Actually, the point is that Facebook passed the 1000-investor level, by which the SEC required them to start making all the financial disclosures of a public company anyhow. Since they were effectively public, better to do it now than let people see prolonged negative growth and force a lower IPO valuation.
Actually, NONE of those are browsers. Your ability to type something into a search engine does not constitute research.
Apple will block any web browser from the App Store that runs interpreted code (such as Javascript) and does not use the Safari WebKit engine. That means that every one of those browsers is either:
- Using Safari and running a different skin on top
- Passing your information to remote servers who pretend to be you online, then send back server-rendered data to your phone
- Stealing your personal info
- Some combination of the above
Major names like Opera are not running browsers, they're running remote servers. Most of the little guys are just reskins hoping people will like them better than the Safari UI and pay a few bucks.
So Google is a completely data-driven company, especially when it comes to user testing. There are a few possible explanations for this:
1) They are testing how users respond to this change. Not in a "man I'm angry" sense, but in a "does it generate more clicks" sense. If it doesn't, or it generates sufficiently fewer, it'll fail. But they'll have the data to prove it, not the hunch of a product manager
2) This was an early roll-out feature that involves eventually merging G+ and YouTube accounts, which thanks to Google's updated TOS they can now do. Once complete, you wouldn't have to log into YouTube and Google services (gmail, for example) separately. They'd be the same account. The +1 makes sense over the like/dislike feature (which isn't really relevant to any other current services).
Or you know, you can wave your arms and cry that the sky is falling because you don't bother to understand. Whatever.
The other option of course would be to just let you tether. The devices are all more than capable of it.
If carriers are serious about offering "bundling" and not wanting to give out two internet connections for two users, just let users use the wifi hotspot on their device with their current data plan and be done with it.
Sarcasm aside, you make a salient point - most gamers won't know Zynga blatantly copied Nimblebit's game.
But you know who will know? Investors, and employees. SOMEONE at Zynga knew they copied the other game. Maybe it was the Product Manager, maybe it was the whole team, but you can bet the entire company didn't know.
And you can also bet that future hires will come across this and stories like it. If I'm good at what I do and want to create original games, Zynga isn't the place for me.
Please remember that the very state in which Hollywood resides is arguably the foremost technological hub of the world. More people and more money are involved in that industry than the narrow interpretation of "Entertainment" that Hollywood carries. Yes, they have marketing muscle. But ultimately, they don't drive our country and our planet forward the way that technology does.
Pissing off technologists is a dangerous and politically fatal move, especially as the Youtube/Facebook/Tumblr/whatever generation begins voting. They will care a lot more if Facebook tells them a bill is bad than if some aging studio exec does.
Let's be real here - we've been eating genetically modified foods (animals and plants) for the last 6000 years or so. Domestication, selective breeding and cross-breading of species has been a staple of human cultivation of food sources.
Except now we have people with advanced degrees, selectively modifying genes, instead of randomly cross-breeding species and hoping for the best.
Cross-breeding gave us killer bees. Genetic modification gave tomatoes that can be grown naturally, without harsh pesticide chemicals because they naturally repel insects.
Microsoft isn't in the habit of suing open source projects, even if they're backed by commercial entities.
For example, MS never sued Open Office, despite making the assertion it violated 45 patents (many of which may be invalid). Now, if companies like HP started building Open Office-based school machines? Well, MS might step in.
I think this will be tested when/if the Motorola + Google deal closes, if the existing Motorola + MS license deal doesn't carry forward.
I've struggled with this as well. There's obviously not "no evidence" as Mike claims - otherwise these companies wouldn't be settling. There might not be strong evidence, or legally tested evidence, but there's clearly some.
MS isn't going after tiny devs. These are giant companies with huge legal budgets, they looked at MS's evidence and decided a settlement that both companies felt was fair.
Would you prefer the Apple approach? Sue in every country, blocking competitors from entering the market, harm consumers, submit fraudulent evidence to courts?
There are so many other issues in the patent system and tech companies being sleazy, why focus on this so hard? Let it go - you don't need to be angry on the behalf of two companies that are entering into a mutually beneficial business deal.
Sorry, I didn't make it clear in the original post - I'm not the only one to consider this, and there are many extensions and plugins that do the same thing. Fact is, birthday wishes are something we value to receive but put little thought into sending, so it's unsurprising this person saw so many duplicates. There are fewer than 20 people that I could even roughly guess at their birthday, let alone notice if they moved it every few months.
So, I outsourced my birthday wishes to the Happy Birthday Extension. There are precious few people I want to write something specific to, but the feeling when you log in and see 200 "yay you're wonderful" messages is important to some people. So I compromised, sending them varying but generic messages, unless I really care about them, in which case it's a three- or four-sentence message about their importance to me.
Apple has shown that they're perfectly willing to use every questionably-legal technique to sell their products. Lie with your ads, "accidentally" misquote competitors numbers, snidely mock rival CEOs and make fun of their english in your product announcements, and now - taking out a competitor (and supplier) for a few months right when their product is gaining steam (and mindshare)?
