Quotulatiousness

May 24, 2012

Losing big to (potentially) win small

Filed under: Law, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

ESR on what might be the “beginning of the end” for patent warfare:

It’s all over the net today. As I repeatedly predicted, the patent claims in the Oracle-vs.-Java lawsuit over Android have completely fizzled. Oracle’s only shred of hope at this point is that Judge Alsup will rule that APIs can be copyrighted, and given the extent of cluefulness Alsup has displayed (he mentioned in court having done some programming himself) this seems rather unlikely.

Copyright damages, if any, will almost certainly be limited to statutory levels. There is no longer a plausible scenario in which Oracle gets a slice of Android’s profits or an injunction against Android devices shipping.

This makes Oracle’s lawsuit a spectacular failure. The $300,000 they might get for statutory damages is nothing compared to the huge amounts of money they’ve sunk into this trial, and they’re not even likely to get that. In effect, Oracle has burned up millions of dollars in lawyers’ fees to look like a laughingstock.

Of course, even if this is the beginning of the end, there will be lots of lawyers encouraging their clients to go down this route, as even if it’s not successful, it can be a very lucrative journey for the lawyers.

March 23, 2012

Software patents: a legal minefield with no accurate maps

Filed under: Economics, Law, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:33

In the Atlantic, Timothy B. Lee explains why most software companies are effectively ignoring the patent system:

A major reason for the recent explosion of patent litigation is that it’s hard for software firms to figure out which patents they’re in danger of infringing. There are hundreds of thousands of software patents in existence, with more than 40,000 new ones issued each year. Indeed, in a recent paper, Christina Mulligan and I estimated that it’s effectively impossible for all software-producing firms to do the legal research, known as a “freedom-to-operate” (FTO) search, required to avoid infringing software patents — there simply aren’t enough patent attorneys to do the work. That’s a major reason why most software firms simply ignore the patent system.

One of the striking things about the patent debate is vast gulf between the views of computer programmers on the one hand and patent attorneys on the other. Steve Lundberg is a patent attorney and blogger who mentioned our paper in a blog post exploring the challenges of performing FTO searches in the software industry. I don’t want to pick on Lundberg, because I think you’d get similar arguments from many patent lawyers. But his post shows a fundamental lack of understanding of how the software industry works.

I work in the software industry (although not as a programmer), and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen software patents granted for things that clearly do not meet the stated criteria for granting patents. It could be a geeky party drinking game: guess whether a particular common programming technique or decades-old user interface element is patented or not, take a drink when you guess wrong. It’d be educational, although guessing “patented” every time might leave you stone cold sober at the end of the party.

As a matter of patent theory, Lundberg is absolutely correct. Patent law’s novelty and obviousness requirements are supposed to narrow the scope of patent protection. But in practice he’s dead wrong. The patent office issues a seemingly endless stream of patents on broad, obvious concepts like emoticon menus, one-click shopping, and wireless email.

And the existence of these broad, obvious patents means that software companies are constantly infringing each other’s patents by accident. The companies with the largest patent portfolios, such as Microsoft and IBM, have tens of thousands of patents, allowing them to credibly threaten almost anyone in the software industry. Even Yahoo, with its relatively modest cache of 1000 patents, was able to find ten patents to assert against Facebook.

March 8, 2012

Army training simulators have come a long way from blanks and oversized firecrackers

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:04

Back in my day, we trained with blanks and “arty simulators” which were just oversized firecrackers with an attached whistle (simulating the fall of shot before it exploded). Today, the market for combat simulation is huge and growing fast:

Towards the end of the Gulf war in 1991, an American armoured scout unit in Iraq’s southern desert stumbled upon a much larger elite force of dug-in Iraqi armour. Rather than retreating, the nine American tanks and 12 Bradley fighting vehicles attacked. When the battle ended about 25 minutes later, the Americans had destroyed, by one tally, 28 Iraqi tanks, 16 armoured vehicles and 39 trucks without suffering a single loss. The Battle of 73 Easting, named after a map co-ordinate, is now considered a masterpiece of American tactical manoeuvring. It prompted America’s Department of Defence to build a digital model of the battle for training.

