No, I just picked the most well known economist that has contributed to our current economic problems.
If I was being serious, I'd have looked up the asshole economist who initially put forward the theory that a corporation's sole duty is to it's stock holders.
Apple's gestures patents that are the issue in the HTC case are incredibly stupid, rivaling Amazon's one-click shopping. I'd say the patents covered here are also amazingly stupid, but they're more reasonable than Apple's patents simply by virtue of being lower level.
Sergey and Larry are perfectly normal names. Google is the most ethical multi-national ever. If I cared about namesakes, I'd consider Sergey or Larry for free. I'd avoid John and Maynard regardless.
That said, I hope google sends him a very nice letter respectfully thanking him for the deep complement, but explaining that they'll choose the cities based upon other various factors, like their potential influence upon other cities.
You are wrong. Poor starving people almost never revolt. Revolutionaries are rich kids who either get religious like communists or get threatened by taxes like the american revolution. I'd imagine copyright reform driving violent revolution in the U.S. before starvation in Asia. That said, we've no basis for violent revolution because people who want power can easily obtain it through election.
I'll vote against any president that signs the death warrant for thousands of poor people in Africa and South America that we call ACTA, even if that means voting for some moron like Sarah Palin. I'm a ver practical person who understands why there are compromises, but some things are so evil they are non-negotiable.
Fine, cut out theory, but teach math using basic problem solving games, and teach programming. If a kid is smart, they should start writing basic video games like age 7.
We're not talking intelligence work where people are under cover. A little war footage never hurt any combat soldiers in an occupied country, except by getting them court-martialed.
Wikileaks held the footage back after making the initial announcement because they wanted it analyzed by reporters, otherwise we'd just treat the bride being blown up as more war porn.
I'm sure there are plenty of chinese nationals willing to settle for a domain outside China just to avoid the registration requirements. So they might make more money in China by not being in China.
I'm sure the announcement was an attempt to give the leak more publicity, possibly by attracting reporters. In fact, wikileaks occasionally offers an interested reporter an exclusive access period, once they promise they'll write a story about the leaked document. In this case, they got more publicity than required for just another war porn flick.
We're actually better off with some patent troll holding the patent rather than an excessively litigious big boy like Apple. A patent troll will know they stand little chance when faced with a jury trial, so they'll take their money and go home. Apple will try their best to prevent other players from even exploring similar avenues.
A smart patent troll would start by targeting smaller players, taking a payoff in exchange for an obligation to pay some fraction of their later payoffs. So then once they reach a victim who'll fight the case, they've got a long list of settlements loosely indicating their patents validity.
You want basically the original format whenever reasonable because conversion requirements will reduce throughput.
A government document was usually designed for printing, making PDF the logical choice. If we're talking raw data, then xml, mysql, etc. are all more appropriate. HTML would be reasonable when we're talking documents presented on internal intranets or such.
Imagine a word discussion document circulates through email with various parties making modifications wiki-style, but then a final procedure alters the document considerably. If an outside group ask for access to the internal discussion document, they should receive an html document, not the word file. A PDF is inappropriate here because the discussion document was never seriously organized for printing.
Insurance prices are not regulated by this bill. No public option either.
If your local market is open, you can shop around, and maybe find competitively priced insurance. If your market's providers are locked up by 1 or 2 insurance companies, they'll charge outrageous rates, and you'll now be fined for not paying them.
There are some weak anti-monopoly rules embedded in the bill, but they're fairly toothless. If your local market is locked up, you're likely to see your house prices fall as people move away.. rental property will be hit especially hard.
There are vast cultural differences between the U.S. and Europe here : An M.D. costing $100k+ ensures that most M.D.s are financially ambitious people. If we fixed the costs, we'd be laying off the doctor's secretaries who put up with the insurance company bullshit, plus oodls of insurance companies staff. etc.
Insurance prices are not regulated by this bill. If you market is open, you can shop around, and explore reasonable options. If your market's providers are locked up by 1 or 2 insurance companies, they'll charge outrageous rates, and you'll be fined for not paying them.
We're still very unsure how this will all shake out over the long run, but change has now arrived.
Google only ever had one small bit of leverage when negotiating with China : Chinese citizens know that Google is more legit & honest than Badu. We're totally unsurprised that Chia spins away this leverage.
I don't think India has ever faced any credible direct security threat from the U.S., well aside from aid to Pakistan, and the threat of war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. India has very strong ties with Britain, vibrant trade with the U.S., developed nuclear weapons early, plays amongst the big boys economically, we idealize Gandhi, etc.
