Posts by aldude

Boffins whip up SELF-WIRING chip

New?

Erm.... FPGA?

Google lands patent for, um, estimating shipment time

Don't forget...

That the actual protection is defined in claim 1. Which is this:

A method of providing notification of impending delivery of a shipment shipped by a shipper to a shipping address specified by a customer, comprising: periodically querying, by a broker computer system independent of the shipper and a merchant and which enabled the customer to purchase an item contained in the shipment from the merchant, a shipper computer system to obtain status information for the shipment with each query, wherein a periodic query of the shipment computer system comprises: requesting status information from the shipper computer system by providing a shipment identifier of the shipment to the shipper computer system; and receiving status information in response thereto; responsive to status information obtained with a periodic query indicating an estimated delivery date for the shipment, halting, by the broker computer system, the periodic queries and scheduling the restart of periodic queries of the shipper computer system a day prior to the estimated delivery date; restarting, by the broker computer system, periodic queries of the shipper computer system the day prior to the estimated delivery date to obtain updated status information with each query; responsive to updated status information obtained with a periodic query indicating that the shipment is out for delivery to the customer, halting, by the broker computer system, the periodic queries and calculating an estimated delivery time for the shipment based at least in part on the status information; and sending, by the broker computer system, an electronic message including the estimated delivery time to the customer.

So, not such a simple patent after all!

Android passes iPhone in mobile ad race

Misleading numbers

Don't forget that they're lumping all the iPhones and iTouches into two respective groups - so the "iPhone" is really the iPhone 1G, 3G, 3GS and 4G all together, which isn't really a good basis for comparing the numbers with all the separate Android devices.

Microsoft's FUD goes mobile

It's OK

In before the anti-MS and anti-patent nutters, hopefully:

This is acceptable practice - MS have patents that are probably infringed by the Android OS, so they're just licensing them to companies who want to use the technology. What's wrong with that?

People ought to be grateful that MS didn't just bring out an injunction against use of Android at all!

DARPA, Microsoft, Lockheed team up to reinvent TCP/IP

Rant, rant, rant.....

I wanted to get in before the usual anti-MS idiots spout their usual rubbish, but it looks like 11 idiots have got here already. Ho hum....

Microsoft admits to Halo 3: ODST 'issues'

First!!!!!!!!!

No problems here!

The vocal minority again no doubt........

Troll blockers take Microsoft SGI patents

@Destroy All Monsters

MS just sold the patents to the highest bidder, not caring who they were. I don't think that's unethical, that's just meeting the desires of the shareholders. Anybody who says MS is unethical or has done wrong here is just an ill-informed anti-MS sheep.

Also, the $3.5-5bn figure seems a bit high - millions is probably more like it.

Microsoft can still sell Word

@seanj

Yes, yes.... let me just adjust your tinfoil hat.

The fact is, an injunction should only be used in exceptional circumstances where there would otherwise be irreparable damage. That's not the case here, as if i4i win the appeal, the damages would just be a bit greater, hence the injunction is not needed. MS should never have been given the injunction in the first place.

Windows 7 to push up netbook prices

@Joe Montana

Surely the updated netbooks with dual-core processors and upgraded chipsets plus the new version of Windows will be as powerful as those laptops that you speak of? So really, a powerful netbook shouldn't be called a netbook at all.

EC rejects Microsoft's browser promises

EC = fail

It's time for the EC to drop this crap - people have a choice of browser, aren't they freely downloadable on the internet (using IE)? If people don't bother to do that, surely that's the fault of the alternative browser makers for not punting their benefits (if any) well enough?

Offering a choice of browser with Win 7 is daft - a load of out of date browsers sound like a security nightmare, and surely the list will only be a selection of the range of browsers out there, so someone else will soon kick up a fuss.

Finally, whatever daft behaviour should be imposed on other distributions such as OS X and Linux - one rule for all is only fair.

IE for Linux FTW!

Official next-gen PlayStation Portable details leaked

Launch probably not "ruined"

Launch probably not "ruined" as I suspect leaks like this are often done deliberately to increase publicity and hype before the actual official "launch".

That's one ugly piece of kit, though.

Microsoft's Live Search to morph into Bing?

Excellent

Excellent - we could do with some Google competition.

(Also, just to get the ANTI-MS BS in early: anything MS is evil, Live Search sux, M$, rant, foam...)

Microsoft talks open-source love amid TomTom Linux 'war'

Linux

You can bet that Linux infringes many, many MS patents and plenty of them that are valid. MS is holding off taking any action because it would be a PR disaster and the Linux community doesn't have that much money anyway. I expect that if/when Linux becomes more prevalent and MS loses a lot of market share then litigation will probably rear it's ugly head. Makes sound business sense to me, no matter what you think of the moral side of things.

Of course, Linux won't increase its market share much until it's made about 100 times easier to use...

