Showing headlines posted by BernardSwiss

Google bid for the patents, but it didn't get them. Instead, the patents went to a group of competitors—Microsoft, Apple, RIM, Ericsson, and Sony—operating under the name "Rockstar Bidco." The companies together bid the shocking sum of $4.5 billion. Patent insiders knew that the Nortel portfolio was the patent equivalent of a nuclear stockpile: dangerous in the wrong hands, and a bit scary even if held by a "responsible" party.

This afternoon, that stockpile was finally used for what pretty much everyone suspected it would be used for—launching an all-out patent attack on Google and Android.

The idea that Wikipedia is dying has become one of the Internet's recurrent stories. Because something used by so many people every day is completely free and dependent on the selfless dedication of relatively few individuals, there is perhaps an underlying fear that it will disappear, and it will be our fault for not supporting it better. However, alongside major issues like the need for an influx of new contributors from more diverse backgrounds, one of the lesser-known challenges Wikipedia faces is the rise of "socking", or sock puppetry.

Last December, that patent received an initial rejection from the Patent Office. But now the reexamination has concluded, and the patent has survived intact.

We've written a few times about the patent troll "Personal Audio" which claims to hold a patent (US Patent 8,112,504) that it says covers podcasting. With this patent it's been busy shaking down the creators of a bunch of popular podcasts. The company's owner and his lawyer recently asserted (somehow, without laughing) that their patent was "the roadmap" for podcasting, even though no one involved in the early days of podcasting was even remotely aware of the patent.

Due to the unusual nature of this Ubuntu update, this review is going to diverge a bit from the usual formula. The first half will include a hands-on look at the new Unity features. The second half will take a close look at the Ubuntu roadmap and some of the major changes that we can expect to see over the course of the next several releases.

Back in January, we reported on a truly stupid idea: making DRM an official aspect of HTML5. Things then went quiet, until a couple of weeks ago a post on a W3C mailing announced that the work was "in scope".

We're deeply disappointed. We've argued before as to why EME and other protected media proposals are different from other standards . By approving this idea, the W3C has ceded control of the "user agent" (the term for a Web browser in W3C parlance) to a third-party, the content distributor. That breaks a—perhaps until now unspoken—assurance about who has the final say in your Web experience, and indeed who has ultimate control over your computing device.

Most of the technology world is familiar with open source software and the reasons why, in some eyes, it's more appealing than proprietary software. When software's source code is available for anyone to inspect, it can be examined for security flaws, altered to suit user wishes, or used as the basis for a new product.

For nearly a decade, TrueCrypt has been one of the trusty tools in a security-minded user’s toolkit. There’s just one problem: no one knows who created the software. Worse still, no one has ever conducted a full security audit on it...

... the likes of which the world has never seen!

Two weeks after first publicly unveiling its unique dual-touchpad Steam Controller to the world, Valve has posted a video showing just how that controller will work with a variety of PC games, including those not specifically designed for the controller in the first place.

Intellectual Ventures may be running out of cash, but that doesn't mean it's slowed down the pace of evildoing. If you look over its recent lawsuits, you'll notice that over the summer, Intellectual Ventures was busy suing a bunch of banks, including Capital One (that lawsuit is embedded below). At least some of those lawsuits involve US patent 6,182,894 entitled: "Systems and methods for authorizing a transaction card." In short, it basically describes the concept of the CID or CVV number that is found on the back of most credit cards today, which you often have to enter when purchasing stuff online with a credit card. Now, we may question how the hell the idea of adding 3 numbers to the back of a card as a security measure should be patented in the first place, but let's leave that aside for a moment.

Bloomberg reports that conversations between HTC and Microsoft have revolved around the idea of HTC putting Windows Phone onto its Android handsets as an alternative. As enticement to pursue this strategy, the report states that Microsoft has offered to cut or eliminate the licensing fee.

Microsoft Corp. is talking to HTC Corp. about adding its Windows operating system to HTC’s Android-based smartphones at little or no cost. People with knowledge of the matter said that it's further evidence of the software maker’s struggle to gain ground in the mobile market.

When a new article is posted on the Internet, the first addition to the comments section is often an inconsequential, one-word statement: "First!"... The Samsung Galaxy Gear says "First!" in hardware form. Samsung has beaten Google and Apple as the first major manufacturer to market, but much like the Internet commenter, it has sacrificed substance for the sake of timing.

We've written a few times about patent troll Innovatio, which claims to hold some patents on WiFi, saying that anyone using WiFi (including home users) are infringing, though it has chosen "at this stage" not to sue home users.

With this morning's revelation of how the NSA and GCHQ are trying to attack Tor, some of the presentations being used by the NSA to explain Tor are somewhat interesting or amusing. For example, in one presentation about the program EgotisticalGiraffe (I don't make 'em up, so don't ask), the NSA amusingly feels the need to highlight the fact that "terrorists" use Tor:

Valve has been very clear that there will be a number of manufacturers making a number of living room-centric boxes running the recently announced SteamOS. Still, there's a lot of attention being paid to the prototype box Valve is creating and distributing free to 300 lucky beta testers this year (before the boxes get a wider launch next year). Here's a list of hardware that will be in those prototype boxes, straight from Valve:

Patent-holding giant Intellectual Ventures (IV) has been making the rounds seeking investors for a new patent-purchasing fund, according to a Reuters report. The company is apparently out of money, having spent the $6 billion it has raised since its inception in 2000. For the time being, it has stopped buying new patents.

The patent in question is U.S. Patent No. 7,346,545. That patent basically describes a simple idea familiar to anyone who has watched videos on the Internet: the idea of taking a video available for purchase, and showing it for free in exchange for viewing an advertisement first.