Bet they didn't. If you've seen early Crunchpad prototypes, they looked NOTHING like the iPad. It wasn't until their final launch prototype was unveiled that the resemblance even began.
The iPad shares a common design history with the iPhone, and R&D started on the iPad *before* the iPhone. I'd be willing to bet that Apple has several years worth of prototypes and design documents showing that their development of the "look" of the iPad happened before the CrunchPad was a twinkle in Mr. Arrington's eye.
Yes, Dodge Caravans, Honda Odysseys and Toyota Siennas are all part of the market segment known as "minivans." Line 3 of them up side by side, would you confuse one for the other? Or would you be able to tell them apart easily? Now repeat that exercise with a Xoom, Galaxy Tab, and iPad. Much stronger similarities, don't you think?
And that's what these suits are about: You're welcome to create a competing, similar product in the free market. You're not allowed to just rip off someone else's design and slap your label on it. Whether or not the Galaxy & Xoom are "too similar" to the iPad is up to the court to decide, but pretending that the Galaxy & Xoom were pre-existing product lines that predate the iPad is just foolishness. They are clearly responses to the iPad, and there is a fairly strong similarity. So, the court will review and determine whether or not that similarity rises to the level of an actionable infringement.
This assumes it's an overinflated bubble now, and there are very few indications that it is. Given that it's P/E ratio isn't particularly out of line with other similar companies, there's not a lot to suggest that its value is heavily over-inflated at present - they make a metric shit-ton of money (and profit) on all those devices, and they've been selling more, and more, and more of them quarter over quarter and year over year.
Now, Steve Jobs stepping down / dying would certainly be a psychological shock, but there's not a lot to indicate that the market would be fundamentally left adrift by that happening - they have a solid line of products, they no doubt have several years of future revisions mapped out, probably several product ideas in the pipeline, and strong leadership still - all fundamentally good things for a company. I expect the stock will take a hit when he does step down (or pass away), but I suspect that will be fundamentally a self-correcting jitter.
You won't see the price truly take a lasting hit until one or more of the following becomes true: 1) Apple's margins start getting eaten into by competing products; so far, doesn't look like that's happening - Macs still make good profits-per-unit, and all estimates of iPod, iPad and iPhone costs also suggest high margins; 2) Apple's sales volume drops significantly, and for several quarters in a row; so far, doesn't look like that's happening, with quarterly increases and year-over-year increases for several years running now; 3) Apple's products reach a saturation point ("everybody who wants an iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Mac has one"), and it becomes apparent that they have no additional product ideas - new lines, or new models of existing lines - in their pipeline; Too early to tell if that's the case, but I suspect they have a few more tricks up their corporate sleeve.
How is this different from *any other software development,* ever, in history? If you want to program effectively for a platform, you need to have a computer running that platform. Want to program for Windows? Go buy a windows box. Want to program for Linux? Build or buy a PC and load Linux on it. What's that? You have a Windows box already? Great, then either: 1) turn it into a hackintosh; or 2) consider whether or not the money / knowledge you'll get in return for programming on iOS or Mac OS X will be worth that $699 hardware purchase. If it is, buy the hardware and quite whining. If it isn't keep programming for Windows, Linux, WebOS, WP7, and Android on your Windows/Linux system.
For my money, if I wanted an all-purpose programming system, I would actually go out and buy a mac. Then I'd load VMware on it, and install Win7 and Ubuntu or Red Hat as guest operating systems, and set up dev environments for all of the platforms I intended to build software for, all on a single system, so I can easily move from one to the other.
Then rather than complain about it in a short whiny blog post, perhaps they should start flexing their consiberable muscle and: 1) Educating the public (that blog post is not educational, it's a "oh woe is me" rant) 2) Lobbying congress for legitimate reform.
Google is not the only company with the time, money, and inclination to pursue patent reform, but I'm sure they're among the largest and most influential. Right now, patent portfolios amount to mutually assured destruction - just like the cold war. If we can sign the START series of treaties for nuclear weapons, I'm sure we can find some common ground on patents, too. I bet even big, patent-rich companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle would be willing to agree to many of the reforms that Google would want, despite the fact that they are all competing in various markets with one another. After all, less money spent fighting off patent lawsuits from competitors = more money for R&D, acquisitions, marketing, advertising, and the like.
Imagine if Google took a leadership role in this space - they have the money, they have a free-to-use advertising and marketing platform, and I bet there'd be thousands of companies here and around the globe who would love to see serious patent reform, as well as tens of thousands of sizable open source projects and developers who would no doubt love to see significant reform, as well as organizations like the FSF and the EFF who have been talking about the need for reform for years now. That 3 billion would have gone a lot farther towards ending their woes as lobbying money than it would in contributing to the patent "cold war" that exists currently.
