Slashdot Mirror

First time accepted submitter snobody writes "Recently, an article was posted on Slashdot about the claim that law enforcement made about being frustrated by their inability to decrypt messages using Apple's iMessage. However, this article on Techdirt suggests that the DEA may be spewing out disinformation. As the Techdirt article says, if you switch to a new iDevice, you still are able to access your old iMessages, suggesting that Apple has the key somewhere in the cloud. Thus, if law enforcement goes directly to Apple, they should be able to get the key."

theodp writes "Rupert Murdoch's Amplify Education site is all about the kids, so it's understandable that the site's Terms of Use bans abusive, pornographic, obscene, and vulgar content. But if one uses Google to do a site search of Amplify.com (e.g., site:amplify.com donkey) you may get quite an unexpected eye-opener (redacted, but still NSFW). So, does someone at Amplify really want to "@&^$" your "a**"? Of course not. But this does serve as a cautionary tale of the perils of buying a second-hand domain name when pages of the shuttered site may live on in cache-land. Prior to its conversion to a site for kids' education, Amplify.com was a social sharing product that allowed users to clip favorite sites from the web and add their own commentary. Google does note that removed content may still show up in Google's search results in certain situations (removal requests can be made)." Update: 04/08 17:04 GMT by T : Stephanie Chang writes (in a comment below): "Hi, I’m the editor of Amplify.com. We purchased our domain name in February 2012 and took ownership of the site in July 2012 for use as our company's home page. Prior to that, the domain was used by its previous owners as a social-sharing site. As a result, some old content dating back to the previous domain ownership still shows up as cached on certain search engines. Amplify Education, Inc. did not produce the cached content in question nor do we in any way endorse it. We’re working with Google and other search providers to make sure caches of our site are up to date. In the meantime, we apologize to anyone whose attempts to locate information on amplifying donkeys resulted in a negative browsing experience."

We've mentioned a few times the "gentleman's agreements" which some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley used to reduce the risk of employee poaching. walterbyrd writes "This comes from the same judge who awarded Apple $1 billion from Samsung. 'A federal judge on Friday struck down an effort to form a class action lawsuit to go after Apple, Google and five other technology companies for allegedly forming an illegal cartel to tamp down workers' wages and prevent the loss of their best engineers during a multiyear conspiracy broken up by government regulators.'" The lawsuit itself is ongoing (thanks to a ruling last year by the same judge); it's just that the plaintiff's claims cannot be combined.

We've mentioned a few times the "gentleman's agreements" which some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley used to reduce the risk of employee poaching. walterbyrd writes "This comes from the same judge who awarded Apple $1 billion from Samsung. 'A federal judge on Friday struck down an effort to form a class action lawsuit to go after Apple, Google and five other technology companies for allegedly forming an illegal cartel to tamp down workers' wages and prevent the loss of their best engineers during a multiyear conspiracy broken up by government regulators.'" The lawsuit itself is ongoing (thanks to a ruling last year by the same judge); it's just that the plaintiff's claims cannot be combined.

After being saddled with a half-billion dollars in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy, electric car manufacturer Fisker just can't catch a break. It's not just the cars; it's the company itself. From a Reuters report: "In a statement, Fisker confirmed that it let go about 75 percent of its workforce. The automaker said it was 'a necessary strategic step in our efforts to maximize the value of Fisker's core assets.' A Fisker representative could not immediately answer questions on the company's financial position. In the past, the automaker has declined to comment on the possibility of bankruptcy. ... About 160 employees were terminated at a Friday morning meeting at Fisker's Anaheim, California, headquarters, according to a second source who attended the meeting. They were told that the company could not afford to give them severance payments."

After being saddled with a half-billion dollars in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy, electric car manufacturer Fisker just can't catch a break. It's not just the cars; it's the company itself. From a Reuters report: "In a statement, Fisker confirmed that it let go about 75 percent of its workforce. The automaker said it was 'a necessary strategic step in our efforts to maximize the value of Fisker's core assets.' A Fisker representative could not immediately answer questions on the company's financial position. In the past, the automaker has declined to comment on the possibility of bankruptcy. ... About 160 employees were terminated at a Friday morning meeting at Fisker's Anaheim, California, headquarters, according to a second source who attended the meeting. They were told that the company could not afford to give them severance payments."

Adam Orth, creative director of Microsoft Studios, on Thursday tweeted that "doesn't get" objections to DRM schemes that require always-on internet connection to play console games. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft on Friday released an official statement regarding the tweets: 'We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.'" I can't help reading those tweets in the voice of Sterling Archer.

Adam Orth, creative director of Microsoft Studios, on Thursday tweeted that "doesn't get" objections to DRM schemes that require always-on internet connection to play console games. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft on Friday released an official statement regarding the tweets: 'We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.'" I can't help reading those tweets in the voice of Sterling Archer.

beerdragoon writes "Electronic Arts CEO Peter Moore has responded to the company's appearance in the finals of the Consumerist's Worst Company In America poll. Moore accepts some responsibility for some of EA's past failings: 'I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.' However, he ignores or contests many of the common complaints about the company — issues that earned it a spot in the finals for the second year in a row. Quoting: 'Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period. ... Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."

beerdragoon writes "Electronic Arts CEO Peter Moore has responded to the company's appearance in the finals of the Consumerist's Worst Company In America poll. Moore accepts some responsibility for some of EA's past failings: 'I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.' However, he ignores or contests many of the common complaints about the company — issues that earned it a spot in the finals for the second year in a row. Quoting: 'Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period. ... Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."

beerdragoon writes "Electronic Arts CEO Peter Moore has responded to the company's appearance in the finals of the Consumerist's Worst Company In America poll. Moore accepts some responsibility for some of EA's past failings: 'I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.' However, he ignores or contests many of the common complaints about the company — issues that earned it a spot in the finals for the second year in a row. Quoting: 'Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period. ... Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."

beerdragoon writes "Electronic Arts CEO Peter Moore has responded to the company's appearance in the finals of the Consumerist's Worst Company In America poll. Moore accepts some responsibility for some of EA's past failings: 'I’ll be the first to admit that we’ve made plenty of mistakes. These include server shut downs too early, games that didn’t meet expectations, missteps on new pricing models and most recently, severely fumbling the launch of SimCity. We owe gamers better performance than this.' However, he ignores or contests many of the common complaints about the company — issues that earned it a spot in the finals for the second year in a row. Quoting: 'Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period. ... Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."

mk1004 writes "From Bloomberg and the Washington Post come reports that Google is petitioning a federal court to resist compliance with a national security letter from the FBI. This comes two weeks after the U.S. District Judge in San Francisco ruled that NSLs are unconstitutional because they 'violate the First Amendment and separation of powers principles.' Google filed a petition to 'set aside the legal process,' citing a provision that allows judges to modify or deny NSLs that are 'unreasonable, oppressive, or otherwise unlawful.' EFF attorney Matt Zimmerman was quoted as saying, 'the people who are in the best position to challenge the practice are people like Google. So far no one has really stood up for their users.'"

Nerval's Lobster writes "For quite some time, there's been a theory drifting around that government can be made more open and efficient via the same crowdsourcing and social-networking tools that created such successes out of Facebook, Twitter and Kickstarter. In that spirit, numerous pundits and analysts have advocated the development of 'e-government' or 'government 2.0.' But what if the idea isn't as great as it seems? That's the angle embraced by Evgeny Morozov in a recent essay for The Baffler. Structured as a lengthy takedown of open-source advocate and O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly, the piece veers off to fire a few torpedoes at the idea of making government more responsive and transparent through technology (the latter being something O'Reilly readily advocates). 'One of the main reasons why governments choose not to offload certain services to the private sector is not because they think they can do a better job at innovation or efficiency,' Morozov writes, 'but because other considerations — like fairness and equity of access — come into play.' If O'Reilly himself argues that a government should be 'stripped down to its core' into a form more transparent and collaboration-friendly, Morozov counters with the idea that the 'participation' envisioned by most government 2.0 scenarios is limited, little better in practice than the comments section at the bottom of a corporate blog posting."

