"You can blame your screwy Canadian carriers for this."
Don't know if parent is trolling or not, but I had a similar thought.
As a Canadian, I will 100% concur this has a good chance of being the carrier.
My HTC Desire has a lot of stuff which was put on it by the carrier (Rogers) -- some of which I can disable but not delete.
It may well be that LG has decided they don't want to muck around with carrier specific crap. Which is why I think it should be illegal to have carrier specific crap in the first place.
A decade or so ago a co-worker did some testing with his Motorolla Krazr. It turns out the way Rogers had done the internet stuff was to push you through their proxy (with a lot of extra overhead), and which had the net effect of about doubling your data usage so that they could measure you and bill you for it. And this was when data usage was in KB.
Rogers are complete greedy bastards who put a lot of crap on phones to benefit themselves.
Ignoring how we feel about patents... this patent exists, the link I gave was the first one I saw which explained the way in which they were similar, and that those similarities are quite prominent on things you wouldn't do by random.
This is more than just "someone else made a keyboard".
And if you 100% copy someone else's design, I can see why they'd be unhappy about it.
Now that I've read through that, I can see BB had some pretty valid points. And if you could make things which looked exactly like someone else's product, that could be misleading.
The curvature of those keys was pretty darned specific.
This page gives the best side by side comparison I can find.
it's got a picture of one of the BBs, the patent they filed, and the Typo keyboard.
The '964 patent, entitled "HAND-HELD ELECTRONIC DEVICE WITH A KEYBOARD OPTIMIZED FOR USE WITH THE THUMBS", was granted on December 8, 2009, and among its multiple independent claims, of particular note is independent claim 19 which claims "[a] keyboard for use with a mobile communication device". Claim 19 includes the limitations of "twenty-six letter keys and at least one other key" distributed in three rows, that are symmetrically distributed along the face of the electronic device. Furthermore, claim 19 includes the limitation of: "five letter keys in the upper row being disposed on each side of the vertical reference, five letter keys in the middle row being disposed on one side of the vertical reference and four letter keys in the middle row being disposed on the other side of the vertical reference, and four letter keys in the lower row being disposed on the one side of the vertical reference line and three letter keys in the lower row being disposed on the other side of the vertical reference line..."
So, the extent to which the keys skew away from being flat for ergonomic reasons seems to be enumerated in the patent.
Now, as to the validity of the patent, I can't say.
But I will agree that specific design details for ergonomics are pretty much exactly copied in the Typo.. so if they said "give me a keyboard just like the BlackBerry", I can see why they'd have settled.
But there are specific things and details in there. And it's at least slightly more specific than a small, black QWERTY keyboard. Down to quite specific curvatures.
Sir, my primary refute is not based on the language but on the fact that i read the text (in the original Greek, but this fact is not so important) and it is very clear for the events it describes - for example, from Matthew 1:18-25 (the "New International Version", which i just checked against the Greek text and i can confirm it is a good translation):
OK, but here's the problem(s) with this:
1) we have no idea if Matthew actually wrote it or not 2) If he did, would Matthew actually have written it in Greek? I suspect not, because... well, he wasn't Greek. 3) How many other people handled it, changed it, and tweaked it before it became in the "original" Greek? Because here by "original" it several times removed from the original. 4) On behalf of non-religious people everywhere, just because someone says "an angel of the lord appeared to him in a dream" does not actually make that evidence of a damned thing.
Ignoring the biological mechanics of how someone might be conceived... the "original" people here are not speakers of Greek, did not write in Greek, and this is a hand-me-down re-telling of events largely separated from the people actually there, and consisting of someone recounting a dream.
So, no matter what you have read in the texts, the texts are NOT a direct telling by someone who was there, does not constitute facts, and has to be framed in the context of people who may or may not have had a solid grasp of how one becomes pregnant.
The problem isn't so much the quality of the translation, as the quality of the source -- which is hearsay retelling of some guys dream.
