Samsung’s Patent Filing Patent infringes Apple’s Filing Patent Infringement Patent, claims Apple’s Patent Filing Infringement Patent Claims Director

The patent wars that erupted recently between Apple and, well, everybody else were notched up another gear today (that’s up into 6^th!) by the filing of a patent infringement filing infringement patent suit, filed by Apple against Samsung.

Apple spokesman-woman Merrill Bankbum, who was wearing a blue twin-set and pearls made the claim in court today, which was hotly rebuffed by Samsung spokesbot Rordi Somesang, who was wearing a patent suit.

Samsung’s Somesang help up Apple’s 1,834 page, 42,324 clause infringement claims and said that the Samsung board rejected 42,322 of the 42,324 clauses while asking for clarity on clause 73 and pointing out that printer ink had stopped half way through clause 32,356, just after the word ‘balls’.

The judge said the hearing would likely continue for another 3 months, but that 15 minutes into the first day and he was already confused.

Within hours, the judge was then literally slapped with a subpoena injunction mandate demand claiming trademark infringement by Confused.com.

An industry spokesperson (though we’re not sure what industry) said that the situation in electronics manufacture was now so grave that almost every device contained components that infringed someone else’s patent, and that almost everything we owned was now subject to an infringement claim by almost every other company seeking to defend their products to better serve their customers, who are also us.

He cited the case of his aunt who had laser eye treatment where the manufacturer of the equipment used had been challenged and lost an infringement claim, and whereupon his aunt subsequently had her eyeballs snatched out by a patent lawyer in Kensington High Street.

In another incident, bailifs acting on behalf of an unnamed medical equipment manufacturer, called Medifact Products ‘n’ Shit, physically removed pacemakers from three shoppers in Hull last week, in a move described as ‘heartless’ by onlookers.

‘It’s all going to the dogs’ replied a man from Barnsley, to an unasked question.

My Vow

I vow to do whatever it takes to get whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing done, to whatever level that thing needs to be done to, and by the time that thing needs to be done by, no matter what has to be done, and no matter the cost that this thing, whatever it is, costs.

I repeat this vow to myself every morning, before I check my TODO list, though to be fair, when you’re so focused on ‘doing everything it takes’, you don’t really need a TODO list, or any of those organizer things.

That’s because you live and breathe this thing. Or, more accurately, these things because when you’re so committed to ‘laying yourself on the line’ people start asking you to do more things because they know you’re the kind of guy who will do what it takes, regardless of the cost.

So when I’m asked if I can do something, I always say ‘yeah, I can do that’.

And when they say ‘don’t you need to go and reflect on what will be needed, and whether the objectives are achievable?’ I just reply with ‘hey, it’ll be done’

And when they add ‘..by the end of March?’ I just go ‘yeah, sure, whenever’

And when they ask ‘don’t you want to make a note of the deliverables and due date etc?’ I just say ‘no, I don’t sweat the small stuff’

At that point they know they’re in safe hands.

But that’s not to say everything always goes smoothly.

When you lay yourself on the line it’s not a bed of roses on the line that you’re laying on – it’s, like, a line thing, which is hard. Like a hard line.

So, yeah, projects screw up from time to time – I mean, who hasn’t lost all their data at one time or another, or had an entire website just disappear without trace?

But if you’re totally committed, and you feel that commitment in every fibre of the natural-fibre duvet that you’re using when you lay yourself on the line whatever the cost, then you can get those screw-ups down to below the 50% mark.

And that’s not a bad average, really. I mean this stuff’s difficult.

Goats Paved the Way for the Internet

I’ve been reading a book recently on Monetary Policy, not so much because it’s a subject I’m drawn to, but rather it was the first book that came to hand when there was talk of gardening and I’m now kind of stuck with it.

However, one of the fascinating things about the use of money is that many people don’t know its value. By ‘many people’, of course, I really mean my children, but it’s true of ancient civilisations too.

In early times, goats were used as a means of commercial transaction. This works well when the price of something is three goats, but in a recession, when the price drops to two goats seventy-five it becomes somewhat more problematic.

As a result, goats were replaced by coins, so now when something was priced at 2 coins seventy-five, the problem could be rectified by the simple expedient of a Black & Decker Workmate, a vice and a hacksaw. And by dumping the hot filings in the hand of the recipient, the phrase ‘keep the change’ was invented.

Introducing a monetary policy by way of coinage where none previously existed was, of course, very disruptive to the existing order, and those who couldn’t adapt quickly enough usually lose out.

For example, when coins replaced goats, there were those who continued to leave all their coins out in the fields overnight, hoping they would grow bigger and become more valuable, but in the end losing everything. Interestingly, this caused the invention of crime (enriching yourself at the cost of others) and banking (enriching yourself at the cost of others). Also financial services (enriching yourself at the cost of others) and insurance (enriching yourself at the cost of others).

However, while most coins were silver, putting two coppers in the field at the same time kept everything else safe (and if you paid off those two coppers to protect your interests at the expense of others then, hey presto, you have the birth of the modern police force).

The point I’m making here is about progress. If we were still using goats as a means of financial transactions then we wouldn’t have ATMs, or at least we wouldn’t have an ATM and a small grocers shop in the same place. And it wouldn’t be called an ATM but rather an AGM (Automated Goat Machine), and about as much use as the kind of AGM we have all come to know already.

And without the move from goats to modern finance, we wouldn’t have the Internet. Nowadays you often need a card-reader to ensure security for online banking – but a goat-reader? That would be on the verge of unworkable.

I’m reminded of the expression ‘if it looks like a goat, and talks like a goat, it IS a goat’. But whose goat? They never answer that one, and yet it would be crucial to goat-centred online banking as we know it.

Some say that without Tom Bernard-Lee there would be no Internet, others that it took electricity to make it happen, or that without mass consumer-induced lobotomisation there would be no Web 2.0, but I think we need to look further back.

Had goats not got out of the way, allowing us to finally leave the goat-standard behind and adopt a flexible monetary policy strategy, then we would have had no Internet.

It really was that close.

iPad Book Burning Launch Pulled in Favour of Powerpoint Presentation

Apple insiders are now reporting that the plans to launch the new iPad with a giant book-burning were pulled at the last minute in favour of a simpler Powerpoint presentation.

To make up for the fact that people would just look at the iPad as a giant iPhone, and that there's only so much excitement you can get from standing up on a stage and saying 'look, you can surf the Internet, and look at photos, and do mail and stuff...', Jobs was quoted as saying

“I want a giant book burning. Every freakin' book you can get hold of. Even that Brit guy, Shakespeare, and all that literature 'n shit. Now that would be a launch.”

“And I'll personally toss a couple of Kindles onto the pile for good measure.”

Close advisors are reported to have counselled Jobs to wait and see that the iPad actually worked first, before they started burning stuff, and anyway, they had this Powerpoint presentation all worked out already and, look, you could put the screens out onto the Internet in real time, whereas live video of books burning would take up too much bandwidth, and have to be broadcast later, when the whole idea might have turned to ashes by then, so like, don't overdo it.

Cabin Baggage - the Third Law

Imagine wearing pyjamas made from the business section of the Mail on Sunday, soaked in cold urine, while trying to sleep under a duvet made of quilted kippers. Or having your face pushed into mouldy porridge while a failed first-year arts student, drunk, tries to tattoo a Google map of Ballymena's historic quarter onto your left buttock. Or, worse, being forced at gunpoint to skip using the entrails of your recently slaughtered pet dog, while your assailant hums the entire Nolan Sisters back catalogue, before blasting your genitalia with both barrels of a sawn-off shotgun. An almost priceless Purdey shotgun that, ten minutes previously, was a family heirloom and its original length.

If you can hold those three images in your head simultaneously, then you have an approximation of how unpleasant flying has now become.

But I'm not here to whinge, dear reader.

I will let others complain about the fact that the cost of flying has been stable for some years now, so that the term 'low-cost' is now a marketing lie, or that a ticket advertised at £1 becomes £50 by the time you get to the end of the process, or that you can't sleep on a flight now because you are being 'marketed-to' for the entire duration, or that airline staff are getting thinner on the ground and hate you, that you have to pay the airport just to pick someone up in your car, that parking charges are extortionate, that airport concessions charge you double the normal rate ('as a concession') and the smile on the face of airport management is as sincere as a Bernie Madoff IOU.

I am simply here to state Mitchell's 3^rd Law of Cabin Baggage Size Restriction Recommendations (laws 1 and 2 being debunked in a peer-reviewed journal owing to statistical anomalies in my Hertz-Lugwiggenstein canonical redundancy regression algorithm).

And that law is, “Don't take anything on board the plane that you can't have shoved comfortably up your ass by a member of airline or airport staff”.

So the next time someone tells you the airline just 'lost their luggage', just nod and smile because you know, and they know you know, where it really went......

New Apple iTablet Pricing Shock

Insider information has revealed a pricing shock in store from O2 whenever the new Apple iTablet launches next year.

The new pricing structure is still being worked out, but it looks certain that O2 will force customers to sign up to a contract that requires them to take the iTablet three times a day, after meals.

With the initial selling price of the iTablet looking to be set at $936, this will work out at a cost of $2,808 per day, and eventually come to a total of $505,440 over an 18 month contract term, not including the additional cost of bundled minutes, texts and data.

An O2 spokesperson said that customers have already got used to paying double on contracts.

“We amortise the hardware cost of an iPhone across the contract term, so it's not unreasonable to charge customers for the balance on that if they upgrade to a new model. But we found they also seemed happy to pay double the profit margin, data and minutes during the overlap period as well. And they seem happy to pay extra for Internet tethering, which is a double hit for the same downloaded data. So our marketing department thought that charging them over and over and over again for the same hardware on a daily basis would work also.”

With Orange now entering the market, with their Haliborange iTablet, keen competition is likely to drive the costs to exactly where they were. And Tesco looked at the margin, added on some more and said "Every Little Helps!"

IT consultants have warned, however, that customers should take no more than 8 iTablets in any 24 hour period.

Apple iPhone Explodes in Customer's Face

I've been sitting on the fence for a while now regarding the iPhone. Will I get one, will I not?

On the one hand, there is the expense, and the fact that everyone now has one.

On the other hand, there is the expense, and the fact that everyone now has one.

So I wasn't sure.

Then I heard on the radio that an iPhone had exploded in the face of a user, showering him with brittle shards of glass, and I'm afraid that has finally made my mind up.

I must have one.

I've found mobile phones a little bland to date. They've never really done anything for me. Sure, texting was a novelty for a while, but after you've done all the 'just thinking about you naked' and then 'sorry, mum, meant for someone else' kind of stuff, that starts to pale also.

But a device that explodes randomly in your face, or better still in your ear when you're talking to someone important. Now that's something worth having.

Who's heart rate wouldn't increase when the phone rang? Who wouldn't live life to the full every day, as the personal development coaches would have us do, knowing they had a few texts to send later on that afternoon?

When a parting friend says 'I'll ring you later', your first instinct would surely be to grab them in a Casablanca-style embrace, lest that call be your last.

Yes, finally a device to die for. The REAL killer app. The ultimate pinnacle of blind consumerism.

I'm on my way!