The problem with Google's stance is that it's so self-contradictory: 1) We're being attacked by bogus patents. (If they're bogus... being attacked by them shouldn't be too hard to shrug off the attempt - demonstrate how bogus the patents are in court.) 2) We're bidding on patents. (To defend ourselves against these bogus patents, which are totally bogus, but seemingly require acquisition of key patents and technology rights to enable us to defend against suits - indicating that maybe they're not totally bogus, after all.) 3) We hold our own patents.
Declaring that "this game is so stupid," while playing the game yourself doesn't make the rules of the game as it exists today go away, it just makes them look like feeble hypocrites.
If only they'd start out with a blog post discussing how they thought that patents were harming innovation.
1. Their post blithely ignores the fact that they have their own patents, and have participated in numerous bidding exercises for patent pools in the past. 2. They didn't discuss how they thought patents were harming innovation, they complained that "Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are ganging up on us because they don't like Android." There were no statements of principle, but there was an awful lot of bitching.
From the whiny blog post:
Our competitors are waging a patent war on Android and working together to keep us from getting patents that would help balance the scales.
Yeah, that's a great vision for change right there. No whining at all, and thoroughly educational. I can't wait to see what's next in their excellent educational initiative. My bet is it reads something like: "Microsoft are big jerk faces, Android rules, but bogus patents!"
It doesn't seem to be handwringing over cultural trends at all. Just seems to be saying that there's a very real chance of selection bias inherent to the data set.
Say you did an analysis of computer programming based on O'reilly's Safari service. It'd probably suggest to you that algorithms and system design was pretty much irrelevant to programming, since there's only a couple Knuth books which could be overlooked, but things like "Ruby on Rails," "Perl," and "iOS Programming in 21 Days," were incredibly important tomes, simply based on the relative volume of output related to the two subjects.
The content of those digitized books could easily skew the results of any quantitative analysis, when you are using source material that is curated & biased towards certain topics. The fact that you cite one "kinda porn" book as an example of the diversity simply highlights this: the inclusion of only a handful of "sexy" fare might lead people to conclude that, as a society, modern people are actually a very asexual bunch, much more inclined to think about academic topics, than sex. In short - a very mistaken conclusion, as anybody who's bothered to turn on a television in the past 20 years can attest.
No, I'm not confused at all. I'm saying that both Microsoft (with the Linux patent threats) and Google (with its Android patent defense) are engaging in the same vapid "LOL NO U" behavior, just on different sides of the argument. In the case of Microsoft vs. Linux, they refused to name a patent, and were engaging in FUD. In the case of Oracle's suit vs. Android, they've named 6 (iirc) specific patents which Android is infringing on. They've stated the facts, and filed a suit, and Google's response has been, "After all we've done for you people, why won't you stop persecuting us?!"
Microsoft alleged that Linux infringes on patents they held, but couldn't name how, or cite a single patent they believe is infringed on. They are told, "Shut up unless you have some actual facts to back up your claim." A reasonable response from the Linux community - for a company full of engineers and PhDs, I think it's reasonable to expect that somebody at Microsoft can name at least one patent they feel is being violated, publicly, and explain how Linux is violating that patent.
Oracle alleges Google infringes on patents, and names very specific patents which they believe are being infringed and files suit. Google responds with, "Nuh-uh, you're bogus, you big stupid!" For a company full of engineers and PhDs, I think it's reasonable to expect that they could mount a more credible defense of their technology than a whiny blog post written by a lawyer, moaning about how Google is just trying to better everybody's life, and these awful mean corporations just keep on harshing their buzz. Fire back strongly and factually enough, and I bet even Oracle would be tempted to slink away looking pretty sheepish, rather than press the suit and risk having a bunch of their patents invalidated in court by a pissed off Google with the facts on its side.
They need ammunition... for what? They're being sued. They claim all of the suits and patents are bogus - so why not simply demonstrate the obviousness of the solution, or the prior art, in court, get the patents invalidated, and have an end to the situation? You don't need to spend 3 billion dollars getting bogus suits tossed out, and I bet the remainder of that 3 billion would go a long way towards lobbying for patent and copyright reform which would solve the problem for good.
Or, spend that 3 billion doing some innovating in-house, and build your own patent portfolio, and then negotiate aggressive cross-licensing deals with your competitors, if detente is what you want. Google is chock full of Computer Science wunderkind, how hard can it be for them to come up with some awesome patentable innovations that they build their own IP portfolio with?
