I took the time to register about 50 products for my Mother's site victoriantreasury.com that has some handmade products - handmade valentine gift cards based on real antiques in her collection. Anyway the site shows up on the top page of google's results so I thought it might attract people interested in buying in this niche area.. she's really a collector and runs a collectors' society so it is not like Hallmark or anything. But it seemed it would be a perfect long tail kind of niche to fit Google's merchant area.

Well, despite even having to update the spreadsheet more than once as rules changed and putting much time into it, we never got many hits and finally when it recently seemed like it should start working the results list got filled with other vendors spamming tons of identical products to the point that our company didn't even show up in the list of vendors. The engine was very susceptible to be gamed. If they did an ounce of work trying to make a serious engine I would not begrudge them a percentage of any sales made but as it is, I am sorry I wasted my time on Google which you never know if they are going to stand behind a system they build or trash it the next week. Sure glad I didn't get into Google Wave, either. Maybe Google is its own worst enemy?

I think the "cheap as fuck" bit is probably the most important, since many clamshells still use press-locks instead of hermetic sealing (and press-locks are obviously useless at theft prevention).

I've seen a few packages with both hermetical sealing AND press-locks...with the press locks OUTSIDE of the hermetical seal. This would be closer to "stupid as fuck", since cutting away the seal cuts away the press-locks too.

And ejectable, magazine-fed primary beam projectors.

That one always blew my mind. "Here's one of our primary batteries. Everything you see here except the barbette is ejected after firing once and replaced from an automatic feed."

That and inerted planets. And the Lens.

If you're a shoplifter, and you need a pair of scissors (or more likely, a bolt cutter) to open the package, they have succeeded.

After all, once the damn thing is paid for, the manufacturer certainly doesn't care how hard it is to open. They've got theirs. Whereas losses from pilferage take (prospective) money out of their pocket, so THAT is not gonna happen if they have any say in the matter.

See? You're doing it wrong.

You should robo-dial them all hours of the day and night until someone answers.

And what makes you think the DJ will actually get out of paying these licensing fees by not playing music licensed by "Re:Sound"? I'll bet anything that the DJ will be charged on the basis of his mere presence with equipment at a function, regardless of the contents of his playlist. These "rights agencies" have a track record of extorting their fees whether or not they have any legal rights to the music being played.

So a contractual pledge to avoid such music simply guarantees that the customer won't be getting what they have no choice but to pay for, since the DJ for damn sure isn't eating the unavoidable license fee just because the customer thinks they can avoid it. It'll be buried in the overall fee.

I wonder of Oracle will start a frantic search for Linux kernel checkins from Judge Alsup. That would be hilarious. (And kinda horrifying if they find some, since they might have an think they have an avenue of appeal based on failure to recuse.)

Yeah. I know. They'd be worse than wrong if they did try an appeal on that basis, but judging from the bizarre and self-contradictory legal theory they've put forth during the trial, I am convinced that it wouldn't be beyond them.