By that I mean all of us: the companies and people who directly interact with the patent system, the media that reports on those interactions, the analysts and experts who inform the media, and finally the large, active, and vocal readership that we try and service with our reporting. As a group, we have accepted and let lie the lazy conventional wisdom that the patent system is broken beyond repair, a relic of a previous time that has been obsoleted by the rapid pace of technical innovation, particularly in software, and that it should perhaps be scrapped altogether.That's what's been missing from this whole conversation (really more shouting and whining than anything, actually). Short of throwing out the patent system that has actually worked fairly well for the last 200 years, how do we reform what is patentable software, how does one patent it, and how long is it protected for?
So let's start over, shall we? Let's actually look at how the patent system works, where it's specifically malfunctioning, and how we can fix it.
The domain name in the address bar is now highlighted, to make phishing more apparent — mimicking a similar feature already found in Internet Explorer — and Mozilla is claiming that there's some speed improvement. And that's about the extent of it.
However, for future versions, "A feature request calls for the removal of the version number from Firefox's "About" dialog."
How on earth do you file a decent bug report without the build number? That was something like page three of the first chapter of How We Test Software At Microsoft.
From Mozilla's own help article, "How to open a bug":
Make the Bug Summary useful
Which version of Firefox do you run? To know that, we need the "Build ID". Click "help" then "about Firefox/Minefield".
These guys are on a roll...
I've gone from one tweet to knowing an entire family's names, location, address, contact details, what they look like, how they are connected to the military and, potentially, where a part of the US army is coming under fire.And that's why the Internet is scary.
Given, there are a lot of thoughts on this. Daring Fireball, PC World, Ars Technica, Business Week all have articles with varying thoughts. But the more I think about this, the more I'm convinced that this was only for the patents. Google hopes to protect its interests in Android using Motorola's more than 17,000 patents.
But This Is My Next and FOSS Patents, which covers primarily wireless and mobile patents, both have good coverage of the alternative view on the Motorola patents, which doesn't look so good for Google:
Until regulatory approval is granted, Google still has nothing to protect itself with patent-wise, and Google has no means of assisting in the patent disputes Motorola is currently engaged in.
Microsoft was happy to settle the patent lawsuit with HTC with some licensing fees, and would be perfectly content I imagine to do the same with Motorola. That will not be the case if dealing with a Google-subsidized business, however, which probably bodes poorly for the Android ecosystem overall. Should Microsoft actually have the ability to win, Google's now on the hook for Motorola's infringement, I would suspect. Knowing that they will be going after Google will only persuade Microsoft to strengthen and solidify its case. Counter-claims from Google would likely be minor as Microsoft does not manufacture its own phone hardware nor does Google have many patents on the Android OS itself.
Apple's got strong patents as they've already convinced the EU to stop sales of Samsung's tablets while more legal action unwinds, and as Mr. Mueller points out, Motorola's patents probably aren't very strong period. Apple can probably win this one regardless of who's funding the defense.
This one's only slightly interesting because the chances of Motorola having something to help Google and Android out on this one are zip. If Google is found to have willingly infringed or have acted in anti-competitive nature, Motorola's not going to protect them at all. Mr. Patel points out, however, Motorola owns patents on networking and video encoding that Oracle might be interested in bargaining for, which one could only hope make an interesting twist in this sad story.
Google is desperate:
Google...agreed to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. for $40 a share in cash, or 73 percent more than the stock's 20-day trading average. That's the most expensive premium paid in a wireless-equipment takeover greater than $500 million since 1999, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The $9.8 billion price tag including net cash is 32 times the target's 2010 adjusted earnings, also the highest valuation in 12 years, the data show.
They were forced to overpay for a manufacturer that has declining share and flatline profit. But Google itself knew it was in a corner. It posted an almost 20% breakup fee, money paid to Motorola even if the deal should fall through.
"A high reverse breakup fee shows the buyer's confidence of getting the deal done," said Donna Hitscherich, a senior lecturer in finance at Columbia Business School, who is also a former banker and lawyer. "People don't do deals to get the breakup fee, they do them to get the deals done."
Google had to close the deal. The high breakup fee also indicates Motorola's worried Google can't get the deal past regulators and was reluctant to commit effort trying.
So what's Google's game? Either it's about the patents that may prove to be mostly useless, or it's about competing with the OEM partners that consume the free OS Google itself codes, which is to say, not competing with them. No partner could compete with Google controlled hardware running Google-controlled software, and they're been happy to let their feelings on the acquisition known in eerie similarity. Good for Microsoft, bad for Android and, in my understanding of Android's goal, ultimately Android itself.
Which IT or CS decision has resulted in the most expensive mistake?
The best candidate I have been able to come up with is the C/Unix/Posix use of NUL-terminated text strings. The choice was really simple: Should the C language represent strings as an address length tuple or just as the address with a magic character (NUL) marking the end?
Yeah, they chose wrong.
The US military is interested in developing the hypersonic aircraft so that it can possess a machine which would be capable of reaching any part of the world in less than an hour. Presumably it would be armed to the teeth with weapons rather than delivering flowers.No kidding?
Intellectual Ventures is not buying inventions. It's buying patents. And most software engineers will tell you, at least when it comes to software, a patent and an invention are not the same. Lots of patents cover things that people who write software for a living wouldn't consider inventions at all.
I have an ugly tendency to blame all my failings on others. It's something I picked up from my parents.
Ben Long, CreativePro.com:
"Image editing" starts as soon as you lift your eye to the viewfinder. What you choose to include in the frame is a massive edit of the scene before you, and it's important to understand just how powerful this "cropping" of the real world can be.
MPEG LA, the self-styled one stop shop for motion video patent licenses, says that 12 different companies have come forward with patents "essential" to the VP8 algorithm championed by Google as a royalty-free compression standard.I assume Google will start whining about these patents soon, too. So much for being patent-free technology...