One jurisdiction cannot dictate the terms to another independent jurisdiction. Russia, for example, sells CDs that contain whole sets of albums in MP3 format at a cheap price that while legal in Russia (the contracts were set per disk, before people thought about higher compression allowing multiple albums on one CD). The import of those albums into the US is restricted (on a commercial not personal basis, so go to Russia and buy one, fine, buy one and have it shipped, not so good).

So, in the Internet age, we have to look at a different range of solutions. We cannot continue to have the hodge-podge application of some laws that really have no standing where they are applied. You Tube should not be held responsible for filtering pro-Nazi video for Germany. What could be done is that every jurisdiction that cares could enter into a treaty that allows conforming content suppliers to accept a tag from a legal jurisdiction of the treaty conforming parties, and when such content is supplied the legal jurisdiction / country can then take responsibility and filter the content request. Yes, this means wire speed content filtering at the level of whole countries. It also means the treaty must prohibit filtering of any content not destined for an end point in their jurisdiction. Else content merely routed through becomes subject to filtering. The content providers can voluntarily meet these requirements to add to their own infrastructure, and the consequence of not adding the ability to tag content would be they may not be able to deliver any content to the jurisdiction that chooses to filter all their content.

Why would this be good? Mainly because sovereign jurisdictions have the right to impose their own restrictions, restrict freedoms, and in general trample on what Americans take as basic rights. Well, legally but perhaps not morally. And the Big Win? The treaty would provide that transient traffic not destined for a venue in their jurisdiction would be unencumbered by their policy, and would freely traverse their jurisdiction.

When we get around to rewriting some of the basic Internet protocols to have security in mind at the start, as well as non-repudiation and verification checks, then we just add a message portion to the initial setup for content flags. This means we can easily block based on acceptable age, overall content, ratings, etc. As well as assure easy access that is unrestricted when legal. Make the creation of the flags / registration of them, based on the individual jurisdictions preferences and then they can filter based on their own custom criteria. Have a set of general purpose flags and combine with the ISO code for the jurisdiction and its all good for most cases, but add the ability to register custom codes too. Then their censors can tag away and isolate their populations to their hearts content. The current DNS bases schemes are bound to failure. And if for example a Russian Film is still under copyright that is valid in the US, then they really do have the right to send a DMCA takedown for that item. But they seem a bit overly aggressive in the articles case. My solution is workable, and will help put a bunch of compsci people to work initially and a whole lot of censors at work around the world.

In Russia, which covers 10 time zones (they eliminated one recently I think) everything transportation related is on Moscow time. Like the train schedules. They keep local time and national time straight for the world's largest country ... (by landmass not population). So ...

In Soviet Russia, time zone changes you...

A serious proposition to do this would also move to 24 hour time. It is used in a majority of places. And our military here in the US. I already set my devices to GMT/UTC when possible. Oh, and to the metric promoters and detractors of the standard system of measurement, (US or British Imperial) for almost all sizes and quantities that we routinely measure in day to day life, there is a one syllable unit of measure that keeps the total number of units easy to conceptualize. But if you must change something, change the jewelry industry over to metric.

The biggest benefit to me would be that when I travel, if everyone used UTC, my calendars would not get messed up moving from one to the other. Sometimes birthdays move a day in one direction and not in others, so after several trips the "all day events" moved to a new week. Now it just makes multiple copies sometimes. A great way to ease into this would be have all OS'es offer the ability to set the clock to UTC, and only change the display.

They stop a carriage at the border, hoist it cargo, people, et al, into the air, and change the trucks out under the carriage bed to fit the new rail gauge. It is faster and easier than cargo handling. I've seen customs inspectors vetting people while in midair. OH NO, NO WHERE TO RUN!!!

