yankinwaoz’s Techdirt Profile

On the post: Children Are Leading The Cord Cutting Revolution

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 22 Dec, 2014 @ 11:05am

TV news... really?

I am saddened when I see the partisan sniping about cable TV news networks. "Faux News".. "Clinton News Network". Really?

News flash! All news networks have an agenda. The newspapers and magazines do too. In other news, water is wet.

What I can't understand is why anyone would choose to consume their news via a cable news show in the first place regardless of their political slant. It just seems so inefficient.

It is far more efficient for me to use web based news aggregators to find the news I am interested in. It lets me read it as my schedule. I can choose to invest my time in subjects that deeply interest me. It gives the news service a way to do their job the best they can.

The few times I have watched cable news, I find their information is at best half baked, speculative, and sometimes just plain wrong. Unless I need to know that a comet is about to land on my head, I don't need breaking news.

For example, two cops are murdered in NYC. That is legit news. So take your time news writers. Do the research, put it in context, then present it to me when you are done. I don't need to know this today. It serves me zero good in regard to the decisions I need to make today.

I really hope more and more people are thinking like I do and tuning out the cable news noise. It is no better than the entertainment news, all junk food for the brain.

On the post: Keurig's Controversial Java 'DRM' Defeated By A Single Piece Of Scotch Tape

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2014 @ 11:23am

Isn't this highly illegal

The DMCA has an anti-circumvention provision. Fines between $200 to $2500 can be awarded.

Wouldn't doing this open up the owner of a Keruig to being sued and fined?

On the post: Author To Chobani: I Own The Word 'How'

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 02 Jul, 2014 @ 05:26pm

Holy frijoles! The USTPO gave this guy a trademark on the word "HOW". I thought he was making it up. Nope. Here they are!

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=4210276&caseType=US_REGISTRATION_NO&searchType=statusSearch

http://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=4388331&caseType=US_REGISTRATION_NO&searchType=statusSearch

However. I did notice that the trademark is all uppercase.

On the post: Senator Feinstein Finally Finds Surveillance To Get Angry About: When It Happened To Her Staffers

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2014 @ 08:39am

She lies

I recently got a letter from Feinstein informing me that the NSA does not spy on US citizens.

"...please be assured that the NSA does not conduct mass surveillance on U.S. citizens."

So all those giant Prism taps at ISP's around the country are there to improve network performance?

I give up.

On the post: Adobe Releases New DRM For eBooks, Plans To Screw Over Anyone Using Old DRM

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2014 @ 10:28am

I might be the publisher's fault

It might be the case that the publishers refuse to license books to a platform that doesn't have a working DRM in place. So Adobe had to whip up a new one, just good enough to meet the demands of the publishers, existing customers be dammed.

On the post: Red Light Cameras On The Decline, As Everyone Realizes They Don't Make Roads Safer, They Just Make Money

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2013 @ 11:40am

Make safer intersections!

A lot of this red light camera stuff is moot. The same idiots that run red lights can just as easily run a stop sign.

If public safety is the justification for the cameras, then a better solution would be roundabouts. Collisions in roundabouts are usually side-to-side, not T-Bones. You can even engineer a roundabout with a light. Roundabouts are also much more efficient and less polluting too.

But most drivers in the US are too stupid to use them. In my hometown (Santa Barbara) they installed a large roundabout (Large for California) at a 5-way intersection (Milpas, Hwy 101 ramps, and Carp. St. I've driven all over the world. Not a problem. But that intersection scares the hell out of me. People either come to a screeching halt and freeze with paralysis. Or they just blow through it not yielding to anything. Except for me, I've never seen anyone signal going out, which I think is a nice courtesy to others.

If you want a good laugh: In Long Beach on Highway 1 there is a large roundabout (The Los Alamitos Circle). Stand there and watch the cars navigate it. You will either want to weep in shame, or laugh. or shoot all of the other drivers. I really wish the DMV would recall all Cal. driver's licenses and only reissue after you learned how to safely transverse a traffic circle.

