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"For people who actually NEED the power, say folks like me who do video transcoding while running accurate physics simulations of sound propagation for commercial acoustic design and/or industrial noise abatement, and would like to still be able to work in their CAD suite with multiple detailed 3D views open, it is quite clearly NOT a "simple fact" that PCs are "insanely overpowered", that's fucking ridiculous you fool! The systems are never powerful enough."

Autodesk does 3D CAD rendering in the cloud now. Imagination Technologies offers a 3D ARM based ray tracing card called Caustic R2500. Transcoding has similar solutions.

You really don't need that screaming monster under your desk any more, nor the awful costs and effort of upkeep that come with it.

2. He has lots of money.
3. He is investing in a new enterprise and knows that he has to spend money first in order to make money in the future.

I assumed all that was fairly obvious. What's your theory, by the way?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/building-mega-ars-pre-launch-interview-with-kim-dotcom/

The Mega business plan will be a distributed model, with hundreds of companies large and small, around the world, hosting files. A hosting company can be huge or it can own just two or three servers Dotcom says--just as long as it's located outside the US.

"Each file will be kept with at least two different hosters, [in] at least two different locations," said Dotcom. "That's a great added benefit for us because you can work with the smallest, most unreliable [hosting] companies. It doesn't matter because they can't do anything with that data."

More than 1000 hosts answered a request for expressions of interest on the Mega home page. Dotcom says several hundred will be active partners within months. Successful hosts will get paid E500 per month per server; each server needs to supply 24 hard drives with 72 terabytes of storage and one gigabit of bandwidth, among other requirements.

That's all down the road, however. For now, Mega is launching with just one, professional, hosting operator--a subsidiary of Cogent, based in Dotcom's home country of Germany.

According to other articles, he has a (maxed out) 10Gbit pipe from this Cogent subsidiary
And FYI - Cogent was the US host for megaupload.com, so they believe in his business plan enough to host for him again.

If he can get Mega back into the big leagues again, it's going to put some serious strain the undersea fiber that feeds the USA.
That's the most expensive wired bandwidth around and he's planning to host nothing in the USA.

amazon DRM free first? impossible. they didn't even have a music store yet.

http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2007/06/emi-says-drm-free-music-is-selling-well/
Although the iTunes Store was the first online store through which EMI sold its DRM-free tracks, Amazon recently said that it will also be selling DRM-free EMI songs through its newly-announced music store later this year

"apple had the nerve to charge"
no. "price increases by the record labels, which were made possible by Apple's capitulation."
http://news.cnet.com/amazon-follows-apple-to-$1.29/ ...so apple made DRM go away in exchange for higher prices. you think amazon raised prices because apple did? or you think amazon raised prices because the lables told them to? makes no sense to RAISE your prices to match the competition unless the IP owners set the terms (for DRM free). makse more sense to me to keep the price LOWER (you know, to attract more customers) - than to raise them

IE is still the most popular browser in the world.

No it isn't, it fell off that perch years ago. Nobody uses Microsoft's browser by choice. Face it, Microsoft's sun is setting. Don't let the chair hit you on the way out.

I think statistics say otherwise. Remember, most people do not hang out on slashdot and are into browsers. Ask any webmaster here who writes internet sites that average people or businesses use? They will say 50 to 60% still use IE. It still sets the standards if you want to be paid by anyone to attract users sadly.

Remember these users are grandmas, 40 year old moms, accountants in the office with locked computers, redneck Joe Six Packs, and little kids at home whose teacher showed them that little blue e = internet. Not techies. Which browser do you think they use? I give you a little hint? It is the one they are familiar with that they use at work or school. Sometimes they geeky smart nephew will introduce this foxfire thingie for many ... but not everyone.

Lets say people who are not grayhairs who hate change and are set in their ways decide to switch to Chrome? IE drops to say 10% of users! Can we still ignore it? Still a NO. Unless you want to use my example of telling 1 out of 10 customers to go screw themselves to a client who is paying you the answer is you support it. 5%? Then maybe you can put a polite banner with a link to Chrome or Firefox then.

Arstechnica, zdnet, slashdot, and engadget are a tiny minority. It is not like the 1990s when the internet was a geek thing.

Lets hope MS has technical reasons for this as Skype would be better support the w3c standard?

The MS Kin was a special case.

It wasn't so much that it was a loser that should have been culled; rather, it was destroyed by poor decisions from Microsoft middle-management.

