They do actually mean posted highway speeds, not actual highway speeds. And in fact, the standard did 50mph on a treadmill, so wind wasn't even a factor. The last revision made the mileage more realistic, but still, no 80mph issue. If I have my 2003 Prius -- hybrid, but nearly ten years old, hardly state of the art -- going at the posted speed limits, I get 48-52mpg on summer fuel blends. I don't usually drive that slow, but that's the way they're being tested.
Sure, it's a pretty high goal for CAFE, but they also credit EVs and Hybrids with pretty high numbers, so those offset the occasional Ford Brontosarus or two. And of course, once you get to medium trucks (like the old Hummer H2), they're not included in CAFE anyway.
Might as well also add in the vast corporate welfare we have, supporting a Cold War level military a generation after than level of threat no longer exists. This can't be ended at the rate Ron Paul would like, as it would result in an actual 25% or so unemployment rate. But he's absolutely right on that subject (not a Ron Paul nut here, just agree that we simply can't afford to be a global military empire any longer).
The big problem with Obama's tenure is that he knew (or was well advised) on what he needed to do to fix the economy, and didn't do it. The GM decision was a very good one, but the stimulus was way too small to have the needed profound effect on our giant economy. The Republicans were far more interested in seeing Obama fail than seeing the country recover -- Obama and the Democrats hammered out bipartisan plan after bipartisan plan, only to have the Republicans oppose each one. You know there's insanity in play when the Republicans filibuster a bill they pretty much wrote, only because it's also got Democratic support, then ultimately approve it by 95% or so. And this happens, over and over.
The current engine of Washington is broken. It's more obvious among the Republicans, but it's broken for both. They are heavily in need of reforms. No big business money to either side -- outlaw legal bribery. Make it a crime for a Congresscritter to swear an oath to anyone other than the USA and the people they represent. Shut down the lobbyists, bulldoze K Street. Make it a simple exercise for a representative NOT representing one's constituents to be censured and ultimately recalled if they're not doing their job. End Jerrymandering and other political manipulations by either party when in power. And require all national elections to be Instant Runoff elections.
It's not simply that there's too much money in Washington -- it's the fact that the money changes the system. If you can get $100 million from the Koch brothers, you become their representative, not the one for the people who elect you. Eliminate all that, and you'll find a far better class of politican walking the DC streets, pretty quickly.
It's so ironic when Republicans, who perpetually complain that the Government can do nothing to create jobs, complain about the Government not creating jobs.
The real problem here isn't the Government, it's not the regulations, it's not the taxes, it's the systematic dismantling of the middle class by the Republicans. Jobs are created by the demand for something. Government programs can create these, of course (and, quite often, the jobs themselves are in the private sector), when there's some need: building infrastructure, fighting a war, etc. But if that's unfashionable, then it's up to the private sector. With that said, Government Jobs do not pull from the economy, necessarily -- they provide some kind of service. The money's not going into a black hole somewhere, it's getting spent. Now sure, the money spent on the military pretty much vanishes; it's lowest return on jobs for cash spent anywhere. Sure, there's a need for security. There is not a need for a global military empire and Cold War level spending. Of course Romney thinks so -- then again, he still thinks Russia is our greatest international security threat.
And the private sector, "my friend", is literally swimming in money. But they're not spending it on jobs. Why? Well, it's a combination of those jobs having often moved, permanently, to someplace else, like China. And part of it is that there's simply no demand. You can cut taxes to zero and it doesn't get a corporation incentive to boost production if they're sitting on excess inventory today because the consumer class is hurtin' and can't buy what they're selling.
Tax increases to millionaires does nothing but cut out some investments, most of which have absolutely no effect on the real economy. This could easily be fixed. Regular investments -- one rich guy selling stock, another buying it -- gets taxes as any other income, on US investments. Investment income from new business, money that actually went to a company for the first time (IPOs, venture/angel funding, etc) , that gets very low taxes... even zero. Investment income from foreign sources gets much higher than usual taxes. Mitt won't like it, but it'll promote investment in the USA that actually goes to create jobs, and close the gaping hole in the budget caused by the Bush/Obama Tax Cuts.
And we need to re-think the definition of "US Company", too. For example, Apple seems as American as Apple Pie. But the do all of their production overseas, every bit of it. And 3/4 of their vast cash fortune is kept overseas. Meanwhile, Samsung and Toyota and Honda are clearly foreign companies, but they're creating American jobs with factories here. For the purposes of the increased taxes mentioned above on foreign investment, you have to take into account where each company's operations and assets are kept, and weight the percentage of that in the US vs. overseas.