India projecting sea power more effectively definitely impacts China's trade routes however, especially with the middle east. India causing an increase in China's manufacturing costs would benefit industry in India, the U.S., and Europe.. and generally be cheered by all non-tools.
I'm afraid the article is quite miss-leading, but the metafilter thread dissects the ruling more carefully. You'll find that this ruling is actually a major win for technological progress.
Saw Shop had perused licensing the technology with virtually every major saw manufacturer, but nobody was interested at at any price. All decided the current no liability status was better than risk incurring liability by making any safer saws, which is ant-technology and evil. All these saw manufacturers are now liable for injuries, not because saws are dangerous, but because they killed off safety technology.
In fact, traditional saws will not be replaced by saw shops saws because saw shop saws cannot cut wet wood, but saw shop's approach works quite well and most people should be encouraged to buy it.
Yes, clearly the saw shop technology should be lessened under an FRAND like license, ideally lifesaving should licensed under FRAND terms too, but fighting against technology that saves lives and prevents injuries should make you liable for those injuries.
Isn't this just a subtle puff piece for Windows Mobile? Microsoft has no stake in the entertainment phones market currently, i.e. Android vs. iPhone. Windows Mobile competes against business phones offered by RIM and Nokia.
Yes, business and entertainment phones are completely different markets because touch screens are good for games but bad for writing emails. See my previous comment : http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1583886&cid=31492008
Thanks that's very clarifying. But how are the contracts actually implemented?
It appears the patents are not simply offered under a fixed license, like say a GPLed program. Each case requires separate negotiation. So what happens if a patent holder blocks that process?
I'd naively imagine that, as the patents are not distributed under a fixed license, the licensee must ultimately appeal to 3GPP itself if they feel the terms are unfair, no?
If A and B enter into a contract, and A reneges, then B has a very strong case against A. If C is hurt by A reneging, they won't have nearly so strong a case.
We've then got all the sticky issues like : Apple declining the initial offer that places essential IPR under FRAND terms. Apple's ongoing infringement. And all how both companies will throw in tangentially relevant patents. etc.
I'm afraid all this mess is way more complicated than merely Nokia's obligation to offer the patents to GSM Association Members under RAND terms.
We're not sure that Apple ever had the rights to RAND terms administered by the GSM Association. Nokia's RAND obligations are a contract with the GSM Association, not Apple. We don't know why Apple has avoided joining the association. Apple might be fucked if the association favors existing members like Motorola and HTC. We've also gleaned that Nokia's initial offer was quite close to the pure RAND terms, but the price went up when Apple played hard ball.
We are sure that Apple has knowingly violated the GSM patents without obtaining licenses. We should therefore expect that Nokia will win significant punitive damages based upon Apple's ongoing violations, as RAND would have no bearing upon past infringement. We're obviously unsure however how much gets covered by the hardware maker's license, also whether Apple's went though manufacturer that had the licenses (Chinese manufacturer, hello?).
I'm personally curious what role the GSM Association plays in enforcing the RAND obligations imposed upon members. Is association membership a contract between all the members pairwise, like a treaty, or a contract between each member and the association?
Nokia takes an interesting flexible form factor approach where their highest end phones are designed explicitly excluding both the business and entertainment market. For example, the N95 let Nokia debug technology among more forgiving early adopters, before releasing the N97 for business users. I'd call these early adopter or fanboy phones.
I personally own an N900 myself, a phone so raw Nokia won't even call it a phone. I don't mind subsidizing Nokia's R&D though because the phone does wicked shit like run pdflatex, R, python, glom (gui sql client), x11vnc, sshd, etc. A few crazy mother fuckers even run the gimp!
You can easily see where Nokia is taking the N900 however, a unified smartphone platform well optimized for both business and entertainment functionality, and provides an easy porting target for apps developed on other platforms. We should ultimately expect two Maemo/MeeGo phone, a thin touchscreen phone and a thick N97 form factor phone, both offering the same high level phone features, native applications, and Android compatibility layer.
I don't believe "smart phones" is a meaningful market category. First, my 2006 Motorola L7 SLVR supports email, plays mp3s, and plays java games. Second, all these fancy phones are distinguished mostly by who buys them, not their features.
