'G-Cloud is nothing more than a suppliers' website'

Quotw This was the week when the US patent trial between Apple and Samsung was still happening and the pair of them were as snide as ever.

Documents released in court revealed various tidbits about the companies and their ongoing tiff, including that the fruity firm offered Samsung a licensing deal at one point, though not a very good one.

The fruity firm wanted a hefty $30 per mobile and $40 per tablet, though it was willing to knock the price down a bit if Samsung handed over all of its patents in a cross-licensing deal.

The company sent Sammy a message, in which it snarked:

Samsung chose to embrace and imitate Apple’s iPhone archetype. Apple would have preferred that Samsung request a licence to do this in advance. Because Samsung is a strategic supplier to Apple, we are prepared to offer a royalty-bearing licence for this category of device.

We didn't get to hear Samsung's response in court, but we can imagine it was something along the lines of 'Expletive off, you expletive money-grubbing expletive', since no deal was made.

That didn't stop US Judge Lucy Koh from trying to get the pair of warring firms to put down their weapons to just talk about it. She appears to be at the end of her tether and seems willing to do anything to avoid having to endure round two of the firms' childish whining in the appeal.

She pleaded with the pair to see sense:

It's time for peace.

And if not for her sanity, then for their own sakes, because getting the jury to understand the intricacies of patent law through the obfuscation of attorney smart-mouthing is going to be a toughie.

She warned:

I see risks here for both sides.

Meanwhile, it's been Samsung's turn to get witnesses on the stand to tell the court that it didn't copy Apple at all and actually Apple infringes on its patents.

One designer for the Korean firm said that the team worked night and day, day and night on the first Galaxy phone. Designer Jeeyuen Wang was up all hours working on it. She said:

I slept perhaps two hours or three hours a night. That was about it.

In the UK, small and medium businesses were dissing the Cabinet Office's G-Cloud. The IT buying portal is supposed to be a revolutionary way to fill government contracts, ensuring that SMEs are as much represented as the big boys.

The SMEs reckon that's a load of tosh. Tim Foxlow, veep at medium-sized managed services provider Attenda said:

Any SME you talk to will say the same thing: it's not working.

While Martino Corbelli, chief customer officer with hosted email and unified communications provider Star complained:

From my perspective, G-Cloud is nothing more than a suppliers' website. How are you going to change decades of procurement practices with just a suppliers' website?

In Saudi Arabia, there is some concern over the new gTLDs being handed out by ICANN. It's not that the country is worried about its companies not getting the .whatevers they want, it's more the moral of the whole thing.

The country is worried that gTLDs like .wine, .vodka, .casino, .poker, .bar and .pub can only be bad for people on moral and health grounds.

And as for .baby, the gTLD that Johnson & Johnson are hoping for, that's clearly an invitation for child pornography, according to the Saudi Communication and Information Technology Commission's objection:

We consider there is a risk that this string is used in the same way as .XXX to host pornographic websites.

Ditto .virgin, which Richard Branson's group are looking for and anything to do with sex really - .dating, .hot, .sex, .porn, .sexy and .gay.

The commission claimed:

Many societies and cultures consider homosexuality to be contrary to their culture, morality or religion. The creation of a gTLD string which promotes homosexuality will be offensive to these societies and cultures.

And just to round out as many people and companies as it can insult at once, the commission also objects to religious gTLDs like .catholic, .bible, .islam, .halal, etc. ®