Posts by Zippy the Pinhead

GM OnStar cars will upload all data unless owners opt out

@matthew

If your car is old enough to have a computer in it. (Post 1986 I believe) Then the computer in your car probably does have this ability!

Skype for iPhone makes stealing address books a snap

This is Apple's problem

Apple of course will try to shift the blame to MS but it's not their problem! Apple has a walled garden approach and this is something their App Market testers should have tested for.

Samsung preps anti-iPhone 5 lawsuit before it's even out

NO.. they licensed the tech from Samsung.. Now Samsung has decided enough is enough!

@AC 21:58

No.. Apple licensed that tech for the iPhone3 and 4 from Samsung. They own the tech in Korea. Since Apple has decided that they own all tech now Samsung has more than fittingly decided to teach them who actually owns the tech.

Fail on Apple

If Samsung does hold the patent on this.. just refuse to license to Apple. Apple will instantly drop from the cellular market! haha

Major fail on Apple!

Netflix: How to completely screw up

Netflix Streaming

Unless you're a child or love Anime, or kids shows Netflix streaming a huge waste of money! There is next to nothing for online viewing newer than 3 years old or something that lived in a theater for about 2 days before it was pulled. Unless Netflix gets it's Streaming Service updated with ALL its titles its gonna lose HUGE!

Dell: HP's PC exit is an opportunity, not a death knell

Goodbye HP... We won't miss ya!

Your Desktops are average at best and your Elitebooks aren't!

Ballmer: Windows Phone can win third place in mobile!

being 3rd

MS will probably reach 3rd place in the smartphone world when all the other smartphones are either Android or iOS.. but at least they'll be in 3rd! lol

@ Paul Shirley

essentially describing how WP7 is inferior to every other smartphone OS unless you're buying a business phone and need strong Exchange support

That's funny cause WP7 actually has weaker Remote Admin/Exchange support than 6.5 or 6.1. I know my corp refuses to allow WP7 on Exchange just for these reasons.

Google crams arsenal with 1,000 IBM patents

@AC 15:51

No what Google is doing is helping other companies fight patent lawsuits being flung at them from outside companies such as MS and Apple by licensing or transferring the patents to others in their patent fights. That's not stifling competition or collusion!

Google feeds patents to HTC for assault on Apple

@noodl

Apple Fanbois it is then

Post your own message

I originally posted this under another article regarding patents...

I'm not against patents because honestly if I invent something other than software I want to be able to patent it or some large company would just swoop in and steal my product and I would never be able to compete against that.. and why should my idea make an already rich company even richer without me licensing or selling the technology to them.

But to go further.

Ask a developer.. do you WRITE code or do you INVENT code? You write it of course!

In fact you can write code in many different ways and it can have the same results. However when a developer writes code he writes it for a specific OS designed to run on a specific type of computer and he then expects his patent to protect hm from all the others doing the same thing even if they are not writing in the same computer language or OS. This is why I object to software and process patents.. They pervert the patent process. Patents aren't the problem. The problem is they should never have been using patents for software in the first place! And don't even get me started on patents to protect a process!!!

Take the toaster

Patent 1 - simply because I typed this example 1st

A electrical powered device that uses heated coils and pops up when a selected electrical resistance is reached then I have a modern home toaster

Patent 2

A steel bar with a wooden handle on one end and a thin steel cage on the other, I have made a toaster that would work excellent over a camp fire.

The two devices are equally valid and do the same function, just in different ways And they are actually mutually exclusive since one requires the use of fire as a heating source and the other requires the use of electricity. However if this was a software or a process patent the person who made patent 1 could sue the owner of patent 2 for infringing on his invention.

They are both valid devices doing the same thing but in different ways.

Now if the patent office were to create a patent just for software and they made the rules that allowed the patent very specific then maybe I will agree to using patent protection for software..

But I would insist on the following:

What is the specific OS this software designed to run on including version number of the OS.

Since code written under MacOS and Windows or Linux would probably be different don't expect a patent you created to work under Windows to also protect you under a different OS if you didn't code for it.

Is the application web based or what, is the code portable, in which specific way?

What was the software coded in, (an application compiled in C cannot be protected if someone else can have the same desired effect if they built their's in Java or visual basic or assembly or whatever. They may be doing the same thing but they are doing it in a different way and their code is different from yours.

A copy of the code MUST be attached - Yeah I know software companies would hate this but the Patent Office could hold this back from the public to protect the person or company who created the code - this way the patent office could reject copied code. All comments would need to be removed from the submitted code and the patent office could just do a code comparison.

The software must work as described and not be something oblivious that people would do naturally without the patent in the first place (I'm thinking the Amazon OneClick patent here which really isn't a software patent but a process patent but I think you get what I mean)

I could go on, but the point I'm getting to is this is a fail on the Patent Office in the first place who without thought or consideration just made it easier on the lawyers and patent trolls to get rich and kill innovation.