New submitter SoVi3t points out comments from Microsoft Studios Creative Director Adam Orth about the debate over always-online DRM, brought to the fore recently by the disastrous launch of SimCity and rumors that the next-gen Xbox console will require it. "Don't want a gaming console that requires a persistent internet connection? 'Deal with it,' says Microsoft Studio's creative director. In what he later termed a 'fun lunch break,' Orth took to Twitter to express his shock at people who take umbrage with the idea of an always-on console. When quizzed by other Twitter users about people with no internet connection, he suggested that they should get one, as it is 'awesome.' He then likened people who worry about intermittent internet connectivity being an issue as the same as someone not buying a vacuum cleaner because the electricity sometimes goes out. While Orth later apologized, saying it had being a bit of banter with friends, it did raise awareness that there are more than a few people who are very unhappy with the possibility of an always-on future version of the Xbox. Orth has also now switched his Twitter account settings to private."

New submitter SoVi3t points out comments from Microsoft Studios Creative Director Adam Orth about the debate over always-online DRM, brought to the fore recently by the disastrous launch of SimCity and rumors that the next-gen Xbox console will require it. "Don't want a gaming console that requires a persistent internet connection? 'Deal with it,' says Microsoft Studio's creative director. In what he later termed a 'fun lunch break,' Orth took to Twitter to express his shock at people who take umbrage with the idea of an always-on console. When quizzed by other Twitter users about people with no internet connection, he suggested that they should get one, as it is 'awesome.' He then likened people who worry about intermittent internet connectivity being an issue as the same as someone not buying a vacuum cleaner because the electricity sometimes goes out. While Orth later apologized, saying it had being a bit of banter with friends, it did raise awareness that there are more than a few people who are very unhappy with the possibility of an always-on future version of the Xbox. Orth has also now switched his Twitter account settings to private."

hypnosec writes "WebKit developers have already started discussing the removal of Chrome- and Chromium-specific code from the rendering engine in a bid to make the code easier to maintain. Just a couple of days back, Google announced it will go ahead with a WebKit fork to develop a new browser engine — Blink. According to Google, having multiple rendering engines — just like multiple browsers — will allow for innovation as well as contribute toward a healthy open-web ecosystem. The discussion was started by Geoffery Garen, an Apple WebKit developer. He said Google's departure is an 'opportunity to streamline' the code of WebKit, which would eventually make development 'easier and more coherent for everyone.' Garen expects that developers who will be working on WebKit in the future should help to clean up the code. However, Adam Barth and Eric Seidel — two Google WebKit developers — have already offered their help." Google plans on making the switch to Blink in the stable Chrome release in around 10 weeks. They've posted a half-hour video explaining how the transition will work.

First time accepted submitter gkndivebum writes "The latest casualty from the ill-fated acquisition of British company Autonomy by HP appears to be Raymond Lane, who was recently re-elected by only 58.8% of shareholders. Mr. Lane will remain on the board with shareholder Ralph Whitworth as interim chairman. It will be interesting to see where the 'evolution' of the board as articulated by Mr. Whitworth leads."

Nerval's Lobster writes "Facebook has announced "Home" for Android smartphones (and, eventually, tablets). It's something less than a full Facebook mobile operating system, as some expected before the company's presentation, and more like an app update. Facebook also announced the Facebook Home Program, which will work with several carriers and device makers to pre-load Home onto select devices, including ones built by Samsung, Sony, ZTE, and Lenovo. The first "Home" phone will be the HTC First, a $99.99 phone that will ship April 12 from AT&T. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told analysts and journalists assembled for his presentation that Home was designed to reorient the phone and the Facebook mobile experience around people, not apps: "On one level, Home is the next mobile version of Facebook. On the other, it's a change in the relationship with the next generation of computing devices." Home essentially is a custom start screen for your Android phone, replacing the home screen with one centered on Facebook. While users can access other Android apps on the phone, the focus is on those apps that run on the Facebook platform. Home can also be enabled as a lock screen." Reader RougeFemme points out that France Telecom/Orange will be the first carrier in Europe.

An anonymous reader writes "MIT announced that despite a long history of running an open network (so that any student can run a server on any port, without any questions asked), it will now end this policy due to recent denial-of-service attacks and gunman hoax. From a letter sent by Executive Vice President and Treasurer Israel Ruiz: 'I am deeply and personally committed to safeguarding our community, protecting our campus and securing our systems. Together with our colleagues dedicated to campus safety and security, with the support of senior academic leadership and in collaboration with the campus community, we are deploying all necessary resources to this effort. It will require the dedication of all of us to promote safety awareness, complete necessary emergency training, and adhere to reinforced cyber security guidelines. IS&T staff members are working with information technology (IT) leadership and partners across campus in making the changes described above. We continue to explore all opportunities to further strengthen our preparedness, and will communicate additional information as these plans evolve.'"

An anonymous reader writes "Google on Wednesday made a huge announcement to fork WebKit and build a new rendering engine called Blink. Opera, which only recently decided to replace its own Presto rendering engine for WebKit, has confirmed with TNW that it will be following suit. 'When we announced the move away from Presto, we announced that we are going with the Chromium package, and the forking and name change have little practical influence on the Opera browsers. So yes, your understanding is correct,' an Opera spokesperson told TNW. This will affect both desktop and mobile versions of Opera the spokesperson further confirmed."

coondoggie writes "New federal restrictions now preclude four U.S. agencies from buying information-technology (IT) systems from manufacturers 'owned, directed or subsidized by the People's Republic of China' due to national-security concerns. But is this a smart tactic? It's clear that some in the U.S. government, including the House Intelligence Committee — which issued a scathing report last fall that called Huawei and ZTE a threat to national security — and the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. are also working in other ways behind the scenes to keep technology made by China-based manufacturers out of U.S. commercial networks as well."

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft on Wednesday released SkyDrive 3.0 for iOS out of the blue. Last time the app was in the news, Apple was stopping Microsoft from pushing out an update in the App Store because the company doesn't pay a 30 percent cut of the subscription revenue it generates. Now we've learned how Microsoft managed to update its iOS app today. 'We worked with Apple to create a solution that benefited our mutual customers,' a Microsoft spokesperson told TNW. 'The SkyDrive app for iOS is slightly different than other SkyDrive apps in that people interested in buying additional storage will do so via the web versus in the app.' Does this set a precedent for an iOS version of Microsoft Office?"

crookedvulture writes "Seagate announced its third-generation hybrid drives last month, revealing a full family of notebook and desktop drives that combine mechanical platters with solid-state storage. These so-called SSHDs are Seagate's first to be capable of caching write requests in addition to reads, and the mobile variants are already selling online. Unfortunately, a closer look at the Laptop Thin SSHD reveals some problems with Seagate's new design. While the integrated flash cache reduces OS and application load times by 30-45%, overall performance appears to be held back by its 5,400-RPM mechanical component. Seagate's last-gen Momentus XT hybrid spins its platters at 7,200-RPM, and it's faster than the new SSHD in a wide range of tests. The upcoming desktop SSHDs will also have 7,200-RPM spindle speeds, so they may prove more appealing than the mobile models."

