These people didn't opt-in into this, they never even knew about it, and if they knew, they would have opted out.
You do not have a right to "opt out" of having your face recorded in public; in a democracy, other people have a right to take photos of you and publish them whether you agree or not.
And yet you are unable to understand that there is a difference between broadcasting SSID and MAC addresses to let your equipment interoperate inside your home and volunteering them to a global geolocating database of the entire Internet!
Google wasn't the first company to do this. In fact, I don't think they even bother anymore because there are so many other sources of information available.
Furthermore, you're running your WLAN under public spectrum licensing regulations. Here too what you want is less relevant than what those regulations say. Historically, you didn't have any right to privacy at all for these kinds of uses; you were not even allowed to encrypt if you used the public spectrum. Recent legislation has muddied the water, but doing what you propose, making the reception of unencrypted, unlicensed spectrum illegal would be a serious problem.
Keep in mind that that spectrum is also shared; a radio amateur can legally blast your access point out of existence with his transmission in many places. WLAN is a guest on that spectrum. If you don't like it, don't use it.
Google basically played "easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission".
Google didn't do anything wrong and they haven't done anything a lot of other companies haven't done as well. But even if they did, a lot of what they have accomplished is because they have been willing to move into legally gray areas and get them clarified. Without that, there would be little technological progress because technology usually creates new gray areas.
Are you really so incapable to realize the difference between an individual and a corporation?
And what difference would that be? Although the corporate form is being abused for all sorts of things, corporations are fundamentally just a means by which individuals cooperate. Newspapers, environmental organizations, public watchdog groups are all corporations (or similar private organizations). If you place them at legal risk for collecting and distributing public information, you threaten our entire democracy.
Google didn't get caught, they simply were truthful. They didn't have to give access to German government officials, and they could have just quietly erased the data when they found it.
The thing I don't get about google, is how they can claim that it was by accident. Sure, it was by accident, we started some software that would take dumps of data-packets and store them, when all they wanted to do was just take photos.
Google recorded WLAN information in order to help with geolocation. Software that does that routinely records the payload as well. Lots of other companies have done the same thing (minus Streetview) and some of them almost certainly did the same thing that Google did, because it is a standard software function. An iPod Touch and an iPad know where they are, even in Germany, because Apple is using such a database from some vendor.
But that wouldn't have required storing the data.
Google's data is evaluated on their servers, not in the cars. That's why they record all the information in the cars in raw form and then take it to their servers. That's the only reasonable way to do this kind of owrk. And there was no obvious reason not to store the data: it's public, unencrypted data. By law, such data cannot contain private information in Germany or the US. So why shouldn't they have stored this data?
You may claim that this is stupid. I for one however rather sip a beer, sitting on a park bench on a sunny day then have my private data (including phone, financial and medical data) splattered around the world and sold to every sleazy marketoid that pays for it.
Google didn't access your private data, they recorded public, unencrypted WiFi broadcasts.
And your implication that the privacy situation in Europe is better is wrong. Germany's data protection situation is atrocious: communications devices and lines need to be licensed, there is an extensive infrastructure for tracking communications and travel, there are few effective restrictions on how the government can intrude on your life, and there is a lively exchange of your personal data going on between government agencies and even the government and private organizations.
Furthermore, until 1990, part of Germany was run by a totalitarian, highly intrusive government, so it's not like Germans have a spotless record (not to mention 1939-1945).
One example of how careless the German government is with private data is that it not only records your religious affiliation, but it also shares that information on your passport and with your employer. For a nation that murdered millions of people because of their religious affiliation, this is an outrage.
US privacy laws are tending towards libertarian (protection from government), European privacy laws are totalitarian (intrusive government and limiting the rights of individuals to communicate). Enjoy your beer on your park bench while you still can.
And unarmed people walking through alleys at night are vulnerable to all sorts of things as well; it doesn't mean we don't prosecute those who do those things.
We prosecute those things because they cause harm. But criminalizing the act of merely recording the data doesn't make sense; it doesn't provide any protection, it just turns us into a police state.
Google did something completely normal and standard in network scanning: they recorded the payload of the packets. They didn't publish it, they didn't misuse the data, and hence they shouldn't be guilt of anything.
You may see your neighbor changing through her curtains, but if you post that video to the internet, that's not legal (at least, not where I am).
If your neighbor exposes her breasts or genitals in a way that's visible from the street, she is guilty of indecent exposure, a sex offense.
And, likewise, in many places (including Germany), unencrypted WiFi broadcasts are often against the law, depending on the circumstances.
