Posts by Paul Shirley 2284 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Jun 2009
"What about all the people who pirate and then go and buy the full game?"
Bollocks.
However... what about all the people that bought the full game then installed a pirated copy to avoid the DRM? I have a large pile of games behind me and a matching folder of cracks for most of them. 1st thing I do after installing is apply a crack, before even running the games. Sometimes before installing ;)
Wonder how they count those installs. Pirate or paid? (Hint: it's piracy;)
The system is rigged to make patents diabolically hard to invalidate.
They decide *if* there's infringement 1st because if there isn't they don't have to even try to decide validity. So shitty, invalid patents get a 2nd chance to enrich a bunch of lawyers and they get paid to show invalidity both times!
Quickest path through:
1 Apples patents invalid
2 Samsungs exhausted
3 damages on what's left $1. they can swap the a note
Wonder if they'll have the balls to do it. It wouldn't even be a wrong result.
2 would cause severe panic in the industry and might just provoke real pressure for reform, since it would decapitate a lot of the lawyers charging opportunities as well as hitting patent holders in the wallet.
1 would just leave the world laughing.
The worst possible thing that could happen is the jury not deciding all claims. Decide and it's nearly appeal proof, deadlock and the whole charade starts over again.
Today could be the most important, the jury instructions control what the jury can do to the squabbling litigants and they're unlikely to go outside them. Koh would simply ignore them if they did in any case. Expect a tooth&claw fight between the lawyers.
What I want to see is the jury having the opportunity to rule that both sides lose. If there's no option to rule Apples design patents invalid the entire affair was just a waste. Samsung losing on FRAND just leaves Apple forced to pay up a smaller amount... actually forced to hand over real money with no more delay. TBH though I expect them to rule Apple is covered by Intel's licences.
Still, both sides losing would be great news for Samsung. The injunction lifts and they don't collect excessive fees they never expected to get and asked for in retaliation. For Apple it's game over, they'll lose their ludicrous patents. That's got to be good for almost everyone.
The jury were too busy falling asleep to laugh. That's why judge Koh regularly asked if anyone needed caffeine throughout the jury days.
Don't know what to read into that but I really hope it's because they found Apples design patents so ludicrous they couldn't maintain any interest in the horse shit Apple were shovelling ;)
It occurs to me that maybe Boies is actually behind this fiaSCO. It's just so familiar from the SCO case, where SCO via it's lawyers persistently insinuated there was an IBM funded PR conspiracy. This time BSF reached trial and I'd guess Boies&co actually pushed the court to look for the imagined conspiracy.
In SCO they went to great lengths (including sending private investigators after PJ) to implicate groklaw in particular and never tired of making threats that groklaw would be outed. Because the case collapsed they never managed to even try to interest the court in that. This time I suspect Boies expected to find groklaw on Googles list and finally get revenge.
They fought a PR war in SCO and lost, badly. They fought a PR war in Oracle and lost, badly. It must be hard to accept the other side weren't playing the same secret game and still won. Of course believing either SCO or Oracle had a strong case is a sign of delusional beliefs!
You'd think Boies would warn Oracle that talking up some vast Google organised conspiracy against them was a bad idea - he cant have forgotten how well it worked for previous Boies client SCO (where most of the legal strategy was copied from).
And just like SCO, the side doing the shouting seems to be the only side actually proved to be paying anyone posting favourable opinion.
I wonder if Boies will find another mug to hawk this failed legal attack too. Haven't the Oracle fees covered the £30mil loss they made creating it for SCO? Then again, $30mil is a lot...
One tinfoil hat way to look at Aero is as the excuse MS needed to fundamentally change driver model and that's the excuse they needed to freeze XP at DX9. Gamers would then migrate rapidly to Vista/Win7 for DX10 and games would swiftly drop XP support forcing migration (which didn't happen).
Well the hardcore gamers have moved, the casual ones replaced their PCs and the diehard XP users aren't budging, there's no longer any need for the ploy. So it's dropped with no way back.
A more realistic theory: WP7/8 devices aren't really up to running something like Aero and Win8 has to be hoobled to that level to avoid making the phones and tabs look bad in comparison. It's the whole Win8 story, an OS downgraded to promote a different product few will ever own.
Wonder what would happen if Android took advantage of it's shiny new GPU accelerated 2D to add bling. A mad rush at MS to resurrect Aero?
"The big button thing"
Been wondering how it will handle my current Start menu, with its 76 nested folders organising several hundred things. In particular how using Win8 search will help me find the correct ReadMe among the 20 odd on there and other common named files.
I know they can be forced into a hierarchy under the Metro menu, but that's still a click for every nesting and a whole lot more scrolling in random directions than the simple click, zigzag right, click of the Start menu.
