Posts by Jyve

Windows XP activation algorithm cracked, keygen now works on Linux

Re: Xrays.

Aye, had an XP VM for... a couple of decades now I think it is with a bunch of, funnily enough, x-ray stuff too. Only got the .exes for the vital stuff, or I'd have moved them to something/anything else a decade+ ago, something the boss continues to bug me about whenever he's bored, but yeah, this is NOT an unknown setup. A few 'grizzled old timers' still have a few of these floating around because they're useful. (too useful sometimes, that it boots up in a couple of seconds vs most other VM's and only needs a couple of gb assigned ram to feel fast also helps.).

Samsung on fridge cert error: Someone tried to view 'unsavoury content' in middle of John Lewis

Phone use

That's why you set your phone to be a hotspot, get the fridge connecting to that, and THEN going to anywhere you want.

Koh YEAH! Apple, Samsung finally settle iPhone patent crusade

Self inflicted

That Apple still has to go back to Samsung for so many parts of their phones, and Samsung will crank up the cost of those components to cover some of the loses here, Apple really must at one point have realised that this was a stupid way to try and get a discount.

I'm sure that's why Jobs started, but the moment the lawyers took over, it escalated into this mess we say, and though Samsung 'lost' the case, there was still plenty of evidence showing that Samsung threw designs at the wall and saw what stuck, they'd been making phones for a long time before Apple turned up asking for help/parts to make their phone, and Apple did exactly the same things they accused Samsung of, ie, looking at other products and copying/refining them, but then going the extra mile to patent it.

The moment in the case it was shown Apple had photoshopped a Samsung device to make it look more like iOS was the moment the case should have been thrown out. Then that initial settlement being found against devices the case said didn't infringe?

Samsung were screwed from the start. I'm still not understanding how the Judge was allowed to run this case after having worked on Patents/IP issues for Apple before in the past. That there was a risk she herself could be called as a witness at some point was just crazy and should never been allowed to happen.

BOFH: Free as in free beer or... Oh. 'Free Upgrade'

Printer fun over the years

Hate them.

My first 'real' IT job, I was made it feel /really/ useful when told by my boss how just ONE of these high capacity printers cost more than twice my salary.

I did get /some/ small measure of satisfaction a few weeks later when it ran out of toner in the middle of some /pretty/ vital work being unable to be done (would have been huge fines if regulators found out about the documentation not actually existing at certain times).

The guy flying down the M6 to get to us was MIA. He later turned up swearing blind that he'd been stopped by the police for speeding and that's why he wasn't here on time. Another Boss who'd chosen these printers and was having doubts now about going against the advice of the techs was starting to get twitchy about everything and was getting annoyed with the continued problems "they stopped you for 5 hours? you must have been /really/ zooming along". "well... there were roadworks too" "yes, yes, of course, strange we came that same route this morning and didn't see them".

To be fair, the boss did make a valid point "why do you only turn up to replace the toner when it says empty?" "there'd not be much point replacing a half full cartridge, they're not cheap" "I don't think you understand, why only when it says empty? Can we get a few more spares" "well, you need to go through training to be able to configure these things..." "a printer cartridge? really?" "yes, they're more complex than you think..." "ok, ok, but why only 'empty', it'd be like having a car that had a petrol tank gauge that only flashed empty when you're suddenly coasting to a stop because you've ran out of fuel 'yeah, thanks, I know that now' so why.." "well, it's all networked, but you chose not to get THAT option..." "Don't even start... you're saying we can only find out if the printer cartridge is nearing empty if we spend another few k? And why does it do the same for the paper bins too? Can't we get a display showing a rough %? Like how a car petrol tank shows half empty?" "Too complex..."

At that point, as struggling with the cartridge, he dropped it. It cracked open. And a huge mushroom cloud of toner slowly went up, to be caught by the server room's out-gassing vent (if not the right name, but the vent at the top where all the heat was sucked out into the large machine room).

There was a covering of toner of the guy, the printers, everything in a line even reaching the window. To avoid A) laughing B) an asthma attack, I ducked out of the room.

