It would be nice to have one of these suits actually go to a court where the judge actually understands the 'value' of these patents. Even if they're valid, they're worth about 1 millionth of the cost of the phone. Have some judge set damages of a penny and let's be done with this crap.
Right. I don't think Kubuntu is directly related to Ubuntu. It's certainly not offered as a download choice at ubuntu.com, which is where most newbies would go. But apparently (according to other posts here), the standard Ubuntu repositories do host the bits to support kubuntu's desktop stuff. Other distros support GNOME and KDE out of the box, but Canonical hasn't taken that approach. Presumably, that's because their approach is to simplify things and have there be 'one Linux' as much as possible (a rational choice that might not be so popular here). So, I guess the question is whether to consider Kubuntu a separate distro, a KDE option supported by Canonical, or something in between.
This has become a much bigger problem recently, because the patent office has been rubber-stamping patents of the form 'do this thing that's always been done, but do it on a mobile device'. Or '...do it with a gesture on a touch screen'. I agree that the mobile device (i.e. the method of supporting TCP/IP over a cellular system) may well be patentable. Likewise the physical multi-touch screen should be patentable. But email over cellular IP is not even an innovation - it's email (there have been 'push' communications before). And patenting specific gestures is like patenting new words in the language.
So, it may not be that 'software patents are always bad patents'. But they are bad patents in so many cases, that, without a better way to sort the good from the bad, abolishing them does less harm than continuing to grant them.
Well, some of us hate most ads, but understand that something's got to fund the content. Still, I use Adblock Plus, and would welcome a way to have it allow non-obtrusive stuff through. I don't feel good about freeloading - I do it because I can, and because the ads tend to be overly distracting.
Google seems to have found the sweet spot in web advertising. Their text ads are unobtrusive, and in fact, can be quite useful. They mainly show up when I'm looking to buy something, and are profitable for both Google. What they don't do is try to manipulate my feelings - and that's the main reason I don't mind them. I guess Google's lucky to be in a business that lends itself to such a 'clean' ad-based revenue stream. I don't know if non-search websites can manage this.
Anyway, much as I hate ads, I'd rather control their methods than try to eliminate them. I pay for home delivery of the ad-stuffed New York Times and subscribe to Public TV and radio. Those are habits I made before the web and AdBlock and 'information wants to be free' came along - I'm not sure I'd make them today. And ultimately, that's a shame. I want there to be a New York Times, a PBS and an NPR - and a slashdot...
Well, then certainly Canonical didn't author the software either. In theory, this is how open source software is supposed to work. The software's free, and you're free to try to make a buck packaging it and providing a better, more stable or more up-to-date experience. Mint isn't doing anything to Canonical. They're both doing what distros do. Now, whether this is a formula for making lots of money is still an open question. And if the writers of Banshee start feeling cheated out of their 'deserved' cut, well they might stop working on it. Which might not be the end of the world, since Canonical and Mint are free to take up the slack if they find it profitable (or rewarding) enough. Of course there are hundreds of ways this could degenerate into a huge mess... But somehow, Linux manages to soldier on.
And then there's Android. Because it's been embraced by hardware vendors, the revenue stream doesn't have to come from the software. That's a big plus. Of course Google's revenue stream comes from ads tied to the non-free bits. So far, that's working pretty well. But as folks like Amazon and Verizon start replacing the Google bits, things could break down there too.
At 59, I'm still going (realatively) strong. I too still like 'mucking about', but I must admit that the sheer number of 'latest things' out there makes it near impossible to keep up with them all. Thankfully, I don't have to, but somehow I doubt having dabbled in Android development to keep my skills up would serve me well should I need to interview again.
In the meantime, I'm still employed based on a ton of knowledge specific to my employer. And you'd think that'd be okay, but they still tried to outsource me. It was a disaster, and now I'm technically a consultant to the outsourcing firm and doing the lion's share of the 'outsourced' work to make that project read as a success. So, in addition to ageism, anyone starting out in IT had better realize that they want you to be expendable. I'm sure that my employers think their big mistake wasn't trying to outsource a small group of long-time employees. No, they think the mistake was keeping those employees around long enough for them to become critical resources. Don't count on the next generation of corporate whizzes making that same 'mistake' twice.
