The referenced patent seems to be entirely focused on systems that allow users of a product to generate feedback to owners of the product, such that the owners can improve and enhance the product or even determine new directions for future products. Here's a clip from the description, which seems to show the general direction of each of the individual claims:
For products (and information systems) that contain this Module, customers may continuously inform vendors (or developers) of their current and emerging needs. The vendors of those products may have the best opportunity to respond swiftly to a much clearer view of customer problems, product problems and market opportunities than they have today. The inventor believes that within a generation it will be normal for many products and services to include this type of Module, so that customers (in aggregate, the market) comes to play a larger role in directing and controlling the commercial development of many products and services.
Then later:
Simply put, this invention helps vendors and customers by transforming their learning cycle: It compresses the time and steps between setting business objectives, creating effective products and services, and improving them continuously. It also alters their roles: Customers become partners in the improvement process along with vendors and distributors.
Reading through the claims with my layman's understanding... I don't see any of them that even suggests a click-to-upgrade scheme might be related. The closest that I can find is:
16. The system of claim 1 in which the user interface presents information in one or more of the following styles: text, lists, charts, views, arrangements, hierarchies, graphical maps, sample extracts, abstracts, summary descriptions, or hypertext.
A button could be construed as hypertext, so let's look at claim 1:
1. A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user's perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location.
Again, it's all about reporting back on the user's experience and perception - nothing to do with upgrade. In this light, I find it extremely odd that they would even attempt to file suit for violation of this patent.
I am so glad I'm not the only one who encountered that particular problem when I first (and last) felt the impulse to throw something. I dunno, I just figure most folks should've given up temper tantrums sometime very early in life.
There is no excuse for mornings. None, at all. They exist only so that something fills that dead space between sunrise and noon -- the problem is that so many people got the wrong impression and think we're supposed to *use* that time for something.
Oh, that still exists. Except "client" is no longer synonymous with "user" in the online world. The client is the advertising provider. The service is the attention and browsing habits of your viewers. Your viewers play the incidental toys you've put online to capture that attention.
It's become more than a bit ridiculous - all the more so because no matter how illogical it is, companies are *succeeding* at turning a profit based on the business model I described above -- over and over again.
Oh look, a slashdot article about a blog post about a blog post about ToS changes at TwitPic.
Yes, the TOS gives the right to redistribute. If you did not assign those rights, wouldn't that basically mean that they couldn't host your content at all?
Outside of that (I could easily be wrong in my interpretation, IANAL): yes, it's technically possible that they can sell your content. . But here's the thing - check the TOS for almost any major "social" service that accepts user generated content and you will find the same thing: YOU own the copyright, but the service provider can do what he damn well pleases. Up to and including distributing your work.
he entirety of this statement from TwitPic is intended to stave off the growing hate campaign from users who don’t like the idea of their copyright being gobbled up
Actually it's to stave of kneejerk reactions such as yours (and the countless people who immediately forwarded this kind of crap to all their twitter followers) -- those who jump to conclusions based on an understanding of terms that's somehow even hazier than mine, without providing any basis in fact. Suck it up, quit whining. If you don't like it, feel free to find another service that doesn't want rights to redistribute your work. Since you likely won't be able to, you may want to look into starting your own.
Ah, well. I hope your crappy ill-informed blog post got you some nice ad revenue from making slashdot's front page. Where's my cut of that revenue, BTW? After all, I'm one of the users who visited your site, giving you some of my valuable time to read your drivel. (Think about that for a minute.)
Same. Of course, since I'm already looking at my phone, if I happen to see that there are new messages... well, I'm already right there. Might as well check. Lets me delay the inevitable task of getting out of bad just a little longer...
True. I also left out a major factor: I (and hundreds of thousands of other ebook purchasers) really dislike the pricing; yet we don't dislike it enough to stop buying books. Until we do, or until the publishers feel that there's enough additional sales to make up for a lower per-book profit margin, they have no reason to lower prices.
I've got one as well and am pleased with it. However... I rather wish that we'd a) start seeing prices that reflect lower production costs and b) start seeing a standard, so that each device seller is not trying to lock you in.
I know, I know. And yet... I still don't have to wake up and look at this face in the mirror every morning. Frankly, my relief at that simple fact kind of drowns out anything you might be trying to say.
I did an experiment on Digg and Slashdot a few years back. I posted two extremely similar comments using two different accounts. Then I modded one comment up, and one down.