If Google is willing to spend 3 billion dollars on a bunch of bogus patents as "ammunition" to defend itself with, it's clearly not averse to the concept of bogus patents, they're just bummed that they don't have any of their own - so why not start filing some? The iPhone didn't exist as a product until 2007, Google's been around quite a bit longer than that... how is it that Apple has all kinds of patents on touchscreen phone technology to sue Google with, but Google has nothing to counter-sue with from their time and money spent on Android?
It's clear they were sensitive to the notion that their platform might run afoul of Sun's Java patent licensing; In light of that, I'm sure they were very careful to document their non-infringing clean-room implementation to protect themselves against just such a claim of infringement. So, if Google truly has found a third way that doesn't infringe in their Dalvik implementation, surely they can demonstrate that in court, and the courts will deny Oracle's claims against Google.
Google is not an underdog, and hasn't been much of one for years. If you think that Google's bid on those patents was anything other than an attempt to secure a mutually-assured-destruction detente with some or all of the people suing them, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, too.
They could have easily joined the pool, and saved a few billion dollars, if their goal was simply to secure rights to the technology covered by those patents. Instead, they decided they'd rather own them outright, rather than share, and they lost the bidding.
Would you bid 3 billion dollars on a bunch of shit papers that you believed were dubious, and would be invalidated by the first legal challenge to come along? I could think of a few better uses I could find for 3 billion dollars, and I bet the PhD's and MBA's at Google can, too.
So Google's complaint about Microsoft and your hero Apple employing anti-competitive practices in the marketplace is whining?
Yes, it is. If they have a legitimate legal case, they should file a lawsuit, and resolve it in court - using a bunch of weasel words and half truths in a blog post because somebody's competing vigorously with you is whining. It would be whining if Microsoft, Apple, or Oracle did it, too. Google asserts the patents are bogus - great, tell us which ones are bogus, and show your work, don't just wave your hands and throw FUD around. When Microsoft asserted that Linux "violated numerous patents" way back when, that was - rightfully - the response of the Linux community: "Really, Microsoft? If we violate so many patents, surely you can provide us with the patent numbers we've violated, can't you?"
So you think that if Microsoft and your hero Apples does not use dubious software patents to usurp the marketplace its "pretty fucking stupid"? Well I guess we know where you stand.
I can't even parse this sentence, but I believe what you're saying is: "I (Americano) believe that Apple and Microsoft are stupid if they don't use software patents I (Andydread) believe to be dubious to protect their businesses." If that is indeed what you meant, then yes, I believe that Apple and Microsoft would be fucking stupid not to use every *legal* competitive advantage at their disposal - and I think Google would be a bunch of retards for failing to do so, as well. Let's be clear: The patent system is law. It certainly needs an overhaul, and there's a lot of shitty patents floating around, I'll absolutely grant that. But with that said, the solution to a bad system is not to whine about it in a blog: it's to create a compelling alternative vision for reform (I'm certain Google could get lots of help from the EFF and FSF with specific ideas about how to reform the system), and then lobby for that reform by enlisting the support of other industry leaders, and lobbying the government for reform - just like all those companies lobbying the government to extend copyright terms, and issue patents on obvious and non-innovative ideas.
Laws don't get changed because of a blog post. According to conventional wisdom here, laws get changed when a corporation buys up enough legislators. Well, if money is all it takes, Google sure has a lot of that, and a pervasive - and quite free for them to use - platform for advertising their position to educate and convince citizens of the problems inherent to the current system.
As it is, Google's just going 'Whaaa, we lost the bidding for those patents, and Apple and Microsoft and Oracle are trying to hurt our poor widdle Andwoid business. Poor us." That's not a compelling alternative vision for IP law, that's a whiny bitchfest, and it does nothing to advance the reform they're claiming is needed. If the patents are bogus, then Google has nothing to fear - clearly if they know they're bogus, they can demonstrate their flimsiness in court. And if the patents are not bogus, then Google is running roughshod over other people's IP, and deserves the penalties for violating them. "Because I really wanted it, but didn't want to pay for licensing" is not a good enough reason to violate patents, if they are found to have violated any.
One of the most interesting passages in today's order quotes from an October 2005 email by Google's Android boss Andy Rubin:
"If Sun doesn't want to work with us, we have two options: 1) Abandon our work and adopt MSFT CLR VM and C# language - or - 2) Do Java anyway and defend our decision, perhaps making enemies along the way"
Verbatim, from a Google email. But yeah, there's no evidence that they've done anything untoward with other peoples' IP, it's all just a bunch of paid shills attacking the little bitty underdog Google, because they're afraid of how that scrappy, unconventional little indie company named Google pisses innovation and craps excellence.
In fairness, Google brings this round of criticism on themselves with their whiny, self-righteous blog post.
"Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft are evil and awful. Never mind the fact that we engage in the same business practices and do the same things they do - right down to bidding on the same sets of patents they outbid us for, and offered to let us join the consortium to buy. Ignore that. Continue viewing us as the embattled underdog, because that makes us more sympathetic."
Imagine if Tim Cook posted a blog whining about "Oh woe is me, Google is trying to build a competing service to our iCloud service with Google Music! They're evil, and just copy everything we do... waaaah." He'd be laughed out of the Valley, and rightfully so.
When you're on top in an industry, guess what? Your competitors will go after you and try to take away your business. This is the way competitive markets work. If you suspect that your competitors are colluding in violation of antitrust laws, file a lawsuit. Whining about how your competitors won't just go away and cede the market to you is pretty fucking stupid, especially when you're an 8,000-ton gorilla.
Yes and no. Everything Google does is oriented towards bringing in better advertising revenue.
By direct income, Android licensing and other non-search "stuff" isn't making them much money.
But that "income from search" number remains large, and that is the point of Android, Gmail, Maps, Places, Google+ etc. To get you using everything that they can possibly think of that's owned by Google, so Google can display more ads, and understand online behavior better and serve more *effective* ads, and make money.
They give away Android to get Google apps and search in front of consumers, which turns into more ads displayed, and more data to mine for online customer behavior.
It all feeds their bottom line, which is search. In my opinion, this is why you can't and shouldn't trust google farther than you can throw them, but I still have a gmail account, and I still use Chrome, and I still use google search constantly, despite my misgivings about what they do with the data. Until and unless they do something *blatantly* awful, free, quick, and easy, trumps more-private subscription services for the casual online stuff.
According to the takedown notice posted at one seized site: "This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C. Sections 981 and 2323."
It goes on to quote, "Willful copyright infringement is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (17 U.S.C. Section 506, 18 U.S.C. Section 2319). Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (18 U.S.C. Section 2320)."
So, there you go. There's the US Laws it appears the seized sites have violated. I'm sure you'll look them up now in an attempt to understand how the laws are being applied here, rather than insist that it's an arbitrary seizure that falls outside the purview of any existing laws. You may disagree with these laws, and find them odious, but they are laws, nonetheless.
So letting the vendor replicate its bugs and idiosyncrasies across all platforms in perfect sync is a good thing? Systems which are written & tested to clearly documented requirements tend to have a higher quality implementation and documentation. If the same people who write the requirement specs are the people writing the code to implement those requirements, then you open the door for all kinds of shenanigans, like "Well the spec says X, but it's so much easier to do Y, and nobody will ever notice - we can just update the spec after the fact to reflect the change."
Apple pushing nVidia to clearly document its interfaces and discovering disconnects between "actual behavior" and "expected behavior" based on a written spec is a good thing for all of nVidia's users. If your interfaces are so brittle that people are regularly exposing significant issues when they write code against them, you're doing something wrong.
After all, consumers are quick to be incensed but they're easily mollified by good customer support.
And with some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry, isn't it possible that perhaps Apple knows something about good customer support that you don't?
I don't know, maybe they've discovered that it's a bad idea to let your support forums turn into a whining trollfest full of threats of boycotts and lawsuits, related to an issue that has just been found, and might be a software, hardware, manufacturer or "user error" type of issue? I can't imagine how increasing the amount of unhelpful whining on customer support forums is a "good" thing for the general user base - it contributes nothing useful to help people troubleshoot, and it's just going to bog down the support forums.
You have yet to establish that this is "such a problem" in the first place, so it's hard to understand what problem you're thinking would be solved by letting nVidia write their own drivers.
Take it for what it is: The systems generally work quite well, so when something goes wrong, people freak out and behave like it's the end of the world.
This is exacerbated by sites like Slashdot who love nothing more than to pump pageviews and revenue by getting a bunch of apple-hating and apple-loving trolls trolling each other, to the tune of hundreds of comments per article.
I'm just pointing out the obvious here, but Google could actually go innovate something, produce a patentable product, and build their own portfolio of patents as well, rather than just buying up everybody else's patents, and scraping everybody else's copyrighted data to profit from it.
I read this whole issue as "Google says patents make their business model of pumping de facto monopoly profits from search into other industries to kill competitors really difficult to implement."
Yet, they are one of the most secretive companies when it comes to anything relevant to their actual profit centers. They're happy to destroy other people's business models, but if somebody attacks them, they go crying to the government and the press.
Technically, 4.5 billion *is* pocket change for Apple, who is sitting on cash reserves of upwards of 75 billion, at last report.
I don't know how much cash on hand Google, Microsoft, and Oracle have offhand (I know Apple's because it was just reported in the last couple days), but I have to think that if they had wanted to, they could have easily found or raised 4.5 billion.
