* Posts by Paul Shirley

2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009

Apple's anti-Googorola patent lawsuit tossed by US court

Paul Shirley

@Sirius

Further to Davids post: Florian has posted non-stop about this case for quite some time now, almost exclusively just cheerleading for Apple with precious little accurate factual content. The bias has been unmissable and extreme. He's firmly stuck in a Jobsian reality field (which looks remarkably like the Ellison distortion field in Oracle v Google and the astonishing SCO v anyone with a pulse affair).

Along the way he made a lot of predictions and analysis, *all* of which turned out to be wrong. Posting a bare summary is unusual for him though, in previous defeats for his patrons (SCO,Oracle and who knows how many he hasn't been outed working for) Florian has 'explained' why the loss wasn't actually a loss OR that the judge was simply wrong OR some other bullshit.

Put simply, Florian is no expert at anything but feeding PR to lazy journalists and remarkably good at finding rich clients to 'consult' for in the middle of PR wars.

Windows Phone 8 has a secret feature which may activate at any time

Paul Shirley

Re: One small issue...

I still occasionally manage to collect email before logging into free WiFi in a number of places. Doesn't always work in the same places, must be a bug. Welcome though.

Microsoft's 32GB Surface RT has 16GB of free storage

Paul Shirley

Re: 5GB for recovery partition

...yet a full Win8 64 install DVD contains just 3.3Gb (before magically expanding to closer to 16Gb installed). Office must be impressively fat. Or they just forgot to compress any of it.

Paul Shirley

Re: And where did they get their figure of 32 decimal gigabytes?

While the flash blocks are indeed binary sizes and there may be a 'binary' total, some are reserved for wear and bad sectors and 32GiB of raw cells never ships as a 32GiB drive.

That 7% difference is very convenient for covering that hidden space without having to list 'odd' capacities though.

'I'd buy that for a dollar': Apple on Moto phone patents

Paul Shirley

Re: @a_been

I suspect you neither understand FRAND or the games Apple are playing. Motorola made the same opening offer to Apple as everyone else. That's pretty fair and non-discriminatory by any standards.

What's supposed to happen then is Apple try to negotiate it down, both sides negotiate, if that fails it goes to binding arbitration and someone else decides what a fair price is. Apple skipped EVERY step of that process. Motorola completely lack any ability to force their choice of pricing under that procedure, they supply a starting price and negotiation skills but can't refuse to licence. But Apple didn't enter the FRAND process and arguably should gain no benefit from it now.

Motorola *look* like they're in trouble because Apple and Microsoft have influence and have whispered lies into the right ears. When it reaches impartial judges (which hasn't happened yet) the opinion of bought politicians and bureaucrats tends to lose effect.

Apple are playing a dirty and dangerous game and they're doing it because they have no negotiating power in SEP, owning bugger all essential patents. They aren't going to lower Motorola's initial offer much because they have very little to cross licence. That doesn't make the offer unfair, it simply reflects the value in the deal. Apple are in a weak negotiating position and desperate to bypass the process completely, was going to say 'by fair means or foul' but they seem to only be trying 'foul'.

Paul Shirley

Re: Apple to court

What you need to remember is Apple only made this offer to avoid an instant loss for wilfully ignoring the FRAND licensing procedure, which *requires* them to negotiate, then go to arbitration. Only then do they get to whine to a court.

Apple refused to negotiate at all and found a judge willing to just ignore all that but they need to cover their arses, by pretending to open negotiations.

Microsoft building its own Phone hardware: Not 'If', but 'When'

Paul Shirley

it's all about the app store

3.6mil licences probably doesn't cover the launch costs for WP7. See that repeated with WP8 and losing the license income really doesn't seem important.

It's also pretty clear MS have bet the future on a steady income stream from their app store. Sacrificing the license stream would hurt but with unlimited riches just an app store away they'll do it just to get the store into wider use.

It's a little weird though: Win8 has been butchered to prop up the lacklustre WP biz but if Google are to be believed delivering apps on mobile isn't a source of riches. So in a way wider WP distribution would then become a way to prop up the app store on the desktop! On the desktop bandwidth is cheap -> costs low = profit!

...but first they have to get some sales and only Nokia seems remotely interested in pushing the phones.