Oh, don't get me wrong.. I get there are some actual badass Civics out there. I've seen all the Fast and the Furious films.;-)
But I've also seen the piece of crap cars with all of the stickers and none of the mods with the cheap-ass plastic spoiler held on with duct tape and rolling on bald tires.
I don't know which of these two painting one side of the graphene this sail gets us.
A solar sail with one side painted and the other painted with graphene might be really cool.
Hmmm... you mean "really cool" in the "it will do more useful stuff" sense of the word? Or in the sense of adding a spoiler and neon running lights to a beat up Honda Civic "might be really cool"?
Or maybe the painted side could have a jolly roger on it to play space pirate?
Sadly criminal law is all over the map when it comes to rules about intent
Honestly, though. That's because lawmakers who seldom understand the technology jump to try to pass new laws for new problems. And they end up passing really badly written laws.
In a lot of cases, they could have used existing laws. And in other cases, they just pass overbroad laws because "teh interwebs" are scary.
Changing the threshold for criminal liability to the laughable levels used for civil liability is a terrible mistake.
The problem is it takes many years to fix badly written laws. And in the mean time a lot of people can get their lives ruined... when defacing a web page can carry a longer sentence than an actual murder, something is seriously wrong.
But half-wit lawmakers who want to quickly pass a law for the evening news sound bite have neither the time, nor the skills apparently, to write a law which makes sense and will hold up in court.
These days it seems like governments get one in-house lawyer to say "sure, works for me", and then proceed.
Kinda like Alberto Gonzales, who more or less demonstrated his grasp of the US Constitution was to terrible as to disqualify him from having been the AG in the first place. That idiot would rubber stamp anything.
My history of windows use has always reinforced the idea of "clean install" over upgrade
Agree on this one... there have been lots of "you can buy this upgrade for your current" which haven't always worked, and then you end up without proper install media for the version you're running.
I won't run a version of Windows for which I don't own the install media for. Because it basically leaves you at the mercy of hoping nothing ever goes wrong.
And that, in my experience, is a dumb idea with any software.
With Classic Shell you can add the start button back to Windows 8.1. I highly recommend it.
With some tweaking, you can turn a Windows 8.1 desktop into something which pretty much looks like the classic Windows desktop, and ignore the mobile eye candy and app-crap entirely.
After which, Windows 8.1 becomes a fairly decent platform.
I think what Microsoft fails to realize is the things they think are cool and innovative are useful for some people, but utterly fail for people who need a traditional desktop.
I don't use a single feature on my desktop Windows 8.1 machine which Microsoft had configured as the GUI by default -- but once I got rid of their "innovative" crap, the OS itself is pretty nice.
So I see a gushing blog post, trumpeting way too many "touch first" applications, claiming some fancy innovations (which are mostly the app-ification of Windows and which other companies already have), as well as some biometric stuff which sounds annoying and is likely not very secure.
I see nothing in this which would make me "upgrade" from Windows 8.1, and except for the Edge thing, not much of it seems especially innovative to me.
But, you guys download it and test the crap out of it, let the inevitable bugs and security holes get shaken out... and maybe by next July I'll decide if I'm willing to consider the free upgrade.
I question if this will offer a useful desktop experience, or if they're so focused on mobile that they've lost the plot.
but a photograph that's in a frame (generally) is a transformative work. Framing has been recognized as an art
I'm pretty sure that, while the frame can be considered as art, you can't sell copies of someone else's image just because you put it in a fancy frame.
In fact, you sure as hell can't sell copies of someone else's copyrighted photo in a frame and call it a transformative work.
You can own the art of the framing, but you sure as hell don't get rights to the work you framed. Not even a little.
The description is that the work was "transformed" by being annotated and printed from a screenshot. I have no problem with that.
You should. Because what you're saying is you can co-opt someone else's work merely by framing and annotating it.
And, I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's bullshit.
