decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
"stealing music" | 305 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
MegaUpload scoreboard: Momentum is with Kim DotCom
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 25 2012 @ 10:07 AM EDT
Link here

and here
"Abuse a man unjustly, and you will make friends for him"

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Scratching the Surface (or not...)
Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, June 25 2012 @ 02:28 PM EDT
[www.thestreet.com]

I found a Microsoft store on a recent trip to the US. It was a deeply depressing place. You could almost hear a pin drop. So very unlike the nearby Apple outlet. In the apple store people were using the devices without pressure to buy. There are staff a plenty to help. Those staff want (from my own experience) to make a sale but the right sale. If you only want an adapter they will do everything to ensure that you leave the store with one in hand and happy with your purchase. Say what you like about Apple, they have got the retail experience down to a 'T'. MS would do well to emulate them but sadly, I don't think they have the heart.

Frankly if MS want to emulate the Apple retail experience they have one huge mountain to climb. I was not allowed to explore the 'delights' of the X-box without supervision. Eh? Really.

If Microsoft want to sell their Surface devices directly then they are going to have to open up and let potential users explore their delights and even its warts.

Their decision not to let journalists have real 'hands-on' experiences with their 'new' devices has left them open to all sorts of speculation. Are they for real? Do they work? and a whole host of other issues are 'surfacing' (pun intended) simply because they've seen fit to announce something their classic 'FUD' style.

If you really want to put the fear of God into your partners then give the journalists days if not weeks (not minutes) of experience with the devices. IF you don't then many prople are going to continue to treat your announcement with a good deal of doubt and even derision.

You really should start taking lessons from Ford, GM and others on how to launch a product. You had it once with Windows 95 but now? We all remember 'Plays for sure' and that oh so wonderful 'The Wow starts Now!' with Vista.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

News Pick "Capble of Test"
Authored by: dio gratia on Monday, June 25 2012 @ 06:19 PM EDT

Application of the “Capable of” Test when a Controller with Associated Programming is Claimed

Now we move to automotive power plants where patent protection is dependent the presence or absence of software providing 'capability' to emulate a block heater coil in colder climes.

This appears to be a slippery slope leading to use infringement for other products, when the software 'capability' is added in.

Will we see roving bands of company representatives accusing people of violating patents as aftermarket activities?

On the other hand you could wonder if adding the capability wouldn't be obvious to someone having ordinary skill in the art.

The innovation appears to lie mainly in a new way to create a protected monopoly.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

"stealing music"
Authored by: globularity on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 07:17 AM EDT
The notion of stealing music is absurd, I have visions of somebody running down
the street with a bag full of sheet music they stole from somewhere.
On face value the record labels had no problem giving away millions of free
listening hours in the form of radio airplay in the hope people would buy some
of it. Many people listen to far more radio music than what they buy and play.
What has changed, people download stream or otherwise find music to listen to
then buy a small portion of that.

I can think of an example, the albums by a famous artist Mayumi Itsuwa were only
distributed in Japan, yet for whatever reason her manager arranged a tour of
Hong Kong, when she got off the plane there were loads of fans waiting for her.
The Hong Kong pirate industry had picked up her music and filled the gap her
record company failed to. The fans were willing to pay to see her concerts.

Music sells itself but you have to give away quite a lot to sell it, the record
labels know this, they just can't handle the loss of control.

In the Chinese music industry piracy is widespread, I could buy a famous
classical artist's pirate CD's for around a dollar but the genuine ones at 5 to
20 dollars still sell and the concerts are popular. The Chinese music industry
has innovative packing, and all sorts of "audiophile" features the
pirate discs do not.

---
Windows vista, a marriage between operating system and trojan horse.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft unveiled Surface after seeing partners' designs, says analyst
Authored by: hardmath on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 08:55 AM EDT

Link

Microsoft's Surface is vaporware, being aimed at its own partners on the hardware side of the enterprise, "companies like Acer, Asus, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Toshiba, and Sony."

Unnamed sources at Microsoft are cited for the proposition that "[i]f Microsoft had seen compelling enough plans from [PC makers], they wouldn't have needed to do this," referring to the Surface launch.

But stop and reflect on the fiasco that was the "netbook". Microsoft Vista was incapable of running on these, until they were loaded up with expensive, high capacity solid- state disks. Microsoft leaned on these same manufacturers to release only the tiniest, least capable models running Linux until something could be worked out (a cut down version of WinXP) that would fill out the shelf space on more attractive hardware.

Having hammered the PC manufacturers to move slowly into the market with Windows desktop replacements (new terms, "ultrabook" or "tablet"), Microsoft now wants to let it be known how reluctantly they have taken the step of putting forward the Surface (itself a repurposing of the table top touch-enabled home media center platform of the same name).

It's tough times for the junior collaborators in the Wintel monopoly. Lest we forget, it's been less than a year since HP's Léo Apotheker advised they were dumping tablets altogether and possibly moving out of consumer PCs.

Although the HP's board of directors moved swiftly to replace Léo Apotheker with Meg Whitman, who then denied that HP would drop their #1 PC manufacturing business, the evidence seems pretty clear that Microsoft has such leverage in the relationship that even the mightiest of hardware partners are reluctant to show much innovation for fear of M$ licensing retaliation.

---
"Prolog is an efficient programming language because it is a very stupid theorem prover." -- Richard O'Keefe

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Microsoft buys Yammer
Authored by: complex_number on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 09:35 AM EDT
<a
href="http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/64285-microsoft-conf
irms-yammer-acquisition">[www.tgdaily.com]</a><P>
If MS thinks that Yammer is 'World Class' then they are in even worse state that
I'd thought.<P>
My old employer used Yammer. Quite a lot of people signed up for it but within a
few weeks, the traffic was down to noise level i.e. 2-3 messages a day if you
were lucky.<P>
It wasn't cheap either.<P>
It might look like an alternative to Twitter but if you get your service hosted
by Yammer then all those 'yams' about what it happening in your business are
stored god knows where and could easily be hacked just like voicemail. Now that
MS is taking over, I'd be very careful about services like this.
<P>
IMHO, 'The Cloud' is also a disaster waiting to happen. Before very long a
company will go bust in a very publis way because their cloud supplier messes up
big time.
<P>
Looking on the brightside, another wannabe gets sold to MS never to be seen
again. Par for the course really.
<P>



---
Ubuntu & 'apt-get' are not the answer to Life, The Universe & Everything which
is of course, "42" or is it 1.618?

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Papers Please!
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 10:51 AM EDT
If you are in Arizona you now need to carry either a Arizona Drivers Lic. , and Social Security Card. Or a Birth Certificate, Out of state Drivers Lic. , Social security Card and whar ever else The local law enforcement requires. Your papers please !

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • Papers Please! - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 03:04 PM EDT
    • Papers Please! - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 05:45 PM EDT
      • Papers Please! - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 07:32 PM EDT
Google Motorola Win in Apple IPhone Patent Case Gets Review
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, June 26 2012 @ 11:37 AM EDT
It seems to me that if Google looses this correctly it will benefit them
greatly. If the Trade Commission concludes that patents of core technologies
should not be used as weapons, this will affect many other cases -- and
potentially prevent similar cases trying to exclude Android phone from entering
the market place.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )