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The Nokia E73 has UMA built-in, most other Symbian phones don't seem to have this.

Android doesn't have UMA yet - you can get an Android app from Kineto Wireless ('Smart WiFi' is their term), or you can ask Google nicely to support this in the OS: see http://umatoday.blogspot.com/2010/05/stand-up-and-be-counted.html

Blackberry seems to have the best UMA support.

The answer is that consumers don't know about UMA, and most mobile operators are still very cellular focused, and UMA is only one approach (though for my money it works a lot better than some of the alternatives).

Mobile operators are seeing something of a bandwidth crunch, giving rise to the idea of 'data offload': put as much traffic as possible on WiFi, home broadband, etc - UMA is effectively 'voice offload' which is complementary, and is great for people with poor indoor coverage. Since the more advanced the cellular technology (HSPA, LTE, etc) the smaller the cells become, there will be more and more need for voice and data offload, including UMA.

http://www.umatoday.blogspot.com/ has some stories on UMA, from the consortium promoting it. Andy Abramson, something of a VoIP guru, also likes it: http://andyabramson.blogs.com/voipwatch/2009/11/my-t-mobile-uma-experience-and-my-cdma-data-experience.html - sounds like the UMA support in phones is maturing, perhaps due to RIM/Blackberry pushing this.

UMA is also a great way of roaming internationally with your cellular number, as long as you have WiFi coverage.

Soyuz TMA? See, the Soviets actually do a little thing called "continuous improvement"..

In any case, its the stuff that is being built now that the Shuttle is being retired, and the Constellation zombie is being shot in the head, that you should check out. Quite a few vehicles are under development: http://quantumg.blogspot.com/2010/06/lifeboat-politics.html

You do know that the European Parliament shot down ACTA by a very large margin in the last vote? My MEP isn't from any Pirate Party (our isn't a real party, just a movement), and yet he voted vehemently with them.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_EdNQ3oQR0_c/S_ryDNvviXI/AAAAAAAAEYc/9qJtwvzKrWA/s1600/2010+be+autocolantes+(13).JPG

It's a poster from one of our political parties. It says "Share your files".

The man's real name was Ibrahim Botani - the pseudonym "Kopimi" was adopted because many pirates refer to themselves as kopimists - "kopi mi" --> "copy me."

Here's a somewhat autobiographical post in his blog. Unfortunately for most of slashdot's readership, it's not written in english.

tomhudson, you should be careful about accusing others of lying when they simply disagree with you. Concerning your first "FACT": of course IBM has asserted the patents. For a definition of "to assert", here's a link.

True enough.

We may not have the stars, but we have diversity! And man, does it suck!

Ah, so we're down to playing word games.

I would much prefer to look at all of this from a common sense point of view but if others bring up terminology issues, then so be it and let's talk about them in that case.

simply gloss over the fact that the whole pledge was only about a small subset of the tens of thousands of patents that IBM has.

I criticized the useless quantity of patents covered by the pledge on the very day when it was announced, five and a half years ago. Here's one example of many articles that quoted me that day. Later that same year, I wrote a whole article here on /. in which I explained that those pledges are useless.

Yes, I know one or two of the patents listed on the pledge were on the list of 150 or so sent by Mr Anzani. Somehow I doubt that if they were not there it would make the slightest bit of difference in your statements.

Those are two different aspects. The pledged patents are important from an IBM trustworthiness angle. From another angle, they're just a small part of the overall problem. I discussed this in a blog posting: "the pledged patents are important in one way and unimportant in another"

By the way, any comparison to Google in their approach to patents is meaningless anyway. Google is primarily in the advertising business. IBM is mostly in the intellectual property business.

I've seen a whole more innovation from Google over the last 12 years than from IBM during that same period. Patent experts actually consider Microsoft's innovation much more valuable than IBM's patent-everything-under-the-sun-approach, as I mention in this blog posting on IBM's patent portfolio and patent-related practices.

You actually do think is perfectly OK for someone to simply rip-off an investment representing of billions of dollars by investing nothing yourself, and then claim that is 'competition'.

So would you then also have claimed that Samba, the open source software that interacts with Windows Server, is also just a "rip-off" scheme against the billions of dollars Microsoft invested in its R&D? IBM supported that complaint against Microsoft in the EU. I, too, believe that the EU was right to intervene and I would have liked the EU to go even further and also deal with the software patent problem as a whole. I brought the Microsoft antitrust case up just recently in a presentation I made at LinuxTag, Europe's largest Linux and open source trade show and conference.

Ah, so we're down to playing word games.

I would much prefer to look at all of this from a common sense point of view but if others bring up terminology issues, then so be it and let's talk about them in that case.

simply gloss over the fact that the whole pledge was only about a small subset of the tens of thousands of patents that IBM has.

I criticized the useless quantity of patents covered by the pledge on the very day when it was announced, five and a half years ago. Here's one example of many articles that quoted me that day. Later that same year, I wrote a whole article here on /. in which I explained that those pledges are useless.

Yes, I know one or two of the patents listed on the pledge were on the list of 150 or so sent by Mr Anzani. Somehow I doubt that if they were not there it would make the slightest bit of difference in your statements.

