Posts by Turtle

Re: Triple Microsoft tax bingo

"> ... it had seriously questionable IP

Does it? What IP would you be referring to? Or does your NDA stop you discussing it?"

The fact that there have been 19 publicly-announced royalty-bearing agreements between Android handset manufacturers and Microsoft (and other IP holders) to this point should be very obvious proof that Android has extremely serious IP issues.

"> ... MS are rightly claiming royalties for the technologies they developed

Really? Like to tell us all what this technology is?"

Why do you need to know? That the lawyers for the Andriod handset manufacturers know, is all that really matters.

"> ... That no credible company has tried to take them to court suggests that they have something valid.

No it doesn't. It suggests it's cheaper and less painful to give in."

Have you got ANY evidence to back that up? Like, let's say, the cost of mounting a defense and the amount of money that any of these Android handset manufacturers can be expected to pay in royalties under the terms of these agreements? Also, there are at least some jurisdictions where the loser has to pay the winner's legal fees.

"> ... , but actually they don't have to tell us,

And there is the crux of the problem. I notice they're still not going after the source of the "infringement"."

You seem to mistake, "I want to know" for "they have a legal obligation to let me know"

And as for "not going after the source of the infringement", if this is how their lawyers have decided to do it, then that's how they decided to do it.

And notice that Google is not exactly rushing to intervene in these lawsuits on the Android handset manufacturers' behalf, and they haven't exactly offered to indemnify them against any judgements or awards, or even (as far as I know) to help pay their legal costs.

Re: Oh dear... @Turtle

"Interesting how mention of the old guys brings out pretention. I like HP Lovecraft's stories, and your writing style makes *me* wince. Well, and what it implies about your personality too :)"

I realize that that's not intended as a compliment... but thanks!

: )

@ReduceGHGs Re: Addressing the problem

"The more effective way to deal with climate change is to have policy makers in Washington DC that are willing to enact laws and regulations to reduce emissions. Currently we have too many obstructionists (mainly industry backed Republicans) in the Senate and House."

1) Yep. Washington is going to tell China and India to reduce omissions, and they will obey! No doubt about it!

2) "Industry backed Republicans" are being "obstructionists"? Well then thank goodness for industry and thank gooodness for Republicans.

@BigNose Re: Reality

"In order to do that, THEY will need to fit smart sockets in every part of the home, because the best they can do is switch off a circuit breaker's worth of ring mains, or the whole friggin house, both of which are highly desirable to no-one."

That should read "highly desirable to no-one except the people who want to save the earth by reducing your consumption of just about everything except air (and they're not too sure that they want you breathing, either.)

Well how much are you going to consume in a dark house with no electricity?.

Re: "What bureaucrat, in their right mind, would want to do that?"

"What bureaucrat, in their right mind, would want to do that?"

The ones who expect to be employed by Google either directly or as outside consultants and lobbyists once they leave the EU or government bureaucracy (as the case may be).

Whinging about pedantry...

"Whinging about pedantry? You must be new here".

Truer words were never spoken.

Li'l Syntactical Correction Re: If...

"...those are not the people whose ideas will prove beneficial (to anyone except themselves.)"

*sighs*

@James 51

"Surely this is just yet another example of anti-capitalist/anti-free market behaviour from big business?"

No, it's another example of Silicon Valley applying the libertarian principles they so fervently espouse.

@The Man Who Fell To Earth

"My experience with research in China is that there is so much data fakery going on, that anything spectacular is suspect. I'll wait until the experiment is repeated someplace reputable."

My reaction was sorta kinda similar: although I did not think "fakery" I did think "measurement error". It will be interesting to see if the results can be replicated.

@Captain DaFt: Re: A Very Good Thing Indeed.

It was said by Jack Cade's follower Dick The Butcher in Shakespeare's Henry VI; it was in the midst of a harangue in which Cade lays out his, errr... social-political program.

Consider this quote: "'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers' You know the line, from Shakespeare's 'Henry VI, Part 2.' Like a mantra, it is mindlessly quoted by pundits, stenciled on T-shirts and generally marshaled as condemnation of the legal profession from the very pen of the Bard of Avon. Not only is this a gross calumny, it is a symptom of gross cultural illiteracy.[...] Dick the Butcher shouts enthusiastically, 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.' There it is - the phrase so frequently used to damn the legal profession, shouted by a butcher in response to an ex-convict and confidence man who was in London to foment anarchy, burn the city and loot the commonwealth. But that's not all. Cade shows us what his world would be like without lawyers. Immediately after Dick the Butcher mouths his famous line, a clerk enters. Someone accuses the clerk of being able to write and read. Cade orders, 'Hang him with his pen and inkhorn about his neck.' Yes, second thing let's do, let's kill anyone who can write or read." (http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-14/local/me-1614_1_jack-cade.)