/ducks

/puts on flame retardant suit

IE8 for Windows 7 beta in 'reliability update'

No probs here

I must be one of those lucky 90% of customers - no crashes on IE8 for me so far. A few weird bugs in Win 7 but nothing too serious. Love it so far!

Mozilla Google relations strained by Chrome

@Ian Davies

Way to get some MS hate into the comments of an article that's predominantly not about MS!

Inside Microsoft's 'New Xbox Experience'

Like it

I quite like the new interface. I'm not fussed about avatars but you can always just ignore them. However, the whole thing looks a lot better and feels a lot faster and smoother.

The HDD install feature is absolute genius. Well done MS for introducing this. I picked up a 120GB HDD for £89 yesterday, which is a bit steep but, well, what are you going to do?!

Xbox 360 nears 25m global sales mark

Re: The big question however..

Probably very few are replacement units. The retailer is unlikely to sit on them or throw them in the bin, likely they go straight back to MS. I would guess that not even MS can spin the figures so that returned units are "sold" units.

EPO to give definitive ruling on software patents

Good idea

Finally - the EPO approach has been changing in various ways over the years, so this should hopefully provide a definitive answer to what the EPO's opinion is on the issue.

Then the "free software" movement can get down to ripping it apart. Instead of having to fit their own point of view to various different scenarios.

Oh, and trade secrets usually don't work for protecting software - software is easy enough to reverse engineer using legions of pasty programming thralls, and so the only way to keep it a "trade secret" is to not release it in the first place. Not good business practice!

Apricot drops 'too complicated' Linux from netbook line

Sigh...

I jumped into this comments thread hoping that the usual anti-MS crap would be avoided this time ... now I realise how silly I was, as I get just that - ill-thought-through anti-MS crap from nearly all of the posters above.

Remember that Apricot is trying to produce a mass-market product, i.e. a market that is wider than just a bunch of IT geeks and fanatics. If you gave a Linux one to my parents, for example, they would not have a clue how to use it. It's a simple fact that people find Win XP much, much easier to use and there you go, that's why Apricot went for it. Good on them for braving the wrath of the vocal minority (most of which appear to have posted in this comments section already) for dropping a product that would have cost them dear in support costs.

MS roll out exploit prediction with Patch Tuesday

@A better solution

Not better for me - Installed Linux a while back and it's a complicated mess. Also, not sure how you get an improvement in stability, Win XP has never crashed in the many years that I've been using it (I use it every single day). Perhaps Linux is more robust against misuse by clueless fanbois?

I for one am pleased that there will soon be 4 fewer critical vulns in XP!

Ruling makes it easier to get software patents in the UK

re: re: Seems sensible

Not sure I agree with this comment. How can a way of accessing DLLs be a "mathematical solution"? No maths in there.

I was merely referring to the fact that CoA decisions are binding but the UK patent office was not following these decisions and instead following an incorrect interpretation of the A/M decision - behaviour that is in fact illegal as CoA decisions are law. This most recent CoA decision just returns the behaviour to what it was before, or should do.

As for most of the other comments - posters seem to start of with the view that "there shouldn't be software patents" and look for reasons to support this, rather than taking a more neutral view on the issues. Patents work to protect investment by companies and copyright is clearly insufficient protection where your new and clever software-implemented invention is quite a simple one, or where a new program can be written by a competitor that does the same thing and thus avoiding copyright.

Seems sensible

This is a sensible decision by the Court of Appeal. For some time, the UK Patent Office has used an incorrect interpretation of the Aerotel/Macrossan decision which contradicted earlier CoA decisions. This latest decision merely returns the situation to where it was before the whole Aerotel/Macrossan mess.

US satellite returns first hi-res snap

Re: High Res... ?

It is probably lower resolution than what's available - but that's taken using cameras in aeroplanes, which is slow, expensive etc. and therefore only available in a limited area and sometimes a couple of years out of date, if not more.

At least with a satellite the images may cover a larger area and get updated more frequently. At least, there's the hope...

Apple's secret iPhone app blacklist

@Adam Starkey...

... sounds like a faboy to me.

Here's a good example: MS was apparently so evil for forcing users to use perfectly good software like IE and WMP that they were even forced by the courts to release a version of Windows XP that didn't include WMP.

On the other hand, Apple forces everyone (at least, everyone who isn't a techie and a good deal more who are) to use iTunes and a bunch of other software, and apparently this is perfectly acceptable.

Paris, cos I feel as confused by this as she presumably does about everything.

Dell files patent office application for 'cloud computing'

Massive errors

Fools above who comment on what they don't understand...

Dell's application is for a Trademark - i.e. the words "cloud computing" to be used to identify a brand, much like the way that "Dell" and "The Register" are registered and used as such.

Dell are NOT trying to patent cloud computing - at least not with the information located in this news story.

Also, I'm sure El Reg has noticed that the Trademark registration was filed five days BEFORE cloud computing was used in the referenced Reg story...