Basically, MS bought a successful company, Danger. Danger's "Sidekick" was a feature-phone with a well-chosen feature mix. Kin was to be the next Sidekick, and it should have been the same success the Sidekick was. The most interesting feature: it was supposed to have a special low-cost data plan. Instead of being a full smartphone, it was going to be a "social media" phone; SMS, Twitter, and Facebook wouldn't put too much load on the data network, so Verizon agreed to offer a special low-cost data plan.

Well, a Microsoft middle manager forced the guys working on the Kin to scrap the old Danger code base, and rewrite everything to Windows CE. After all, Microsoft didn't want to have to support two code bases, right?

But the delay caused by the rewrite was fatal. The special low-cost data plan evaporated (Verizon was pissed at the delays), and instead of being a low-cost phone with a low-cost data plan, it became a phone that cost about the same as other phones, and had a data plan exactly as expensive as other phones, but wasn't a smartphone so the built-in apps couldn't be added to. That last was really stupid: since the Kin guys were forced to rewrite to Windows CE, it should have been possible to put a Windows Phone app store on the device, and the Kin team wanted to do it. They were denied, again a stupid decision by MS management (and I guess internal MS politics).

Had the Kin shipped 18 months earlier, even 12 months earlier, with the less-expensive data plan? It should have been a big hit like the Sidekick. Had it shipped as a smartphone with an app store, it might have had some sort of a chance. But as a featurephone that cost like a smartphone, it was instantly doomed.

So yeah I guess MS should have culled it rather than endured the embarrassment around the Kin disaster. But better still they should have had less broken decision-making by their own middle management.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2010/07/a-post-mortem-of-kins-tragic-demise/

http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/02/life-and-death-of-microsoft-kin-the-inside-story/

However, Kim already successfully fought off extradition to the U.S.

When exactly did this happen? The hearing hasn't even taken place yet.

...and what law was broken?

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/family-blames-us-attorneys-for-death-of-aaron-swartz/

Stamos goes on to write that MIT runs an “open, unmonitored and unrestricted network on purpose. Their head of network security admitted as much in an interview Aaron’s attorneys and I conducted in December. MIT is aware of the controls they could put in place to prevent what they consider abuse, such as downloading too many PDFs from one website or utilizing too much bandwidth, but they choose not to.” In addition, he wrote, MIT did not require users of its network to agree to any terms of use, nor did JSTOR take any steps to prevent large-scale downloads of its PDFs.

"millions of dollars".. in ACADEMIC papers? really?

worst case is trespassing because he entered the network closet w/o permission. tresspassing does not warrant 30 years. ever.

overzealous resume padding is the reason the US Atty continued with this sham.

Do we really want a world where a person could face 35 years for trespassing (normal max: 30 days in jail and $100 fine) (1) but merely have to defer a portion of their bonus for laundering money for drug kingpins and terrorists (2)?

(1) http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/feds-go-overboard-in-prosecuting-information-activist/

(2) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

A lot of people are outraged over the prosecutorial overreach in this case (and, by extension, the tradition of prosecutorial overreach in most cases prosecuted by the federal government), and a petition has popped up to remove the DA in charge of this case: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck

It's a start, though what I'd really like to see is some proper judicial reform, so we can bring some sanity to the judicial system.

Links to the Ars coverage of this story:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/internet-pioneer-and-information-activist-takes-his-own-life/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/family-blames-us-attorneys-for-death-of-aaron-swartz/

A lot of people are outraged over the prosecutorial overreach in this case (and, by extension, the tradition of prosecutorial overreach in most cases prosecuted by the federal government), and a petition has popped up to remove the DA in charge of this case: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-attorney-carmen-ortiz-office-overreach-case-aaron-swartz/RQNrG1Ck

It's a start, though what I'd really like to see is some proper judicial reform, so we can bring some sanity to the judicial system.

Links to the Ars coverage of this story:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/internet-pioneer-and-information-activist-takes-his-own-life/
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/family-blames-us-attorneys-for-death-of-aaron-swartz/

I'm pretty sure internet services providers and the telecommunications market in China is dominated by two or three massive companies just like it unfortunately is in the states.

All the easier to monitor and record everything each citizen of China does 24 hours per day, 365.25 solar days per year, for every year of their life.

Government: I see you and your spouse were engaged in martial activity despite the ban on child birth.
Citizen: How did you know we had sex?
Government: The FIBNet altered us and recommended a face-to-face meeting in lieu of a prison sentence.
Citizen: I'm screwed.
Government: No, you are disallowed from screwing unless we can clip the reproductive organs from you and your spouse.
Citizen: Fuck you!
Government: Yes, you all allowed to fuck me. I am infertile as all Government workers must agree at time of employment by our People's Republic of China.

