If the FSF had been founded today, GNU would be Windows-like and we would be saying things like, "Well at least its Windows!"
I seriously doubt it. There were plenty of other operating system designs around at the time, including VMS, developed by the same people who brought you Windows NT. The FSF considered and rejected those other systems, and for good reason.
Not only that, but using Mac OS X is nothing like GNU/Linux or even the BSD on which Mac OS X is based.
And that's why OS X is going to be superseded by systems like Android, ChromeOS and iOS, because the current OS X user community just wants to launch some simple end-user apps and doesn't care about the technical details. OS X never managed to make serious inroads into actual UNIX or Linux usage.
Even within CS departments, you see an awful lot of Apple customers these days...
True, but they mostly use OS X like an iPad: to run consumer apps and as a thin client. Very few computer scientists or engineers actually develop for OS X.
Other claims of environmental effects on decay rates are crank science, [...] In agreement with theory
There has indeed been no credible experimental evidence for environmental effects on decay rates, nor does there look to be any anytime soon. But you're talking out of your ass when you talk about "in agreement with theory". The idea that decay rates don't depend on environmental factors isn't a prediction of theory that anything could agree or disagree with, it is simply a lack of known mechanism that could cause such an effect.
In the trial, evidence was produced that Samsung actively studied Apple's designs and tried to imitate them,
Just like Apple actively studied Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and tons of other designs and massively imitated them. That's how product design works.
so it's hardly surprising that a jury agreed with Apple that Samsung's designs are not original
There is no legal requirement for designs to be original. And much of Samsung's designs weren't copied from Apple, they were common phone design features that predate Apple.
But compatibility does not require, for example, that icons be the same shape, use a similar color screen, and be similarly arranged to those on the iPhone
Cellular phones have used the image of a telephone handset combined with the color green for over 20 years to indicate "making a call". And icons with rounded corners have been around for as long. Apple did not invent any of this and they do not deserve ownership.
So it is perfectly possible to construct a fully functional smartphone that does not infringe upon Apple's patents.
It is possible, but nobody should be forced to do that.
Linux indeed never succeeded much in the traditional home desktop market where Windows and OS X split the market. But, of course, that market is being replaced by tablets and lightweight laptops, and Android (i.e. Linux) is kicking both Apple's and Microsoft's butt there.
The other desktop market is software developers, engineers, scientists, and education. OS X was briefly making some inroads there against UNIX and Linux, but Apple dropped the ball, first discontinuing its servers, then falling further and further behind with its workstations. That professional desktop market is largely split between Windows and Linux, with OS X becoming more and more irrelevant.
you can't patent ideas, most of the iOS patents are for specific implementations on the current touch screen tech
In order for something to be patentable, it needs to be a novel, non-obvious, and useful invention in a technical area, and we call "novel, non-obvious" insights "ideas". "Ideas" become "inventions" when they are about something that is also useful and in a technical area. So, not all ideas are patentable, but all patents (theoretically) require some idea at their core.
You are absolutely right that most of Apple's patents are "for specific implementations", and that is the core of the problem: Apple takes other people's novel, non-obvious insights and then creates a massive patent portfolio on implementations. And because juries aren't that good at figuring out the differences and are swayed by Apple's marketing prowess and commercial success, they then side with Apple when these cases go to court. As a result, inventors and innovators get screwed and Apple just keeps copying and stealing.
And along the way to our wealth and low birthrates, a lot of people died of starvation, wars, and disease. Europe was in the grip of these evils well into the 20th century.
Horrible as what is happening in Africa may seem, Western societies went through worse. It's nice that we're trying to help them, and I think it is having a positive impact, but it's naive to think that we can ever make development happen without also incurring great loss and sacrifice.
No, different patents. But it's the same m.o.: Apple steals other people's ideas and products, creates a barrage of iffy patents and copyrights, invests in a massive marketing campaign to create the false impression that they invented the technology, and then sues the hell out of everybody else.
After all, one of the things that came out in the trial was that Google (and other third parties) warned Samsung that their products looked too similar to Apple's [allthingsd.com].
