Posts by EvilGav 1

How spreadsheets (nearly) conquered and killed the financial industry

Easier to implement . . .

. . . maybe, but spreadsheets are the bane of every IT persons life, especially ones built by so called experts.

The number of times i've found people altering them, without understanding all the background logic that they've just completely fucked up; the number of times i've seen complex spreadsheets created by someone who does know what they are doing, but leave leaving the entire system unsupported and undocumented.

Speradsheets have their place, don't get me wrong, but the level of inappropriate use is insane in any large organisation. I've seen a spreadsheet written that entirely duplicates MS Project (which we also have available) - the main reason for doing this? The Project Managers didn't know how to use Project.

The list of bad uses far outweighs the number of good uses.

'Mount Doom' rumbling ominously

Re: Theories about why this is happening

I was trying to find the name of the car company that I used, which was super cheap (compared to the major ones like Avis and Hertz), basically it's meant for backpackers, so it's all older cars with high mileage (but clean and run well) for about 1/10 the price - I think I paid NZ$300 for 10 days.

Remember to hire car from Auckland to Wellington, walk on passenger on the ferry and then from Picton to Dunedin. The price for travelling on both North and South islands in the same car goes up dramatically.

And yes, I would encourage anyone to visit NZ, I spent 3 weeks there in 2009 and it was spectacular. Will go back when I have the money, time etc again!!

Windows Phone 8 reboot woe causes outpouring of forum misery

Re: Reboot culture

Having spent more time than I care to mention on 3rd line support, there is a reason for the reboot culture - it tends to "fix" the incident.

If you are genuinely rebooting on the scale you suggest, then your support *should* have been altering an incident to a problem (ITIL standard), since you have an underlying issue that needs to be resolved.

As for other comments about continuous reboots/rebuilds. I rebuilt my PC 2 weeks ago, for the first time since November 2007. It had been running Vista 64bit for all that time, mostly on long stints without rebooting - what had been changed over that time period was the motherboard (wanted a PCI-e 2.1 mobo), the CPU cooler (went from air to water cooled), the soundcard (went from onboard to Asus D2X), the memory (went from 4GB to 8GB), the graphics card (X1950 to 8800GT to 8800GTS to HD5770), the PSU (replaced with a modular supply) and the case (needed more drive bays). All of that done with the same OS install and it was running at almost the same speed at the end as the start (boot-up wise).

To all those who think you need to rebuild every 6 months, learn to build it properly in the first place and that becomes unnecessary.

Facebook: Give us your credit card and pals' addresses as GIFTS

How about no . . .

. . . megalomaniacal yank bastard!!

Pollster predicts mega UK smart TV sales

They get an 'F' ni Statistics

11percent of respondants equates, apparently, to just shy of 6million people wanting a smart TV?

So, population of the UK is 62million, 11million < 16 (according to 2011 census), which means to get their figures they took 11 percent of the remaining population.

Except we have around 26million households in the UK (according to the 2011 census), so they are saying that about 20percent of households intend to buy a smart TV in the next 12 months.

Also 9.5million of those 51million are 65+, a group historically known as not being at the forefront of buying new technology (n.b. *new* technology, i'm well aware of the silver surfer, i'm tech support to my two).

Basically, a first year statistics student should be able to tell them what they've done wrong.

ViewSonic VSD220 22in Android mega tablet

Nice

Wonder what the sensitivity is like though?

Can think of an ideal use for it - as a touchpad for PhotoShop (other graphics programmes also available). Being able to look at the image as you draw on it, rather than the slightly disjointed feel using my Wacom tablet would be fantastic.

Industry in 'denial' as demand for pricey PCs plunges

Re: What's missing?

I'm well aware of console rendering. The 360 renders at 720p and upscales to 1080, the PS3 is a mixture of the same and natively rendered 1080p.

On the contrary, i've seen the absolute best systems around playing the latest games - water cooled monsters running hex core Intel chips at 4.5GHz and triple SLi pushing out insane frame rates and textures. Yes, they are very pretty, but they aren't doing enough differently than 5 years ago.

The only element of my machine that's been upgraded regularly is the graphics card, which makes teh difference - the article is about heavy iron, the CPU side of things, which *hasn't* advanced enough to warrant a mass upgrade.

What's missing?

Consoles.

The huge elephant in the room as to why even gamers aren't updating their PCs regularly.

Along with Windows demanding ever more from a PC, there were the games, demanding ever more performance - whether that be screen resolutions, physics or the plethora of other details.

