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Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android
puddingebola writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has a piece of commentary discussing Microsoft's profit from their patent claims on Android. From the article, 'To some, Windows 8 is a marketplace failure. But its flop has been nothing compared to Microsoft's problems in getting anyone to use its Windows Phone operating systems. You don't need to worry about Microsoft's bottom line though. Thanks to its Android patent agreements, Microsoft may be making as much as $8 per Android device. This could give Microsoft as much as $3.4 billion in 2013 from Android sales.'"
So after all... Microsoft is making money on Linux.
Why not?
If you're going to make a claim like that, you should at least say why. If they're valid, legitimate patents then I see no reason why the company shouldn't make money off them. That's how the system works.
If Microsoft had pushed out the OS a couple of years earlier the mobile phone market would likely be a very different place.
Yep, and if my grandma had wheels she'd be a WAGON.
In the current patent regime, it is far more likely that the patents involved are total bullsh*t. It's Microsoft that has to justify itself here. Of course it will never do that because the entire Android community could then try to code around this kind of larceny and extortion.
Although some things boil down to "being compatible".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
If Microsoft can make enough money operating simply operating as a patent troll maybe they can leave the actual software market to people who actually know how to write and maintain software rather than as license extortionists for software that has only become a de facto standard through marketing and guile and really doesn't run very well.
The only one named but not confirmed is about FAT, something easily avoided by using Ext3 or 4.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
The main ones are long filenames in FAT, ex-FAT for > 32GB SD cards, and ActiveSync.
There are alternatives for all of these, but in the case of Activesync alternatives, they are not as good, and in the case of FAT, it means getting the same filesystem drivers onto other computers and devices.
All Google needs to do is offer a commercial licence, for a small fee, to all Android OEM's that indemnifies them. This way if Microsoft has an issue with Android or Linux they can take on Google directly. But, we all know that would never happen because Microsoft clearly knows that Google would single handily invalidate all of their obvious, worthless and prior art ridden patents one by one.
well, few years ago they thought that it was nice to have an actual os.
there's nice things about wp8. being a smartphone os isn't one of them though. feature by feature it's a featurephone. no taskswitcher, no proper multitasking(STILL!).. which is just fine for phones but not for gigantic multimedia slabs like the 920. sure, not much venues for malware either, since there's just so much you can do if you as the owner of the device actually want to do..
though I don't know what's so great about rectangles on desktop or icons and text on a mile long list instead of icons on desktop... only having selections on screen for relevant things isn't that bad though.
yeah yeah it's understandable why they don't allow proper multitasking when a trivial app easily gobs up 40 megs of ram whilst it's on foreground. don't ask me where the fuck the memory is going, the program logic in these apps was done in less than a meg on phones 10 years ago.. and the increase in resolution doesn't add up to the memory usage.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
From the Constitution: "...by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their..." The patents are from the Jurassic age, in software years.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
this isn't how the system is designed or intended, this is how the system has been perverted.
making money off products you do not have any involvement in via patent extortion is a sign of a broken system and this is already reaching antitrust investigations.
but in the case of Activesync alternatives, they are not as good
What do you mean, "they're not as good"? What's so magical and special about ActiveSync (whatever that is) that no other protocol for synchronizing nodes in a distributed system (DB servers, remote file systems, collaborative text editors...) can't beat it?
Ezekiel 23:20
So if Windows Phone were shutdown.
There would be no barrier to native Office for Android, or Office for Apple iOS devices. [Just like the old days, competing with Wordstar and Lotus or Borland]
Even better they could shift the developers for Windows Phone over to developing Mobile versions of all their Apps and tools to Android and iOS versions.
They should "own" the Mobile App market on Android and iOS, and stop loosing money on Windows Phone.
The current mindset of tossing good money after bad.. is just plain stupidity and stubborness.. its a culture of "we can't be wrong".
Except it does actually have a taskswitcher.
any good reason not to use UDF for large flash cards? it has read and write support in linux, mac and windows. I use it for USB sticks.
Microsoft won't justify themselves, they just have to threaten to take away the Windows licence form that company and thats probably why they won;t go after Google.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
But Microsoft are justifying themselves. They are going to court where companies justify themselves. IANAL but if I read the news correctly they are currently crashing Motorola in each and every court they sue each other. Of course none of the cases is over yet but the "justification" has certainly began.
Because this is not how patent settlements work. Patent settlements do not list patents they license the entire portfolio related to the product. This means that if tomorrow MS invents something and Google puts it in Android Samsung will be able to use it because they are paying for it even though it is not invented yet. Actual patents are only shown in court and they are certainly showing some patents when suing Motorola. The Motorola case will certainly prove if MS has relevant patents as the legal system defines them although I am sure /. people will invent a "rounded corners" meme and claim that the judge is corrupted or something.
ActiveSync works. With Exchange. It just works. But it is easily replaced by going to GMAIL and GCalendars. ActiveSync is what killed BlackBerry servers, as it does most everything most people want or need. Not everything, but good enough.
