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• Commented on EFF sets sights on abusive EULAs
  My favourite has always been airline EULAs. They are written in their own special language: DOUBLE OPEN JAWS NOT PERMITTED. ADD-ONS NOT PERMITTED. END-ON-END END-ON-END COMBINATIONS PERMITTED. VALIDATE ALL FARE COMPONENTS. TRAVEL MUST BE VIA THE POINT OF COMBINATION. OPEN...
• Commented on Maricopa deputy steals defender's paperwork during a court case
  Sheriff Joe's war on everybody continues. It is utterly and entirely illegal for a deputy to even read the document, much less take it and photocopy it. He should simply be fired, the sheriff's office should retrain their personnel, and...
• Commented on Leopard seal teaches photographer how to catch penguins
  Interesting behavior for a leopard seal. I'm fairly surprised; leopard seals have a reputation for nastiness and the jaws to back it up....
• Commented on Congressional record exposes military officers to identity theft, covers up
  Much better to simply make a federal standard for the verification of identity which does not rely on ssn, and a law which mandates usage in certain applications (as we do now for banking... through the ssn). There's absolutely no...
• Commented on Arnold Schwarzenegger's coded F-bomb in veto
  Back 'o the envelope calculation: assuming every gubernatorial communication had seven lines, separated into a group of 4 and 3, the probability that it would spell the phrase shown is 5.519648 x 10^-12. Since most communications are not in this...
• Commented on Pocket-sized gadget for detecting autism in children
  Language processing technology reading adult native speakers does marginally well at translating that text into speech. Color me dubious that this has been shown to be effective at detecting something people can't otherwise detect. My suspicion is heightened by the...
• Commented on Crazy organic bread-slicer sign for crazy organic bread eaters
  Millions dying each year from malnutrition, millions more die from having a water supply which doubles as a sewer system, and people are worried about the health risks of non-organic bread contaminating their organic bread? It's nonsense. It's madness....
• Commented on Contrafactual history of Jimmy Carter's green space-race
  Ugh, problems a'plenty for that method of power generation. Cars with giant magnets would also be attracted to the reinforced concrete of the road surface, decreasing gas mileage due to an increase in friction (same as everyone carrying extra weight...
• Commented on The Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 3D
  I realized when watching this that the entire Star Trek franchise takes place in our own galaxy. Even our imagination has not caught up with exploring the vastness of reality....
• Commented on Movie industry wants the right to take your house off the net without full judicial review
  I'm not sure why any company would be in favor of this. All it would take to knock Amazon.com or the iTunes store offline is three copyright complaints? I file three complaints saying I own the copyrights to, umm, 1984,...
• Commented on NY police use trick to arrest people for pot possession
  @A Nonny Moose: Police have been lying for years. A commonplace interrogation tactic is to make up some completely damning evidence to try to get you to confess. For example "We know you were there, we have your fingerprints all...
• Commented on Associated Press will sell you a license to quote the public domain
  If it is the APs position that the licensor has no duty to verify ownership of the license before granting it, and that sale of the license can not be construed as proof the AP actually owns the content, this...
• Commented on GPS jammer plugs into cigarette lighter
  @Drew from Zhrodague: I don't know about the gps jamming properties, but I love the idea of a cigarette-lighter powered Tesla coil. I would mount mine on top of my car....
• Commented on Movie/record industry rep says that you shouldn't expect to be able to play your media for as long as you own it
  You know, its not theft if it is written into your business model... These things get more outrageous every day....
• Commented on Firefighter allegedly shoots cyclist in head to teach him not to ride on a busy street
  I'd bet dollars to donuts that the intent of the article was to say the bullet passed through the rider's helmet but missed his head. I'd bet, as others have noted, no inch of styrofoam is going to stop bullets....
• Commented on What real piracy looks like: biopirate loses patent over century-old latinamerican staple crop
  Patent abuse and drug patents need to be front and center of any Pirate Party platform. It is not clear to most people that patents and copyrights are killing people. Not indirectly killing people, not sort-of kind-of killing people, but...
• Commented on Cat burglar falls off three-storey building across from my bedroom window
  I don't want to rush to judgement here. Maybe he was a Harvard professor. *ducks and runs*...
• Commented on PowerPoint considered militarily harmful
  * Good points made * See also * Gettysburg address as powerpoint....
• Commented on Tiburon, CA will photograph and record license plate of every visitor to town
  Other than the fact that it is every car, I don't know this is different from police license cameras which are already in wide use in the US. The license cameras are mounted on police cars, and software recognizes and...
• Commented on Visa claims teen spent $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 on prepaid credit card
  I see a political future for this kid. Clearly he understands the new economy....
• Commented on Socialstructing: Statement of Social Currency
  Regarding the first entry on the list, Wikipedia does already have an entry for Ivrea, Italy (although it is only start class, so it needs work). /nitpick...
• Commented on Response to IEEE paper that characterizes P2P as undesirable and illegal
  P2P is already an underutilized protocol. There's a http(p2p) protocol which has never been implemented (to my knowledge) in browsers, but in many cases could solve the effect of boingboing (or digg, fark, or other high traffic sites) linking to...
• Commented on Consumer groups around the world demand transparency on secret copyright treaty
  We should emphasize that copyrights and patents are government grants of monopolies, not natural rights of creators. The proponents of these sort of treaties take on the mantel of "free trade;" we should deny them that claim. We also need...
• Commented on Fresh leads in 3,000 year old murder
  Wow, how the passage of time changes things. I can only imagine it is the intervening 3000 years which allows this to be tagged "happy mutants."...
• Commented on $134.5 BILLION worth of US bonds seized from smugglers at Swiss border
  No doubt these are the bonds Hans Gruber was trying to steal from Nakatomi Plaza. Hmm, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts the folks caught were either running a scam or victims of a scam. There are plenty of scams involving...
• Commented on Minimum font-size for credit card fine-print
  I concur that font size is probably not the issue. I read the terms of service I was agreeing to for an airline ticket the other day. A brief quotation: 10.COMBINATIONS DOUBLE OPEN JAWS NOT PERMITTED. ADD-ONS NOT PERMITTED. END-ON-END...
• Commented on Wasting Time for a Good Cause
  Very cool idea. Although Wikipedia editing will always be my number one "wasting time for a good cause" activity....
• Commented on Android app uses G1 compass as a metal-detector
  I wonder why companies don't provide an option for a few easily miniaturized sensors in a palm device. I'd certainly pay an extra hundred or two to look at sound and light spectra, pick up magnetic and electric fields, maybe...
• Commented on High School Teacher Recounts "Sexting" Ordeal That Ruined His Career
  I used to teach at a k-12 private school, and administrators are pretty much paranoid of any suggestion of inappropriate relations. Case in point, we had a kid (5-6 yo) who was wandering around in our parking lot. One of...
• Commented on CW-11 news claims clip of them airing YouTube prank infringes copyright
  I think the key part of US copyright law being overlooked by this thread is the well established precedent of "all your copyrights are belong to us."...