Does not remove the fact that the iPhone is inflicted by CarrierIQ also. So the argument that Apple wouldn't allow this on the iPhone is a farce. Apple allowed it and probably facilitated in the installation of it. Any pure carrier-free phone whether its Android, WinMo or plain old feature phone does not have this spyware period.
Its only comes installed by AT&T on Android phones distributed by AT&T. There are Android phones that you can purchase that does not even have it installed. So at least on Android you have a choice of not having it installed in the first place based on the phone you chose.
Oh how nice of you to lump Google into this. I wonder if you are just pro trolling, or some fanboy of some type. . THis event has nothing to do with Google. It is installed by the cell carrier and there are clients available to carries for ALL mobile operating systems and it has been found on other non Android phones. Nice attempt to smear Google with this one.
Unfortunately for you it looks like you wont be owning Cell phone of any type. And I suppose you don't own one now. Almost every cellphone from certain carriers has CarrierIQ installed. THis has nothing to do with Google or the underlying operating system. Carrier IQ is crapware that is installed on phones by the CARRIER. And its on Nokia phones and blackberry's along with many many many feature phones. Apple has been tight lipped but don't be surprised if it is found on iphones either. They already have a client available for Iphones. So if the carrier choses to install it you are SOL.
The trademark was originated by the project that invented the software at the poor library in NZ. Because the software can be distributed for free anyone can download it and re-distribute the software. So what Liblime did was downloaded the software and because the poor owner of the software failed to register the trademark worldwide Liblime registered the trademarks. And they are now marketing the trademark as theirs totally hijacking the real project's trademark.
According Barnes and Noble this about open source software in general not just Android. They mention Tomtom and other non-Android device manufacturers. Microsoft is on a campaign to kill open source in the marketplace. More info available here and a damning PDF with lots of juicy information here
Microsoft wanted them to sign a NDA to even tell them what software-patents they were purportedly violating. Software-patents that are public information. They refused to sign a NDA to discuss public information. The purpose of patents is for the betterment of the arts by producing information to the public on how your invention works. If people are violating your public software-patents then tell them which ones they are violating so that they can stop violating them. Its that simple. Forcing them to keep secret the software-patents that you are extorting them over is sleazy. This is mobster extortion tactics.
Its true with everything. Helmets, Seat Belts, Airbags, Planes that don't break up in the air. Bus drivers that arent drunk. ( I should be free to chose the bus service that does not have drunk bus drivers i don't need the government to make that decision for me.), DOT tires, gas stoves that don't blow up in my face, clean water ways ( if I can simply chose my ISP i can simply chose my water company.) etc etc etc. We need to get rid of government regulation so that the free market can work. If we leave it up to the free market then when companies poison the crap out of the ground water system, we the fully informed consumers will just switch to a competing company and the polluting company would lose in the marketplace. Its really simple. Look how good its working in china We need to be more like them.
In Barnes & Noble's own words to the court:- At the meeting, Microsoft alleged that the Nook infringed six patents purportedly owned by Microsoft. Microsoft had prepared claim charts purportedly detailing the alleged infringement but insisted that it would only share the detailed claim charts if Barnes & Noble agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”) that would cover the claim charts as well as all other aspects of the parties’ discussions. Noting that the patents were public and that the infringement allegations pertained to Barnes & Noble’s public product, Barnes & Noble refused to sign an NDA.
Insisting that an NDA was necessary, Microsoft discussed the alleged infringement on a high level basis only. Microsoft nevertheless maintained that it possessed patents sufficient to dominate and entirely preclude the use of the Android Operating System by the Nook. Microsoft demanded an exorbitant royalty (on a per device basis) for a license to its patent portfolio for the Nook device and at the end of the meeting Microsoft stated that it would demand an even higher per device royalty for any device that acted “more like a computer” as opposed to an eReader.
