Tag Archive for 'Google'

Googlephone G1 — the God Phone.

Published on 31 October 2008 in Geek, Uncategorized and toys. 9 Comments Tags: , , , .

Geeklawyer got himself a HTC G1 from T-Mobile yesterday. google phone g1 Now, as Geeklawyer has said many times before, he’s something of an Apple fanboy and the question is, therefore, what is wrong with the Apple 3G iPhone? Why the disloyalty? After all Geeklawyer has the latest iPod Touch which is a pretty spiffy sort of device. Why not drink the second bottle of Apple Kool-aid? Because Apple is degenerating into the maniacal monopolist that Microsoft was, before it became all flabby middle aged and got itself nailed for being technologically incompetent. That’s why. Apple could have made a shit hot iPhone and Touch. Instead Steve Jobs decided to suck phone-carrier cock. AT&T to be exact, though like a whore anyone’s money was good enough; it was just he asked too much and gave too little to get inside Verizon’s boxers. So not only did Steve suck, he swallowed in a manner that would have made Monika ‘blue dress’ Lewinsky ashamed of herself. He decided that by locking down the phone he could tie his buyers to a shit phone company, prevent them exercising choice and make himself big bucks. So, if you buy an Apple phone/Touch you get a heavily encrypted device you can’t hack. You want a feature? Ask Apple. You want an application? Go to the iTunes store. Got a great idea for a red-hot innovative application? Great. Spend an eternity developing it and hope Steve is in a good mood that day and decides to let you deliver it via iTunes. Just pray it doesn’t compete with anything Apple does ‘cos you’ll have wasted all that time and effort. You want to take a crap? Sign the Apple Toilet-Paper license first, pay, then stand in a long line to shit in an approved Apple Partner iToilet. japanese toilet OK, the iPhone interface is very slick indeed. The hardware design is elegant. But take off the Oakley shades and you’ll see that the hardware is limited, the add-ons expensive the options limited. No removable media or battery, no FM radio, crap camera, no turn by turn navigation, bad bluetooth, ho-hum battery life. But above all what grates is the “Smile biatch, I’m about to do you in the ass :) ” attitude of Steve Jobs. So. The options? Geeklawyer has an N95 and it is a good phone. The GPS is sucky and so is the battery life. And Symbian S60 is a mid 90’s operating system which has a team of paramedics following it around it looks so ill. Geeklawyer had it for 18 happy months but he is not, barring disasters, looking at the N96. Which leaves Google’s answer to the Jesus phone: the God Phone. Well OK that’s not entirely justified but it is potentially far more important than the iPhone.The iPhone is that pretty little lingerie model you picked up last night who’s conversation is: “erm, you know I just want to see, like, World peace because we all just have to get along, right?”. So you videoed yourself fucking her in the arse, then posted it on YouPorn.com and then couldn’t get her out of your apartment fast enough. The Googlephone by contrast is a coked up PhD student who is looking to ball you till your cock drops off, tell you how crap you are in bed, and then rip the intellectual heart out of your life’s ouvre; just as it was about to be published. A sort of subdued Ruthie in other words. And yes Google has far more potential to be a monopolist than Apple. The G1 is not perfect it is true. Apple fanboys, the other Apple fanboys that is, will witter on about how you need to to tap the screen to get a zoom button rather than the pinch feature of the iPhone. Yea pinching is nice. And I’d like it on the GodPhone, patents permitting, but frankly having used both it’s no deal breaker. the G1 screen is nice and the interface every bit as intuitive and slick as the iPhone, arguably more intuitive. The G’s hardware is slightly poorer in some respects: the battery life is marginally poorer on standby: Really though like most smartphones the battery life sucks and in this is fares no worse than the iPhone or the N95. I have yet to have the G1 out of chambers for any length of time so I can’t compare it in practise to the iPhone or N95 but I’d doubt it was much different. The GPS on the G1 is great. On the N95 one can get an accurate longtitude and latitude by pacing from the Royal Greenwich Observatory to one’s current position, in say Antartica, before the fucking N95 GPS gets a lock on a passing satellite. The G1 GPS locks on fast and it seems accurate. The G1 has a retarded headphone system: one needs a USB dongle to attach a headphone. who the fuck thought that was a good idea? A win for the iPhone. But a pretty small one. The N95 allowed it to be used as a tethered modem. One could tow around a laptop and use N95 to get net access. Very spiffy. By contrast the Apple OSx doesn’t even recognise the Googlephone as a phone. FAIL. Mind you, you can’t use the iPhone as a tethered modem either, since Apple won’t allow it’s partners to be robbed of a revenue stream: so it yanks such apps from the iTunes store (Not sure if this remains true as of time of writing — possible with jailbreaks & hacks? — blerch). Geeklawyer calls that a draw. So in many respects the iPhone and the Googlephone are evenly matched it would seem. At least it might seem that way if you didn’t understand that Google was playing rope-a-dope with Apple. Apple thinks it is clever. Justifiably so: because it is. But Google is way slicker. It is as evil as Apple, but it does it better and more subtly. Props Sergey, props. And here is the game changer: here is where Google has blind-sided dopey Apple:

