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Why do iOS users need to update their phone so often? Is it because Apple locked them down so hard in the first place that the only way to get those features is to update their OS?
Freshly Exhumed writes: Robert Bork, the fiery former federal judge whose U.S. Supreme Court nomination battle galvanized a generation of conservative activists, spent the late 1990s arguing that Microsoft should be carved up into multiple pieces because of antitrust violations. Bork, an antitrust scholar and author of a landmark book on the topic, is now saying that Google is no Microsoft. In a new analysis released at an event in Washington, D.C., today, Bork offers a point-by-point refutation of claims that Google has violated the law or acted in an anticompetitive fashion. Rather, Bork says, it's a case of competitors' sour grapes. 'None of the purported antitrust problems that Google's critics have raised indicates that Google is behaving anticompetitively,' concludes the 29-page legal analysis. 'Given the serious factual, logical, and economic flaws in the antitrust complaints about Google's practices, one can reasonably conclude only that Google's competitors are seeking to use antitrust law to protect their own market positions.'
parallel_prankster writes: NYTimes has an interesting article about how patents are really stiffling inovation in the tech industry. Today, almost every major technology company is involved in ongoing patent battles. Of course, the most significant player is Apple, industry executives say, because of its influence and the size of its claims: in August in California, the company won a $1 billion patent infringement judgment against Samsung. Former Apple employees say senior executives made a deliberate decision over the last decade, after Apple was a victim of patent attacks, to use patents as leverage against competitors to the iPhone, the company’s biggest source of profits. At a technology conference this year, Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, said patent battles had not slowed innovation at the company, but acknowledged that some aspects of the battles had “kind of gotten crazy.” It is a complaint heard throughout the industry. The increasing push to assert ownership of broad technologies has led to a destructive arms race, engineers say. Some point to so-called patent trolls, companies that exist solely to sue over patent violations. Others say big technology companies have also exploited the system’s weaknesses. “There are hundreds of ways to write the same computer program,” said James Bessen, a legal expert at Harvard. And so patent applications often try to encompass every potential aspect of a new technology. When such applications are approved, Mr. Bessen said, “the borders are fuzzy, so it’s really easy to accuse others of trespassing on your ideas.” The number of patent applications, computer-related and otherwise, filed each year at the United States patent office has increased by more than 50 percent over the last decade to more than 540,000 in 2011. Google has received 2,700 patents since 2000, according to the patent analysis firm M-CAM. Microsoft has received 21,000.
another random user writes: Previously redacted documents presented in the Apple-Samsung case seem not to offer actual evidence that Samsung told its designers to copy the iPhone.
Documents that have now been unredacted seem to show that there was never any 'copy apple' instruction. There was a push towards things that would be different, such as what is now seen in the Galaxy S3: "Our biggest asset is our screen. It is very important that we make screen size bigger, and in the future mobile phones will absorb even the function of e-books."
Groklaw suggests, rather shockingly, that Apple's lawyers might have been a little selective in how they presented some of this evidence to the court, by picking little parts of it that offered a different shade of nuance.
An anonymous reader writes: Samsung has now released the source code for the Samsung GALAXY Note 2. For all those of you who do not know what that means, now clears the way for much more sophisticated custom ROM’s for this smartphone. Because they can now build directly on the Samsung GALAXY Note 2 Source
hovelander writes: "For three decades, Mr. Phillips had focused on writing software to allow computers to understand human speech. In 2006, he had co-founded a voice recognition company, and eventually executives at Apple, Google and elsewhere proposed partnerships. Mr. Phillips’s technology was even integrated into Siri itself before the digital assistant was absorbed into the iPhone. But in 2008, Mr. Phillips’s company, Vlingo, had been contacted by a much larger voice recognition firm called Nuance. “I have patents that can prevent you from practicing in this market,” Nuance’s chief executive, Paul Ricci"
I don't have the money yet to retain a patent monkey, sorry lawyer, and don't wish to live in the movie "Brazil"! What are some pragmatic options?
hypnosec writes: Entire cities in the World of Warcraft have been destroyed with no one spared, not even the NPCs. About 13:00 GMT, forums on WOW started getting the first comments from users regarding player and NPCs dying on the Ragnaros-EU realm in Orgrimmar. Users of the online game started reporting that Draenor had a similar sight to offer. Some of the other realms where this was reported include Tarren Mill, Twisting Nether and others.
Don't forget all the developers who need to own all the iOS devices their app is going out on, for testing. Multiples if they want to test multiple versions of iOS.
angry tapir writes: "Nokia and Oracle have joined forces on mapping, with details of the deal to be announced at the Oracle OpenWorld conference. To differentiate its smartphones from the competition, Nokia is betting big on location as well as imaging technology. Oracle is expected to add Nokia's mapping technology to its applications. Part of Nokia's location strategy is signing deals for the use of its Navteq mapping technology with as many companies as possible. Besides the deal with Oracle, Nokia has recently announced contracts with car makers BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen and Korean Hyundai, which will all use Navteq map data in some of their vehicles. Garmin will also start using Nokia data on transit services and walking routes to power a new Urban Guidance feature, which will be available as part of its Navigon app for Android and iOS. Nokia's most important partner on navigation, though, is Microsoft. All smartphones based on Windows Phone 8 will have Nokia's Drive application as standard, while Microsoft's Bing Maps geographical search engine uses Nokia data."