Average Joe user may have absolutely no clue his WAP is broadcasting in the clear,
And who cares? The fact that Google recorded his packets doesn't harm Joe or your 80 year old grandmother.
nor should he be required to have that technical talent,
He isn't required to. If he doesn't know any better than to broadcast in the clear, Google picks up his packets. BFD.
anymore than we should all be expected to be car mechanics
If you operate a motor vehicle, you're actually required to keep it in safe condition. If you can't do that either yourself or by hiring someone, you shouldn't be driving that vehicle.
Likewise, Joe and your grandmother always have the option of not using technology they don't understand sufficiently well to ensure that they and others aren't harmed by it.
The alternative is putting governmental pressure on everyone to purchase Best Buy "security services" when they purchase a router.
Why would that be needed? If Joe runs an open access point, that's his business. If he comes to harm from it, that's his business too. And if people use his access point for copyright infringement, he may be liable. None of that has anything to do with whether Google receives some of his packets.
The alternative is to do nothing. If you don't understand some piece of technology, either don't buy it or hire someone who can help you. It's not the government's responsibility if you're a moron.
Quite well, I imagine. I mean, we live in a world full of 20-somethings that start computer companies and become billionaires nearly overnight. Many of those clearly don't have much experience with privacy, security, safety, etc. That's part of the reason for their success: where more experienced companies hem and haw and worry about such things, they just push out a product and don't even know what they're doing. And customers don't know any better either, so they buy it. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc., they all got big that way.
(Even Google basically started that way; they didn't have a problem with security, but they didn't know or care that their algorithm was already known or whether their search engine actually worked better than other search engines. Google, however, quickly hired experienced people who beat their system into shape, which is why Google these days is both successful and technically competent. Other companies, however, just grew old with their inexperienced initial development staff and never got much better. Hello, Microsoft.)
But the real question is how long until carriers start treating Android phones like any phone before it only authorizing their firmware to operate on their network and going to their "Market place?
Oh, you mean like iPhone, where I get one firmware and one app store running on exactly one carrier? I don't think this is going to happen with Android. What's the sales pitch to customers: "buy our restricted Android phone and get fewer apps"? I don't think so.
In the rest of the world, carriers often don' t care. In Europe, carriers still have branded phones with modified firmware in their programs, not in order to mess with their customers, but because it's really easier for people who just want to turn on their phones and go. But you can use whatever phone you like with whatever firmware you like.
Even in the US, carriers don't really care. For example, on AT&T, there are tons of restrictions on iPhone, but if you buy a Symbian phone, you can tether your phone and run whatever software you like. AT&T on iPhone is a miserable experience, but that's due to the iPhone, not AT&T.
I've already heard some complaints from friends with different Droid phones not being able to run the same apps. One person downloads an App that works great on a HTC, but a person with a Motorola can't down download the same app due to incompatible hardware.
Bullshit. Put up or shut up: show that this is a widespread problem.
As a developer, we're already charging 4x's the amount to develop for Android vs iPhone. Why? Because with Android we have test against 4 software versions and a number of different handsets and that adds a lot of time/cost in the QA phase.
Isn't a free market great? Other software houses will be able to offer Android development for lower price than iPhone development because it's just a better platform. And companies like you that have an iPhone up their a** will just go out of business.
As someone who uses both the iPhone and iPad browser and the Android browser, let me say this: the Android browser is already nice than the iPhone browser. And with V8, Flash, and the new Dalvik, it will be great. I don't like Flash, but I am happy that I get Flash if I need it. And the fact that Apple tries to control what I install on my phone is unacceptable.
All the Apple desktops are essentially gone (one is still sitting in a corner being lonely). I am so looking forward to getting rid of the last Apple hardware that I still have once Android tablets are out.
Its patent portfolio is only a fraction of the size of Apple, for an example, and even Apple isn't extremely big compared to some others.
Many of Google's patents come from acquistions; they aren't listed under Google. Furthermore, it's not the size of the portfolio that matters, it's its quality. Apple's patents are by and large junk.
Also, if Google had the ability to do this, why would they stand on the sidelines when Android adopters such as HTC are being sued or when royalties are collected from them?
How do you know Google is standing on the sidelines? AFAIK, they have gotten involved. And how do you know what the royalties are for? HTC makes more than Android phones, you know.
Furthermore, hardware-related royalties really don't matter that much--they just disappear in the hardware price. Royalties matter for open source software, and nobody has sued over that so far.
