Manufacturers competing on their "view of innovation"--which apparently means junkware like TouchWiz--is precisely what is fragmenting the platform. Schmidt seems to believe that by reframing it with a feel-good word like innovation, he can successfully claim that it's somehow the opposite of fragmentation. The differentiation and and in-fighting between manufacturers and devices is the fragmentation. Nothing he stated refutes the claim that the platform is fragmented; he's just describing the fragmentation in a different way.

NPD now says that iOS has officially closed the gap with Android in U.S. marketshare since the release of the iPhone 4S, so these issues are having a real effect on the platform. According to NPD's report, 150 Android handsets can't beat three old iPhone models. What's happening here is that Android phones catered to techies and budget buyers, but with the iPhone 3GS now free on contract, Apple now has budget buyers covered--and there are way more of them than there are techies.

I'll give you the rest, but no way graphical UIs are faster than using command-line tools.

Well, my screenshot was from Outlook 2007, so it's been around since then (released in Jan 07). The patent was filed in September 2006. My question is why it took 6 years to look at and grant the patent? We've now got countless mail clients that now use this as a standard feature. Have IBM been warning them they have a Patent Pending on this (or other, as yet ungranted) item? What happens to all these mail clients? How much will IBM be charging for use of this patent? What if they can't/wont pay up?

You don't understand - Carriers make money for overselling. They want you to buy 1GB a month, because they don't think you'll use it. If you do, they'll complain that you are using too much, and "hogging" data.

What they really want is to charge you for a 1GB plan, then charge you extra if you actually use it. Carriers want to upsell people to plans they won't use, and feel cheated if people use what they bought.

I've been puzzled from the beginning as to why the OWS protesters aren't in front of the Capitol and the White House. They're the ones ultimately responsible for Wall Street corruption, because it necessarily requires a corrupt government in order to exist and grow.

For corruption to flourish in the private sector requires a corrupt government, for only with a corrupt government can the corrupt businesses and individuals be protected from the People and Justice.

Strat

Without being facetious, in reality these are the kinds of issues the so-called occupy movements should be focusing on...things like this where the average employee is all but powerless to prevent having any balance between their work lives and their personal lives.

The concept of a group of workers organizing themselves in order to achieve common goals, such as better working conditions, isn't new. That's the definition of a trade union.

Remind me again why the average US citizen is so violently opposed to the existence of trade unions, let alone joining one?

The point is that Apple is suing HTC because they are using a map to pinpoint a location. I bet that in the last month, there have been a thousand courses taught in colleges and high schools that tell students how to pinpoint locations on maps. Why isn't Apple suing those community college profs instead of HTC?

Do I really need to answer that?

Who came up with mapping technology first? Was it perhaps Google Maps?

I'm not convinced any companies, even patent trolls, are truly acting irresponsibly. It's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't valid without going to court. And it's impossible to know if a patent is/isn't being infringed without going to court.

This leads to disagreements between patent holders and potential licensors about just how much should be paid in any licensing agreement, or whether any licensing fees should even be paid at all. To make matters worse, the courts are making stupid decisions all the time.

In my mind, this is a clear situation where we need to blame whoever wrote patent law in the first place for failing to predict the mess they created. And blame more recent government(s) for failing to do anything about it.

But how to solve it? That's the trillion dollar question.

Nope. It's a choice. Apple is choosing to strangle the competition while they have the strong hand. Microsoft chooses to set up a protection racket with companies that infringe on their vaguely-defined Linux patents. In contrast, IBM and Google (generally?) don't pursue patent suits unless they're attacked first. (At least, that's the impression that's been put forth by tech journalism.)