Samsung and HTC, and doubtless others, invented this first. My Galaxy S3 has a combined USB, HDMI and audio port. My ancient HTC Hero had a combined USB and audio port. Different connectors used different pins.
And how is any of these prior art for a combined USB and SD card reader? You don't (or shouldn't) get patents for an idea, you should get patents for a working implementation.
Even if Apple applied for a patent for a combined USB, HDMI and audio port, as long as it works different from the Samsung implementation, there is no reason why it shouldn't be patented. And there must be another way to implement it, because if there was only one possible way, then Samsung wouldn't have got a patent.
weapon of mass destruction to me is exactly what it sounds like. does it cause "mass destruction" if the answer is yes, than it is in fact a weapon of mass destruction. 2 bombs going off in a crowded city seems to fit that definition pretty well IMO
Well, no. Not if the city is still there after the bombs go off. What size was the crater? There was no crater? No weapon of mass destruction then.
"Some people think"... What some people think is usually rubbish. There is no evidence for any of the things you claim. And the best argument is that we would have to believe that the mental geniuses at NSA who can take over your computer would be so idiotically stupid to put a key named "NSAkey" on your computer in plain sight.
It may very well be that the NSA has some backdoor into your Windows (or Linux, or MacOS X) computer, but it's not and it never was in this NSAKey file.
Now something completely different: Intel and AMD processors have a built-in operation that calculates the product of two 64 bit numbers and delivers a 128 bit result. An awful lot of code related to encryption uses that instruction to make encryption / decryption reasonably fast. There was a paper demonstrating that if the processor produces the wrong product for exactly one pair of two 64 bit numbers, and the two numbers and the product are known to an attacker, then for example RSA can be attacked successfully, on a wide variety of operating systems. Without modifying any code on that machine.
And which structures would those be? Yeah, five pounds of military grade explosives make a huge bang. But you're talking about first getting your hands on military grade explosives, which ain't easy.
A common misconception is that "military grade explosives" are somehow more powerful than other explosives. They are not. They are easy to handle and don't blow up except where you want them to blow up, that's their point. Because the military has lots of explosives and that would cause huge damage to the military if it just went off from time to time.
Non-military grade will explode just as powerful. It just might explode while you carry it around, or not at all.
In German, they tend to use word concatenations, and a proper translation into English would pull these words apart. This one didn't. So it was a threat against the state, not state-threatening.
All of that said, this anti-America stuff is getting seriously circlejerky. You're seriously worried about getting hassled for bringing personal-use copies of legally-acquired media into the US? Seriously?? Are you actually that ignorant about US copyright law (I suppose one could be forgiven, somewhat, for trusting anonymous internet-dwellers who would have you believe the police break down people's doors to search for stolen digital media and similar nonsense) or are you just flamebaiting?
Since I live in the UK, why would I know _anything_ about US copyright law? Seriously?
And even if I did know about US copyright law, what makes you think the border goons in the USA do?
Re:At the Risk of Disgust for Defending the IRS ..
on
The IRS vs. Open Source
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I wonder if the abuse would be mitigated if the software were released publicly while under the open source license. Evade taxes, taxpayers get access to your product.
Would still be a possible tax loophole if you develop software that is of use to you and you only, with no secrets that can be discovered from the software, and you release it as "open source" fully knowing that nobody in the world except you is interested in it and can use it.
I assume with the turn of a screw you also void the warranty?
No. For warranty the manufacturer would have to prove that you caused the damage. For statutory rights in the EU after the warranty runs out _you_ have to prove that _you_ didn't cause it.
Just explain that replaced one screw at a time, therefore, the phone was never "open". The great thing about phone companies is they are always very understanding of their customers and willing to work with you rationally.
It's up to you to prove that you didn't cause the damage. Not up to them to prove the opposite.
You put the old screws back before you turn it in.
That's what I love about slashdot - quick, witty comebacks that fall apart when you look closely. So they give you a special screwdriver and replacement screws so you can put in the replacement screws and don't need a special screwdriver which you might lose, in case the phone has problems and you want to open it. But now you have to keep the special screwdrivers, the special screws, and a philips screwdriver in case you need to replace the screws when the phone has problems.
In other words, you just created for yourself three problems to solve one. And these screws are tiny, and what are the bets they are gone when you need them?