The military is such a big expense now, and often not even exposed in the budget (is these days, wasn't under Bush), that it really needs its own private funding account, like Social Security and Medicare. The Homeland Security tax would replace that segment of the general pool taxes used for any kind of military spending: troops, foreign bases, veteran's benefits, interest on the money borrowed to fight wars, etc. This is sourced from many places. American businesses in foreign countries carry a greater share of this, since they need our protection. Europe and Japan can help pay, or start spending more on their own protection. Oil companies have to carry the full cost of US involvement in the Middle East. Back home, the tax you pay is a flat percentage of your assets, US or foreign. After all, if you have millions, you have far more that needs protecting that poor folks. You pay for that.
Do this, and you solve the budget and jobs problems.
That's kind of what parties do, back the incumbent. Happens pretty much every time. Look at the 2008 election -- the Republicans were going mad because a few Tea Party types had won primaries over incumbents, and they didn't even have a plan for what to do about that. It just hasn't happened.
And if you ever do see that happen at the Presidential level, that's an excellent good sign that the incumbent party doesn't have a chance in hell at the election. In fact, the Democrats have a bunch of good people these days. The Republicans might, too, but very few of them are willing to come out of the closet and expose themselves as rational, adults who will choose America over the GOP. Huntsman appears to be the one for this election season.
Hey, at least that's a safe bet with Captain Beefheart being gone an all... not to mention the good musical taste.
All these Republicans coming out for their favorite rock stars, like `"Big Fat" Chris Christy for Springsteen, or Paul "Lyin'" Ryan for Rage Against the Machine, only get slammed (“Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades,” says Tom Morello) has got to be embarrassing.
Anyway, Huntsman does give one hope that maybe there's more to the Republicans, deep down somewhere, than all these ass-clowns. Speaking of which, I will absolutely vote for the first Juggalo to run for national office, assuming they do it in full makeup. That's would just be too good to pass up.
From the little of Huntsman that made the national news, he did seem to be the one respectable candidate in that whole nutty Republican pool.
It's a shame the mainstream Republicans can't actually make it a real two-way race. The current strategy of pandering to old rich white dudes, throwing a few bones to the loonies, advocating less government in business and way more in the your bedroom, and spending crazy money to lure in the stupid can't be a long-term plan.
Can it? Maybe they need to be reminded that the elected are, ultimately, representatives of the voters. Thus, they need to represent the things the voters actually support. I think even some of the loonies are starting to get wise to these guys.
Apple didn't bother to try to patent the Newton's row-of-icons. Neither did Palm. They were both small companies back then, and small companies think about winning via technology, not winning in court. But the Apple patent in question doesn't attempt to patent a grid of icons. It's all about the look -- it's a design patent,not a utility patent. And a big part of that look is that all icons are squares (or perhaps squares with rounded corners -- the patent mostly just shows pictures, it doesn't explain what the "inventors" thought was novel and what wasn't.
The laws are little different today. In the past, in the USA, we used a "first to invent" system in the PTO. If you designed and built a working telephone, documented this and everything, and went to the PTO and found your telephone already patented, but after yours was first documented as working (and obviously, working in exactly the same way), you could, in theory, not just strike down that prior patent, but obtain one of your own.
Today, it's first to file. So if you come to the PTO with a patent application and find that your thing was already patented, but way after yours, you can file to have that other patent tossed out. But you can never get a patent yourself on that technology.
I've read hundreds of utility patents, written many, got some of my own, etc. I really don't know all of the rule around design patents, which are half of those being asserted by Apple on Samsung. They really say very much -- their design patents show lots of pictures, but unlike utility patents, they don't list "known" prior art (you're supposed to declare everything that you know about prior art in a utility patent; in practice, patent lawyers only declare other patents, and ignore things everyone knows about unpatented prior art -- that should have the whole patent tossed just on the basis of fraud, but it doesn't). So I really don't know what they're supposed to do here, relative to things way before the iPhone that look as much like the iPhone as Samsung's TouchWiz did.
Sure it does. Well, no, AT&T can't sue. But patents are declared invalid all the time, or limited based on prior art. A judge could rule that Apple has no claim on square icons... though it's hard, with design patents, as they basically just illusrate the design, they don't make the kind of claims you find in a utility patent. So basically, if the prior art looks close enough, they toss out the whole design patent. If not, well, you have to look more like Apple than the prior art in order to infringe on Apple.
Palm obviously did the grid of colorful icons, easily a decade before Apple did. Apple actually did B&W grids of icons on the Newton, but didn't patent that.
