I'm tired of seeing "the radiation hasn't killed anyone" post from people like you who are either shills or ignoramii.
Oh, you mean shills like a wikipedia article with full links to sources?
It's giving uncountable people cancer right now, people who have taken particles into their body.
And your evidence for this is???? All of the information on estimated number of additional cancer cases and deaths is in the first link I gave on my original post. It's orders of magnitude below the ACTUAL immediate, countable deaths caused by the tsunami.
Direct radiation exposure only ever kills plant workers because of whichever law that is, square-cube, cube-square, math makes my head hurt unfortunately
You don't even know the term for the law you're arguing about? And you refer to people with actual facts and evidence as "ignoramii"?
Indeed, the USA stepped up radiation monitoring of milk and the atmosphere and actually stepped it down after discovering that the numbers were actually off the charts in many places around the country....
Now you're flat out lying. The radiation levels detected in the atmosphere, milk (and/or water) in the US were never "off the charts", nor where they even dangerous for the duration that they were high. The never even approached the FDA DIL limits for safe radiation levels in food and drink. They exceeded the EPA MCL levels, but the EPA MCL are the maximum level can be continuously sustained level for 70 years without exceeding a still very low lifetime dose. Here is more info on the radiation levels in milk and water due to Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Slashdot is not a wise venue for displaying your ignorance. Go learn something about the topic or go elsewhere.
"...Further, the radiation exposure resulting from the accident for most people living in Fukushima is so small compared to background radiation that it may be impossible to find statistically significant evidence of increases in cancer. As of September 2011, there were no deaths or serious injuries due to direct radiation exposures. Cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures cannot be ruled out, but, according to one expert, might be in the order of 100 cases."
Patents are there to protect inventiveness, not hard work.
Creativity, art, knowledge, and engineering can all contain inventiveness. I didn't say anything about "hard work".
Video compression is math.
And you've just repeated the very mistake that I pointed out in my original post. Video compression is NOT just math. Math did not figure out how to remove information while keeping it below perceptible levels. Inventiveness did that, math was simply the tool for implementing it.
Software is not just math. Software is an embodiment of a process. The programmer must reduce the process to a specific set of instructions, which eventually end up as a set of logical operations and data movements/transformations. However, it took a whole lot more than math to create the process.
Saying software is just math is a gross oversimplification of the facts. It's comparable to saying all engineering is just math, writing is just pressing keys, and music is just a series of notes. By that reasoning, digital books, music, pictures, and video are just data, and all the engineering that went into creating any product is just math, therefore, nothing should be patentable or copyrightable. That logic completely ignores the creativity, art, knowledge, assumptions, engineering, and inventiveness that went into creating the product. It's completely flawed logic.
For example, video compression is not just math, you have to determine what data can be removed with the least visual/audible impact, invent new ways to encode that information, invent ways to perform motion compensation for the encoder. For the decoder, you need to invent ways to skip detail or frames when playing back on devices that aren't fast enough to decode and play back all the data in real time, all while keeping the audio and video synchronized. And those playback features will affect the design of the encoder and format of the data stream. That's not just a mathematical process, it involves understanding visual and audio perception, and a bunch of other non-mathematical processes.That's a whole lot more than just math.
So, even though it is eventually reduced to a set of logical and mathematical operations, the software is the embodiment of much more than math. All the work is in converting an idea into a process, then reducing that process to a set of steps that can be executed as a series of mathematical and logical operations that will execute in the necessary time window on the available computer equipment. In some cases, such as the video encoding example above, the process should be patentable, even if it's sole embodiment is in software.
I'm not defending all software patents, many of them are bad patents. But when software is the embodiment of an invention, that invention should be patentable even though there is no "physical" embodiment of the invention. Copyright is not the appropriate type of protection for such an invention, patent is. The specific software might also be covered by copyright, but the novel and useful process embodied in the software should be covered by patent.
And, I would support a shorter term for patents that have only a software embodiment, perhaps 10 years. But what happens when someone creates a dedicated purpose piece of hardware for that process, does it then extend to a 20 year patent? That's something to work out before seriously pursuing shorter terms for software based patents.
Apple does not have a patent on "slide to unlock". Their patent includes several specific features including the moving visual slider under the finger as you slide to unlock. It's a pretty specific patent and one that's easy to work around. It's a REALLY bad example to use as an example of a bad software patent.