If Google really believed that WebM/VP8 was safe from a patent perspective
Nothing is ever safe from a patent perspective, and if Google believed that, they would be fools.
then why in the world don't its WebM license terms contain a hold-harmless clause at least some basic indemnification
Come on, use your head, that just doesn't make sense. You could have members of MPEG-LA suing each other over VP8 patents with Google paying the bill.
I explained Google's limits in that regard in this recent slashdot comment, The idea of Google countersuing isn't realistic
That analysis is truly stupid. First of all, many of Google's patents are not listed under their name because they got them from acquisitions. Second, it's not the number of patents that counts, it's what they are on. I have looked at Apple's patents; many of them are total junk; they aren't worth the paper they are printed on. I suspect Google's patents are substantially stronger.
And Google doesn't need a lot of patents to deal with this, they just need one that works. If they can even just create uncertainty around h.264, h.264 is done for, because it becomes just another patent risk.
People should think twice (at least!) before relying on any vague promises and they should also consider that Google isn't the patent powerhouse that could start a "pissing contest" with the major contributors to the MPEG LA pool.
VP8 is pretty good from a patent perspective: it comes with a collection of relevant patents, an implementation that has been carefully crafted to avoid infringement, and a pretty big and powerful company to back it all up.
Is it perfect? No. But for open source, it's a big win over h.264, which we know with certainty to be patent encumbered.
Because there is nothing in either statutory or case law to give any legal force behind such a ridiculous clause
Such a clause doesn't seem significantly more ridiculous than the kinds of clauses MPEG-LA imposes on users.
"If you're a police officer you can't look at this". Yeah, those were real big in stopping the FBI or other police groups from going there anyway and busting them
I don't think that's the purpose of such clauses; rather, the purpose is to deprive police of the use of legal content. For example, if I make steganographic software, I might say "this software may not be downloaded or used by police". That makes it potentially harder for police to download the software and develop countermeasures, because police do not have the right to break copyright laws arbitrarily.
The MPEG-LA wants patent-encumbered video format as a web standard.
It's worse than that. A lot of the features in h.264 probably serve no particular purpose other than to make the standard patent encumbered. And when h.264 is about to run out, they are just going to add some more useless tweaks to create the next patent encumbered standard. The thing is, for hardware manufacturers, content providers, and Apple and Microsoft, this is all just fine and dandy: they get to extract more money from your pocket with upgrades you didn't need to standards that are really no better than before, they can force DRM on you, and they can beat down open source.
Technically, there have been better approaches to video compression than h.264 already, but their implementations never had a chance to mature to the point where they could be competitive.
Yeah, but even the patent holders that don't sell anything don't like their patents to become worthless. If Google truly has a patent that h.264 implementations infringe on, then MPEG-LA can't function anymore and h.264 becomes worthless. Making a deal that would cease MPEG-LA's patent FUD on VP8 might be their best bet, because then at least they could still succeed in the market.
Anyhow, h.264 will be about as useful 15 years from now as Intel Indeo is right now.
h.264 is not substantially different from video codecs that were around 15 years ago; most of what has happened since is tweaks necessary to adapt it to higher resolutions. Little is going to happen there from now on. h.264 handles pretty much all resolutions you're going to realistically be using for the foreseeable future. And there is neither much room for additional compression nor much need for it.
In addition, a lot of people invested a lot of money in developing better video compression technology. They succeeded, but although technically better, they didn't have a chance in the marketplace due to licensing and business arrangements. Nobody in their right mind is going to invest any significant amount of money in a new video codec.
What you are going to see is the current patent holders creating technically insignificant tweaks, patenting them, and pushing them into the standards and hardware. That will effectively extend the current patents again and again. Consumer electronics firms like it because they get to sell a new generation of equipment, Apple and Microsoft like it because they get to spread more FUD and beat open source over the head, and movie studios like it because proprietary formats end up giving them more control over distribution, devices, and DRM.
The only people for whom this is bad is users and buyers, but 99% of them are too stupid to figure it out, and the remaining 1% can't do anything about it.
You and I are "evolved entities composed of randomly assembled machines". That's just an elementary fact of biology. The "randomly assembled machines" part doesn't even bear on evolution, we'd be "randomly assembled machines" even if creationism were true.
"More importantly, nobody has established as a fact that Google even violated German law."
Exactly... since the harddrives would have to be looked at for that, you know?
No judge has made a legal determination that way the data was obtained is itself illegal and there is not a shred of evidence that Google recorded anything other than unencrypted data. In different words, the question of legality does not hinge on what is in the data.