Those are two different aspects. The pledged patents are important from an IBM trustworthiness angle. From another angle, they're just a small part of the overall problem. I discussed this in a blog posting: "the pledged patents are important in one way and unimportant in another"

By the way, any comparison to Google in their approach to patents is meaningless anyway. Google is primarily in the advertising business. IBM is mostly in the intellectual property business.

I've seen a whole more innovation from Google over the last 12 years than from IBM during that same period. Patent experts actually consider Microsoft's innovation much more valuable than IBM's patent-everything-under-the-sun-approach, as I mention in this blog posting on IBM's patent portfolio and patent-related practices.

You actually do think is perfectly OK for someone to simply rip-off an investment representing of billions of dollars by investing nothing yourself, and then claim that is 'competition'.

So would you then also have claimed that Samba, the open source software that interacts with Windows Server, is also just a "rip-off" scheme against the billions of dollars Microsoft invested in its R&D? IBM supported that complaint against Microsoft in the EU. I, too, believe that the EU was right to intervene and I would have liked the EU to go even further and also deal with the software patent problem as a whole. I brought the Microsoft antitrust case up just recently in a presentation I made at LinuxTag, Europe's largest Linux and open source trade show and conference.

Ah, so we're down to playing word games.

I would much prefer to look at all of this from a common sense point of view but if others bring up terminology issues, then so be it and let's talk about them in that case.

simply gloss over the fact that the whole pledge was only about a small subset of the tens of thousands of patents that IBM has.

I criticized the useless quantity of patents covered by the pledge on the very day when it was announced, five and a half years ago. Here's one example of many articles that quoted me that day. Later that same year, I wrote a whole article here on /. in which I explained that those pledges are useless.

Yes, I know one or two of the patents listed on the pledge were on the list of 150 or so sent by Mr Anzani. Somehow I doubt that if they were not there it would make the slightest bit of difference in your statements.

Those are two different aspects. The pledged patents are important from an IBM trustworthiness angle. From another angle, they're just a small part of the overall problem. I discussed this in a blog posting: "the pledged patents are important in one way and unimportant in another"

By the way, any comparison to Google in their approach to patents is meaningless anyway. Google is primarily in the advertising business. IBM is mostly in the intellectual property business.

I've seen a whole more innovation from Google over the last 12 years than from IBM during that same period. Patent experts actually consider Microsoft's innovation much more valuable than IBM's patent-everything-under-the-sun-approach, as I mention in this blog posting on IBM's patent portfolio and patent-related practices.

You actually do think is perfectly OK for someone to simply rip-off an investment representing of billions of dollars by investing nothing yourself, and then claim that is 'competition'.

So would you then also have claimed that Samba, the open source software that interacts with Windows Server, is also just a "rip-off" scheme against the billions of dollars Microsoft invested in its R&D? IBM supported that complaint against Microsoft in the EU. I, too, believe that the EU was right to intervene and I would have liked the EU to go even further and also deal with the software patent problem as a whole. I brought the Microsoft antitrust case up just recently in a presentation I made at LinuxTag, Europe's largest Linux and open source trade show and conference.

I can address these claims one by one.

And IBM has not violated their pledge in any way. They have not sued anyone. They have not sent a cease and desist letter to anyone.

IBM's pledge didn't say "we won't sue or send cease-and-desist letters". It was a promise not to assert the relevant patents. For the difference between "assert" and "sue", please check out this blog posting. No one forced IBM to use the broad term "assert", but they did in the original pledge, so I don't think I'm asking for too much if I expect them to comply with it.

They have not even mentioned the existence of the patents to any member of the Hercules OSS project.

Roger Bowler, the founder of TurboHercules and the person to whom IBM addressed its letters, founded the Hercules open source project in 1999.

Jay Maynard, the current maintainer of the Hercules open source project but not employed by TurboHercules (if I recall correctly), interprets this correctly as an attack on the Hercules open source project.

Apart from this, it's not even a relevant point that you try to make. IBM's pledge wasn't limited to companies in any way. It was a promise not to assert those patents "against the development, use or distribution of Open Source Software" and you can't sue bits and bytes, so obviously this includes companies. There can be no doubt about it because the pledge later makes reference to the scenario of another "party" (anyone but IBM) asserting its own patents against open source, and that passage clearly includes companies just as well.

The Wall Street Journal was right to ask: if TurboHercules doesn't qualify for the pledge, who does?

They have already taken all the action they need - they refused to license z/OS to run on it.

From a copyright perspective they can refuse, but from an antitrust point of view there can be restrictions on IPR owners and the way they exercise their rights. In my opinion this tying of z/OS to IBM-only hardware should be prohibited as tying based on the case law established in the EU in the original Microsoft antitrust case, based on the fact that IBM is no less dominant in the mainframe market than Microsoft was for desktop PC operating systems at the time of the decision.

Neither IBM, nor Google, nor any other company who has made a similar statement has said they would actively SUPPORT a project that they felt infringed on their IP. All they have said is that they would take a passive approach and not sue.

