Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, July 02 2012 @ 04:34 PM EDT |
Newspick
Apple Inc.
took in nearly $8 billion in greater China during the first three months of
2012. The price of continuing
to sell its tablet in China under the iPad name:
a mere $60 million. WSJ
More numbers: Proview started out asking for $1.6Bn,
eventually dropping to $400M. Apple as usual offers no comment. They
don't
need to. iPad sales are currently blocked in several large urban markets. To get
back that $60M they need to sell only half
a million entry level devices. A
personal observation: devices claiming to be iPad were widely on sale in western
China last
month. Whenever I brought out my iPod Touch to show some picture or
movie my Chinese audience were all gasps of
admiration, mistaking the iPod on
the back for iPad. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Gringo_ on Monday, July 02 2012 @ 11:18 PM EDT |
I found this article astonishing. Microsoft is so
desperate to "get in the
game" that they are throwing away
billions of dollars. It admitted its largest
acquisition in
the Internet sector was effectively worthless and announced
a
$6.2 billion charge to write down the value of an online
advertising agency
it bought five years ago.
Microsoft's online services division (Bing)
is currently
losing about $500 million a quarter. The unit has lost more
than $5 billion in the last three years alone.
Right there in
those two paragraphs we are talking over $11
billion. How much is a
billion, anyhow? Can you get you get
your head around just how much that is? A
thousand million
dollar bills. What could you do with that much money? Could
you manage to spend it all? ...and here we have Microsoft
throwing it around
like it was pocket change. On top of
that there's the 8 billion they spent on
Skype, and so many
other things.
Microsoft has too much money! I
think the share holders
might want some of that. How much could Microsoft be
paying
out in dividends to its shareholders instead of making
worthless
investments? I suppose they may be more than a tad
upset with Microsoft's
leadership - or lack thereof.
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 09:44 AM EDT |
See here:-
Court of Justice of the European Union
PRESS RELEASE No 94/12
Luxembourg, 3 July 2012
Judgment in Case C-128/11
UsedSoft GmbH v Oracle International Corp.
An author of software cannot oppose the resale of his ‘used’ licences allowing
the use of his programs downloaded from the internet
The exclusive right of distribution of a copy of a computer program covered by
such a licence is exhausted on its first sale.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 12:47 PM EDT |
About the Nokia/FRAND/Google commentary. Nokia has already sued
Apple and
gotten a large payment in a settlement.
Which raises a question: Android
does require a license. Could the terms of
the license include waiver of any ip
claims upon Google and fellow licensees of
Android?
The overriding
point about Nokia is that its traditional business is
collapsing faster than
its ability to replace it. Patent claims are an inefficient
means to slowing
down the competition and generating cash to fund
transitions, but it takes less
time to send a demand letter and file a suit than it
does to build and market
polished products. And, yes, that is what I hate about
the software patent
system.
I grant that the conspiracy is possible, but neither Nokia nor
Microsoft can
possibly expect that competitors using Android are going to go
away. They do
both want the time so they can get a profitable position in the
mobile markets,
but when given a choice of exclusive outcomes, Nokia would
rather have the
cash than help Redmond with its 1200-step
program to mobile
dominance.
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- Doubt it - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 08:39 PM EDT
- Doubt it - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 04:16 AM EDT
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Authored by: Tolerance on Tuesday, July 03 2012 @ 05:02 PM EDT |
I enjoyed the irony when Mr Fontana pointed out (via twitter) the snippet from
Vanity Fair's interview with Paul Allen - "We borrowed ... a long-standing
software tradition". But with context you see it's not that embarrassing:
"In building our homegrown basic, we borrowed bits and pieces of our design
from previous versions, a long-standing software tradition."
Mr Allen doubtless knew that programming languages, even more than APIs, aren't
copyrightable. And at the time (1974) the idea of patents in any software was
dodgy.
That's even true of copyright, though there's an IBM case involving airport
software which goes back to 1961 or so, if I recall correctly. What is more
bracing is the sentence immediately following:
"Languages evolve; ideas blend together; in computer technology, we all
stand on others’ shoulders."
---
Grumpy old man[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 05:53 AM EDT |
Link to News
Pick.
Like the rate-fixing scandal, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It
is an inadvertent glimpse of something much bigger going on with the banks right
now -- something you won't see in the mainstream media until it's no longer
possible for the banks to keep up the business-as-usual facade, already
crumbling.
This is significant.
No link. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, July 04 2012 @ 01:12 PM EDT |
My favorite part of the article:
Instead, Parliament made
“three strikes” schemes illegal in the entire European Union.
It
would be beautiful if that kind of response occurred more often. Imagine an
EULA - a non-negotiable license - with a Clause that says "you give up any right
to a class action lawsuit examined by the Government and a new Consumer
Protection Law comes into being to make such a clause
unenforceable.
That's just one example of the many situations which would
seriously benefit Society if such a process was followed.
LOL - I'd love
to see Microsoft's attempt to get a Law put in place that makes it illegal to
sell a computer without Microsoft software turn into a Law that says:
It is
illegal to refuse the sale of a computer without software! Additionally, any
computer sold where the consumer does not want the software is due an immediate
discount based on the shelf value of said software and the software is to be
removed.
:)
RAS[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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