Posts by ratfox

And so it begins

I am getting flashbacks from Palm, four years ago.

$7 millions? Wow

The scariest part is, if they could only come up with that, it probably means they could not even find which law Google had broken, and Google just settled with them to stop the nagging.

Ha! We can guess more info than they wanted to release!

For each year, they say they received between 0 and 999 letters… But always about a nonzero number of users! So we know that they actually received between 1 and 999 letters.

I bet the US government is going to freak out about the security implications of that slip.

And this, gentlemen, is why…

Android should by default allow the users to selectively block access rights from apps; at least the right to send data over the network. I'm tired of arguing this point when it is such a no-brainer. All I could ever hear against is how poor developers should not have to handle their applications losing access to this or that… But anyway apps don't always have access to the network, e.g on planes, so this is pretty moot.

Like he's the only expert

He should have more respect for this Thad Starner guy leading the project at Google, with reasonable credentials of his own…

Heh… Zopfli

It means little jar…

He who lives by the sword…

And as you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Makes no sense to me

The world contains many things that impede the wind from blowing. Apart from the windmills, there are trees, houses, skyscrapers, mountains…

I fail to see why a windmill would slow the wind more than any fixed structure of the same size… And frankly, we are very far from windmills being even a small percentage of all the wind-impeding crap we have built. Without even mentioning the mountains.

Good, good

Google Maps need the competition, and they need as many users as they can to keep up map quality. A map service simply cannot compete on quality without user-submitted content.

If I was Apple, I would launch a desktop version of their maps as soon as possible, and offer on it a proper way to report issues. The little tool they have on their phones is just not going to be enough.

Interestingly, Robert Pattinson was spared

I suspect he has many fans from Harry Potter.

OMG it never worked before, why still try?

I for one find the Google Glass less obtrusive than many designer glasses.

Then again, I'm the type of guy who has always despised people who wear sunglasses after sundown, so I guess it's a matter of taste.

Yeah right

Seriously, what are the chances of RIAA being happy about Google? ZERO.

Ultimately, the RIAA is unhappy about the Internet, all of it. It's not like Google is the only search engine; just the most popular one…

Brinkmanship

Looks to me like both sides are bargaining hard for the best they can get. I think Google would do well to remember that in the end Almunia is basically calling the shots. They make him happy, or they are in a world of pain.

I'm guessing that Google really does not want this to get serious, so they'd better make him happy.

It's a Y axis

I'm curious, what makes you think that "the majority of successful hijacks are probably pulled off by shady state-sponsored types" rather than spammers? Because you hear more about it in the news?

According to my research, only rich people get married and have children. You never hear of these things happening to poor people in the news.

How about this for novelty?

All patents are kept secret for one year. If at anytime during that year, somebody else comes up with the same idea/concept, the patent is invalidated as being not novel enough.

When you think about it, the fact that two or more companies would be racing to patent a concept should automatically disqualify the concept from being patented. Patents are meant to reward the inventor who brings something to society. If many inventors come up with the same idea at the same time, then society would have benefited even if any of these guys had decided to go back to bed instead. At the most, the patent should be shared between the multiple inventors, certainly not awarded to the one with the fastest legs.

Disappointed

I would have thought that Google would pay more attention to their complaints, instead of apparently not answering. It does not even seem that prohibitive to do as they asked, if they really only asked for opt-out (which in the overwhelming majority users will not do).

People are crazy

Seriously, you want a new law just to stop the maybe two guys in the whole state who would be willing to go to all that trouble, when there is an internet full of porn available?

Anyway, isn't it already illegal to peep on people? Why bother with a new law, which will stop people from taking some completely innocent but very cool movies?

This is very much like banning all phone cameras because there are people who will use them to take underskirt pictures in the subway. Let's ban zoom lenses, too.

Farcical

Whether Gibraltar is promoted or not is not that important, but they might want to check if there is a hole in the way decisions are made which could be used to game the system in more important places…

Yeah, good luck

I honestly can't think this is anything else than a publicity stunt. W\ithout even talking about the common sense point of view, there are a few large companies with a legal budget two orders of magnitudes bigger than Veber who are going to get involved pretty fast.

"he drove the car off the road when it ran out of petrol."

…Wait, what? The damn car finally runs out of petrol, and he that's when he decides to drive the car off the road? This contradicts the info that he had a full tank of gas. Half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.

Regarding the whole story, I'll misquote Thomas Jefferson and state that I would sooner believe that a French guy would lie than that a car would keep accelerating no matter what the driver did. Brakes, gearbox, ignition keys… There is an awful lot of things that would need to go wrong in exactly the right way for this to happen.

Did not read the article

But epic title is epic!

Huh?

What has Google got to do with this? Why would it want a monopoly in broadband??

In before Opera aficionado laments the loss of the one true rendering engine

Though I have to agree with the decision.

Pour one for Presto...

"can survive a strike from a 110-gram ball bearing"

There must be something missing in this sentence. I'm pretty sure that most phones will survive having a 110-gram ball bearing dropped on them.

Yeah right

Like Microsoft ended spinning-off its OS, because they could not possibly produce an OS and at the same time compete with their Office suite against other business suites running on that OS.

Bezos certainly knows what he's doing; and I doubt he needs advice from Openheimer.

Video production is going to hit a wall

The day that every single cat in the world is filmed 24/7