Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

@Bryce

I think you misunderstood...

I'm not saying how Google should defend itself against the lawsuit, meaning I'm not advocating any strategy.

My comment about when to invalidate a patent is meant that any company, in this case Google wants to argue about the validity of the patent, they need to do so before they are getting sued by the company that holds the patent. Regardless of the validity of the patent, at the time of the lawsuit, its in place and that is what the court will base their rulings on. They don't care about the validity of the patent just that the company being sued did infringe upon the company.

Clearly you don't understand the law (US Law).

You also don't understand the logic behind using patents outside of patent trolls.

I think you miss the point...

Nokia has become the favorite phone company to bash because it is so large and is lagging in the 'hottest' market of PDA phones.

The point is that its fun to poke fun of Nokia.

Nope, it was the evil Martians.

They heard that we were planning on using the moon as a launch pad to send people to Mars.

So they figured if they got rid of the moon that they would stop our invasion.

So they set up a small black hole that would slowly destroy the moon.

Them Martians are a patient breed and figure that they'll give us a fighting chance by making the decay slow.

Either that or they're really cruel bastids who wanted us to recognize our fate and watch us scramble and panic ...

@Bill, its not that simple..

"what about the opportunity cost of losing advertising revenue that would have been generated form external customer purchase?"

Its not that simple...

I know that the GAAP rules have changed since I took some accounting classes on a whim when back at University....

The issue is something like this...

Google Nexus wants 2 million dollars to advertise their product on Google.

They bid up the adwords... They 'spend' 2 million dollars out of their budget to Google.

Google Adwords bills the department for the 2 million.

In the overall scheme you have a 2million dollar expense on one department, against a 2 million dollar 'revenue gain' in another. So its a wash. At least that's the argument the author is making. (Note: This is an over simplification even if real money did change hands the net result is about the same.)

The net result is that if someone like Moto wanted to advertise their 'Droidxxx' phone against the same key word, they have to raise their bids against Google. And its a blind bid.

In terms of accounting, you can't 'account' for immaterial things like 'opportunity cost'.

In terms of revenue... there isn't a 'loss' .

This is very much akin to Ebay's shill bidders.

Suppose you want to be a shill bidder. You list a product. You use a shill bid to inflate the bids.

On most items, the buyers end up paying more for an item because of the shill. On the chance that the last bid is the shill bidder, then the seller is out the fees Ebay charges to host the auction. If you do this enough times, you make more money than you lose.

Same thing here.

The only nit to pick with the author is that since Google is a publicly traded company, there should be an outside auditor reviewing the books. Cross payments like the one used as an example should be flagged.

However, if we look at the big 4??? (Used to be 8 but that has been shrinking due to acquisitions, and things like Enron killing Anderson and such...) How trustworthy do you think they are when they consider that Google pays their salaries?

Its a FAIL not that the article is bad, its pretty much spot on. But that Google lacks transparency and so that we have to take them at their word 'do no evil' which may mean that getting advertisers to pay more for their services and more cash to the shareholders really isn't evil.

After all, as Schmidt points out... you can always go somewhere else. ;-)

Not Illeagal

The fact that you set up an account as Eric Schmidt is not illegal unless the real 'Eric Schmidt' can prove that you're trying to steal his identity.

Even if you don't post all of Eric's details, like where he lives, the net doesn't know if its the same Eric Schmidt. So people who google Eric Schmidt will make the assumption you want.

And no, you can't live it down.

Of course what Eric Schmidt seems to forget is that if you legally change your name, the name change is a matter of public record. Ooops. And of course you can't stop Google from snarfing up public records....

@42

Funny. Aussies support the US.

How may Aussies died in Bali?

Aussie, Canadian, Brit, American. (You can insert your other favorite Western country here)

To the terrorist, they all look alike. And if you happen to be Islamic and caught in the crossfire? You've just become a martyr like it or not.

With respect to Assman... He's playing with fire. Perhaps you've never heard the expression "Reach out and touch someone..." ?

The flame is because the Aussie twit only cares about himself.