That's like saying you could print out someone's source code, add some annotations to it, and claim copyright on the whole thing.
So, if you buy a copy of someone's work, frame it, and sell that.. sure, you can be value added, and your framing is a "transformative work".
But you can't sell multiple copies, because the act of copying that photo means you have violated copyright. Because you can't make copies in the first place.
I find it really ironic that Google, a company so used to being the new hotness upstart company, is so willfully ignoring usage patterns of a significant minority comprising "the youth" and people on the wrong side of the internet divide, and much of the third world, and anyone without a data plan outside of wifi range.
So, basically the non-profitable ones they can't sell ads to?
Because, let's be honest here, Google makes the new hotness to sell ads. That it is useful "new hotness" is just the way they lure you in.
Google isn't providing a public service. Google is padding their ad revenue. And all those "free" services exist for two reason: analytics and ads.
Beyond that, you can bet your ass google doesn't give a crap about you. Not even a little. And they never will.
Honestly, if you're thinking of solutions for hurricanes where you might be without power for longer than the portable batteries will last... see if you can't find a hand-crank generator or something.
This looks interesting, but other than the google search for "hand crank generator" I know nothing about it.
A bunch of years ago my family spent a week without power after a major storm. A few weeks after that my father had a Honda generator wired directly into the house so they could keep the fridge running for short periods and run the well pump. Flick a switch, and you have limited power and a single AC plug. My in-laws have a much bigger generator which will generate a lot more power.
And then there's really cool things like this which is a campstove, but which also powers USB.. so you can cook and generate electricity from wood, which is pretty neat.
Similar thing in this power pot which charges USB while you boil water.
So, wood-burning USB power is a real thing.
With some googling, you can find a ton of ruggedized things which both charge from USB, and, and which generate power to charge USB devices.
What other things am I missing that would be useful and/or interesting to power when not near an electrical outlet?
Well, your phone, your tablet, your GPS, your portable speakers, your music player. You know, anything you own which can be charged via USB.
I've got 2x5000 mAh, and 2x6000 mAh batteries I keep charged around the house and when I travel. They all have 1A and 2.1A outputs, as well as built in LED flashlights. Which means I can keep most of my stuff charged until I get where I'm going. Or I can charge them where I'm sitting instead of being chained to a wall charger. (And I've got a 4-port USB wall charger as well as a 3-port USB wall charger which will do 120/240V 50/60Hz.)
They've handy and convenient, but do you actually need to ask "what things that charge from USB can I charge from USB"?
If it charges from USB, and you own it... ta da!
Years ago I decided that except for very specific things (like my camera), I won't own anything which doesn't charge with standard USB. From there, a couple of cables, a couple of batteries, and a couple of wall chargers and you can keep stuff always charged.
Once you toss proprietary cables, or anything which can't charge by USB... you find it's a lot easier to pack what you need.
My travel electronics bag is now capable of operating everything I need from any electrical source by reusing the same USB cables. It really cuts down on the crap and clutter.
We are entitled to being paid for not working. That is what is morally right. Of course the Republicans are stupid and think you should be required to work for what you are paid. That is morally wrong, and it goes against the concept of basic income.
No, you're a moron making a strawman argument.
If you think that working for a company for years, to get laid off and have zero severance is in any way a sensible thing, then you're an idiot who thinks the rest of the world should take it up the ass to benefit corporations.
Because I don't hear any Republicans saying how evil it is when CEOs get multi-million dollar severance packages for being incompetent. They act like it's well deserved.
But let's not pretend that this is a case of "getting paid for nothing". This is a case of "corporations don't get to fuck employees over for their own benefit".
Since there are Republican candidates who have received massive corporate payouts when they lost their job... don't even pretend this is any different.
You're a moron. The rest world doesn't think in terms of "Republican" and "Democrat" -- just you guys.