So you are saying that Samsung deliberately planned on losing $1bn? Of course not. Google correctly recognized that, although Samsung's phones look very different from Apple's, a US jury and court could be bamboozled by Apple into finding a substantial violation. There was already legal uncertainty, and now it is substantially larger.
So how is it such a terrible tragedy if Samsung has to come up with original designs, the way Microsoft and other manufacturers have done?
Because Samsung's designs already were original. They shared a few design cues with Apple phones, but nothing that should constitute a violation. If these kinds of standards were imposed universally, all the tech we use would be completely incompatible and randomly different.
A second thing that is terrible about this verdict is that all the IP the jury gave to Apple is stuff Apple essentially stole from others.
It seems likely that the damages would have been minimal in the unlikely event that Apple had bothered to bring suit if a few of Samsung's devices had happened to inadvertently violate one of Apple's design patents, and that there would be little chance of an injunction.
Samsung's designs did violate Apple's "design patents", and quite deliberately so. And there is nothing wrong with that because those design patents should have been thrown out, making the whole case moot.
And is it really such a tragedy if manufacturers have exert a little creativity and avoid duplicating these cosmetic features of Apple's products for the relatively brief (14-year) term of a design patent?
Yes, it is such a tragedy, because the dividing line is completely unclear now. Many people (presumably Samsung's lawyers included) did not believe that there was a violation, in particular since many of the design elements Apple won on were elements Apple themselves had copied from others. How far are these newly invented rights going to go? Do the biggest companies in the industry, like Apple, now just get to grab whatever prior art they want, put their name on it, and successfully sue everybody else?
Indeed, Microsoft's new Windows phones are quite attractive, and quite clearly do not violate Apple's design patents.
That is far from clear, but we will never know because Apple is in bed with Microsoft.
And where is the guarantee that experts will be any more attentive to testimony? The jury system is imperfect but likely still better than the alternatives.
That doesn't mean we can't improve the jury system. For example, we might ask juries to provide more justifications for their decisions and allow those to be used within some limits in challenging a verdict as well.
Much as I despise the decision the jury came to in the Samsung/Apple trial, I still think this a jury is the best way of settling such cases. This jury did reflect the feeling and legal intuition of the community it was selected from, and its decision wasn't obviously in contradiction to the law (otherwise, it would have gotten thrown out).
The real problem with the Samsung/Apple case wasn't the jury, it was the patent office that granted these bogus patents in the first place. The patent office is filled with supposed experts who grant these patents in the first place; I don't see how putting the same kinds of experts in charge of the legal cases would improve the situation; I think it would like make things worse
Ah yes, back to the notion that Apple's victory simply turned on a touch screen, a thin bezel, and rounded corners, which seems to be very popular among people whose reactions to the case are dominated by their own prejudices rather than the actual evidence or decision
You're absolutely right that, of the long list of trivial design patents, each was only infringed by some Samsung device. What that means, however, is that you cannot make a device that embodies any of these features, because infringing any one of them is sufficient to violate Apple's patents. That is not the way design patents are supposed to work. And Apple's method patents are rip-offs of other people's ideas.
Could it be maybe, that after sitting in court for all those hours and going over the evidence in detail, they figured out something you didn't?
Yeah: you have a hometown jury who swallowed Apple's propaganda about "innovation" hook, line, and sinker.
Should have no problems naming some examples then.
No problem at all: portable music players, MP3 syncing, PDA syncing, online music stores, the app store, multitouch, Dashboard, the iPhone launcher, iCloud, iMessage, notifications, game center, iBooks, etc. just for starters. The question is: what original concepts did Apple ever come up with.
That's not true in mixed member proportional, for example, where people also get to elect individual candidates from their districts.
Although many members get voted on directly doesn't change the fact that the proportional representation system makes parties, not individuals, the primary unit of decision making. After all, even those directly elected candidates are counted against the quota for their party, and the party gets to decide who runs.
Sounds reasonable to me. Why do you want to shut up 5-10% of your population based on the claim that they're "extremist"?
The question is: do you sometimes want small political groups to be able to be the deciding factor in big decisions. Under a proportional system, small groups frequently manage to push through their agenda even against the will of the majority. Sometimes that's a good thing. But when the minority is a group of people that is hostile to democracy and freedom and it succeeds, then the entire system fails, as it has with regularity in Europe. Countries like Germany today "shut up" their extremists and have state security spy on their parliamentarians to ensure constitutional conduct because under a proportional system, that's all they can do: the system allows neo-Nazis and communists to get voted into parliament and they need to deal with it somehow.