Trust me when I say this, nothing else comes close to Exchange for total functionality. Problem is, it is Microsoft, and horribly expensive. Someone making a ground up replacement to Exchange would make a killing, especially if they give it away for free (j/k).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
any good reason not to use UDF for large flash cards? it has read and write support in linux, mac and windows. I use it for USB sticks.
This is why I read slashdot.
Apparently it had passed me by that UDF is for anything other than DVDs (I know technically you can have any FS on any block device on Linux). I am actually going to try this on my next USB stick.
Thanks!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
ActiveSync is for receiving email from Exchange or other compatible email servers and syncronising calendar, contact etc items. The alternatives are things like IMAP IDLE, but they generally use more data bandwidth and more battery power than ActiveSync.
Maybe my idiot factor is high today, but what are yous saying? if the "entire Android community could then try to code around this kind of larceny and extortion." then they should get going, because the fees from the patents are already in place. What are they waiting for?
no comment
Maybe you should educate yourself before you make stupid claims. You only show your ignorance with statements like this
as a near-term 'water bailing' strategy for microsoft but at some point, google will either adopt smarter strategies to avoid the patents entirely, buy the patents outright, or challenge them in court. considering how microsoft has been almost worthless for more than a decade in the smart phone industry though ill have to quote the words of Tony Stark, "You're missing the point. There's no throne, there is no version of this, where you come out on top."
Good people go to bed earlier.
Microsoft won't justify themselves, they just have to threaten to take away the Windows licence form that company and thats probably why they won;t go after Google.
In a relatively short period of time, that may be irrelevant... Windows Phone isn't selling for shit, and even Microsoft knows it. That leaves threats and patent pseudo-trolling as their only real income option in the mobile space.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
It doesn't have a massive "app store" like the Play store or iOS but it does seem to have everything I use.
Duh! Of course it has everything you USE. You couldn't use it if it wasn't on your phone. However, that tells us nothing about whether it has everything you *want*, or everything you *need*.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
But it is easily replaced by going to GMAIL and GCalendars.
Kinda' true, but no business of any reasonable size is going to use Google for email and calendaring. Google also doesn't do tasks, notes, etc.
And, FYI, Outlook/Exchange isn't all that expensive. I pay for subscriptions to a service for it, and it's reasonable.
I don't respond to AC's.
The only one named but not confirmed is about FAT, something easily avoided by using Ext3 or 4.
Well, until Joe Sixpack wants to pack his micro-SD card with stuff from his Windows laptop...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
...and this is already reaching antitrust investigations.
From your lips to God's ears.
Problem is, I have yet to see any sane thing like that happen yet.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Courts of law are not the only judge of what's bullsh*t. Since it's pretty clear the current court system is flawed, allowing massive abuse of the patent system, I think it's fair to ask Microsoft to justify itself to the large audience, and explain what value it's adding. This way we can make a determination whether or not it's acting like a parasite.
Funny you say that. I have a Windows Phone. Several people I know have Windows Phones. We all like 'em quite a bit. Bought 'em at a local Verizon store. Much better than the alternatives.
Why all the FUD?
I don't respond to AC's.
..in my ivory tower built from free software and dumbphones.
I don't share your pain.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
OK but I think you can't blame Microsoft for the patent system. They did not invent it. They suffered from it and it is well known Bill Gates warned about this. Nobody listened and Microsoft eventually proved he was correct in a "if you can't fight them join them kind of way". In my opinion the patent system for IT is currently a form of tax when entering the field. Microsoft and Apple paid it once upon a time and now they demand it from newer companies. It would be almost unfair if some companies have this obstacle while others don't. Something like applying taxes to one company but not another.
It's like slashdot is Vaughan-Nichols's own private distribution channel. Slashdot stories quoting or linking to him in reverse chronological order:
Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android: May 09, 2013
Microsoft's "New Coke" Moment?: May 06, 2013
Windows: Not Doomed Yet: April 19, 2013
UEFI Secure Boot and Linux: Where Things Stand: August 03, 2012
Linus' Lessons On Software Dev Management: September 26, 2011
7 Days With a Google Chromebook: July 18, 2011
Linux-Friendly Alternatives To Skype: May 19, 2011
Bill Gates Doesn't Work At Microsoft Anymore: June 23, 2010
Here Come the Linux iPad Clones: March 12, 2010
Fast Wi-Fi's Slow Road To Standardization: December 10, 2009
Apple Pushes Unwanted Software To PCs, Again: September 28, 2009
London Stock Exchange To Abandon Windows: July 03, 2009
Confirmed Gmail / Google App Outage: May 14, 2009
Why It's Not Business As Usual For Microsoft: June 09, 2008
Malware vs. Anti-Malware, 20 Years Into The Fray: May 06, 2008
Truth Behind the ClearType/OpenSUSE FUD: April 12, 2007
Groklaw No Front for IBM: February 15, 2007
That was only the first 3-4 pages of google results.
Yeah?
coverage: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/feds-may-use-subpoena-powers-to-study-patent-trolls/
explanation: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2013041110212889
give it a few months. The wheels are turning, slowly but surely.
Motorola sued Microsoft over H.264 related patents in Germany and demanded a ban on Xbox and Windows :) Microsoft countersuit may potentially lead to the ban of Google Maps in Germany. We're far from safe from all this bullshit.