Neale Cosby, the retired army colonel who led the project at the Institute for Defence Analyses in Alexandria, Virginia, says it let commanders watch the action on panoramic screens, select alternate points of view and identify potential improvements in weaponry and tactics. The software was then upgraded so that it could be played like a video game in which “what if” circumstances — foggy night-time fighting against upgraded vehicle armour, say — could be tested. Widely demoed in Washington, DC, during the 1990s, the model kick-started “heavy-duty funding” for combat simulators, says Timothy Lenoir of Duke University, and began a technological revolution that has transformed training and changed the way war is waged.

[. . .]

Motion Reality, a firm based in Marietta, Georgia, that provided some of the technology used to animate “Avatar”, “King Kong” and the “Lord of the Rings” films, has built a mixed-reality “fight simulator”, called VIRTSIM, in conjunction with Raytheon, an American defence contractor. America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation began using the system in January at its academy in Quantico, Virginia, and it has also been sold to a Middle Eastern country. Training in an area the size of a basketball court, 12 commandos wear goggles that display high-resolution 3D images delivered wirelessly [...]. Real objects in the training area commingle with computer-generated ones such as buildings and enemies. A virtual insurgent can be realistically displayed in the goggles of trainees who look in his direction — even if everybody is running. Trainees wear electrodes that deliver a painful shock when they are struck by a virtual bullet or bomb blast.

January 25, 2012

The obvious mash-up: Minecraft and Lego

Filed under: Gaming, Randomness — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:01

It’s just a brief mention in The Register, but if you’ve ever seen a Minecraft game in progress, the connection is pretty hard to miss:

Lego has given the green light to a set of the famous building bricks based on the world of the cult cyber-block game Minecraft.

The idea came from fan submission site Lego Cuusoo, where users can suggest new creation kits. If these submissions gather sufficient interest among the site’s visitors, the Danish toy maker takes note and sometimes agrees to take the concept to retail.

It’s amusing to think that the next generation of Lego users may consider it to be a spin-off of Minecraft for use offline.

January 5, 2012

Firefly MMO may rise from the dead

Filed under: Gaming, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

There’s still hope, Browncoat gamers:

While Multiverse, the development platform that was supposed to be the driving force for possible Buffy and Firefly MMOs, suffered a studio shutdown, the source code lives — and has been snatched up by the newly formed Multiverse Foundation. Fortunately for those who were holding out hope for an online version of Joss Whedon’s scifi western, it looks as though this new company wants to pick up where the previous team left off.

Don’t let your hopes soar too high: this is still very far from being a complete product (and the organization’s website is still in deep lorem ipsum marination). It is, however, a sign that there’s still enough life in the fan community for the Joss Whedon properties that it appears viable for someone to take this on.

December 9, 2011

600 million “virtual war criminals” to be snagged in new virtual Geneva Convention

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:10

Look out FPS gamers — the Red Cross has you in their sights:

Move aside, Milosevic. Out of the way, al-Bashir. It’s the world’s videogamers who should be hauled up on war crimes charges, some members of the Red Cross seem to think.

During the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, which took place in Geneva last week, attendees were asked to consider what response the organisations should make to the untold zillions of deaths that can be laid at the feet of videogamers.

[. . .]

There is “an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating international humanitarian law (IHL),” it noted.

The key word there, folks, is ‘virtually’. Ruthlessly gunning down civilians, fellow combatants and/or extraterrestrial visitors may be a crime if you do it for real, but not if you merely imagine the action, even if helped by the realistic visuals of the likes of Battlefield 3 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

October 29, 2011

Windows XP, the operating system that refuses to die

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 11:08

Ars Technica looks back on the long, long history of Microsoft’s Windows XP:

Windows XP’s retail release was October 25, 2001, ten years ago today. Though no longer readily available to buy, it continues to cast a long shadow over the PC industry: even now, a slim majority of desktop users are still using the operating system.

Windows XP didn’t boast exciting new features or radical changes, but it was nonetheless a pivotal moment in Microsoft’s history. It was Microsoft’s first mass-market operating system in the Windows NT family. It was also Microsoft’s first consumer operating system that offered true protected memory, preemptive multitasking, multiprocessor support, and multiuser security.

