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Windows 8 won't hit critical mass in enterprises, Forrester says | 156 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
VP9 is (almost) here!
Authored by: Imaginos1892 on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 01:28 PM EDT
Google is announcing the near-release of the VP9 codec which is good news, only
they had better be planning to make their own Android-based HD video cameras too.

I'm betting that if any of the existing manufacturers try to sell video cameras with VP9,
MPEG-LA will pull their licenses for H.264 out from under their feet. Kind of like MicroShaft
used to do to those who tried to offer Linux computers.

Also, will we ever be able to get disk players that understand VP9? Again, it is unlikely
that any of the existing manufacturers will be allowed to make them. And Sony, of course,
wouldn't even try.

MPEG-LA exists mainly to keep new competitors out of the movie business.
---------------------
Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Stevens: Rationale for Bush v. Gore was “unacceptable”
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 04:09 PM EDT
mistaky on hanging chads vs dimpled chads
and because of that:
oh well, just another future ....

(

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/stevens_rationale_for_bush_v_gore_was_unacceptab
le/

)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

ReadWrite's new policy of making their articles impossible to copy and paste? OK with Chrome...
Authored by: SilverWave on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 04:38 PM EDT
Version 26.0.1410.63

Google Is Prepping A Sneak Attack On Microsoft Office

Test: Why QuickOffice?


QuickOffice uses the same .DOCX file format that Office does, allowing users to quickly edit and share the same files as Office users. QuickOffice compatibility probably means that more businesses and users will see Google Apps as a viable alternative to Office, wounding Microsoft's Office cash cow.

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Windows 8 won't hit critical mass in enterprises, Forrester says
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 06:02 PM EDT
Windows 8 won't hit critical mass in enterprises, Forrester says

A lot of companies are still in the middle of rolling out Windows 7. In many cases they're only doing that because Microsoft will be dropping support for XP next year. I won't be surprised if quite a few companies start their migration from XP in a last minute panic.

On "enterprise" time scales, by the time the next upgrade cycle comes around the market for commodity desktops may have changed out of all recognition. Even if everyone isn't using tablets, people will expect tablet style ease of administration for desktops. Most desktops will probably be more like overgrown Android tablets with keyboards in front of them. That may not work for CAD, but most people don't use CAD. I can remember when people were using SUN or IBM Unix workstations to do serious CAD, and that didn't mean that everyone else in the company had to use a unix workstation as well.

That doesn't mean that Microsoft is going out of business tomorrow. IBM is still selling mainframes after all. It just means that Microsoft will become just another "legacy vendor" wringing cash out of a shrinking pool of enterprise customers.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Google’s VP8 License Proposal
Authored by: tknarr on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 06:17 PM EDT

Google ’s VP8 License Proposal

I don't see where the potential pitfalls they talk about are present in the license draft. For instance, as far as users go, the license says:

Subject to the terms and conditions of this VP8 Patent Cross-License Agreement, Google grants to You a non-assignable and non-transferrable, non-sublicenseable, worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive license under the VP8 Patent Claims to make, use, sell (including the licensing of software), offer for sale (including the offer of a software license) and import (collectively, “Exploit“) Licensed Products in the Licensed Field of Use.
So software vendors need to explicitly accept the license, but once they do their users no more have to accept individually than users of Microsoft Windows have to individually agree to a license for all the patents Windows implements. Seems pretty clear-cut to me just from reading the language of the license, I don't see how it could reasonably be read any other way.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

News Picks: Alcatel v Newegg
Authored by: webster on Friday, May 17 2013 @ 11:44 PM EDT
.

Newegg won a jury verdict at trial. Alcatel had the
challenge on appeal. Justice Prost of CLS v Alice was on
this panel.

It was an easy call. They weren't going to go behind the
jury.

.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Thats a huge number! "only one in 10 American smartphone users would use Google Glass regularly"
Authored by: SilverWave on Saturday, May 18 2013 @ 03:46 AM EDT
Quote: A new poll from BiTE Interactive claims that only one in 10 American smartphone users would use Google Glass regularly.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/05/17/peep-this- google-glass-for-eyeglass-wear ers-revealed/#ixzz2Td0FAd6X

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Add this to the News Picks PJ... Awesome - London in 1927
Authored by: SilverWave on Saturday, May 18 2013 @ 04:31 AM EDT
London in 1927
from Tim Sparke 3 years ago NOT YET RATED
Incredible colour footage of 1920s London shot by an early
British pioneer of film named Claude Friese-Greene, who made
a series of travelogues using the colour process his father
William - a noted cinematographer - was experimenting with.
It's like a beautifully dusty old postcard you'd find in a
junk store, but moving.
Music by Jonquil and Yann Tiersen.
The lovely people at the BFI have got in touch and it turns
out the film was made in 1926. They have lots of other
footage from his film, The Open Road on their YouTube
channel up here bit.ly/1920sEngland. More background on this
here bit.ly/1077PVK.

via Guardiantech

---
RMS: The 4 Freedoms
0 run the program for any purpose
1 study the source code and change it
2 make copies and distribute them
3 publish modified versions

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

FP: Canada’s Competition Bureau plans investigation into Google Canada
Authored by: glennjones130486 on Saturday, May 18 2013 @ 11:48 AM EDT
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/05/17/google-canada-investigation-competi
tion-bureau/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&__lsa=5887-6b37

From the article:

---

"Google was recently notified by the Competition Bureau of the watchdog
organization’s intentions to investigate the Silicon Valley giant’s business in
Canada. The agency has so far informed Google of its plans to open a formal
inquiry, but has not asked for specific information or documents from Google
Canada."

