Where are the lawyers from Samsung when you need them?

Last time I bought chips from Qualcomm, all associated license and patent payments had already been handled by Qualcomm and included as part of the per chip fee.

Assuming this still happens (it was a while ago), I cannot see how Samsung will succeed.

A couple of years ago I flew back to London from Las Vegas via Denver (I think) and the TSA wouldn't let any drinks over 100ml purchased inside the airport terminal go onto the connecting flight.

Every single person was forced to either hand it over during the screening proces or stand around and drink it before proceeding. It was extremely annoying to find that we couldn't take our overpriced bottle of water onto the flight.

If they are now screening drinks then it's better than it was before.

Personally, there haven't really been any movies or music made in the past 15 years that are even worth downloading for free, I'll never understand why people bother wasting drive space.

That old Slashdot chestnut.

According to IMDb's these are the highest ranked films in their top 250 that were made in the last 15 years and scored 8/10 or higher:

The Dark Knight (2008), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Fight Club (1999), The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), Inception (2010), The Matrix (1999), City of God (2002), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), Memento (2000), American History X (1998), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Spirited Away (2001), American Beauty (1999), Toy Story 3 (2010), The Departed (2006), The Pianist (2002), Life Is Beautiful (1997), WALL-E (2008), The Lives of Others (2006), Amelie (2001), Gladiator (2000), The Prestige (2006), The Green Mile (1999), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Untouchable (2011), L.A. Confidential (1997), Avengers Assemble (2012), Oldboy (2003), Princess Mononoke (1997), A Separation (2011), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), Downfall (2004), Batman Begins (2005), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Up (2009), Snatch. (2000), Gran Torino (2008), The Big Lebowski (1998), Sin City (2005), No Country for Old Men (2007), Hotel Rwanda (2004), The Sixth Sense (1999), Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), The King's Speech (2010), Warrior (2011), The Secret in Their Eyes (2009), Into the Wild (2007), Black Swan (2010), Good Will Hunting (1997), How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Donnie Darko (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), V for Vendetta (2005), Million Dollar Baby (2004), There Will Be Blood (2007), Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The Artist (2011), Amores Perros (2000), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Mary and Max (2009), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Howl's Moving Castle (2004), District 9 (2009), A Beautiful Mind (2001), Ratatouille (2007), Infernal Affairs (2002), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011), The Truman Show (1998), The Wrestler (2008), Ip Man (2008), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), Star Trek (2009), Monsters, Inc. (2001), Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring (2003), Mystic River (2003), Shutter Island (2010), Let the Right One In (2008) and Big Fish (2003)

Are you really trying to say that none of these are worth watching?

In fact, the only merit to your argument is that all the films that scored higher than 8.8 were made before 1997:

The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Godfather (1972), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Pulp Fiction (1994), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), 12 Angry Men (1957) and Schindler's List (1993)

Out of interest, does anyone know how many of the original Psygnosis staff worked at Studio Liverpool till the end?

My gut feel is that all the people that really made it Psygnosis are probably long gone, which means the company (as we Amiga and Atari ST owners remember it) has actually been dead for a very long time.

We are trying to make absolutely clear we are not going to leave any space uncovered to Apple

Great Steve, how about getting your teams to do some actual innovation on Windows Media Center - before you lose that to Apple too?

(note: adding de-interlacing, a bunch of codecs and then shoving it in a pay-for additional pack for Windows 8 isn't innovation)

Of course he's going to say that, he's the CEO and he's expected to say that.

Coming out and saying "we're screwed" may be technically more accurate - but it'll only hasten the demise of the company even more. Who knows? Maybe BB10 is amazing - but if he says anything other than "we're doing just fine" then he's running the risk of his careless talk meaning that it'll never ever see the light of day.

I can't believe the submitter missed out the worse bit!

From the BBC News:

Suspected internet pirates will have 20 working days to appeal against allegations of copyright infringement and must pay £20 to do so, according to revised plans to enforce the UK's Digital Economy Act.

So now you're automatically assumed guilty .. and can only prove you're innocent after you've paid for the "privilege" to do so!

According to Nokia Siemens Networks, the average amount of smartphone data used per day is 15MB (about 450MB per month). If you're using ten times that amount on a grandfathered plan that costs you peanuts, it's hardly surprising that someone somewhere will run the numbers and work out that you are of no value to the company.

By all means shout "right, that's it! I'm off to Sprint!" but it'll be a hollow victory as Verizon will probably be more than happy to see the back of you.

Well, that article is mostly a "duh". Of course people come in wanting one of two things- #1 Android or #2 iPhone. It is going to take a LOT of work on Microsoft's part to try and get visibility now.

Nokia ditched perfectly good Linux based mobile OS's for their high-end phones and now they will have another uphill battle.

Given, as you rightly said, people come in wanting either Android or iPhone, Nokia would probably still have had the same problem even if their platform ran Linux - and the integration with Windows PC's may not have been as good,

Primarily it's format agnosticism and skin capabilities. 99% of my library is in MKV format, which WMC does not care for

Not quite. If you install Media Browser and the Shark007 codec pack then MKVs - as well as a number of other formats and containers - will play just fine in Windows 7 Media Center.

Both are free and Media Browser is released under the GPL.

You fund 1,000 projects, in the hope that 1 of them will return more then the other 999 consume. What Google is doing, is what most US companies are failing to do to get ahead of the rest of the world.

Whilst I agree with you, the problem that Google has is that some of their projects are so poorly defined and then poorly executed that it's patently obvious that they're going to be a disaster before they even launch.

Google TV is one example. A device with a remote control with that many buttons and a non-existent ecosystem of content is going to fail, however hard you try.

Nope, I have an ipad 2 and they're nonfunctional. I wish slashdot would change the interface to make them usable on touchscreens.

I wish Slashdot would change the interface to make it just plain useable.

Have you tried Avantslash?

There isn't a template specifically for the iPad 2 (make one!), but the desktop or classic templates should work just fine.

An interesting article originally posted by OKCupid (until they were bought and it was pulled down) explaining why you should never pay for online dating:

http://interestingreads.posterous.com/why-you-should-never-pay-for-online-dating-ok

Worth a read.

Marketing is far more than people sitting around designing posters or television adverts. Doesn't anyone here actually work with a Product Manager?

You know, those people that own the product, build the roadmaps, speak to clients and internal departments to get their requirements, prioritise those requirements and flesh them out into something a little more useful that can be fed into the technical teams for them to produce low level documentation (as well, as be used for feedback on edge cases and ambiguity).

Or do you think that the business requirements and direction for a product just get made up by someone in the technical team with no consideration to anyone or anything else?

So I read the description of the story and thought to myself "this makes no sense, if you posted photos as private or friends only, how on earth did Channel Seven get hold of them?"

So, shockingly, I read the story and it turns out the description is completely wrong. Here are the key parts (bold mine for emphasis):

Australia's communications regulator has ruled that television networks are not breaking the industry's code of practice when publishing photos lifted from a public Facebook profile.

[...]

"The ACMA found that due to the open nature of the tribute page, the absence of privacy settings and the non-sensitive nature of the photographs, Seven did not breach the privacy provisions of the code," the ACMA noted in a press statement.

In short, they lifted photos tagged as public on a public tribute page, littlekorea completely twisted the truth (by mixing up "public" and "private") when submitting the story and timothy didn't do any basic editing.

It'll be interesting to sit back with the popcorn and watch the comments from outraged slashdotters who didn't bother to read the story and the upvotes from those with moderator points who equally didn't bother to read the story ...