People bitch about Windows activation, but on the few occasions I've experienced where Windows needed to be re-activated because of a hardware change, the process was completely painless. As in, "I'm helping out my mom on Christmas Eve and dinner is going to be served in a half hour" painless.
The first couple of times I called, I spoke to an Indian man who asked me a few questions and gave me a code. More recently, it was a fully automated system. I don't think the process has ever taken as much as five minutes from beginning to end. It seems to me the for individual users, Windows Activation is more of a way to scold you than anything else: "You do know you're only allowed to use this copy of Windows on one computer... right?"
Now, if Ubisoft is really claiming that you get three activations and after that your software is useless, well, that seems like something else entirely.
I believe you're talking about the codes on the little stickers that come on your produce in U.S. supermarkets, not the UPC code. The UPC code is the barcode that comes on boxes and cans, and its first digits describe the food's country of origin.
Wheat has been "improved" by selection, so GM food is probably even more dangerous.
That's not a particularly scientific or even rational-sounding argument, I'm sorry to say. If you have an autoimmune disease that's triggered by wheat, then GM wheat is wheat and you shouldn't eat it. The GM part is not your issue.
Yes, that's exactly what they do. Why do you think they wouldn't?
If you'd read the rest of his comment, it's not that they wouldn't but that they don't, mainly because it's too difficult and therefore costly. Most GM foods have been produced by bathing cells either in radiation or in chemical preparations designed to induce mutation. If the mutation seems favorable, they hang onto it. If it doesn't, they throw it away. The idea that scientists have enough control over DNA to just change bits and pieces according to some grand design gives scientists too much credit. Very seldom is it done that way. Most of the GM modifications might conceivably have occurred in nature. Humans simply select the ones they prefer, rather than letting nature take its course -- which is pretty much how agriculture has always been done.
BTW, I am not saying all GM foods are beneficial in terms of nutrition, ecology, etc. Many are only beneficial in terms of lining some company's pockets. But some people act as though GM foods are made of plastic and cyanide, when really they're still just corn, soybeans, etc.
You spend more on average for public schools than most of the union, but have little to show for it compared to many other states with equivalent wealth production capacity.
Errr, no we don't. Per capita, California is somewhere in the middle. New York spends almost twice what we do. Don't forget that California is the most populous state in the nation by a long shot, and the figure isn't going down.
There is no political will to actually clean up your state's problems with spending too much money.
Some of that is because spending was voted in through Propositions, via California's direct-democracy system. Basically, if it collects enough signatures, a special interest group can get a spending measure on the California ballot that requires X amount of public funds to be set aside for Y purpose, and the public gets to vote on it, basically doing an end-run around their own elected representatives. If it's passed, the legislature has a hell of a time getting it off the books, because "it's what the people want." This has happened many times over the years, and the result is that a lot of otherwise sensible-sounding budget decisions are effectively off the table.
Canada has a smaller population, and is somewhere between 7th and 10th in the worlds largest economies last time I looked.
Canada is 11th last time I looked. Canada's GDP per capita is $40,000. California's GDP per capita is $52,000. So Canada's population produces less economic value than California's, despite the fact that Canada occupies an area 24 times larger than California. If Canada is so much better at capitalizing on its natural resources than California is, as you imply, you'd think it would be producing more by now, given all that land. I guess you must have some "environmentalists" tripping you up, too? Meanwhile, California's GDP per capita puts it roughly on par with Norway, which on that scale is the third or fourth richest country in the world.
Funny that a Canadian would want to criticize California for its "entitlement programs," though -- that's usually the one Canadians hold out on until they want to get on their soapbox about the superiority of Canadian society. In fact, it's not entitlement programs that have damaged the Californian economy, but years of misgovernance due to an overabundance of budgetary earmarks that have left legislators incapable of allocating funds where they're needed.
Be that as it may, as far as California having a "self-inflated opinion of itself," California represents 13 percent of the GDP of the entire United States, which is 60 percent better than the second-place state (Texas) can claim.
But that's OK. Americans are well aware that nothing keeps a Canadian warm on those cold winter nights like talking trash about the United States, even if they've never set foot in the U.S. and don't really know the first thing about it except what they see on TV.
I've lived in California for 33 years and nobody has ever seriously talked about secession. Now, splitting Southern and Northern California in to separate states, on the other hand...
