What gets me is that they liken the alternatives like the "Wild West".
If you want something other than the "Wild West", you'd better be prepared to face the real prospects of what you're seeing now with Apple's store situation. And, while it's a "Wild West" situation with the Android App Store, I'd hardly categorize it as a "nightmare" as the article's claiming.
You either want the walled garden with all that comes with it or you want the freedom to produce your apps and not have a capricious vendor pull the plug on you unless you make an unstable or malware application. You can't get the best of both worlds- it can't, won't ever work any differently because of the nature of the beasts in question. CHOOSE.
Jailbreak it? Excuse me, that's not an option for most- and without that store, it dilutes at least a good part of the selling point of MAKING applications for the iPhone/iPad in the first place.
1) Range is higher with things like LTE and WiMax, meaning it'll be possibly easier to roll out larger coverage plats for the 4G services.
2) It runs smoother for data to voice and back again transitions (with no transitions with WiMax as it's VoIP for the voice parts of the service...)
As for the author of the article- I didn't really think he did a good job when he went and claimed that LTE is "dominant" and WiMax is turning out to be a "niche" play. Sorry, but that's NOT been determined yet and making statements like that is pulling things out of one's backside. Hell, we don't know which way the wind's blowing at my day job and it's our business to know this stuff because we do monitoring and diagnostics for all that signaling they do to make it all work.
Heh... They also used terms like "dominant" and "niche" within the context of the two differing specs- neither of which can honestly be stated at this time.
Ahh... But how many subscribers will you be able to do per site with that sort of bandwidth?
Furthermore, I don't know about you, but do you HONESTLY need 1Gbps while being mobile- or even fixed in location? I'd love a Gbps feed, yes. I don't regularly stress my 20Mbps link I currently have unless I'm bittorrenting Ubuntu or doing something similar.
It'll act mostly the same way, though they'll take differing paths. It won't be VoIP with the LTE network- it'll be data and voice paths just like with the 3G stuff, but it'll work largely like EVO does as far as the user's concerned. EVO's like the networking along the lines the Internet understands and if you've done your network roll out right, it'll handle things more gracefully than LTE will for the mixed data design. LTE is more akin to the current network designs in the mobile space and is geared more towards removing the data latencies and upping the bandwidth. It's more complex on signaling than the WiMax would be and has concomitant overhead.
As it stands, I don't lay a bunch of credibility in the article we're discussing. The moment they said "dominant" within the context of LTE versus WiMax with WiMax being a "niche", they lost any credibility with me.
There isn't a "dominant" 4G standard and WiMax isn't "niche" quite yet. (i.e. They're both at about parity with part of the players doing one or the other...) Anyone painting it as anything other than "we'll have to wait and see" is feeding you a line right at the moment. We don't know which way it's going at where I work- and we do monitoring and diagnostic systems for the telecom industry.
I think most people don't. Unless you're doing it to a floppy or an OLD MFM/RLL style hard disk, those "low-level" formatter programs don't DO what people think they do. All they do is a full-disk zero write which triggers a device re-init to factory config which does a recalibration in some cases, and maps spare blocks (if possible) to bad-block spots so the disk looks pristine at the filesystem level. This also works for flash based devices after a fashion.
Considering it's "Tetris" (tm) they're having yanked, there's no patents that could realistically exist from the time the game was patentable. In fact, it's 10 years older than the effective date for any possible patents (some 30-odd years old now...).
DMCA provides Copyright protection and not Patent or Trademark protection. This is the very reason some should seek sanctions against an actor using the DMCA. Most of the claims done so far are actually misuse instead of valid. It's easy to do and difficult to un-do; coupled with a fairly high bar to entry to get a malicious actor into court to get them sanctioned on the subject.
Those are legit- but DMCA isn't the vehicle for protecting Trademarks. They need to litigate EACH AND EVERY infringer in the case of Trademark. Keep solidly in mind that there IS no Copyright that The Tetris Company has standing with in this little stunt. The best they have is Trademark infringement.
Sure, they were playing with fire. Doesn't make what The Tetris Company did here legit.
DMCA isn't about Patents- it's about Copyrights and as such, you can't Copyright the gameplay concepts. More to the point, even if this WERE about Patents, any relevant Patents would be over 20 years old. YOU do the math there. At most, you're talking Trademark- which can't be enforced with a DMCA takedown (Law doesn't cover, the ISP doing it can get sued for breach of contract/agreement...the Trademark holder has to be suing and file for an Injunction at that point that gets granted...) and is only an issue if you use the name "Tetris" within your own.
This is about misusing the DMCA to "protect" a game that literally CAN'T be protected under law at this point except for Trademark protection.
