Posts by dssf

Space shuttle to slip surly bonds of Earth one last time over California

Spoonerism i have for years waited and wanted to use...

Crashed where? On the Dark side of the Moon, or the marked side of the dune?

HP unzips slim Windows 8 notebooks

reviews

These reviews should more critically talk about the placement of USB ports that block areas where the mous ismused in confined spaces.

Ditto for the existence of longish, straight out power pins that literally beg "let me be a cause to send the hardware in for repair on the power port.

Why must bidget machines be thick and ugly?

China warned on nano-safety

China and health safety topics...

http://mobile.businessweek.com/news/2012-09-17/bgi-shenzhen-agrees-to-buy-complete-genomics

While not exactly nano, but is related to science and medical, and genetic sequencing and manipulation, and definitely health safety, this might interest, amaze, concern, or frighten some readers:

"BGI-Shenzhen, a Chinese operator of genome-sequencing centers, agreed to acquire Complete Genomics Inc. (GNOM) for about $117.6 million to expand in the U.S. market for medical and research DNA testing.

BGI will pay $3.15 a share in cash, a premium of about 54 percent over the closing price on June 4, the last trading day before Complete Genomics’s announcement that it was exploring strategic alternatives, the companies said today in a statement. The board of Mountain View, California-based Complete Genomics unanimously recommended that stockholders accept BGI’s offer.

Genomes, the DNA instructions for making and operating cells, are helping doctors understand and sometimes treat cancer, inherited diseases, and other disorders. While BGI has focused on agricultural and human genetic research, Complete Genomics is preparing for greater use of DNA sequencing to prevent and treat human disease, the companies said.

“We look forward to growing the business to improve medical research and, when clinical services are provided, support better disease diagnosis with tools that can be used by doctors and hospitals to treat their patients,” said Wang Jun, chief executive officer of BGI, in the statement."

More is at thr URL?

OpenStack Foundation launches with $10m in funding

I hope much success in this endeavor

Hopefully, all the members that initially or are partially quasi competitor-turned-sponsors/supporters will behave.

Winklevoss twins stuff $1m into social network for the FILTHY RICH

Re: Am I the only one.... kineckt

them and sexbox to to the pron industry, maybe even to dice.com and create some dicey pro positions, hahaha (puns intended)....

Microsoft bod dreams up 'Star Trek holodeck' games console

Re: Pfft. hehehehe... glad i am not the only one on that bent...

See my three e-lab-orations in this topic, hehehe....

why stop at 360 degree projectors? toss in metro

umm specialy-milspeck-hardened win 8 tablets and have sexbox actors cat leap on colors a la Toss Across and Twister. In the Adult arena, this could become Twist Across and Tosser (Spoonerims here, mind you) as Kineckt, SexBox, and Metr8 furiously track users....

Of course, ms shareholders may not want to hold shares in such a touchyfeely geek realm of this genre.

Re: idea patents PBD

Give them a break? They have beelyuns in the bank. If they blow a few wads o cash on the pron end dust try, they could get more bang for their buck by thrusting the SexBox, ramming itnthroug the highly pliant USPTO. At least this time, a patented idea truly would have a prod duct coarsing throug the USPTO. I am sure at least 100ms engineers would jump at the chance to work with the pron industry to develop cameras and UV sensitive skin strips to fine tune Kineckt to recognize air groping and "the climactic ugly face" moment.

PBD for Patent Booty Duty

Re: just an idea

I am willing to bet (butt not bet my ass) that ms are funding a stealth company to introduce the Sex Box and SexNekt. Really, seriously, ms could angelically/stealthily enter the "Dr. Ruth Westheimer 'What's Your Problem'" and similar sex therapy field. After all, the automobile industry knows that 'sex sells' when it paces sultry or catty women on show cars and in adverts.

Just imagine postal deliveries in non-descript packaging, containing the aparatus that could save sexually dysfunctional relationships or interface with RealDolls and allow the users to aero-dynamically hip-scrawl their ways into Rudy Valentino-rivalling gyrations.

Now THAT could be a way for ms to fast track their way into orgasmic cash stream or cash flow. Well, if they decide to actually make or angel/angle-fund product production.

Of course, it would not be advisable to permit demos in Best Buy, eMart, Lotte, Costco, etc...

Dice swallows Slashdot, SourceForge, Freecode in $20m deal

Re: Why? (who cares!)

Maybe Dice thought it would be too dicey to have /.preemptively /.ting itself?

E-publisher 'fesses up: 'Apple UDIDs were ours'

otoh, if it is a real and non fronting company...

Then it is commendable that they fessed up, is it not?

Why ruin a conspiracy theory?

Well, consider the possibility the company could be a front, and a plausibly deniable and disposable one at that, hehehe... Just to add another spoon of gas to the quasi fire...