Google's chief lawyer said they won't "use" patents against open source. That is, like "assert", a far broader terminology than "sue", even though "use" and "sue" are anagrams.

In the 10+ years of it's existence, has IBM ever sent any member of the Hercules project a cease and desist letter? Have they ever actually (not in someone's imagination) threatened a lawsuit? No.

I explained above that (i) they had promised "not to assert" (as opposed to promising "not to sue"), and (ii) the TurboHercules company is a natural part of the Hercules community and ecosystem just like Red Hat and Novell's SuSE decision are for Linux, MySQL AB was for MySQL, etc. Should all those companies not have been included in IBM's pledge?

But you and a few others are trying to paint IBM's refusal to actively support a direct competitor as some sort of 'attack' on open source, and it is just plain dishonest.

Looking at how Google categorically dismisses it as "a bad idea" to use patents against open source, you can see that there are indeed people in the industry who share my view that the use of patents against open source is really bad stuff. I never claimed that they sued, I never claimed that they sent a formal cease-and-desi

I find it interesting that the vehicle is being designed for short duration missions. Is Boeing prematurely bowing out of the upcoming lifeboat competition?

http://quantumg.blogspot.com/2010/06/lifeboat-politics.html

You know how many comments PJ deleted on that last story, right?

[...]

Anyhow, actually, I personally commented quite a bit on the TH issue.[...] Not that you'd know that, however, given that she vanished half of the comments. And you can't even tell that she did it, because they'll show up for anyone from your IP, but if you visit Groklaw from elsewhere, they're gone.

Incidentally, I have proof of that in the form of screenshots, logs and quotes.

Other people told me similar stories, but I haven't looked into them in greater detail so far. My focus is really on what the major players in the industry do on the commercial side and in political terms. However, since I already have a collection of material that could be used to expose Groklaw for what it is, I'd like to ask you to send me whatever you have. I got some such material sent in reply to a different call for input, where you find an email address that I use for community input. If you send it to me, I can't promise if or when I'll actually publish it, but it doesn't hurt if I have it in stock because who knows what kinds of debates may come up in the future. Please note that I don't check that email account too frequently, but I do read what I get.

Right after - and as probable as - Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Bernanke, the Chase-Morgan Wells-Fargo etc., and BP gang and CEOs get nabbed and waterboarded. For the same reasons. You shouldn't go holding your breath about it, though.

Dantas is, in Brazil, as those guys are in the US. One of the gang, the 'elite' - or it's sacred bagmen. Got caught on the wrong side of a standard political dispute, for a while. He still has support and enough inside dirt to hold on for a long time.

He'll recover once the parties in cause reconcile, somehow. Probably when the newcomers hang on long enough to qualify as "Lower-tier" old-timers. And as long as he - and his "patrons" - can pay the lawyers, of course.

Meanwhile, us, we, the little folk - get scraps of 'justice'. And the novel satisfaction of seeing a once untouchable and all-powerful banker get prosecuted and do a little time behind bars. In special cells, of course. The comfortable ones. With personal visits. Outside food from good restaurants. Cable-tv. And so on.

Not the popular prisons. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or...

I left the really shocking ones out, of course.

Right after - and as probable as - Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Bernanke, the Chase-Morgan Wells-Fargo etc., and BP gang and CEOs get nabbed and waterboarded. For the same reasons. You shouldn't go holding your breath about it, though.

Dantas is, in Brazil, as those guys are in the US. One of the gang, the 'elite' - or it's sacred bagmen. Got caught on the wrong side of a standard political dispute, for a while. He still has support and enough inside dirt to hold on for a long time.

He'll recover once the parties in cause reconcile, somehow. Probably when the newcomers hang on long enough to qualify as "Lower-tier" old-timers. And as long as he - and his "patrons" - can pay the lawyers, of course.

Meanwhile, us, we, the little folk - get scraps of 'justice'. And the novel satisfaction of seeing a once untouchable and all-powerful banker get prosecuted and do a little time behind bars. In special cells, of course. The comfortable ones. With personal visits. Outside food from good restaurants. Cable-tv. And so on.

Not the popular prisons. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or...

I left the really shocking ones out, of course.

Right after - and as probable as - Bush, Cheney, Halliburton, Bernanke, the Chase-Morgan Wells-Fargo etc., and BP gang and CEOs get nabbed and waterboarded. For the same reasons. You shouldn't go holding your breath about it, though.

Dantas is, in Brazil, as those guys are in the US. One of the gang, the 'elite' - or it's sacred bagmen. Got caught on the wrong side of a standard political dispute, for a while. He still has support and enough inside dirt to hold on for a long time.

He'll recover once the parties in cause reconcile, somehow. Probably when the newcomers hang on long enough to qualify as "Lower-tier" old-timers. And as long as he - and his "patrons" - can pay the lawyers, of course.

Meanwhile, us, we, the little folk - get scraps of 'justice'. And the novel satisfaction of seeing a once untouchable and all-powerful banker get prosecuted and do a little time behind bars. In special cells, of course. The comfortable ones. With personal visits. Outside food from good restaurants. Cable-tv. And so on.