My phone needs to work that way because its a small screen with an inprecise pointing device and it's frustratingly inefficient compared to my PC. Microsoft, sharing the frustration with everyone.
That 14 years taught me that hitting the Win key in a game can crash the game, sometimes taking Windows with it. Even recent games don't always recover from it. Since I only stick with Windows for gaming the muscle memory is strong and avoidance automatic ;)
"I do also like the suggestion above to just use the power button on the computer."
Sadly my wife and I keep our PC's well out of arm reach behind sound blocking pieces of furniture, so that's the least appealing option.
Anyone checked if the sleep buttons on many keyboards will do the trick on Win8? (A button I'd completely forgotten on mine!)
Comical. The MS damage control team were 8min late to post and failed to consider that none of their supposed enemies could be arsed getting in ahead of them!
Sometimes a 10 to 1 disparity in comment/voting means more than a big astroturfing budget ;)
You can almost see the panic setting in. She's pissed off both sides and their lawyers to the point they're making minimum effort to comply with her running of the trial and occasional seem to be deliberately trying to provoke her.
It's going to appeal, something most judges hate and the only way to stop it is to badger Apple&Samsung into a settlement - I could almost believe her treatment of Samsung was a heavy handed and misguided attempt to pressure them. Most judges try that right at the start of the case, before tempers rise.
The only available pressure she has left is on Apple, by threatening to lift the injunctions. Waiting 2 years for an appeal with injunctions still in place means Apple won't bother settling while Samsung are being hurt. Ready to provoke and anger Koh all over again...
Yes, Florian has a longer history of being wrong than being listened to by a lazy bunch of journos. Florian didn't come into disrepute with many of us because of his associations, it was the consistent bullshit in his writing, dating back to when he was still pretending to be a friend of open source.
The accompanying bias was impossible to miss, be it for SCO, Microsoft or Oracle. Or the perpetual attack on Android. When he came clean about Oracle most were already certain he was working with them, based on what he was saying. Hardly coming clean, more covering his arse, probably remembering the savaging he got in the SCO affair where he was outed.
If he'd admitted the various relationships upfront journos would perhaps have been less willing to swallow any old crap he fed them. Instead he did the damage first.
Journalists are lazy, Florian is just the latest to benefit from that. At least Rob Enderle is nearly forgotten after playing the same game all the way through SCO, with his constant and pathetic anti-Apple chanting now falling on deaf ears.
"I suspect that the tech community (the source of the slamming, given that the silent majority has yet to see W8)"
For a change I sort of agree with you. The vast majority of unbiased observers have indeed not tried Win8 yet and we can only guess what will happen when they do.
Now convince me the biased minority that have bothered installing and trying Win8 are not mostly Microsoft fans, eager to try the latest shiny. Because I don't believe many with an anti MS agenda will have bothered unless their job demands it. Just too disruptive for most, even techies.
Comment on Win8 is indeed biased, with epic levels of very amateur astroturfing everywhere I look mixing with kneejerk anti-MS reactions. What I don't see *many of* are endorsements I actually believe read as genuine. It's a biased pool but I believe it's biased toward Win8 more than we'll see from the wider public.
Launch time is going to be interesting.
Much easier for attention grabbing MPs to distract the public with show trials than pressure their parties to stop giving business (primarily finance) these tax dodges to stop them fleeing abroad.
These idiots collaborated in creating an 'immoral' tax system, they have no right to complain when companies actually use it. It's OK when these idiots are protecting our banking and finance industries by letting them avoid tax, it's much more immoral if anyone else does it.
These MPs need to quit attention grabbing show trials and get of their lazy arses and force real change. That or keep taking the bribes and just STFU.
As a user it looks incredibly "jarring" to me and I don't care how much you like it as a developer.
The crucial error here is having no fucking choice as a USER what the is looks and feels like. Linux I can tweak. Xp I can tweak. Win7 I can tweak. Win8 I can just bend over and take it.
That forced change is why it's not just the usual crackpots screaming this time.
I'm running with 'cosy' and around 10% of screen is empty. There's not much difference between all 3 display densities anyway, most visibly just more vertical spacing in text.
Unfortunately Gmail achieves that information density by using cryptic icons and dropdown selectors that frequently leave me wondering how to do even simple things. MS seem to have done better with clearer controls, at the cost of pissing away much more screen space. It just isn't empty screen space letting them tell porkies about use of space!
TBH neither of them are more than crippled ways to handle email, a single screen/window interface is too limiting.
"from what I understand of US law if the patent owner doesn't vigorously defend a patent and it becomes ubiquitous then they essentially give up the right to the patent"
You're thinking of trademarks, not patents but these are aren't actually patent claims from Apple but something halfway between patent and trademark. But no, they don't need proactively defending to survive.