Well, that's just Apple.
What's really upsetting is that there's no cost to Apple for this - if Samsung is later cleared of wrongdoing, the months of lost sales? The'll get no settlement for that. Knocking out a quarter of your competitors sales with bogus patent claims?
The upside to this is that if New Jersey bars think they might get sued if they let total dickbags get wasted and leave, they might just stop serving them alcohol when they're wasted.
I'm pretty sure the women of NJ are about to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Recall - this is the country that sued Google because a bunch of BANKING PASSWORDS were being sent, unencrypted, over open WIFI connections.
Clearly their laws and practices don't make for good security policy. Maybe it's a culture thing?
And why would you ever need a user's password? Any decent program has a "become" feature for admins, so you can log in as that user. All the ones I write have it, anyhow.
This whole article sounds like it is written by someone who is outside the military, business, and technology worlds. Why and how we're listening to this hermit is beyond me. Sure, if these predictions had been made in the 70s, that'd be one thing, but at this point, it seems like they're pointing to the past.
That crap about WoW being an example of how DNA traders will work? I'm sorry, haven't ever come across telepresence or Skype, have ya? Amazed groups of people can talk to each other in teamchat? Gee - where do you think VoIP came from? Oh right - military.
I'm sorry, the whole thing just reeks of someone who's stumbled into technology, never worked at a real company, and goes "Wow, if only we could get these two together!", blissfully unaware that these applications have been developed side-by-side for decades.
Our press has always generally agreed with the government. Look back at the "Red Scare" - were newspapers decrying the rounding up of citizens accused of being Communists? No, they were supporting it and applauding every time we "caught one"
I dunno, after her initial comments of "it happens all the time", etc, I wonder if it's just come out that she's been plagiarizing for years and is worried about being sued.
Re: Re: A loss
Actually, the point is that Facebook passed the 1000-investor level, by which the SEC required them to start making all the financial disclosures of a public company anyhow. Since they were effectively public, better to do it now than let people see prolonged negative growth and force a lower IPO valuation.
Re: Re:
Actually, NONE of those are browsers. Your ability to type something into a search engine does not constitute research.
Apple will block any web browser from the App Store that runs interpreted code (such as Javascript) and does not use the Safari WebKit engine. That means that every one of those browsers is either:
- Using Safari and running a different skin on top
- Passing your information to remote servers who pretend to be you online, then send back server-rendered data to your phone
- Stealing your personal info
- Some combination of the above
Major names like Opera are not running browsers, they're running remote servers. Most of the little guys are just reskins hoping people will like them better than the Safari UI and pay a few bucks.
This is only a test...
So Google is a completely data-driven company, especially when it comes to user testing. There are a few possible explanations for this:
1) They are testing how users respond to this change. Not in a "man I'm angry" sense, but in a "does it generate more clicks" sense. If it doesn't, or it generates sufficiently fewer, it'll fail. But they'll have the data to prove it, not the hunch of a product manager
2) This was an early roll-out feature that involves eventually merging G+ and YouTube accounts, which thanks to Google's updated TOS they can now do. Once complete, you wouldn't have to log into YouTube and Google services (gmail, for example) separately. They'd be the same account. The +1 makes sense over the like/dislike feature (which isn't really relevant to any other current services).
Or you know, you can wave your arms and cry that the sky is falling because you don't bother to understand. Whatever.
OR they could let you tether
The other option of course would be to just let you tether. The devices are all more than capable of it.
If carriers are serious about offering "bundling" and not wanting to give out two internet connections for two users, just let users use the wifi hotspot on their device with their current data plan and be done with it.
Re:
Sarcasm aside, you make a salient point - most gamers won't know Zynga blatantly copied Nimblebit's game.
But you know who will know? Investors, and employees. SOMEONE at Zynga knew they copied the other game. Maybe it was the Product Manager, maybe it was the whole team, but you can bet the entire company didn't know.
And you can also bet that future hires will come across this and stories like it. If I'm good at what I do and want to create original games, Zynga isn't the place for me.
Please Remember
Dear Mr. President,
Please remember that the very state in which Hollywood resides is arguably the foremost technological hub of the world. More people and more money are involved in that industry than the narrow interpretation of "Entertainment" that Hollywood carries. Yes, they have marketing muscle. But ultimately, they don't drive our country and our planet forward the way that technology does.
Pissing off technologists is a dangerous and politically fatal move, especially as the Youtube/Facebook/Tumblr/whatever generation begins voting. They will care a lot more if Facebook tells them a bill is bad than if some aging studio exec does.
A little intellectual honesty, now
Let's be real here - we've been eating genetically modified foods (animals and plants) for the last 6000 years or so. Domestication, selective breeding and cross-breading of species has been a staple of human cultivation of food sources.
Except now we have people with advanced degrees, selectively modifying genes, instead of randomly cross-breeding species and hoping for the best.