He has one very definite power - naming people to the Supreme Court. And Bush has succeeded in ensconcing two of the most reflexively Business over People, money over anti-corruption justices on the Court for years to come. Citizens United + a do-nothing congress means money's gonna get its way for a generation.
Right. Isn't putting up a map with a 'You are here' indicator and street names the same thing as a map with a "You are here' indicator and Starbucks locations? And if the existance of GPS isn't prior art for a "You are here" map, then what is GPS for in the first place. Utterly obvious.
Tower triangulation is another thing, though. I guess that had to be 'invented'. Though triangulation itself is ancient, a database of Wifi points may be new.
They're not doing this to make money from the licensing. They're doing it to make sure that Microsoft alternatives always cost at least as much as 'genuine Microsoft' software. They are doing this so they don't have to compete on cost - it is anticompetitive to the core. The money they make from the licenses is a mostly irrelevant side-benefit.
I have a Nook Color running Cyanogen mod 7.1, and it's pretty nice. But I almost never use it. The reason - there are 2 of us in the apartment, and Android (gingerbread, at least) is a lousy multi-user system. The Gmail app supports multiple accounts, but doesn't let you sign out of them - so each user can see everybody else's email. Other apps have no multi-account support at all - and they shouldn't have to. Android should just support the multi-user capabilities of the underlying Linux OS. But as it is, there is no way to support multiple Facebook (or even Words With Friends) accounts on the thing. Ditto browser bookmarks and stored web passwords, etc.
Maybe the iPad (and the 'tablet' versions of Android) have true multi-user signon options. If not, they need to get 'em.
That's because you're not forced to load Chrome in the first place. Presumably, anybody who's bothered to download Chrome wants Google as their default. And if Chrome ever achieved the 90+ % penetration that IE gets simply by coming with Windows, which comes with just about every new PC, then yeah, they should have to make search engine switching easy. Of course Microsoft doesn't make switching easy now, but that's been covered already.
So... The Bush tax cuts passed with 51% of the votes. If you're saying it's meaningful to need to get all of one party's members' votes for a bill, you're simply making shit up. 51% is all it takes, and the filibuster is meant to be used in extraordinary circumstances. The current state of affairs in the Senate is one of radical obstructionism. Of course, if and when the Republicans ever take 51% of the Senate, the Democrats will probably try the same thing. Precedent, you know. But the Republicans will scream bloody murder.
Any time a Republican blames 'the Democratic Senate', you know it's bullshit. They should be saying 'the nominally Democratic Senate that now requires a 60-40 majority on any vote, because the big baby Republicans say so'. And don't go saying 'the Democrats filibuster too' - they've never abused it to this extent.
Amazingly, Republican talking heads are allowed to get away with this on just about every 'news' show around.
A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user's perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location.
The only thing innovative about this patent is the creative use of complex language to obscure the simplicity of the underlying 'invention'.
and by the way, by 'never noticed the shift', I mean 'pretended not to notice the shift'. These folks aren't morons - once a bubble forms, as long as they can get away with it, they're paid not to 'notice' bubbles. That's why we need regulators that are independent of the systems they regulate.
Back around the peak of the housing bubble, I heard Alan Greenspan interviewed about his then new autobiography. The interviewer asked him whether a house was always a good investment, and he answered "In a capitalist society, it's a good thing for people to have a stake in the system". That says it all. It doesn't matter to the financial sector whether people are making good investments; they just want to make sure that voters' think they're interests are aligned with bankers'.
the logical thing for me to do might be to borrow lots of money and invest it into projects that will have a long term payoff
...as long as you can identify projects that really will have a long term payoff. Housing fit the bill, until it didn't. But the snake oil salesmen (aided by the ratings agency) never noticed the shift. Without decent information, borrowing and investing can easily be traps. CEO's are expected to know how to get that info, but even they botch it more often than not (because 'long term' now means quarter to quarter to them, and because they are often rewarded whether they succeed or fail). Regular folks watch CNBC - i.e. they're doomed.
The sold well until Windows netbooks became available. If they hadn't, Windows netbooks wouldn't have come into existence. XP was at end of life at the time, remember?
The thing is, to run Windows, netbooks had to go with hard drives instead of SSD and more memory. And Microsoft mandated maximum screen size and resolution. Today's netbook is just a slightly cheaper cheap laptop - not a whole new device category, and barely worth considering. And in the meantime, tablets have taken off. So the netbook is essentially a dead category. Yeah, they still exist, but they've lost most of their reason for existing.