On the post: DailyDirt: The U.S. Postal Service

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2013 @ 10:57am

Re: Realistic Pricing of First Class Postage

I agree. I think I mail 6 letters a year now. So I think it is fine if I pay $1 a stamp.

I also wish the USPS would drop Saturday service. This is left over from the days when phone calls were expensive and there was no email, etc.

However, I think they should have a 7 day a week parcel delivery service. That makes more sense.

On the post: The MPAA's Plan To Piss Off Young Moviegoers And Make Them Less Interested In Going To Theaters

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2013 @ 12:16pm

Wait.. I pay for the cops

As a tax payer, I don't want my police wasting their time examining every teenager with a mobile phone in my local megaplex cinema. Especially on behalf of asshats like the MPAA. The fact that they insist that the theater call the police is outrageous.

On the post: UK Political Party Tries To Dump 10 Years Of Speeches Down The Memory Hole

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2013 @ 11:28am

But it is THEIR content

I don't understand the hub bub.

This is a website that belongs to a political party. They can do with it what they wish... right? Is there a law in the UK that requires a party to maintain an online history of every utterance made?

Perhaps they looks at their stats and noticed that no one, or very few people, was retrieving their archive pages. So they decided to cull them from the site rather than paying for the hosting of that much data.

Maybe the robots.txt entries was a just a lazy way of preventing a bunch of 404's from being logged by an SE spider trying to get to content that is no longer there. I suspect that they didn't even realize that this also purges content from an internet archive service.

It is the public interest to save political speeches. I'm sure there is some sort of .gov.uk site, such as a national library, that is a better suited as the custodian of the UK's political history. One that would curate content from all political parties and activist.

On the post: Court Tells FCC It Has No Mandate To Enforce Net Neutrality (And That's A Good Thing)

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 06 Apr, 2010 @ 10:07pm

Re: Legislation needed

A better analogy would be:

The phone company is paid by Dominoes to degrade, or even prohibit phone calls to Pizza Hut. To make matters worse, they don't disclose this fact to the consumers. The consumer just thinks that Pizza doesn't answer their phone.

On the post: Digital TV Switchover Looking Like Massive Confusion-Generation Plan

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 23 Dec, 2008 @ 11:14am

SNAFU City

I am not impressed how this is being handled. I've tried to set up my mom with her receiver, north of Tucson (Oro Valley).

(1) Many of the stations are already broadcasting a digital signal are moving frequencies on the 17-Feb. So if you go ahead and set up ahead if time, everything will change on you again.

(2) Right now I can only get 2 digital stations. There is a huge mountain blocking the transmission of many of the major broadcasters. As far as I have been able to tell, they have no plans to fix this.

(3) The FCC is allowing many smaller stations to stay analog after the transition. So if you install a digital receiver, you have to switch between analog and digital to all of the stations.

(4) I tried an indoor antennae... only got 2 stations. So it looks like I am going to have to purchase a large roof top antennae for my mom to pick up more digital stations. That means I will also have to install a grounding system because of lighting. So it looks like I will need to spend a few hundred bucks on this.

On the post: Fry's Exec Funnelled $65 Million To Himself For Gambling Debts

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 22 Dec, 2008 @ 11:17pm

Who extends $100m in credit to a gambler?

I'm curious about the sentence "apparently he still owes a lot more -- potentially another $100 million from the sound of it)"

What casino was dumb enough to let this guy gamble away $100m on credit? How to they expect to collect it? Perhaps I don't understand because gambling is a dumb waste of money and time to me.

So... do casinos really loan gamblers money?

On the post: Are 88% Of IT Admins Really On The Verge Of Stealing Sensitive Company Info?

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 04 Sep, 2008 @ 07:39am

They may have left out the word "Think"

My gut tells me that the question was asked was "would you THINK about stealing info if you were fired". Not "Would you steal info if you were fired". It makes a big difference.

Of course people would think about it. Anger is a part of being fired. But I think most admins are mature and responsible enough to not act on fantasies of revenge.

