Posts by Loyal Commenter

Re: Sun it hot and grass is green...

"If any human cancers ever became contagious, we'd be screwed as a species."

Only screwed in as much as it would be a bad idea to go and rub open wounds up against other people's fungating tumours. The thought of that doesn't appeal to me, and I suspect it wouldn't to many others either.

It has been known for a while that this disease is a transmissable cancer; I believe this new research has found that it is a certain type of cancer, where the telomeres* do not shorten on cell division, thus meaning that the cell line can continue indefinitely.

*Note, telomere, not telemore or telomore, from the Greek telos, 'the end' and moros 'the part', literally 'the end part'

Re: Apple Schmapple

Nice ad-hom you've got going there.

Life may be about learning to do things, but software design should definitely be about makig things as easy and intuitive as possible. As a professional software developer, I am frequently appalled by how little these basic principles are followed by some companies.

iTunes is a prima facie example of poor software design; it is not designed to make things easy for the user, it is designed to make certain things hard, such as taking control of your own music collection. This is clearly intentional, and a business-driven decision. Apple can more than afford to employ some developers with a knowledge of user interface design, that iTunes is designed to work the way it does tells us as much about Apple as a company as we need to know, and, to me, is evidence enough that they should be avoided.

Re: please

Foxconn's headquarters are in Taiwan, their manufacturing is based in mainland China. Admittedly, the whole China/Taiwan thing is a bit of a political grey area. I believe Beijing still refer to it as the Taiwan Autonomous Prefecture and consider it to be part of China. I'd suspect it would still be extremely difficult for a company even as powerful as Apple to make a move for it.

Re: Sodium borohydride?

Have a read on the MSDS* for this compound, and then tell me if you want a large amount of it, most likely in a fine powdered form, in your car:

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9924969

*Material Safety Data Sheet

@Grumpyjoe

One word: bollocks.

He isn't facing life imprisonment or death, he's facing a possible charge of statutory rape. Add to that the charge of jumping bail in the UK. He is responsible for his own image in the eyes of the world's media going from one of a possibly falsely accused innocent man to one of a bail-jumping fugitive deliberately trying to cause diplomatic tensions between the UK and Ecuador to suit his own personal goals of escaping justice.

Re: Fundroid commentards are funny

"Samsung themselves show how and why they copied every inch of the iPhone"

And then added a few inches on, yes? And some extra buttons? And a big samsung splash screen?

What the document in question actually shows is that Samsung compared their phone to the iPhone and considered what improvements they could make to compete with the features of the iPhone. Like pretty mush any manufacturer of any product where they have a competitor in the market. Some of the icons on the Samsung phone might look a bit like some of the icons on the iPhone, but so what? Do you seriously beleive that the 'look and feel' of an icon is a sensible thing for the patent system to cover? If the icons were being copied verbatim, then Apple would have a case to say that Samsung are infringing their copyright, but they are not, and they don't.

@Jemma

"Historical side note, Israel, for the last 1880 years has been referred to as 'Zion'. To be classified as a 'Zionist' for the majority of that time means nothing more than 'Jewish person wanting to go back to the 'home'land that Cyrus nicked for them'"

I think the operative word in that quote, is majority. Words chage their meaning over time, and since the early 20th century, the implication of the word 'Zionist' is that of a Jewish conspiracy. Whilst accusing the Jews of various crimes was historically a favoured past-time amongst the Christian peoples, it has fallen out of favour somewhat in the last century or so, along with the use of the swastika as a symbol of peace.

Therefore, to write about 'zionism' these days implies that the author believes there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy, beyond the legitimate interests of the modern state of Israel. The author has duly earned his (or her) tinfoil headwear as a result of this misapprehension.

@Sean Timarco Baggaley

I don't tihnk anoyone would argue that DVDs have to be localised for different markets. This, however, does not justify the region-locking that prevents a consumer in country A in region 1 from buying the DVD from country B in region 2 and playing it on their hardware in the original language.

@I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects

Yes, this would happen without an arrest - an injunction such as a restraining order is a civil matter. If he doesn't turn up to court to explain himself, the he doesn't get the chance of defending his actions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_injunction

Arresting him is disproportionate, giving him a gagging order is not, IMHO. This has nothing to do with 'ignoring 8 centuries of human rights', it is more a case of this being the sort of thing the civil courts are for, and therefore the appropriate action. The Home Office has bugger all to do with it.

Re: UK's thirst for energy falls, yet prices rise: Now why is that?

"It's not a scam, it's basic economics."

If economics doesn't count as a scam, nothing does.

Re: These UK "Apple did not copy Samsung" ads @bdam

Maybe, like many of us in the UK, the judge in question is sick of the bloody olympics already, and has no favour at all towards any of the corporate sponsors feeding from that particular trough?

Re: Hear hear.

Sorry, but you put this into my head, and I must share...

http://xkcd.com/1013/

Re: Go judge Birss

The more I hear about this man, the more I want to buy him a beer. A well-educated, sensible judge making balanced and potentially far-reaching (in a good way) judgements. As others have said here, hopefully this will put the kybosh on this sort of frivolous anti-competitive nonsense in the future and tech companies can get on with making tech.

I'm just trying to work out what effect this judemeng could have on any potential future libel case brought by Samsung against Apple in the future. I seem to recall that the British libel laws basically say that if you publish a statement about a person/company anywhere in the world but that it is easily availble in the UK, then you can be prosecuted in the UK for libel (hence 'Libel Tourism'). Would Samsung now have a valid libel case against Apple if Apple persist in publishing claims that Samsung copied them, and those publications (for instance on the internet) are availble in the UK?

Of course, IANAL. Thank $deity.

Re: Ugly

My bad. T'was Sega. Nintendo's offerings were equally shabby though IIRC.