On the other hand, Google's data probably contains evidence that large numbers of Germans violated German telecommunications law (transmitting private data without encryption), copyright laws (movie downloads), and censorship laws (pornography, violent games). How is the German government going to use this information?
How does a German regulator demanding to inspect the harddrives translate to "the German Government stating as a fact that Google has violated German law"?
You can't prove non-existence by example. Go read Aigner's and Caspar's statements to the press. Aigner, for example, talked about "Millionenfache Verletzung der Privatsphäre".
In any case, you see no problem with the notion that a bureaucrat makes a determination that a private organization has violated a law and requires them to surrender a hard drive? What exactly is the legal basis for that supposed to be? What are the safeguards? What's he going to do with that data? What if he finds someone's child pornography in that data, is the state going to prosecute those people? Can the same bureaucrat demand my hard drive or yours?
The proper course of action is that the bureaucrat goes to a prosecutor, the prosecutor goes to a judge, the judge makes a determination whether there is sufficient cause to obtain the data, writes a warrant, and decides and documents the limits that the data can be used for.
Except for legally well-defined cases, members of the executive branch deciding unilaterally to require access to people's hard drives is an absolute no-no. If this kind of conduct is legal in Germany, anybody's hard drive can be accessed by many parts of the government at any time without legal review, authorization, or proper procedures, and the data used for any purpose. Sadly, that's probably the case, and it's frightening.
Because of Nazi Germany? LOL?
Not "because" of it, but reminiscent of it. Sorry, but there still seems to be some deep and widespread problem with the German understanding of civil rights, the rule of law, and democracy. And it's not just the Nazi regime; half of Germany was a totalitarian state until 1990, complete with anti-American sentiments and bureaucrats whose supposed purpose in life was to protect the German population from evil Western companies and who spied on everybody and everything.
There is no harm in "looking into" them. However, the German government isn't "looking into them", they are stating as a fact that Google has violated German law.
not to simply ignore them and try to wiggle the way out of it. That doesn't achieve anything.
The term "ignore" implies intent; there is no evidence that Google intentionally captured packets in Germany, let alone intentionally violated German law. To many software developers, the fact that capturing unencrypted packets in a public place might get them thrown in jail would probably come as a surprise, and it is probably not illegal in most places in the world. More importantly, nobody has established as a fact that Google even violated German law. So far, that is merely an opinion expressed by some members of the German executive branch.
You can talk a lot about how this isn't right, or how different things would be better, but even if laws do get changed, what happened happened, and the laws that were in place at that time, do apply. What is so hard to understand about that?
Democracies have separation of powers. In particular, courts determines whether a law was violated, not the executive branch. When members of the executive branch state as fact to the press that "Google has violated German law", that is a serious problem. A breakdown between executive and judicial powers is a big step towards totalitarianism, and given Germany's history, it should be particularly careful not to cross that line again, as it has several times before.
The proper statement for the German government to have made would have been: "we believe Google may have violated German privacy laws and we are considering filing suit in German court unless Google voluntarily cooperates".
What are you talking about? What "persecution"? If they violated laws, they get punished. Where's the problem?
I have yet to see a legal analysis that demonstrates that what Google violated any German laws. Right now, you just have members of a right wing German government foaming at the mouth. That's the rough equivalent of US southern politicians giving their legal opinions on something.
And if Google did violate laws, then German law needs to change; no country that calls itself democratic and free should have laws on the books that allows the government to throw people in jail for accidental reception of unencrypted broadcasts. Furthermore, the current political tempest does nothing to protect consumer privacy; Google's packet data is useless, and any prosecution of Google over this isn't going to deter the criminals that listen in on WiFi communications with the intent to defraud and harm people. The German government should educate people about the importance of encrypting their WiFi, not prosecute Google.
(And before you engage in a tu quoque, let me add that, yes, there is some legal uncertainty in the US surrounding this issue as well, and, yes, it needs to be addressed.)
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I have no problem with giving up some privacy... as long as I get to choose.
The problem with Facebook is that if you put your information in there, they unilaterally and unpredictably disclose it to others.
Often, they seem to do that in a way that I do not benefit from, but that actually endangers me.
These people didn't opt-in into this, they never even knew about it, and if they knew, they would have opted out.
You do not have a right to "opt out" of having your face recorded in public; in a democracy, other people have a right to take photos of you and publish them whether you agree or not.
And yet you are unable to understand that there is a difference between broadcasting SSID and MAC addresses to let your equipment interoperate inside your home and volunteering them to a global geolocating database of the entire Internet!