The main thing they had on Samsung was the grid of icons set in squares -- all the iOS icons are in squares (kind of the way Windows 7 Phone forces every icon into a square, only, smaller squares). Most of the grid of icons UIs, going back to Windows, MacOS, AmigaOS (did it in color before MacOS did), etc. all have icons set within a bound of some sort (though actually, on the AmigaOS, they could be huge), but there's a transparent background, no drawn box.
Some of the early version of SymbianOS also had icons in the box. I don't know if this was enforced by the OS, or just the way Nokia shipped it, a style thing. Since this is based on a design patent, it doesn't matter -- the SymbianOS thing is also prior art (they eventually went to the normal "transparent background" look used by Android and nearly everything else, other than Apple and Samsung's TouchWiz shell).
Millions already did, even with Windows Phone 7.5.
But just millions, about four million over two years. Like a couple of good days worth of sales for Android or iOS. That's a real problem, no matter how you spin it.
Pretty much. And that seems to be the way Microsoft wants it. It's lack of modern capabilities certainly held W7P back on technology. It's not really suitable for much... I guess it may still live on in some GPS units.
It's also got to make you question Microsoft in the long term. They dumped WinME compatibility for Windows Phone 7, and now Windows Phone 7 users are dumped for Windows Phone 8. Sure, it'll likely be three years or more before Windows Phone 9, but I'd be concerned, if I had any interest in W8P.
Pretty shocking they'd include the 3GS, 4, and not the original iPad, given that the original iPad has the same basic hardware as the iPhone 4, only clocked slightly faster. Then again, the 3GS is still on sale (free at AT&T), so they may feel compelled, even if the performance will suck.
Uh, the tile concept would be closer to Android than iOS. Not even close. Android has a clear split between the list of all apps and the home screen stuff (which can be a variety of things, anything the user wants). Microsoft's mixing the app lister with the informational displays (which you can have on Android via home screen widgets). Microsoft's is clumsy.
And as far as tiles go -- they just even larger boxes around icons than Apple draws. Wasted space. And sure, you can draw those boxes around widgets too. But it's even less efficient, since hunting for a rarely used app should talk longer than those used all the time, and the information stuff shouldn't be randomly mixed with the app launcher stuff. This is entirely at one's control in Android -- you can pin your most-used Apps on the home screen, in a drawer on the home screen, or just leave it to widgets, if you need to get a quick 411 on a bunch of things with a glance at the home screen. Far more efficient, but maybe ever so slightly more difficult for novices to use.
Google did the "home screen" thing to avoid the "rounded rectangles with square grid of icons" patent on Android.
Incorrect. Apple design patented the "grid of rounded square icons" to avoid being copied. No one (well, except early versions of SymbianOS) did the rounded square icons. Android icons are like those of Windows, Linux, PalmOS, Newton, etc. And the row of icons is similarly historical -- on iOS and Android, they're both riffing on PalmOS and some of these others.
And in fact, the pop-up grid doesn't around Apple's patent. Samsung had the bad business sense and aesthetic taste to enforce a grid of rounded squares in their home shell (TouchWiz), to try and look more like iOS. That's one of the design patents they got slammed on last month.
There's no "cheap pen-tile" when you're talking about a 720p screen that's 4.5" wide. Once the pixels are too small to be seen anyway, there's little wrong with the pentile arrangement. For an OLED display, it keeps the display 20% lower power and 20% cooler, which has traditionally been a problem with OLED -- overheating shortens display life.
Of course, Nokia's OLED phones are RGB, like Samsung's old Galaxy SII, which isn't much of a problem when you have a gigantic screen and low resolution. The 920's screen went back to LED, because Nokia doesn't have access to higher density OLED technology at present. They have a few tweaks to the tech (dubbed PureView... apparently, all new Nokia technologies will be dubbed Pure-Motion). They claim traditional high density IPS LCDs (I'm sure they mean Apple) are too slow for video (not even slightly a factor on any OLED screen -- the LEDs switch in nanoseconds), so they're using a high voltage spike (and, of course, more power) to deliver a claimed 7ms response (fast enough for video, yes) versus a claimed 28ms response for an unnamed "typical" display. They also have higher output LED backlights, which they claim will make their device more readable than the unnamed "typical" display (as are all OLEDs) in bright sunlight. No comment given on what all this does to battery life, particularly since the display, LCD or OLED, is generally the place all your power goes on a smartphone.
They're also claiming the touchscreen can be operated with fingernails or even gloves. To me, that's pretty interesting... I have thick guitar-generated calluses on my left hand, which the Galaxy Nexus pretty much ignores. So I can only touch-screen with my right hand. Not a biggie, but something I'd look for (in Android, of course) if it was actually available. And that's the one reason I'll track down a 920 at some point and play with it... like to see if that's real or not.
