Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 7th Jul 2011 20:41 UTC, submitted by sawboss
More patent news? Sorry, but for some reason, there's a spike in patent, trademark, and related news this week - not entirely unsurprising considering it's earnings season. HTC, currently under attack from Apple and a recent signer of Microsoft patent agreement regarding Android, has bought S3 Graphics... For the patents. Patents Apple has already been found infringing upon.
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RE: Have to give this a try
by Alfman on Fri 8th Jul 2011 03:03
in reply to "Have to give this a try"
Member since:2011-01-28
ourcomputerbloke,
"'So the billions of developers out there developing trillions of apps ever year are either incredibly brilliant or insanely rich?'
Wow, this exaggerating is easy."
Not really, most software does infringe, it just so happens that most software projects aren't worth suing over.
On the one hand, I'm thankful that software patents are poorly enforced, since it enables many of to develop the best software we can worrying about obscure patent documents written by lawyers.
On the other hand, if software patents were absolutely enforced, it would cause so much backlash, overhead, and abuse that the whole software patent ecosystem would collapse on it's own.
As is, all software exists in a perpetual state of limbo.
RE[2]: Have to give this a try
by crimperman on Fri 8th Jul 2011 08:03
in reply to "RE: Have to give this a try"
Member since:2006-11-09
RE[2]: Have to give this a try
by viton on Fri 8th Jul 2011 16:27
in reply to "RE: Have to give this a try"
Member since:2005-08-09
On the other hand, if software patents were absolutely enforced
Then millions of patents need to be submitted every day, USA government will push insane amount of money to expand staff and the patent office kleks started to killing themselves massively and explode the whole thing =)
RE[2]: Have to give this a try
by Lennie on Sat 9th Jul 2011 14:29
in reply to "RE: Have to give this a try"
Member since:2007-09-22
I always thought they are just waiting for something to get somewhat populair before suing. Going to court to fight a little company and putting them out of business doens't give you much.
But waiting for them to get large and then sue them is probably more profitable (might need to happen within some kind of timeframe).
RE[2]: Have to give this a try
by bnolsen on Sat 9th Jul 2011 17:44
in reply to "RE: Have to give this a try"
Member since:2006-01-06
RE: Have to give this a try
by senshikaze on Fri 8th Jul 2011 11:49
in reply to "Have to give this a try"
Member since:2011-03-08
There are an estimated 3 billion people using computers in the world (give or take half a billion). I seriously doubt that at least one third of computer users are also programmers. Just in my little world including friends, family, and work, I can come up with 1% being programmers. And that is out of some 500 people. I think my ratio is much closer to correct than yours with your "billions of programmers" BS.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/25/13 0:45 UTC
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 23:59 UTC
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 22:33 UTC
Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Linked by Howard Fosdick on 05/24/13 21:41 UTC
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/24/13 14:44 UTC
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 23:22 UTC
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:04 UTC
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 22:01 UTC
"In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/23/13 17:52 UTC
"The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 22:23 UTC
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.More News »
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Member since:
2011-05-12
"So the billions of developers out there developing trillions of apps ever year are either incredibly brilliant or insanely rich?"
Wow, this exaggerating is easy.