...because the patent was not on "sharing bits over radio", it was on some extremely clever and complex technologies that were developed, intially for radio telescopes, and then extended to the difficult problem of fast communications inside of an echoey and interference filled environment.
Just because this is now done inside a chip that costs a few euros doesn't make it simpler, and just because 99.999% of the people using it (99.9999% on slashdot) have no idea what is going on in their little box, it doesn't mean it isn't worth other companies paying for the patents.
They'll just hire some taiwanese design team to take and ARM core and hang some extra bits on it like a functions for mp3 decoding, then get TSMC or some other taiwanese Fab to produce it.
AFAIK they didn't even design the ipod tech themselves, just decide on the look of the thing and contract all the rest out.
People paying with their own money will put up with a lot to save a few quid or euros.
Companies earning money from the software they use will pay a *lot* to make sure it works as quick and optimally as possible.
If someone is sitting in their bedroom and writing software that outperforms what your full time programers are doing, then I would suggest getting either new employees, or a new career for yourself.
As an example, there are lots of free and good programs to view GDSii (chip layout) files, but my company pays a big fee for a site licence for the one that we think works the best with the sort of large files we deal with. If it saves a few minutes each time someone uses it, that is worth every penny to us.
Take note of the date, 1990.
I've been hearing about this company around Cambridge for ever. They are a classic case of a good idea fucked up by useless managers.
They actually had a working B+W unit about 10 year ago till the idiots in control decidced they had to have colour before selling it.
Meanwhile they burnt through their cash on expensive managing directors and golden handshakes and parachutees and god knows what else. Most of the origional good people have left (I supervises one doing his PhD after he left) and it seems to be little more than a marketing scam there now.
VC-1 is also on the way out. At the bitrates that BD can handle AVC gives noticeably quality. Even at low bitrates it is questionable, VC-1 was essentially a success of MS astroturfing on AVS and other forums.
It's not quite true about VC-1 being used on most movies. At the higher bitrate that blueray allows the AVC codec produces what are generally agreed to be better results, and now there are no more dual format releases, expect to see that used more and more.
I got given something like this and told that it 'just cleared up some legal stuff connected with intellectual property' and was asked to sign it so that my review could be cleared and I could get my (rather large) pay increase. One of the new clauses was an extension of my notice period from one to three months
Well, I put it on my shelf, unsigned, forgot about it, next month got the pay increased, and never thought about it again till the day I handed in my resignation and was told by a manager that actually I couldnt leave as soon as i stated on my letter due to the new employment contracts... and guess what i had to say about that:)
Slashdot Mirror
...because the patent was not on "sharing bits over radio", it was on some extremely clever and complex technologies that were developed, intially for radio telescopes, and then extended to the difficult problem of fast communications inside of an echoey and interference filled environment.
Just because this is now done inside a chip that costs a few euros doesn't make it simpler, and just because 99.999% of the people using it (99.9999% on slashdot) have no idea what is going on in their little box, it doesn't mean it isn't worth other companies paying for the patents.
They are emulating arcade games on an AIRBUS???!!!! Wow, how cool would Sega Rally be on that?
They'll just hire some taiwanese design team to take and ARM core and hang some extra bits on it like a functions for mp3 decoding, then get TSMC or some other taiwanese Fab to produce it. AFAIK they didn't even design the ipod tech themselves, just decide on the look of the thing and contract all the rest out.
You'd be amazed how much you can do with them, apart from most news sites and forums they also work with yahoo-mail and gmail.
And you can use them on an ssh session tunneld through the https port to your home server for a bit of sneaky reading from work.
People paying with their own money will put up with a lot to save a few quid or euros. Companies earning money from the software they use will pay a *lot* to make sure it works as quick and optimally as possible. If someone is sitting in their bedroom and writing software that outperforms what your full time programers are doing, then I would suggest getting either new employees, or a new career for yourself. As an example, there are lots of free and good programs to view GDSii (chip layout) files, but my company pays a big fee for a site licence for the one that we think works the best with the sort of large files we deal with. If it saves a few minutes each time someone uses it, that is worth every penny to us.
Take note of the date, 1990. I've been hearing about this company around Cambridge for ever. They are a classic case of a good idea fucked up by useless managers. They actually had a working B+W unit about 10 year ago till the idiots in control decidced they had to have colour before selling it. Meanwhile they burnt through their cash on expensive managing directors and golden handshakes and parachutees and god knows what else. Most of the origional good people have left (I supervises one doing his PhD after he left) and it seems to be little more than a marketing scam there now.
VC-1 is also on the way out. At the bitrates that BD can handle AVC gives noticeably quality. Even at low bitrates it is questionable, VC-1 was essentially a success of MS astroturfing on AVS and other forums.
It's not quite true about VC-1 being used on most movies. At the higher bitrate that blueray allows the AVC codec produces what are generally agreed to be better results, and now there are no more dual format releases, expect to see that used more and more.
I got given something like this and told that it 'just cleared up some legal stuff connected with intellectual property' and was asked to sign it so that my review could be cleared and I could get my (rather large) pay increase. One of the new clauses was an extension of my notice period from one to three months Well, I put it on my shelf, unsigned, forgot about it, next month got the pay increased, and never thought about it again till the day I handed in my resignation and was told by a manager that actually I couldnt leave as soon as i stated on my letter due to the new employment contracts... and guess what i had to say about that :)