They put out a whitepaper on this stuff... kind of a marketing thing, but with a little meat here and there: http://i.nokia.com/blob/view/-/1824216/data/2/-/PuremotionHD.pdf Anyway, Nokia was nice enough to put out a whitepaper on this stuff. Pretty much marketing-oriented, but it does dig in a bit.
I thought it was very "last year", too, initially. But they are using the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, which is based on Qualcomm's Krait processor, not the ARM A9 or the yet even slower Qualcomm Scorpion core. I think a dual core Krait, while not a match for a four core A9, is still very much a 2012-vintage processor. Display and camera are also fairly contemporary, if nothing unusual.
In fact, only real flaw I see is the locked-down Windows 8 Phone software....
Windows 8 Phone and Windows RT will both include the Win32 API, or much of it. Only Microsoft gets to use it. The WinRT version will be on all systems. Sure, the set of default applications will be different, hard binaries can't run on all three (and MS is using managed/VM code, rather than fat binaries, to support the same WinRT apps on different hardware). So there's more than just the kernel in common. Same basic APIs.
Microsoft's EOLing support for Windows 7 Phones, not Nokia. They will have the 7.8 update, but that's basically the last scheduled service pack. It adds some UI queues from Windows 8 Phone, but not app compatibility. That's the place current Windows 7 Phone users are being screwed -- that phone you bought last month, or may yet buy this month (not folks here, sure, but there are plenty of people not wise to the ways of Microsoft, and a small number of them are buying Windows 7 Phones), is going to be abandoned, software-wise.
Developers aren't being screwed, no... the apps they've written (most major companies were paid by Microsoft to port them) will still run on Windows 8 Phone. And they'll be relatively easy ports to full Windows 8, except for the parts that aren't that portable. And if the developers stick with Windows on mobile, they'll all be jumping to Windows 8 now, that's where the hardware will be, since desktop Windows 8 will run these apps, too. No one's going to keep writing Windows 7 Phone apps, with only some 4 million sold... the first day of Windows 8's release, if it's Microsoft's greatest failure, they'll sell more than that.
However, it's not surprising the Windows 7 Phone hardware isn't being updated, and that's also Microsoft's fault. They didn't have any trouble orphaning Windows Mobile users for Windows 7 Phone, so it should come as no surprise the same is happening all over again. And by design. Windows 7 Phone, being based on the ancient WinCE kernel, was limited to single-core processors. Not sure what drove Nokia to not even try on the GPU side of things, or maybe that, and certainly the lower screen resolution, were dictated by Microsoft as well. Nokia's only fault was throwing everything after Windows 7 Phone. Microsoft paid for that, with $250 million per quarter to Nokia for doing so. Of course, the 10's of thousands of Nokia employees let go thanks to the tanking of the company over this (mostly the dramatic fall-off of SymbianOS sales, with no replacement sales from Windows Phone) also paid.
We never built anything on the scale needed to go for 10 years without contact with Earth. We pretty much know how.
The big problem is building something that'll last for 100 years in space. Every spaceship we've ever built, together, have barely lasted 50 years. And not in continuous use.
Spending more than the next 27 countries together on our Military has absolutely nothing to do with defending our liberty. We're maintaining a global military empire, which is more necessary for others' security (Europe, Japan, etc) than our own. The country would benefit dramatically from this money [a] being spent at home, and [b] our not continuing to borrow money from China to fund these exploits.
Actually, the cheapest class I took in college was an Introduction to Computer Programming class, in which the prof was currently finishing his textbook. The first five chapters came for like $15, in a binder. From then on, it was hand-outs (laser printed, even in the early 80s) as new chapters were completed. It was a pretty good book, too.
It was (probably still is) commonplace for the books used at CMU to be written by the professors teaching the course, or perhaps the professors of the professors teaching the course. Certainly not true of all universities (one of my kids took a physics course last year, with many-years-later edition of the same Hugh D. Young textbook, but he didn't have Professor Young teaching the course), but I didn't see any problem with it, as long as they were good professors.
In the one case I had issue with the prof (very confusing guy), it was fortunately with a textbook written by one of his professors, back when he was a TA. So there was a refuge from the confusion. And of course, with the expansion of resources like Kahn Academy, you may well have other readily available materials to work from. But hopefully, not too many bad professors are writing textbooks...
