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Comment: Re:Massive sense of entitlement & missing pers (Score 1) 301

First, it says "less than $5,000" which I would expect to be "*much* less than $5,000" for the vast majority.

But most importantly, you claim that this is what artists get for "work they did last year" which I also don't expect to be true in the majority of cases. This income is most likely usually from continuously producing new music, not "residual income whilst you do nothing else for the rest of the delivery platforms life".

I wasn't able to find more detailed numbers, but I would expect income to be more driven by recent releases than "some song I wrote 10 years ago". Which means that of the small proportion of artists who even get any money at all, 90% get very little, including those that work very hard to produce new interesting music. Of course, without more detail (how many artists, how many new releases, the actual income distribution, etc.) it's impossible to really interpret that statement in any meaningful way, but I'm pretty sure that your interpretation of "getting $5,000 whilst you do nothing" is not the most appropriate.

Comment: Re:Calm Down, It's Only Group 2B (Score 2) 354

by dataminator (#36307820) Attached to: World Health Organization Says Mobile Phones May Cause Cancer


Hint: bananas have more radiation than almost every other food available, yet nobody wants to pull bananas from the market because it's the only good source of potassium.
Double hint: you get the same amount of radiation from a banana by just lying near someone.
Triple hint: take everything you read with a grain of iodized salt.


Comment: Re:Devil's advocate... (Score 2) 173

by dataminator (#35654130) Attached to: Ridiculous Software Patents: a Developer's Nemesis

Do you actually have an example where the differenciating aspect with regard to prior art is "on the internet"?

I doubt that you will even find many examples that mention the internet in the independent claim, as that would be far too limiting. Only very inexperienced (and dumb for not getting help) applicants would possibly write a patent like that.

Comment: Re:Perfect for Government (Score 1) 47

by dataminator (#35465634) Attached to: Eric Schmidt a Contender For US Commerce Secretary



In other words, he's warning people that Google cannot protect them against the privacy invasion that is the Patriot Act. The oft-quoted first sentence is nothing more than a politically correct disclaimer: "but of course doing bad things is bad and Google doesn't condone it".

Basically, the message is the exact opposite of what is so often claimed, including by you. Schmidt says: "be careful to protect your privacy" and you claim he said "only evil people need privacy". I consider this to be either voluntarily misleading or a pretty strange interpretation of what he said.

Comment: Re:Perfect for Government (Score 1) 47

by dataminator (#35464868) Attached to: Eric Schmidt a Contender For US Commerce Secretary



Instead of recognizing Schmidt for being one of the few (influential) people out there who actually recognize and warn people about the dangers of Internet privacy issues, his quote gets turned around as if he was saying the exact opposite. Sorry, I'm getting really fed up with the manipulative assholes who consciously misquote him, and the huge amount of stupid idiots who believe and repeat that shit.

Comment: Re:publicity stunt (Score 1) 574

by dataminator (#34377964) Attached to: Apple Bans Android Magazine App From App Store

I'm calling fanboi on this one. ^^^

Wow, that's brilliant. As soon as somebody dares say that Apple, despite being evil, might possibly not be completely and utterly stupid he's obviously a fanboi.

It's just a bit strange that an otherwise unknown publisher gets huge worldwide publicity for free, based on his unsubstantiated claims that "Apple is teh evil", and nobody stops to wonder if what he says is true.

It might be true, Apple has done weird and stupid things in the past. But the publisher has so much to gain, and this stunt is so easy to pull off, that I would really like to see some proof before taking his word for it.

Comment: publicity stunt (Score 1) 574

by dataminator (#34376768) Attached to: Apple Bans Android Magazine App From App Store

I'm calling bullshit on this one. Is there any verifiable source to indicate that this is anything more than a publicity stunt by the magazine publisher?

While Apple is sometimes strange and incoherent about its processes surrounding the app store, this really makes no sense. And we only have the word of the publisher of some obscure Android mag claiming to have talked to some unidentified Apple rep.

The obvious and entirely predictable result is bad press for Apple and a huge amount of free advertising for an otherwise completely unknown magazine. Unless there is some convincing proof that this really happened I just don't buy it. My guess is that it's either completely made up, or the app got rejected for a different reason, maybe even intentionally provoked, and the publisher is spinning it.

Comment: Re:Answers and Suggestions and Further Questions (Score 3, Informative) 249

by dataminator (#34342274) Attached to: Coder Accuses IBM of Patenting His Work


Ok, you said you are not a lawyer, but you could at least try to know what you're talking about before writing such a post.

IANAL either, but even I know that being granted a patent doesn't magically make you own all prior art in the domain. The patent examiner even noticed HeapCheck as related work! The author has no claims whatsoever against IBM, and the idea to push for a settlement is ridiculous. What can there possibly be to settle?

Since the examiner approved the patent, while knowing about HeapCheck, they must have thought that the patent claims (only the claims count, the description is worthless in that regard) are not fully covered by prior art. I doubt they could be wrong on this, so the prior art defense is pretty much out. They must also have thought that there is significant non-obvious innovation in relation to the prior art. That part is more subjective and thus may be debatable.

In any case, the only possible outcome would be that IBM loses the patent, which changes exactly nothing for anybody unless IBM starts to sue people based on that patent. In any case the author has absolutely nothing to gain, and no basis whatsoever to negotiate with IBM.

There are no rights to sign away, the author can do nothing to help IBM maintain the patent if it is invalid, and has no benefit from invalidating it. And if the patent is valid, as it probably is, he's just going to lose a lot of money and look like a fool (as opposed to losing a lot of money but without looking like a fool if he wins).

No, I did not look at the patent, and am not going to. It would change nothing about the above.

Comment: Re:GPL Violation? (Score 1) 232

by dataminator (#33584274) Attached to: Open Source VLC Media Player Coming To iPad

A few reasons I didn't go forward with it:

2) In order to get the full behavior I'd want with a bluetooth or USB keyboard, at this time I would have to use undocumented APIs, which would piss off Apple. An example of what I mean: I wouldn't be able to get the control keybindings to work properly without using undocumented APIs. And without correct keyboard behavior... what's the point?

USB keyboard? I thought you had finally found the ultimate use of multi-touch on the iPad.

C-xC-s, C-xC-c