We ended up with a few spares of the cartridges and got the cleaning crew to replace them/the paper if the 'test print' looked a bit washed out and the paper bin looked a bit empty.

VirtualBox 5.1 debuts

Re: Zombie

Very much so. I've got a few useful VM's laying around, would prefer for Oracle to not notice how useful this is to many people.

But if they do, guess it's VMWare time. But I've just got used to VBox.

$10bn Oracle v Google copyright jury verdict: Google wins, Java APIs in Android are Fair Use

Re: Google must have paid big bucks...

If they'd have won this, lawyers would have sensed a payday.

"yes, this function, it takes a string, for example, "Hello World" and it prints it to the screen! We have the copyright on that!"

There'd not be a single api/function/method of coding that wouldn't have been torn apart, only to have RMS in the corner probing orifices going "I told you!"

Microsoft announces Windows 10 Anniversary Update coming this summer

Re: Give'em credit

"At last, this could be the year of Win10 on the desktop."

By including Linux! Hilarious.

Oracle blurts Google's Android secrets in court: You made $22bn using Java, punk

Aye, I don't get this. IF Oracle did somehow win, the chaos that's follow, including against Oracle themselves from various language developers.

"nice output statement you got there, you take a string as input, and output it to a file/screen/stream/all of the above? that looks very familiar. If fncRangeCheck was worth 6.5Billion to you, then printing 'hello world' to the screen must be around.. 26Billion?"

There's an epidemic of idiots who can't find power switches

tickityclickboom

Had a user that every... 3 to 6 months, her pc would flat out die. Not just be odd, but mobo fried. Pop open the case to inspect and it was obvious something had blown. Replace mobo, reinstall, good to go. Using the same software as everyone else, not over clocked gaming hard, just regular PC. 3 months later, it'd pop again. Mobo blown.

Pop under desk, check power, seem ok. 2 machines into a splitter, but other machine ok, they're not too much draw, nothing else on that same socket.

Replace entire machine, maybe the psu faulty. 6 months later, blown Mobo.

What the heck is she doing to the machine, those woolly jumpers she wears and static or something?

Sheer fluke was sat opposite her one Friday afternoon working on someone else's machine and I hear 'rickitytickity' noises, like, power sparking. "Anyone hear that?" "hear what?" "that noise?" "no?" And to be fair, with the yelling going on in the office, printers/faxes blaring out, was fairly noisy for an office sometimes, especially the day before a sailing trying to get everything squared up. I pop under the desk to investigate the noise (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it), and I notice the girl who blows machines up every few months, the power cable, under her feet, and she's rolling it back and forth out of habit I guess. So it's everso slightly twisting in the psu and that's what's blowing it up. One cable run cover later, problem never came back though she moaned that she liked rolling the cable, helped her think.

Doctor Who storms back in fine form with Season 9 opener The Magician's Apprentice

Gimmicks over story. The last season was painful to wade through, but Clara leaving gave me hope. Now she's back, and... it's... I give up.

It's jumped the shark, or Guitared the Tank.

Maybe it's too much budget, where someone saying "hey, what if we get a tank, and the doc rides in playing a guitar, and... we have a castle set, with... 20? 30? extras? All garbed up? and some pyrotechnics on the tank, it's only a 2 minute scene, missy/clara collecting the Doctor who could have been pondering things by sitting nearby some water, eating jelly babies, lost in thought as Missy/clara walk up behind him, "oh, you 2, well, lets get this started then, again, eh?". Or even a several minute chat between Missy/The Doctor, with more backstory on what Missy is thinking/doing, and that she understands the Doctor's position, she too misses Gallifrey, but perhaps the TimeLords had their chance, after all... 'brief exposition', then arguments about their roles in the universe, how each see things differently, and something that EXPANDS the characters, the story, the plot.

But no.

Guitar playing, tank riding nonsense.

Think I'm done for now, someone prod me when Moffat moves on.

Apple: Samsung ripped off our phone patent! USPTO: What patent?

Re: A blogger did this ?

