* Posts by Turtle

1888 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Jan 2010

Voyager's 35th birthday gift: One-way INTERSTELLAR ticket

Turtle

@Ken Hagan Re: Nobel?

"I wonder if they have the imagination to reward the Voyager team."

I might be misunderstanding your intent here, but a Nobel Prize can only be awarded to a maximum of three people. It's in the rules:

"A maximum of three laureates and two different works may be selected per award. Except for the Peace Prize, which can be awarded to institutions, the awards can only be given to individuals. If the Peace Prize is not awarded, the money is split among the scientific prizes. This has happened 19 times so far." - Wikipedia

Zuckerberg WON'T flog his Facebook shares for a year

Turtle

Re: I think the problem is they floated too late

"I think the problem is they floated too late..."

.....and now the captain is going to go down with his ship.

Very inspirational.

Google/Oracle judge loses interest in paid bloggers

Turtle

Astroturfers And Sockpuppets for Google. Here's a Professional.

I'll give you the punchline first:

"Ms. [Jill] Hazelbecker is currently the Director of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Google. And her public bio at Linked In doesn’t mention anything about Mr. Kean’s campaign in New Jersey."

And here is the story of how she helped Republican Tom Kean run for office:

" Hazelbaker served as the campaign spokeswoman for the 2006 New Jersey Senate campaign of Republican Thomas Kean Jr., who was easily defeated by Democrat Robert Menendez.

New Jersey grad student Juan Melli, founder of the blog Blue Jersey, noticed that between July and September one IP address had registered four different accounts, each one claiming to be a Democrat but posting multiple anti-Menendez comments using pseudonyms like usedtobeblue and cleanupnj. This IP address had also been used to send emails signed by Hazelbaker to other correspondents, according to the New York Times.

[T]he liberal Democratic hosts of BlueJersey.com, the Web log where such comments were posted, smelled something fishy about the postings, and said they traced them to a computer inside the campaign headquarters of Mr. Menendez’s Republican opponent, Thomas H. Kean Jr.

The Kean campaign’s technical adviser said that the Internet protocol, or I.P., address that linked the posts to the Kean headquarters was an old one, “from over a month ago.” But an e-mail message Ms. Hazelbaker sent to a reporter on Wednesday shares the same I.P. address."

"And of course what makes this story the more interesting is that Ms. Hazelbecker is currently the Director of Corporate Communications and Public Affairs at Google. And her public bio at Linked In doesn’t mention anything about Mr. Kean’s campaign in New Jersey."

Geddit?

From:

http://musictechpolicy.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/where-are-the-rest-of-the-shills/

Torvalds bellows: 'The GNOME PEOPLE are in TOTAL DENIAL'

Turtle

@1Rafayal: Re: What prevents Linux from conquering the consumer PC market?

"A lot of people seem to be saying that Windows 8 will be the death of desktop computing, especially for games and media." I would not be surprised is this highly-gimmicky UI-formerly-known-as-Metro turns out to be highly popular with casual computer users - the ones who like to download emoticons, change their desktop background pictures regularly, and play browser games exclusively. And that is a *huge* mass of users. And if it works well on tablets, then the sky is the limit. I have no interest in it, and used to think that it would be an unmitigated disaster for Microsoft, but after taking another look at how some typical computer users (family members) use their computers, I have had to rethink my opinion.

"YouTube works fine on Linux, well the distributions I have used anyway." Well I guess it works for everyone.

"These days we have Linux everywhere, in our cameras, in our phones, our tellies and STB's etc. It is a gloriously flexible platform. " It's yet to flex sufficiently much to be a good fit on the desktop, though. That your television runs on Linux has *no bearing* on its suitability for a typical computer-user's desktop. None. None whatsoever. It's that simple.

"When it comes to games, its a bit light at the moment, but with people like Valve aiming to put Steam on Linux, things can only get astronomically better." You know, I am at a bit of loss here. That "Steam" runs or will run on Linux - or on some selected distros - poses a question that I can't answer: Will Steam allow DirectX games to run on Linux?" Because if it doesn't, than you will realize that "Steam" is one thing and "Steam games" are a very different matter indeed. And in that case, expect the number of Steam games that run on Linux to be very small. (And this does not even touch the matter of graphics card drivers for Linux: how well are Steam games going to run with the drivers currently available for Linux.)