I don't get this. My Google-defaulted Mozilla makes it really easy to switch to Bing. It's right there in the pulldown list, which is way more than I can say for IE, which is supposed to make it easy to switch from the Bing default to another search engine, but which acutally puts you through some pretty tricky hoops to install another search engine from an MS website. When I tried it on a co-worker's machine, it wouldn't install (either because their IE version wasn't compatible or because the machine was locked down in such a way that prevented it. Anyway, the fact that Mozilla already offers a trivially easy way to switch says a lot about how important the built in default is. So there you go. Microsoft knows the built in default is vitally important, uses it in IE to boost Bing - way more so than Mozilla boosts Google, and still is willing to pay for default placement in Firefox. Wasn't there an antitrust suit?
Why on earth did they release the N9 at all? Wasn't that just released last week? Unless they're hedging their bets on keeping Meego alive, why would they want to confuse the market that way?
People are getting more and more tech savvy and everyone in the tech industry is aware of it.
Well, I'm pretty tech savvy, and I couldn't get a co-worker's IE to use Google as its default search engine (IE7, I think - whatever our employer allows on the machine - I run Firefox on mine, so I don't know what the IE version is). Sure, after a few non-obvious clicks, I could get to Microsoft's web page for adding a search plug-in, but it wouldn't load the Google engine. I think it said the IE version wasn't supported or something. Whatever. Whether intentional or not, it means there are a lot of PC's out there stuck with Bing as their default search engines and no easy way to swtich it.
And the user in question actively wants to use Google. She's just not using the search bar for now.
Perhaps, but if this patent is as obvious and unoriginal as posters here are implying, and it still gets granted, and it's somehow more likely to get granted, then first to file has effectively been changed by the new law.
Admittedly a lot of if's. But, if anything in the new law effectively grants a greater presumption of originality than before, and a prior art claim requires you to sue to override the stupidity of the patent office, then first to file grants a temporary monopoly to anybody that can frame an idea in such a way as to get it past the asleep at the wheel bureaucrats a the P.O. Maybe this isn't a significant change from the old status quo, but it sure feels like it.
Well, at least one of the name callers attempts to address some of my points.
Say what? Republicans want less government and less regulation.
I said nothing about regulation being part of the problem, but of course as a dittohead, you assume all problems are caused by regulation. What part of 'to the extent cash in the political system is driving many of these problems' did you miss? Now you may think regulation is more of a problem than buying politicians, but I fail to see how.
Huh? Unions, big donators to the Democratic party, are not supported by the majority of people:
Again, I didn't say anything about unions. But let's take unions. It may be true they don't have the support of the majority of people, but again, that's not what I was talking about. Unions do represent the interests of large numbers of people, which is more than you can say of corporations buying politicians (and, no, the 'interests' of Wallmart employees don't count in this calculus). So, to the extent that unions == corporations in the political bribery game (your point, I assume), and to the extent that unions support Democrats, then yeah, Democrats represent more people than Republicans. I'm all for ending the bribery game, but as long as it exists, let's not pretend that it's a union-specific problem, just because unions play it too.
As far as Democrats outspending Republicans (if that is indeed true), it doesn't change the fact that Democrats support campaign finance reform way more than Republicans do. So either Dems are for a clean political system, despite the possibility that it will hurt them, or maybe the statitstics you cite are cooked a bit. All I know is that groups like "Americans for Apple Pie" that consist primarily of a few billionaire donors and lobby against environmental regulation are highly suspect and pollute our democracy. And if you think those groups are primarily in support of Democrats, you're just not paying attention (which is exactly what they want - listen to the ominous music and voice-over, vote against your own interests).
While there may be a grain of truth to your simplistic statement, remember that Bush appointees tipped the scale toward 'Citizens' United.
To the extent that cash in the political system is driving many of these problems, Republicans are for perpetuating the system. Democrats are mainly playing the game as it exists, but do not 'believe' in it. Republicans are about money first - the rest is what it takes to get votes. Democrats come down (mostly) on the side of the larger number of people, but they need money to get votes too. So they may come out looking similar, but for very different reasons. John McCain's moment of temporary lucidity aside, getting money out of politics has always been a Democratic issue.
