Nota Bene

How can you locate and destroy ALL the maliciousness hiding in the sleeping jungles of your computer?

In particular, the extra nasty maliciousness that’s never ever been seen before, which also happens to have a mega-high malevolent-IQ (and is often state sponsored)?

Easy. The answer’s simple: you can’t.

Well, you can at least have a good go at it; but to find the proverbial black malware cat in a pitch black room you need a handful of top-notch pros to do the task manually: expensive. But to do it automatically with a boxed antivirus product – that’s a whole different matter altogether: you normally just get as far as getting on to the scent of super sophisticated infections, but that’s about it. That is, at least, using the old-school AV approach that uses classic antivirus signatures and file scanners.

So what’s the solution?

Again, simple: put some mega brains to hard work – to automate sophisticated-infection seek-and-destroy functions in an AV product.

Read on: So how we do that?…

What-ho, peeps!

How many times I’ve been to London I lost track of long ago. How many miles I’ve walked in parks, along river banks and down side streets I couldn’t even give a ball-park figure for. But a stroll along London’s Industrial Revolution-era canals – no, that was a first.

Locks, water stock and two trees

I really recommend checking out this somewhat lesser well-known side to the UK’s capital. It’s a network of mini-canals, which connected London with the rest of the country so Industrial Revolution-era raw materials and goods could be ferried about.

Read on: thousands of miles of canals …

As per tradition, the festive season for KL kicked off with our Christmas/New Year shindig – this year on the already decidedly tipsy December 20.

The following week another tradition was duly observed – the annual tour of every room in the office by Santa (me) and his little helpers, which this year also took in some of our neighbors‘ offices, to personally wish everyone personally a merry Christmas and a happy upcoming New Year.

+ two snow queens + one snow queen Read on: 2013 – hardly unlucky for us… 2014 – up all year to get lucky.

Hi folks!

Well here I am, back in a frosty London – one of my fave capitals.

One of the first things I saw here was a Christmas tree bobbing down the river Thames! I think it was a sign… a reminder that the festive period is o v e r, period! Enough already! Back to work!

Read on: Time to move on. Just like a Christmas tree on the Thames.

Two mega-cars from Scuderia (a Challenge and a GT3) + a completely empty Aragon race track in Alcaniz, Spain + a fog thicker than school-dinner semolina = tragedy.

You drive in an exquisite bit of motorsport kit, but the pedal stays a good way off the metal. Visibility is down to silly meters, and you’re trying to get some decent speed up. Rather, you’d want to. But you’re not as silly as those meters… So, like I say… a tragedy.

Read on: visibility superciliously silly…

Ciao all!

Herewith, the two next – Italian – installments from my recent Trans-Europe Express-2013.

Installment No. 1: Location, location, location.

We dropped in on one of our partners in Rome, whose office is handily situated in a building right in the city center. The panoramic view from up top was just incredible – as you can probably guess. Got me thinking how on earth the guy ever gets any work done. Hmmm, I guess you can’t just keep staring at the view for days… but I found out you can for hours! My conclusion: if the rooftop terraces here weren’t covered with those pesky Roman pigeons I’d give the place a perfect 10.

AC and a Xerox

Read on: Felipe Massa gets an engine…

“This world is a desert that is a circle.

Heaven is closed and hell is empty.”

– Octavio Paz, Elegía interrumpida (Interrupted Elegy), mid-20^th century

I recalled these lines of this great (though not all that well-known) Mexican poet just recently on my latest travels – driving across Switzerland. Have to say I wasn’t expecting low season here to be this low. Place was practically deserted, with most of the hotels practically empty too. But of course: Summer is a distant memory, and neither Christmastime nor skiing-time has fully kicked off yet…

Making the place even more eerily desolate was the thick fog that had descended…

Rocking

Read on: 800 kilometers of autobahn…

Increasingly of late – particularly since our recent much publicized triumph in court against a patent troll – I keep getting asked for advice on how to combat patent parasites. So… here they are: our top-10 tips for fighting back against and conquering patent bloodsuckers.

First, your applause please for the KL guys behind the tips (and our fight against patent trolls):

• Nadya Kashchenko, Chief IP Counsel
• Dmitry Polyakov, Head of IP Protection & Defense
• Nikolay Borovikov, Head of IP Research & Analysis
• Sergey Vasilyev, Senior IP Counsel

From our various battles over the years with patent piranhas in different countries, we’ve come to a number of conclusions about patent trollism. Of course, every country has its own particular economic and socio-political features, plus its own unique patent legislation, but still, on the whole the pattern pretty much stays the same when it comes to trollism – with just a few minor differences. For both clarity and practicality here I’ll concentrate on specifically the US patent environment, since trollism there is currently the most out of control and problematic for innovative companies.

Read on: rule #1 – don’t panic!…

As recent events have confirmed – we have an active patent life.

Our inboxes keep getting filled with all sorts of e-mails – both positive and negative, interesting and insipid – about various patent claims and assorted inventions…

…Which got me thinking…

…Which led to my doing some research of some of the weird and wonderful – and totally wrong – predictions of ‘experts’ with regard to various new ideas, inventions and undertakings over the centuries.

Here’s an interesting list of 20 extremely bizarre absurdities which I found on the web; I’m sure it will at least raise an eyebrow or two, maybe compel a chuckle or three, or hopefully induce four LOLs:

1. “The fall of stones from the heavens is physically impossible.” – Paris Academy of Sciences on meteorites, 1772.

2. “In the future computers will weigh more than 1.5 tons.” – Popular Mechanics, 1949.

3. “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, CEO, IBM, 1943.

4. “I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won’t last out the year.” – Editor, Business Books, Prentice Hall, 1957.

5. “But what…is it good for?” – Engineer, Advanced Computing Systems Division, IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

6. “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.” – Ken Olson, Chairman, Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

7. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – Western Union internal memo, 1876.

8. “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?” – Associates of David Sarnoff who was seeking investment in the radio in the 1920s.

9. “The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C’, the idea must be feasible.” – Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper proposing a reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

10. “Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” – H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

11. “We don’t like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.” – Decca Recording Co. suits rejecting the Beatles, 1962. (I LOLed to this one.)

12. “Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.” – William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, British scientist, 1899.

13. “That Professor Goddard with his ‘chair’ in Clark College and the countenancing of the Smithsonian Institution does not know the relation of action to reaction, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react – to say that would be absurd. Of course, he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.” – 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard’s revolutionary rocket work. The remark was finally retracted in the July 17, 1969 issue.

14. “Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You’re crazy.” – Workers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

15. “Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.” – Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, 1911.

16. “Everything that can be invented has been invented.” – Attributed to Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

17. “Louis Pasteur’s theory of germs is ridiculous fiction.” – Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872.

18. “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.” – Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

19. “640 kb ought to be enough for anybody.” – Attributed to Bill Gates, 1981.

20. “$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft.” – IBM, 1982.

As is becoming a habit already, I’ll finish with another brainteasing conundrum:

A rope is stretched snugly around the Equator. It gets cut at one point and an extra one-meter section is inserted to its length. If this rope could magically float on air so that it is fully stretched out (as before), how far above the earth would it be floating?

Howdy folks!

First, some pix. Actually – screenshots from one of my recent transatlantic flights. Notice anything unusual?…:

Let’s have a gander…

Read on: in-flight underhandedness…