We have authoritarianism, it just gets its power from corporate lobbing and campaign donations instead.

NC started a few public fiber in some towns, so Time Warner lobbied and made broadband operating as any other public utility illegal, ignoring the protests of many local tech businesses and even the FCC.

However, even China is offering something Google and Verizon aren’t here in the US: Open access, and the choice of multiple service providers once the fiber is installed.

Um, yeah so you can pick from China Telecom and China Unicom which are both -- SURPRISE SURPRISE -- state run and controlled providers. So, yeah, go ahead and select between Super Auspicious Provider A and Premium Auspicious Provider B and think you have a choice just like Cox and Comcast are two sides of the same inept coin.

According to the China Daily report, the Chinese government hopes to have “40 million families connected to fiber networks by 2015,” which is almost one-third of the country’s entire population.

Emphasis mine. Anyone see a believable plan on how that's going to happen? I mean, I bet every government hopes to have a third of its nations homes on fiber networks by 2015 ... that sounds like a rather expensive project that you're not going to see a return on until the state owned providers pay it back though. You've got a state owned and state controlled newspaper telling you about something unbelievably awesome enforcing some totally unrealistic (unless there are few fiber neighborhoods) regulation. Am I the only one saying that I will applaud them when it's actually in place and working?

2015 is two years away. Um, yeah, they had better get crackin'. Well, I guess when you can just force the poorer farming people to work for free it might be possible! That little project was called “Speed up the Roads and Enrich the People” hahaha. Here's your shovel, comrade. Now start digging until you're enriched.

The skeptic in me is just thinking that the home builders in China just need to pay off one more inspector to get a structure standing. Hell, their sheet rock and cement are clearly bribed through quality control -- why not structural, electrical and fiber officials?

It ahs no protections and its a pyurmid.
It also coulod never support a middle class. Byt it's nature it favors on group over others.

It's like if everyone had a printing press the printed dollars, that kinda of worked. But if you bought 1000's of dollars in equipment, then your printing press works more.

Which then leads to complete separation of actual work and money.
It also remove people who can not afford the technology to support it from the equation. I'm not sure how you are going to pay a maid who doesn't have a computer. For example.

"Feel free to laugh at people who are using a next-generation financial system. It"
How about I laugh at people who clearly have no clue how macro economies work. You have no protection. If I were to steal your bitcoins, you could not go after me for theft.
And it has happened with bitcoin before.

"FYI financial regulations do apply to Bitcoin exchanges as they would any other online currency exchange"
Someone is lying to you, because they are not regulate like other currency exchanges. Not at all.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/hacker-steals-250k-in-bitcoins-from-online-exchange-bitfloor/

Gee, I misread the headlines to say Carreon Files.

Because adopting Android worked out so well for everyone but Samsung, right?

Oh, the exact opposite of that? I guess being a "me too" player isn't a smart strategy. Probably even worse for premium brands.

RIM made a smart move by buying QNX. It's (quite possibly) the most advanced mobile OS on the market. It instantly gave them a presence in new markets, which they're leveraging well, and an easy way to maintain their legendary security.

Their new UI is stunning (thanks to great acquisitions like TaT and smart hires like former Apple designer Don Lindsay) and from what we've see so far, clearly not something you could achieve by slapping a skin on top of Android. Features like Balance would also be a clunky mess (like running a VM on your phone).

For developers, there's nothing attractive about Android -- from the tools to the ROI, it's painful. RIM, in contrast, has dramatically improved developer relations and the quality and variety of the tools available to developers. This includes true native development, not just a few "essential" parts. From Google's What is the NDK page: "In general, you should only use native code if it is essential to your application, not just because you prefer to program in C/C++".

In short: Adopting Android would have been the single worst move RIM could make. They'd be just another Android phone is a sea of unprofitable competitors, they'd lose every advantage that they currently have (their edge in security and MDM, for example), they'd be left out of other markets instead of expanding in to new ones, and they'd be unable to provide the same innovative new features for end users and developers (balance, peak, flow, etc.)

RIM made some mistakes, that's not in question, but skipping over Android was not one of them. Their transition was painful, sure. However, their new products are very impressive and, in many ways, well ahead of the game. Even BGR is singing their praises -- that takes some doing!

They could still fail in the market, I'll grant you that, but that won't be because they've produced an inferior product.

Rural areas. Dialup and satellite internet suck in this application. 3G? Unless one has a large data cap or uses their console infrequently.