In the EU, including Britain, the customer has certain rights against the seller to fix problems even after the manufacturer's warranty runs out. An essential part of this is that the seller has to fix problems for some time if the buyer can prove that the problem was there when the item was purchased.
Now you turn up with your iPhone not working and all the screws replaced. "Hey Apple (or O2, or Vodaphone, or whoever sold it), the phone doesn't work and it sure must be your fault because I never opened it". "So how do you explain that all the screws have been replaced? You most definitely opened that phone. "
I'd rather not. I wonder: Would he ever date a woman who owns an iPad? (That's ignoring the question whether a woman, with or without iPad, would ever date him).
This really, really sounds like an Android fan who just can't stand it if Apple has something good to say about iOS.
Fact #1: Apple doesn't care about the market share of Android. Apple's market share in the phone market has been growing every year since 2007 when it started at zero. Today, cheap feature phones are being replaced with cheap smartphones. But if you don't buy a $600 iPhone but choose a $100 phone instead, Apple doesn't care whether that $100 phone is a Nokia feature phone or a cheap Android phone.
Fact #2: Developers don't care about market share, they care about the number of people who are willing to pay for software. Someone who pays $600 for a phone (iOS or Android) is much more likely to pay for software than someone who paid $100 (Android or feature phone).
The market fragmentation in itself is not the problem. The problem is that those on a three year old OS are not likely to buy any software. (You are free to assume otherwise and either write software that runs on the oldest OS and doesn't use any features of the newer OS, or put in lots of work to work fine everywhere). Which means the number of potential buyers is much lower than the number of Android users. It also seems to indicate that many new phones actually ship with an old OS.
Shhhhh... Googles competitors and their pet nutters are here in force,
I expected no less than your comment on Slashdot. What you are doing here is called an ad hominem attack, which is generally considered the vilest method to try to get the upper hand in a discussion, by attacking everyone having a different opinion than yours. Usually fails.
I suspect that Google was simply working to enhance their location services by mapping Access Point MAC addresses to GPS locations. The simple way to do that is to drive around, collecting and location stamping packets, then process that data later. Nothing nefarious involved, and Google was upfront when they realized that some people were too stupid to set up encryption (or simply didn't care about their privacy). If they'd set up a pcap which grabbed only the headers, there would have been no issue.
That is not what happened. What they needed was MAC addresses and GPS locations, or better yet MAC addresses + GPS locations + signal strengths. Code to record packet data was _intentionally_ added by a Google engineer who thought it was a good idea (which it wasn't); all the data that Google collected was absolutely not needed for their purposes.
Intent is very important in a legal system. I've yet to see one word of evidence that Google acted in bad faith.
In UK law, what matters is not "intent to breach the law" but "intent to do what you did". From some reports, it seems that some engineer at Google had the great idea to add code that would gather a bit of data together with the locations and IDs of routers (that data didn't gather itself), and he _intentionally_ added the code. As we all know, it was a super stupid idea and frankly I cannot even try to follow his thought process. But the intent of an employee turns into intent of the company and Google is legally on the hook.
(There are specific laws where things are different, for example theft requires intent to deprive another / intent to enrich yourself, depending on the country; not just intent to take the item)
No, it's more like standing naked by your front window, then complaining because someone takes a picture from the street. Setting up minimal WiFi encryption on consumer wireless equipment has never been a task requiring a "capable expert."
Of course it is. You have to find how to get into the router, you have to know which encryption to choose, then you have to set up your computers in the same way. All that while avoiding the little snag that as soon as you turn on encryption, your WiFi connection to the router will fail, so if you make the slightest mistake you are stuffed. Unless you have a big box full of stuff including an Ethernet cable.
The magnetic connector was used on deep fryers for a very long time before Apple managed to get a patent on it.
You don't get a patent on the idea that pulling violently on a cable should just unplug the cable instead of throwing the connected device around or damaging it. You get a patent on a non-obvious and new implementation of that idea, so I suppose Apple's implementation is different. I find it interesting that nobody has created their own implementation.
If you really want hassle-free, you would use windows. OSX needs 3rd party apps for everything. OSX is always trying to sell you apps. Windows has lots of great free apps, like NotePad++, but OSX wants you to pay for BBedit. Plus the OSX MS Office is far inferior. Also, it's way harder to fix a mac, always have to deal with permissions problems. For every good thing I like about OSX, I find some bad thing about it too. It's a wash at best. Plus, when I'm working, I don't want to have to stop to look up how to do XYZ on a Mac, when I already know how to do XYZ on windows.
