There's a universal assumption of respect for (and illegality of reusing without permission) personal data for example in your US?
No, there fortunately isn't.
Must be a different US and EU than I know about then.
Same US and EU. The US has reasonable, usually working restrictions. Europe has grandiose notions of "universal assumptions" and "respect", but less actual protection.
Yeah, nobody in the US [slashdot.org] was ever fired [slashdot.org] for posting stuff [associatedcontent.com] on social networking sites [cbsatlanta.com] like facebook [pcmag.com]
Those examples don't bear much on what I was saying. First of all, firing and hiring are different things. Second, as I was saying: US employers have been limited in how they can use social networking sites, they haven't been prohibited from using them. Third, some of the examples you list are not work related, others are currently in court. Fourth, try to come up with arguments why a blanket prohibition is more reasonable than the US approach.
Many of these protections are already in place in the US and Europe is just catching up. For example, US employers have been limited for years in how they can use social networking sites, based on existing US non-discrimination and privacy laws. Many of those restrictions in the US are based on case law; they don't require separate legislation. In Europe, legislators need to pass many more explicit laws, and a lot of that is knee-jerk reactions to recent events and populist legislation that sounds good on the surface but that nobody knows how it's going to work out in the long run.
And you're also right that a lot of European privacy abuse just isn't reported on much in the US. For example, the law in the story was prompted by several huge scandals in which big German companies spied on their employees, again in ways that are already totally illegal under US law.
Other European privacy abuses aren't even perceived as such in Europe; people are just used to a more intrusive government. Many other European privacy abuses aren't visible at all. For example, despite all the brouhaha over Google Streetview in Germany (=big evil US corporation), it turns out that the German government itself regularly does detailed aerial surveys and precise GPS measurements of buildings and sells that information to anybody willing to pay for it (starting at around $200k); that data really is problematic, since it not only shows in great detail private areas protected by fences, but also is being used to charge individuals with code violations. And it's quite clear that European intelligence services spy on their citizens without as much as anybody even batting an eye.
Much of the "Europe is better" perception is a myth, created by the European media and European governments to make Europeans happy, and some of that propaganda spills over into the US.
The US is simply lucky enough to be able to export (most of) its conflicts. Which it has been doing with consistency and enthusiasm.
Oh, get real. Britain and France had oppressive and vicious colonial empires until after WWII, and they only stopped because they couldn't keep them together anymore. Let's not even get into Germany's sordid history of colonialism and war.
There is nothing even remotely comparable on that scale in US history. When the US has conquered territory, it has usually given people citizenship and often a choice of independence. Most US conflicts since WWII have been about trying to keep the western economic and political system together and cleaning up after the mess that European colonialism left behind.
Defense of market economies? Access to raw materials? Since when do countries have the right to the raw materials in other countries?
You tell me: Europe held on to its colonies through much of the 20th century. And today, European companies are as much exploiting and oppressing populations in Africa and Asia as American companies are. And European economies are dependent on those raw materials to this day.
Not trying to build an empire? Only for as long as US interests are not harmed. It's just that your administrators are the CIA.
Yes, the US does impose requirements on markets and political systems and backs that up with military power. If the US didn't do that, you could kiss the G8 economies--including Germany's--good-bye. It's not a perfect system, but it certainly beats colonialism and the British and French empires.
Most anti-American rhetoric I've heard from Germans is that they disagree with the wars fought by America.
Well, it's easy for Germany to advocate pacifism, with tens of thousands of US troops and missiles guaranteeing its security. Where do you think Germany would be today if the allies had simply taking reparations and then withdrawn after WWII? Where do you think the German economy would be if the US didn't keep the oil flowing from the Middle East?
The next wars (and, in Africa, the current wars) won't be about fascism, they will be about natural resources.
Most wars are about natural resources.
Unless we get wise and stop them from happening.
Germany is totally dependent on imports of raw materials. The US isn't going to let the German economy slide into chaos because of resource shortages, not out of any love for the Germans, but because the economic and political consequences would be catastrophic.
If you want to stop those wars from happening, figure out how Germany can keep its economy alive and its democracy going without the US having to ensure a steady supply of raw materials. Until then, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
There are several Archos models that do; search for "archos android" on Amazon.
Also, their latest player (v. 9) runs Windows.
You make it sound like they are abandoning Android; they are not.
I have heard that Archos 7 runs Android, but the one I've played a bit with in a store didn't resemble its interface at all, didn't have any visible link to Google's market and the documentation did not mention any SDK or such.
