Umm, perhaps you'd better read the thing again. 50% of their revenue was from the iPhone. App sales are not included in that number. Those are included in iTunes revenue.
To be fair, I think one of the big problems with CueCat was that it came way too soon. Pair that with an Android or iPhone with a barcode scanner app, and it would have been much more successful.
No. The financial disparity was still there, even when you take into account donations, because those donations likely would not have been enough to cover his legal fees and a potential judgement against him. And odds are the legal talent available to Sony is orders of magnitude higher than the talent available to Geohot.
Do you really think a jurisdiction issue would stop them? Suppose its found out that California doesn't have jurisdiction. What's stopping Sony from then filing the same suit in whatever Geohot's home jurisdiction is? It may be more convenient and cheaper for Sony to do it in California, but they could easily go over to RIT if they had to.
If he did have it in the bag, he probably wouldn't have settled. You have to remember, Sony has armies upon armies of highly trained and highly skilled lawyers on their side. Geohot does not. Even if he was completely in the right, Sony can drag things out over and over until he loses the will or the financial capability to fight.
Are you talking about when you miss a call, or when you see a phone number anywhere? Cause if you missed the call, just about all phones will bring up the contact name if the number is stored in your phone book.
So, if the judge agrees with the jury that the original patent was valid and then Apple uses the technology without paying royalties, So, how can a judge find that the original patent is valid (which is also what the jury determined), recognize that Apple used the patented technology (which is also what the jury determined) and then through out the award and close the the case? At a minimum, should it not have been sent back to the lower court to be re-tried?
You don't suppose there couldn't be another option? One in which the judge thinks the patent is valid, yet at the same time, doesn't believe that Apple infringed on it?
If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet, that means that the demand for tablets is being driven by Apple rather than a need for tablets.
Close, but not quite. The Xoom may be a "good enough" tablet, able to compete with the iPad. However, given that the iPad has such a head start, in order to get people to buy Xooms instead of iPads, the Xoom can't just be as good as the iPad, it has to be much, much better. If its not as good, or just as good, there's really no point, and I might as well buy an iPad, as the large user base will help guarantee that I'll have access to a steady stream of content and apps designed for my device. Its like the iPod and every other MP3 player. Creative, Phillips, even Microsoft all came out with portable media players to compete with the iPod, and many of them were good devices. But none of them were significantly better than the iPod, so consumers didn't really see the point.
But if Office and Windows play nice with smartphones, then other tools can interact with Office and Wndows, dramatically reducing the value of Microsoft's proprietary format lock-in.
Unless Office is interacting with Office on the smartphone. Some numbers somewhere say that they're making something like $20/handset for WP7. They could easily get that and more if they were to sell Word, Excel and Powerpoint Mobile for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. It would probably be much less of an effort than designing a phone OS, too.
Here's the question: Bell Labs did some pretty awesome shit, there's not really any debating that. However, in order to fund some of that shit, AT&T themselves engaged in some very dickish, anti-competitive behavior. Stuff like only being able to use their phones, leased from them at high rates. Now, there's no question in my mind that, given the opportunity, the new AT&T would be more than willing to do more of the same, only in the wireless market. The question is, would we also expect to see a similar level of innovation out of a new "Bell Labs" type R&D department, and would it be worth it?
That's not nitpicking. That's showing an example. And odds are, if they just scaled down network-manager for their settings page, they probably did the same for many other applications. And that's NOT how you get software on a phone, especially one with a touchscreen. You have to rewrite the UI layer.
I love using it for maps. I love how it shows my corporate Exchange email along with my personal IMAP email in customized updating tiles on the front page. It works great as a portable radio for listening to podcasts when I'm out gardening or in my workshop. I take it to bed with me each night to read Kindle and to listen to radio comedies.
And absolutely NOTHING on that list(except maybe the thing about tiles) is unique to WP7, or is something that you could have done on another device. If they don't have anything to differentiate themselves, they're going to get lost in the shuffle, and most people aren't going to bother.
paying $45/month for unlimited data
I really, really hope you mean you don't have a voice line or texts either, as T-Mobile has had plans with unlimited data for $30 for some time now.
Slashdot Mirror
That he's on T-Mobile, and therefore wasn't offered the iPhone?
Umm, perhaps you'd better read the thing again. 50% of their revenue was from the iPhone. App sales are not included in that number. Those are included in iTunes revenue.
Just like lifting the ban on cross state credit cards made them soooo much better?
To be fair, I think one of the big problems with CueCat was that it came way too soon. Pair that with an Android or iPhone with a barcode scanner app, and it would have been much more successful.
I'd think they'd be able to handle a simple list lookup. If they can't, then they have bigger problems than offending paying customers.
No. The financial disparity was still there, even when you take into account donations, because those donations likely would not have been enough to cover his legal fees and a potential judgement against him. And odds are the legal talent available to Sony is orders of magnitude higher than the talent available to Geohot.
Your tinfoil hat is loose. You might want to fix that.
Do you really think a jurisdiction issue would stop them? Suppose its found out that California doesn't have jurisdiction. What's stopping Sony from then filing the same suit in whatever Geohot's home jurisdiction is? It may be more convenient and cheaper for Sony to do it in California, but they could easily go over to RIT if they had to.
If he did have it in the bag, he probably wouldn't have settled. You have to remember, Sony has armies upon armies of highly trained and highly skilled lawyers on their side. Geohot does not. Even if he was completely in the right, Sony can drag things out over and over until he loses the will or the financial capability to fight.
PirateCorp?
Are you talking about when you miss a call, or when you see a phone number anywhere? Cause if you missed the call, just about all phones will bring up the contact name if the number is stored in your phone book.
You must be blinded by anti-Apple hatred.
So, if the judge agrees with the jury that the original patent was valid and then Apple uses the technology without paying royalties,
So, how can a judge find that the original patent is valid (which is also what the jury determined), recognize that Apple used the patented technology (which is also what the jury determined) and then through out the award and close the the case? At a minimum, should it not have been sent back to the lower court to be re-tried?
You don't suppose there couldn't be another option? One in which the judge thinks the patent is valid, yet at the same time, doesn't believe that Apple infringed on it?
Besides, the overturning judge ruled the patent valid, somehow, he just wrote off the damages from the infringement.
He ruled the patent valid, but he also ruled that Apple did not infringe.
Technically a tax would be a way to combat overconsumption. But I agree it's not that great of an idea.
Just because telecommuting may have value to the employee doesn't mean that they should have to pay for it in the form of a pay cut.
Agreed. The discussion should be about pay raises for telecommuting, not pay cuts.
Wow, isn't it weird how the anti-Apple fanboys are the most full of vitriol and hatred?
If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet, that means that the demand for tablets is being driven by Apple rather than a need for tablets.
Close, but not quite. The Xoom may be a "good enough" tablet, able to compete with the iPad. However, given that the iPad has such a head start, in order to get people to buy Xooms instead of iPads, the Xoom can't just be as good as the iPad, it has to be much, much better. If its not as good, or just as good, there's really no point, and I might as well buy an iPad, as the large user base will help guarantee that I'll have access to a steady stream of content and apps designed for my device. Its like the iPod and every other MP3 player. Creative, Phillips, even Microsoft all came out with portable media players to compete with the iPod, and many of them were good devices. But none of them were significantly better than the iPod, so consumers didn't really see the point.
But if Office and Windows play nice with smartphones, then other tools can interact with Office and Wndows, dramatically reducing the value of Microsoft's proprietary format lock-in.
Unless Office is interacting with Office on the smartphone. Some numbers somewhere say that they're making something like $20/handset for WP7. They could easily get that and more if they were to sell Word, Excel and Powerpoint Mobile for iPhone, Android and Blackberry. It would probably be much less of an effort than designing a phone OS, too.
Here's the question: Bell Labs did some pretty awesome shit, there's not really any debating that. However, in order to fund some of that shit, AT&T themselves engaged in some very dickish, anti-competitive behavior. Stuff like only being able to use their phones, leased from them at high rates. Now, there's no question in my mind that, given the opportunity, the new AT&T would be more than willing to do more of the same, only in the wireless market. The question is, would we also expect to see a similar level of innovation out of a new "Bell Labs" type R&D department, and would it be worth it?
Couldn't you just, I dunno, not go to those sites? Instead of forcing the entire country to go along with a ban?
Well, from what I understand, Guido van Rossum is still very active in developing Python as part of his job at Google.
The $30 tmobile plan is limited to a tiny 200mb/month with 10c/megabyte after that.
You're not in the US, then. The $30 Tmobile plan is "unlimited" as the rest of them (meaning there's a 5GB soft cap, and throttling after that).
That's not nitpicking. That's showing an example. And odds are, if they just scaled down network-manager for their settings page, they probably did the same for many other applications. And that's NOT how you get software on a phone, especially one with a touchscreen. You have to rewrite the UI layer.
I love using it for maps. I love how it shows my corporate Exchange email along with my personal IMAP email in customized updating tiles on the front page. It works great as a portable radio for listening to podcasts when I'm out gardening or in my workshop. I take it to bed with me each night to read Kindle and to listen to radio comedies.
And absolutely NOTHING on that list(except maybe the thing about tiles) is unique to WP7, or is something that you could have done on another device. If they don't have anything to differentiate themselves, they're going to get lost in the shuffle, and most people aren't going to bother.
paying $45/month for unlimited data
I really, really hope you mean you don't have a voice line or texts either, as T-Mobile has had plans with unlimited data for $30 for some time now.