Into Tech

I’m not a huge fan of the term “patent troll” which I agree can be unfairly negative, and without a clear definition often leads to problems. Recently, it seems that the term is most often applied to “non-practicing entities” making some people think that the patent system is mainly abused by those operations. That’s a bit of misdirection. There’s just as much, if not more, abuse of the patent system done by large companies. If there were actual proof (still waiting!) that the patent system actually did lead to more innovation, then I can easily understand why a non-practicing entity that just licensed its works could make sense. Unfortunately, most of the evidence suggests that patents don’t actually lead to more innovation. In those cases, the only thing that non-practicing entities end up doing is hindering innovation.

However, Joe Mullin points us to a rather odd paper, suggesting that non-practicing entities are a good thing and should be called “patent elves” rather than “patent trolls.” Part of what makes this paper so odd, is that one of the writers works for that law firm that recently advertised that it wouldn’t work with patent trolls. Meanwhile, I guess it wants to let those “patent elves” in the back door.

As for the actual paper, it’s really not all that different from earlier papers that try to present non-practicing entities as a boon to competition and innovation. They’re all based on a few faulty assumptions, however. This latest one is basically a massive broken windows fallacy. That is, it basically states “if specialization is good, more specialization is better” in that it creates more economic activity. What it fails to do, however, is take into account how the market is distorted by that greater economic activity. Just as the broken window fallacy doesn’t take into account the hidden costs of what kind of economic activity would take place in the absence of the broken window, this paper fails to take into account the innovation that occurs in the absence of the patent-holding non-practicing entity — and simply assumes (falsely) that the patent holder is the key component in driving the innovation forward. Instead, it’s much more likely that the patent holder represents the broken window — a cost that detracts from more efficient economic activity, such as actually bringing a product to market where real innovation occurs.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

The geek’s Geek, Bill Gates, is saying his final farewell to Microsoft, to concentrate on his charity work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

He’s going to stay on as chairman and may, at the behest of somewhat excitable CEO Steve Ballmer, help out on some projects. There’s no doubting the impact that his software has had on the IT world and, love it or hate it, we are stuck with Windows going forward.

A few years back, Microsoft decided to shift its strategy on software patents. The contrast in what Microsoft was saying publicly about patents was stark:

Brad Smith, Microsoft general counsel, 2007: “Protection for software patents and other intellectual property is essential to maintaining the incentives that encourage and underwrite technological breakthroughs. In every industry, patents provide the legal foundation for innovation. The ensuing legal disputes may be messy, but protection is no less necessary, even so.”

Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO, 1991: “If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today’s ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today… A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose.”

If you needed any proof that Microsoft has shifted from a “young company innovates” to an “old company litigates” stance, just take a look at the massive ramp up in patents awarded to Microsoft over the last decade and a half. It’s been steady growth, with a massive leap in the past two years.

Every week, if you follow patents granted to Microsoft you see huge numbers. In the past four weeks alone, Microsoft has been granted 49 patents (June 24), 44 patents (June 17), 42 patents (June 10) and 76 patents (June 3). That’s 211 patents this month alone. Compare that to a company like Google, who was granted a grand total of 7 patents in June.

The patent system was designed to award incentives in the rarest of circumstances — when the free market alone wouldn’t provide the incentives necessary to bring a technology forward. When a single company is getting over 200 patents a month, the system isn’t functioning as intended. It’s not an incentive to innovation. It’s a tax on innovation.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Clean up your disk

I have problems with “Compress Old Files”. When I run disk cleanup, deleting old compressed files takes a long time and may not finish after an hour.
Reza Masoudi

JS: Compress Old Files is a feature of the Disk Cleanup tool (cleanmgr.exe) in Windows XP, but it does not delete files. What it does is take files that have not been accessed for a specified number of days and compress them to save disk space. This wasn’t a bad idea when hard drives were small and expensive, but it’s not such a good idea now. The files that benefit most from compression are things like Microsoft Office files, and these are already compressed as standard when saved in the new Office 2007 and OpenOffice file formats. The files that take up most room - sound, image and video files with extensions such as jpg, mp3 and avi - are already compressed. Trying to compress them further takes a long time and they can end up larger than they were before. If you’re really short of disk space, it’s better to back up some large files to CD or DVD then delete them. External hard drives are an even handier option, but these should also be backed up.

Disk Cleanup can also perform a number of functions such as removing temporary internet files, removing downloaded program files such as ActiveX controls (not always a good idea), removing restore points (a bad idea) and uninstalling Windows components that you don’t use (possibly a bad idea). As such, it provides a useful one-stop shop for people who don’t want to be involved with the operation of their PCs. However, I think it’s better to get slightly involved and download CCleaner from ccleaner.com, which does most of the same jobs. If you need to compress files, you can do this separately. Bear in mind that Windows XP needs lots of disk space to store its swap file (code that temporarily doesn’t fit in memory), hibernation files, temporary files, directory entries etc. You should always try to leave 2GB of hard drive space free, and never less than 1GB, to keep XP running at its best.

Uninstallation blues

I have some unwanted software installed on my laptop which I can’t remove using the Windows uninstall tool. Can you suggest any free software that would do the job?
Mel Hallworth

JS: Add or Remove Programs, in the Windows Control Panel, is usually the safest way to uninstall programs. However, some programs come with their own uninstallation files, and these should be visible in the program’s Start menu folder, or in its folder in the Program Files directory on your hard drive. If neither of those applies, there are several free utilities that will do the job. The one you are most likely to have already is CCleaner. If you run CCleaner and click on the Tools icon, Uninstall is the first tool. The main problem with uninstalling software is removing the right registry entries without also removing ones you still need. CCleaner includes a good registry cleaner, and will also back up any changes it makes, so I tend to trust it.

However, there are a few more specialised uninstallation utilities, such as ZSoft Uninstaller 2.4.1 and Revo Uninstaller. The ZSoft program is quicker and has more features than Add/Remove programs, such as search and analyse, and it looks reasonably safe to use. Revo Uninstaller has lots of extra features including Auto Run Manager, Evidence Remover, and Unrecoverable Delete. It looks powerful, but could do a lot of damage if used carelessly. There are other options at SnapFiles. Bear in mind that some programs are designed to be hard to remove completely, either because they need to resist viruses that try to remove them, or because they have hidden anti-piracy features, or both. It’s a good idea to run a web search for the word “uninstall” plus the program’s name, to see if a special tool is available.

Disappearing applications

When I minimise Windows programs they no longer go to the Taskbar but disappear off the screen completely.
Phil Boddey

JS: The programs should still be running, so you can Alt-Tab to them. If so, Kelly’s Korner has a registry tweak to fix the problem: Line 240.

Ads on shutdown

When closing down Windows XP I get lots of ads, which I have to close as well. I bought AVG8, but the ads still come.
Sean Brogan

JS: There are no legitimate programs that display ads on shutdown, though it could be an adware program that you installed along with some free software. AVG should have identified it. Try running it again in Safe Mode. If that doesn’t solve the problem, try SuperAntiSpyware.

Backchat

Nicola Richard wanted a simple way to scan slides on a Mac and I suggested the Plustek OpticFilm 7200i AI film scanner. Roger Larkinson says Plustek’s OpticFilm 7300 (£169.99) “works well. The CD includes SilverFast software for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), and software for OS X 10.5 (Leopard) is available as a download, I believe.”

· Get your queries answered by Jack Schofield, our computer editor at jack.schofield@guardian.co.uk. More at blogs.guardian.co.uk/askjack

This one is getting passed around pretty quickly, but as he retires from Microsoft, we couldn’t resist highlighting this fantastic internal email from Bill Gates complaining about the usability of some Windows features. It’s old — from 2003 — but it’s difficult to read it and not identify with some of the complaints. It reads like thousands of angry ticked off blog posts from folks who run into ridiculous situations with Windows. The only difference, of course, is that this one comes from Bill Gates. Some excerpts (though, you should read the whole thing):

So I went to Windows update. Windows Update decides I need to download a bunch of controls. (Not) just once but multiple times where I get to see weird dialog boxes.

Doesn’t Windows update know some key to talk to Windows?

Then I did the scan. This took quite some time and I was told it was critical for me to download 17megs of stuff.

This is after I was told we were doing delta patches to things but instead just to get 6 things that are labeled in the SCARIEST possible way I had to download 17meg.

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn’t use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night — why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

….

At some point I get told I need to go get Windows Media Series 9 to download.

So I decide I will go do that. This time I get dialogs saying things like “Open” or “Save”. No guidance in the instructions which to do. I have no clue which to do.

The download is fast and the install takes 7 minutes for this thing.

So now I think I am going to have Moviemaker. I go to my add/remove programs place to make sure it is there.

It is not there.

What is there? The following garbage is there. Microsoft Autoupdate Exclusive test package, Microsoft Autoupdate Reboot test package, Microsoft Autoupdate testpackage1. Microsoft AUtoupdate testpackage2, Microsoft Autoupdate Test package3.

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

When asked about the email, Gates claims he sends similar notes nearly every day, as that’s his job. If that were the case, though, wouldn’t you have expected Windows to actually get better?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

As Google’s Gmail product has grown, it should come as absolutely no surprise that the company would offer up a tool to migrate users of Microsoft Outlook/Exchange over to Gmail. However, it appears to have come as a surprise to a small startup that offered similar tools in partnership with Google. That company has now sued Google claiming trade secrets were taken. From the details in the article, it appears that Google partnered with this small company that had developed such software as a rapid way of offering such functionality. Then, while all that was happening, it was developing its own such tools. This shouldn’t be a surprise — since migrating people over from Microsoft’s email solutions is clearly a priority for Google, and it’s no surprise that Google would want to have control over that technology.