I don't know if this was an idea ever espoused by the real Jack Cade and Shakespeare account of Cade and the events surrounding him seems to be quite ahistorical.

The quote has also been attributed to Leo Trotsky, who might have been well-enough read to know it from a tranlation of Shakespeare. I do not know if Trotsky ever said it or not, but it would have been both appropriate and ironic if he had.

@KjetilS: Re: @Rampant Spaniel: Rights

"'the law simply prohibits the jury in a criminal proceeding from making this obvious inference' Yes, but this isn't a criminal proceeding."

The lawyers themselves were not on trial at all, they were acting on behalf of the plaintiffs in a civil trial (ignoring the shell-corporation accusations etc etc.). So there were no inferences to be drawn or not drawn by a judge or jury weighing their guilt or innocence. They were invoking their Fifth Amendment rights in order not to supply possible links in a chain of evidence that might incriminate themselves. The discussion is more about the Fifth Amendment generally.

Re: April Fools!

I figured out at this line: "An attorney identifying himself as Ernest K Malley, who spoke to The Register on condition of anonymity". And *that* brought to mind "Ern Malley" so I did not think that The Reg erroneously revealed a confidential source....

@Anonymous (Noel) Coward

"> But just for the sake of amusement, why not give us your delusional reasoning as to why the US would want Egypt's internet cable cut.

"Think "Google".

You're gonna have to spell it out because your answer makes no sense.

The only people I could imagine wanting the cable cut would be Islamic fundamentalists. Under certain circumstances which are not operative at the moment (i.e. political unrest threatening to lead to the overthrow of the government) one could cast suspicion on the Egyptian government - but the Egyptian government would probably know better than to apprehend itself - especially if the people who *caught* the saboteurs are essentially the same people whom the Egyptian government would have tasked with committing the sabotage..

@Boris the Cockroach

" I bet the norks are being egged on by Apple... 'go on.. take out the Samsung HQ... you know you want to'"

It's not funny. But I did laugh.

@PyLETS: A possible solution to the problem of spam.

"I've worked on developing anti-spam tools for some time."

I have another - possible - solution.

The crux of the matter is that spam is basically cost-free to the sender. Imagine an ISP or email service that would let a user send out, say, 5,000 emails a month for free. (That's an arbitrarily-chosen number, used for the sake of illustration.) After that allowance is exhausted, the user must pay - again, using arbitrarily-chosen figure - a penny for each additional 100 emails.

5,000 emails is a lot of email but many, many orders of magnitude less than what a spammer needs to send in order to make a profit.

Now imagine if several such ISPs allowed its users the option to only accept email from similar ISPs/email services. Spam would no longer be cost-free to the spammer, and spam sent from non-participating ISPs/email services would be immediately rejected. (Not even returned to sender; just consigned to the bit bucket.)

This is not a complete plan, obviously, (and Microsoft had the idea of charging a very nominal sum for sending emails quite a few years ago), but considering the huge number of spamming emails that must be sent in order to make any money for the spammer, I would think that this would seriously reduce and might even come close to eliminating spam.

Re: Ya think?

"Does it really take a 155 page report to know this guy is a liar?"

No, but that's not really what the report is for.

This is an official report, so to speak, and lays out the facts in great detail so that it can - as it probably will - be used as a basis for further court and legal action. Any facts not in this report would need to be proved, again, in the new court in which the new case was being tried. I believe that the statements of fact in the judge's finding would be incontestable as a matter of law. (but I am not sure.) So this report makes any subsequent legal proceedings that much less cumbersome, unwieldy, and hopefully less time-consuming of both parties' time (which also reduces legal costs.) It also reduces the demands that any future lawsuits will make on the resources of the judicial system.

An interesting example of this is the trial in Florida at which Ted Bundy was found guilty of multiple murders: he was allowed to vigorously defend himself during the first phase of the trial, which concerned his culpability for the murders with which he was charged. However, once he was found guilty and the penalty phase of the trial got underway, he was *not* allowed to argue that he should be spared execution because he was innocent: that he committed the murders with which he was charged was at that point a legally-established fact.

Also, if this report was, as is usual in legal documents, typed using triple-space, it is not *quite* as voluminous as one might think.

@An0n C0w4rd

"Given how the UK police and security services (as well as our lovely friends in the USA) have over-reacted numerous times to innocent comments posted on the Intertubes,

How many times, actually?

Re: @Rampant Spaniel

"Bottom line is if people are coming into the store for advice, make that a selling point."

Celiac Supplies' point is that this has not been working.