After sending the proposed license agreement, Microsoft confirmed the shockingly high licensing fees Microsoft was demanding, reiterating its exorbitant per device royalty for Nook, and for the first time demanding a royalty for Nook Color which was more than double the per device royalty Microsoft was demanding for Nook. On information and belief, the license fees demanded by Microsoft are higher than what Microsoft charges for a license to its entire operating system designed for mobile devices, Windows Phone 7
So Microsoft is not trying to license their trivial, dubious software-patents under Fair Reasonable and NON Discriminatory terms. They are trying to drive up the cost of open source beyond what it would cost to purchase windows from them. They are sleazy slimy bullies. Will no longer use or recommend their products to ANYONE.
Microsoft is taking ownership of other people's code through the abuse of software-patents. This is scary. The notion that you cannot sit down in front of your computer and write successful code without Microsoft attacking you with a team of lawyers using dubious and obvious software-patents is scary. All you code are belong to Microsoft. They didn't write it but the own it anyway. This egregious behavior is something that Microsoft actually promised in their Halloween document. This is not just against Android. Its campaign to sink open source particularly Linux in the marketplace. By making it an expnesive hassle to deploy Linux vendors will just use windows instead. Its not noble. Its sleazy. MIcrosoft's Steve Balmer has been treating to use sleazy tactics and they are doing it now.
Here is how it works :
Microsoft Approaches open source company
Microsoft: My what a nice open source company you have here
Microsoft: You know this is a dangerous neighborhood you need some protection.
Business Owner: Protection? From who?
Microsoft: Well...From us really.
Microsoft: Oh and sign this NDA you cannot talk about this to anyone. Got it?
Its egregious sleazy software-patent extortion tactics.
The real question is how does the greater open source community stop them.
So far only Shuttleworth has pledged to fight them in court if they come knocking
on Ubuntu's doorstep
If you think this is about Android then you are sadly mistaken. This is about LInux and open source
victims include:- TomTom, Buffalo, IO-DATA, Kyocera MIta etc. None of those produce Android products.
They are now beating drums that Open Office and Libre Office violates their patents. Look for them to
start suing anyone that distributes Open Office or Libre Office in a successful product.
This is their strategy against open source in general If you write open source software that competes
with Micorosoft expect them to make it very expensive for you in the marketplace if your product
becomes successful.
You are definitely a greyback here.:-) LOL I started using Linux back in the days of the SLS release. Struggled to get X running for weeks then moved to slackware. 1.1.59 was the first time i got X running and I was in heaven running TWM. Back then I downloaded linux on 30+ floppies over an AOL 9600bps connection right when AOL got "Limited Internet connectivity" They only offered gopher and ftp at the time. Then moved to FVWM then FVWM95. Those were the days.
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
Is absolutely trolling.
I can't speak for decisions I didn't make, but I can guess. Linux is an very fragmented platform. Getting a major piece of software to work across different distros often requires hacks and changes specific to each one. It's very rarely just a matter of recompiling and it's good. If you follow some of the microsoft blogs (windows 8 for example), one of the most common questions they get asked is why didn't you include feature X. The response is usually along the lines of not enough people would use it to be worth the effort. No company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted.
So how is it that Mozilla can do it and Microsoft cant? I see their flagship Firefox on Windows, OSX, many versions of Linux including Android, Runs fine in Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc. So tell us what resources do Mozilla have that Microsoft does not?
I remember the move from the Program Manger to the Windows95 interface that so many people here seem to currently love. Back then people were bitching about how the new Windows95 interface sucked. Now we have some of us Linux geeks that are still clinging to that interface. I remember when Gnome 2 came out and all the bitching started again. "Where did all the customizations go" "This shit sux" bla blah. Then that settled down. Then came KDE 4.0 and the signal to noise ratio got all out of whack again. "Fuck this i'm moving to Gnome" was the mantra. Now we have Gnome3 and Unity....... Break out the popcorn.
First of all the lawyer is echoing his client's position on Software Patents. Not his own. Now you can say that Google is against software patents. I don't see Google filing thousands of trivial and obvious software patents and suing the competition over software patents. So at least they are practicing what they preach. The are now amassing patents to use them defensively because of the orchestrated attack on Android by Apple Microsoft and Oracle. So trying present a aura of false-equivalence just won't work for people in the know.
