Greenpeace's power estimation model is:
* 1MW / $15M
Apple announces a $1B datacenter investment, with a huge amount of that money spent on on-site solar panels and other energy efficiency improvments. Greenpeace then says: $1B * 1MB / $15M == 67MW of dirty-fossil fuels.
Literally the only way Apple could win is by not spending *any* money on a datacenter. Even if they made a datacenter which ran on hydroelectric power and literally sucked CO2 out of the air they would still show up on Greenpeace's worst polluter list.
I guess your point is that the burden of proof is on Apple; but frankly I think they've provided a fair bit of proof about their huge solar array.
There is no such thing as 'patent-pool' pricing. There is no difference in the licensing price for companies which contributed to a standards patent-pool vs. companies who didn't. That's not why patent-pools exist and you repeating it over and over doesn't make it anymore true. It is pure fiction.
Such a difference is specifically impermissable by the "non-discriminatory" requirement of FRAND, that's what the 'ND' stands for. Look it up.
Like it or not, that's how the world works. You can't make a contour bottle that looks exactly like Coca-Cola's bottle, with a similar color scheme and the name Cola-Cola, and then sell it. Why not? because of design patents.
You seem to believe standards work by several companies contributing patents to a pool and then those companies are the only ones who get to build to the standard. That is *not* how they work, and frankly that is a pretty stupid guess as to how they work.
Companies contribute patents to a pool as a condition of making that technology part of the standard under requirements to FRAND that technology for any and all who want to implement that standard (whether those future companies contributed to the pool or not). Companies then set licensing costs for everyone who wants to implement the standard--those costs have to be FAIR, REASONABLE, and NON-DISCRIMINATORY. Some companies choose to pay the licensing costs with a fair trade of intellectual property, others pay in cash.
Apple purchased chips from Qualcomm. Qualcomm paid those licensing costs, so Apple felt like they shouldn't have to pay the licensing costs twice--they considered their debt paid.
Meanwhile, Motorola (and others) approached Apple and said that they wouldn't accept cash from them anyway as payment for the FRAND technology, they would only accept in exchange Apple's non-FRAND patent portfolio--presumably so that they could make literal copies of iPhones.
I'm not a lawyer, but frankly I see Apple's side of this one.
Nobody forced anybody to license anything under FRAND conditions. The patent holders voluntarily committed them to FRAND licensing in order to get them included within a standard. That's how standards work. By the way, FRAND doesn't mean "free" as you seem to believe, some of those companies make a lot of money off of their FRAND patents. It means that you can't charge Apple more than you charge Toshiba--which is exactly what Motorola was trying to do.
Also, design patents != standard patents. Nobody is claiming that rounded corners is some kind of technical invention, that isn't the purpose of design patents--they are *by definition* aesthetic. They exist so that a competitor can't make a look-alike replica of your product and then sell it to confused customers--which is exactly what Samsung was trying to do.
All that said, I think Apple overstates their case sometimes by assuming every feature on another phone which is similar to an iPhone was copied from the iPhone. Sometimes there is a simpler explanation, like two people trying to solve the same problem came up with a similar answer, or the feature actually existed in an earlier product.
All my music/shows/movies/photos/documents across several devices. And I can (and do) replicate subsets to my devices for off-line access. Not sure what you are worried about.
I'm not even sure where to start other than to say--technology is only ever adopted broadly if it is cost-effective to do so. The printing press wasn't successful because of some incontrovertible march of progress--it was successful because it was cheaper to make books that way than by having monks transcribe them by hand. Yes, that caused more people to read which drove up the demand for books. And I'm sure some jackass back then wrote an article saying that demand for books was accelerating at a rate that we weren't going to be able to afford enough printing presses anymore.
There are over 100 million Macs in use in the world*. So what we have here is some random Russian anti-virus firm is claiming that 0.6% of them are infected with a trojan due to a vulnerability in Oracle's Java engine (for which Apple has already sent out an update to patch the vulnerability). And that Russian firm would love to sell you the cure.
Yeah, that totally proves that Macs are just as unsafe as PCs.
All of your complaints apply equally well to standard computers, so lets get rid of those. Also the printing press created far more problems than it solved--lets revert back to singing songs around a fire.
acquired from Nortel for $4.5 Billion, so I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say that Apple has no patents on traditional cellular functionality.
Also, they are offering their patents in this case royalty-free, so I'm not sure what there is here to hang them by.
The original poster made some vague claim about Apple abusing RAND terms; I've yet to hear any examples of them doing that. Then you made some jackass comment about how they haven't invented anything which would ever appear in a RAND standard, which I easily refuted. And now you are saying that none of it matters because they haven't invented anything related to mobile telephony?
Well, whatever, I'll bite...obviously that is stupid because they have a huge mobile telephone business which nearly ever manufacturer is desperately trying to copy. I'm not sure how they could get there without inventing anything, and they have lots of patents on a lot of deeply technical problems they encountered along the way. They also own a lot of LTE patents acquired from Nortel for $4.5B.
You have been completely destroyed and it was the easiest thing I did all day.
Slashdot Mirror
well said.
What, we're supposed to take your single unverified claim otherwise as proof? You need to back that statement up with something.
Greenpeace's power estimation model is:
* 1MW / $15M
Apple announces a $1B datacenter investment, with a huge amount of that money spent on on-site solar panels and other energy efficiency improvments. Greenpeace then says: $1B * 1MB / $15M == 67MW of dirty-fossil fuels.
Literally the only way Apple could win is by not spending *any* money on a datacenter. Even if they made a datacenter which ran on hydroelectric power and literally sucked CO2 out of the air they would still show up on Greenpeace's worst polluter list.
