sumgai 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Anti-Vax Doctor Hires Anti-Vax Lawyer To Threaten A Dallas Publication With A ‘Deafamation’ Lawsuit

    sumgai ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2022 @ 11:19am

    TOC, as of this morning (Wed 3/2/2022), the total number of deaths in the US attributed to Covid is sitting at 931,000. I'll assume a small tolerance, due mainly to reporting delays and such. While that number does comply with your "800K+ dead" statement, it quite understates the fact by about 12%. Only 'cause I'm a stickler about these kinds of things, don't take it personally. ;)

  • On the post: Federal Court Rejects Former US Ambassador's Attempt To Sue Google Over Things Telegram Users May Or May Not Have Posted

    sumgai ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2022 @ 09:53pm

    If I'd been the judge, I'd've ordered Altman to return to Ginsberg all of the fees he took. Then I'd advise Ginsberg that if he wants to appeal, he should spend that money on a different lawyer. That should be enough of a rebuke, without actually referring Altman to the Bar's Lawyer Conduct Committee. More judges should do this, it might teach lawyers a "new" fact-of-life that they apparently didn't learn in law school....namely, stop giving the legal profession a bad name!

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2022 @ 09:35pm

    Italics now show up as well as the indent, so thanks!

  • On the post: Education Spyware Purveyor Uses Lawsuit As Excuse To Sling Subpoena At One Of Its Most Vocal Critics

    sumgai ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2022 @ 09:19pm

    something is vewy scewy hewe

    .... they have to start editing files with vi to bring it back up. Say what?! No emacs??? Sounds to me like someone is rather gleefully playing the role of The BOFH, and the newbies are all PFY's.....

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2022 @ 05:40pm

    Welp....

    This was unexpected. When viewing a profile, mine or others, and I see a post that I want to follow up on (to see if there was any further discussion), there is no link like the old system. You know, the one that used to say "re: re: re:", etc. If there is an actual title for that individual post, then that link shows up. Otherwise, all we see is the thread's title, which just links to the top of the article. I rate this as a highly undesired bug, there's no way it can be re-labeled into "feature".

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2022 @ 01:44pm

    OK, next bug..... When using markdown to copy/paste a quotation, the ">" symbol indents the quote, but does not italicize it. Small one, to be sure, but one does get used to easily identifying certain aspects of what one is reading. Using indented italics to call out a quote is quick and easy for the reader. I'll bet that others here wouldn't mind that feature being returned. (But I could be wrong on that score.)

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2022 @ 01:23pm

    Sorry, Toom, but I don't know where to move to, in order to get an orange bar, top or side. Nothin' like that here. What I do see is occasional orange bars between postings, but I can't tell if they're part of the preceding post, or meant to call out the following one. Does no good for the reader at that point. But worse, I can scroll down the page just a little over half way, and the orange bar disappears! How is that helpful?? Besides, I'd petition to change out anything colored orange for any other color - reminds us all too much of a certain turd, doncha know....

  • On the post: Today In Senators Who Don’t Know What The Fuck They’re Talking About Regarding Internet & Speech: Senator James Lankford

    sumgai ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2022 @ 01:18pm

    ... and the honorable senator can’t possibly not know that
    I think that you forgot the letters "[space]dis" after the phrase "and the"
    Just how much legislation is “like” Section 230 without BEING Section 230…?
    Now that's a bleepin' good question!

  • On the post: Today In Senators Who Don’t Know What The Fuck They’re Talking About Regarding Internet & Speech: Senator James Lankford

    sumgai ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2022 @ 01:12pm

    My thoughts exactly, S.A. - why couldn't Lankford (who doesn't deserve any respect for the title he purchased) just walk down the hall and knock on Sen. Wyden's door? Is he too lazy? And wouldn't it be delicious irony if Sen. Wyden came out publicly and asked that very question of Lankford: "Why didn't you bother to ask the author of Sec. 230 what the intent was, instead of shooting from the hip with a misfiring gun? After all, my office is just down the hall from yours."