They also don't think in terms of being 100% douchebag capitalist, or 100% socialist. Because they're not morons incapable of understanding the whole picture of how to balance society's needs with those of corporations.
Corporations aren't some magical construct -- it's a bunch of people looking out for their own interests. That doesn't mean they should be entitled to do that at someone else's expense.
Except the Republicans seem to champion the idea of douchebag capitalism as some form of moral idea, and then make stupid statements like you just did.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I might not take down the plane ... but give me some asparagus and I'll make the the eyes water of everybody near the lav. ;-)
My "obvious explanation" is the Canadian carriers added their own crap, and now we're not considered a big enough market to fix it.
I don't need to blame LG. My first thought on reading that was "yeah, that's entirely due to carriers putting their own shit on the phones".
Some devices are carrier locked. Some have crapware put there by the carrier.
This isn't the first time I've seen this with phones here.
As a Canadian, I will 100% concur this has a good chance of being the carrier.
My HTC Desire has a lot of stuff which was put on it by the carrier (Rogers) -- some of which I can disable but not delete.
It may well be that LG has decided they don't want to muck around with carrier specific crap. Which is why I think it should be illegal to have carrier specific crap in the first place.
A decade or so ago a co-worker did some testing with his Motorolla Krazr. It turns out the way Rogers had done the internet stuff was to push you through their proxy (with a lot of extra overhead), and which had the net effect of about doubling your data usage so that they could measure you and bill you for it. And this was when data usage was in KB.
Rogers are complete greedy bastards who put a lot of crap on phones to benefit themselves.
Ignoring how we feel about patents ... this patent exists, the link I gave was the first one I saw which explained the way in which they were similar, and that those similarities are quite prominent on things you wouldn't do by random.
This is more than just "someone else made a keyboard".
And if you 100% copy someone else's design, I can see why they'd be unhappy about it.
Now that I've read through that, I can see BB had some pretty valid points. And if you could make things which looked exactly like someone else's product, that could be misleading.
The curvature of those keys was pretty darned specific.
This page gives the best side by side comparison I can find.
it's got a picture of one of the BBs, the patent they filed, and the Typo keyboard.
So, the extent to which the keys skew away from being flat for ergonomic reasons seems to be enumerated in the patent.
Now, as to the validity of the patent, I can't say.
But I will agree that specific design details for ergonomics are pretty much exactly copied in the Typo .. so if they said "give me a keyboard just like the BlackBerry", I can see why they'd have settled.
But there are specific things and details in there. And it's at least slightly more specific than a small, black QWERTY keyboard. Down to quite specific curvatures.
So do CEOs and politicians.
I'm not missing anything ... I'm saying the expression is meaningless in terms of a discussion of parthenogenesis of sawfish and we don't give a damn.
Well, then the stomach/kidney/bladder pipeline is about 3 beers then. ;-)
I've ... er.. never measured output volume.
About 3 beers. ;-)
OK, but here's the problem(s) with this:
1) we have no idea if Matthew actually wrote it or not ... well, he wasn't Greek.
2) If he did, would Matthew actually have written it in Greek? I suspect not, because
3) How many other people handled it, changed it, and tweaked it before it became in the "original" Greek? Because here by "original" it several times removed from the original.
4) On behalf of non-religious people everywhere, just because someone says "an angel of the lord appeared to him in a dream" does not actually make that evidence of a damned thing.
Ignoring the biological mechanics of how someone might be conceived ... the "original" people here are not speakers of Greek, did not write in Greek, and this is a hand-me-down re-telling of events largely separated from the people actually there, and consisting of someone recounting a dream.
So, no matter what you have read in the texts, the texts are NOT a direct telling by someone who was there, does not constitute facts, and has to be framed in the context of people who may or may not have had a solid grasp of how one becomes pregnant.
The problem isn't so much the quality of the translation, as the quality of the source -- which is hearsay retelling of some guys dream.