This is the second of our two-part interview (part one ran yesterday) with Conjurer and Investigator (his words) James Randi, whose organization, the James Randi Education Foundation, has a long-standing offer: prove you have paranormal abilities and they'll give you $1 Million. They say they've recently made this award easier than ever to win. Note that, lower bar or no, Randi claims the last time a conjurer's illusion fooled him was many years ago, when he was very young. It was one done by the famous Chan Canasta -- and Randi claims that in the end he figured it out, anyway. So forget the $1 Million, relax, and enjoy James Randi. He's a great raconteur, so we can all be jealous of interviewer Rob Rozeboom (samzenpus) for having made this great video even as we enjoy watching it.

Last week we announced that co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, had agreed to do a live Q&A. Earlier today we posted a few of his answers, but now's your chance to hear it directly from him. Mr. Myhrvold will be answering your questions below until 12:30 PDT. Please keep it to one question per post so everyone gets a chance. Update: 04/03 19:41 GMT by S : 12:30pm PDT has come and gone, and Mr. Myhrvold has to move on. Thanks for the answers! Here's a link to his user page if you'd just like to read his responses.

Last week we announced that co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, had agreed to do a live Q&A. Earlier today we posted a few of his answers, but now's your chance to hear it directly from him. Mr. Myhrvold will be answering your questions below until 12:30 PDT. Please keep it to one question per post so everyone gets a chance. Update: 04/03 19:41 GMT by S : 12:30pm PDT has come and gone, and Mr. Myhrvold has to move on. Thanks for the answers! Here's a link to his user page if you'd just like to read his responses.

Last week we announced that co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, had agreed to do a live Q&A. Earlier today we posted a few of his answers, but now's your chance to hear it directly from him. Mr. Myhrvold will be answering your questions below until 12:30 PDT. Please keep it to one question per post so everyone gets a chance. Update: 04/03 19:41 GMT by S : 12:30pm PDT has come and gone, and Mr. Myhrvold has to move on. Thanks for the answers! Here's a link to his user page if you'd just like to read his responses.

Last week you had a chance to ask co-founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, Nathan Myhrvold, questions before his live Q&A. Below you'll find his answers to a few of the highest rated. Make sure you come back today from 12-12:30pm PDT (3-3:30pm ET, 19:00-19:30 GMT) to ask him whatever you like in real time. We'll have a new story for your questions at that time. What's it like being "evil"?
by Sarten-X

From working at big bad Microsoft to founding a patent-focused lab, you seem like an ideal person to answer a question I've had for a while: What's it like working in companies that are constantly under attack from those who try to claim a moral high ground?

To clarify, I don't mean to imply that you are evil, or that Microsoft or Intellectual Ventures are harming society, but rather I recognize that such accusations are common, regardless of truth. On the one hand, I don't assume that the FOSS fanatics (including myself at times) are always right about how bad Microsoft is, or the free-IP crowd is always right about how patents are crushing us, but at the same time I find it hard to believe they're always wrong, too. I'm curious what kind of moral dilemmas you encounter in this respect, if any, and what insight you might be able to provide as to life on the receiving end of the activists' assaults.

NATHAN: First, thanks for implying I may not be evil. I appreciate it. Most people think I’m crazy for entering this lion’s den. But look, if I wanted to be popular, I would have gone to a chef’s convention!

The fact is that I have more in common with you guys on /. than you might think. This is a community populated by engineers and technologists, not Luddites. You love great ideas. So do I. We may differ on the *economic value* of those great ideas, but I think this group debates innovation with the same passion and rigor that I do.

Here is an analogy – which isn’t perfect, but I think it captures the flavor of your question – it’s like being American and hearing international criticism.

When you turn on the news it’s certainly not uncommon to see demonstrations by people burning flags and declaring their hatred of America. North Korea is the most recent example, but it happens all the time. Analogous demonstrations occur all over the world – even in prosperous western democracies like France.

While people calling for your death is concerning, it doesn’t automatically follow that I should take it personally as an American citizen. More often than not these are manifestations of ideological struggles. It is more about what America symbolizes than anything. Most of their angst is directed against the political idea of “America” and what it means in the world rather than tangible acts by individual Americans.

At Microsoft, we were on the receiving end of this as well. Obviously I was aware of that, but it was hard to take all of the hatred seriously for the same reason that it is hard to take all of the criticism of America personally.

If you’re a “superpower,” a market leader or disruptive agent of change you’re going to catch some shit. Some of it may be due to legitimate complaints about certain things said “superpower” does. Microsoft wasn’t (and isn’t) infallible. Nor is the US government. But a lot of it is going to be reacting to the abstract idea that Microsoft is a “superpower”.

Even if you disagree about the source of the criticism, your question was how does it *feel* to be in a company that is hated. Well, I think that the feeling is very similar to how I feel about being an American when my country is hated. I was (and remain) very proud of what I did at Microsoft. The other people there were great, and on the whole did great work.

The same goes for Intellectual Ventures. When the critical remarks become too shrill or over the top, it is just hard to take it seriously as anything approaching constructive criticism.

Also, I’m willing to take on that personal risk of negative attention and stay on the pointy edge of these debates because I know very well that what I’m doing is risky. A) I’m creating a capital market for invention that has never existed before and B) I’m investing in inventions! Inventions take decades to bear fruit and let’s face it, history says they are more likely to fail than they are to succeed. But that’s the thrill of it. Gambling on those great ideas and watching which ones win. Kymeta is one I’m particularly proud of. They just signed up their first customer.



Is the Patent System broken?
by eldavojohn

Many readers of Slashdot (myself included) feel that the patent system is broken. I haven't heard any criticisms from you or Intellectual Ventures so I'm interested in hearing what you have to say about the patent system. Is it fundamentally broken? Only a little broken? Working flawlessly and exactly as it was intended to work??

NATHAN: No, I do not think the U.S. patent system is broken.

That is taken for granted by a lot of people, but frankly there isn’t any evidence that on a wide spread basis that it is “broken”.

People may “feel” that way (as you put it) but in my view that is mostly based on a couple of things:

1. Recounting anecdotes about a specific bad patent. There are lots of stories about patents that never should have been granted. These are used to imply that all patents are bad. Well, of course there are a few patents that should not have been granted, but isolated anecdotes don’t indict a whole system. Indeed you can always find an anecdote to support virtually any proposition. Statistics matter, and you can’t use rare cases to draw sweeping conclusions.

2. Plus, many of the stories about bad patents don’t actually tell the real story. While there are some bad patents out there, it turns out that many of the specific cases that are used to illustrate how “broken” the patent system are not told correctly. Some stories turn out to be factually wrong; some are fabricated entirely. In other cases the story that is told is true as far as it is told, but the whole story isn’t out there. A complete understanding of the story often leads to a different conclusion.

3. Not knowing how to read a patent. Say you aren’t a programmer and you try to read some code – say in C – you could probably sort of understand some of it because “if”, “else” and similar constructs can be interpreted a bit using their English language meaning. But you can’t really understand the code that way. Well, a patent is similar. The language used to write patent claims is basically English, but the specific interpretation is couched in patent law. When a technical person who isn’t familiar with patent law reads a patent they often come away with a misunderstanding of what the patent actually covers – usually thinking that it is much broader than it actually is. This gives the impression that the patent covers things it doesn’t, and then leads to the impression that it is overly broad, obvious and shouldn’t have been granted.

4. An axe to grind. Many of the people claiming that the patent system is broken feel that way because they have an agenda. As one example, many large technology companies have taken other people’s inventions and used them to make billions. They don’t want to pay. So they have an agenda to attack the patent system – that is both easier and cheaper than to pay what they owe. Open source advocates have a similar agenda – they fear that their favorite open source project may be threatened by patents. Once you have an agenda to minimize or marginalize patents, it is easy to see the system as broken.