Microsoft and Apple are not on our side in this matter. They are abusing the system against open source competition and innovation. "swipe to unlock" "scroll bounce" and other silly obvious patents that should have never been filed and should have never been granted in the first place. They are using this in an attempt to drive up the cost of open source and in the case of Apple out right kill ANY open source project that threatens them in the marketplace. A sleazy egregious practice by the two biggest and most powerful companies in technology. They are on a mission to use dubious and merit-less software-patents to take ownership of other people's code. They are NOT on our side. Our side is END SOFTWARE PATENTS. They ONLY want to stop themselves from getting sued by trolls and you know what? The more they act like trolls is the more I hope the trolls sue the shit out of them. They are sleazy. Fuckem. I will no longer use or recommend their products to ANYONE, customers et al. And until they end the practice of using litigation as a weapon against open source I will do my best to move every customer and person I know away from their products. fuckem.
Apple's attempt to own the code that other developers write has failed in this case. They will continue their mission though. They are using software-patents to take ownership of other people's code. It a horrible horrible development in the software industry. Filing patents on applications and gestures just so they can claim ownership over code that they did not write. This egregious behavior on the part of Apple is really showing their true colors. Apple followed by Microsoft and Oracle are the most anti-competitive companies in the software industry and people who are aware of this egregious behavior on the part of Apple and still go out and purchase their products are simply willfully supporting this kind of abuse and litigious practice in the software marketplace and are willfully helping Apple to destroy the software marketplace by removing consumer choice with these despicable practices.
"After a slow start in 2010, AT&T has over-delivered on the number of Android devices it promised to launch in 2011, including the Impulse 4G, supplied by Huawei but AT&T-branded, sold at an aggressive $30 with a contract to target first-time smart phone buyers. Android holds nearly 70% of the platform share in the United States, compared with 57% worldwide."
Then there is the massive Chinese market that's coming online.
"The Chinese smart phone market is seeing explosive growth, not least from domestic vendors Huawei and ZTE,’ said Shanghai-based Canalys Research Director for China, Nicole Peng. ‘Both vendors are delivering good-quality, attractive smart phones on the Android platform for both the domestic and foreign markets, and their aggressive pricing strategies are enabling them to ship large volumes. They will continue to be an increasingly disruptive force in the global market in the coming quarters"
Then there are the Andoid smart watches and who knows what else around the corner.
That's the real news. Android looks like it's set to steamroll.
Wow.
Google create a fake query and it showed up on Bing. You and TechLA are a obviously shills. The only people in the tech world that believes google made this up is you
From Google: We created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag]. As a one-time experiment, for each synthetic query we inserted as Google’s top result a unique (real) webpage which had nothing to do with the query. Below is an example:
To be clear, the synthetic query had no relationship with the inserted result we chose—the query didn’t appear on the webpage, and there were no links to the webpage with that query phrase. In other words, there was absolutely no reason for any search engine to return that webpage for that synthetic query. You can think of the synthetic queries with inserted results as the search engine equivalent of marked bills in a bank.
We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the “Suggested Sites” feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar
We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted. We were surprised that within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing. Below is an example: a search for [hiybbprqag] on Bing returned a page about seating at a theater in Los Angeles. As far as we know, the only connection between the query and result is Google’s result page (shown above).
Look. This is an attempt to take wholesale ownership of other people's code. Plain and simple. They want to do on to others what they do not want to happen to them. Microsoft is doing the same thing. They want to own _all_ useful code in the marketplace. It is their strategy of fighting against the freedom for you to write your own code. A push back against open source and free software and a way to raise the barrier of entry for any small newcomers to the marketplace. They have said over and over again that Open Source "does not respect intellectual property rights" and they will use litigation to drive up the cost of producing anything with open source. Apple and Microsoft have been beating their chest a lot about this. They have said they were going use software patents in this way and guess what they are doing it. The days when you can freely write code without Apple and Microsoft trying to stop you in your tracks are coming to an end.