Oh, don't get me wrong .. I get there are some actual badass Civics out there. I've seen all the Fast and the Furious films. ;-)
But I've also seen the piece of crap cars with all of the stickers and none of the mods with the cheap-ass plastic spoiler held on with duct tape and rolling on bald tires.
I don't know which of these two painting one side of the graphene this sail gets us.
Hmmm ... you mean "really cool" in the "it will do more useful stuff" sense of the word? Or in the sense of adding a spoiler and neon running lights to a beat up Honda Civic "might be really cool"?
Or maybe the painted side could have a jolly roger on it to play space pirate?
Honestly, is painting one side functional?
A laser technique is used to herd the fermions
So ... do fermions most resemble cows, or cats? I'm confused.
Yeah, and understand that when the PM says "well, if we all work 24x7 we'll be ontime" then PM is an idiot and should be told that.
Way too many employers will run you into the ground and burn you out because they'll just keep asking for more.
Don't do it.
Honestly, though. That's because lawmakers who seldom understand the technology jump to try to pass new laws for new problems. And they end up passing really badly written laws.
In a lot of cases, they could have used existing laws. And in other cases, they just pass overbroad laws because "teh interwebs" are scary.
Changing the threshold for criminal liability to the laughable levels used for civil liability is a terrible mistake.
The problem is it takes many years to fix badly written laws. And in the mean time a lot of people can get their lives ruined ... when defacing a web page can carry a longer sentence than an actual murder, something is seriously wrong.
But half-wit lawmakers who want to quickly pass a law for the evening news sound bite have neither the time, nor the skills apparently, to write a law which makes sense and will hold up in court.
These days it seems like governments get one in-house lawyer to say "sure, works for me", and then proceed.
Kinda like Alberto Gonzales, who more or less demonstrated his grasp of the US Constitution was to terrible as to disqualify him from having been the AG in the first place. That idiot would rubber stamp anything.
It's still true .. only in this case "free time" is unemployment.
It was naive to say that automation would make all of our lives better. Mostly it just makes corporate profits go up, and everybody else gets screwed.
Agree on this one ... there have been lots of "you can buy this upgrade for your current" which haven't always worked, and then you end up without proper install media for the version you're running.
I won't run a version of Windows for which I don't own the install media for. Because it basically leaves you at the mercy of hoping nothing ever goes wrong.
And that, in my experience, is a dumb idea with any software.
With Classic Shell you can add the start button back to Windows 8.1. I highly recommend it.
With some tweaking, you can turn a Windows 8.1 desktop into something which pretty much looks like the classic Windows desktop, and ignore the mobile eye candy and app-crap entirely.
After which, Windows 8.1 becomes a fairly decent platform.
I think what Microsoft fails to realize is the things they think are cool and innovative are useful for some people, but utterly fail for people who need a traditional desktop.
I don't use a single feature on my desktop Windows 8.1 machine which Microsoft had configured as the GUI by default -- but once I got rid of their "innovative" crap, the OS itself is pretty nice.
So I see a gushing blog post, trumpeting way too many "touch first" applications, claiming some fancy innovations (which are mostly the app-ification of Windows and which other companies already have), as well as some biometric stuff which sounds annoying and is likely not very secure.
I see nothing in this which would make me "upgrade" from Windows 8.1, and except for the Edge thing, not much of it seems especially innovative to me.
But, you guys download it and test the crap out of it, let the inevitable bugs and security holes get shaken out ... and maybe by next July I'll decide if I'm willing to consider the free upgrade.
I question if this will offer a useful desktop experience, or if they're so focused on mobile that they've lost the plot.
If by that you mean "prison", yes.
I'm pretty sure that, while the frame can be considered as art, you can't sell copies of someone else's image just because you put it in a fancy frame.
In fact, you sure as hell can't sell copies of someone else's copyrighted photo in a frame and call it a transformative work.
You can own the art of the framing, but you sure as hell don't get rights to the work you framed. Not even a little.