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They do actually mean posted highway speeds, not actual highway speeds. And in fact, the standard did 50mph on a treadmill, so wind wasn't even a factor. The last revision made the mileage more realistic, but still, no 80mph issue. If I have my 2003 Prius -- hybrid, but nearly ten years old, hardly state of the art -- going at the posted speed limits, I get 48-52mpg on summer fuel blends. I don't usually drive that slow, but that's the way they're being tested.
Sure, it's a pretty high goal for CAFE, but they also credit EVs and Hybrids with pretty high numbers, so those offset the occasional Ford Brontosarus or two. And of course, once you get to medium trucks (like the old Hummer H2), they're not included in CAFE anyway.
Might as well also add in the vast corporate welfare we have, supporting a Cold War level military a generation after than level of threat no longer exists. This can't be ended at the rate Ron Paul would like, as it would result in an actual 25% or so unemployment rate. But he's absolutely right on that subject (not a Ron Paul nut here, just agree that we simply can't afford to be a global military empire any longer).
The big problem with Obama's tenure is that he knew (or was well advised) on what he needed to do to fix the economy, and didn't do it. The GM decision was a very good one, but the stimulus was way too small to have the needed profound effect on our giant economy. The Republicans were far more interested in seeing Obama fail than seeing the country recover -- Obama and the Democrats hammered out bipartisan plan after bipartisan plan, only to have the Republicans oppose each one. You know there's insanity in play when the Republicans filibuster a bill they pretty much wrote, only because it's also got Democratic support, then ultimately approve it by 95% or so. And this happens, over and over.
The current engine of Washington is broken. It's more obvious among the Republicans, but it's broken for both. They are heavily in need of reforms. No big business money to either side -- outlaw legal bribery. Make it a crime for a Congresscritter to swear an oath to anyone other than the USA and the people they represent. Shut down the lobbyists, bulldoze K Street. Make it a simple exercise for a representative NOT representing one's constituents to be censured and ultimately recalled if they're not doing their job. End Jerrymandering and other political manipulations by either party when in power. And require all national elections to be Instant Runoff elections.
It's not simply that there's too much money in Washington -- it's the fact that the money changes the system. If you can get $100 million from the Koch brothers, you become their representative, not the one for the people who elect you. Eliminate all that, and you'll find a far better class of politican walking the DC streets, pretty quickly.
It's so ironic when Republicans, who perpetually complain that the Government can do nothing to create jobs, complain about the Government not creating jobs.
The real problem here isn't the Government, it's not the regulations, it's not the taxes, it's the systematic dismantling of the middle class by the Republicans. Jobs are created by the demand for something. Government programs can create these, of course (and, quite often, the jobs themselves are in the private sector), when there's some need: building infrastructure, fighting a war, etc. But if that's unfashionable, then it's up to the private sector. With that said, Government Jobs do not pull from the economy, necessarily -- they provide some kind of service. The money's not going into a black hole somewhere, it's getting spent. Now sure, the money spent on the military pretty much vanishes; it's lowest return on jobs for cash spent anywhere. Sure, there's a need for security. There is not a need for a global military empire and Cold War level spending. Of course Romney thinks so -- then again, he still thinks Russia is our greatest international security threat.
And the private sector, "my friend", is literally swimming in money. But they're not spending it on jobs. Why? Well, it's a combination of those jobs having often moved, permanently, to someplace else, like China. And part of it is that there's simply no demand. You can cut taxes to zero and it doesn't get a corporation incentive to boost production if they're sitting on excess inventory today because the consumer class is hurtin' and can't buy what they're selling.
Tax increases to millionaires does nothing but cut out some investments, most of which have absolutely no effect on the real economy. This could easily be fixed. Regular investments -- one rich guy selling stock, another buying it -- gets taxes as any other income, on US investments. Investment income from new business, money that actually went to a company for the first time (IPOs, venture/angel funding, etc) , that gets very low taxes... even zero. Investment income from foreign sources gets much higher than usual taxes. Mitt won't like it, but it'll promote investment in the USA that actually goes to create jobs, and close the gaping hole in the budget caused by the Bush/Obama Tax Cuts.
And we need to re-think the definition of "US Company", too. For example, Apple seems as American as Apple Pie. But the do all of their production overseas, every bit of it. And 3/4 of their vast cash fortune is kept overseas. Meanwhile, Samsung and Toyota and Honda are clearly foreign companies, but they're creating American jobs with factories here. For the purposes of the increased taxes mentioned above on foreign investment, you have to take into account where each company's operations and assets are kept, and weight the percentage of that in the US vs. overseas.