This Ars article covers the best satellite currently seems to be able to offer:

"ViaSat's Exede service launched last year as a major improvement over WildBlue. It offers 12Mbps down and 3Mbps up across all of its plans, differentiating tiers not by speed but by data usage. Usage is unlimited from midnight to 5am, but metered at all other times of the day. $50 a month gets you 10GB per month, $80 equates to 15GB, and $130 provides 25GB.

Hughes charges between $40 and $100 a month, with speeds ranging from 10 to 15 Mbps down and 1 to 2 Mbps up, and data limits of 20 to 40GB per month. Satellite bandwidth is not limitless: both Hughes and ViaSat have optimized their service for download speeds, saying in their experience customers care much less about upload speeds.

While Dish Network or DirecTV services are one-way broadcasts, Hughes and ViaSat home systems receive and transmit.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/01/satellite-internet-15mbps-no-matter-where-you-live-in-the-us/

>If they simply say "well, we have no idea of who is using it for what", some clever lawyer will say they're facilitating this.

And it would be laughed out of the courtroom.

Show me one court case where someone was held criminally responsible for having open wireless and it was abused by a third party.

One. Case.

I double-dog-dare you.

-- BMO

This is kind of mixed. It appears that the MPAA will often back down if you run an open wifi defense. However, it might not work for a child porn defense. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/04/child-porn-case-shows-that-an-open-wifi-network-is-no-defense/ http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/WiFi-Network-Shuttered-By-MPAA-ReOpens-105492

But Powerball is based on luck. App success is based on quality and marketing. Huge difference.

Quality I'll agree with, but as for the rest, can't tell if sarcasm. The analogy between the App Store and a lottery appears to connect the success of marketing with luck, especially given the imperfection in the App Store's own search feature. Are there commonly accepted best practices for marketing an app in the App Store or Google Play Store?

If this is true, where is the patch to remove the obnoxious DRM after 6 weeks?

The developer for The Witcher 2 removed it a week after release. A couple of months in, 2K removed the activation limits for BioShocks 1 and 2 (which isn't the same as removing the DRM but it makes it less obnoxious). And BioShock 1 was unpirated for close to twelve days after relase.

Look, I know you want to live in some little world where there's no DRM and everything is the same but it's just not. DRM is required and the people who make decisions on this are not idiots, no matter how smug you are about it.

If this is true, where is the patch to remove the obnoxious DRM after 6 weeks?

The developer for The Witcher 2 removed it a week after release. A couple of months in, 2K removed the activation limits for BioShocks 1 and 2 (which isn't the same as removing the DRM but it makes it less obnoxious). And BioShock 1 was unpirated for close to twelve days after relase.

Look, I know you want to live in some little world where there's no DRM and everything is the same but it's just not. DRM is required and the people who make decisions on this are not idiots, no matter how smug you are about it.

Apple has some good products but you have gone much too far drinking the coolade. Apple did nothing to contribute to the invention those displays they simply bought the highest res LCD panels and added them to their systems.

The "fusion" drives are standard hybrid drives that use flash as the cache for the spinning media. Support is not baked into OS X and everything they described in the link you listed are functions provided by the drive firmware. The fact that they make it seem like OS X is doing anything for this at all is just laughable since I could throw the drive into a windows 2000 system and still have everything in that paragraph still apply.

I guess they finally realized their earbuds were terrible but the replacement doesn't look like it would be anywhere near as good as my Sennheiser ear canal set.

No, they caused those displays to be created. They went to their "glass" Vendor with a design, and had that Vendor (Samsung, I think) FABRICATE their Design. They don't fabricate their ARM-based "A"-Series SoC chips, either; but they most assuredly designed them.

As for the Fusion drives, are you actually postulating that the DRIVE ITSELF is moving file around? If so, then why did Phil Schiller say that it was OS X that was watching the user habits, and doing the moving? I'm pretty sure he said exactly that. And in fact, as this Ars article shows, this is a form of "auto-tiering", which is a technique employed in large data storage arrays. Read, THEN Post. What you are mistaking this for is simple caching. This is more, and DOES involve the cooperation of at least a part of the OS.

As for the "EarPod" Earbuds, this was actually something like the THIRD re-design. Are they Audiophile material? Hardly; but they are significantly better, especially in the bass region; and I submit they are now at least on-par with any other, and significantly better than, the other "freebie" earbuds included with similar devices from other manufacturers. By the way, Apple is under no allusions as to the quality if their earbuds; otherwise, why would they offer several other Third-Party earbuds and headphones in their stores?

The Apple one is really odd - because if you read Apple's response, it makes no sense. It automatically fixes itself on January 7? WTF? Date/time bugs don't usually have self-expiry dates (though Apple's response is adequate since the bug will auto-fix itself before Apple could fix and test the update). And especially since there's nothing seemingly *special* about January 7...