Under the US system, small political groups can participate in the political process and talk all they want, but they never succeed against the opinion and will of the majority; the only way you're going to get anything done is if you convince close to a majority of your fellow citizens that it's a good thing. That's frustrating both to extremists on the left and the right, to progressives as much as to Christian conservatives. It's why things like gay marriage and repeal of the death penalty take longer to pass in the US. But it's also why fascists and communists have not succeeded in US politics, whereas they have time and again killed democracies in Europe and elsewhere.
The patent system certainly doesn't protect small developers from Apple sweeping in copying their work, and crushing them, as Apple has over and over again.p
And this is hardly the first time Samsung has been caught copying. Before they were copying Apple, they were copying Blackberry, Motorola, and others.
Why shouldn't they? Apple themselves copied much of the iPhone design from Palm and Microsoft. That's how products improve and markets mature: companies copy general designs and features and improve on them, creating and raising standards in the process.
When Apple really, really doesn't like you - they have no qualms just shutting you out. See also the replacement of Google Maps, the removal of YouTube app pre-install, the long delay in approving Google Voice (Siri 'competitor').
Good luck with that. So far, none of Apple's attempts at replacements (MobileMe, iCloud, etc.) have gone anywhere. Apple has found it a whole lot easier to rip off Google phone features (multitasking, notificiations, etc.) than actual Google services.
And the other shoe may still drop as Apple's competitors have now started taking notice of what trivialities can be used to sue competitors. I wouldn't be surprised if there were lawsuits against Apple in the making on various aspects of their UIs that they copied.
No, the fanbois would win. Apart from having their choice validated and their egos stroked for picking a winner, if everybody uses their favorite platform, there will be more apps, more accessories, and more tools.
Of course, that's penny wise and pound foolish. Without Android, iOS might not have multitasking or notifications or iCloud or tons of other features that Apple introduced (erm copied) in response to pressue from Android. But fanbois usually are not technology driven, so they mostly don't care.
Apple fanbois are really not much different from the Microsoft fanbois of yore.
People did "new and exciting things" with wirless standard, where people innovated and differentiated. The result? We have four major carriers that lock you in for years, charge excessive prices, don't bother innovating, and make you buy all your phones and tablets again when you switch.
Forcing people to create phones with different form factors and user interfaces that are inconsistent between vendors will have the same effect.
If you really believe that Apple has discovered the One True Way for smartphones to work.
Yes, having a thin device with an all-screen touch-screen front, a thin bezel, and rounded corners is "the one true way" for a lot of devices, because it optimizes screen-to-size ratio and because screens are rectangular for physical and mathematical reasons.
The trouble with all this is that Apple didn't discover it, they simply are trying to monopolize it.
Slashdot Mirror
Android isn't a "monopoly" because anybody can distribute and sell it.
Well, it is.
Let's not forget the granddaddy of Apple's steal-and-sue approach, the look-and-feel lawsuits, where Apple tried the same sh*t:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Computer,_Inc._v._Microsoft_Corporation
Note that Xerox also had to sue Apple to get a declaratory judgment because Apple was threatening Xerox's licensees:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3538913398421433687&hl=en&as_sdt=2&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr
I seriously doubt it. There were plenty of other operating system designs around at the time, including VMS, developed by the same people who brought you Windows NT. The FSF considered and rejected those other systems, and for good reason.
And that's why OS X is going to be superseded by systems like Android, ChromeOS and iOS, because the current OS X user community just wants to launch some simple end-user apps and doesn't care about the technical details. OS X never managed to make serious inroads into actual UNIX or Linux usage.
True, but they mostly use OS X like an iPad: to run consumer apps and as a thin client. Very few computer scientists or engineers actually develop for OS X.
There has indeed been no credible experimental evidence for environmental effects on decay rates, nor does there look to be any anytime soon. But you're talking out of your ass when you talk about "in agreement with theory". The idea that decay rates don't depend on environmental factors isn't a prediction of theory that anything could agree or disagree with, it is simply a lack of known mechanism that could cause such an effect.