It's actually common practice to *not* assert patents while waiting for others to adopt them, so called submarine patents you only spring when enough people are infringing.
In fact it's usually a very bad idea in the US to actually reach court with patent disputes because it's the leading way to lose your patent. In software 90% or are lost and Apple's design patents are so weak they're unlikely to survive this trip to court. Lose the patent and you can't get anyone to volunteer licence fees.
So why did Apple go this far? Simple, if they backed down those injunctions would vanish in short order. Going to court hurts Samsung a lot, win or lose.
It also keeps alive the illusion of threat from Apple, something few in the industry seem to take seriously at all even with Apple on the warpath. It would vanish completely if they quit.
You're ignoring the possibility that Apple engineered the situation. The F700 was in Apples initial claims as an iPhone copy but voluntarily dismissed when Apple realised the claim was false and easily proved false.
It's not surprising that Samsung did not expect Apple to claim it as an example iPhone copy in the case, or have 'Perry Masoned' it on them so close to trial. And it really should have opened the door to Samsung over this evidence. Especially since it's pretty clear Apple are lying to the jury.
The puzzle is why Samsung hadn't already introduced the evidence in their planned defence anyway, it would seem to be a killer blow. I can only guess that the harsh time constraints of US trials force ruthless culling of weaker claims, that this wasn't considered strong enough. If true that should scare Apple. Except Apple are so disconnected from reality nothing seems to scare them. Not even lying in court.
Just read John B. Quinns declaration to Koh and Koh is trussed up like a Xmas turkey, caught between her own court policy on public disclosure and legal rules. Quinn obviously either prepared for this or simply knows the rules better than the judge, it appears there's no basis for any sanction other than the judge being 'livid'. Which is a good basis for a mistrial but not much more.
This is getting interesting. I can see this trial not surviving into next week if Koh decides to fight.
Yes, I was starting to wonder if Samsung are now playing for a retrial, with a fairer judge. In principle they don't want any delay while injunctions are in place but it's looking like the whole case is heading straight for appeal, don't stop at justice. with the injunctions intact for the 2 years that's likely to take.
At this point provoking Koh may look like a quicker route to justice via retrial. Samsung seem to be doing slightly better fending off Apples sales injunctions in other courts as well, this might well remove Koh from future battles.
Why does no one remember the win app store when discussing win8? Metro apps are locked to the store, Surface gobbles cheap broadband bandwidth so MS get to keep most of their 20-30% cut without mobile carriers charging them. There's a huge pot of gold MS are chasing, enough to make them consider subsidies at least.
I don't believe tbeyll subsidize the less locked down pro version but I don't believe that's more than window dressing for the RT product anyway.
The TV networks are going to love this. Finally a way to grab control and force us to sit through the adverts, channel promo's and basically any other crap they want, as already implemented in the various internet catchup services.
You can bet they're already scheming in smoky backrooms, working out how to make the lockdown most intrusive, how much palm greasing needs to happen.
Nope, in US civil cases the judge has a lot of freedom to ignore many rules and it appears to be normal to do so. Koh had the option of allowing the late submission, albeit with a possibility of creating delay if Apple fought hard enough. She chose not to, continuing the pattern of favouring Apple.
...but every alias you set up in Gmail automatically gets another G+ account, which you then have to remember to delete. Luckily the arseholes at Google have started spamming G+ users with weekly emails - a useful reminder to delete the crap.
The dedicated feedback address for my app doesn't need a G+ account, just another unused one padding the G+ user number.
You could ship in a jury of Apple employees and get a fairer result than leaving it to judge Koh!
Biased or not, once the jury ballot gets stripped down to a list of yes/no decisions juries seem to overcome bias. Separated from all the BS that 'rounded corners' patent is going to look very silly to most jurors.
Debatable how good they are at updates. One thing is certain though, they're pretty incompetent at getting ICS to run on their 512Mb devices. Waiting for ICS/JB to actually be available is very good advice. As is waiting a couple of weeks to see if it's too broken to use!
You do have to wonder quite how much more legal error Koh can perpetrate, how badly she can bias the jury instructions.
Maybe she'll copy the Oracle vs Google case and tell the jury Samsung are guilty? But that was only tolerable because judge Alsup set it up so he could correct the jury decision if they didn't throw out Oracles claims. I assume he already knew he would rule against Oracle and it seemed like a sensible shortcut (didn't work out that way).
The normal explanation when US judges show bias like this is that they're favouring the side they think will lose to prevent them having any chance of appealing. Kohs behaviour just seems too far beyond that explanation, the damage is being done to Samsung NOW and an appeal can't undo that, a win won't pay enough either. She's made sure Samsung lose whatever the outcome of the case.