Ars has a nice write up about it - http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/01/ask-ars-why-will-apples-do-not-disturb-bug-fix-itself-next-week/

TL;DR version: The DND bug is because well, to the DNS part of IOS the year is 2012. In fact, it's technically week 53 because of the way Apple chose to code DND.

It's a mismatch between the calendar date and the ISO Week date (at least, the consensus seems to be this since the effect is reproducable and a bit of silliness in NextStep APIs make it a REALLY easy bug).

There's even code that repros the bug.

TLDR: Mark of the Beast contender (RFID) makes way to CDROMS as method to communicate with hardware.
--
Examining Sony's Internet-free method for blocking used game sales

New patent filing describes using RFID chips to tie games to a single user.

by Kyle Orland - Jan 3, 2013 5:55 pm UTC

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/01/examining-sonys-internet-free-method-for-blocking-used-game-sales/

"A newly published patent application filed by Sony outlines a content protection system that would use small RFID chips embedded on game discs to prevent used games from being played on its systems, all without requiring an online connection. Filed in September and still awaiting approval from the US Patent Office, the patent application[1] for an "electronic content processing system, electronic content processing method, package of electronic content, and use permission apparatus" describes a system "that reliably restricts the use of electronic content dealt in the second-hand markets."

[1] http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2013/0007892.html

Used game sales continue to be a major concern for many big-name publishers and developers, who see the practice as a drain on the revenue they earn from selling new software. Sony's patent explicitly points out that suppressing the used game market will "[support] the redistribution of part of proceeds from sales of the electronic content to the developers."

The used-game blocking method described in the patent involves a "radiofrequency tag" and a type of programmable ROM chip that are paired with each game disc and can communicate wirelessly with the game system. The tag and chip can be used to store "unique information" about each console the game has been played on. Thus, when the game is used on a second system, the unique information stored on the disc can be compared to the information stored inside the new hardware, and in turn checked against "use permission" data stored on the EEPROM chip itself. As described in the patent, this "unique information" could be a system identifier or some sort of unique user ID that is somewhat portable between systems.

The patent describes users being asked to "pass the use permission tag over the RF reader/writer," suggesting some sort of near-field communication (NFC) area on the system itself that is used to launch this confirmation process. The patent also describes the RFID tag being used to decrypt content on the disc, which could provide a method for locking certain on-disc content to certain users who have unlocked or paid for the privilege. The system would theoretically also make game discs much harder to pirate, since illicit copiers would have to include correctly configured security chips in their copies, rather than using off the shelf media.

Of course, the fact that Sony has applied to patent this idea is a far cry from confirmation that this kind of protection system is in the works for the PlayStation 4. Even if it is, Sony could easily leave it to individual publishers to decide whether or not to implement it. In May, industry analyst Michael Pachter recounted a conversation[2] with SCEA president Jack Tretton where the Sony executive said he was "totally opposed to blocking used games."

[2] http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-05-14-pachter-claims-sonys-jack-tretton-supports-used-games

It was about this time last year that rumors started to swirl that Microsoft was planning to block used games from being playable on the next Xbox. In March, similar rumors popped up surrounding the PlayStation 4[3], codenamed "Orbis" in leaked documents.

[3]

Honestly curious why this is set up this way, it seems so inefficient and insecure.

Hah, welcome to the internet. But seriously though, a lot of the protocols in use weren't designed with the current form of the internet in mind, so looking at them now it's almost amazing that the internet is as functional as it is. The web is built on trust, which made sense back in its infancy. Not quite as much anymore however. for example, just a few months ago google was effectively inaccessible to a portion of the world, entirely by accident

Patent trolls want $1,000â"for using scanners

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/patent-trolls-want-1000-for-using-scanners/

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-acers-199-c7-chromebook/

Take a look for yourself, do you feel your not able to do the install?

There are those that can and those that can't. Most people can drive a car, just because most people can't do much else with it doesn't make for a bad car.

I'm not saying this topic isn't cause for some eyebrow raising, but it doesn't do anyone any good to be spreading FUD! If you actually spent some time researching this topic, you will find that what you said isn't entirely true. Take the Dell Latitude 6430u that comes with Windows 8. You can disable secure boot in BIOS. I refer you to page 44 of its owners manual (PDF format). Not only that, but TPM can be disabled along with the options of booting via legacy ROM (BIOS).