Keep in mind that there was essentially no difference between these posts other than their initial out-of-the-gate moderations. On both sites, the one I modded down got modded down further. And the one I modded up got modded up further.
While the experiment was quick and informal (I'd love to see others expanding the effort...) it does tend to indicate that as little as one or two people do the "real" moderation of a comment, and many subsequent votes are "me too" votes. Given that, there's not much value in the final tally. And as we see here and elsewhere - unpopular (but factually correct and well written) views can get downmodded into oblivion; or up/down modded so much that the overall moderation is minimal.
Don't allow user moderation like slashdot and digg. If you must allow it, do it very minimally and in a way that doesn't alter whether the comment can be seen by default. DIsplay upmod and downmod totals, and don't assign a final value.
Ultimately the problem here is that just because everyone *can* speak... doesn't mean everyone who does speak has something worthwhile to add. In addition - anonymity makes it easy to be a jackass as it removes any connection to real-life consequences.
So my undoubtedly unpopular answer is to require verified ID for all posters*. Further require that all posters use their real names as contained in their verified IDs. Even with that you'll still get some amount of trolling/flaming, but it will require much less time to manage than otherwise.
* Before anyone comments on the implicit hypocrisy, you can see that my "homepage" URL contains my name [even if the site is offline]. I don't hide behind an online identity - I am who I am, online and off. Helps keeping me from saying things I'd not want associated with me;)
Because seeing "by thePowerOfGrayskull" causes no end of amusement for my simple mind. Also because I forgot the account info and retired the email address used for my older real-name account. Though it's not like I make a secret of my real name in any case...
Most new appliances: 1 year warranty, if not less. Most electronics: same.
Like it or not, when you're buying new equipment, you're looking at less than two years' support in most cases. I don't necessarily think this is a good thing (I remember when appliance warranties were 5, 10, 15 year), but the only way to avoid it today is to buy various extended support packages at inflated prices.
Of course it's not quite the same, as software is not warrantied item to begin with. It's been a while since I read an EULA, but the last I checked , there are disclaimers left and right -- namely, no warranty; and -- as importantly -- no obligation set forth wherein the vendor is required to provide any ongoing updates at all.
And as you mentioned, automobiles are under special rules.
And? I am neither a fan nor customer of apple, but I would say that if you last purchased something 2+ years ago... you're *not* a customer. You're a former customer.
Well - that depends on your target.
I'm not talking about building web sites with it, that's still pretty unforgivable. Rather - using it as an application platform, where you don't even necessarily want to expose your content to the world. Reporting tools, games, proprietary content delivery. For many mind sets, this is quite a possibly a good thing. Content delivered through a custom flash app can't be trivially scraped and displayed elsewhere.
(That being said: didn't they make a big deal a couple of years ago over working with google to provide search integration?)
RIM bought QNX, everyone expected them to move their platform to that. BlackBerry OS is terrible, loads all apps at boot, etc.
Actually it verifies the signatures of all apps at boot. The only ones loaded at boot are the ones developed to have boot-time load components...
Having used the PlayBook, I do hope to see that OS on their phones in the very near future though, and will likely be sitting out the OS7 upgrades until that's available.
That would be every country in all likelihood, after following whatever due process is in place for any given country (or lack thereof). That's the same as any data provider in any country.
What RIM cannot do is provide any government access to secured email that's attached to BES. And that's where governments like India keep repeatedly making threats -- but can't force RIM to do the impossible. (That is: obtain the private keys for each server running BES and use them to somehow provide email details to the government.) And that's a couple steps ahead of the competition.
I commented about this here a couple of months ago, from a theoretical perspective: if the H TML5 spec is ever-evolving, how can you develop for it? How can you have compatibility with a not-final, not-ratified standard?
The answer, as I feared before and as I now know from experience: you can't. (Note: this is in the context of client-side applications designed to run in the framework of the browser -- and isn't referring to basic HTML tags, rendering, etc. All you "get off my lawn the web is about serving documents" types need not reply:p)
If you are targeting mobile devices, it's a little less painful: simply target Webkit and you'll get most of the modern mobile devices and OSs, with minor variations between them. Even so, each device platform has its own webkit version - and because the HTML "standard" is changing, so too are the features across versions. With that in mind, I have been able to produce a couple of cross-platform HTML5 "apps" that I'm decently content with - though the experience will never match a native app for each platform, of course, it is relatively consistent across platforms.