Fans' loyalty questioned as iPhone popularity plummets

Paul Shirley

maybe tired seeing others getting real innovation quicker

At some point even the frothiest of fanbois have to notice that this years new innovations are increasingly things Apple previously swore they would not do. Things they took the time to publicly claim were mistakes when their competition did them, hard to not notice that the competition did them 1st since Apple pointed that out to all that would listen.

Cool is a poor substitute for functionality. When iPhone started it was ahead on both. Now its not and even the deliberately blind can't continue lying to themselves about that.

Ballmer claims Win 8 sales strong, WinPhone to follow

Paul Shirley

Re: No Doubt Huge Customer Base But...

Getting used to it won't bring back the hundreds of small but destructive changes they made to discourage desktop use. So maybe people will get used to it - but they'll be getting used to an inferior desktop experience.

I personally don't like Win7 but even I can't imagine why a desktop user would downgrade to the gimped Win8 desktop. XP and to some extent Win7 were very customisable and didn't go out of their way to block 3rd parties providing that customisation. Win8 does.

FFS Win8 will actually let you customise a fair amount of window decoration. But only in high contrast mode and that gratuitously disables a different set of customisation. So you can't actually make the damn thing look any better, can't reconstruct the visual clues to gui elements without further gimping other things. It's deliberate, cynical and abusive.

Stone shatters kid Rock: Gamers not as flush as they used to be

Paul Shirley

More top the point, what serious gamer would play on a laptop. And no-one else would pay so much for one.

Granny upstages Microsoft, storms stage at Surface launch

Paul Shirley

Re: It gets worse

How convenient the queuing happened in quiet time on Internet forums, leaving shills free to take a break from carpet bombing PR bullshit everywhere ;)

Still, they got back in time to organise a spirited defence in that articles comments...

This 'real user' is finding more broken stuff every day in the release build. I'm eyeing my spare parts pile, if I can cobble together a MythTV box from it Win8 might not survive the week. It broke so much of my software and hardware (*) I might as well switch to 'any other' OS and just duel boot for gaming.

(*) apparently hardware is "supported" if drivers don't crash Win8 - whether the device works they don't seem to check. It remains easy to load bad drivers and watch Win8 burn. A lot.

4G: Bad coverage, crap battery life - but at least it's really expensive

Paul Shirley

Re: 3 for good data? Really?

"Fallen off the edge of a cliff"

Meaningless without comparison to other operators in the same locations. My adventures with "3" showed a patchy and extremely variable coverage that rapidly got better. O2 and Orange however had slightly less blackholes, slighly less variable rates but rarely beat "3" 4 years ago and haven't much improved since.

Right now "3" arguably have better coverage than O2 and certainly better data speeds. They even have better prices if you eat lots of data and don't want to go down the giffgaff rabbit hole.

Microsoft: Just swallow this tablet ... the rest will take care of itself

Paul Shirley

Re: "that deer-in-headlights look, that anger over the realization that they don't know jack"

Yes, but you have to admit their adaptable.

They have to be with the endless churn of new execution enviromnents/programming frameworks/languages MS throws at them. Barely enough time to learn this years replacement for Silverlight or .NET for normal mortals, before it's unceremoniously dumped...

Why is 4G so expensive? Answer: The Post-Voice Era is coming

Paul Shirley

By the time the other operators get 4G, EE will have raised the acceptable price point

"By the time the other operators get 4G, EE will have raised the acceptable price point"

More likely they'll have established that people just won't pay it and won't be able to tell if its because the price is too high OR the coverage is to restricted, since either of them is a deal killer for many.

I don't think we'll know what users are really prepared to pay till the network covers a lot more than 10 cities and actual competition is likely to start well before coverage stops being an issue. Till then it's a distress purchase if the alternative is congested 3G. TBH if 3G congestion's the problem smart users should just switch to "3" for an instant boost and wait till 4G becomes widespread and cheaper.

Judge GIVES APPLE THE FINGER in multitouch iDevice patent case

Paul Shirley

Re: multiple collision detection in any computer game

...but have you done it where inputs may crosstalk and/or alias each other, on inherently noisy input?

Game collision detection is a very different problem because you have perfect knowledge, not just a best guess at what provoked the inputs you're seeing.

Windows 8: Is Microsoft's new OS too odd to handle?

Paul Shirley

Re: Program Manager

Personally I never heard anyone say a good thing about the old Program Manager, it was a clunky abomination everyone hated. And of course MS didn't actually remove it in Win95, if you were clinically insane enough to want to carry one using it.

Nice strawman for the apologists though.

