I have a surprise for you; the world outside the US is actually bigger than the US its self!! In all of land mass, number of people and even economic activity. Actually Europe alone is larger on each of those counts; as is Asia.
Furthermore, in most countries in Europe and Asia, mobile networks were set up with an expectation that they provide services to customers rather than just finance Qualcomm. That means that the networks actually provided data service to everyone almost automatically as soon as they could and means that the market may look a bit different from the one you are used to.
This is not about installations, this is about web site views. In fact this is the most important data reliably available to use when determining smart phone market share. It's not quite as good as App installs, but those numbers are manipulated by the various manufacturers so can't be trusted. The reason is that what makes a phone a "smartphone" isn't really a device, it's the user's attitude to that device. If the user buys an iPhone and uses it for just phone calls, they may get the boyfriends, but that they aren't making app store purchases and they aren't influencing how people should build web apps.
If you were right, then this is in some sense a disaster for Android because it shows that people who have Android don't actually use it nearly as much as they use iOS. You aren't entirely right however, since the Android installed base is still smaller than iOS; Android is selling more right now but hasn't yet caught up with iOS. I believe Android is just below 200 million and iOS is decisively over 200 million. Furthermore, older Android devices have much worse usability than the newest ones, so it will be a year or so until the installed base of usable Android devices overtakes the installed base of iOS.
The phrase is normally "You TEND to get what you pay for." It's a rule of thumb rather than an absolute. As individuals we rarely or never bring lawyers into it, so whilst you're right, your version isn't much use except in business to business deals.
As individuals we use the government to do our lawyering. That makes it very scary to lose control of the government to the companies. Compare, for example, the fact that all products in the EU have to be supported for free for two years from sale whilst in the US you always have to pay for extended warranties or the fact that in the EU the price you pay is the price on the label (including VAT) whilst in the US the price is deceptive and for example always excludes sales tax.
There are special consumer protection organisations in each place and it would be very interesting to see them taking a phone with a security bug and demanding it get fixed.
I badly hate you for forcing me to post this link supporting Microsoft. If you are a troll or a Microsoft shill, I bow down to your powers; we are not worthy of you (your posting history shows remarkable re. Anyway; here goes;
Windows Mobile is still supported; Microsoft's lifecycle page gives its end of mainstream support as August 2013 which means that if a serious security bug becomes widespread they will still "have to" fix it. According to Microsoft's support policy you even have a minimum of a further year where their self help stays up which will help migrate off the no longer supported product.
The simple thing is, that if your business has somehow committed to Windows Mobile, you now know that during 2012 you gently suggest everyone move over to something else and you make an allocation in your 2013 budget to migrate those people that are still using it. This compares with Android lifecycle which seems to be more a matter of speculation than an existing plan in Google's mind. This would would be okay if Android were continually upgraded like Gmail but it isn't. I have no idea how to check when security fixes will stop for my Android phone.
How can I make up for this post? Could I point out that RedHat provides production support for two years longer than Microsoft provide mainline support? Maybe I could point out that if it was Free software, you could buy outside support forever and ever because you have the source code? I should definitely point out that if you collaborate with known felons like Microsoft you shouldn't be surprised and definitely shouldn't complain when they stab you in the back as they have done to most of their important partners in history. I really don't think any of it helps. I still feel dirty inside.
No you don't; you get what you have a contract forandcan afford the lawyers to enforce* as long as it costs less than paying the penalties in the contract. We've already had one of these stories today, where it was mentioned that Microsoft provides guarantees. That's not entirely true (they provide guarantees for windows; not for some other products; different ones for different people etc. etc); but for the most part most of the serious IT vendors, Microsoft included, do things like:
provide end of life announcements at least a year and as much as five years in advance
clearly tell you in advance exactly how much warning they will give you and then always give you at least that much
seriously take into account the different needs of big and small customers
If Google and co want to be taken seriously they need to do at least the second thing.
* provided that you do "due dilligence" to make sure that the company actually can do what they have promised in the first place and that you are reasonably lucky and they don't, for example, go bankrupt from some stupid patent lawsuit.