The same can be said of Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Google as regards free software. Google's DNA does not preclude it in the way that Microsoft's does. Apple is somewhere in the middle - they don't make their money directly from software, but they are occasionally threatened by free software anyway. Google is able to actively support it, but even they try to retain enough control so that their support actually can serve their purposes. Still, the underlying motivations do matter, even when the outward behaviors appear similar.
I still use Firefox on Windows at work. The Windows version works well, and I can live with the constant upgrades (so far). And all things being (more or less) equal, I still prefer Firefox as a browser.
But I'm finding that the Linux version of Firefox is getting unbearable to use. There are just so many times when the UI becomes unresponsive. Hell, there are very noticeable delays just to scroll with the scroll wheel. And their attempts to copy the Chrome UI are really kludgey on Linux. Chromium works much better - though I've seen it do flaky stuff on some websites. So most of the time, I still use FF, but I'm getting closer to switching.
I was pretty pissed off when Chrome didn't go with QT or GTK for a cross-platform UI. But Google's somehow managed to come up with a way to build a multi-platform browser that actually works well on all the platforms. Firefox used to be the best at that, but it's losing ground. I was beginning to suspect that Firefox's shortcomings on Linux were Linux-specific (X window events getting lost - or GTK throwing them out when the app can't consume them, crummy threading libraries, etc.), but Linux Chrome has very few of the FF performance issues. I guess that's good news for Linux, but not great for FF.
This may be a stupid question, but just how hard is it to update the Android version on a device?
It took ages for Google to put out a gingerbread update for the Nexus One. I've got a Nook Color running CM7, and the 7.1 gingerbread update for that is taking a really long time to go stable. Assuming one Android version runs on a device, what actually needs to be done to get the next version to run? What exactly are the Cyanogen folks tweaking in their nightly releases? Presumably they're using the latest gingerbread source code as is, and not fixing coding bugs.
Also, while I'm at it, does anybody think Ice Cream Sandwich is gonna run on the Nexus One or the NC? Or is gingerbread the end of the road for these 'older' devices? And if so, is that because of memory constraints? Processor speed?
Slashdot Mirror
It would be nice to have one of these suits actually go to a court where the judge actually understands the 'value' of these patents. Even if they're valid, they're worth about 1 millionth of the cost of the phone. Have some judge set damages of a penny and let's be done with this crap.
Right. I don't think Kubuntu is directly related to Ubuntu. It's certainly not offered as a download choice at ubuntu.com, which is where most newbies would go. But apparently (according to other posts here), the standard Ubuntu repositories do host the bits to support kubuntu's desktop stuff. Other distros support GNOME and KDE out of the box, but Canonical hasn't taken that approach. Presumably, that's because their approach is to simplify things and have there be 'one Linux' as much as possible (a rational choice that might not be so popular here). So, I guess the question is whether to consider Kubuntu a separate distro, a KDE option supported by Canonical, or something in between.
This has become a much bigger problem recently, because the patent office has been rubber-stamping patents of the form 'do this thing that's always been done, but do it on a mobile device'. Or '...do it with a gesture on a touch screen'. I agree that the mobile device (i.e. the method of supporting TCP/IP over a cellular system) may well be patentable. Likewise the physical multi-touch screen should be patentable. But email over cellular IP is not even an innovation - it's email (there have been 'push' communications before). And patenting specific gestures is like patenting new words in the language.
So, it may not be that 'software patents are always bad patents'. But they are bad patents in so many cases, that, without a better way to sort the good from the bad, abolishing them does less harm than continuing to grant them.
Well, some of us hate most ads, but understand that something's got to fund the content. Still, I use Adblock Plus, and would welcome a way to have it allow non-obtrusive stuff through. I don't feel good about freeloading - I do it because I can, and because the ads tend to be overly distracting.
Google seems to have found the sweet spot in web advertising. Their text ads are unobtrusive, and in fact, can be quite useful. They mainly show up when I'm looking to buy something, and are profitable for both Google. What they don't do is try to manipulate my feelings - and that's the main reason I don't mind them. I guess Google's lucky to be in a business that lends itself to such a 'clean' ad-based revenue stream. I don't know if non-search websites can manage this.