Unlikely contender tops rankings in Nokia ringtone quest

That's the most liked ringtone?

Wow.. What a horrible ringtone!

Three in ten Americans urge feds to read their email

Unless ANY government law enforcement agency (Federal, State, or Local) has a search warrant I don't want them in my email. This goes for Corps as well. They can stay out of my phone conversations and my written stuff as well! lol

Shareholder demands RIM sell itself or spin off patents

@Mondo

Don't be silly.. don't you know share price is king! lol

*export jobs to 3rd world countries - check

*sell patents and gut company strengths - check

*assume the company is competing in a vacuum and other companies you compete with wouldn't want to snap up your patents and then use them against you - check

*stupidly assume your short term financial goals match the long term goals of the company's stock you purchased - check

If RIM sold it's IP it would be out of business in a year!

Spamhaus victorious after 5-year fight with mass mailer

@nametoad

Just because the company was located outside of US jurisdiction does not mean it still wasn't doing business in the States.... Which it was doing. That makes it legally liable for its US based business.

Ohio man cuffed for shagging inflatable pool raft

@figgus

At least they look better than the "women" from Michigan!

Windows 8 ribbon entangles Microsoft

Not not just go back to the classic menu?

I mean really how flippin hard is it to click on Start? Vista started this crap but at least it had the classic menu hidden as a option and you could switch back to it. Under W7 I had to install a replacement start menu because the crap new menu.

New Apple move against Galaxy Tab on Euro front

@ Rob Crawford

IBM Thinkpads also come to mind!

@ James 68

"jobs shat out the ipad in a cloud of diamond dust and unicorn vomit."

If I were drinking coffee my non-Apple screen would be wearing it now! lol

@ Giles Jones

And a lot of people (myself included) who look at the iphone and its lack of a slide out keyboard and they conclude that the Apple design sucks as well. There is nothing wrong with HTC's or Samsung's or Motorola's cell phone designs.. After all they are more advanced than Apple's!

it's nice that

It's nice that Jobs believes he has the legal and moral obligation to tell others how to do their business. Wow does story point out the arrogance of Apple more than any other or what?

Can't wait for the fanbois to flame me now whoohoo! lol

Samsung says Apple lifted iPad from Kubrick's 2001

@amanfromearth

doesn't matter if the patent has run out.. prior art is prior art!

@ Mick Sheppard

However the image that Apple provided to the court of the Samsung tablet was doctored to make the device look MORE like the Apple iPad. If you compare the two side by side they are less similar. Just cause it's a rectangle and it has a black bezel it doesn't mean that Samsung stole the idea from Apple. That's the same crap Apple tried to pull with the Mouse and the GUI. They stole (sorry borrowed for all you fanbois out there) the idea from Xerox. This makes Apple's claim that Samsung stole the idea for the device very weak and in fact it's been pointed out that not only did Apple steal the idea from prior art, but also that this is just the natural shape of a device of this type.

@AC 3:58

Yes.. yes they are.

IT admin cops to crippling ex-employer's network

@ Crazy Operations Guy

>> First off, destroying a network of a former employer is a stupid idea, there is always evidence and once you get a felony your life is pretty much over. If you are going to do this, use a connection in another state and use cash the whole day while giving your credit card to a mate to use while you are out of town. <<

Given this some thought huh lol

Anonymous and TeaMp0isoN promise songs but no Facebook hack

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

Once it hits the charts it has to be played by law? haha.. seriously? No it doesn't! It's freedom of choice.

@Anon 16:01

What if it actually is a good song?

Then pirate it! lol

Apple sued over Mac OS X 'quick boot'

$ Onid

It's not even specific to a modern Windows PC.. CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT are DOS specific.

Isolated human genes can be patented, US court rules

Post your own message

How can you patent something created by nature?

Good news: A meltdown would kill fewer than we thought

@ Ru

"I hope you're all prepared to live in a future where electricity is a middle class luxury."

Na.. it'll be so expensive only the upper crust rich could afford to pay for it.. The poor of course will get it for free. lol

@LJRich

"It's a nuclear power plant, how does it lose power???! Can't it power its own cooling?"

Well since power to cooling must be on before the Nuc Plant is up.. the easy answer to that is NO.

@ MIPS

In other words, the risk of getting a cancer caused by your next door nuclear meltdown is less the risk from other causes, combined!

There.. fixed it! lol

'Topiary' suspect bailed

hahaha.. I love this

"enforce a nighttime curfew and stay at his mother's house"

Wow could this be anymore stereotypical?