Paul Shirley

Re: expect techies to neuter the Win8 experience

The techies will quickly apply every available hack and revert Win8 back to something they like. In effect they won't be using Win8 as MS reimagined it and won't need to complain.

MS will make their usual mistake of assuming folk are still using the bad features and must love them to not complain.

Paul Shirley

Website resizes window to fill screen. I try to grab right edge to shrink it. Charm bar grabs my focus. Shit.

Five attempts later I managed to drag it before the charmless bar got in the way.

Not pleased. There's a good reason good ui's don't hide interface elements behind invisible trigger zones. Unless your mission is driving users away from the desktop...

Apple slips bomb into ITC filing: Samsung being PROBED by US gov

Paul Shirley

It's worse than that: Apple *refused* to take part in any negotiation at all under FRAND rules. They simply said NO at the 1st offer and took the IP without paying, then lied to every authority they could when it was convenient.

They have a little problem: FRAND rules have clear arbitration procedures that Apple didn't bother with. Procedures that make it impossible for Samsung to unfairly charge anyone unless they volunteer. Whatever protectionist authorities can be bribed to do, they can't overcome the fact that Apple voluntarily removed themselves from FRAND's guarantees, the best they should expect is being ordered to take part in FRAND arbitration *before* being allowed to hit the courts again.

Windows RT OEMs unveil pricing for Surface wannabes

Paul Shirley

@n4blue sexy hardware

With a design spec so locked down there wasn't much scope to differentiate devices anyway. Changing the casing was about as much as ms allowed for wp7.

After being burnt by that design limit, screwed by favouring Nokia, I doubt many had any enthusiasm for any new ms platform.

Paul Shirley

'contractual obligation release'

...it's almost like no-one actually wants to *sell* RT devices.

I just LOVE Server 2012, but count me out on Windows 8 for now

Paul Shirley

Re: Agree largely, but...

My next monitor will get me back up to a 3 display setup. It really doesn't matter if it's touch enabled, the 2 existing ones aren't. Touch isn't going to work well in that mix and those monitors have many years life left in them.

...and I also can't imagine actually reaching out to touch my displays - all need leaning to reach all edges. Microsoft can expect class action suits when the 1st RSI cases go public.

Paul Shirley

Re: The first rule of Windows is...

Wrong. 32bit x86 machines are perfectly capable of handling >4Gb. What they cant do is hand linear address spaces >4Gb to a single process. The initial release of XP32 and SP2 both supported up to 128Gb RAM with PAE, SP2 dropped that to 4Gb. Those builds would hand as many blocks of 2Gb to different processes as you had RAM.

Even SP3 actually supports 36/37 bit memory ranges. Mine is using RAM mapped above the 4Gb line for it's temp folder right now. I've resisted trying the hacks to reenable proper 4Gb+ support so can't comment on how risky they are.

Paul Shirley

Re: The first rule of Windows is...

...you mean I just imagined XP32 losing support for >4Gb RAM with a service pack?

Paul Shirley

Re: @Sir Wiggum: appliances

1st: other peoples use patterns has nothing to do with *my* usage and is no justification for reducing my choices and experience.

2nd: this use of computing devise as appliances explains why users *can* switch to devices with simpler form factors, lower prices and lower capabilities. It's *why* a simpler UI/OS is acceptable but that UI/OS is *not* why they're switching. Forcing the extremely tablet configured Metro on the desktop won't stem the switch to tablet or phones, it's a 2nd rate experience on highly capable hardware that lacks the convenient form factor and any price saving.

If Microsoft cared at all about end users they would configure Metro apps to fit the desktop, not just clone the tablet/phone experience on a bigger screen. This whole misadventure is about what Microsoft needs to avoid irrelevance in a post-PC world and PC users really don't matter to them - other than as potential future MS tablet/phone users to be hooked.

Paul Shirley

Re: Installing Linux

Technically not.

The OEM license requires that Secure Boot be present and enabled, so all new devices will come locked. But Win8 x86 licensing requires secure boot be user disableable - but IMHO that's only to avoid the anticompetitve hammer still held over Microsoft.

It's a certainty MS will insist Secure Boot is shipped enabled or yank licences, it's a fair bet they'll do nothing if OEMs forget to give the user disable rights or a buggy setup that cannot be disabled. Or worse, one that somehow fails to accept 3rd party licence keys.