Archos is trying to get into the market, but Google isn't letting them yet. Android 3 is probably going to have tablet support, and you can be sure that Archos will be shipping it.
they practically murdered java script with that crap and the format for transfering wave data:xml documents hint it looks more like exchange system and if you wonder why it failed?
Yes, Google's implementation totally sucked. And it sucked because they had drunk the XML/Java/GWT cool-aid. But lots of other Google (and non-Google) products suck in the same way, and they don't get canceled; they just throw more engineering resources at it to make it work anyway.
Together with that, the introduction of the Euro means that we Europeans are very much in trouble together when we start a war with our neighbor. The history of the world is changing very rapidly, if there was any cycle it might well and truly be broken by now.
It may be broken, but not in a good way. Instead of a conflagration of war, Europe may just get permanently stuck at the totalitarian or fascist stage.
The most aggressive country by far is the US. It makes war with countries that never even threatened the US.
That's because after WWII, the US was the only nation that had the economic and military power to ensure that Europe wouldn't be overrun by the USSR.
That the US does not have any wars inside of its borders (and outside of prisons) does not mean that there is no war there.
So? War is not intrinsically wrong. Most of the wars that the US has engaged in have been in defense of market economies and democracy, and in ensuring the access to the raw materials that Europe and the US need. Some of the wars have been unjust, more have been unwise, but unlike European nations, the US has not been trying to build an empire, and it has generally respected the right to self-determination.
The most troubling thing for me is the economic stability. If masses of people get out of work and there is mass poverty, then political correctness is the first to suffer (like in pre-Nazi Germany, were the nation went bankrupt after the first world war).
The US had its Great Depression and got through it without devolving into fascism; somehow, it seems to be resilient. It is possible that US democracy is starting to fall apart, under the strains of military engagements, social tensions, and corporate power. But things seem no worse than a century ago.
It's Germany you should worry about. No German democracy has survived a major economic crises yet, and the current German democracy has never had to face any serious economic problems. And, tellingly, as German democracy was falling apart a century ago, you got the same kind of anti-American rhetoric and demagoguery that's coming out of Germany today.
The US has fought constant wars for as long as it has existed.
Yes, it fought many of those wars against evil and repressive regimes. It fought many of those wars to ensure that Europe could remain democratic, instead of being swallowed up by the USSR. Fighting wars is not intrinsically wrong. More importantly, the US has remained a democracy throughout that entire time.
The difference is simply that it lacks a foe in its home continent who had the resources for a major war.
There are lots of reasons why Germany is the way it is; that doesn't change the observation that Germany is in no position on giving other nations advice on democracy or human rights.
Or, to put it even blunter: your progress has mainly depended on slaughtering the natives and stealing their land,
Huge numbers natives in the Americas were wiped out by disease, and others were slaughtered by European armies and settlers before the US was even founded. Much of the Indian territories were considered British property and ceded to the US by the British. Once the US was founded, it tried to cope with the mess that European governments had left behind as best it could. The US made plenty of mistakes along the way, but compared to how European governments continued to mistreat native peoples around the world, the US was progressive. Germany itself was still oppressing and slaughtering natives in its colonies until 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles finally put a stop to it.
The root of the evil in the plight of the native Americans was European colonialism and European attitudes.
What matters for the us/them distinction in this case is the history and culture of democracy and liberty. The US has more than two centuries of uninterrupted democratic governance. In the same period, Germany has had two failed democracies, a monarchy, a fascist state, a military dictatorship, and a communist state. In fact, the reason there are so many Americans of German ancestry is that so many Germans wanted to escape the chaos and repression they were experiencing in Germany.
Pointing out that Germany has had problems with democracy and liberty is not "stereotyping an entire nationality", it's a historical fact about a nation. And pointing out restrictions on freedom of speech and other liberties, and the fact that these are politically viable, is not stereotyping, it's a political fact about a political entity.
Our freedom of speech (I'm german) is as real as yours.
Germany objectively has stronger restrictions on civil liberties than the US.
We just have some priorities differently.
German priorities were set by the allies after WWII. The primary goals were de-Nazificiation and prevention of a recurrence of WWII. Democratization and freedom were secondary concerns, merely means to an end. If Germany could have been pacified after WWII by turning it into a military dictatorship or splitting it up between its neighbors, I doubt any of the allies would have objected.