Slashdot Mirror
Bet they didn't. If you've seen early Crunchpad prototypes, they looked NOTHING like the iPad. It wasn't until their final launch prototype was unveiled that the resemblance even began.
The iPad shares a common design history with the iPhone, and R&D started on the iPad *before* the iPhone. I'd be willing to bet that Apple has several years worth of prototypes and design documents showing that their development of the "look" of the iPad happened before the CrunchPad was a twinkle in Mr. Arrington's eye.
But nice try.
That rather depends on how you define "successful," I suspect. What's your nomination for first successful tablet?
Yes, Dodge Caravans, Honda Odysseys and Toyota Siennas are all part of the market segment known as "minivans." Line 3 of them up side by side, would you confuse one for the other? Or would you be able to tell them apart easily? Now repeat that exercise with a Xoom, Galaxy Tab, and iPad. Much stronger similarities, don't you think?
And that's what these suits are about: You're welcome to create a competing, similar product in the free market. You're not allowed to just rip off someone else's design and slap your label on it. Whether or not the Galaxy & Xoom are "too similar" to the iPad is up to the court to decide, but pretending that the Galaxy & Xoom were pre-existing product lines that predate the iPad is just foolishness. They are clearly responses to the iPad, and there is a fairly strong similarity. So, the court will review and determine whether or not that similarity rises to the level of an actionable infringement.
"Join the Apple boycott now, and win a free iPad 2!"
This assumes it's an overinflated bubble now, and there are very few indications that it is. Given that it's P/E ratio isn't particularly out of line with other similar companies, there's not a lot to suggest that its value is heavily over-inflated at present - they make a metric shit-ton of money (and profit) on all those devices, and they've been selling more, and more, and more of them quarter over quarter and year over year.
Now, Steve Jobs stepping down / dying would certainly be a psychological shock, but there's not a lot to indicate that the market would be fundamentally left adrift by that happening - they have a solid line of products, they no doubt have several years of future revisions mapped out, probably several product ideas in the pipeline, and strong leadership still - all fundamentally good things for a company. I expect the stock will take a hit when he does step down (or pass away), but I suspect that will be fundamentally a self-correcting jitter.
You won't see the price truly take a lasting hit until one or more of the following becomes true:
1) Apple's margins start getting eaten into by competing products; so far, doesn't look like that's happening - Macs still make good profits-per-unit, and all estimates of iPod, iPad and iPhone costs also suggest high margins;
2) Apple's sales volume drops significantly, and for several quarters in a row; so far, doesn't look like that's happening, with quarterly increases and year-over-year increases for several years running now;
3) Apple's products reach a saturation point ("everybody who wants an iPad, iPhone, iPod, or Mac has one"), and it becomes apparent that they have no additional product ideas - new lines, or new models of existing lines - in their pipeline; Too early to tell if that's the case, but I suspect they have a few more tricks up their corporate sleeve.
Yes, actually, in that Android is a Linux kernel, they are all running Linux somewhere in their development environments.
See? I can pretend I didn't understand your point, too!
How is this different from *any other software development,* ever, in history? If you want to program effectively for a platform, you need to have a computer running that platform. Want to program for Windows? Go buy a windows box. Want to program for Linux? Build or buy a PC and load Linux on it. What's that? You have a Windows box already? Great, then either: 1) turn it into a hackintosh; or 2) consider whether or not the money / knowledge you'll get in return for programming on iOS or Mac OS X will be worth that $699 hardware purchase. If it is, buy the hardware and quite whining. If it isn't keep programming for Windows, Linux, WebOS, WP7, and Android on your Windows/Linux system.
For my money, if I wanted an all-purpose programming system, I would actually go out and buy a mac. Then I'd load VMware on it, and install Win7 and Ubuntu or Red Hat as guest operating systems, and set up dev environments for all of the platforms I intended to build software for, all on a single system, so I can easily move from one to the other.
Then rather than complain about it in a short whiny blog post, perhaps they should start flexing their consiberable muscle and:
1) Educating the public (that blog post is not educational, it's a "oh woe is me" rant)
2) Lobbying congress for legitimate reform.
Google is not the only company with the time, money, and inclination to pursue patent reform, but I'm sure they're among the largest and most influential. Right now, patent portfolios amount to mutually assured destruction - just like the cold war. If we can sign the START series of treaties for nuclear weapons, I'm sure we can find some common ground on patents, too. I bet even big, patent-rich companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, and Oracle would be willing to agree to many of the reforms that Google would want, despite the fact that they are all competing in various markets with one another. After all, less money spent fighting off patent lawsuits from competitors = more money for R&D, acquisitions, marketing, advertising, and the like.
