Posts by Mike Moyle

Re: Weird morals...

You're apparently confused because you're conflating two issues.

1 -- "it's normal to research and plan for a war where you'd flatten a country with explosives, tanks and nukes," so that you are READY to fight that war when the civil authorities DECLARE war and ORDER you to fight it.

2 -- It is NOT (or, at least, SHOULDN'T) be normal for a military to initiate offensive actions (physical or otherwise) against across national borders WITHOUT the civil authorities' declaration of a state of war.

One is POTENTIAL action; one is ACTUAL. One places the military in a SUBORDINATE position to civil authority; one places it ABOVE civil authority. See the differences?

The German army's new HYDRA corps (Sorry... That was my first thought when I saw the headline.) has been operational for 5 years and the civil authorities -- quite rightly, IMO -- want to know whether they have planned POTENTIAL action outside of Germany's borders or taken ACTUAL ones without civil authorization.

Re: Price comparison

Sorry -- don't know when the "WTF" icon got clicked. That wasn't intended as an editorial comment Mr. or Ms Walrus.

Re: Hmmmm...

"...what sort of font it's supposed to be, etc."

It's Microgramma Bold Extended.

(Trek geek AND font geek. I believe that I still have my original Franz Josef Trek Tech Manual with the type specs around somewhere.)

Re: You've GOT to be trolling.

Well, they say the devil recognizes his own...

"The normally apathetic middle class in the US has woken up since 2008 and is taking more of an interest in their government than ever before, and generally they are against handouts and subsidies (staples of the Democrat election process)."

Or if you're not trolling, perhaps you meant "The normally apathetic middle class in the US has woken up since 2008 and is taking more of an interest in their government than ever before, and generally they are against handouts and subsidies to the rich (staples of the Republican election machine)."

Re: Launch condition optimisations

If you're worried about pendular swing, the easiest solution would be to damp it by hanging a weight from the bottom point of the whole megillah (from the bottom of the backplate?), using a long cord of a different length from the main balloon tether. A long, thin fiberglas rod with a weight on the end, hanging from a swivel shackle off of the backplate might be even better -- you just want something with a different period from the main tether and any oscillations should damp each other. You could even use two rods, of different lengths shackled together with the weight hanging from the bottom of the lower rod to really break the rhythms up, but that may be overkill. Of course, this DOES add weight to the ascender, but has the advantage of NOT adding significant complexity.

Re: dozens...

"I asked for a similar product round-up some months ago and Reg delivered(...)"

I was thinking a couple of weeks ago as I was looking into low-end-tablets (being a cheap bastard) that, with the field changing so quickly, it would be extremely useful i some enterprising tech site (hint, hint...!) would do, say, a quarterly round-up/comparison of what's available at the top end of the low end. Maybe pick an arbitrary price point -- half the price of a base-level of the latest iPad iteration, maybe, as a floating target to account for inflation, and see what's the best below that price point (Today: $250/£156).

Re: Hah! - Do you really expect all MacOS users

"For the slightly more sensible of that crowd, assuming always that they exist outside my increasingly desperate fantasies..."

Not to put too fine a point on it but, considering the number of sensible Apple users -- including, I would like to think, myself -- who post on this site, it seems that your "increasingly desperate fantasies" may revolve more around your own arrogant expression of your oft-stated antipathy to Apple and its users than around the users themselves. Like the true troll, you seem to be able to ignore any evidence that doesn't fit your preconceived notions. Many of us use Macs, Windows, and Linux machines interchangeably; besides the Mac that I normally work on, I have a Windows box sitting directly to my right, for those times when Windows Server and OS X can't agree to play nicely together. I haven't actually had to turn it on in the past couple of weeks, but it IS there, because I tend to be a "belt-and-braces" kind of guy. This is also why, despite the -- historically -- general dearth of malware for OS X, I have used Sophos anti-malware software on my machines for some years and occasionally double-check them by running ClamX-AV software on disks that Sophos says are clear.

