So if their are 250,000 patentable inventions in a phone, and that phone retails for $600, by my math each of those inventions are worth about a quarter of a cent per device. So it looks like Apple has a justifiable claim to 1.25 cents per phone.

A slim column of text lost in a sea of ads. But that's okay, I rarely come to Slashdot any more, so I doubt I'll miss it.

...but what happens to the bits is almost completely different. The original layer 1 (physical) layer stuff has evolved from the original idea of a shared broadcast medium (thick and thin coax up through the age of hubs) to nowadays being a point-to-point network managed through a centralized intelligent switch. And the layer 2 stuff (data link) evolved from the original spec of 1973 to the notably different 802.2 spec in 1983. In some ways, the great success of Ethernet is that it became the name we gave to whatever technology won out.

"Air Cavalry" must keep you awake at nights ;)

While Games Workshop are the main villains here, this does highlight the problem with buying DRM encrusted books from an entity with unaccountable censorship powers. I note that this ebook is available from Smashwords in open, unencumbered formats: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.smashwords.com%2Fbooks%2Fview%2F26359 - as is usual in situations like this, I immediately purchased a copy to give the finger to bullies, and support an author.

Well, I'd been meaning to check out Moon Reader, ever since Aldiko blocked the third party plugin that was providing Dropbox sync. This will likely push me over the edge.

Do I think it's bogus that Google pulled the app with seemingly no warning or no review? Yes. But, thanks to the fact that Android allows users to sideload (unless further blocked by horrible carriers like AT&T) this developer at least has recourse to continue providing his app by direct channels, and users can continue using it. Had this happened to a developer on the iOS app store (as it does all the time) that developer would have no recourse at all.

I hope that this gets resolved quickly, and I hope that this developer winds up getting more attention from this publicity in the end.

I carried a Windows Phone in place of my usual Android device for about 45 days at the start of the year to understand what the experience was like. My take away is that while it is a serviceable OS, it still has many of the shortcoming that the other smartphone platforms have grown out of. Also, it occasionally errs on the side of "pretty graphic design" over usability. I wrote up a full article on my experience here: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fplus.google.com%2F100566622327534003774%2Fposts%2FRyT3Ajwd1GX

A bellicose feller named Teller
That prominent atom bomb seller
Promotes with aplomb
The hydrogen bomb
And tells the uncertain they're yeller!

-- lifted from the back column of a science mag of my childhood

I've put this on my Galaxy Tab 10.1, which I recently updated to a developer release of CyanogenMod9 (The forthcoming ICS based Cyanogen). It really is nice. I can load up the full desktop version of Google+, which only sorta-kinda worked under the standard ICS browsers, and sorta-kinda worked differently under Firefox mobile, and it works 100%, no compromises. And doesn't feel much slower than my desktop either. That's great! The only annoyance is that it does seem to identify itself as a mobile browser, and I haven't yet found an option to change the user agent. No problem for sites like Wikipedia or G+ that give you a link to escape their mobile versions, but could be annoying elsewhere, since so many mobile sites are terrible. Surprising overside, since the stock browser in ICS includes an option to "request desktop site".

To me, this story shows the importance of keeping Project Gutenberg moving forward, slowly but steadily.

...I feel bad these suckers who are lining up to buy "a cheap carbon copy".

I have the Galaxy Tab myself, and really like it, but I've also played with an Eee Transformer and was very impressed. I previously had the Xoom, and it was okay, but it's screen wasn't as good as the former two. The 10.1" Android Tablets have higher resolution screens than the current crop of iPads (1200x800 vs 1024x768), meaning a slightly higher DPI, meaning slightly easier on the eyes for reading.

Honeycomb gives you lots of flexibility as to how you get PDFs on to the device (e.g. via Dropbox, local file transfer, etc) combined with the freedom to then view those PDFs with the app of your choice. Android has a version of Adobe Reader, which while feature light, is pretty much guaranteed to correctly render any PDF you throw at it. For my own purposes though, I typically use RepliGo, which handles most things, is notably faster, and lets you view and add notes in PDFs.

Wait a minute here, the linked article says "A new study from open source services vendor OpenLogic reports that 71 percent of Apple iOS and Google Android apps are not in compliance." Yet the headline for this story mentions only Android. I understand it's become fashionable to bash Android lately, but this seems a bit egregious. The problem appears to be endemic across all mobile devices.

Actually, unless that software you were referring to was "copy-protected" in some fashion (just an early form of DRM), with the plethora of emulators & virtual machines available, you probably could get that old software running on your modern hardware if you needed or wanted to. And that's because you do own it, and have the ability to use those bits you purchased in any manner you see fit, including transferring them to machines and environments that could not have been forseen when they were first sold.

That's really all I want from my ebooks (and my music, and my video), to be able to keep moving it forward on to new platforms.

So no, it's not the same thing at all...