Nokia and RIM produce smart phones with large keyboards that balance the need for sending real emails with portability. A casual consumer simply doesn't need that big ass keyboard because a casual consumer doesn't lose a $200k contract by sending a short terse text message. I feel these are more properly called business phones, which also well represents their extra features, like tethering, vpn, voip, etc.
Apple and Google produce smart phones with large touch screens for entertainment. Any road warrior salesman type would be stupid for depending upon a touch screen keyboard, even the new blackberry storm 2. You know, Apple's iPhone hype might even have contributed to the recession.:) I feel these are more properly called entertainment phones, again well represents the available applications.
Apple's iPhone did surprise the industry by proving the profitability of high end entertainment phones, which prompted the Blackberry Storm 2 among others, and surely changed Android's direction. Apple's iPhone has not altered the needs of business users. If anything, Apple has removed business oriented applications, and push out the iPod Touch as a high end entertainment platform for travelers. You almost surely know people who own both an iPod touch for entertainment and a Blackberry for work.
p.s. Nokia largely control the smartphone market outside the U.S.
If they invalidated software patents, Apple's whole bullshit portfolio would evaporate, meaning fewer bullshit patent cases. Nokia's parents would remain valid of course because they're actual technological patents resulting from serious research.
In fact, best possible outcome technologically speaking would be Apple's software patents being invalidated, while Apple owing Nokia some small but non-trivial fee for every iPhone shipped, and then Nokia reinvesting that money in further technological advances and MeeGo.
I'd understand any company, even Apple or Google, telling road warrior business men types :
You must have a blackberry or nokia for company purposes because the Android or iPhone virtual keyboard encourages short terse emails that disrupt relations with clients and costs sales.
We're all well aware that capitative touch screen keyboards require longer for typing, produce more errors, and worse discourage standard politeness. So you should not use any virtual keyboard for important business emails, period.
I'm pretty sure however that the microsoft employees being discussed are actually developers, not road warrior salesmen. Microsoft has no business asking their engineers to restrict their personal electronics choices.
Slashdot Mirror
No, I just picked the most well known economist that has contributed to our current economic problems.
If I was being serious, I'd have looked up the asshole economist who initially put forward the theory that a corporation's sole duty is to it's stock holders.
Apple's gestures patents that are the issue in the HTC case are incredibly stupid, rivaling Amazon's one-click shopping. I'd say the patents covered here are also amazingly stupid, but they're more reasonable than Apple's patents simply by virtue of being lower level.
Sergey and Larry are perfectly normal names. Google is the most ethical multi-national ever. If I cared about namesakes, I'd consider Sergey or Larry for free. I'd avoid John and Maynard regardless.
That said, I hope google sends him a very nice letter respectfully thanking him for the deep complement, but explaining that they'll choose the cities based upon other various factors, like their potential influence upon other cities.
You are wrong. Poor starving people almost never revolt. Revolutionaries are rich kids who either get religious like communists or get threatened by taxes like the american revolution. I'd imagine copyright reform driving violent revolution in the U.S. before starvation in Asia. That said, we've no basis for violent revolution because people who want power can easily obtain it through election.
I'll vote against any president that signs the death warrant for thousands of poor people in Africa and South America that we call ACTA, even if that means voting for some moron like Sarah Palin. I'm a ver practical person who understands why there are compromises, but some things are so evil they are non-negotiable.
Fine, cut out theory, but teach math using basic problem solving games, and teach programming. If a kid is smart, they should start writing basic video games like age 7.
We're not talking intelligence work where people are under cover. A little war footage never hurt any combat soldiers in an occupied country, except by getting them court-martialed.
Wikileaks held the footage back after making the initial announcement because they wanted it analyzed by reporters, otherwise we'd just treat the bride being blown up as more war porn.
I'm sure there are plenty of chinese nationals willing to settle for a domain outside China just to avoid the registration requirements. So they might make more money in China by not being in China.
I'm sure the announcement was an attempt to give the leak more publicity, possibly by attracting reporters. In fact, wikileaks occasionally offers an interested reporter an exclusive access period, once they promise they'll write a story about the leaked document. In this case, they got more publicity than required for just another war porn flick.
We're actually better off with some patent troll holding the patent rather than an excessively litigious big boy like Apple. A patent troll will know they stand little chance when faced with a jury trial, so they'll take their money and go home. Apple will try their best to prevent other players from even exploring similar avenues.
A smart patent troll would start by targeting smaller players, taking a payoff in exchange for an obligation to pay some fraction of their later payoffs. So then once they reach a victim who'll fight the case, they've got a long list of settlements loosely indicating their patents validity.