It's not a million miles away from;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LifeDrive

How much do you have to change the design before you can claim to be revolutionary and unique? The first iPhones sure had a lot more polish perhaps than other phones, but they were still the same basic shape as we'd seen before in other devices. So they put a bit more glass on, so they put a bit more glass on, remove some buttons, claim to be unique. Samsung comes along, adds glass, leaves the extra buttons on, gets sued for 1.2 Billion. If the design was truly that obvious, why was Apple photoshopping the Samsung devices to make them look more alike? Surely wouldn't have been needed if it was that obvious.

Meh.

Lawyers making jobs for lawyers.

BOFH: Don't go changing on Friday evenings, I don't wanna work that hard

Not just Absolute BS, but BS 5750!

Fanbois designing Windows 10 – where's it going to end?

Re: A novel idea?

Yeah, was first wondering what the fuss was about as wasn't really mentioned WHAT was the problem until the 2nd page, and then... 'oh, yeah, you can change that setting".

And lets be honest, how many regular users ARE going to start faffing with multi windows?

And regular power users will already be using vdesk.exe or desktops.exe and all configured to work they way they like. (which in this case, I think MS hasn't done that good a job, nothing seems to have ever kept up with the sheer speed/configuration of the original windows nt 3.1 resource kit's vdesk.exe that only just stopped working after all these years with Windows8).

This is a non-issue for anyone that'd use it.

Plod wants your PC? Brick it with a USB stick BEFORE they probe it

Re: Wonder if there would be a market for

yes, there'd be a huge market for this. Once had the wonderful meeting where thermite was seriously being considered to destroy a large amount of harddrives to a secure standard. It was only because they couldn't get an environmental impact report/waiver in time that we went back to the usual boring linux boot/secure wipe 7 times random data.

But....

man, would have loved to have gone the thermite route.

But Secure ssd's with a secure method to nuke (the important part!) before shipping the now dead PC to a warehouse for decommissioning? Yeah, there's some people would go for that, might be cheaper for them to do it that way.

Re: Automatic bricking...

Alas not in regards to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investigatory_Powers_Act_2000 where you're guilty until you can prove yourself innocent.

It's horrible legislation and ripe for abuse, thus why it was implemented.

Netflix: Look folks, it's net neutrality... HA, fooled you

Maybe not bad

IF they put their video server inside the ISP, then... I'm ok with this. It's providing better quality to the customers, not using peering bandwidth, everyone's a winner here.

IBM drops patent bomb on Priceline.com

Re: Invention versus Description of the Bleedingly Obvious

Can't see clearly on other sites what the patents actually do apart from being;

"do something that everyone did for years on computers, but do it on the internet".

Ugly, incomplete, buggy: Windows 10 faces a sprint to the finish

Re: looking for apps

Find the app, right click, properties, you can fire up stuff even faster.

But... that's for techies who read sites like this.

Support on Win8 with the Metro UI has been a nightmare, only fixed when using classicshell to 'make it how it used to be!'.

I'd have thought non techies wouldn't mind the pretty icons and all, but turns out they've been using computers just as long as us, and /really/ like not having to do anything different, even if it does mean throwing every single document they can find onto the desktop. "it's the only place I can find it easily!" /groan.

US govt opens door to Google The Cellphone Network

Re: Google wouldn't be paying for the 3.5 GHz band

Google's been prepping for this for a LONG time.

Need many cell towers? And the insane amount of backhaul to service it? Hmm, if only they had their own fiber networks in some places. Aha! They DO!

So in all the places they're offering fiber, you can go to Google to get your home internet, cell phone coverage (the actual phones/OS themselves), movies/music/email/document storage/video calling/home security/laptops/desktops. The only things they're missing out at this point I can see are Google Power, Google Sewage and Google Snack Burritos to drive all this. Scary

20 years on: The satirist's satirist Peter Cook remembered

Re: "greatest British comedian of all time "

You're not the only one. That bloke was comedy incarnate. Can't think of anyone else who could walk onto a set, stare at a chair, and get a response like he could, you yourself would have all the things going through your mind on what he was going to say, to then be surprised when he pointed out something obvious you'd not thought off.