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2022 @ 03:10pm

    Couple more things.... I dont' consider these so much as bugs as just lack of time to think through the whole user interface thing. For instance: (Note, I'm on a desktop. Should've mentioned that earlier.) When scrolling, nested responses show lines that collapse inward when going up the page, and expand outward when scrolling down the page. These should remain stationary, and with a bit of spacing, as in the old system. There's no indication of new, and hence unread, replies have been posted since one has last visited a given topic (such as this one!). Is there a plan to bring back the green line on the left of a posting to indicate that one has not yet read it? Pretty sure that others here appreciated that interface trick on the old system.

  • On the post: Delta Airlines, Washington Post Call For The Federal Government To Create A No-Fly List For Unruly Passengers

    sumgai ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2022 @ 02:26pm

    TOG is correct, an airline serving the public is still a private business. Just like a local bar that bounces you for being an ass, and then tells other bar owners along the same street, you suffer the consequences of your actions for being a jerk on an airplane. But as I noted earlier, there is recourse in civil court. You may have had a really bad day, and you're flying back home to bury your dad.... so you failed to exercise civility when asked to mask up. The court can take that into consideration, and may possibly persuade the airline that you are remorseful, enough so that they should remove you from the no-fly list. This is nothing more than a contract dispute, at least at this time. If the government gets into it, and somehow makes it a criminal action (civil vs. criminal in copyright, anyone?), then the shit will really hit the fan, and it may come down to no, one cannot sue to be removed from the list. Again at least not without a significant investment of time and money. And FWIW, no has any inherent right to fly anywhere. A citizen or visitor to the USA has something of a right to travel freely (without hindrance), but that does not extend to any particular mode of transportation. When it comes down to it, you'll recall that when the Constitution was written, all that was available for personal movement was horse and carriage, or good ol' Ralph-and-Louie. Sailing ships (wind powered) were how you got to other places like islands. Funny enough, those methods are still available, should one so desire to use them.... or need to. I'm sure that some of you will see a direct correlation between this scenario and that of social media, yes?

  • On the post: Delta Airlines, Washington Post Call For The Federal Government To Create A No-Fly List For Unruly Passengers

    sumgai ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2022 @ 10:18am

    The intent here is not to "federalize" the list, but to gain protection under color of law that short-circuits any law suits over an airline sharing names of former customers that they won't let fly with them again. Such a list, or sharing of lists, is probably already being done, I have no idea, but the thing is, a person on the list can contest it in court, which is something a person on a government watch list cannot do. At least, not without a lot of time and money. Administration of the list should rightly be at the "front desk" where people attempt to buy a ticket, but if there's a government law on the books, then it enters the province of some government agency. Guess who's on deck for that little operation..... Additionally, where this will have to reach to have any effect at all is on-line purchasing of tickets. It's still a viable court case if one can buy a ticket on-line, then finds out at the check-in counter that he/she is on a "no-fly list for assholes". That becomes a contract dispute, albeit one that won't be settled until long after the flight has taken off for Timbuktu.

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2022 @ 10:08am

    The comment voting icons need to have a confirmation similar to the previous version, where it said "Thanks, saved your vote!" in letters large enough to read, and in a separate box. Now all we get is a 'you have to hover over the icon again to see some text that ways "you've already voted"'. Not copacetic.

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2022 @ 09:52am

    re: Feedback

    I don't know what the hell that thing was, but Ad-Guard took care of it right smart-like. For me, it just showed a list of names in a box that (poorly) imitated the appearance of an SD card. No label = no use for it on my system, so up to the Big Bit Bucket In The Sky it went.