5. Revisionist history. One of the funny arguments that people make is that patents are supposed to be there to help product-making companies. The U.S. Constitution predated the Industrial Revolution and the creation of the US patent system in 1787 was designed to protect the inventor, not corporations (or practicing entities as the IP industry is fond of calling them now). The idea of patents is to give incentive to inventors.

6. Ideology. Some people have an intellectual or ideological problem with intangible intellectual property. For example, some people hate copyright. Well, there are some that hate patents also.

These are just some of the pitfalls in the “patents are broken” argument as it is typically presented.

Is the system perfect? No, it isn’t.

The patent office has had funding issues. In recent years Congress has raided the patent office fees and taken them to spend elsewhere rather than let them be used to improve the patent office.

In some industries – say biotech and pharmaceuticals – the system works reasonably well in its main point, which is to give economic motivation to people inventing new things. No pharma company would invest in a new drug, especially the huge cost of clinical trials, without having some exclusivity.

Millions of people are alive today because of the patented medical innovations created by this incentive system. While it may not be perfect (what is?), it is has been remarkably successful. The majority of people reading this post have had their lives or those of a close family member saved by a patented medicine.

Within computer technology, the system of granting patents works reasonably well. The system of getting an inventor paid isn’t that great because historically speaking giant technology companies steal a lot of inventions and don’t pay for them.

This is changing somewhat because big tech companies like Microsoft and Apple are now enforcing patents as a part of their business strategy, but there is still a strong segment of the tech industry that doesn’t want to pay inventors.

The ideal system would be a meritocracy where inventors would get paid for their work. That is what makes the incentive system work. Failing to pay hurts the effectiveness of the system overall.



Re:what are the differences from the past?
by alexander_686

Those patents were for making things and scope was well defined. First, the newer set of patents tend to be for ideas and business processes and are not well defined and tend to be broad. I forget the details, but somebody has a patent for transmitting images over a network which in theory covers almost every moving image on the internet – and this was not for a specific method, code, or algorithm of doing so – just the general idea. Second, devices are getting more complex and interrelated. A cell phone needs patents covering data transmission, networking protocols, digital camera, OS, etc. Throw on top of that design patents (look and feel) and it is a real mess.

NATHAN: This may be a bit controversial, but the reality is that the patent system was the world’s first experiment with open source.

The idea of the patent system is that after a period of time (typically 20 years) the invention passes into the public domain. The inventor must share enough information in the patent to allow somebody to recreate the invention. Indeed, the word “patent” originates from the Latin “patere,” which means "to lay open".

The 20 year exclusive period acts as an economic incentive for the inventor to share the information. The incentive is necessary because otherwise an inventor could keep an invention secret. The incentive is reasonable because invention is expensive and risky. It often takes a lot of failure before you get it right. Patents are a way to simultaneously protect and distribute the ideas for usage, assuming the original inventor gets compensated for their work. There’s the rub. What’s so wrong with making sure the inventor gets compensated for their hard work? Why is that such a problem?

We have plenty of tech companies now that offer free massages, lunch, dry-cleaning and a myriad of other things to their employees. Have you seen their margins? Do you really think they can’t afford to pay an inventor for their work? I’m not talking about huge percentages either. Licensing patents represent only a *fraction* of a product’s overall costs, when you tally up development, materials, production, marketing, distribution, and so forth. But the fact of the matter remains, these companies are standing on the shoulders of those who came before without proper compensation even though their work is being used in a product by thousands or even millions of people.

Calling patents a system similar to open source may seem odd, because most current open source software has no period of exclusivity. Open source software as typically practiced is a private system that people willingly enter into. If they don’t want to ask for benefit other that participation and recognition that is great – but their CHOICE to do what they want with their creative output is fully consistent with copyright law.

In fact, that is a very instructive case. Not so long ago many people now associated with the open source software community hated copyright. They wanted to copy code, and thought it was terrible that software could be protected by copyright. Richard Stallman in particular argued strongly against copyright.

Then, a funny thing happened. People in the open source community figured out that by cleverly adopting a copyright license they could actually protect the openness of the code. Suddenly copyright went from something that was hated to something that is an essential part of the legal framework that lets open source work.

I believe that something like that is possible with patents too. At the moment many people in the open source movement disapprove of patents. I believe that this is an echo of the anti-copyright sentiment. But ultimately I think that it is just as misguided – that far from being a problem for open source, patents could make a net-positive contribution.



Can you present examples of how IV has helped individual inventors to get revenue from their inventions?
by patmandu

Please include specific names, specific inventions, approximate revenue seen by the inventor, and current status of the invention-related product(s) and ownership of the patent(s).

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures has paid out $400 million to individual inventors to date, where our business model involves purchasing either A) a patent application to prosecute (note that “prosecuting” a patent means applying to the patent office to get a patent granted – people think that it means litigation, but that’s not the way the term is used); or B) a patent outright.

Here are some examples:

Rebecca Taylor, an inventor from Austin, received her first patent for an embedded software translation machine that streamlines data sharing and eliminates code bloat to create efficient communication between devices. When a deal fell through to sell this invention to another big tech company, a chance meeting with me brought her to Intellectual Ventures instead. She sold her patent to us and fund both her son’s college education and her own graduate studies in public policy. Taylor is currently serving as senior adviser for innovation and entrepreneurship in the U.S. Department of State’s Office of the Science & Technology Adviser to the Secretary.

Lev Bolotin, an inventor & entrepreneur based near us in Seattle, and Matthew Whitten, an inventor and software engineer from Maine, both chose Intellectual Ventures because it was the only company that could both monetize and build up a significant IP portfolio for their startups. Both have used the cash from these deals to finance their ventures. In Bolotin’s words: “Intellectual Ventures proved to the business community that IP can be trusted as an asset. It can be bought and sold. IV has established a value reference for IP—and that is priceless!”

There are other great examples of the individual inventors we work with here.

I’ll also take this opportunity to point out that the most important inventors we work with are Intellectual Ventures employees. We have nuclear physicists, rocket scientists, neurosurgeons, chemists, and mathematicians roaming our halls. Many have hundreds of patents worldwide to their name. Many more have PhDs.



Results
by Matt_Bennett

What products have Intellectual Ventures developed and brought to market?

NATHAN: Intellectual Ventures is focused on invention, not making products itself.

In terms of new inventions filed before the patent office in 2012, we were the 4th company in the US, and 16th worldwide.

Some of those inventions are suitable for starting new companies. We have created two spin out companies so far, Kymeta, which makes a radical new metamaterial antenna that will revolutionize mobile bandwidth, and TerraPower, which is commercializing our invention of a new type of clean and safe nuclear power plant.

Most inventions, even great ones, are not suitable for founding a company. In those cases we license the patents, typically on a non-exclusive basis, to dozens of companies. Most market-leading technology products contain inventions that Intellectual Ventures has licensed.

Some people don’t like the idea of invention without making products. I don’t really see why. By specializing in invention, and investing in invention, we can be better at it than companies that focus on the commercialization.

Another weird aspect of this is that very few US-based companies actually *make* products. Apple doesn’t make iPhones. They design them, and then they contract for others to make them. The actual MAKING is done by companies in China.

As another example, a venture capital company does not make products. Neither does a mutual fund company. They simply invest in others.

So, if a mutual fund like Fidelity owns stock in Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others, people don’t seem to have a problem with it. Their investment enables those companies to make their products (or contract for them to be made).