To a first approximation, the point seems to be that what we used to be able to do with bi-layer two layer graphene, we can now do with tri-layer three layer graphene. Um, OK, thats nice but not "new"
No, bi-layer graphene can have a band-gap, but it's not controllable, so it can't be used to make a transistor. Conventionally stacked tri-layer graphene has the same problem. What is new is that by changing the way three graphene layers are stacked allows creating a voltage controlled band-gap, which allows for the creation of a transistor.
Signal-to-noise ratio. Even with a massive array of dipoles, trying to pick a signal with less than 10^-9 relative strength is essentially impossible. Assuming 32-bit sampling (which is what they're using in state of the art radio astronomy), you've got only a 4B range, and the signals you're looking for a less than 1/1B of that. There isn't enough remaining sensitivity to differentiate it from noise and interference that are thousands, millions, and billions of times stronger. The cellular signals and other earth based ambient RF will so overpower the signals of interest that the data will be useless.
From Parabolic AntennaApplying the above formula to the 25-meter-diameter antennas used by the VLA and VLBA radio telescopes at a wavelength of 21 cm (1.42 GHz, a common radio astronomy frequency) yields an approximate maximum gain of 140,000 times or about 50 dBi (decibels above the isotropic level).
Long dipole antennas also become more directional so you still need a steering mechanism. And since you'll want to observe a particular part of the sky for a while, it will need to be motion compensated star tracking steering mechanism that will increase the cost. An 8WL (8 x 21cm = 1.84m) dipole which has 8.5dBi gain. Compare the 50dBi of a 25m dish and that's 41.5dBi advantage for the dish (yes, I know, comparing a 1.6m dipole to a 25m dish isn't fair, but those are the number I could find). 41.5 dBi is > 2^13 ~ 10,000 times the gain on the 25m dish. Plus, the dish has much better rejection of signals arriving from other directions.
As you noted, 21cm (1.42GHz) is a common radioastronomy frequency. Cellular phones operate at 800-900MHz and 1700-2150MHz, with new frequencies added at 700-800MHz and 2500-2700MHz, all of which bracket 1.42GHz within 1/2 wave length in either direction. Therefore, any antenna with good gain @ 21cm will also have good gain for cellular signals, which will be many billions of times stronger. You can't do the level of RA SKA is intended to do using cellular towers without adding directional antennas, a steering mechanism, a lot of RF shielding, a lot of computing and storage, a whole lot of cost, and a much bigger maintenance problem. Even if you did all those things, you wouldn't be able to pick up the weakest signals unless you use a dish and can shield the cellular RF from the dish, and now you're back to the original problem.
An area of RF quiet significantly improves the S/N ratio. A directional antenna has a huge advantage in that the antenna itself concentrates signals from the direction of interest, and filters those from other directions. You can get by with one or the other for some signals, but for really weak signals, it still won't be enough, even with an array, there simply won't be enough S/N ratio. When you combine those, you have vastly improved S/N ratio.
You would need to add large, stable, steerable, and extremely sensitive dish near each tower because the cellular antenna and receivers aren't even close to sensitive enough. The RF from the tower would overpower the receiver and electronics for the dish. That's the core of the problem they're trying to address in SA.
So do conductive gloves. You can buy silver coated conductive thread to make your own, or you can buy some already made.
Although they did say "while wearing mittens", not gloves. Mittens are warmer than gloves, but you lose a lot of dexterity with them. You could still do conductive mittens, but they might be cumbersome.
... the plaintiff must prove fair use to escape the verdict (which would still lead to "innocent, but each side pays their own lawyers").
Not necessarily so. In Lenz v Universal Music, the judge ruled that the copyright holder must consider fair use before issuing a takedown notice, which would imply they must do so before filing suit. Because UM didn't do that, Lenz' countersuit for misrepresentation of copyright was allowed to proceed. The logical extension of that is that if the copyright holder either fails to consider fair use, or considers it and incorrectly files suit when it's a clear example of fair use (e.g. they didn't use any due diligence in considering fair use), they may be subject to a countersuit for misrepresentation. If they consider fair use, and it's with not fair use, or it's unclear that it's fair use, then they would have an affirmative defense against a countersuit for misrepresentation.