Yes, there are exceptions. There's still some "run anywhere" exploited on the desktop - e.g., Crashplan's desktop GUI. But most companies who are doing Java at any scale are doing it on specific hardware - i.e., their backend processing system runs on x86, SPARC, POWER, or whatever and so who cares if they could pick up the Java code and move it? They're never going to.
All the companies who bought Itanium beg to differ.
That OpenJDK could just get the lion share of development and mindshare. If LibreOffice can functionally replace OpenOffice there's hope for OpenJDK.
Unlikely. Java is too important to too many people. Imagine Java being run by a consortium of IBM, Red Hat, Hitachi, Samsung, Nokia, SAP, and about three hundred junior members, with nobody clearly in charge. I don't see how anything would ever get done. Part of what makes Java popular is that it tends to keep up with modern trends in computing (or even establishes them). If Java becomes the next Ada, some other technology will take its place.
So... you're saying you've already made the switch from OLTP to OLAP and you'd like to take this opportunity to gloat about it, but you'd still like to hear from other developers what they think the prerequisites are for making such a move and what has held them back from doing all the cool stuff you're doing? Or am I missing the question?
I haven't actually taken a close look at any working Metro apps yet, but as I understand it, you build them with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XAML, and.Net managed code. I don't think you can compile native x86 binaries and have them run in Metro. So even if they're not strictly universal executables, recompiling Metro apps for the various Microsoft ARM platforms will probably be dead easy, and some of them may indeed run unmodified on Windows 8, Windows 8 ARM, and Windows Phone.
Open Firmware is part of the hardware, not part of OS X.
And this thread is about Microsoft locking down Windows 8 ARM hardware so it can only run one OS.
The important part of the OP's post is that Apple probably wouldn't have been as accommodating with its closed, proprietary hardware if Mac OS X had Windows's market share. As it stands, it's in Apple's best interests to allow people to run Windows on Mac hardware, to encourage them to migrate to Mac OS X. Apple isn't at such a disadvantage with iOS, so look what it does there: iOS devices are completely locked down.
Bullshit. When OS X first came out, it only ran on PowerPC. It came with OpenFirmware, and which provided a graphical multiboot bootloader. When it was ported to Intel, Boot Camp was a separate download, now it's integrated.
I think you missed the point. Try it like this:
True but to be fair Apple did this because when OSX first came out it came with OpenFirmware, but it only ran on PowerPC so it wasn't nearly as popular as it is now because there were a lot of windows only apps people wanted to run. That's the same reason they invested in boot camp - to make the transition from windows to OSX easier. When OS X was first ported to Intel, Boot Camp was a separate download, now it's integrated. If OSX had the lead market share like Windows does now, I'm not so sure Apple would be as accommodating. Just look at how locked down the iPhone is w/respect to having to get all your media through iTunes.
Its not like MSFT is gonna sell jack shit when it comes to Windows 8 on ARM anyway because the whole damned selling point of Windows is WINDOWS PROGRAMS which are all x86. Has everyone forgotten WinNT on Alpha and MIPS? Remember how quick and how hard that shit bombed? Why would you want Windows if you can't run Windows programs?
Ahhhh, but you forget... Windows isn't about programs anymore, it's about apps. And all the hot developer action on Windows these days involves building apps for the Metro UI -- which, not coincidentally, is the Windows Phone and Windows 8 ARM UI. It's even the Xbox UI now. A Windows 8 ARM tablet isn't going to resemble a Windows PC as much as it's going to resemble an iPad that runs a Microsoft OS. The bonus is that you'll be able to take the same programs you run on your Windows 8 tablet and run them in the Metro Start screen on your Windows 8 PC.
I know, it doesn't sound particularly appealing to me, either, but that's how it is.
Basically, in a nutshell, ask yourself what makes you happiest and pursue that. Worst case scenario, you've wasted a few months. Best case scenario, you grow into a beautiful butterfly...
I would add that the first time I quit a long-term, high-paying job, I enjoyed the time off for about two weeks. After that, I was white-knuckle stressed every day, wanting to get to work on a new job. I let it pass, though. I forced myself to ignore it, and by taking the time to really think about what I wanted to do next (or what I didn't want to do), I was eventually able to land myself a new job that I really enjoyed. If the submitter has been making good money so far and has the skills he describes, I'd say the best favor he can do himself is to realize that he's got some time and he doesn't need to jump into the first thing that presents itself. If you really want to enjoy your career, the best thing you can do is manage your career, rather than letting it manage you.