On the post: SCO Gets Wrist Slapped Over Novell Unix Copyrights

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 18 Jul, 2008 @ 12:25pm

Can Novell now sue SCO?

Can Novell (and eventually every one else that SCO sued) now turn around and sue SCO for the cost of having to defend themselves from their scam?

I don't think that recourse was part of this judgment. So SCO could still be slammed with counter suits.

But, I'm no lawyer. Just thinking.

On the post: If So Many Content Creators Don't Understand The Law… Perhaps It's The Law That's The Problem?

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2008 @ 10:57pm

The UK doesn't have the US 1st Amendment

I think this attorney is comparing apples to oranges. True, he is correct... in the UK.

However in the US the First Amendment gives citizens far more freedom to speak their minds than in the UK. Trying to prosecute a blogger for slander in the US is almost impossible. In the UK, it is much, much easier.

Other nations have much less freedom of speech than the US, and not only can you be sued for slander, but you can be criminally prosecuted.

Some people have attempted to sue Americans for slander, but in UK courts. They do this because they know they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding in the US.

On the post: Is Reselling A Shampoo Bottle Copyright Infringement?

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 29 May, 2008 @ 03:47pm

This is not Copyright Infringement

I am not a lawyer. But I fail to see this as a copyright infringement.

It is not a trademark infringement. They are not selling another product pretending to be this.

They are not making a clone or copy of this product. They are selling the real item.

What the have is failure to control their distribution channel. I don't know what agreements they have with their customers. At best, they have a customer who has violated the terms of an agreement (if there is one) by reselling the product. If the customer signed an agreement not to resell the product, then THEY are liable. Not the merchant who sold the product to the consumer.

On the post: Should Wikipedia Take The Money?

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 13 Mar, 2008 @ 04:53pm

Yes. Absolutely. Wikipedia is too valuable and too promising to loose. They can strike a balance between ads and content. Google does it. I trust that they can keep integrity without compromise.

If they make good money, then excellent. They can hire full time researchers, fact checkers, and developers to improve the product. If they loose non-profit status, then so be it.

Otherwise, Wikipedia will go the way of other idealist concepts such as communism, communes, etc. A failed experiment that collapsed under the weight of reality.

On the post: Forget Washing Dishes Or Sweeping Up; Parents Handing Off Online Chores To Kids

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 16 May, 2007 @ 11:42pm

I would like to see the Boy & Girl Scouts have a merit badge for tech support. Especially in 2008 when the $40 coupons for digital TV receivers roll out.

It would be great if a clueless senior citizen could schedule a Boy Scout to drop by to get the new digital receiver hooked and working on the old TV. Or a troop could hit their neighborhood over a few weekends in 2008 knocking on doors seeing if people need help switching over.

It could keep the clueless from being scammed into buying TV's or antennas they don't need. And the Scouts could get credit for helping out the public.

On the post: Click Here To Get Infected With A Virus!

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 16 May, 2007 @ 11:03pm

In high school I worked weekends at an equipment rental yard. One morning this guy rented a sand blaster. So I hooked it up to his hitch and then fired it up to demonstrate how to use it.

He grabbed the hose from me and tells me he already know how to use it. He turns it on the air pressure, then the sand valve, but nothing comes out.

Then to my shock he decides to check the sandblaster by pointing the nozzle at his hand to feel for air coming out. I was shocked! I grabbed the hose from him and yelled at him for being such an idiot. "What if some sand decided to come out just then?", I screamed at him. "You would have lost your hand!"

The guy just looked at me stupidly. I showed him how to test for air pressure by sprinkling some loose grains of sand on the ground and pointing the nozzle at them.

I just remember looking at this idiot wondering how on earth he had managed to live to the age he did and still have his limbs intact.

On the post: Another Thing You Need: A Smell-O-Phone

yankinwaoz ( profile ), 13 May, 2007 @ 11:14pm

Use them in radar dectors

Here is an idea... use this tech in radar detectors. Since these detectors are illegal in lots of places (such as Switzerland), you could hide them under the dash somewhere. Then when it detects a radar, it releases a cooked bacon scent.

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