Just like Apple actively studied Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and tons of other designs and massively imitated them. That's how product design works.
There is no legal requirement for designs to be original. And much of Samsung's designs weren't copied from Apple, they were common phone design features that predate Apple.
Cellular phones have used the image of a telephone handset combined with the color green for over 20 years to indicate "making a call". And icons with rounded corners have been around for as long. Apple did not invent any of this and they do not deserve ownership.
It is possible, but nobody should be forced to do that.
Linux indeed never succeeded much in the traditional home desktop market where Windows and OS X split the market. But, of course, that market is being replaced by tablets and lightweight laptops, and Android (i.e. Linux) is kicking both Apple's and Microsoft's butt there.
The other desktop market is software developers, engineers, scientists, and education. OS X was briefly making some inroads there against UNIX and Linux, but Apple dropped the ball, first discontinuing its servers, then falling further and further behind with its workstations. That professional desktop market is largely split between Windows and Linux, with OS X becoming more and more irrelevant.
In order for something to be patentable, it needs to be a novel, non-obvious, and useful invention in a technical area, and we call "novel, non-obvious" insights "ideas". "Ideas" become "inventions" when they are about something that is also useful and in a technical area. So, not all ideas are patentable, but all patents (theoretically) require some idea at their core.
You are absolutely right that most of Apple's patents are "for specific implementations", and that is the core of the problem: Apple takes other people's novel, non-obvious insights and then creates a massive patent portfolio on implementations. And because juries aren't that good at figuring out the differences and are swayed by Apple's marketing prowess and commercial success, they then side with Apple when these cases go to court. As a result, inventors and innovators get screwed and Apple just keeps copying and stealing.
And along the way to our wealth and low birthrates, a lot of people died of starvation, wars, and disease. Europe was in the grip of these evils well into the 20th century.
Horrible as what is happening in Africa may seem, Western societies went through worse. It's nice that we're trying to help them, and I think it is having a positive impact, but it's naive to think that we can ever make development happen without also incurring great loss and sacrifice.
No, different patents. But it's the same m.o.: Apple steals other people's ideas and products, creates a barrage of iffy patents and copyrights, invests in a massive marketing campaign to create the false impression that they invented the technology, and then sues the hell out of everybody else.
So you are saying that Samsung deliberately planned on losing $1bn? Of course not. Google correctly recognized that, although Samsung's phones look very different from Apple's, a US jury and court could be bamboozled by Apple into finding a substantial violation. There was already legal uncertainty, and now it is substantially larger.
Because Samsung's designs already were original. They shared a few design cues with Apple phones, but nothing that should constitute a violation. If these kinds of standards were imposed universally, all the tech we use would be completely incompatible and randomly different.
A second thing that is terrible about this verdict is that all the IP the jury gave to Apple is stuff Apple essentially stole from others.
Samsung's designs did violate Apple's "design patents", and quite deliberately so. And there is nothing wrong with that because those design patents should have been thrown out, making the whole case moot.
Yes, it is such a tragedy, because the dividing line is completely unclear now. Many people (presumably Samsung's lawyers included) did not believe that there was a violation, in particular since many of the design elements Apple won on were elements Apple themselves had copied from others. How far are these newly invented rights going to go? Do the biggest companies in the industry, like Apple, now just get to grab whatever prior art they want, put their name on it, and successfully sue everybody else?
That is far from clear, but we will never know because Apple is in bed with Microsoft.
And where is the guarantee that experts will be any more attentive to testimony? The jury system is imperfect but likely still better than the alternatives.
That doesn't mean we can't improve the jury system. For example, we might ask juries to provide more justifications for their decisions and allow those to be used within some limits in challenging a verdict as well.
Much as I despise the decision the jury came to in the Samsung/Apple trial, I still think this a jury is the best way of settling such cases. This jury did reflect the feeling and legal intuition of the community it was selected from, and its decision wasn't obviously in contradiction to the law (otherwise, it would have gotten thrown out).