The only problem I see with freelancing is that he specifically says he wants to advance his career. When you're a freelancer, people tend to want to hire you to do the thing you did last time. It's just the nature of the beast; you're probably going to get a lot of jobs by word of mouth, and the word of mouth is going to be "when we needed that same thing, we hired this guy -- you should hire him, too." Also, people tend to underestimate the amount of hustle it takes to be a freelancer. You're always thinking about your next job, which means you tend to be reluctant to turn down paying work. These two factors make it very easy to fall into a rut.
Are you interested in anything besides programming? Maybe head that direction. I don't mean stop programming and do something else, I mean find a job where your programming skills will be contributing toward something worthwhile and that you're interested in. That might mean working on software to help find new cures for deadly diseases, or it might mean being a lead programmer for the NFL. Whatever floats your boat. If you're a part of a team that's doing something that you genuinely like and that enriches your own life, maybe it you'll be less concerned about "the same old challenges" and you'll be happy just to contribute toward the end goal.
B&N is not trying to get out of the e-reader business. B&N is looking to spin that business off so that they can raise more money to invest in that business. They believe that they could raise more money to invest in the e-reader business by spinning it off than by keeping it in house. I think that would prove to be a strategic mistake, but I understand the logic behind it.
I'm not sure I'm following you. Are you saying B&N would sell the Nook division, then take the money it receives from the sale of the Nook division and give it back to the buyer as an investment? That doesn't make much sense to me. At any rate, B&N has only issued one press release that has mentioned the possibility of spinning off the Nook business, to wit:
In order to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK digital business, and its favorable leadership position in the expanding market for digital content, the Company has decided to pursue strategic exploratory work to separate the NOOK business.
“We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our NOOK business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value,” said William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble.
"Unlock that value" would seem to be to be a euphemism for "liquidate that value," which would be a logical move given that the e-reader business seems rather at odds with the retail bookselling business. If B&N planned to get out of retail and restructure its bookselling business model to look more like Amazon's, investing heavily in Nook might make more sense. (In fact, the whole strategy might make more sense.) But if B&N is committed to retail then it's probably better off splitting in two. The Nook division might even take the ebook business with it and sell ebooks through B&N as a wholesaler.
Considering that B&N chose to fight, I think it is more likely that the reason is #4, the companies that settled want to do business with Microsoft in the future (or do so already and want to continue to get good terms).
That's likely, but it's also likely that B&N is very new to this industry and doesn't really understand how the game is played. Note that B&N is trying to get out of the e-reader business now (not the ebook business, just the e-reader business).
If it is indeed for the file system, then it's understandable.
Good guess. I hadn't thought of that.
Now, if by "understandable" you mean "comprehensible," then sure. But how is it reasonable? From the article (by Bruce Perens):
Indeed, the FAT patents have been invalidated for being non-innovative in Germany, and only survived invalidation in the U.S. through a patent office appeal in which opponents were not allowed to participate. It would take a trial in court to finally settle the issue, a trial that Microsoft would likely have lost.
But justice is too expensive. A trial to invalidate the eight patents Microsoft brought against TomTom, none of them poster-boys for innovation, would have cost more than TomTom had to spend, perhaps in excess of $10 million dollars.
2. Microsoft is offering reasonable licensing terms to the device makers, so the licensing agreement costs significantly less than the cost of litigating.
I think it's pretty clearly this. That is, licensing Microsoft's patents is not cheaper than how the handset manufacturers were doing business before, but now that the legal challenge is on the table, they've run the numbers and it will be cheaper to license the patents.
But I do think Microsoft is taking advantage of the current mobile market, in which all of the various Android handset makers are in close competition with one another. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, etc., all need to invest their full attention and resources on the competition at hand, not open a second front in the courts (where they only stand to save money, not earn profit). If any one of those vendors were to invest significant time and funds on a protracted legal battle against Microsoft, it stands to lose its position in the market versus its competitors, who would then eat its lunch. That's what's really making it cheaper to license the patents -- avoiding a lawsuit is always going to be cheaper than risking your entire business.
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People bitch about Windows activation, but on the few occasions I've experienced where Windows needed to be re-activated because of a hardware change, the process was completely painless. As in, "I'm helping out my mom on Christmas Eve and dinner is going to be served in a half hour" painless.