I meant Windows on PC's, laptops etc not Mobile
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Which companies have capitulated and bought an Android license via a court case that Microsoft won?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Tsk Tsk:
GNU/Phone
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
Patents are generally invalid.
Did you check how long they are in place? How well they are checked? How corrupt the system around patents is?
That is how the system works.
The system needs a big change.
You have a few options that try to emulate it(or at least its feature set) but really they don't have it yet.
What exactly *is* its "feature set" that you claim is unique to ActiveSync? It still makes little sense to me, the problem of synchronizing two sets of data in disparate locations is pevasive and well-researched: multi-master RDBMS replication, rsync, Unison, distributed VCS (Darcs, Git. Mercurial), collaborative text editors, directory services synchronization... I'm being serious, this is actually an area I'm interested in and I'd like to know why mobile data synchronization, of all data synchronization protocols, is so ill-serviced. There doesn't seem to be any objective reason for that to be the case.
Ezekiel 23:20
That's just like people who legally immigrated to the US getting all mad at the illegal immigrants. "I had to jump through these ridiculous hoops so they damn well should too" instead of "I had to jump through these ridiculous hoops and they suck so much I wouldn't wish them on anyone else." Sure, it is "fair" for a very narrow-mind definition of fair.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Maybe you should educate yourself before you make stupid claims
I've posed two questions and zero claims. How can a set of two questions and zero claims contain stupid claims is beyond me. I know you're just a trolling AC, but still...
Ezekiel 23:20
There is a task switcher (hold down the back button and a list pops up with thumbnails from your open app). Also, with WP8, any app can run in the background as long as it conforms to certain rules about resource utilization. Not many apps use the feature yet, but the key ones like Skype do, where you want the app to do something even if the app is running in the background.
Why are manufacturers paying this extortion rather than banding together and trying to fight it like any other patent troll?
What is Google's position on this and why aren't they indemnifying manufacturers that use Android or fighting this themselves?
FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - none of those elements are present in the above post. It's simply an account that that differs from your personal experience. It may or may not be true, but it's not FUD.
Well, to be fair its actually just bullshit that differs from reality, posted with the intent of creating FUD.
Every sentence in the GP was factually incorrect. The ones that were opinion based are clearly lies (like them not being available -- every single Verizon and ATT store in the US carries them, every authorized reseller will also have them available). I suspect the "I actually wanted to develop for it" was a lie, too... given that they're so easy to find and the dev tools are free for it.
I have been issued a work one and I hate the bugger. Non-intuitive and a half.
Not really, a lot of devices have non removable SD cards.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
RMS does not believe in mobile telephones, because they innately track your location, which limits your freedom...
There's no such thing as a legitimate software patent.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I have no personal experience here, but this UDF compatibility matrix does not look too promising. Apparently there are five UDF versions and three variants within each version, and only the oldest versions (from 1996-1997) actually have wide OS support.
A bit more googling produces more comments from users about tricky incompatibilities.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
If they were talking about eliminating the loops, that would be one thing. But they are basically wanting to keep the loops for those who obey the law (typically the more productive and people who you want immigrating) and short-circuit them for law breakers (people who are more likely to be a drain on the welfare state).
So is it really non-intuitive, or is it simply "different than what you're used to"?
My non-techie parents have one. They figured it out in seconds. My parents tried to use my brothers Android and they can't figure out how to even make a phone call.
Simple answer: The people who make the SD standard come up with a non-FAT filesystem for use on it. Devices can then implement either or both depending on their needs. Many devices will implement both and FAT will eventually go away. This would also allow some new things of which FAT is simply incapable. Why hasn't this been done already? I'm sure the FAT patent doesn't have much life left in it but neither does FAT.
Once all the high end cameras are Android powered this problem will go away.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The point of the GNU phone would of course be that it doesn't do that... and that the UI is based on Emacs.
I knew a guy that bought an AMC Pacer. He loved it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1975_AMC_Pacer_base_model_frontleftside.jpg
By asking the question "What's so magical and special about Activesync", you are implicitly stating that the alternatives are so good that ActiveSync has to actually use magic in order to be better than them. Putting a question mark at the end of an outrageous implication doesn't get you off the hook for implying outrageous claims.
I've seen them too. Everyone carries them, just like everyone carried the Zune. Some people even bought the Zune. I knew one guy that had one and loved it. Just one. I'm sure other people bought them too though.
Hell my Dad can hardly use a flip phone. I can't imagine him with any kind of smartphone. I know my wife's droid has a picture of a phone on it. Push that and it brings up a keypad. Lot's of people can't even do that.
Ironically, it's Google that's facing antitrust issues by abusing FRAND standard patents for extortion on basic things like H.264 and WiFi.
Meanwhile Microsoft and Apple have made a public and binding declaration that they won't use FRAND patents for injunctions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/eu-rules-against-googles-motorola-mobility-unit-over-patent-claim/2013/05/06/00be129c-b666-11e2-b94c-b684dda07add_story.html
This space for rent.
Problem is, it is Microsoft, and horribly expensive.
