In this case, the rodent breeders in question are Qualcomm, who has been requiring companies to both buy their (protected by patent) chips, AND to pay licensing fees on those same patents.
Qualcomm abused its monopoly on critical chip patents for decades, a US federal judge in California said on Wednesday in a decision with radical implications for the cellphone market.
In a 233-page opinion [PDF] Judge Lucy Koh came down heavily on the chip designer, saying it had violated antitrust laws and “strangled competition” by insisting that companies license its patents at unreasonable prices before being allowed to purchase its chips. Qualcomm chips are an essential component in modern mobile phones.
Koh also issued a permanent injunction that orders Qualcomm to sell its chips to companies without requiring them to license its patents. She also ordered that the company be monitored by federal regulators for seven years.
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Qualcomm has said it will appeal the decision and seek an immediate stay on the injunction. “We strongly disagree with the judge’s conclusions, her interpretation of the facts and her application of the law,” the company said in a statement. The impact of the decision on Qualcomm’s bottom line was reflected in an instant 12 per cent drop in its share price.
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“Qualcomm’s licensing practices have strangled competition in the CDMA and premium LTE modem chip markets for years, and harmed rivals, OEMs and end consumers in the process,” Judge Koh wrote. “Qualcomm’s licensing practices are an unreasonable restraint of trade.”
Explaining her decision to grant a permanent injunction, she argued “it makes little sense for the court, having found that Qualcomm’s patent licenses are the product of anti-competitive conduct, to leave those licenses in place.” The Snapdragon system-on-chip designer was charging “unreasonably high royalty rates,” Koh said.
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At the core of the case is that fact that Qualcomm possesses a number of “standard essential” patents on chips that are critical for mobile phones to function. It then used that position to force companies to license its patents – demanding many times a fair market rate – before being allowed to buy its chips.
Experts highlighted the fact that Qualcomm would also only license its patents at the device level, as opposed at the component or chip level – which forced companies to pay it more and gave it greater control of the market.
Normally, I would file this under, “Huh, that’s interesting,” and I might post a link in my linkage posts.
But then a thought hit me, which is that a fairly large number of researchers are involved in this, including research assistants, graduate students, and maybe some undergrads as well.
Doubtless these folks will be going to other jobs, and other schools, where they will want to relate this experience to future employers or educators.
This raises a question for me, what is the best way to put, “Shark Vomit Analyst on a resume?”
Uber and Lyft accounted for two-thirds of a 62% rise in congestion in San Francisco over six years, according to a report published on the day of a coordinated protest by drivers.
The figures “are eye-popping,” said Joe Castiglione, deputy director for technology, data and analysis at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority. He co-authored the study with researchers from the University of Kentucky.
It shows that hours of vehicle delays increased by 62% throughout the city from 2010 to 2016, the period when ride-hailing services began proliferating on the streets. Traffic models that exclude Uber and Lyft cars show that hours of delay would have gone up 22% in their absence.
Extrapolating from those numbers, the study’s authors concluded that on-demand ride services — or transportation network companies, as they’re known in academic patois — are clogging roads and siphoning people from mass transit, going against the companies’ stated mission to wean people off of private cars. The authors laid out their findings in the scholarly journal Science Advances, providing fodder for policymakers seeking to regulate these companies.
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A similar study that the Transportation Authority published last year looked more broadly at swelling traffic from 2010 to 2016, and found that transportation network companies comprised about half of it, with the other half stemming from job and population growth. Wednesday’s study narrowly measured the correlation between ride-hailing services and increased congestion.
Access to a government jet 24 hours a day. An office in the West Wing, plus guaranteed weekends off for family time. And an assurance of being made secretary of homeland security by November. Those were among a list of 10 conditions that Kris Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, has given to the White House if he is to become the administration’s “immigration czar,” a job President Trump has been looking to create to coordinate immigration policy across government agencies. The list was described by three people familiar with it. ……… The list was submitted by Mr. Kobach in recent weeks as he discussed his interest in the job. Other conditions included having a staff of seven reporting to him, “walk in” privileges to the Oval Office, a security detail if deemed necessary and the title of assistant to the president. He would need access to the jet, he said, for weekly visits to the border and travel back to Kansas on the weekends. The existence of the list has become known among officials in the Trump administration, some of whom were taken aback by what they regard as its presumptuousness.