You need to mark your post clearly as being sarcastic, or people might not get it and think you are on drugs or something like that.
Happened to me once that I got upgraded to a larger monitor, and when I turned it on it was like being physically smacked in the face. It's a long time ago so I can't remember exactly what happened then, but I didn't use that monitor.
So what? What that does prove? That someone (maybe the one who bought the book, maybe not) took this book and shared it???
I still don't see how based on such a funny "watermark" they this could stand in the court. Anyone? Can you prove me wrong?
Are you willing to try it? In a civil court, I'm quite sure that "this is the exact copy of the book that was sold to X" will stand up in court. And if you were found to have that copy, and you are not X, then this will be enough evidence that you have an illegal copy, unless you can get X to testify that they sold it to you.
On the other hand, if you are X and your copy of the book was available for download on the internet, you'd also have to have some pretty good excuse. Saying "I gave only one copy to Y and he swore he would delete it after reading it and I'm really sorry" might be a good enough excuse and put the onus on the other person.
1. Get a copy from a legal user, without their knowledge.
You just went from a little bit of copyright infringement to criminal hacking, and what is called in the UK "perverting the course of justice" by creating false evidence, which is a crime that _will_ be punished with time in jail if you get caught.
"Apple embeds your account information in all songs sold on the store, not just DRM-free songs. Previously it wasn't much of a big deal, since no one could imagine users sharing encrypted, DRMed content. But now that DRM-free music from Apple is on the loose, the hidden data is more significant since it could theoretically be used to trace shared tunes back to the original owner."
It has two effects: It puts stuff into the "Purchased items" folder in iTunes, and it prevents things with the wrong ID to be uploaded to your computer if you use "Upload purchased items from device" by mistake with a friend's iPod or iPhone. I'm assuming it is a mistake, obviously.
Slashdot Mirror
Samsung and HTC, and doubtless others, invented this first. My Galaxy S3 has a combined USB, HDMI and audio port. My ancient HTC Hero had a combined USB and audio port. Different connectors used different pins.
And how is any of these prior art for a combined USB and SD card reader? You don't (or shouldn't) get patents for an idea, you should get patents for a working implementation.
Even if Apple applied for a patent for a combined USB, HDMI and audio port, as long as it works different from the Samsung implementation, there is no reason why it shouldn't be patented. And there must be another way to implement it, because if there was only one possible way, then Samsung wouldn't have got a patent.
weapon of mass destruction to me is exactly what it sounds like. does it cause "mass destruction" if the answer is yes, than it is in fact a weapon of mass destruction. 2 bombs going off in a crowded city seems to fit that definition pretty well IMO
Well, no. Not if the city is still there after the bombs go off. What size was the crater? There was no crater? No weapon of mass destruction then.
"Some people think"... What some people think is usually rubbish. There is no evidence for any of the things you claim. And the best argument is that we would have to believe that the mental geniuses at NSA who can take over your computer would be so idiotically stupid to put a key named "NSAkey" on your computer in plain sight.
It may very well be that the NSA has some backdoor into your Windows (or Linux, or MacOS X) computer, but it's not and it never was in this NSAKey file.
Now something completely different: Intel and AMD processors have a built-in operation that calculates the product of two 64 bit numbers and delivers a 128 bit result. An awful lot of code related to encryption uses that instruction to make encryption / decryption reasonably fast. There was a paper demonstrating that if the processor produces the wrong product for exactly one pair of two 64 bit numbers, and the two numbers and the product are known to an attacker, then for example RSA can be attacked successfully, on a wide variety of operating systems. Without modifying any code on that machine.
And which structures would those be? Yeah, five pounds of military grade explosives make a huge bang. But you're talking about first getting your hands on military grade explosives, which ain't easy.
A common misconception is that "military grade explosives" are somehow more powerful than other explosives. They are not. They are easy to handle and don't blow up except where you want them to blow up, that's their point. Because the military has lots of explosives and that would cause huge damage to the military if it just went off from time to time.
Non-military grade will explode just as powerful. It just might explode while you carry it around, or not at all.
...state-threatening act of violence.
Subtly incorrect translation.
