Oracle Sues Google Over Use of Java in Android

WTF‽‽‽ oracle is a patent troll or something now‽

From the article:

MarketWatch:

Oracle Corp. said Thursday it has filed a copyright-infringement lawsuit against Google Inc., alleging that the Internet search giant infringed on intellectual property related to the Java software that Oracle acquired when it purchased Sun Microsystems Inc.

Hmm. Makes no sense to me, but the story is light on technical details. Google sure is picking up enemies, though.

Update: Tom Krazit has a copy of Oracle’s complaint and the patent numbers they claim Google is violating.

 ★ 

Michigan Governor says Limbaugh hating on the Volt "un-American" [w/video]

Oh, so Rush Limbaugh is a douche? I hadn't realized that.

From the article:



Rush Limbaugh and Fox News might not like the Chevrolet Volt, but Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm will gladly go to bat for the car and for General Motors. She did just that at the Center for American Progress recently after being asked about Limbaugh's comments by Think Progress, saying:

It's just un-American. I can't believe that somebody would say this about this American product. He hasn't even driven it. He hasn't sat in it. You know, why wouldn't you be supportive of American manufacturers building American vehicles with American workers, who now have jobs as a result of this. Why wouldn't you be supportive of that? It is mind-blowing to me. And of course, the public is getting paid back. You know, GM has paid back the loan - the bottom line is, is this is a good news story, and somebody who would twist it to be something negative obviously has another agenda. Which we all know he does.

Exploded view of Chevy Cruze "shutter" grille [w/video]

‘Why Google Became a Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey’

Ryan Singel for Wired on Google and net neutrality. The most damning bit is this quote from Google’s own weblog, back in 2007:

The nation’s spectrum airwaves are not the birthright of any one company. They are a unique and valuable public resource that belong to all Americans. The FCC’s auction rules are designed to allow U.S. consumers — for the first time — to use their handsets with any network they desire, and download and use the lawful software applications of their choice.

It’s not that Google is worse on net neutrality than other companies with a stake in the mobile phone game. It’s that they made such a show of being better, of being on the side of the public interest — before they had a big stake in the game.

A Review of Verizon and Google's Net Neutrality Proposal | Electronic Frontier Foundation

EFF weighs in on the Verizon/Google Net Neutrality Proposal.

From the article:

Efforts to protect net neutrality that involve government regulation have always faced one fundamental obstacle: the substantial danger that the regulators will cause more harm than good for the Internet. The worst case scenario would be that, in allowing the FCC to regulate the Internet, we open the door for big business, Hollywood and the indecency police to exert even more influence on the Net than they do now.

Don’t Be Ugly By Accident! « OkTrends

Weird article, but I thought this part was funny.

From the article:

oh, also—iPhone users have more sex.

File this under "icebreakers, MacWorld '11". Finally, statistical proof that iPhone users aren't just getting fucked by Apple:

The chart pretty much speaks for itself; I'll just say that the numbers for all three brands are for 30 year-olds, so it's not a matter of older, more experienced people preferring one phone to another. We found this data as part of our general camera-efficacy analysis: we crossed all kinds of user behaviors with the camera models and found we had data on the number of sexual partners for 9,785 people with smart phones.

Google and Verizon's net neutrality proposal explained

I don't get what the point is, but I don't trust Verizon. I trust Google to eventually figure it out, even if they take some wrong turns along the way (kinda like doing business in China).

I think it's bullshit to distinguish wireless broadband from wired broadband and pretend wireless should get special treatment. If any of the major wired broadband providers figured it out, they'd just start installing wireless access points on every telephone pole and call it "wireless broadband" and be able to do whatever they want as long as it fits within this "special service" tier. I hope that Google figures it out faster than they did China if they do end up selling consumers out.

I'm very interested in what you guys think that have the time to read and understand all this. Unfortunately, I do not.

From the article:

After a week of rumors hinting at Google and Verizon brokering some sort of net neutrality "deal," the two companies made some waves this afternoon with a hastily-arranged press call during which CEOs Eric Schmidt and Ivan Seidenberg emphatically denied any sort of formal business arrangement and instead put forth what they called a "joint policy proposal" -- seven principles they say will preserve the open internet while allowing network operators the flexibility and freedom to manage their networks.

What's interesting is that the announcement comes just few days after the FCC declared its closed-door net-neutrality meetings with ISPs and other interested parties to be dead -- it's odd for Google and Verizon to claim their new proposal is just an extension of their joint statement in general support of net neutrality from last October when it's very clearly an articulation of a specific plan that was undoubtedly proposed and rejected during those failed meetings.

Now, we don't know for sure what happened, but we've got a theory: the proposal reads to us like Verizon's basically agreeing to trade neutrality on its wired networks for the right to control its wireless network any way it wants -- apart from requiring wireless carriers and ISPs to be "transparent" about network management, none of the neutrality principles that govern wired networks will apply to wireless networks. That's a big deal -- it's pretty obvious that wireless broadband will be the defining access technology for the next generation of devices and services. But you know us, and we don't do hysterics when we can do reasoned analysis instead -- so grab a copy of the official Verizon / Google Legislative Framework Proposal right here and let's break it down step by step, shall we?

Continue reading Google and Verizon's net neutrality proposal explained

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Earliest Web Doc is HTML5

It just lacks the DocType that didn't exist then. WHATWG did a great job building history into HTML5.

From the article:

“Links and Anchors,” the very first document published on the web, is almost valid HTML5.

Hat tip: Jeremy Keith.

P.S. Got yours yet?

Confessions of a Tea Party Casualty

Fascinating piece by David Corn for Mother Jones, on Bob Inglis, a very conservative South Carolina Republican who lost the primary election to a “Tea Party” candidate. Why? Because Inglis is not insane:

I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there’s a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life’s earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, “What the heck are you talking about?” I’m trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, “You don’t know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don’t know this?!”

And because he wouldn’t falsely smear President Obama as a “socialist”:

For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment. He is a liberal fellow. I’m conservative. We disagree… But I don’t need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

Google Shitcans Wave

Glenn Fleishman on Google’s pulling the plug on Wave:

Wave’s primary problem is that it was a mishmash of too many separate elements crammed into one bulging interface. Was Wave email? Not quite, although it could handle notifications. Was it an annotation system used to mark up documents? Yes, but in an odd way that was hard to follow. Was it a wiki or a simultaneous editor? Yes and no. And so on.

It’s always seemed remarkable to me that they even shipped Wave in the first place. Interesting technology? Sure. But as a product, it was almost impossible to describe. When has a new product been successful when no one knows or understands what they’re supposed to use it for? It was the most Google-y product ever — no other company would have or could have shipped it.