Nope. It's most definitely less than 1% of the book or the script for the Radio, TV, or Movie Editions. And with the proper attribution (which while abbreviated and with a link, it does kinda count...) it would be Fair Use.
Ahh... But that's proper Fair Usage. Just because we didn't need to be told, doesn't mean that the GP poster isn't obligated to attribute to make it legit usage within the Copyright Code.:-D
Heh... That's even inaccurate, even though it does a better job of things than many have in the past. A Toughbook fails on power endurance and sunglight display function compared to an XO-1
The big problem isn't that it was capable of running Windows- it was that the machine was MODIFIED to be able to use XP and wasted energy and effort trying to do THAT particular task instead of worrying about the original design goals.
They're guilty of the sin of Feature Creep and they did it to suit Microsoft and Intel, when they clearly didn't have ANYTHING to give back into the project and did all of what they DID do because it was all cutting into their market and nothing else.
Heh... I'm none too happy with either of them. And "doesn't run nearly as well" is a relative concept- I've had decent results (though not as good as with NVidia) with my AMD parts I've got- though there ARE glitches with the proprietary drivers (which is where all the problems with AMD's stuff arises from- even on Windows.).
So, while you've got decent overall performance with reasonably stable drivers, you've got to deal with a company that did what NVidia did with their packaging a while back.
On the other hand, while you've got better theoretical speed and overall performance (including bang for buck and bang for watt spent...), you've got to deal with a company that can't manage to get their drivers as well off as they ought to and haven't for years running now... I'm hoping that the driver devs with xorg, etc. can get the FOSS AMD drivers really going good so everyone will be ahead of the game on that front, including AMD.
Ah... The problem is...the store's just as obligated as the developer. They distributed it. The GPL is a derivative works and publication/distribution license on whatever is protected by it.
By selling the app, they're in a pickle. Much like Verizon was with the Actiontec routers with BusyBox in them that was just as non-compliant.
Heh... And they'll just move back to VxWorks' braindead POSIX layer, licensing requirements that're as onerous as the GPL ones (just different), and things like 'em.
There IS a reason they left VxWorks to begin with.
Heh... The reason they're "happy to recognize junk patents" is mainly because many don't have the cash to pursue a litigation to prove them as junk. Oracle did a while back (go looking for yourself on that one...) and this would be no different with Google behind this one.
What the MPEG-LA people are doing is nuts. It's technically superior. The answer would be to take the value proposition away from VP8 as much as is possible, with the potential loss of the licensing revenue for the streaming, etc. (which is debatable anyhow...).
Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....
on
H.264 and VP8 Compared
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Keep solidly in mind- the patents in the pool in question are going to have to be tightly constrained. Almost to the point of being explicitly tied to h.264 or there's a risk of being defined as overbroad. Don't think for a moment that Google doesn't have the cash on hand to litigate that one to it's conclusion- if it's found overbroad the patent in question dies on the vine as invalid.
This is a game with a rules of engagement similar to dancing with a dragon- one mis-step and it's over for you. I'd be backing down from that position and trying to sell up my codec over the competing one. Just because it's "close" doesn't mean it's duplicating- and with the requirements there, you're going to have someone with deep pockets very probably willing to prove "overbroad" or doesn't duplicate. You'll waste money and/or lose the patent in the fight. Saber rattling is largely all this BS is.
Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....
on
H.264 and VP8 Compared
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Without patents, we will have essentially no technological or scientific development at all, except where funded by the government (and, in case you didn't know, the US government profits handsomely from patents they fund). The current US Federal budget is woefully inadequate to take on that role.
Really? No technological or scientific development at all save for the government? Heh- I guess the following are figments of our collecitve imagination then:
These are just a mere smattering of the vast number of things that were developed with nothing along the lines of what you speak of- there's tons more where that came from. In the end, the remark that we'd have no development at all has not been proven out- and there's very, very strong evidence to the contrary all throughout our history. Patents were conceived to encourage the process in question to hopefully speed up the rate of invention to our benefit.
Patents, the way we're seeing them used and implemented do nothing of the sort and really don't do what YOU claim of them either. They're being more of a HINDRANCE on things and don't really protect R&D unless you're someone like IBM. A Patent is only worth the amount you're able to litigate it for- no more and no less.
Actually, you're required to mitigate infringements in a timely manner no matter how "worth chasing" it was or not- or face estoppel on action against the infringers at a later date.
You DON'T have the luxury of doing what you're stating- period.
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What gets me is that they liken the alternatives like the "Wild West".
