I am Honoured...

I was very glad to see today that the majority of my users were either using a mac or Safari! I know this sounds a bit nerdy, but still! All regular viewers know I resent Microsoft, although I have not made that official yet with a lengthy rant (hint, hint), and much prefer macs, yet to be formalised (hint, hint; again). Unfortunately, there are some people stuck in their old ways, so in 2nd place comes Windows OSs and Internet Explorer, which everyone knows is a complete and utter disgustingly huge pile of horse shoes (did not expect that one, eh?). anyway, here is a detailed breakdown of the stats: 

P.S. I have no idea what Apple PubSub is. 

New Theme, New Name, New Ideas.

You probably have by now noticed that the theme and name of the blog have completely changed (read my post on why i changed the name). Out of the limited choice Blogger offers regarding themes, I chose this one. Its modern and suited for the new age of the web, although it does not use HTML5, unfortunately! I have no idea how to code!

Moving on, why did I choose this theme with the wind turbine in the background? It looks good for a start and that should be, but it's not, my only reason. I chose the wind turbine to present my thoughts on the world and how we interact with it (read my "Earth, Nature and Mankind" post). It is of vital importance that we learn how to use nature in a constructive way and not destroy it. We need to learn to adapt ourselves around nature instead of trying to force nature to adapt to us. We can clearly see the consequences of this (Japan, Chile, Haiti).

Tech companies have to lead the revolution, by making and selling eco-friendly products, while manufacturing them in a sustainable way (unlike Apple with Foxxcon).

The wind turbine is the perfect example of man working alongside nature.

Copyright, Infringement and Stupidity: Update 3

Ok, these posts have been mainly about patents, not copyright, but who cares? Anyway, lets get on with the post.

Did you know that Apple and Microsoft have hired linguists to fight for the name App Store. Bit of background: Apple filed for a trademark 2008, I think, for the App Store name. Microsoft combated that move, saying the term is too generic, even though no one, not even Microsoft, were using the term!

Microsoft have now filed a formal complaint (notice the italics), against the Apples strong linguistic team, with their own expensive linguist definition of the term:

"The compound noun 'app store' means simply 'store at which apps are offered for sale,' which is merely a definition of the thing itself--a generic characterisation."

In my opinion, Apple deserves the right to the name, as they invented the whole idea of apps, whereas previouly, they were programs (a dirty Windows word) for the PDA, with limited access for 3rd party developers.

This goes into a bit more detail here, but I will let you read it if you are interested.

Copyright, Infringement and Stupidity: Update 2

We are back on the Nokia Vs. Apple theme today and guess what? Nokia is being childish (not a surprise). Having lost a lawsuit where the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple did not violate any of five patents claimed by Nokia, Nokia has turned around and filed a second complaint against Apple! Very, very childish. Like a younger sibling never willing to admit defeat (and trust me, I know this feeling. I have a younger sister)! The new complaint claims that Apple have infringed 7 more patents, now being used in "virtually all" Apple products. 

  The seven Nokia patents in the new complaint relate to Nokia's pioneering innovations that are now being used by Apple to create key features in its products in the areas of multi-tasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories.

  This second ITC complaint follows the initial determination in Nokia's earlier ITC filing, announced by the ITC on Friday, March 25. Nokia does not agree with the ITC's initial determination that there was no violation of Section 337 in that complaint and is waiting to see the full details of the ruling before deciding on the next steps in that case.

Nokia says that it now has 46 patents infringed by Apple, many of them dating back to as much as early iPhone development. Yeh, right! They just want to make money from Apple and not products, which have been a complete fail lately. 

Now that you have this information (that I got from got from here), tell me, is this an issue of infringement or stupidity? 

Topic: "Open"

I seem to be using the word "Topic" a lot lately. Anyway, as a tangental post, I have provided a link to a very good article about Google and its alleged "openness". I do not nessesarily agree with the article, I just think its very good.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/26/open/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Copyright, Infringement and Stupidity: Update 1

U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has made a decision regarding the patent lawsuit between Apple and Nokia. Apple has not violated any of five patents claimed by Nokia in its lawsuit.

Apple Inc (AAPL.O) won a round in its patent battle with Nokia (NOK1V.HE) on Friday as a U.S. trade panel ruled that the U.S. company did not violate any of five Nokia patents. The patents were for electronic devices, including mobile phones, portable music players and computers

Nokia had first filed this patent dispute back in October 2009. The situation quickly escalated, with both companies counter suing and filing patent infringements against each other. Nokia has recently filed 4 new suits in Europe against Apple.

I told you this was going to be an exiting year!

Info is from here.

Copyright, Infringement and Stupidity

To start off in my routine sort of way: while sitting in an Airbus A319 on the way to Vienna (yes folks, it's another airplane post, typed on my iPhone and not an Android), I had remembered I had to start my ICT assignment. I have already finished the first part of it, as you can see in the previous post, but this next part is extremely time consuming and you will probably not see anything else on this blog but posts on copyright over these next 3 weeks. I would have liked to post about something else alongside copyright, but with 2 1200 word essays to type up, my fingers would never cope! I will however guarantee you that the next series of posts will be highly interesting, useful and educational. So let's get started.

There are several ways to protect your ideas nowadays: Copyright, that ® logo (no idea what it means), trademark and patents. These each protect different things (copyright is protecting media and text, patents protect ideas and products and a trademark protects a logo, I think). You might want to look up the proper definition! So, what is their significance? If you make a song, you do not want people going around and claiming the song is theirs, right? If you have an idea that will change the industry, you will defiantly not want a rival copying it. This is what these laws aim to do.

Remixes, Mashups and More

As part of one of my school ICT assignments, I need to post some of my favourite machups/remixes on my blog. Just to note, a remix is taking someone else's work or content and re-makeing it into something original, as Larry Lessig says in this TED talk below (skip to 8:30 to see the interesting stuff):

Think Different

The “think different” ad campaign was one of Apple’s most influential advertisements ever. It was created in 1997 (my birthday!) and restored Apple to its once famous image. The ad came in many formats: a famous television commercial (which I will show you later), several print advertisements and a number of TV promos for Apple products.

Apple was loosing a good reputation as a company before the ad launched due to Steve Jobs, The founder of Apple Computer.inc, being fired from his own company! The company went readily downhill. A lot of the Apple supporters left to competitors for better equipment and processors (Apple was using PowerPC, whereas Intel was the up and coming standard). Even worse, the million-dollar project, The Apple Newton, a PDA type device, was largely unsuccessful, loosing Apple Millions. The advertisement, in many ways, marked a significant turning point in Apple’s history, as the re-emergence as one of the major tech giants. Along with the ad, the return of Steve Jobs and a whole bunch of new revolutionary products (including the iMac, Mac OS X and the PowerBooks), really pushed Apple back into the competitive game of tech.