"'I think the idea of "Linux works for me, but not for the average consumer' doesnt really ring true these days anymore. Most people are clued in enough to understand what Linux is and use it." I could not disagree with this more.

"I think the question these days is 'Linux works, but what can I do with it?'". Here's a better question: "Here's what I want to do and note please that 'what I want to do' means 'I want to do what all my friends do and I want to do it *with* them'; can Linux do it?" and the answer is, "I use Windows at work so I already have some familiarity with it, and since my friends use Windows they can show me how they do whatever it is that they do so that I can do it too and we can all do it together because that's the reason I even have friends." And that is about as good as an answer can be.

Sun daddy: 'Machines will replace 80 per cent of doctors'

Turtle

Small mistake corrected.

"'Khosla referred to today's physicians as 'voodoo doctors,' noting that 'Health care is like witchcraft and just based on tradition,' according to conference attendee Davis Liu, who discussed Khosla's profoundly ignorant attempt to attract media attention and thus make it easier for him to raise investment and venture capital, in a blog post."

Just a small, really very very minor correction, which I am sure that most people would not even notice.

‘Pre-bionic’ eye implanted in blind patient

Turtle

@MrXavia

"Cancer, already very treatable"

Although there are forms of cancer that are more treatable than in the past, in general I think that that's a debatable statement.

Turtle

Compare And Contrast...

....with certain other people who prefer to find ways to crash your pacemaker.

Patent flame storm: Reg hack biteback in reader-pack sack attack

Turtle

"No one. At all."

Andrew: what did you expect? Well, I am sure that you aren't too surprised.

Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin

Turtle

"Electronic skin"?

"Safer conjugal rights via electronic skin"?

Could give new meaning to the word "resistor".

Apple and Google in talks to end patent war?

Turtle

Re: Impossible...

"Impossible to see any winners here."

Except we don't know what the terms of the agreement will be.

Personally what I find impossible is trying to guess what Google could possibly offer Apple to stop their lawsuits. And why would Apple do that, unless Google agreed to stop infringing Apple's patents. A royalty on for the use of some patents and an agreement to not infringe others? But *that* would require that Google and Apple agree on the exact meaning and applicability of any patent to any feature of Android and that would effectively amount to Google giving Apple a veto in any features of Android - and any disagreement would only result in... new lawsuits.

So the questions remains, what can Google offer Apple?

An interesting turn of events, if true, and if both sides are serious.

Turtle

Influence via Corporate Post, or Otherwise

"Jobs was reportedly outraged that Eric Schmidt, who sat on Apple's board, didn't recuse himself from key meetings that discussed iOS. Schmidt resigned in 2009 and stepped down from the CEO role at Google last year."

Google is controlled by Brin, Page, and Schmidt by virtue of their stock holdings. If I recall correctly, The Three Pigs control, between them, 66% of the all voting rights - 22% a piece, I believe.

So, irrespective of Schidt's position in the corporate hierarchy, the noxious effects of his influence will nevertheless pervade Google - although the other two sociopaths provide plenty more of the same.

Official: Google's brazen domination of Earth nearly complete

Turtle

@diodesign: Re: Deeper Meaning.

"Well, it is August. And, er, it's odd that there are more google.tlds than nic.tlds."

Oh so there was a deeper meaning!

Thanks !

(Maybe I need to read up on numerology or something. I wonder if it can be done in binary.)

Turtle

Deeper Meaning.

Is there some deeper meaning that I need to take from this story, or is it basically nothing but a bit of marginally-interesting trivia? (I have nothing against marginally-interesting trivia; I am just wondering.)

1 MILLION accounts leaked in megahack on banks, websites

Turtle

Oh good work.

"Team GhostShell said the online leaks, which are part of its Project Hellfire campaign, were made in order to increase support for cops and government agents who want to enforce stricter police measures on the internet."

Right.

“All aboard the Smoke & Flames Train, Last stop, the penitentiary!" Team GhostShell wrote. "Two more projects are still scheduled for this fall and winter. It's the beginning of the end for us!"

Don't you just know it.

Why the Apple-Samsung verdict is good for you, your kids and tech

Turtle

No one. At all.

No one is going to change their minds about this. Anyone who has made up their mind is not going to unmake and then remake it. Trust me on this. See the threads about the Apple-Samsung verdict, and ask yourself how many people condemning the verdict will rethink their opinions. Correct answer: none.

Court confirms $675,000 fine for sharing 30 songs

Turtle

@AC 10.09 Re: Must be good drugs?