Not the popular prisons. Like this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or this one. Or...

I left the really shocking ones out, of course.

There's certainly some truth in that.

Have you considered using force.com (there is for example the GeoPointe tool to link with google maps) or perhaps Google App Engine (GAE) as a platform for building your own easily scalable, mashup-friendly service? There seems to be something called GeoModel which you can access from within GAE for simple queries like what assets are within a given radius. These services will host it for you so you can save the money of purchasing and renting your own servers too. Here are some jumping off points perhaps..

http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2008/05/app-engine-local-search-maps-making.html
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/articles/geospatial.html#geomodel
http://www.arrowpointe.com/
http://sites.force.com/appexchange/listingDetail?listingId=a0N300000016ZHeEAM

To be fair I suspect the GP means something like the 340mpg Supercub:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_Super_Cub

Looks like they are improving their emissions as well:
http://oscarapparel.blogspot.com/2010/01/honda-super-cub.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorcycle

"United States Environmental Protection Agency 2007 certification result reports for all vehicles versus on highway motorcycles (which also includes scooters),[72] the average certified emissions level for 12,327 vehicles tested was 0.734. The average "Nox+Co End-Of-Useful-Life-Emissions" for 3,863 motorcycles tested was 0.8531, for a difference of about 16%, not the claimed 10X factor. Likewise, if one looks at how many of the 2007 motorcycles tested were also catalytic equipped, 54% of them, 2,092, were equipped with a catalytic converter."

Unfortunately, most vehicle registration fees kill the economics of owning something like that. Those fees ought to be eliminated, along with the sales taxes. When compared to a car, every mile traveled in a Supercub is virtually indistinguishable from using a bicycle in terms of fuel consumption and CO2 production. I'd own one, but for the registration fees. With a bit of thought, the safety need not be any worse than a car - wear highly reflective clothing so that other motorists see you, and ride during daylight when it's dry. Otherwise use your car.

Who knows how many people would buy one if they were exempt from registration fees? If gas prices go up 10x, you can still get around. That's good insurance for a couple grand.

Granted it *should* at least tell them "This app has been found to be malicious and will be removed."

It does:
If an application is removed in this way, users will receive a notification on their phone

Obligatory XKCD

Yep, private industry has never wasted a cent. Their track record is spot on.

http://it-project-failures.blogspot.com/

Just let Google take their StreetView trike, the one for paths too small for a car, down every row in Arlington Cemetery. Then the whole thing would be in StreetView.

OK, so where did they ask IBM for FRAND licenses and get rejected? AFAIK, there has not been even a hint of a suggestion anywhere that they did that.

In this blog posting you can find links to all four letters. The first one says toward the bottom of page 1: "The pricing, conditions and limitations of that license would be at the sole discretion of IBM on reasonable and fair terms.

Instead, they make statements like they think it is 'unlikely' that IBM, a company which proudly touts it's investments and patents, would have any IP relating to it's flagship hardware and architecture.

I'm not aware of any such "unlikely" statement by TurboHercules. In their second letter they said they were surprised to be told that their platform infringes any IBM intellectual property. They had reasons to be surprised, given that the Hercules project started in 1999 and IBM even mentioned it in one of its RedBooks a few years later, and that throughout all those years IBM never indicated any IP issue.

Of course IBM talks a lot about its patents. I discussed IBM's overall approach to patents, and patent quality concerns, in this blog posting. But the fact that IBM has lots of patents doesn't necessarily mean that Hercules infringes any of them.

I think it's very strange that IBM on the one hand claims to be a major proponent and benefactor of open source and then uses patents to threaten an open source startup and, effectively, an 11-year old open source project. By contrast, look at the quote from Google's chief lawyer in this blog posting: "anyone using patents against open source is a bad idea -- you won't see us do it"

OK, so where did they ask IBM for FRAND licenses and get rejected? AFAIK, there has not been even a hint of a suggestion anywhere that they did that.

In this blog posting you can find links to all four letters. The first one says toward the bottom of page 1: "The pricing, conditions and limitations of that license would be at the sole discretion of IBM on reasonable and fair terms.

Instead, they make statements like they think it is 'unlikely' that IBM, a company which proudly touts it's investments and patents, would have any IP relating to it's flagship hardware and architecture.

I'm not aware of any such "unlikely" statement by TurboHercules. In their second letter they said they were surprised to be told that their platform infringes any IBM intellectual property. They had reasons to be surprised, given that the Hercules project started in 1999 and IBM even mentioned it in one of its RedBooks a few years later, and that throughout all those years IBM never indicated any IP issue.

Of course IBM talks a lot about its patents. I discussed IBM's overall approach to patents, and patent quality concerns, in this blog posting. But the fact that IBM has lots of patents doesn't necessarily mean that Hercules infringes any of them.

I think it's very strange that IBM on the one hand claims to be a major proponent and benefactor of open source and then uses patents to threaten an open source startup and, effectively, an 11-year old open source project. By contrast, look at the quote from Google's chief lawyer in this blog posting: "anyone using patents against open source is a bad idea -- you won't see us do it"

OK, so where did they ask IBM for FRAND licenses and get rejected? AFAIK, there has not been even a hint of a suggestion anywhere that they did that.