In German, they tend to use word concatenations, and a proper translation into English would pull these words apart. This one didn't. So it was a threat against the state, not state-threatening.
All of that said, this anti-America stuff is getting seriously circlejerky. You're seriously worried about getting hassled for bringing personal-use copies of legally-acquired media into the US? Seriously?? Are you actually that ignorant about US copyright law (I suppose one could be forgiven, somewhat, for trusting anonymous internet-dwellers who would have you believe the police break down people's doors to search for stolen digital media and similar nonsense) or are you just flamebaiting?
Since I live in the UK, why would I know _anything_ about US copyright law? Seriously?
And even if I did know about US copyright law, what makes you think the border goons in the USA do?
I wonder if the abuse would be mitigated if the software were released publicly while under the open source license. Evade taxes, taxpayers get access to your product.
Would still be a possible tax loophole if you develop software that is of use to you and you only, with no secrets that can be discovered from the software, and you release it as "open source" fully knowing that nobody in the world except you is interested in it and can use it.
I assume with the turn of a screw you also void the warranty?
No. For warranty the manufacturer would have to prove that you caused the damage. For statutory rights in the EU after the warranty runs out _you_ have to prove that _you_ didn't cause it.
Just explain that replaced one screw at a time, therefore, the phone was never "open". The great thing about phone companies is they are always very understanding of their customers and willing to work with you rationally.
It's up to you to prove that you didn't cause the damage. Not up to them to prove the opposite.
You put the old screws back before you turn it in.
That's what I love about slashdot - quick, witty comebacks that fall apart when you look closely. So they give you a special screwdriver and replacement screws so you can put in the replacement screws and don't need a special screwdriver which you might lose, in case the phone has problems and you want to open it. But now you have to keep the special screwdrivers, the special screws, and a philips screwdriver in case you need to replace the screws when the phone has problems.
In other words, you just created for yourself three problems to solve one. And these screws are tiny, and what are the bets they are gone when you need them?
In the EU, including Britain, the customer has certain rights against the seller to fix problems even after the manufacturer's warranty runs out. An essential part of this is that the seller has to fix problems for some time if the buyer can prove that the problem was there when the item was purchased.
Now you turn up with your iPhone not working and all the screws replaced. "Hey Apple (or O2, or Vodaphone, or whoever sold it), the phone doesn't work and it sure must be your fault because I never opened it". "So how do you explain that all the screws have been replaced? You most definitely opened that phone. "
That's because if a Waze user is driving by as an accident happens or just after, they can mark it on the map.
And cause another accident while doing so.
You could do what Richard Stallman does:
I'd rather not. I wonder: Would he ever date a woman who owns an iPad? (That's ignoring the question whether a woman, with or without iPad, would ever date him).
Well, we know that Microsoft and Google have apparently been giving a feed of data to the NSA for quite some time, now.
Please be a bit precise here. What exactly is claimed have Microsoft and Google given to the NSA? And how exactly do we "know"?
This really, really sounds like an Android fan who just can't stand it if Apple has something good to say about iOS.
Fact #1: Apple doesn't care about the market share of Android. Apple's market share in the phone market has been growing every year since 2007 when it started at zero. Today, cheap feature phones are being replaced with cheap smartphones. But if you don't buy a $600 iPhone but choose a $100 phone instead, Apple doesn't care whether that $100 phone is a Nokia feature phone or a cheap Android phone.
Fact #2: Developers don't care about market share, they care about the number of people who are willing to pay for software. Someone who pays $600 for a phone (iOS or Android) is much more likely to pay for software than someone who paid $100 (Android or feature phone).
The market fragmentation in itself is not the problem. The problem is that those on a three year old OS are not likely to buy any software. (You are free to assume otherwise and either write software that runs on the oldest OS and doesn't use any features of the newer OS, or put in lots of work to work fine everywhere). Which means the number of potential buyers is much lower than the number of Android users. It also seems to indicate that many new phones actually ship with an old OS.
Shhhhh... Googles competitors and their pet nutters are here in force,
I expected no less than your comment on Slashdot. What you are doing here is called an ad hominem attack, which is generally considered the vilest method to try to get the upper hand in a discussion, by attacking everyone having a different opinion than yours. Usually fails.
