Actually I have that laptop, it's my main portable right now. If you think this looks like a MBP, you have a rather vivid imagination.

Here are some better photos of the Series 3 12.5" incher: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP350U2B-A01US-gallery.

Samsung has always been a "fast follower", but if you look at what they actually do, it's take existing designs and make them better: faster, more reliable, cheaper. This is, like it or not, how *all* innovation happens. Do you think Apple invented the concept of "computer" or "phone" or "mp3 player" or "tablet"? So it really is just a matter of degree. All Apple devices are essentially copies, with minor refinements. And Samsung do make extraordinarily good hardware. Apple also do, but they charge too much for it, and they lock you in.

that if anyone complains of my obnoxious behavior, I can cite them for violating Microsoft's patent claims. Microsoft, can I please get a license?

Yes, it's quite simple. Take existing models that work, copy those. Use science, not philosophy. Fashion, food, open source. Industries that are incredibly innovative and where ideas are properly treated as worthless. It's execution that counts, not ideas. Here's an idea: "send a man to the moon". Now execute that.

To suggest that innovation needs patents is like suggesting reproduction needs divorce lawyers.

So kindly point to any argument in my blog on patents that you consider "ignorant" rather than making blanket dismissals. If you don't know "where to start to tear it apart", you're showing the emptiness of your position. Patent (not "intellectual property") laws protect big business, which is why the only ones lobbying for them are big business.

The solution is legally enforced sharing of knowledge. That is, you can steal anyone's ideas and they can steal yours right back. This is how the fashion industry works and the notion that "big guys will steal your precious ideas" is shown to be bogus. The state should enforce mandatory share-alike on every aspect of technology. The large firms will complain they have no motive to invest. Fine, allow the small ones to.

Actually I'd conclude that patents are a main cause that innovation has stagnated in the last 20 years. Innovation depends on sharing knowledge.

What I really wonder is whether the strangulation of research will put our survival at risk at a time in history when we need to be smarter than ever about how we use energy, land, water, and raw materials? Why patents are evil.

It's kind of ignorant to use Poland as an example of expensive security administrations. Security at Polish airports is handled by the same mix of military, police, and private security as in most European airports and stations. It's nothing like the TSA.

When a politician takes a position, any position, the main key to understanding why is "follow the money". In this case, I'd assume, even without research, that the TSA budget represents a huge and lucrative pot of money and certain people think they can grab that pot and run with it. Perhaps Mica didn't get the payoff he was expecting. There'll be some hand waving about "rights" but really the goal is just to take control of the budgets, blow them up even larger, and slice off 10-20% into personal accounts in various tax havens.

The only solution to security theatre is competition, whereby airports pay their own security costs, and charge passengers directly, and passengers then choose whether to travel via low-cost insecure airports, or more expensive airports with more people to frisk and search. This is how it works in European transport, and it pretty much keeps things sane.

You kind of miss the point. Yes, GPLv3 is unattractive for some firms. Apple hates it presumably because of the software patents clauses. But a FOSS license is primarily a social contract for a community. Such communities are stronger and more successful the more (a) they depend on volunteer labour and (b) they have strong rules against theft, or put it another way, they can enforce remixability. The GPLv3 is essentially the most powerful contract on Earth for growing software-building communities. All the changes to the GPL since day one have been to reinforce its anti-cheating rules.

So businesses hate this, because they depend on using others' volunteer labour for free. Big deal. They will eventually fail, as pure GPL communities build better and more accurate products. This isn't theory, it's happening today. Look at pure GPLv3 projects like ZeroMQ.org. It has no competitors even close.

There is no ideology at play here, pure competition between competing social technologies.

If you believe GPL software is becoming obscure, you are living under a rock.

No, Apple cannot simply negotiate a different license. The main point of the GPLv3 (as earlier versions) is to ensure reciprocity, i.e. I'll share my work with you (stranger) if you share your improvements back with me. Various firms, mainly Microsoft and Tivo, had figured out ways to subvert that social contract in GPLv2.

Now, the most efficient form of GPL-driven community does not have a single owner of the collective work, precisely because that gives a way for firms to subvert the contract again. A stranger with sufficient money can negotiate a non-GPL contract, and escape the reciprocity requirement. This reduces the economic incentive for contributors and makes the project overall less successful.

Thus a project like Samba, or ZeroMQ, does not centralize copyright ownership but allows every contributor to own their own work, and this guarantees reciprocity. Apple cannot buy their way out of that requirement. They would have to get a license from every individual contributor separately.

While this is probably very annoying to Apple (and they have asked my firm, for example, for non-GPL licenses for ZeroMQ on multiple occasions), it is the most economically satisfying to contributors, who are guaranteed that no-one can cheat the rules, no matter how rich they are.

The GPL is essentially an ultra-capitalist instrument, which economists are starting to realize, and only the old trolls try to hide under their "hippy commie we want the freedom to cheat" nonsense. The GPL creates wealth on a massive scale to all those who participate in the social contract. Firms that don't or can't use it will eventually lose out.

Yes, the reason here seems to be GPL-related, and nothing to do with Oracle and Java. Postgresql uses an MIT/X11 style license. MySQL is GPL. This is a trend at Apple.

The reason, ironically, is probably the GPLv3's anti-patent clauses. My hypothesis is that Apple's lawyers have picked up on this and it's now company policy to avoid GPLv3 software in their stack, at any cost.

"velocity of money"? You're really off track.

Software is like ice. I wrote, in 2003: "Information technology, likewise, is an essential part of todays' business world. In many ways, the IT systems of the last decades resemble natural ice: an incredibly valuable material hacked out with curious cutting tools by a small band of rugged adventurers, transported with great care to distant places, and mainly catering to the richest consumers only. Like ice, information technology has no basic cost: no expensive raw materials, no inherent limits on production. Ice is simply the solid form of one abundant matter, and information technology is a solid form another abundant matter, namely the human intellect."

When ice is free, you enable huge industries on top of it. Same with software. Free software underlies the Internet, for one thing. Velocity of money? No, it's about velocity of knowledge, freedom of the market, lower friction, and overall more wealth.

No, no, no, that's a Troll. A proper Fanboi would go like this: "Apple make fantastic gadgets. They really know how to design the user experience. Samsung are just copycats, one step up from KIRFers."

And an Astroturfer would say, "While I'm a Samsung user, and I love their products, I have to side with Apple on this one. Samsung did, after all, copy the iPad in many ways, and you have to give it to Apple, they're the only real innovators in terms of UI and technology."

No, I'm serious. This is not about emails and licenses but about whether we tolerate monopoly ownership of ideas, i.e. software patents (or patents at all). Up until recently Google has been deliberately naive about the problem, shrugging it off and allowing others to take the hit. It's allowed Microsoft and Apple to accumulate large patent portfolios intended to stop free competition.

Google need to get hit, and they need to see software patents as a real threat to their plan of world domination. They need to realize that $100M buys a lot of lobbyists, and they need to spend that money in Washington to end the software patent system. Oracle is doing us a favour by forcing Google into court here. They're greedy enough to not want a nominal settlement, and they're smart enough to win their case.

So despite the fact that I'd rather stab myself with a blunt fork than install a piece of Oracle software on any machine I own, I'm rooting for them in this case, and I hope they win big.