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User: Joce640k

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  1. Re:Laughable on The Era of Facebook Is an Anomaly · · Score: 3, Funny

    The basic premise, that it is an anomaly for us to come together into a common social space, is so ridiculous

    Is Facebook a "single space? I thought it had groups.

    Facebook is just a medium of communication - like talking using a mouth. Everybody used mouths before and nobody thought it was weird.

    I have to wonder what her agenda is for making such a blatantly false claim.

    She's just having a massive cognitive failure because nobody's using a Microsoft space and her job is to justify that.

    It's a bit like Zune: It was a perfectly good piece of hardware so why did nobody want it? Why did they think Steve Ballmer "squirting" his Zune at people was wrong? It sounded like fun to her...

    Does not compute.

  2. Re:Whatever on Religion Is Good For Your Brain · · Score: 1

    Whatever...it's a placebo effect. It shouldn't be seen as an endorsement of religion. You can probably get the same results by owning a cat/dog, sticking pins in yourself, meditation, going for a walk, or... any number of things.

  3. Re: Double blind tests? on Neil Young's "Righteous" Pono Music Startup Raises $1 Million With Kickstarter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Do any of you guys have ears?

    128kbs MP3 (which used to be the "standard") is crap, yes.

    320kbs MP3? I doubt many people can hear the difference.

    After I got tired of clicking through the links to "What makes pono better" I eventually googled it on Wikipedia and found out it's FLAC. Aren't we already using FLAC? I know I am.

    Bottom line: He's comparing 128kbs MP3 to FLAC. Nothing to see here, keep moving...

    If you have heard live music vs an mp3, the loss of audio info is very obvious.

    Who's talking about live music? Of course live music is different.

  4. Re:This is more than a little bit naive. on Environmentalists Propose $50 Billion Buyout of Coal Industry - To Shut It Down · · Score: 1

    I'm amazed that the entire coal industry is only worth 50 billion.

  5. Re:This is more than a little bit naive. on Environmentalists Propose $50 Billion Buyout of Coal Industry - To Shut It Down · · Score: 2

    For two, the cost of shutting that industry down does not cover the cost of starting new energy industries to replace it. Or were we just going to go without 37% of our electricity?

    Yep. Any plan which doesn't include this is a non-starter.

  6. Re: How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    True, but there were many touchscreen phones before iPhones and none had the "obvious" slide to unlock feature.

    Weirdly enough, slide-to-unlock was patented in Europe five years before Apple decided to "invent" it.

    Europe: http://worldwide.espacenet.com...

    Apple: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi...

  7. Re:Does it really cost $100k? on The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery · · Score: 1

    Why stop there?

    I'm sure there's a $200,000 device which is even better than this, and a $500,000 device which is even better than that. After they're installed we can rip them out and install the $1,000,000 device that somebody else just invented.

    Best of all: Give each passenger their very own aircraft so that if one of them fails then all the other passengers will be perfectly safe, even in the case of a terrorist attack!!

    Or...we can be sensible.

  8. Re:How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    For it to be an invalid patent, it has to be *immediately* obvious to *anyone* with sufficient knowledge of the state of the art.

    a) How exactly do you *prove* that in a court of law?

    b) It shouldn't have to be *instant*, but it should need more than a 1-hour brainstorm to figure out.

    c) How do you *prove* (b) in a court of law?

    Really, the onus should be on the patenter to *prove* it was difficult. They should maybe even have to state their case in the patent application.

  9. Re:How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    > If Apple didn't come up with it, someone else inevitably would have.

    It's not enough that *someone* else would have come up with it *eventually*.

    For it to be an invalid patent, it has to be *immediately* obvious to *anyone* with sufficient knowledge of the state of the art.

    (And if we took the former as our patent law, perhaps only miracles would be patentable.)

    Much of what Apple produces had already been invented, eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    They may have been the first to engineer a working consumer device but they aren't the visionaries some people seem to think.

  10. Re:How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 2

    If you find one that is not sufficiently descriptive, it is not valid.

    But proving a patent invalid is so difficult and so expensive that an invalid patent is almost as good as the real thing.

    Maybe better. They can be filed in huge quantities and if one of them fails you still have dozens more to fall back on.

  11. Re:er, not really on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    I had several good friends who were Palm executive level, including head of UI team. Palm was dumbstruck by the apple interface, it's fluidity and ease of use.

    That doesn't make it deserving of enough legal protection to garantee Apple exclusive rights to the entire marketplace.

  12. Re: How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    That's the thing, the design was NOT unique.

    eg. 2001 A Space Odyssey had "iPads" in it...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    And here's "The Newspaper of the Future" as imagined in the 1990s, seem familiar?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

  13. Re: How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    So what kind of protection would you feel is reasonable for a unique, refined design that makes all its competitors look like they were designed by idiots? The first-mover advantage is pretty useless when a competitor can duplicate your device in a few months.