The military is such a big expense now, and often not even exposed in the budget (is these days, wasn't under Bush), that it really needs its own private funding account, like Social Security and Medicare. The Homeland Security tax would replace that segment of the general pool taxes used for any kind of military spending: troops, foreign bases, veteran's benefits, interest on the money borrowed to fight wars, etc. This is sourced from many places. American businesses in foreign countries carry a greater share of this, since they need our protection. Europe and Japan can help pay, or start spending more on their own protection. Oil companies have to carry the full cost of US involvement in the Middle East. Back home, the tax you pay is a flat percentage of your assets, US or foreign. After all, if you have millions, you have far more that needs protecting that poor folks. You pay for that.
Do this, and you solve the budget and jobs problems.
That's kind of what parties do, back the incumbent. Happens pretty much every time. Look at the 2008 election -- the Republicans were going mad because a few Tea Party types had won primaries over incumbents, and they didn't even have a plan for what to do about that. It just hasn't happened.
And if you ever do see that happen at the Presidential level, that's an excellent good sign that the incumbent party doesn't have a chance in hell at the election. In fact, the Democrats have a bunch of good people these days. The Republicans might, too, but very few of them are willing to come out of the closet and expose themselves as rational, adults who will choose America over the GOP. Huntsman appears to be the one for this election season.
Hey, at least that's a safe bet with Captain Beefheart being gone an all... not to mention the good musical taste.
All these Republicans coming out for their favorite rock stars, like `"Big Fat" Chris Christy for Springsteen, or Paul "Lyin'" Ryan for Rage Against the Machine, only get slammed (“Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades,” says Tom Morello) has got to be embarrassing.
Anyway, Huntsman does give one hope that maybe there's more to the Republicans, deep down somewhere, than all these ass-clowns. Speaking of which, I will absolutely vote for the first Juggalo to run for national office, assuming they do it in full makeup. That's would just be too good to pass up.
From the little of Huntsman that made the national news, he did seem to be the one respectable candidate in that whole nutty Republican pool.
It's a shame the mainstream Republicans can't actually make it a real two-way race. The current strategy of pandering to old rich white dudes, throwing a few bones to the loonies, advocating less government in business and way more in the your bedroom, and spending crazy money to lure in the stupid can't be a long-term plan.
Can it? Maybe they need to be reminded that the elected are, ultimately, representatives of the voters. Thus, they need to represent the things the voters actually support. I think even some of the loonies are starting to get wise to these guys.
Apple didn't bother to try to patent the Newton's row-of-icons. Neither did Palm. They were both small companies back then, and small companies think about winning via technology, not winning in court. But the Apple patent in question doesn't attempt to patent a grid of icons. It's all about the look -- it's a design patent,not a utility patent. And a big part of that look is that all icons are squares (or perhaps squares with rounded corners -- the patent mostly just shows pictures, it doesn't explain what the "inventors" thought was novel and what wasn't.
Of course prior art counts.
The laws are little different today. In the past, in the USA, we used a "first to invent" system in the PTO. If you designed and built a working telephone, documented this and everything, and went to the PTO and found your telephone already patented, but after yours was first documented as working (and obviously, working in exactly the same way), you could, in theory, not just strike down that prior patent, but obtain one of your own.
Today, it's first to file. So if you come to the PTO with a patent application and find that your thing was already patented, but way after yours, you can file to have that other patent tossed out. But you can never get a patent yourself on that technology.
I've read hundreds of utility patents, written many, got some of my own, etc. I really don't know all of the rule around design patents, which are half of those being asserted by Apple on Samsung. They really say very much -- their design patents show lots of pictures, but unlike utility patents, they don't list "known" prior art (you're supposed to declare everything that you know about prior art in a utility patent; in practice, patent lawyers only declare other patents, and ignore things everyone knows about unpatented prior art -- that should have the whole patent tossed just on the basis of fraud, but it doesn't). So I really don't know what they're supposed to do here, relative to things way before the iPhone that look as much like the iPhone as Samsung's TouchWiz did.
Sure it does. Well, no, AT&T can't sue. But patents are declared invalid all the time, or limited based on prior art. A judge could rule that Apple has no claim on square icons... though it's hard, with design patents, as they basically just illusrate the design, they don't make the kind of claims you find in a utility patent. So basically, if the prior art looks close enough, they toss out the whole design patent. If not, well, you have to look more like Apple than the prior art in order to infringe on Apple.
Pretty good. I hadn't found that one yet.
Palm obviously did the grid of colorful icons, easily a decade before Apple did. Apple actually did B&W grids of icons on the Newton, but didn't patent that.