Basically here's the skinny. For x86 computers brandishing a Windows 8 sticker, Secure Boot will be enabled by default (or it's supposed too). But, the machine still must allow the user the option of disabling it in BIOS. However, if the machine is ARM based certified for Windows-RT it will be locked down. Essentially, a Windows 8 *only* machine.

Ars Technica wrote a much better article on the subject here dated Jan-2012.

If there were still people at Microsoft with the technical and moral authority to send emails like that, the company's flatlined stock price graph would look very different.

Pics or it didn't happen. Apple had Asshole-in-Chief Stephen P. Jobs with the technical and moral authority to do exactly that. And guess what? OS X took almost a decade before it was anything other than crap. Maybe it helps to have 'vision' but yelling and screaming rarely I does more than make the yeller and screamer feel important.

If you want not retarded internet, your single only option is to move out off the continent.

Or get your municipality to run their own fiber as a public utility.

I want common carrier broadband. AT&T doesn't offer it, nor does Comcast. So there's no issue of public entities competing with private business here.

Then your municipality would get sued by the Telco/CableCo for being anti-competitive (of all things):

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/08/09/12/2326251/telco-sues-municipality-for-laying-their-own-fiber
http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/09/telco-to-town-were-suing-you-because-we-care/

How do we know the little rover bugger wasn't filled with them?! Maybe it is already too late!

Curiosity's SAM instrument inadvertently contained Florida air in its Tunable Laser Spectrometer, which you might remember caused an early false positive of methane when NASA first tried to sample the Martian air. This Florida air was subsequently evacuated into Mars' atmosphere. But I'm not sure anyone knows what was in that air, and no reporters queried NASA about this contamination.

Ars has another article; this one actually cites the patent numbers and specific claims found to be infringing.

Reading one of the claims, I can't imagine how a jury of Joe Sixpacks could possibly come to a rational conclusion on whether or not infringement occured. I'm an EE and it's gibberish to me without putting some significant Google-time in. Claim 4 of US6201389, for example:

"4. A method of determining branch metric values for branches of a trellis for a Viterbi-like detector, comprising:

        selecting a branch metric function for each of the branches at a certain time index from a set of signal-dependent branch metric functions; and
        applying each of said selected functions to a plurality of signal samples to determine the metric value corresponding to the branch for which the applied branch metric function was selected, wherein each sample corresponds to a different sampling time instant."

I searched for more than the BBC article

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/marvell-technology-group-seeks-to-overturn-jurys-patent-infringement-findings-184920041.html

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/jury-slams-marvell-with-mammoth-1-17-billion-patent-verdict/

There's also some more info behind the WSJ pay wall.

I got that from this article on Ars Technica which states it's an authentication chip and claims "manufacturing sources" have found it difficult to duplicate. But it doesn't say who is trying to duplicate them, I suppose to avoid them getting sued by Apple. Wikipedia also states that it's an auth chip twice and provides two different citations. Reading the citations and clicking through links, you end up here which is an article on Apple Insider that also repeats this claim.

Now I'm looking closer at all the sources and citations that are claiming this, it's not really clear to me if the chip is indeed designed to engage in some kind of auth protocol, or if it's just that nobody actually knows what it does and so people assumed it must be for auth. It seems like it's at least responsible for pin routing, whether it does more is unclear. Given the licensing requirements and Apples love of squeezing customers for fat accessory profits, it's not an unreasonable assumption, but as far as I can tell nobody has fully reverse engineered the chip. The Chinese manufacturers aren't stupid so I'd think if the chip was doing something trivial it'd have been cloned by now, but it seems no-one knows for sure.

Yes, I'd also call it the fault of patent law for allowing something so absurd intended solely to block interoperation with 3rd party devices; but Apple chose to use it.

If it makes you happier, I also condemn Intel for the abomination they call "Thunderbolt" - Though unlike iThings, at least Thunderbolt never really caught on.

Some companies innovate by producing proprietary technology, which is not to say all proprietary technologies are innovative. This is also neither to say that Lightning and Thunderbolt technology are or are not innovative.

I do, however, want to take a quick look at the claim (not yours, but related to the idea of "standard" as opposed to "proprietary") that Apple should have used USB instead of implementing the new proprietary Lightning connector.

One of my coworkers was on the bandwagon of people complaining that iPhone 5 used an unnecessary proprietary connector. I offered that some of the write-ups I'd seen explained that the Lightning port and its required adaptors did things that could not be (easily/presently) achieved using USB. My coworker asked for some examples and, being the only-slightly-more-techie-than-average guy I am, I said I'd heard about audio affordances and that I'd only read and could not fully detail other differences and that there may be business reasons we don't understand for introducing the new connector.