  1. The Googlephone is open source. The core is Linux, open source. Google can’t be evil even if wants to (And in truth it probably does).
  2. The Android underpinnings of the Googlephone are open source and licensed to anyone and everyone. Only Apple makes the iPhone. So Nokia, Motorola HTC and my Uncle Bert can make an Android phone but only someone taking up the arse can build Steve’s phone.

The Android Market Place is open. Google doesn’t say “hey!! That’s a search engine application. Screw you, it might divert people from Google. App denied”. No. If Yahoo! or Microsoft want to built a search engine they can. The Android Market place is much more limited than iTunes,for now. Geeklawyer predicts it will pick up vibrabcy as people get to grips with coding for Android. Geeklawyer LOVES the apps on Android so far, and more is to come. Who wins now? Apple, just. But in 18 months/2 years Apple will be on the backfoot. Googlephone is the ultimate winner for sure. Even if you bitch about the HTC G1 the point is this: other phones from this and/or other manufacturers will come along. Some will have the iPhone features you like, others will have better. Further, once the Android software picks up, the Googlephone’s maturity  will equal that of the iPhone.

Android GooglePhone/T-Mobile G1 — *shock* Google looking to make a profit?!

Published on 16 October 2008 in Geek. 2 Comments Tags: , .

A cynic sent Geeklawyer an article saying that Google may hope to up-sell it’s service using the G1 GooglePhone platform.

Geeklawyer was, of course, surprised shocked and horrified. “What is the World coming to when previously benign and generous companies seek to make a profit?”, he said down the pub, weeping into his beer.

The warrantless accusation is that Google would tie in its own information services, such as search email or mapping, to give it a head start over the competitors when procuring advertising and other services. Geeklawyer is truly outraged at this naked commercialism.

He discounts entirely the idea that other competitors can provide their own services on this open platform so as to compete on an equal footing. Apple by contrast, with it’s admittedly sexier iPhone, insists on not tying phone users into it’s own iTunes store or certified pre-apprved non-competing applications. The truth is that we all understand this to be phoney openness on their part. Mercifully, third parties will assist in locking-down your iPhone to Apple products only — to avoid confusion caused by unwelcome choice.

Google browser

Published on 2 September 2008 in Geek. 18 Comments Tags: , .

Geeklawyer read the news (alerted by @iOverlord on Twitter) of the impending Google Chrome web-browser to be released for Windows tomorrow. The premise is exciting and promises a more reliable safer and quicker browser than Irefox or Internet Exploder. Each tab will be, in effect (Geeklawyer waves hands magically over geeky talk about separate threads & processes ‘n’ shit), a separate browser.

Available from tomorrow only for Windows Geeklawyer may fire up a warez copy of Windows XP just to give it a run, but he hopes to cop a good dirty feel-up of Chrome when it eventually comes for Mac OSX.

Google even explain it via a cartoon: an odd lengthy way of explaining things but actually fun and ideal for the 5 second attention span of the Internet kids of today. When we had the Internet back in the 20’s William S. Boroughs could have written an 800 page novel to explain it & everyone would have read it, but not now. Tsssh, Kids.

Thanks to the commenter below for the Google video link explaining it:

Gikii conference — Society for Computers & Law

Published on 12 September 2007 in blawg conference. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Since he is participating in a round table panel Geeklawyer feels that he should punt the Society for Computers and Law’s conference. Billed as a “conference without the boring bit” the programme and the speakers & topics look very very interesting indeed. It’s geared towards looking at the issues of law facing the newest web technologies;

  • New forms of property in data eg virtual “property”, reputations, and “mash ups”
  • New forms of identity eg identities in social networking worlds such as Facebook
  • New forms of speech eg collective content produced by wiki; user-generated content such as blogs; “open content”

We will look at issues like

  • How do web 2.0, the “Semantic Web” and distributed computing interact?
  • What are the commercial and business model implications of web 2.0?
  • What are the social implications of social networking software and the “open access” paradigm?
  • What are the intellectual property and data protection laws impacting on these technologies and their exploitation?
  • Should public sector geospatial data be bought, sold, and “mashed up”, and if so, on what conditions?
  • How can identity and reputation be managed on the new Web?
  • Does Europe need to rewrite the laws of privacy and data protection in a web 2.0 world?
  • What dangers are we exposing children and the unwary to in a world of ubiquitous disclosure?
  • What laws govern virtual worlds? How do we do business there?
  • How do control mobile and distributed data in a connected world?
  • Should platforms like Facebook and You Tube be legally liable for user generated content?
  • Is Google legal?
  • What next in the music download wars in a web 2.0 world?