"Besides which, and speaking as a working IT support professional, I don't want ex-Apple-zealots for users! Christ almighty, I'd rather support an old folks' home -- while probably not any more familiar with the equipment than, say, a graphic designer would be, older folks are at least somewhat likely to recognize the uses of politeness, and I'd rather listen to a codger's stories than a crayon-pusher's any day."

As a working graphic designer -- who not only supports/upgrades his own Macs, at the office and at home, but is the first person that the folk in the office (a large-ish municipal government department) come to for assistance with workgroup printer issues (hardware and software) and problems with their Windows machines, before even CONSIDERING putting their request into the MIS helldesk queue -- I don't find your attitude "professional" at all. Your "...somewhat likely to recognize the uses of politeness..." is particularly laughable, considering your own apparent inability to grasp the concept.

And, BTW -- Pen/brush and ink, Photoshop, InDesign, Freehand/Illustrator, SolidWorks and Blender for 3-D, OpenOSX Grass for GIS (when I don't feel like booting up the Winbox to run ArcView), HyperEngine-AV/Premiere for video editing, and... Oh, look... Buried in the bottom drawer of my desk... I *DO* have a box of crayons... one that I bought to keep the office-mates' tykes amused for "Bring Your Child to Work Day" some years ago and haven't had need for since...

So in all fairness, given that I *DO* have a box of crayons in my desk and they *HAVE* ended up getting "pushed" to the back of the drawer over time, I suppose that I MUST allow you one point in the accuracy of your screed. Other than that, however, it's appears to be all fail.

Re: they may have shafted the DOD...

"I bet a £ to a penny that its not ever going to be quick enough for battlefield use. They are not going to discard something in the arena that will fix itself for the enemy to come along and pick up."

OTOH, not everything gets abandoned on the battlefield; some equipment DOES get taken back to a repair depot. I suspect that in the future the equation will be roughly the same as it is now "How expensive/critical/replaceable/repairable is this unit? Is it too damaged to be worthwhile sending back? If some parts are self-repairing, that could change the equation.

Re: Hmm

"I have no idea what size Apple's non-SEP portfolio is..."

According to the US Patent & Trademarks Office site, Apple has a total of 4649 patents awarded and 2945 pending. Unfortunately, they don't separate out SEP patents. The list also, I believe, only lists patents initially assigned to Apple directly and may not include those that Apple received through acquisitions or swaps or patents on which Apple is a co-holder (h.264 through its membership in MPEG LA, I think...?). Further, some number of those listed are design patents (the infamous "rounded rectangle" that so many fume over) and some are technical patents ("Method and apparatus for improved duration modeling of phonemes in a speech synthesis system," to pick one at random). What the split is I don't know.

I think that it may be the design patents that could be the sticking point. If Google owns Motorola and Motorola has access to all of Apple's design patents, this would seem to imply that Motorola could make and sell under their own label a tablet, say, that looks identical with an iPad, with a UI that looks identical with iOS. Now, it seems unlikely that Moto WOULD do that under their own brand, since it would be a tacit acknowledgement that they make "me too" products. OTOH, it appears that there would be nothing stopping them from setting up a new division with a new marque selling to the low end of the market with all that that implies -- resistive screen, bottom-of-the-line processor, cheesy build quality -- running an iOS-skinned Android on an iPad-looking device.

Build it like a Coby Kyros and sell it as "just like an Apple iPad" and I doubt that the fallout would take any gloss off of Motorola's reputation among the general public as much as it would off of Apple's ("If this is just like an iPad, then what's all the fuss about?"). And with the depth of Google's pockets subsidizing this, such a product line could survive to erode Apple's image in the mass market for far longer than a less cash-rich company could manage.

I dunno, but that's what I might be be thinking if I were a cynical sort of individual (...which, of course, I'm not...! ;-) ).

Re: Once a crook......

