To this you should add that the computer is always connected in a room next door (between each instruction take a five minute break with them listening to some music - you have to keep it sounding like they are connected though). Fun would be to have your computer in a different language. When they say "start menu" take ten minutes to eventually work out that it's "demarrer" (look up "vista francaise" in Google images for inspiration if you speak just a little French). Make every standard stupid support mistake "it says 'any key' but I can't find that one". Remember they are used to dealing with total IT idiots; in fact these are their most important customers. Every time you make them hang up by being "too computer stupid" (this always takes us over an hour) you have saved five other people's grannies from one of these guys.
You can do anything you like - as long as Google approves, or else you have to fork as Amazon has done.
What's your point? From the moment you start to do anything different you have effectively "forked". Having long running independent forks is a clear fear for Google. What this means is that any handset manufacturer can threaten a fork and that's all they need to ensure that Google stays onside.
Probably, it will buy one of the more successful ones with a Windows phone (HTC? LG?)
Why not Nokia itself? That has made the most sense all along.
Nokia no longer has the level of smartphone sales to be useful; they have destroyed most of their manufacturing base and closed their most important factories. They also seem to be in an agreement where they have to give their Windows Phone improvements back to Microsoft in any case. Microsoft has nothing to gain from bringing them on board. They have plenty to lose from the cultural clash it would cause. Even the stupidest of Nokia employees is realising that they have been totally taken to the cleaners by Microsoft.
Yet if asked why Linux never took over the desktop and Microsoft's dominance there, the answer is typically that Microsoft's marketing is unbeatable.
Long and interesting post; however it already broke down completely here. The actual answer given is:
because Microsoft illegally forced PC manufacturers to pay more to Microsoft if they bundled Linux than they paid if they bundled Windows
This was done by things such as providing subsidies for companies that were Microsoft exclusive. Without access to major manufacturer pre-installs Linux could never achieve consumer readiness. Given that your entire post is based on a falsehood and attacks a straw man, I'm afraid you wasted your effort.
Did you miss that Google has already moved into the hardware with their purchase of Motorola Mobility?
Apparently you missed that Android is open sourced. That means that there are at least three major competitive ecosystems (Amazon ; Barnes and Nobel and the major Chinese app market places) as well as innumerable minor ones (e.g. CyanogenMod and all the small independent market places). Any or all of those would welcome a major manufacturer as a partner.
Google has to compete for favour from Mobile manufacturers. Microsoft is setting its self up to completely mess them over. Probably, it will buy one of the more successful ones with a Windows phone (HTC? LG?) once it has driven Nokia and co bankrupt whilst stealing their ideas.
Remember the strategy; Embrace and cooperate (Burn the platforms memo) Extend (provide Windows 8 with Nokia and other people's functions and ideas) Exterminate (Windows 9 / 10 has special "Microsoft only" features; Windows 11 barely works on partners phones).
Even if Android from Google went closed source tomorrow, there is enough weight of developers outside Google to overtake it within two releases.
Its dead until the elections are over, then don't be surprised if it comes back.
Oh so innocent; thinks he's so cynical. This is a thing that big media agrees with small (commercial) media agrees with commercial interests. The arms industry doesn't want you getting your information independently; the consumer industries want you to read their ads; the media doesn't want you to compete with them.
At this very moment the Intellectual property provisions of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership are being negotiated in secret. This is yet another treaty negotiated by the type of people that brought you the WIPO. Their aim is to basically to make it so that SOPA / PIPA is forced upon all nations without any chance of a democratic debate.
This will not be reported on unless people have actually already succeeded in stopping it. The election doesn't matter since nobody will hear about it even if it is going on.
Why? These phones will just come with the same binary blobs as all the other mobile OSes. It'll have zero effect on getting good gfx drivers for desktop Linux.
If they are "state of the art optics" then the resolution hasn't gone up. Instead what has gone up is the ability to a) get lots of signals in at the same time from different frequencies and b) filter them out to identify the interesting ones.