Exchange costs about $60-70 per user for a CAL. Even if you're constantly upgrading to the latest version of Exchange, that's a hair over $20 a year. You and I have different definitions of "horribly expensive." Compared to the cost of a full time employee, $20 is noise.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Kinda' true, but no business of any reasonable size is going to use Google for email and calendaring.
Urm, like KLM? (11k+ users...)
http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/customers.html
Not a Google shill, btw, (I use both G and Outlook, and agree G are not *quite* there yet).
But they're getting closer...
this isn't how the system is designed or intended, this is how the system has been perverted.
making money off products you do not have any involvement in via patent extortion is a sign of a broken system and this is already reaching antitrust investigations.
Well I agree that the system is broken in various ways, but the point of the patent system is to make money off things that you aren't involved in. To allow & encourage people to publish their inventions in return for a cut whenever someone uses that invention. It is supposed to encourage invention, by allowing a monopoly to the first person to do something. They are not supposed to have to make a working product, just to publish their idea so that someone else might.
Now whether that's a good idea anymore is another discussion, but what you describe is what patents are designed to do.
than actually making products that don't suck. Implication? Corporate leeches and legal parasites have changed the legal environment to favor their existence by purchasing laws via bribes labeled as "campaign contributions." Tell me again how, as an individual ISV or inventor, I could *ever* be successful in the USA's current legal environment?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
...sponge off of those who can.
The only one named but not confirmed is about FAT, something easily avoided by using Ext3 or 4.
Well, until Joe Sixpack wants to pack his micro-SD card with stuff from his Windows laptop...
Just to be clear: FAT is not patented. Anyone can use it, for any purpose, with no license. The patent is for Extended FAT.
Joe's laptop is most likely using NTFS, so he will be copying to a different filesystem regardless of whether it is exFAT or Ext3. A bigger problem is things like cameras which have FAT built into their firmware, but most of these stick to basic 8+3 FAT.
you are implicitly stating that the alternatives are so good that ActiveSync has to actually use magic in order to be better than them
You're putting your words into my mouth. I've said no such thing. I've merely reacted to the claim that none of the alternatives is "as good". Setting aside the usual caveats of unidimensional comparison, it raises the question of why the market leader in an industry area notorious for networking effects should be technically superior against dozens of both existing and possible competitors when it is actually seldom the case in the field (witness VHS, for example).
Ezekiel 23:20
I've worked for/with a couple of small businesses that switched to MS's hosted plan for exchange + office licenses, and couldn't be happier... Difference between MS and google there, is that they actually, and easily got a live person to talk to the one time one of them was having issues. That, and imho Google killing of the CalDav access to calendar was a big bad.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Nokia reported their Q1 2013 results, which were very much, for their smartphone business at least, in line with expectations, with 5.6 million Lumia handsets being shipped, most of these WP8 devices.
Shipped != sold unless there is high demand. For example the Wii when first launched was sold out everywhere so shipped == sold. For WP8 phones, I don't see that kind of demand.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
If Microsoft hadn't planted a trojan horse as Nokia's CEO, the mobile phone market would likely be a very different place: MeeGo would be now a strong contender versus iOS and Android. No change for Windows Phone, of course, it would be as dead as it is now.
Circumcision is child abuse.
No, but you CAN blame them for taking advantage of the legal system as it stands. If the 1% manages to pass a bill tomorrow that makes it legal to shoot anybody who has less the $10K in assets that doesn't make it right, and it doesn't make the people who follow the law moral.
Blackmail for instance.
Brinksmanship would be another.
For patents on physical devices a working prototype must be submitted or demonstrated. I fail to see why this should not be the case for software.
A guy I work with got one too. It was very nice looking, and the interface seemed pretty slick.
A couple of us were standing by his desk chatting and watched as his phone, sitting on his desk, lit up and started to call his wife without any user interaction. He had so many problems with it, he traded it in for an iPhone.
I've seen a few in the wild, like people using them in restaurants and bars, but he was the only person I've known that had one.
Bill Gates father is a prominent property rights attorney who's advised Bill on structuring MS business practices since day 1.
I drank what? -- Socrates
There were a few Zunes sold. I bought a Zune for my daughter years ago despite recommending against it. For some reason only know to her, that's what she wanted. It was actually a decent little piece of hardware, but it was God awful trying to connect it to a computer and load it. When she finally broke the display, we replaced it with an iPod. Lots of accessories available for Apple, NONE for Zune.
rsync and activesync are two completely different things. One is for transferring files, the other is for delivering emails, calendar, contacts etc to mobile devices.
Have you actually used Notes or Groupwise? We did, some of our clients still do. Exchange is worth every penny.
Of course, the AMC Pacer didn't get consistently good reviews like Windows Phone 8. But, why should anybody let something little like "facts" get in the way, right?
I don't respond to AC's.
That is a different ActiveSync to the one I was refering to that Android uses, and yes that one is pretty rubbish. Exchange Activesync works over the air, and it makes no difference how many other devices are connected to the same computer, or even if it is connected to one at all.
Heh. I'm picturing the western world reduced down to pre-industrial levels due to patent fights and then aliens show up and the best we have to throw at them is a seed drill.
