* Posts by GavinL

16 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Jan 2008

Sorry, Qualcomm, Apple – your patents don't scare us

GavinL

Patents

I really don't get the patent argument for technologies embedded inside the chips sometimes.

If I buy a computer with an AMD cpu that contains IBM or Intel patents, I expect that AMD are responsible for any license payments, not the manufacturer of the computer system. Therefore then the manufacturer of a modem chip that implements the 4G signal (whether that is a stand alone chip or part of a SoC) should be responsible for payment based on the price of the chip, not the company that puts that chip in a phone.

If I build a small IoT sensor that uses chips that include patented technologies, how would I know if any relevant licenses had been paid? and should I be liable if they were not, having bought the chip in good faith?

Motorola, Samsung smash Apple's touchscreen patent claim

GavinL
Stop

Patents

First up, I like Apple kit, but this whole patent thing is stupid beyond belief.

Patents are for thing that do things, not designs. Designs are protected by copyright.

Corners and this "scroll bounce" thing are design elements and should be covered by copyright and not a patent.

The patents for multi-touch should cover how the technology works eg how you detect the multiple touches and how they are presented to the OS not what you do with them in the UI.

The sooner all sides involved and the various patent offices start rejecting applications for how something looks the better.

Patents should protect people that invent, not design. You can not invent a corner, a bounce, or a colour.

This is why you can not patent a business process in the UK.

/Rant

Satnav blunders blamed for £200m damages

GavinL

Re: map costs

My Tom Tom maps for the car (Built into my Megane) cost £45 for the year, more than a map book but a lot less than the £300 pounds for my previous Laguna, and that if there were any.

And Stoke is the Arse-end of the A50

Grand Theft Auto V trailer drives onto interweb

GavinL

Lets hope they do a better job on the PC than the last attempt.

I enjoyed playing it but the bugs and slow performance on a reasonably quick machine just made me get frustrated with it and stopped before the end.

'iTunes in the Cloud' has arrived in iTunes 10.5 update

GavinL

Now working in the UK.

It wasn't working last night following the update but is this morning.

Game gears up for Mac OS X Lion release with... Panther

GavinL

Stupid Title

You have never been able to buy a "full" version of OSX, they have always been upgrades.

The full license is only available with a new Mac.

This is just normal Game pricing.

Aussie retailer accuses UK shops of HDMI 'scam'

GavinL

Cheap Audio cables

Some years ago an audiophile collegue of mind ran some tests with phono interconnects comparing "cheap, included in the box", £30 hand made by local hifi store, £60 leads and some home made leads using cheap 32/07 multistrand patch wire twisted together with cheap but solid gold plated connectors total cost about £7.

In blind tests against a number of friends the home made cables won with the £30 ones in second.

The HDMI to DVI cable I needed to go between my V+ and my TV was less than £5 from Amazon.

PA Audio cables, I make myself or oder in bulk from companies like VanDamm

The quality of the cable and therefore the cost needed for any job is proportional to the frequency and distance involed.

When working in SatComms we had £200 2M cables because at 14GHz, anything less the attenuation was too great., even these had a loss of about 5db/m

Gavin

Praying for meltdown: The media and the nukes

GavinL
Thumb Up

Radio4

This morning Radio4 had someone on (can't remember his name) that basically said that we were stupid for worrying about the radiation levels and that they insignificant in the grand sceame of things.

Finally some sence on the BBC.

Oz filmmaker to flog virgins for TV doco

GavinL
Paris Hilton

GTA4

And how long before GTA4s "America's next top hooker" is made real.

'Negatively strange' antihypermatter made out of gold

GavinL

My head hurts

This makes standard quantum physics look simple.

Apple Store down - new cultware coming?

GavinL

Store Open

The store is back up,

New mini, macbook and iMacs with even bigger screens.

'Get cameraphones out of nurseries' plea

GavinL
Thumb Down

CRB

I assume that the person at the centre of this had passed a CRB check which proves the governments obsession with anyone that works with children has one proves nothing.

How long before the government uses this case to include all known associates n the CRB check as they do for some levels of security clearance.

Also banning something twice does not make it any less likely to happen.

Glasgow unbans Life of Brian

GavinL
Thumb Up

Church Youth Group

I have shown this film to a number of church youth groups, one because it is very funny and not blasphemous at all, and two to teach teenagers to make their own minds up about what is offensive or not.

I don't know anyone, having seen the film has problem with it from a religious point of view.

Almost nobody that complained about the film at the time of it's release saw the film for themselves or knew anybody that had.

The whole thing was blown up by the churches and the right wing press.

Unfortunately the daily mail and its readers are still doing this today with them campaigning about people and things they have no experience or knowledge of.

Mattel bemuses gamers with 'brainwave' toy

GavinL
Thumb Down

Even older toy

I had this game but with a space / moon crater theme in the early 80's.

Back then it had two levers, one controlled the fan speed and one the direction of travel.

Virgin Media calls foul on web speed testers

GavinL

Speed tests.

I have no problems with my 10Mbps VM line.

But just to point out the problems with speed tests here are some examples of why you can't always trust them:

Speedtest.net:

Default node for me is Maidenhead, 9764kbps down, 481kbps up, ping 27ms

Paris node, 9788kbps, 477kbps up, ping 85ms.

Surely Paris should be slower?

However the results from thinkbroadband.com (top of the list for google uk only results) only reports 9205kbps.

I have seen tests that report only 3500kbps.

There are so many things that affect link throughput that need to be taken into account that it is impossible to take speed test sites at face value.

Also as links get past the 10Mbps mark the TCP window size becomes increasingly important, especially to servers with high ping times. The default values are wrong on Win2K and XP for high bandwidth / high latency lines. (Don't care about vista).

I used to work with satellite IP links and we used to get complaints from customers about lack of bandwidth when they tested it from a single PC, after talking them through changing the TCP window size they usually shut up as they saw a vast improvement in their figures without us doing anything to the service.

Apple cuts UK iTunes prices

GavinL
Unhappy

Not much of a saving!

The current exchange rate (xe.com) puts 99 cents as 74 pence.

Hardly much of a difference