As it turns out, constructing a democracy based on the American model, but with some additional restrictions on free speech and religion, was be the better model for Germany. Giving Germans a stake and say in the process also turned out to be a good idea. That was coupled with military occupation and tight supervision of the German government until the 1990s (many important government posts could only be filled with US approval until 1990).
It's nice that German democracy has turned out as well as it has. Germans shouldn't make the mistake now, however, to present the construct that the allies essentially imposed after WWII as a model democracy for the rest of the world. Germans have never managed to construct a stable democracy themselves and Germany still doesn't have a long tradition of democracy or liberty.
We don't think anything done by the government is automatically evil and to be mistrusted. We view the government as an entity much like many others - capable of both good and evil.
The government is capable of both good and evil; and when it commits evil, millions of people suffer and maybe even die. That's why you need to distrust everything the government does: the cost of governmental failure are simply too high.
The lessons have been forgotten, so authoritarianism and militarism are once again on the rise in Europe, and will once again lead to the world burning.
Having lived in Europe on and off, sadly, I can confirm this. Part of the problem is European arrogance: for more than two centuries, Americans have had to listen to Europeans about how superior their culture and political systems are, only to watch them self-destruct like clockwork. Europeans simply can't imagine that their supposedly superior culture leads to mass destruction and mass murder, again and again.
That is the cycle of human history, and it cannot be broken, since no matter what lessons you might learn, your children won't, and their children certainly won't care.
Other continents haven't been following this cycle. The US has had centuries of continuity and progress. South America and Africa don't have stability at all, but they don't have European delusions of grandeur either.
There is something uniquely wrong with European politics and European culture.
You forgot the third option; Fuck the US and its draconian immigration policies and never go there again. Works for me so far.
European, Asian, and Australian policies are no less draconian. They may seem a little less draconian to you at the border, but that's because those governments can track and check you anywhere once you're in the country.
Maybe this would be a good time for Google to cut ties with the Java language altogether, by coming up with a new, better language that compiles to Dalvik. The Java language has too many problems anyway.
Java is their language. Don't like it? Don't use Java.
Companies don't own languages unless they can claim a patent or copyright on the language. Oracle has neither. Their patents are on something completely different.
If they did, neither Sun, nor Oracle, nor Microsoft would exist. In fact, much of what any of those companies got started with was ripped off from others.
Re:Not remotely similar to the Microsoft situation
on
The Case For Oracle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
If it's a platform that you can write code for in Java language, then it damn well better compile under the standard Oracle Java, otherwise you're very blatantly infringing upon Oracle's trademark.
Language syntax does not define a trademark. The trademark is on the word "Java", nothing else.
This isn't C where platforms are allowed to be incompatible, the whole purpose of Java was theoretically to allow it to be written once and run on any platform with Java support.
The law doesn't give a damn what pipe dreams Sun had for Java.
What Google has opted to do damages Oracle's trademark by referring to non-compatible software as Java language.
You use Oracle's Java compiler to compile software for Android. Google is correct to refer to that as a "Java compiler" because Oracle refers to it that way. The fact that they do something different with the class files afterwards is none of Oracle's business.
Re:Not remotely similar to the Microsoft situation
on
The Case For Oracle
·
· Score: 1
Isn't that the whole problem? If they call it a Java platform, it should run software written in Java.
Face the truth why didn't Google use a full implementation of java as they are required by the patent grants. Because they wanted people to write for there platform and not simply port software.
Google didn't use a "full implementation of Java" because J2SE is extremely bloated and unsuitable for mobile phone use. And they couldn't use Sun's implementation because that wasn't even open sourced when they started. J2ME doesn't have a patent grant, so making a cleanroom implementation of that wouldn't have helped them either.
Of course, Google didn't use "an implementation of Java" at all, they implemented something completely different that happens to use Java syntax. Oracle's lawsuit is not based on the parts that Android happens to share with Java, because those are not covered by any patents.
McAllister argues that Google is splintering the Java platform, just like Microsoft was doing back in the 90s
So what? Companies don't have a right not to have their platforms "splintered".
Besides, Google isn't "splintering the Java platform", they created a new platform that happens to use the Java language.
Furthermore, Sun/Oracle's mobile efforts are largely dead, so Google isn't "splintering" anything, it is replacing them with something actually viable.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a universal assumption of respect for (and illegality of reusing without permission) personal data for example in your US?
No, there fortunately isn't.
Must be a different US and EU than I know about then.
Same US and EU. The US has reasonable, usually working restrictions. Europe has grandiose notions of "universal assumptions" and "respect", but less actual protection.