IANAL, but it's a bit less clear than that. The newspapers contracted with Righthaven to pursue infringement cases on their behalf. However, the newspapers never transferred the copyrights to Righthaven, therefore, Righthaven had no standing AS the plaintiff. However, as a law firm, Righthaven did have the right to file the suits under the direction of or as an agent of the newspapers using the newspaper (copyright holder) as the plaintiff. The contract between Righthaven and the newspapers *could* be construed as direction from the newspaper, or that Righthaven was acting as an agent of the newspaper. If they were acting as an agent of or at the direction of the newspaper, and filed a defective lawsuit which was thrown out for lack of standing, then it *could* be determined that the newspaper is jointly responsible for the legal fees and/or penalties assessed against Righthaven. Whether or not it will go that way is TBD.
US energy consumption in the US in 2008 = 26,560 TWh. Of that, 11,710 TWh (11.71 PWh) was from oil (in 2006 because 2008 figures not given).
Estimate of total geothermal energy that can be extracted worldwide = 35GWe - 2,000GWe (with a 10%-23% conversion efficiency). Assuming the high end 23% was used for the 2,000 GWe estimate, therefore 2000/.23 ~ 8,700 GWt. Assuming 100% uptime for the plants (not possible, but it won't matter), that's 24 * 365.25 * 8,700 GW = 76,264 GWh/t maximum worldwide capacity. The US has 9.83M km2 of surface area, which is ~6.6% of the world land surface (149M km2), and 1.9% of earth's total surface area. Being very optimistic, the US might have access to 10% of that maximum geothermal energy, or 7,626 GWh/t and more realistically somewhere between 2% (1,525 GWh/t) and 5% (3,813 GWh/t) of the highest estimate of worldwide geothermal energy possible. All of those are significantly less than our current oil consumption.
Achieving high rates of geothermal energy extraction also requires use of enhanced geothermal systems which have been shown to trigger significant seismic activity, so it's unlikely we can even replace 10% of our oil consumption with geothermal energy.
The only sustainable/renewable sources that can actually provide all the power we're currently using are solar (*1), wind, and nuclear (*2). Other sources such as hydro, geothermal, wave/tidal/ocean, can supply part of the energy we consume, but all such sources combined can't supply even 25% of current worldwide power consumption, therefore, solar, wind, and nuclear have to be the staples of any sustainable energy plan.
Solar and wind both require installation of 3x-5x average demand because they're intermittent sources and because production varies throughout the year. Both require a higher capacity grid that spans multiple countries (or the globe) because they're intermittent. Solar, wind, and nuclear all require some form of energy storage because they don't react quickly to meet peak demand.
So, we have 3 viable primary sources for sustainable energy, all 3 have some significant issues to address. All require major upgrades to the electricity grid. All have environmental and political concerns to address. All have cost and energy storage issues to address. They can be addressed, and it will take time, money, and commitment.
*1 - I'm including biomass/biofuels in with solar, but because of the land, water, and nutrient requirements, I doubt they can contribute a significant portion (> ~10%) of a sustainable energy plan. They're useful mostly for production of liquid fuels for mobile applications.
*2 - The current nuclear power model (uranium fueled fission) without fuel reprocessing is not sustainable, we'll exhaust the uranium in a few thousand years, and it produces far too much radioactive waste. Sustainable nuclear requires transitioning to primarily thorium fueled breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing, or a breakthrough in fusion.
Becoming the default search engine on a secondary version of another browser with a declining market share. Is MS trying to implode or are they just clueless?
Actually, it's far less relevant today than nine years ago. Gates actually had some focus on the products. Ballmer is focused on the money. M$ is much more applicable today than at any time in their history.
I would love to see the MAFIAA sue Google. Yahoo and MS/Bing would join in with amicus briefs because they know they would be next on the list. While the court case proceeded, there would be LOTS of lobbying dollars getting the law changed.
Which points out one of the flaws of allowing corporations to make campaign contributions and lobby congress. Money should not make law. But for now, that's what we have to deal with, so use it until we can change the system.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm tired of seeing "the radiation hasn't killed anyone" post from people like you who are either shills or ignoramii.
Oh, you mean shills like a wikipedia article with full links to sources?
It's giving uncountable people cancer right now, people who have taken particles into their body.
And your evidence for this is???? All of the information on estimated number of additional cancer cases and deaths is in the first link I gave on my original post. It's orders of magnitude below the ACTUAL immediate, countable deaths caused by the tsunami.
