“Fundamentally, we believe that Apple was the first true smartphone, and hence Apple invented the concept of using a (real) smartphone”, said an Apple spokesman explaining the idea behind the patent claim.

Smart Patent

Patent number 10,420,777 called Concept of Using a Portable ‘Smart’ electronic device as a mobile telephony/communication device, has a claim that is just what it looks on first reading:

A concept and a method, comprising: people talking to each other using a phone device that has apple phone like characteristics; people sending electronic messages using a device that has apple phone like characteristics; people sending mails to each other using a device that has apple phone like characteristics; people browsing the internet using a device that has apple phone like characteristics; AND the act of people using electronic device that has apple phone like characteristic, to do any/all of such things mentioned above, and anything else that people do with devices that have apple phone like characteristics; including things not included in the list above; and any future thing that may be included; according to the definitions herein; of things that are therein.

Effectively, this patent makes any use of smartphone other than apple an infringement on the Apple patent. Ordinary users could be sued for violating Apple patent if they talk on a smartphone, that is not an Apple phone.

When contacted rival smart-phone makers said that they are unconcerned by Apple’s patent.

“They will never be able to enforce it”, said spokesman for a Apple mobile competitor. “For that they’ll have to acknowledge that there are other devices that can be termed as smartphones. And Apple would rather close their business than acknowledge anything like that”

Tech community is divided over the patent.

Meanwhile Apple is waiting for a patent on the use of words ‘I’ and ‘phone’ together. If granted, Apple can sue people for using those words in the same sentence, or even in the same paragraph. The patent is applied retrospectively, since Steve Jobs was supposed to be way ahead of time.

No More Offensive Broadcasts!

“Majority of Indians are offended by the what is shown on live TV under the pretext of parliamentary sessions. Images of members of parliament — the representatives of Indian people — screaming, throwing things, abusing each other, and in general acting like eight year old kids on steroids, offend  the sensibilities of average Indian citizens”, said Mr. Sibal, justifying this extreme measure.

“We have asked the Prasar Bharati, and NIC, to stop broadcasting any of

The Good Days

the parliamentary sessions, after they refused to sanitize the content as it was streaming, but they did not co-operate with us”, said visibly angry Sibal.

“For months, we have tried to work with them to come up with an effective mechanism to sanitize the content being shown on prime-time television, but these bodies haven’t come up with any workable solutions. Finally, we decided to take this extreme measure”

Sibal denied the rumors that Government is taking this action because it wants the debates about Lokpal and such contentious issues in future to happen outside of public eye.

“There are so many shameful things happening in the sessions, that the last thing we worry about is the actual debates”

When a reporter asked, “But can’t the public be provided with sanitized footage, in a delayed-live fashion?”

“Have you looked at a Parliamentary session?”, Sibal asked the reporter.

“No Sir”

“That is the problem with you guys. You don’t even watch those sessions and talk about sensibilities. The members of parliament work in most offensive office conditions prevalent anywhere in the world, except, maybe, for live combat. We had hoped that after people look at the plight of the members of parliament, they will be more favorable to revision of compensation for the members. But media has put a completely different spin on it”

“They’re boring”, sneered a young journalist.

“Then I have nothing more to say”, said a miffed Sibal.

Prasar Bharati spokesman was not available for comment. However our source there, on condition of anonymity, revealed that TRPs for the parliamentary sessions have been really low, what with people never knowing when a debate will actually happen. It’s a waste of TV time, was his assessment. “Besides, if we sanitize the feed, we will pretty  much have to show empty benches all the time. And that is indistinguishable from what happens most of the times anyways”

On social media, however, the reactions have been pouring in.

“Good riddance”, said a Mumbai based blogger on her twitter stream.

“Watching a parliamentary session for fighting is like watching an art film for raunchy scenes. First, you have to wait for years for the cast to assemble, and then the fighting is so lame. It’s high time we pushed these old hags out of parliament. We need some young blood. At least the fights will be worth watching”, said another youth on his Facebook page, his sentiments validated by two thousand likes.

“I’ve sinned, so help me Anna”, read a poster in a rally in Mumbai.

“People are ready to come forward and voluntarily confess to corruption they’ve engaged in”, said IAC activist, “because, people are tired of corruption. I think the government, and a section of cynical intelligentsia, do not understand the mood on the ground. Yes, people are tired of engaging in corruption. They don’t want to be corrupt, and they want to be honest, and righteous like our leader Shri Shri Anna Hazare. The system has become so corrupt that it’s forcing everyone to be corrupt. And people now realize that”

“For years”, said a doctor who takes a cut for every necessary or unnecessary USG he proscribes his patients, and more for every time he sends patients to specialists for further consultation, “I lived with this terrible guilt of corruption. But now I see better. It’s the system which is corrupt, and I’m a helpless pawn in the game. I am going to do everything that is needed to help Anna cleanse the system of this demonic corruption”

Does that mean he will stop taking those cuts?