Yeah, nobody in the US [slashdot.org] was ever fired [slashdot.org] for posting stuff [associatedcontent.com] on social networking sites [cbsatlanta.com] like facebook [pcmag.com]
Those examples don't bear much on what I was saying. First of all, firing and hiring are different things. Second, as I was saying: US employers have been limited in how they can use social networking sites, they haven't been prohibited from using them. Third, some of the examples you list are not work related, others are currently in court. Fourth, try to come up with arguments why a blanket prohibition is more reasonable than the US approach.
Many of these protections are already in place in the US and Europe is just catching up. For example, US employers have been limited for years in how they can use social networking sites, based on existing US non-discrimination and privacy laws. Many of those restrictions in the US are based on case law; they don't require separate legislation. In Europe, legislators need to pass many more explicit laws, and a lot of that is knee-jerk reactions to recent events and populist legislation that sounds good on the surface but that nobody knows how it's going to work out in the long run.
And you're also right that a lot of European privacy abuse just isn't reported on much in the US. For example, the law in the story was prompted by several huge scandals in which big German companies spied on their employees, again in ways that are already totally illegal under US law.
Other European privacy abuses aren't even perceived as such in Europe; people are just used to a more intrusive government. Many other European privacy abuses aren't visible at all. For example, despite all the brouhaha over Google Streetview in Germany (=big evil US corporation), it turns out that the German government itself regularly does detailed aerial surveys and precise GPS measurements of buildings and sells that information to anybody willing to pay for it (starting at around $200k); that data really is problematic, since it not only shows in great detail private areas protected by fences, but also is being used to charge individuals with code violations. And it's quite clear that European intelligence services spy on their citizens without as much as anybody even batting an eye.
Much of the "Europe is better" perception is a myth, created by the European media and European governments to make Europeans happy, and some of that propaganda spills over into the US.
You only think it's a "bi-partisanship circus" because you don't understand how the US political system works.
The US is simply lucky enough to be able to export (most of) its conflicts. Which it has been doing with consistency and enthusiasm.
Oh, get real. Britain and France had oppressive and vicious colonial empires until after WWII, and they only stopped because they couldn't keep them together anymore. Let's not even get into Germany's sordid history of colonialism and war.
There is nothing even remotely comparable on that scale in US history. When the US has conquered territory, it has usually given people citizenship and often a choice of independence. Most US conflicts since WWII have been about trying to keep the western economic and political system together and cleaning up after the mess that European colonialism left behind.
Defense of market economies? Access to raw materials? Since when do countries have the right to the raw materials in other countries?
You tell me: Europe held on to its colonies through much of the 20th century. And today, European companies are as much exploiting and oppressing populations in Africa and Asia as American companies are. And European economies are dependent on those raw materials to this day.
Not trying to build an empire? Only for as long as US interests are not harmed. It's just that your administrators are the CIA.
Yes, the US does impose requirements on markets and political systems and backs that up with military power. If the US didn't do that, you could kiss the G8 economies--including Germany's--good-bye. It's not a perfect system, but it certainly beats colonialism and the British and French empires.
Most anti-American rhetoric I've heard from Germans is that they disagree with the wars fought by America.
Well, it's easy for Germany to advocate pacifism, with tens of thousands of US troops and missiles guaranteeing its security. Where do you think Germany would be today if the allies had simply taking reparations and then withdrawn after WWII? Where do you think the German economy would be if the US didn't keep the oil flowing from the Middle East?
The next wars (and, in Africa, the current wars) won't be about fascism, they will be about natural resources.
Most wars are about natural resources.
Unless we get wise and stop them from happening.
Germany is totally dependent on imports of raw materials. The US isn't going to let the German economy slide into chaos because of resource shortages, not out of any love for the Germans, but because the economic and political consequences would be catastrophic.
If you want to stop those wars from happening, figure out how Germany can keep its economy alive and its democracy going without the US having to ensure a steady supply of raw materials. Until then, don't bite the hand that feeds you.
Archos doesn't run Android.
There are several Archos models that do; search for "archos android" on Amazon.
Also, their latest player (v. 9) runs Windows.
You make it sound like they are abandoning Android; they are not.
I have heard that Archos 7 runs Android, but the one I've played a bit with in a store didn't resemble its interface at all, didn't have any visible link to Google's market and the documentation did not mention any SDK or such.