Unfortunately, 5 years ago, the consoles' latest incarnation came to town. At the time at least on a par with high-end PCs, however that has ceased to be true for several years now. Unfortunately, they are a huge cash generator for games makers.

Add in to that that monitors have stalled at a resolution of 1080p for the same 5 years or so and you get to the bottom of why nothing has moved on.

Games are designed and built for 5 year old hardware, to be displayed at 1080p resolutions.

Nobody is pushing for a performance increase - even the CPUs Intel is producing aren't pushing the envelope. 5 years ago the Q6600 was released, quad core @ 2.4GHz; today's equivalent the 3570K is a quad core running @ 3.4GHz. I know there are other differences, but the big one is that clock cycles in 5 years haven't advanced particularly far and raw computing power today isn't a large enough leap to warrant the expense, so why bother?

Add in to that mix that a lot of gamers have looked over the fence and gone "hang on, why am I paying out £x when I can just get a console for £x/2?" and a lot have jumped ship. Look at the games - 5 years ago games were released to support 64 players online (with Battlefield 2 unofficially supporting 128 with some, at the time, ridiculous hardware requirements), today we're lucky if they support 32 (there are exceptions).

If the big requirements for faster processors have diappeared (e.g. Windows, Games), then why is anyone surprised that there is no market for new, faster processors?

What happened to comics for kids? Hell, what happened to COMICS?

Re: Engaging comic-book-guy mode....

For those Edinburgh residents who know their comics, Deadhead is the place to be - indeed the book shop owner in Black Books is based on the owner of Deadhead.

Intel uncloaks 'highest performance' desktop processor

Re: Nooooooo

Haswell due late Q1/early Q2 2013 (running on the new LGA1150 boards), Ivy-E is due Q3 2013 (expected to be running on X79 LGA2011 boards).

Problem is no-one is really experiencing CPU as a bottle-neck since C2Q came out 4 or 5 years ago and memory is hardly a problem anymore with how cheap it has got (16GB for ~£40).

Will Santa be working overtime to shift Win 8 kit? No. Yes! Maybe

Re: Oh dear @AC 12:56

Shill? Nope, not even slightly.

Unlike you I haven't posted anonymously, feel free to view the posting history on a variety of different topics when I find them interesting.

I, of my own free will and volition, chose to install Windows 8 on my home PC. I get no commendation from anyone for making this comment, nor do I receive any inducement to make this comment or any others I may make.

Oh dear

I see a good portion of the commentards on here haven't actually used Win 8 yet.

Inferior to Windows 7? It's faster on the same hardware. Different, yes; inferior, no.

Inconvenient to use with keyboard and mouse? Errr, why? It has a start screen instead of a start menu (press and release windows key alone, just like all Windows versions since Win 95), which allows for a larger clearer display of all your applications. It's actually more convenient to use than Windows 7, as above it's just different.

Win 8 sucks balls? Well, that's a well thought out argument.

As for an incentive? It's currently £24.99 to buy the download upgrade (to Win 8 Pro no less), cheaper than Windows 7 was offered for and history suggests that'll be for a 3 year lifecycle with all updates thrown in for free, you can even get the Media Centre for free just now as well. That download can be burnt as a stand-alone build disk, rather than as an update disk as well.

Rather than vague arguments as to what's wrong with it, actually state specifically what's wrong with it from your experience and not from what some blogger has told you about it. I and a number of my friends have now upgraded and after the initial niggles of "where the hell have they moved x to this time" (which they did in the move from Win 98 to XP and the move from XP to Vista *and* the move from Vista to 7), it's a very nice OS.

Exactly!!

My score on Windows 8 is 6.8 and that is limited by the main drive (which is still an SSD), the CPU scores 7.1 (a Q6600 from the quarter they were released) and the GPU scores 8.1.

Why on earth would I update the hardware to a whole new PC?

Judge denies move to ban ad-skipping DVR

Re: Might be good for the viewing experience, but what does it do to the business model?

That's all well and good, but the current model is broken for many reasons.

The obvious one being that for prime time shows, paying your lead actor ~$1M per episode is going to make it very expensive to make/sell (one of the big reasons lots of shows in the US get cancelled is the increasing wage bill as shows continue season after season). Cutting the wage bill would go a huge way to cutting the necessity for adverts.

Apple tries to add Galaxy Note, Jelly Bean to patent slapfest

@ AC 16:21

You can pick up a phone size bluetooth keyboard for about a tenner, which saves on the dust ingress you get with the Desire Z (just upgraded to an LG x4 HD and said keyboard from one).

Re: Pathetic..

It's true, they are nearly identical to look at. As are every television and monitor on the planet. There's a very simple reason for that - the primary device in both is the screen and little else, so why waste space on things that aren't needed?

The iPad looks remarkably similar to the Windows Tablet released in 2001, for exactly the same reason.

That the technology inside all of these devices, the bit that's genuinely patentable, isn't the same seems to not enter into the argument . . .

Firm-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's tax dodge profit shift? Totally legit

Re: and go through the books with a fine tooth-comb

You haven't fixed anything!!

It's a fine toothED comb - as in the teeth of the comb are fine.

Apple's anti-Googorola patent lawsuit tossed by US court

Hmmm, why would you think the "insider" rate was any different to what they offered Apple? If it was, then under abitration Apple could claim it wasn't being offered under FRAND (non-descriminatory).

Apple seem to just not want to pay, as they would *only* be paying out. The majority of other phone companies have patents involved in the standard - they don't pay each other the full whack as the costs are balanced across the companies patent portfolio.

Monitors to grow half an inch in 2013

As per other comments - when you haven't increased the screen resolution in a decade, no wonder no-one is upgrading.

I replaced my cheap LCD panels about 3 years ago for a pair of HP IPS panels and the difference in colour, saturation and brightness was astonishing - put side by side with a friends almost new Samsung LED monitor and the difference was incredible.

However, if you want anything more than 1920x1200 (and even those are quite scarce), you have to go for either silly money (Eizo monitors) or larger screens and still expensive (£500+). If you can make a 7" 720p IPS display for a portable device, why cant you bolt 4 of them together and give me a 4K display? It doesn't even need all that touch gubbins in it!!

You know who else hates Windows 8? Hackers

Re: So what ?

We've had the "Start" menu for ~20 years now, but the one we have in 7 is nothing like the one we had in 95 - not least because it no longer has "Start" emblazoned on it.

Prior to 95 we had the mixture of Win 3.11 and MS-Dos, which was even more fun.

Having upgraded to Windows 8 at the weekend (on 5 year old hardware no less), I simply don't see what the complaints are all about. Is it different? Yep. So what? In the ~20 years since the "easy" Start interface was introduced, has everyone forgotten how to learn something new? Has societies intelligence dropped that far that having a new GUI will make the world fall in?

No, everyone will get used to it and move on. Or else they'll take the oppurtunity to switch to Linux or OS X, both of which also have completely different GUI front-ends and their own inherent idiosyncracies.

It took me an hour or two to get used to it. That's it.

Businessweek: 'It's Global Warming, Stupid'

Re: Why the Denial? @ Sean Timarco Baggaley

Why yes, I have heard of ice cores and indeed dendrochronology (the study of tree rings to determine things).

Ice cores are great at telling you the gas absorption for a certain era, which gives you a fairly accurate plot of atmospheric conditions at that time. But they don't tell you if it was a super-storm once a month, once a year or once a decade, not least because they cant be used to accurately predict down to that level of detail, but mostly because they can only tell you information about the climate of the time in general and not about the weather in particular.

As for dendrochronology, using this to accurately predict anything is fraught with problems. You have the fact that there are many atmospheric gasses that influence how the rings form, you have the issues related to how long/short summer and winter is in any year.

These are the obvious failings with both types of data. This would be why, if you look at any graph relating to temperatures, it gives accurate figures back to 1850 (when accurate recordings appear to have started on a wide-spread basis) and then the time period they cover gets wider and wider, as the further back we go the harder it is to determine what was happening in a smaller time-frame.

The climate itself, if you look at the various graphs going back millenia, repeats on around a 125,000 year scale. Is it changing faster now than at any other time? I don't know, we don't have annual records for 125,000 years or 250,000 years ago.

Always remember that science deals in probability, not absolutes. Anyone telling you something is a certainty is selling you something.

Pristine WWII German Enigma machine could be yours

Re: unbreakable

There is a story regarding the massacre of the Jews in all this. It was known, via deciphered communications, that this was going on, not always in time to do anything but that it was known what was happening.

The story goes that a town in northern Italy was due to have it's Jewish population sent to the concentration camp, some 60,000 people. However, if the British high command told the resistance cell in that town and got them to act on it, it would be known that we'd broken the code and would have caused problems for the D-day plans.

Churchill made the call to keep it quiet.

It's mentioned in some of the many biographies of Churchill. A decision on a scale the vast majority will never, ever have to take.