No; even without them people will create just for the joy of creating. However, even if this was true and copyrights were a prerequisite for creativity that still doesn't mean they are "needed". Don't get me wrong; the creative process is nice. However, immediately the creative process gets in the way of democracy; freedom of speech; privacy; the right to do absolutely anything in your own home as long as the effect stays inside your own home; the right to celebrate birthdays in the way you culturally feel you want to or any other of a bunch of things that are more important than the creative process, the creative process needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
This needs to be stated clearly; copyrights; patents; and a whole bunch of other ways of adjusting people's freedom of speech are privilages and not rights. They are things which should exist in society as long as the harm they do is vastly outweighed by the good they do. Immediately copyrights or patents start seriously interfering with other more important issues they should be cancelled. When groups and companies which rely on copyrights start to overreach they are playing with fire.
Same thing with popular proprietary systems too like OSX and Android. People don't seem to have a problem with the concept of just buying hardware that these operating systems are intended for so why not do that for Linux without having to make an issue out of it? And, yes, I know Android is Linux.
This is 100%. If you buy a PC and try running OS/X on it you will have a hell of a time. On the other hand I have bought HP laptops with pre-installed Linux and they work great. If there's one thing Linux advocates have to learn it's to tell everybody that they won't have a good experience if they don't buy dedicated hardware. Being able to work on strange/old hardware should be seen as an additional feature for experts rather than a good way of getting Linux about. Even if it does work, the experience is always going to be worse for Linux on five year old hardware than Windows on the newest hardware. I've heard good experiences with System 76 for Ubuntu. Are there any equivalents for Mint, for example?
I would have modded AC up, but that link wasn't clickable, so instead FTFY. It took me a couple of seconds, but once you get it, it is an excellent explanation why Go Daddy would love SOPA and it's ilk.
It's astounding how long a meme can keep going. Go Daddy has not changed it's view; it has not changed it's actions; it has just removed a couple of press releases about those actions and started to support SOPA behind the scenes. If Go Daddy had changed their viewpoint, and actually was opposed to SOPA now, then we should stop the boycott and concentrate on others who are worse. However, this is not a decision we need to make. Even as I post today Go Daddy's "general counsel and corporate secretary" has a blog posting up which clearly states her opinion in support of SOPA and is undersigned in her official role.
If Christine is acting against company policy then Go Daddy needs to be disciplining her now. Lets be clear; not because of what she believes, but because she has a representative role for the company, is directly opposing and contradicting company policy and is doing so using the name of Go Daddy to get publicity for that role. Also because she was involved in drafting SOPA and should take responsibility for the mess that it is which is a clear and visible failure to work in Go Daddy's customers interests.
If Go Daddy is still employing her without disciplinary action, and that blog posting is still up then Go Daddy is effectively supporting SOPA and should continue to be boycotted.
it's fairly obvious that they should be separated because they do in fact have separate goals, agendas, etc....
And this is exactly why you shouldn't separate IT. Immediately you start having separate goals and agendas the business people start hating you and you stop contributing effectively to the future of the company. This means that you have more difficulty getting budgets justified to actually do things. There are advantages to having a separate IT department; it may make it possible to have a coherent vision and fewer systems doing the same things. However, these advantages could be achieved by having a CTO/CIO type with technical knowledge and vision and healthy cooperation and discussion between departments.
As far as you can; keep the IT people as close as possible to the business and use virtual cooperation (IRC if you can, some kind of Yammer type system if you can't) and common sense to achieve common systems. Be aware that this makes IT look more expensive since you start actually doing more and you start fulfilling business demands. Make sure that if some idiot comes around trying to measure that you have a way of identifying and justifying the extra part of the cost which comes from actually doing useful things rather than just blocking the work of the rest of the company.
Obviously, for empire building reasons everyone else seems to have mentioned, this ideal vision very seldom actually happens.
100% right. And we can get a good guess where their policy is coming from when we see that Christine Jones has this on her Blog, undersigned in her role as general counsel and corporate secretary of GoDaddy.com
The debate about the contents of this bill, and its companion bill in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act, has been heated in recent weeks, as companies within the Internet ecosystem have rallied to lobby against the passage of legislation which might hold us accountable.
That myopic view has never been shared by Go Daddy.
The boycott of Go Daddy should not stop until at least Christine has been fired.
There is one loose cannon in particular whose name I will not mention whose personal vendetta includes not only the entire GPL ecosystem, but Debian too.
Could someone name and shame here? I'm not saying this is untrue; maybe the parent has a real reason not to name; but strong statements require evidence. Google continually claims to be supporting and helping Linux.