Direct radiation exposure only ever kills plant workers because of whichever law that is, square-cube, cube-square, math makes my head hurt unfortunately
You don't even know the term for the law you're arguing about? And you refer to people with actual facts and evidence as "ignoramii"?
Indeed, the USA stepped up radiation monitoring of milk and the atmosphere and actually stepped it down after discovering that the numbers were actually off the charts in many places around the country....
Now you're flat out lying. The radiation levels detected in the atmosphere, milk (and/or water) in the US were never "off the charts", nor where they even dangerous for the duration that they were high. The never even approached the FDA DIL limits for safe radiation levels in food and drink. They exceeded the EPA MCL levels, but the EPA MCL are the maximum level can be continuously sustained level for 70 years without exceeding a still very low lifetime dose. Here is more info on the radiation levels in milk and water due to Fukushima Dai-ichi.
Slashdot is not a wise venue for displaying your ignorance. Go learn something about the topic or go elsewhere.
P.S. the second link in my original post was corrupted. Here's the correct link
That is absolutely not what I said. Re-read my comment until you understand it.
The radiation hasn't killed anyone.
"...Further, the radiation exposure resulting from the accident for most people living in Fukushima is so small compared to background radiation that it may be impossible to find statistically significant evidence of increases in cancer.
As of September 2011, there were no deaths or serious injuries due to direct radiation exposures. Cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures cannot be ruled out, but, according to one expert, might be in the order of 100 cases."
While the tsunami killed over 15,800.
That has absolutely nothing to do with anything I said.
Then go protest the patent on prior art claims. But don't try to claim Apple has a patent on "slide to unlock", that's false.
Patents are there to protect inventiveness, not hard work.
Creativity, art, knowledge, and engineering can all contain inventiveness. I didn't say anything about "hard work".
Video compression is math.
And you've just repeated the very mistake that I pointed out in my original post. Video compression is NOT just math. Math did not figure out how to remove information while keeping it below perceptible levels. Inventiveness did that, math was simply the tool for implementing it.
Software is not just math. Software is an embodiment of a process. The programmer must reduce the process to a specific set of instructions, which eventually end up as a set of logical operations and data movements/transformations. However, it took a whole lot more than math to create the process.
Saying software is just math is a gross oversimplification of the facts. It's comparable to saying all engineering is just math, writing is just pressing keys, and music is just a series of notes. By that reasoning, digital books, music, pictures, and video are just data, and all the engineering that went into creating any product is just math, therefore, nothing should be patentable or copyrightable. That logic completely ignores the creativity, art, knowledge, assumptions, engineering, and inventiveness that went into creating the product. It's completely flawed logic.
For example, video compression is not just math, you have to determine what data can be removed with the least visual/audible impact, invent new ways to encode that information, invent ways to perform motion compensation for the encoder. For the decoder, you need to invent ways to skip detail or frames when playing back on devices that aren't fast enough to decode and play back all the data in real time, all while keeping the audio and video synchronized. And those playback features will affect the design of the encoder and format of the data stream. That's not just a mathematical process, it involves understanding visual and audio perception, and a bunch of other non-mathematical processes.That's a whole lot more than just math.
So, even though it is eventually reduced to a set of logical and mathematical operations, the software is the embodiment of much more than math. All the work is in converting an idea into a process, then reducing that process to a set of steps that can be executed as a series of mathematical and logical operations that will execute in the necessary time window on the available computer equipment. In some cases, such as the video encoding example above, the process should be patentable, even if it's sole embodiment is in software.
I'm not defending all software patents, many of them are bad patents. But when software is the embodiment of an invention, that invention should be patentable even though there is no "physical" embodiment of the invention. Copyright is not the appropriate type of protection for such an invention, patent is. The specific software might also be covered by copyright, but the novel and useful process embodied in the software should be covered by patent.
And, I would support a shorter term for patents that have only a software embodiment, perhaps 10 years. But what happens when someone creates a dedicated purpose piece of hardware for that process, does it then extend to a 20 year patent? That's something to work out before seriously pursuing shorter terms for software based patents.
Apple does not have a patent on "slide to unlock". Their patent includes several specific features including the moving visual slider under the finger as you slide to unlock. It's a pretty specific patent and one that's easy to work around. It's a REALLY bad example to use as an example of a bad software patent.
