Not according to Wikipedia. It claims that Aero first made an appearance in Vista Beta 1 and that it was feature complete by build 5270 (the December Community Technology Preview). After that there were many releases including Beta 2 and Release Candidates 1 & 2.

Fair enough, but my original question still stands. Other than the original drafters of the constitution, who actually thought that the Nortel patent purchase would result in anything other than what we have today? The complaint that you and 3seas have is with the patent system in general, not with this particular action.

How quaint. Given that the patents are now being run by the folks who used to run Nortel's patent licensing program, it means that not much has really changed under the new ownership. Nortel may have claimed to want to use them defensively, but they still had a licencing program for them.

Oops. I meant to edit out EMC.

Just because someone disagrees with you, that does not make them an astroturfer.

Why are you picking on Microsoft? Shouldn't you also blame Apple, EMC, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony? And also Google, who also attempted to buy the patents.

How so? The purpose of a patent is to give someone a monopoly over a specific invention, meaning to prevent other people from being able to use it or even import goods that duplicate the invention. In the event that the patent holder cannot make use of the patent themselves (eg. too costly to implement) then they can licence it or even transfer the ownership of the patent to someone else, usually for a fee.

This is exactly what has happened here. Ownership has been transferred. This is business as usual in the patent industry.

Now you may believe that patents should not be owned by companies, only individual inventors. But that simplistic idea disappeared long ago; long before the Nortel patents went on the market. Surely nobody actually expected these particular patents to be used in the limited way they were hundreds of years ago.

So a group of companies band together to buy patents and they create a single organisation to handle it. What else would they do? It is hardly likely that any company would be happy with the whole lot being overseen by one of the other member companies, and they would be in negotiation for years if they tried to split them all up.

So the question to the submitter is: what other outcome did you expect?

So what is your point? That Samsung should be so grateful to Apple for choosing them as a supplier of parts that they stop competing with Apple in other markets? If that is how things work then all Microsoft has to do is buy a billion dollars worth of Macs and Apple will drop the iPhone so they don't compete with Windows Mobile phones.

The fact that these massive companies can do business with each other on one hand while filing lawsuits with the other hand is not unusual. It is as relevant to this story as them both having members of staff named Eric.

It is possible that misunderstood your point. If that is the case then please tell us what possible scenario you had in mind when you said that you suspected that there is more than meets the eye? That Apple has paid Samsung to be its whipping boy so they can look like dicks when they sue them for using rounded corners? Or perhaps Apple are using this dispute to renegotiate their other contracts with Samsung. Or maybe it is all just to fill up newspaper columns so that journalists don't start talking about the other players in this area like Microsoft or Blackberry. (If the last one is true then it certainly worked!)

It's a pretty silly argument to say that Google have been unfairly singled out, and quite wrong too. The companies that you mention have all had their share of regulatory intervention, especially in the EU. Your first example, Microsoft (exactly who was inconvenienced by their OOXML standard?) is the first company that springs to mind when thinking of EU intervention. Remember the browser choice screen or the two billion dollars in fines?

They are also keeping their eye on Apple in the eBook market, although I maintain that the consumer has benefited from Apple being able to strong-arm the record industry on removing their DRM. Facebook's privacy problems have also been the subject of scrutiny in the EU. And for Oracle...

No, I can't bring myself to even appear to defend Oracle!

So the idea that Google should be given a free pass because they are being unfairly picked on is just rubbish. That doesn't mean to say that the EU's complaint isn't without issue. The fact that Google displays links to its own vertical search services doesn't seem too unreasonable, and it is a practice that has gone on in the industry for years. I first saw this used by Yahoo when they linked to their own services in their results (eg. Yahoo Finance). And when I search for "microsoft stock price" on Google, I got links to an assortment of financial sites at the top of the results (eg. Yahoo Finance).

Similarly, when they include reviews or news from other sites, they always link to the source. That said I can see that there would be a concern if they show the entire news story or review which means that you never have to follow the link. I guess there is a legitimate concern about some of Google's practices, but I am wary of the heavy handed, simplistic approach that the EU regulators sometimes utilise.

Spartacus? It's not much of a spoiler, as it turned out that they were all Spartacus.

My turn: Rob Schneider.

There, what movie did that spoil? Click here for the answer.