This is a pretty serious accusation against a company which would have been priced out of the market if it hadn't had Linux and wouldn't have had Linux (or for that matter BSD) if the GNU project hadn't provided a shelter for FOSS during the bad days around the BSD lawsuit. Google, IMHO would have been swamped by Microsoft by now without GPL software.
No; no; you aren't getting this. When I do the swap the patent office will laugh me out of town. When a big corporation, like Apple, does it then they will accept it because they are scared of getting sued. This is, indeed, really beginning to affect the whole world.
In that kind of analogy, this is not a knife, but a remote controlled shotgun which is disguised as a decoration. When you moved into the house nobody told you about it. When you spot it and ask about it you are told not to worry; it's a pest control device.
To be honest I don't have a problem with this as such. However, a) Apple needs to make a standard way to turn it off without jailbreaking your phone and b) they need to tell people about it upfront. If they have nothing to be embarrassed about then it shouldn't hurt them to explain the feature openly.
When you read a patent the key part to start with is not the introduction or the explanation. These are, mostly background reading and/or fluff (though can be very important if they change the meaning of a word in the document). The important part is the claims. I already gave an analysis of claim 1 which shows that, despite the introduction which looks reasonable this patent really is claiming the world.
Probably, in some sense, you are right, and Apple's patent will effectively be narrowed to very specific cases if there ever is a lawsuit about it; prior art would eliminate many of the claims that are very broad (e.g. the fuel cells on the space shuttle must have been able to be controlled and must have been able to communicate their current status with the on board computer) and the narrow claims in areas where Apple hasn't really done work will turn out not to be very applicable. However you can't count on this.
The original work is probably on exactly what you said; that's almost certainly exactly what the engineer who did the actual invention described to the lawyer. The problem is that this has been through the lawyers with almost no limits to how they "improve" it. The lawyers for Apple are paid to make this as general as they are allowed to so that Apple gets the best value they can from the patent. For example, if you invented a new sensor and just happened to use copper wire in the sensor, the lawyer would (rightly) make claims for a) a copper wire, dependent on a claim for b) any metal wire at all, dependent on c) a claim for any conductor whatsoever. They are both trying to cover all bases and at the same time try to extend the claim as much as they can. Basically, if they could get away with it they would make patent claims like (imagine this is a numbered list, no matter what Slashdot does with it):
an invention
an invention as in claim 1; which does something
an invention as in claim 2; which involves people
an invention as in claim 2; which doesn't involve people
...
The job of the patent office is supposed to be to stop that stuff and make them claim specific patents. The problem is that, when the patent office used to reject patents, this was taken to the courts which often allowed the patents. The patent office oversight was weak to begin with and is now totally ineffective. Looking at this patent the system clearly isn't working.
That's ok with me, as long as any judge understands the patent protects specific details but just that sole working implementation --
Let's have a look at this specific case; I'll take one of the claims of the patent:
What is claimed is:
1. A fuel cell system for a portable computing device, comprising:
a fuel cell stack which converts fuel to electrical power;
a fuel source for the fuel cell stack;
a controller which controls the operation of the fuel cell system; and
an interface to the portable computing device, wherein the interface comprises,
a power link that provides power to the portable computing device, and
a bidirectional communication link that provides bidirectional communication between the portable computing device and the controller for the fuel cell system.
So; the first part is a completely normal fuel cell with controllable output. The second part is a completely standard set for any existing computer battery. In other words, this is the only possible way an reasonable person would come up with to put a fuel cell into a computer. It's beyond obvious; it's inevitable.
Claiming this as patentable is outrageous. The US patent office is clearly not even trying to do its job. It doesn't do any good to have judges which fix this after the fact since it will already scare people away from developing fuel cells.
This is a security fix. Oracle has taken away Canonical's license for this software package (they don't want it distributed any more since it's outdated). Serious security faults have been found in this version of Java. Given that they can't update it (not having a license from Oracle) Canonical has decided that they have no option other than to remove it. This doesn't cause any major inconvenience, remember that it's trivial to simply install the old version from Oracle's web pages; you can even just do a simple pin of the old package.
The promise with automated security fixes is that "we will do whatever it takes to more or less guarantee that your system does not contain old and outdated versions of our software, even if this risks breaking things". Places which need things not to break have to run their own internal testing followed by pushing the updates themselves. Practically all the major OS vendors, RedHat, Debian, Apple, Mint, Canonical, CentOS, Microsoft, Oracle and SUSE agree about this. I have had RedHat remove old not working distributions. In fact, if I remember right, at EOL, RedHat normally sends out a package which forces a system shutdown.
Even if you do have automated updates, the vendors help you to avoid problems by announcing in advance that they will retire a package. Then, as in this case, everybody who reads the vendor announcement mailing list gets a warning and can block the update if they want to.
Nor has any app ever been remotely killed on Ubuntu. FUD much?
Not just that no app has been killed by Ubuntu, but if you switch don't opt in to automatic updates then Ubuntu doesn't even have the ability to do remote kills without your agreement, which, despite the fanbois moderation of my above post, has been confirmed to exist by Steve Jobs himself.
"Already demonstrated" how? To my knowledge, NO app has ever been remotely killed on iOS, though they have said they have the ability to do so. However, both Amazon Kindle (with the unlicensed "1984" edition) and Google (repeatedly to nuke apps that turned out to be trojans) have done so.
It's been demonstrated by the guy who found the URL for doing it. I'm not sure if he had to add a fake root certificate to the phone to do it though. I also thought they had done it with the fake driving license app but I can't find a way to prove that even after having searched hard so you are probably right and I should have been clearer and Apple has never actually used this feature for its intended use.
What "difference" are you talking about? There are *no* automatic updates on Apple stuff (OSX or iOS) - you have to agree to them each time. Please stop trolling about things you clearly don't know anything about.
The OP is talking about Apple's ability to remote kill applications for security reasons (already demonstrated on iOS, presumably coming soon on OS/X). This comes from itunes, bypasses all need for acknowlegements and has nothing to do with software updates. I will leave you to stew in the irony of your last sentence.
Slashdot Mirror
"Feature phone" owners in the United States ....
I have a surprise for you; the world outside the US is actually bigger than the US its self!! In all of land mass, number of people and even economic activity. Actually Europe alone is larger on each of those counts; as is Asia.
Furthermore, in most countries in Europe and Asia, mobile networks were set up with an expectation that they provide services to customers rather than just finance Qualcomm. That means that the networks actually provided data service to everyone almost automatically as soon as they could and means that the market may look a bit different from the one you are used to.
This is not about installations, this is about web site views. In fact this is the most important data reliably available to use when determining smart phone market share. It's not quite as good as App installs, but those numbers are manipulated by the various manufacturers so can't be trusted. The reason is that what makes a phone a "smartphone" isn't really a device, it's the user's attitude to that device. If the user buys an iPhone and uses it for just phone calls, they may get the boyfriends, but that they aren't making app store purchases and they aren't influencing how people should build web apps.
If you were right, then this is in some sense a disaster for Android because it shows that people who have Android don't actually use it nearly as much as they use iOS. You aren't entirely right however, since the Android installed base is still smaller than iOS; Android is selling more right now but hasn't yet caught up with iOS. I believe Android is just below 200 million and iOS is decisively over 200 million. Furthermore, older Android devices have much worse usability than the newest ones, so it will be a year or so until the installed base of usable Android devices overtakes the installed base of iOS.
The phrase is normally "You TEND to get what you pay for." It's a rule of thumb rather than an absolute. As individuals we rarely or never bring lawyers into it, so whilst you're right, your version isn't much use except in business to business deals.
As individuals we use the government to do our lawyering. That makes it very scary to lose control of the government to the companies. Compare, for example, the fact that all products in the EU have to be supported for free for two years from sale whilst in the US you always have to pay for extended warranties or the fact that in the EU the price you pay is the price on the label (including VAT) whilst in the US the price is deceptive and for example always excludes sales tax.
There are special consumer protection organisations in each place and it would be very interesting to see them taking a phone with a security bug and demanding it get fixed.
(fix: posting history shows remarkable restraint for an MS shill :-)...
I badly hate you for forcing me to post this link supporting Microsoft. If you are a troll or a Microsoft shill, I bow down to your powers; we are not worthy of you (your posting history shows remarkable re. Anyway; here goes;
Windows Mobile is still supported; Microsoft's lifecycle page gives its end of mainstream support as August 2013 which means that if a serious security bug becomes widespread they will still "have to" fix it. According to Microsoft's support policy you even have a minimum of a further year where their self help stays up which will help migrate off the no longer supported product.