Acer is the latest maker to delay plans for a Windows RT fondletop

Interesting, what makes you think Windows 9 will be here by 2014?

History is against you, given that only Me has had a life lasting for such a short time and that had more to do with introducing the NT core to the home than anything else.

95 lasted 3 years, 98 lasted 2 years (only 1 if you actually believe that 98SE was a whole new OS), Me lasted for 13 months, XP lasted for 5 years, Vista just shy of 3 years and 7 3 years.

For 9 to be here in 2014 you have to believe that 8 will be as unloved as Me was, which from all i've heard from people who have actually used it, is not the case - everyone is stating it runs quicker than 7 on the same hardware.

Hackers deface 'sinful' French Euromillions site

Re: The National Lottery

1 in 14 million is the probability of getting the correct numbers, the odds of getting the correct numbers are astronomically higher.

Re: Oh you believers...

Interesting you mentionall the Abrahimic religions and Budhism, but none of the polytheist religions, most of which predate these by millenia.

Re: @Evil Auditor @Jim Booth

Stating "grow a pair" := "invade their country"

It means stop pandering to them *in your own country*.

In point of fact, there actually wouldn't even *be* as many hardline muslim countries without the West (i'm thinking Egypt and Libya here) - the overthrow of their governments was done with the help of the West, after the incumbent populations started the ball rolling.

EC tells Euro rebels: Hike up your ebook tax to 15%, or else

Re: This is not a service

You are fully aware that trees cut down to make paper are replaced after being cut down? That young trees soak up more carbon dioxide than old trees?

And of course we are all aware of how "green" Li-On batteries are to produce.

VAT is added to things that are deemed not to be "essential". eBooks are so far in that category, mostly because the vast, vast majority of books are still bought on paper. Until that fact changes, eBooks will remain a "luxury" item.

Apple slips bomb into ITC filing: Samsung being PROBED by US gov

@ Chris 19Re: Double standards

Actually the investigation is to do with 4G/LTE patents, not wi-fi, 3G or anything else.

The fact that Apple have been selling products and walking rough-shod over FRAND licencing that *every* other phone manufacturer has been paying seems to miss them completely.

Ofcom probe into telcos jacking-up charges halfway through contracts

Re: Hmmm

The important part, as with any contract, is that it has to be a "major change".

If the overall terms remain the same (minutes, data, texts) and the price increase is around inflation, you may get away with it after a lot of complaining.

If you got a new shiney phone, you would be expected to return it - the phone is "free" with an n period contract, if you want out of the contract it works both ways.

A lesser-known new feature in iOS 6: It's tracking you everywhere

Re: @A/C 10:13

That's wonderful and all, but you're quoting odds and not probability.

The odds of something happening != the probability of it happening.

In your example, the odds maybe 50%, but the probability of the first and second numbers being identical isn't.

Theresa May gets a smile out of Gary McKinnon at last

Re: Human rights act

Interesting viewpoint. The problem with "rights" are that they exist with or without the law. I certainly had the right not to be persecuted before the HRA came into effect.

The HRA wasn't the start and isn't the end of your rights, it's just a nice document to point at to use in legal proceedings - vast amounts of prior case law could be used to further the same arguments that are used in HRA cases, but it's just easier to use that one.

The reason people complain about the HRA is when it's used far beyond it's actually boundaries were meant to be - like many of those cases where incarcerated prisoners use it to make life in prison easier for themselves.

It's those times when people use the letter of the law rather than the intent of the law, in all cases it tends to annoy people.

Übertroll firm bags DRM patent for 3D printing

I'd suggest it had more to do with how you have been brought up than anything else.

I'll fix it, unless the cost of fixing outweighs the cost of replacing, doing anything else is a little silly. However, i've fixed everything from malfunctioning shower mixer taps (~20 years old) to faulty soldered devices. My dad instilled in me the belief that it's fine to pay for something that you need and to pay for somebody else to do a job, but you should always be able to rely on yourself to fix anything - so I can dismantle a car engine and rebuild it, re-wire a house, plumb in a kitchen, tile floors/walls and so on.

As an aside, a generation lasts 25 years, the chances of you and your brother being different generations is highly unlikely - generation X is generally used to denote those born in the 70's and 80's, generation Y starts some time in the 90's.

Apple files disappearing-feature iPhone patent

Oh dear lord

Just because it can now be done "electronically" or "mobile" doesn't make it patentable.