You want basically the original format whenever reasonable because conversion requirements will reduce throughput.
A government document was usually designed for printing, making PDF the logical choice. If we're talking raw data, then xml, mysql, etc. are all more appropriate. HTML would be reasonable when we're talking documents presented on internal intranets or such.
Imagine a word discussion document circulates through email with various parties making modifications wiki-style, but then a final procedure alters the document considerably. If an outside group ask for access to the internal discussion document, they should receive an html document, not the word file. A PDF is inappropriate here because the discussion document was never seriously organized for printing.
Insurance prices are not regulated by this bill. No public option either.
If your local market is open, you can shop around, and maybe find competitively priced insurance. If your market's providers are locked up by 1 or 2 insurance companies, they'll charge outrageous rates, and you'll now be fined for not paying them.
There are some weak anti-monopoly rules embedded in the bill, but they're fairly toothless. If your local market is locked up, you're likely to see your house prices fall as people move away.. rental property will be hit especially hard.
There are vast cultural differences between the U.S. and Europe here : An M.D. costing $100k+ ensures that most M.D.s are financially ambitious people. If we fixed the costs, we'd be laying off the doctor's secretaries who put up with the insurance company bullshit, plus oodls of insurance companies staff. etc.
Insurance prices are not regulated by this bill. If you market is open, you can shop around, and explore reasonable options. If your market's providers are locked up by 1 or 2 insurance companies, they'll charge outrageous rates, and you'll be fined for not paying them.
We're still very unsure how this will all shake out over the long run, but change has now arrived.
Google only ever had one small bit of leverage when negotiating with China : Chinese citizens know that Google is more legit & honest than Badu. We're totally unsurprised that Chia spins away this leverage.
I don't think India has ever faced any credible direct security threat from the U.S., well aside from aid to Pakistan, and the threat of war between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. India has very strong ties with Britain, vibrant trade with the U.S., developed nuclear weapons early, plays amongst the big boys economically, we idealize Gandhi, etc.
India projecting sea power more effectively definitely impacts China's trade routes however, especially with the middle east. India causing an increase in China's manufacturing costs would benefit industry in India, the U.S., and Europe.. and generally be cheered by all non-tools.
I'm afraid the article is quite miss-leading, but the metafilter thread dissects the ruling more carefully. You'll find that this ruling is actually a major win for technological progress.
Saw Shop had perused licensing the technology with virtually every major saw manufacturer, but nobody was interested at at any price. All decided the current no liability status was better than risk incurring liability by making any safer saws, which is ant-technology and evil. All these saw manufacturers are now liable for injuries, not because saws are dangerous, but because they killed off safety technology.
In fact, traditional saws will not be replaced by saw shops saws because saw shop saws cannot cut wet wood, but saw shop's approach works quite well and most people should be encouraged to buy it.
Yes, clearly the saw shop technology should be lessened under an FRAND like license, ideally lifesaving should licensed under FRAND terms too, but fighting against technology that saves lives and prevents injuries should make you liable for those injuries.
New publishing industries have always pirated.
I hope google plays hardball with the content industries on this one, i.e. fine we'll take down pirated videos.
Isn't this just a subtle puff piece for Windows Mobile? Microsoft has no stake in the entertainment phones market currently, i.e. Android vs. iPhone. Windows Mobile competes against business phones offered by RIM and Nokia.
Yes, business and entertainment phones are completely different markets because touch screens are good for games but bad for writing emails. See my previous comment :
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1583886&cid=31492008
Yes, but the issue seems far more complex :
(1) Nokia says their first offer placed GSM essential patents under FRAND terms, proposing additional cross licensing only for non-essential patents.
(2) Who enforces Apple's access to FRAND terms? I'd imagine the FRAND obligations are spelled out in contracts between Nokia and 3GPP.
(3) Apple has now been violating these patents for several years now. It's doubtful that FRAND terms apply to past infringement.
Thanks that's very clarifying. But how are the contracts actually implemented?
It appears the patents are not simply offered under a fixed license, like say a GPLed program. Each case requires separate negotiation. So what happens if a patent holder blocks that process?
I'd naively imagine that, as the patents are not distributed under a fixed license, the licensee must ultimately appeal to 3GPP itself if they feel the terms are unfair, no?
If A and B enter into a contract, and A reneges, then B has a very strong case against A. If C is hurt by A reneging, they won't have nearly so strong a case.