What they do at the borders now is use a hoist/crane to lift the cars and change the carriage assemblies out for the other gauge. Happens a the "Western Europe" "FSU plus satellites" borders now. And happens a few places in the US. What they should go is make a much wider gauge that could accommodate 2 wide standard cargo containers. Then we have the ancillary industry to make new train cars and so on. It also means a car loads on nose first. In fact you could use a quad rail system and use carriages 20 feet wide, then short cargo containers fit either direction to maximize carriage usage. Might as well blue sky as this is not going to happen. For the cost involved I could run a rough weather ferry service between the same end points for much much less.

This will cost way more than the 65bn estimated. The Chunnel was approximately 17 billion in todays dollars. This is twice as long. And the Chunnel went through a layer of chalk almost all the time. This is going through mainly igneous rock. Hard hard rock. 1 trillion dollars might be a lowball estimate for the cost. They will essentially have to stockpile 9 months of supplies in a huge building or well designed set of buildings at each end to accommodate construction through the winter. It needs to cover equipment and people, all the resources and tools. The chunnel was about 5 million a day in operating expenses. Work stoppages just have to be avoided. So you have to over buy equipment and have extra people around to mitigate that because 9 months of the year you are crippled in logistics from the outside world.

On the other hand, is it worth it? Likely, but the Russians will be surprised that most of the trucks will have Chinese drivers that arrive to offload. If they are smart they will do a design that accommodates a double deck 4 lanes each way auto tunnel at the same time. And just for me they'd put an underwater office and hotel in two spots along the tunnels.

If they think they can submerge tunnel sections and then join them underwater and clear the water after construction; well, they haven't watched what the crab boats do on "Deadliest Catch". Note to self: Underwater Hotel roof must have extra heavy glass, and triple hull even at windows.

Import duties are higher, VAT is added, currency fluctuations are accounted for by adding a preload cost adder, because they never make less than what they want, but sometimes have extra profit, and because they need to set up a foreign corporation to deal with Australian legal formalities and consumer laws. Not to mention a foreign organization to service all the products. The fact that it isn't double the US price means the US folks are already subsidizing the Oz purchases by giving a higher unit profit per device than Australians are providing to Apple. And Apple has more 3rd party folks who have to be able to purchase the products and make a profit selling at close to Apple's list price. As to Geography it behooves Apple to make the case that even if assembled in China they are US goods, to maintain WTO and most favored trading partner status. Remember that the hardware manufacturing cost is only 25% of the equation all the intellectual property, software, etc. originated elsewhere. Quite frankly the Microwave oven I want to buy if I head over to Europe is "made" in Australia and they charge more for it online in Oz that I can walk in an buy it in a shop in England, discounting the VAT I'll get refunded when I reexport it out of the EU. I the paperwork is less bother. So even your own countrymen charge you guys more than they charge others. Want the same price as the US, then buy as many of each product as the US does. We just get a quantity discount.

iPad is my preferred mobile pdf reader. iBooks app is a free download. Decent days plus worth of reading time. Quality hardware. Decent company backing it up with a good warranty. And not likely to pull the plug anytime soon.

I understand poor little Britain's position. Once the Sun Never Set on the British Empire, and now they are largely irrelevant because their former colonies revolted or else-wise left the control of the commonwealth. But as a few odd guys a few hundred years pointed out, it is the right of the people, the right, not a government sanctioned privilege, to throw off the yokes of tyranny of an oppressive government. I for one think that in the US the Internet usage by individuals is not only a protected first amendment right, but also a second amendment one. (Arms covers all offensive as well as defensive means like armor not just things like firearms. Knives, slingshots, etc. are covered, so should the Internet and social networks be covered as well.)

As the times change we don't leave our freedoms in the past, we embrace the new technology in the spirit of the old. It is hypocritical of any country that has helped a revolution elsewhere to oppress its own people and their right to replace their own government, hopefully through peaceful means, but when tyranny arises, so must the people, and to do that, the tools must be allowed, which also aids in checking a government from aggressiveness. The free flow of information is a basic vital right.

