I have received a number of emails from people who say they have received an email with a link to a folder on my server. It seems my server (which is hosted by dreamhost) has been hacked. I did not create or upload the mysterious nav.backup folder. I am waiting to hear back from dreamhost’s hacking helpdesk, but I’ve taken all other obvious measures. The folder has been deleted and I hope this hasn’t caused anyone too much trouble.
Archive for August, 2011
Enjoyable Riff
I had a wonderful time reading the a New York Times Magazine article this weekend. It talks about how language usage among bloggers, and perhaps the internet, may have been inspired by David Foster Wallace. It also riffs on the sort of writing that promotes likability at the expense of un-popular specificity. For example:
Qualifications are necessary sometimes. Anticipating and defusing opposing arguments has been a vital rhetorical strategy since at least the days of Aristotle. Satire and ridicule, when done well, are high art. But the idea is to provoke and persuade, not to soothe. And the best way to make an argument is to make it, straightforwardly, honestly, passionately, without regard to whether people will like you afterward.
It’s called Another Thing to Sort of Pin on David Foster Wallace. Enjoy.
Patent Wars: August 15 Update
The mobile industry is in the middle of a “patent war,” which led to Google’s purchase of Motorola Mobility (soon to be called googarola?) today. While there have been lawsuits in process for sometime, the lawsuits started in March. Apple sued HTC and Samsung because of certain “similarities.” HTC and Samsung fired back. Meanwhile, Microsoft continued suing Android manufacturers by going after, of all companies, Barns & Noble.
The back and forth’s continue for a couple of months and 2 key events take place. Apple, Microsoft , RIM, and a few other companies are given the go ahead to purchase 6000 patents Nortel for $4.5 billion. Google was also bidding for the patents, but lost out to the other companies. It was pretty clear this purchase was going to impact the Android ecosystem in a negative way. Then Oracle sued Google because of patents that relate Java.
Everyone was trying to get a piece of the Android pie.* HTC pays Microsoft $5 for every android phone they sell, and other manufacturers may enter similar licensing agreements. A similar licensing agreement between Oracle and phone manufacturers make take place. Things were looking bad for Android manufactures.
Google was basically forced into buying Motorola Mobility. This surprising move is smart, but it raises serious questions. The most pressing question seems to be what impact will this have with other Android manufacturers? From a consumer perspective, why would anyone buy an Android device that was not designed and built by Google? Will manufacturers decided to build Windows Phone 7 devices?
Let’s see what happens.
* This may or may not be the name of a future Android release. =P