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You are, like, talking of the shareware "demo" version of Doom.

I think part of the confusion is that app stores don't let developers say "demo", "trial", or "test" anymore. See section 2.9 of Apple's App Store Review Guidelines from September 2010. (I apologize for the outdated information; newer versions are behind a $99 per year paywall.)

The complete game doesn't act like that

I'm aware of that. But nowadays, it'd more than likely be implemented on devices with the engine and first episode available without charge and episodes 2-3 (and later 4) as a paid expansion purchased through the platform's in-application purchase framework. I guess part of this was directed at some of the criticism of OUYA, which requires all games in the store to have at least some free-to-play experience, at around the time when games for major consoles were devoting disc space to paid day-one DLC and mobile games were starting to abuse repeatable IAPs just to allow taking more than a handful of turns in one 24-hour period. People saw "IAP" and knee-jerk replied in a manner that showed that they had forgotten about the traditional shareware model.

you can't patent ideas, most of the iOS patents are for specific implementations on the current touch screen tech. the fact that we had some kind of pinch to zoom 20 years ago has no bearing on current tech. different screens, different algorithms need to be created.

Patents are for protecting the ideas of inventions, not inventions themselves.

Inventions are covered by copyright, trade secrets, etc.

Protecting implementation of the invention by patent is also useless. Actual implementation might change, while underlying idea remains. And that's what patents are designed to protect.

IOW, any implementation of pinch zoom from 20 years ago must have automatically invalidated any pinch zoom patent filed later. Now, if Apple had patented particular way to implement the pinch zoom, it would have been different story. But they did not. Because there are no algorithms involved, it's a dumb finite state machine. (And yeah, I have read the patent. It's more of a how-to patent than a computer tech patent.)

its like cars. every automaker has patents on their cars and specific engines. yet they all operate the same way and use the same fuel. everyone just has to make their own algorithm or slightly different way of injecting and burning fuel. been like that for decades and has worked

What actually leads to inefficiency (in many areas): obvious and efficient implementation is patented, patent holder demands enormous license fee - other makers had to implement something less obvious and often by far less efficient. (Had witnessed precisely that happening in semiconductor industry at least two times.)

Interestingly, the '826 pinch-to-zoom patent could be more correctly called "double pinch to zoom": it covers a more narrow implementation in which the system recognizes a user doing a pinch-to-(activity) gesture followed by a 2nd pinch-to-(activity) within a preset time, maintaining the activity state in between. A naked pinch-to... activity (or any number of them) isn't covered if the system doesn't explicitly connect the repeated pinches together. This is probably why Apple hasn't asserted it. (And between you and me, an oddly-specific qualifier in an independent claim is almost always is a smoking gun pointing to prior art on the claim sans-qualifier.)

You must be joking....

Patent 915 is the pinch-to-zoom patent that Samsung was found to have violated.

It most certainly is not:

http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2012/07/915patent.pdf

Patent 7,812,826 looks far more like pinch to zoom:

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/apple-ptz-patent.pdf

See also:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/08/hold-maybe-apple-doesnt-own-pinch-zoom-after-all

and

http://techpinions.com/pinch-to-zoom-and-rounded-rectangles-what-the-jury-didnt-say/9465

It's frustrating to see so many commenters and articles getting this wrong.

"If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps." http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/app-store-guidelines.pdf

http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/7032616626194684.JPG?0.3942647363857573

Enough said.

From the patent:

Page 2, "OTHER PUBLICATIONS":

Sony Viao X505, available at least as early as May 8, 2005

The Examiner looked at the Vaio and properly determined that this design was different and not obvious in view of it.

http://www.weblogsinc.com/common/images/7032616626194684.JPG?0.3942647363857573

Enough said.

The App Store approval guidelines have been on Apple's developer website for a while now. Here's a snapshot from the day they were first published.

http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/app-store-guidelines.pdf

I'm no fan of Apple's walled garden, but this is clearly a CYA move, rather than a misguided attempt at preserving "experience".