HTC's 4G patent beef could get iPhone 5 BANNED in US

Re: OK I'll feed the troll if only all site devs would take a little INTIATIVE

anon posts could be made sense of if they had suffixes, not just time stamps. And the suffixes should help identify those appearing to come from the same person who appears to be using the sam browser, machine, and tping pattern. Yes, i am aware that one ip address may be serving a handful of simultaneously reading followers (or stalkers)...

Re: OK I'll feed the troll if only all site devs would take a little INTIATIVE

anon posts could be made sense of if they had suffixes, not just time stamps. And the suffixes should help identify those appearing to come from the same person who appears to be using the sam browser, machine, and tping pattern. Yes, i am aware that one ip address may be serving a hnadful of simultaneously reading followers (or stalkers)...

Re: "why El Reg fails to put an age restriction on the site..."

Speaking of juvenile behavior in the forum, i do not know whether anonymous people can down or upvote because i have not tried. Also, i do not down vote, but i definitely do upvote. I feel that downvoting should come with the burden of exposing oneself and having to make 3 counterpoints to justify the downvote, at the peril of permanent banning for rank and ranking abuse of a site. Will, alas, just have to accept the fact that it is ok to anonymously or without counterpoints assail my comments (most of them taking apple and that other judge to task), knocking me down by over or almost 100+points in a few days, as if to negate not WHAT i say but THAT i say something at all.

Well, just as karma and payback are being a bitch to apple, i will prognosticate it will so be for those who bully or harbor bullying, too. One day, i foresee, major sites will be forced to identify, track, warn, and route bullies. I see the downvoting as a form of bullying. Jst as apple's conduct is being seen as such.

Some may be interested in this:

"Is Apple Turning into a Patent Troll?

http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2012/09/133_119451.html

Mars probably never wet enough for life, nuclear bomb crater indicates

Re: Fossil Finds...

What i failed to articulate was that it would impact our perception of our place in the universe, WRT the fact that to date, we think we are the only sentient beings. That's because so far, nobody/nothing has ever proven us right or wrong. But, for fear or entertainment purposes, or calls to prepare for the end of the world, or claims to prophesy and so on, imagine would it be like if suddenly, finally, we can let our hair down that right in our own back yard we find evidence of an extinct advanced set of animals or other beings. Of course, given that we've not found structures, roads, or the like, even if we did find fossils, they'd likely be very very pre-advance -- assuming no interstellar travelers crashed and died there trying to get to what WE call Earth. Then again, it could be that WE are in "the back yard", but the front-yard-occupants got killed off.

At any rate, it seems to hold that Earth had the optimal conditions for sustaining life that was started here locallly, and Mars was just too hot, too dry, and not right at the time for life that we can visualize. But, "Martian life" is still a possibility. That is probably why NASA and international bodies want to avoid introducing to Mars microbes not likely present on Mars or avoid reintroducing them in case what we take to there is active.

As for the risk of contamination, if non-contamination is THAT important, why hasn't there been build a "Decontamination Chamber" of sorts (send ahead of Curiosity) into which the Rover would be driven, parked, and repeatedly subjected to ND-TC (non-destructive-to-Curiosity) treatment that solar UV and G forces might not have killed. If it's just the drill bits, it probably would not need to be ST:TNG-grade stuff, especially since we don't have pattern buffers, collimators, quantum force fields, or other Treknobabble-of-the-week stuff at our disposal (decontamination was complicated by the unique structure of the pre-anu-dioxcipitall pre-cortex lobes behind his 3rd condron filament...... You know, bowl-of-soup-spewing babble like that, which in itself would be a reason to watch TNG, to see which episode would on the floor rolling my ass off in laughter as the writers one-up themselves, possibly on inhalable/injectable contaminants, themselves..... (really, many TV adverts that defy ordinary logic arise from stress-induced people resorting to drugs to take the edge off their lives -- one of my friends working in the insanely-competitive and cutthroat marketing/advertising industry in the 90s was serious when I joked about it... Anyway....)).

BTW, in your lst para, you mentioned RNA-based microbes on Mar and possibly originating here... After all this time, the separation time and existence in two differrent environments, is it likely that the microbes would develop in compatible ways or diverge, possibly incompatibly? Is it necessarily so that cross-transferrence would result in cross-contamination? Even if today Curiosity's pre-exposed drill bit contaminates Mars, how many millions of years would it be before humans or the Martian microbes would know? In which direction would the finger point? Just some thoughts...

Fossil Finds...

Somehow, I get the feeling that if any fossils are found in the next 2 years, we'll never hear about it in OUR lifetimes.

But, it WOULD be astonishing and kewl if suddenly, out of NOwhere, former, now-extinct life remains are found, even if they are 20,000,000 long dead. Would be too scary if they were found dead, but only about 5,000 years dead. If dead THAT recently, we could be doomed because it could be natural, or because there may be dormant beings undiscovered.

Either way, it would cast a whole new perspective on our place in the Uniwerse.

Apache man disables Internet Explorer 10 privacy setting

Is there any connection between Flash and AdBlock Plus and others?

For example, by choice, is he violating people's desire do block Flash or java script because those choices to block adverts would block his employerr's Flash?

Re: Well now I've seen everything! DNT Honeynet/Blackhole

The ONLY (or possibly only) way for DNT to be effective is if things like Better Privacy and the rest are fashioned into a sophisticated in-browser honeynet and adverft blackholer. Or, if some false return bot system could be in it to feed false info to the more brazen collector ad sites. If they WANT info, GIVE them info -- just make them waste their marketing dollars. That will teach them to sell real products, not other people's information. I SOMEtimes respond to ads, but not to very many. Response to too many just gives rise to more unwanted stuff. If I'm interested in ads, it's usually almost exclusively to products I have already purchased or read about in forums I specifically join to learn more about the product or its analogues in the field.

Too damned many moguls and their networks know tooo damned much about too damned many of us. At some point, they're just sloshing around leads information like laundry -- dirty or clean. At some point, the reality is that they're awash in redundant, elusive information when people's moods dictate what they will really respond to. Unfortunately for them, some of these ad businesses operate on artificial funds on hopelessly sinking platforms.

Fanboi beats 'e-trespassing' rap after using GPS to find stolen iPad

Re: Odd system ....

Well, if he stole enough shit and ends up a long stay in prison he'll be pooting from a poisoned hind for eating fruit from a poisoned vine....

Re: Coveted item What are you talking 'about, Willis?

TrustGo is just ONE of several companies that will offer remote tracking and wiping of your devices, and it is prominently displayed in Android devices. I dunno whether they supporrt iPads. But, your claim about it being at risk if that iPad were an Android is not accurate. TrustGo is on my GTab.... That is how I know the product is offered. Whether or not it actually works is something I hope to never have to find out.

But, since burglarers will be on to this, the next stage of this game has to be that the owners have gyro/accel/EM information plus the mic all in on the alerts as soon as the device is moved and an immediate followup is not a proper countermand command. But, even so, a skilled thief need only shove the device into an evidence bag and then fiddle with the device in a Faraday-cage-like bunker or building to try to audibly silence or EM-silence it.

Maybe a new trick may be to install proximity sensors around the perimeter the owner demarcs as a protection zonee. Program the devices on different freqs (to increase the difficulty for the ordinary thief) to all listen to an inventory list, all the while with each noded device sharing inventory info every few seconds. As soon as a device doesn't "check in", all the prox devices remote-call the police, the lucky alarm company, and the device's contracted monitoring/anti-theft/theft-tracking service. Simultaneous to that, motion and video sensors would try to off-site off load their footage to prevent local wiping of the footage and correlated video prior to and after entry/departure of the residence and property limits.

Too bad non-lethal booby traps arre not always legal. One with a hand-smacker, knee-whacker and some EM/IR/Reontgin-emitting dye packs could make all but the most prepared thief catchable in about 1 hour or less unless the theif is an undercity dweller and can escape with fractured kneecaps....

Curiosity clears things up

But, NASA fears Curiosity may muddy the waters -- if any water is found

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mars-contaminate-20120910,0,365701.story

FTA:

" For all the hopes NASA has pinned on the rover it deposited on Mars last month, one wish has gone unspoken: Please don't find water.

Scientists don't believe they will. They chose the cold, dry equatorial landing site in Mars' Gale Crater for its geology, not its prospects for harboring water or ice, which exist elsewhere on the planet.

But if by chance the rover Curiosity does find H2O, a controversy that has simmered at NASA for nearly a year will burst into the open. Curiosity's drill bits may be contaminated with Earth microbes. If they are, and if those bits touch water, the organisms could survive.

The possible contamination of the drill bits occurred six months before the rover's launch last Nov. 26. The bits had been sterilized inside a box to be opened only after Curiosity landed on Mars.

But that changed after engineers grew concerned that a rough landing could damage the rover and the drill mechanism. They decided to open the box and mount one bit in the drill as a hedge to ensure success of one of the most promising scientific tools aboard Curiosity. The drill is to bore into rocks looking for clues that life could have existed on the planet. Even if a damaged mechanism couldn't load a drill bit, at least the rover would have one ready to go.

Under the agency's procedures, the box should not have been opened without knowledge of a NASA scientist who is responsible for guarding Mars against contamination from Earth. But Planetary Protection Officer Catharine Conley wasn't consulted.

"They shouldn't have done it without telling me," she said. "It is not responsible for us not to follow our own rules.""

More at the article...

ENCODE’s ‘junk DNA’ claims spark biological bunfight

This site is not new, but may interest some...

The article from 2009 might, too....

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070423185538.htm

" Gill Bejerano, PhD, assistant professor of developmental biology and of computer science at Stanford, found more than 10,000 nearly identical genetic snippets dotting the human chromosomes. Many of those snippets were located in gene-free chromosomal expanses once described by geneticists as "gene deserts." These sections are, in fact, so clogged with useful DNA bits - including the ones Bejerano and his colleagues describe - that they've been renamed "regulatory jungles."

"It's funny how quickly the field is now evolving," Bejerano said. His work picking out these snippets and describing why they might exist will be published in the April 23 advance online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It turns out that most of the segments described in the research paper cluster near genes that play a carefully orchestrated role during an animal's first few weeks after conception. Bejerano and his colleagues think that these sequences help in the intricate choreography of when and where those genes flip on as the animal lays out its body plan. In particular, the group found the sequences to be especially abundant near genes that help cells stick together. These genes play a crucial role early in an animal's life, helping cells migrate to the correct location or form into organs and tissues of the correct shape."

More at the url...

Or, Or...

It is remnants of our Human Cylon/hominid ape/Human-Human blood being mixed successfully?

Or, possibly -- if there is a God/Supreme Being/Nature, whatever, he/she/it has a great sense of humor-- keep making findable the things that will confound, confute, and otherwise embarrass the stupid proseletysers and make look smart those who boldly and tirelessly TRY to REALLY, neutrally understand the world and its components and leave out the junk mystery, religion, and other mysticisms that are non-quantifiable except emotionally or for feel-good....

One example that could shut up a whole planet load of religious injectors is to ask rabid, homophobic types why HIV + controllers and HIV non-progressors and slow progressors exist. IF HIV were "God's Punishment for Homosexuality", just to use an example, then why to Non-Progressors, Controllers, and Elite Controllers exist? Probably to tell SOME humans through the continuum of humanity to just STFU!

Other examples could be why do some humans survive man-made poisons and yet others drop like flies. Why did some survive bubonic plague/black death and other massive "human eradicators", yet humanity was allowed to trundle on through time.

The DNA probably is far more useful than junk, filler, or any other negative connotation or assertion of uselessness. Besides, assuming humanity will continue on for another 5,000-15,000 years in need of bodies, there will always need to be useful stuff for scientists to find out about us. Otherwise, what is the point if we in short order learn all that there is to know?

iPhone 5 wait drives record Samsung smartphone sales

Likely the reason for the trial: gambit, bluff tactics

Here is another story i will link which el reg can whip up a story on soon thereafter...

http://mobile.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/iPhone-5-Despite-Apple-Hype-Will-Be-Disappointingly-Conservative-532222/

May be that the story annoys some, irritates others, but it is eweek's story. Still i expect 20more, unsubstantiated, emotional, irrational downvotes on top of the 75+ hits i took on 10 or so posts in under 20 hours... Some with "reachback downvotes", people going back and downvoting a week's worth of posts, likely maliciously.... But, whatever...

Re: Just proves Apple's legal case... and...

If Tim does it on a whim, it'll blow up in his face and be Apple's first bone-ef~fied cockup, ehh?

I... Couldn't ... Re...sist...

Facebook seals Instagram buyout for roughly $715m

Re: So, a zero revenue company... Visualizing two zeros in a sac sack...

I hope I don't feel their pinch-ons on my funds...

GODS, it would be really awesome to have an idea that makes a product (not a "product") that commands a following and generates even just a few million$ a year.... But with vastly fewer bodies on the payroll. Just imagine their monthly burn rate on wages, salaries, benefits... And all the real estate and furniture leasing, plus those cafes, rec centers, shuttle buses...

Hell, fb probably could have invested in Sharp had they had a crystal ball. Maybe fb could invest in Sharp, then Apple in turn invests in the two of them and milks them both? Oh, wait... Don't wanna give any ideas, hahahaha (besides, it might be funny to see Apple take a huge investment chunk in a company ms hugely invested in, only to spar with ms, tho a few years back ms invested in Apple to avoid the risk/appearance of destroying a small but growing competitor.)

Cash-strapped Sharp puts HQ, factories in hock

OUCH

Well, recall that Sharp slogan (one I to which I found warm humor and chuckles in):

"From SHARP minds come SHARP products".

Now, those words may hurt apple in the ass if Sharp cannot fix it's production problems. If they get very deep into apple, it could hurt as in "From Sharp minds come SHARP prod ducts" as they wend their way back toward profitability.

That seems insane, though: mortgaging ALL their Japan-based/domestic property and other assets there and elsewhere in other parts of the world to borrow a schload of money that almost assuredly will be wiped out in a handful of months just on the learning curve and the machinery tweaks. IF the iPhone sells well (as it most assuredly will), you can bet that Apple will take a deep bite in the pre-profits cash and hawkishly monitor the books to ensure that Sharp will have to be VERY sharp and not just Sharp to actually get a recovery on its mortgaging scheme which might come back to haunt Sharp severely.

Apple can sell all the phones it wants or can, but it would be a tragedy for a lot of people if Sharp got steam-rolled out of gree... umm, eagernes to get that possibly lucrative contract.

OTOH, as suggested above in a post before mine, Apple might be forced to invest deeply in Sharp if Sharp starts stumbling. Even Apple doesn't want to be in the business of owning a manufacturing facility (after all, Apple shed most of the remainder of if not ALL of their physical production plants by the late 90s, IIRC, and I do recall as a courier in the 90s driving past a LOT of Apple facilities in Campbell, Cupertino, Fremont, and a few other places when they IIRC had or owned more than 20 buildings in that area alone, not counting their then-growing collection of office campuses) which cannot be easily and on-the-spot reconfigured. If Apple suddenly vanished, I am pretty sure that Hon Hai/Foxconn would keep chugging along as other companies would suddenly be in a commanding posittion to demand better pricing and Foxconn could divert feverishly humming resoures to others, until those companies peter out.

Does anyone know what stops Foxconn from being able to make more of what Apple wants/needs? Is it lack of tech, lack of expertise, lack of patents, or something else or all of those? Maybe we we'll see a new "AppSharpConn"? Or "ShaPpleConn"?

First Irish-speaking virus holds bloke's computer to ransom

Can not resist... This type of con job is a

Digital leprechaun... And the prose from it might be digital le prose, tho not very rosey, you see.

Consideratioon might be to allow the victiime to choose a red jacket or a green jacket before pressing key number one or key number twoo.....

Momentum-gaining, limeric-spewing digital leprechauns may become the new lepers of the computer era, even surpassing Nigerian scam artist, no?

Airbus predicts catapult takeoffs and formation flying by 2050

Re: If you want to save fuel HelluvaLevitation

What'd be REALLY kewl is having non-stop focal points where, say, 150 maglevs timed to cross through a single portal or pathway hurtling along at Mach 4 (maybe in their own tubes to cut down on aerodynamic issues) every 22 minutes or so. There's GOT to be some future benefit to that. Well, as long as they don't build the portals too close to the Super Conducting Semi-Collider or that "Time Ring" relativity machine people worried would open rift or gateway to Hell.

I hope it is Mach 3 or Mach 4, because I rode at 305 kph or faster on the Shanghai Maglev, and I really felt underwhelmed. Might have been more fun had it bolted off rather than acted like a silky accelerator.

Having said that, I would not be first in line to ride any Mach 6 Souper Hadron Slinky Plane... That'd be a helluva sight, too. Such an airline might be calld "Tendrils", but the Pax might feel as if hit by Ten DRILLS...

Re: If you want to save fuel SGM-Pax ... Going TOTALLY TUBULAR, DUDE...

We could go the route of Self-Guided-Munition-- Passenger Mod 1. Just magnetically launch each passenger in his or her own cylinder. On approach to glideslope, it homes in on a beacon and makes final course adjustments. It could allow each person 120 lbs of launchable weight. G forces might be a bitch, and 2,000,000 "baby bullets" in US airspace alone would drive ADC/SAC/NORAD/whatever it's called these days battty. But, anaesthesia and anti-diarrheals may be quite necessary since the flight might be only about 60 minutes to cross coast to coast. Trans Atlantic could be QUITE transformational. TransPac could be a spine-packer package.

Parachutes would be necessary. But, imagine the reduced number of group fatalities: If a few hundred a year fail terminally, it won't be "party crash/er" type of deal.

Sadly, this might put a lot of pilots out of business. OTOH, they could be trained to become trajectory planners or even double-up on "accident/mishap insurance" sales and triple-up as insurance consultants. I haven't figured out what to do with teams and families. They might go by formation-bulleting. Speaking of "bulleting", almost all Pax might feel as if they are in the Outer Limits or Twilight Zone due to rifling. And, if a crazy tripled-up pilot includes Coriolis Effect Program 3.4.B, the flight might become VERY interesting as in-flight entertainment would really take one out FOR and DURING "a spin". Talk about airlines of the future needing "Spin Doctors"...

Re: A wonderful idea!

They can try inverse phasing, or cross-circuiting to B.... Or, just ordinary anti-grav thrusters to land right on the spot. Or, tractor beams and flight path guides can bring them in during ion stor... Umm, rain storms....

If all else fails, they'd better have a secretly-placed Tantalus Field to wipe out a few specific designers or project managers, hahahaha...

Judge: Apple not liable for dropped, broken iPhone screens

Re: Missing the point maybe.... hehehe

You gave me my first laugh of the day, despite my being whack-a-mole-nailed downward 65 down votes over 10-or 15 posts in the past 12 hours. So, I gave you a thumbs up for that phrase "feckless goons".

Cheers!

Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE! WOW!!!

68 thumbs down on a day's worth of posts... I must be doing SOMEthing right -- pissing off those who cannot bear to see their cherished company slandered or riduculed when it deserves it at a given moment.

But, really, down-thumbs should have an enforced justification and account integrity/accessibility at-risk for those who reach back and justs in anger down-thumb every recent post of someone just out of rage or anger. So, go ahead, destroy my upvote/downvote ratio. It's just your piss-poor inability to accept the perspective of someone else without any way to comprehensably take someone to task. I'd hate to have a boss like you because no one would be able to rationalize with you when you are too pig-headed to just accept comments by another. Learn to ENGAGE, not frag, comments. That's the major flaw of rank-based social and news sites: most of them give frack all about making downvoters justify their positions, and it allows for rank (and ranking) abuse of those with strong, vociferous, yet non-violent, non-destructive opinions.

And, in my other posts about citizens referring to the EC for recourse over the bureacrat allowing the cable boxes in... Who except a pro-bureacrat or an uber nationalist or plain irrational type would find a reason to downvote that?

Sigh...

Re: Hell no, don't stop using glass!

OK, fine, I'll buy that you said it's "dead easy" to remove two screws to replace the glass. But, a Korean friend of my dropped his dotingly-loved iPad and cracked the glass in a small area of a corner. He went to one or more local Yongsan electronics stores to get estimates. They wanted a whopping W200,000 to replace the glass and do the labor. He could just wait a few more months for the upcoming iPad. THAT, I suspectg, is what galls some iPhone/iPad/iPod owners, knowing they will pay big time, whichever way they choose -- if they are among the price-sensitive iConsumers.

In defense of apple, though, I suspecgt that my friend's iPad was not in its case when he dropped it. If he did have it encased, then he REALLY got unlucky to have a corner suffer the drop.

If he said that, he'd have been a Judas, heheh, and his quarterly dividend/annual bonus check would have been painfully slashed.

Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE!

His words STILL had the effect of decieving not only his flock, but the general, non-engineering public. Plastic or glass, it is immaterial -- lots of people expected more from apple, and dropping a phone 3-6 feet on any hard surface should not be such a heart-shattering experience. So, it is no wonder that people come up with consipiracy theories about the repair costs, refurb vs new, and other thorns in the sides of consumers having that issue, non?

Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE!

HAHAHAHA!!!!

You just gave me the best laugh I had all day, Edwin. Thanks! I gave you a thumbs-up for your comment! :)

I do have occasional anger issues, but not anger management issues. I usually can vent in a few (maybe 10-20?) minutes, sometimes sooner if a nicer distraction materializes. If I lost control, I'd have rotted organs, gray hair, and maybe premature hair loss, at the very least.

Again, cheers for the laughter you gave me!

IDEA for Samsung...

SAMSUNG should go to the US 7th District Court and on behalf of iPhone users who were jilted by apple, sue apple for apple daring to go to Korea and prod the local courts there for abuse of patent hoarding. Korean courts are not stupid. They fully are aware that the major and Chaebol companies holding patents have to file them, and there IS a deep, invasive Chaebol Family Map of sorts alread discoverable by the public and the patent filing ministry officers. So, even IF SAMSUNG is an illegal "patent hoarder", Korea doesn't NEED *apple* telling Korean courts how to handle domestic affairs. Besides, due to materialism and such, plenty of Koreans have iPhones, and I do not in 3 months recall seeing ANY KOREAN walking around with a SHATTERED iPhone. But, in the USA, I've seen puhlenty of 'merkuns casually whipping out their shattered iPhones, as if the shattered state was just a feature rather than an embarrassment, hahahaha..

Re: Frackin MORON JUDGE!

And, in case anyone wants to know, I have in anger at phone wonkiness hurled across the room TWO of my previous SAMSUNG phones, one multimedia flip phone from 2007, and my SAMSUNG Moment, from 2009. In both cases they had minor or non-annoying dents or scratches, and in neither case did the plastic shatter, peel, delaminate, buckle, warp, pop out, or otherwise deform in a way to make me regret hurling them. I doubt any iPhone would have survived the rage-induced hurling I gave my phones. And, I did it more than once. My Moment, a slider phone, kept sliding without of the tester-raped wobbliness one finds the display models to have suffered after a year of finger fracking by indecisive or abusive shoppers.

Again, that judge needs to be made to rethink his decision or an outside-of-the-region judge needs to be brought into that court room for that particular door-opening-capable case.

(The cause of my rage was either SAMSUNG or Android, where the inputs would just fuckng stutter or shudder and then spew key inputs like vomit rather than smoothly displaying as I typed. That kind of bullshit is annoying, whether it is hardware, OS, or network induced. Another form of rage inducement was when two backspaces would surge backwards and wipe out half a line, then a whole fucking line of carefully crafted 2-minutes of text. So, it doesn't take much imagination to figure how hard I must've hurled/flung those phones, bouncing them off walls, furniture, and onto the floor, and they kept working! It did feel like a dumbass, and I cringed while picking them up, then almost cried that they still worked because destroying them would have set me back by hundreds of dollars.)

Frackin MORON JUDGE!

Only an IDIOT would not find against apple in this regard. Jobs stood his ass up, brandishing the phone, touting how tough it was, claiming it was some 30x stronger than plastic, IIRC. When or how often do we see dropped plastic phones, delaminating, shatttering, exploding, or bursting like self-destructing cells?

I cannot tell you how many must-be-embarrassing-to-show shattered iPhones I've seen, 3, 4, and 4s. Sure, the owners could have bought them at Best Buy and paid the extra $5-$80 per month for loss, theft, damage, destruction -- No Questions Asked -- if they paid BB and signed up with a carrier BB partners with. Then, such people could get a replacement phone, NQA. Imagine how one of my friends felt when he dropped his iPhone 4S, it slid, and then a 300lbs lady stepped on it because it slid faster than he could dive toward it. He was lucky it compression-shattered on the back ONLY. I've seen them shattered on both sides.

One bonus for apple, though: I've seen front-shatttered iPhone 4, 4s, or other models still react nearly normally to touch usage despite the spidery look of the glass.

That judge, though, needs his head examined. But, he knows that if he allows a finding in favor of the plaintiff, apple will make him pay dearly for opening the global floodgates against apple-- such a finding would erode probably 40% of apple's profits to date covering shipping both ways, insurance, labor, and new materials, and then the necessary testing, assuming they don't have a secret stash/cache of 8M spares for emergencies or loaners.

Thanks for being a corporate pawn, your no-honor.

Why is the iPhone so successful? 'Cause people love 'em

Re: but I thought I just read that Samsung sells more phones than Apple.

As for those who dropped and shatttered one or more faces of their iPhones, I wonder how satisfied they are. They, too, probably cannot justify $800 on pretty. It seems they cannot even afford nor justify *$200* on cosmetic or physical repairs on their phones. But, to be fair, I do not know for how long they tolerate or let their phones remain shattered. I might see they are broken, but in reality they might fix them within 2 weeks or even sooner. But, if it looks fairly dirty or very scratched on the sides, too, I could presume a clumsy owner, maybe a lazy one. Still, it is quit a premium to pay for pretty.

Despite my vitriol toward Apple, I STILL find the 17-inch MacBook Pro to be the sexiest laptop out there, but the combination of price and of Apple's aggressiveness in trying to cripple smart phone makers is utterly galling. So, it would be very difficult for me to buy an Apple product and very difficult to logically separate out Customer Satisfaction from personal and group politics. Besides, I (and I cannot remember for certain), I need my up/down, left/right arrows to have separation from other keys, purely for tactile reasons when speed typing, and I need number keys separated, too. The HP Envy looks nice, too, but that damned 3-inch straight power pin as with all HP power adaptors and other sheepish companies' straight-pin power adaptors will prevent me from buying any model with such a power pin. They could force that reticent, resistant, control-freak-it-seems manufacturer (whoEVER it is) to change the pins, but for cost reasons, nobody will. Too much inertia and intransigence are in the way. I wonder what that would do for a customer satisfaction survey.

As for the walled garden, I wonder whether the survey asked whether the owner has hacked or rooted his or her phone or knows anyone who has, and how their emotional state impacted their satisfaction. Of course, Apple could always rest on the reports that no non-rooted phone to date has had virii or Trojans or "pawned" phones surface to date. Not sure of what could be claimed about Android-based phones.

New broadband minister snubs 'ugly' fibre cabinet gripes

Well, if the local government is dependent upon the EC, then...

Do the London/UK/English residents have recourse to ask the EC to take an oversight stance on the issues? If UK citizens are paying tax dollars to the EC, then shouldn't the EC have to listen? If the EC has to listen, and not be filtered by judges and local government officials, then in legit cases, cannot the citizen complaints at lease force a compromise? Or, have compromises already been thoroughly exhausted?

At as matter of safety and insurance liability at the very LEAST, boxes should never be installed if they can damage doors of cars, be "atttactive nuissances", or "invite" pedestrians and bicyclists to crash into them. Not many people break a neck flipping a bike or stumbling while joggingg, but they do twist ankles, break hands, and damage their knees or elbows. So, how high up is the minimum for these boxes?