Google wasn't the first company to do this. In fact, I don't think they even bother anymore because there are so many other sources of information available.
Furthermore, you're running your WLAN under public spectrum licensing regulations. Here too what you want is less relevant than what those regulations say. Historically, you didn't have any right to privacy at all for these kinds of uses; you were not even allowed to encrypt if you used the public spectrum. Recent legislation has muddied the water, but doing what you propose, making the reception of unencrypted, unlicensed spectrum illegal would be a serious problem.
Keep in mind that that spectrum is also shared; a radio amateur can legally blast your access point out of existence with his transmission in many places. WLAN is a guest on that spectrum. If you don't like it, don't use it.
Google basically played "easier to ask forgiveness than ask permission".
Google didn't do anything wrong and they haven't done anything a lot of other companies haven't done as well. But even if they did, a lot of what they have accomplished is because they have been willing to move into legally gray areas and get them clarified. Without that, there would be little technological progress because technology usually creates new gray areas.
Are you really so incapable to realize the difference between an individual and a corporation?
And what difference would that be? Although the corporate form is being abused for all sorts of things, corporations are fundamentally just a means by which individuals cooperate. Newspapers, environmental organizations, public watchdog groups are all corporations (or similar private organizations). If you place them at legal risk for collecting and distributing public information, you threaten our entire democracy.
Google got caught, that's what's the difference.
Google didn't get caught, they simply were truthful. They didn't have to give access to German government officials, and they could have just quietly erased the data when they found it.
The thing I don't get about google, is how they can claim that it was by accident. Sure, it was by accident, we started some software that would take dumps of data-packets and store them, when all they wanted to do was just take photos.
Google recorded WLAN information in order to help with geolocation. Software that does that routinely records the payload as well. Lots of other companies have done the same thing (minus Streetview) and some of them almost certainly did the same thing that Google did, because it is a standard software function. An iPod Touch and an iPad know where they are, even in Germany, because Apple is using such a database from some vendor.
But that wouldn't have required storing the data.
Google's data is evaluated on their servers, not in the cars. That's why they record all the information in the cars in raw form and then take it to their servers. That's the only reasonable way to do this kind of owrk. And there was no obvious reason not to store the data: it's public, unencrypted data. By law, such data cannot contain private information in Germany or the US. So why shouldn't they have stored this data?
You may claim that this is stupid. I for one however rather sip a beer, sitting on a park bench on a sunny day then have my private data (including phone, financial and medical data) splattered around the world and sold to every sleazy marketoid that pays for it.
Google didn't access your private data, they recorded public, unencrypted WiFi broadcasts.
And your implication that the privacy situation in Europe is better is wrong. Germany's data protection situation is atrocious: communications devices and lines need to be licensed, there is an extensive infrastructure for tracking communications and travel, there are few effective restrictions on how the government can intrude on your life, and there is a lively exchange of your personal data going on between government agencies and even the government and private organizations.
Furthermore, until 1990, part of Germany was run by a totalitarian, highly intrusive government, so it's not like Germans have a spotless record (not to mention 1939-1945).
One example of how careless the German government is with private data is that it not only records your religious affiliation, but it also shares that information on your passport and with your employer. For a nation that murdered millions of people because of their religious affiliation, this is an outrage.
US privacy laws are tending towards libertarian (protection from government), European privacy laws are totalitarian (intrusive government and limiting the rights of individuals to communicate). Enjoy your beer on your park bench while you still can.
but that doesn't mean when someone steals your car the police shouldn't go after the thief.
No, but if someone accidentally opens your car door and then walks away, they haven't committed a crime either.
Except for recording the packets, Google clearly done nothing else with the data.
And unarmed people walking through alleys at night are vulnerable to all sorts of things as well; it doesn't mean we don't prosecute those who do those things.
We prosecute those things because they cause harm. But criminalizing the act of merely recording the data doesn't make sense; it doesn't provide any protection, it just turns us into a police state.
Google did something completely normal and standard in network scanning: they recorded the payload of the packets. They didn't publish it, they didn't misuse the data, and hence they shouldn't be guilt of anything.
You may see your neighbor changing through her curtains, but if you post that video to the internet, that's not legal (at least, not where I am).
If your neighbor exposes her breasts or genitals in a way that's visible from the street, she is guilty of indecent exposure, a sex offense.
And, likewise, in many places (including Germany), unencrypted WiFi broadcasts are often against the law, depending on the circumstances.
