Posts by cloudgazer

Tesla tops $20bn as Elon Musk claims arm-wave design tech

not a hecamillionaire anymore

He's a billionaire now, he has 28 million shares of Tesla, at $160 each.

Apple: 27-inch iMac won't ship until next year

Are you guys completely innumerate?

Firstly you quote the GBP prices for the 27inch incorrectly, the prices you quoted were for the 24inch should be pretty obvious since the pound isn't currently worth over $2. Somehow you got the USD equivalent of the UK price correct.

So the basic 27inch is £1499 including £250 in VAT - that £250 is worth $400 at current rates, which means that the UK price of $2400 would equate to a US price (with similar tax) of $2200 not $2000 - which should be pretty obvious as the pound isn't currently worth less than $1.

Proof read maybe?

WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped

Re: Douglas Adams

You mean ...

'I wonder if it will be friends with me?'

Young Frenchwoman desperate for fat pipe tumbles out of window

Re: We have all been there...

http://xkcd.com/466/

Motorola's Germany Xbox sales ban castrated by US judges

Re: The judgement is here ...

ALJ Shaw determined that “the evidence supports Microsoft’s conclusion that Motorola was not interested in good faith negotiations and in extending a RAND license to it.”

http://www.itcblog.com/20120524/alj-shaw-issues-public-version-of-initial-determination-finding-a-violation-of-section-337-by-microsoft-in-certain-gaming-and-entertainment-consoles-337-ta-752/

'Immortal cancer' found in Australia

Re: It's somewhat sad...

There's a great difference between a species dying out due to a virulent disease and a species dying out because we killed it.

Top US Senator to Apple, Google: 'Curb your spy planes'

Seems ironic really

Given that the most dangerous place to be in America is between Charles Schumer and a camera.

Surface: Because Microsoft does so well making hardware?

Perhaps they'll really imitate Apple and go to Foxconn

Newsflash: They use Foxconn already, have for a while now.

Nokia and Symbian still number one in China

Re: Baidu

Actually - very likely, turns out that Baidu is dominant on the desktop but not on mobile.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_search_engine-CN-monthly-201104-201204

vs

http://gs.statcounter.com/#search_engine-CN-monthly-201104-201204

Eugene Kaspersky frustrated by Apple’s iOS AV ban

The reason Apple don't provide Kaspersky with any such API is of course that such an API would itself have to breach the sandbox - and so its presence would make iOS less secure. The same will probably be true for Windows RT tablets, and is presumably the case on WP7.

This isn't a Mac vs PC thing, this is a heavily sandboxed device OS vs PC thing.

Windows Phone beats iOS sales in China

Re: Do these figures represent

It almost has to be just channel at this stage, because WP7 is still a blip on the web-usage stats for china, in the last quarter iPhone's share of web usage grew fifty times faster than WP7's in the PRC. I guess next quarter we find out if they actually managed to shift any of them.

Microsoft, Motorola legal bickering sparks judicial disgust

minor correction

Actually I believe the Jury in question would be only 6 people, at least if Florian Mueller's quote of Judge Robart is accurate.

Apple screws UK disties, punts just 13,000 iPads to channel

It's kinda odd

Because availability of 32GB and 64GB models in the Apple stores was non-existent, but I had no problem picking one up at Dixons in Gatwick - so if channel aren't getting very many, they're clearly having trouble shifting even the few that they do get.

I guess most people prefer to shop in Apple stores than Dixons/Currys if given the choices?

Blizzard ponders World of Warcraft for iPad

This is clearly just a setup

For a really good April fool - they can't port WoW to console, I can't see how they could hope to port it to iPad.

Diablo on the other hand ....

Apple wins battle in Motorola patent war

Re: Re: Re: Its only a matter of time

> FRAND is there to protect patent holders and people who need to use the tech in question, it protects the patent holders from someone just using their tech (in theory) without payment, it protects people who need the tech because they can't be stopped from using it (if they pay).

Completely wrong - FRAND is there to protect potential licensees, it does not protect patent holders in any way whatsoever. There's also no need to negotiate a license in advance of using the tech, you can start using and negotiate later, and this isn't just according to Apple, but also freely admitted by Nokia when they were suing Apple.