Though even this solution - targeting webkit - hearkens back to the days of IE-specific code; however it's a marginal improvement in that the webkit extensions you're using will *probably* be made an official part of the standard. If and when other browsers decide to adopt the features, you'll be able to use your app on them too - that is, after you go back and add the final, offiical names/tags for the features to your js and css files.
When you look at the situation across browser engines, it's much worse. Each implementation has cleverly prefixed non-final features with their own namespace in CSS3 for one thing. That means - you guessed it - each CSS entry has to contain declarations for a given feature from 1-4 times depending on the specific feature you're trying to use - and if a given platform provides it at all. Not to mention if it works the same across platforms (it's close, but not exact).
Because the standard is evolving, there is NO standard in terms of which features a given browser engine will choose to implement. None, zero, zilch. Is there a common baseline? I'd say about 90% of one. You absolutely cannot get away from browser-specific implementations if you want to code in HTML5/CSS3 -- you know, the very thing a standard should be preventing.
It's bad enough that I'm not planning to use HTML5 for anything but simple data delivery apps; and will be committing the egregious sin of using Flash for more complex applications that I want to deliver across platforms in the mobile space. Why? It's simple: say what you will (and trust me, I've said the same things and worse about Flash ): it *does* provide a relatively consistent experience across platforms. It provides a single, standard-in-all-but-name means to deliver applications across modern devices, systems, and OSs. (Even iOS now, with appropriate third party tools.)
And while you can choose to use platform-specific implementations of features, NOT doing so still provides you with a rich baseline of shared common functionality. Unlike HTML5 - where completely avoiding platform-specific code restricts you from using most of the functionality.
As much as I hate to admit it, Adobe appears to have succeeded in reaching what HTML5 is still striving to attain: write once, for one platform. Run anywhere that platform runs. HTML5 might have a chance to catch up, but I am doubting it. With the process of creating "standards" subject to more bickering than children unsupervised in the schoolyard, I fear they're still going to be arguing over details of their standard long after it's obsolete.
> the upcoming iOS software update (see Apple press release) will prevent further evaluation of the collected data.
They forget to add a USB port to their iPad. Users cry out. Next iteration has a USB port.
Users discover Apple is tracking them! Users cry out! Next iOS update makes it so they wouldn't have been able to see it in the first place.
Why the fuck do people continue to use Apple? Why the hell doesn't Apple want their users to see how they're being tracked and where they're being tracked?
So much for 'thinking different'.
well, based on your comment I would say that they use apple because apple has historically been very responsive tothe demands of their customers;)
Slashdot Mirror
For products (and information systems) that contain this Module, customers may continuously inform vendors (or developers) of their current and emerging needs. The vendors of those products may have the best opportunity to respond swiftly to a much clearer view of customer problems, product problems and market opportunities than they have today. The inventor believes that within a generation it will be normal for many products and services to include this type of Module, so that customers (in aggregate, the market) comes to play a larger role in directing and controlling the commercial development of many products and services.
Then later:
Simply put, this invention helps vendors and customers by transforming their learning cycle: It compresses the time and steps between setting business objectives, creating effective products and services, and improving them continuously. It also alters their roles: Customers become partners in the improvement process along with vendors and distributors.
Reading through the claims with my layman's understanding... I don't see any of them that even suggests a click-to-upgrade scheme might be related. The closest that I can find is:
16. The system of claim 1 in which the user interface presents information in one or more of the following styles: text, lists, charts, views, arrangements, hierarchies, graphical maps, sample extracts, abstracts, summary descriptions, or hypertext.
A button could be construed as hypertext, so let's look at claim 1:
1. A system comprising: units of a commodity that can be used by respective users in different locations, a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity, configured to provide a medium for two-way local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity, and further configured to elicit, from a user, information about the user's perception of the commodity, a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity, a communication element associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location.
Again, it's all about reporting back on the user's experience and perception - nothing to do with upgrade. In this light, I find it extremely odd that they would even attempt to file suit for violation of this patent.
I am so glad I'm not the only one who encountered that particular problem when I first (and last) felt the impulse to throw something. I dunno, I just figure most folks should've given up temper tantrums sometime very early in life.
There is no excuse for mornings. None, at all. They exist only so that something fills that dead space between sunrise and noon -- the problem is that so many people got the wrong impression and think we're supposed to *use* that time for something.
It's become more than a bit ridiculous - all the more so because no matter how illogical it is, companies are *succeeding* at turning a profit based on the business model I described above -- over and over again.