I drank what? -- Socrates
If Microsoft had pushed out the OS a couple of years earlier the mobile phone market would likely be a very different place.
Microsoft had a more capable mobile OS in 2001 than they have now with WP8. The hardware has finally reached a point where Windows Mobile could shine but they gave up and bought Danger and trotted out the Kin which they spent over 2 years developing but gave up on in less than 6 mo. They were so desperate to get Windows Phone out the door they left crucial features and backward compatibility out completely. Microsoft is all about bailing the water out of the boat instead of patching the leak.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Interesting.. though I'm unlikely to buy a winphone or ithingy, I know a few people that really do like them, and wrote a test app for winphone, which was probably the nicest mobile dev experience I've had (would still rather to web apps). MS knows how to make development as friendly as possible (sometimes so friendly that small tasks outside their 90% case become incredibly hard).
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
While I agree that there really isn't any realistic alternative yet, Exchange costs are quite a bit more than the cost of a CAL. The overhead costs of redundant/support servers, specialized backup systems, staff knowledgeable enough to to deal with database corruption, etc. etc. add up very quickly.
Actually the long filename to 8.3 conversion concept is patented, not exactly the algorithm used by Windows.
So FAT LFN => pay
Tell me again how, as an individual ISV or inventor, I could *ever* be successful in the USA's current legal environment?
Apparently, it's quite simple. Just look at the current state of the arts and start filing patents for the next obvious innovation. Used to be "$X on a computer", then "$X on the Internet" now "$X on mobiles". So, the next big thing will be private "clouds" -- streaming your media collection from your home NAS, what's next after that? Synchronizing your whole family's individual private clouds so that they can share redundant backups of everything, and you just buy a new PC or NAS and plug it in, put in your password, and you're all set. It's quite easy to predict the tech around that, and then the tech around the next innovation, etc, etc. Even if you only get 10% right, you've still got a bunch of ideas locked up in patents.
Now, here's the key thing: DO NOT MAKE ANY OF IT. You can't actually make anything because the other technologies you'll need to implement atop are all tied up in patents and the established companies will sue you out of existance and buy your patents for cheap... Corporations are immortal, they can just choose to waste 20 years of time not licensing a patent. However, if you don't make anything you can just wait till everyone else does -- I mean, these are obvious innovations we're talking here, so they'll come about pretty quickly. Since you don't make anything, they can't sue you back for infringing any of their patents, you just use your own patents to bash them with.
So long as you rent an empty suite in an office building for your shell corp in East Texas, you can sue there, where they're favorable to the economy of Artificially Scarce Ideas. If you get big enough, then you just move your money overseas in a Double Irish so that if worse comes to worse, you can coast quite comfortably on the money you save by not paying any taxes on your intangible intellectual property rights.
In short: Become that which you despise. That is the way of the Sith.
Plus backup, server licence, admins, storage.... Outlook licence. And to add insulte to injury, the licence is even more expensive than direct competitor like IBM lotus note and Novell groupwise.... and that's not considering open source alternative.
Exchange cost a lot.
Backup, admins, storage are going to be required no matter what you're running--even if you're only running postfix and courier. I'll grant the cost of the server license, but that too is fairly cheap (around $700 last I looked). Amortized it across a user base of any reasonable size, and it's at most a couple of bucks a user per year. If it's more than this, your userbase is so small that you should probably be looking at a hosted solution, anyway.
In either case, "horribly expensive" is a gross overstatement at best.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
For ex-FAT there's an acceptable solution: reformat the card with FAT32 and it will work on both Linux and Windows. Microsoft tools just refuse to format >= 32GB but the FS drivers accept the structure.
Haven't you heard of this thing called "abstraction"? You know, what programmers use to encapsulate reusable functionality into libraries. rsync and activesync are actualy attemtping to do the same thing essentially: synchronizing two almost-identical data structures with minimum amount of roundtrips necessary (because of latency) and with minimum amount of bytes that need to be transferred (because of metered data, or simply to finish the task in the shortest time possible).
(If you happened to have said e-mails, calendars, contacts etc. exposed with FUSE, don't you think that rsync would be able to sync them? That's not to say that this would be the best solution, I'm pretty sure that an app-specific differential encoding is better for this purpose, not to mention having to handle potential sync conflicts with policies outside of the scope of rsync.)
Ezekiel 23:20
No one wants to write, develop, implement, test, deploy, and push such a protocol.
I'm pretty sure that the VPRI guys want to do exactly that for their Frank system (or how that thing is called today), because that's exactly the kind of thing I'd expect of them. :)
If a new one were written, it wouldn't be adopted (for the reason that no one's adopted it), and would instead be 'yet another RFC'.
I think that if you wanted to go down the RFC road, the only way would be to make it bloody damned general, i.e., not application-specific, so that everyone would want to use it, and not too complicated to implement it. (Think HTTP of sorts, it started with web pages, and somehow WebDAV, REST, and what not appeared along the way.)
We have ActiveSync for MS servers, and IMAP for everything else, have fun getting everyone to move away from IMAP.