“That’s a very ignorant question. If I don’t take the cut someone else will. So unless everyone stops taking cuts, I can’t. If I stop taking a cut, the specialists, and the pathologists, the urologists, will start eying me suspiciously and spread rumors about me, and who will suffer? Poor patients who will stop coming to me and go to some unscrupulous doctor. This is the system we have to fight. And lokpal will fight it for us”

IAC activists are beaming with energy as they prepare for the final assault on India’s corruption, armed with a team of thousands of such followers who’re corrupt victims of the corrupt system, and who’ve now seen that the system has to be changed for getting rid of their corruption.

“I must confess there is a temptation to run into the streets naked like that guy in the science books shouting ‘I’m corrupt’, and to rid oneself of this guilt. But in the interest of the movement, I must carry the burden till the whole country is corruption free. The IAC needs my support. I cannot just confess I’m corrupt and be punished, because that way, the worst of the corrupt will enjoy the fruits of corruption while those like me with regrets, the best of the corrupt, will be punished. And the system will not change at all. We need systemic cleansing, and Lokpal will do it”, said a builder from Baroda, who has made millions with shady business deals, and evading taxes.

“Ek dhakka aur do (give one more push)”, shout the crowds gathered at India Gate, and the mood is buoyant for a better tomorrow. Police, government employees, are ready to give up bribes for a better tomorrow, where their children will be educated in good public schools, and not have to be educated with those bribes in expensive private schools they cannot afford. “Once we punish a few guilty politicians, and high ranking bureaucrats”, said T. Raja (name changed to protect him from official backlash), who works in Nagpur RTO, where he does not move a paper without proper weight, “everyone will start being afraid. No one will take bribes, and then I will be free to be clean and corruption free”

How will he pay EMIs for the house he booked recently on his meager pay?

“Surely, Lokpal will raise my salary”, asked Raja indignantly. “I haven’t read the draft yet, but all that money they say they’re going to put back into public kitty, they’re surely going to raise my salary to corporate levels”

When told that Lokpal doesn’t really have the power to decide the salaries of Government employees, he said: “Is that so? We need to change that too. I’m sure those guys will think of that”

“For us, a user leaving the site without finding the pages that she was looking for, is a failure. We rarely see that user again on Google. Typically, Google is the first and the last refuge of users searching for information on the net, and if they cannot find what they’re looking for, they are disillusioned not just with Google, but with the internet itself. And that’s a loss for Google”, said Amit Singhal, a fellow at Google, who is widely acknowledged as the master of Google’s Ranking Algorithm.

“Enter Fake Pages (TM), and Google is blurring the line between search and well, non-search”, said Mr. Singhal.

Fake Pages (TM) feature, which will be rolled out to users based on Google’s prediction of their desperateness for finding something relevant, based on their browsing personality recorded by Google, will create exactly the kind of pages that the user was hoping to find, and instantly display them to the user.

“Once this is rolled out to everyone, no one will turn away from Google disillusioned with search. And that’s a gain for internet as a whole”, said Mr. Singhal.

But doesn’t this violate all the rules of what a search is supposed to be?

“With personalized search, we’ve already violated most rules of what a search engine should be. We already guess what you want, and prioritize it over what could be more obvious result of the query, universally. What you don’t want, we bury it deep into inner recess of the searchdom. We already put you in a bubble. Now, we’re just going to make you believe there is a bubble, where there isn’t one. The end result is what is important, and that is, you, a search user, walks away happily, to return, or doesn’t walk away in the first place. All other rules are there to be broken”, said a Google Guru on conditions of anonymity (sic!).

But will a user be happy, if she realizes that the pages are fake?

“Google’s prediction engine will predict if a user will be happy or unhappy with Fake Pages (TM), and what you will get will depend on the feedback from the prediction engine. If you’re a kind of person who never cares about reality much, you’ll see more Fake Pages (M), than those who are little demanding on that front. The Fake Pages (TM) for the latter group will be that much more subtle, but few. Over the time, no one will know what’s fake and what’s real. And everyone will be happier for it”

#fakepages is now trending on twitter, with mixed reactions from the twitterrati. Some think of this as just another logical step towards Google’s plans of  world domination, while others are excited that this will finally kill Bing.