  • On the post: Welcome To The New Techdirt!

    sumgai ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2022 @ 09:43am

    Not quite 6 hours after the opening bell.... The only thing I can see and call a probable bug is that under the profile link at the top right, the menu choices (four of them) don't disappear when I click elsewhere on the page. In fact, when I visit another page, either here on TD or another site, I can return to the same page where I had previously dropped it down, and then menu is still visible. If I ask for the dropdown on two pages, they both display said menu again, after going away and then returning to either of those pages. Even if clearing the cache straightened this out (I've not tested for that possibility), the old setup didn't leave things visible like this - I clicked away, and the menu disappeared. It's not in the way, at least not for me on fixed-width, but it's something I'm sure you'll need to address sometime in the future. BTW, it would be very nice if the Preferences page had an option to set the fixed-page width. TD takes up less than half of my screen width - that's a lot of white space! But variable drives me nuts, I can't use it. I don't know if I'm the only one in that boat, but I thought I'd just throw that out there....

  • On the post: Medical, Home Alarm Industries Warn Of Major Outages As AT&T Shuts Down 3G Network

    sumgai ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2022 @ 10:44am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Which is exactly the point - a publicly traded company answers to the stockholders. If they act like they don't care about what the stockholders think, then how long do you suppose they'll be trading publicly? Tell us, if you held stock in a company that pulled this kind of stunt, would you keep your money there, or would you sell your stake and move on to something more likely to succeed without screaming, wailing and gnashing their teeth, all because they were short-sighted? But more important is the fact that while trading is suspended, not only can one not sell his/her stock, but no one can buy it either. That can ham-string a company at a critical time. And don't think that stockholders, current or potential, won't pay attention to that kind of thing. It's in their nature to do so, less they loose their investment all the more foolishly. Oh, wait... were you thinking in terms of the individual investor, the guy who puts in between 10,000 and 100,000 bucks? No, my friend, I'm talking about the institutional investors, the ones with more money to invest than the value of all small-cap and many medium-cap corporations. Those are the people who will pull up stakes as soon as trading resumes, and trust me, that kind of sell-off is not something from which a company can easily recover.

  • On the post: New Right To Repair Bill Targets Obnoxious Auto Industry Behavior

    sumgai ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2022 @ 10:06am

    Re:

    If you're going to compare reporters with legislators, the main difference is that some reporters can fool some of the people some of the time, whereas legislators can fool only themselves. Secondary to that, reporters have a steady income, whereas legislators receive a varying amount over time, depending on which lobbyists need what legislation to be passed (or opposed). I'd rather have a reporter making laws for me, instead of a legislator that bought his/her way into the seat of power. At least reporters have seen what's really happening in the streets of America, to people from all walks of life. Legislators? (I'll admit that there have been some exceptions to my thoughts on legislators, but they've been too few and much too far between.)

  • On the post: Comcast Continues To Bleed Olympics Viewers After Years Of Bumbling

    sumgai ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2022 @ 09:51am

    Re:

    .... garnering for the IOC billions of grifted income.
    T,FTFY In no case that a sensible person can imagine would the words "IOC" and "earn" ever be used in the same sentence.

  • On the post: Apple Finally Defeats Dumb Diverse Emoji Lawsuit One Year Later

    sumgai ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2022 @ 09:41am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    What was that meme again? Oh yeah, it goes something like

    On the internet, no one knows you're a dog.
    For all I know (and I don't), each and everyone of you could be a white male - how am I supposed to figure out any differently.

  • On the post: Comcast Continues To Bleed Olympics Viewers After Years Of Bumbling

    sumgai ( profile ), 24 Feb, 2022 @ 09:09am

    Re:

    .... greedy bastards
    It does make one wonder where all that money is ending up, doesn't it? I mean, host countries spend their own money building villages, arenas, infrastructure, taking care of security, etc., none of that comes out of the billions paid to the Committee by advertisers and televisors. Participating countries spend their own money to train, clothe, feed, and transport their athletes to the event locations, so the Committee isn't spending money in this fashion either. Advertising? Possibly, but certainly not billions' worth. And insofar as I can determine, they couldn't possibly spend enough on advertising to sway those who don't give a damn about the Olympics in the first place, and it's wasted on those who are already fanatical about the whole schmear. I'd like some transparency here, please - just who pocketed nearly all that incoming money? 'Cause sure as shit those lame-ass medallions aren't made of real gold, etc.

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