Even the show he died, I have to admit, I was giggling as it happened as I thought it was all a setup. Even the curtain being shaken around with his feet sticking out, you couldn't have set something like that up to be as funny. What a way for a comedian to go.

Apple on the art of the deal: 'Put on your big boy pants and accept the agreement'

Cheapo sapphire machines?

How can I get a sapphire making machine on the cheap? This could sort out the wife's birthday/xmas/anniversary prezzies for decades.

Nexus 9: Google and HTC deliver Android 5.0 'Lollipop' at iPad prices

Re: Maybe...maybe not.

Exactly how I feel. The Nexus7 price/formfactor is great. When it gets Lollypop I think it'll be an even better device than it already is.

Android's Cyanogenmod open to MitM attacks

So it'll be fixed soon?

M...12? just released? So there'll be a quick fix/release this week soon most likely.

Wonder how common CM actually IS in common use. Is the 10million amount of downloads/upgrades or actual current running versions? Guess my Nexus One running CM7 is out of luck.

Zippy one-liners, broken promises: Doctor Who on the Orient Express

Clara must go

I don't get why they feel Dr Who has to be turned into a pseudo rom-com, but her presence is a detriment to every story. I want to watch Sci-Fi with a time traveling alien who uses smarts (and a /bit/ of luck) to fix things than a mopey sidekick who's fretting about having a boyfriend and "oh look, an adventure to distract me, but I'm going to chew my bottom lip until everything is fixed through some odd coincidence of events that being there doesn't really impact much, and I've got to keep making him feel guilty about something"

Capaldi's a great actor but the stories so far have been absolute dross, and Clara being there isn't helping.

Google AXES AndroidScript app used by 20,000 STEM coders WITHOUT WARNING

Re: Blame the lawyers

The naming thing is catching a lot of people out, seems like the last 2 weeks they've started enforcing the name. A few apps got the headlines for being 'edgy' and something Google would want to get rid of! But then they renamed the app, removed the Android part (as the emails devs get suggest) and the apps are back.

Google hauls Java-on-Android spat into US Supreme Court

Re: Oracle are most definitely evil

Aye, this is what I don't get, there's going to be people crawling out of the woodwork with, to be fair, valid claims against Oracle/MS/Pretty much EVERYONE.

There won't be enough lawyers to take on the work this is going to cause, and the need for one to be sat next to every coder on the planet to make sure they don't break an existing copyright on how to print 'hello world'.

Shields up! Nvidia crams Tegra K1 into gaming slab to rival your PS3

Tempting, but wondering what OS upgrades will be like.

If the next Nexus device uses this chip? I'm all over it.

Report: Google back in Europe's crosshairs over web domination claims

Re: Feels like déjà vu

It's the sort of thing that when I hear from people at this sort of position, and the phrase 'it's on my desk for review' is uttered, I hear the 'and I'll be accepting various offers for my opinion' even when it's not said out loud.

Perhaps this guy leaving is waiting to find out who's offering the best job after he leaves this post.

Re: Is there a way to circumvent the EUs ruling?

Me too. And I can also install other browser/media players and change the defaults if I want to.

Can I use Yahoo if I want their services? Bing if I want to look for pr0n?

Looking forward to MS offering IE on Android/IOS.

Cheer up, Nokia fans. It can start making mobes again in 18 months

Re: Microsoft bought Nokia because ...

That's pretty much how I understood it. Even if Nokia does get back into making smartdevices in the future, they'll end up having to pay so much in licensing, MS will STILL make more money from Android than nokia would making the phones themselves I suspect.

Google's lounge room invasion advances with Chromecast upgrade

Works, kinda

Nexus7 2013, works kinda, seems to be dropping connection often. No lag when running though, some games, whilst connected, looked great on the big screen. Playable (though you find yourself looking down at the tablet anyway, so more a presentation thing!)

Wife's Nexus5 worked flawlessly. No lag, no dropouts. Both running standard OS, no random roms, so... not sure what's happening there.