Why would I want to do that? I like IMAP. I don't want anyone to move away from it.
Ezekiel 23:20
I suppose you could use rsync for that, but I don't think it would be a very good solution. Firstly, rsync doesn't support "push" syncronisation. You would need to have rsync constantly poll the server for any changes which would use a lot of data and battery even when nothing is happening whereas activesync will open a connection to the server and only receives data if there is actually a change on the server (or sends it if there is a change on the client). Secondly, activesync doesn't maintain an idential copy of the data on the device, just a user specified subset of it. I have mail and calendar entries on my Exchange server going back to 1996 when I started using a computer rather than a filofax to organise my life. It takes up about 3GB on the server which is nothing when you consider the storage capacity of a server, desktop or laptop, but quite a lot for a mobile device, so I only sync the last 6 months and all future calendar entries, and the most recent 1000 emails up to a maximum of 10kb, with no attachments unless I specifically choose to download them. I use rsync to synchronise some files on my FreeBSD server with my MacBook, though I'm currently evaluating alternative solutions for that.
At this point in my life, I can probably say, I have been doing "computers" over 1/2 my life (over 25 years), and it always amuses me when people tell me I need to learn about how a computer works. Usually people who don't know how reality works.
I'm not a shill for any company or technology. I've seen way too many products come and go to be emotionally tied to a piece of hardware or software. AND if you go through my posts, you'll find where I tell people that Microsoft is a dying "Windows" company, not a technology company. HOWEVER, ActiveSync is the one "cross platform" API that Microsoft has that just "works". That being said, I would drop ActiveSync in a heartbeat if there was something better. No, Linux doesn't have anything better. It has a bunch of tools we can approximate the functionality of Exchange, but nothing that replaces ActiveSync.
Thanks for making me laugh though, I appreciate it. :-D
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I just met the first person with a Lumia 920 a few weeks ago. He said it took 5 month and multiple updates until it was barely usable as a phone. A friend bought a HTC with Windows Phone 7.8 (he cannot use a WP 8 phone at work due to compatibility issues with IE 10 or so). He was pretty happy with it (also I was unimpressed), but the Camera up was crashing often and the phone had to be rebooted then. I would say that Windows Phone still seems to have many stability issues, digging deeper into support forums seems to confirm this.
You can't patent a concept, only an implementation.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The organization I work for has over 5,000 users and we use gmail. It has been a pretty foolproof system for us so far.
They intentionally hide infringing patents behind NDA, walking from vendor to vendor and shaking up money from. In normal, non-corrupt system this should qualify as racketeering and should be prosecuted as such. Unfortunately, in dysfunctional US legal there is nothing big corporation could be successfully prosecuted and properly fined. If you look at such fiascos as HSBC drug cartels money laundering operation (those fucks created dedicated organization for this purpose and essentially walked out scott free!), Microsoft's patent racket looks like small potatoes in comparison.
LOL. Have you ever *been* to East Texas? The "office building" would have to be a broken down trailer, right next to the fellow who lost all his teeth in his last meth holiday (I have a cabin there).
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I could see changing the file system as a possibility in the medium term. More and more of the people I talk to (including non technical users) very rarely hook up their phone to a computer except for charging it and most people only ever get to insert their SD card once - when they first setup the phone.
ActiveSync is more problematic to replace, given the widespread nature of Outlook and the growing nature of BYOD in workplaces. Maybe the alternative is for manufacturers or Google to offer this functionality as an optional extra, so that those people who don't need it can save on the licensing fee and those people who use it for work can claim back the cost on expenses.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Highly selective numbers you have there. There is high demand for one model of Nokia that was priced really low. Unless Nokia sold 7 million units of this one phone, I still don't see high demand for WP8 overall. LTC seems to think that there isn't enough demand to even make a WP8 phone.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
ActiveSync works with Exchange. That's the special thing it does that others don't do well. Turns out that's important.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If you pay attention to Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at all, you'll know he always frames fact and opinion in a way to try to make you think Microsoft is evil and bad and about to die. He has zero credibility.
http://chicagodave.wordpress.com
Who on Slashdot really needs to ask why? Isn't it common knowledge here by now?
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist, and these technologies are necessary for compatability with their monopoly operating system and email server. Why are patent licenses needed?
It's a real tragedy that MSIE isn't available for my OS, I'm tellin' ya.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
As has been mentioned already, B&N already won against Microsoft regarding these patents so clearly they're not exactly paragons of validity.
The other players don't want to upset Microsoft because they sell Microsoft products on their hardware.
Barnes and Noble have already won against Microsoft on these patents, so they can't be all that great.
I can't blame them for playing the game. They pay other companies tons of money for patents why wouldn't they take tons of money for their patents? In addition Microsoft are company that produces actual products with the patents they own.
And Google act as if their decision makers learn about the industry from /. comments. The result is they lose all battles in court.
Motorola are the only one fighting and I think we all know why. If Google pays it will be equivalent to them telling everyone who uses Android that they should pay Microsoft. Not that it is not the case already. BTW claiming that behemoths like Samsung can't defend themselves if they think Microsoft do not have anything real is absurd.