---

If Microsoft/Fairsearch claims that Android/Linux/FOSS is
"anticompetitive", does any Canadian here know of a local group I can
support to fight this?

(I'm a university undergrad with no connection to Google. I already donate to
the FSF, EFF, and Wikimedia, but they don't have local Canadian offices AFAIK.)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

[cryptography] skype backdoor confirmation
Authored by: tiger99 on Sunday, May 19 2013 @ 01:56 PM EDT
I don't know about security backdoors, although it would not be at all surprising.

What I do know is that I finally changed my Android phone from Vodafone, with their currently useless network as far as data is concerned, to Virgin at half the price, and unlimited text, data and phone use. £15 only, for the SIM on a monthly contract.

Now that may seem not to be relevant, but while I was setting things up (WiFi tethering for the Xoom works faultlessly, before it did not work at all) I cleared out some apps and installed some new ones which I expected to need. All was going well, until I installed Skype, which caused the phone to keep crashing and rebooting, as well as seriously draining the battery.

I don't know whether to put it down to the usual gross incompetence and negligence by M$, or by utter malice, considering that it is an Android phone.....

Skype, the only M$-owned code that I had ever had on the phone (their patent claims are not valid in the UK), is now uninstalled, and it will not be back.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Why am I not surprised...
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 19 2013 @ 07:28 PM EDT
that xmonad is the preferred window manager for people who visit a web site
called ycombinator?

MouseTheLuckyDog

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

News Pick Is a broadcast to everyone private under the Copyright Act?
Authored by: dio gratia on Sunday, May 19 2013 @ 10:19 PM EDT

Is a broadcast to everyone private under the Copyright Act?.

Judge Chin's dissenting opinion appears to require a judicious edit of the statute text:

to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work . . . to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
Where the actual statute 17 U.S.C. § 101 - definition says:
(2) to transmit or otherwise communicate a performance or display of the work to a place specified by clause (1) or to the public, by means of any device or process, whether the members of the public capable of receiving the performance or display receive it in the same place or in separate places and at the same time or at different times.
And clause (1) preceding the quoted clause 2 specifies:
(1) to perform or display it at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered; or
In effect attempting to create a public display where likely none exists at least in private residences and displays not available to the public.

Judge Chin supports by:

Hence, the use of a device or process to transmit or communicate copyrighted images or sounds to the public constitutes a public performance, whether members of the public receive the performance in the same place or in different places, whether at the same time or at different times.
This isn't about private individuals being members of the greater class 'the public', but rather the display being made to the public or to a less than substantial numbers of persons normally a family circle and/or social acquaintances.

And we could note that the statue defines what it is "To perform or display a work “publicly”" in the two clauses without requiring resorting to looking up public in the dictionary, providing in any event exceptions as specified in clause (1).

As I understand it copyright infringement is a matter of equity, in which the copyright holder is made whole for losses incurred by infringement. It isn't clear there is any demonstrable losses the plaintiffs can have incurred here in any event.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Cheap genetic testing -- PJ, Careful please!
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 19 2013 @ 11:46 PM EDT
PJ,

False positives on tests for scary diseases like cancer are just as much a
problem as false negatives...both lead to harm.

This is a SEPARATE, INDEPENDENT problem from patent holdup of
research and testing that might make said tests more accurate, or put real
numbers to my possibility below.

False positives are a classic...so, making up facts out of whole cloth for
illustration, suppose every woman with inherited breast cancer has BrCA1.
Suppose further that this is approximately 1 in 100,000 women...or about
1500 women across the US who might save their lives with a mastectomy
before cancer ever develops.

Now suppose, simplistically, that the gene itself occurs in one in 10,000
women, so there are 15,000 women across the country who have the gene,
but will not benefit from the early mastectomy. Note that a very large
number of these tests will be needed to find this out.

But a mastectomy is costly and carries definite risks...including death. So,
on balance, using only the test to decide on a mastectomy will lead to a
certain number of early deaths.

So the author of our newspick is completely off base....there are only two
known solutions for tests like ths. The first is education on the limitations,

and the second is more research...which is being prevented by the patent
on the gene.

Hope this helps.
(Christenson)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Patents, patent tolls, PAEs, software patents
Authored by: Gringo_ on Monday, May 20 2013 @ 12:45 AM EDT

It is so gratifying to see so many articles on the subject. I remember just a few years ago, though we were discussing this subject here, it seemed "the outside world" had not yet caught on to the magnitude of the problem.

Then bit by bit, first one, then another, and a trickle has become a flood. It seems the vast Collective Consciousness has finally awoken to the problem.

So much discussion now about how to "fix" the broken system, how to ensure patent quality, especially, how to ensure patent quality for software patents. This last is, of course, the wrong question. There should be no software patents. Will they all ever agree on how to fix the system? Will they all ever agree on what to do about software patents, now that some of the biggest companies on the planet have invested billions in both acquiring them and asserting them?

I have a simple suggestion. Do nothing at all. Leave the patent system exactly as it is, because you will never find two people in a position to actually do something about it to agree on a fix anyway. Instead, I suggest they put a cap on the amount anybody can sue for a patent.

That cap should be one dollar. Not one dollar per device, one dollar in total. Any award by the courts should be limited to one dollar. That's it. Companies could go right on suing if they wish. Trolls could continue to troll. Companies can go right on accumulating and asserting software patents if they wish. However, if people don't pay the license fee demanded, and are taken to court, the maximum damages awarded would be limited to one dollar. (And no interest can be collected for late payments!)

End of the problem. Beginning of a golden age of productivity and accelerated growth of technology, tech sector employment, and the GDP.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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