Very impressive that the lag is... I'd guess, half a second, if that. Gaming is going to be possible on this casting. Gets strange when you go to watch a youtube clip, it'd make sense to ask if you want to keep doing it this way or use the standard chromecasting youtube method that's smoother.

For a beta, it's impressive. Hopefully the issues on the N7 get smoothed out, but early days yet.

Also wondering if/how it'll do it as a second screen, as shown under the dev settings, so you can 'throw' a game/something to the screen and still use the tablet perhaps.

What's your game, Google? Giant collared by UK civil lib minister on 'right to be forgotten'

Re: right to change history

Aye, that's it exactly. It's all right for this no-body MP to offer HIS legal opinion, but can Google use that when they're sued for not removing information? I suspect not.

If he really believes in what he says, he should get the law clarified/changed to give Goog legal protection from the inevitable sueing that'd occur when they denied someone big.

Amazon sues former employee who took Google cloud job

Re: Can't see the gray area here

To be a fly on the wall at the dole office.

"I see here you're claiming unemployment benefit, have you tried looking for work?"

"No, I'm not allowed to"

"I'm sorry? You're not allowed to? Why?"

"Well, I signed a document with my last employer that stops be working in anything that competes with them, and as it's so highly specialised, there's only 2 companies in the world who do this, so, as I left one, I can't work for the other"

"Ok... Well, can you do anything else?"

"Sorry, no, the document i signed was very broad, so you see, legally, I'm not allowed to work, thus that's why I'm here as I need money. If I get a job, my old company can sue me for everything, now, I don't know if they'd win, but I'd still need to pay for a lawyer to handle that, so to be safe, I'm avoiding working for 2 years"

"I'm sorry, we can't pay you unemployment unless you're looking for work"

"But my contract says I can't"

"From your last employer? Who you no longer work for?"

"yes"

"then you should get them to pay unemployment"

"I can't"

"Why not?"

"They're in receivership, not paying anyone"

"Why?"

"Because I was their expert, now I've left, there's no-one who can figure it out"

"what are you an expert in?"

"I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to tell you unless you have a certain security clearance"

Judge halts spread of zombie Nortel patents to Texas in Google trial

Re: What a difference it makes

Totally. The only thing I can think of with that is Samsung is just building up a monstrous amount of evidence to show horrendous amounts of bias. Every other judge who deals with this stuff (Google Vs Oracles, this one here) appears to want to get to the meat of the matter and get facts out, ALL the facts. Not disallow anything that helps Samsung. That she used to work for the company who dealt with Apple IP issues still strikes me as odd she's even allowed to deal with a case that has apparent bias.

Microsoft: Let's be clear, WE won't read your email – but the cops will

Re: In other words...

What I find interesting about the Scroogled campaign is it reflects (and always has) worse on MS than it has on Google. And now with this, and Scroogled often being mentioned in the same articles, it continues to draw attention to MS.

Now, yesterday was;

http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2014/03/27/microsoft-wins-battle-over-scroogled-ad-campaign/

"Two people complained about the ad, pointing out that Microsoft scans the content of emails too. But the ASA ruled that, because this scanning was for the purposes of eliminating spam rather than targeting ads, Microsoft wasn’t being hypocritcal."

Sure more news companies will draw attention MS probably didn't want. They don't scan for ads, they manually read/snoop on your email.

Xenon: Bitmap Brothers' (mega)blast from the past

Hacked version on vid!

Nice that it's showing 'trained by Bamiga sector 1'! Maybe only way to do a decent capture on an emulated machine, as if I recall, the real version was notorious for being fickle to load on the disc drive.

Worked for a tiny computer shop at the time, and it was this game that got people buying Amigas as fast as we could get them. Ok, later gameplay probably put them off, but cranking up the loading screen with this music blaring out, then the first couple of minutes that had you with the full power ups, looked uber impressive.

But we really did have so many problems with that game, think it used some odd format to get as much data as possible, and probably all the viruses going around at the time would knock it out, so we often had to get a dodgy copy for people who'd trashed their original.

