Hardware Archive

"Multi-touch technologies have a long history. To put it in perspective, my group at the University of Toronto was working on multi-touch in 1984, the same year that the first Macintosh computer was released, and we were not the first. Furthermore, during the development of the iPhone, Apple was very much aware of the history of multi-touch, dating at least back to 1982, and the use of the pinch gesture, dating back to 1983. This is clearly demonstrated by the bibliography of the PhD thesis of Wayne Westerman, co-founder of FingerWorks, a company that Apple acquired early in 2005, and now an Apple employee. In making this statement about their awareness of past work, I am not criticizing Westerman, the iPhone, or Apple. It is simply good practice and good scholarship to know the literature and do one's homework when embarking on a new product. What I am pointing out, however, is that 'new' technologies - like multi-touch - do not grow out of a vacuum. While marketing tends to like the 'great invention' story, real innovation rarely works that way. In short, the evolution of multi-touch is a text-book example of what I call 'the long-nose of innovation'." If we lived in a just and science-based world, this detailed history alone would be enough for judges the world over to throw all of a certain company's patent aggression out the window. Sadly, we live in an unjust and money-based world.

"Quick - name the most important personal computer of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Those of you who mentioned the legendary Apple II - that's fine. I respect your decision. Forced to think objectively in 2012, I may even agree. But if you just named Radio Shack's TRS-80, you made me smile. Your choice is entirely defensible. And back in the TRS-80's heyday, I not only would have agreed with it but would have vehemently opposed any other candidate."

"Andre Hedrick, a principal engineer and operating system architect at Cisco Systems and a Linux kernel contributor, has died. He leaves behind a wife, four young children and many friends. Andre made a significant contribution to personal computing history in a way few people fully realise." I indeed had no idea. It's subtle, but quite important indeed. Worth reading, and our thoughts and condolences with his family and friends.

"The UEFI secure boot mechanism has been the source of a great deal of concern in the free software community, and for good reason: it could easily be a mechanism by which we lose control over our own systems. Recently, Red Hat's Matthew Garrett described how the Fedora distribution planned to handle secure boot in the Fedora 18 release. That posting has inspired a great deal of concern and criticism, though, arguably, about the wrong things."

Two weeks ago, my grandmother passed away - the last grandparent I had left. As those of you with experience in dealing with deceased family members know, the funeral is only the start; the next part is taking care of the deceased's affairs, which includes going through all their belongings to determine what to do with them. I took care of my grandmother's extensive book collection, and while doing so, I hit something that fascinated me to no end: a six-volume Christian Encyclopaedia from 1956. In it, I found something I just had to share with OSNews.

Hewlett Packard announced the company would lay off nearly nine percent of its 300,000 person workforce over the next two years, or about 27,000 people. The move is expected to save HP $3 billion to $3.5 billion annually. HP stock went up 5% in response to the news Thursday morning. Research firm Ovum asks "...the key missing piece is long-term company vision and strategy, which hopefully will be revealed to an anxious customer base soon... the question still remains: Just what kind of company does HP want to be next year, three years, five years from now?"