To a first approximation, the point seems to be that what we used to be able to do with bi-layer two layer graphene, we can now do with tri-layer three layer graphene. Um, OK, thats nice but not "new"
No, bi-layer graphene can have a band-gap, but it's not controllable, so it can't be used to make a transistor. Conventionally stacked tri-layer graphene has the same problem. What is new is that by changing the way three graphene layers are stacked allows creating a voltage controlled band-gap, which allows for the creation of a transistor.
Signal-to-noise ratio. Even with a massive array of dipoles, trying to pick a signal with less than 10^-9 relative strength is essentially impossible. Assuming 32-bit sampling (which is what they're using in state of the art radio astronomy), you've got only a 4B range, and the signals you're looking for a less than 1/1B of that. There isn't enough remaining sensitivity to differentiate it from noise and interference that are thousands, millions, and billions of times stronger. The cellular signals and other earth based ambient RF will so overpower the signals of interest that the data will be useless.
From Parabolic Antenna Applying the above formula to the 25-meter-diameter antennas used by the VLA and VLBA radio telescopes at a wavelength of 21 cm (1.42 GHz, a common radio astronomy frequency) yields an approximate maximum gain of 140,000 times or about 50 dBi (decibels above the isotropic level).
Long dipole antennas also become more directional so you still need a steering mechanism. And since you'll want to observe a particular part of the sky for a while, it will need to be motion compensated star tracking steering mechanism that will increase the cost. An 8WL (8 x 21cm = 1.84m) dipole which has 8.5dBi gain. Compare the 50dBi of a 25m dish and that's 41.5dBi advantage for the dish (yes, I know, comparing a 1.6m dipole to a 25m dish isn't fair, but those are the number I could find). 41.5 dBi is > 2^13 ~ 10,000 times the gain on the 25m dish. Plus, the dish has much better rejection of signals arriving from other directions.
As you noted, 21cm (1.42GHz) is a common radioastronomy frequency. Cellular phones operate at 800-900MHz and 1700-2150MHz, with new frequencies added at 700-800MHz and 2500-2700MHz, all of which bracket 1.42GHz within 1/2 wave length in either direction. Therefore, any antenna with good gain @ 21cm will also have good gain for cellular signals, which will be many billions of times stronger. You can't do the level of RA SKA is intended to do using cellular towers without adding directional antennas, a steering mechanism, a lot of RF shielding, a lot of computing and storage, a whole lot of cost, and a much bigger maintenance problem. Even if you did all those things, you wouldn't be able to pick up the weakest signals unless you use a dish and can shield the cellular RF from the dish, and now you're back to the original problem.
An area of RF quiet significantly improves the S/N ratio. A directional antenna has a huge advantage in that the antenna itself concentrates signals from the direction of interest, and filters those from other directions. You can get by with one or the other for some signals, but for really weak signals, it still won't be enough, even with an array, there simply won't be enough S/N ratio. When you combine those, you have vastly improved S/N ratio.
You would need to add large, stable, steerable, and extremely sensitive dish near each tower because the cellular antenna and receivers aren't even close to sensitive enough. The RF from the tower would overpower the receiver and electronics for the dish. That's the core of the problem they're trying to address in SA.
Your glove manufacturer didn't make your gloves conductive? That does sound like a defect.
So do conductive gloves. You can buy silver coated conductive thread to make your own, or you can buy some already made.
Although they did say "while wearing mittens", not gloves. Mittens are warmer than gloves, but you lose a lot of dexterity with them. You could still do conductive mittens, but they might be cumbersome.
If I had mod points (or the copyrights), I would mod you up and/or make you richer.
... the plaintiff must prove fair use to escape the verdict (which would still lead to "innocent, but each side pays their own lawyers").
Not necessarily so. In Lenz v Universal Music, the judge ruled that the copyright holder must consider fair use before issuing a takedown notice, which would imply they must do so before filing suit. Because UM didn't do that, Lenz' countersuit for misrepresentation of copyright was allowed to proceed. The logical extension of that is that if the copyright holder either fails to consider fair use, or considers it and incorrectly files suit when it's a clear example of fair use (e.g. they didn't use any due diligence in considering fair use), they may be subject to a countersuit for misrepresentation. If they consider fair use, and it's with not fair use, or it's unclear that it's fair use, then they would have an affirmative defense against a countersuit for misrepresentation.
Pierce the corporate/LLC veil (they engaged in illegal activity) and go after the principals personal assets.