The main thing they had on Samsung was the grid of icons set in squares -- all the iOS icons are in squares (kind of the way Windows 7 Phone forces every icon into a square, only, smaller squares). Most of the grid of icons UIs, going back to Windows, MacOS, AmigaOS (did it in color before MacOS did), etc. all have icons set within a bound of some sort (though actually, on the AmigaOS, they could be huge), but there's a transparent background, no drawn box.
Some of the early version of SymbianOS also had icons in the box. I don't know if this was enforced by the OS, or just the way Nokia shipped it, a style thing. Since this is based on a design patent, it doesn't matter -- the SymbianOS thing is also prior art (they eventually went to the normal "transparent background" look used by Android and nearly everything else, other than Apple and Samsung's TouchWiz shell).
Millions already did, even with Windows Phone 7.5.
But just millions, about four million over two years. Like a couple of good days worth of sales for Android or iOS. That's a real problem, no matter how you spin it.
Pretty much. And that seems to be the way Microsoft wants it. It's lack of modern capabilities certainly held W7P back on technology. It's not really suitable for much... I guess it may still live on in some GPS units.
It's also got to make you question Microsoft in the long term. They dumped WinME compatibility for Windows Phone 7, and now Windows Phone 7 users are dumped for Windows Phone 8. Sure, it'll likely be three years or more before Windows Phone 9, but I'd be concerned, if I had any interest in W8P.
Pretty shocking they'd include the 3GS, 4, and not the original iPad, given that the original iPad has the same basic hardware as the iPhone 4, only clocked slightly faster. Then again, the 3GS is still on sale (free at AT&T), so they may feel compelled, even if the performance will suck.
Uh, the tile concept would be closer to Android than iOS.
Not even close. Android has a clear split between the list of all apps and the home screen stuff (which can be a variety of things, anything the user wants). Microsoft's mixing the app lister with the informational displays (which you can have on Android via home screen widgets). Microsoft's is clumsy.
And as far as tiles go -- they just even larger boxes around icons than Apple draws. Wasted space. And sure, you can draw those boxes around widgets too. But it's even less efficient, since hunting for a rarely used app should talk longer than those used all the time, and the information stuff shouldn't be randomly mixed with the app launcher stuff. This is entirely at one's control in Android -- you can pin your most-used Apps on the home screen, in a drawer on the home screen, or just leave it to widgets, if you need to get a quick 411 on a bunch of things with a glance at the home screen. Far more efficient, but maybe ever so slightly more difficult for novices to use.
Google did the "home screen" thing to avoid the "rounded rectangles with square grid of icons" patent on Android.
Incorrect. Apple design patented the "grid of rounded square icons" to avoid being copied. No one (well, except early versions of SymbianOS) did the rounded square icons. Android icons are like those of Windows, Linux, PalmOS, Newton, etc. And the row of icons is similarly historical -- on iOS and Android, they're both riffing on PalmOS and some of these others.
And in fact, the pop-up grid doesn't around Apple's patent. Samsung had the bad business sense and aesthetic taste to enforce a grid of rounded squares in their home shell (TouchWiz), to try and look more like iOS. That's one of the design patents they got slammed on last month.
There's no "cheap pen-tile" when you're talking about a 720p screen that's 4.5" wide. Once the pixels are too small to be seen anyway, there's little wrong with the pentile arrangement. For an OLED display, it keeps the display 20% lower power and 20% cooler, which has traditionally been a problem with OLED -- overheating shortens display life.
Of course, Nokia's OLED phones are RGB, like Samsung's old Galaxy SII, which isn't much of a problem when you have a gigantic screen and low resolution. The 920's screen went back to LED, because Nokia doesn't have access to higher density OLED technology at present. They have a few tweaks to the tech (dubbed PureView... apparently, all new Nokia technologies will be dubbed Pure-Motion). They claim traditional high density IPS LCDs (I'm sure they mean Apple) are too slow for video (not even slightly a factor on any OLED screen -- the LEDs switch in nanoseconds), so they're using a high voltage spike (and, of course, more power) to deliver a claimed 7ms response (fast enough for video, yes) versus a claimed 28ms response for an unnamed "typical" display. They also have higher output LED backlights, which they claim will make their device more readable than the unnamed "typical" display (as are all OLEDs) in bright sunlight. No comment given on what all this does to battery life, particularly since the display, LCD or OLED, is generally the place all your power goes on a smartphone.
They're also claiming the touchscreen can be operated with fingernails or even gloves. To me, that's pretty interesting... I have thick guitar-generated calluses on my left hand, which the Galaxy Nexus pretty much ignores. So I can only touch-screen with my right hand. Not a biggie, but something I'd look for (in Android, of course) if it was actually available. And that's the one reason I'll track down a 920 at some point and play with it... like to see if that's real or not.