Actually for most satellites the launch cost tends to be far lower than the value of the object. Custom made; extremely carefully; out of very exotic materials (just study up on the solar panels they use for example). These probably really do deliver real value if someone can work out how to use them effectively. Plus, the instruments you use for spying into people's homes are probably a bit different from (and much more expensive than) the ones you use for seeing far off black holes. If they were already up and installed then a) the scientists wouldn't be allowed the satellites and b) they probably wouldn't do the right job anyway.
Uhh, Linux ALWAYS takes tweeking to get working 100%, regardless of how standardized your components are.
Simply not true, but that's the impression people get. Whenever I have bought a system which was dedicated to Linux everything has worked great. If you bought a PC and then complained that the OS/X install was difficult people would think you were crazy. If you bought an Amiga and then complained that getting Windows 7 working was difficult they would laugh in your face. For some reason, however, people continue to recommend running Linux on hardware which wasn't set up for it. That's fine for yourself if you are a hobbyist. It's not fine if you are telling other people what to do. I think this is probably the thing which does the most damage to the reputation of Linux overall.
The interesting thing here is that you are perfectly right in the case of an iPad. Apple should have almost 100% credit for the tablet computer. There were many prior attempts, Microsoft has been making tablet PCs for years, and they were complete failures. The work that Apple did was the most important work to make it useful. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of work that the patent system is designed to destroy.
The essential patents on tablets belong to companies like IBM, Sony, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and Microsoft. These guys did work on tablets before Apple and so they got the patents. Microsoft is sort of excluded since they have a cross licensing deal with Apple, but you have to remember that that means they get money from the iPad. This is why Nokia has already had a huge settlement out of Apple on phones and we can expect that Motorola will be able to close them down completely at some time soon.
What Apple shows is that innovation only happens when companies completely ignore the patent system. Look at Nokia which ended up spoiling their interface with a resistive screen and a stupid, inconvenient zoom gesture in order to avoid the one, invalid, potential patent Apple had and has almost completely lost it in the mobile phone market since.
I think you still aren't getting this. There are real reasons why what is a contractual dispute in one place may not be a contractual dispute in another. For example a number of cartel like agreements would be legal in the US but not in the EU. A contract which is enforcable in the US may not be enforcable in Germany. Microsoft has the right to attempt to persuade the German that it has a potentially valid contract. It also has the right to persuade the German court that there is a clause in the contract which means the contract should be decided in the USA and that Motorola has accepted that. If it passed those barriers then it would have the right to demand, from the German court, that the German injunction should be suspended. The US court should even write to the German court and say that it has a dispute which it believes should interact with the German dispute.
If, however, the German court decides that there is no contract dispute here, even after hearing that there is a contract dispute in the USA, and decides that an injunction is needed, then that is for the German court to decide without US interference. Motorola and Microsoft agreed to follow German law when they started working in Germany. They must be made to do so. An injunction is normally granted when it is not guaranteed that a wrong will be righted with money. If Microsoft is allowed to deliver illegal products it is the German consumer that will suffer as they have before. The German court should come down extremely hard on this attempt to avoid it's jurisdiction. All Microsoft products should be banned in at least Germany and probably the whole of Europe until it is clear that Microsoft will obey the law.
And because you didn't make cash and turn it into a going concern. It will dry up and go away just as soon as you lose interest.
And this is bad, how?
When this does happen it is bad. Often there's only room for one community in a particular space, and a really good one sucks the life out of others. If it suddenly disappears then it can be really disruptive.
However, the grandparent's argument is a complete Strawman. The solution is obvious. Once your one man hobby become as important as e.g. Linux is then you agree with your users and whoever is willing to help to set up a foundation which can continue the work independently if you lose interest or die. Also you collaborate with other people interested in setting up independent sites around your site (possibly including ones with advertising) to make sure that if your own site for some reason dies there will not be a complete vacuum.
