troll

The 404 1,025: Where hey, you gonna finish that dime? (podcast)

Be extra careful on the Internet if you live in Arizona, the local legislators may soon make it a Class 3 felony to be a "troll."

House Bill 2549 has already made its way through both houses and is waiting for the signature of Governor Jan Brewer. If passed, a minimum sentence of 2.5 years will be handed down to non-dangerous offenders that use any electronic device in a lews or lascivious act." Head over to Governor Brewer's Facebook page and send a message of protest!… Read more

BBC confronts Facebook troll

What goes through the mind of someone who trolls Facebook's RIP pages in order to leave messages like "Rot in Piss?"

What sort of person does that? What do they really look like? What do they sound like?

The BBC took it upon itself to try and meet one of these people, just to measure their charm level and the cut of their jib.

In a piece of footage unearthed by The Next Web, a BBC reporter tracked down a troll in Cardiff, Wales, who goes by the handle Nimrod Severen. Astoundingly, his real name is a … Read more

CES 2012, as seen by engineers who went to the dark side

LAS VEGAS--While teams of people worked through the night to get their booths looking pretty--or at least not pretty awful-- there were some who could lounge a little and be glad that all they had to do was sip a little wine.

Fortunately, I was allowed to be embedded with them--in the Iraq sense, you understand--in order to get an understanding of just how these devious minds saw CES 2012.

When I speak of these devious minds, I do not even think of Justin Bieber's management team. No, I bow in reverence to those whose jobs it is to … Read more

Amazon's Kindle Fire tablet hit by patent lawsuit

Though it won't reach store shelves until next month, Amazon's new Kindle Fire is already the target of a patent lawsuit.

A company called Smartphone Technologies filed the suit last Friday in Texas Eastern District Court accusing the Fire tablet of violating four of its patents.

Smartphone Technologies is owned by Acacia Research, a firm that buys and licenses patents and is seen by many as a patent troll. Acacia has kept the courts busy launching suits against the likes of Apple and Research In Motion.

The patents named in the suit against Amazon seem to include several … Read more

The America Invents Act and the individual inventor

commentary Much has been said about how the newly passed patent reform legislation, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, benefits large corporations. While that argument certainly can be made, Congress did not forget the individual inventor entirely. The creation of a "micro entity" encourages the individual inventor to get back into the patent game by reducing the fees required for filing an application.

Jerome Lemelson is considered by some to be one of the most prolific inventors of all time. With more the 600 patents to his name, Lemelson was able to generate over a billion dollars in licensing … Read more

The 404 874: Where two sticks make a fire (podcast)

Joey guest hosts The 404 Podcast today again; not because of all the Joey-related fan mail we've received, but because nobody else in the office knows how to operate the camera switcher. Just joking. Joey brings his refreshingly positive sense of humor while Jeff cools off.

Today's stories include a quick review of Spotify and the new Sonos small network speaker, a California ruling that makes Facebook trolling a crime, and a Web site that reveals previously deleted tweets of any Twitter user.

The 404 Digest for Episode 874

Sonos ships new smaller Play: 3 speaker. That story about the IQ of Internet Explorer browser users was fake! Undetweetable collects tweets you thought you deleted. California judge: trolling with someone else's Facebook is identity theft. My fake Facebook birthdays. A video voicemail from Kokesh on top of a mountain!

Episode 874 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Apple loses playlist patent suit, must pay $8M

A federal jury in Eastern Texas, the same district where Lodsys has filed all of its patent suits, has ruled against Apple in a case accusing the iPod maker of infringing on patents for downloadable playlists.

Bloomberg first reported Friday on the verdict requiring Apple to award $8 million in damages to the patent holder, Personal Audio, a nonpracticing entity--meaning it licenses patents but doesn't actually have any other business. The jury found Apple liable for infringing on the patents and upheld their validity, Bloomberg reported, citing Personal Audio's lawyer, Ron Schutz.

Personal Audio, a patent licensing company … Read more

Novell auction could be patent troll bonanza

On Thursday Novell reported another poor quarter with fiscal second-quarter earnings down 5.4 percent to $204 million and a declining cash balance of $980 million. That's bad for Novell investors, of course, but it may portend something even worse for the wider industry.

Patent lawsuits. Lots of them.

As reported, as many as 20 organizations have registered bids for Novell, most (or all) of them private equity firms. While an Oracle or a Cisco might acquire Novell for its maintenance streams and product portfolio, it's unclear that private equity firms will have the same motivation. For at … Read more

Unvarnished: Person reviews or trollfest?

Updated throughout with comments from co-founder Peter Kazanjy

A new site called Unvarnished launched in beta today, and aims to do for individual people what Yelp does for restaurants and local businesses: let anyone create a profile about you and then post "reviews" about your job performance, management style, reputation, behavioral quirks, and so on. Or, put another way, it'll let co-workers or relative strangers subject you to anonymous and potentially defamatory attacks that are completely outside your control, can't be removed or edited, and are ripe for abuse. So, that sounds like a super idea. … Read more