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Why I’m Suing the US Government

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Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#181

Post by kwhitefoot »

ggambetta wrote: post #151
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #94

Good. My wife is a speech therapist and uses a system that is designed to help people who have had strokes regain their voice. It comprises a piece of software that comes with a "specially calibrated USB microphone". The microphone is actually a Samson laptop USB mic that had the voice improvement systems logo stuck on it. The system came with lots of legal warnings about not copying, not telling unqualified people a…

Would be easier to do a hex search on the binaries, find the device id of the old mic, and patch in the device id of the new mic. I'd be surprised if they had bothered to obfuscate the id in any way.

Won't be so easy if they obfuscate/encrypt the binaries.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#182

Post by Paul-ish »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #104
ProAm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does your wife charge as a therapist? Everyone needs to make money. HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. Everyone hates laws until its in their best interest to have said laws.

She barely takes home minimum wage and she is self-employed. Most of her peers are in a similar position. It is not a vocation you get in to for the money. Edit: A common problem in her sector, and other therapy sectors, is that all the recognised diagnosis and treatment systems get bought by the likes of Pearson and other big technical publishers who will demand recurring payments to use the system. For example Owls…

Could a professional organization of speech therapist come together and fund a competitor? Obviously you would need to deal with the free rider problem somehow.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#183

Post by emodendroket »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #48
emodendroket wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which people are you talking about? This is done pretty regularly but generally judicial review tends to favor conservative interests.

The people, citizens. Though i'm curious what kind of laws are rolled back in the US because a citizen decided to sue to government. Do you have any nice examples (preferably of some law effecting many but sued by just one person?)

This is a pretty big part of what the Supreme Court does, although I guess the majority of the time it's because of an appeal or a lawsuit against some other entity and not a lawsuit against the US government directly.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#184

Post by blastrat »

ProAm wrote: post #169
dimal wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. I think the insulting tone towards those that disagree with him might have something to do with it. And the above statement is just plain absurd.

I did not intend for it to be insulting. I often see posters complain about laws that prevent them from shoehorning them into and industry start making money, and defending similar laws when it's in their best interests. My original comment was a merely to argue the other side of the argument because HN has a tendency to be two-faced when it comes to topics like this.

you were downvoted because HN is not the friendly place it pretends to be: they don't like what you said. You only get to sneer at people if you drink the KoolAid. They hide behind the "it was the way you said it" excuse when they don't share your POV.

I don't share your POV btw, but I got downvoted because they don't like that I defended your right speak because your POV is unacceptable here. And this, to move the topic further afield, is why codes of conduct don't work: it's just another flavor of Turkish Pres Recep Erdoğanian "thin skin to disagreement", or "I don't like your opinion in one area, so you'd better shut up about everything else"

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#185

Post by a3n »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #153
safeignorance wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking on Pearson and other companies that use similarly predatory tactics to extract value from society's most disadvantaged is exactly the sort of "disruption" that the world needs more of. That said, I doubt one could go at it alone with no support or with only a grant -- building up mind share, fighting off BS patent threats, and doing enough sales to break even on these non-development costs aren't the sort of t…

I agree. I mentioned Owls above. You wont believe what it is... just clipart in a nice easel book form. I'm not joking, its just page after page of clipart, accompanied by a manual and 20 page copyright warning booklet. The thing is Pearson has convinced governments, schools, charities, hospitals etc that this system is the best way to diagnose speech issues. My wife and a lot of her colleagues would beg to differ.

Tangent: Pearson sells curricula to a lot of school districts. These are the people that in part control what your children learn, and what their teachers can teach.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#186

Post by roninb »

dmix wrote: post #115
ProAm wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much does your wife charge as a therapist? Everyone needs to make money. HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. Everyone hates laws until its in their best interest to have said laws.

HN is hardly an active supporter of unicorn style VC pump and dump. We poke fun of it all the time. This is a common criticism of HN I hear on Twitter by people who clearly don't spend much time here.