In this blog posting you can find links to all four letters. The first one says toward the bottom of page 1: "The pricing, conditions and limitations of that license would be at the sole discretion of IBM on reasonable and fair terms.

Instead, they make statements like they think it is 'unlikely' that IBM, a company which proudly touts it's investments and patents, would have any IP relating to it's flagship hardware and architecture.

I'm not aware of any such "unlikely" statement by TurboHercules. In their second letter they said they were surprised to be told that their platform infringes any IBM intellectual property. They had reasons to be surprised, given that the Hercules project started in 1999 and IBM even mentioned it in one of its RedBooks a few years later, and that throughout all those years IBM never indicated any IP issue.

Of course IBM talks a lot about its patents. I discussed IBM's overall approach to patents, and patent quality concerns, in this blog posting. But the fact that IBM has lots of patents doesn't necessarily mean that Hercules infringes any of them.

I think it's very strange that IBM on the one hand claims to be a major proponent and benefactor of open source and then uses patents to threaten an open source startup and, effectively, an 11-year old open source project. By contrast, look at the quote from Google's chief lawyer in this blog posting: "anyone using patents against open source is a bad idea -- you won't see us do it"

You make it hard to respond to your questions. You come up with some speculation and diversion in the first paragraph and then in the second paragraph you ask a question that's unrelated to everything I said.

Of course there's no FOSS license that overrules patent law. But there's a code of ethics in open source. Google's chief lawyer said clearly - when I asked him at a conference two weeks ago - that they think using patents against open source is a bad idea and they won't do it. I've quoted him in this blog posting.

In another post you said that 'certainly no-one expects IBM to give it's IP away for free', and here you say they must 'retract their patent threats'. Well, which is it? Do you expect IBM to give away it's billions of dollars in investments or not?

As a self-proclaimed good citizen of the open source universe, who in some presentations even cites the four freedoms from the Free Software Definition, and as a big proponent of unencumbered open standards, they should retract the threats. But that's a FOSS point of view and should not be confused for a position on what the outcome of an antitrust proceeding would/should/could be. z/OS is clearly an antitrust non-FOSS issue and for that one TurboHercules only inquired about "reasonable" terms, which in my opinion is in line with antitrust law.

What is clear is that you have an agenda against IBM.

My agenda is issue-driven, not company-specific. I want open source to be able to compete. I also want closed source to compete. So my agenda is about competition, about customer choice, about innovation, about fair treatment of customers because all of us are customers even those of us who are also producers.

I don't have any problem with IBM anymore the moment they practice what they preach in terms of interoperability. If they allow customers to run z/OS on non-IBM hardware and if they retract their patent threats against TurboHercules, then I'll applaud them. Then I won't have any more reason to say they use double standards.

They can end this anytime if they do what's right. If they continue to refuse, antitrust intervention may make them consider, or might force them to act reasonably.

In this case, the law has yet to step in and say that IBM is abusing a monopoly position, even though you continue to imply that they are abusing a monopoly position.

Of course it's now up to others than me to determine this. The European Commission has complaints on the table, and the US Department of Justice is aware of the problems. I'm all for letting them to do their job. But I'm entitled to my opinion at this stage. Did you also tell everyone who claimed Microsoft had a monopoly that he should not say so until the end of some proceeding? Freedom of speech, and of thought.

Oh god! you link to sys-con.com as a reference and worse yet to Maureen O'Gara is the author. Well that says it all

You mean the link on this page. It points to an article by Maureen O'Gara that seems accurate to me. If I had found anything in it that I disagree with, I wouldn't have linked to her (nor anyone else). Actually the whole resaon I linked to her article is because it was the first one to say that Sun's former EU antitrust law firm now works for NEON. I thought this was relevant information because Sun was a key antitrust complainant against Microsoft int he past and that law firm did a great job for Sun.

The main problem is that you and TurboHercules are being entirely unreasonable.

You can compare what the TurboHercules company says to what I say, but I want to make it clear that it's not necessarily the same. I view a lot of issues here the way they do, but not all of them, and vice versa I guess.

You do not only want IBM to license z/OS on other platforms

I think a company in a dominant market position should be required to do so. I believe that TurboHercules also thinks so, which is why they filed their antitrust complaint after trying unsuccessfully for a long time to enter into negotiations with IBM. They wrote their first letter to IBM in July 2009 and got turned down (four months later); then wrote another one asking IBM to reconsider, and four months later were turned down again. So they tried in good faith but IBM didn't even want to have a reasonable conversation.

you want IBM to forget that they invested billions of dollars in the platform, and give the results of all that investment away for free.

No one forgets that, and no one wants IBM to forget it. And most importantly, no one demands anything for free. TurboHercules asked in its first letter (for links to the entire correspondence, please check here) for a reasonable offer. They didn't ask for anything free of charge.

Would you be happier if IBM opened the licensing for z/OS (ending the anti-trust claims), then turned around and sued for patent infringement?

This is not a question for me to answer. The regulators have the complaints on the table (not only the one from TurboHercules but also others, such as NEON) and if the European Commission launches an in-depth investigation into IBM's practices, then it's up to the EC to determine what it would consider a satisfactory outcome. And even if they have a satisfactory outcome at some point, they could always launch a new investigation later if necessary.

No he does not mean well The only question is: is Florian Mueller a paid Microsoft shill, or does he do it gratis?

If this is the basic question you have, then I think you can answer it yourself if you take a look at this other comment of mine here.

My position is still the NoSoftwarePatents one. You can find that position reiterated all over my blog and you may also see that I criticized a court decision in favor of a Microsoft FAT patent and have mentioned Microsoft in a variety of patent-related contexts in a way that I'm sure you'll agree is not what a "Microsoft shill" would say.

... apparently so they could throw the list they ASKED for in IBM's face.

This claim that they ASKED for the list is misinformation because it omits an essential fact: IBM said that Hercules infringed its intellectual property (using that term as a synonym for "patents", which is what many lawyers do) out of the blue (or Blue, if you will). TurboHercules had not asked any question about potential "intellectual property" infringement when IBM did it. Then TurboHercules wanted to know what kind of "intellectual property" (the term is so broad it could theoretically mean a plant variety right...) was involved. All of those letters (four in total, two from either company) have been published and you can find links to them in this blog posting. The chronology is perfectly clear, so I hope this clarification helps.

Look at it this way: If I told you you infringe some of my intellectual property, wouldn't you also then want to know what I meant by the term?

Again, you are free to use their HTML5 platform however you wish, without restriction. Your apps will even run without modification on any mobile device that uses WebKit or compatible engine (which is almost all of them).

On the iPhone, iPod touch, and the iPad, HTML5 applications are installable to the springboard and will load without a network connection. They appear to the end user just like a native app, but without the need for App Store access.

Google ported Quake 2 to HTML5. That seems like more than just basic graphics to me. Just exactly what kind of games are not possible using Apple's HTML5 platform?

if they continue with their lawsuit against IBM then IBM might consider using this list of patents against them. [...] I think software patents suck, but using a lawsuit to try to force someone to do something that they don't want to sucks just as much.

Let me inform you then that this is incorrect in three important ways:

This blog posting contains links to all four letters exchanged between the two entities from July 2009 to March 2010. The antitrust complaint was filed in March. The first time IBM said that the Hercules emulator is an "infringing platform" and claimed that its "intellectual property" (in that case, as a synonym for "patents") was violated was in November 2009 -- four to five months before the antitrust complaint.

You say "lawsuit" but TurboHercules never filed a lawsuit. A complaint with an antitrust regulator is something different. It means that the regulator is informed of what someone considers anticompetitive conduct. The regulator then takes a look and will only take action if it concludes that this must be pursued in the public interest. The case then doesn't go to court, at least not in Europe, but if the company that's being investigated (which in this case would be IBM if and when an investigation starts) wanted to appeal the ruling, it could go to court later. Again, TurboHercules didn't go to court.

The other respect in which this is wrong is that IBM never said that TurboHercules should withdraw its antitrust complaint or else would face IP infringement. If you look at the correspondence between the companies, it's clear that TurboHercules had only asked IBM for an offer of reasonable business terms that would allow the use of z/OS in emulation mode. The complaint was lodged in March 2010, and considering that the first polite letter asking IBM for an offer was written in July 2009 and flatly turned down, they decided at some point that they needed help. From an access-to-justice point of view it's very important that such a fledgling company can ask a regulator for help because otherwise the big bully on the block can do to the little guy whatever the bully wants...

Sorry, the last sentence lost me. How does the OpenDocument Format relate to mainframe software?

The explanation is that both are interoperability matters. I've discussed it in greater detail in a blog posting but let me also give some explanation right here:

There are two interoperability issues about the way IBM treats TurboHercules and the Hercules open source project. By tying its operating system to its hardware (not allowing the use of z/OS, even if customers are willing to pay a reasonable price for it, on non-IBM hardware), IBM prevents the emulation/virtualization that Hercules is technically capable of providing. The other issue is that IBM uses patents on its mainframe CPU instruction set to bully TurboHercules and thereby effectively against the Hercules open source project as a whole, as the Hercules maintainer explains on his blog.

ODF is an interoperability matter and its interface is a document format. But the instruction set of a CPU is also an interface: it's the way the software interfaces with the CPU hardware (or, alternatively, with an emulator).

In the political context that's relevant here, it's not primarily about which category of software you promote or attack. It's about the concept of interoperability. IBM's denial to make its proprietary z/OS operating system available for use on non-IBM hardware and its use of patents on a programming interface (the mainframe CPU instruction set) is an attack on interoperability. Therefore, they have a serious credibility problem when trying to tell policy-makers that other companies must make their patents available on an "open standards" basis because of interoperability being so important.

Interoperability is extremely important, no doubt about that. But in IBM's case it's too obvious that they don't want interoperability, customer choice etc. -- they use them as pretexts for their political purposes.