The first couple of times I called, I spoke to an Indian man who asked me a few questions and gave me a code. More recently, it was a fully automated system. I don't think the process has ever taken as much as five minutes from beginning to end. It seems to me the for individual users, Windows Activation is more of a way to scold you than anything else: "You do know you're only allowed to use this copy of Windows on one computer... right?"
Now, if Ubisoft is really claiming that you get three activations and after that your software is useless, well, that seems like something else entirely.
If the UPC starts with 9, it's organic.
I believe you're talking about the codes on the little stickers that come on your produce in U.S. supermarkets, not the UPC code. The UPC code is the barcode that comes on boxes and cans, and its first digits describe the food's country of origin.
Wheat has been "improved" by selection, so GM food is probably even more dangerous.
That's not a particularly scientific or even rational-sounding argument, I'm sorry to say. If you have an autoimmune disease that's triggered by wheat, then GM wheat is wheat and you shouldn't eat it. The GM part is not your issue.
Yes, that's exactly what they do. Why do you think they wouldn't?
If you'd read the rest of his comment, it's not that they wouldn't but that they don't, mainly because it's too difficult and therefore costly. Most GM foods have been produced by bathing cells either in radiation or in chemical preparations designed to induce mutation. If the mutation seems favorable, they hang onto it. If it doesn't, they throw it away. The idea that scientists have enough control over DNA to just change bits and pieces according to some grand design gives scientists too much credit. Very seldom is it done that way. Most of the GM modifications might conceivably have occurred in nature. Humans simply select the ones they prefer, rather than letting nature take its course -- which is pretty much how agriculture has always been done.
BTW, I am not saying all GM foods are beneficial in terms of nutrition, ecology, etc. Many are only beneficial in terms of lining some company's pockets. But some people act as though GM foods are made of plastic and cyanide, when really they're still just corn, soybeans, etc.
You spend more on average for public schools than most of the union, but have little to show for it compared to many other states with equivalent wealth production capacity.
Errr, no we don't. Per capita, California is somewhere in the middle. New York spends almost twice what we do. Don't forget that California is the most populous state in the nation by a long shot, and the figure isn't going down.
There is no political will to actually clean up your state's problems with spending too much money.
Some of that is because spending was voted in through Propositions, via California's direct-democracy system. Basically, if it collects enough signatures, a special interest group can get a spending measure on the California ballot that requires X amount of public funds to be set aside for Y purpose, and the public gets to vote on it, basically doing an end-run around their own elected representatives. If it's passed, the legislature has a hell of a time getting it off the books, because "it's what the people want." This has happened many times over the years, and the result is that a lot of otherwise sensible-sounding budget decisions are effectively off the table.
Canada has a smaller population, and is somewhere between 7th and 10th in the worlds largest economies last time I looked.
Canada is 11th last time I looked. Canada's GDP per capita is $40,000. California's GDP per capita is $52,000. So Canada's population produces less economic value than California's, despite the fact that Canada occupies an area 24 times larger than California. If Canada is so much better at capitalizing on its natural resources than California is, as you imply, you'd think it would be producing more by now, given all that land. I guess you must have some "environmentalists" tripping you up, too? Meanwhile, California's GDP per capita puts it roughly on par with Norway, which on that scale is the third or fourth richest country in the world.
Funny that a Canadian would want to criticize California for its "entitlement programs," though -- that's usually the one Canadians hold out on until they want to get on their soapbox about the superiority of Canadian society. In fact, it's not entitlement programs that have damaged the Californian economy, but years of misgovernance due to an overabundance of budgetary earmarks that have left legislators incapable of allocating funds where they're needed.
Be that as it may, as far as California having a "self-inflated opinion of itself," California represents 13 percent of the GDP of the entire United States, which is 60 percent better than the second-place state (Texas) can claim.
But that's OK. Americans are well aware that nothing keeps a Canadian warm on those cold winter nights like talking trash about the United States, even if they've never set foot in the U.S. and don't really know the first thing about it except what they see on TV.
I've lived in California for 33 years and nobody has ever seriously talked about secession. Now, splitting Southern and Northern California in to separate states, on the other hand...
Oracle would never go with C-sharp.
Yes, there are exceptions. There's still some "run anywhere" exploited on the desktop - e.g., Crashplan's desktop GUI. But most companies who are doing Java at any scale are doing it on specific hardware - i.e., their backend processing system runs on x86, SPARC, POWER, or whatever and so who cares if they could pick up the Java code and move it? They're never going to.