"meanwhile piracy habits go back to fundamental human nature (maximum result for minimum effort). Just as haters gonna hate, pirates gonna pirate."

Just as haters gonna hate, pirates gonna pirate, muggers gonna mug, serial killers gonna serial kill, rapists gonna rape, burglars gonna burgle, robbers gonna rob, child molesters gonna child molest, spouse-abusers gonna spouse abuse, shoplifters gonna shoplift, tax cheats gonna cheat on their taxes, drunken drivers gonna drive drunk.... There are no laws and never will be any laws that will succeed in eradicating all of these things. So which ones should therefore be legalized?

Joel "Blame The Foster Child" Tenenbaum got caught, he was warned, he continued, he was told there would be a lawsuit, he continued, he lied, and lied some more, and lied some more, he destroyed evidence, and he got a lawyer whose main interest was in publicizing an ideological agenda as opposed to acting in his (Tenenbaum's) best interest.......

That he got caught in the first place was bad luck. Everything after that is his own fault. He should have settled for $3500 and been done with it. And instead of getting a real lawyer, he gets Nesson - and by attempting to wiggle out of it entirely, he only worsened his situation - by orders of magnitude.

Everyone once in a while you have to just say, Well, I got caught and I give up. And the longer it takes to get to that point, the worse the final outcome is going to be.

Turtle

Joel "Blame The Foster Child" Tenenbaum

"The only winners in case are again.....the lawyers."

That's debatable. What is not debatable is that there is a very obvious *loser* in this case, and that is Joel Tenenbaum. And that's altogether appropriate.

Here's a short synopsis of Tenenbaum's behavior, entitled "Joel Tenenbaum willfully infringed plaintiffs’ copyrights, lied, destroyed evidence and tried to shift the blame to a foster child living in his family’s home, his sisters, a family house guest, and burglars" (I'll paste the link at the end of this post.) Additionally, as pointed out in the article, even after receiving warnings from Sony, he continued downloading until the lawsuits were actually filed. From the Huffington Post: "During the trial, Tenenbaum admitted he downloaded and shared hundreds of songs". He'd been doing this for years.

But look at that again: "Joel Tenenbaum tried to shift the blame to a foster child living in his family’s home". Some kid who needs a foster home gets the blame for Tenenbaum's downloading. In fact, that should be made part of his name: Joel "Blame The Foster Child" Tenenbaum.

It is only fitting that Joel Tenenbaum be the loser - in this lawsuit and in life too..

*********************************

Here's the quote from the judge's decision: "When he was confronted at trial with his attempts to shift blame for his actions to others – including a foster child living in his family’s home, his sisters, a family house guest, and burglars – Tenenbaum finally admitted responsibility'" available here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/103737792/Sony-BMG-v-Tenenbaum-Order-August-23-2012

Here's the link: http://vrritti.com/2012/08/25/joel-tenenbaum-willfully-infringed-plaintiffs-copyrights-lied-destroyed-evidence-and-tried-to-shift-the-blame-to-a-foster-child-living-in-his-familys-home-his-sisters-a-family-ho/

Turtle

@Unicornpiss: Re: "The day they hanged the lawyers"

"The difference is, in Heinlein's novel, it was an actual event that wasn't in the history books and that no one talked about. It vastly improved society though..."

That's the beauty of fiction: you can write any kind of world you want and make it look good.

Turtle

What Tenenbaum needs to do.

Tenenbaum needs to sue Nesson for malpractice.

Cook's 'values' memo shows Apple has lost its soul

Turtle

"Declining Dollars"

"As a result, Apple is now the most valuable company on the planet (in part thanks to the declining value of the American dollar)"

Someone is going to have to explain to me exactly what effect the exchange rate has. I can think of ways that the exchange rate would make the company more valuable, or less valuable. But they don't seem realistic in either case.

After all, with a floating exchange rate, the *value* of the company remains the same, it is only the value as expressed in a specific quantity of any given currency that changes. I.e. because of the declining exchange rate, Apple's value is equivalent to a lesser number of dollars than before - when measured against a foreign currency, but it will at the same time be worth a larger number of Japanese yen, or euros, or renminbi. Which one is going to be your "inertial frame of reference" in this highly relativistic system - and why?

