Linked by weildish on Sat 24th Jan 2009 22:44 UTC
Several days ago when Apple hinted at legal action against Palm, we held our breath to see just what would happen. Now Palm has stepped up to the plate boldly and hinted that they'd fight whatever legal action is thrown at them.
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RE[4]: Beautiful system - they're not the first
by melgross on Sun 25th Jan 2009 20:23
in reply to "RE[3]: Beautiful system - they're not the first"
Member since:2005-08-12
[quote]"Invented", eh? Even the user interface domain is stuffed full of prior art.[/quote]
You're just making statements that have no validity, as you're just guessing.
Patents are a very important component in enforcement of the right to retain IP. Your denial of that doesn't negate the fact of it.
You apparently don't know the difference between a copyright and a patent. Look it up and then come back here.
Edited 2009-01-25 20:26 UTC
RE[5]: Beautiful system - they're not the first
by _txf_ on Sun 25th Jan 2009 22:45
in reply to "RE[4]: Beautiful system - they're not the first"
Member since:2008-03-17
Unfortunately, many interface patents are hideously vague. One of my faves is this one:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=wv5-AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,181,690
Horribly out of date, but with which the company (a bunch of dinosaurs) are going to use as a hammer against anyone remotely touching similar aspects.
RE[5]: Beautiful system - they're not the first
by gustl on Tue 27th Jan 2009 14:04
in reply to "RE[4]: Beautiful system - they're not the first"
Member since:2006-01-19
Patents are a very important component in enforcement of the right to retain IP. Your denial of that doesn't negate the fact of it.
What is IP?
It is a artificial term which sums up things like trademarks, patents, copyrights, creator's rights, ... .
And it is a murky territory nowadays.
Whereas patents are necessary for pharmaceutic innovation (long development times, long testing times, high development costs), patents in areas like mechanical engineering are less useful as a tool to foster innovation.
For software, ideas are vast, the development costs are close to zero, obtaining a software patent costs as much as the person who does the PTO paperwork costs. Consequently, software patents are not worth protecting. Nobody would protect a single one dollar bill, whereas Fort Knox with all it's gold is heavily guarded.
Patents are a tool to make people and companies innovate, despite high costs of innovation. if innovation does not cost much, patents are not needed, quite the contrary, they are a hindrance to innovation.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-11-14
"Invented", eh? Even the user interface domain is stuffed full of prior art.
Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame to last forever, but you actually need to keep up the hard work for that to happen.
If you're referring to the production of fake goods, there are a range of instruments other than patents which would deal with that problem adequately. And by using "ip" you're deliberately blurring the issues. Many people who advocate the abolition of patents in various fields don't advocate the abolition of copyright because copyright not only functions adequately as a "protection", but it's also completely clear when someone has infringed copyright: they've either acquired (and probably massaged) the work or they haven't. With patents, you can rediscover some technique and do all the hard work yourself and then be sued for treading on someone's turf.
And now that China's bureaucrats have discovered the easy money in "intellectual property", what has happened? A deluge of junk patents which will ultimately be used to stifle competition. In fact, they've even "innovated" in making new categories of junk patents. Welcome to the club, eh?