Bu Lou...

Say it aint so!

I mean I love all of the free goo that the chocolate factory spews out in the name of "doing no evil".

How can you be critical of a company that showers all this wonderful stuff upon us mere mortals?

Eric Schmidt is brilliant. I have nothing to hide!

Ok, now I'm starting to taste some bile in my mouth. The above should have pegged everyone's sarcasm meter.

I totally agree with Lou's comments.

Of course Lou forgot that Google of course wants to provide 'free' DNS services. You know so that they can log every DNS request you make ... ;-)

Also huge praise to Lou for not fearing the wrath of exposing Google for what it is and not hiding behind an anonymous post.

Seriously?

Because it would cost more to send you the $0.50 they made on your personal details.

Here's the danger...

If the USPTO is dumb enough to grant these patents, then the burden of defense is on the company that Apple sues.

Meaning that the patent, while it may not win, acts as a barrier to entry. That is, the sole purpose of patenting the 'app' is to limit competition and increase the barriers and cost to start ups.

This has nothing or very little to do with protecting IP. And yes, there is not only prior art, but also the fact that the patent is neither new, nor novel

I guess if this were Google patenting these 'apps', they would be granted because the white house has been infected by the goo in google. Just ask Obama's CTO...

Too funny.

The government was fat dumb and happy until a 'retired' Oracle employee blew the whistle on them. He stands to collect a very large 'bonus' check from reporting the misdeeds.

As to the contract, Oracle agreed to the contract, and incidentally I believe the same clause is in all GSA contracts in an effort to try and get the lowest price possible for the software.

Oracle doesn't care because they'll settle, take the charge, and write it off against today's profits.

To them its the cost of doing business.

Too True...

Too many fanboi's foaming at the mouth on this... The issue is in the 'Management' software. So one would imagine that it happens outside of the OS.

And to your point... how did it get in there in the first place?

Where are the 410s built? (Motherboards.)

Who has access?

Hmmmm

A constant 65F / 18.33C?

Sounds like a perfect place to put up a data center if you think about it. Then your only worry is how to generate electricity in a cost efficient manner and getting a good internet connectivity.

It looks to be 25-30km from Aberdeen so it would be expensive getting a large data pipe brought in...

Maybe be better as an off site storage for hard drives and tape as part of a DR plan.

Also note that the price says >$250 (That should be British Pounds)

That's not the point.

Whether they 'spam' you or send invites on their member's behalf, Facebook's ToS says that they have the right to do whatever they want with this information. (More or less.)

Tying this information to sites the embed Facebook links and java scripts means that they have a way of capturing and correlating data about you, even if you are not a Facebook member.

Hence the rub.

Your family member or friend sends you an invite. Facebook tracks that invite and your response along with an IP address and whatever information. Now they then pull data from their 'partner sites' that have facebook javascript embedded on their page. So they now log your visit to said site. While that site may only know your IP address, Facebook could also have your e-mail address and any other information that they have captured.

Got it?

Spot on...

If you're truly paranoid enough... yeah you could put in an electric timer which has a bit of randomness built in. (If your lights go on every day at 8:00pm kind of give it away...)

The NSA is usually limited in what they can do domestically and of course with FOIA, difficult to keep any surveillance secret.

Also if you're really paranoid, you could go off the grid completely. ;-)

Its getting very Orwellian. ... NOT!

Its cheaper to employ a SCRAM than it is to incarcerate an individual. It also allows the courts to put a step in place between a first warning and a more severe jail time.

The point of the monitor is to give the individual a chance to show that they are capable of reform prior to heading to jail/prison.

This isn't Orwellian, but that our government is looking for a cheaper solution to a problem. You can refuse the SCRAM, but the alternative is jail time. What would you do?

Cheap energy means a lot.

Cheap power means you have cracked a lot of other issues.

You can grow food in green houses with grow lamps/leds.

You have energy to make steel and other materials that you use in building shelters.

You have cheap energy to heat/cool homes.

You have cheap energy that will lead to space exploration of our solar system and then potentially our galaxy.

Not quite...

