Let me be perfectly frank: I do agree that Jobs was a great innovator, and to some degree a visionary in the computer, on-line and entertainment business. I do not agree that he was the giant almost god-like superman that he is being portrayed as. In these cases it almost feels as if all writers and responders are one-upping each other in the superlatives used to describe the man.
Let’s not forget the at times abrasive personality and fuck you attitude displayed and the fact that he completely ignored the people and companies that helped Apple through the hard times once Apple had risen again. Yes, I am talking of Adobe, the one major company that kept publishing their products for Apple’s waning platform throughout the slow years, but was shafted by Jobs as soon as he thought himself bigger than anyone. What aggravated me was the fact that Jobs slagged off Adobe’s products and technology while his real reasons were purely commercial. Jobs was the King of Closed Ecosystem Publishing.

Anyway, Steve Jobs’ passing is sad, but not world-ending. So please stop writing the weepy drivel that has been pouring out of my RSS reader for the past week, and maybe spend some time remembering some other greats in our business. Dennis Ritchie died yesterday, and with his passing goes a man that has meant more for the computer industry but who has been doing his work in the background for years. Let’s not forget that Jobs’ OSX runs on a grandchild of Mr. Ritchie’s invention UNIX and is programmed using a version of Mr. Ritchie’s other invention C.
So grieve Jobs but honor Ritchie, publicly and loudly.

Some Belgian newspapers sued Google in 2006 because Google was linking to them and the wanted money. Now the courts have ruled in their favor, they got some money and (of course) Google stopped linking to them. And now they’re complaining that they are being “unfairly punished” because Google is no longer sending them traffic.

Well DUH! Einstein, what did you actually think would happen? You bit the hand that feeds you, i.e. sue the site that is sending you traffic, and now they cut you off and you whine like spanked little children? And you wonder why the whole world thinks you’re money-grabbing bungholes who are desperately clinging on to a dying business model? And why Belgians are universally giggled at?

As Mike Masnick put it: “So, let me get this straight. When Google links to them, it’s ‘theft.’ But when they don’t link to them, it’s ‘harsh retaliation.’ How does that work?”

More info at Techdirt.

UPDATE: Excellent op-ed piece by Max Smoley at Hyper Om.

UPDATE 2: Oh. My. God. Google had “talks” with Copiepresse, and has received “permission” to link to the newspapers after all. If I were Google I’d have spit in their coffee, giggled a lot and then gone home. Full info right here.

I guess I should clarify that, before the men in white coats arrive: The two subjects I am talking about are hackers and patent trolls. The third one is the defunct patent system.

Patent trolls are greedy, bad people and companies with an (unfortunately non-lethal) deficiency in scruples that use the broken US (and sometimes worldwide) patent system to extort other companies and people. Some examples:

- A quite recently formed company named Kooltol is suing tech companies over a patent they don’t even completely have yet covering “publishing and sending messages using one way or two way messaging and by subscribing to posts of other users of a network. By indexing each message of each user the system provides real time search capabilities to users of the network in turn creating a unique form of communication.” (more info here)
Sounds generic? Yeah, that’s how these $@&!holes usually operate.

- Lodsys, LLC. is suing Apple and a number of small app developers over their claimed patent on in-app purchases, among other things. This one has been dragging on for a while and is especially dastardly because they are going after small entities that do not have the economic means to defend themselves in a lengthy court case. Total douches.

- Visual Interactive Phone Concepts, Inc., a “non-practicing entity” (translation: a company that does nothing but own two rather generic patents and sue people to get rich quick) that holds two “videophone mailbox” patents and has previously instigated patent infringement suits, filed lawsuits against Apple, Google, AT&T, and US Cellular.

The idea is simple yet very elegant: a keyboard which is in fact a full color touch screen. This way any configuration can be used with the multi-touch interface. Image manipulation, video playing, or just typing. Without physical keys there are no limits to any tactile interface you’d need.

I would love to get my hands on one of these, the possibilities are endless.

# Set the field separator to a line break to correctly process VM names with spaces
OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS=$'\n'

# Read the list of VMs
VMLIST=`/usr/bin/vmware-cmd -l`

# Cycle through the list of VMs
for VM in $VMLIST
do

  # Read the power state of the VM
  VMSTATE=`/usr/bin/vmware-cmd "$VM" getstate -q`

  # If the VM is powered on, try a soft stop
  if [ "$VMSTATE" == "on" ]
  then
    /usr/bin/vmware-cmd "$VM" stop trysoft

    # Wait a bit for the command to process before moving on
    sleep 5
  fi
done

# Wait for 2 minutes to give the VMs time to shut down
sleep 120

# Read the list of VMs again (to account for possibly moved VMs)
VMLIST=`/usr/bin/vmware-cmd -l`

# Cycle through the list of VMs
for VM in $VMLIST
do

  # Read the power state of the VM
  VMSTATE=`/usr/bin/vmware-cmd "$VM" getstate -q`

  # If the VM is powered on, try a hard stop (poweroff)
  if [ "$VMSTATE" == "on" ]
  then
    /usr/bin/vmware-cmd "$VM" stop hard

    # Wait a bit for the command to process before moving on
    sleep 5
  fi
done

# Reset the field separator to its old value
IFS=$OLDIFS

(in case you’re wondering what I’m on about, think Flash, iPhone 4 antennas, Android…I don’t really need to continue, do I?)

The server is colocated at a data center in Amsterdam by the good people at ColoClue, a colo…well, I guess “club” or “association” is the best word, but mostly they are a most excellent group of people I’m quite proud to have joined.

The full post: Apples attack on Adobe Flash, its all about online video. (via Slashdot)

James closes his article with:  ”In conclusion, as a developer who likes Flash, to tell the truth, I can respect the business decision by Steve to not allow Flash on their iTechnology platforms for good old competitive reasons. What is wrong here is that Apple is on a campaign of deception. They are not happy to not use flash, but are also producing FUD to displace Flash as a relevant web technology.”

I agree. In my view it’s all about the money, although James thinks it’s about the video. I think Mr. Jobs just does not want a platform that can be (and is) used for free games on his devices where he is currently making 30% off every game sold in his App Store. And that is fair and completely up to him, but just come out and say that, don’t piss on another company’s work and products to hide the fact that you like your revenue stream.
And for the record: as a developer I have rarely seen any company so closed, proprietary and revenue-focused as Apple. Apple is no longer “cool” (although they do make very “cool” products), it is just as much an “Evil Empire” as they say Microsoft, Google, Adobe or anyone else is. No biggie, it happens to every company at that level, but for God’s sake be honest about what you are.

Red Hat has won a legal fight with a small Texas company that claimed the Raleigh-based software maker infringed on its patents.IP Innovation (a subsidiary of Acacia Technologies LLC, a well-know patent troll) sued Red Hat and another software company, Novell, over technology that involves sharing icons across computer workstations. But on Friday, a jury in federal court in Marshall, Texas, agreed with Red Hat and Novell that the patents were invalid.

Here’s hoping this is the first of many more of these verdicts to come. Maybe one day even the law makers will wake up to the malodorous practices by these bastards.

Via: Techdirt

By the way, buy these shirts and show your distaste of these bungholes.