The simple thing is, that if your business has somehow committed to Windows Mobile, you now know that during 2012 you gently suggest everyone move over to something else and you make an allocation in your 2013 budget to migrate those people that are still using it. This compares with Android lifecycle which seems to be more a matter of speculation than an existing plan in Google's mind. This would would be okay if Android were continually upgraded like Gmail but it isn't. I have no idea how to check when security fixes will stop for my Android phone.
How can I make up for this post? Could I point out that RedHat provides production support for two years longer than Microsoft provide mainline support? Maybe I could point out that if it was Free software, you could buy outside support forever and ever because you have the source code? I should definitely point out that if you collaborate with known felons like Microsoft you shouldn't be surprised and definitely shouldn't complain when they stab you in the back as they have done to most of their important partners in history. I really don't think any of it helps. I still feel dirty inside.
They could get a trademark on Google.
oh yeah??
If you have a better source, the internet wants to know.
At least they can spell.
Oh yes?? You do know that Google's own name is a misspelling of a very large number? Seldom has a pedant been so completely and utterly wrong.
You get what you pay for.
No you don't; you get what you have a contract for and can afford the lawyers to enforce* as long as it costs less than paying the penalties in the contract. We've already had one of these stories today, where it was mentioned that Microsoft provides guarantees. That's not entirely true (they provide guarantees for windows; not for some other products; different ones for different people etc. etc); but for the most part most of the serious IT vendors, Microsoft included, do things like:
If Google and co want to be taken seriously they need to do at least the second thing.
* provided that you do "due dilligence" to make sure that the company actually can do what they have promised in the first place and that you are reasonably lucky and they don't, for example, go bankrupt from some stupid patent lawsuit.
is needed to keep the creative process going.
No; even without them people will create just for the joy of creating. However, even if this was true and copyrights were a prerequisite for creativity that still doesn't mean they are "needed". Don't get me wrong; the creative process is nice. However, immediately the creative process gets in the way of democracy; freedom of speech; privacy; the right to do absolutely anything in your own home as long as the effect stays inside your own home; the right to celebrate birthdays in the way you culturally feel you want to or any other of a bunch of things that are more important than the creative process, the creative process needs to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
This needs to be stated clearly; copyrights; patents; and a whole bunch of other ways of adjusting people's freedom of speech are privilages and not rights. They are things which should exist in society as long as the harm they do is vastly outweighed by the good they do. Immediately copyrights or patents start seriously interfering with other more important issues they should be cancelled. When groups and companies which rely on copyrights start to overreach they are playing with fire.
Same thing with popular proprietary systems too like OSX and Android. People don't seem to have a problem with the concept of just buying hardware that these operating systems are intended for so why not do that for Linux without having to make an issue out of it? And, yes, I know Android is Linux.
This is 100%. If you buy a PC and try running OS/X on it you will have a hell of a time. On the other hand I have bought HP laptops with pre-installed Linux and they work great. If there's one thing Linux advocates have to learn it's to tell everybody that they won't have a good experience if they don't buy dedicated hardware. Being able to work on strange/old hardware should be seen as an additional feature for experts rather than a good way of getting Linux about. Even if it does work, the experience is always going to be worse for Linux on five year old hardware than Windows on the newest hardware. I've heard good experiences with System 76 for Ubuntu. Are there any equivalents for Mint, for example?
The...... whole...... point..... is..... that.... all.... hate.... domains... will.... get.... redirected.... to.... Go Daddy.... even.... if.... they.... had.... legitmate.... content.... at.... one.... point.... that's.... why.... Go Daddy.... is.... supporting.... S...O....P...A...
Can someone explain why GoDaddy would support SOPA in the first place?
http://GoDaddy-is-the-son-of-Satan.org/
I would have modded AC up, but that link wasn't clickable, so instead FTFY. It took me a couple of seconds, but once you get it, it is an excellent explanation why Go Daddy would love SOPA and it's ilk.
Boycott worked exactly as intended....
It's astounding how long a meme can keep going. Go Daddy has not changed it's view; it has not changed it's actions; it has just removed a couple of press releases about those actions and started to support SOPA behind the scenes. If Go Daddy had changed their viewpoint, and actually was opposed to SOPA now, then we should stop the boycott and concentrate on others who are worse. However, this is not a decision we need to make. Even as I post today Go Daddy's "general counsel and corporate secretary" has a blog posting up which clearly states her opinion in support of SOPA and is undersigned in her official role.