Imagine if Google took a leadership role in this space - they have the money, they have a free-to-use advertising and marketing platform, and I bet there'd be thousands of companies here and around the globe who would love to see serious patent reform, as well as tens of thousands of sizable open source projects and developers who would no doubt love to see significant reform, as well as organizations like the FSF and the EFF who have been talking about the need for reform for years now. That 3 billion would have gone a lot farther towards ending their woes as lobbying money than it would in contributing to the patent "cold war" that exists currently.
The problem with Google's stance is that it's so self-contradictory:
1) We're being attacked by bogus patents. (If they're bogus... being attacked by them shouldn't be too hard to shrug off the attempt - demonstrate how bogus the patents are in court.)
2) We're bidding on patents. (To defend ourselves against these bogus patents, which are totally bogus, but seemingly require acquisition of key patents and technology rights to enable us to defend against suits - indicating that maybe they're not totally bogus, after all.)
3) We hold our own patents.
Declaring that "this game is so stupid," while playing the game yourself doesn't make the rules of the game as it exists today go away, it just makes them look like feeble hypocrites.
1. Their post blithely ignores the fact that they have their own patents, and have participated in numerous bidding exercises for patent pools in the past.
2. They didn't discuss how they thought patents were harming innovation, they complained that "Apple, Microsoft, and Oracle are ganging up on us because they don't like Android." There were no statements of principle, but there was an awful lot of bitching.
From the whiny blog post:
Yeah, that's a great vision for change right there. No whining at all, and thoroughly educational. I can't wait to see what's next in their excellent educational initiative. My bet is it reads something like: "Microsoft are big jerk faces, Android rules, but bogus patents!"
It doesn't seem to be handwringing over cultural trends at all. Just seems to be saying that there's a very real chance of selection bias inherent to the data set.
Say you did an analysis of computer programming based on O'reilly's Safari service. It'd probably suggest to you that algorithms and system design was pretty much irrelevant to programming, since there's only a couple Knuth books which could be overlooked, but things like "Ruby on Rails," "Perl," and "iOS Programming in 21 Days," were incredibly important tomes, simply based on the relative volume of output related to the two subjects.
The content of those digitized books could easily skew the results of any quantitative analysis, when you are using source material that is curated & biased towards certain topics. The fact that you cite one "kinda porn" book as an example of the diversity simply highlights this: the inclusion of only a handful of "sexy" fare might lead people to conclude that, as a society, modern people are actually a very asexual bunch, much more inclined to think about academic topics, than sex. In short - a very mistaken conclusion, as anybody who's bothered to turn on a television in the past 20 years can attest.
No, I'm not confused at all. I'm saying that both Microsoft (with the Linux patent threats) and Google (with its Android patent defense) are engaging in the same vapid "LOL NO U" behavior, just on different sides of the argument. In the case of Microsoft vs. Linux, they refused to name a patent, and were engaging in FUD. In the case of Oracle's suit vs. Android, they've named 6 (iirc) specific patents which Android is infringing on. They've stated the facts, and filed a suit, and Google's response has been, "After all we've done for you people, why won't you stop persecuting us?!"
Microsoft alleged that Linux infringes on patents they held, but couldn't name how, or cite a single patent they believe is infringed on. They are told, "Shut up unless you have some actual facts to back up your claim." A reasonable response from the Linux community - for a company full of engineers and PhDs, I think it's reasonable to expect that somebody at Microsoft can name at least one patent they feel is being violated, publicly, and explain how Linux is violating that patent.
Oracle alleges Google infringes on patents, and names very specific patents which they believe are being infringed and files suit. Google responds with, "Nuh-uh, you're bogus, you big stupid!" For a company full of engineers and PhDs, I think it's reasonable to expect that they could mount a more credible defense of their technology than a whiny blog post written by a lawyer, moaning about how Google is just trying to better everybody's life, and these awful mean corporations just keep on harshing their buzz. Fire back strongly and factually enough, and I bet even Oracle would be tempted to slink away looking pretty sheepish, rather than press the suit and risk having a bunch of their patents invalidated in court by a pissed off Google with the facts on its side.
They need ammunition... for what? They're being sued. They claim all of the suits and patents are bogus - so why not simply demonstrate the obviousness of the solution, or the prior art, in court, get the patents invalidated, and have an end to the situation? You don't need to spend 3 billion dollars getting bogus suits tossed out, and I bet the remainder of that 3 billion would go a long way towards lobbying for patent and copyright reform which would solve the problem for good.
Or, spend that 3 billion doing some innovating in-house, and build your own patent portfolio, and then negotiate aggressive cross-licensing deals with your competitors, if detente is what you want. Google is chock full of Computer Science wunderkind, how hard can it be for them to come up with some awesome patentable innovations that they build their own IP portfolio with?