If you want something other than the "Wild West", you'd better be prepared to face the real prospects of what you're seeing now with Apple's store situation. And, while it's a "Wild West" situation with the Android App Store, I'd hardly categorize it as a "nightmare" as the article's claiming.
You either want the walled garden with all that comes with it or you want the freedom to produce your apps and not have a capricious vendor pull the plug on you unless you make an unstable or malware application. You can't get the best of both worlds- it can't, won't ever work any differently because of the nature of the beasts in question. CHOOSE.
Jailbreak it? Excuse me, that's not an option for most- and without that store, it dilutes at least a good
part of the selling point of MAKING applications for the iPhone/iPad in the first place.
Depends on the usage.
1) Range is higher with things like LTE and WiMax, meaning it'll be possibly easier to roll out larger coverage plats for the 4G services.
2) It runs smoother for data to voice and back again transitions (with no transitions with WiMax as it's VoIP for the voice parts of the service...)
As for the author of the article- I didn't really think he did a good job when he went and claimed that LTE is "dominant" and WiMax is turning out to be a "niche" play. Sorry, but that's NOT been determined yet and making statements like that is pulling things out of one's backside. Hell, we don't know which way the wind's blowing at my day job and it's our business to know this stuff because we do monitoring and diagnostics for all that signaling they do to make it all work.
Heh... They also used terms like "dominant" and "niche" within the context of the two differing specs- neither of which can honestly be stated at this time.
Ahh... But how many subscribers will you be able to do per site with that sort of bandwidth?
Furthermore, I don't know about you, but do you HONESTLY need 1Gbps while being mobile- or even fixed in location? I'd love a Gbps feed, yes. I don't regularly stress my 20Mbps link I currently have unless I'm bittorrenting Ubuntu or doing something similar.
It'll act mostly the same way, though they'll take differing paths. It won't be VoIP with the LTE network- it'll be data and voice paths just like with the 3G stuff, but it'll work largely like EVO does as far as the user's concerned. EVO's like the networking along the lines the Internet understands and if you've done your network roll out right, it'll handle things more gracefully than LTE will for the mixed data design. LTE is more akin to the current network designs in the mobile space and is geared more towards removing the data latencies and upping the bandwidth. It's more complex on signaling than the WiMax would be and has concomitant overhead.
As it stands, I don't lay a bunch of credibility in the article we're discussing. The moment they said "dominant" within the context of LTE versus WiMax with WiMax being a "niche", they lost any credibility with me.
There isn't a "dominant" 4G standard and WiMax isn't "niche" quite yet. (i.e. They're both at about parity with part of the players doing one or the other...) Anyone painting it as anything other than "we'll have to wait and see" is feeding you a line right at the moment. We don't know which way it's going at where I work- and we do monitoring and diagnostic systems for the telecom industry.
I think most people don't. Unless you're doing it to a floppy or an OLD MFM/RLL style hard disk, those "low-level" formatter programs don't DO what people think they do. All they do is a full-disk zero write which triggers a device re-init to factory config which does a recalibration in some cases, and maps spare blocks (if possible) to bad-block spots so the disk looks pristine at the filesystem level. This also works for flash based devices after a fashion.
Considering it's "Tetris" (tm) they're having yanked, there's no patents that could realistically exist from the time the game was patentable. In fact, it's 10 years older than the effective date for any possible patents (some 30-odd years old now...).
DMCA provides Copyright protection and not Patent or Trademark protection. This is the very reason some should seek sanctions against an actor using the DMCA. Most of the claims done so far are actually misuse instead of valid. It's easy to do and difficult to un-do; coupled with a fairly high bar to entry to get a malicious actor into court to get them sanctioned on the subject.
Those are legit- but DMCA isn't the vehicle for protecting Trademarks. They need to litigate EACH AND EVERY infringer in the case of Trademark. Keep solidly in mind that there IS no Copyright that The Tetris Company has standing with in this little stunt. The best they have is Trademark infringement.
Sure, they were playing with fire. Doesn't make what The Tetris Company did here legit.
DMCA isn't about Patents- it's about Copyrights and as such, you can't Copyright the gameplay concepts. More to the point, even if this WERE about Patents, any relevant Patents would be over 20 years old. YOU do the math there. At most, you're talking Trademark- which can't be enforced with a DMCA takedown (Law doesn't cover, the ISP doing it can get sued for breach of contract/agreement...the Trademark holder has to be suing and file for an Injunction at that point that gets granted...) and is only an issue if you use the name "Tetris" within your own.
This is about misusing the DMCA to "protect" a game that literally CAN'T be protected under law at this point except for Trademark protection.
Ah, but the DMCA doesn't cover Trademark infringement- and you can't copyright game mechanics the way The Tetris Company thinks it can.