If nobody is willing to help set up a foundation then the site probably isn't actually that important and you just shouldn't worry. Do it as long as you feel like.
Motorola sued Microsoft in a Washington state court. For an RTFA Troll, you really didn't RTFA (or even if you did, you still want to play armchair lawyer...)
Motorola also sued Microsoft in Germany. I really don't get your point? Do you mean that because the USA defended its self in Pearl Harbor it would be wrong for it to defend other pacific islands? Are you trying to say that because it was a Washington court and so not bound by the rules of natural justice they can't expect to use justice elsewhere? Are you trying to suggest that; because this is Microsoft, nobody is allowed to attack the sacred company more than once?
In fact; your ideas are bizarre and interesting to me; where can I subscribe to your newsletter?
What this, and most other posters ignore, is that the German court already had available the fact that the US action was ongoing. It also already knew about the contracts. Even so it ruled that Motorola had a right to stop Microsoft.
I don't think Motorola should do this; they have far more assets under the jurisdiction of the US court than in Germany and so too much to lose. However, I believe in Germany any person can initiate some kinds of actions against people who are in breach of the law. If a few concerned German Slashdot readers wrote in to check that the Judge was aware of Microsoft's contempt of the court, that might turn out to be an interesting situation. Judges inevitably come down much harder on contempt of court than whatever penalty the miscreant would have had otherwise.
Anyone knowledgeable in German law want to comment here?
It's not a PATENT dispute at the core, it's a CONTRACT dispute,
No; even if Microsoft has the right to get a RAND license, they have not done that. Until they have a RAND license or a clear statement that they have a right to it they do not have a right to use the patent (aside from arguments that patents are inherently invalid; not available to Microsoft since they never advance such arguments). Microsoft should be paying the Motorola license and then suing to recover any part which is not "reasonable". In the worst case, Microsoft should at least be paying the amount that they consider "reasonable" and keeping the rest in escrow for Motorola.
As it is, there are two disputes
a dispute about what a "reasonable" cost is for a patent license.
a dispute about Microsoft using a patent without a license
Any link between those is purely speculative and should be treated by the German court as a clear and very illegal attempt at an end run around German justice.
The German judge should simply impose a "contempt of court" ruling banning all Microsoft products from sale in Germany until such time as the threat against Motorola is lifted. This should be done on the basis of Microsoft's failure to submit to the German court and in such a way that Motorola has no involvement in or control over the order so that Motorola cannot be punished for it in the USA. I guess the correct way would be for some concerned German citizen to report this serious crime to the judge.
Better for children to be prepared for a world of lies early. Less religious fundamentalism that way.
Your comment is incomprehensible to me. Are you proposing telling them the truth to prepare them of a world of lies?? The well motivated betrayal of trust involved in pretending Santa Claus existed always seemed one of the best lessons available. Requiring kids to work it out themselves is fundamental.
This is not simply not true; With ODF the format is completely documented. Wtih Microsoft's formats the documentation misses major sections of description of the meaning of various tokens ("do like Microsoft Word '1945" or whatever)
Try searching with Duck Duck Go. It gets most of its results from Bing. You soon find that the most useful feature is the "!g" command you can mix with your search which redirects it to use Google results. The simple fact is that whilst there are other search engines, there is only one working search engine. Probably the majority of the 20% of search results are just people who don't know how to change their web browser settings or accidental searches by people who have been stuffed with Windows phones by their company (you can't reconfigure the search button at all!!).
So how can Google maintain any kind of abusive monopoly.
