This guy going straight to a DMCA takedown letter is a dbag move in the same way that a homeowner is a dbag for having you towed when you park blocking their driveway. Yeah, the hassle they caused you was probably disproportionately larger than the hassle you caused them, but you were needlessly an asshole to them, so suck it up. Also, ambulance chasing is illegal in the US. your argument is invalid.

I dunno, available bandwidth and content has always struck me as an armor/munitions sortof relationship when it comes to innovations. they drive each other. once the bandwidth is there, someone will have something just too big to fit down the pipe consistently. I remember the first time i used a dedicated T1 connection. on an internet designed by and large for 14.4 modem access, it was mindbogglingly fast. now my phone has a faster connection, and its never fast enough. incentive to improve? content creators will always be testing the limits of what can be done with their available means of distribution. give them 30 gigs a second peak, and someone will figure out what to do with 60 gigs a second. Maybe streaming will finally *actually* start matching quality with physical media.

i completely agree with all of your arguments as to how apple approaches the patent system in the general sense. I do have to wonder, however, how this is really an example of squashing innovation and new technologies when there is already a major implementation of this idea, google wallet, live in the wild. They haven't been awarded a monopoly on the Idea of an NFC smartphone payment system, just one implementation of it, and only time will tell how they actually use the patent.

at the same time, i would also invite you to step outside the techie distortion field into reality, where it is only a small percentage of the populace that gives a flying fuck. yes, there are demonstrably hordes of people displeased with apple, and particularly iOS devices. Android sales figures prove this. But "prefers Android" is by no means the same thing as "sick of Apple's shit."

i would also argue that you dont really understand patent law. or at least certainly not patent lawyers. patent lawyers are not normal, rational people as to seem to envision them. If there is something you are doing that can be construed as patentable, they're going to advise you to patent it. That's why Amazon patented 1-click. That's why Microsoft patented the Start menu. But beyond that, a mechanical sliding lock isn't prior art for a software sliding lock. it may not strike you as a practical distinction, but implementation matters, and software is different than mechanics. And expecting a large tech firm not to retain patent lawyers would be bordering on infantile.

Also, the AppStore dispute isnt about patents, its about trademark. I think this one is iffy. On its face, the words App Store are pretty generic, which would defeat the trademark. But generic terms can acquire secondary meaning and thus acquire protection as a mark. Given that android and blackberry have chosen to avoid this dispute and chosen distinctive names for their mobile software vending might actually strengthen apple's case for the distinctiveness of the mark.

lastly, of course its completely anticompetitive. patents are inherently anticompetitive. they are a temporary legally granted monopoly (mandated by the Constitution, in the US). There are several ways that patents can be used anticompetitively so as to run afoul of antitrust laws, but simply filing for a patent on a thing isnt one of them.

So, he did manage to recover the whole video but I admit to some skepticism as to his narration of it. From the video it looks to me like he just got a little too bold with his camera. There really didnt seem to be any protestors around, but the couple other photographers who were there were all basically being ignored as long as they stayed a few yards away from the line. The cops looked like they were staging a drill more than carrying out a dispersal order on a group of people, as there was no longer a group of people. So they pushed up a block. stopped, met with another group of cops, then formed a queue and started to walk back down the block. The photographer then immediately started back down with them. He was ignored as he started, then about 15 yards in, that officer stopped him, and you can hear the muffled, 'oh i was just going back to my car.' but he wasnt, he was just continuing to film the cops.

I'm of two minds about this. on the one hand, he was kindof obviously tempting fate. the cops had just 'cleared' the block, and he immediately tried to walk back up it. if he was really 'just heading back to his car to leave because everything was over,' it certainly didnt look like it. On the other hand, all of the other cops were ignoring him. at a couple points, he seemed to be in the midst of the line without any of them telling him to clear off. Going from totally ignoring him to arresting him and saying he'd been warned seems like bullshit. even if his claim that he was walking back to his car was bullshit, and i think it was rather a poor justification, zero to arrest seems over the top. 'Oh, your car is back there? well, you'll have to wait here until we've cleared the area' seems like a more rational first response than 'you're under arrest.'