Anyway, much as I hate ads, I'd rather control their methods than try to eliminate them. I pay for home delivery of the ad-stuffed New York Times and subscribe to Public TV and radio. Those are habits I made before the web and AdBlock and 'information wants to be free' came along - I'm not sure I'd make them today. And ultimately, that's a shame. I want there to be a New York Times, a PBS and an NPR - and a slashdot...
Well, then certainly Canonical didn't author the software either. In theory, this is how open source software is supposed to work. The software's free, and you're free to try to make a buck packaging it and providing a better, more stable or more up-to-date experience. Mint isn't doing anything to Canonical. They're both doing what distros do. Now, whether this is a formula for making lots of money is still an open question. And if the writers of Banshee start feeling cheated out of their 'deserved' cut, well they might stop working on it. Which might not be the end of the world, since Canonical and Mint are free to take up the slack if they find it profitable (or rewarding) enough. Of course there are hundreds of ways this could degenerate into a huge mess... But somehow, Linux manages to soldier on.
And then there's Android. Because it's been embraced by hardware vendors, the revenue stream doesn't have to come from the software. That's a big plus. Of course Google's revenue stream comes from ads tied to the non-free bits. So far, that's working pretty well. But as folks like Amazon and Verizon start replacing the Google bits, things could break down there too.
At 59, I'm still going (realatively) strong. I too still like 'mucking about', but I must admit that the sheer number of 'latest things' out there makes it near impossible to keep up with them all. Thankfully, I don't have to, but somehow I doubt having dabbled in Android development to keep my skills up would serve me well should I need to interview again.
In the meantime, I'm still employed based on a ton of knowledge specific to my employer. And you'd think that'd be okay, but they still tried to outsource me. It was a disaster, and now I'm technically a consultant to the outsourcing firm and doing the lion's share of the 'outsourced' work to make that project read as a success. So, in addition to ageism, anyone starting out in IT had better realize that they want you to be expendable. I'm sure that my employers think their big mistake wasn't trying to outsource a small group of long-time employees. No, they think the mistake was keeping those employees around long enough for them to become critical resources. Don't count on the next generation of corporate whizzes making that same 'mistake' twice.
He has one very definite power - naming people to the Supreme Court. And Bush has succeeded in ensconcing two of the most reflexively Business over People, money over anti-corruption justices on the Court for years to come. Citizens United + a do-nothing congress means money's gonna get its way for a generation.
Right. Isn't putting up a map with a 'You are here' indicator and street names the same thing as a map with a "You are here' indicator and Starbucks locations? And if the existance of GPS isn't prior art for a "You are here" map, then what is GPS for in the first place. Utterly obvious.
Tower triangulation is another thing, though. I guess that had to be 'invented'. Though triangulation itself is ancient, a database of Wifi points may be new.
They're not doing this to make money from the licensing. They're doing it to make sure that Microsoft alternatives always cost at least as much as 'genuine Microsoft' software. They are doing this so they don't have to compete on cost - it is anticompetitive to the core. The money they make from the licenses is a mostly irrelevant side-benefit.
I have a Nook Color running Cyanogen mod 7.1, and it's pretty nice. But I almost never use it. The reason - there are 2 of us in the apartment, and Android (gingerbread, at least) is a lousy multi-user system. The Gmail app supports multiple accounts, but doesn't let you sign out of them - so each user can see everybody else's email. Other apps have no multi-account support at all - and they shouldn't have to. Android should just support the multi-user capabilities of the underlying Linux OS. But as it is, there is no way to support multiple Facebook (or even Words With Friends) accounts on the thing. Ditto browser bookmarks and stored web passwords, etc.
Maybe the iPad (and the 'tablet' versions of Android) have true multi-user signon options. If not, they need to get 'em.
That's because you're not forced to load Chrome in the first place. Presumably, anybody who's bothered to download Chrome wants Google as their default. And if Chrome ever achieved the 90+ % penetration that IE gets simply by coming with Windows, which comes with just about every new PC, then yeah, they should have to make search engine switching easy. Of course Microsoft doesn't make switching easy now, but that's been covered already.
So... The Bush tax cuts passed with 51% of the votes. If you're saying it's meaningful to need to get all of one party's members' votes for a bill, you're simply making shit up. 51% is all it takes, and the filibuster is meant to be used in extraordinary circumstances. The current state of affairs in the Senate is one of radical obstructionism. Of course, if and when the Republicans ever take 51% of the Senate, the Democrats will probably try the same thing. Precedent, you know. But the Republicans will scream bloody murder.