Why should the life of the author even be part of the copyright term at all? Why should copyright in a work whose author lives for another 70 years last longer than copyright in a work published the same day whose author dies the next day?
The point of the GNU phone would of course be that it doesn't [track your location]
I hope you were going for Funny because selling a mobile phone that doesn't track your location is a crime under E911 statutes.
Windows Mobile lost to the less capable OSs (iOS and Android) because of terrible user experience. Capabilities do not matter to anyone but hardcore geeks. It is user experience that matters.
yep.
wonder what will happen when the facts really start to come out.
Quit being an inventor and become an artist. A corporation can wait out 20 years for a patent to expire, but it can't as easily wait out life plus 70 for a copyright to expire.
nope.
supposed to be able to implement the product based on the patent, and math is not patentable.
remind me what software is?
I'm just waiting for such a ruling to actually occur, because once it does this whole patent BS will end immediately.
Most PCs don't have a microSD slot; they have to use either an adapter in the SD slot or an adapter plugged into the USB port. One could just use the Android device as a microSD adapter to transfer files on and off the Ext-formatted card using MTP over USB or FTP or SMB over Wi-Fi. I've had the most luck using SMB over Wi-Fi to move files on and off my Nexus 7 tablet.
How is this a troll? Even if you don't agree with a single word, I don't think its a troll comment.
The patented implementation of long file names in FAT is the only implementation that Windows understands. Therefore, licensing is required for interoperability unless you want to, say, store all files in a zip file and store the zip file with a short file name.
Joe's laptop is most likely using NTFS, so he will be copying to a different filesystem regardless of whether it is exFAT or Ext3.
The difference is that the driver for exFAT comes with Windows and the driver for Ext3 does not. One would have to gain Internet access, download the Ext3 driver, and convince a member of the Administrators group to run its installer.
Why do you think MS kept the rights to DOS after they rewrote it for IBM? In fact they made sure that they would be able to license it to other manufacturers as well. Clever move back in day one set MS on a track no one else predicted. Seemed to work out for them at the time.
I drank what? -- Socrates
The patented implementation of long file names in FAT is the only implementation that Windows understands. Therefore, licensing is required for interoperability unless you want to, say, store all files in a zip file and store the zip file with a short file name.
I think this is not entirely correct. As I understand it, the patent only applies if you store both the short name and the long name. You can, with a bit of trickery, store only the long name or only the short name, and if you do that in precisely the right way, both Windows and the most common non-Windows VFAT implementations will do something close to the right thing (if there is a right thing on a file system as broken as VFAT). IBM proposed a patch to the Linux kernel to do so back in 2009, but the patch was rejected.
However the discussion is fairly moot because a modern FAT implementation needs exFAT support, and Microsoft has secured multiple patents on that.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Software patents are common in Europe. They may be invalid, but the EPO issues them routinely. If you choose to "infringe" on such invalid patents, you suddenly run the risk of getting sued in some far-off corner of Europe where your product happens to be sold. Will every court in Europe do the right thing and invalidate the patent?
China and India are mostly ignoring all this bullshit and forging ahead while the Western world has lost the ability to innovate. Rent-seeking for old inventions can keep us going for a while, but what happens in 10 or 20 years when that gold mine runs out?
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I have not been following Microsofts Rise, but the stock rose on the News that Microsoft financial statements were better than expected, and even though news of Windows being awful..which turned out to be true. It remained profitable in other areas; due to price rises elsewhere and live services on its EOL console. It rose again on news of a large investment by a third party know for positively influencing companies.
For patents on physical devices a working prototype must be submitted or demonstrated. I fail to see why this should not be the case for software.
And I fail to see how it'd be unreasonable to include with the patent application a Raspberry Pi computer containing an implementation of the patented process.
I'd suggest Ext2 as a far better alternative. Have one small partition with Ext2Fsd or other software for Windows users, and every other popular platform will be able to just natively mount it. If it caught on, Microsoft would look positively user-UN-friendly, and would soon recant and include native Ext2 support, probably copied from FreeBSD like they've done in the past...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I'm picturing the western world reduced down to pre-industrial levels due to patent fights
I fail to see how. Patents last twenty years, leaving us with 1993 tech. In fact, patents are the only sort of "intellectual property" with a relevant expiration date.
How can a set of two questions and zero claims contain stupid claims is beyond me.
Betteridge's law of headlines is that the answer to a yes or no question in a news headline is "no" far more often than "yes". Perhaps someone interpreted "What's so magical and special about ActiveSync" as a Betteridge rhetorical question with the answer "nothing".
any good reason not to use UDF for large flash cards?
A lot of devices that are not personal computers expect removable writable media other than optical discs to be formatted FAT and only FAT. Game consoles and other living room entertainment devices are among them.
it has read and write support in linux, mac and windows.
Not Windows XP, which has 11 months left of extended support.
The hope is that the income from the copyright will encourage the author to create more works
Giving lifelong copyright encourages the author to create one successful work and live off residuals. A 28-year copyright, as envisioned in the Copyright Act of 1790, would give the author 28 years to create another hit just as drug companies have a decade or so of patent exclusivity to find the next blockbuster drug.
