Apple, Microsoft, Google & Others: END THE PATENT WAR NOW!!

Look, we get it, each company wants to be successful and ultimately be the dominant player in the mobile phone arena. Microsoft, you've got Windows Phone which showcases your ideas on what a smartphone should be. Apple, your products have always been innovative and well thought out and well implemented. Google & the Android camp, you've got the momentum, the ability to rapidly improve and adapt, and the open source movements to bolster Android devices. And all of you, Microsoft, Apple, Google and the Android army are all doing one thing extremely well: pissing all of us the hell off!!

Patents are a key to maintaining intellectual property and protecting its enclosed ideas. We outsiders understand that and recognize that without patents, a lot of the advances we enjoy every day might not have been possible because there might be too many competing technologies on the market to enable advancements based on them to develop. But that can hardly be the case with operating systems, mobile or otherwise.

Face it, you all have stolen or borrowed ideas not only from one another, but from your predecessors. And I'm especially aiming that comment at Microsoft and Apple! But what you guys are doing right now isn't about protecting your business, it's about hurting the other guy. This patent war is barely accomplishing even that! What you don't realize is that you're hurting your customers!  Most of what you are suing one another over is prior art, common sense, or the reasonable evolution of an idea that likely didn't even have its origin with your companies.

What it's mainly doing is pissing off all of your current and potential customers. Apple and Microsoft: you make many consumer products outside of the smartphone market that you're probably hurting your own sales of those products as well future smartphone sales as you alienate Android enthusiasts. While most Android manufacturers simply tout their product and try to keep to themselves, others, like Samsung, have taken an aggressive stance in their advertising campaigns deliberately targeting iPhone users. While it's hard for me to paint Android as an antagonist in this war, simply an entity defending itself, it's obvious that some of the things that Android developers and manufacturers have done have been deliberately provocative.

Then again, isn't that the whole idea of competition in the capitalist market? Anytime someone implements a similar feature is implemented in Android, lawsuits start flying. Never mind that the same features have been implemented in desktop OSes or in iOS and Windows Phone without triggering the same lawsuits. The bottom line is that rather than competing and relying on the superiority of your implementation, you unleash a team of lawyers.

Give the people you claim you're serving a break, and stop this damned patent war!!


Update 7/9/2012: I'm not exactly the only one thinking this way... http://www.tomshardware.com/news/patent-lawsuit-judge-Richard-Posner-patent-system-broken-reform,16220.html and http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18736415

Tired and Lost...

Like the title says, right now I'm feeling tired and lost. I've been living more or less day to day for so long that I'm not sure how I manage to keep going at all.  I've got visions of the future I want for myself, but I'm not entirely sure it's possible for me to get there. I miss having my friends around me, I miss having a significant other. I miss my son. I also miss that part of my soul that I took for granted: the creative spark that let me write stories like a mad man.

I can still write very well, and I believe I can come up with ingenious story ideas with plots and subplots that flow so well it's hard to believe I'm making them up as I go along, but I fear that I've lost the ability to just put those ideas on paper, weaving them as they come out. It's not just because I'm out of practice, there was just a fire that I've lost some where along the way to where I am now...

Ironically, the creative talent that I fear I've lost has been replaced by programming logic I wouldn't mind losing... I've been surviving on my talents with computers for more than 10 years now, but they've never really lead me to a successful career. Just when I thought I had settled into a company I could stay with forever, Be Incorporated, they went and died on me. So I found myself floating from company to company between years of unemployment, and yet here I am working on a project that might help pay my bills if I'm lucky.

As I mentioned on my development web site, Bad Luck Software, I'm working on an Android application that will allow people to enter the price of gas at a local gas station. Yeah, that's real genius right? Well, the good part, the part that I hope people will like, is that as people enter gas prices everywhere, hopefully on a daily basis, people will be able to find the lowest gas prices in their area. And maybe, just maybe, if they find my little app useful enough, they'll donate a few dollars to support my work. Maybe.

The app is nearly done... I'm in the process of trying to link the app to the central database, and then I have a few more items to polish up. After that, I have the not so insignificant task of convincing people to use it without pre-existing data. At the moment, I have no fucking idea how I'm going to do that when I can't even get my friends and family to acknowledge that they have Android phones so they could possibly help me out... I don't want to pester anyone into using something to help me (and others) out, but I don't think I have any other choice...

