hn_decay
A billion dollar transaction does not happen quietly, and IBM would have no reason to keep it quiet. This was strategic for IBM (which is actually a bizarrely responsible corporation): They have a strategic interest in seeing Google empowered.
Microsoft and Apple don't want Google to have defensive patents (patents that both of them know that they infringe on in droves, otherwise they wouldn't be concerned about them).
They should have worked to remove all of these patents off the table as cheaply as possible. The available cash that MS+Apple simply dwarfs what Google has.
Dwarfs is a gross exaggeration. Further both Apple and Microsoft have shareholder responsibility. Microsoft has already made questionable judgment calls to maintain the upper hand -- billions of dollars in patents to make a few hundred million a year in extortion fees, while empowering their own primary competitor (Apple)? It's extraordinary. Apple shareholders are going to start demanding their cash back if it looks like one giant ego pile.
And Google can't quietly buy patents because the people selling want to get as much as possible for it. Well except for IBM who just wanted to stick a gank in Oracle.
The fact that their current IP strategy seems to be to buy IP is absurd.
Many of the patents that Microsoft and Apple are using against Android precede the mobile explosion. They are older companies, having had a long time of big profits to pay people to sit around submitting patent applications.
Because Google didn't make that argument, no matter how terribly M G Sielger may misinterpret it.
"They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them;"
That's what Google actually said. Google partly owning them in concert with Apple and Microsoft does nothing given that Apple and Microsoft are the primary antagonists of Android.
You made this claim yesterday as well. It is so ridiculous that I find it hard to take the rest of your comment seriously.
The iPhone most certainly showed consumer acceptance of a touchscreen. It was a consumer test that demonstrated that the lack of a physical keyboard and minimal physical buttons is acceptable if not preferable by customers. Did any patent application teach anything technical, though? That is laughable.
>People seem to presume that patents are on ideas, and that people are patenting really obvious ideas.
Most patents are on ideas.
There have been a tremendous number of misunderstandings or outright lies about patents on here-
-patents are not some great mystery only known by a few, and are overwhelmingly boilerplate. Every single independent claim stands on its own and can be infringed.
-some have posited that patents are highly specific and no one is qualified to comment on them save super experts. Any criticism of a patent will yield a "you have to look at the specific claims!". Yet here's Apple's own patent lawyers description of why HTC Android handsets violate their patent-
"the Nexus One includes Android's "Linkify" functionality, which "take[s] a piece of text and a regular expression and turns all of the regex matches in the text into clickable links. This is particularly useful for matching things like email addresses, web urls, etc. and making them actionable". That is the meat of it. The rest of the text is boilerplate expanding on the concept of "on a computer".
-patents do not need a working implementation. As others have pointed out, people have patented perpetual motion motions, among other hilarious patents.
But he was. He is arguing that only a small handful of patents -- those used to attack Apple and/or app store developers -- are the problem with the patent system. That is directly in the section quoted.
His argument seemed to be that instead of Google lobbying to rid the world of software patents, they seemed to be playing the same game as MS, Apple & Oracle by bidding on the Nortel patents.
Google is essentially the bitch of the patent world right now, simply because they're a younger company and a land claim occurred. They can both appeal for changes -- which that very blog entry does in droves -- while preparing for the reality that nothing is going to change overnight.
Google will likely acquire a lot of ammunition (the IBM purchase puts them in a very interesting position relative to Oracle, threatening Oracle's entire platform), make life painful for its competitors, and then will be in a position to call for change without everyone declaring, as they are now, that it is merely convenience.
A few hours later he completely changed position to one where he was mildly critical of Apple for making the app less user friendly. I suspect his overwhelming bias just became too strong for even him to bear.
Apple themselves distilled their own patent into the specific infringement. Their reading was identical to mine.
>the HMS Zealotry
You are in the wrong place. Every one of your tactics is bog standard on borefests like Engadget comments.
I believe that software patents are overwhelmingly farce, whether they support Microsoft in attacking Apple, Apple against Samsung, Samsung against Apple, or any of various IP ventures against App Store developers. It is not a position that varies based upon the actors.
The pro-Apple lobby, however, has a position that essentially holds Apple's patents as legitimate and righteous to enforce, but everyone else's as illegitimate for various reasons. It is farce to criticize lodsys and others for entirely legal IP protections -- as the system supposedly encourages -- while supporting Apple and their like behaviors. Whether a company is open to counter-attacks is irrelevant to the legitimacy of patents.
