Posts by Eddy Ito

@Joseph Lord

Given the three independent claims, being 1, 8 & 17, are so overly broad the other claims are there to try to make as much as possible stick by defining it more specifically. Clearly claim 1 is bogus as I can't tell you how many boats fit this description, heck a neighbor glued up a plywood dory in his shed over 30 years ago that is exactly this. Likewise #2 hangs up on many boats made since the early 70's. Frankly most of this is crap unless they can get away with something like 'carbon fibers are soooo novel and very different from all other fibers used for the last half century and this is unique because nobody would have thought of substituting carbon fibers for other types of fibers'. Somehow, I don't see that happening.

Finally, @AC 19:52, it isn't a design patent as it describes functionality not ornamentation and further it isn't a patent at all, it's only an application and therefore it has to be rubber stamped by some brainless 'let the court's figure it out' bureaucrat before it becomes totally stupid a patent.

Re: Bluetooth or GPS

From what I've seen on slashgear, BT yes, GPS no. The deal breakers for me are no 5 GHz wifi and custom cables to drag around for USB and HDMI. Someone please build a tablet with 802.11abgn and standard ports.

as opposed to

Female A through F-spots of course unless it's a Caesar cipher but hey how hard could that be?

Re: Too little too late!

Perhaps they don't understand that even if you hire 9 women you can't make a baby in one month. Worse yet, adding so many people that late in the game usually just means the project will slip further behind even faster while everyone is busy trying to get on the same page. Had they been honest with themselves that update in 6 months might have been a wonderful publicity event, now it will look like a sheepish apology regardless of how they try to spin it.

Given the screen resolution I can't imagine anyone having envy over that laptop. They could at least offer a 1600 x 900 display on the smaller one.

Re: Christmas crackers and cornflake packets

"It's a great technology for making small plastic gewgaws very slowly and very cheaply."

Granted the current set of vulture heads cost 12 pence in plastic which would qualify as very cheaply but there is the matter of the capital cost of the machine which adds about $500 to the price of each of the four heads. Then there is the other expense that everyone seems to neglect, power. Perhaps the good folks at El Reg could cook up another vulture head with a watt meter attached and record how many watt hours it takes. Oh don't forget to measure the preheat time separately since you could do several in one go if they are small enough.

Here now!

That's a low blow, there's no need to go around insulting mutant monsters like that.

It isn't just inflation, let's not forget the international impact of printing $40B per month. It means that in order to remain competitive everyone else has to do something similar or their economy will stall. Compare the Yen which was over ¥100/$ before the first round of QE and now it's all of ¥78/$.

Now look at seniors who are looking at retirement and watching their nest egg evaporate. These aren't people who really have a long-term interest like most of the debtors do. Even Greenspan had to admit his surprise at how ineffective the past rounds of QE have been. Sure it drives the stock market up because nobody wants to be holding cash as the dollar value plummets but it doesn't change the facts.

I don't believe Ben is going to get his reflation because the economic data is so bad. The reports are trickling out and even oil has taken a hit because supply is plentiful and demand is low even with the low and dropping dollar value. I see it everyday on my morning commute which has steadily gotten easier over the past year. We may get stagflation but the road we're on seems pretty clear, double dip ahead.

Re: "People don't queue like this for Samsung or Sony"

Oddly they mostly only queue at the Apple stores. The local RadioShack, AT&T and Verizon shops will all also be selling them but there aren't queues at those places. Clearly it isn't about "being first" but more like an odd act of narcissism in the hope that they can bask in the glow of Appleshine. Are there going to be queues at the malls? Maybe some but mostly I don't think so.

Props to Zohaib Ali on becoming a regular on El Reg and while I'm happy for him that he enjoys the experience, I don't understand it and have to chalk it up to having more dollars than sense.

Re: "oh, we have secure email"

I did because, believe it or not, they were the best* of a bad lot. The previous four banks I tried were as bad if not worse. The worst of the lot was a chap who said I had to use the web app but if I wanted we could do it in his office but it would still be the same web based application. Keep in mind when I inspected the first few of their frames I noticed weren't even https. At some point you just give up and it may be true that the paperwork all just gets transcribed by some 15 yr old kid in Estonia working on a ancient compaq laptop running Win95 over a SLIP link anyway. I just wish my usual Credit Union could have carried the loan but it was my mum's house and at several hundred miles away she doesn't live in their service area.

*Not the best rate but competitive.

Re: Why blue LEDs?

Agreed, blue LEDs in consumer products is the work of the devil or a politician*. There is a big reason why car tail lights tend to be red and emergency lights are often blue. It's the same reason that many devices designed to be used at night tend to use red illumination. It's because red is a nice low energy photon, which is also likely the reason red LEDs came out so long ago, and won't wreak havoc with your night vision. Blue on the other hand is a high energy photon and the LEDs are usually bright enough so you don't need night vision because they illuminate the room sufficiently to see clearly. Either works but when visiting a friend out of state and crashing on the pull out sofa bed in the den I found the blue LEDed wifi router blinking away like a bloody lighthouse in the corner to be a bit distracting.

*I know, it's a distinction without a difference.

Re: And?

Uh-oh, if this is the deal I hope everyone has their AAPL shorts in place. I don't see any 80 million iPhone5s being shifted like Munster thought. As expected, it also looks like a big swing and a miss by JP Morgan. I don't know what all the hypestirs were on when they did their numbers but it only stands to reason that Apple couldn't continue the streak much longer.

Set up your AAPL options wisely folks, my gut says short iron condor or butterfly based around today's price, long iron condor/butterfly around the price in two weeks. Expiry should be just after the earnings call in October. Sure, I've been wrong before but I can feel it in my hallux rigidus.

"Instead I'm waiting for the Ouya..."

For a few bucks more you don't have to wait. An Odroid X carries Samsung's quad core Exynos 4412 and goes for $129. Sure the $40 shipping from Korea stings a little bit but it goes down per board when you get multiples. The ones I ordered took about two weeks to deliver, now I just need a free weekend to play with them.

Re: Who picks these places?

I was thinking the same thing. Why are two of the stores within spitting distance of Boston yet the whole state of California gets 2 and only 3 in Texas. My guess is that they signed a deal with a retailer in those areas to rent a bit of space for the time. Pretty clever I think as it gives them a fair sampling of which areas would be best to put their own stores.

I also thought it funny that many, if not most, of the locations also have an Apple store. Granted I only checked about seven or eight at random and only the Ohio location didn't have an Apple shop, I guess they aren't renting space from Apple.

@AC 23:08

Wow, it must suck to be you. A whole world of color and you're stuck with a B&W TV or perhaps since you only see envy it's an old P1 phosphor screen. Either way, I see a Ferrari and think 'why?' I see an iPhone and think 'why?' I see a lottery winner and I think, 'who?' You see to me cars and phones are tools and as long as they can efficiently do the job, I'm happy. A car that passes everything but a gas station doesn't impress and I don't want it, likewise a phone that has to be plugged in every day instead of every other week doesn't work for me. Further, I can't imagine why I would know any given person won the lottery although I did have a friend that did although you would never know it over a beer at the pub and he was great bridge partner to the point where it really isn't the same game now that he's passed.

That said, let me turn the tables on you and ask;

Some see a person who owns an AR-15 and say 'can I try that.'

Some see a person who owns an AR-15 and say 'what a crazy nutter, those things should be banned.'

Is it just envy? Or do some people aren't bothered by what others do, some are open to try new things and others pass judgement based on their personal prejudices. But you're right, it is very sad in the last case.

Re: Pretty sure this entirely misses the point

I'd go one step further and say it doesn't matter that it's Nokia. Apple gets some nice upward momentum for a few days before they announce a new shiny but come the day of the announcement the stock price drops and typically does so for the next few days. Sure there are a few exceptions but it isn't often.

Re: Reasons....

It's likely a combination of the two so call it firmly held technical beliefs about the superiority of owned patents.

Fortunately I think Apple will sit this one out as they already have a patent they can standardize around in this area. Hmm, is that chuckling I hear in the background?