“Bing(o)! Do I feel lucky?  Well, do ya, punk?”, read a tweet by @bing_hater. “How will you steal these pages?”

The Victory Pose

In a press conference after his quarter final victory in Miami, Roger Federer, former world no 2,  insisted that he’s always shown grace in victory.

“I have always been gracious in victory”, he said, answering questions about his inability to handle defeats.

“Lot of people forget that crucial part. Most tennis players cannot control their emotions when they win, and make their opponents feel bad by their extravagant display of pleasure. I never do that. I cry even when I win. That way, my opponent who has lost the match cannot cry. If Rafa had cried after winning that Wimbledon title, I would have felt better about my defeat. But I guess you got to live with that in competitive tennis. Not everyone will be gracious in victory”

But isn’t crying a little extreme a reaction to defeat?

“Normally, yes. But here we are talking about the GOAT and all that. How many in the world qualify for that title? Just me, right? So only I know what a defeat feels like for GOAT. For non-GOAT kind of players, defeat is not that painful, guess. I don’t know. I’ve never been one. They’d take defeat any day, I’m told. They’re prepared for that. But being a GOAT and all that puts a lot of emotional strain on me, you know, and it sometimes shows when I lose. It’s lonely at the top, you know, even when you’re winning, you know, as I am. So think about how it must be feeling when you’re on top, and losing”

KBNN will keep serving you news, like always. We are not swept away by hype. But our readers, who will be swept away by hype, need a lifeboat. We’re obliging.

For the usual suspects, who are tired of the hype already, even before it’s begun, we’re going to be open 24x7x365/random(). Right here.

India's Future in Speech Delivery?

“The robot will have programs in it to double-check what he is reading, and switch to the right speech as soon as possible, without external intervention. However, in the rare event that he realizes this late, or has to be corrected, he will be programmed to look appropriately embarrassed, and come up with a pre-configured excuse to suit the occasion”, said Dr. Anil Naik, who’s heading the team at C-DAC where the robot was developed, primarily for parliamentary speeches.

“We had to disable the auto-raise feature, that keeps raising the robot’s voice, when anyone else in the room is speaking, but otherwise, it’s the same robot”, confirmed Mr. Naik.

S. M. Krishna is furious about the development.

“The government is over-reacting”, he said, prompting his aides to remind him that he’s still the part of the government.

“I mean, look, what I’ve done has just raised India’s chances of getting a permanent security council membership — now that we’re seen to be so inclusive, to actually espouse other peoples’ causes”

The opposition parties are also upset over the move.

“We are already sending a robot there. What is the point of replacing that with another, costly one?”, said Arun Jaitely, talking on an NDTV panel debate.

“Arun, Arun, look at this way”, interjected Kapil Sibbal, “Robots have high capex, but low opex; ministers on the other hand, may come free, but their opex, as we all know, is quite high”

Dr. Manmohan Singh did not have much to comment at this time.

“I have all the reports piled up on my table. I’ll go through them, and only then can I comment. They must know what they are doing. I’m an old man, but I’m all for technology”

The Brain Thinners

“There is plenty of evidence to prove that the Eskimo Berries thin your brain”, said nurtrional expert Joel Katz. “Within weeks of taking this super-food, 99% of people have measurable decrease in their brain matter. They report feeling euphoric, and in general lighter”

Nutritional Scientists have identified a substance called  levidic-acid in the Eskimo berries, in abundant quantities.

“Levidic-acids have amazing anti-brain properties”, said Dr. Naresh Rao, a nutritional scientist working for American Nutrition Society, “In mice testing, they’ve managed to get rid of almost all brain matter in matter of weeks”

There are other foods that are known to have levidic-acids, Pretzels, for example, and raw squid. But Eskimo Berries have almost 30-50 times levidic-acid than these foods, and a whooping thousand times that of most other foods.

"How, when, where, not what"

Michael Pollan, Food journalist, and the author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, has dismissed it as another marketing gimmick that food corporations routinely come up with. “It’s not the berries that are thinning people’s brains”, he said in a lecture delivered to Whole Food Enthusiasts, a NY based group. “It’s not just what you eat, but how you eat, when you eat, and where you eat, and with what you eat it, that determines how what you eat affects you in general. But with brains, it’s how they’re washed is also an important factor”

He insisted that levidic-acids are another half-understood nutritional phenomenon, dismissing the claims of what he calls reductionist science.

