When I read this story in he weekend on a Dutch tweakers site, the comments were juicy. The apple camp kept saying that apple needed to pay ten times more than other parties for samsung frand's. That got me thinking...Dothese other parties have frand's that Samsung uses? If so, frands can be used to say 'I don't pay for your frands, you don't pay for my frands'. If there is a difference in number of frands between parties a bonus-malus system would be reasonable. How much (relevant) frands does apple have in this case? According to the trade cmission not enough. I believe that because of this apple didn't pay anything and dod not even try to negotiate. Both sides act as little children trying toget their way. Samsung is right, but 'big brother' obully sets the market straight...I am just waiting for the bitch-slapping to be delt to each and every party in this scandal. It is seriously long overdue.

-Shades (August 05, 2013, 01:35 PM)

In the industrial world that's the whole patent game. They're used to form cartels to make sure nobody who isn't part of the club (or big enough to buy in) gets a seat at the table. If you have a warchest full of patents you get a cross licensing deal. If all you've got is a great product you get sued into oblivion. Samsung fully expected Apple to just buy in because that's the way the game is played. Steve Jobs thought he'd use patents the way they're supposedly intended and screwed up everything.

I've got no sympathy for either side. Steve Jobs was a brilliant CEO but also a whiny baby who was all for copying until he was the one being copied. Then it was theft. Samsung is a government backed anti-competition machine that suckers other companies into paying for their R&D as supposed partners. They break up a couple years later and Samsung gets the goldmine while their partner just gets the shaft.

Honestly they deserve each other. The problem is we don't.

Windows is nasty with USB. There are bugs where speeds crawl and the only way to fix it is to sacrifice several endangered chickens while chanting black magic in ancient Egyptian as you... etc. etc.

Try deleting the device in the device manager then rebooting. Idiotic? Yes. Does it work? Kind of. But you can try the chicken thing too. It probably works better.

-Renegade (August 03, 2013, 07:20 AM)

That's kinda how I feel also.  That's why I never really liked USB, fromt he beginning days, for anything really serious.  yeah, I love it for peripherals, thumbdrives...but for any serious work like backing up, syncing reliably, migrating drives, etc. I always try to stay away from it.  When esata came out, i really wanted it to replace usb for everything, like make it extinct.  I love esata.  now we have thunderbolt, but nothing is really taking advantage of it.  Like, i want thunderbolt enclosures, thunderbolt thumbdrives, etc. And I don't know what all the specific issues are, so that's all I can say , is what i want.
so whatever.  I want things like a thunderbolt external plug on a tower, where I plug in a thunderbolt hub, connect like 5 external drives to it, and move files around to each of them with >100 MB/s speeds.  things like that.  That would be progress that i'd consider to be very exciting.

-superboyac (August 04, 2013, 04:08 PM)

The more I think about it, the more likely it seems we'll eventually end up with something ethernet based. It more or less has all the benefits firewire did (man I miss my firewire) but it's application, platform, and media agnostic. The only thing it's missing is a better connector or maybe even a whole new media and it could hit the ground running.

...is answered by "No Attendant, I will be pissing in this water jug here!"

-TaoPhoenix (August 02, 2013, 10:13 AM)

For those considering this option, I recommend that you practice first and that you be acutely aware of the volume of your chosen container.

While aircraft mini-wine bottles measure around 170 ml and aircraft water bottles might be as large as 330 ml, you may find that during practice a 500 ml bottle is still insufficient. :P ;D

-Renegade (August 03, 2013, 02:55 AM)

You say insufficient. I say economy urinal.

-Vurbal (August 04, 2013, 06:02 AM)

I think the important question here is do they have a drain in the floor of the aircraft?

-Stoic Joker (August 04, 2013, 09:04 AM)

They could pull out the carpeting an run gutters down the aisle. Don't expect them to provide a squeegee though.

-Vurbal (August 04, 2013, 10:34 AM)

Like I said before - a bigger bottle and none of that's a problem! ;D

Oh, and decent aim... doesn't help if you can't aim worth a toot.

For those with difficulty aiming, I suppose bringing a funnel could work. ;D

-Renegade (August 04, 2013, 10:37 AM)

At last a singular advantage for those suffering from needle d***.

-Stoic Joker (August 04, 2013, 12:23 PM)

Dude, I'm right here!