Numerous compact digital cameras have had "hidden" lenses, whereby the "on" button makes it appear, which would seem to cover the "mobile" element.

And as numerous people have pointed out, most of the current crop of Android phones have buttons that don't "appear" until you activate the phone.

Harvey Weinstein wants US to adopt French piracy laws

What ?

It's quite easy to fix the problem :

Actually make something that people want.

Stop paying actors/directors/producers multi-million dollar/pound salaries.

Stop shovelling 3D films down everyones throat and gounging on the ticket price.

When I can buy the film on BD for around the same price as going to the cinema to see it and buy it on release day, which will be 90 days or so after theatrical, then there is something wrong - either the cinema "experience" is too expensive or the BD is too cheap. Pretty sure it's not the latter.

US trounces UK in climate scepticism jibber-jabber

Re: conservative republicans?

Hang on, of the last 3 decades, Labour were in power for 13 years - or is this the slight of saying that Nu Labour are actually Conservatives?

That would be lovely, except they back-dated the legislation for 2 to cover some 6 years before they introduced the legislation. Given a multi-thousand pound item isn't bought by most people unless they absolutely need to, there was no choice.

@ AC 21:22 Re: @Dave126 Climate change a ruse to introduce new taxes

Whilst I agree with quite a lot of what you say, there are a couple of minor problems.

Where Chernobyl was concerned, the act of moving the fuel rods into a pattern that the scientists thought would create the highest yield from the fuel (which it did), they were unaware that this pattern was also in the running book for the reactor, pretty much saying "don't do this, it'll blow up the reactor". However, it was deemed as classified by some internal bureacracy in the then USSR, so the scientists had never read that part of the safety manual.

It's a wonderful display of the dangers of compartmentalising information.

Where Fukushima is concerned, that was a 30 year old design, hit by a ~8 richter earthquake and a few hours later a tsunami - even the biggest doom-sayer would suggest that such happening wouldn't happen outside Hollywood. However it was shut down in < 72 hours with little collateral damage. A modern version of the same reactor would actually have been shut down before the tsunami hit, due to the changes in the shut-down process and fail-safes.

Basically, using both as examples, it shows that : don't hide important information from people running an explosive device and look at how safe nuclear power actually is.

Now, if you want to talk about Three Mile Island or Windscale, then we'd be having a different conversation . . .

Climate change threatens to SHRINK FISH AND CHIP SUPPERS

What you've displayed is the clear position of someone who doesn't understand science and/or the scientific method.

If you did, then you would know that no scientist will ever say "if x happens, then y *will* happen", they may, in some of the more stable and accepted scientific answers (say, for example, Boyles Law), say that "if x happens, then we expect to see y".

The reason for this is that science doesn't work with absolutes, it works with probabilities and with any probability you have to accept that even at a tiny level, you could be wrong (this is why it's still called the Theory of Evolution).

If you want to talk in absolute's, talk to a politician, religious fanatic or a sales-man.

ICO: Data blunders by your cloud provider still YOUR fault

And then . . .

. . . where does your cloud storage provider store *their* backups?

Our company recently moved our internal HR systems to another part of the world (Canada), ue to a part of the company working their and having closer ties to our HR system provider - but that means all of our personal data is now in Canada.

I queried this at the time, but apparently Canada are considered as vigilent as a European company and conform to the European laws regarding personal data, so that was ok.

However, the backups are kept in the USA, which doesn't conform to European laws. What they have is something called "Safe Harbor" (sic), which is a *voluntary* code that they sign up to, but has no legal backing.

Apparently as a company we were ok with that . . .

Salt marshes will suck CO2 from air faster and faster as seas rise

Re: Mixed message

How many times must this be repeated - no-one has ever questioned climate change, it's happening, you wuold have to be the biggest buffoon in the history of the world to think otherwise.

But :

Climate Change := Global Warming

Further, the use of the word "could" means, as well as anything else, that the assumption is based on something yet to be proven - namely that increase in CO2 is driving the climate.

Re: I imagine Lewis...

Interesting you choose that analogy, given that economists are another bunch of snake-oil peddlers who continually claim to have models that never seem to come particularly close to reality.

CPS grovels after leaking IDs of hundreds arrested during student riots

What ?

"This all shows how the policing of protest is increasingly out of control."

I don't understand the MPs comment. Why does arresting people for damaging private property and attempting to assault police officers mean that the policing was "out of control"?

What this shows is that there aren't the relevant safe-guards in place for FOI request answers.

Japanese boffins unfurl banner above newly-discovered Element 113

Re: And the purpose of this element is...?

