Monthly Archives: October 2010

All your Motorola Androids are belong to us

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Yesterday Microsoft announced they have filed a lawsuit against Motorola alleging infringement on nine patents regarding Android smart phones:

REDMOND, Wash. – Oct. 1, 2010 – Microsoft Corp. today filed a patent infringement action against Motorola, Inc. and issued the following statement from Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of Intellectual Property and Licensing:

“Microsoft filed an action today in the International Trade Commission and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington against Motorola, Inc. for infringement of nine Microsoft patents by Motorola’s Android-based smartphones. The patents at issue relate to a range of functionality embodied in Motorola’s Android smartphone devices that are essential to the smartphone user experience, including synchronizing email, calendars and contacts, scheduling meetings, and notifying applications of changes in signal strength and battery power.

We have a responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year in bringing innovative software products and services to market. Motorola needs to stop its infringement of our patented inventions in its Android smartphones.”

More information can be found here. Even though I work for Microsoft on Windows Phone 7 I don’t have any further information on the topic and even if I did I wouldn’t be at liberty to discuss it.

Quote of the day—Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph

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Magnificent…will terrify and appall jackbooted stormtroopers everywhere, and even more so the whimpering media geeks who squat to lick those boots.

Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph
1996
From the back cover of Unintended Consequences by John Ross.
[If you haven’t read Unintended Consequences then you don’t really understand the gun culture.—Joe]

MAIG mimics Brady Campaign errors

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Mayors Against Illegal Guns did not make an innocent mistake when they released their recent report. They deliberated misused the data to arrive at a conclusion they wanted. It’s been explained to them many times before but the truth doesn’t matter to them. NRA-ILA explains once again:

MAIG’s conclusions, like Brady’s, are based entirely upon BATFE firearm tracing statistics, which BATFE and the Congressional Research Service have repeatedly said should not be used to reach broad conclusions about criminal activity with guns.

BATFE says, for example, “Not all firearms used in crimes are traced and not all firearms traced are used in crime. Firearms selected for tracing aren’t chosen for purposes of determining which types, makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes. The firearms selected don’t constitute a random sample and should not be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or any subset of that universe. . . .[S]ources reported for firearms traced do not necessarily represent the sources or methods by which firearms in general are acquired for use in crime.”

Of course, for many years on many issues — “assault weapons,” “Saturday Night Specials,” lawsuits against gun manufacturers and dealers, and the list goes on — anti-gun groups have resorted to tracing data because crime and other reliable data have not supported their arguments. In this instance, for example, MAIG contends that illegal acquisition of firearms is associated with 10 specific state-level gun laws. But, the 10 laws — some of which are already in effect at the federal level — don’t correlate to state total violent crime rates. And, the 10 states with the highest violent crime rates, and the 10 states with the lowest rates, both have an average of two of the 10 gun laws.

Update: James has more very interesting stuff to share on the topic.

Firearms Freedom Act news

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The Brady Campaign has very little to feel good about these days so they are doing a lot of crowing about the Federal district court judge who dismissed the Montana Firearms Freedom Act case.

While most observers agree that we will not win this case that doesn’t mean it is a losing action. As I said in the comments over at Say Uncle’s place:

From the Missoulian

“We’ve believed all along that the federal District Court cannot grant the relief we request. We seek to overturn a half-century of bad precedent,” Gary Marbut, MSSA president, said in a statement. “Only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that. In that light, the pending dismissal by the District Court means little except that we are now free to move to the next step of the process.”

The Brady Campaign may ultimately be able to claim victory but not without more work. They are crowing now because it will be a while before they can crow for a real victory.

…

I don’t think “restrictions are defeated before they start” via lots of guns is a workable strategy. As an example look at machine guns. There were lots of them in private hands prior to 1934 and now there aren’t. Also consider legislative attacks such as trigger locks, “safe storage” laws, restrictions on carry that start with schools and public buildings then progresses to banks, parks, churches, vehicles, and “public spaces”.

While the Firearms Freedom Act has a low chance of ultimate success it is an integrated part of the SAF firearms civil rights judicial strategy.

I used to play a lot of chess which gives us a way to view this. Suppose you have a slight material advantage say 15 pieces to their 12 pieces. You increase your odds of winning by trading down an equal number/quality of their pieces for yours. When the odds are 3 to 1 in your favor you are far better off than when you were at 15 to 12.

Think of it this way–we have far more money than the anti-gun side. Suppose we have 10 x as much money and resources as they do. Suppose they need to spend half as much as we do on each front as we do in order to defeat us. The more fronts we attack on the less they have to spend on any one front. Even if we attack on a front they can easily win they must spend resources on it. This makes it easier to win on more fronts.

By forcing them to divide their resources we can create much better odds for success on each of the individual attacks because we have sufficient resources that our multiple attacks do not suffer from division.

There are other reasons as well but discussion of those in public would not be in our best interests.

Please add to that what Idaho Governor Butch Otter said about the ruling:

Governor Otter said that decision is consistent with Molloy’s wolf ruling, and together they highlight the lack of regard that the judge has for states’ rights under the 10th Amendment.
“We’re hopeful that we’ll find some relief from the appellate court,” he said. “But if not, we’ll keep fighting to protect our right to self-determination.”

Quote of the day—Lyle@UltiMAK

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I’d rather pay most feds to do nothing (or snort coke, watch daytime TV, drink booze and buy whores) than pay them to do what they’re doing now (in addition to snorting coke, drinking booze and buying whores that is). That’d be a step in the right direction, say, for a while, before they’re indicted.

If I had my full ‘druthers I’d see them stripped of their citizenship, packed into crates, stuffed into transport planes, flown over Venezuela (or Cuba, North Korea, etc.) and dropped, along with their supporters in Congress. Parachutes optional, depending on donations from the private sector. I’d suggest using them on the front lines in battle, but I wouldn’t trust them in that capacity. They’d most likely throw up the white flags and then side with the enemy against our real troops. The whole tar and feathers thing seems unnecessarily messy and time consuming. We have work to do after all, and if we could simply get rid of them as quickly as possible, we could get on with living our lives in peace. If they’d go voluntarily and then mind their own business for the rest of their lives, that would be the ideal, though we all know that’s an impossibility – statists, who understand nothing on Earth but deception and brute force don’t ever quit until quitting is the only option left. Even then, we see what happened with Jim Jones and his dupes. If they know they’re going to take the big fall, they’ll take as many as possible along with them. That’s axiomatic and it goes for the whole statist society.

Lyle@UltiMAK
September 30, 2010
Comment to Random thought of the day.
[The only thing I would add is they should get a fair trial first. But I guess that was sort of implied in the “stripped of their citizenship” line. And please note that each individual need not have their own trial. They don’t seem to have any regard for the individual so why should the individual have any regard for them independently of their collective? It probably could done at the department/agency level. Department of Education, Department of Housing, etc.—Joe]