Not an Electronic Rodent 's BestNetTech Comments

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  • On the post: FCC Boss Being Investigated By His Own Agency For Being Too Cozy With The Industry He Regulates

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 18 Feb, 2018 @ 04:01am

    Outliers

    Isn't the FCC noted for historically being pretty damn cozy with the industry is regulates anyway? This in a political arena where regulatory capture, special interest and buying votes is so normal it barely raises comment. If he's managed to actually twitch the agency's own "investigate-ometer", you have to wonder just how far from the political pack he's strayed.

  • On the post: Censorship By Weaponizing Free Speech: Rethinking How The Marketplace Of Ideas Works

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2018 @ 12:39pm

    Re: Re: And yet YOU frequently state that "these platforms" have their own "First Amendment" RIGHT to silence those voices at any time, for any reason.

    YOU or other administrator have "hidden" thousands of my and others comments here at TD to disadvantage dissent.
    Or possibly they get hidden because a large number of commentors hit the report button because they're sick of listening to your ad-hom whining and spamming?

  • On the post: Italian Government Criminalizes 'Fake News,' Provides Direct Reporting Line To State Police Force

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2018 @ 12:32pm

    Sounds kinda familiar...

    The state deciding what is and isn't true in news and political reporting... What could possibly go wrong?

    The UK government seems to be doing something similar - an [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42791218] "anti-fake news unit"... Guess "Ministry of Truth" was too copyright...?

  • On the post: UK Begins Absolutely Bonkers 'Education' Of Grade Schoolers About Intellectual Property And Piracy

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2018 @ 04:08pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Learning those skills past that magical "adult" age is too late. Most people don't care about these things and won't ever learn them anyways.
    Which is exactly my point. What I learnt (at least partially) at school was that when I'm about to enter into a complex, legally binding relationship that I don't understand, I should take the time to research it and understand it before I do so using the tools for learning that I have. From what I've read about it, this is not the way the US educational system functions and increasingly it is not the way the UK educational system functions (probably because it's hard to count and put on a league table).

  • On the post: Community Backlash Leads Adult Diaper Company To Drop Its Trademark Application for 'ABDL'

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2018 @ 10:37am

    Re: Re: Surely that should be "personcott" these days?

    Apparently you don't do facetious. Though I'll grant you there is a fair-sized element on the internet who would probably mean it. The big give away, though, is that it's in the header and was only peripherally connected to what I was actually talking about, which is that boycotts often don't work.

  • On the post: UK Begins Absolutely Bonkers 'Education' Of Grade Schoolers About Intellectual Property And Piracy

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2018 @ 09:40am

    Re: Re:

    Doing taxes is a life skill, getting a mortgage is a life skill, getting a student loan is a life skill, paying bills and getting credit cards is a life skill. I learned some of that in Business Math, which was an elective course.
    And right here is one of the major problems in education, both in the UK and, I suspect, the US: These are not separate skills! All of these are "Maths + applying an existing skill in a different way" The issue is not; "We rarely teach children how to beat the essential systems set up in our society", but that educational systems are mostly set up to impart specific, testable knowledge to children so that the "progress" can be easily counted. It rarely addresses the question of how to learn for yourself and apply the skills you have learnt to new situations.

  • On the post: UK Begins Absolutely Bonkers 'Education' Of Grade Schoolers About Intellectual Property And Piracy

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2018 @ 08:32am

    Re:

    Well then, obviously we need to change the law if navigating copyright and IP laws is so difficult it has to be considered a 'life skill'.
    This! Though, sadly, it's even worse than that in that all too often the corporations and the government enforcement they buy don't have any better idea of what the law actually means or how it applies in a usual impossibly tangled real situation than the afor-mentioned -7-year-olds.

  • On the post: Community Backlash Leads Adult Diaper Company To Drop Its Trademark Application for 'ABDL'

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2018 @ 01:08am

    Surely that should be "personcott" these days?

    Boycotts were threatened with promises to patronize other makers of these products, which, yes, this is an industry with multiple players.

    Yeah, that works less well in sectors where there basically isn't an alternative, or the alternative supplier of said product/service is just as big a sh*tnozzle... Take US broadband for example...

  • On the post: Chinese Internet Users Start To Rebel Against Lack Of Online Privacy

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2018 @ 02:53am

    Re: We are right there with them

    The US has tapped the backbone of the internet and has enough storage and processing power to literally rewind the internet and follow the actions of people they wish too.
    Internet traffic currently estimated at about 100 Petabytes/month with approaching exponential growth rate year on year. Even if there in fact is enough storage manufacturing in the world to keep ahead of that and allow even a short, rolling window of "the historical internet", I'd hate to be the storage tech that has to install all that! I've no doubt the hoover up vast quantities of data they shouldn't have, but let's keep the hyperbole at least within reason?