The transition to pure 32-bit, modern operating systems was a slow and painful one. Though Windows NT 3.1 hit the market in 1993, its hardware demands and software incompatibility made it a niche operating system. Windows 3.1 and 3.11 both introduced small amounts of 32-bit code, and the Windows 95 family was a complex hybrid of 16-bit and 32-bit code. It wasn’t until Windows XP that Windows NT was both compatible enough — most applications having been updated to use Microsoft’s Win32 API — and sufficiently light on resources.

In the history of PC operating systems, Windows XP stands alone. Even Windows 95, though a landmark at its release, was a distant memory by 2005. No previous PC operating system has demonstrated such longevity, and it’s unlikely that any future operating system will. Nor is its market share dominance ever likely to be replicated; at its peak, Windows XP was used by more than 80 percent of desktop users.

October 18, 2011

The “Long Tail” gets chopped off for App Store customers

Filed under: Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

Matt Asay considers the “Long Tail” argument and finds it doesn’t apply for app developers:

Two years ago The Register‘s Andrew Orlowski, writing for the New Statesman, poked crater-sized holes in the notion that “long tail” economics were good for musicians. In 2011, it’s equally clear that the long tail* is bad business for app developers, brands, and, well, everyone. The internet has not diffused the ability to make money; it has concentrated it.

The reason is clear: the more abundant the content or apps, the greater the value of separating wheat from chaff. We simply don’t have the time or patience to scavenge the long tail of production.

This isn’t a new idea. For me, Orlowski’s review of the music industry was dispositive on the issue, along with Nick Carr’s analysis of web traffic. But it bears repeating because of the continued euphoria around app stores and their supposed ability to share the wealth in a growing mobile economy.

If only.

Some of the blame for this diminished opportunity for small app developers has to go to the app store’s organization (or lack thereof). In the Apple App Store, I found it very hard to find what differentiated many apps from all the (sometimes dozens) of similar apps other than the odd spelling of the name and the even odder choices for the app icons. Early gaming of the review and ranking made it even less useful. I’ve had an iPhone for over three years, but it must be at least a year since I downloaded a new app — partly because my aging iPhone 3G is no longer able to run the current iOS — but mostly because it’s such a pain to find things in the App Store.

October 13, 2011

This will probably be a common source of humour for a while

Filed under: Media, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Posting your conversations with Siri, the new voice assistant feature of the iPhone 4S:

I’ve spent a week with an iPhone 4S loaned to me from Apple, and I got hooked on Siri quickly. Creating Reminders with Siri was the most useful. I found it silly, however, that items you create with Reminders do not show up in the Calendar app. That means if I create reminders and calendar events, I have to open two different apps to see everything I have to do. I’m hoping Apple integrates Reminders into Siri in a future update.

The only other problem with the iPhone 4S is that once you start using the robot assistant, you’ll wish it did a lot more. It is limited, but really good at what it can do so far.

Here are some of my favorite examples from experimenting with Siri:

Me: “I’m drunk.”

Siri: “I found a number of cabs fairly close to you.” (Perfect; it didn’t dial my ex-girlfriend.)

Me: “I have a flat tire.”

Siri: “I found 14 towing services. 12 of them are fairly close to you.”

Me: “Remind me to steal a ream of paper when I arrive at the office.”

Siri: “Here’s your reminder for when you get to work: Steal a ream of paper. Shall I create it?”

Me: “I’m going to kill myself.”

Siri: “I found four mental health agencies. Three of them are fairly close to you.” (This was just a test — don’t be alarmed.)

Just remember, if you’re going to do something silly with Siri, that everything you do can be (will be?) recorded on Apple’s servers. Siri doesn’t work without an internet connection, as most of the processing is done remotely and the response is generated on your iPhone. In case you thought it’d be wickedly funny to pretend to plot something illegal with Siri’s help.

October 9, 2011

Keylogger infects computers at USAF base where Afghani UAV missions are controlled

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:23

This sounds more like an irritation than a serious attack, but it would be instructive to find out how the keylogger was introduced into what one assumes is a secure location:

A computer virus that captures the strokes on a keyboard has infected networks used by pilots who control US air force drones flown on the front line, according to a report.