I disagree about the motivations for this, I think it's all about control. Apple have tasted that control over developers with iOS, and found they like it. If it was simply about making sure that apps were not malicious etc, they wouldn't have such restrictive rules, just a few basic common-sense ones. Here's a sample of some of the things they're banning from their app store:

3.1 Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be rejected

2.24 Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected

2.16 Apps that download or install additional code or resources to add functionality or change their primary purpose will be rejected

2.14 Apps must be packaged and submitted using Apple's packaging technologies included in Xcode - no third party installers allowed

7.2 Apps that create a store inside themselves for selling or distributing other software (i.e., an audio plug-in store in an audio app) will be rejected.

6.2 Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected

Like some of the conditions for iOS, that last one could be taken to mean just about any app on the Mac platform, at the whim of the anonymous Apple reviewer. And just like iOS, these rules will constantly change as Apple wants to put down competitors (Google was rejected for 'being too similar to the built-in phone app').

Full list here:
http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/mac-app-review.pdf

These conditions are very similar to the iOS ones, perhaps even more draconian in some cases. I think they make it clear (along with moves like deprecating Java) that Apple wishes to have complete control over their platform, developers and users. That won't come in 10.7, as this is just the start, but perhaps by 10.8 they will feel bold enough to outright ban apps installed by other means, or just make it so difficult that the vast majority will never attempt it.

I'm not sure that's a world I want to be part of, which is a shame for me, as I like a lot of other aspects of their hardware and software.

For $10 I guess it will be as much of a laptop as this is a DS.

The way to combat is is not to create DRM. That only makes annoyed. It's like trying to enact legislation against or beat people who use cloth buttons. The solution is to realize that the data is a non-scarce good. Trying to artificially make it so is only calling the grass purple. The fact remains that it's green. What you monetize on is the time, services and other actually scarce goods. Use the free movies to get people into theaters, where the quality is better. Use the free music to gain listeners who will pay to see your shows or buy things relating to your band. Use your free software to sell your reputation to companies that will hire you to make the software work like they want it to, or to support it. Whatever. The money's there if you want to work for it. What's not there is the gravy train of artificial scarcity. If you want to keep eating, you have to keep working. Imagine that... being just like everyone else.

It should also be noteworthy that another fairly well-known act sold their latest album online. It was for a fixed price, true, but they offered FLAC files of the song -- DRM-free and of the highest possible quality. I'm talking about the Barenaked Ladies and Barenaked Ladies Are Me . According to this blogger, their gross sales during the first week were close to $1 million.

How the RIAA Litigation Process Works

There's also an excellent overview of this here, entitled: The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits.

IMHO, these should be required reading for anyone who is hit by these lawsuits. If you want the real condensed version, it is this (from the second link):

"The best advice if you are sued by the RIAA is to quickly retain a lawyer who has some experience dealing with RIAA cases. Having knowledgeable council early on won't stop the process from being difficult, but can give you a better chance of protecting your rights."

Finally, here's another article that Ray has put together, on a Directory of Lawyers Defending Against RIAA Lawsuits

I got the latter from the second article. I have no idea if there are defensive legal strategies that any students can employ before they get a letter from the RIAA, but it would be interesting and useful if a skilled lawyer could make the University think twice before just bending over for the RIAA.

Not the origional, the square corners would leave marks on my palms for hours afterward. My favorite was the 2nd gen "dogbone" controllers.

I'll second that.

But - I'd buy CD's that where a little more expensive than that if the artists where actually getting the amount per CD that they are owed. The amounts that Artists get and how they get paid is hog wash. Check out this blog post about Weird Al with a break down for more info on that.

Too bad this get the Discovery Order on John Doe and not you.

The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits

-- TMK

This is a bad argument against it. The RIAA hasn't been able to prove their case against people putting even the minimal amount of resistance.