Yet this startup seems to believe that a simple partnership with Google means that it was guaranteed to always remain Google’s partner and that Google would never build similar functionality in-house. If anything, this seems like sour grapes from a company that perhaps didn’t put together a very good contract with Google and didn’t recognize the obvious path for Google’s own development efforts. Not surprisingly, perhaps, this lawsuit is being prosecuted by the same lawyer who recently was on the losing end of a different lawsuit against Google (the infamous “American Blinds” case, accusing Google of trademark infringement because competitors could buy ads on American Blinds’ trademarks).

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Nokia moved to counter the growing threat of Apple and Google in the race to supply the next generation of mobile phones by taking control of the British software company Symbian yesterday and announcing plans to make its mobile phone software free of charge.

Symbian, which Nokia helped create with the UK-based Psion 10 years ago, makes the operating system software that sits on so-called smartphones, handsets that can access the internet and play music. As mobile phones become more powerful and people do far more than just make calls and send texts, the software that powers these devices has become a crucial battleground.

Symbian has about 60% of the global smartphone market with its technology in more than 200m handsets already. But the recent entrance of Apple into the market with the iPhone and plans for Google to do likewise with its Android operating system later this year have threatened the positions of Symbian and Nokia, which makes four out of every 10 phones sold worldwide.

Kai Öistämö, Nokia’s vice-president, insisted that the company’s move, which has been under discussion for several months, had nothing to do with the threat posed by Google or Apple. “Looking at this as a response to anybody would not do any justice to the boldness and magnitude of what we are doing.”

Analysts were in no doubt about the Finnish company’s motivation: to prevent Google’s Android operating system, due to appear on phones towards the end of the year, grabbing a significant slice of the market. Nokia’s plans to stop charging for operating software also pose a threat to Microsoft and the BlackBerry developer, Research In Motion.

Nokia is spending €264m (£209m) on the 52% of Symbian it does not own and bringing on board its 1,600 staff - more than 1,000 of which are in London and Cambridge. Ericsson, which has 15.6% of Symbian, Sony Ericsson, with 13.1%, Panasonic, with 10.5%, and Siemens, with 8.4%, have already agreed to sell. The last remaining shareholder is Samsung and Nokia expects the Korean firm also to sell its stake. Nokia then plans to integrate its own smartphone operating system - called Series 60 - with the UIQ standard developed by Motorola and Sony Ericsson and the MOAP platform of Japan’s NTT DoCoMo. It will roll together all these systems, in the form of about 10m lines of computer code, into one free-of-charge software product that is “open source”, or accessible to all, within two years.

That new product will be controlled by a non-profit organisation called the Symbian Foundation, which already has more than 20 members including Vodafone, Orange, Nokia, Samsung and LG. All members will be able to use the new operating system to install on handsets or develop applications free of charge.

Many mobile phone firms complain that the sheer number of operating systems makes it very hard to develop new revenue-generating services.

Setting up the foundation means Nokia will be abandoning hundreds of millions of pounds of software-licensing revenues. Symbian alone made £160m last year by charging mobile phone makers for its software. For Nokia, however, the ambition is to make it as easy as possible for engineers to develop applications for the new system, which will make Symbian handsets more attractive to consumers and consequently to mobile phone companies.

“I am convinced this will lead to us selling more phones,” said Öistämö.

Symbian’s chief executive, Nigel Clifford, described the creation of the Symbian Foundation as “epoch-making”. Analysts said it would also frustrate Google, whose Android system is also “open source”.

Emeka Obiodu, at the industry analysts Global Insight, said Google’s plans had been “fatally derailed” by Nokia’s move.

“Nokia is taking the fight to Google on its own terms,” he said. “Google prides itself on open-source credentials and is eager to build up a coalition of industry players to push through with its agenda (which is to cultivate a viable platform for mobile advertising). However, Nokia has nipped that in the bud.

“By tying up the top five mobile handset makers, key chipmakers and the likes of AT&T and Vodafone, Nokia wants to starve Android, and similar initiatives, of influential industry players, leaving them to toy around with smaller players with lesser chance of changing the status quo.”

It will also be a blow to Microsoft, which has toiled for most of the past decade to get into the mobile phone market and now faces the prospect of its main rival becoming free of charge. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system has only 13% of the market and costs handset makers $8 to $15 a phone to use.

