Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 31st May 2011 22:20 UTC, submitted by john
Well, I have to say this: Lodsys got some balls. After Apple threatening them with legal action, Lodsys has gone on the offensive, and has proceeded to sue third party iOS application developers. While Lodsys had first given developers 21 days to negotiate an agreement, due to Apple's legal threats, the company has now moved its litigation timing to an earlier date.
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Member since:2008-03-17
So once he finished building his compression algorithm and built it into a file format, what would you say the odds are that his format would be 100% compatible with zip files? THAT is what I am talking about, being able to patent formats, codecs, APIs, etc that are VERY SPECIFIC
Then doesn't copyright apply here? The final data structure would have to be exactly the same, meaning that it would be an exact copy of the original work...
Member since:2005-11-13
Then doesn't copyright apply here? The final data structure would have to be exactly the same, meaning that it would be an exact copy of the original work...
No, I don't think so. As somebody else said, you can copyright the source code of the program that supports the file format, and the source code of the file format itself. But if somebody could reverse engineer the file format without looking at the code, then without patents, he is free to implement it in any way he so chooses.
Whether this is a good or bad thing is another discussion, but this is one area that copyright doesn't really cover.
Member since:2011-01-28
WorknMan,
"So once he finished building his compression algorithm and built it into a file format, what would you say the odds are that his format would be 100% compatible with zip files? THAT is what I am talking about..."
A competing technology infringes whether it's 100% compatible with zip files or not. Since the patents have expired, many different compression formats do share the same algorithm and are 0% compatible since they're separate implementations. It is algorithms which are patented, not the file format.
The fundamental flaw with arguments like yours is the assumption that independent work is always unique. If that's your view, then you need a better understanding of how the principals of mathematics will lead separate developers to the same conclusions.
Given the same problem, how many unique algorithms will 2 developers come up with? 10 Developers? 100 developers? 10000 developers?
Your going to find that developers think alike because they derived the same math as everyone else.
Go read about the "birthday problem", which is a similar problem.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_attack
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:
2005-11-13
THAT is the problem here: even if you create something all the way from the bottom all yourself, with absolutely no one else's help or any documentation, someone can still come to you saying that what you did is wrong and you need to pay them!
The flaw in your logic is that you are talking about the patent system as it exists now, and not in the context in which I am speaking, where patents exist, but cover much more specific things. For example, let's say somebody wanted to invent a new type of compression format, and this guy has been living under a rock and has never heard of .zip files.
So once he finished building his compression algorithm and built it into a file format, what would you say the odds are that his format would be 100% compatible with zip files? THAT is what I am talking about, being able to patent formats, codecs, APIs, etc that are VERY SPECIFIC, not overly generic like somebody being able to patent the concept of compressing a file. In other words, the only way you would be able to patent something in software is if it would be damn-near impossible for somebody else to come along and do what you did on accident.
Well, an exception might be made if you were the VERY first one to ever come up with a thing, like if you were the first person to ever build a file compression scheme and the tech world truly has a 'holy shit!' moment when you release your thing, then maybe you get a monopoly on that for a year or two, and a patent on whatever specific format you came up with that lasts for five or ten years. In other words, after a period of time, the world gets to copy your idea, but not your specific format.
Note: I'm not suggesting that the world needs any more compression formats; just using it as an example, since it's the first thing that came to mind