The "abusive" bit comes when they start to use the monopoly in one place to force their products in another place. As long as they do that at a level which is below the notice of most companies that's perfectly possible. Possibly you are thinking of Microsoft, though. There's a key difference between Google and Microsoft. Nobody is accusing Google of acquiring its monopoly illegally. They simply did the best job at search. Microsoft's monopoly having been illegally acquired was one of the things that the appeals judges supported Judge Jackson over in the Microsoft monopoly trial. Google should not be held to the same standard as Microsoft should be held to.
not that it is especially wrong for this: everyone steal from everyone, and then improves on it. this is how creation works
There is an Academic concept of plagiarism. This is very interesting because it has nothing to do with copying; academics are supposed to copy. Someone who fails to report what their predecessors said is treated with more contempt. Plagiarism, however, is worse. It is taking other people's words and ideas without crediting them. That gives you some idea what is wrong here.
which tells us how useless and ignorant intellectual property, as a concept, is
For "Intellectual property" as a phrase and a grouping you are probably right, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are specific kinds of intellectual property, trademarks are one of them, which have real value. Without clear ownership of names it's very difficult for companies to build a reputation. Without reputation there is no difference between a cheap forced labour made rip off job like an iPhone and a serious communication device like an EADS Tetra terminal. If you ended up in with your communication device packing up just because you put it sprayed it with water to stop it melting you would be rightly upset when you found out someone had given you an inferior product by accident.
With the swiss railways, there is serious value here. When you buy a watch endorsed by them it means something. This is not some random quartz knock off job. Proper precision engineering. Think of the famous joke:
Q: You are standing in Bern railway station; you see a train coming in; you look at your watch and see that the train is late; What are the two possible explanations?
A1) it's not a Swiss watch.
A2) it's not a Swiss train.
In this particular case there are series of design elements which are completely different from a normal clock; Lack of numbers; a bright red circle on the second hand. A very plain white disk. These are things which are original from Swiss railways and that nobody used before them. If you exactly copy these then you are basically trying to make off the reputation of the Swiss railway. This is something which can reasonably be protected; merely by changing from a bright red to a blue triangle you can copy the concept (a clock which emphasises the change of every second) without copying the design.
Now you might ask; "why does the rtfa-troll support Swiss Railways here and not Apple there". Well firstly; I'm not supporting them for a "beeelion dollars" like Apple wants. I'm supporting them for a couple of hundred quid and an apology. Secondly; pick a random Samsung Galaxy S vs iPhone comparison. Have a look at the way that key design elements (the bare metal surround on the side of the phone) are different. Anything which clearly distinguishes one product from another should be enough. The key standard is "designed so as to be easily confused with" not "designed to pay homage to".
It would be a shame if the IP cowboys forced us to throw away all of the things that are valuable in trademarks or secrets just because they abuse patents and copyright.
No no; you see you made the mistake of shutting down your server between the post and when it was put up by slashdot to save energy. You are just too slow to achieve internet time like Google or Facebook and will never make it in the market. Let this be a lesson.
yes; apparently so; it still shows total stupidity (if someone puts most of their entropy at the end of the password you really lose) but means that their security is not getting worse.
An AC makes a reasonable on topic first post with a more or less accurate entropy count (note that both sexconker and Immerman's posts are right; since most users will get a-z with first letter capitalized and a single numerical substiution you get about 26 variations per character + 2 bits for the substitution that gets you less than five bits per character; of course if you use a password safe then you can use A-Za-z1-9 + about 20 - 30 punctuation characters depending on your keyboard, for about 90 characters giving you just over six bits). The only possible explanation that it gets modded to zero immediately is that it's anti-Microsoft and the shills are out with their large number of mod points as ever.
Now, for the next trick. If you store passwords as a hash, as you are supposed to, then there is no way to shorten them since without the end of the password you won't be able to make the hash match. This means that at least somewhere Hotmail is storing passwords in plaintext. That's actually a much worse breach than having limited passwords since there is no way for the user to overcome it.
AC's post was excellently insightful. It should be modded back up to infinity.
So are you saying that nothing should ever change about the iPhone connector?
They could have made a new open connector and encouraged other phone manufacturers to use that. Then I would have no problem with this. Even if they never managed to persuade any other manufacturer, that would at least show they are trying.
Slashdot Mirror
Put it on headphone and volume up a bit. It was fine. Certainly better than some support desk guys I have had in the past.
