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User: zrelativity

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  1. misses size & location, distribution of compan on Tech's Highest-Paid Engineers Are At Juniper · · Score: 3, Informative
    Many of those companies are based in the Silicon Valley (particularly Santa Clara, North San Jose, Sunnyvale and Mountain View) where your cost of living is very high.

    If you were in Washington State or Texas (Dallas), your cost of living maybe only half of what it is Silicon Valley. When I was living in Dallas, I was paying less than half of what I now pay for an apartment in San Jose. There is state tax too. Juniper is relatively small.

    What was surprising to me was to see Walmart, but I don't know their Software Engineering group size or location.

  2. Re:Come again? on Jury Finds Google Guilty of Standards-Essential Patents Abuse Against MS · · Score: 1
    This is my simple version:

    Motorola/Google demands $4B for use of use of some H.264 & Wifi patents by MSFT in XBOX and other devices

    MSFT disagrees, will pay the license but at RAND rate since Motorola participated in the standards

    The case goes to court in Seattle to determine what the rate should be

    Motorola sues MSFT in Germany, trying to get an injunction to prevent XBOX sale in Germany.

    Seattle court says the case is already in review and German court cannot make a judgement

    Seatle court determines that the license should be just over $1M

    MSFT sues Motorola/Google for breach of contract

    Jury agrees with MSFT and gives them $14M

  3. I am sure a loaded gun was not held at the head of Motorola to participitate in the various Standards Bodies. Large corps such as Motorola/Google, MS, Apple, Sony, Sansung etc participate in these standards and want their IP included is to direct and leverage to develop products earlier than their competitors, and somethings that would interoperate with other (competing) products.

    Rules are very simple, you disclose the IP you hold in the area, agree to RAND if you participate in creating the standards.

  4. Re: Against or because of? on Google Buys Foxconn Patents For Head-Mounted Tech · · Score: 2
    Here is the list of 300 companies with numbers of patents granted in 2012. Google is now #23, up nearly 60% from last year with 1151 patents granted in 2012.

    http://www.ipo.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Top-300_6.23.13.pdf[ipo.org]

  5. Re:Why? on Don't Fly During Ramadan · · Score: 2
    But even then their action does not make sense, because the subject in this case is not a muslim. His name would suggest that he is a Hindu Bengali from west Bengal, India. So the logic being employed is

    brown skinned -> some muslim are brown skinned -> "there are muslim terrorists" -> "all muslims are terrorists" -> "this guy might be a muslim! Break down his door!"

    there would appear to be some major flow in their passenger profiling

  6. Re:Proud? on Don't Fly During Ramadan · · Score: 1

    Aditya Mukerjee is certainly not a Muslin or Arab name. Its a Hindu Bengali name, most probably from West Bengal, India.

  7. Re:1 EUR == 1 USD?!?! on PS4 Launch Date: November 15th · · Score: 1

    try again ;-)

  8. Re:1 EUR == 1 USD?!?! on PS4 Launch Date: November 15th · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are other more reasonable reasons why hardware may cost more in the EU than USA. For example, in USA, hardware typically only comes with a 6 months warranty. In Europe, your consumer protection is much much better; for example, it is not limited to month or even 1 year, but can be over a reasonable lifetime of the product, which maybe 3-4 years. Many consumer do not understand this and take out additional insurance covers which are usually unnecessary.

  9. Re:Spin it all you like guys ... on Microsoft Reputation Manager's Guide To Xbox One · · Score: -1, Troll
    I certainly will be buying a XBOXONE. I think the price difference for having the Kinect will pay off very well. Because this is integral part of the device, it will have applications developed using its capabilities. It will enhance and enable many new genre of games.

    Also, the 24h license check can work out great for me (its not always internet connected). If this allows me to share my library, loan games with my kids and friends who live across the country - this is great feature. This DRM is way more friendly than what you find with Apple store, Google play or indeed Steam (whom many in this forum will also praise).

  10. Re:ok on Montreal Union Wants a Camera On Every Policeman's Uniform · · Score: 5, Insightful
    OK, like in UK, where surveillance cameras suddenly fail to operate when its convenient to the police.

    I'm all for the video cameras on the police, provide the camera is "sealed" from tampering and the police are compelled to produce the video evidence else the prosecution fails and the courts charges the police for contempt.

  11. Why would Intel care on Intel Haswell CPUs Debut, Put To the Test · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Why would Intel care about raw CPU performance. They have no competition from AMD in CPU performance. The GPU performance may not be as good as A10, but it has improved and that's what matters for Intel.

    Intel for a little while has correctly perceived that their risk to business is from shift in computing to mobile devices and they are addressing this issue. One thing Intel has always been very good at, and I'm a great admirer of them for that, when they perceive a risk, they are extremely good at steering their giant ship very rapidly into the headwind and tackle that threat. Their process technology lead also gives them a huge advantage.

