The trademark is valid until May 29, 2019. It covers various trade classes including Nice 41m which incorporates Betrieb von Online-Spiele, Foren-Rollenspiele (operation of online games and "play by post/email" games). So the complainant has a valid EU trademark that covers roll playing games. That said, it appears that the company registration has expired, which puts the ownership of the trademark into question. As far as the US site's position goes, the complainant would have to demonstrate that the American site is using the trademarked name for commerce within the EU. That would be hard to prove, especially since the product in question is a computer game owned and operated by Sony; the defendant is merely operating an online catalog of Sony's game characters. This case would therefore be akin to Disney seeking redress from a website that lists cartoon characters including trademarked properties such as Mickey Mouse, in a jurisdiction where Mickey Mouse is not a registered trademark of the Walt Disney Co.

But short-range peer-to-peer radio between two devices would be at least as secure as an audio squawk between those same two units - either technique can be bugged or spooked.

So instead of initiating a digital handshake between two devices, I encode the digital handshake information onto an audio carrier, play it through a speaker, capture it with a microphone, and finally re-encode it back into its original form. Why on earth would I opt for this bizarre technology instead of WiFi, Bluetooth or other low power NFC techniques?

We have precious few, actually. Especially ones that are georeferenced to a specific coordinate. Shortcuts like Trafalgar, Eiffel, Empire, Chrysler would be useful but aren't unique in common language (Empire Theater? Empire State Building?). Hell, add a couple of numbers behind them as an offset in meters - Eiffel (23,15). It just seems that there's a much smarter way to use meaningful abbreviations than fishmonger.cephalopoda.drain.

While every square on the grid can be identified by three words, wouldn't it make sense to use a single word to describe coordinates of a few thousand key high traffic locations? After all, being able to geolocate to part of a field in Wyoming has considerably less value than a identifying the entrance of an art gallery, restaurant or popular landmark in a major city. Heck, make them meaningful, too. "Trafalgar" could geolocate the centre of the fountain in Trafalgar square (an admittedly stupid place) while "Trafalgar.north" could place you X meters north of the coordinates.

I agree that Netflix should make the CC setting global. That said, I strongly disagree with your ageist assertion that "no senior citizen could cope." I loaned our Apple TV 2 to a retired neighbor for a week recently, just so he could put Netflix through its paces. He liked it so much that he went out and bought his own. He's not terribly computer savvy, so the most challenging aspect of the process was configuring the WiFi, iTunes and Netflix logins. He called me and left a message asking for help, but figured it out before I got home that day. As far as enabling closed captioning goes, he was delighted to discover how simple it was to activate.

The Apple TV 2 supports closed captioning in Netflix. Simply hold down the select button on the remote for several seconds and a captioning menu pops up. I second Apple TV. I introduced it to a retired neighbor who was growing increasingly irate at the endless bombardment of repeating commercials on cable. They absolutely love it.

Grimes' friend isn't tasked to protect anything. He is a civilian defence contractor whose job is to exploit flaws in software for the benefit of his employer's client.

Teaching mouth breathers to program cnc machines and robots is about about as useful as placing a typical geek in mandatory ballet lessons.

The guy was flaming, claiming that the act of climbing the mountain was a joke. It's not. It's damn hard and extremely dangerous.

54 fatalities since 2000, around 2%. A 1 in 50 chance is still extreme.

Just checked the 6 hr forecast for SFO, and it's reporting -58 degrees F at 39,000 ft. The aircraft had been at altitude for 10 hours, so you can't automatically rule out a temperature-related anomaly simply because it's a nice day on the ground.

Another 777 landed short of the runway at Heathrow in 2008 after losing engine power because of ice in the fuel lines. I wonder if something similar happened here? The preliminary report that the aircraft "seemed unstable" could have been because the pilot was flying just above stall speed in a desperate attempt to maintain altitude in a power loss situation. That could also explain the tail damage; the aircraft would have been in an extremely nose-high attitude as the pilot attempted to maximize lift to avoid hitting the water.

3,142 people have summited Everest a total of 5,104 times. Two hundred and nineteen people have lost their lives, with a quarter dying after reaching the summit. That's a 6.97% fatality rate. It's hardly something to joke about.

Adecco registered the phrase "Around the world in 80 jobs" with the uspto, and a trademark was granted on April 13th. It will be expensive and time consuming for Barr to fight them -- if he ends up tens or hundreds of thousands in debt, he loses. That said, this story is in the process of going viral, and it will make Adecco look like thieving toads. That still won't help Turner much.