Any time a Republican blames 'the Democratic Senate', you know it's bullshit. They should be saying 'the nominally Democratic Senate that now requires a 60-40 majority on any vote, because the big baby Republicans say so'. And don't go saying 'the Democrats filibuster too' - they've never abused it to this extent.
Amazingly, Republican talking heads are allowed to get away with this on just about every 'news' show around.
A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user's perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location.
The only thing innovative about this patent is the creative use of complex language to obscure the simplicity of the underlying 'invention'.
and by the way, by 'never noticed the shift', I mean 'pretended not to notice the shift'. These folks aren't morons - once a bubble forms, as long as they can get away with it, they're paid not to 'notice' bubbles. That's why we need regulators that are independent of the systems they regulate.
Back around the peak of the housing bubble, I heard Alan Greenspan interviewed about his then new autobiography. The interviewer asked him whether a house was always a good investment, and he answered "In a capitalist society, it's a good thing for people to have a stake in the system". That says it all. It doesn't matter to the financial sector whether people are making good investments; they just want to make sure that voters' think they're interests are aligned with bankers'.
the logical thing for me to do might be to borrow lots of money and invest it into projects that will have a long term payoff
...as long as you can identify projects that really will have a long term payoff. Housing fit the bill, until it didn't. But the snake oil salesmen (aided by the ratings agency) never noticed the shift. Without decent information, borrowing and investing can easily be traps. CEO's are expected to know how to get that info, but even they botch it more often than not (because 'long term' now means quarter to quarter to them, and because they are often rewarded whether they succeed or fail). Regular folks watch CNBC - i.e. they're doomed.
The sold well until Windows netbooks became available. If they hadn't, Windows netbooks wouldn't have come into existence. XP was at end of life at the time, remember?
The thing is, to run Windows, netbooks had to go with hard drives instead of SSD and more memory. And Microsoft mandated maximum screen size and resolution. Today's netbook is just a slightly cheaper cheap laptop - not a whole new device category, and barely worth considering. And in the meantime, tablets have taken off. So the netbook is essentially a dead category. Yeah, they still exist, but they've lost most of their reason for existing.
I don't get this. My Google-defaulted Mozilla makes it really easy to switch to Bing. It's right there in the pulldown list, which is way more than I can say for IE, which is supposed to make it easy to switch from the Bing default to another search engine, but which acutally puts you through some pretty tricky hoops to install another search engine from an MS website. When I tried it on a co-worker's machine, it wouldn't install (either because their IE version wasn't compatible or because the machine was locked down in such a way that prevented it. Anyway, the fact that Mozilla already offers a trivially easy way to switch says a lot about how important the built in default is. So there you go. Microsoft knows the built in default is vitally important, uses it in IE to boost Bing - way more so than Mozilla boosts Google, and still is willing to pay for default placement in Firefox. Wasn't there an antitrust suit?
Why on earth did they release the N9 at all? Wasn't that just released last week? Unless they're hedging their bets on keeping Meego alive, why would they want to confuse the market that way?
People are getting more and more tech savvy and everyone in the tech industry is aware of it.
Well, I'm pretty tech savvy, and I couldn't get a co-worker's IE to use Google as its default search engine (IE7, I think - whatever our employer allows on the machine - I run Firefox on mine, so I don't know what the IE version is). Sure, after a few non-obvious clicks, I could get to Microsoft's web page for adding a search plug-in, but it wouldn't load the Google engine. I think it said the IE version wasn't supported or something. Whatever. Whether intentional or not, it means there are a lot of PC's out there stuck with Bing as their default search engines and no easy way to swtich it.
And the user in question actively wants to use Google. She's just not using the search bar for now.
Perhaps, but if this patent is as obvious and unoriginal as posters here are implying, and it still gets granted, and it's somehow more likely to get granted, then first to file has effectively been changed by the new law.
Admittedly a lot of if's. But, if anything in the new law effectively grants a greater presumption of originality than before, and a prior art claim requires you to sue to override the stupidity of the patent office, then first to file grants a temporary monopoly to anybody that can frame an idea in such a way as to get it past the asleep at the wheel bureaucrats a the P.O. Maybe this isn't a significant change from the old status quo, but it sure feels like it.