See for instance section 40 of http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/102209nokiapplecomplaint.pdf

Apple goes to European Commission with complaint about Motorola

Re: That's nice..

I think they have been for a while now.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/12/30/apple_statement/

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: So how come

Yep - also HTC and Nokia are being sued by IPCom an independent patent troll that acquired some standards essential patents and is determined to make the most of them.

US and EU regulators will give Googorola the nod soon

Um

Feel free to quote an instance of Apple asserting a FRAND patent against anybody - and they do have them - H.264 related patents for starters.

Apple crushes rivals under its heel in Euro fondleslab sales

common misconception

Apple reports both. They report shipped numbers, but then they include channel inventory numbers in the conference call. Since their inventory is invariably tight, shipped=sold. For instance in the last quarter sold iPad was actually 200k units higher than shipped.

Better yet

You can order US iTunes cards online from the EU, so you can route around the content owners stupid geographical restrictions while still owning legitimate copies of whatever it is you're after.

EU competition chief threatens patent war smackdown

No consideration at all because it wouldn't happen.

There's no point in holding a patent that would allow higher data rates if nobody adopts it, there's no point in putting it into one's own handsets if it's not in the base-stations. There's no point putting it into the base-stations if it won't be in a large fraction of handsets. This is the reason why industry bodies grew up in the first place, this is the reason why companies like Moto and Nokia joined them and submitted their patents.

This isn't bait and switch - this is what Moto signed up for.

Revealed: Apple's plea for fairness in mobile patent war

All FRANDs here

I'm pretty sure you're wrong about IPcom not being bound by FRAND

http://www.ipcom-munich.com/IPCom_Frand_Declaration.pdf

In fact part of the problem for handset makers is that their patents are declared essential and so they can't stop implementing them without ceasing to technically implement the standard - and if they do that they lose their rights to FRAND licenses for everything else!

Lumia sales fail to set world alight

Given it matches up with the FT report indicating the Lumia failed to make the top-10 I'd question your anonymous online stores instead.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/822aec78-27ed-11e1-a4c4-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1hI8H0lR9

NASA detects 'heartbeat' of pint-sized star-sucker

Nope

The power in the Hawking radiation from a solar mass black hole turns out to be a minuscule 9 × 10E−29 watts. Bigger bodies radiate less than smaller, so a 3 solar mass black hole wouldn't lose any appreciable amount of mass over the lifetime of the galaxy.

The only blackholes that could have shrunk appreciably are those that were created in the big bang itself and started off much smaller than any blackhole created by a supernova could be.

Why are Android anti-virus firms so slow to react on Carrier IQ?

Actually they've already admitted to recording more than they need to

They record URLs. They consider this ok because they don't record the web pages themselves, but URL tracking is itself a privacy invasion.

Facebook disses Effin Irishwoman

needs another syllable on line 3

Perhaps:

'coz they wouldn't let in

Man's phone burns, toasts trouser region

There are different models of SGS-2

This one is apparently the SGS-2 Skyrocket - a recent AT&T model.

EU: Apple-Samsung row could be stifling competition

This is specifically about Samsung's abuse of FRAND

The key is in the phrase 'involving 3G standards patents.' Really Reg, you can do better than this. The way you've reported it implies that Apple is also under investigation. It isn't.

Spillover from 400lb man squeezed fellow flier into galley

The arm rests are your friends

Under no circumstances allow the fat man to raise them. When he calls the steward remind the steward that the arm rests must be down for take off. If the fat man cannot sit down with the arm rest up, that's his problem. Safety first!

Apple eyes set on Sharp IGZO tech for iPad 3 screen

There are transistors, but they control whether the pixel is on or off, the LCD itself is more than just transistors so, there is another factor which is that the larger you make a screen the greater the possibility of faults, and the more pixels you make the larger the possibility of faults, so when you try to make a very high resolution large display you get truly terrible yields.

It took years for LCD panels at larger sizes to be economically viable.

Kindle Fire: An open letter to Jeff Bezos

What part of this being an unofficial android fork did you not understand?

