Posts by Tom 35 3040 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
Is that the place you go to get a dent removed from you auto fender? or The Body Shop, the store that sells stinky stuff?
The Body Shop has a trademark that applies to stores selling stinky stuff (no bodies), but not to the generic term used by places that fix car bodies (www.arborbodyshop.com for example).
Here in Toronto I could see the suckers lined up across the street from my office. They stood outside the store for hours to buy their new toy. It didn't even sell out, I could have walked over after work and bought one if I wanted. Even if it did sell out, big deal wait a couple of days till they get more.
If you fall for the media hype and line up you ARE a sucker!
No kidding. Who is going to opt-in to be tracked and pillaged?
The only way their model works is to track everyone while pretending to offer some opt-out system that...
a. doesn't work.
b. is stored in a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory behind a door that said "Beware of the tiger"
c. if you figure out how to opt-out, will opt you in again the first time you miss a hidden check box
"Also, if Microsoft's "exorbitant licensing fees" have a "highly detrimental anticompetitive effect" on the market, as Barnes & Noble asserts, why are HTC and Amazon – which, as reported in their filing, have licensing agreements with Microsoft – doing so well in their respective smartphone and e-reader markets?"
You already answered your own question.
"These types of disputes tend to be settled in corporate conference rooms, with chunks of change changing hands."
The first few get it cheap, then they use the list of people who paid as proof that their claim must be good so you better pay too.
"The US Government said that it was up to the private sector to develop technologies that make online identities secure and easy to use, safeguard transactions, and protect anonymity"
So they are in effect going to put out a saucer of milk, and check in the morning to see if the elves have put together a system for them.
I don't think anyone expects the same "entity" to perform all roles. If you can't sell a patent outright you could still licence it non-exclusively. Right now an individual inventor has little choice but to sell a patent.
In days gone by you patented a complete product, now you patent little bits of it, how the bits connect, and the method of pushing the on button. You can't build something like a cell phone without licensing patents from others. So you have already removed all of the individual inventors and small startups as the big companies have all bought up big pools of patents and setup cross licence deals (including large numbers of crap patents) so that any innovative / upstart / disruptive new player is excluded.
They want news!
Earth quake? Na, they just had one someplace not long ago, and there have been lots of them anyway, boaring.
Tsunami? Didn't we just beat that one to death? Only 20k dead Zzzzzzz
Reactor melt down? This is only the third problem that people know about, and the last one was a big deal... lets big this up, it's real NEWS. It will sell lots of ads, it could be the best thing since the TEA PARTY!
It's one thing to look at the stuff you posted on FB and use if for stuff you don't want.
The real problem is that they take the stuff from your store points card, online tracking cookies, and data from all kinds of other sources and cross reference it.
Data that you provided to allow someone to provide a service is being used for something else without your ok. Your data is treated as a product that is owned by someone else.
"We believe consumers will be more prepared to make purchases on .XXX sites, safe in the knowledge their payments will be secure"
Don't forget that he will be running the only payment system allowed, and will be taking a cut from every sale (just to make sure it's safe or course) and if you have both .com and .xxx you have use his payment system for both.
He must have made a deal with Apple, he gets a cut of all the porn, Apple gets a cut of everything else.
Kids today have missed the whole experience of buying an album and finding it has two good tracks and a bunch of fluff.
Or buying The greatest "Hits" volume 1, 2 and 3 to get all 5 of the bands actual hits and 3 copies of all their fluff.
The poor kids don't know what they are missing.
If a program is available in one Country (East Enders and Dr. Who are on CBC in Canada for example) will the BBC block them for users in that Country? If they also include stuff that's only available on cable TV (that I can't even get) then this could end up as a chocolate tea pot.
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