To this you should add that the computer is always connected in a room next door (between each instruction take a five minute break with them listening to some music - you have to keep it sounding like they are connected though). Fun would be to have your computer in a different language. When they say "start menu" take ten minutes to eventually work out that it's "demarrer" (look up "vista francaise" in Google images for inspiration if you speak just a little French). Make every standard stupid support mistake "it says 'any key' but I can't find that one". Remember they are used to dealing with total IT idiots; in fact these are their most important customers. Every time you make them hang up by being "too computer stupid" (this always takes us over an hour) you have saved five other people's grannies from one of these guys.
You can do anything you like - as long as Google approves, or else you have to fork as Amazon has done.
What's your point? From the moment you start to do anything different you have effectively "forked". Having long running independent forks is a clear fear for Google. What this means is that any handset manufacturer can threaten a fork and that's all they need to ensure that Google stays onside.
Probably, it will buy one of the more successful ones with a Windows phone (HTC? LG?)
Why not Nokia itself? That has made the most sense all along.
Nokia no longer has the level of smartphone sales to be useful; they have destroyed most of their manufacturing base and closed their most important factories. They also seem to be in an agreement where they have to give their Windows Phone improvements back to Microsoft in any case. Microsoft has nothing to gain from bringing them on board. They have plenty to lose from the cultural clash it would cause. Even the stupidest of Nokia employees is realising that they have been totally taken to the cleaners by Microsoft.
Yet if asked why Linux never took over the desktop and Microsoft's dominance there, the answer is typically that Microsoft's marketing is unbeatable.
Long and interesting post; however it already broke down completely here. The actual answer given is:
This was done by things such as providing subsidies for companies that were Microsoft exclusive. Without access to major manufacturer pre-installs Linux could never achieve consumer readiness. Given that your entire post is based on a falsehood and attacks a straw man, I'm afraid you wasted your effort.
Did you miss that Google has already moved into the hardware with their purchase of Motorola Mobility?
Apparently you missed that Android is open sourced. That means that there are at least three major competitive ecosystems (Amazon ; Barnes and Nobel and the major Chinese app market places) as well as innumerable minor ones (e.g. CyanogenMod and all the small independent market places). Any or all of those would welcome a major manufacturer as a partner.
Google has to compete for favour from Mobile manufacturers. Microsoft is setting its self up to completely mess them over. Probably, it will buy one of the more successful ones with a Windows phone (HTC? LG?) once it has driven Nokia and co bankrupt whilst stealing their ideas.
Remember the strategy; Embrace and cooperate (Burn the platforms memo) Extend (provide Windows 8 with Nokia and other people's functions and ideas) Exterminate (Windows 9 / 10 has special "Microsoft only" features; Windows 11 barely works on partners phones).
Even if Android from Google went closed source tomorrow, there is enough weight of developers outside Google to overtake it within two releases.
Its dead until the elections are over, then don't be surprised if it comes back.
Oh so innocent; thinks he's so cynical. This is a thing that big media agrees with small (commercial) media agrees with commercial interests. The arms industry doesn't want you getting your information independently; the consumer industries want you to read their ads; the media doesn't want you to compete with them.
At this very moment the Intellectual property provisions of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership are being negotiated in secret. This is yet another treaty negotiated by the type of people that brought you the WIPO. Their aim is to basically to make it so that SOPA / PIPA is forced upon all nations without any chance of a democratic debate.
This will not be reported on unless people have actually already succeeded in stopping it. The election doesn't matter since nobody will hear about it even if it is going on.
Why? These phones will just come with the same binary blobs as all the other mobile OSes. It'll have zero effect on getting good gfx drivers for desktop Linux.
It's probably true that Jolla will compromise and do exactly what you say in order to deliver the very best phones with the newest hardware. However, there seem to be some in the Mer community who are very determined to get open devices. They even seem to be succeeding. Since the Android community is also realising that binary blobs are a nightmare there is getting to be real commercial and cost pressure to get rid of binary blobs.