It's a MISUSE of the DMCA.
At least he'd find it mostly harmless...
Nope. It's most definitely less than 1% of the book or the script for the Radio, TV, or Movie Editions. And with the proper attribution (which while abbreviated and with a link, it does kinda count...) it would be Fair Use.
Ahh... But that's proper Fair Usage. Just because we didn't need to be told, doesn't mean that the GP poster isn't obligated to attribute to make it legit usage within the Copyright Code. :-D
Heh... Depends on the store... Most of them have "Shoplifting is a Crime" posters in varying places in the store.
Heh... That's even inaccurate, even though it does a better job of things than many have in the past. A Toughbook fails on power endurance and sunglight display function compared to an XO-1
The big problem isn't that it was capable of running Windows- it was that the machine was MODIFIED to be able to use XP and wasted energy and effort trying to do THAT particular task instead of worrying about the original design goals.
They're guilty of the sin of Feature Creep and they did it to suit Microsoft and Intel, when they clearly didn't have ANYTHING to give back into the project and did all of what they DID do because it was all cutting into their market and nothing else.
Heh... I'm none too happy with either of them. And "doesn't run nearly as well" is a relative concept- I've had decent results (though not as good as with NVidia) with my AMD parts I've got- though there ARE glitches with the proprietary drivers (which is where all the problems with AMD's stuff arises from- even on Windows.).
So, while you've got decent overall performance with reasonably stable drivers, you've got to deal with a company that did what NVidia did with their packaging a while back.
On the other hand, while you've got better theoretical speed and overall performance (including bang for buck and bang for watt spent...), you've got to deal with a company that can't manage to get their drivers as well off as they ought to and haven't for years running now... I'm hoping that the driver devs with xorg, etc. can get the FOSS AMD drivers really going good so everyone will be ahead of the game on that front, including AMD.
Not only that, but people shouldn't confuse the GMA500, which is a rebadged PowerVR in the mix.
Ah... The problem is...the store's just as obligated as the developer. They distributed it. The GPL is a derivative works and publication/distribution license on whatever is protected by it.
By selling the app, they're in a pickle. Much like Verizon was with the Actiontec routers with BusyBox in them that was just as non-compliant.
Heh... And they'll just move back to VxWorks' braindead POSIX layer, licensing requirements that're as onerous as the GPL ones (just different), and things like 'em.
There IS a reason they left VxWorks to begin with.
Heh... The reason they're "happy to recognize junk patents" is mainly because many don't have the cash to pursue a litigation to prove them as junk. Oracle did a while back (go looking for yourself on that one...) and this would be no different with Google behind this one.
What the MPEG-LA people are doing is nuts. It's technically superior. The answer would be to take the value proposition away from VP8 as much as is possible, with the potential loss of the licensing revenue for the streaming, etc. (which is debatable anyhow...).
Keep solidly in mind- the patents in the pool in question are going to have to be tightly constrained. Almost to the point of being explicitly tied to h.264 or there's a risk of being defined as overbroad. Don't think for a moment that Google doesn't have the cash on hand to litigate that one to it's conclusion- if it's found overbroad the patent in question dies on the vine as invalid.
This is a game with a rules of engagement similar to dancing with a dragon- one mis-step and it's over for you. I'd be backing down from that position and trying to sell up my codec over the competing one. Just because it's "close" doesn't mean it's duplicating- and with the requirements there, you're going to have someone with deep pockets very probably willing to prove "overbroad" or doesn't duplicate. You'll waste money and/or lose the patent in the fight. Saber rattling is largely all this BS is.
Really? No technological or scientific development at all save for the government? Heh- I guess the following are figments of our collecitve imagination then:
The Steam Engine
Archimedes' Screw
Stirling Engine
Fresnel Lens
The humble, lowly screw
The submarine
The diving suit
These are just a mere smattering of the vast number of things that were developed with nothing along the lines of what you speak of- there's tons more where that came from. In the end, the remark that we'd have no development at all has not been proven out- and there's very, very strong evidence to the contrary all throughout our history. Patents were conceived to encourage the process in question to hopefully speed up the rate of invention to our benefit.
Patents, the way we're seeing them used and implemented do nothing of the sort and really don't do what YOU claim of them either. They're being more of a HINDRANCE on things and don't really protect R&D unless you're someone like IBM. A Patent is only worth the amount you're able to litigate it for- no more and no less.
Actually, you're required to mitigate infringements in a timely manner no matter how "worth chasing" it was or not- or face estoppel on action against the infringers at a later date.
You DON'T have the luxury of doing what you're stating- period.