IANAL, but it's a bit less clear than that. The newspapers contracted with Righthaven to pursue infringement cases on their behalf. However, the newspapers never transferred the copyrights to Righthaven, therefore, Righthaven had no standing AS the plaintiff. However, as a law firm, Righthaven did have the right to file the suits under the direction of or as an agent of the newspapers using the newspaper (copyright holder) as the plaintiff. The contract between Righthaven and the newspapers *could* be construed as direction from the newspaper, or that Righthaven was acting as an agent of the newspaper. If they were acting as an agent of or at the direction of the newspaper, and filed a defective lawsuit which was thrown out for lack of standing, then it *could* be determined that the newspaper is jointly responsible for the legal fees and/or penalties assessed against Righthaven. Whether or not it will go that way is TBD.
...the smell of trolls roasting on an open fire?
I pick #2 & 3. Don't need any political party.
US energy consumption in the US in 2008 = 26,560 TWh. Of that, 11,710 TWh (11.71 PWh) was from oil (in 2006 because 2008 figures not given).
Estimate of total geothermal energy that can be extracted worldwide = 35GWe - 2,000GWe (with a 10%-23% conversion efficiency). Assuming the high end 23% was used for the 2,000 GWe estimate, therefore 2000/.23 ~ 8,700 GWt. Assuming 100% uptime for the plants (not possible, but it won't matter), that's 24 * 365.25 * 8,700 GW = 76,264 GWh/t maximum worldwide capacity. The US has 9.83M km2 of surface area, which is ~6.6% of the world land surface (149M km2), and 1.9% of earth's total surface area. Being very optimistic, the US might have access to 10% of that maximum geothermal energy, or 7,626 GWh/t and more realistically somewhere between 2% (1,525 GWh/t) and 5% (3,813 GWh/t) of the highest estimate of worldwide geothermal energy possible. All of those are significantly less than our current oil consumption.
Achieving high rates of geothermal energy extraction also requires use of enhanced geothermal systems which have been shown to trigger significant seismic activity, so it's unlikely we can even replace 10% of our oil consumption with geothermal energy.
The only sustainable/renewable sources that can actually provide all the power we're currently using are solar (*1), wind, and nuclear (*2). Other sources such as hydro, geothermal, wave/tidal/ocean, can supply part of the energy we consume, but all such sources combined can't supply even 25% of current worldwide power consumption, therefore, solar, wind, and nuclear have to be the staples of any sustainable energy plan.
Solar and wind both require installation of 3x-5x average demand because they're intermittent sources and because production varies throughout the year. Both require a higher capacity grid that spans multiple countries (or the globe) because they're intermittent. Solar, wind, and nuclear all require some form of energy storage because they don't react quickly to meet peak demand.
So, we have 3 viable primary sources for sustainable energy, all 3 have some significant issues to address. All require major upgrades to the electricity grid. All have environmental and political concerns to address. All have cost and energy storage issues to address. They can be addressed, and it will take time, money, and commitment.
*1 - I'm including biomass/biofuels in with solar, but because of the land, water, and nutrient requirements, I doubt they can contribute a significant portion (> ~10%) of a sustainable energy plan. They're useful mostly for production of liquid fuels for mobile applications.
*2 - The current nuclear power model (uranium fueled fission) without fuel reprocessing is not sustainable, we'll exhaust the uranium in a few thousand years, and it produces far too much radioactive waste. Sustainable nuclear requires transitioning to primarily thorium fueled breeder reactors with fuel reprocessing, or a breakthrough in fusion.
Egregiously Purloining Anyone's Rights by Arbitrarily Stifling Information Transfer for Enterprises.
Becoming the default search engine on a secondary version of another browser with a declining market share. Is MS trying to implode or are they just clueless?
Actually, it's far less relevant today than nine years ago. Gates actually had some focus on the products. Ballmer is focused on the money. M$ is much more applicable today than at any time in their history.
I would love to see the MAFIAA sue Google. Yahoo and MS/Bing would join in with amicus briefs because they know they would be next on the list. While the court case proceeded, there would be LOTS of lobbying dollars getting the law changed.
Which points out one of the flaws of allowing corporations to make campaign contributions and lobby congress. Money should not make law. But for now, that's what we have to deal with, so use it until we can change the system.
Two major factors:
1. Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop was a senior exec for M$ prior being hired as Nokia's CEO
2. M$ offered ~ $1B in incentives to Nokia.