Microsoft has warned time and time again that they are going to use this method to destroy open source and software freedom.
The strategy:
Microsoft approaches open source business
Microsoft: You know its a dangerous neighborhood. you should pay us for protection.
Business Owner: Protection? from who?
Microsoft: Well...from us really.
Microsoft: Oh and sigh this NDA you cannot talk about this to anyone ok?
This campaign is not limited to Android its an attack on all open source and software freedom.
Its a legal way for them to take ownership of other people's code that they had nothing to do with
Microsoft is making sure that companies are too scared to use open source.
The list of companies that have fallen victim to this scheme is getting long
Remember TomTom? And Bufallo? They don't make Android devices but still signed a Linux license.
They claim Open Office violates their patents. Expect them to charge for devices distributed with OO and Libre Office
Basically if your code is anything other than "hobby code" you are liable. Microsoft says you are running an "undisclosed balance sheet" and must pay them.
Non-Android Linux licensees that I'm aware of:-
Tomtom
IO-Data
Buffalo
Amazon(License for use of Linux on Amazon servers)
Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd.
Brother International.
Kyocera Mita Corp
LG Electronics,
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd
I'm sure there's more.
Bottom line If you write useful code that competes with Microsoft look for them to take ownership of your code through the use of software-patents and have a nice day.
Slashdot Mirror
Well in the USA its easy..just avoid AT&T. Verizon issued a statement saying the do not issue phones with CarrierIQ.
Does not remove the fact that the iPhone is inflicted by CarrierIQ also. So the argument that Apple wouldn't allow this on the iPhone is a farce. Apple allowed it and probably facilitated in the installation of it. Any pure carrier-free phone whether its Android, WinMo or plain old feature phone does not have this spyware period.
Its only comes installed by AT&T on Android phones distributed by AT&T. There are Android phones that you can purchase that does not even have it installed. So at least on Android you have a choice of not having it installed in the first place based on the phone you chose.
Sorry CarrierIQ i on your Iphone. Before you trip over yourself to defend Apple here maybe you should get informed? no? http://blog.chpwn.com/post/13572216737?fe250de0
Oh how nice of you to lump Google into this. I wonder if you are just pro trolling, or some fanboy of some type. . THis event has nothing to do with Google. It is installed by the cell carrier and there are clients available to carries for ALL mobile operating systems and it has been found on other non Android phones. Nice attempt to smear Google with this one.
Unfortunately for you it looks like you wont be owning Cell phone of any type. And I suppose you don't own one now. Almost every cellphone from certain carriers has CarrierIQ installed. THis has nothing to do with Google or the underlying operating system. Carrier IQ is crapware that is installed on phones by the CARRIER. And its on Nokia phones and blackberry's along with many many many feature phones. Apple has been tight lipped but don't be surprised if it is found on iphones either. They already have a client available for Iphones. So if the carrier choses to install it you are SOL.
How about some process telling me that the sea food I eat is free of Oil spill dispersants, Oil contamination and the like?
The trademark was originated by the project that invented the software at the poor library in NZ. Because the software can be distributed for free anyone can download it and re-distribute the software. So what Liblime did was downloaded the software and because the poor owner of the software failed to register the trademark worldwide Liblime registered the trademarks. And they are now marketing the trademark as theirs totally hijacking the real project's trademark.
According Barnes and Noble this about open source software in general not just Android. They mention Tomtom and other non-Android device manufacturers. Microsoft is on a campaign to kill open source in the marketplace. More info available here and a damning PDF with lots of juicy information here
That is incorrect. They were forced to license many MS only protocols in the EU under F/RAND terms. Many are not part of any official standard.