Koh and the magistrate judge have now made so many legally unsupportable decisions Samsung are guaranteed to have their appeal heard and Koh has no power to stop them applying. Apple may have a harder job when/if the jury smacks them because Koh's decisions have been so transparently biased in Apples favour.
It's going to be a BIG bill for lost Samsung sales. Enough to put a dent in even Apples accounts.
This sounds disturbingly like the ongoing Android Kobo app trainwreck, where every new version just changes what's broken and feedback is completely ignored. The Play store comments section is also full of suspiciously enthusiastic reviews - they must be using a different app to the one I see, one that works, doesn't bombard them with spam or interrupt their reading regularly with spurious social features. Almost as if someone's being paid to spam endorsements to drown out the complaints...
I feel lucky now, didn't buy my father the Touch because it felt far too sluggish in the shop but I had assumed it wasn't as deliberately fscked up as the app. A narrow escape, they seem more interested in having an advertising opportunity than delivering a good ereader. FFS they even spam promotional crap into the Android notification bar.
"Windows 8 has probably been in planning, if not active development since before Windows 7 actually started being sold"
I'll agree something intended to be released as Windows 8 was probably in planning before Vista was launched. Some of the desktop core is probably actually implemented in Win8.
What's actually being released as Win8 only started after Apple started *selling significant numbers* of iPads. Not when they launched because as usual MS failed to believe there was a market. As usual MS are late to the party and as usual using dirty tricks to catch up - in this case screwing over the desktop to cross promote other, non-PC products.
...but that's the whole shell game being played. Too externally identical devices, both with identical start screens and mostly indistinguishable Metro modes. 2 wildly different prices. A recipe for hoodwinking customers if ever I saw one, talk up the pro device, sell the RT, hope the disappointed buyers don't make too much noise.
They are conservative 'cover our arses' statements *but* everything in the risk disclosure affects stock value, they don't just throw things in to be safe because that also gets them sued.
If something this damaging is in there they believe it's a real risk. This one is so damaging if anything they'll have understated it as far as they believe possible while avoiding a shareholder lawsuit.
You could argue that rounding off the corners is necessary to avoid causing damage to pockets. That leads to an argument that rounded corners on the shell are a functional requirement and hence not eligible for patent.
Not sure it would get far with legal pro's but might well work on a jury.
TBH I foresee Apple leaving court with less patents than they entered with and a very large bill for Samsungs lost sales.
...and I expect it to break out in the jury room when the lawyers are done posturing. The jury can gut Apples case in many ways and have much less reason to prop up an obviously broken system than a legal system earning money from every dispute. The jury will decide the damages and decide if infringement happened.
I expect Apple dreams of a $30/tab 'tax' to be crushed by the jury even if they win on infringement. I can hope (but don't expect) they'll realise Apple are taking the piss, that Samsung's naughtiness is far outweighed by Apples.
Either way I believe this is where Steve's crusade hits the buffers, with the patents devalued enough to not be a credible threat.
Upgrading without WP source code access is near impossible, especially with locked loaders and whatever other protection MS used to prevent hacking. Android is only easy to modify because the boot loaders can be unlocked AND enough source is available to make it practical.
You can't even use the 2nd tier of mods, mix&matching components from different devices (which works on Android) because there are no different devices below the OEM UI tweaks. So no frankensteined OS replacements either.
And yes, the hardware has changed, the kernel has changed, parts of the stack above it have changed. The WP8 kernel wont run on WP7 hardware, the new stack won't run on the WP7 kernel. This is the downside of MS so tightly specifying the hardware, you end up with a kernel that can't adapt to anything else. Just the single->multi core change creates fundamentally incompatible kernels - no-one builds unified kernels that can handle both, it's too inefficient.
Somehow I doubt even flag waving patriotic Americans actually believe that! So far the US has been seen as followers, extremely tardy ones at that, not a good position to be influential from. Even with 4G they're only in the leading pack, nowhere near heading it.
Valuable: yes, to the carriers. They're adept at picking their customers pockets. The idea that WP8 will divert any of that wealth to MS or Nokia is laughable, Apple already took what extra margin the carriers were willing to give up.
IMHO calling the US market valuable and influential is just an admission they've already lost in the European market and aren't winning in Asia. All that's left is the US backwater! They don't seem to be winning that one either ;)
Yes. I vividly remember cut&pasting a carefully constructed diagram from 1 page to another and discovering the amazing 'Jumble' function. It made a better job of scattering the symbols randomly across the page while breaking most of the connections than I ever could.
Word. Not even compatible with its own functions.
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