If Christine is acting against company policy then Go Daddy needs to be disciplining her now. Lets be clear; not because of what she believes, but because she has a representative role for the company, is directly opposing and contradicting company policy and is doing so using the name of Go Daddy to get publicity for that role. Also because she was involved in drafting SOPA and should take responsibility for the mess that it is which is a clear and visible failure to work in Go Daddy's customers interests.
If Go Daddy is still employing her without disciplinary action, and that blog posting is still up then Go Daddy is effectively supporting SOPA and should continue to be boycotted.
it's fairly obvious that they should be separated because they do in fact have separate goals, agendas, etc....
And this is exactly why you shouldn't separate IT. Immediately you start having separate goals and agendas the business people start hating you and you stop contributing effectively to the future of the company. This means that you have more difficulty getting budgets justified to actually do things. There are advantages to having a separate IT department; it may make it possible to have a coherent vision and fewer systems doing the same things. However, these advantages could be achieved by having a CTO/CIO type with technical knowledge and vision and healthy cooperation and discussion between departments.
As far as you can; keep the IT people as close as possible to the business and use virtual cooperation (IRC if you can, some kind of Yammer type system if you can't) and common sense to achieve common systems. Be aware that this makes IT look more expensive since you start actually doing more and you start fulfilling business demands. Make sure that if some idiot comes around trying to measure that you have a way of identifying and justifying the extra part of the cost which comes from actually doing useful things rather than just blocking the work of the rest of the company.
Obviously, for empire building reasons everyone else seems to have mentioned, this ideal vision very seldom actually happens.
100% right. And we can get a good guess where their policy is coming from when we see that Christine Jones has this on her Blog, undersigned in her role as general counsel and corporate secretary of GoDaddy.com
The debate about the contents of this bill, and its companion bill in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act, has been heated in recent weeks, as companies within the Internet ecosystem have rallied to lobby against the passage of legislation which might hold us accountable.
That myopic view has never been shared by Go Daddy.
The boycott of Go Daddy should not stop until at least Christine has been fired.
There is one loose cannon in particular whose name I will not mention whose personal vendetta includes not only the entire GPL ecosystem, but Debian too.
Could someone name and shame here? I'm not saying this is untrue; maybe the parent has a real reason not to name; but strong statements require evidence. Google continually claims to be supporting and helping Linux.
This is a pretty serious accusation against a company which would have been priced out of the market if it hadn't had Linux and wouldn't have had Linux (or for that matter BSD) if the GNU project hadn't provided a shelter for FOSS during the bad days around the BSD lawsuit. Google, IMHO would have been swamped by Microsoft by now without GPL software.
No; no; you aren't getting this. When I do the swap the patent office will laugh me out of town. When a big corporation, like Apple, does it then they will accept it because they are scared of getting sued. This is, indeed, really beginning to affect the whole world.
In that kind of analogy, this is not a knife, but a remote controlled shotgun which is disguised as a decoration. When you moved into the house nobody told you about it. When you spot it and ask about it you are told not to worry; it's a pest control device.
To be honest I don't have a problem with this as such. However, a) Apple needs to make a standard way to turn it off without jailbreaking your phone and b) they need to tell people about it upfront. If they have nothing to be embarrassed about then it shouldn't hurt them to explain the feature openly.
Right; but there's a bunch of other blog postings from Go Daddy which are still up and still supporting SOPA. Not really that much confusion.
When you read a patent the key part to start with is not the introduction or the explanation. These are, mostly background reading and/or fluff (though can be very important if they change the meaning of a word in the document). The important part is the claims. I already gave an analysis of claim 1 which shows that, despite the introduction which looks reasonable this patent really is claiming the world.
Probably, in some sense, you are right, and Apple's patent will effectively be narrowed to very specific cases if there ever is a lawsuit about it; prior art would eliminate many of the claims that are very broad (e.g. the fuel cells on the space shuttle must have been able to be controlled and must have been able to communicate their current status with the on board computer) and the narrow claims in areas where Apple hasn't really done work will turn out not to be very applicable. However you can't count on this.