I think that perhaps you have a differing set of criteria for "window management inconsistency", "finder cock-ups", "bugs", and what the "mass market and corporations need" than a lot of other people.

I certainly know that one thing I treasure about the OS X experience is how much more consistent the window management is over, say, XP....over, say, the junk that shows up in XP.

Safari requires two clicks to activate a control, unless you click on a text edit area (but not the URL) or the Bookmark bar. Mail will let me open a link without having focus, but Safari will not. TextEdit requires two clicks to move the carrot but one to abuse the toolbar, the ruler which is in the toolbar area, and even overflows a bit with the tab elements requires focus to interact. This inconsistency is pervasive throughout Apple's applications.
XP... controls are active regardless of focus.

As for allowing programmers to make rational, conistent, and powerful user interfaces across the board. That's just spurious nonsense, either platform will let you do whatever you want. Whether or not it becomes a noose has nothing to do with the platform.

At this time I'd like to reintroduce Perversion Tracker. ... it gets my cock down quite frankly.

Cock-up has nothing to do with your phallus, nor is this an appropriate time or place to discuss your penis. Frankly, you are disgusting.

And let's just pretend that you didn't mention bugs. Or polish. Just how is it that you never hear Mac users bitching about their buggy OS and how nothing seems to work seamlessly?

Well, except me... And everyone who has ever posted at Macfixit Et al. Let's not talk about it? That's just ignorant, because that's the point...

The iTunes update today for instance. Apparently Apple didn't think anyone would change to/from full screen because it doesn't update the cover in the other view. Performance on a Mini is horrendous, more like "cover slide show". Forget about animation if you're viewing full screen and skipping a song. I can play WoW well enough on a mini to get some trading done but Apple can't shift and skew a rectangle? They must have been in a hurry, and God knows what else they rushed. Speaking of which, considering how much they have riding on iTunes they sure manage to botch a lot of releases. At least this one didn't destroy my library.

I'm skipping the emotional rhetoric, disinformation, and logical fallacies...

At least Apple is producing major releases every 18 months (not five+ years) with six-month point updates that not only fix the broken bits but actually make older machines run faster. If there is one major company out there that is at least trying to get it right, don't choose Microsoft as your answer. And don't think that M$ somehow updates their operating systems for free either.

If you look at the condition Apple released that software in the best adjective to describe it would be "unconscionable". They said it would work on said platform, but the actual product was unusable. There is a not insignificant number of people who feel that 10.0 and 10.1 should never have been released in the first place.

Oh and MS actually does this, service packs and interim patches are regularly released to fix bugs, improve performance, and add features. Which you can read all about in excruciating detail on their website. Which segues nicely...

Refusing to talk about failure? Which company are we talking about? Personally, I think you've got the whole thing ass-backwards.

And now we arrive at the thrust of my argument, and the thing you utterly failed to address in any fashion. Your baseless cheerleading obviously fulfills some kind of need but brings nothing to the table. All large pieces of software have problems no matter how much you want

The RIAA vs. John Doe, a layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits

While it's more general than for just the college-student lawsuits, it's still an eyeopener for the layperson on how this scam works. What's especially interesting is how to fight this in the earliest stage. But you need a lawyer quickly.

I'm posting this in the hopes that, if more people know how to fight this extortion, the harder it will become for the RIAA to continue

I've been using their Windows Live Mail Beta for several months, and while it's still not as good as Yahoo's mail beta, it's MUCH better than regular hotmail... which sucks.

That said, I find myself using Windows Live Mail Desktop more and more. The early betas were pretty bad, but now it's a fairly good, simple e-mail client. Good stuff for those who don't need Outlook.

I'm actually pretty surprised that the Yahoo mail beta doesn't get more press. It is, by FAR, the best web-based e-mail I've ever seen. Check out this review for screenshots.

The labels get MOST of the money from album sales. The artists get a really small percentage, actually.

