Rob 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Schaumburg Dumps Redlight Cameras After They Show No Safety Benefit

    Rob ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2009 @ 09:41am

    Re:

    Do you even know how to read?

  • On the post: Schaumburg Dumps Redlight Cameras After They Show No Safety Benefit

    Rob ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2009 @ 08:38am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Sweet!

    @hack -- What? first of all teh grammerz. is terrible, in your post? you are apparently; not overly (familiar) with proper punctuation! or basic sentence structure as your post. makes no sense? Ack -- writing as poorly as you is making my brain hurt.

    Responding to the content of your post, do you even know what a Catch-22 is? Can you please explain to me how the situation in question presents a situation which creates two potential but paradoxically impossible outcomes (i.e. -- the original Catch-22 -- If you are insane, you cannot be allowed to fly in combat. However, if you actually want to fly in combat you must be insane and cannot fly. Conversely, if you don't want to fly into combat you must be sane and therefore must fly) I can't see how that is a Catch-22 at all to begin with, but that is irrelevant. I was pointing out that slacker was missing the point, that we were talking about cameras being used for automated ticketing rather than cameras being used for monitoring. Apparently you are the one missing the point.

  • On the post: Schaumburg Dumps Redlight Cameras After They Show No Safety Benefit

    Rob ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2009 @ 07:22am

    Re: Re: Re: Sweet!

    And sometimes it is simply an unreasonable red light -- I don't think that there is any reason that I need to be sitting at a red light for 2 minutes when it is 3 o'clock in the morning and I can clearly see that there are no other cars coming within a mile. Better traffic sensors? Better software controlling the lights? No, let's just throw a camera up there and make the yellow light shorter so we can give out more tickets!

  • On the post: Schaumburg Dumps Redlight Cameras After They Show No Safety Benefit

    Rob ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2009 @ 07:12am

    Re: Re: Sweet!

    "And unfortunately the best way to get that number might actually be to have a camera sitting at every light and simply monitoring who runs yellow and red lights."

    Well -- I will ignore the fact that I disagree with that being a good idea and simply point out to you that the lights were not being "simply monitored", they were sending tickets out automatically in the mail. This is absurd and incredibly unjust, and a TERRIBLE way for the city to collect revenue, as only a small fraction of the revenue goes to the city.

    For instance, I was issued a $270 speeding ticket last year (probably deserved that one, but that's beside the point), followed by my insurance company tacking on a $400 surcharge for 6 years. That means that the total "revenue" garnered from me getting that ticket is an obscene $2,670, only $270 of which goes to the town. So the town collects their little fee, and then lets the insurance company charge me nearly 10 times more for getting the ticket! When towns start going out and giving tickets to generate revenue, they have to keep in mind that the people that they ticket are going to have to take on, in many cases, 10x the fee that they are charging. This is absolutely despicable and shows once again, that the government is not REALLY looking out for you (unless, of course you happen to live in Schaumburg, apparently).

  • On the post: Tricking People With Fake Content Isn't Good Advertising

    Rob ( profile ), 30 Jun, 2009 @ 06:19am

    Re: How about Responsibility?

    Umm... from the sounds of it, I don't think that this company is trying to "get you in the door at all", it sounds more like they are getting you to stop and talk to you and then picking your pocket. Or to put it more simply, I don't think that we are talking as much about a business as an out and out scam here, it does not seem that they really offer any sort of services whatsoever other than whacking a lot of people with the initial $80 fee. If there is only a few people involved in the upstream end of this and they nail a few thousand victims (which is entirely plausible, it is easy to forget how many extremely gullible people there are out there), this could turn them a pretty tidy profit. I am not sure where the law stands on blatant manipulation such as this, but I am sure that something can, and quite possibly will, be done. I am sure that AT LEAST something can happen in civil court if they have deceived a large number of people.

  • On the post: German Court Says Rapidshare Must Get Magical Powers To Know Which Songs Infringe And Which Do Not

    Rob ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2009 @ 08:13am

    "Secondly, just as important, you are talking about sealed packages, which Fedex and UPS cannot easily see the insides of. Doesn't compare to a filehost, who gets each byte of data unprotected. In other words, if you showed up at Fedex with a clear baggy of weed, dropped it on the counter and said "I want to send this to my buddy", they would probably refuse your business (or accept it and call the cops)."


    Wow, you are an idiot. The filehost gets each byte of data unencrypted? What happened when the file is uploaded in a password protected .RAR (which a very large % of RapidShare files are)? Does RapidShare have to crack the password on the archive so that they can peek inside and spy on you? What about people that, I don't know, re-encode the files and name them something irrelevant, or spell the name wrong? Are we going to demand that RapidShare hire a person to manually inspect each file that is uploaded for infringing content? This requires massive manpower, which costs a massive amount of money, which would need to come from somewhere (subscription fees), not to mention the fact that it would take far longer for files to be uploaded, greatly reducing the value to the customer. Reducing value while simultaneously vastly increasing cost to that degree would fail immediately.

    Extrapolating this outwards, holding up this unrealistic standard would completely kill the Internet as we know it. If this were to be held up as the standard, we would not even be able to have this open conversation here, comments would have to be individually inspected to ensure that I am not posting any copyrighted text, raising the marginal cost for a comment from very close to $0.00 to several dollars, making the comments section entirely unfeasable. Say goodbye Youtube, Facebook, Google, Craigslist and everything else that makes the web what it is, as EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of these sites would need to be manually moderated, which would make them entirely impractical without charging, which nobody is going to be willing to do after having these services for free. This would bring an already struggling economy to its knees and kill one of the most valuable tools we have in our free expression.

  • On the post: According To WSJ, Google Not Just A 'Thief' But A 'Digital Vampire'

    Rob ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2009 @ 06:54am

    Do you hear that?

    It sounds like the newspaper industry digging their own grave!

  • On the post: How The Entertainment Industry 'Launders' Policy Pronouncements

    Rob ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2009 @ 05:56am

    "He also fails to show how this is different from any other industry where the key players lobby actively."

    Thus the fundamental injustice in our current system... the government has truly been subversively "taken over" if you will by corporate interests, and is now being used as a wedge between the people and corporations to keep the money flowing. This is a HUGE problem all around and it is amazing to me that people are not more upset about this... instead we have people like the second anonymous (can't really blame him, I wouldn't want to attach my name to such silly opinions), who would defend the actions of one corporation by saying that everyone else is doing it. I agree that the recording industry is not the most grievous offender (health care and big oil immediately come to mind), it is still massively unjust and needs to be stopped. We need to urge our elected officials to put in place policy that will return control to the people. We need to publicly shame officials who bow to the corporate lobbies. We need to imprison the crooked officials who take bribes from the lobbies. We need to return to the government prescribed by the U.S. Constitution. The corporations may have be dug in like an Alabama tick (please excuse the Predator reference), but I think that this can change if we start pressuring our elected officials -- we need to speak with our votes and with our wallets.

  • On the post: Three Strikes Rejected In Spain

    Rob ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2009 @ 04:43am

    Three Strike for the RIAA

    I think we should impose a three strikes law on the RIAA. For every person they falsely accuse of file sharing, they get a strike. If they get three strikes, they get kicked off the planet.

  • On the post: Three Strikes Rejected In Spain

    Rob ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2009 @ 04:39am

    Three Strike for the RIAA

    I think we should impose a three strikes law on the RIAA. For every person they falsely accuse of file sharing, they get a strike. If they get three strikes, they get kicked off the planet.

  • On the post: Ray Bradbury Still Hates The Internet

    Rob ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2009 @ 09:32am

    "It's distracting," he continued. "It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."

    What Mr. Bradbury somehow manages to miss here is that the real value of a book is "in the air somewhere" as well, being that the real value of a book comes not from the paper or the ink, but from the information contained within. What is information? It is not the letters or words, it is simply something that happens within your brain as you read the words on the page and interpret them. A book in and of itself, sans the intangible information is entirely meaningless.

    I would like to say that I ought to give Mr. Bradbury a break on this one, but it really does bother me quite a bit that a visionary such as himself could be so short-sighted and closed-minded, even at the age of 90.

  • On the post: If Downloading A Song Is Just Like Stealing A CD, Why Won't The RIAA Allow Reselling MP3s?

    Rob ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2009 @ 11:38am

    I'm pretty sure that if the RIAA had their way you would not be able to re-sell CDs...

  • On the post: Moby Says 'Disband The RIAA' For Winning $1.92 Million From Jammie Thomas

    Rob ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2009 @ 06:37am

    Re:

    I second that -- I have never cared for his music, but if I could buy directly from him I would most certainly do so simply to give him my support because he seems like a pretty upright character. Unfortunately though, if any money goes to the RIAA, then I will not be able to do so as I have been successfully boycotting them for 5 years now.

  • On the post: As Expected, Bill Introduced To Outlaw Tiered Bandwidth Pricing

    Rob ( profile ), 18 Jun, 2009 @ 06:39am

    I would actually like to see metered broadband in a way -- then the telcos would have a reason to get as many bits and bytes to me as possible, and maybe even (gasp!) increase network speeds to be competitive with the rest of the world and usher in the next generation of 'net technology (better streaming video, etc.). Now, before you jump down my throat, I know that metered broadband will just result in astronomically high prices for those of use that actually use our Internet, but if the price was right, metered broadband would be the way to go for sure.

  • On the post: China Says Its Okay For Users To Delete Its New Censorware

    Rob ( profile ), 18 Jun, 2009 @ 04:40am

    I am willing to bet that their censorship software doesn't run on Linux ;-)

  • On the post: Um, Sorry, But You Don't Get To Sue When Somebody Moves Images You're Hotlinking

    Rob ( profile ), 17 Jun, 2009 @ 11:57am

    "In some way, it's sort of disappointing that the guy's lawyer didn't want to move forward, since the suit would been pretty amusing."


    That really is a shame, this could have been one of the funniest legal smackdowns in the history of the Internet, not to mention the fact that the plaintiff would have had to reveal his identity to do that, and would certainly have got to meet the Internet very quickly :-D.

  • On the post: Teen Gets 23 Years In Jail For Killing His Mom; Judge, AP Blame Video Games

    Rob ( profile ), 17 Jun, 2009 @ 10:58am

    Re: Don't be so defensive!

    @stat_insig: You are wrong one two fundamental levels:

    #1 --

    First of all, the video game did play a role in the murder. The kid was obsessed with the video game, parents took it way, he killed them.


    If you actually read the article you would have seen this:

    Of course, there was significant additional evidence, including details that Daniel had planned for weeks beforehand to kill his parents, suggesting this had a lot more to do with a mentally disturbed teen than with an "addiction to violent video games."


    I don't think anything more needs to be said about that so moving on to:

    #2:
    Video games, like many other things, are bad when used excessively.


    You are stating something which you believe to be true. The studies, however, do not show this whatsoever. Excessive video game usage will obviously harm your physical health (i.e. playing Halo all day instead of going out and getting exercise), but there is NO evidence whatsoever that links violent video games in any amount to real world violent behavior. Before a newspaper (or an idiot commenting on a blog) states something like this as if it were fact, they ought to make sure that it actually is a fact. In this case, it is demonstrably false as study after study has come up negative in this regard.

  • On the post: Teen Gets 23 Years In Jail For Killing His Mom; Judge, AP Blame Video Games

    Rob ( profile ), 17 Jun, 2009 @ 09:40am

    "It's my firm belief that after a while the same physiological responses occur that occur in the ingestion of some drugs. And I believe that an addiction to these games can do the same thing..."

    Is anybody else bothered by the fact that this judge is talking about his firm belief in a very specific medical condition? He is entering into the world of science here, which is not a discipline that has any room for belief. Something is either supported by the evidence, or it is not. If it is questionable, you keep testing until you get to the bottom of it.

    Study after study has shown that there is no link between video game violence and real world violence. This is what the EVIDENCE says. If you are going to be trampling into the world of science the only thing you need to know is the evidence, belief should not play any part whatsoever. This judge very clearly has no idea how science works, and as such, ought to be keeping his mouth shut on matters such as this. Talk about law all you want, but leave the science to the scientists.

  • On the post: Is Germany Following Australia Down The Slippery Slope Of Internet Censorship?

    Rob ( profile ), 17 Jun, 2009 @ 05:42am

    Does anybody know what sort of transparency would be involved in this process, i.e., will the block list be secret as it was in Australia? My gut tells me that that will be the case, but I am not sure. Either way, this is a really stupid idea, and no good will come of it. A degree of transparency would make it slightly less odious (people being able to check up and make sure that political websites and the like are not being blocked), but I doubt that will be the case. This is really a bad day for freedom worldwide, as these ideas tend to spread like wildfire. The German government will release a baseless report saying how they cut down on child porn by over 107%, some idiot senator will get a hold of the erroneous report, make the claims even more exaggerated, nobody will think to fact check it, and before you know it there will be open Internet censorship in the U.S.

    I don't like it. Not one bit.

  • On the post: Entertainment Industry Still Insisting That Gov't Protectionism Is The Only Way To Compete

    Rob ( profile ), 16 Jun, 2009 @ 08:46am

    Re:

    Mike's logic on this is very solid -- I don't see anything in there where he says no harm no foul, he is simply arguing with the use of the word theft -- copying is absolutely not theft no matter how you slice it. It is still infringement, it is still against the law, and some might argue that it is a bad thing (I would disagree, but that is entirely beside the point), but it is absolutely NOT theft. If I were to walk into a record store, pick a CD up off the shelf, and walk out without paying, the record store would not have that CD anymore. I would have taken a finite good out of their possession, that is THEFT. If I were to buy that CD, take it home, rip it, and upload it on the Internet, and somebody were to download the copy, that would be INFRIGEMENT, not THEFT. Nobody lost any finite goods in that transaction, and it is even debatable as to whether or not a potential sale was even lost, the person may never have intended to buy the CD in the first place or could even (*gasp*!) go BUY the CD after hearing it for free and liking it. But I digress...

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