But they did call it Americium . . .

Guardian's Robin Hood plan: Steal from everyone to give to us

I Whole Heartedly Support This

Now, that opening should get me plenty of down votes, but allow me to explain.

I hate taxation, as much as everyone else, but the merits in this system are massive.

Firstly, you would have to define what this money will be used for. Now, if we say "news", then you have to define "news". Readers letters? Not news. Celebrity and other columns? Not news. Continue this ad nauseum. If it's anything that someone writes down, every blog is entitled to it's slice of that pie and having read a fair few blogs, vast swathes could never be called news. So the definition has to be tight, or the pie will be gobbled up by the hnudreds and thousands claiming.

Secondly and assuming the first point is true, any mistakes which currently resolve to either a retraction or an editing of the story, well the story was just that and not news. If it's not news, you don't get paid for it. Those headlines that turn out to be false and garner a page 21 column 3 retratcion? Well, now you cant count those page counts towards your revenue. It would mean that news would actually have to go back to being investigated or they don't get paid for it.

Thirdly and quite an important one, you'd have to define who actually gets the money. There are a lot of news items that get picked up by Reuters and re-reported with little to no editing, every publication cant claim for that same story, so it would have to go back to the writer to be the recipient and not the publication. The publication would need to bill it's reporters for hosting their stories and in so doing force the reporter to actual have to write something worthwhile - so a lot less of the fluff pieces.

So, in conclusionm you have the two choices :

i. define news properly and force reporting to actually go back to being reporting

ii. fail to define news, resulting in either the money being so thinly distributed it's worthless or the tax having to be so high no sane person would ever vote the legislation in

Google defends drowning Acer's newborn Alibaba Linux mobe

@AC at various times re YouTube

You are aware that YouTube pays a not inconsiderable amount of money to the likes of the RIAA for copyright? That if you do use copyright material (music) on YouTube, if it's licensed they will auto-include a link to buy the song? That if they don't have a licence (for most Sony stuff), they blank the audio?

Huawei, ZTE clash with US over national security

"motive to tamper with the global telecoms supply chain"

I like that comment, because the only governemnt that has saught to tamper with the global telecoms is - the US. Seizing web addresses of foreign companies and impeding the progress of a global resource (stopping the XXX TLD, for example).

Before pointing a finger, first look at yourself.

Apple Lightning adaptors reveal limitations

Re: Mixed feelings

What design has so far lasted 9 years? The current 30 pin standard is the second one and the iWhatever has only been around since 2006/7.

At this rate we can expect a new one on the iPhone 6S . . .

Everything Everywhere's 4G: Why I'm sitting this one out

It's even simpler than that.

I live and work in central Edinburgh, yet I cannot guarantee a 3G signal everywhere I am in the city, in some places I cant even get the HSDPA (?) signal, so why jump to a new standard that's going to have even less coverage and contain more problems than what we currently (don't) have??

I guess this is still a knock-on from the astronomical sums the mobile tel-cos paid for the 3G licences and haven't been able to recoup the money on.

New broadband minister snubs 'ugly' fibre cabinet gripes

In general, thank the FSM, maybe this will increase the speed of rollout (although, allegedly, i'll be getting this at the end of the month anyway).

However, i'd caution the complete throwing away of over-sight - for example, the old town of Edinburgh is a world heritage site, i'm pretty sure these boxes would remove that status.

South Korea probes 'mobe patent bully-boy' Samsung

Re: One-sided much?

You seem to not quite understand what FRAND is, otherwise you wouldn't continually type the same comment.

Fair Reasonable and Non-Descriminatory

Which means you can charge what the industry believes is a Fair and Reasonable amount (whatever that may be, in the case of CDs it's around 0.5cents per disk to Phillips and Sony), but that price has to be the same to everyone, you cant charge someone more because you don't like them - Non-Descriminatory.

If the entire industry is paying a price for patents and a new person turns up to the party, they don't get to claim that the price is unfair just because it seems too high to them - that price was set before you joined the party, deal with it.

Furthermore, the licences that are used within a standard aren't dictated by the owner of the patent, but usually by a working group or committee made up of representatives of hardware, software and sometimes governmental types - the reasoning behind patents *not* becoming part of a standard is frequently based on the fact that the FRAND requirement would require too high a payment.

Again, all of the standards that Apple so vehemently argued about payments for (which included 2G, a standard that had been in place for over a decade before Apple even announced a phone), were in place before they were interested in the market.