I suspect that Google was simply working to enhance their location services by mapping Access Point MAC addresses to GPS locations. The simple way to do that is to drive around, collecting and location stamping packets, then process that data later. Nothing nefarious involved, and Google was upfront when they realized that some people were too stupid to set up encryption (or simply didn't care about their privacy). If they'd set up a pcap which grabbed only the headers, there would have been no issue.
That is not what happened. What they needed was MAC addresses and GPS locations, or better yet MAC addresses + GPS locations + signal strengths. Code to record packet data was _intentionally_ added by a Google engineer who thought it was a good idea (which it wasn't); all the data that Google collected was absolutely not needed for their purposes.
Intent is very important in a legal system. I've yet to see one word of evidence that Google acted in bad faith.
In UK law, what matters is not "intent to breach the law" but "intent to do what you did". From some reports, it seems that some engineer at Google had the great idea to add code that would gather a bit of data together with the locations and IDs of routers (that data didn't gather itself), and he _intentionally_ added the code. As we all know, it was a super stupid idea and frankly I cannot even try to follow his thought process. But the intent of an employee turns into intent of the company and Google is legally on the hook.
(There are specific laws where things are different, for example theft requires intent to deprive another / intent to enrich yourself, depending on the country; not just intent to take the item)
No, it's more like standing naked by your front window, then complaining because someone takes a picture from the street. Setting up minimal WiFi encryption on consumer wireless equipment has never been a task requiring a "capable expert."
Of course it is. You have to find how to get into the router, you have to know which encryption to choose, then you have to set up your computers in the same way. All that while avoiding the little snag that as soon as you turn on encryption, your WiFi connection to the router will fail, so if you make the slightest mistake you are stuffed. Unless you have a big box full of stuff including an Ethernet cable.
The magnetic connector was used on deep fryers for a very long time before Apple managed to get a patent on it.
You don't get a patent on the idea that pulling violently on a cable should just unplug the cable instead of throwing the connected device around or damaging it. You get a patent on a non-obvious and new implementation of that idea, so I suppose Apple's implementation is different. I find it interesting that nobody has created their own implementation.
If you really want hassle-free, you would use windows. OSX needs 3rd party apps for everything. OSX is always trying to sell you apps. Windows has lots of great free apps, like NotePad++, but OSX wants you to pay for BBedit. Plus the OSX MS Office is far inferior. Also, it's way harder to fix a mac, always have to deal with permissions problems. For every good thing I like about OSX, I find some bad thing about it too. It's a wash at best. Plus, when I'm working, I don't want to have to stop to look up how to do XYZ on a Mac, when I already know how to do XYZ on windows.
You need to mark your post clearly as being sarcastic, or people might not get it and think you are on drugs or something like that.
No. You're imagining things.
Happened to me once that I got upgraded to a larger monitor, and when I turned it on it was like being physically smacked in the face. It's a long time ago so I can't remember exactly what happened then, but I didn't use that monitor.
So what? What that does prove? That someone (maybe the one who bought the book, maybe not) took this book and shared it??? I still don't see how based on such a funny "watermark" they this could stand in the court. Anyone? Can you prove me wrong?
Are you willing to try it? In a civil court, I'm quite sure that "this is the exact copy of the book that was sold to X" will stand up in court. And if you were found to have that copy, and you are not X, then this will be enough evidence that you have an illegal copy, unless you can get X to testify that they sold it to you.
On the other hand, if you are X and your copy of the book was available for download on the internet, you'd also have to have some pretty good excuse. Saying "I gave only one copy to Y and he swore he would delete it after reading it and I'm really sorry" might be a good enough excuse and put the onus on the other person.
1. Get a copy from a legal user, without their knowledge.
You just went from a little bit of copyright infringement to criminal hacking, and what is called in the UK "perverting the course of justice" by creating false evidence, which is a crime that _will_ be punished with time in jail if you get caught.
"Apple embeds your account information in all songs sold on the store, not just DRM-free songs. Previously it wasn't much of a big deal, since no one could imagine users sharing encrypted, DRMed content. But now that DRM-free music from Apple is on the loose, the hidden data is more significant since it could theoretically be used to trace shared tunes back to the original owner."
It has two effects: It puts stuff into the "Purchased items" folder in iTunes, and it prevents things with the wrong ID to be uploaded to your computer if you use "Upload purchased items from device" by mistake with a friend's iPod or iPhone. I'm assuming it is a mistake, obviously.