Posts by ratfox

Re: How many of these are using Google as their address bar?

That's a good point. Maybe The Register can give us the breakdown of how many users coming from Google go to the home page, vs. to an article. Those going to the home page probably googled for "the register" and clicked on the first link.

Re: I didn't know a court could compel a company to divulge a trade secret.

Not a court; a government. Though my understanding is that the French Senate is a bit of a joke, and has far less power than the Assemblée Nationale, the lower chamber.

It's a bit funny that they want the link to three competitors. I suppose the competitors will not be forced to the same.

But it's very funny that they want Google to reveal their algorithm. It's very clear that Google will close down their .fr website and their French offices before doing this. And keep selling ads on French websites from Ireland.

Apple has lobbied for a tax amnesty.

Essentially, the argument is that there's no way they will bring the money back to the US if it is taxed at the usual rate. So it makes sense for the US to give them a "tax holiday", allowing them to repatriate the money at a lower tax rate! Because that way, the money can be invested in the US economy instead of sitting uselessly in an offshore bank account.

Apple's Tim Cook To Propose Profit Repatriation Tax Changes

Re: What study?

If you read the article, you'll find that a lot of iPhone users do indeed try to use it at least once; it is once they've tried it that they stop liking the idea. So "just waiting for it to be launched over here" actually confirms what the study says.

Re: Must be my eyes

Can't say I see a difference between the two

I want to be tracked

I want the Register to remember who I am so I don't need to login every time I write a comment. I want Facebook to remember which messages I read so it can only show me the small percentage I'm actually interested in. I want Amazon to remember my tastes in books so they can tell me which of my favorite authors just write a new book. I want Google Now to tell me that XKCD was updated recently.

That doesn't mean everybody else has to be tracked, though.

Re: Much ado?

A gedankenexperiment: Let's say Indiana affirmed the right of individual shops and restaurants to not serve kosher food

That is a silly comparison. One case is letting business arbitrarily decide what they sell, and the other is letting them arbitrarily decide who they sell to.

Re: Lazy facts

It seems to me that Apple is approaching the watch launch from a customer-focused perspective.

I'm pretty certain the customer would like to have their watch as soon as possible, and show it off on their wrist as they walk out of the store.

I rather assume that with all the possible options, between the size and band, they cannot provide enough stock to avoid having the light blue and pink models the only left in the store after two hours.

Apple doesn't usually have so many different versions of what they sell, and they are in general very careful about unintended consequences. The resulting atmosphere of unattainability surrounding the watch might well be considered an additional bonus.

Re: So... The Reg editorial line is in favour of geo-blocking? Didn't see that one coming.

Is a comment piece like an op-ed?

About the article, I don't think the intention of the author is to bash Europe; it is rather about protecting copyright holders, which is one of his recurrent themes.

Re: This one's not about patents though is it?

The fact that there are similarities between the designs does not mean one was stolen from the other. I suspect Facebook has been building data centers for a while now; in fact they announced their Open Compute Project in April 2011, months before ever meeting with BRG. It might well be that Facebook came up with the same ideas independently.

They're not talking about patents either, so this seems to have been a trade secret. Unless they can somehow prove that Facebook filched their design, I think they're going to lose this.

Re: no use of "Chocolate Factory"

Thanks. I came here to ask "why the chocolate?"

…Great. Now I'm hungry.

Re: Pot...kettle...etc...

I suspect they still accept it better when it is done by professionals from other countries, instead of amateurs who're just gonna leak their secrets.

Re: So basically Assange's lawyers are asking for favoritism?

Which is one of the reasons for the rule of law

Sure. Yet even the law can be unclear, considering that whistleblower protection laws exist and sometimes apply, sometimes not. Quoting from the Wikipedia™ article about whistleblowers:

"Whistleblowing in the U.S. is affected by a complex patchwork of contradictory laws."

I wish it was possible to know whether someone's actions are legal or not, but very often, the answer costs a lot of money and time spent in front of a judge.

Spying is also particular in the fact that its illegality depends on the place. Spying in the US is illegal in the US. Spying on the US might be illegal in the UK. Spying on the US is probably not illegal in Iceland. In general, people don't get extradited to another country for acts that are not a crime in the country where they are (blasphemy laws come to mind).

So you can say that Assange will be judged according to the rule of law (assuming he is); but you cannot tell me that this truly determines whether what he did was wrong.

Re: Organised crime is in the wrong business

On one hand it does definitely feel self-serving from these societies to try to make it illegal to not use their services. Especially so considering they give back so little of the money they collect supposedly on the behalf of authors. At this point, they feel very much like a middleman that should be bypassed and made redundant as soon as possible.

On the other hand, there is something to be said for protecting people from exploitative conditions. This is why minimum wage laws exist.

I'm surprised Amazon does not have built-in protections from DDoS attack… After all, it most certainly have such protections for its own websites, you'd think it would be trivial and cheap to offer that to the websites it hosts…

I'm pretty sure Google offers such a thing, though I might be confusing with yet another X-as-a-service.

Re: Google dominance

Seems to be the FTC decided that what Google was doing was bad for the competitors — but not bad enough to kill competition. And in the US at least, Google does face significant competition in about everything they do. They have "only" 2/3 of the US search market, unlike in Europe. And yeah, they are the largest in advertising, but only at around 1/3 market share.

I can't think of any product where Google is able to get away with something that truly sucks. The competition is vicious in pretty much everything they do.

Apart for Google Reader, so they fixed the glitch.

Re: Good for him… maybe?

"He still will face the jumping bail charges."

For an international arrest warrant which no longer exists?

Yes, very much so. The UK justice system told him to stay put and not run away. When he failed to do so, he broke the law.

On the same line of thought, if he had stolen a car and killed three cops to escape, it would be held against him even if the original charges are dropped. It's common sense.

No matter what Hollywood movies say about it.

Re: “Get your privacy policy down to one page in a language that everybody understands"

If you ask Google to do it in one page, they'd basically have to write: we do anything we want with your data.

Just the list of Google products is probably over one page by now…