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Comment Re:Listen to the trolls (Score 1) 93

...I seem to recall making that same remark myself in response to the first Aereo message posted here.

Some guy's black robe won't magically prevent everyone from trying to get that rule applied in the lower courts. It will have to be litigated back up to the SCOTUS before 9 guys can declare that "sorry, it doesn't apply to you". Although even that's not assured. By the time it gets back up to the SCOTUS, it could be different guys or case could just come out different.

Comment Re:You'll want either AT&T or T-Mobile. (Score 3, Informative) 146

Prepaid service in Canada sucks ass.

Depends on your needs. In Canada I tend to go with Koodo mobile; pay $15 for the month as a base charge, then buy however much data or voice I'll need. I conserve my data usage so 1 gig of 4G data can cost me for 4-5 months. And both data and voice with them are "Canada wide", so no roaming or long distance charges, plus they never expire. I had my phone with them for a full year, and on average it's cost me about $25 / month, total.

In the US, on the other hand, I tend to shell out the $60 per month so I can have unlimited data and calling. Unfortunately you're right about Canada not really having any decent offerings for "unlimited use".

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think Chat-R offers a nano sim, so if you have an iPhone 5/5S/5C or an HTC One M* you're SOL as well,

You can walk into any cellphone repair shop and have them punch your existing sim to a nano.

Comment Re:Who uses Perl anymore? (Score 1) 192

The next time someone asks "What good is Perl anymore?" or "Who actually uses Perl?" or "Why use Perl?" you can point them to this article. Perl is perfect for this type of quick development.

Kinda. But he could just as easily have written it as a VB Script. More easily, actually, since he was working on windows and ended up having to write Excel VBA for it later anyway.

Comment Re:Zediva all over again. (Score 1) 484

Cable companies operate a single antenna for a large group of people.

Thus you have something resembling a public performance.

Aereo didn't do this. They operated single antennas for single individuals. They rented a single piece of hardware to a single individual. There are older cases with DVD rental setups that are very analogous. Those were protected as not being public performances because they weren't really.

Now potentially any file transfer on the web is a public performance.

Comment Re:Predictable (Score 1) 484

...and who determines what this "spirit" is exactly?

Is the "spirit" of copyright law to enable abusive monopolies or is it to be fodder for the young starving artist?

The really sad part here is that the victim was going out of it's way to abide by a previous SCOTUS ruling. The idea that you can't cater your business to recent judicial findings is an especially troubling one. It destroys the entire basis for commerce.

Comment Re:One disturbing bit: (Score 2, Insightful) 484

His black robe doesn't allow him to alter the natural laws of the universe or the basic principle that a rule once made applies to EVERYONE.

Declaring that a file transferred to a single person constitutes a "public performance" applies to EVERYONE.

That's the way the law works.

That's what Aereo was depending on. They exploited the rules created by another SCOTUS precedent. They abided by those rules.

The lower courts will apply this rule. It will have to be litigated all the way to the supremes before they can declare that some rule doesn't apply to a particular person.

Comment Re:Feels like a fallacy... (Score 3, Interesting) 270

It's funny you should mention package delivery because we already have a great example of this: the Netflix DVD-by-mail service.

This has always been a very efficiently handled product since the relevant middle man has no conflict of interest.

It's amazing how much less problematic that dinosaur of a product is. You have first sale protecting the right of Netflix to continue offering stuff and a parcel service that is a common carrier.

Meanwhile, the streaming service is surrounded on all sides by evil jack*sses with some entrenched monopoly interest.

Comment Re:Families come first (Score 1) 370

This is also a regional thing.

You can't judge the entire industry based on a single location. This goes triple if that location happens to be Silicon Valley. It's a tournament mentality over there. The gold rush started in 49 and never stopped really.

You've got tons of young talent feeding itself into the grinder.

Comment Re:Families come first (Score 1) 370

> I was productive at my first job out of college after a month.

I was also productive pretty much immediately. Then again, I had an internship for 2 years before I graduated from school. In my day, it was a trendy thing to get job experience while you were still in school.

Do they not do that anymore?

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