“Many of the people who’re embracing this so-called super-food — I call it so called, because, if you have read any of my books, you’ll know that all food are super-foods, if you define food as I define it — are already losing their brain matter fast, so it’s not clear if levidic-acids can take the credit”

While food manufacturers are in a frantic race to come up with Eskimo Berries based products, including juices, spreads, powders and cake mixes, even sodas; in the Alaska where they’re grow in abundance, native people are happy to have finally got an exit route for them.

“In Yupic, one of the native languages of Alaska”, said an Alaskan scholar, who stays off the Eskimo Berries, “they’re called Anuk Berries. Anuk in Yupik means shit. They taste like shit. There is an Alaskan proverb which translated means: if it tastes like shit, it’s got to be healthy”.

Way before it was discovered as a super-food, though, the Eskimo berries have been a staple diet for some of the politicians from that region.

“My security team, after accessing the situation, has advised me not to meet anyone, during my India visit. I know that this will come as a disappointment to many who were eagerly waiting for this trip, and the my meetings with Indian leaders. However, I am, first and foremost, an American president, and will have to think of the American interests first. And there is no doubt in my mind that America needs me, more than ever”

Meet the President

The brief statement has triggered a wave of reactions from Indian politicians,  business leaders, men on the street, and the strong Indian Blogosphere.

“It’s unfortunate”, said Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. “I had canceled my meeting with Shrimati Soniaji, for this meeting, after consulting with her. She was very understanding, as always, and had given me a clear go ahead for the meeting”

Top Indian bloggers are insisting that this is just a ploy by President Obama to avoid uncomfortable questions about his policies, which are perceived to be anti-Indian, and also the recent debacle in US for the Democrats.

The fortunate few

It’s not clear what Mr. President will do now, on his India trip. His security team has managed to get a clearance to meet him, however, no other person, including India’s top political leaders, and President Madam Patil, have been able to secure a clearance.

“It’s an insult to India”, insisted a television news anchor. “Even Indian news channels are being denied a meeting with the US president”

No Elite Business!

“We expecting to win 95% of all medals in the CWG. It will be unprecedented, for sure”

CWG, or the Commonwealth Games, are currently the hot topic of discussion in Indian Media, due to reportedly shoddy state of the facilities,  including an overhead pedestrian bridge which collapsed just a few days ahead of the games inauguration on Oct 3. For some reasons it was BBC who exposed the “horrible state” of the CWG facilities, while India has hundreds of Television News Channels were debating over various other important issues 24×7.

“It’s unfortunate that the games have got a lot of bad press,” said a calm, and undeterred Kalmadi, fielding questions from various journalists, “because of the obsession of Indian media to concentrate on negatives. We, at the OC, are more concerned about an Indian success in the games, than about some overhead bridge that will be used by some onlookers. We’re more concerned about players”

A Classic Co-existence of the Urban and the Rural

In 2006 version of the games, hosted in Melbourne, Australia, India finished fourth, with 22 Gold medals, and 50 medals in total — less than 10% of total medals being contested. So it would surely be a tall task to win 95% of the medals, noted a reporter.

“True. Traditionally, we’ve not done too well in Commonwealth games. This time, however, with the home advantage, we should be able to sweep most of the events. Many of the international athletes have already realized that, and are withdrawing from the competitions for one overt reason or another. It’s sad to see this unsporting attitude of professional sports-persons. But it’s obvious to us that they’re scared at facing Indian athletes in their home conditions — the sewage, the mosquitoes, and so on”, said Kalmadi, explaining the rational behind the games planning and execution.

Homely Conditions

“International athletes are used to unnatural standards of hygiene and quality. When Indian players compete in these events outside, they’re baffled by the surroundings — clean rooms, finished stadiums, usable latrines. They’re overwhelmed by it all, and it impacts their performance. We’re trying to give them more homely feeling here, so that they can do their utmost best”, said Kalmadi.

Brushing aside the criticism of OC as “elitist propaganda”, Kalmadi insisted that he is the representative of the “common man”, like any leader from his party.

“What we have in opposition, today, is essentially an elitist party. Much of the complaints about the preparations of games really do not reflect the problems of common man in this country.

War on (Mosquitoes) Terror

Back in Pune, where we saw similar criticisms of the youth games preparations, I was re-elected by the common man. Because, at the end of the day, common man wants to see level playing field, not further advantages given to a bunch of elite people. If common man is living with those mosquitoes, why should the players be spared of them? If common man does not have clean toilets, why should some visiting, pampered players have those?”

“There is a reason why it’s called a games village! Have any of those criticizing CWG preparations seen a real village?”, asked Kalmadi, as he joined Delhi CM, Sheila Dixit for an aerial inspection of the CWG facilities.