My coworker stood firm in his opinion that making chump change from wires and cables was Apple's (Apple's!) ultimate motive for introducing a new proprietary cable.

Within the next couple of weeks, my coworker had to order a new Android phone (G3, I believe, I don't recall and don't know all the models. Sorry.) and he was grateful he was being allowed to receive one as a fulfillment of his warranty. Why, you (should) ask, did he need to make a warranty claim?

Good of you to ask.

He had plugged his G3 into one of the (micro/A/B/whatever) USB plugs from his other "standard" USB-charging phone and fried his G3.
In other words, the pseudo-standard USB<—>micro/A/B/whathaveyou USB allows (wait for it) incompatible specifications to be interconnected which, in this case, yielded a catastrophic result.

So much for sticking with existing "standard" technology.

I'm not saying standards are impossible or undesirable. I'm only saying that in the case of USB vs. Lightning, USB is not a real standard and Apple's decision to produce a proprietary connector was a choice that Apple deemed best (whether selfishly or also in consideration of their users as well).

Mark Cuban is an accidental billionaire with a lot of attitude and an itchy twitter finger. His smarts are debatable, but his chutzpah is not. In this instance, however, I agree with him.

Judge Posner who ruled on an Apple v Samsung case agrees with a lot of us here: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/judge-decries-excessive-copyright-and-software-patent-protections/ . It's time the USPTO did something drastic about frivolous patents and patent trolling. The problem cannot go away with major systemic change, and because of the complexity of laws involved, you can't just make reforms such as "ban all patent trolls" willy-nilly. The patent trolls will just reincarnate as software company holding companies or some other type of legal entity that bends the rules.

What needs to happen are major changes to the patent examination process itself. Very few people know that when looking for prior art, patent examiners don't use Google or even the Internet to do their research. They do searches in a few official patent/scientific databases in order to make their opinions about prior art. The patent applicant and his attorney can provide USPTO with references from the Internet to prove their point and those are read over by the examiner, but otherwise the examiner has their hands tied.

If the examiner wants to deny a patent application, he/she has to move mountains and prove without a doubt that the invention is not patentable. Patent attorneys are persistent leech-like creatures who will keep appealing any such decisions using any possible argument for as long as possible. Every time a patent attorney argues and disproves a patent examiner's decision, the examiner looks stupid in front of his peers. So, by default, the path of least resistance for the patent examiner is to just keep on awarding patents based on the limited knowledge of USPTO's databases.

I know this from working as a software patent litigation expert.

If you steal $1 from my wallet, I'll have $1 less than I would without your interference. If you copy one of my books rather than buy it, I'll have (let's say) $1 less than I would without your interference.

Um..buying your book *is* interference. It's the act of copying of your books rather than buying it that is not interference. That's why, in the above scenario, no amount of copying makes you personally less any money.

Of course, you may not have bought my book in the first place, and I may have dropped that $1 bill by accident. There's probabilities involved, I know, but that's not the point.

Funny, but do you know the point? The point isn't whether you get that $1 for a copy of your book X. It's that society has agreed that money is a motivator for action by authors--Mark Twain is a great example of that--to write more works and hence authors who write book X and can profit from it--or at least pay off the loan sharks--will be motivated to write book Y and then book Z and the act of copying without payment, while it benefits society directly, has the side effect of longer term halting the production of book Y or book Z because a person who believes their work is worthless may, no matter how much they like writing, practically look elsewhere to feed their kids^W^W^Wpay off their loan shark.

Of course, once you get to that point, you then have to acknowledge that the only way to encourage an author to write book Y or book Z if book X is widely successful is to end the copyright on book X *within an author's lifetime*. In fact, IIRC, a study a few years back says that the optimal copyright term is 14 years. Now, I imagine there's some real world fuzziness to that number because there's such a wide range of medium and their rate of propagation is varied, but the general point stands if anything that copyright is so out of focus to its intent that there's a pretty strong moral argument to ignore it entirely or at least to effectively treat everything 14 years old as not copyrighted.

But, then, that's just me.

One recent example: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/12/data-helps-rebut-the-violent-video-games-cause-shootings-argument/

Comcast discontinued their cap about 8 months ago.

Their business support doesn't suck though.

Dell's latest entrant into Windows 8 market looks solid as well Review: Dell's acrobatic XPS 12 is the Windows 8 convertible to beat

I'd be all over a 10" Android screen-flip convertible.

Their business support doesn't suck though.