And if Google wants to put a stealth app on your phone... no nice pop up.

Ooops! We forgot to do that... some bad programmer made an 'honest' mistake.

HUH?

Its nice that you can point out the waste of the raw materials and environmental impact of building the phone.

But what about the environmental impact of destroying the phone by fire?

There was no conversation ...

The lawyers took in to account the cost of maintaining and replacing the computers and baked 2x that in to their bill rate as a 'reasonable' expense. :-)

Seriously, this is one of the reasons why I build my own kit.

Not exactly...

This is always a source of confusion.

First, IBM has certain people sign a second employment agreement .

In this agreement, they contract names only a couple of companies specifically.

This is legal because you can't argue that "right to work" is being violated. The employee can go to other companies than the ones mentioned. So the contract is not overly burdensome.

The time off is unpaid.

What usually happens is that companies settle their issues, or the court case rolls on long enough that the waiting period expires.

@martin

You've unfortunately failed because they were not just capturing SSIDs and the status of being an open network.

According to published reports the Spanish authorities have concluded that Google did indeed capture enough snippets to make an identification of an individual. So your acid test just failed.

Read the law. As much as Google tries to deny it, they are in the business of pulling in as much information as they can and then try to make sense of it. (Hmmm. Picking up bits and pieces of a network adding to their knowledge of the web? ;-)

How about those of us who are sick of Google getting away with crimes?

As another poster put it, this isn't the first and most likely not the last illegal/criminal act committed by google.

The problem is that not many read 'industry insider' blogs so El Reg is the best place to get info until the mainstream press picks it up. (Unless of course Google's PR folks have gotten to them... ;-)

Moi paranoid? Don't think so. Not after BP buying up ad links for the terms Oil and Spill. :-)

Mens rea

"Then on June 3rd 2010 as a result of ongoing class action suits in the US it emerged that @Steven Knox : You wrote :

"""

Google had filed a patent application for similar technology in 2008, this reinforced our opinion that this could not have been rogue code. In order for a patent application to be filed, it seemed obvious to us that Google's legal department would have had to review the technology and submit the application. This also would suggest that the project had been funded which in itself would require the attention of managers, designers, developers and testers."

Software development companies try to patent EVERYTHING THEY DO -- even experimental stuff that they have no intention of actually using. They do it because they know every other software development company is trying to patent everything THEY do, and patent portfolios are used both offensively and defensively in this business. So the fact that Google applied for a patent means only that they developed the software, not that they ever intended to use it.

"""

I won't comment on your points concerning software development. They're moot.

The author is correct to point out that the patent is the smoking gun.

Regardless for the reasons a company patents a technology, the fact that they did file the patent establishes mens rea. (Guilty mind) Meaning that they knew about the technology and that their legal dept as well as product managers had to know that they code exists. The fact that one can show that Google can find value in having such code (legal or otherwise) and that they understood the possible potential by creating the patent, they should also have known that it violated multiple countries' laws.

There is enough evidence to suggest that Google acted in an illegal and reckless manner.

Can you say circumstantial evidence?

Look at it this way... You're holding a smoking gun and are standing over a dead body. While forensics evidence can't show that you fired the gun, and that there were no witnesses as to what happened... regardless of what you say, your prints are on the murder weapon and you are at the scene of the crime at the time of death. If the prosecution can show mens rea, that you had a motive to kill the victim... you will end up being charged.

Does that make sense?

You're joking right?

"Seriously I want to know what you think is illegal about driving around connecting to WiFi networks that are available to anyone? They wern't using aircrack to gain access to anything even slightly secured. It's certainatly not a massive invasion of privacy, as well, nothing private was invaded. I think you've read a bit to much of your daily mail....now put it down and go form your own opinion."

Those who practice 'war driving' claim to only listen to the API and find the broadcast SSID and if the network is public.

Connecting to the network and using its services without explicit authorization is referred to as piggybacking.

What Google did was go beyond just capturing the SSID , type of encryption (or lack of encryption) and its GPS point.

And yes, this is against the law in many countries.