Since it is difficult to encourage dead people to do anything
I'm guessing it has something to do with encouraging the heirs to prepare unfinished manuscripts for publication. But a fixed period after publication would do the same.
Software isn't maths, software is a machine! Saying software is maths is saying that everything that exists is in some form applied maths, which is true, but utterly unhelpful.
WMDC is the slowest program in the history of mankind
I worked for a company developing warehouse software for a bunch of Symbol (now Motorola) barcode scanners running Windows CE. I worked around the dain bramage by running the application on a web server and presenting the user interface through the included Internet Explorer over Wi-Fi. Then I used the included ScanWedge app to turn scans into keypresses and form submissions, and it's still in use at Phil's Hobby Shop.
It's Microsoft that has to justify itself here.
Not to you, though it seems that's what you're after. They've obviously justified themselves to Samsung, HTC, Huawei, ZTE and others, yes the claims may be frivolous and yes the patent system needs to be overhauled but these companies aren't two-bit operations that are just going to cave to empty threads, Samsung went up against the much richer and more powerful (than Microsoft) Apple over patent claims, they wouldn't give a second thought to fighting off frivolous claims from an ailing software maker, Samsung's burgeoning business is in things other than Microsoft, there is no reason for them to appease Redmond to the tune of a few dollars for every device if they don't think they need to.
Unfortunately, Microsoft's countermeasures are already in place. First, Windows appears unable to see past the first partition on removable media. The workaround may have to store the Ext2 file system image on the FAT file system and mount it with loopback. Second, I was under the impression that one had to be an administrator to install a file system driver.
RMS does not believe in mobile telephones, because they innately track your location, which limits your freedom...
Unlike POTS phones which can be located anywhere in your house.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Have you even tried to find a Windows Phone? [...] I gave up.. I actually wanted to develop apps for it.. and it just became too much frustration
I suspect the "I actually wanted to develop for it" was a lie, too... given that they're so easy to find and the dev tools are free for it.
I was under the impression that it was like the iPhone, costing a recurring fee to be able to run programs that you wrote on a device that you own. This link claims that each "valid and current developer account on Windows Phone Dev Center [...] lets you register three devices for app development", and this link claims that a developer account costs $99 and self-destructs after 365 days.
What? I don't know why you got modded up for that because I'm pretty sure that only makes sense in your head. What is "they?" Microsoft?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Which companies have capitulated and bought an Android license via a court case that Microsoft won?
Most companies seem to have conceded the legitimacy without having to go to court, and these are hardly companies that would have a second thought about going to court against Microsoft. Samsung even went to court against one of the largest companies in the world who is also one of their biggest customers.
Well, at least you can keep track of the things around you in the Pacer. Compare that to the modern cars that use early APC style viewing slots instead of windshields.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
You're putting your words into my mouth. I've said no such thing.
No, I'm interpreting your implications. Any reasonable person would pick up the same implication from your words and it is disingenuous to so heavily imply something in the form of a loaded question and then feign innocence by protesting that your words should only be interpreted exactly and literally. Communication doesn't work that way.
The only people who have capitulated own Desktop/Laptop WIndows licenses so i hold judgement on legitimacy of their claims
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Or you could maybe try, you know, not attacking them?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
This is why you have a dual standard. Eventually enough people will move over to the new standard (since it would be the default) that you simply don't care about the hold-outs.
The people proposing current immigration amnesty, of course. Which world do *you* live on?
The people proposing current immigration amnesty, of course.
Since you didn't actually say that, kinda hard to figure out what you meant. Your context is not everyone else's context.
The fact that the overwhelming majority of people who illegally come to the US come for work not charity your post was a non sequitur anyway.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Hell if I know how, but his behavior shows clearly what he is.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yet Samsung's biggest business is in the market where Apple is their biggest customer and they didn't fold to them.
Fair enough, I thought the context was obvious but if it wasn't, that's my bad.
My post was a reply to someone so entirely not a non sequitur. And also I speak as someone who has gone through the immigration process. For what it's worth, yes, it is entirely too long and egregious. It took many months to go through the process and then more than a year after that for me to actually receive my green card. When my wife went through the mirror process in the UK, we simply caught the train to London, visited the appropriate department and were out in time for breakfast. The US should, quite frankly, be embarrassed at its immigration process.
I can't blame them for playing the game.
I certainly can. There are a million ways that I could make my next door neighbor's life miserable that are completely legal. You can certainly blame me for employing any of those tactics if it was done simply to hurt somebody. Sure, if somebody doesn't like the sight of clothes lines I'm not going to refuse to hang up my laundry. However, if my next door neighbor just lost his job and needs to sell his home to reduce his expenses, I'm not going to go out and paint my house with perfectly legal polka dots and put 1k pink flamingos in my lawn just to knock 40% off of his home value, even if I could somehow make money off the deal.
and sure enough, here we are today. what has happened already?
the #1 supporter of patent trolls gets shut down by his own court. Does he whine about it? you bet.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20130510155818152
You're the silver lining type aren't you? That's one of the ugliest cars ever made.
I was born in the USSR - I am accustomed to ugly cars.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap