vegetaman 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Peak Internet Dismisses Defamation Suit Against Former Customer Who Complained About Its Lousy Connection Speeds

    vegetaman ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2014 @ 07:10pm

    Somehow, this whole situation reminds me of a Monty Python Sketch (paraphrased).

    ISP: "But, you have a witches nose."
    Customer: "They put this on me."
    ISP: "No! No we didn't! Well... Yeah, we did do that. But she is still a witch!"

  • On the post: Amazon To Hachette And Authors: Here, Let Us Explain Basic Price Elasticity To You

    vegetaman ( profile ), 30 Jul, 2014 @ 05:49am

    Re: Some extra numbers regarding lower price points

    I can believe the $3 to $3.99 number. I never even bought an e-book until I found one in that price range, and I have only bought ones in that range or lower ever since.

  • On the post: City Of London Police Inserting 'This Website Has Been Reported To Police' Banner Ads On Websites With No Legal Review

    vegetaman ( profile ), 30 Jul, 2014 @ 11:07am

    Just a further push into "guilty until proven innocent" territory, coupled with no oversight.

  • On the post: Wikileaks Reveals Super Injunction Blocking Reporting On Massive Australian Corruption Case Involving Leaders Of Malaysia, Indonesia & Vietnam

    vegetaman ( profile ), 30 Jul, 2014 @ 09:38am

    Damn, that almost sounds like a more blanket and catch all excuse than national security... Because of "inter-national security"!

  • On the post: Square Enix Nixes 3 Years Of Fan Translation Work On PSP, Despite Not Releasing English Version For PSP

    vegetaman ( profile ), 24 Jul, 2014 @ 09:37pm

    Typical for SE to be this bone headed.

    Square Enix has already been on my shit list after they screwed over the fantastic Chrono Trigger project (several CT projects over the years, really) awhile back in the same way -- letting it go on for years of hard work before dropping the hammer. But as long as people will line up to buy Final Fantasy Rehashed XX, they don't care. I haven't bought nor played a Square product since the SNES days.

    And honestly, they've even doubled down on their DRM stances recently too. Which also prevents me from throwing money at them. Which is fine; there have been plenty of great other game companies for me to throw it at that produce content how I want (see: Shadowrun Returns). More money for the artists and developers I care about that don't equate me with a machine that shits dollar bills into their hands on demand that they can slap around at will.

  • On the post: DOJ Tells Court That Of Course It Can Go On A Fishing Expedition Globally For Emails Microsoft Stores Overseas

    vegetaman ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2014 @ 08:35pm

    At this rate, any American who ever travels to a foreign country will probably be on a list and get watched in the near future.

    Who am I kidding. That's probably how it works already.

  • On the post: An Actual D&D Effect: Inspiring Kids To Become Writers

    vegetaman ( profile ), 16 Jul, 2014 @ 03:38am

    Having played quite a bit of D&D 3.5 in my day (and some Shadowrun 3.0), I thought it was a great creative outlet as well as a nice social experience. Say what you want about it, but sitting in a room with a half dozen buddies for several hours, snacking and playing, is actually quite fun. "Game Night" was one of my favorite weeknights, even if I didn't go to bed until after 4AM because of it (just to get back up for 8AM class).

  • On the post: Years Later, Google Finally Dumps Its Ill-Advised Real Names Policy: Drops All Restrictions On Names

    vegetaman ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2014 @ 07:33pm

    Re: Google Revises History - Again

    I concur to an extent. They do change the rules a lot, and various services have a bad habit of going poof... Which is disappointing. I now use duckduckgo for my searches and have pared back to just a gmail and google sites page. My youtube account has a G+ account for no damn reason other than google has arbitrary stupid rules for no reason (did i mention it was stupid?).

  • On the post: Aereo: Okay, Fine, If You Say We Look Like A Duck, We'll Quack Like A Duck

    vegetaman ( profile ), 10 Jul, 2014 @ 09:20am

    "Your honor, we'd only like Aereo to be treated like a cable company when it suits us, and then not treated like one when it doesn't. Much like how Verizon wants to be under Title II for subsidies. But not for anything else. See, we've got precendent!"

  • On the post: Group Of Major PR Firms Pledge To Play Nice On Wikipedia

    vegetaman ( profile ), 17 Jun, 2014 @ 08:12pm

    A PR firm, to me, is basically a case study of a way of saying a ton of words that are strung together into sentences to form a press release or a response that really doesn't "say" anything.

    I mean, it doesn't have to be an external PR firm, either. Plenty of marketing departments are good at making pie in the sky sounding bullshit or truth twisting or word-smithing to get their "feel".

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    vegetaman ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2014 @ 04:50pm

    Thanks to the techdirt news about him, I've made it a point to catch Wil Wheaton's show on SyFy. I must admit, it's pretty good. Far more interesting than most of the stuff that has taken over that channel ever since they quit being "SciFi" (in more ways than one).

    Now if they'd just bring back MST3K... And have them riff on their own scifi originals...

  • On the post: Academic Publisher Fights Publication Of Paper Criticizing Publishers' Price Increases And Profits

    vegetaman ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2014 @ 06:49pm

    Re: Re:

    I... Think this is a genius idea.

    I have basically written off anything that comes out of EA and Ubisoft and various other companies for years now. And it isn't that I don't spend the money -- I just don't spend it on their stuff. I avoid their games at all costs. But to actually tell them "Hey I just bought indie game because of your draconian DRM practices and refuse to touch your products until you about face" seems perfect.

    Of course, at this rate, they're pretty much dead to me. I've found so many great indie games that I can't dream of going back.

  • On the post: Academic Publisher Fights Publication Of Paper Criticizing Publishers' Price Increases And Profits

    vegetaman ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2014 @ 06:20pm

    Re: Re:

    Oh wow, even worse than just GameShield? Hazard avoided!

    I was actually impressed that Arkham Asylum had GFWL removed from it in a recent update on Steam.

  • On the post: Academic Publisher Fights Publication Of Paper Criticizing Publishers' Price Increases And Profits

    vegetaman ( profile ), 12 Jun, 2014 @ 04:36pm

    This type of draconian activity just disgusts me to no end. Heck, just yesterday I was on Steam (which is about as much DRM as I can stand) and saw they had L.A. Noire on sale. I was like, this looks cool, and the reviews are good, but then I saw something -- it comes with GameShield DRM. Automatically noped out of that page and went and bought the soundtrack to Hotline Miami instead. Every time a company pisses me off with their terrible DRM schemes, I purposefully go out and buy something indie (it's how I first acquired the amazing game Legend of Grimrock, too). Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can do anything to show these legacy players my disdain for their short sightedness and urge to maintain the status quo (and "profit quo", as it were).

  • On the post: Why The Trial Lawyers May Have Miscalculated In Killing Patent Reform, And How It May Come Back To Bite Them

    vegetaman ( profile ), 28 May, 2014 @ 08:55pm

    It never ceases to amaze me how when some group or lobby gives a sliver of the pie, the lengths they will go to so that they don't have to give it up. Reminds me of listening to my local congressman talk a few years ago, where he said:

    "Everybody always calls and tells me that we need to cut government. And in the next breath, says why this or that thing shouldn't be cut or should get an increase."

    Of course, we're used to it in Illinois, too. We had a "temporary" state tax increase recently so the state could (attempt to) pay off some of its many late bills and IOUs.

    Well, guess what, the state is still bleeding red ink (and I'm not even sure they paid off all of the IOUs), and so they want to make said tax increase permanent. They didn't cut anything of note, and the budget ballooned again, and the money was likely squandered. Which many of us cynically assumed was the plan all along, anyway.

    In a somewhat related story, if anyone believes in the altruism of any lobbying group or politician, then I've got this here bridge for sale...

  • On the post: A Media Shield Law That Wouldn't Protect Glenn Greenwald Is Not A Media Shield Law; It's A Joke

    vegetaman ( profile ), 20 May, 2014 @ 05:54pm

    *given that it seems to involve them determining who is, and who is not, a journalist*

    I just wanted to comment on this part here... Freedom of the Press doesn't mean, to my understanding, that the government gets to decide who "The Press" is. In fact, I would read into it (and I'm sure it's been discussed here before), that The Press is the printing press. So today, anyone who blogs or writes a letter to the editor or anything is a 'journalist' in the legally important sense of the word. Of course, legacy journalist industries and societies may have their own ulterior motives for not always supporting this viewpoint.

  • On the post: Congressional Reps Signing Sympathy-For-The-Cable-Industry Letter Received More Than Twice As Much Funding From Cable Lobbyists

    vegetaman ( profile ), 20 May, 2014 @ 05:51pm

    "Their tears won't dry themselves with these stacks of crisp $100 bills!"

  • On the post: Looks Like Patent Trolls Have Won This Round As Even Weakened Patent Reform Likely To Die

    vegetaman ( profile ), 19 May, 2014 @ 04:58am

    Blamed on the need to compromise!? On what!? How the hell does that make sense? It needs stopped; period.

    "Hey, this thing you're doing it's pretty shitty and just a waste of money. We're going to make you stop it."

    "But we need to compromise. We need our revenue streams to like, let us keep fleecing people, ya know?"

    "...Okay."

  • On the post: DailyDirt: Teaching New Computers Old Tricks

    vegetaman ( profile ), 13 May, 2014 @ 08:43pm

    Sure they can solve captcha's, but can they see why kids love cinnamon toast crunch!?

  • On the post: The Glorious History Of Video Game Panics

    vegetaman ( profile ), 10 May, 2014 @ 07:41am

    I guess you could turn this same stupid argument around on them, like so:

    "I'm getting the new Wolfenstein game, because I want to fight NAZIs. You don't... You don't LIKE the NAZIs, do you? Why wouldn't you want me to fight them?"

    I'm not sure if their means to an end is "no violent video games" or "only politically correct video games".

    And that, my friends, is how art truly dies.

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