which is simply saying what I said.

perhaps it makes the phone cheaper (or alternatively more capable and just as expensive), but either way, with fewer discrete components the individual combined component cost remains high. If other makers respond in kind QCOM wins too: by putting the LTE modem in the same die as the cpu, then the royalty qual com gets for the LTE patent applies to now more expensive combined component. Thus their revenues rise.

Having fun with your straw man arguments?

Never stated nor implied that the US has a perfect history (or present); merely that most of the rest of the world is hardly a model.

errrata: I typoed TSMC as TMSC

No that's not what I said. In fact this is a great example of the patent system working well. first the patent royalties are what led Qualcom to develop technology and then agree to share it via FRAND. and FRAND lisencing is what allowed a proprietary technology to be incorporated into a standard. Both are great!! finally, when there was a FRAND dispute over what was "reasonable" (the R in FRAND), the IEEE adjudicated. I think they reached the right conclusion but any conclusion would have been a hearing of the parties involved. So this isn't a case you want to dress in the arguments you made.

What is interesting is that some of the recent predictions about QCOM are not accurate. Lately QCOM stock has been heading down under two clouds. The first cloud is that the IEEE council appears to have sided with apple and other handset makers that the value of a FRAND license is not relative to the value of the phone (which has been the case up until now) but relative to value of the component that contains the patent. The rationale is simple: if the same component embodying the same patent could be in a cheap phone then the value should be tied to the common component. The latter is said to be about 1/10th the value of a high end phone. Thus QCOMs business model which includes royalties hit a snag. Thus it becomes vital that the components become expensive (and thus only be suited for expensive phones)---and the way to acheive that is to bundle up features into one uber component. Put the LTE in the processor. This is how they solve their problem.

The second reason the stock was headed down appears like it might be wrong information now. TMSC reported a huge drop in expected orders in the next year. It was known Qualcom was the cause of the reduced orders (well convincingly rumored). And thus it was assumed that qualcom was experience a loss of demand and reducing its TMSC orders. Thus the TMSC loss fed right into a QCOM stock price drop. But now we learn the drop was not QCOM reducing orders because of lack of demand for Qcom products but QCOM switching foundaries.

Since QCOM is switching boundaries so the TMSC part of the stock price drop was mistaken.

Finally, QCOM may be going upscale with a more costly process and going even more upscale by bundling patents into components. SO in one move they fix their business model problem. It makes sense too since broadcom has been targeting the low end SOC and wifi market where they can win on volume. Rather than compete at the low end where Broadcom could put Qcom patents in cheap hardware and pay little on the FRAND costs, QCOM veers luxury where it supports their patent portfolio and maximizes the value of their research. It turns their fabless strategy into an advantage that is harder to steal. smart.

It would not be surprising to learn that Samsung made some concession to win the 14nm business, such as promoting it in a next gen phone. Samsung is very familiar with partnering with their competitors--- see their cozy relationship with mortal enemy apple.

I'm thinking this is a huge deal for QCOM. Or at least a huge deal for their stock.

I think that's a reasonable approach. We can never have perfection, but we can strive to avoid mistakes, and one way is through requiring better evidence, as you called it "beyond doubt". What standards would you suggest?

Yep. A physicist trying to explain a balanced line to other physicists, without knowing the word for it.

Haldane would be spinning in his grave.

If the end of the coil that is hanging is grounded (earthed), it becomes an autotransformer. As it's shown, it's a variable inductor and the disconnected end is irrelevant and has no meaningful physical effect at the frequency a spark transmitter could have reached.

This comment seems to get closer to what they actually mean in their scientific paper. But the article about it is garble and the paper might suffer from second-language issues, and a lack of familiarity with the terms used in RF engineering.

Sorry, I was being sarcastic. I happen have built more than one counterpoise.

The point they're missing is grounding of the "asymmetric" half of the antenna, and that's to keep a static charge from building in the antenna that'll zap through your electronics (or you) for safety reasons.

Sometimes. But you're missing what a Counterpoise does.

Ah, I missed the Sweden reference, thanks. Too much stuff to read this morning and I'm skimming at best.

Damn, I wish I would have patented that and all its quantum magic...

I noticed that my vertical transmitting antenna often works better if I connect a horizontal wire about the same length as the antenna to ground at its base! The wire isn't connected to the transmitting side of the circuit at all! And how well it works varies depending on the length! Obviously there is some deus ex machina at work here...

Clearly you missed the bit where they invoked quantum mechanics, surely that explains away all the inaccuracies, like the fact you can already buy chip scale dielectric antennas

The thing that I really hate about Innovation Stories is that the reporter invariably doesn't understand what's going on, and invariably is easily convinced that The Obviiously Very Technical People have some very valuable invention.

Marconi's connection to the center tap of a coil with one end not connected worked by broken symmetry? Really? It wasn't just a method of tuning a coil to the correct reactance for a particular frequency?