Yes, the TOS gives the right to redistribute. If you did not assign those rights, wouldn't that basically mean that they couldn't host your content at all?
Outside of that (I could easily be wrong in my interpretation, IANAL): yes, it's technically possible that they can sell your content. . But here's the thing - check the TOS for almost any major "social" service that accepts user generated content and you will find the same thing: YOU own the copyright, but the service provider can do what he damn well pleases. Up to and including distributing your work.
he entirety of this statement from TwitPic is intended to stave off the growing hate campaign from users who don’t like the idea of their copyright being gobbled up
Actually it's to stave of kneejerk reactions such as yours (and the countless people who immediately forwarded this kind of crap to all their twitter followers) -- those who jump to conclusions based on an understanding of terms that's somehow even hazier than mine, without providing any basis in fact. Suck it up, quit whining. If you don't like it, feel free to find another service that doesn't want rights to redistribute your work. Since you likely won't be able to, you may want to look into starting your own.
Ah, well. I hope your crappy ill-informed blog post got you some nice ad revenue from making slashdot's front page. Where's my cut of that revenue, BTW? After all, I'm one of the users who visited your site, giving you some of my valuable time to read your drivel. (Think about that for a minute.)
Same. Of course, since I'm already looking at my phone, if I happen to see that there are new messages... well, I'm already right there. Might as well check. Lets me delay the inevitable task of getting out of bad just a little longer...
True. I also left out a major factor: I (and hundreds of thousands of other ebook purchasers) really dislike the pricing; yet we don't dislike it enough to stop buying books. Until we do, or until the publishers feel that there's enough additional sales to make up for a lower per-book profit margin, they have no reason to lower prices.
Alas, I suspect neither one is coming soon.
I'm sorry, were you still speaking? I was just basking in the wonderful glow of not having your face. 'tis a shame you'll never know the feeling.
I know, I know. And yet... I still don't have to wake up and look at this face in the mirror every morning. Frankly, my relief at that simple fact kind of drowns out anything you might be trying to say.
I did an experiment on Digg and Slashdot a few years back. I posted two extremely similar comments using two different accounts. Then I modded one comment up, and one down.
Keep in mind that there was essentially no difference between these posts other than their initial out-of-the-gate moderations. On both sites, the one I modded down got modded down further. And the one I modded up got modded up further.
While the experiment was quick and informal (I'd love to see others expanding the effort...) it does tend to indicate that as little as one or two people do the "real" moderation of a comment, and many subsequent votes are "me too" votes. Given that, there's not much value in the final tally. And as we see here and elsewhere - unpopular (but factually correct and well written) views can get downmodded into oblivion; or up/down modded so much that the overall moderation is minimal.
Don't allow user moderation like slashdot and digg. If you must allow it, do it very minimally and in a way that doesn't alter whether the comment can be seen by default. DIsplay upmod and downmod totals, and don't assign a final value.
Actually that's a really good idea. Better implement it soon before someone else does...
So my undoubtedly unpopular answer is to require verified ID for all posters*. Further require that all posters use their real names as contained in their verified IDs. Even with that you'll still get some amount of trolling/flaming, but it will require much less time to manage than otherwise.
* Before anyone comments on the implicit hypocrisy, you can see that my "homepage" URL contains my name [even if the site is offline]. I don't hide behind an online identity - I am who I am, online and off. Helps keeping me from saying things I'd not want associated with me ;)
Because seeing "by thePowerOfGrayskull" causes no end of amusement for my simple mind. Also because I forgot the account info and retired the email address used for my older real-name account. Though it's not like I make a secret of my real name in any case...
Why am I not surprised: http://www.kristopeit.com/person.php?person_id=207
Excellent, glad it helps! Look for some updates coming in the fairly near future...
It wasn't too geeky, but it was written as if by someone with ADD. Perhaps no surprise?
It appears that in the process of ducking the tomatoes, you took a down-mod directly to the face.
Like it or not, when you're buying new equipment, you're looking at less than two years' support in most cases. I don't necessarily think this is a good thing (I remember when appliance warranties were 5, 10, 15 year), but the only way to avoid it today is to buy various extended support packages at inflated prices.
Of course it's not quite the same, as software is not warrantied item to begin with. It's been a while since I read an EULA, but the last I checked , there are disclaimers left and right -- namely, no warranty; and -- as importantly -- no obligation set forth wherein the vendor is required to provide any ongoing updates at all.
And as you mentioned, automobiles are under special rules.