If Google is willing to spend 3 billion dollars on a bunch of bogus patents as "ammunition" to defend itself with, it's clearly not averse to the concept of bogus patents, they're just bummed that they don't have any of their own - so why not start filing some? The iPhone didn't exist as a product until 2007, Google's been around quite a bit longer than that... how is it that Apple has all kinds of patents on touchscreen phone technology to sue Google with, but Google has nothing to counter-sue with from their time and money spent on Android?
It's clear they were sensitive to the notion that their platform might run afoul of Sun's Java patent licensing; In light of that, I'm sure they were very careful to document their non-infringing clean-room implementation to protect themselves against just such a claim of infringement. So, if Google truly has found a third way that doesn't infringe in their Dalvik implementation, surely they can demonstrate that in court, and the courts will deny Oracle's claims against Google.
Google is not an underdog, and hasn't been much of one for years. If you think that Google's bid on those patents was anything other than an attempt to secure a mutually-assured-destruction detente with some or all of the people suing them, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you, too.
They could have easily joined the pool, and saved a few billion dollars, if their goal was simply to secure rights to the technology covered by those patents. Instead, they decided they'd rather own them outright, rather than share, and they lost the bidding.
Would you bid 3 billion dollars on a bunch of shit papers that you believed were dubious, and would be invalidated by the first legal challenge to come along? I could think of a few better uses I could find for 3 billion dollars, and I bet the PhD's and MBA's at Google can, too.
Yes, it is. If they have a legitimate legal case, they should file a lawsuit, and resolve it in court - using a bunch of weasel words and half truths in a blog post because somebody's competing vigorously with you is whining. It would be whining if Microsoft, Apple, or Oracle did it, too. Google asserts the patents are bogus - great, tell us which ones are bogus, and show your work, don't just wave your hands and throw FUD around. When Microsoft asserted that Linux "violated numerous patents" way back when, that was - rightfully - the response of the Linux community: "Really, Microsoft? If we violate so many patents, surely you can provide us with the patent numbers we've violated, can't you?"
I can't even parse this sentence, but I believe what you're saying is: "I (Americano) believe that Apple and Microsoft are stupid if they don't use software patents I (Andydread) believe to be dubious to protect their businesses." If that is indeed what you meant, then yes, I believe that Apple and Microsoft would be fucking stupid not to use every *legal* competitive advantage at their disposal - and I think Google would be a bunch of retards for failing to do so, as well. Let's be clear: The patent system is law. It certainly needs an overhaul, and there's a lot of shitty patents floating around, I'll absolutely grant that. But with that said, the solution to a bad system is not to whine about it in a blog: it's to create a compelling alternative vision for reform (I'm certain Google could get lots of help from the EFF and FSF with specific ideas about how to reform the system), and then lobby for that reform by enlisting the support of other industry leaders, and lobbying the government for reform - just like all those companies lobbying the government to extend copyright terms, and issue patents on obvious and non-innovative ideas.
Laws don't get changed because of a blog post. According to conventional wisdom here, laws get changed when a corporation buys up enough legislators. Well, if money is all it takes, Google sure has a lot of that, and a pervasive - and quite free for them to use - platform for advertising their position to educate and convince citizens of the problems inherent to the current system.
As it is, Google's just going 'Whaaa, we lost the bidding for those patents, and Apple and Microsoft and Oracle are trying to hurt our poor widdle Andwoid business. Poor us." That's not a compelling alternative vision for IP law, that's a whiny bitchfest, and it does nothing to advance the reform they're claiming is needed. If the patents are bogus, then Google has nothing to fear - clearly if they know they're bogus, they can demonstrate their flimsiness in court. And if the patents are not bogus, then Google is running roughshod over other people's IP, and deserves the penalties for violating them. "Because I really wanted it, but didn't want to pay for licensing" is not a good enough reason to violate patents, if they are found to have violated any.
From: http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/07/judge-orders-overhaul-of-oracles.html
Verbatim, from a Google email. But yeah, there's no evidence that they've done anything untoward with other peoples' IP, it's all just a bunch of paid shills attacking the little bitty underdog Google, because they're afraid of how that scrappy, unconventional little indie company named Google pisses innovation and craps excellence.
In fairness, Google brings this round of criticism on themselves with their whiny, self-righteous blog post.
"Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft are evil and awful. Never mind the fact that we engage in the same business practices and do the same things they do - right down to bidding on the same sets of patents they outbid us for, and offered to let us join the consortium to buy. Ignore that. Continue viewing us as the embattled underdog, because that makes us more sympathetic."
Imagine if Tim Cook posted a blog whining about "Oh woe is me, Google is trying to build a competing service to our iCloud service with Google Music! They're evil, and just copy everything we do... waaaah." He'd be laughed out of the Valley, and rightfully so.
When you're on top in an industry, guess what? Your competitors will go after you and try to take away your business. This is the way competitive markets work. If you suspect that your competitors are colluding in violation of antitrust laws, file a lawsuit. Whining about how your competitors won't just go away and cede the market to you is pretty fucking stupid, especially when you're an 8,000-ton gorilla.
Yes and no. Everything Google does is oriented towards bringing in better advertising revenue.
By direct income, Android licensing and other non-search "stuff" isn't making them much money.
But that "income from search" number remains large, and that is the point of Android, Gmail, Maps, Places, Google+ etc. To get you using everything that they can possibly think of that's owned by Google, so Google can display more ads, and understand online behavior better and serve more *effective* ads, and make money.
They give away Android to get Google apps and search in front of consumers, which turns into more ads displayed, and more data to mine for online customer behavior.
It all feeds their bottom line, which is search. In my opinion, this is why you can't and shouldn't trust google farther than you can throw them, but I still have a gmail account, and I still use Chrome, and I still use google search constantly, despite my misgivings about what they do with the data. Until and unless they do something *blatantly* awful, free, quick, and easy, trumps more-private subscription services for the casual online stuff.
According to the takedown notice posted at one seized site: "This domain name has been seized by ICE - Homeland Security Investigations, pursuant to a seizure warrant issued by a United States District Court under the authority of 18 U.S.C. Sections 981 and 2323."
It goes on to quote, "Willful copyright infringement is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to five years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (17 U.S.C. Section 506, 18 U.S.C. Section 2319). Intentionally and knowingly trafficking in counterfeit goods is a federal crime that carries penalties for first time offenders of up to ten years in federal prison, a $2,000,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution (18 U.S.C. Section 2320)."
So, there you go. There's the US Laws it appears the seized sites have violated. I'm sure you'll look them up now in an attempt to understand how the laws are being applied here, rather than insist that it's an arbitrary seizure that falls outside the purview of any existing laws. You may disagree with these laws, and find them odious, but they are laws, nonetheless.
So letting the vendor replicate its bugs and idiosyncrasies across all platforms in perfect sync is a good thing? Systems which are written & tested to clearly documented requirements tend to have a higher quality implementation and documentation. If the same people who write the requirement specs are the people writing the code to implement those requirements, then you open the door for all kinds of shenanigans, like "Well the spec says X, but it's so much easier to do Y, and nobody will ever notice - we can just update the spec after the fact to reflect the change."
Apple pushing nVidia to clearly document its interfaces and discovering disconnects between "actual behavior" and "expected behavior" based on a written spec is a good thing for all of nVidia's users. If your interfaces are so brittle that people are regularly exposing significant issues when they write code against them, you're doing something wrong.
And with some of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry, isn't it possible that perhaps Apple knows something about good customer support that you don't?
I don't know, maybe they've discovered that it's a bad idea to let your support forums turn into a whining trollfest full of threats of boycotts and lawsuits, related to an issue that has just been found, and might be a software, hardware, manufacturer or "user error" type of issue? I can't imagine how increasing the amount of unhelpful whining on customer support forums is a "good" thing for the general user base - it contributes nothing useful to help people troubleshoot, and it's just going to bog down the support forums.
You have yet to establish that this is "such a problem" in the first place, so it's hard to understand what problem you're thinking would be solved by letting nVidia write their own drivers.
Take it for what it is: The systems generally work quite well, so when something goes wrong, people freak out and behave like it's the end of the world.
This is exacerbated by sites like Slashdot who love nothing more than to pump pageviews and revenue by getting a bunch of apple-hating and apple-loving trolls trolling each other, to the tune of hundreds of comments per article.
I'm just pointing out the obvious here, but Google could actually go innovate something, produce a patentable product, and build their own portfolio of patents as well, rather than just buying up everybody else's patents, and scraping everybody else's copyrighted data to profit from it.
I read this whole issue as "Google says patents make their business model of pumping de facto monopoly profits from search into other industries to kill competitors really difficult to implement."
Yet, they are one of the most secretive companies when it comes to anything relevant to their actual profit centers. They're happy to destroy other people's business models, but if somebody attacks them, they go crying to the government and the press.
Technically, 4.5 billion *is* pocket change for Apple, who is sitting on cash reserves of upwards of 75 billion, at last report.
I don't know how much cash on hand Google, Microsoft, and Oracle have offhand (I know Apple's because it was just reported in the last couple days), but I have to think that if they had wanted to, they could have easily found or raised 4.5 billion.