We've then got all the sticky issues like : Apple declining the initial offer that places essential IPR under FRAND terms. Apple's ongoing infringement. And all how both companies will throw in tangentially relevant patents. etc.
I'm afraid all this mess is way more complicated than merely Nokia's obligation to offer the patents to GSM Association Members under RAND terms.
We're not sure that Apple ever had the rights to RAND terms administered by the GSM Association. Nokia's RAND obligations are a contract with the GSM Association, not Apple. We don't know why Apple has avoided joining the association. Apple might be fucked if the association favors existing members like Motorola and HTC. We've also gleaned that Nokia's initial offer was quite close to the pure RAND terms, but the price went up when Apple played hard ball.
We are sure that Apple has knowingly violated the GSM patents without obtaining licenses. We should therefore expect that Nokia will win significant punitive damages based upon Apple's ongoing violations, as RAND would have no bearing upon past infringement. We're obviously unsure however how much gets covered by the hardware maker's license, also whether Apple's went though manufacturer that had the licenses (Chinese manufacturer, hello?).
I'm personally curious what role the GSM Association plays in enforcing the RAND obligations imposed upon members. Is association membership a contract between all the members pairwise, like a treaty, or a contract between each member and the association?
Nokia takes an interesting flexible form factor approach where their highest end phones are designed explicitly excluding both the business and entertainment market. For example, the N95 let Nokia debug technology among more forgiving early adopters, before releasing the N97 for business users. I'd call these early adopter or fanboy phones.
I personally own an N900 myself, a phone so raw Nokia won't even call it a phone. I don't mind subsidizing Nokia's R&D though because the phone does wicked shit like run pdflatex, R, python, glom (gui sql client), x11vnc, sshd, etc. A few crazy mother fuckers even run the gimp!
You can easily see where Nokia is taking the N900 however, a unified smartphone platform well optimized for both business and entertainment functionality, and provides an easy porting target for apps developed on other platforms. We should ultimately expect two Maemo/MeeGo phone, a thin touchscreen phone and a thick N97 form factor phone, both offering the same high level phone features, native applications, and Android compatibility layer.
I don't believe "smart phones" is a meaningful market category. First, my 2006 Motorola L7 SLVR supports email, plays mp3s, and plays java games. Second, all these fancy phones are distinguished mostly by who buys them, not their features.
Nokia and RIM produce smart phones with large keyboards that balance the need for sending real emails with portability. A casual consumer simply doesn't need that big ass keyboard because a casual consumer doesn't lose a $200k contract by sending a short terse text message. I feel these are more properly called business phones, which also well represents their extra features, like tethering, vpn, voip, etc.
Apple and Google produce smart phones with large touch screens for entertainment. Any road warrior salesman type would be stupid for depending upon a touch screen keyboard, even the new blackberry storm 2. You know, Apple's iPhone hype might even have contributed to the recession. :) I feel these are more properly called entertainment phones, again well represents the available applications.
Apple's iPhone did surprise the industry by proving the profitability of high end entertainment phones, which prompted the Blackberry Storm 2 among others, and surely changed Android's direction. Apple's iPhone has not altered the needs of business users. If anything, Apple has removed business oriented applications, and push out the iPod Touch as a high end entertainment platform for travelers. You almost surely know people who own both an iPod touch for entertainment and a Blackberry for work.
p.s. Nokia largely control the smartphone market outside the U.S.
If they invalidated software patents, Apple's whole bullshit portfolio would evaporate, meaning fewer bullshit patent cases. Nokia's parents would remain valid of course because they're actual technological patents resulting from serious research.
In fact, best possible outcome technologically speaking would be Apple's software patents being invalidated, while Apple owing Nokia some small but non-trivial fee for every iPhone shipped, and then Nokia reinvesting that money in further technological advances and MeeGo.
..or just ask mods to add the torrent to the post.
I'd understand any company, even Apple or Google, telling road warrior business men types :
You must have a blackberry or nokia for company purposes because the Android or iPhone virtual keyboard encourages short terse emails that disrupt relations with clients and costs sales.
We're all well aware that capitative touch screen keyboards require longer for typing, produce more errors, and worse discourage standard politeness. So you should not use any virtual keyboard for important business emails, period.
I'm pretty sure however that the microsoft employees being discussed are actually developers, not road warrior salesmen. Microsoft has no business asking their engineers to restrict their personal electronics choices.