Average Joe user may have absolutely no clue his WAP is broadcasting in the clear,
And who cares? The fact that Google recorded his packets doesn't harm Joe or your 80 year old grandmother.
nor should he be required to have that technical talent,
He isn't required to. If he doesn't know any better than to broadcast in the clear, Google picks up his packets. BFD.
anymore than we should all be expected to be car mechanics
If you operate a motor vehicle, you're actually required to keep it in safe condition. If you can't do that either yourself or by hiring someone, you shouldn't be driving that vehicle.
Likewise, Joe and your grandmother always have the option of not using technology they don't understand sufficiently well to ensure that they and others aren't harmed by it.
The alternative is putting governmental pressure on everyone to purchase Best Buy "security services" when they purchase a router.
Why would that be needed? If Joe runs an open access point, that's his business. If he comes to harm from it, that's his business too. And if people use his access point for copyright infringement, he may be liable. None of that has anything to do with whether Google receives some of his packets.
The alternative is to do nothing. If you don't understand some piece of technology, either don't buy it or hire someone who can help you. It's not the government's responsibility if you're a moron.
How do these people sleep at night?
Quite well, I imagine. I mean, we live in a world full of 20-somethings that start computer companies and become billionaires nearly overnight. Many of those clearly don't have much experience with privacy, security, safety, etc. That's part of the reason for their success: where more experienced companies hem and haw and worry about such things, they just push out a product and don't even know what they're doing. And customers don't know any better either, so they buy it. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, etc., they all got big that way.
(Even Google basically started that way; they didn't have a problem with security, but they didn't know or care that their algorithm was already known or whether their search engine actually worked better than other search engines. Google, however, quickly hired experienced people who beat their system into shape, which is why Google these days is both successful and technically competent. Other companies, however, just grew old with their inexperienced initial development staff and never got much better. Hello, Microsoft.)
Ubuntu is the right choice. It has tons of scientific apps, it's what many universities use, and it's easy to set up and maintain.
I don't think either Windows or OS X are a realistic choice. Windows is hard to maintain, and OS X would end up being quite expensive.
But the real question is how long until carriers start treating Android phones like any phone before it only authorizing their firmware to operate on their network and going to their "Market place?
Oh, you mean like iPhone, where I get one firmware and one app store running on exactly one carrier? I don't think this is going to happen with Android. What's the sales pitch to customers: "buy our restricted Android phone and get fewer apps"? I don't think so.
In the rest of the world, carriers often don' t care. In Europe, carriers still have branded phones with modified firmware in their programs, not in order to mess with their customers, but because it's really easier for people who just want to turn on their phones and go. But you can use whatever phone you like with whatever firmware you like.
Even in the US, carriers don't really care. For example, on AT&T, there are tons of restrictions on iPhone, but if you buy a Symbian phone, you can tether your phone and run whatever software you like. AT&T on iPhone is a miserable experience, but that's due to the iPhone, not AT&T.
I've already heard some complaints from friends with different Droid phones not being able to run the same apps. One person downloads an App that works great on a HTC, but a person with a Motorola can't down download the same app due to incompatible hardware.
Bullshit. Put up or shut up: show that this is a widespread problem.
As a developer, we're already charging 4x's the amount to develop for Android vs iPhone. Why? Because with Android we have test against 4 software versions and a number of different handsets and that adds a lot of time/cost in the QA phase.
Isn't a free market great? Other software houses will be able to offer Android development for lower price than iPhone development because it's just a better platform. And companies like you that have an iPhone up their a** will just go out of business.
As someone who uses both the iPhone and iPad browser and the Android browser, let me say this: the Android browser is already nice than the iPhone browser. And with V8, Flash, and the new Dalvik, it will be great. I don't like Flash, but I am happy that I get Flash if I need it. And the fact that Apple tries to control what I install on my phone is unacceptable.
All the Apple desktops are essentially gone (one is still sitting in a corner being lonely). I am so looking forward to getting rid of the last Apple hardware that I still have once Android tablets are out.
Its patent portfolio is only a fraction of the size of Apple, for an example, and even Apple isn't extremely big compared to some others.
Many of Google's patents come from acquistions; they aren't listed under Google. Furthermore, it's not the size of the portfolio that matters, it's its quality. Apple's patents are by and large junk.
Also, if Google had the ability to do this, why would they stand on the sidelines when Android adopters such as HTC are being sued or when royalties are collected from them?
How do you know Google is standing on the sidelines? AFAIK, they have gotten involved. And how do you know what the royalties are for? HTC makes more than Android phones, you know.
Furthermore, hardware-related royalties really don't matter that much--they just disappear in the hardware price. Royalties matter for open source software, and nobody has sued over that so far.