Microsoft wanted them to sign a NDA to even tell them what software-patents they were purportedly violating. Software-patents that are public information. They refused to sign a NDA to discuss public information. The purpose of patents is for the betterment of the arts by producing information to the public on how your invention works. If people are violating your public software-patents then tell them which ones they are violating so that they can stop violating them. Its that simple. Forcing them to keep secret the software-patents that you are extorting them over is sleazy. This is mobster extortion tactics.
Its true with everything. Helmets, Seat Belts, Airbags, Planes that don't break up in the air. Bus drivers that arent drunk. ( I should be free to chose the bus service that does not have drunk bus drivers i don't need the government to make that decision for me.), DOT tires, gas stoves that don't blow up in my face, clean water ways ( if I can simply chose my ISP i can simply chose my water company.) etc etc etc. We need to get rid of government regulation so that the free market can work. If we leave it up to the free market then when companies poison the crap out of the ground water system, we the fully informed consumers will just switch to a competing company and the polluting company would lose in the marketplace. Its really simple. Look how good its working in china We need to be more like them.
Microsoft is using gangster extortion tactics.
In Barnes & Noble's own words to the court:-
At the meeting, Microsoft alleged that the Nook infringed six patents purportedly owned by Microsoft. Microsoft had prepared claim charts purportedly detailing the alleged infringement but insisted that it would only share the detailed claim charts if Barnes & Noble agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement (“NDA”) that would cover the claim charts as well as all other aspects of the parties’ discussions. Noting that the patents were public and that the infringement allegations pertained to Barnes & Noble’s public product, Barnes & Noble refused to sign an NDA.
Insisting that an NDA was necessary, Microsoft discussed the alleged infringement on a high level basis only. Microsoft nevertheless maintained that it possessed patents sufficient to dominate and entirely preclude the use of the Android Operating System by the Nook. Microsoft demanded an exorbitant royalty (on a per device basis) for a license to its patent portfolio for the Nook device and at the end of the meeting Microsoft stated that it would demand an even higher per device royalty for any device that acted “more like a computer” as opposed to an eReader.
After sending the proposed license agreement, Microsoft confirmed the shockingly high licensing fees Microsoft was demanding, reiterating its exorbitant per device royalty for Nook, and for the first time demanding a royalty for Nook Color which was more than double the per device royalty Microsoft was demanding for Nook. On information and belief, the license fees demanded by Microsoft are higher than what Microsoft charges for a license to its entire operating system designed for mobile devices, Windows Phone 7
So Microsoft is not trying to license their trivial, dubious software-patents under Fair Reasonable and NON Discriminatory terms. They are trying to drive up the cost of open source beyond what it would cost to purchase windows from them. They are sleazy slimy bullies. Will no longer use or recommend their products to ANYONE.
Microsoft is taking ownership of other people's code through the abuse of software-patents. This is scary. The notion that you cannot sit down in front of your computer and write successful code without Microsoft attacking you with a team of lawyers using dubious and obvious software-patents is scary. All you code are belong to Microsoft. They didn't write it but the own it anyway. This egregious behavior is something that Microsoft actually promised in their Halloween document. This is not just against Android. Its campaign to sink open source particularly Linux in the marketplace. By making it an expnesive hassle to deploy Linux vendors will just use windows instead. Its not noble. Its sleazy. MIcrosoft's Steve Balmer has been treating to use sleazy tactics and they are doing it now.
Here is how it works :
Microsoft Approaches open source company
Microsoft: My what a nice open source company you have here
Microsoft: You know this is a dangerous neighborhood you need some protection.
Business Owner: Protection? From who?
Microsoft: Well...From us really.
Microsoft: Oh and sign this NDA you cannot talk about this to anyone. Got it?
Its egregious sleazy software-patent extortion tactics.
The real question is how does the greater open source community stop them. So far only Shuttleworth has pledged to fight them in court if they come knocking on Ubuntu's doorstep
If you think this is about Android then you are sadly mistaken. This is about LInux and open source victims include:- TomTom, Buffalo, IO-DATA, Kyocera MIta etc. None of those produce Android products. They are now beating drums that Open Office and Libre Office violates their patents. Look for them to start suing anyone that distributes Open Office or Libre Office in a successful product.