All the companies who bought Itanium beg to differ.
That OpenJDK could just get the lion share of development and mindshare. If LibreOffice can functionally replace OpenOffice there's hope for OpenJDK.
Unlikely. Java is too important to too many people. Imagine Java being run by a consortium of IBM, Red Hat, Hitachi, Samsung, Nokia, SAP, and about three hundred junior members, with nobody clearly in charge. I don't see how anything would ever get done. Part of what makes Java popular is that it tends to keep up with modern trends in computing (or even establishes them). If Java becomes the next Ada, some other technology will take its place.
Go.
For it.
Will that still work with WinRT? I'd hate to end up having to duplicate a lot of work.
So... you're saying you've already made the switch from OLTP to OLAP and you'd like to take this opportunity to gloat about it, but you'd still like to hear from other developers what they think the prerequisites are for making such a move and what has held them back from doing all the cool stuff you're doing? Or am I missing the question?
Are you saying these are universal binaries?
I haven't actually taken a close look at any working Metro apps yet, but as I understand it, you build them with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XAML, and .Net managed code. I don't think you can compile native x86 binaries and have them run in Metro. So even if they're not strictly universal executables, recompiling Metro apps for the various Microsoft ARM platforms will probably be dead easy, and some of them may indeed run unmodified on Windows 8, Windows 8 ARM, and Windows Phone.
Dropbox has been around for years thats why...noob
So has WinZip.
Open Firmware is part of the hardware, not part of OS X.
And this thread is about Microsoft locking down Windows 8 ARM hardware so it can only run one OS.
The important part of the OP's post is that Apple probably wouldn't have been as accommodating with its closed, proprietary hardware if Mac OS X had Windows's market share. As it stands, it's in Apple's best interests to allow people to run Windows on Mac hardware, to encourage them to migrate to Mac OS X. Apple isn't at such a disadvantage with iOS, so look what it does there: iOS devices are completely locked down.
Bullshit. When OS X first came out, it only ran on PowerPC. It came with OpenFirmware, and which provided a graphical multiboot bootloader. When it was ported to Intel, Boot Camp was a separate download, now it's integrated.
I think you missed the point. Try it like this:
True but to be fair Apple did this because when OSX first came out it came with OpenFirmware, but it only ran on PowerPC so it wasn't nearly as popular as it is now because there were a lot of windows only apps people wanted to run. That's the same reason they invested in boot camp - to make the transition from windows to OSX easier. When OS X was first ported to Intel, Boot Camp was a separate download, now it's integrated. If OSX had the lead market share like Windows does now, I'm not so sure Apple would be as accommodating. Just look at how locked down the iPhone is w/respect to having to get all your media through iTunes.
Its not like MSFT is gonna sell jack shit when it comes to Windows 8 on ARM anyway because the whole damned selling point of Windows is WINDOWS PROGRAMS which are all x86. Has everyone forgotten WinNT on Alpha and MIPS? Remember how quick and how hard that shit bombed? Why would you want Windows if you can't run Windows programs?
Ahhhh, but you forget... Windows isn't about programs anymore, it's about apps. And all the hot developer action on Windows these days involves building apps for the Metro UI -- which, not coincidentally, is the Windows Phone and Windows 8 ARM UI. It's even the Xbox UI now. A Windows 8 ARM tablet isn't going to resemble a Windows PC as much as it's going to resemble an iPad that runs a Microsoft OS. The bonus is that you'll be able to take the same programs you run on your Windows 8 tablet and run them in the Metro Start screen on your Windows 8 PC.
I know, it doesn't sound particularly appealing to me, either, but that's how it is.
Basically, in a nutshell, ask yourself what makes you happiest and pursue that. Worst case scenario, you've wasted a few months. Best case scenario, you grow into a beautiful butterfly...
I would add that the first time I quit a long-term, high-paying job, I enjoyed the time off for about two weeks. After that, I was white-knuckle stressed every day, wanting to get to work on a new job. I let it pass, though. I forced myself to ignore it, and by taking the time to really think about what I wanted to do next (or what I didn't want to do), I was eventually able to land myself a new job that I really enjoyed. If the submitter has been making good money so far and has the skills he describes, I'd say the best favor he can do himself is to realize that he's got some time and he doesn't need to jump into the first thing that presents itself. If you really want to enjoy your career, the best thing you can do is manage your career, rather than letting it manage you.