I hear much of the same. I don't think I've ever seen Snapchat mentioned here without an oogle of 40 somethings complaining about how useless and unintuitive it is.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#187

Post by zekevermillion »

mtgx wrote: post #88
zekevermillion wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue self-driving car software is different. If license terms permit modification, and a modified version is running in a car that causes damage, then there will be an argument as to whether the modifications caused the wreck, or whether it was the underlying software and thus the manufacturer who is responsible. Tesla, quite rationally, would not want to give users a permissive license, given this obvious l…

How about using the same tactic many smartphone makers use: "We're allowing you to unlock your bootloader, but if you do, you're voiding your warranty." Similarly car makers could say as soon as the user unlocks the car's systems for modification, the company is no longer responsible for any accident that might happen. It seems like a rather good compromise to me.

I'm sure user modification of functional systems would void the warranty. That is a separate issue from third-party liability, though, because the third-party victims are not party to the warranty.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#188

Post by Joof »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #181
ggambetta wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be easier to do a hex search on the binaries, find the device id of the old mic, and patch in the device id of the new mic. I'd be surprised if they had bothered to obfuscate the id in any way.

Won't be so easy if they obfuscate/encrypt the binaries.

Could do it live, but it's more annoying.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#189

Post by blastrat »

dimal wrote: post #158
blastrat wrote: post #142

yes I agree, and also, what? why should PP's question be downvoted-to-hell?: He's entitled to defend the other side here. Not saying you did it, but I had to comment someplace.

> HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry. I think the insulting tone towards those that disagree with him might have something to do with it. And the above statement is just plain absurd.

his "above statement" is not at all absurd, it reflects the thinking of somebody who is drawing a parallel because they are clearly educated in the Nobel prize attracting (i.e. hardly obscure) field of microeconomics; if you can't see that, am I right in guessing you have not studied micro? Cuz if you did, you missed a chunk of it.

| HN is a weird place to bemoan prices when many here are seeking unicorn valuations while disrupting industry

HN is a place where many seek unicorn valuations which are only achievable from monopoly rents. Monopoly rents are what the headphone USB trick is attempting to collect (see bundling). That's what makes it pertinent to state "weird place to take this side" especially so vociferously... well, weird side to take unless you are not educated about econ and are unable to decode what's actually happening.

If the software producer did not try to enforce copy protection through the USB scheme, they would presumably face the problem of people copying the software and buying aftermarket headphones. In a large scale industry like operating systems (Microsoft Windows) such rent seeking behavior is to be deplored because prices of individual copies of the software should approach their very-inexpensive marginal cost. But the marginal cost of a niche piece of software such as this ADA software is complicated by the difficulty in earning back the development costs. This is the justification for patents, etc. whether you believe in it strongly or less strongly or not. I am less strongly a believer, but I'm not a pussy who downvotes people who disagree with me.

Re: Why I’m Suing the US Government

#190

Post by imglorp »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #110
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She barely takes home minimum wage and she is self-employed. Most of her peers are in a similar position. It is not a vocation you get in to for the money. Edit: A common problem in her sector, and other therapy sectors, is that all the recognised diagnosis and treatment systems get bought by the likes of Pearson and other big technical publishers who will demand recurring payments to use the system. For example Owls…

How much do you think it'd cost to replicate the software as an open source tool? I've written grants before for funding open source projects, and this anecdote boils my blood.

Another business that does this is the hearing aid racket. An audiologist examines a patient, comes up with a patient's profile (some kind of EQ / convolution map), and then loads that into the hearing aid using proprietary programming cable and software.

There are other settings more under the preferences category than DSP, like what profiles go on what switch setting, beeps, things like that. But these are all guarded jealously.

The aids are very expensive, more than $5k, for what's now ancient tech. They've only recently gotten BT and only then at the high end, more like $8k for the BT models.

We really need open hardware and software, so home users can get an audiologist to compute their profile and then do what they want with it.

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