"Why doesn't British Telecom file suit in their own country? Serious patent holders would, at least in my guess, have a home turf advantage."

Probably because it would eventually be referred to a court in the EU, and the judge would simply tell BT to fuck off.

Most thieves are opportunists, and unless they've been watching you and really, really, REALLY want what you've got, then simply locking the car securely is your best bet.

The other night, I was walking home (about 11:30pm, through East London), and there was a guy walking toward me. He was testing the door handles of each car he passed, until finally one opened. He took the stuff out that he found, throwing some of it away and pocketing whatever else it was he got.

I stood staring at him as he did this, quite incredulous that he would do this right in front of me, and he just looked at me and said, "Well, should've locked their car, shouldn't they?" and walked off, carrying on.

I didn't do anything because this was a very tall bloke, and was probably carrying a knife. I didn't call the police either, since, this being East London, he was no doubt part of a gang and knowing my luck I'd walk into him the following week.

So, lock your car and don't keep anything of value on show. Thieves won't smash EVERY car they come to - only the ones they know they can get stuff out of.

My publishers don't give me stats that distinguish what ebook readers are purchasing my books, so I really don't know what percentage the kindle accounts for.

Based on what I've gleaned so far from my own effort, I'd say that Amazon outsells the other ebook retailers by a considerable amount.

In one month, I might sell 1,000 ebooks on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. In the same month, I will sell about 100 copies through the iBookstore, Smashwords, Kobo and Barnes and Noble combined.

Amazon is a juggernaut that is unlikely to be stopped any time soon. I have to wonder how this will leave publishing in the next ten years. If hardback and paperback sales are slipping as much as people say, and book stores closing at the same rate, then people will end up reading more and more ebooks.

Which means they'll probably buy a Kindle. Which means they'll then probably not want to pay $9 for a book. Which means they'll turn to the free and $2 / $3 books.

Which might mean that you'll start to see traditional publishers outputting less, because they simply can't afford to compete at such a cost level.

But that's just my prediction of the next 10 years. It's probably very wrong.

I've spoken to a few publishers about this sort of thing, and they've told me the following:

You are not and never have been paying for the cost of the book, but the words and the story contained within.

They've never explained why a hardback costs twice as much, though.

They need to charge as much as they do for the cost of a book because they have a number of overheads and they need to get back the advance they paid the author. There is a lot of risk involved in publishing a book, due to the subjective nature of storytelling.

Why pay advances at all? Isn't that basically just a form of credit? Apparently, a lot of books don't earn out their advance. This makes no sense to me, whatsoever. Why not just pay higher royalties quarterly, when you know what the book has actually made. This reduces your risk and allows you to invest the accrued money for a period before handing over the author's share.

If you self publish a book (that they didn't want to publish) then you are both impatient and doing the work of the Devil.

Sure, not every book needs to be published, but given that I've spent around $50 on crap books this year, I don't really think they should get their knickers in a twist over someone selling a book for $3. I'd rather pay $3 on a crap book, than $12. Also, what are they REALLY scared of?

The publishing industry is a really strange beast, that I'm sure which anyone has at one time worked within or tried to get published in probably knows. It's a bit of a circle jerk, with a lot of cliques and infighting. It's also somewhat fascist in places.

Although, at the same time I'm a little nervous that this may end up looking a bit too much like Red Dwarf, Space 1999.... or Team Amercia :|

8 hours work for 8 hours pay.

Don't work for free, people. After all, you're just an employee to them, not a BFF.

I recently saw a guy who had worked at my current place of work get given the shove after nearly 20 years. Escorted him out of the building and everything. He sat in the pub blubbing like a baby and asking how they could be so cruel after everything he'd given them.

I've vowed never to work a minute past what I'm contracted to do, and if I have to I simply come in late the next day.

What I'd like to see, and something that games companies never seem to provide, is how the sales on each platform stack up against one another.

People say that PC games sell well on Steam (such as Skyrim), but I'd love to see the total sales to date, and how those sales stack up on the PC, the Xbox and the PS3.

After that, maybe we'll get better clarity on why companies seem to be walking away from the PC more and more these days.

Note - I used to game on PC about 10 years ago, but bought into a PS1 to play FF7. I now game exclusively on consoles, since... well, I just find the breadth of games on offer is higher (I imagine that comment will get some people's hackles up, but you simply don't get games like God of War 3, Uncharted, Vanquish or Dark Souls on Windows...)

A small trend I've noticed is that Google seems to struggle in the areas of music and TV a lot more than say... Apple. Why is that? Is it because they attempt to approach the licensing and royalties in a completely different way? Or is it that Apple, keen to sell hardware, are willing to take such a small slice of money per song / movie / TV show that the studios and labels are taking near 100% of the receipts?

Google TV seems to have gone nowhere. I can't see why, since it works very nicely on paper. Apple on the other hand seem to have zero problems in getting all the latest TV shows onto iTunes.

Have I missed something really obvious? Or are Google too inexperienced in this area to build a good case for using their services?

... now, if Google could only find a way to be able to push out Android OS updates onto ALL handsets, regardless of manufacturers, we'd be cooking with gas.

Android's greatest asset is that it's open*. Sadly, it's also it's greatest enemy. When Google creates a new version of Android, let's say Jelly Bean, everyone should be to upgrade to it, regardless of whether HTC, Samsung, LG, etc. made the phone.