Now, of course the value of Apple's products sold "abroad" (i.e. not in the US) might drop - but it could go up too! After all, I am sure that Apple is heavily into arbitrage - and I would expect that it is possible for Apple to conduct their manufacturing operations from start to finish abroad, and to do so in such a way that they never have to spend their "declining-in-value" dollars, spending their "overvalued" foreign currencies instead.

Well, I can't make heads or tails out of it. Just like the guy who wrote the original article that we are all commenting on, it seems.

Turtle

@David Simpson 1: Re: unlicensed music illegally on iTunes?

"Re: unlicensed music illegally on iTunes? As a musician you follow news about iTunes ? That sounds a bit ridiculous !"

Why is that? They're the biggest music retailer in the world. Considering that a musician wanting to make a living would pretty much be compelled to use iTunes, I would expect that musicians as potential iTunes clients would be expected to follow news about iTunes - as news about iTunes could relate to their ability to earn a livelihood.

I'm trying to understand why it's "ridiculous" but am failing completely.

Turtle

@Peter Johnstone: Re: iPhone was a big risk, iPad was a big risk.

"Why the down votes? I made an informed decision and switched OS based on a practical evaluation. Surely as this is a tech site, nobody here chose an OS because it was fashionable? Maybe the down-voters just didn't like my choice. Any down-voters care to comment?"

I'm not a downvoter of your post, I don't like Apple, loathe Steve Jobs, and I am and will remain an XP user. I personally don't care what OS you use. In this thread I've gotten about 50 downvotes so far and that is nowhere near my "record" for a single post, let alone multiple posts in a single thread. In a thread like this, in which Google, Android, and FOSS supporters are bashing Apple, you have to expect downvotes from those people if you support Apple in any way. These people seem to want to be able to buy products with Apple features at a fraction of Apple prices - and they have a very well-developed sense of entitlement.

Let me put it this way: If you point to a weather report that predicts rain for tomorrow, you will get downvotes from people who think that the weather report is wrong, and from people who had planned to go for a picnic tomorrow and think that "shooting the messenger" will somehow change the weather report.

Ignore the downvotes. There's nothing else to say about it.

Turtle

@Jim Booth: "level playing field"

"If software patents were outlawed, these companies would ***gasp*** have to play on a level playing field."

Right. Because if Apple invests the money and does the work and research to create software features that people want, it is only fair that Samsung and anyone and everyone else be immediately allowed to use those ideas for themselves.

That's "innovation and fairness" at its best, now isn't it?

Turtle

@swschrad

"Apple got their start making blue boxes"

Yep. Funny and true. (Didn't know the part about him getting roughed up, though.)

Turtle

@BeachBoy: Re: iPhone was a big risk, iPad was a big risk.

"No, people buy these Apple products because they are fashion accessories, and its cool to have a little apple logo on things. Not because they´re better. Is an Ipod really better than a generic MP3 player is the sound any better (hint they almost all use the same chips inside)? The sheep will always buy something that other sheep deem to be cool."

1) There is no company on earth that would refuse to take the money of those "sheep". In fact that is what every company pretty much strives for.

2) A significant part of the iPod's success is the ecosystem, as embodied by iTunes, that Apple has built around it. *That* was a risk that required a great deal of planning and investment., and was the result of successful negotiations with the rights-holders of the content that is sold on iTunes. Be aware that that was no small achievement on Apple's part. (I consider iTunes to be a horrible piece of software, but other people seem able to tolerate it. Maybe they even like it. Dunno.)

3) It is not the case that Apple can succeed with anything. Consider Apple TV.

4) You are right about iPods not sounding better than other mp3 players. (That's not strictly true, but true enough as far as the average or typical consumer is concerned.) But you are wrong if you think that the average or typical consumer buys an mp3 player based on sound quality. If you don't believe me, look at the headphones or earbuds that most people use. And see point 2 again.

Turtle

@Naughtyhorse

"apple have you by the balls"

Only if you want Apple kit and nothing else.

Turtle

Re: Cloud talk

"If Apple tried to make a car they'd get brutally bitch-raped on day one by the Germans and Japanese, pre-emptively, because of how they've behaved in the phone sector. Rightly so, too, given their form."

But if Apple didn't sue Samsung, and thereafter did attempt to enter the automobile market, you think that the additional competition would be welcomed by existing automobile producers with open arms? You're kidding, right?

Turtle

Re: Bad long term move really

"Apple should not have seen Samsung as a real threat, followers never are, they come late to market with something similar, and cheaper."