I guess your point is that the burden of proof is on Apple; but frankly I think they've provided a fair bit of proof about their huge solar array.
Don't try to deny it, that only makes you look more guilty.
---
Now think about this for a moment and decide if you want to live in a world where you are innocent until proven guilty or the other way around.
There is no such thing as 'patent-pool' pricing. There is no difference in the licensing price for companies which contributed to a standards patent-pool vs. companies who didn't. That's not why patent-pools exist and you repeating it over and over doesn't make it anymore true. It is pure fiction.
Such a difference is specifically impermissable by the "non-discriminatory" requirement of FRAND, that's what the 'ND' stands for. Look it up.
Like it or not, that's how the world works. You can't make a contour bottle that looks exactly like Coca-Cola's bottle, with a similar color scheme and the name Cola-Cola, and then sell it. Why not? because of design patents.
that's the whole frickin point. That's what 'non-discriminatory' means.
Idiot.
You seem to believe standards work by several companies contributing patents to a pool and then those companies are the only ones who get to build to the standard. That is *not* how they work, and frankly that is a pretty stupid guess as to how they work.
Companies contribute patents to a pool as a condition of making that technology part of the standard under requirements to FRAND that technology for any and all who want to implement that standard (whether those future companies contributed to the pool or not). Companies then set licensing costs for everyone who wants to implement the standard--those costs have to be FAIR, REASONABLE, and NON-DISCRIMINATORY. Some companies choose to pay the licensing costs with a fair trade of intellectual property, others pay in cash.
Apple purchased chips from Qualcomm. Qualcomm paid those licensing costs, so Apple felt like they shouldn't have to pay the licensing costs twice--they considered their debt paid.
Meanwhile, Motorola (and others) approached Apple and said that they wouldn't accept cash from them anyway as payment for the FRAND technology, they would only accept in exchange Apple's non-FRAND patent portfolio--presumably so that they could make literal copies of iPhones.
I'm not a lawyer, but frankly I see Apple's side of this one.
Nobody forced anybody to license anything under FRAND conditions. The patent holders voluntarily committed them to FRAND licensing in order to get them included within a standard. That's how standards work. By the way, FRAND doesn't mean "free" as you seem to believe, some of those companies make a lot of money off of their FRAND patents. It means that you can't charge Apple more than you charge Toshiba--which is exactly what Motorola was trying to do.
Also, design patents != standard patents. Nobody is claiming that rounded corners is some kind of technical invention, that isn't the purpose of design patents--they are *by definition* aesthetic. They exist so that a competitor can't make a look-alike replica of your product and then sell it to confused customers--which is exactly what Samsung was trying to do.
All that said, I think Apple overstates their case sometimes by assuming every feature on another phone which is similar to an iPhone was copied from the iPhone. Sometimes there is a simpler explanation, like two people trying to solve the same problem came up with a similar answer, or the feature actually existed in an earlier product.
All my music/shows/movies/photos/documents across several devices. And I can (and do) replicate subsets to my devices for off-line access. Not sure what you are worried about.
That's the best you can come up with?
I'm not even sure where to start other than to say--technology is only ever adopted broadly if it is cost-effective to do so. The printing press wasn't successful because of some incontrovertible march of progress--it was successful because it was cheaper to make books that way than by having monks transcribe them by hand. Yes, that caused more people to read which drove up the demand for books. And I'm sure some jackass back then wrote an article saying that demand for books was accelerating at a rate that we weren't going to be able to afford enough printing presses anymore.
Only on slashdot.
by at least an order of magnitude.
There are over 100 million Macs in use in the world*. So what we have here is some random Russian anti-virus firm is claiming that 0.6% of them are infected with a trojan due to a vulnerability in Oracle's Java engine (for which Apple has already sent out an update to patch the vulnerability). And that Russian firm would love to sell you the cure.
Yeah, that totally proves that Macs are just as unsafe as PCs.
* http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_Macintosh_computers_are_in_use_worldwide
Textbooks transmit lice. Anyone who doesn't own a tablet will develop a meth addiction. The TCO of a pencil is $8400.
All of your complaints apply equally well to standard computers, so lets get rid of those. Also the printing press created far more problems than it solved--lets revert back to singing songs around a fire.
How are they able to get any value out of a computer that you can't compile on?
That is the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time; and keep in mind that there's been a Republican primary underway for quite a while.
after the original iPhone started shipping.
acquired from Nortel for $4.5 Billion, so I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say that Apple has no patents on traditional cellular functionality.
Also, they are offering their patents in this case royalty-free, so I'm not sure what there is here to hang them by.
Yawn. I feel like Apple-haters are getting dumber over time--it didn't used to be so trivial to punch holes in their arguments, did it?
for you--you should stick with that.
"So a 'mouse' for an iOS device would cause a mouse pointer to emerge on the screen."
Priceless.
problem solved.
The original poster made some vague claim about Apple abusing RAND terms; I've yet to hear any examples of them doing that. Then you made some jackass comment about how they haven't invented anything which would ever appear in a RAND standard, which I easily refuted. And now you are saying that none of it matters because they haven't invented anything related to mobile telephony?
Well, whatever, I'll bite...obviously that is stupid because they have a huge mobile telephone business which nearly ever manufacturer is desperately trying to copy. I'm not sure how they could get there without inventing anything, and they have lots of patents on a lot of deeply technical problems they encountered along the way. They also own a lot of LTE patents acquired from Nortel for $4.5B.
You have been completely destroyed and it was the easiest thing I did all day.