We had a case some years ago where a State Trooper driving down the highway saw a rental truck being driven by a guy wearing (back then) Walkman earphones. He pulled the truck over and was gently explaining why this was unsafe when, it being a warm summer's day, he noticed a sweetish, greenish, resinous-ish aroma coming from the box of the truck. Getting -- grudging -- permission from the driver, he opened the back of the truck to find it filled floor to ceiling with black trash bags full of recently-harvested marijuana.

Lesson: If you're going to break the BIG laws, make sure that you always obey the LITTLE ones while you're doing so.

Re: Re: Re: I don't get it...

It should also be noted that -- at least in the Florida case -- the prosecution was trying to gather evidence to present to a Grand Jury, whose job it is to look at the evidence and see whether there is enough to warrant holding the accused over for trial. The (apparent) fact that the prosecution felt that they NEEDED whatever may have been on those hard drives in order to bring the case to trial implies that they really may not have had a very solid case at all and were going on a fishing expedition.

Once they had the drives in clear, there was, AFAIK, no limit to what they could look for -- they weren't limited to looking for child porn but could use anything they found (records of unreported freelance income, say) with which to pile added charges on. Too many prosecutors get ahead by following the policy attributed to Cardinal Richelieu: "Give me ten lines written by the most pious of men and *I* can find something with which to hang him!"

Re: Re: If Apple loses their appeal to the high court...

It all rather depends on whether this is officially-sanctioned criminal activity or not. While it LOOKS like it might be, given the court's seemingly skewed reading of the sale agreement, it COULD just be Beijing going along, rather than being an active participant.

Even if it is, if the head of ProView isn't tight with Li Keqiang and Xi Jinping (widely expected to become premier and president, respectively, this fall), then whatever ProView's status re "official crime" is now could change radically, particularly if Apple mooted the idea that $2 billion would go a long way towards setting up manufacturing lines somewhere like India or Thailand that already have tech manufacturing infrastructures in place and could use the jobs.

Re: Did she learn anything?

Well, she doubtless learned that the proper response to a public tantrum is an even bigger public tantrum...

She doubtless learned that the best way to show your love for someone who is dependent on you is with public humiliation...

She doubtless learned that it's safer to bury any feelings that she might have from her over-reactive father than to deal with them openly...

She doubtless learned that the only rational, adult response to adolescent venting is gunfire...

...and, presumably, if her father is ever job-hunting in the future, she will then get to learn the dangers of posting video on the web which demonstrates that you can be an absolute fucknuckle when you are frustrated.

Re: You lost me in the third paragraph

"The Coca-Cola bottle was specifically designed to be different and distinguish it from other products."

And if you look at a history of tablet computing, like this one: http://www.pcworld.com/article/188223/the_long_fail_a_brief_history_of_unsuccessful_tablet_computers.html

...or this one:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/history-tablet-pc-photos_n_538806.html#s77827&title=RAND_Tablet_1964

...you will see that Jonathan Ives' minimalist design WAS intended to be different from anything else that had previously been put forth as a tablet computer. Trade dress does not *have* to mean "the most decorated", it just has to be sufficiently *different* from anything that already exists in its market. Ives' design clearly met that criterion. Had Samsung been first to market with its tablet, then *its* trade dress would be the one that competitors would have to work to avoid appearing to imitate.

"If I was selling shoes and chose to sell them in a plain white shoebox should I qualify for a design patent?"

You would presumably have to show how your plain white box >>differed in an immediately obvious way<< from any other white box that had been used for shoes. If its design was distinctive enough -- if its appearance did not too closely resemble "prior art" -- then you possibly could. At that point, all the decision would mean is that no one else could deliver shoes in a box which looked like your distinctively-designed one. Other white boxes, as long as they were clearly designed NOT to look too much like your design, would likely be allowable.

I'm not saying anything about whether your shoebox example, or the Apple/Samsung decision is right or wrong; I'm just explaining the concept and the current law, as I understand them.