The only problem I see with freelancing is that he specifically says he wants to advance his career. When you're a freelancer, people tend to want to hire you to do the thing you did last time. It's just the nature of the beast; you're probably going to get a lot of jobs by word of mouth, and the word of mouth is going to be "when we needed that same thing, we hired this guy -- you should hire him, too." Also, people tend to underestimate the amount of hustle it takes to be a freelancer. You're always thinking about your next job, which means you tend to be reluctant to turn down paying work. These two factors make it very easy to fall into a rut.
Are you interested in anything besides programming? Maybe head that direction. I don't mean stop programming and do something else, I mean find a job where your programming skills will be contributing toward something worthwhile and that you're interested in. That might mean working on software to help find new cures for deadly diseases, or it might mean being a lead programmer for the NFL. Whatever floats your boat. If you're a part of a team that's doing something that you genuinely like and that enriches your own life, maybe it you'll be less concerned about "the same old challenges" and you'll be happy just to contribute toward the end goal.
B&N is not trying to get out of the e-reader business. B&N is looking to spin that business off so that they can raise more money to invest in that business. They believe that they could raise more money to invest in the e-reader business by spinning it off than by keeping it in house. I think that would prove to be a strategic mistake, but I understand the logic behind it.
I'm not sure I'm following you. Are you saying B&N would sell the Nook division, then take the money it receives from the sale of the Nook division and give it back to the buyer as an investment? That doesn't make much sense to me. At any rate, B&N has only issued one press release that has mentioned the possibility of spinning off the Nook business, to wit:
In order to capitalize on the rapid growth of the NOOK digital business, and its favorable leadership position in the expanding market for digital content, the Company has decided to pursue strategic exploratory work to separate the NOOK business.
“We see substantial value in what we’ve built with our NOOK business in only two years, and we believe it’s the right time to investigate our options to unlock that value,” said William Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble.
"Unlock that value" would seem to be to be a euphemism for "liquidate that value," which would be a logical move given that the e-reader business seems rather at odds with the retail bookselling business. If B&N planned to get out of retail and restructure its bookselling business model to look more like Amazon's, investing heavily in Nook might make more sense. (In fact, the whole strategy might make more sense.) But if B&N is committed to retail then it's probably better off splitting in two. The Nook division might even take the ebook business with it and sell ebooks through B&N as a wholesaler.
Considering that B&N chose to fight, I think it is more likely that the reason is #4, the companies that settled want to do business with Microsoft in the future (or do so already and want to continue to get good terms).
That's likely, but it's also likely that B&N is very new to this industry and doesn't really understand how the game is played. Note that B&N is trying to get out of the e-reader business now (not the ebook business, just the e-reader business).
Eric Schmidt stepped down as Google CEO a year ago. His title now is "executive chairman," which is a little ambiguous.
If it is indeed for the file system, then it's understandable.
Good guess. I hadn't thought of that.
Now, if by "understandable" you mean "comprehensible," then sure. But how is it reasonable? From the article (by Bruce Perens):
Indeed, the FAT patents have been invalidated for being non-innovative in Germany, and only survived invalidation in the U.S. through a patent office appeal in which opponents were not allowed to participate. It would take a trial in court to finally settle the issue, a trial that Microsoft would likely have lost.
But justice is too expensive. A trial to invalidate the eight patents Microsoft brought against TomTom, none of them poster-boys for innovation, would have cost more than TomTom had to spend, perhaps in excess of $10 million dollars.
2. Microsoft is offering reasonable licensing terms to the device makers, so the licensing agreement costs significantly less than the cost of litigating.
I think it's pretty clearly this. That is, licensing Microsoft's patents is not cheaper than how the handset manufacturers were doing business before, but now that the legal challenge is on the table, they've run the numbers and it will be cheaper to license the patents.
But I do think Microsoft is taking advantage of the current mobile market, in which all of the various Android handset makers are in close competition with one another. HTC, Samsung, Motorola, etc., all need to invest their full attention and resources on the competition at hand, not open a second front in the courts (where they only stand to save money, not earn profit). If any one of those vendors were to invest significant time and funds on a protracted legal battle against Microsoft, it stands to lose its position in the market versus its competitors, who would then eat its lunch. That's what's really making it cheaper to license the patents -- avoiding a lawsuit is always going to be cheaper than risking your entire business.