Oliver Wendell Jones 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Mobile Music To Come With Copy Protection Attached

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 03 Nov, 2004 @ 09:23am

    Re: You are forgetting about one thing...

    Phone boy, that's why you pay the $4 a month for insurance on your phone...

  • On the post: Doubleclick Puts Itself Up For Sale

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2004 @ 09:30am

    I'm in...

    If anyone wants to create a geek-fund to buy up the company and burn it to the ground, count me in for $10....

  • On the post: c: Microsoft> patent idea=commandline

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2004 @ 08:13am

    New Patent Bounty Idea

    Of course this will never work, but...

    For every non-sensical patent submitted (as determined by the reviewing body) you have to give up one valid patent chosen randomly *and* you lose the right to submit any additional patents for a period of six months.

  • On the post: Canadians Fight Back Against Mobile Phone Fees

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2004 @ 11:26am

    A good example is gasoline

    A lot of the gas stations in the area where I live have stickers on the pump that show how much money goes toward taxes for every gallon of gas - the tax is already figured into the cost of the gas.

    Maybe they should learn a lesson from the cell companies and start advertising gas at $1.01 per gallon (+ tax and fees).

    Can you just imagine the consumer reaction?

  • On the post: Proactively Stopping WiFi In The Office

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2004 @ 02:09pm

    I've seen worse...

    The building I work in and all the other buildings belonging to my employing company have been wired up for WiFi - we have access point every so many yards, etc., but they haven't turned them on yet nor distributed the WiFi cards to go with them yet.

    This in itself wouldn't be all too surprising if this was a recent development, but the equipment has been in place for over three years now (and already been upgraded once!) but still has yet to be used because they can't decide if it's actually secure enough or not...

  • On the post: Sell A Box Of Crap To Companies For Lots Of Money

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2004 @ 12:37pm

    So whatcha get?

    So what did you get in your 'bag o' crap'?

  • On the post: Rolex Confused About How Spam Works

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2004 @ 11:15am

    Re: $1,000,000 ?

    sure, but only one of the cheap, Plebian-grade watches...

  • On the post: Upside Down Fax Costs 100 Million Euros

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2004 @ 10:19am

    Let he who is without sin...

    I'd call the person in question a moronic idiot if I hadn't made the same mistake myself... of course mine wasn't a 100 page legal brief nor was it worth 100 million euros...

  • On the post: Is Mobile Bullying Worse?

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 18 Oct, 2004 @ 08:49am

    Paper trail

    But if you're being cyber-bullied, isn't there a digital "paper trail" that leads back to the bully? Shouldn't the victim be able to simply show their phone to parents, the police, school officials, etc. and have the bully tracked down and punished?

  • On the post: Baby's First Not Really TiVo

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2004 @ 08:07am

    Sequel?

    Unless I'm mistaken, this is a sequel to a product that flopped the first time.

    It was almost exactly the same thing, except it was black & white instead of color. No, really... seriously.

    It came out last year and every review of it said "Seriously? Black and White? In the 21st century?".

    This is basically the same gadget, just now with a color screen.

    The $9 per 25 minutes is exorbitant - if you're an adult. Children have no problem watching the same movie or TV show over and over and over again, so you could get away with buying 2 or 3 discs and being set.

    The choice of going with a proprietary video/disc format was made to make sure that only they could provide content and thus keep as much of the profits to themselves as possible. I would also be willing to bet the video format is such that it requires a minimal amount of CPU power to process to increase battey life, similar to Sony's Net Walkman.

  • On the post: From Spyware To Licking Toads

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2004 @ 08:16am

    It's an old rule of thumb...

    Noone gets re-elected for the laws they enforced, they get re-elected for the new laws they create and pass.

  • On the post: Gartner: Printer Ink Costs More Than Perfume

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 12 Oct, 2004 @ 01:53pm

    Re: Yeah, but...

    well, that's a good plan, but most new printers come with "demonstration" cartridges that are less than half full... but you're right, last time I checked it was $10 more to buy a brand new Lexmark printer with ink cartridges than it was to buy just the ink cartridges...

  • On the post: Can't Name Your Kid @ In China

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 12 Oct, 2004 @ 12:16pm

    I'm sure Dorpus will know

    Since (s)he seems to know everything related to Asia, but maybe the translation is "Shift+2"?