If a venture firm like Benchmark or Kleiner Perkins invests in tech startups, nobody has a problem. Again, the investment enables them.

Well, we license patents to Apple, Intel, Microsoft and others. That enables them too. And we start new companies, enabling them to make products.



Relationship to Oasis Research and Lodsys?
by eldavojohn

One of my favorite radio shows called "This American Life" covered Intellectual Ventures extensively about two years ago in an episode called "When Patents Attack!" They tried to visit Oasis Research offices at 104 East Houston Street, Suite 190 in Marshall, Texas but found them largely vacant. What is IV's relationship with Oasis Research and Lodsys and why are these empty offices in Marshall, Texas? What sort of partners are Lodsys and Oasis Research? Customers? Licensees?

NATHAN: We routinely sell our patents either individually or in full portfolios. These are called divestitures in the asset management world and we consider our patent holdings our assets. We sold patents to Oasis and Lodsys.

At the time we bought those assets, anybody else could have bought them. At the time we sold them, the same thing is true. Before selling them we had licensed a number of companies to these patents. Those companies, or others, could have bought the patents to use them strategically, or simply to hold them as a service to their developer communities.

It happens that Lodsys and Oasis bought them, and they chose to pursue patent assertion, and also litigation. I have no control over what they would do with the patents.

In a perfect world we could make money without any side effects, and the buyers of our patents would not cause as much controversy as those sales have done. Here on planet earth things are far from perfect, and that is not what happened. I re-learned an important management lesson from This American Life: I cannot control every outcome, but I certainly take responsibility for it.

On one hand, I don’t feel a bit ashamed that Intellectual Ventures could make a return on those investments for us and for our investors. We bought the assets originally, we licensed them, and then we sold them. That is how the market works.

On the other hand, I feel that even though I don’t control them, I do take responsibility for the backlash it created. As CEO, it’s my job to determine whether that’s the best business practice moving forward. We will most definitely continue to divest assets since there is market demand, but the company will be looking more closely at the *how* we do it and under what terms.



Mosquitoes
by Skewray

The Photonic Fence project was proposed with much fanfare about six years ago, to rid Africa is disease-carrying mosquitoes. Rumor has it that the Gates Foundation has cut funding. The project appears to have developed nothing of practical use, although the project leaders responsible appear to still be in control. Is there going to be a serious forensic analysis of how the project went south?

NATHAN: Actually, we have many anti-malaria projects, and the photonic fence is just one of them. We have been successful in proving the basic concept – that you can identify, track and kill a mosquito using lasers – in a lab setting, so now we’re looking at the best way to apply the technology.

There are some significant hurdles to deploying something like this in developing countries, so it might end up that the technology is used more for research purposes to understand mosquitoes.

We’re still figuring that out and talking with potential commercial partners, but one of the important things about the photonic fence is that we got people thinking and talking about malaria prevention in new ways. That’s one of the values of inventing. It’s an inherently risky activity, but even inventions that don’t ultimately work out as you expected challenge people to think about problems in new ways and open up new possibilities to explore.

It is important to remember that not every project will work out! We are still working on the photonic fence, but it may be an idea that is flawed, or maybe it will work in the future but it is ahead of its time. When you invent you take that sort of risk.



Philanthropic work
by jaiyen

As you've already made your fortune, I'm curious as to why you choose to get involved in controversial patent licensing, rather than, say, Bill Gates style philanthropic work?

NATHAN: First, I think that what we are doing at Intellectual Ventures is a very important and beneficial thing for the world. If we can establish what I like to call the “invention capital” market and get more funding to inventors, it would have an impact similar to the creation of the venture capital market.

So, far from this being simply a way to make money, I think that establishing invention capital is a very important contribution. I’ve written an article in Harvard Business Review about this: [http://www.intellectualventures.com/index.php/news/media-coverage/funding-eureka]. That doesn’t mean that it is the same as Bill’s philanthropy, but I think it is still a very worthy thing to do.

Bill is one of my closest friends, a mentor and also an investor in many of our projects. I admire the work he is doing with his Foundation. So much so in fact, that we decided to partner a few years ago to tackle some of the biggest problems Bill and Melinda want to solve. So we have a project called Global Good that focuses specifically on the inventions required to save lives in developing countries.

Frankly we think we serve the developing world better by focusing our expertise than via traditional philanthropy. So far, we have done work on the photonic fence (which I described in my response to Skewray), cold-chain storage technology for vaccines and modeling software for infectious diseases.



Traveling wave reactors vs (and) thorium
by DPajak

Mr. Myhrvold: I know you are sold on traveling wave reactors, and I hope they prove their worth. But, I was wondering; have you given up on thorium-powered reactors? I saw an article in Forbes not too long ago where the author actually argued that, because it would turn thorium from an expensive-to-dispose-of-waste-product into a valuable resource, building thorium reactors could make electronics cheaper. This is because thorium is usually present in rare earth metals used for electronics and often have to be removed prior to processing. Have you considered running a similar kind of reactor to traveling wave on a thorium-uranium mixture (that would also deal with the problem of thorium being "fertile" as opposed to "fissile")? If thorium-powered reactors reduced the price of manufacturing electric vehicles, you would have the added benefit of cheaper EVs. This would not only reduce carbon emissions even further and faster; it would put more demand on the electricity grid as more people switched over to EVs from internal combustion powered cars. This would mean we w’ould need even more electricity generation and less fossil fuels; we could build more of both the thorium reactors like LFTRs and traveling wave reactors to meet the demand. Finally, as everyone knows, thorium is far more common in the earth's crust than uranium. It seems to me using thorium-powered reactors to compliment your reactor concepts like traveling wave reactors would speed up the process you are trying to create, namely, the decarbonization of first the United States first, and then the world. I see no reason why both uranium and thorium reactors are not necessary. What are your thoughts? And is Intellectual Ventures pursuing R&D on thorium, as well?

NATHAN: Thoughtful question, thank you. We did explore thorium in the conceptual designs for the travelling wave reactor at TerraPower.

The neutronics of a thorium reaction are not quite the same as for uranium, and as a result it is a lot more challenging to engineer a thorium based system. That said, we have invented what we believe is the best thorium based reactor out there, and would love to pursue it at some point.

The nuclear power community is quite conservative – and rightly so – so we have tried to make the best design we can get into service quickly, and that is a uranium based system.

Also, while Th is much more common than U in the crust as you point out, our TerraPower reactor can use depleted uranium, and even use spent fuel rods as a source. As a result there is PLENTY of fuel for our reactors for the foreseeable future. Eventually, we would like to see both U and Th systems out there.



Sense of Accomplishment
by PaddyM

As a software engineer, I produce solutions to different problems every day which are then implemented and used by people. If my resulting software was not used by anyone, I would not gain much fulfillment in my work. Considering that much of the work done by Intellectual Ventures does not result in actual tangible products, do you still get a sense of accomplishment? Are you prouder of the ideas which actually get implemented? Or are you satisfied with the ideas that are developed, independent of whether they result in viable products or not?

NATHAN: Excellent question. I absolutely do get a sense of accomplishment. But it’s a more delayed sense of accomplishment. This brings up a really important distinction I think that needs to be made. I firmly believe that ideas are ends in and of themselves. Sure they might go on to live their lives as part of a product down the road, but even if it doesn’t make it into a product it is not deprived of its intrinsic value. No idea = no product in the first place. Intellectual exploration doesn’t require the validation a product does.