That you thought it would run the android google app suite is an indication of how clueless you are, not anything else.

LG seeks cash to save its smartphone biz

I believe the phrase is Good Money After Bad.

Fixing Android mobes costs telcos millions

Ultimately telcos will price this into Android by reducing the subsidy on the handsets involved. I doubt it will amount to more than a few dollars per handset though.

Shock movie upset - Daniel Craig still James Bond 007

Oh dear - whenever the Bond franchise wanders away from Fleming's books things go badly awry. Hopefully this time will be an exception, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Koreans get touchless gesture-controlled Android phone

How long till we have the first security problem with background apps abusing this to spy on users?

Steve Jobs named most influential game guy – ever

Molyneux was struck off because of the Fable series - oh and Black and White.

Jobs? Zuckerberg? Tim Berners Lee?

This list suffers from the classic 'what's important right now' syndrome. Sure right now the most important growth platforms for gaming are iOS web and facebook, but those stand at the end of a long road and you can't ignore the people who built it.

HTC Titan WinPho 7.5 smartphone

Just because MS has set a crappy upper limit to the resolution doesn't mean that phones using supersized screens shouldn't be marked down for it. Just because it isn't HTC's fault doesn't mean it isn't HTC's problem.

@tony smith

now now, everybody knows that using facts in an argument is cheating.

India uncloaks new thorium nuke plants

Great to see investment in Thorium - not least because the Thorium cycle cannot be weaponized.

BlackBerry nicks iPhone's UK smartphone crown

Next quarter numbers are going to be pretty interesting. Is the iPhone 4S a big deal or a damp squib? Can WP7 pull Nokia out of the death spiral? Will Blackberry's consumer market hold up as WhatsApp and iMessage destroy the BBM advantage? Is the recent dip in Android sales in the US just a blip or the start of a wider slowdown?

Interesting times in the smartphone 'verse.

Samsung making over half its cash from its mobes

They'd need to borrow about $50BN to buy Samsung Electronics at current prices. But of course it's academic, because Samsung Electronics is controlled by the Chaebol holding company and it isn't for sale.

Nexus vs 4S is far more mixed than you are portraying it

CPU: Nexus ahead slightly - rendered irrelevant by the difference between native and VM code

RAM: As above, Nexus is ahead, but it needs far more due to architectural differences.

GPU: iPhone ahead enormously. It's unlikely we'll see an equivalent GPU from Android before Kal-El hits, maybe not until Krait.

Resolution: Higher in logical pixels, about even in subpixels, worse in pixel density, much worse in sub-pixel density. So better for video, but worse for text.

Native Gmail app coming to iPhone, iPad?

Because gmail is different. Labels aren't folders, deletion doesn't really work the same way. The default mail app is a poor substitute to a proper gmail app.

Asus eyes Android, Windows 8 tablets in 2012

Just because it was supply constrained doesn't mean it still is. Apple also could have sold more iPad-2s if it hadn't been supply constrained, but those constraints no longer apply. Likely Asus could have sold more units if it had been able to get them to market while Apple was still struggling to meet demand, but it's a much rougher environment for them now - especially with the Kindle Fire launching in the US.

Samsung demands iPhone 4S source code in Aussie row

'Cupertino obviously believes patent rights should be transferable, but that will depend on the contract Samsung has with Qualcomm, which is why Apple wants to see it.'

This isn't about patent rights being transferable, non-exclusive licenses generally aren't - this is about double dipping not being allowed because patents rights are exhaustable.

Critical Windows zero-day bug exploited by Duqu

DCOM isn't obsolete. It's still very much part of MS' technology stack, and doesn't look like getting replaced anytime soon.

Bill Gates strangled Microsoft's 'tablet for creatives'

This is why MS hasn't innovated significantly in decades - they're more worried about preserving existing monopolies than blazing new trails.

Apple confirmed as buyer of 3D mapping firm

I'd hate to see that, because it would be a real shame to see Google get dragged through the kind of anti-trust case that would result.

No discussion of google maps is ever complete

without xkcd

http://xkcd.com/461/

Will Apple get me past the spectral wolf?