US Navy orders laser machine guns

screw the naval ships

When are we gonna see these things attached to frickin sharks!!!

Developer fury as Google makes Android apps vanish

Its funny

Its funny how the largest search engine company does searching so poorly in its own app market.

Pacific rare-earth discovery: Actually just gigatonnes of dirt

@ BristolBachelor

Bauxite is one of the most common minerals on the planet. The cost does not come from mining but from the incredible amount of electricity needed to release the mineral from the ore itself.

I hate seeing anything thrown away because of our disposable society.. we should always attempt to recycle when we can... It needs to be cheap and effective.. such as mechanical sorting our trash before its compacted into our landfills.. sorting the trash at the landfill can remove items like plastic and metals for recycling and leaving a larger amount of organics to decompose into methane.

Chinese coal blamed for global warming er... cooling

mememine69

Here's the problem I have.. Scientist have not proven yet they really know if its happening or if it even has human causes and yet we have people and organizations screaming and we are killing the planet.

Yes we should keep our planet clean and not waste but lets not kill our global economies trying to head off something we really know nothing about. Let's not do additional damage trying to fix something we don't even know is broken yet. We have scientist wanting to dump hundreds upon hundreds of tons of iron filings into the oceans to attempt to create algae blooms to suck CO2 out of the air.. which will probably do nothing but WARM the areas impacted and kill millions of fish. We have companies paying to offset carbon as a tax.. a tax on something we don't even know we are causing which does nothing but increase the cost of the goods and services we depend upon each day.

Keep the planet clean and minimize our impact upon it.. but don't tell me that I'm the cause of global warming when right now the largest impact on the planet's temperature appears to be that bright shiny yellow thing up in the sky.

So Pollution causes BOTH warming and cooling

You can't have it both ways!

US judge greenlights case against Google Wi-Fi slurp

So its not ok for Google to slurp your data

But its okay for Law Enforcement to do so anytime they want without a warrant! Pot Kettle Black anyone?

Amazon throws tax hissy-fit, dumps California affiliates

its a bogus argument

Since once the sales tax makes it into a database your tax could automatically calculate

If the argument was valid then Amazon wouldn't be able calculate shipping to your address on the fly. So what makes it so hard to tabulate the price of the sales tax and then automatically cut an e-check once a quarter to proper jurisdiction.

Amazon it just upset that they won't be able to automatically undercut brick and mortar stores 8 to 10% anymore just because they don't add sales tax.

I could be wrong but I believe that the sales tax exemption they are referring to has run out.. Not really sure about that though.

Patriot hackers disrupt al-Qaeda websites

They should have pushed malware to the site the 1st time

Then the malware phones home and you know the IP of the possible Jihadist.

Oracle: 'Google owes $2.6bn in damages'

@ Cliff

I don't find it hard to choose. Oracle is coming up with stupid insane price for a piece of software that it basically gives away free with the exception of a normal small license fee.

How much would Oracle charge IBM or MS or Apple for a license fee to cover those patents normally? My guess maybe a few million at best???

MySpace sacks more

last one to the door

Please turn off the lights.

Microsoft nails second Android device maker

my question

Does General Dynamics Itronix even sell PCs to consumers anymore? I've seen Itronix laptops and even repaired a couple.. in my opinion they were pretty much generic extremely cheap laptops that looked like the kind grandma would buy because she didn't know any better.

@skelband

I would assume that unless the contract expressly contains language stating something like if the "patents are ruled invalid" then that company would have to continue paying the MS tax for the length of the contract period. It would be foolish of MS to let that into the license and but to the advantage of the company licensing the technology.

US Navy invents 'Zero-Power Autonomous' ocean probe

not just a research probe

Sounds like a great way to make a device that could be dropped off for intel work or a self-powered torpedo.

Hackers pierce network with jerry-rigged mouse

@ Matt

You could block the cell phone installation by requiring signed drivers. My guess is the device wouldn't properly install. The user would then call IT.. they'd wipe the PC assuming its an issue with Windows, and then when the signed drivers still don't install the device properly IT would say it's the device that is defective and tell the user to take it up with the company that provided it... or turn off requiring signed drivers on that PC. Then you're screwed! lol

US Supremes to hear warrantless GPS tracking case

so what we should do

So if we see a marked or unmarked police car in a parking lot maybe we should attach tracking devices to their vehicles and have it automatically update to a widely available mapping and tracking utility.

Oracle's Android claims slashed by US patent authorities

@ Homer 1

Honestly I hope Google wins this one as I have some serious contempt for Larry and the way he does business... But if they have a patent on it an application and they feel someone is infringing on the patent then its not really a frivolous lawsuit. That is while the patents are still valid. If the patents are invalidated for whatever reason and Oracle continues to sue, THEN its a frivolous lawsuit.