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Comment What discounts? Fake discounts! (Score 1) 214

by ljfrench (#64327073) Attached to: Hertz CEO Resigns After Blowing Big Gamble On EVs

U.S. EV sellers are not offering "huge discounts" unless you count how they are first selling EVs at huge markups.

Volkswagen, for example, sells the ID.3 for the equivalent of $19,000 in China, but marks it up to €45,000/$50,000 in Europe.

When I bought my electric car, all the big auto makers were pricing their EVs about $10,000 more than a comparable ICE. They see EVs as "high tech" and therefore worth a markup.

Put them at price parity, educate consumers about how EVs work, and build out the charging network, and the comparison will be more fair.

Comment Re:I don't get it (Score 3, Insightful) 67

It's not a crime to discuss piracy. The users here are being sought as witnesses, not infringers. The Plaintiffs are accusing the ISP of not terminating repeat infringers. Under the DMCA, failing to implement a repeat-infringer termination policy can result in the ISP being liable for the copyright infringement. Cox got hit with a $1 Billion judgment, they are appealing. The Plaintiffs here are trying for a similar result with RCN.

Whether these users can be unmasked so they can be named as witnesses? Probably not. And I find it imprecise that Attorney Culpepper wouldn't seek something more tailored to the concerns that Reddit and the Court relied on to deny the first subpoena.

Source: I'm a practicing copyright attorney currently litigating against similar copyright Plaintiffs.

Comment US Expat living in Lux right now (Score 5, Informative) 83

by ljfrench (#59702812) Attached to: Luxembourg Wants to Solve Congestion With Free Public Transport

I'm engaged to an EU citizen and working on my Lux residency right now. By EU standards, the transport system is "ok" but by US standards, this place is great. My biggest concerns are that the trains are already pretty full at rush hour and I don't know of any plans to run more carriages until a year or more from this "free transport" change.

But I also hear complaints about driving around here. Rush hour is also congested just like anywhere else that I know. I've experienced little traffic myself as I don't have to drive much because the bus and train transport are pretty reliable. They also have a couple car share programs which help when I need a short-term car rental. But I haven't needed a car more than a handful of times.

The county is basically always under construction, like literally 25% or more. They are extending the light-rail tram from it's current route in the NE of Lux city to include the airport and the central train station. That will certainly help.

I'm sure there will be hiccups but I applaud their leadership for looking for ways to make things better even if the implementation isn't as fast as we'd like.

Comment Re:Go READ His Comment People (Score 1) 187

by ljfrench (#57846152) Attached to: YouTuber Admits Aspects of Viral HomePod Glitter Bomb Video Were Faked

He solicited 3rd parties who would be willing to place the package on their porch. He offered to compensate them for it. It was those third parties who had friends fake stealing the package. When he found out that these alleged thieves were fake, he edited them out of the video and disclosed the issue.

All he had to do was say this in the original video, not afterward.

Comment Re:What's the big problem? (Score 1) 675

by ljfrench (#52613567) Attached to: The Chip Card Transition In the US Has Been a Disaster

If you're talking about the process being slower, ok yeah, by about 10 to 15 seconds or so.

Only on Slashdot could we read a story about Grace Hopper handing out nanosecond-length-wire to developers to highlight the importance of processor cycles - followed by a card-chip-and-pin story where it's completely okay to add 10-15 seconds to each and every customer.

Comment This trademark application just needs a challenger (Score 1) 204

by ljfrench (#51418497) Attached to: Fine Brothers File For Trademark On Word "React"

I posted a video reaction to this myself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Basically, it's tough to trademark a word that describes the thing you're selling. "React" describes the videos they create. Although this doesn't conflict with any valid trademarks the USPTO has registered, it shouldn't survive a challenge in court. Anyone who makes react videos themselves should have standing to oppose the mark.

Filing an opposition is not as simple as filling out an online form. I believe there's a trademark attorney willing to help for free. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

If you want to file an oppsition notice yourself: http://estta.uspto.gov/filing-...

Comment Re:Lucky for Stripe (Score 1) 353

by ljfrench (#48310973) Attached to: Online Payment Firm Stripe Boots 3D Gun Designer Cody Wilson's Companies

There is no provision in the U.S. Constitution protecting the civil rights of gays. There is a whole amendment for protecting the civil right to own guns.

I disagree. The 5th and 14th amendments are intended to ensure all of us receive the equal protection of the laws. It is under these amendments that laws banning marriage were struck down.
Privacy

Facebook Lets Advertisers Use Pictures Without Permission 260

Posted by kdawson from the controlling-rights-to-your-face dept.
Krokz sends in an LA Times piece that begins "A warning is bouncing through cyberspace today, landing on the Facebook statuses of many of the social networking site's users. The message: 'Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission.' It continues with a prescription of how you can protect your photos." The attention-grabbing incident in this furor involved a married woman, whose photo appeared in an ad for a dating service that was presented to her husband to view. Fortunately, both husband and wife had a sense of humor about it.
Censorship

Pirate Party Banned From Social Networking Site 354

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the you-can't-buy-publicity-like-that dept.
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that as the European Parliament elections loom, StudiVZ, Germany's largest social networking site, has opened up to political parties for election campaigning. That is, if you aren't the Pirate Party. "The other political parties were allowed to have a special account to show they are an organization and not an individual. The Pirate Party, however, was not allowed to have one and instead operated on a standard user account registered by an individual. StudiVZ noticed that the Pirate Party account was not a "real person" and despite it having a thriving network with hundreds of followers, it was summarily deleted. This means that it is impossible for the Pirate Party to have a presence at all on the largest social networking site in Germany." Update: 05/02 19:17 GMT by T : Reader riot notes: "FYI: I just translated the press release to English."
Image

Parrots Can Dance 104

Posted by kdawson from the elephants-too dept.
juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"
The Courts

Fair Use Affirmed In Turnitin Case 315

Posted by timothy from the sensing-sensibility dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turnitin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, 'denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"

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