Another morality tale. I am sure that this story appeals to your sense of justice, but does not have a very close relationship with reality. Here's a good example: Japan. In the 60's, "Made In Japan" was synonymous with cheap and cheaply-made goods, very often direct knock-offs of more expensive items - and that applied to pretty nearly everything that Japan produced. According to your outlook, they were not a "real threat" to any American or Western manufacturers because they were "late to market with something similar, and cheaper" but in fact, they were. I will leave it as an exercise for you to find supporting examples. (Hint: start with "automobiles"if you are really stuck.)

"I'm reminded of the start of Ben and Jerries ice cream, were they whinged about being 'excluded' from the market, as the big competitors wouldn't allow shops to put their product in the competitors freezers, only years later to do the exact same to quite a few start ups. The Merkins just love a monopoly!"

You have an odd definition of "monopoly". With the exception of a few stores which Ben & Jerry's seems to own and in which the only product sold in the entire store is Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, I have *never* seen a store that sold only Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream. I can not even count the number of different brands of ice cream for sale in any of my local stores here, which includes both national chain stores and mom-&-pop stores. And it would not even be possible for any given store to stock all available brands of ice cream, because there are simply too many brands for too little space in any given store's freezers. Therefore there will always be "excluded" brands. But you know, that's not a "monopoly" either.

Turtle

Re: Oh come on ...

"when you go into a major court-room battle with billions at stake, it had better be about money. Anything else and you risk pissing away your wealth and pissing off the shareholders."

I think that that's really very well put.

Turtle

Re: Vote with your wallet

Does Cook get 1 million shares every year? If not, then it is a bit inaccurate to say that he is reaping $700 per year unless is really is getting that year after year. Wikipedia says "In early 2012, he was awarded compensation of 1 million shares, vesting in 2021". Now I might well be misunderstanding what this means, but if those 1 million shares are a sort of bonus that will he will receive if he remains CEO for the next 9 years, then that's not really his yearly compensation - unless, as I said, he gets that year after year.

Cook by the way is also on the board of directors of Nike. Now there's a bunch of scumbags. It was so... characteristic of someone like Phil Knight to be aggressively defending Joe Paterno - although he seems to have since opined as to how possibly Paterno was in some way a little bit imperfect. $300 for a pair of Lebron James sneakers - what can one possibly say? Irrespective of his record on the basketball court, how many people have ever gotten paid more for doing less. But then, I guess we could say that about any highly-paid athlete.

Turtle

@eulampios: Re: @Turtle

"Come on, you don't have to explain us anything, Florian."

Apparently I do.

Turtle

Re: This isn't really about Samsung

That's a pretty insightful post.

One little caveat, though. I am pretty sure that Page decided to buy Android. Some people must not recall how Schmidt was on Apple's board, how they had a "gentlemen's agreement" (even though no actual gentlemen were involved) to not poach each others staff and personnel so as to keep salaries and employee compensation down, and how Steve Jobs said that Google's slogan "do no evil" was "bullshit" - because Google decided to compete with Apple in the mobile phone market. Anyone whose idea of "evil" is so self-absorbed can only be described as a pig. Oh, wait, that's an insult to pigs, isn't it?

The world is a better place now that he's dead. Really.

Turtle

Re: Apple are another amoral company

"But are Samsung or Google really any better?"

Google is in a class of its own.

I have no particular animus against Samsung, and in spite of having supported Apple's actions in defending their products I do not like Apple at all and don't use their products. In fact, I resent having to defend Apple.

But Google is much, much worse than any other major tech company. Witness the money they made by financing the sale of controlled and counterfeit medicines by means of their AdWords program. They financed the sites conducting these drug sales for years, in spite of any number of warnings, including a letter from Joseph Califono, Secretary for Health And Human Services for President Jimmy Carter. Eventually they agreed to disgorge $500,000,000 in return for a federal non-prosecution agreement. They finance mail-order brides and other human-trafficking sites. Need I even add that they make money by financing pirate sites enabling the theft of content and software? Don't forget the "Google Books Affair" by which they hoped to be able to strip copyright protection from whatever books they wanted. Google has suborned institutions such as Harvard and Stanford by managing to enlist academics there to lobby for Google's legislative agendas in return for large donations of Google money. And their legislative agenda, which favors expropriating content creators for the benefit of people who are *already* billionaires, can only be described as "fascist". Their invasions of the privacy of the users of Google services, and constant surveillance of anyone who uses the internet, should be well-known to everyone who frequents this site.

