brownbat

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• Commented on Police seek man's stolen medicinal weed
  @Dragonfrog, et al; on legalization, smuggling and the tobacco analogy. There's actually a World Bank study on the economics of smuggling, consumption and taxation with tobacco (link below). The report shows that anti-smuggling regimes can be effective, even when the...
• Commented on Copyright's Paradox: brilliantly argued scholarly book tackles free speech vs. copyright
  "[A]rtists have the right to sell their work on their own terms rather than get pushed around by non-paying faux-sumers." Sheesh, some people really have it in for public libraries....
• Commented on Publishing's crises (incompletely) explained
  Wow, I guess globalization and technology can be used as tools to kill long tails too....
• Commented on "America's financial system was shaken to its core on Sunday."
  I feel sick. We might need a chaser. Not an image chaser, but just good optimism style news. Wasn't a kitten rescued from a tree somewhere today? Baby saved by boy scout? Anything?...
• Commented on Peek Email Theory
  I don't think "simple phone" people are "two pocket devices" people, no matter how simple the second device is. I say this as a "one simple device" person. I'm sold on this the moment I can communicate exclusively via email...
• Commented on International day of protest against surveillance Oct 11
  I ask, "If we assume bad faith on the part of the government, then doesn't every policy look miserable?" Takuan responds, "We should assume bad faith on the part of the government." Point and match to you, my insistent friend....
• Commented on International day of protest against surveillance Oct 11
  @Takuan: "What will you feel if that government changes to one you don't like...?" You're right that we shouldn't be naive, but if we assume bad faith on the part of the government, then doesn't every policy look miserable? I...
• Commented on Mister Jalopy profiled by AP
  "some junked electrical parts and a kitchen table he found abandoned by the side of a road" Maybe the abandoner just didn't know where to drop it off. I have a bunch of old cables and fans and things in...
• Commented on Klingon knife scares the crap out of dumb British scandal-sheet
  @29: It's because this is utterly BOAKYAGB. I JWLKOMGQQ'd like 4 times....
• Commented on Drew Friedman: Barack Obama portrait
  "I'm not the least bit offended by the suggestion that the media's enthusiasm for a particular candidate might be inappropriate." It still seems reductionist, like the artist is deliberately ignoring the reasons why Obama has a more compelling story to...
• Commented on Drew Friedman: Barack Obama portrait
  (Not that "No Joke" added anything more constructive to the current political dialogue.)...
• Commented on Drew Friedman: Barack Obama portrait
  I find that more offensive than the New Yorker cover. The NY cover was poking fun at the ridiculous straw men the media was using to scare the public about Obama, whereas this poster uses a ridiculous straw man to...
• Commented on Spamwar's worst mistakes being recapitulated by the copyright wars
  I once tried to poll my friends to see who got free text messaging, so I could figure out who to text all day long. I decided to use a few internet catchphrases and creative misspellings so they'd know it...
• Commented on Tor.com: a blog, a social network, a zine -- totally clueful big publishing website
  @4: I wonder if they'd publish my book anonymously......
• Commented on Spammers discuss breaking Craigslist verification system
  I've been reading a lot of Kurzweil recently. He makes me pessimistic and optimistic. Pessimistic, because the hope of telling a computer from a human is going to be basically impossible within years. Optimistic, because at the Singularity, as soon...
• Commented on Video: documentary on Showbiz animatronic band
  This reminds me of my favorite animatronic opera/thrash/death metal/comedy troupe: Captured! by Robots. A new show is written, constructed and programmed each year by one man (a former bassist for the Blue Meanies and Skankin' Pickle). The story is that...
• Commented on That Violet Blue thing
  I apologize for posting after Nina explained the situation, it's hard to catch every comment in a list of 1200. Thank you for clarifying the situation, and please be kind in disregarding my embarrassingly belated post....
• Commented on That Violet Blue thing
  I don't mind the unpublishing, and I don't mind the attempt to be discreet. But when someone claims you have hurt them in some way, and you acknowledge the action but refuse to tell that person why, it makes the...
• Commented on Scrubbing the atmosphere of CO2
  Sorry for the mistake, but it'd be more accurate to say Hansen's suggested we may have passed the tipping point (while stressing the uncertainty of that sort of forecasting)....
• Commented on Scrubbing the atmosphere of CO2
  James Hansen has also argued that we've long passed the tipping point....
• Commented on Banshee free/open music player for GNU/Linux turns 1.0
  I fourth(?) the Amarok plug, but when on Gnome, I use Exaile, which has a similar feature set: wikipedia integration, auto album art downloading, etc. Unlike Amarok, Exaile plans on being omniplatform sooner or later, so it might be worth...
• Commented on Plutonium spill in Boulder, Colorado has spread
  Freakonomics talked a bit about radiation this week as well, and how the media habitually treats it like "scary future science stuff," even though it's been around for decades, and way safer than all the other science we use (think...
• Commented on Bicyclists on LA freeways
  That's nothing. In NY, you can outwalk traffic, especially buses....