While there are many VCs out there expecting returns in just a handful of years, we work on a much longer timeline. So the stepping stones and ideas that might not seem relevant or directly applicable now may be 20 years from now—we aren’t entirely sure about that. I have to be satisfied with that. Even though an idea doesn’t make it into a product this year or next isn’t automatic failure to me.

As an inventor and as someone in the business of ideas, you have to be satisfied with failure. And in a weird way, that has to be part of your sense of accomplishment. Knowing that each failure means you’re one step closer to getting it right.

Also, there’s great satisfaction in taking the journey in the first place. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Take the scientific research community for example. A lot of the glory in research comes from being first to get your idea published in a peer-reviewed journal. It’s a race. And ideas are the same way. I want to win, but I don’t always. But it’s good to at least be part of the race.



Science of cooking food
by peter303

One of the TV news magazines showed some of the things you learned about new, scientific ways of cooking food. What was the most amazing thing, in your opinion, that you discovered?

NATHAN: I’ll be honest, I can’t pick one thing - I learned so much as I worked on Modernist Cuisine. But I’m betting this crowd will like these two:

1. Try decanting your wine with an ordinary kitchen blender. It’s pretty amazing. I just pour the wine in, frappé away at the highest power setting for 30 to 60 seconds, and then allow the froth to subside (which happens quickly) before serving. We call it “hyperdecanting.” One reason to do is to improve the taste of a young red wine, but the other big benefit is the looks on people’s faces! People are so conservative about wine – they treat it with this odd reverence – that when you put in a blender a lot of folks just freak out.

2. Perhaps you have an ultrasonic bath lying around? (Finally! I’ve been waiting for an audience that might actually apply to!) Try using it to make French fries. Unbelievably delicious.



One inventor question:
by Tablizer

where's our f@!&# flying cars?

NATHAN: Seriously. Where the f@!&# are they? I want one too!

The serious answer to the question is that flying is really hard to do. Look at driving a car. It is easy enough that everybody does it, but also hard enough that we kill ~30,000 people a year on the road. We take this for granted, but it is a huge problem.

Flying is much safer because the FAA went nuts on safety, and on qualifications. Flying in a commercial jet is much safer than driving your own car. In a perfect world, you would spend some of the effort made to make airplanes safe to make our cars safer.

FAA regulations make it virtually impossible for anybody to make a flying car that is a realistic consumer product. It’s also hard to do intrinsically – flight is very challenging.

Even though flying is much safer, it is still hard to do – most accidents are pilot error. The same thing is true for cars. The problem is leaving the human in the loop.

I am very excited by self-driving cars pioneered by the DARPA Grand Challenge, and now experimented with by Google and others.

The next big step in safer cars is going to be making them drive themselves.

Airplanes, and especially helicopters, need this approach too.

Maybe once that technology is mature we can get a flying car.

Nerval's Lobster writes "After defeating a shareholder insurrection that largely stemmed from how it handled the Autonomy acquisition, Hewlett-Packard is trying to resuscitate the fortunes of that troubled analytics-software unit. In an interview, Robert Youngjohns, General Manager of the Autonomy division for HP, conceded that the controversy surrounding the acquisition and its aftermath has proven a significant distraction for the company. ... HP's ambitious turnaround plan involves focusing Autonomy technology, which can help find the right data in huge datasets, on areas such as Web content management and information governance. But it's a big question whether HP can overcome all the negative publicity swirling around Autonomy, widely seen as a poor acquisition: Back in November 2012, HP accused Autonomy's management team of using 'accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company.' It alerted the SEC's Enforcement Division and the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office (Autonomy is based in the U.K.), and announced it would take an $8.8 billion write-down on Autonomy's value. That sort of thing could make Autonomy a tough sell to companies still trying to figure out if they even need so-called 'Big Data' tools."

Nerval's Lobster writes "After defeating a shareholder insurrection that largely stemmed from how it handled the Autonomy acquisition, Hewlett-Packard is trying to resuscitate the fortunes of that troubled analytics-software unit. In an interview, Robert Youngjohns, General Manager of the Autonomy division for HP, conceded that the controversy surrounding the acquisition and its aftermath has proven a significant distraction for the company. ... HP's ambitious turnaround plan involves focusing Autonomy technology, which can help find the right data in huge datasets, on areas such as Web content management and information governance. But it's a big question whether HP can overcome all the negative publicity swirling around Autonomy, widely seen as a poor acquisition: Back in November 2012, HP accused Autonomy's management team of using 'accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures to inflate the underlying financial metrics of the company.' It alerted the SEC's Enforcement Division and the United Kingdom's Serious Fraud Office (Autonomy is based in the U.K.), and announced it would take an $8.8 billion write-down on Autonomy's value. That sort of thing could make Autonomy a tough sell to companies still trying to figure out if they even need so-called 'Big Data' tools."

Maximum Prophet writes "While Redigi is illegal, Aereo, the service that allows users to time-shift over-the-air TV programming, isn't. 'We conclude that Aereo's transmissions of unique copies of broadcast television programs created at its users' requests and transmitted while the programs are still airing on broadcast television are not 'public performances' of the plaintiffs' copyrighted works,' said the ruling (PDF). Of course, both decisions are going to be appealed. 'The outcome also answers the question, at least momentarily, of whether online television would be controlled by a stodgy industry that once shunned the VCR, or whether third-party innovators embracing technological advances have a chance to build on the openness of public airwaves. ... Aereo’s technological setup, the court found, basically allows it to do what cable companies could not: retransmit broadcast airwaves without paying licensing fees. In short, the Aereo service is as legal as somebody putting an antenna on top of their house to capture broadcast signals. The court said Aereo “provides the functionality of three devices: a standard TV antenna, a DVR, and a Slingbox” device. “Each of these devices is legal, so it stands to reason that a service that combines them is also legal. Only in the world of copyright maximalists do people need to get special permission to watch over-the-air television with an antenna,” said John Bergmayer, an attorney with the digital-rights group Public Knowledge. “Just because ‘the internet’ is involved doesn’t change this."'"

Nerval's Lobster writes "The Nebula One is being positioned as a 'cloud computer' that can connect preconfigured servers to a private cloud using an OpenStack-based OS. The idea, according to former NASA CIO Chris Kemp, is to spin up a private cloud in as little as an hour. Even so, while a pitch on the company's homepage (narrated by none other than Patrick Stewart) may sound like the company can take any old CPU, storage, and memory resources and combine them together, buyers actually have only a small selection of servers from which to choose. The company's secret sauce is its Nebula Cosmos software, based upon the OpenStack cloud OS, which pools all compute and local storage within a system to provide a cloud-level aggregation of resources for all users. Users are presented with quotas and limits, within which they can spin up their own instances, deploy applications, and manage their own storage resources. If that sounds somewhat simple, well, that's the whole point. Three key investors who backed Google—Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton and Ram Shriram—have also put money into Nebula, and the company has operated quietly out of the spotlight for several years."

KindMind writes "To probably no one's surprise, wiping a smartphone by standard methods doesn't get all the data erased. From an article at Wired: 'Problem is, even if you do everything right, there can still be lots of personal data left behind. Simply restoring a phone to its factory settings won't completely clear it of data. Even if you use the built-in tools to wipe it, when you go to sell your phone on Craigslist you may be selling all sorts of things along with it that are far more valuable — your name, birth date, Social Security number and home address, for example. ... [On a wiped iPhone 3G, mobile forensics specialist Lee Reiber] found a large amount of deleted personal data that he recovered because it had not been overwritten. He was able to find hundreds of phone numbers from a contacts database. Worse, he found a list of nearly every Wi-Fi and cellular access point the phone had ever come across — 68,390 Wi-Fi points and 61,202 cell sites. (This was the same location data tracking that landed Apple in a privacy flap a few years ago, and caused it to change its collection methods.) Even if the phone had never connected to any of the Wi-Fi access points, iOS was still logging them, and Reiber was able to grab them and piece together a trail of where the phone had been turned on.'"