This is not going to eliminate binary blobs but it's going to mean that people who produce them are going to be gradually forced out of major markets.
If they are "state of the art optics" then the resolution hasn't gone up. Instead what has gone up is the ability to a) get lots of signals in at the same time from different frequencies and b) filter them out to identify the interesting ones.
Actually for most satellites the launch cost tends to be far lower than the value of the object. Custom made; extremely carefully; out of very exotic materials (just study up on the solar panels they use for example). These probably really do deliver real value if someone can work out how to use them effectively. Plus, the instruments you use for spying into people's homes are probably a bit different from (and much more expensive than) the ones you use for seeing far off black holes. If they were already up and installed then a) the scientists wouldn't be allowed the satellites and b) they probably wouldn't do the right job anyway.
Uhh, Linux ALWAYS takes tweeking to get working 100%, regardless of how standardized your components are.
Simply not true, but that's the impression people get. Whenever I have bought a system which was dedicated to Linux everything has worked great. If you bought a PC and then complained that the OS/X install was difficult people would think you were crazy. If you bought an Amiga and then complained that getting Windows 7 working was difficult they would laugh in your face. For some reason, however, people continue to recommend running Linux on hardware which wasn't set up for it. That's fine for yourself if you are a hobbyist. It's not fine if you are telling other people what to do. I think this is probably the thing which does the most damage to the reputation of Linux overall.
The interesting thing here is that you are perfectly right in the case of an iPad. Apple should have almost 100% credit for the tablet computer. There were many prior attempts, Microsoft has been making tablet PCs for years, and they were complete failures. The work that Apple did was the most important work to make it useful. Unfortunately it's exactly the kind of work that the patent system is designed to destroy.
The essential patents on tablets belong to companies like IBM, Sony, Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and Microsoft. These guys did work on tablets before Apple and so they got the patents. Microsoft is sort of excluded since they have a cross licensing deal with Apple, but you have to remember that that means they get money from the iPad. This is why Nokia has already had a huge settlement out of Apple on phones and we can expect that Motorola will be able to close them down completely at some time soon.
What Apple shows is that innovation only happens when companies completely ignore the patent system. Look at Nokia which ended up spoiling their interface with a resistive screen and a stupid, inconvenient zoom gesture in order to avoid the one, invalid, potential patent Apple had and has almost completely lost it in the mobile phone market since.
I think you still aren't getting this. There are real reasons why what is a contractual dispute in one place may not be a contractual dispute in another. For example a number of cartel like agreements would be legal in the US but not in the EU. A contract which is enforcable in the US may not be enforcable in Germany. Microsoft has the right to attempt to persuade the German that it has a potentially valid contract. It also has the right to persuade the German court that there is a clause in the contract which means the contract should be decided in the USA and that Motorola has accepted that. If it passed those barriers then it would have the right to demand, from the German court, that the German injunction should be suspended. The US court should even write to the German court and say that it has a dispute which it believes should interact with the German dispute.
If, however, the German court decides that there is no contract dispute here, even after hearing that there is a contract dispute in the USA, and decides that an injunction is needed, then that is for the German court to decide without US interference. Motorola and Microsoft agreed to follow German law when they started working in Germany. They must be made to do so. An injunction is normally granted when it is not guaranteed that a wrong will be righted with money. If Microsoft is allowed to deliver illegal products it is the German consumer that will suffer as they have before. The German court should come down extremely hard on this attempt to avoid it's jurisdiction. All Microsoft products should be banned in at least Germany and probably the whole of Europe until it is clear that Microsoft will obey the law.
And because you didn't make cash and turn it into a going concern. It will dry up and go away just as soon as you lose interest.
And this is bad, how?
When this does happen it is bad. Often there's only room for one community in a particular space, and a really good one sucks the life out of others. If it suddenly disappears then it can be really disruptive.