Here is an interesting article on digital vs. physical music purchases and the artist's cut:

Correction. Grant wrote that my post was "dry like a bread sandwich".

Okay, everybody say it with me now ... what do you never, ever want to do? Upgrade any Apple product to a point-zero version. Ever.

They almost always suck, and sometimes they suck badly enough to take your data down with them. Mac OS 10.0? Major problems. iTunes 5.0? A disaster. Aperture 1.0? Sucked (well, at least for $300 it sucked).

In almost every case, Apple has followed up with a point release that's made the software usable. Mac OS 10.0.4 was the first version I'd say wasn't actually dangerous to use; iTunes 5.0.1 stopped eating people's music libraries for lunch; Aperture 1.5 could have been a whole different program (but thankfully was a free upgrade).

Anything from Apple that ends in a zero should get treated like a public beta. It's obnoxious, and I don't know what the deal is with their QA, but they've been doing it for years, and with nearly absolute consistency. Anytime a major upgrade of a product comes out, you can count on there being a bug-fix point release in the next few weeks. This was my major reason for holding off on iTunes 7.0; I didn't have to go online to know that it was going to suck, they always do. 7.0.2 though, seems reasonable, although admittedly the interface is questionable.

Apple as a company, seems to work best when it's under the gun. Sometimes I think they put themselves there, by releasing a product that's just not ready for prime-time and pushing it out as an upgrade to unwitting users; but yet they always seem to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with an emergency patch. It's like they really don't start working until the pressure is really on and the users are screaming for blood.

12/08/06: Warner CEO slaps own child on wrist
11/28/06: Pressure on AllofMp3
11/22/06: Pressure on the RIAA

Without it, there would be no music stores with major artists [major labels] who expect to get paid.

If you're talking about Yahoo!, I think they did do IMAP for a while ... At least that's what it looks like.

So, it is not like they don't have the IMAP server, they merely can't handle the connections it'll need to keep alive (hmmm... paid customers, that's no more too, I think).

The lawsuits are not frivolous as evidenced by how many people settle them out-of-court, or just lose.

I heard from Weird Al that if you DO want to buy his music, you should do it from a real store with physical CDs rather then from an online digital licenser.

(This is not meant to invalidate your point!)

And make sure to tell them something realy important was on there. Like the names and addresses of the people who attended last year's Police Ball.

Or maybe Baltimore police don't have balls?

In all seriousness, file a "John Doe" civil suit in the ISPs district. As part of the action, ask for discovery on a specific IP address. Since you are filing against John Doe, Verizon will most likely consent. Once you have the name and address of the theif, drop the John Doe case and go back to the police with the guy's name, address, phone number, photos of his house and dog. At this point, either the police press charges, or you lodge an official complaint against the cops.

Look at the following article about how the RIAA uses IP addresses to find people. You should be using similar tactics. Do some sleuthing once you have the address. Make sure you aren't going after some poor bastard with an open WAP while the real theif lives right next door.

Going to the press is a bad idea. The theif is very likely to see the story and will move to dispose of the property.

People have made careers low-ball suing corporations because they know it's cheaper to settle than fight...that doesn't make them 'guilty'.

Nobody I know ever says that they "Yahooed it".
I think it's a pretty strong indication of brand value when the name of your company becomes a commonly used verb in the english language.[link to wikipedia/googling]

Google (as a verb) is accepted in the Oxford On-line Dictionary, too.

Not sure Yahooligans caught on. I'm certain it was even frowned upon in some countries where Hooligan has a stronger negative connotation than it carries in the USA

You forgot another important reason: to compensate the artist. Believe it or not, some people feel good about compensating others for work they find enjoyable (or in the case of linux: useful).

Wrote about him a while back too, there's an NPR interview with him: http://design.weblogsinc.com/2005/11/18/dennis-hwa ng-the-man-behind-the-google-logos/

...I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me.

...you actually own the CD. You're really just kinda leasing the songs with iTunes...