And the music apps... Even basic trackers, so easy to get on with, basic samplers. And cross-over cables to get some multiplayer games going!

When later getting into PC's, really annoyed me how long it took for them to catch up basic stuff, like clicking an icon to launch and the machine not freezing up. Better multiscreen handling, sound of course. Ok, the 3D hardware took some time to hit the PC, was only then the PC started to LOOK like it was better. Agnes chip really could crank out some impressive gfx.

Wasn't that long ago a neighbour asked me to give their machine a quick look over as her brother had donated it to her. Turned out he was a gfx artist for a certain well known god game creating company, and it had DPaint installed. Ah, memories.

But yeah, having a machine at home that did what it did, as well as it did it, when we had Mac time in the lab, these 'advanced' machines made me laugh (black and white? tiny screen? ugh!). And the uber fast 486 with high end matrox card? Yup, Amiga hardware really was ahead of the curve for a long time. Shame Commodore mismanaged it; Amiga did well despite Commodore, not because of them.

Satisfy my scroll: El Reg gets claws on Windows 8.1 spring update

Re: Having used every desktop version of Windows since 3.11,

That the IT Pro has been using the existing paradigm for 20 years and finds Win8 simple does things odd?

MS trained us to work this way, and things you learned in Win386 still worked after all these years until now. Things like setting the properties on the icons so you can zoom around uber fast. Worked in Progman.exe, all the way upto Win7. Now, the default UI won't let you do that, you drop down to Desktop mode, that has been deliberately knobbled. I still find it staggering that even after all this noise is being made, MS is STILL trying to force this through and these tweaks are minor at best, and users are being forced to install Start button programs to get back lost functionality.

That whole 'charms' thing, NO obvious UI hints to that at all, suddenly there's hidden things appearing? And... right clicking in Windows Store for more options, not having a menu in place to start with to know there IS a menu? It just breaks everything UI design has been working towards since UI design was thought of.

Why is MS fighting it's own users so hard on this?

Apple granted patent for two-faced iPhone with wraparound touchscreen

Seeing as they were showing these things off at trade shows...2+ years ago? Yeah, most likely.

Google search biz offer BINNED by EU competition chief

Re: vertical search?

More than anything this is an attack by Microsoft to slow down Google so they can get to do the same stuff.

MS has always tried to get 50% of a market, then snipe away, but in this case, critical mass has been against them, and accuracy of data Now Bing isn't /that/ bad (not AS bad, but those google vs bing test is trivial to work out which site is which), MS are cranking up the attacks. Which, to be a bit fair to MS, they did get bashed over the head for their dominance and probably want everyone dragged down to their level.

But they're behind, and doing anything they can to knobble Google, and it looks like these funded 'fairsearch' organisations and the money being thrown about is working.

Apple dodges data privacy sueball: Fanbois didn't RTFM*, says judge

Wait, Koh again?

She used to do work for Apple, and keeps finding in Apple's favour? Eh?

I don't get how she's able to keep getting these cases when there's prior business dealings.

Ultimate Doctor Tom Baker REGENERATES, RETURNS to WHO

If this is true (and I'm truly hoping it is), then it's the right thing to do.

Chuck on a wig, wrap him in the scarf, and let those dulcet tones flood over you.

A lot of hype here, but considering all the misdirections (and flat out lies!), I wouldn't put it past them.

/pleaseohpleaseohplease

Ex-CEO Elop's plunder to total $25m in voyage from Nokia to Microsoft

Unexpected

"Rumors that Elop was grooming Nokia for an eventual sale to Microsoft began shortly after he joined the company,"

After? Before, during, after, and every week until it finally happened. Was incredibly obvious this was MS's plan all along and it was only a matter of time of when, not if.

Nokia staff leaving knew what was about to happen, for Nokia to feign shock at eventual outcomes is... well, it's not working. But, the right people have had their cut, so business as usual.

Legal eagles pit Apple v. Samsung in thievery test

Or...

