SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Today on this March 6, 2018, this Reuters article describes:
BlackBerry Ltd on Tuesday filed a patent infringement lawsuit against social media platforms Facebook Inc and its units WhatsApp and Instagram.
BlackBerry said Facebook and its companies developed "competing applications that improperly used BlackBerry's mobile messaging intellectual property".
There are more details on the lawsuit at Ars Technica:
BlackBerry, the once-great smartphone maker that exited the hardware business in 2016, is suing Facebook for patent infringement. BlackBerry owns a portfolio of broad software patents that cover some of the most basic features of modern smartphone messaging services—and the company says it wants Facebook to pay up.
[...] BlackBerry began its own campaign of patent litigation in 2016, suing the little-known Android phone maker BLU and the Internet telephony company Avaya. BLU agreed to pay up last year, and BlackBerry is now moving on to Facebook—potentially a much more lucrative target.
BlackBerry is asserting seven software patents against Facebook, and they're remarkably broad:
- Patent 7,372,961 covers the concept of generating a cryptographic key by choosing a pseudorandom number and then checking if it is "less than order q prior to reducing mod q." If it is, the key is used. If not, another key is chosen at random and the process repeats.
- Patent 8,209,634 covers the concept of using icons with numeric badges to signal the arrival of new messages.
- Patent 8,279,173 covers the concept of tagging people in photos using an auto-completing search box.
- Patent 8,301,713 covers the concept of marking a significant lull in a text message conversation by inserting a timestamp reflecting the time of the next message.
- Patent 8,429,236 covers the concept of changing how a mobile device sends messages depending on whether they're being actively read by the recipient's device. For example, if updates aren't being read in real time, then the sending device may be able to conserve power by sending messages in batches rather than one at a time.
- Patent 8,677,250 covers the concept of tying a messaging service and a game application together so that a user playing a game can send messages to contacts on the messaging app that includes updates on the player's progress in the game.
- Patent 9,349,120 covers the concept of muting a message thread.
How fitting it is that today is the 15th anniversary of the SCO vs IBM lawsuit.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 07 2018, @05:18PM (7 children)
I see windows as a gaming console. Beyond that, yeah: why use it?
But wine on Linux is great!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Wednesday March 07 2018, @07:50PM (6 children)
It may be great.
In actual practice, if I'm provided a very nice Windows workstation that is maintained by someone else, I'm fine with it. I would never own one, and never have. But the fact is, I've used Windows at work for years. For what I do, it is generally reliable and stable. It works. As long as it is "turnkey" for me and I don't have to "learn Windows", then I'm okay with that. (And they replace workstations every three years.)
It just needs to run Eclipse, GIMP, Inkscape, LiberOffice, FireFox, Chrome, Tomcat, SCiTE, VLC, and various other open source softwaare. And it fills this role fine. So I don't need to complain. As long as I can print. Access the file servers. Use Outlook. And other corporate applications (which now seem to all be web based), I'm good.
I'm in an organization where they manage a fleet of nearly 5,000 Windows, scattered in offices all over the US and Canada. They seem to know what they are doing.
I've got an $11,000 box in my own office room (feet away from me) that runs Windows Data Center Edition (cost about $6,000, eg, that Windows license cost more than half the total cost of the box). [But we get volume discounts.] I can create unlimited Windows VMs on it without any pesky Windows licensing or activation issues. It goes without saying I can create Linux VMs on it without licensing issues. [But I could have done that with VirtualBox instead of Hyper-V.]
At work, I don't run Linux on any bare metal. I don't really need Wine. I have real Windows. I also have real Linux, just on a very nice VM.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 07 2018, @08:26PM (5 children)
Sounds a lot like my workplace: Windows on the desktop, Linux in a VM. Windows itself seems to work OK, however it's still Win7, for now. They're moving to Win10. Some people who have already been moved are reporting a lot of problems.
Are you still on Win7? You might in for some real "fun" when your company "upgrades".
Windows is OK as long as you have full-time administrators keeping it working for you, but it really isn't good for home users because it needs too much maintenance and has too many problems. If it were really that reliable, services like Geek Squad wouldn't exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @08:31PM
not true; geeksquad makes their money from the fbi.
also, windows 10 took away most admin control and replaced it with feel good errors and the illusion of controls, but the real control is gone. its perfect for people that don't know and don't care.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 07 2018, @09:18PM (3 children)
I'm on Win 10 Enterprise Edition. It seems to work fine. But . . . for corporations, we get different things than consumers. For example, I have absolutely no reason to use the Windows Store.
We pay obscene amounts of money for corporate antivirus software. Again, it is completely invisible to me -- other than I can right click on any file / folder and pick to scan it RIGHT NOW. Windows Update is also pretty much invisible to me except for occasional requirements to reboot.
Despite how a lot of workstations are "locked down", developers (Woo hoo!) always get local Administrator access. So I can install software.
I completely agree that no home user should have to suffer Windows. But in a corporate environment, with paid staff that have a full time job to keep this crap working, it actually works pretty well.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 07 2018, @09:25PM (2 children)
Well, that crap isn't really the same crap that home users are using either. A big, big factor here is the forced updates that home users (and "pro" editions too) get, which make their computers unusable during the update process and force reboots. The enterprise version doesn't have that garbage. Of course, with this, it's up to each organization how to deal with updates, so some places are better than others.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 07 2018, @09:34PM (1 child)
I believe we have our own central windows update servers. In principle, I know some people I could ask to find out more. I know that through the policy mechanism they can selectively push out updates or installs to various groups that should get them. (eg, all HR people get this software. All support people get this software. All professional services, all sales, all developers, etc, etc get specialized software for various purposes.)
We also have specialized boxes (somewhere) that filter external mail entering our mail system. Those reject insane amounts of spam. I heard the figure a few years back, but don't remember it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 07 2018, @10:28PM
Check the registry if your really interested.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\
WUServer Reg_sv key should contain the IP of the WSUS server.
https://github.com/vFense/vFenseAgent-win/wiki/Registry-keys-for-configuring-Automatic-Updates-&-WSUS [github.com]