Well, at least one of the name callers attempts to address some of my points.
Say what? Republicans want less government and less regulation.
I said nothing about regulation being part of the problem, but of course as a dittohead, you assume all problems are caused by regulation. What part of 'to the extent cash in the political system is driving many of these problems' did you miss? Now you may think regulation is more of a problem than buying politicians, but I fail to see how.
Huh? Unions, big donators to the Democratic party, are not supported by the majority of people:
Again, I didn't say anything about unions. But let's take unions. It may be true they don't have the support of the majority of people, but again, that's not what I was talking about. Unions do represent the interests of large numbers of people, which is more than you can say of corporations buying politicians (and, no, the 'interests' of Wallmart employees don't count in this calculus). So, to the extent that unions == corporations in the political bribery game (your point, I assume), and to the extent that unions support Democrats, then yeah, Democrats represent more people than Republicans. I'm all for ending the bribery game, but as long as it exists, let's not pretend that it's a union-specific problem, just because unions play it too.
As far as Democrats outspending Republicans (if that is indeed true), it doesn't change the fact that Democrats support campaign finance reform way more than Republicans do. So either Dems are for a clean political system, despite the possibility that it will hurt them, or maybe the statitstics you cite are cooked a bit. All I know is that groups like "Americans for Apple Pie" that consist primarily of a few billionaire donors and lobby against environmental regulation are highly suspect and pollute our democracy. And if you think those groups are primarily in support of Democrats, you're just not paying attention (which is exactly what they want - listen to the ominous music and voice-over, vote against your own interests).
While there may be a grain of truth to your simplistic statement, remember that Bush appointees tipped the scale toward 'Citizens' United.
To the extent that cash in the political system is driving many of these problems, Republicans are for perpetuating the system. Democrats are mainly playing the game as it exists, but do not 'believe' in it. Republicans are about money first - the rest is what it takes to get votes. Democrats come down (mostly) on the side of the larger number of people, but they need money to get votes too. So they may come out looking similar, but for very different reasons. John McCain's moment of temporary lucidity aside, getting money out of politics has always been a Democratic issue.
The same can be said of Microsoft vs. Apple vs. Google as regards free software. Google's DNA does not preclude it in the way that Microsoft's does. Apple is somewhere in the middle - they don't make their money directly from software, but they are occasionally threatened by free software anyway. Google is able to actively support it, but even they try to retain enough control so that their support actually can serve their purposes. Still, the underlying motivations do matter, even when the outward behaviors appear similar.
I still use Firefox on Windows at work. The Windows version works well, and I can live with the constant upgrades (so far). And all things being (more or less) equal, I still prefer Firefox as a browser.
But I'm finding that the Linux version of Firefox is getting unbearable to use. There are just so many times when the UI becomes unresponsive. Hell, there are very noticeable delays just to scroll with the scroll wheel. And their attempts to copy the Chrome UI are really kludgey on Linux. Chromium works much better - though I've seen it do flaky stuff on some websites. So most of the time, I still use FF, but I'm getting closer to switching.
I was pretty pissed off when Chrome didn't go with QT or GTK for a cross-platform UI. But Google's somehow managed to come up with a way to build a multi-platform browser that actually works well on all the platforms. Firefox used to be the best at that, but it's losing ground. I was beginning to suspect that Firefox's shortcomings on Linux were Linux-specific (X window events getting lost - or GTK throwing them out when the app can't consume them, crummy threading libraries, etc.), but Linux Chrome has very few of the FF performance issues. I guess that's good news for Linux, but not great for FF.
This may be a stupid question, but just how hard is it to update the Android version on a device?
It took ages for Google to put out a gingerbread update for the Nexus One. I've got a Nook Color running CM7, and the 7.1 gingerbread update for that is taking a really long time to go stable. Assuming one Android version runs on a device, what actually needs to be done to get the next version to run? What exactly are the Cyanogen folks tweaking in their nightly releases? Presumably they're using the latest gingerbread source code as is, and not fixing coding bugs.
Also, while I'm at it, does anybody think Ice Cream Sandwich is gonna run on the Nexus One or the NC? Or is gingerbread the end of the road for these 'older' devices? And if so, is that because of memory constraints? Processor speed?