The end result will be ordinary consumers in a world of pain if they try replacing Win8 on new devices, even where that's as simple as turning off Secure Boot that will stop most even trying.

Windows 8 versions will confuse the punters, say OEMs

Paul Shirley

"won't even carry the RT version as a normal stock item"

That won't be hard, It's not for sale to the public. Only OEMs can even buy/license it.

...now if they decide to not stock RT devices that will be fun. I believe Win8 tablets don't launch till next year when MS get's the software finished.

Windows 8: Microsoft will declare victory, but will anyone believe it?

Paul Shirley

Re: Please excuse the rant...

Tablets are also rapidly approaching 'good enough' status. Inevitably they are taking some of the replacement market as old PCs physically die (and often unrepairable thanks to planned obsolescence). That proportion can only grow. It's a double hit for the trad PC market - long product life and an eroding like for like replacement market.

Nokia puts Symbian out to pasture ... why not release it into the wild?

Paul Shirley

Re: @ShelLuser

" I did see a Nokia commercial coming around every now and then; but nothing from the competition."

I'll say it again: 'contractual obligation releases'. Every other producer of WP phones has succumbed to a patent shakedown from Microsoft, all with strictly secret terms. But obviously the phrase 'must vigorously market' wasn't part of the deal ;)

On a less speculative tack, given the astonishing amount US carriers, MS and Nokia have spent promoting Lumia for so little reward, it makes sense to just not bother pushing their own WP7/8 devices. The extraordinarily complete design lock down on WP7 devices means they cant have cost much to design and the Nokia brand is pretty diluted in the Lumia promotion - effectively it's just generic WP advertising in fact. Just hedge their bets and waste as little money as possible, only Nokia and MS are relying on success.

Windows 8 'bad' analyst says Store is a weakness

Paul Shirley

...but that was 500 more than their competition combined.

Unless you consider WinCE and Symbian actually compete in the same market, something the market doesn't seem to believe ;)

Paul Shirley

@h4rm0ny: Office RT edition licence restrictions

"You can run Office on WindowsRT"

True, you can run Office *RT* on RT. But have you read the EULA on that version? You can't use it for work or anything that generates income. Official word from Microsoft is you'll need to subscribe to Office 365 if you want to actually work with these devices. While casual users won't fall foul of this they aren't exactly in need of Office either.

For business use RT just doesn't make a lot of sense once you add in the extra licence costs for a version of Office they can actually use. That wipes out any price advantage RT might have over just buying laptops with Win8 Pro or Enterprise. It also gets them a full, uncompromised version of Office to use...

AMD posts $157m loss, will lay off 15% of workers this quarter

Paul Shirley

Re: The AMD quandary

This years new CPU lines basically just caught up with the 2010 Phenom II performance. That's nearly 2 years of stagnation in high end CPU scalar performance, starting from a level below Intel, the tradional profitable business. The heterogeneous computing cores seem to have attracted little actual use or interest and low prices.

So yes, you could easily say current AMD CPU's are indeed piss poor efforts, only competitive on price - not good for AMD's profits.

I'm glad I grabbed an 1100T hex core before they dropped that entire line.

IE10 coming to Windows 7 sometime, maybe

Paul Shirley

it's an OS component, not a normal app

"But if Internet Explorer is any indication, writing a modern application for Windows 8 that still runs on older platforms is a lot harder"

The problem is IE is NOT a userland app, it's source is embedded in the OS and reused all over the place in the GUI. MS have never presented a believable justification for embedding IE this way and pretty obviously only did it for anticompetive reasons - it conveniently became impossible to remove the steaming POS just at the time regulators were starting to ask questions about monopoly abuse.

Once embedded this way, changing the OS layer is guaranteed to bork portability. Perhaps the biggest question is why MS are even trying to backport to Win7, they don't normally miss any chance to drive migration to the new shiny or care if customers get screwed over for not migrating.

Fukushima operator feared shutdown if risks revealed

Paul Shirley

Re: During the meanwhile ...

@Voland: "major disaster protection that goes into the design of a nuclear plant"

...unless they choose to spend the cash on evading regulation and detection instead of disaster protection.

Paul Shirley

Re: The question facing all users: What to do with the waste?

"could sit on a few dozen yards of industrial shelving"

...but the large military encampment to protect it, the aircrash proof dome and air defences might take a little more space. Suddenly spending billions burying it out of reach underground seems slightly more credible...

