They should be fined, HTC that is, for the cost of the current-day expense of doing their own R & D to implement those key factors in their technology under the presumption no groundwork was laid for them. $13 a unit or other such numbers are patent extortion however. Considering the level of triviality the patents in contention have now reached, those development costs should not be all that substantial. ... the novelty wore of quickly.

" in order for an invention to be patentable, it must not only be novel, but it must also be a nonobvious improvement over the prior art" - http://www.bitlaw.com/patent/requirements.html#nonobvious No joke, the "Upgrade" button is a patent the United States Patent and Trademark Office is currently holding as a protected I.P.. They've clearly failed to perform their due diligence regarding what are technical innovations versus only Trade Secrets. I believe the root of this problem is due to the exponentially faster timescales that complexity now shifts to merely being novelty. The speed of development in software fields is unprecedented and old schools of thought for decades long protections are antiquated. Considering the USPTO was designed to handle the slow advancement of a paper age however, it should come as no surprise to anyone that a paper dinosaur of old bureaucratic methods can't keep up.

I sincerely hope the Judge is smart enough to spot a failure of jurisprudence on behalf of the Patenting Authority. If these patents had been judged correctly the first time, this mess would never of had to been bothered with. I also can’t blame Google for disregarding unrealistic claims of property regarding common-sense programming advancements. The claims are likely rationally un-defendable, like nearly all software patents these days.

An irony of our society: We child safety proof ALMOST EVERYTHING when it comes to showing dimwits what to avoid (Then hold responsible those who failed to protect idiots from themselves) yet it is somehow controversial to try clever tricks to show the sensible people better paths. .... Sigh. My vote is that civil nudging methods are a definitive good use of influence.

I'm not necessarily saying I agree with what they are doing, just that its a best case scenario for how our historically lax information security measures can be exposed as I don't think the polite approach would drive the point home sufficiently. Pulling the pants down of major companies who should have already prepared better sucks for the companies disgraced but for every one they embarrass are scores more who are doing what they can to tighten their own belts. Whitehats have been trying for years to demonstrate, unsuccessfully, better efforts are needed. The best cure for our complacency is a tame threat encouraging solid fences are built before the real, wild threats arrive. And keep in mind, it's OUR data these companies have so poorly guarded.

The Sony hacks illustrated just how exposed our data is; the treasure trove of personal data sitting out there for the EASY taking by real criminals is a disaster waiting to happen on an unprecedented scale. I'd rather a group like Lulz go around poignantly dispelling our notions of information security rather than have actual identity thieves take on the mantle of a wake up call themselves. I applaud their point: if you can't even stop people compromising systems for laughs, you'll never be able to stop those who are doing so for profit.

If we can agree that quantum phenomenon apply to the matter that comprises our neurology then it is a given that quantum behavior is an element of the environment in which our neurology has evolved. Being an intrinsic property, isolating conscious activity from that inherent dynamic requires fully encompassing its behavior in such a way as to sufficiently capture and nullify these characteristics. Barring achieving that effect, we are left with a situation in which quantum phenomenon plays some role in the way our neurology and by that our consciousness works. Frankly, the non sequitor is in thinking that quantum theory DOESN’T play a role in consciousness.

The most substantial fallacy here however is in all this trite search for a silver bullet, the “QUANTUM PHYSICS WILL EXPLAIN MY SOUL” mysticism some seem to embrace. It’s one a piece of a bigger puzzle; there will never be a simple answer at which we can point to and declare “That is I”. Still, why do rational people presume quantum mechanical inclusion as a factor in consciousness? It’s because quantum theory is EXTREMELY useful for explaining how the computationally complex aspects of our cognition are capable of operating; probabilistic computation makes almost trivial types of tasks which are FAR beyond our binary computational approaches. Tasks which are critical to simulating reality in a non-polar universe. If we have an evolutionary system developing with access to the components useful for developing a computational advantage that increases survivability, Occam’s Razor (or to stick with the popular Latin phrasings here, lex parsimoniae) in the very least can be used to show that the presumption of exclusion of these properties is the less defendable position.