Companies with lots of patents and sagging revenues will often use lawsuits as a strategy to increase their own revenues with some court awarded damages and thin out the competition. Back in the early 1990s Texas Instruments set about on just such a strategy and failed miserably. At a point when memory prices were falling and japanese competition was heating up, they filed lawsuits against several Japanese chip manufacturers over their misuse of Jack Kilby's IC patents. In the end, TI lost their court cases and a lot of money in the process. (It was kinda ugly) So this kind of strategy is a gamble that doesn't always pay off.
I'm not sure how it will workout with internet companies like AltaVista. They may not have the funds to support a lengthy court case and the companies they are suing, probably can't afford to pay if they lose. Perhaps they're just hoping to scare some people into signing some modest licensing or partnership deals? (If war is just diplomacy by other means, are lawsuits just business deals by other means? hmmm...) Otherwise the courts may rule that, as with TI, these basic technologies are now entrenched and the patent holder simply waited too long to start trying to enfore them.
This is very similar to a fud article on c|net the other day. Nothing new. The biggest failure of AOL/Netscape has been their lack of PR for Mozilla. The less they say, the more the mainstream press is going to hurt them.
What is actually interesting was this article which goes on about Microsoft's new plans to support standards in future versions of IE. Would Microsoft be doing this if Mozilla didn't exist? I don't think so. If there wasn't a Mozilla, Microsoft would be pushing 'MSTML' or some other proprietary kludge.
Competition, standards, and Mozilla are GoodThings(tm) and need active support.
Unfortunately the current media climate has given us two bad choices -anonymity or self-censorship. Either way it amounts to living in fear and in a free society that's very bad.
Slashdot Mirror
I think i've seen this kind of thing before...
Companies with lots of patents and sagging revenues will often use lawsuits as a strategy to increase their own revenues with some court awarded damages and thin out the competition. Back in the early 1990s Texas Instruments set about on just such a strategy and failed miserably. At a point when memory prices were falling and japanese competition was heating up, they filed lawsuits against several Japanese chip manufacturers over their misuse of Jack Kilby's IC patents. In the end, TI lost their court cases and a lot of money in the process. (It was kinda ugly) So this kind of strategy is a gamble that doesn't always pay off.
I'm not sure how it will workout with internet companies like AltaVista. They may not have the funds to support a lengthy court case and the companies they are suing, probably can't afford to pay if they lose. Perhaps they're just hoping to scare some people into signing some modest licensing or partnership deals? (If war is just diplomacy by other means, are lawsuits just business deals by other means? hmmm...) Otherwise the courts may rule that, as with TI, these basic technologies are now entrenched and the patent holder simply waited too long to start trying to enfore them.
Simpson characters.
X-Files characters.
Porn Stars.
Precious metals, stones, and int'l currency.
Planets from StarWars.
StarTrek Characters.
...I'm really hoping to add Pokemon to this list soon, since there are 150 of them we won't run out of names anytime soon.
I really liked his use of the royal 'we' throghout the interview. It's very 'Jobsian'. I'm going to start doing that in meetings. It'll be fun.
example:
them: What are your priorities for this week.
Me: This week 'we' will be optimizing the epl templates.
They will think I'm a god -oh yeah, that'll rock...
This is very similar to a fud article on c|net the other day. Nothing new. The biggest failure of AOL/Netscape has been their lack of PR for Mozilla. The less they say, the more the mainstream press is going to hurt them.
What is actually interesting was this article which goes on about Microsoft's new plans to support standards in future versions of IE. Would Microsoft be doing this if Mozilla didn't exist? I don't think so. If there wasn't a Mozilla, Microsoft would be pushing 'MSTML' or some other proprietary kludge.
Competition, standards, and Mozilla are GoodThings(tm) and need active support.
Think twice. Type once.
Unfortunately the current media climate has given us two bad choices -anonymity or self-censorship. Either way it amounts to living in fear and in a free society that's very bad.
-stephen