Turn on the GPS remotely, take a picture, send round the police to arrest the person with stolen goods.

Pretty soon;

A) no-one will steal phones

B) buy stolen phones.

And the problem is solved, as well as lots of other local burglary crimes too most likely.

Magpie Apple plunders the competition for cosmetics, as egos run wild

Familiar

It wasn't unexpected the direction they'd be going. They'd really backed themselves into a corner, and WP8/Android were showing that functionality beats pretty UI's that need extra clicks.

The Notification bar, the quick settings, it's obvious that Apple have sat down with everything out there and /really/ looked carefully at it, probably had meetings on what to take it, improve it, and make it look 'appley' but it's incredibly obvious to anyone who looks at them where the ideas are coming from.

And that's ok! It really is! Palm had some great ideas too, as can be seen by the switcher.

But...

You know deep down every iPhone user is going to look at this and think "well, they kept telling me this was better than the competition for all those years, and that they were copying MY phone, but now they're copying them and... I just feel uncomfortable. What else do other phones do better?"

Then again, maybe it'll get a few others to re-look at iPhones and say 'oo, nice hardware and now a nice OS that works like i'm used to'.

Shame they're going to Bing though, to get away from Google, they're once again willing to break their functionality. Unless they think Bing's good enough now. But as bad as Google may be perceived to Apple, have they REALLY forgotten how Microsoft works?

Shows an Apple that's following, following, racing around, sniffing for clues. And at last, the general press seems to be aware that the smoke and mirrors are just that.

YES, Xbox One DOES need internet, DOES restrict game trading

This makes the Ouya look highly impressive!

Stunning that all this is blowing up in MS's face now. With E3 coming up, there's not going to be chance to talk about games. It won't be just games journalists there, but regular press (I hope) badgering MS execs on providing information to the Government.

Always on? Kinect always running? Listening in? Identifying who's in the room?

No wonder it's already being known as the Xbox1984

iPHONES and 'Pads BANNED in US for violating Samsung patent

Re: OMG!

This is the first step though for a lawsuit to get cash from all those prior sales though.

Googorola loses bid to ban US Xbox sales after ITC slapdown

Yeah, MS didn't even try to negotiate right, just ran to the judge.

So they get the patents they need for next to nothing, can't be punished for not paying, but can lock out others from using any of their tech.

No-one will submit anything of worth to a patent pool in future, it's just been shown to give away everything for no benefit, and you're far better off keeping it to yourself to allow room to sue later.

Very odd ruling, and something MS will end up also being hurt by at later points in time.

Google misses privacy-policy deadline, incurs EU wrath

Laws?

If Google's breaking the law, where is it. Point them to the exact wording, let them fix/work around it, AND hold other companies to the same standard. Otherwise this just looks like a huge shakedown.

Can you implement a law in the EU that's only applicable to one company? No? then show us the law. List exactly how Google are breaking it. Otherwise this is simply corruption.

I'm sure there's other companies cheering them on, offering support, who'll run into huge problems themselves if such laws are implemented. Needing user confirmation on using the search engine, the mapping, the email, the printing (these services can cost money), the... everything.

Funnily enough, Google's method, obvious on why it's the way it is, really is the simplest way to manage this, and thus most likely for a user to tweak. Having different options all over the place is only going to make things worse.

Apple's profits fetish could spell its DOOM

Re: Apple is more than just a tech company...

" but mobile makers don't earn any money from content sold on Android"

I suspect that eventually they'll all hammer on Google for a share of that revenue too. Google will take 30% of the app price, take 10% for themselves, 10% for the carrier (if it IS a phone or tablet with wireless), 10% for the device maker it was bought on. It's certainly something I'd negotiate for when Google came knocking on the door wanting cheap but quality devices.

Apple granted patent for ebook page-turning

You know, of all the other times we've seen this, it was those 80's games that was my first thoughts too. Fairy Tale Adventure;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5_4DhXWdwo&feature=related

18 seconds into the vid. 1986

If this was running on a handheld device, it'd be prior art? Or just mind numbingly bleeding obvious.