RIM had considered using Google's Dalvik, the Java software used in running Android apps, and decided against it for reasons including an ongoing patent dispute between Oracle Corp. and Google over the software, two people said.

Would a clean-room implementation of an interpreter to run Dalvik bytecode actually evade the legal issues with Dalvik itself?

Presumably they have licensed Java properly for their mobile devices. Are they just going to translate Dalvik bytecode back to Java bytecode, and run Android applications that way?

That is true. Bing did not use Google's ranking as an input, just the link that the user got from Google.

There is a distinction there, but not a difference in terms of whether or not Bing is piggybacking on Google's algorithms. Google found that link and displayed it to the user. Bing then knows that the link is relevant without having to actually find that out for itself.

If Google went away, Bing would be a worse search engine, because it is relying on Google to improve its own search quality. The reverse is not true.

...engineers working in the space launch industry are resistant to change just for the shits...

You have an excellent rant, and I know there are many people who should read it.

However, it seems like a straw man argument here, as TFA did not say that "engineering culture" is resistant to change without good reason, just that it's resistant to change. You seem to agree with this assessment since your post gives many very good reasons why engineering culture should be resistant to change. Change is hard, and you need to do it right.

Just because the application is running on a web server somewhere, and not on your hardware, doesn't mean it's not an application. Applications that users access over the web are called, gasp, "web apps".

Also, a bookmark is not the same as a web app. "bookmark" is a term for a URL that probably begins with "http" and is stored by a browser (unless it's IE, in which case I believe it's "favourite" instead). Slashdot is not a bookmark, but you can have a bookmark for Slashdot. The things being called "apps" in this case are not the little icons, they're the things you access using the icons.

How did this make it to the front page of Slashdot?

Not everyone considers loss aversion a fundamental law of nature.

It doesn't matter how much we spent on that stuff. We should still be doing what makes sense for us here and now.

The issue is not alleged copyright infringement. No one needs evidence of direct copying to make this a story.

The fact is that Google's search results are, albeit indirectly, an input into Bing's ranking algorithms. That makes it a less credible search engine, since to a degree they are piggybacking on Google's ranking algorithms, which work without using other search engines as input.

Statements like "but we got the data via opt-in customers" and "it's just one of many inputs" do not change the fact that Google's ranking is being used as an input to Bing's ranking algorithm.

All those hours spent gazing fondly at your picture at the top of every Wikipedia page. Installing the Jimmy Wales extension for Chromium, so I could see you everywhere. Knowing that you were looking just at me...

You have betrayed me, Jimmy, with your false generalization of software distribution systems. Words cannot express the anger and shame I feel.

I want my $2.50 back.

A controlling body preventing another group of people from seeing selected content is censorship.

When the controlling body and the group of people are one and the same, it is not censorship. So censorship is not what's going on on Slashdot.

Please mod this and parent Offtopic; I fear our nerdly pendantry has led us far astray of the original discussion.

You can't be "censored" by the masses, no matter what your persecution complex is telling you.

It's the "net" part of Net Neutrality that makes it irrelevant to this. This is the older and more well-known problem of companies forcing incompatibility to achieve one of their goals when it's not in the interest of the masses. You waved the wrong flag. Try "Freedom" next time.

Also, your assertion that Google is in control of every aspect of this are completely false:

The player is a codec, and Google has open-sourced it, placed all the patents they own that pertain to it in the public domain, and promised never to sue anyone for using it however they want. So they do not "own" the player.

The distribution mechanism is the web. Google is a big fish in that particular pond, but they do not "own" it, and any attempts to exert control using their influence will be seen as a fault in the network, and they will be routed around.

The codec, as has been discussed, is the player.

As for the video search that reveals the content: Google is only one option among at least two acceptable options, and to suggest that they would tamper with their search results to promote WebM over h.264 is ludicrous. They would lose market share faster than the GIF file format.

I may agree with your apparent wish that Google would just support h.264, but your opinions on this matter are not well thought-out. I suggest you stop posting on this article.

Who is censoring posts?

A group of people disagreeing with you is not censorship. The fact that I still (unfortunately) see your posts is proof that no matter how stupid the things you say are, some people on Slashdot will still be forced to read them.

But I suppose I can understand your frustration. You must get modded into oblivion quite often.

So it's not enough for you that one codec is definitely encumbered with patents and that the owner of these patents is highly litigious, while the owner of the other codec has placed all patents they hold relevant to the codec explicitly in the public domain. You demand that the latter group also provide legal protection for you?

Do you get legal protection against patents for all the software you use?

It's incorrect to say that WebM is equally dangerous to use from a patent litigation point of view. Is it 100% risk free? No. But what non-trivial piece of software is, when a static image file format has resulted in royalties being collected under threat of litigation?

The idea that this has anything to do with Net Neutrality is ridiculous.

A browser not supporting a codec has no impact on your ability to retrieve a video encoded with that codec.

I may as well claim that Adobe is undermining Net Neutrality because I can't edit Photoshop files I downloaded from the internet without buying their software.