Martha Rans from Creative Commons Canada on campus

For those who are interested, Martha Rans from Creative Commons Canada will be on campus for Open Access Week on Ocober 21st. She will be taking about the effect of the new copyright bill (C-32) on education: http://oaweek.scholcomm.ubc.ca/open-access-week-2010/#THURSDAYVAN

Rollover image on your website? That will be $80,000 (please)

Does this count as patent trolling? Wowza...

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/10/patent-troll-takes-over-the-web-can-it-be-stopped.ars

Nader

Against the Necessity of Software Patents

"Patents make a lot of sense in many industries; they are needed to protect the designs of industrial equipment, pharmaceutical formulations, biotechnology products and methods, biomedical devices, consumer products (toothpaste, shampoo, contact lenses, etc.), advanced materials & composites, and of course, widgets (lighting fixtures & elements, batteries, toys, tools, etc.). But in software these are just nuclear weapons in an arms race. They don’t foster innovation, they inhibit it. That’s because things change rapidly in this industry...."

Continue on:

http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/07/why-we-need-to-abolish-software-patents/

About the recent controversy of Icefrog (the creator of DOTA game in Warcraft 3) joining the Valve team to create the new DOTA 2 game.

http://icefrogtruth.blogspot.com/

I found this really similar to the Facebook controversy:
"We found out that not only did he lie about DOTA, but he lied about his involvement with both Riot Games and S2 Games. As I said at the start of this blog, you can go to www.dota-allstars.com to brush up on that history. This is the equivalent of the CEO of McDonald's (DOTA) looking for a job at Burger King (Riot Games), then working for Fatburger (S2 Games), then quitting and going to work for Wendy's (Valve) but outright lying to Wendy's of his involvement with ANY previous employer, despite the fact that he had contributed to a significant chunk of development with each company. In the corporate world, this would be the equivalent of stealing trade secrets. But instead, this is the game development business, and the rules are not so established."

Apple Gets Patent on Pinch-to-Zoom

The patent for pinch and zoom on multi-touch displays is finally granted to Apple.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/13/apple-awarded-limited-patent-on-pinch-to-zoom/

Quote:

Patent #7,812,826 was first applied for on December 29, 2006, and over the course of the patent process the claims have been significantly narrowed to cover a very specific set of actions:

1. A multitouch display detects at least two contacts.
2. Those contacts perform a first gesture.
3. That gesture adjusts an image in some way: magnification, orientation and rotation are specifically claimed, but the patent is broad enough to cover virtually any adjustment.
4. The first set of contacts is broken.
5. A second set of contacts is detected.
6. The second contacts perform another gesture within a pre-determined period of time.
7. The gesture continues to adjust the image in the same way.

Microsoft patents the "search engine"

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/search-engine-seo-bing,11462.html#xtor=RSS-181

"Microsoft has received a patent that covers a search engine platform that is based on a "bag-of-words" and "essential pages" ranking system to make searches more efficient."

I'm no expert, but this sounds pretty similar (although not identical) to another very popular search engine.

What hasn't Apple patented? :P

http://gizmodo.com/5662615/apple-will-help-your-mom-stop-you-from-sexting

Very interesting patent (bringing in a couple of topics we've talked about). I wonder how their algorithm actually catches it, and whether it can stop photos as well.

*edit* Only text is covered in the patent. Reading comprehension fail =(