And yet how many people here ignore all this, yet foam at the mouth because Apple is enforcing their rights against Samsung and Android - because Android is another of Google's ploys to increase its advertising revenue. And since Google gives these people free content - by stealing it or enabling others to steal it from the people who create that content - they think Google is good, and will not see that Google is simply the image, writ large, of the avaricious, sociopathic kleptomaniacs who run it.

Google is in a class of its own.

Turtle

Re: A moralist predicts the future

The problem with your corrections is that the points you make don't really answer the points I make.

If you look again, you will see that it is possible for my two propositions and your two comments on them to all be true simultaneously.

Turtle

Re: A friend of mine works for Samsung

"A friend of mine works for Samsung and summed up her feelings as 'Apple are just scared'."

There's an authoritative opinion. It must be right.

On the other hand, I saw someone with an Apple device waiting for a bus this morning. They didn't seem concerned.

Turtle

A moralist predicts the future

Not a terribly insightful article; in it reads like the script of a morality play that a moralist would like to see played out.

"Cook is in no mood to play nice with the rest of the industry" - nor has Apple ever been. One li'l example: USB was adopted as an alternative to Firewire. Why? Because the royalty that Jobs wanted for it was exorbitant.

"Based on the evidence yes, Samsung copied both the design and the style of Apple's products, in the same way that Apple always has." Actually it's not that Samsung copied the design and style. It's that they infringed Apple's patents protecting the "design and style" - along with the way certain parts of the way that the hardware and software operate. And once you agree that Samsung did "copy" then it's difficult to see how you can complain about how quickly the jury returned its verdict.

In fact, once you know that Google warned Samsung about the too-close-resemblance of Samsung's products to Apple's, it really becomes an open-and-shut, slam-dunk kind of case.

Apple has always been about walled-gardens, lock-in and lock-out, planned incompatibility and no interoperability, proprietary formats and hardware specs. And you know what? They are the most valuable company in the world today. To think that anything that Apple is doing at the current time is going to change that, is to think wishfully, magically, and childishly.

UK kids' charity lobbies hard for 'opt-in' web smut access

Turtle

The problem with this thread.

The problem with this thread is that the commenters do not identify themselves as having or not having children (with whom they live - absent parents' opinions are not as important as the opinions of parents who actually take care of the kids.)

It would be interesting to see how the parental status of the commenters correlates with their opinions.

Of course, I would expect that there would be more than a few people who would lie about it....

Neil Armstrong dies aged 82

Turtle

Re: Stop with the angst already and go watch 2001 or something.

"Sanctimonious bourgoise attitude?"

Precisely.

Jury awards Apple $1bn damages in Samsung patent case

Turtle

@Robert Long 1: Re: @Arctic fox RE: The USA patent system is a disgrace

"'Apple was legally granted and is legally entitled to enforce a monopoly on the use of its patents.' I don't agree. Apple have grabbed 'entitlements' that were illegally (sic) granted "

The courts are the ultimate arbiter in this matter. Your opinion will be correct when and only when the patents in question are declared invalid. As of this moment, the patents in question have been deemed by a court of law to be both valid and infringed, which has in turn underscored the correctness of the decision of the patent office to grant those patents in the first place. Blame Samsung for their original decision to risk infringing those patents.

Turtle

@Anthony Hulse: Re: The right verdict

"They happily paid out to Microsoft for their patents, so why not Apple?"

Apple is concerned with product differentiation, not licensing patents.

Apple is concerned with getting users into the Apple ecosystem to use their App Store and whatever else Apple has to continue to sell content etc to their users. Therefore there is no great attraction for Apple in license fees for patents that reduce product differentiation between Apple and Samsung: those license fees would need to make up for the future earnings that Apple will lose because of any given customer buying a Samsung phone and not becoming part of the Apple ecosystem and contributing income thereby.

I am not sure that Apple ever offered Samsung an license that would have given Samsung the right to use all the patents that Samsung wanted. (Actually I am pretty sure that Apple made no such offer but I could be wrong or be conflating some of these numerous lawsuits.)

Microsoft on the other hand seems to be quite happy to simply collect a royalty on every Android sold (with the exception of Google/Motorola, as the only company that has refused to take a license from Microsoft. But expect them to be compelled to do so.)