Last week James Randi answered your questions. But that was text, and he's a performer ("The Amazing Randi"), so you need to hear the man talk to get his full flavor. He's a good talker, too. So Rob Rozeboom (samzenpus) got on Skype with The Amazing Randi to talk about his exploits, including his debunking of a whole bunch of (alleged) frauds, ranging from Uri Geller to Sylvia Browne. The resulting interview was so long and so strong that we cut it in half. Today you see Part One. Tomorrow you'll see Part Two. (The video's here now; sorry about the delay.)

Nerval's Lobster writes "Tech journalist Milo Yiannopoulos asks the question lurking in everyone's mind about Google Glass. 'It's an audacious product for a company no one trusts to behave responsibly with our data: a pair of glasses that can monitor and record the world around you,' he writes. 'But if Glass becomes as ubiquitous as the iPhone, are we truly to believe that Google will not attempt to abuse that remarkable power?' With each new eyebrow-raising court judgment and federal fine levied against Google, he adds, 'it becomes ever more clear that this is a company hell-bent on innovating first and asking questions later, if ever. And its vision, shared with other California technology companies, is of corporate America redefining societal privacy norms in the service of advertising companies and their clients.' He feels that Google will eventually end up in some sort of court battle over Google Glass and privacy. Do you agree? Does Google Glass deserve extra scrutiny before it hits the market?"

Redigi runs a service that lets you resell your digitally purchased music. Naturally, they were sued by major labels soon after going live, with heavyweights like Google weighing in with support and an initial victory against pre-trial injunctions. But the first actual court ruling is against them. Pikoro writes "A judge has sided with Capitol Records in the lawsuit between the record company and ReDigi — ruling that MP3s can only be resold if granted permission by copyright owners. From the article: 'The Order is surprising in light of last month's United States Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons, which reaffirmed the importance and applicability of the First Sale Doctrine in the United States of America.'" Redigi vows to appeal, and claims that the current version of their service is not affected by the lawsuit.

Redigi runs a service that lets you resell your digitally purchased music. Naturally, they were sued by major labels soon after going live, with heavyweights like Google weighing in with support and an initial victory against pre-trial injunctions. But the first actual court ruling is against them. Pikoro writes "A judge has sided with Capitol Records in the lawsuit between the record company and ReDigi — ruling that MP3s can only be resold if granted permission by copyright owners. From the article: 'The Order is surprising in light of last month's United States Supreme Court decision in Kirtsaeng v. Wiley & Sons, which reaffirmed the importance and applicability of the First Sale Doctrine in the United States of America.'" Redigi vows to appeal, and claims that the current version of their service is not affected by the lawsuit.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Last week, research firm IDC issued a report suggesting that Windows Phone shipments exceeded those of the iPhone in seven countries around the world, including Argentina, India, Poland, and Russia. The data startled some people — Daring Fireball's John Gruber, for example, blogged his skepticism. As the story gained a bit more momentum, The New York Times' Nick Wingfield reached out to IDC analyst Kevin Restivo for a bit more clarification: 'IDC's numbers also reflect only the official number of cellphones imported into the countries,' he wrote. 'Mr. Restivo said that in some countries, like Argentina, high government taxes mean there is a very significant gray market in cellphones, which IDC doesn't track.' Now new survey data from Kantar Worldpanel uggests that Windows Phone is indeed gaining some sort of momentum in some parts of the world: Android was responsible for 51.2 percent of smartphone sales in the U.S. for the quarter ended February 2013, followed in second by Apple's iOS with 43.5 percent, with Windows Phone edging up into third place with 4.1 percent. BlackBerry trailed in fourth with 0.7 percent, down significantly from its 3.6 percent market-share last year. That doesn't mean that Windows Phone will prove any sort of champion in the near term, but maybe the platform isn't totally on life support."

Nerval's Lobster writes "The one and only Jeff Cogswell is back with a new article comparing the two biggest competitors in the home-computing business: the Commodore 64 and the Radio Shack TRS-80. What does he have to say about these absolutely cutting-edge machines? The TRS-80 simply can't stand up to the awe-inspiring Commodore 64, which features the latest processor from MOS Technology, the 6510. Best of all, the C-64s graphics processor can display up to 16 colors simultaneously, and it can create a full screen made up of 320 x 200 'dots.' But the TRS-80 has some good points, as well, including a whopping 512 K of memory (not that you'll ever use that much, anyway). As Cogswell writes: 'Let's cover these two bad boys and provide a totally unbiased review unencumbered by any alleged kickbacks (including a brand new daisy wheel printer and a case of Schiltz Beer) from Commodore, the maker of the awesome machine known as the Commodore 64.'"

We appreciate all the support we've gotten over the years from Slashdot's logged-in users. They take part actively in discussions, and in exchange for their active interest in the site, we like to give a few perks over and above what our beloved anonymous readers get. But we never want to deprive anonymous readers of the actual features of the site — whether you're a logged-in account holder, anonymous, a subscriber, or have a username but are browsing anonymously at any given moment, Slashdot has always been freely available to read for anyone with a browser and an uncensored Internet connection. It's a balance we try to maintain, too, Sure, we'd like you to login, and we think it has some worthwhile benefits (like tracking comment responses, building karma, and using the Zoo system to keep track of your friends and foes), but we'll never force you to. Today, we're building on this approach, by introducing a feature that benefits every logged-in user, but still leaves the page free to read for all. We'll be phasing in over the next few days a button that logged-in users and subscribers can click to decrypt the text of each Slashdot posting with the trivial transform known as Rot13. Read more, below! Don't panic. You don't have to do anything at all, especially for right now. For the rest of the week at least, though, you'll notice that stories are rendered a bit harder to read, because they've been ROT13'd. "Encrypted" seems too strong a word for it, since ROT13 is about as tough an encryption as Pig Latin is, and more consistent. You'll just need to click once more to read the full, plaintext version of each story. After we complete a few shakedown days, subscribers and other logged-in users will always be able to get through to the plaintext just that simply, and for anonymous readers, it'll be nearly as easy: they'll just need to click one button, and watch one painless interstitial ad, to reach each story's plaintext. For the masses who read anonymously but don't want to suffer through any more ads? (Believe us, we understand.) Not to worry! As we transition away from offering the plaintext along with the ROT13 version, there will be several great options for translating ROT13 text; you'll just need to copy and paste the text, or in some cases the URL for the story you'd like to read, into the engine of your choice. We favor the spartan rot13.com, but there are others. Heck, if you're a CS grad, or even an amateur programmer at all, you've probably written a ROT13 translation program, or you can pipe the text through a built-in function in the language of your choice. (Let us know your favorite translation system in the comments below.) If you have any questions about the transition, please let us know.

Note: You'll notice that comments are still in plaintext for now by default. They will probably stay this way for a while, too, even for anonymous readers. The conversion process itself for the 19.2 million comments in our database is pretty trivial, actually, but there have been some glitches with the way that the transform handles things like code inside of comments, and it would be a shame to break any of that code. And it's a near certainty that only anonymous readers will ever see reader comments encrypted with ROT13, when all those details are worked out.

An anonymous reader writes "In the last few years there has been a significant upsurge in subverting the cellular network for law enforcement purposes. Besides old school tapping, phones are have become the ideal informant: they can report a fairly accurate location and can be remotely turned into covert listening devices. This is often done without a warrant. How can I default the RF transmitter to off, be notified when the network is paging my IMSI and manually re-enable it (or not) if I opt to acknowledge the incoming call or SMS? How do I prevent GPS data from ever being gathered or sent ?"