  • On the post: Gartner: Printer Ink Costs More Than Perfume

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 12 Oct, 2004 @ 12:14pm

    Yeah, but...

    I work in a similar industry, we spend millions of dollars to develop a product that is *very cheap* to manufacture, yet we sell it at a premium price.

    We also produce hardware that uses our cheap disposable product and give this away for far less than they cost to manufacture. Why? To entice people to use our premium priced product.

    The reason is that everyone else in this field uses the same business model. Everyone would love to not give away the hardware, but like with HP, Lexmark, etc., noone wants to be the first to try and sell a $500 entry-level inkjet printer with $5 ink cartridges.

    I'd venture to say that more than 95% of consumers do not consider the total cost of ownership when they purchase most products, they look at the features and the base cost and never once go to look at the cost of the expendable/disposable parts. Those 95% sure bitch when they run out of ink the first time, though...

  • On the post: Microsoft Using Eolas Patent They're Fighting In Their Own New Patent

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2004 @ 12:45pm

    Ok, enough's enough

    Does anyone at the USPTO really even try to review a patent or do they just rubberstamp everything with a check attached?

    I'm not trying to be a smart-ass, but shouldn't someone have said "hey, this Microsoft patent sounds vaguely familiar... and haven't I seen this prior art previously?"

    I still think they need to publicly post all patent applications for public review for at least 60-90 days before finalizing them. Give the public a chance to submit existing prior art since the patent office people obviously don't have time to look it up themselves.

    Maybe they could turn half the patent fees submitted over to the person(s) who first submit the prior art to overturn the posted patents.

  • On the post: VoIP Guys Missing The Point

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2004 @ 07:16am

    I beg to differ

    You said " There's no difference in doing video calling over a phone line or over VoIP, so why should it catch on now?"

    The *huge* difference is that every time they tried to do video calling in the past, there was no broadband involved. They tried to send voice and video over a dial up connection.

    I doubt anyone is using a pay-service VOIP provider over a dial-up connection, that would be silly. It's relatively safe to assume that greater than 99% of your paying VOIP customers have a broadband connection - a connection that can handle real time video calls.

    Now, as to whether or not you can actually make any money off of it, I guess we'll have to wait and see what the porn industry does with it - they are the world leaders in technology innovation, after all...

  • On the post: Copy Protection Goes On The Offensive

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2004 @ 02:35pm

    I can understand...

    I can understand why a company doesn't want their software running on a PC that contains software that *might* be used to pirate their precious program, but...

    I do not agree that they have the right to insist that the software be removed or, worse yet, damage the software in some way. That's not just wrong, that's criminal.

  • On the post: Microsoft Patents Matching Wits With Triumph The Insult Comic Dog

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2004 @ 09:01am

    Prior Art

    Win Ben Stein's Money?

    Wasn't that the whole point of the game - be picked as the smartest of 3 contestants and then go head-to-head against Ben Stein on trivia questions?

    Someone needs to open a 6-pack of whoopass on the people at the USPTO...

  • On the post: Computer Security: It's Not Just For Computers Any More

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2004 @ 01:47pm

    Who's going to eat the cost?

    The only way people are going to get their computer security handed to them on a silver platter is if they pay for it.

    In the current market environment, many companies are walking that very thin line between charging just barely enough to show a profit and charging too much and losing customers to a cheaper competitor.

    About the only way someone is going to be able to offer computer security is as an optional support package with an ongoing monthly or annual subscription fee.

    There are a lot of us who are technical enough to figure out our own security solutions and would resent a $10/month surcharge on our ISP bill to cover security services.

    Maybe that's the next big marketspace for unemployed IT people to jump on - door-to-door computer security consultants!

  • On the post: Music Label Promoting A Lack Of Copy Protection

    Oliver Wendell Jones ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2004 @ 12:44pm

    How would you do it?

    If you're a record company who has started putting copy protection on some audio CDs, and you get a lot of flack and see that your customers really don't want that, so you change your mind and stop selling protected CDs...

    How do you let the public know which CDs are "safe" for them to buy?

    What would you do to let the public know?

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