The original work is probably on exactly what you said; that's almost certainly exactly what the engineer who did the actual invention described to the lawyer. The problem is that this has been through the lawyers with almost no limits to how they "improve" it. The lawyers for Apple are paid to make this as general as they are allowed to so that Apple gets the best value they can from the patent. For example, if you invented a new sensor and just happened to use copper wire in the sensor, the lawyer would (rightly) make claims for a) a copper wire, dependent on a claim for b) any metal wire at all, dependent on c) a claim for any conductor whatsoever. They are both trying to cover all bases and at the same time try to extend the claim as much as they can. Basically, if they could get away with it they would make patent claims like (imagine this is a numbered list, no matter what Slashdot does with it):
The job of the patent office is supposed to be to stop that stuff and make them claim specific patents. The problem is that, when the patent office used to reject patents, this was taken to the courts which often allowed the patents. The patent office oversight was weak to begin with and is now totally ineffective. Looking at this patent the system clearly isn't working.
That's ok with me, as long as any judge understands the patent protects specific details but just that sole working implementation --
Let's have a look at this specific case; I'll take one of the claims of the patent:
What is claimed is:
1. A fuel cell system for a portable computing device, comprising:
a fuel cell stack which converts fuel to electrical power;
a fuel source for the fuel cell stack;
a controller which controls the operation of the fuel cell system; and
an interface to the portable computing device, wherein the interface comprises,
a power link that provides power to the portable computing device, and
a bidirectional communication link that provides bidirectional communication between the portable computing device and the controller for the fuel cell system.
So; the first part is a completely normal fuel cell with controllable output. The second part is a completely standard set for any existing computer battery. In other words, this is the only possible way an reasonable person would come up with to put a fuel cell into a computer. It's beyond obvious; it's inevitable.
Claiming this as patentable is outrageous. The US patent office is clearly not even trying to do its job. It doesn't do any good to have judges which fix this after the fact since it will already scare people away from developing fuel cells.
This is a security fix. Oracle has taken away Canonical's license for this software package (they don't want it distributed any more since it's outdated). Serious security faults have been found in this version of Java. Given that they can't update it (not having a license from Oracle) Canonical has decided that they have no option other than to remove it. This doesn't cause any major inconvenience, remember that it's trivial to simply install the old version from Oracle's web pages; you can even just do a simple pin of the old package.
The promise with automated security fixes is that "we will do whatever it takes to more or less guarantee that your system does not contain old and outdated versions of our software, even if this risks breaking things". Places which need things not to break have to run their own internal testing followed by pushing the updates themselves. Practically all the major OS vendors, RedHat, Debian, Apple, Mint, Canonical, CentOS, Microsoft, Oracle and SUSE agree about this. I have had RedHat remove old not working distributions. In fact, if I remember right, at EOL, RedHat normally sends out a package which forces a system shutdown.
Even if you do have automated updates, the vendors help you to avoid problems by announcing in advance that they will retire a package. Then, as in this case, everybody who reads the vendor announcement mailing list gets a warning and can block the update if they want to.
Nor has any app ever been remotely killed on Ubuntu. FUD much?
Not just that no app has been killed by Ubuntu, but if you switch don't opt in to automatic updates then Ubuntu doesn't even have the ability to do remote kills without your agreement, which, despite the fanbois moderation of my above post, has been confirmed to exist by Steve Jobs himself.
"Already demonstrated" how? To my knowledge, NO app has ever been remotely killed on iOS, though they have said they have the ability to do so. However, both Amazon Kindle (with the unlicensed "1984" edition) and Google (repeatedly to nuke apps that turned out to be trojans) have done so.
It's been demonstrated by the guy who found the URL for doing it. I'm not sure if he had to add a fake root certificate to the phone to do it though. I also thought they had done it with the fake driving license app but I can't find a way to prove that even after having searched hard so you are probably right and I should have been clearer and Apple has never actually used this feature for its intended use.
What "difference" are you talking about? There are *no* automatic updates on Apple stuff (OSX or iOS) - you have to agree to them each time. Please stop trolling about things you clearly don't know anything about.
The OP is talking about Apple's ability to remote kill applications for security reasons (already demonstrated on iOS, presumably coming soon on OS/X). This comes from itunes, bypasses all need for acknowlegements and has nothing to do with software updates. I will leave you to stew in the irony of your last sentence.