Gmail has minor problems relatively often, although the last major outage that I can find was a year & a half ago (when it was in beta).

The GP has a point - a large business would be mad to trust their core business applications to a third party with so many potential points of failure.

> I don't *think hotmail or yahoo would either

I think MS certainly would...they've been accused of blocking GMail invites before, though they never admitted to doing it:

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/is-hotmail-blockin g-gmail-invitations-015942.php
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,39020369,391577 55,00.htm
http://google.weblogsinc.com/2004/06/23/hotmail-bl ocking-gmail-invites/

I'm involved with a project that is looking to develop an online community for technology oriented business customers.
Sell your idea to ebay, they might like you. (and the highest bidder wins!)


  If you could develop an online community to encourage collaboration and information sharing, what features would you want included?
That's easy, BitTorrent.


  How would you go about including features that are widely available in other places (weblogging, message boards, wiki) and generating buy-in from customers.
1) Visit homepages of said OSS
2) Get the sources
3) Right-Click Ctrl-V
4) Get headache integrating code from multiple projects^W4) Discover 'magical' missing libraries^W4) Consider rewriting everything with existing code as reference^W4) Give up^W4) ????
5) Profit!

I can make a "standards compliant" page out of IMG tags that the W3C validator would absolutely love. What you mean is "Google has a vested interest in keeping lots of text flowing through the Internet," and that's certainly true. They've got an e-mail service, an IM service, a not-necessarily-usenet groups service, a blogging service, and many other services that ensure that Google has plenty of text to index and to seed their contextual ad generator.

Incidentally, Google does index text it finds in Flash files and has for nearly two years.

Wasn't MS continuing development of the IE engine for MSN for Mac?
I remember hearing something about that a long time ago. I could be wrong, just googled and found this so I guess I must be wrong. But I swear hearing something about them continuing it for paying MSN users.

How about $199?

I have this theory... Mainstream media (traditional media, dead tree media, whatever) is under a lot of pressure these days, not from bloggers per se, but the popularity of blogs as an advertising medium. Look at Gawker media and Weblogs Inc. Where would those advertising dollars be spent if banners weren't showing up on the two networks 100+ blogs? Volvo launched an ad campaign with Y! 360, or was it MSN Spaces, no matter, the point is, MSM is too rigid to adapt. They're like the dinosaurs. No one is 100% sure why they went extinct, but whether it was a gradual change where they couldn't adapt or a catastropic event that wiped them out, the fact is, they're gone in favor of a more hearty species. Time will tell the truth about blogs.

Many authors do support the service. They just don't get as much attention. For one example, see Download Squad's article: http://google.weblogsinc.com/entry/123400072006450 7/

OMG, not another iPod suit!!!

Sad for them, and sad for the FOSS community. As it is no doubt only a matter of time until they become poster children for Bill Gates assertion that FOSS is communism and does't work.

Let me get this straight, you download an anoying browser toolbar and you get free software with it? Usually it`s the other way around...

But please, can we stop comparing google and microsoft already? The only similarity they have is that they are both in the nasdaq... I understand that makes them competitors for people who don`t look further than stock markets but can can we, at least in the "news for nerds" world, look for the real wars? Like, I don`t, know sun, apple and all the other vertical unix guys? Remember "small but unix" is a market IBM got out of because it saw no future. Do you see any "redhat declares war on sun" speculation? The "netcraft confirms, bsd dying" comments are the closest we get I am afraid.

Also the nasdaq has nothing to do with innovation... Sorry folks. Business and innovation are a great mix, kinda like wodka and coke... but in real life they are just as separate things most of the time. Sorry nasdaq guys, but just becouse you don`t understand something doesn`t mean it`s new. Everyone knows new ideas always come from people who are bored and have some darpa funded time to waste at university/school. These Ideas then go through a standard body that does the engineering work, then businesses f@#$ it up and the biggest guy buys the business the fu$#%ed up the least or just patents the idea and clones it... and then you can buy it as a product or service. Thats how innovation works... as you can see, there is a bit of nasdaq right at the end of the chain there.