Geeklawyer will be participating in the roundtable debate about the disruptiveness or otherwise of blogs and Wikis.

date: 17th 18th September 2007

time: Monday: 9.30 am — 5.30 pm Tuesday: 9.30 am — 4.30 pm

members: £352.5
non-members: £470

venue: Herbert Smith, Exchange House, Primrose Street, London, EC2A 2HS.

Thanks to Alex at Impact for pointing out that Gikii is a separate conference organised by the university of Edinburgh and happening the day after. Doh, if I was any stupider I’d have to become a solicitor-advocate :P .

If you are at the Lamb pub in Lambs Conduit Street on Monday evening you can buy him a beer. Or several, ideally. Don’t sit next to him at the Herbert Smith dinner the following night though, he has very poor table manners and is prone to get excited in polite company.

Lawblog 2007 report

Published on 19 May 2007 in blawg conference. 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Geeklawyer was a little apprehensive about the UK and Europe’s first legal bloggers conference. Would it be well attended? would it get support? would people find the content to be useful and would the social networking work?

Yes.

Caveats exist on the delight both Geeklawyer and Ruthie felt about the results: it was a little small, though this was down to the still small size of the legal blogging community, something that will change in future years; and several desirable bloggers failed to show up; trying to co-ordinate the diaries of more than two lawyers is usually a nightmare so the fact that we managed it for thirty is an achievement in itself, but inevitably some academics such as Martin fell victim to exam marking, pupilblogger & Liadnan fell prey to clerks and Corporate Blawg collapsed under the weight of numerous client files suddenly being heaped unannounced on his head.

Nonetheless, these were merely small clouds on an otherwise sunny and clear blue sky. Several members of both the general and trade press were present so we hope that the evangelical component of the conference will achieve its goal of greater awareness and uptake of lawyer blogging in the UK.

Several speaker commented on the mixed objectives of bloggers. CharonQC spoke of the egotists ranters anarchists serious commenters and marketing departments; and the horrors inflicted by errors such as the infamous Watson Farley Williams debacle; and he provided a taxonomy of blogging.

Geeklawyer spoke of the four main dangers of blogging for lawyers: professional misconduct, the Google eternal memory problem, malicious commenters and lack of blog upkeep. He also discussed the acquisition and control of co-bloggers.

Justin Patten led what ended up as quite interesting question and answer session on such things as the goals and objectives of blogging as well as the risks.

Ruthie talked about her life as a blogging sidekick. Inevitably much of this was biased propaganda presenting her twisted agenda and deluded grievances; no-one, it seemed to the more balanced Geeklawyer, was fooled for a moment.

Ruthie caused a significant amount of disappointment by not turning up in her famous pink leather motorcycle jacket citing its weight and the heat. A rather glorious Chinese smoking jacket, while in other circumstances sensational, failed to be an adequate substitute for the leching lawyers present. She presented her plan for a Ruthie calendar for next year and merchandise like t-shirts mugs and leatherware. Lacking any concept of discussion she disclosed some gossip about Geeklawyer’s initial inability to manage her effectively as a blogger (guilty). She said that while she was not anonymous she didn’t exploit the blog as a marketing opportunity and eschewed providing free legal advice. She also commented on the disappointing inevitability of sexual discussion in a post making it massively and enduringly popular.

Perhaps the surprising hits of the conference were Headshift Consultancy and Professor Jeremy Phillips of IPKat. Of all the conference attendees Geeklawyer was most nervous of Headshift because of their content. They emailed him when they heard of the conference and Geeklawyer thought they were doing something that sounded interesting. The trouble is that being a bit of a geek Geeklawyer has a distorted value and interest system and perhaps, just perhaps, this geeky stuff attracts him in a way it may not or should not do for anyone sensible: like lawyers. Headshift discussed the use of social networking to provide resources within large firms and organisations using easy existing software Wikis social bookmarking tagging and blogs. They described how quickly built projects costing next to nothing radically changed knowledge sharing and workflows in several prominent law firms, outperforming vastly more expensive software that took ages to develop. Geeklawyer knew all the technology well but hadn’t considered its use in this way. He found it to be a revolutionary idea and it genuinely has made him look at whether he can adopt this on a lesser scale for his own needs. To his astonishment several other lawyers said to him afterwards, unbidden, how interesting this talk was and what revolutionary ideas it revealed.

Professor Jeremy Phillips was the other great surprise: Geeklawyer had of course read his blog on innumerable occasions and took it as the product of a heavyweight and austere intellectual. In reality Jeremy was funny friendly and polite. He told the rather impressive story of the creation and growth of IPKat, and he was a highly engaging speaker.

