Posts by 205guy

Council of Europe condemns teen-bothering Mosquito

Seems to be a UK thing

I was originally thinking that something like this on a shop's private property would be justifiable, but now I realize that it is essentially blasting into the public spaces. In the US (outside of a few major cities), a convenience store would have a parking lot in front, so the sound would be attenuated by the time it reached the public sidewalk.

Plus, I agree that the company's statement about purposeless assemblies being not being a right is asinine.

Shouldn't a pair of noise-cancelling headphones work against this?

Apple tweaks privacy policy to juice location tracking

But are the iAds part of the App?

So with location services, I can control which Apps have access to my location. But the language of the EULA seems to let Apple know my device location at any moment--though the disabling of the Find Me feature seems to disprove that. So could Apple still serve me location-targetted ads in whatever apps I have, since the app makers just get the ad framework from Apple now?

Or does shutting off location data actually shut down the GPS and save power?

Apple, the iPhone 4G, the cops and the click-tart

Forget about this phone, it's all about IP

I posted this comment on TechCrunch earlier, though I think it's more appropriate in this thread. As some of the first commenters have said, it's not just "any" phone that is at stake here.

I think everyone should forget about the phone and concentrate on the bigger picture of intellectual property. In a few of the early [TechCrunch] posts on this story, people quoted the IP parts of the California laws (not sure if it was penal code or civil code), but nobody caught on.

Imagine what happens if IP is no longer protected, and every hacker and every employee is out to make a buck off whatever they can grab from companies. Less investment into big things, just tiny incremental improvements, everything bland, looking the same and having the same uninnovative tech. KIRF and worse, decent copycats, coming from China before product launch. In that environment, R&D investment doesn’t make sense because you can’t get any market lead and thus no decent ROI. And don’t forget that flaghip products are sure to affect company revenue and thus millions of shareholders [you'll excuse me for exaggerating slightly].

I’m not defending Apple’s policies, nor their business model, but I can totally see how businesses and the state have an interest in protecting IP and asserting the force of IP law to protect investments, markets, emplyoment, and tax revenue. You’d hope they protect IP in a way that nabs the wrong-doer and doesn’t violate anyone’s constitutional rights, but then again, business interests and government work rarely meet that ideal.

All these industry websites (Giz, Engadget, Techcrunch, The Register) are treading a fine line every time they choose to release stolen info about products and strategy [actually, I don't think El Reg is as bad as the others in this regard]. I would much rather see insightful opinions about tech and society, such as the future of publishing, gaming, social networks, etc… [which they sometimes publish, but enough of the next phone articles already, who even reads those?]

[Welcome because it's my first comment to The Register, even though I first posted it elsewhere.]