(emphasis mine)
Seriously, there is something deeply and profoundly wrong with this guy.
The Democratic Party's weak-kneed consultant class has brought you nothing but mediocrity and failure: wars, bank bailouts, a government fully owned by corporations. They have no interest in a government for the people. Don't listen to a word these soulless idiots tell you.
House Democratic leaders sparred internally on Monday over whether to begin an impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies rejecting the call to move forward for now, according to multiple sources.
Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) — all members of the Democratic leadership — pushed to begin impeachment proceedings during a leadership meeting in Pelosi’s office, said the sources. Pelosi and Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) — some of her key allies — rejected their calls, saying Democrats’ message is being drowned out by the fight over possibly impeaching Trump.
The, “Democrats’ message,” what the hell is that?
According to Cheri Bustos, head of the DCCC, you have to aggressively support an anti-choice Dem in a safe district, (Lipinski) and a right wing darling of the Koch brothers. (Cuellar)
What is your message, besides, “This space for rent”?
She is the George McClellan of Congress.
She has done a creditable job organizing a Democratic Congress, but she seems determined not to do anything it.
Drivers for ride-hailing apps Lyft and Uber have organized for better pay through collective action – and not by unionizing.
Here’s how it works: a group of drivers who pick up passengers at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, outside the US capital, have been turning off their taxi apps simultaneously to influence the surge pricing algorithms used by the two companies.
A report published last week by local ABC affiliate WJLA-TV recounts how a group of 100-150 drivers all turned off their driver apps in sync – coordinated by an individual using an unidentified app – to create the false impression of a local driver shortage.
With the ride supply down as demand peaks, the taxi apps’ surge pricing algorithms kick in, offering higher rates to entice more drivers to come to the airport. Minutes later, once the price rises anywhere from $10 to $19 or so, the drivers sign back on and accept the fare at a level they find more reasonable.
This is why you should not do business with companies that treat their employees like crap.
Even ignoring the ethical issues, it is likely that those poorly treated employees will find a way to fight back, and you are likely to be the battlefield.
It appears that in the UK, hurling milkshakes at right wing rat-f%$#s is a thing.
While I cannot offer my wholehearted support of the abuse of dairy products, I do find this preferable to the US approach, which all to often involves the use of firearms.
A South Florida family is outraged at North Miami Beach Police after mug shots of African American men were used as targets at a shooting range for police training.
It was an ordinary Saturday morning last month when Sgt. Valerie Deant arrived at the shooting range in Medley, or so she thought.
Deant, who plays clarinet with the Florida Army National Guard’s 13th Army Band, and her fellow soldiers were at the shooting range for their annual weapons qualifications training.
What the soldiers discovered when they entered the range made them angry: mug shots of African American men apparently used as targets by North Miami Beach Police snipers, who had used the range before the Guardsmen. Even more startling for Deant, one of the images was her brother. It was Woody Deant’s mug shot that taken 15 years ago, after he was arrested in connection to a drag race in 2000 that left two people dead. His mug shot was among the pictures of five minorities used as targets by North Miami Beach police, all of them riddled by bullets.
“I was like ‘why is my brother being used for target practice?’” Deant asked.
Your brother is being used for target practice because he is black, and because the North Miami Beach Police sniper team is a sociopathic and racist organization.
The degree to which racism and brutality are unthinkingly incorporated into law enforcement culture in the United States truly deplorable.
Here permanently peeved expression was due to feline dwarfism, so it could be argued that we are actually seeing is the world’s most extreme case of “resting bitch face” ever seen on a cat.
Over her short life, this cat may have earned as much as $100,000,000.00.
This is important, because excluding the disabled, and other students who need extra help, is the “Secret Sauce” of charter schools.
It allows them to create the appearance of exceptional performance on the cheap:
State law already requires that a charter school admit any student who applies. In his May budget revision, Gov. Gavin Newsom is proposing to tighten the language banning discrimination in charter school enrollment, particularly to protect students with disabilities and students with poor grades who want to attend charter schools.
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In return for receiving public funding, charter schools must have open admissions and hold a lottery when there are more applicants than spaces. School districts have complained that some of the state’s 1,300-plus charter schools have discouraged families with academically struggling students and special education students with high-cost needs from signing up. Others counsel students who are struggling academically to leave school mid-year to boost schoolwide test scores, districts say.
