Posts by Qux

US eyes speedy reviews for 'green' patents

Miss Anne Elk

Oh, great -- that's _sure_ to improve quality of the patents coming out of a USPTO that's already pretty disconnected from reality. Can I be the first to patent my very own energy-saving device:

"Energy is delivered by a manually controlled electrical power circuit (1) for supplying power to an electrical load (3) requiring electrical power from an electrical outlet comprising an insulating lever (4) which can be actuated by one of several most distal parts of a limb, including but not limited to fingers and toes, present in humans and other vertebrates. The motion of the lever (4) produces positive action to close contacts (2) and to apply power to the load. Arbitrarily large energy savings can be realized by moving lever (4) in the opposite direction, opening contacts (2) and removing power from the load."

Channel 4 raises Bing word-extinction alarm

Microsoft must be so proud...

Wow, with friends like that, who needs enemas?

Microsoft Silverlight - now with hidden Windows bias

Silverlight != cross platform

How can Microsoft have any interest in true cross-platform functionality? While it was critical to tout Silverlight as cross-platform in order to attract developer interest, it's hard to imagine that the actual implementation won't be massively preferential to Windows. It seems to me that it's in Microsoft's interest -- and undoubtedly part of their strategy -- to make Silverlight work as poorly as possible on OSX and Linux.

MS patent looks just like Unix command, critics howl

More like a blind eye

"prior art is in the eye of the beholder"?

Rubbish. My personal experience writing technology patents is that the US patent office is almost _guaranteed_ to overlook any prior art you choose not to identify in the patent application.

Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7

Re: Quit yer moaning

While I have to agree that Karmic Koala lacks the polish of Win 7 or Snow Leopard, there's really no comparison between it and the (clunky, ancient) XP. Frankly, the "free" aspect had little to do with installing UNR on this new netbook (my other machines are Mac$), but a lot to do with the fact that it's quicker, more stable, and easier to use than Win 7. (Getting a "Windows tax" refund from Amazon was just icing on an already tasty cake.)

Nice work, Canonical!

Ubuntu Netbook Remix installed with no hassles and works very nicely on a brand new ASUS 1005HA for the mother-in-law. Much faster, and easier to use than the Win 7 netbook I test-drove. Amazon even refunded me $58 for the pre-installed copy of Windows whose EULA I rejected. If Win 7 is the best that Microsoft can come up with, I'm going to stick with my OSX and Linux boxes.

Nokia sues Apple over iPhone

You gotta pay if you wanna play

So Apple refused to pay for the usual patent license agreement that all the other cellphone manufacturers have with Nokia, eh? Can't see the boys in Cupertino coming out of this one unscathed.

Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on sticks

@Rob

Well, the Merkin rail system is well behind India's in terms of general usefulness. It would be easier to take these Popular Mechanics proposals seriously if the country actually had a functional "steel-wheels-on-rails" system.

Geeks Guide₂ Windows 7

Where's O'Reilly?

I'll wait for "Windows 7 Annoyances" -- that's the one we'll really need.

Mine's the one with the picture of the Star Nosed Mole on the back.

Swissdisk suffers spectacular cloud snafu

"truely world class", eh?

If the quality of the spelling and grammar from customer support is any indication of the level of professionalism they employ elsewhere, I'll stick with my old-fashioned local storage, thanks.

FCC flooded with anti-net neut letters

Getting the agenda out into the open

Wow! There seems to be a bigger sense of entitlement among big business than among the freetards whinging about BitTorrent throttling. Most users are already pissed off enough by their cable companies and telcos that this might just energise the net neutrality campaign -- provided that enough folks can choose between self-serving politician-speak and self-serving business PR.

Malvertisers slapped by Microsoft lawsuits

Just another revenue stream

I'm surprised that MS hasn't actively targeted this revenue stream earlier. After all, when a company with so many lawyers pointedly fails to lock the (security) doors, you've got to figure that they've already got a plan for making money from the scumbags that walk in past the "No Trespassing" signs.

Microsoft $358m patent violation damages tossed

Calendar patent??

I'll be the first to bash Microsoft, but this is really a case of one of those patents that should never have been granted in the first place:

"Outlook's calendaring function infringed on the patent in the way it displays a month's calendar as a grid and then translates the date into an appointment date form"

Lawsuit seeks to tag WGA nagware as spyware

Re: Malware

Yes, WGA is indeed malware.

In our case, WGA disabling our copies of XP didn't even require a change in hardware, simply a row between Microsoft and the Taiwanese manufacturer of our PCs. Microsoft claimed that the manufacturer had paid for the OEM licences at the wrong price for PCs sold in our geographic region, and -- two years on -- retroactively invalidated the product keys on our OEM XP installations.

Our response was simple -- install Linux, and resolve to avoid Microsoft in the future.

Apple nabs 90% of all 'premium PC' dollars

Consumer sales only?

"90 percent of every dollar spent on a PC listing for over $1,000 goes to Cupertino"

Are NDP's figures limited to consumer sales? Given the $1000+ median price of business machines from Dell, HP, and Lenovo, it's hard to believe that this includes business sales (which remains heavily dominated by Windows).

Amazon, Apple dish up $300,000 to 'musical crims'

Such a shame...

...but nobody else was going to pay good money for LOtUSFLOW3R, after all...