An anonymous reader writes "In the last few years there has been a significant upsurge in subverting the cellular network for law enforcement purposes. Besides old school tapping, phones are have become the ideal informant: they can report a fairly accurate location and can be remotely turned into covert listening devices. This is often done without a warrant. How can I default the RF transmitter to off, be notified when the network is paging my IMSI and manually re-enable it (or not) if I opt to acknowledge the incoming call or SMS? How do I prevent GPS data from ever being gathered or sent ?"

An anonymous reader writes in with bad news for Apple. "It would appear that Apple has lost an attempt to trademark the 'iPad Mini.' This time it's not nefarious foreigners subverting the just order of things simply by trademarking something several years before Apple did. No, that was what happened in Brazil with the IFone. Nor is it people nefariously selling the rights to everywhere but China but Apple's lawyers didn’t notice, as happened with iPad in China. No, this time it's the U.S. Patents and Trademarks Office saying that Apple simply cannot have a trademark on 'iPad Mini.' For the simple reason that the law doesn't allow them to trademark something which is just a description of the product."

An anonymous reader writes "HBO programming president Michael Lombardo not only says that illegal downloading of Game of Thrones isn't hurting the show, but goes so far as to say it's 'a compliment' and worries about the image quality of pirated copies"

Nerval's Lobster writes "Federal regulators are starting to make noise about Bitcoin, the digital currency that's gained in recognition and value over the past few years: the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is offering up 'guidance' for digital currency and those who use it as part of commerce. But the Bitcoin Foundation, which is devoted to standardizing and promoting the currency, doesn't like that idea; as Patric Murck, the organization's general counsel, wrote in a March 19 blog posting: 'If FinCEN would like to expand its statutory authority over "money transmitters" to include brand new categories such as "administrators" and "exchangers" of digital currency it must do so through proper rulemaking proceedings and not by fiat.' If Bitcoin continues to gain in value, it could spark a rise in virtual currencies—and force some very interesting discussions over regulation. But here's the question: would regulation actually be good for Bitcoin, if it made organizations and businesses more comfortable with using it as a currency?"

theodp writes "Responding to an earlier request by the estate of Aaron Swartz to disclose the names of those involved in the events leading to Aaron's suicide, counsel for MIT snippily told the Court, "The Swartz Estate was not a party to the criminal case, and therefore it is unclear how it has standing, or any legally cognizable interest, to petition for the modification of the Protective Order concerning others' documents." In motions filed on slow-news-day Good Friday (MIT's on spring break), the DOJ, MIT, and JSTOR all insisted on anonymity for those involved in the Swartz case, arguing that redacting of names was a must, citing threats posed by Anonymous and LulzSec, a badly-photoshopped postcard sent to Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann and another sent to his Harvard Prof father, cake frosting, a gun hoax, and e-mail sent to MIT. From the DOJ filing: 'I also informed him [Swartz estate lawyer] that whatever additional public benefit might exist by disclosing certain names was, in this case, outweighed by the risk to those individuals of becoming targets of threats, harassment and abuse.' From the MIT filing: 'The publication of MIT's documents in unredacted form could lead to further, more targeted, and more dangerous threats and attacks...The death of Mr. Swartz has created a very volatile atmosphere.' From the JSTOR filing: 'The supercharged nature of the public debate about this case, including hacking incidents, gun hoaxes and threatening messages, gives JSTOR and its employees legitimate concern for their safety and privacy.'"

An anonymous reader writes "A DDoS attack targeting American Express on March 28th was just one in a series of incidents by self-proclaimed 'cyber-fighters' over the past few weeks. Beyond that, it's part of a much longer campaign to disrupt financial infrastructure using attacks over the internet. Ars details the group behind the most recent attacks, called 'the cyber-fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.' From the article: 'Named after a Muslim cleric who led The Black Hand, an anti-British and anti-Zionist jihadist organization in the 1920s and 1930s, and sharing a name with the military wing of Hamas (which the group's statements claim it is tied to), Izz ad-Din al-Qassam has taken credit for a variety of attacks on U.S. financial institutions over the past year, all allegedly in protest against the posting of trailers for the film The Innocence of Muslims on YouTube. Until the film is removed, the group said it would target "properties of American-Zionist CapitalistsThis attack will continue till the Erasing of that nasty movie." [sic]' There are concerns that the group is providing cover for organizations looking to defraud those banks. 'But even if the group behind the attacks isn't profiting from them, [Arbor Networks' Dan Holden] said it's clear that there are very real investments being made in their activities—maybe not in servers or hard assets, but in the form of countless hours of maintenance of the botnet by finding new servers to exploit, and further development of attacks. "Regardless of who's behind this," Holden said, "it has to be funded at some level. Even if it's hacktivists, it's got to be funded hacktivism." That, he says, is because of both the amount of time dedicated to the attack, and to its ongoing refinement. "It's not that these are the most sophisticated things in the world," he explained, "but it has been getting more sophisticated, and it's growing."'"

An anonymous reader writes "A DDoS attack targeting American Express on March 28th was just one in a series of incidents by self-proclaimed 'cyber-fighters' over the past few weeks. Beyond that, it's part of a much longer campaign to disrupt financial infrastructure using attacks over the internet. Ars details the group behind the most recent attacks, called 'the cyber-fighters of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.' From the article: 'Named after a Muslim cleric who led The Black Hand, an anti-British and anti-Zionist jihadist organization in the 1920s and 1930s, and sharing a name with the military wing of Hamas (which the group's statements claim it is tied to), Izz ad-Din al-Qassam has taken credit for a variety of attacks on U.S. financial institutions over the past year, all allegedly in protest against the posting of trailers for the film The Innocence of Muslims on YouTube. Until the film is removed, the group said it would target "properties of American-Zionist CapitalistsThis attack will continue till the Erasing of that nasty movie." [sic]' There are concerns that the group is providing cover for organizations looking to defraud those banks. 'But even if the group behind the attacks isn't profiting from them, [Arbor Networks' Dan Holden] said it's clear that there are very real investments being made in their activities—maybe not in servers or hard assets, but in the form of countless hours of maintenance of the botnet by finding new servers to exploit, and further development of attacks. "Regardless of who's behind this," Holden said, "it has to be funded at some level. Even if it's hacktivists, it's got to be funded hacktivism." That, he says, is because of both the amount of time dedicated to the attack, and to its ongoing refinement. "It's not that these are the most sophisticated things in the world," he explained, "but it has been getting more sophisticated, and it's growing."'"

An anonymous reader sends this quote from Forbes: "... it is an almost certainty that within the next few years, three biometric options will become standard features in every new phone: a fingerprint scanner built into the screen, facial recognition powered by high-definition cameras, and voice recognition based off a large collection of your vocal samples. ... We store an enormous amount of our most intimate and personal information on cell phones. Businesses today are already struggling with policies regarding bringing devices from home, and it’s only going to get more difficult. A study by Symantec highlighted the depth of the problem – around the world, all different types of companies consider enterprise mobile device security to be one of their largest challenges. ... Ever since Apple purchased Authentec Inc in July of last year, there has been an endless stream of news stories obsessing over whether Apple will include a fingerprint scanner in their next release. In reality, Apple is one among many players, and whether they include a biometric sensor in the 5S or wait till the 6 is largely irrelevant, the entire mobile industry has been headed this way for years now. ... There are separate questions as to whether these technologies are ready for such a wide-scale deployment."