The Darkness decends

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ed-pay-Apple-1BILLION-losing-patent-case.html

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10829382

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10829382


An interesting lecture on how creativity really works;
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix.html

Creativity is built on the work of others.
Henry Ford; "progress happens when all the factors that make for it are
ready and then it is inevitable"

It also shows how Steve Jobs thought it was ok for Apple to copy off others,
but not ok for anyone else to copy their stuff.
Steve Jobs; "we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas"

 

A crushing blow.

 

http://pandodaily.com/2012/08/25/co...s-decision-to-mimic-apple-paid-off-in-spades/

 

The reader comments posted after such articles make interesting reading.
It's amazing how much passion has been generated amongst the general
public over technical, legal, and ethical matters surrounding the
manufacture and use of wireless telephones.

 

To what exactly ?

It will be appealed ... and probably appealed again.

Some US judges are known to make outrageous decisions in this sort of case
to ensure the decision is appealed, knowing they actually have no say. Yes,
I know it was a jury (of only 9 I think ?).

This decision is far from "made".

 

I hope you are right.

 

The hole thing is corrupt it seems that it only took 3 days to come out
with this massive decision.

Trouble is the case was not fought on natural grounds Apple is a US
company and Samsung is a Korean one, so its obvious that a US court
would side with Apple.

I hear that Ford is taking all the car companies to court now.

 

"Mutlley" wrote in message

Especially when Apple, The court and the jury are all from the San
Jose , CA area.

On a lighter note?
http://dottech.org/miscellaneous/77906/apple-kills-star-trek-with-court-order-parody/

 

That will get Apple some sales for sure, and rightly so, they make good
products. I appreciate that they have to defend their investment with
the limited rights granted to them.
The patents are just part of the business though, and the response of
their competitors will be, we've got work to do, we have a business to
run, what are the options ? To pay royalties, to work around the
patents, to develop an alternative, to continue to litigate, to exchange
patent rights etc. I wouldn't expect any radical change in Android phones
http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/30/3279628/apple-pinch-to-zoom-patent-myth

 

That's great!

 

That would put the boot on the other foot. Ford was sued for
infringing a patent a guy claimed to have on any type of motor
vehicle.

 

Let there be Light! Google in its shining armour is riding in to
subdue Apple using the Motorola patents.

 

Best example of why patents are well past their use by date.

 

http://www.rushkoff.com/blog/2012/8/31/apple-v-samsung-what-if-they-hadpatented-the-alphabet.html

 

Imagine we were just developing spoken language for the first time. And
someone came up with a new word to describe an action, thought, or
feeling - like “magnify†or “dreadful.†But in this strange world, the
person who came up with the word demanded anyone else who used it to pay
him a dollar every time the word was uttered. That would make it pretty
difficult for us to negotiate our way to a society that communicated
through speech.

That’s the way the patent wars on smartphone and tablet advances are
beginning to feel to me.

As a human being, I do not particularly care about Apple’s recent
victory in the US version of its patent lawsuit against Samsung for
copying its iPhone and iPad’s form and features. Now that Apple is
demanding that Samsung pull eight of its products off the shelf, my only
personal interest is whether the Samsung products, once banned, will
become collectors’ items. Will I one day want to show my grandchild the
phone that dared to mimic the iPhone?

But while the details of legalities and impact to share prices and even
consumer choice don’t keep me or any of my friends up at night, there
is nonetheless something creepy about Apple’s suit. It’s not so much
that Apple - the biggest company in the world - has turned into a
competitive monster; it’s the territory that Apple’s fighting over. It
feels as if the technology innovation wars are no longer over one piece
of technology or another, but over us humans.

It’s one thing for Apple to defend the look and feel of its phone -
things like the little button on the bottom, which are apparently
obvious but actually the result of a lengthy and painstaking design
process. They may deserve a few years exclusive on stuff like that.

But when it comes to gestures, such as the now ubiquitous “pinch and
zoom†technology through which users stretch or shrink pictures and
text, well, that no longer feels quite the same. They are gestures that
may have begun on the device, but which have become internalized, human
movements. When my daughter was three I used to watch her attempt to
enact those same swipes and stretches on the television screen - a
phenomenon so prevalent that many television dealers now keep a supply
of Windex handy to clean their giant flat screens of children’s
fingerprints on a regular basis.

That’s because these gestures are not simply technological innovations,
but the language through which we humans are coming to navigate our way
through the emerging digital landscape. We take to gestures and
movements that grow out of the ones we use here in the real world. To
translate them into the digital realm well requires skill, but the
gestures themselves are not the typical territories - like land masses -
over which corporations have traditionally fought. They’re inside us.

Usually, advancements of this sort are developed through consortia of
companies. The HTML standards through which the Web is rendered are not
owned by a single company, but developed together and used by everyone.
Imagine if one musical instrument company owned the patent on the piano
keyboard, and another on the tuning of a violin. Or what if every
typewriter company had to develop its own layout of letters? What if
blowing one’s nose into soft disposable paper were owned by Kleenex?

While Apple deserves to be rewarded for the innovations it comes up
with, there’s a limit to how far into our learned behaviors that the
company should be awarded protection from competitors. Our transition
toward a digitally functioning society is no less momentous than the
shift from grunters to speakers, or from speakers to readers and
writers. As such, it will require an equally cooperative spirit from the
people and companies who take us there.

 

Especially if you give me a penny for your thoughts and I give you my
two cents worth.

 

It's ironic that once naive people thought of Apple as the good guy
versus the Microsoft bad guy.

 

All the big guys are bad guys (or will become bad guys). Should go without
saying ... but as you suggest, it often doesn't.