If Google really believed that WebM/VP8 was safe from a patent perspective
Nothing is ever safe from a patent perspective, and if Google believed that, they would be fools.
then why in the world don't its WebM license terms contain a hold-harmless clause at least some basic indemnification
Come on, use your head, that just doesn't make sense. You could have members of MPEG-LA suing each other over VP8 patents with Google paying the bill.
I explained Google's limits in that regard in this recent slashdot comment, The idea of Google countersuing isn't realistic
That analysis is truly stupid. First of all, many of Google's patents are not listed under their name because they got them from acquisitions. Second, it's not the number of patents that counts, it's what they are on. I have looked at Apple's patents; many of them are total junk; they aren't worth the paper they are printed on. I suspect Google's patents are substantially stronger.
And Google doesn't need a lot of patents to deal with this, they just need one that works. If they can even just create uncertainty around h.264, h.264 is done for, because it becomes just another patent risk.
People should think twice (at least!) before relying on any vague promises and they should also consider that Google isn't the patent powerhouse that could start a "pissing contest" with the major contributors to the MPEG LA pool.
VP8 is pretty good from a patent perspective: it comes with a collection of relevant patents, an implementation that has been carefully crafted to avoid infringement, and a pretty big and powerful company to back it all up.
Is it perfect? No. But for open source, it's a big win over h.264, which we know with certainty to be patent encumbered.
Because there is nothing in either statutory or case law to give any legal force behind such a ridiculous clause
Such a clause doesn't seem significantly more ridiculous than the kinds of clauses MPEG-LA imposes on users.
"If you're a police officer you can't look at this". Yeah, those were real big in stopping the FBI or other police groups from going there anyway and busting them
I don't think that's the purpose of such clauses; rather, the purpose is to deprive police of the use of legal content. For example, if I make steganographic software, I might say "this software may not be downloaded or used by police". That makes it potentially harder for police to download the software and develop countermeasures, because police do not have the right to break copyright laws arbitrarily.
The MPEG-LA wants patent-encumbered video format as a web standard.
It's worse than that. A lot of the features in h.264 probably serve no particular purpose other than to make the standard patent encumbered. And when h.264 is about to run out, they are just going to add some more useless tweaks to create the next patent encumbered standard. The thing is, for hardware manufacturers, content providers, and Apple and Microsoft, this is all just fine and dandy: they get to extract more money from your pocket with upgrades you didn't need to standards that are really no better than before, they can force DRM on you, and they can beat down open source.
Technically, there have been better approaches to video compression than h.264 already, but their implementations never had a chance to mature to the point where they could be competitive.
Yeah, but even the patent holders that don't sell anything don't like their patents to become worthless. If Google truly has a patent that h.264 implementations infringe on, then MPEG-LA can't function anymore and h.264 becomes worthless. Making a deal that would cease MPEG-LA's patent FUD on VP8 might be their best bet, because then at least they could still succeed in the market.
Anyhow, h.264 will be about as useful 15 years from now as Intel Indeo is right now.
h.264 is not substantially different from video codecs that were around 15 years ago; most of what has happened since is tweaks necessary to adapt it to higher resolutions. Little is going to happen there from now on. h.264 handles pretty much all resolutions you're going to realistically be using for the foreseeable future. And there is neither much room for additional compression nor much need for it.
In addition, a lot of people invested a lot of money in developing better video compression technology. They succeeded, but although technically better, they didn't have a chance in the marketplace due to licensing and business arrangements. Nobody in their right mind is going to invest any significant amount of money in a new video codec.
What you are going to see is the current patent holders creating technically insignificant tweaks, patenting them, and pushing them into the standards and hardware. That will effectively extend the current patents again and again. Consumer electronics firms like it because they get to sell a new generation of equipment, Apple and Microsoft like it because they get to spread more FUD and beat open source over the head, and movie studios like it because proprietary formats end up giving them more control over distribution, devices, and DRM.
The only people for whom this is bad is users and buyers, but 99% of them are too stupid to figure it out, and the remaining 1% can't do anything about it.
You and I are "evolved entities composed of randomly assembled machines". That's just an elementary fact of biology. The "randomly assembled machines" part doesn't even bear on evolution, we'd be "randomly assembled machines" even if creationism were true.
"More importantly, nobody has established as a fact that Google even violated German law."
Exactly... since the harddrives would have to be looked at for that, you know?
No judge has made a legal determination that way the data was obtained is itself illegal and there is not a shred of evidence that Google recorded anything other than unencrypted data. In different words, the question of legality does not hinge on what is in the data.