Dell's latest entrant into Windows 8 market looks solid as well Review: Dell's acrobatic XPS 12 is the Windows 8 convertible to beat

The only thing that Barr did correctly was look up WHOIS info on the People's Liberation Front's website after an Anonymous guy claimed to be "Supreme Commander" of the PLF... When Barr confronted him, the guy claimed it was a joke, so Barr pointed to an innocent man instead. (Ars Tech article on the 'correct' Commander X.) Otherwise, Barr's tactics -- including analyzing what the people wrote -- gave him completely wrong answers.

Agree, but how about submitting something interesting, then? For example...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/google-maps-for-ios-may-violate-european-data-protection-law/

You are so full of shit - in the original case (I can go check the others if you want...), Jury Instruction 14:

Judge Davis amended the instruction to say that the "act of making available for electronic distribution... violates the copyright owner's exclusive copyright."

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2007/10/debate-over-making-available-jury-instruction-as-capitol-v-thomas-wraps-up/

And she was found guilty.

In the retrial, the Jury was not allowed to differentiate between "reproduction" or "distribution" in their verdict, but they were told to consider both when deliberating the verdict.

The third trial was purely about damages, the original verdict was not in question.

You need to stop making such false posts, hoping your claims are accepted purely on the basis that you claim to be a lawyer.

> Taxation isn't theft.

When you have a private exchange between two parties and the 3rd party must resort to force and duress to so they can steal from both parties how is that NOT theft??

The government does not have the right to steal my time.

> Taxation is the honoring of a contract, the social contract you are implicitly a signatory to as a citizen of a civilized society.

You really don't have a clue about contract law do you?

You DO know one can opt out of taxes, right? The problem is that is an ALL-or-NOTHING approach. Either you rescind ALL your contracts because even _one_ little one will put your fictitious legal entity back in the system. Usually the inconvenience of not having ANY financial instruments such as a bank account may make life a little challenging then most people would be willing to trade but it is entirely possible. I know one person who has proven it.

Personally though there are bigger battles to wage wars against such as corrupt and war-mongering government then an ignorant government.

Maybe if we would spend less money on killing OTHER people and rather on HELPING people maybe people would LIKE supporting the government. But what do you expect when you have useless entertainers making tens of millions and teachers struggle to make a living or classic pork-barrel spending:
i.e.
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/09/army-to-congress-thanks-but-no-tanks/?hpt=hp_c1
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/how-to-blow-6-billion-on-a-tech-project/

The fact that it takes the government 10 years to ban loud commercials is a prime example of the idiotic bureaucracy.

great. just waiting for laptops to follow this format as they inevitably will. then we'll be able to read up to 3 lines of text at a time!

Already done. Yes, Toshiba has a wide-screen 21:9 ultrabook running at an oddball 1792x762 resolution.

Sony sold a small laptop with a 1600x768 screen as well - a tiny Atom-powered UMPC.

But if you want to reach 90%+ of all devices you'll have it on the play store.

Humble Bundle seems to be doing just fine bypassing the Play store (and Google's fees) entirely.

Of which very few people are going to ever do.

Again, this is what Humble Bundle does.

Nope. Google prohibits using 3rd party payment processors for in-app purchases. Google is acting no different than Apple.

Again, this is only for apps sold via the Play Store. You're welcome to bypass the Google ecosystem entirely. And they take a very small percentage of the transaction, which is more in line with typical credit card fees, nowhere near close to the 30% Apple charges.

Google is acting nothing like Apple.

Nope. Google prohibits using 3rd party payment processors for in-app purchases. Google is acting no different than Apple.

ONLY for apps that are purchased through the Google Play store. Amazon, for instance, has its own in-app purchasing system. Side-loaded apps can do whatever they want.
In fact, there's nothing stopping MS from creating their own Android store and selling apps themselves, complete with their own in-app purchasing.

Well, you aren't forced to use Google's Plat store

But if you want to reach 90%+ of all devices you'll have it on the play store.

there are others,

Like Amazon who also takes a 30% cut of all sales?

and side loading is allowed as well.

Of which very few people are going to ever do.

You are also not forced to go through Google for in-app purchases I believe. Both of these services are set up so that it is convenient, and you *want* to use it. You are not forced to.

Nope. Google prohibits using 3rd party payment processors for in-app purchases. Google is acting no different than Apple.

Yes, apparently the scientists are doing it wrong getting in on the bonanza of bucks to be had for joining the conspiracy of promoting AGW with shoddy science.

In my experience, proponents of market-based systems have an insufficient appreciation for just how overwhelmingly powerful market forces can be in influencing not just the decision to buy a particular widget, but also in purchasing ideas, religions, governments and information distribution systems, taking advantage of every loophole in their cognitive system if it can be put to profitable effect.