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Charges that charter schools deliberately select top student applicants have been largely anecdotal, which is why Newsom is proposing a uniform complaint policy that allows parents to file a grievance if they believe they were discriminated against. He also wants to explore using state Smarter Balanced testing and other data to identify enrollment disparities “that may warrant inquiry and intervention,” his budget stated.
Three years ago, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California and the public interest law firm Public Advocates released a report that found that about a fifth of charter schools had admissions policies that improperly excluded students based on grades, pre-enrollment interviews, a parental participation requirement, or that required citizenship documentation and a minimum level of English language proficiency. The report was based on a review of charter schools’ websites and most charter schools responded by removing pages they said were outdated and didn’t reflect their current policies.
Newsom’s proposed statute would specify that charter schools cannot request or require parents to submit student records before enrolling. And it would require that charter schools post parental rights on their websites and make parents aware of them during enrollment and when students are expelled or leave during the year. ………
The proposed statute implies there should be no allowances “for any reason” that might discourage any pupil from enrolling in a charter school.
Republican Congressman Justin Amash has broken with the Republican Party line to declare that President Trump has “engaged in impeachable conduct.” He also accuses Attorney General William Barr of attempting “to mislead the public about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s analysis and findings.” President Trump has responded calling Amash a “lightweight” and a “loser.”
Amash, who represents a Michigan district anchored by Grand Rapids, leans libertarian in his political orientation. He is the first prominent GOP officeholder to suggest that Trump’s efforts to obstruct justice and undermine the rule of law merit his removal from office. Indeed, Amash’s call for impeachment puts him out ahead of Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
“President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment,” Amash writes. The congressman used a Twitter thread Saturday to broadcast his views, “only after having read Mueller’s redacted report carefully and completely, having read or watched pertinent statements and testimony, and having discussed this matter with my staff.”
Here are my principal conclusions: 1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report. 2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct. 3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances. 4. Few members of Congress have read the report.
In his thread, Amash offered choice criticism for Barr in his execution of his duties as America’s top law enforcement officer.
Barr’s misrepresentations are significant but often subtle, frequently taking the form of sleight-of-hand qualifications or logical fallacies, which he hopes people will not notice.
Amash spends much of his thread warning America about adherence to party over our constitutional system of checks and balances, while making a subtle jab at fellow conservatives who sought to impeach Bill Clinton for obstruction of justice, but have remained silent in the face of Trump’s lawlessness:
In fact, Mueller’s report identifies multiple examples of conduct satisfying all the elements of obstruction of justice, and undoubtedly any person who is not the president of the United States would be indicted based on such evidence.
I just noticed that there is a lot of physical similarity between anti-alien bigot Ben Lockwood/Agent Liberty (played by actor Sam Witwer, right) on Supergirl, and Alt-Right bigot Ben Shapiro (played by useless sphincter Ben Shapiro, left).
The story arc of Supergirl, prominently features an anti-alien movement in the United States.
This arc is unequivocally an allegory for the anti-immigrant movement in general, and the Alt Right in particular, in the United States.
I am thinking that this was an deliberate decision by the producers, and I wholeheartedly approve.
I have been writing for some time about how Turkey’s purchase of the top of the line Russian S-400 surface to air missile (SAM) system has the US military industrial complex freaking out over the loss of sales.
The US claims that Turkey operating the system would allow the Russians unique insights into the characteristics of the F-35, but this is complete crap.
The Russians would be able to determing things like radar cross section from installations in Syria and Russia. (It is an extraordinarily long range system)
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that the purchase of S-400 defense systems from Russia was a done deal, adding that Ankara would also jointly produce S-500 defense systems with Moscow.
U.S. officials have called Turkey’s planned purchase of the S-400 missile defense system “deeply problematic,” saying it would risk Ankara’s partnership in the joint strike fighter F-35 program because it would compromise the jets, made by Lockheed Martin Corp.
I don’t speak Turkish, but I’m pretty sure that this is an invitation for the Pentagon, and Lockheed Martin, to go Cheney themselves.
If Third Way’s attacks on Senator Elizabeth Warren make the group sound like a stalking horse for Wall Street executives, there might be a reason for that.
At a demonstration today outside the think tank’s downtown DC office, Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett conceded to Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) co-founder Adam Green that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector.
Well knock me over with a mackerel.
This has been patently obvious since the group has burst on the scene.