This is their strategy against open source in general If you write open source software that competes with Micorosoft expect them to make it very expensive for you in the marketplace if your product becomes successful.
You are definitely a greyback here. :-) LOL I started using Linux back in the days of the SLS release. Struggled to get X running for weeks then moved to slackware. 1.1.59 was the first time i got X running and I was in heaven running TWM. Back then I downloaded linux on 30+ floppies over an AOL 9600bps connection right when AOL got "Limited Internet connectivity" They only offered gopher and ftp at the time. Then moved to FVWM then FVWM95. Those were the days.
Try to run it on a dual core ARM and report back.
Saying things like this:
If you actually look at the facts of the situation the intention is not difficult to understand. But what the fuck ever. If you want to be naive it's your choice.
Is absolutely trolling. I can't speak for decisions I didn't make, but I can guess. Linux is an very fragmented platform. Getting a major piece of software to work across different distros often requires hacks and changes specific to each one. It's very rarely just a matter of recompiling and it's good. If you follow some of the microsoft blogs (windows 8 for example), one of the most common questions they get asked is why didn't you include feature X. The response is usually along the lines of not enough people would use it to be worth the effort. No company has enough resources to implement everything that everyone ever wanted.
So how is it that Mozilla can do it and Microsoft cant? I see their flagship Firefox on Windows, OSX, many versions of Linux including Android, Runs fine in Gnome, KDE, XFCE etc. So tell us what resources do Mozilla have that Microsoft does not?
I remember the move from the Program Manger to the Windows95 interface that so many people here seem to currently love. Back then people were bitching about how the new Windows95 interface sucked. Now we have some of us Linux geeks that are still clinging to that interface. I remember when Gnome 2 came out and all the bitching started again. "Where did all the customizations go" "This shit sux" bla blah. Then that settled down. Then came KDE 4.0 and the signal to noise ratio got all out of whack again. "Fuck this i'm moving to Gnome" was the mantra. Now we have Gnome3 and Unity....... Break out the popcorn.
First of all the lawyer is echoing his client's position on Software Patents. Not his own. Now you can say that Google is against software patents. I don't see Google filing thousands of trivial and obvious software patents and suing the competition over software patents. So at least they are practicing what they preach. The are now amassing patents to use them defensively because of the orchestrated attack on Android by Apple Microsoft and Oracle. So trying present a aura of false-equivalence just won't work for people in the know.
Microsoft and Apple are not on our side in this matter. They are abusing the system against open source competition and innovation. "swipe to unlock" "scroll bounce" and other silly obvious patents that should have never been filed and should have never been granted in the first place. They are using this in an attempt to drive up the cost of open source and in the case of Apple out right kill ANY open source project that threatens them in the marketplace. A sleazy egregious practice by the two biggest and most powerful companies in technology. They are on a mission to use dubious and merit-less software-patents to take ownership of other people's code. They are NOT on our side. Our side is END SOFTWARE PATENTS. They ONLY want to stop themselves from getting sued by trolls and you know what? The more they act like trolls is the more I hope the trolls sue the shit out of them. They are sleazy. Fuckem. I will no longer use or recommend their products to ANYONE, customers et al. And until they end the practice of using litigation as a weapon against open source I will do my best to move every customer and person I know away from their products. fuckem.
Apple's attempt to own the code that other developers write has failed in this case. They will continue their mission though. They are using software-patents to take ownership of other people's code. It a horrible horrible development in the software industry. Filing patents on applications and gestures just so they can claim ownership over code that they did not write. This egregious behavior on the part of Apple is really showing their true colors. Apple followed by Microsoft and Oracle are the most anti-competitive companies in the software industry and people who are aware of this egregious behavior on the part of Apple and still go out and purchase their products are simply willfully supporting this kind of abuse and litigious practice in the software marketplace and are willfully helping Apple to destroy the software marketplace by removing consumer choice with these despicable practices.
"After a slow start in 2010, AT&T has over-delivered on the number of Android devices it promised to launch in 2011, including the Impulse 4G, supplied by Huawei but AT&T-branded, sold at an aggressive $30 with a contract to target first-time smart phone buyers. Android holds nearly 70% of the platform share in the United States, compared with 57% worldwide."
Then there is the massive Chinese market that's coming online.
"The Chinese smart phone market is seeing explosive growth, not least from domestic vendors Huawei and ZTE,’ said Shanghai-based Canalys Research Director for China, Nicole Peng. ‘Both vendors are delivering good-quality, attractive smart phones on the Android platform for both the domestic and foreign markets, and their aggressive pricing strategies are enabling them to ship large volumes. They will continue to be an increasingly disruptive force in the global market in the coming quarters"
Then there are the Andoid smart watches and who knows what else around the corner. That's the real news. Android looks like it's set to steamroll.
Google create a fake query and it showed up on Bing. You and TechLA are a obviously shills. The only people in the tech world that believes google made this up is you
From Google:
We created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag]. As a one-time experiment, for each synthetic query we inserted as Google’s top result a unique (real) webpage which had nothing to do with the query. Below is an example:
To be clear, the synthetic query had no relationship with the inserted result we chose—the query didn’t appear on the webpage, and there were no links to the webpage with that query phrase. In other words, there was absolutely no reason for any search engine to return that webpage for that synthetic query. You can think of the synthetic queries with inserted results as the search engine equivalent of marked bills in a bank.
We gave 20 of our engineers laptops with a fresh install of Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer 8 with Bing Toolbar installed. As part of the install process, we opted in to the “Suggested Sites” feature of IE8, and we accepted the default options for the Bing Toolbar
We asked these engineers to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results, i.e., the results we inserted. We were surprised that within a couple weeks of starting this experiment, our inserted results started appearing in Bing. Below is an example: a search for [hiybbprqag] on Bing returned a page about seating at a theater in Los Angeles. As far as we know, the only connection between the query and result is Google’s result page (shown above).
Look. This is an attempt to take wholesale ownership of other people's code. Plain and simple. They want to do on to others what they do not want to happen to them. Microsoft is doing the same thing. They want to own _all_ useful code in the marketplace. It is their strategy of fighting against the freedom for you to write your own code. A push back against open source and free software and a way to raise the barrier of entry for any small newcomers to the marketplace. They have said over and over again that Open Source "does not respect intellectual property rights" and they will use litigation to drive up the cost of producing anything with open source. Apple and Microsoft have been beating their chest a lot about this. They have said they were going use software patents in this way and guess what they are doing it. The days when you can freely write code without Apple and Microsoft trying to stop you in your tracks are coming to an end.
Microsoft has warned time and time again that they are going to use this method to destroy open source and software freedom.
The strategy:
Microsoft approaches open source business
Microsoft: You know its a dangerous neighborhood. you should pay us for protection.
Business Owner: Protection? from who?
Microsoft: Well...from us really.
Microsoft: Oh and sigh this NDA you cannot talk about this to anyone ok?
This campaign is not limited to Android its an attack on all open source and software freedom.
Its a legal way for them to take ownership of other people's code that they had nothing to do with
Microsoft is making sure that companies are too scared to use open source.
The list of companies that have fallen victim to this scheme is getting long
Remember TomTom? And Bufallo? They don't make Android devices but still signed a Linux license.
They claim Open Office violates their patents. Expect them to charge for devices distributed with OO and Libre Office
Basically if your code is anything other than "hobby code" you are liable. Microsoft says you are running an "undisclosed balance sheet" and must pay them.
Non-Android Linux licensees that I'm aware of :-
Tomtom
IO-Data
Buffalo
Amazon(License for use of Linux on Amazon servers)
Fuji Xerox Co. Ltd.
Brother International.
Kyocera Mita Corp
LG Electronics,
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd
I'm sure there's more.
Bottom line If you write useful code that competes with Microsoft look for them to take ownership of your code through the use of software-patents and have a nice day.