Microsoft is the living proof that its cheaper to buy innovation than it is to have a dedicated innovation staff.

• They bought dos
• basic wasn`t new
• bought the vms people to do windows NT
• cloned the gui idea
• bought internet explorer (when they tried to do their own internet)
• rip of java with .net (They might even do a better job of what java does. Ofcourse java is great for what it was intended (embedded stuff) in theory...)
• bough SQL server (sybase)
• the centralised authentication in NT wasn`t new, dcom wasn`t new
• Active directory does the X.500 directory idea (using kerberos and ldap) just like novell did (btw, did microsoft declare war one novell back then?)

One offers search and ad services, the other software products you buy once and use for a long time (no matter how they bundle, licence and shrink wrap them into offers you can`t refuse) Its amazing that the nasdaq talking heads seem to have missed the part of their education where the diffrences between services and product you can break by hitting them with a hammer were discussed.

Google offering an openoffice mirror doesn`t change a thing, even if they bundle desktop search and/or toolbars... (Did anyone notice all this still runs on windows and *needs* ms office import filters?) If microsoft stopped trying to imitate and buy its way into markets, then wake me up.

A more recent link.

My experience is that avoiding buying into things like this isn't a solution. Don't like Microsoft's lack of standards compliance? Don't buy Windows. Whoops, a decent chunk of the Web is now unuseable due to shoddy frontpage-based design (less of an issue now than it used to be, but only due to sterling work by the Mozilla Foundation et al).

Don't like software DRM? Don't buy from companies that use it in their software. Whoops, you've just been sent an important document in MS's latest AllYourRightsAreBelongToUs Office format. Sorry, you'd better get saving up for that Windows box you promised you'd never buy.

Don't like music DRM? Don't buy from labels that use it. Whoops, sorry, didn't we tell you that your new music player won't play unprotected formats like MP3 any more? Oh, and since the major labels have a nice little cartel set up, you're going to find that you're getting somewhat out of touch with mainstream culture. But you can live with that, right?

The problem is that, when a decent proportion of the population is willing to accept whatever crap is thrown at them, said crap will tend to overflow into everyone else's life - a new tyrrany of the apathetic majority. Good luck avoiding DRM in the future without actually ditching your computer.

I posted a response to this "article" earlier today which I am just going to paste here:

Normally I try to avoid these articles, but Sharon Housley's RSS Won the Syndication Standards Battle is one I can't avoid. She claims that RSS has overtaken Atom because of support (or lack there of) for RSS by Microsoft and Google.

Sharon began by saying Microsoft had dumped Atom in favour for RSS. Is it just me or did Microsoft not say that they will support Atom almost 3 weeks ago? She says that Google News feeds having both RSS and Atom is a sign of weakness in the format, even though Google-owned Blogger (and Atom supporter) has always provided a link to FeedBurner for those who prefer RSS instead of Atom. Having both RSS and Atom on Google News isn't a sign that RSS is dominating so much as it is Google providing a choice of format to users. By the way, podcasting is not limited to RSS 2.0 as Atom supports Podcasting in a way that is arguably more powerful than RSS's. Microsoft's lists, another RSS innovation, are also easily done with Atom. Don't forget that the IETF approved the propsed Atom standard while RSS has been fragmented many times by different authors.

With Microsoft calling its support for syndication web feeds, Google refering to them as feeds on Google News and web clips on Google Desktop 2 (as Brad Hill mentions in Google Shuns the RSS Name) it seems likely that other sites will offer syndication through a generic name in more than one format. How all of this can be viewed as RSS winning any kind of standards battle is baffling.

Dana

With some fancy printing technology, and some database-work, 40.000 subscribers were delivered a satelite photo of their own house as cover story, and several personalized ads inside.

Kinda creepy, but still refreshingly cutting edge, for a offline initiative..