Pretty much everyone now recognizes that Yahoo needs to reinvent itself these days. Its image and brand have been severely tarnished due to both poor management choices, an inability to compete successfully with search advertising and (of course) the fight concerning the possibility of a Microsoft merger. But, of course, all of this has only made the spotlight shine even more brightly on management — which makes it much, much harder for the company to reinvent itself. So, I’m in agreement with those who think the real answer is for some private equity firms to take Yahoo private. Outside of the glare (and short-term focus) of the public markets, Yahoo might have the chance to reinvent itself for real, rather than being pulled in a different direction every few months. It can then return to the public markets later, or potentially sell itself again to another company under more favorable terms.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Not many websites have kept their pre-eminence for more than a decade, but Expedia has managed it. The design is showing its age but it’s often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel. Even if you eventually book through a travel agent, Expedia is a great source of information.

The cheapest long-haul flights usually involve a change of planes, and I’ve found that Expedia UK often comes up with options the travel agent can’t see. Most importantly, you can instantly see how long the flight will take, and you can sort flights by duration to juggle price and time. You can - and I do - save money by booking flights to Las Vegas via Phoenix, or Vancouver via Seattle. But you don’t want to spend more than 20 hours getting somewhere that’s 10 hours away, and that’s an easy mistake to make.

Because Expedia pulls up lots of options quickly, you can also save money by trying different travel dates, especially if you can include a Saturday night. If you can travel midweek, it may be cheaper to stay for six or seven days than for a weekend.

But the biggest savings usually come by constructing a package with a flight and a hotel where Expedia has special prices. These aren’t as good as they used to be, but Expedia’s deals can still come out cheaper than making separate bookings on discount sites. And by using Expedia’s hotel area maps, you can also balance convenience (eg close to the beach or conference centre) and price.

Expedia is based in Bellevue, Washington, which is a good place to stay if you’re visiting Microsoft. This isn’t a coincidence: Microsoft launched the website in 1996, before spinning it off as a separate business. Expedia has had no connection with the software giant since 2001, and it is now part of a group that includes Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and the excellent TripAdvisor.

But the site still carries Microsoft’s fingerprints: you can sign in using a Microsoft Live ID (your Hotmail or Passport address), and Expedia still uses Microsoft’s MapPoint. However, you can’t move its maps around easily, as you can in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Maps.

Unlike some of its rivals, Expedia also has a reasonable global network, with sites in 15 countries. These now include Australia, China, India and Japan, as well as the major European countries.

And although Expedia has its detractors, when Fortune magazine published its annual list of America’s Most Admired Companies in March 2008, Expedia was placed third in its category, between Google and Amazon.

Like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and a few other giants from the 1990s, Expedia’s site is showing its age. However, it’s so big, and has so much traffic, it is increasingly hard to change.

If you’re prepared to shop around using some of the newer, more focused travel sites, you may get a better deal. But as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job.

Not many websites have kept their pre-eminence for more than a decade, but Expedia has managed it. The design is showing its age but it’s often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel. Even if you eventually book through a travel agent, Expedia is a great source of information.

The cheapest long-haul flights usually involve a change of planes, and I’ve found that Expedia UK often comes up with options the travel agent can’t see. Most importantly, you can instantly see how long the flight will take, and you can sort flights by duration to juggle price and time. You can - and I do - save money by booking flights to Las Vegas via Phoenix, or Vancouver via Seattle. But you don’t want to spend more than 20 hours getting somewhere that’s 10 hours away, and that’s an easy mistake to make.

Because Expedia pulls up lots of options quickly, you can also save money by trying different travel dates, especially if you can include a Saturday night. If you can travel midweek, it may be cheaper to stay for six or seven days than for a weekend.

But the biggest savings usually come by constructing a package with a flight and a hotel where Expedia has special prices. These aren’t as good as they used to be, but Expedia’s deals can still come out cheaper than making separate bookings on discount sites. And by using Expedia’s hotel area maps, you can also balance convenience (eg close to the beach or conference centre) and price.

Expedia is based in Bellevue, Washington, which is a good place to stay if you’re visiting Microsoft. This isn’t a coincidence: Microsoft launched the website in 1996, before spinning it off as a separate business. Expedia has had no connection with the software giant since 2001, and it is now part of a group that includes Hotels.com, Hotwire.com and the excellent TripAdvisor.

But the site still carries Microsoft’s fingerprints: you can sign in using a Microsoft Live ID (your Hotmail or Passport address), and Expedia still uses Microsoft’s MapPoint. However, you can’t move its maps around easily, as you can in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Maps.

Unlike some of its rivals, Expedia also has a reasonable global network, with sites in 15 countries. These now include Australia, China, India and Japan, as well as the major European countries.

And although Expedia has its detractors, when Fortune magazine published its annual list of America’s Most Admired Companies in March 2008, Expedia was placed third in its category, between Google and Amazon.

Like Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and a few other giants from the 1990s, Expedia’s site is showing its age. However, it’s so big, and has so much traffic, it is increasingly hard to change.

If you’re prepared to shop around using some of the newer, more focused travel sites, you may get a better deal. But as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job.