Cross-breeding gave us killer bees. Genetic modification gave tomatoes that can be grown naturally, without harsh pesticide chemicals because they naturally repel insects.
Re:
Microsoft isn't in the habit of suing open source projects, even if they're backed by commercial entities.
For example, MS never sued Open Office, despite making the assertion it violated 45 patents (many of which may be invalid). Now, if companies like HP started building Open Office-based school machines? Well, MS might step in.
I think this will be tested when/if the Motorola + Google deal closes, if the existing Motorola + MS license deal doesn't carry forward.
Source for MS on FOSS Patent Violations: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-free-and-open-source-software-violates-235-microsoft-p atents/436
Re: Why Care?
I've struggled with this as well. There's obviously not "no evidence" as Mike claims - otherwise these companies wouldn't be settling. There might not be strong evidence, or legally tested evidence, but there's clearly some.
MS isn't going after tiny devs. These are giant companies with huge legal budgets, they looked at MS's evidence and decided a settlement that both companies felt was fair.
Would you prefer the Apple approach? Sue in every country, blocking competitors from entering the market, harm consumers, submit fraudulent evidence to courts?
There are so many other issues in the patent system and tech companies being sleazy, why focus on this so hard? Let it go - you don't need to be angry on the behalf of two companies that are entering into a mutually beneficial business deal.
Re: Work Smarter, not Harder
Sorry, I didn't make it clear in the original post - I'm not the only one to consider this, and there are many extensions and plugins that do the same thing. Fact is, birthday wishes are something we value to receive but put little thought into sending, so it's unsurprising this person saw so many duplicates. There are fewer than 20 people that I could even roughly guess at their birthday, let alone notice if they moved it every few months.
Work Smarter, not Harder
So, I outsourced my birthday wishes to the Happy Birthday Extension. There are precious few people I want to write something specific to, but the feeling when you log in and see 200 "yay you're wonderful" messages is important to some people. So I compromised, sending them varying but generic messages, unless I really care about them, in which case it's a three- or four-sentence message about their importance to me.
http://lifehacker.com/5835409/happybirthday-extension-send-out-b+day-wishes-on-facebook-so-you-d ont-have-to
If you can't compete, litegate
Apple has shown that they're perfectly willing to use every questionably-legal technique to sell their products. Lie with your ads, "accidentally" misquote competitors numbers, snidely mock rival CEOs and make fun of their english in your product announcements, and now - taking out a competitor (and supplier) for a few months right when their product is gaining steam (and mindshare)?
Well, that's just Apple.
What's really upsetting is that there's no cost to Apple for this - if Samsung is later cleared of wrongdoing, the months of lost sales? The'll get no settlement for that. Knocking out a quarter of your competitors sales with bogus patent claims?
There's a silver lining
The upside to this is that if New Jersey bars think they might get sued if they let total dickbags get wasted and leave, they might just stop serving them alcohol when they're wasted.
I'm pretty sure the women of NJ are about to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
Re: Re: Re:
Recall - this is the country that sued Google because a bunch of BANKING PASSWORDS were being sent, unencrypted, over open WIFI connections.
Clearly their laws and practices don't make for good security policy. Maybe it's a culture thing?
And why would you ever need a user's password? Any decent program has a "become" feature for admins, so you can log in as that user. All the ones I write have it, anyhow.
Re: The suit has merit.
No, it doesn't.
If you buy a groupon for $30 for a haircut that normally costs $60, and you let it expire, it's still worth $30, it's just not worth the $60.
And if it expires and you can't redeem it (say, service no longer offered or something), groupon will refund your money.
This lawsuit is a pure moneygrab.
Re: a pertinent link
I was just about to post this - I love the OK Cupid Data blog - their articles are insightful and they expose you to the actual numbers they're using.
Outsider's View
This whole article sounds like it is written by someone who is outside the military, business, and technology worlds. Why and how we're listening to this hermit is beyond me. Sure, if these predictions had been made in the 70s, that'd be one thing, but at this point, it seems like they're pointing to the past.
That crap about WoW being an example of how DNA traders will work? I'm sorry, haven't ever come across telepresence or Skype, have ya? Amazed groups of people can talk to each other in teamchat? Gee - where do you think VoIP came from? Oh right - military.
I'm sorry, the whole thing just reeks of someone who's stumbled into technology, never worked at a real company, and goes "Wow, if only we could get these two together!", blissfully unaware that these applications have been developed side-by-side for decades.
Re: Re: Re:
No, I think that's called re-writing history to mock someone you don't like. Or just blindly quoting Wired (an often embarrassing habit).
Please read up:
http://web.archive.org/web/20040603092645/commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore.and.the.In te1.html
Is it that new?
Our press has always generally agreed with the government. Look back at the "Red Scare" - were newspapers decrying the rounding up of citizens accused of being Communists? No, they were supporting it and applauding every time we "caught one"
Maybe she deserves it?
I dunno, after her initial comments of "it happens all the time", etc, I wonder if it's just come out that she's been plagiarizing for years and is worried about being sued.