And? I am neither a fan nor customer of apple, but I would say that if you last purchased something 2+ years ago... you're *not* a customer. You're a former customer.
Well - that depends on your target. I'm not talking about building web sites with it, that's still pretty unforgivable. Rather - using it as an application platform, where you don't even necessarily want to expose your content to the world. Reporting tools, games, proprietary content delivery. For many mind sets, this is quite a possibly a good thing. Content delivered through a custom flash app can't be trivially scraped and displayed elsewhere. (That being said: didn't they make a big deal a couple of years ago over working with google to provide search integration?)
It is when the company just bought a new OS.
RIM bought QNX, everyone expected them to move their platform to that. BlackBerry OS is terrible, loads all apps at boot, etc.
Actually it verifies the signatures of all apps at boot. The only ones loaded at boot are the ones developed to have boot-time load components...
Having used the PlayBook, I do hope to see that OS on their phones in the very near future though, and will likely be sitting out the OS7 upgrades until that's available.
What RIM cannot do is provide any government access to secured email that's attached to BES. And that's where governments like India keep repeatedly making threats -- but can't force RIM to do the impossible. (That is: obtain the private keys for each server running BES and use them to somehow provide email details to the government.) And that's a couple steps ahead of the competition.
The answer, as I feared before and as I now know from experience: you can't. (Note: this is in the context of client-side applications designed to run in the framework of the browser -- and isn't referring to basic HTML tags, rendering, etc. All you "get off my lawn the web is about serving documents" types need not reply :p)
If you are targeting mobile devices, it's a little less painful: simply target Webkit and you'll get most of the modern mobile devices and OSs, with minor variations between them. Even so, each device platform has its own webkit version - and because the HTML "standard" is changing, so too are the features across versions. With that in mind, I have been able to produce a couple of cross-platform HTML5 "apps" that I'm decently content with - though the experience will never match a native app for each platform, of course, it is relatively consistent across platforms. Though even this solution - targeting webkit - hearkens back to the days of IE-specific code; however it's a marginal improvement in that the webkit extensions you're using will *probably* be made an official part of the standard. If and when other browsers decide to adopt the features, you'll be able to use your app on them too - that is, after you go back and add the final, offiical names/tags for the features to your js and css files.
When you look at the situation across browser engines, it's much worse. Each implementation has cleverly prefixed non-final features with their own namespace in CSS3 for one thing. That means - you guessed it - each CSS entry has to contain declarations for a given feature from 1-4 times depending on the specific feature you're trying to use - and if a given platform provides it at all. Not to mention if it works the same across platforms (it's close, but not exact).
Because the standard is evolving, there is NO standard in terms of which features a given browser engine will choose to implement. None, zero, zilch. Is there a common baseline? I'd say about 90% of one. You absolutely cannot get away from browser-specific implementations if you want to code in HTML5/CSS3 -- you know, the very thing a standard should be preventing.
It's bad enough that I'm not planning to use HTML5 for anything but simple data delivery apps; and will be committing the egregious sin of using Flash for more complex applications that I want to deliver across platforms in the mobile space. Why? It's simple: say what you will (and trust me, I've said the same things and worse about Flash ): it *does* provide a relatively consistent experience across platforms. It provides a single, standard-in-all-but-name means to deliver applications across modern devices, systems, and OSs. (Even iOS now, with appropriate third party tools.)
And while you can choose to use platform-specific implementations of features, NOT doing so still provides you with a rich baseline of shared common functionality. Unlike HTML5 - where completely avoiding platform-specific code restricts you from using most of the functionality.
As much as I hate to admit it, Adobe appears to have succeeded in reaching what HTML5 is still striving to attain: write once, for one platform. Run anywhere that platform runs. HTML5 might have a chance to catch up, but I am doubting it. With the process of creating "standards" subject to more bickering than children unsupervised in the schoolyard, I fear they're still going to be arguing over details of their standard long after it's obsolete.
> the upcoming iOS software update (see Apple press release) will prevent further evaluation of the collected data.
They forget to add a USB port to their iPad. Users cry out. Next iteration has a USB port.
Users discover Apple is tracking them! Users cry out! Next iOS update makes it so they wouldn't have been able to see it in the first place.
Why the fuck do people continue to use Apple? Why the hell doesn't Apple want their users to see how they're being tracked and where they're being tracked?
So much for 'thinking different'.
well, based on your comment I would say that they use apple because apple has historically been very responsive tothe demands of their customers ;)