Virtually everyone who interacts with HN relies upon Linux (for instance as the foundation of their startup). Linux infrgines on countless Microsoft patents. Thus far Microsoft has treaded lightly, but I don't think it's tough to imagine how sentiments would change if they started laying the hammer down, shutting down every cloud host, etc. The simple love of a gadget has many supporting an incredibly dangerous position.
But sentiments are changing. I argue for the exercise of it, but there is no doubt that dramatic software patent changes are coming due.
You say so much while saying so little.
Apple's assault on HTC is a perfect demonstration of the failure of the patent system. Dozens of trivial, laughable patents such as "recognize an email address in a string of text", patented decades after such techniques were commonplace. Do you want to show one with actual value, instead of alluding to some great argument foundation that you don't actually have?
Oh, hey, look, Android isn't actually open. Yuk yuk. What relevance does that have, beyond just partisan posturing? Who cares?
You know thousands of patent holders are realizing the potential value of their patents, looking longingly at Apple's $75 billion dollar cash pile (poor guys. Everyone is stealing their stuff). It will be interesting to see how positions change after Apple comes under constant, unrelenting assault. I already see people like Gruber trying to differentiate patents by their holders, which is so ignorant and fanboy-driven that it should embarrass him.
While the discussion was targeted more at the actual value of software patents (i.e. what specifically Apple 'invented' with their multitouch patents), in actual practice yes such a movie is prior art if the novelty of the patent is the application of multifinger gestures. The idea that you need to show a working implementation is nonsense, and has never been a requirement of the patent system.
Regarding warp drive, the novelty of multitouch is the mere concept of using multifinger gestures on an interface. The novelty of a warp drive is the mechanism of achieving warp drive, not the concept of it.
To put it another way, if you patent a method (or system) of making a car fly, maybe that's an invention. Patenting the concept of flying cars, however, is not.
THAT is the Apple multitouch patent that the industry holds as fearsome. No one gives a shit about the Fingertouch patents.
Both have significant similarity to a year 2000 iPaq. Full screen mobile device using a touchscreen against an icon grid, onscreen keyboard, etc. The iPaq was a "PDA", however, which somehow differentiates it. I owned one. I know how they are similar.
>You keep inferring that everything presented in the original iPhone was an obvious extension of what we'd seen before, but it simply wasn't.
No, I'm not inferring that whatsoever. I am arguing whether its uniqueness is patentable. We've seen with various iterations of iOS that it is borrowing from its competitors as well. That's how the world works.
You spend a good 90% of each of your posts saying nothing of value but instead offending me and pandering to the crowd, desperately trying to drag yourself to some higher ground where your complete lack of facts is overlooked. I hope no one falls for it.
>That Stephen Spielburg was able to do it with computer graphics has no bearing on the validity of someone making it exist in the real world.
Again, what did Apple invent? The concept of multitouch? No, not at all. The screen itself? No, not at all. The interface rudiments? I will say it again that most of them were demonstrated in Minority Report. Specific algorithms to detect movement?
You are the one claiming that Android stole this grand invention, so I ask again - what did Android steal? We know it wasn't the idea, or the physical sensor...and I highly doubt they stole the algorithm...so what?
As to Android, it is entirely possible that it went from being a Blackberry clone to instead being an iPaq clone. You know, the iPaq circa 2000 or even earlier. The one that was all screen. Sure it used a stylus, but that was courtesy of the limits of the resistive touchscreen technology.
Surface was unveiled in 2007, with the final hardware design being completed two years prior. The project itself started based upon, humorously, Minority Report.
"Well, where I come from, that means you lost buddy, and I have no further need to rebut you."
Yeah you've said that a couple of times now. Kind of funny, really.
I know exactly what the multitouch patent covers, and yes the basic principals are almost entirely demonstrated in the movie Minority Report. Apple did not invent or have anything to do with multitouch sensors, nor were they close to the first to implement such a sensor.
But you're sure that Android "stole it" (or apparently that they learned great insights from Apple's patent application), which is PERVERSELY wrong on so many levels.
When people say "I'm not going to debate this", it's because they have nothing to debate. You've said nothing of value beyond alluding to a laughable patent example while making absurd claims about the insights gained from patents.
There are novel software implementations. That applies to vanishingly few software patents.
Are you seriously arguing that competition uses software patent applications to get up to speed?
"If the patent system didn't exist, and Apple didn't reveal its inventions, android would be 7 years behind the iPhone."
Incredible.
"They'd still be at the drawing board trying to figure out how to make multi-touch work."
This is so wrong on so many levels that your argument is precisely what I criticized in my other post (that is, perhaps rightly, being moderated down to oblivion). Do you really think Apple invented multitouch? They neither invented the phsycial mechanism (they have nothing whatsoever to do with capacitive sensors), nor the concept itself. Aside from obvious examples like the movie Minority Report (and many that came before), which Apple apparently shamelessly ripped off, it has existed on industrial touchscreen for well over a decade.
The single and only reason Android avoided multitouch, despite the software and the hardware being capable, was that Apple won the race to the patent office. No one learned anything from their patent, nor did Apple invent anything beyond adding "on a mobile device" on their application.
That example alone demolishes your position on software patents.
Strawman, unfair, bigotry, whatever -- I would love to be proven wrong. I have yet to hear a pro-software patent argument that isn't littered with corporate partisan nonsense.
Those products that, to put in your don't-understand-software-patents way, STOLE from other people's innovations?
Because it's coming, and it's going to be ugly for everyone. The patent nuclear war approaches.
Your facts seems to opine that Google should simply suffer the system. They didn't make the game, but they are a young company in a industry of longstanding titans. Apple nor Microsoft nor anyone else has a right to billions in quarterly profits for perpetuity.
How so? Why would there be any expectation that sales would spike in the proximity of the app being a featured freebie? Does the grocery store sell more chocolate milk before or after a sale?
I would imagine quite the opposite really.
However I would revisit the situation in a few months. The app world, especially on Android, is very much one where word of mouth rules. "What app do you guys like for managing/listening to podcasts?" Having a lot of people who now have a vested interest in this app (because they think that they got a deal on it, and that it has monetary worth that wouldn't be there if it was just a normal trial or long-term freebie) yields a lot of people who may very well promote this app.
We'll see.
This whole entry sounds a little bizarre, however. The author got exactly what they should have expected. Where is the rot? There is a unexplained spitefulness that I'm just not understanding.
The GP post originally contained a claim that Android is "garbage", would persist on "feature phones", among other nonse belonging in Engadget comments.
I've had 4 Android devices, all the ways back to cupcake on the G1. In the early years I absolutely saw the issues that the GP observed, tolerating the platform for secondary reasons while hoping it would get better. I, too, had to pull my battery to end a call more than once. Until Froyo I never recommended Android to non-tech friends or peers. With a modern Gingerbread device I would recommend it in a heartbeat.
But...wow...reading their post is like a blast from the past. jm4 seems to have a really bad sense of timing "buy high sell low!" because Android today is a slick, smooth, reliable platform.
Is that true with current devices? Absolutely not. Gingerbread suffers from zero of the complaints that you mentioned.
"I had a task killer installed. It was my most frequently used app."
You should probably remove this from your post because it betrays that you are an ignorant user. All else follows from that.
While you have edited your post here to temper the zeal, comments like "Android just replaces feature phones" are, well, "fanboy" type comments. Tell my Galaxy S II that.
You're angry about something and are taking it out on Android. No one should draw much from your dated observations.
This story is about a bad device, possibly even a defective handset. Call the press, someone got a lemon!
So, essentially, browser hipsters.
It honestly must be emotionally exhausting to work for Mozilla projects. For all of the incredible work they have done (Firefox is the reason Apple still exists...I'll argue that point if anyone would like), there are so many anti-Firefox fanboys who appear in every single Mozilla discussion to express their ridiculous anecdotes or to make uninformed, naive performance observations.
http://www.openhandsetalliance.com/press_110507.html
"Thanks to the availability of our Jbed™ Java™ VM on the Android platform, we offer immediate compatibility to the standard Java ME world to enable Java ME-based mobile services with the Android platform."
So it's a bit fuzzy. I'm on the fence as to what this means, but given that Android was actually based on Java prior to Google's purchase, and this was not long after that transaction, I have to think Schwartz really was referring to a J2ME implementation. Indeed he specifically talks about support for netbeans and the like, which of course is entirely untrue for today's Android development.
So I don't think this is the smoking gun that many think it is. Scwartz perhaps jumped the gun before formalling licensing it, but it isn't some grand endorsement of an Apachy Harmony derivative.
http://blog.yafla.com/Did_Jonathan_Schwartz_Endorse_Androids...