As to the above discussion of whether one can or should refuse to do what the police tell you, well, even the ACLU will tell you that police misconduct cannot be challenged on the street. So, if, in the course of enforcing an eviction the police issue a dispersal order, yes you have to obey them. I think this discussion went off the rails a bit with hypotheticals, so try to keep in mind what was actually happening here. The police were evicting an Occupy camp. whatever you think about this, it was a court order. Unlike evicting a single family from a home, they cant just show up and change the locks. They really do have to cause everyone to physically leave the area. It would be rather silly if the occupy folk all just went across the street and got a cup of coffee and waited till the cops left. watch the video. its not like he was arrested because he was filming the cops breaking someone's rights. The police had to clear the area, and he was walking right back into it not 5 seconds after they cleared it. which was pretty stupid.

I, too, am concerned that they erased the video of the arrest. Because while the arrest itself seems valid as for cause (taking all the given context and video at face value) the manner in which it was conducted was less than above board. While the off-camera voice instructing the photographer to let go can probably be forgiven - as there was quite a clutch of officers surrounding him, and wearing the cameras might have easily appeared to be holding on to the camera - the first cop, smiling creepily and saying 'we dont want to have to hurt you' while the photographer seems to be standing perfectly still in the middle of a scrum of cops, cannot. That is wildly inappropriate behavior, outside what was necessary to accomplish the arrest, and, when it comes down to it, assault. If a cop menacing you while you are peacefully accepting arrest by saying 'we dont want to hurt you' in response to no provocation whatsoever doenst put one in fear of immanent bodily harm, i dont know what would. And the video would be evidence of this. That the police would take advantage of their custody of his equipment to erase possible evidence that might be used against them is, if not shocking, then at least offensive.

yeah, better is a subjective term. in my subjective experience, I've never encountered an app incompatibility, so the whole 'android is fragmented' hue and cry has always struck me as odd. But I have an evo, which to my understanding is one of the better-updated non-nexus android phones, so, i guess that would make sense. As far as stats and whatnot go, i've recently been stuck between screen size and battery life. I know iphone 4s has a much technically better display, but i cant help thinking, when i use a friend's, that it just seems like a toy, being comparatively so small. It is actually hard to use after a year and a half with so much more real estate. At the same time, I'm getting sick of the paltry battery life. really really sick of it. If the iphone 5 has a reasonably sized screen I'll switch in a heartbeat.

an online service still in beta proves unreliable, asshats ascribe intent to the service's provider. in other news, sun still rising in east, setting in west. film at 11.

...and a thrown chair under every tree...

Actually copyright is exempted from sovereign immunity. So the case would be evaluated on fair use principles which is basically a big balancing test to determine if the use was only enough to satisfy legitimate goals. So if the E-Reserve system in question was making whole books available for a 10 page reading assignment, which students were then printing off and sharing with friends, or worse, reselling, the publishers might have a case. Without the school making a profit off the reserves, and so long as the reserves were only enough as was required for classes, seems like a tough case to make, however.

yeah, srsly.

OMG ITS NOT THE SAME RESOLUTION AS THE RETINA IF YOU HOLD IT FAR ENOUGH AWAY FROM YOUR EYE APPLE IS FULL OF LIARRRRRRS!!!!!1.

i really do not understand this shit. 'apple develops fanciful name for technology.' NOTHING TO SEE HERE MOVE ALONG. So Apple has a silly name for something. who fucking cares? the silly-named tech is better than the android phone 'equivalent.' care to rip on it for being even lower res than iphone4?

They charge what the market will bear. Just because the market is comprised of idiots who dont understand how badly they're being ripped off doesnt mean that the inkjet companies are colluding. people selling goods often charge a lower per-unit price for larger quantities and amounts. Its real. go to the supermarket and check out the price per ounce labels on different sizes of canned goods or ketchup. That the 'oh ink tech is super expensive' explanation is patently bullshit is enough. bullshit price-fixing conspiracy-theories are totally unnecessary.