However, the grandparent's argument is a complete Strawman. The solution is obvious. Once your one man hobby become as important as e.g. Linux is then you agree with your users and whoever is willing to help to set up a foundation which can continue the work independently if you lose interest or die. Also you collaborate with other people interested in setting up independent sites around your site (possibly including ones with advertising) to make sure that if your own site for some reason dies there will not be a complete vacuum.
If nobody is willing to help set up a foundation then the site probably isn't actually that important and you just shouldn't worry. Do it as long as you feel like.
Motorola sued Microsoft in a Washington state court. For an RTFA Troll, you really didn't RTFA (or even if you did, you still want to play armchair lawyer...)
Motorola also sued Microsoft in Germany. I really don't get your point? Do you mean that because the USA defended its self in Pearl Harbor it would be wrong for it to defend other pacific islands? Are you trying to say that because it was a Washington court and so not bound by the rules of natural justice they can't expect to use justice elsewhere? Are you trying to suggest that; because this is Microsoft, nobody is allowed to attack the sacred company more than once?
In fact; your ideas are bizarre and interesting to me; where can I subscribe to your newsletter?
What this, and most other posters ignore, is that the German court already had available the fact that the US action was ongoing. It also already knew about the contracts. Even so it ruled that Motorola had a right to stop Microsoft.
I don't think Motorola should do this; they have far more assets under the jurisdiction of the US court than in Germany and so too much to lose. However, I believe in Germany any person can initiate some kinds of actions against people who are in breach of the law. If a few concerned German Slashdot readers wrote in to check that the Judge was aware of Microsoft's contempt of the court, that might turn out to be an interesting situation. Judges inevitably come down much harder on contempt of court than whatever penalty the miscreant would have had otherwise.
Anyone knowledgeable in German law want to comment here?
It's not a PATENT dispute at the core, it's a CONTRACT dispute,
No; even if Microsoft has the right to get a RAND license, they have not done that. Until they have a RAND license or a clear statement that they have a right to it they do not have a right to use the patent (aside from arguments that patents are inherently invalid; not available to Microsoft since they never advance such arguments). Microsoft should be paying the Motorola license and then suing to recover any part which is not "reasonable". In the worst case, Microsoft should at least be paying the amount that they consider "reasonable" and keeping the rest in escrow for Motorola.
As it is, there are two disputes
Any link between those is purely speculative and should be treated by the German court as a clear and very illegal attempt at an end run around German justice.
The German judge should simply impose a "contempt of court" ruling banning all Microsoft products from sale in Germany until such time as the threat against Motorola is lifted. This should be done on the basis of Microsoft's failure to submit to the German court and in such a way that Motorola has no involvement in or control over the order so that Motorola cannot be punished for it in the USA. I guess the correct way would be for some concerned German citizen to report this serious crime to the judge.
Better for children to be prepared for a world of lies early. Less religious fundamentalism that way.
Your comment is incomprehensible to me. Are you proposing telling them the truth to prepare them of a world of lies?? The well motivated betrayal of trust involved in pretending Santa Claus existed always seemed one of the best lessons available. Requiring kids to work it out themselves is fundamental.
This is not simply not true; With ODF the format is completely documented. Wtih Microsoft's formats the documentation misses major sections of description of the meaning of various tokens ("do like Microsoft Word '1945" or whatever)
I'm not clear as to how Google is a monopoly.
Try searching with Duck Duck Go. It gets most of its results from Bing. You soon find that the most useful feature is the "!g" command you can mix with your search which redirects it to use Google results. The simple fact is that whilst there are other search engines, there is only one working search engine. Probably the majority of the 20% of search results are just people who don't know how to change their web browser settings or accidental searches by people who have been stuffed with Windows phones by their company (you can't reconfigure the search button at all!!).
So how can Google maintain any kind of abusive monopoly.