Archos is trying to get into the market, but Google isn't letting them yet. Android 3 is probably going to have tablet support, and you can be sure that Archos will be shipping it.
they practically murdered java script with that crap and the format for transfering wave data :xml documents hint it looks more like exchange system and if you wonder why it failed?
Yes, Google's implementation totally sucked. And it sucked because they had drunk the XML/Java/GWT cool-aid. But lots of other Google (and non-Google) products suck in the same way, and they don't get canceled; they just throw more engineering resources at it to make it work anyway.
Golang doesn't compile to the JVM, and it can't replace Java (because it would be nearly impossible to create migration tools from Java to Golang).
Together with that, the introduction of the Euro means that we Europeans are very much in trouble together when we start a war with our neighbor. The history of the world is changing very rapidly, if there was any cycle it might well and truly be broken by now.
It may be broken, but not in a good way. Instead of a conflagration of war, Europe may just get permanently stuck at the totalitarian or fascist stage.
The most aggressive country by far is the US. It makes war with countries that never even threatened the US.
That's because after WWII, the US was the only nation that had the economic and military power to ensure that Europe wouldn't be overrun by the USSR.
That the US does not have any wars inside of its borders (and outside of prisons) does not mean that there is no war there.
So? War is not intrinsically wrong. Most of the wars that the US has engaged in have been in defense of market economies and democracy, and in ensuring the access to the raw materials that Europe and the US need. Some of the wars have been unjust, more have been unwise, but unlike European nations, the US has not been trying to build an empire, and it has generally respected the right to self-determination.
The most troubling thing for me is the economic stability. If masses of people get out of work and there is mass poverty, then political correctness is the first to suffer (like in pre-Nazi Germany, were the nation went bankrupt after the first world war).
The US had its Great Depression and got through it without devolving into fascism; somehow, it seems to be resilient. It is possible that US democracy is starting to fall apart, under the strains of military engagements, social tensions, and corporate power. But things seem no worse than a century ago.
It's Germany you should worry about. No German democracy has survived a major economic crises yet, and the current German democracy has never had to face any serious economic problems. And, tellingly, as German democracy was falling apart a century ago, you got the same kind of anti-American rhetoric and demagoguery that's coming out of Germany today.
The US has fought constant wars for as long as it has existed.
Yes, it fought many of those wars against evil and repressive regimes. It fought many of those wars to ensure that Europe could remain democratic, instead of being swallowed up by the USSR. Fighting wars is not intrinsically wrong. More importantly, the US has remained a democracy throughout that entire time.
The difference is simply that it lacks a foe in its home continent who had the resources for a major war.
There are lots of reasons why Germany is the way it is; that doesn't change the observation that Germany is in no position on giving other nations advice on democracy or human rights.
Or, to put it even blunter: your progress has mainly depended on slaughtering the natives and stealing their land,
Huge numbers natives in the Americas were wiped out by disease, and others were slaughtered by European armies and settlers before the US was even founded. Much of the Indian territories were considered British property and ceded to the US by the British. Once the US was founded, it tried to cope with the mess that European governments had left behind as best it could. The US made plenty of mistakes along the way, but compared to how European governments continued to mistreat native peoples around the world, the US was progressive. Germany itself was still oppressing and slaughtering natives in its colonies until 1920, when the Treaty of Versailles finally put a stop to it.
The root of the evil in the plight of the native Americans was European colonialism and European attitudes.
What matters for the us/them distinction in this case is the history and culture of democracy and liberty. The US has more than two centuries of uninterrupted democratic governance. In the same period, Germany has had two failed democracies, a monarchy, a fascist state, a military dictatorship, and a communist state. In fact, the reason there are so many Americans of German ancestry is that so many Germans wanted to escape the chaos and repression they were experiencing in Germany.
Pointing out that Germany has had problems with democracy and liberty is not "stereotyping an entire nationality", it's a historical fact about a nation. And pointing out restrictions on freedom of speech and other liberties, and the fact that these are politically viable, is not stereotyping, it's a political fact about a political entity.
Our freedom of speech (I'm german) is as real as yours.
Germany objectively has stronger restrictions on civil liberties than the US.
We just have some priorities differently.
German priorities were set by the allies after WWII. The primary goals were de-Nazificiation and prevention of a recurrence of WWII. Democratization and freedom were secondary concerns, merely means to an end. If Germany could have been pacified after WWII by turning it into a military dictatorship or splitting it up between its neighbors, I doubt any of the allies would have objected.