Taking Wall Streeter’s money to generate a comfortable life style for the associated lobbyists and political consultants has been it’s raison d’être since its founding.
Charters are unaccountable, and frequently corrupt, as well as being the darlings of Wall Street money:
As president, Bernie Sanders would support a ban on for-profit charter schools and a blanket moratorium on public funding for all new charters, the candidate announced in a speech on Saturday, throwing down a new gauntlet on the left in the Democratic debate over education reform.
The Vermont senator laid out a broad education agenda that seeks to address racial disparities on the 65th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. Sanders’s plan is quite ambitious, thought it lacks some important details.
He wants to triple federal Title I funding for schools that serve a large number of low-income students, set a national salary floor for teachers of $60,000, and provide universal school meals: breakfast, lunch, and snacks for every student year-round.
But his proposed prohibition on for-profit charter schools and temporary ban on government spending on new nonprofit charters is a foray into the most divisive piece of the education reform debate. Charter schools have been a source of debate for years between mainstream liberals who see charters as a promising alternative to the traditional public schools and the labor left that considers them an attack on teachers unions because charters are typically unorganized.
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For existing charter schools, Sanders would propose that they be subject to the same oversight requirements as regular schools, that half of a charter school’s board members be parents and teachers, and that charters be required to disclose certain student and funding data.
Charter schools do not in the whole outperform public schools, and we have seen repeated examples of corruption and self-dealing, so ending for-profit chains, and placing a hold on expansion until appropriate oversight can be implemented is just basic good governance.
I would prefer to see them shut down completely, I think that they are primarily an attempt to loot, with a side order of union busting, but this is a good start.
U.S. aerospace manufacturer Boeing has shown footage of high-speed version of Apache attack helicopter during the Vertical Flight Society’s 75th Annual Forum & Technology Display.
Graham Warwick posted images of the Apache gunship concept and photo of a scale model of a new helicopter that was unveiled by the Boeing on social media.
The concept, called the Advanced AH-64 Block 2 Compound, is developing to serve as a gap filler in a U.S. Army Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program.
Jane’s Defense Weekly early reported that the new gunship will feature an enlarged main wing, revised engine exhaust arrangement, large vertical tail fin, and a rear-mounted pusher propeller. The design may also feature a new, rigid rotor system, which is a standard feature on other compound helicopter designs.
Also the Rotor & Wing International said that Boeing already has conducted wind tunnel testing of a scale model of a high-speed Apache gunship.
The similarities between the two helicopters, both in appearance and concept, are striking.
The blistering speeds promised only occur with the higher frequencies, which only extend about a mile from a cell tower, and do not effectively penetrate building walls and the like:
Buried underneath the blistering hype surrounding fifth-generation (5G) wireless is a quiet but growing consensus: the technology is being over-hyped, and early incarnations were rushed to market in a way that prioritized marketing over substance. That’s not to say that 5G won’t be a good thing when it arrives at scale several years from now, but early offerings have been almost comical in their shortcomings. AT&T has repeatedly lied about 5G availability by pretending its 4G network is 5G. Verizon has repeatedly hyped early non-standard launches that, when reviewers actually got to take a look, were found to be barely available.
If you looked past press releases you’d notice that Verizon’s early launches required the use of $200 battery add on mod because we still haven’t really figured out the battery drain issues presented by 5G’s power demands. You’d also notice the growing awareness that the long-hyped millimeter wave spectrum being used for many deployments have notable distance and line of sight issues, meaning that rural and much of suburban America will not likely see the speeds you’ll frequently see bandied about in marketing issues, and many of the same coverage gap issues you see with current-gen broadband are likely to persist.
If you looked past the headlines you’d probably noticed that even Wall Street was concerned that 5G was being over-hyped and wasn’t yet ready for prime time. Those concerns continue to be expressed largely in industry trade magazines, where you’ll often find stock jocks noting that most of the purported promises of 5G remain well over the horizon:
“What of the other fancy features of 5G, like massive IoT and ultra low latency? Specifications for those technologies are scheduled for availability in — wait for it — 2020, when the 3GPP’s Release 16 is scheduled to be finished.
“We believe the current investment opportunity associated with 5G is limited and unlikely to drive meaningful incremental upside for companies involved considering the mature state of the smartphone market,” wrote the analysts at Wall Street research firm Cowen in a recent note to investors.”
What, you mean that out wireless companies are lying to us?