The "abusive" bit comes when they start to use the monopoly in one place to force their products in another place. As long as they do that at a level which is below the notice of most companies that's perfectly possible. Possibly you are thinking of Microsoft, though. There's a key difference between Google and Microsoft. Nobody is accusing Google of acquiring its monopoly illegally. They simply did the best job at search. Microsoft's monopoly having been illegally acquired was one of the things that the appeals judges supported Judge Jackson over in the Microsoft monopoly trial. Google should not be held to the same standard as Microsoft should be held to.
not that it is especially wrong for this: everyone steal from everyone, and then improves on it. this is how creation works
There is an Academic concept of plagiarism. This is very interesting because it has nothing to do with copying; academics are supposed to copy. Someone who fails to report what their predecessors said is treated with more contempt. Plagiarism, however, is worse. It is taking other people's words and ideas without crediting them. That gives you some idea what is wrong here.
which tells us how useless and ignorant intellectual property, as a concept, is
For "Intellectual property" as a phrase and a grouping you are probably right, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are specific kinds of intellectual property, trademarks are one of them, which have real value. Without clear ownership of names it's very difficult for companies to build a reputation. Without reputation there is no difference between a cheap forced labour made rip off job like an iPhone and a serious communication device like an EADS Tetra terminal. If you ended up in with your communication device packing up just because you put it sprayed it with water to stop it melting you would be rightly upset when you found out someone had given you an inferior product by accident.
With the swiss railways, there is serious value here. When you buy a watch endorsed by them it means something. This is not some random quartz knock off job. Proper precision engineering. Think of the famous joke:
In this particular case there are series of design elements which are completely different from a normal clock; Lack of numbers; a bright red circle on the second hand. A very plain white disk. These are things which are original from Swiss railways and that nobody used before them. If you exactly copy these then you are basically trying to make off the reputation of the Swiss railway. This is something which can reasonably be protected; merely by changing from a bright red to a blue triangle you can copy the concept (a clock which emphasises the change of every second) without copying the design.
Now you might ask; "why does the rtfa-troll support Swiss Railways here and not Apple there". Well firstly; I'm not supporting them for a "beeelion dollars" like Apple wants. I'm supporting them for a couple of hundred quid and an apology. Secondly; pick a random Samsung Galaxy S vs iPhone comparison. Have a look at the way that key design elements (the bare metal surround on the side of the phone) are different. Anything which clearly distinguishes one product from another should be enough. The key standard is "designed so as to be easily confused with" not "designed to pay homage to".
It would be a shame if the IP cowboys forced us to throw away all of the things that are valuable in trademarks or secrets just because they abuse patents and copyright.
First post? ...on my own submission? LOL.
No no; you see you made the mistake of shutting down your server between the post and when it was put up by slashdot to save energy. You are just too slow to achieve internet time like Google or Facebook and will never make it in the market. Let this be a lesson.
yes; apparently so; it still shows total stupidity (if someone puts most of their entropy at the end of the password you really lose) but means that their security is not getting worse.
That's enough for hotmail !!
An AC makes a reasonable on topic first post with a more or less accurate entropy count (note that both sexconker and Immerman's posts are right; since most users will get a-z with first letter capitalized and a single numerical substiution you get about 26 variations per character + 2 bits for the substitution that gets you less than five bits per character; of course if you use a password safe then you can use A-Za-z1-9 + about 20 - 30 punctuation characters depending on your keyboard, for about 90 characters giving you just over six bits). The only possible explanation that it gets modded to zero immediately is that it's anti-Microsoft and the shills are out with their large number of mod points as ever.
Now, for the next trick. If you store passwords as a hash, as you are supposed to, then there is no way to shorten them since without the end of the password you won't be able to make the hash match. This means that at least somewhere Hotmail is storing passwords in plaintext. That's actually a much worse breach than having limited passwords since there is no way for the user to overcome it.
AC's post was excellently insightful. It should be modded back up to infinity.
So are you saying that nothing should ever change about the iPhone connector?
They could have made a new open connector and encouraged other phone manufacturers to use that. Then I would have no problem with this. Even if they never managed to persuade any other manufacturer, that would at least show they are trying.