As it turns out, constructing a democracy based on the American model, but with some additional restrictions on free speech and religion, was be the better model for Germany. Giving Germans a stake and say in the process also turned out to be a good idea. That was coupled with military occupation and tight supervision of the German government until the 1990s (many important government posts could only be filled with US approval until 1990).
It's nice that German democracy has turned out as well as it has. Germans shouldn't make the mistake now, however, to present the construct that the allies essentially imposed after WWII as a model democracy for the rest of the world. Germans have never managed to construct a stable democracy themselves and Germany still doesn't have a long tradition of democracy or liberty.
We don't think anything done by the government is automatically evil and to be mistrusted. We view the government as an entity much like many others - capable of both good and evil.
The government is capable of both good and evil; and when it commits evil, millions of people suffer and maybe even die. That's why you need to distrust everything the government does: the cost of governmental failure are simply too high.
The lessons have been forgotten, so authoritarianism and militarism are once again on the rise in Europe, and will once again lead to the world burning.
Having lived in Europe on and off, sadly, I can confirm this. Part of the problem is European arrogance: for more than two centuries, Americans have had to listen to Europeans about how superior their culture and political systems are, only to watch them self-destruct like clockwork. Europeans simply can't imagine that their supposedly superior culture leads to mass destruction and mass murder, again and again.
That is the cycle of human history, and it cannot be broken, since no matter what lessons you might learn, your children won't, and their children certainly won't care.
Other continents haven't been following this cycle. The US has had centuries of continuity and progress. South America and Africa don't have stability at all, but they don't have European delusions of grandeur either.
There is something uniquely wrong with European politics and European culture.
You forgot the third option; Fuck the US and its draconian immigration policies and never go there again. Works for me so far.
European, Asian, and Australian policies are no less draconian. They may seem a little less draconian to you at the border, but that's because those governments can track and check you anywhere once you're in the country.
And it's high time that "business as usual" get cleaned up.
(Besides, his hair alone should get him convicted.)
Maybe this would be a good time for Google to cut ties with the Java language altogether, by coming up with a new, better language that compiles to Dalvik. The Java language has too many problems anyway.
Java is their language. Don't like it? Don't use Java.
Companies don't own languages unless they can claim a patent or copyright on the language. Oracle has neither. Their patents are on something completely different.
If they did, neither Sun, nor Oracle, nor Microsoft would exist. In fact, much of what any of those companies got started with was ripped off from others.
If it's a platform that you can write code for in Java language, then it damn well better compile under the standard Oracle Java, otherwise you're very blatantly infringing upon Oracle's trademark.
Language syntax does not define a trademark. The trademark is on the word "Java", nothing else.
This isn't C where platforms are allowed to be incompatible, the whole purpose of Java was theoretically to allow it to be written once and run on any platform with Java support.
The law doesn't give a damn what pipe dreams Sun had for Java.
What Google has opted to do damages Oracle's trademark by referring to non-compatible software as Java language.
You use Oracle's Java compiler to compile software for Android. Google is correct to refer to that as a "Java compiler" because Oracle refers to it that way. The fact that they do something different with the class files afterwards is none of Oracle's business.
Isn't that the whole problem? If they call it a Java platform, it should run software written in Java.
They don't call it a Java platform.
Face the truth why didn't Google use a full implementation of java as they are required by the patent grants. Because they wanted people to write for there platform and not simply port software.
Google didn't use a "full implementation of Java" because J2SE is extremely bloated and unsuitable for mobile phone use. And they couldn't use Sun's implementation because that wasn't even open sourced when they started. J2ME doesn't have a patent grant, so making a cleanroom implementation of that wouldn't have helped them either.
Of course, Google didn't use "an implementation of Java" at all, they implemented something completely different that happens to use Java syntax. Oracle's lawsuit is not based on the parts that Android happens to share with Java, because those are not covered by any patents.
McAllister argues that Google is splintering the Java platform, just like Microsoft was doing back in the 90s
So what? Companies don't have a right not to have their platforms "splintered".
Besides, Google isn't "splintering the Java platform", they created a new platform that happens to use the Java language.
Furthermore, Sun/Oracle's mobile efforts are largely dead, so Google isn't "splintering" anything, it is replacing them with something actually viable.
I hear LSD, cocaine, and crack work even better to rid yourself of a StarCraft addiction.
Somewhere in the 20th century.
I find it's more useful to file bug reports like this at https://bugreport.apple.com/ [apple.com], rather than slashdot.
In my nearly 30 year experience with Apple products, I might as well send a bug report to /dev/null.