and invited me to re-submit it, as he thought it was otherwise a fine comment. All that attention can't come cheap.)

    When that burden got to be too great, they chopped the ability to comment down to a few select stories (they maintain the heavy moderation, I guess because of the tone they want to set.)

    I personally think that if a site chooses just cut comments entirely, that's their choice. It might make me less-likely to access the site often, but moderation to keep things from degenerating into a horrible fracas is expensive. (Yes, there is low-hanging fruit to be plucked to take care of the worst of it, but that may not be enough, especially at a large lightning-rod publication like the NYT.)

  • On the post: Ten Years Later, Cable Industry Finally Realizes More Ads Is Not The Solution To Cord Cutting

    SirWired ( profile ), 13 Mar, 2018 @ 07:30am

    It's all about trade-offs

    We are, by almost any reasonable standard, in a "Golden Age of TV". There are daring high-quality shows that never would have received an airing in an age with less competition for viewer eyeballs. And there's a ridiculously huge selection. (487 scripted TV shows were available on US cable/broadcast networks last year; that doesn't even count unscripted programming.)

    What's remarkable is that all this is happening with viewer numbers that are astoundingly low compared to a couple decades ago. The top-rated scripted show in 2016 was The Walking Dead. In 1995, that would have put it between #13 (Murphy Brown) and #14 (Hope and Gloria) The top-rated broadcast show, The Big Bang Theory, would have tied for #50.

    Clearly this variety isn't sustainable with the total subscriber/viewer base on the wane. That means either more commercials to make up for the lost revenue and/or cost reductions in the production process and/or swift cancellation of shows that today would be considered to have marginal revenue.

    Alternately, studios can sell shows to a streaming service to be included in their programming bundle, or they can create their own streaming service. But that's going to either drive up the price of the current streaming services OR lead to further Balkanization of streaming content.

  • On the post: Police Union Boss Attacks New DA For Daring To Speak To Police Recruits About Deadly Force

    SirWired ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2018 @ 06:30am

    We ignore crimes all the time

    We ignore crimes all the time; traffic laws, drunken bar brawls where nobody gets seriously hurt, small-scale fraud, etc.

    The question to ask is, "what form of activity detrimental to society are you trying to prevent through the enforcment of a law?" What interest is served by locking somebody up for a dime bag, especially if it may lead to the loss of their job or other serious consequences all out of proportion to the nominal penalty for the crime? What "big crime" is smoking a couple of joints going to lead to?

  • On the post: Police Union Boss Attacks New DA For Daring To Speak To Police Recruits About Deadly Force

    SirWired ( profile ), 08 Mar, 2018 @ 05:49am

    Some of the criticism was correct.

    Yes, officers should prioritize de-escalation over violence, and resort to non-deadly force if possible.

    But once an officer has made a decision to deploy their firearm, the correct choice is indeed to go for center-of-mass. Somebody who thinks it’s no big deal to try and hit something crippling like an arm, leg, or shoulder, has clearly watched too many action movies and never tried to shoot somebody who’d like to not be shot. The chest is simply a much easier target to hit than extremities. And the more shots that must be fired, the more risk to people the officer isn’t trying to kill.

  • On the post: Five Years After His Arrest, Prosecutors Try To Push Back Justin Carter's 'Terroristic Threat' Trial

    SirWired ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2018 @ 10:32am

    You have it backwards

    Perhaps if lots of people around you "get it wrong", it's you that has it backwards?

    Making the date sooner would be "bumped up" or "pulled forward".

  • On the post: Judge Tells Coal Boss Bob Murray The Judicial Equivalent Of 'Eat Shit, Bob'

    SirWired ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2018 @ 12:49pm

    Having HBO write the order is standard

    It's perfectly normal for a judge to ask a prevailing party to draft the official order and submit for the judge's approval.

    The order itself is just a formality, and doesn't contain commentary, analysis, etc. and the judge must sign off on it for it to be entered.

  • On the post: Quack Doctor Treating Cancer With Baking Soda Sues Skeptic For Questioning Her Cancer Treatment Methods

    SirWired ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2018 @ 12:53pm

    Re: Re: Ask Steve Jobs...

    The thing is, Jobs had a sort of pancreatic cancer that is often treatable if you don't dork around with woo. He could very well have been cured (or at least lived a lot longer.)

  • On the post: Quack Doctor Treating Cancer With Baking Soda Sues Skeptic For Questioning Her Cancer Treatment Methods

    SirWired ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2018 @ 12:45pm

    Chemo "doesn't discriminate"?

    We have a name for chemicals that don't discriminate between diseased and healthy tissue at all: poisons.

    Chemo absolutely discriminates between health and cancerous tissue. That's kinda the whole point of chemo drugs. It certainly doesn't do so perfectly, which why there are side effects.

    And given the alternative, dying of cancer, worrying about the after-effects seems like beside the point.

  • On the post: Why Does China Love The 'Sharing Economy'? Not Because Of Communism…

    SirWired ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2017 @ 03:48am

    Nothing especially sinister here, just a business fad

    Yes, data on location, purchasing habits, etc. has some value, but it's not enough to pay for all this "stuff". This is just a business fad, no different from wacky overcrowded trends here. I mean, seriously, umbrellas and basketballs?

    This sinister bit was just presented almost as a foot-note by some self-appointed consulting-company "expert", and should be treated with the proverbial grain of salt.

  • On the post: Where Credit's Due: Budweiser Goes The Cool And Funny Route On Microbrewery's 'Dilly Dilly' Craft IPA

    SirWired ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2017 @ 06:49am

    Reminds me of that Velcro video

    This reminds me of "Don't Say Velco", a completely horrible/hilarious power ballad to help impress upon the general public the importance of trademark enforcement to the Velcro company.

    https://youtu.be/rRi8LptvFZY

  • On the post: Angry Lawyer Already Engaged In A SLAPP Suit Promises To Sue More Critics, Use His Machine Gun If Sanctioned

    SirWired ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2017 @ 11:07am

    I wonder how a gun defends an empty bank account?

    He appears to be doing his level best to make himself utterly employable. I wonder what he thinks his gun will do to "defend" his empty bank account?

    I wonder if mommy and daddy paid his student loans, because disbarment does tend to put a damper on prospects for repayment.

  • On the post: Defense Department Spied On Social Media, Left All Its Collected Data Exposed To Anyone

    SirWired ( profile ), 17 Nov, 2017 @ 01:00pm

    Does this really count as spying?

    Does it count as spying when they record copies of something people publicly post on the internet?

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