If you read her policy speech, her focus is on the need to rein in "Patent Assertion Entities" ("PAE"), defined as "a firm with a business model focused primarily on purchasing and asserting patents". And she talks about solutions such as making it easier/cheaper to defend against frivolous lawsuits etc.

She does not appear to address, or even acknowledge the key underlying problem with the patent system, namely that right now it is too easy to file for and obtain frivolous, undeserving, non-novel or obvious patents. All the powers the patent trolls have stem from the patents they are granted. Cut down on the number of patents issued and you cut down on the abuse that follows.

This will not only cut out the PAEs, but also lessen the ability of legitimate companies to kill off their competition by abusing their patents, such as when Samsung/Apple/HTC/Huawei/Motorola try to block the importation/sale of each other's products on the basis of patents.

No, parent post has a point.

Let me illustrate this with actual examples where patent trolls sued small businesses for using a modern office scanner to scan documents to e-mail.

The Project Paperless via AdzPro letter-writing campaign is a kind of lowest-common-denominator patent demand. Patent-licensing companies are going after the users of everyday technology rather than their traditional targets, the tech companies that actually make technology. Smaller and smaller companies are being targeted. ...Project Paperless and its progeny don’t have any interest in going after the Canons and the Xeroxes of the world. After all, they have patent lawyers on payroll already and are in a far better position to push back. Project Paperless' spawn—AdzPro, AllLed, GosNel, and the others listed above—exemplify the new strategy. They send out vast quantities of letters, mainly to businesses that never could have imagined they’d be involved in any kind of patent dispute. They send them from anonymous and ever-changing shell companies. And at the end of the day, they either file only a few lawsuits—as Project Paperless did—or none at all, which has been the AdzPro strategy thus far.

“Going after the end users may ultimately be more lucrative for them,” said one patent litigator at a technology company that's closely monitoring the AdzPro situation. “If they extract a small amount from each possible end user, the total amount might well end up being a much larger sum than they could ever get from the manufacturers. The ultimate pot of gold could end up being much bigger."

Or other cases where frivolous suits were filed against small businesses for the use of technologies like WIFI .

In typical patent troll style, these shell companies (with names like AdzPro, FanPar, and HunLos) are asking businesses and users for a few thousand dollars—far less than what litigation would cost—as a licensing fee for using this basic technology. Unwilling or unable to lawyer up, most choose the more convenient route of settling ...
Over the past few years, we saw Lodsys threaten and sue a number of app developers for using technologies provided that companies like Apple and Google require their app developers to use. More recently, a patent troll called Innovatio has been suing restaurants, hotels, and companies for using WiFi. Yes, that’s right. WiFi.

My point is twofold: 1) Patents are being abused by patent trolls, who do not create, nor provide any incentive to creators and 2) Patent abuse is spreading to cause great distress to the general public. I'm sure that some of these businesses, when threatened, would opt to forgo the use of technologies such as scanners, WIFI etc. Scaring people off with frivolous lawsuits from using technology that could improve their performance, efficiency, efficacy or make their lives better is blocking progress.

If you watch the video, there's clearly someone pointing a video cam at the Google employee with the backpack as he walks around.

So a party of at least 2? Barring supernatural options, of course.

On a side note, Gunkanjima is seriously creepy/cool. Good job Google!

Here is the problem with your assumption. You assume that with an absence of or reduction in piracy rates, the content owners will be compelled to reduce the price of their content. Why would they do that?

In terms of competition, the content owners are already competing among themselves today. This has not resulted in any visible reduction in prices. Even assuming piracy is entirely wiped out, it will have no net effect on the degree of competition the contents owners face. The same rivals they face today will still be there tomorrow.

You should also know that movie ticket prices have never been reduced since 1948. This also holds true even for the period before the internet was born or piracy became widespread.

It appears that others in the W3C mailing lists have in fact objected to the implementation of DRM in HTML5.

They were instead shunted off to 'more appropriate forums' to discuss their objections.

There are literally hundreds of emails there to plow through. Although there are many strong objections raised by different parties, the one who really seems to be pushing DRM is Netflix.

Even the EFF have formally objected to the DRM scheme.

It also appears that the CEO of W3C is the one who made the decision.

Are concerns taken seriously on the other mailing list, or is it a spot
to send people to voice their concerns with other likeminded people?

This discussion has gone all the way up to the CEO of the W3C, and
that's where he has requested that the discussion take place. Given
that this is ultimately a CEO decision, if you want to effect a change,
following his advice makes the most sense.

The current W3C CEO is Dr. Jeffrey Jaffe.

So in a nutshell, if you're wondering who to blame for EME in HTML5, thats the story.

Which would be good, except that they have no idea what people will pay to watch.

So being mindful of the bottom line, they chose to keep pumping out movies they perceive as carrying lesser risk of failure, i.e. remakesof old previously successful movies (eg Planet of the Apes, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), sequel after sequel of tired franchises (Scary Movie 2 anyone?), and any movie with excessive violence, explosions, gore, profanity or sex, preferably all of the above.

Which is not to say such movies cannot be fun, mindless entertainment on occasion but watching this steady unending stream of clone movies is the equivalent of living on a diet of popcorn and soda exclusively.

And nothing of value was lost. I doubt I will weep if Batman 23 or Fast and Furious -Grandaddy's Race is cancelled. It might actually be a good thing if the big conglomerates step out of the movie making business so that real filmmakers who have a passion for the craft have a chance to screen their movies at theatres instead of the Hollywood drivel currently crowding them out.

Interestingly, the hiragana letters for the word "kibo" on their website means hope/aspiration.

I do wonder what's the purpose of the trip though, since the robots can jolly well try to communicate with another human on Earth. Its not to test the effects of weighlessness since their video shows that they already tested for zero-G.

Promotional event, maybe?

Its pretty much a known fact that MS employs shills to hawk their products online. Only, they don't call it shilling, they call it Technology Evangelism.

Fascinating read.