    Over the next couple of years, the battle front will be the mobile and server devices, the desktop processors will become a second class citizen. Maybe this will give some lifeline to AMD, but AMD is so far behind on performance.

  12. Re:Everything was fine yesterday.... on Was Google's Motorola Mobility Acquisition a Mistake? · · Score: 1

    I think a lot of people at the time of the purchase did raise that the price was too high. From other sources, who were also interested in the Motorola IP, the IP valuation I was hearing was ~$3B. Was the rest of Motorola worth $9B?

  13. How does it affect earlier cases on Supreme Court Upholds First Sale Doctrine · · Score: 1
    I think the consequence of this decision will be two fold: (1) the cost of books overseas may go up significantly, and (2) books will be more localized (ie some portions translated to local language - already happens for Chinese market, but India teaching is in English).

    But for me, more importantly whether this changes the earlier cases, where retailers such as Costco could not buy in the grey market and resale them in the US (Omega watches).

  14. Re:I'm only surprised they bothered to label it on China Using 'State Secrets' Label To Hide Pollution · · Score: 1

    Just like Marx wrote, isn't it? He was all for using opium to delude the masses. And what country went to war to avoid opium? China.

    Can you post a reference to this "Marx quote"? You are either trolling or ignorant AC.

  15. Re:And in other news... on Raspberry Pi's Eben Upton: "Programming Will Make You a Better Doctor" · · Score: 1

    Physics should be mandatory for a doctor... My son probably would have preferred a joint Physics/Medicine degree, rather than studying Medicine at undergrad, but the workload is really heavy for a medic student as it is.

  16. Re:Err... on Tesla Motors Loses Appeal Against BBC's Top Gear · · Score: 1

    Hey, Top Gear was once upon a time a motor show - before anyone who actually knew about cars left to form Fifth Gear. Jeremy Clarkson is an ASSHOLE who some how thinks its cool to mock people, to denigrate other cultures, which his puny brain has no ability to comprehend. Its a comedy show or the equivalent of the Sun tabloid on the BBC with a few exotic cars as the page 3 model.

  17. Re:disposable tech on Surface Pro: 'Virtually Unrepairable' · · Score: 1
    Being able to repair and able to recycle need not correlate.

    With increasing level of integration, and cramming so many devices into such small packages, means that you need very specialized manufacturing process.

  18. How is this really different on Startup Offers Pay-Per-Page E-Books · · Score: 0
    One the advantage of the micropayment system being touted here is that if you don't like a book, your upfront payment is lower.

    But on Amazon and others, for many books you can get a preview format, ie the first couple of chapters of the book, for free. If you like it, then purchase the book.

    Also, this type of payment system would only work for books which are essentially linear or self contained in small sections.

  19. Re:What happems on In a Symbolic Shift, IBM's India Workforce Likely Exceeds That In US · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have never really understood why many Americans are so hostile to unionization. There appears to be decades of brainwashing in action and mythos regarding correlation between hardwork and financial success.

  20. Re:What happems on In a Symbolic Shift, IBM's India Workforce Likely Exceeds That In US · · Score: 1
    Which computers do IBM today sell into the consumer market?

    IBM is primarily a service company today, and the hardware they are selling is to the corporate and govt market,

  21. Re:What happems on In a Symbolic Shift, IBM's India Workforce Likely Exceeds That In US · · Score: 1
    Because there will always be some one capable and willing to do the work for less.

    You only have to hang around /. and see attitude of multitude of people to unionized workforce.

  22. Re:Windows 8 is a fail on Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a $248 Win8 PC. · · Score: 1

    Neither do I need to using Win7 and Win8. I also have a 3 year old Macbook Pro running Mac OSX Lion. Its now giving me problem, the Finder will often freeze, force close and relaunch does not work and I'm forced to reboot. This almost happening couple of times a week. My Lenovo T420S laptop (win7) has not been rebooted in over a month, I just close the lid, hibernates and restarts without issue.

  23. Re:New sales pitch... on Samsung: Android's Multitouch Not As Good As Apple's · · Score: 1
    Hey this is a great sales pitch for RIM and Nokia

    Samsung says their phone are Crap, Apple says they are not any better, but our are better!

  24. what could possibly go wrong on Google Extends Patent Search To Prior Art · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Prior arts are patents also, and they may not have expired.

    Let Google engineers go do Prior Art Search, or lookup prior patents and start developing in those area.

    Even better is that Google keep a history of such search results performed by their engineers.

    When they are sued for patent infringement, and asked to handover the search results, it would be fun to watch.

    As an engineer, the advice I have always received, "Do not do any patent or prior art search". Leave that to the lawyer. Avoid getting tainted. Avoid doing what Samsung been caught doing.

  25. Re:Patent system broken on Victory For Apple In "Patent Trial of the Century," To the Tune of $1 Billion · · Score: 2

    Not good example, about two-thirds of all new cars which have ABS, it is from Bosch (or licensed from Bosch) who hold some of the original patents in this area. So, if looks like often good ideas get adopted and patent holders benefit.