How Nokia managed to drive its in-house Linux train off the rails

Paul Shirley

"activity theory"-based UI

"activity theory"-based UI sounds remarkably like 'task based UI', one thread in the Metro design. I just fail to see how the randomly ordered words forming the 'activity theory' could tell anyone how to build a UI and apparently no-one at Nokia could work it out either!

I also fail to understand how anyone could think it would lead anywhere but to a similar task based UI every smartphone has today. With so little screen estate it's inevitable, whatever the starting point. Restarting TWICE because they refused to accept that reality is insanity.

Amazon UK leaks Windows 8 retail box, TV ads

Paul Shirley

Re: shades of crack dealer

"This could be why they have a $40 download upgrade - in the fashion of Lion > Mountain Lion."

It's more "the 1st hit's free" thinking. You're supposed to pour a steady torrent of pennies directly into MS pockets via the new app store and they need to grow that herd of customers fast.

And let's face it, the only people buying Win8 otherwise will be getting it for even less bundled with new PC's. That's the downside of a monopoly, eventually you might own all the customers but they already own your product and don't need another copy!

Report: Google offers to 'brand' search results in Euro antitrust probe

Paul Shirley

"if it was found to have violated competition rules"

...and that's still the most important phrase in the affair.

What the commissioner wants comes 2nd to what the law says, Google clearly don't believe they have a problem with the *law* given the piss taking nature of their offer. Google seem very good at working right on the limit of what law allows (even if their downstream partners keep getting themselves into trouble), presumably they pay the lawyers *before* doing anything.

Microsoft spruces up crap apps in early Win8 update

Paul Shirley

Re: All these apps for news, sport, weather, video etc..........

Will anyone be surprised if only the Metro versions see regular updates. Gotta nudge users onto it somehow ;)

Paul Shirley

Is it just a cunning plan...

...to ensure users get exposed to the app store (and hopefully get addicted).

Got to get the herd used to using Microsofts new cash cow somehow ;)

Samsung claims Apple jury foreman LIED to get REVENGE

Paul Shirley

Re: Meanwhile Google are busy compiling the mother of all prior art databases...

"Don't they have some relationship with a search engine to help them?"

The most important thing is they went public with the project and invited anyone to join in. The world isn't all searchable online yet.

I'm still occasionally trying to track down a future pocket PC mockup printed in a UK computing mag around the early 90's that covers everything Apple are currently claiming to own. The slab shape, the rounded corners, grid of icons, apps, touch screen, *built in phone* etc. Only differences were zero hard buttons and a full surface display... both of which Apple will attempt to claim for it's own before long! Can't find it anywhere online and I'm gradually working through decades of paper in case I kept that issue.

Paul Shirley

Somewhere in one of the interviews Hogan gave he claims to have thought the jury were heading in Samsungs favour - implying that only changed when he had his 'a-ha' moment and led them over to Apples side.

That's very credible, while the jury ruled for Apple on the software patents, they ruled against Apples design patents - Hogan couldn't drown them in bullshit on something so simple.

Hogan is probably now #2 on Apples hit list after Google. He just sank their whole campaign. What they won won't survive the next trial, what they really needed to win (the design patents) they lost and in a retrial Koh will struggle to keep out prior art again - so they stay lost. And worst of all, there will be no product ban in place for the 2 years it takes getting to retrial and certainly no chance of a rolling ban with new products waved onto it by a protectionist judge.

Meanwhile Google are busy compiling the mother of all prior art databases...

Microsoft sets date for Windows Phone 8 unveiling

Paul Shirley

Re: Grumpy old codgers

More *good* choice is good for competition and customers. Weak products create no competitive pressure - no pressure on price, no pressure on features and thanks to a broken patent system even a failed competitor can hamstring an entire industry.

WP7 was exceedingly weak competition with warmed over obsolete core technology (WinCE), years behind on base OS features and with a UI many find repellent. Moreover a radically different UI based as much on a licence deal with Apple *requiring it to be different* as any genuine useful ideas.

WP8 may have a stronger kernel and some of the stupider UI choices fixed, it's still well behind on core OS features, still 'different for difference sake' and so desperate to succeed it's pinned everything on cross marketing from Win8. Sounds pretty damn weak to me.

Does anyone honestly believe anything in the WP8 UI is worth stealing (or not already present elsewhere)? That there's anything in the WP8 kernel any competitor needs? That Win8 cross device support (such as it is) is something Apple or Android could even try to compete with given the de facto MS desktop monopoly - and if they can't compete how does that drive customer benefit?