This is not about patents

It's not exclusively about patents. But it's an undeniable fact that IBM asserted patent infringement and hasn't retracted that assertion.

Secondly, citing your own blog is not fact. It's completely insubstantiated.

I didn't say that people should take my word for it, but the blog is a starting point because it contains links to all four letters that were exchanged between IBM and TurboHercules from July 2009 until March 2010. That is what I consider access to substantiation. Please take a look at it and then you might agree.

There is no abuse of rights. IBM has a copyright

No copyright. They said "intellectual property" initially, which is indeed a vague term, but their second letter contained a list of 106 patents and 67 patent applications. No reference to copyright in any of their letters.

and if they choose to exert it they can. Are you going to tell me that if I copyright something I shouldn't be able to exert that copyright? What world do you live in?

The very world in which there's antitrust law. Ever heard of the legal concept of an abuse of a dominant market position? Let me google that for you.

Anyone can still go out and make their own implementation

As you can see, once you do it, IBM claims you violate their intellectual property rights. They bully you, they'll even bully your customers which is what they did in NEON's case. Take a look at the NEON situation and you'll see the parallels between that one and the TurboHercules matter.

The EU also imposed requirements on Microsoft that restricted the way they could use their intellectual property rights and required them to make certain components available separately ("untying"). On that same basis, IBM may soon be required under competition law to make z/OS available on a fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory basis without tying its use to IBM hardware.

Sorry poetmatt, but Groklaw didn't debunk the issue at all. As far as NEON is concerned, Groklaw hasn't reported on it yet as far as I can see. What it wrote in April about TurboHercules was somewhere between 'grossly misleading' and 'totally wrong', and the article contains several links to verify that, for an example, IBM brought patents into play (initially calling them "intellectual property") before TurboHercules ever inquired about possible problems in that regard (see here). Also, Groklaw claimed that IBM's threat letter to TurboHercules wasn't that bad because it wasn't an actual lawsuit or cease-and-desist letter, but IBM had promised in its open source patent pledge "not to assert" a list of 500 patents (see here). And there would be more examples.

I don't think a lot of people here on slashdot agree with you (poetmatt) and Groklaw's PJ that it's a good idea for any company to sue a free and open source software startup that was founded by the same person who created the Hercules open source project in 1999. In fact, a lot of loyal Groklaw readers were disappointed and some of the activists I know (as the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign) were nothing short of shocked that PJ would rush to IBM's defense with an encouragement to sue the pants off an open source company. A few may have expected it from someone who's more loyal to IBM than Rush Limbaugh is to the Republican Party.

You say that it's not "IBM's fault" that Hercules users don't get the license they'd like to get, but that's the whole point of antitrust law: curbing abuse of rights (such as intellectual property rights) by companies in a dominant market position ("dominant" is actually an understatement given that IBM has a de facto monopoly on the mainframe by now).

Sorry poetmatt, but Groklaw didn't debunk the issue at all. As far as NEON is concerned, Groklaw hasn't reported on it yet as far as I can see. What it wrote in April about TurboHercules was somewhere between 'grossly misleading' and 'totally wrong', and the article contains several links to verify that, for an example, IBM brought patents into play (initially calling them "intellectual property") before TurboHercules ever inquired about possible problems in that regard (see here). Also, Groklaw claimed that IBM's threat letter to TurboHercules wasn't that bad because it wasn't an actual lawsuit or cease-and-desist letter, but IBM had promised in its open source patent pledge "not to assert" a list of 500 patents (see here). And there would be more examples.

I don't think a lot of people here on slashdot agree with you (poetmatt) and Groklaw's PJ that it's a good idea for any company to sue a free and open source software startup that was founded by the same person who created the Hercules open source project in 1999. In fact, a lot of loyal Groklaw readers were disappointed and some of the activists I know (as the founder of the NoSoftwarePatents campaign) were nothing short of shocked that PJ would rush to IBM's defense with an encouragement to sue the pants off an open source company. A few may have expected it from someone who's more loyal to IBM than Rush Limbaugh is to the Republican Party.

You say that it's not "IBM's fault" that Hercules users don't get the license they'd like to get, but that's the whole point of antitrust law: curbing abuse of rights (such as intellectual property rights) by companies in a dominant market position ("dominant" is actually an understatement given that IBM has a de facto monopoly on the mainframe by now).

I don't know either, but I'm pretty sure this was done only to silence the public opinion on the US "not doing anything about the hackers!". What's the point of shutting down the networks once the damage is done? Cyberattacks can't be seen coming, like physical ones, and are fundamentally different. Why are those crucial computers networked in the first place, and why aren't they air-gapped?

If anyone's interested, you can read my full opinion at this address.

2.4 From time to time, Google may discover a Product on the Market that violates the Android Market Developer Distribution Agreement or other legal agreements, laws, regulations or policies. You agree that in such an instance Google retains the right to remotely remove those applications from your Device at its sole discretion.

Furthermore, having done it, they informed you.

From Google's blog:

If an application is removed in this way, users will receive a notification on their phone.

6 months

Why America is not helping developing nations by Building (Own, Operate & Transfer) Civilian Nuclear Power Plants?