Wired magazine reported that the spyware has resisted efforts to remove it from computers in the cockpits at Creech air force base in Nevada, where pilots remotely fly Predator and Reaper drones in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The story said there were no confirmed reports that classified data had been stolen and that the virus did not stop pilots from flying missions. Network security specialists were uncertain whether the virus was part of a directed attack or accidentally infected the networks, the story said.

The air force said in a statement that it did not discuss threats to its computer networks because it could help hackers refine their tactics.

August 1, 2011

A quick plug for a useful EFF plug-in for Firefox

Filed under: Liberty, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

I’ve mentioned this before, but I was just reminded about it as I started using the new laptop with its new install of Firefox:

This Firefox extension was inspired by the launch of Google’s encrypted search option. We wanted a way to ensure that every search our browsers sent was encrypted. At the same time, we were also able to encrypt most or all of the browser’s communications with some other sites:

  • Google Search
  • Wikipedia
  • Twitter and Identi.ca
  • Facebook
  • EFF and Tor
  • Ixquick, DuckDuckGo, Scroogle and other small search engines and lots more!

Firefox users can install HTTPS Everywhere by following this link.

As always, even if you’re at an HTTPS page, remember that unless Firefox displays a colored address bar and an unbroken lock icon in the bottom-right corner, the page is not completely encrypted and you may still be vulnerable to various forms of eavesdropping or hacking (in many cases, HTTPS Everywhere can’t prevent this because sites incorporate insecure third-party content).

Back to the drawing board

Filed under: Administrivia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:15

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been trying to use Microsoft’s Windows Easy Transfer utility to move 100Gb of files and settings from my old laptop to the new one, but between technical glitches and thunderstorms, it still hasn’t completely worked. When the initial estimate ballooned up from a few hours to nearly two days, I started to suspect things were not going to go according to the script . . .

Today’s plan is to do it in two stages: back up the old machine’s files to the NAS, then install the files from the NAS to the new laptop.

July 31, 2011

Upgrades in slow motion

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 16:55

I bought a new laptop yesterday, as my old laptop is starting to creak when I load up a full suite of work tools (Adobe FrameMaker, Open Office Writer or Microsoft Word, a couple of web browsers plus a virtual machine or two under VMWare). Elizabeth will be taking over my old laptop and retiring her Acer with its constant beeping and lock-ups when I’ve finished installing all the software and moving over all my files to the new laptop.

I’m currently trying to transfer files and settings from my old laptop to the new machine. The Windows Easy Transfer tool makes it look pretty straightforward . . . but it’s slow, slow, slow. I started a transfer last night after dinner, anticipating it’d be done this morning, but the WiFi router glitched not long after I started the process, so it didn’t happen. Plus, we had some lively thunderstorms roll through early this morning, which meant I had to jump out of bed and shut everything down anyway.

Second attempt this afternoon, once the weather cleared up, and it’s now telling me to expect the transfer to take “1 day 15 hours”. And, of course, you can’t use either machine for anything else while the files are being transferred.

July 27, 2011

MS-DOS at thirty

Filed under: History, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:25

It was indeed, according to The Register, thirty years ago that MS-DOS hit the market:

MS-DOS is 30 years old today. Well, kind of. On 27 July 1981, Microsoft gave the name MS-DOS to the disk operating system it acquired on that day from Seattle Computer Products (SCP), a hardware company owned and run by a fellow called Rod Brock.

SCP developed what it at various times called QDOS and 86-DOS to run on a CPU card it had built based on Intel’s 8086 processor.

July 17, 2011

Testing a new WordPress plug-in

Filed under: Administrivia, Technology — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:35

I’ve installed a new WordPress plug-in to display Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ buttons at the bottom of individual posts (not on the main page). If you have any problems using them, please let me know.

Update, 8 August: I had to turn it off, as it was interfering with the stylesheet for both comments and extended entries. In both cases, whatever it was doing was reducing the space between paragraphs to the same as the ordinary inter-line spacing, and treating bulleted lists as if they were just ordinary paragraphs.

Nice idea, needs either a better (less intrusive) implementation, or should only be used by bloggers who know much more about the innards of stylesheets than I do.

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