So one can not really compare the goals and strategies of Apple and Microsoft.

Turtle
Meh

@0_Flybert_0: Re: drop in the bucket for samsung

"a drop in the bucket for samsung"

With the exception of a few large governments (a few of which are states in the USA), there is no entity on earth for whom a billion dollars is "a drop in the bucket".

Note please that the Wikipedia list which you have cited is based on annual TURNOVER - i.e. gross revenue. You will find that their NET revenue or profit is far, far less.

In fact, Wikipedia lists Samsung's profit for 2011 as $12bn, and Apple's 2011 net income as $26bn. (Note that I am assuming that "profit' and "net income" are the same and that the terminology differs only because the articles were written by different people.)

Doing the math, we see that $1bn represents 8.3% of Samsung's 2011 PROFIT and that, consequently, a fine or jury award of $1bn represents a decline in profits of that same 8.3%.

That's a rather serious matter for any commercial entity in the world.

Turtle

@Arctic fox RE: The USA patent system is a disgrace

1) Concerning your point 1: You have no facts to cite but instead talk about being "substantially distracted" and "corporate focus" and seem to think that this verbiage means something. Please enumerate the actual observable-in-the-real-world effects that this all has. Because if it has no observable effects in the real world, then there's no reason to think that it really exists. (You need to show how things would be today if it were not for Apple's lawsuits, compared to how things are. Good luck with that.)

You have also changed *your* focus from Apple not having enough money to fund java patches, to insights into Apple's corporate state of mind. Evidently you think that if were not for Apple's lawsuits, there would be more Apple innovation and that they would have gone on to something completely different. But Apple is notorious for its paranoiac secrecy. How do you know what they are working on now? And why do you think that these lawsuits have changed Apple's development plans in any way?

2) Re: "Abuse". Apple is entitled to seek whatever legal remedies which the law allows. Apple is also allowed to protect the monopoly granted by the law as embodied in the patents (and copyrights) it owns. Apple is also entitled to assert its rights against any number of infringing or trespassing entities. I want to be sure that you understand that: Apple was legally granted and is legally entitled to enforce a monopoly on the use of its patents. If Samsung et al want to compete against Apple, they can not be stopped from doing so - but they can be stopped from using Apple's patents without permission.

If Apple's competitors can not compete with Apple, then you can agitate for an anti-trust investigation and sanctions when Apple as a smart-phone vendor occupies an position of overwhelming dominance in the market - and is abusing that dominance - but not when Apple is enforcing its right to monopolize its own patents. And certainly not when Apple is facing real competition in its markets.

And again, the most important point here is that the courts, the judges, and the law are capable of deciding what is "abuse of process". And they haven't seen fit to do so.

Nor am I familiar with any doctrine by which Apple's rights are limited or its ability to seek remedies are limited by some vague appeal to "justice" - which always turns out to be a plea to not enforce the law as enacted.

It is not as though the law says, You have 10 patents being infringed but you are only allowed to protect 6 of them, and there 10 entities infringing but you are only allowed to bring suit against 6 of them. That's just not how it works. If the law is felt to be operating in a way not commensurate with the public weal, the only remedy for that is to change the law via legislative process. And since Apple's lawsuits were deemed meritorious and their assertions upheld by a jury, the only real "abuse" here is the way in which *you* are abusing the word "abuse".

Turtle

@Arctic fox: Re: The USA patent system is a disgrace

"They have spent the last two - three years or so focused on abusing the judicial system to avoid competition instead of focusing on development and innovation in order to keep ahead of their rivals by that means."

Are you under the impression that Apple can't fund their product engineers and their lawyers simultaneously? Even though this is a company worth half a trillion dollars? The idea that Apple can *either* make new products *or* litigate, but not both, is maybe just a little bit foolish, don't you think? You *do* know that Apple's engineers and their lawyers are two completely separate groups of people, right? Do you think that maybe the iPhone 5 and the iPad 3 (or whatever is in the pipelines - I don't use their stuff so I neither know nor care) is going to be delayed because of the resources that Apple has devoted to litigation?

You might perhaps want to rethink things.

Also, the reason(s) that you denominate Apple's campaign of litigation as an "abuse" is not clear. I have not seen any judges complaining too much, and I would think that their opinions are authoritative. And verdicts like this one against Samsung with its billion dollar award would seem to indicate that, far from being an "abuse" the Apple lawsuits are both meritorious and a legitimate defense of their business and commercial interests.