That said the government using social networks traffic to stop criminals is also not a bad thing. But the technology exists to monitor the traffic substantially easier than radio, so governments should invest a bit more in that side. Shutting them down is not the answer, and technically not possible by a single government as they would have to disconnect their country from the Internet completely and we know from Iran that is just not possible. They work hard at it and fail. And for a vibrant modern economy it is economic suicide. Iran and the like can, because they have fallen behind so losing the Internet is not a huge impact on their business. But a notch above them in the third world countries depend on the Internet to do vital communications and transact business. And the rest of the economic powers are extremely dependent on the Internet to the point of beginning to dismantle the surface mail systems to some extent. The way to stop a riot is twofold. Resolve the initiating conditions if reasonable for the population as a whole. And if not overwhelming force. But the use of force is tricky to avoid getting the general population from deciding that yes the government has gone too far and joining the riot. Britain should look back at the forces that caused the Magna Carta to come to be, and to the forces initiating the American Revolution and see what the trigger conditions for the current situation are. Then peacefully resolve them. The current economic crisis worldwide can be resolved and reset, if we allow the people the freedom to do so, and remove incorrect politically motivated drains on the economies which only serve to increase the stress.

It is better to embrace the technology to quell the unrest than to be Ludites and go backwards.

Does Moody's have a potential increase in revenue if the US rating is lowered? Why, yes it does, if nothing else from the churn of the holdings for institutional and private investors. So with S&P "at arms length" but Moody's child, Moody's makes money, S&P remains "independent" and brokers buy more Ferraris or whatever this years bonus candy is... The tumult in the government is an excuse to lower it. Facts don't matter; and, where there is a difference between the rating agencies, there is a chance to play between them as that influences peoples investment strategies. Who wins? Why the brokers win. No matter if a investment gains or loses the guy brokering the deal makes money, from both sides. The seller pays their broker, the buyer pays his broker, and slowly through churning they make considerable amounts without a contribution to the GDP.

And how the times have changed that /. is even interested in this article...

That would be a gyro. The iPhone 4 has a 3 axis set. Seemed obvious to me. Patent away. Likely the USPTO would grant it after you spend 10K plus 100s of hours justifying why your description merits unique and novel status.

One of the arguments against being judged obvious is that no one has done it before. After the fact people can shout from the rooftops that it is obvious. But someone makes the connection the first time, before they can say that. As to the mentioned alarmclock mated with a radio. Yes, there are likely patents when someone had the idea to use a radio as the alarm for the alarmclock.

The others used other gravity sensors like little metal balls and contact sets or mercury switches not accelerometers. And they weren't touchscreen devices. Trivial differences, but different technology. Better to argue it was obvious than say the others represent prior art. Still accelerometers in portable media players and phones is pretty much an Apple thing for display orientation, since everyone before had an attached keyboard!

Ignorance of the technology is no excuse ...

They (the litigants) cross licensed some of their patents according to the publicly available news. They don't want this public because in all likelihood they don't want the other potential licensees to have any idea of the deals details so they can get a fair value in licensing the others those same patents. Just like MS makes $5 off each Android phone, there may be other people lining up to get something from the other phone makers based on these Apple and Nokia patents. The balance of payments favors the one with the weaker portfolio of patents usually. If they publicize the settlement they also would inform competitors of which patents were thought to be weak, which they don't want to do either. Much of this amounts to corporate marketing and competitive strategy. You don't, as a company, want to tell everyone, for example, that you have negotiated a deal with some chinese manufacturer to create a second stream of parts for 1/2 the current price because it allows all your competitors to jump on and potentially make a better deal too. There is little difference in licensing agreements.

If you actually know, you violated a court order in saying this. If as I suspect you are just blowing smoke, then it's a pretty shade of pink out your butt. If you violated the court order of the settlement I'm happy I am not you. Neither side wants the details released. You think MS is happy that it was leaked that every Android phone pays them a royalty of $5... Not at all as it boosts Android at the expense of sales of MS phones. The only clue that is public is that Nokia updated their next quarter to break-even financially. If you found an online source of this info, then point it out for fact checking.