Geeklawyer has attempted to persuade IPKat to cast him its unwanted news tips.

There should be MP3’s of the conference at some point: but the audio quality of Geeklawyer’s recordings is a bit poor: it sounds like the sermon on the mount recorded from half a mile away, against the wind and with a huge discontented audience.

Update:
Eeek!

To infinity and beyond

Published on 14 May 2007 in this site. 7 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Whilst Ruthie thinks she ought to be remembered for her stunning advocacy, profound legal insight and intellectual prowess, she can’t help having a sinking feeling that she will be remembered in a hundred years time primarily for the wearing of pink leathers, and possibly writing a few humorous quips on this blog.

Mindful that this blog..a la Tony Blair…is her legacy Ruthie discussed with Geeklawyer ways to preserve the blog for evermore. Geeklawyer cheerfully assured her that the blog would last as long as Google, which is about until a week next Thursday if the monopolies and mergers commission have any input.

We therefore discussed scribing the blog onto stone tablets and burying them in a hot dry environment. However in a thousand years mankind is likely to have regressed to the caves following global environmental catastrophe, and our words of wisdom will be wasted on some webfooted ape creature. Instead, far better to blast a copy of the blog to the stars, where we can present our vision of humanity to other intelligent life forms.

Therefore, if you are from NASA and reading this, we would be grateful if you would get in touch. We also quite fancy some space tourism, if there are any tickets going. We can’t pay, but will give you some free publicity on the blog.

Oh, and we do hope to boldly go where no-one has gone before, rather than fall back to earth and get lost..

the Internet and paralegality

Published on 15 November 2006 in Intellectual Property, contracts, licenses and litigation. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Geeklawyer stumbled across a rather dull story about eBay and its rules of conduct in relation to merchants. In summary if you do business on eBay you agree to lots of stuff. The stuff includes VeRO which is designed to assert the rights of an intellectual property owner against intruders. Thus if someone on eBay decides to punt stuff over which you have copyright trademark patent design rights, yada yada, you can shut them down at very short notice on little more than an email to eBay.
Continue reading ‘the Internet and paralegality’

Ruthie

Published on 21 October 2006 in geeklawyer. 2 Comments Tags: , .

Geeklawyer, having scratched Ruthie’s car, feels obliged to provide an ego recompense. Apparently she is the top result for the Google query ‘Ruthie Lawyer’. Damn. Geeklawyer, in his non Geeklawyer anonymous guise, is absolutely nowhere. Bollocks.

Private: It’s puerile Friday again

Published on 13 October 2006 in humour. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , .

From the Register: Google has a useful (for Geeks that is) search tool for source code. This isn’t new since Koders has been doing the same thing for some time and is very useful.

What’s less useful but more fun is looking for rude words in the source code:

/* The user is a wanker */

if G_UNLIKELY (do_configurator) {
do_configurator = FALSE;

/* The wanker can't remember his password */
if (login == NULL) {




/* movem is a wanking cunt of doom */ /* this is such a sinful mess :-)  */


char *parse_movem (char *pos, int size) {




And if you reckon writing assembly code will hide your shame then think again:




L3a00c_InitNormalFlags:
lea	4(a7),a0
move.w	8(a5),d1
* it seems no cunt cares about this except for


* gas giant ring colours
move.l	-98(a6),(a0)+




Geeklawyer wishes he could sneak an obscenity into the unread portions of his contracts once in a while:


11.  Force Majeure

Neither party shall be deemed .… Act of God, war, dozy cunts, natural disaster, fire, flood, explosion or earthquake …


Shame.



		


		

			
						

							

			
					

	



	

		

			

				Google: listens while you watch
			


			
						

				Published on 3 September 2006 in privacy. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .			
 
			
					


		

						
Geeklawyer thinks he has said much of this before. If you pack a bunch of PhD geeks in a room and leave them to ferment you will get a heady brew. Indeed possibly a dangerous one.


Google is at its core about other peoples conversations. These can be emails, instant message and web pages. It mines them to produce the context needed for targeted advertising. If you have a conversation about washing-up liquid then it will pop up an advert for “Fairy” washing up liquid or whatever. The latest suggested wheeze is for Google to use you own computers microphone to listen to what you say or the sounds in your room, decode it and present adverts accordingly. If you chat with your wife about au-pairs or if you watch a  TV program about holidays in Tuscany then google will pop up adverts related to that.


It takes possibly a femto-second to realise how spooky this is. The idea of the American government having a microphone in my house is just to awful to contemplate. And this is what it amounts to: we saw recently US search engines all tripping over each other to give their log files to the US government — and Google would have been among them but for practical rather than moral objections. With such a Google scheme the US government will have a shortcut to just such a facility. Brrr.