So you might perhaps want to rethink your opinion on that too.

Google names names in amended 'shills' list

Turtle

Surprised?

Anyone who thinks that there is anything surprising about Google having paid influence peddlers is clinically deluded.

Let's see how long it take for the people constantly denigrating Florian Mueller, to explain why and how it is possible to accept Google's shilling and still be honest, while accepting money for Oracle unfailingly imparts corruption. Since I am sure that these people have long ago developed any number of strategies for dealing with cognitive dissonance, their rationalizations could be very enlightening... from an "clinical psychology" point of view..

Groupon loses second top sales bod in a week

Turtle

@Peter R. 1 Re: Can't comment on Groupon US...

"But here in Europe they're just a bunch of parasitic scam artists."

Oh they certainly are parasitic scam artists; I had no intention of implying otherwise. But their original strategy was to scam business owners and share the proceeds with Groupon's customers. Now however insofar as "Groupon Goods" goes, they seem to be heading towards scamming their customers in concert with businesses who have these overstocked and/or borderline unmerchantable goods for sale. (I assume their "Groupon Getaways" exhibit pretty much the same tendency but those emails get put in trash unread, so I can't really be 100% sure.)

When we originally found out about Groupon, we thought it was pretty good but then we found out how it works, and we are pretty careful about what deals we buy because we really don't want to be the cause of some small business owner, whose business might just be getting off the ground, losing significant sums of money.

Turtle

Voucher Bazaar... or Spam Factory?

I'll tell you what: I bought some stuff on Groupon a while ago, and have been getting emails notifying me of offers ever since. But lately those emails seem to be coming more and more often, while the deals have been getting worse and worse. Their new "Groupon Goods" category is almost completely made up of items which, after the alleged "huge discounts" they tout, turn out to be only very marginally less expensive than what a websearch will find you whenever you feel like buying that item..

Shove off Prince Harry, now Norway's teen royal in fresh photo uproar

Turtle

If it's too much for them...

"Norway's police intelligence unit, the Politiets sikkerhetstjeneste (PST), is under fire for failing to inform the royal family about the potential drawbacks of sharing too much info on social networks."

If the royal family can't figure it out for themselves, then Norway might want to considering advertising for a new royal family, maybe just a bit higher up the evolutionary tree...

South Korea bans Apple's AND Samsung's ageing phones, tabs

Turtle

2 Samsung Patents were SEPs

The two Samsung patents which Apple was found to infringe were standard-essential patents encumbered by FRAND obligations. This is not a small detail, by the way, and should have been in the original story. SEPs can not be designed around. We will see what happens both with any appeals, or in any changes to Apple's current market and business plans in South Korea.

Reagan slams webmail providers for liberal bias

Turtle

Re: For some people, EVERYTHING'S about them

Well not really. There are many people who base many decisions on the political contributions and endorsements of the manufacturers of the goods they buy, the actors in the movies they watch, the talk shows that a given advertiser buys time on, and so on, ad nauseum.

I can't see anything wrong with not wanting to contribute to the income of a service that uses part of the income their users generate, to support causes that the users are against.

New US rule aims to crack down on Congolese capacitors

Turtle

As it stands.

"Several major Asian electronics manufacturers – including Canon, HTC, Nikon, Nintendo, and Sharp – had failing marks, and Nintendo in particular was found to have made "no known effort to trace or audit its supply chain. ... By comparison, major US and European electronics companies [...] rated fairly well. All had made significant efforts to address the problem of conflict materials, the report found, with Apple, HP, Intel, and Motorola called out as "pioneers of progress."

By restricting the demand for "blood minerals" and thereby driving down the price for those buyers willing to buy them while increasing the costs of doing business for buyers who shun them, the fact that some corporations have made progress here will very likely benefit the companies that made no efforts at all. This could exacerbate the problem that it is trying to solve by making it more imperative for the warring factions to gain control over more resources than they control now, as the revenue their currently-controlled resources shrinks.

I would expect that most people's purchasing will still be heavily price-dependent, and that the income from sales gained by this or that company for not using conflict minerals will not come close to offsetting the income lost because of the higher prices it will force them to charge.

Not necessarily the wisest policy that has ever been devised unless the non-compliers are going to be compelled to comply.

But then, there are the other potential problems noted in the article.

The end result is that this measure, as it stands, could easily be yet another "do-good" measure that does more harm than good.