The real problem with the Samsung/Apple case wasn't the jury, it was the patent office that granted these bogus patents in the first place. The patent office is filled with supposed experts who grant these patents in the first place; I don't see how putting the same kinds of experts in charge of the legal cases would improve the situation; I think it would like make things worse
You sound like a raving lunatic. Take off your tinfoil hat.
You're absolutely right that, of the long list of trivial design patents, each was only infringed by some Samsung device. What that means, however, is that you cannot make a device that embodies any of these features, because infringing any one of them is sufficient to violate Apple's patents. That is not the way design patents are supposed to work. And Apple's method patents are rip-offs of other people's ideas.
Yeah: you have a hometown jury who swallowed Apple's propaganda about "innovation" hook, line, and sinker.
No problem at all: portable music players, MP3 syncing, PDA syncing, online music stores, the app store, multitouch, Dashboard, the iPhone launcher, iCloud, iMessage, notifications, game center, iBooks, etc. just for starters. The question is: what original concepts did Apple ever come up with.
Jeff Hawkins. What does he have to do with Apple?
I don't know either Bieber's music, nor Osbourne's. I do know technology and have been a long term Apple, Palm and Nokia user.
Although many members get voted on directly doesn't change the fact that the proportional representation system makes parties, not individuals, the primary unit of decision making. After all, even those directly elected candidates are counted against the quota for their party, and the party gets to decide who runs.
The question is: do you sometimes want small political groups to be able to be the deciding factor in big decisions. Under a proportional system, small groups frequently manage to push through their agenda even against the will of the majority. Sometimes that's a good thing. But when the minority is a group of people that is hostile to democracy and freedom and it succeeds, then the entire system fails, as it has with regularity in Europe. Countries like Germany today "shut up" their extremists and have state security spy on their parliamentarians to ensure constitutional conduct because under a proportional system, that's all they can do: the system allows neo-Nazis and communists to get voted into parliament and they need to deal with it somehow.
Under the US system, small political groups can participate in the political process and talk all they want, but they never succeed against the opinion and will of the majority; the only way you're going to get anything done is if you convince close to a majority of your fellow citizens that it's a good thing. That's frustrating both to extremists on the left and the right, to progressives as much as to Christian conservatives. It's why things like gay marriage and repeal of the death penalty take longer to pass in the US. But it's also why fascists and communists have not succeeded in US politics, whereas they have time and again killed democracies in Europe and elsewhere.
I think a lot of people are going to see Samsung as the victim of a patent troll.
The patent system certainly doesn't protect small developers from Apple sweeping in copying their work, and crushing them, as Apple has over and over again.p
Why shouldn't they? Apple themselves copied much of the iPhone design from Palm and Microsoft. That's how products improve and markets mature: companies copy general designs and features and improve on them, creating and raising standards in the process.
Good luck with that. So far, none of Apple's attempts at replacements (MobileMe, iCloud, etc.) have gone anywhere. Apple has found it a whole lot easier to rip off Google phone features (multitasking, notificiations, etc.) than actual Google services.
And the other shoe may still drop as Apple's competitors have now started taking notice of what trivialities can be used to sue competitors. I wouldn't be surprised if there were lawsuits against Apple in the making on various aspects of their UIs that they copied.
No, the fanbois would win. Apart from having their choice validated and their egos stroked for picking a winner, if everybody uses their favorite platform, there will be more apps, more accessories, and more tools.
Of course, that's penny wise and pound foolish. Without Android, iOS might not have multitasking or notifications or iCloud or tons of other features that Apple introduced (erm copied) in response to pressue from Android. But fanbois usually are not technology driven, so they mostly don't care.
Apple fanbois are really not much different from the Microsoft fanbois of yore.
People did "new and exciting things" with wirless standard, where people innovated and differentiated. The result? We have four major carriers that lock you in for years, charge excessive prices, don't bother innovating, and make you buy all your phones and tablets again when you switch.
Forcing people to create phones with different form factors and user interfaces that are inconsistent between vendors will have the same effect.
Yes, having a thin device with an all-screen touch-screen front, a thin bezel, and rounded corners is "the one true way" for a lot of devices, because it optimizes screen-to-size ratio and because screens are rectangular for physical and mathematical reasons.
The trouble with all this is that Apple didn't discover it, they simply are trying to monopolize it.