You should. Because what you're saying is you can co-opt someone else's work merely by framing and annotating it.
And, I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's bullshit.
That's like saying you could print out someone's source code, add some annotations to it, and claim copyright on the whole thing.
So, if you buy a copy of someone's work, frame it, and sell that .. sure, you can be value added, and your framing is a "transformative work".
But you can't sell multiple copies, because the act of copying that photo means you have violated copyright. Because you can't make copies in the first place.
So, basically the non-profitable ones they can't sell ads to?
Because, let's be honest here, Google makes the new hotness to sell ads. That it is useful "new hotness" is just the way they lure you in.
Google isn't providing a public service. Google is padding their ad revenue. And all those "free" services exist for two reason: analytics and ads.
Beyond that, you can bet your ass google doesn't give a crap about you. Not even a little. And they never will.
Honestly, if you're thinking of solutions for hurricanes where you might be without power for longer than the portable batteries will last ... see if you can't find a hand-crank generator or something.
This looks interesting, but other than the google search for "hand crank generator" I know nothing about it.
A bunch of years ago my family spent a week without power after a major storm. A few weeks after that my father had a Honda generator wired directly into the house so they could keep the fridge running for short periods and run the well pump. Flick a switch, and you have limited power and a single AC plug. My in-laws have a much bigger generator which will generate a lot more power.
And then there's really cool things like this which is a campstove, but which also powers USB .. so you can cook and generate electricity from wood, which is pretty neat.
Similar thing in this power pot which charges USB while you boil water.
So, wood-burning USB power is a real thing.
With some googling, you can find a ton of ruggedized things which both charge from USB, and, and which generate power to charge USB devices.
The question is ... what do you need?
Well, your phone, your tablet, your GPS, your portable speakers, your music player. You know, anything you own which can be charged via USB.
I've got 2x5000 mAh, and 2x6000 mAh batteries I keep charged around the house and when I travel. They all have 1A and 2.1A outputs, as well as built in LED flashlights. Which means I can keep most of my stuff charged until I get where I'm going. Or I can charge them where I'm sitting instead of being chained to a wall charger. (And I've got a 4-port USB wall charger as well as a 3-port USB wall charger which will do 120/240V 50/60Hz.)
They've handy and convenient, but do you actually need to ask "what things that charge from USB can I charge from USB"?
If it charges from USB, and you own it ... ta da!
Years ago I decided that except for very specific things (like my camera), I won't own anything which doesn't charge with standard USB. From there, a couple of cables, a couple of batteries, and a couple of wall chargers and you can keep stuff always charged.
Once you toss proprietary cables, or anything which can't charge by USB ... you find it's a lot easier to pack what you need.
My travel electronics bag is now capable of operating everything I need from any electrical source by reusing the same USB cables. It really cuts down on the crap and clutter.
No, you're a moron making a strawman argument.
If you think that working for a company for years, to get laid off and have zero severance is in any way a sensible thing, then you're an idiot who thinks the rest of the world should take it up the ass to benefit corporations.
Because I don't hear any Republicans saying how evil it is when CEOs get multi-million dollar severance packages for being incompetent. They act like it's well deserved.
But let's not pretend that this is a case of "getting paid for nothing". This is a case of "corporations don't get to fuck employees over for their own benefit".
Since there are Republican candidates who have received massive corporate payouts when they lost their job ... don't even pretend this is any different.
You're a moron. The rest world doesn't think in terms of "Republican" and "Democrat" -- just you guys.
They also don't think in terms of being 100% douchebag capitalist, or 100% socialist. Because they're not morons incapable of understanding the whole picture of how to balance society's needs with those of corporations.
Corporations aren't some magical construct -- it's a bunch of people looking out for their own interests. That doesn't mean they should be entitled to do that at someone else's expense.
Except the Republicans seem to champion the idea of douchebag capitalism as some form of moral idea, and then make stupid statements like you just did.