Unfortunately, the manufacturers like to tweak stuff, almost to the point where things like Facebook are tied into the sodding ROM.

If Google can find a way around this and still allow the partners to pop out the phones, then you'll soon find that the only barrier to the upgrades will be your phone simply being too old (not enough RAM, for example).

My HTC Desire will never get an OS higher than 2.2, which is a shame as the OTA update feature sounds pretty cool.

I've no idea how they could do this, but I expect those with more knowledge of how OSes work would be able to answer.

(PS - please don't say that people can just root and install a custom ROM, as the average man on the street has no idea how to do this, and it is he things like this need to consider)

* no, don't start on what Stallman thinks - it's the closest you'll get to a phone that will has a global reach without closing it up entirely. A truly open system would be so fragmented that one would become completely unrecognisable from the other.

The true failing comes when you add in one key component that breaks it: people. Scholars have said otherwise, but I believe that human beings are ultimately very selfish, the most selfish of those being the exceedingly rich, who will do anything, even screw their best friends, to move just that one rung higher on the ladder.

Example? Look at Apple's recent behaviour. That's being driven by shareholders and the suits that now run the firm in Steve's place.

When I saw Apple starting to make gains I thought it was fantastic. They were finally able to sell their products to the masses, rather than their fans and those who enjoyed paying a premium for their goods.

When the Apple Stores began to open, I joked to my brother: Hey, look at that - Apple has become the company that Microsoft always wanted to be.

I got that wrong. They're not the new Microsoft - they're much, much worse than that. They've started to throw their weight around like nothing else, seemingly no longer bothered about whom they hurt along the way. The Financial Times has removed their app from the App Store due to the 30% fee for subscribers and I bet that many more will follow suit soon after.

Should Apple go on to create their rumoured Apple TV (an actual TV), there will be no doubt in my mind whatsoever that they will find ways to sue LG, Sony, Samsung, Philips, etc. for having something in their TVs that infringe upon some broard, dumb patent (such as the way the volume meter is shown).

The same would probably also happen to Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo, should Apple also create their own games console. It would probably go somewhere along the lines of: A device used to wirelessly control the input and display of on screen data and transferrence of feedback to the commanding user. Which would basically be any wireless controller used for gaming that supported force feedback...

Tasty.

If the initial report is to be believed, and I've read this all correctly, this is very disappointing news.

Amazon's tablet is basically just that: a tablet that is linked into Amazon's store.

That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.

I was expecting something more: some sort of LCD / eInk combo or even a colour eInk screen, that Amazon may have been keeping secret to hit the competition with.

As it stands, this is basically just an Android tablet, capable of downloading and listening to music, downloading and watching films, and reading books (and not as well as a true Kindle at that, given that it's a LCD screen..!!) Just like any other damn tablet out there!

Probably the only thing going for it is the price. Other than that, this seems... pointless.

As I understand it, the following are true:

1. Samsung only violated 1 of the patents brought before them.
2. They need only update the photo software in the phones they now ship, rather than the entire Android OS (which will be trivial and they've probably already done so).
3. The patent only applies in certain countries, not the whole of the EU.
4. The enforcement of the patents comes in somewhere around October.
5. I used to be open-minded about Apple. Now I just think they're a bunch of dicks.

I see two reasons for Google having bought Motorola.

The first, and the one that everyone is citing most often, is the patent protection that they can now give Android. I must say that I do find it sad that people are so keen to destroy free software. To businesses it is of course a threat, but when you see fanboys and girls jumping and down with glee at the legal actions being brought before the system, I can't help but shake my head. Not everyone wants or can afford to part with huge volumes of cash for an iPhone, a system that is so locked down you might as well be licensing usage of the thing from Apple, rather than own it yourself.

Second, and the one I've seen less talk of, is the ability for Google to have Motorla build them some flagship phones for Android. As much as I love my HTC Desire, there are several things that annoy the hell out of me

1. It runs Android 2.2. There is no easy way to upgrade it to 2.3.4 (or whatever comes out next), without either rooting or doing some other hacking. This needs to be fixed, as the average man on the street can't be stuck with a device for 2+ years because the manufacturer hasn't made enough provisions to allow the Android system to be upgraded (allowing for things such as better performance and better battery life).

2. The dreaded low internal memory issue. Seriously, who thought (and still thinks) that giving the users access to 128MB of internal storage would be enough? Sure, we can shove in an SD card, but if most useful apps refuse to move over, you're basically screwed. I've currently got 11MB free on the internal memory and over 20GB free on my microSD. This is bonkers. Hopefully, a Google phone would have at least 8GB internal and support microSD.

3. Open is both Android's best asset and it's main problem. Manufacturers and service providers not happy with Vanilla Android? Hack ten tons of irremovable shit onto the phone and tie it closely to the internal system so that it can't be removed. I'm not sure everyone out there wants Twitter and Facebook on their phones. But it's there and using up space that should be free to the user to do with as they please. Oh well.

So, here's hoping that Google will have Motorola create some flagship phones that address all the above. That would be the next phone I would buy.

This is actually the plot of Plan 9 From Outerspace!

IIRC, the aliens are trying to eliminate the human race because they have developed a weapon of ultimate destruction and threaten the entire galaxy.

Or it might just be an example of bad film... :)