Sex, in recent time, considered the most pleasurable mode of fun, but logically if we stop for while and think, we come to know that, this is the process of reproduction, if we consider this aspect of Sex, then the we feel the natural and true feeling of pleasure. For finding problem in I Phone check this website. http://iphone4p.blogspot.com/

And the award for the year's most shamelessly non sequitur self-promotion goes to...

Sex, in recent time, considered the most pleasurable mode of fun, but logically if we stop for while and think, we come to know that, this is the process of reproduction, if we consider this aspect of Sex, then the we feel the natural and true feeling of pleasure. For finding problem in I Phone check this website. http://iphone4p.blogspot.com/

And Anil Ananthaswamy covers both in a very entertaining way in "The Edge Of Physics", a cool look at the more practical side of physics - well worth a read, my brief review here: http://coolsciencebooks.blogspot.com/2010/04/edge-of-physics.html

the need to cut off the internet makes perfect sense IN THE RIGHT CONTEXT. which is what the law will be tailored to. but if you take the idea of shutting down the internet, and put it in the context of your deepest fear: say, censorship based on political ideology, of course the idea is frightening. AS IF THIS CONTEXT MAKES ANY SENSE. there is no slippery slope, folks, unless you remove from the law and its invocation the existence of thinking human beings. all jokes about big government to the contrary, that's absurd

One thing I have found time and time again: It is very easy to determine whether or not a law will be abused. Simply look at the people who are worried about what will happen, ask what they're worried about, and then listen to the responses from the proponents. When the responses include such phrases as "this will not happen" "it's impossible" "that's absurd" and the like, the law will be abused in exactly the way being described.

To see too many examples from my own lifetime, you only need to look at copyright law. Laws can now be copyrighted by the writers, and legal battles waged so that the laws can be even be posted online so that everybody can see the laws they are subjected to (see: building codes for various areas around the country, such as Oregon). People working legally within their own country can be held prisoner should they visit another country (see Dmitry Slyarov). People in other countries being investigated in their own country for violating a law that only exists in the US (see DVD Jon).

I have seen any number of people worried about the laws our government enacts, and the way in which it enforces those laws. I have seen them say "Wait! Bad idea! Abuse runs rampant with this!", and be told "Don't worry. Won't happen. You're being overly paranoid." Every time that has been the response, I have later seen that law get abused in just that way. And here you are, telling me (and others) not to worry, we're being paranoid, it won't happen. You'll pardon me if, based on past observation, I am somewhat skeptical of your claim.

If you want to calm us down, and keep us from worrying, it's actually quite easy: Get limits put in the bill. For instance, this would help: "If the President uses the power granted by this law, then a vote of confidence is to be held in both houses of Congress within 48 hours. If the vote of confidence does not pass with at least a 2/3 majority of all members of the houses (not just those who attend), the President is immediately removed from office, with his successor, the Vice President, to take his place. In addition, the order to shut down the Internet will be rescinded immediately on completion of the vote." Put that in, and I'll be okay with this bill passing. The people in charge will be unwilling to use this power except under conditions that would actually require its use. Your response goes from "That's absurd" to "Thanks to this provision, we can ensure that it will only be used when absolutely necessary." Anything less than that sort of response, and I'm nervous.

Quite frankly, you should be nervous too. If you're not, you haven't paid enough attention to how power gets abused.

Your assumption regarding the rating system of youtube is wrong. The like/dislike system was adopted as a consequence of the rating habits of youtube users not in an attempt to mimic facebook. The majority of the videos on youtube were either 1* or 5* with mostly nothing in between.

The like/dislike mechanism is an evolution of a system that is trying to adapt itself to its user base.

You can read more about this on the official youtube blog - http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html

Cheers.

i prefer to eat that potatoes :-) anyway, great info there.. http://the-anxiety-disorders.blogspot.com/

Just the thing you want to be doing firmware flash from, a highly unreliable, painfully slow technology. After doing a BIOS flash from a .BIN file direct from a flash drive, I'd never want to do a floppy flash again (actually I wouldn't want to do one in the first place). Learn to create USB bootable drives. Why limit yourself to uselessly small, painfully slow floppy when you can have 2GB (or more) for cheap. You can boot to DOS if you want for firmware flashes.

One of the last times I used a floppy was to kickstart OS installation on an ancient laptop that couldn't boot straight from CD. It took seven disks before I could get one that would work. Next time if I have to rebuild that system, I'm going to take the laptop apart, take the hard drive out, and put it USB->SATA/IDE adapter. Much less painful.

Most old technologies I can be nostalgic about, but floppies? Good riddance! I hated them 20 years ago when I first used them, and I still hate them now. I only wish for the sanity of ancient CNC operators and similar these adapters saw some more acceptance: http://floppytousb.blogspot.com/2009/08/floppy-to-usb-readerthe-perfect-upgrade.html Connected to the floppy controller, then on the faceplate provided an SD or USB slot, from which a floppy image file would be mounted direct to the hardware. Bring the flash drive back to an ordinary PC, and mount the image file in software. Throw away all that unreliable junk.