    None at all if the competitors were already moving in that direction (which they were, since the 1980s).

    Apple's advantage in the marketplace should be quality, branding, product support, exclusivity (aka high prices), the safe and sure knowledge that "nobody ever got fired for buying Apple", etc.

    How many products can you think of that rely on being "The Original and best!"? That's what happens when your products are evolutionary (like Apple's are). Only an Apple lawyer would think a rectangle is a patentable shape.

  14. Re:How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Well, they do get credit for being at least one of the first to actually shove the components together like this.

    For example, after SJ went on stage and demo'd the original iPhone [which by all accounts so far, was on a real device, running real apps], BB was convinced it was all a lie,

    Why? Psion/Windows CE had shown the way. I had a Psion Organiser back in the 1980s.

    The iPhone is just evolution and aggressive purchasing of parts. I don't know who "BB" is supposed to be but he needs a reality check. I'm not saying it was easy to do, but it wasn't unbelievable.

    OTOH they don't deserve all this patent protection. Their dominance should come from software, engineering, hardware quality and branding, not legal battles over the roundness of the corners.

  15. Re:How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Windows ce/mobile agree

    They even came up with the 'i' monicker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    iPaq ... iPad. Apple can't even claim to have come up with the name.

  16. Re: How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Treating a phone number like a hyperlink is very obvious.

    My old black-and-white-4-lines-of-text Nokia (remember those?) used to highlight numbers in SMS messages and you could dial them via the menu.

    Adding a touchscreen indeed made the next step OBVIOUS, but 'obviousness' is difficult to prove in a court of law. It's a bit like trying to legally prove that Pepsi is better than Coke, or anything else that's really just a personal opinion.

    Apple is counting on this difficulty.

    It's really the job of the patent office to make the judgement call of 'obvious' (or not) but they don't seem to care about patent quality (why would they, they get paid by quantity...)

  17. Re: How are those kind of things patentable? on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    +1 Informative. As soon as you have a touchscreen then touching-things-that-are-on-the-screen is something obvious.

    This is why people thing iPhones are easy to use - the gestures (ie. touching things) are much more *obvious*.

  18. Re:The term of art is "obvious." on Apple Demands $40 Per Samsung Phone For 5 Software Patents · · Score: 1

    Sure, but as pointed out earlier, court battles in the USA are usually won by whoever has the most money and can file the most paperwork.

  19. Re:Does it really cost $100k? on The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery · · Score: 4, Funny

    Can't we just get the copilot to throw the black box out of the window before they hit the sea?

    Much cheaper...

  20. Re:Wrong. on The $100,000 Device That Could Have Solved Missing Plane Mystery · · Score: 1

    How can anybody "turn up missing"?

  21. Re:Google for: "disable telemetry $MAKE $MODEL" on Volkswagen Chairman: Cars Must Not Become 'Data Monsters' · · Score: 1

    No, you don't, because I unplugged the GPS antenna (since I don't actually have a nav system), leaving your hardwired spyware trapped uselessly deep inside in a big Faraday cage.

    Yeah, right. When electric cars become common there'll be a law to tax them per mile driven. This law will require you to transmit your location to big brother at all times.

    (nb. It will also prevent terrorism and deny pedophiles the use of the roads, etc.)

    You'll see I'm right, five or ten years from now...

  22. Re:If that the only crime a drone commits then goo on Drones Used To Smuggle Drugs Into Prison · · Score: 2

    While what I am suggesting will be fun to read about; I am much more scared of the terroristic possibilities;

    I see the government propaganda is working.

    Question: What exactly is stopping "terrorists" from running riot all over the country right now?

    Lack of drones? Nope.

    The TSA? Nope.

    Heavily armed response teams all over the place? Nope.

    The only logical answer to the question is that there aren't any terrorists.

  23. Re: If that the only crime a drone commits then go on Drones Used To Smuggle Drugs Into Prison · · Score: 1

    What's to stop a terrorist from loading some C4 and rare earth magnets on one of these and attaching it to a plane while it's taxiing at a busy airport?

    Simple - planes aren't magnetic.

    You'll have more success if you make the drone hover in the takeoff area and wait for it to be sucked into an engine.

  24. Re:What? on Drones Used To Smuggle Drugs Into Prison · · Score: 1, Funny

    Prisoners already have drugs.

    What he's talking about is stopping spending billions of dollars on a 'battle' that makes about 1% difference to the drug supply chain.

    For more information see King Canute.

  25. Re:That leaves an interesting idea. on Drones Used To Smuggle Drugs Into Prison · · Score: 1

    I'm wondering how well prepared border control / custom agents are for taking down fast moving drones that sweep in pretty low.

    It's irrelevant. Drug dealers won't be using this because:
    a) It's complex, requires skilled operators
    b) The payload is small
    c) Getting drugs across the border is a solved problem