  • On the post: Copyright Maximalists Throw In The Towel On Term Extension; Admit That Maybe Copyright Is Too Long

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 10 Jan, 2018 @ 03:12am

    Re: Re: This Is What Happens When You Let Teh Pirates Make Copywright Laws

    You do realise you've just excluded a lot of the corporations you champion from holding copyrights there, right?
    Actually, given the state of copyright at the moment and just how ludicrously easy it is to infringe even unintentionally, (e.g. anyone who's ever photocopied anything) doesn't that exclude, well, pretty much everyone? Come to think of it, that's a great idea!

  • On the post: Hopefully For The Last Time: The US Has Zero New Works Enter The Public Domain On January 1st

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2018 @ 04:33pm

    For the synaptically challenged

    No one is having trouble getting old content for free.

    Getting old content for free isn't the problem. The problem is that said content and often anything with even a passing resemblance to it, is basically forever forbidden as inspiration for new creations for fear of being sued. But then I suspect the "person" who claimed that is well aware.

  • On the post: FBI Celebrates Taking Down A 'Terrorist' Who Told Undercover Agents He Couldn't Go Through With An Attack

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2017 @ 02:40pm

    Re:

    Do you want to bet the safety of innocent people on how this guy felt at any particular point in time?
    Well, I suppose the could have gone for the opposite approach - encourage the disturbed gentleman to purchase a reasonably-sized arsenal of small arms and then ignore any signs of increasing mental instability until he shoots up a school or shopping mall... That seems to be the most popular US approach to such things (unless you've got brown skin or any connection, however vague, to nutters that happen to have). It's certainly cheaper, if not as headline grabbing.

  • On the post: Smart Handgun Safe Not Smart Enough Not To Let Basically Anyone Break Into It

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2017 @ 10:53am

    Re:

    So that a robber can shoot the house owner with his own gun.
    Statistics would seem to suggest this is a valuable design feature....

  • On the post: Smart Handgun Safe Not Smart Enough Not To Let Basically Anyone Break Into It

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2017 @ 10:58am

    I'd like to buy an analogy, please.

    Smart Handgun Safe Not Smart Enough Not To Let Basically Anyone Break Into It

    Well, if that isn't an analogy for US gun laws.....

    /ducking

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

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2017 @ 12:54am

    Well, not quite...

    Whatever problems we might have with the practical application of trademark law in modern times, the phrase is creative, unique, and with the ad campaign it has become an identifier for the Bud Light brand.

    Hmmm "identifier for the Bud Light brand" I can't comment on since I've never seen that ad ever (which, I guess would make "identifier for the Bud Light brand in the US" more accurate), but I'd dispute "unique" given the phrase appears in a C17 nursery rhyme. "Creative" looks a bit shaky too given its appearance in, for example, the 1985 Marillion song... I guess that just leaves the first bit, then.

  • On the post: Finally, RIAA Front Group Admits That Forcing YouTube To Police Site Doesn't Work Well

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2017 @ 02:27am

    Re: "only exists because of them"

    Websites with user-generated content existed before the DMCA, and still exist in countries that don't have an equivalent law.
    Isn't that kinda the point? Before the DMCA, no one would have even thought of user-generated content being a liability for the site it's on. After the DMCA, basically everything seems to be potentially infringing unless specifically "allowed".

  • On the post: Denuvo Game Cracked In Mere Hours

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2017 @ 09:00am

    Re: Re:

    Truly, you are a never-ending font of entertainment.
    Possibly the most entertaining bit is trying to work out if replying to himself is to make it look like support, or if he's just that nuts.

  • On the post: UK's Terrorism Law Reviewer Says Tech Companies Shouldn't Offer Encryption To Anonymous Users

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2017 @ 09:36am

    Opinion is divided

    Mr Hill conceded that experts were divided as to whether such checks were feasible but that it was a debate “worth having”.

    Mr. Hill has clearly been "up the old sea dog" and talking to Captain Redbeard Rum.

  • On the post: How Congress' Attempt To Break CDA230 Could Kill Airbnb

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 05 Aug, 2017 @ 12:28pm

    Re: Re: Re: Fulsome support

    I don't think that YouTube would be affected, and I don't see how that could be used for human trafficking.
    You think that a tenuous connection wouldn't be sufficient for someone to try it? Besides, "advertising videos" would seem to be a pretty obvious, if icky, possibility. In fact, one could argue any extremist video encouraging young women to become so-called "ISIS Brides" would qualify as trafficking related, no?

  • On the post: UK Home Secretary Doesn't Want Backdoors; She Just Wants Companies To Stop Offering Encryption Because No One Wants It

    Not an Electronic Rodent ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2017 @ 12:11pm

    Wordy

    The purveyors of far-Right extremism pump out their brand of hate across the globe, without ever leaving home.

    Um.. here in the UK, we usually just call them "The Government"...

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