They put out a whitepaper on this stuff... kind of a marketing thing, but with a little meat here and there: http://i.nokia.com/blob/view/-/1824216/data/2/-/PuremotionHD.pdf
Anyway, Nokia was nice enough to put out a whitepaper on this stuff. Pretty much marketing-oriented, but it does dig in a bit.
I thought it was very "last year", too, initially. But they are using the Qualcomm Snapdragon S4, which is based on Qualcomm's Krait processor, not the ARM A9 or the yet even slower Qualcomm Scorpion core. I think a dual core Krait, while not a match for a four core A9, is still very much a 2012-vintage processor. Display and camera are also fairly contemporary, if nothing unusual.
In fact, only real flaw I see is the locked-down Windows 8 Phone software....
Windows 8 Phone and Windows RT will both include the Win32 API, or much of it. Only Microsoft gets to use it. The WinRT version will be on all systems. Sure, the set of default applications will be different, hard binaries can't run on all three (and MS is using managed/VM code, rather than fat binaries, to support the same WinRT apps on different hardware). So there's more than just the kernel in common. Same basic APIs.
Microsoft's EOLing support for Windows 7 Phones, not Nokia. They will have the 7.8 update, but that's basically the last scheduled service pack. It adds some UI queues from Windows 8 Phone, but not app compatibility. That's the place current Windows 7 Phone users are being screwed -- that phone you bought last month, or may yet buy this month (not folks here, sure, but there are plenty of people not wise to the ways of Microsoft, and a small number of them are buying Windows 7 Phones), is going to be abandoned, software-wise.
Developers aren't being screwed, no... the apps they've written (most major companies were paid by Microsoft to port them) will still run on Windows 8 Phone. And they'll be relatively easy ports to full Windows 8, except for the parts that aren't that portable. And if the developers stick with Windows on mobile, they'll all be jumping to Windows 8 now, that's where the hardware will be, since desktop Windows 8 will run these apps, too. No one's going to keep writing Windows 7 Phone apps, with only some 4 million sold... the first day of Windows 8's release, if it's Microsoft's greatest failure, they'll sell more than that.
However, it's not surprising the Windows 7 Phone hardware isn't being updated, and that's also Microsoft's fault. They didn't have any trouble orphaning Windows Mobile users for Windows 7 Phone, so it should come as no surprise the same is happening all over again. And by design. Windows 7 Phone, being based on the ancient WinCE kernel, was limited to single-core processors. Not sure what drove Nokia to not even try on the GPU side of things, or maybe that, and certainly the lower screen resolution, were dictated by Microsoft as well. Nokia's only fault was throwing everything after Windows 7 Phone. Microsoft paid for that, with $250 million per quarter to Nokia for doing so. Of course, the 10's of thousands of Nokia employees let go thanks to the tanking of the company over this (mostly the dramatic fall-off of SymbianOS sales, with no replacement sales from Windows Phone) also paid.
We never built anything on the scale needed to go for 10 years without contact with Earth. We pretty much know how.
The big problem is building something that'll last for 100 years in space. Every spaceship we've ever built, together, have barely lasted 50 years. And not in continuous use.
George Clinton could get there without the space ship!
Spending more than the next 27 countries together on our Military has absolutely nothing to do with defending our liberty. We're maintaining a global military empire, which is more necessary for others' security (Europe, Japan, etc) than our own. The country would benefit dramatically from this money [a] being spent at home, and [b] our not continuing to borrow money from China to fund these exploits.
... the SIM slot is not defiling?
Actually, the cheapest class I took in college was an Introduction to Computer Programming class, in which the prof was currently finishing his textbook. The first five chapters came for like $15, in a binder. From then on, it was hand-outs (laser printed, even in the early 80s) as new chapters were completed. It was a pretty good book, too.
It was (probably still is) commonplace for the books used at CMU to be written by the professors teaching the course, or perhaps the professors of the professors teaching the course. Certainly not true of all universities (one of my kids took a physics course last year, with many-years-later edition of the same Hugh D. Young textbook, but he didn't have Professor Young teaching the course), but I didn't see any problem with it, as long as they were good professors.
In the one case I had issue with the prof (very confusing guy), it was fortunately with a textbook written by one of his professors, back when he was a TA. So there was a refuge from the confusion. And of course, with the expansion of resources like Kahn Academy, you may well have other readily available materials to work from. But hopefully, not too many bad professors are writing textbooks...