IMHO WP8 is weak competition, not really different enough from either IOS or Android to provoke competition and MS knows it, hence the willingness to wreck Win8 to prop it up. If weak competition somehow succeeds through the usual MS marketing dirty tricks it won't be good for end users.

Mobe app makers doubt Windows 8 will be worth the hassle - poll

Paul Shirley

How are live tiles any different

The most obvious is you can't see them while running a Metro app or using desktop mode... which is why I prefer seeing my message counts on the the notification bar in Android or the start bar in Windows.

Never been able to understand why using a huge chunk of WP7/8 homescreen to show a simple count makes any sense at all. Its the homescreen - only visible while you're doing nothing and its a HUGE waste of space.

Paul Shirley

Re: so they can have the same app all over the place

Surely if they have an app on their phone they don't necessarily need it on the desktop since the phone will likely be sitting next to the keyboard functioning as a 2nd screen. Mine sits there showing me incoming email,gmail,tweets,IM etc while I'm doing other things on the desktop. It actually does that consumption pattern better than the PC does.

I switch to PC versions because there's a real keyboard attached OR they have much richer interfaces that make replying easier. Having the same UI on the desktop seems totally pointless. I need the same content and the same service but don't need to limit the interface to access that. I put up with an inferior UI away from the desktop because I have to, when I'm at my desktop why would I accept that?

Apple: Blue-shirts can fix iOS Maps in their spare time

Paul Shirley

i scent mischief

How unfortunate would it be if groups of "concerned citizens" started submitting the same false corrections. .

Though if it's anything like Google corrections will just be ignored.

Googorola mysteriously pulls plug on ITC Apple patent probe

Paul Shirley

Samsungs lost every case in Germany - wrong

Samsung have started winning cases in Germany in the single court they'd been losing in. Probably because that court noticed courts in the Netherlands, UK and *other parts of Germany* were all ruling for Samsung on the same claims!

AMD launches Android app store for Windows PCs

Paul Shirley
FAIL

just tested it on my PC

Well, it works. You could even say it works well... on my 3rd attempt to launch it.

But what it works best at is reminding us that a touch based interface just doesn't work well on a mouse+keyboard. Temple Run ran fast enough, looked pretty, but was no fun because the bloody mouse wasn't window captured and it was far too easy to get it out of sync in a way that doesn't happen with actual touch. Cue lots of other windows being selected, the player window getting dragged around at random and general unusability.

Something Win8 users will no doubt be facing all too soon ;)

Also a little surprised to see apps on there that Google would filter out based on lack of hardware support.

Anyway, having read the T&Cs it's getting yanked off my PC right away. Most customer information pillaging deals offer some token opt-out. If there's anything about my life they don't own under those T&Cs I can't think of it. Not that I'd allow a program with no quit option, that silently tried to install a 'start at boot' link, to stay on my PC anyway.

Motorola, Samsung smash Apple's touchscreen patent claim

Paul Shirley

Re: @Rob Dobs

Ahhh, but you missed the obvious. They aren't winning with those really obvious patents. Even the German courts have started ruling against Apple after a year of insanity rubber stamping everything. The Germans may have finally noticed that every other EU court has ruled against Apple on the same patents.

...and the Samsung rule 50 appeal should be scaring the jury from that case a LOT. The whole 1st section is redacted but unmistakably about jury corruption. What the foreman swore to do in court is exactly what he didn't do in the jury room. It's been pointed out if it was a UK court he could face jail time. The yanks will probably go easier on him, but the jury ruling will die. Maybe not in Koh's court but it's manifestly unsupportable.

There aren't going to be triple damages on $1bil whatever happens. If the award survives at all it was so badly constructed only a few percent of it is even eligible for tripling.

Apple got a lot of PR from their 'win' and got to perpetuate the import ban but that's about all they'll end up with. And the PR wasn't all good PR.

Fans revolt over Amazon 'adware' in Ubuntu desktop search results

Paul Shirley

Re: I trust Shuttleworth only as far as my backup can rescue me

Learned long ago to take a backup before letting any Ubuntu related updater run. That's a /home copy and a drive image for maximum recoverability.

It's been quite a shock the last 2 Kubuntu in place upgrades went smoothly... OK as smoothly as any upgrade involving Nvidia's shitty drivers can be (need Wine to run 3D well).