On the other hand, Google's data probably contains evidence that large numbers of Germans violated German telecommunications law (transmitting private data without encryption), copyright laws (movie downloads), and censorship laws (pornography, violent games). How is the German government going to use this information?
How does a German regulator demanding to inspect the harddrives translate to "the German Government stating as a fact that Google has violated German law"?
You can't prove non-existence by example. Go read Aigner's and Caspar's statements to the press. Aigner, for example, talked about "Millionenfache Verletzung der Privatsphäre".
In any case, you see no problem with the notion that a bureaucrat makes a determination that a private organization has violated a law and requires them to surrender a hard drive? What exactly is the legal basis for that supposed to be? What are the safeguards? What's he going to do with that data? What if he finds someone's child pornography in that data, is the state going to prosecute those people? Can the same bureaucrat demand my hard drive or yours?
The proper course of action is that the bureaucrat goes to a prosecutor, the prosecutor goes to a judge, the judge makes a determination whether there is sufficient cause to obtain the data, writes a warrant, and decides and documents the limits that the data can be used for.
Except for legally well-defined cases, members of the executive branch deciding unilaterally to require access to people's hard drives is an absolute no-no. If this kind of conduct is legal in Germany, anybody's hard drive can be accessed by many parts of the government at any time without legal review, authorization, or proper procedures, and the data used for any purpose. Sadly, that's probably the case, and it's frightening.
Because of Nazi Germany? LOL?
Not "because" of it, but reminiscent of it. Sorry, but there still seems to be some deep and widespread problem with the German understanding of civil rights, the rule of law, and democracy. And it's not just the Nazi regime; half of Germany was a totalitarian state until 1990, complete with anti-American sentiments and bureaucrats whose supposed purpose in life was to protect the German population from evil Western companies and who spied on everybody and everything.
If life is just an evolved entity composed of randomly assembled machines, as some biologists claim,
'Some" biologists? Like pretty much all of them.
then it begs the question of wether or not there might be 'life' out there that is not water based, but based on say, sand -- or silicon.
Not likely: nothing even remotely like the diversity of stable organic carbon-based compounds has been observed.
So what's the harm of looking into it then?
There is no harm in "looking into" them. However, the German government isn't "looking into them", they are stating as a fact that Google has violated German law.
not to simply ignore them and try to wiggle the way out of it. That doesn't achieve anything.
The term "ignore" implies intent; there is no evidence that Google intentionally captured packets in Germany, let alone intentionally violated German law. To many software developers, the fact that capturing unencrypted packets in a public place might get them thrown in jail would probably come as a surprise, and it is probably not illegal in most places in the world. More importantly, nobody has established as a fact that Google even violated German law. So far, that is merely an opinion expressed by some members of the German executive branch.
You can talk a lot about how this isn't right, or how different things would be better, but even if laws do get changed, what happened happened, and the laws that were in place at that time, do apply. What is so hard to understand about that?
Democracies have separation of powers. In particular, courts determines whether a law was violated, not the executive branch. When members of the executive branch state as fact to the press that "Google has violated German law", that is a serious problem. A breakdown between executive and judicial powers is a big step towards totalitarianism, and given Germany's history, it should be particularly careful not to cross that line again, as it has several times before.
The proper statement for the German government to have made would have been: "we believe Google may have violated German privacy laws and we are considering filing suit in German court unless Google voluntarily cooperates".
Look them up: these patents are absolutely awful; they make the FAT patent look innovative by comparison.
"But he has such an honest face"
"Do you think he could be a successful crook if he didn't have an honest face?"
What are you talking about? What "persecution"? If they violated laws, they get punished. Where's the problem?
I have yet to see a legal analysis that demonstrates that what Google violated any German laws. Right now, you just have members of a right wing German government foaming at the mouth. That's the rough equivalent of US southern politicians giving their legal opinions on something.
And if Google did violate laws, then German law needs to change; no country that calls itself democratic and free should have laws on the books that allows the government to throw people in jail for accidental reception of unencrypted broadcasts. Furthermore, the current political tempest does nothing to protect consumer privacy; Google's packet data is useless, and any prosecution of Google over this isn't going to deter the criminals that listen in on WiFi communications with the intent to defraud and harm people. The German government should educate people about the importance of encrypting their WiFi, not prosecute Google.
(And before you engage in a tu quoque, let me add that, yes, there is some legal uncertainty in the US surrounding this issue as well, and, yes, it needs to be addressed.)