Are signal concentrators in use, to reduce the number of curbside boxes? Are in-ground trunks or vaults used to reduce the eye-sore factor? It sounds as if some of these things were tried or done, but things also sound out of control if the population affected is getting torqued by all this.

COMCAST

If in 1999 Comcast was to be believed, then every time my whole development experienced a blackout, it was because a motorist along highway 5 or 209 crashed into a cable box alongside the highway on a rainy or foggy/tuley fog night -- what an UNLUCKY box, poor thing. Sick of that lame excuse, I looked at a map, and hollered or curtly replied that that CO ("Central Office") box was 4 miles away. It was insane that a box would be alongside a busy freway, strikeable, and be one that was responsible for a development of 3,000 homes built and 2,000 more on the way. It was preposterous, especially given that these outtages seemed to be every few months -- for a car crash reason. When the outtage was not a box-strike or overheating failure,I think they were just pissed that I used Linux and flat-out refused to install their fracking spyware CD on my machines or even route my machines through a windoze box. Yeh, they made keyloggers (which I only suspect, cannot prove) for Win and Mac, but not for Linux. I even commented that AT&T and Comcast started out with a Unix history and as a matter of PRIDE they should have on stafff at least 3 or 4 UNIX/Linux-savvey people on staff. I even had to argue with them that ALL THEY NEEDED TO DO WAS TO PING my router, not be privileged to a persistent conversational link with my machine, sniffing my network, forcing me to block their probes.

So, maybe one reason for all those boxes is to make sure there is redundancy to sniff a home no matter how much bandwidth a greedy neighbor is sucking down, such as those playing Half-Life and other tournament games of the day, hahaha

Sometimes, phone and cablecos can be deeply invasive and evasive and intensive and endtensive pains in the rear.

Creative landowners can start spiking their land with, well, spikes, and such. Then, so long as they put up warnings to diggers and trench makers, they MIGHT be legally clear, so long as they do it before ever getting a notice of intent to dig for cableco purposes. But, the cablecos should NOT be allowed to send a notice adn then sit on their asses for months or years in advance. They have to plant the box within 3 months, or reset the clock at the risk of be spiked out.

And, as a non-UK resident, don't the landowners and homeowners even get a say in the perimeter location of those boxes? In California, in new developments, the builders at LEAST try to set demarcs for the cablecos to route their lines and plant their boxes in respectable/responsible locations. It is a bitch and 2/3 to have one in the wrong place in the lawn, and some have them IN THEIR DRIVEWAY, meaning they may have to move their vehicle if a work order is in effect. Those boxes should NEVER, EVER be inside the land perimeter of a privately-owned home. They should trace the perimeter, and sensible developers and town/city/parish/district administrators should develop master plans to specifically lay out rights-of-way so that everyone in the process knows where the easements are, all for the very sane reason of preventing bad neighbors and sloppy government from encroaching unfairly, unlawfully, or negligently. Sometimes, neighbors can order a bad neighbor to tear down an overhang, even if it is a cherished tree. A sagging, delipidated fence can be ordered repaired at the expense of the homeowner who created conditions to ruin the fence.

When I in 99 was buying an unbuilt-yet home, I made it clear to the builders that I didn't want any fucking cable boxes crossing my yard, planted in my driveway, or along the sidewalk to be a nuissance to car doors of my friends or of others. Fortunately, the easment for the cableco was on the OTHER side of the fence of my back yard, out on the main thoroughfare, where the cablecos would work without disruption and without inconveniencing homeowners. It's a hellofalot harder, though for older development with little wriggle room, sadly. So, if you CAN, but new, buy before it's build, and if you cannot to that, then get a copy of the builder's plans, county's easements rights/claims, and other info that should be publicly available.

Photos of 'iPad mini' body stir rumor pot

Re: In other news... ummm

Ummm, did you really mean "head quarters", or did you mean "headquarters"? (yeh, yeh, contextual joke)....

Re: There is no iPad Mini being mass produced right now.

I'll say it will be a terrible mistake, hahahha. They could not bear a resurrection or hi-res erection of imaxi ipad or imini ipad with wings stories dripping out of the tech rags anytime too soon.

Recall imaxi ipad with wings stories a few years ago, maybe less than 2 years ago....

Google snags patent on price discrimination

Each according to his/needs, each according to his/own abilities? Or...

Each according to his/ desperation and definitely based on sniffing the TARGET's shopping history via paid-off, umm, "partnered" banks, card issuers, AND by sniffing the TARGET's disclosures in email and social sites?

Sucker factor will likely increase pucker factor.

Yes, i am standing by for the frackin down-thumber schills

South Korea probes 'mobe patent bully-boy' Samsung

Re: Once upon a time..

Apple is becoming a real class act....

Third of iPad owners want smaller slabs

Re: Paris says

But, would width be girth?

Maybe apple tried it in for size and decided 7" makes a better weapon than a 10"er...