I'm really tired of trying to make a better life for myself only to fail. I'm tired of being alone. I'm tired of bad shit happening to me. But I'm praying and hoping that I'm on God's path, and that on this path I'll find that place I'm supposed to be so I won't be lost any more.

Android Beta Testers & Early Adopters Needed!

Hi folks! Since I'm actually doing something for a change, I thought I'd invite you to do it with me... Wait, that doesn't sound right... Over the weekend, I had a brainstorm on an app for Android based smart phones, and I've gotten it mostly done already. Soon I'll need testing done on it, by other people than myself, to try to find bugs, improve the features and ideas in the app, and all around make it better.

If you are interested in helping out and have an Android 1.6 or higher based smart phone, you can find more information at my main development web site.

Ahh, the Nexus One...

By now, you've probably heard of the Nexus One, and maybe heard too much. I want one, but Google and T-Mobile seem to want me to wait 10 months. While I'm about 99% certain there will be an even more awesome phone in that time, the Nexus One is the one I want.

Let me start from a little earlier in the story. Ever since Android was announced, I've kept an eye on it because it was a pretty cool concept, and there were certain things I wanted to do on my cell phone. Oh, and I MIGHT be able to write some programs that someone would be willing to spend money on.

So when the G1 came out, I decided that I would invest in one when my Verizon Wireless contract expired, which happened at the end of 2008. Frankly, I prefer Verizon by far, but at the time they were not Google or Android friendly, so I got my G1.

The purpose was two fold: first, I needed a new cell phone, and second, I needed a phone I could use for development. So it was an investment.

The G1 is a pretty decent phone overall, and even though it's kind of dated compared to the Droid and Nexus One, it functions pretty well. I wasn't and still am not particularly tempted by the Droid, but the Nexus is another story.

My only fear with the Nexus is the lack of a physical keyboard, but I'm more than willing to give the on screen keyboard and voice recognition a chance. But the big thing for me is going to be the fact that it will most definitely get Android's latest updates as they become available.

You see, the G1 apparently has a tiny amount of space for the operating system which seems to be preventing it from getting the official 2.0 update despite many rumors. If I'm going to be serious about doing Android development, I will need a 2.x capable phone.

Then there's the recent problems my G1 has been having. It started Thanksgiving weekend, when my phone suddenly started acting weird and certain features were suddenly either missing or malfunctioning. They seemed to be cured with a factory reset that caused me to lose some no longer available apps. Then the G1 started experiencing new problems, such as locking up while the screen was off. The weird thing about that was that the screen wouldn't turn on at all, and I couldn't shut the phone off either. The keyboard backlight turns on if the screen is slid open, but it's useless. Sometimes the notification lights would still be blinking, but the only thing you could do was pull the battery and restart the phone. This didn't happen often, but it was irritating.

So after weeks of hearing about the Nexus One, I asked T-Mobile if it would be possible to extend my contract to 2 more years in exchange for the Nexus at the discounted price. I did this before the official announcement, and was told theoretically that I could. When Tuesday rolled around and the announcement was made, I checked the online orderr system to see if it would allow me to do it, but it wouldn't. It didn't matter at the time any way, because I didn't yet have the money. Today, however I came into the money (through non-nefarious means) to pay on a bill and get the phone, so I called up T-Mobile to try to arrange it.

And I was told that because I wasn't qualified for the normal upgrade routine that I could call Google at a certain number to get the partial discount price. Fine, I called that number, which turned out to be HTC (the manufacturer), who told me that they had nothing to do with it. They connected me back to T-Mobile who then explained that I would have to wait until I was qualified for the upgrade in 10 months.

In rare moment of clarity, I realized what I could do, and I asked about the early termination fee on my existing contract. The lady told me that it was $200, which when combined with the cost of the Nexus One on a new plan was still less than the cost of the unlocked version by more than $100. Since that was a lot of money, I decided to hold off and think about it.

Then my G1 locked up again today, and I made up my mind. If it were just another random lock up, I might not have minded, but on Wednesday, my G1 developed another new and serious issue: while it would make outgoing calls just fine, it would send all incoming calls to voice mail before I could answer them (less than 2 seconds). So between these two problems, and today's lock up coming at precisely the time I was considering my options, I decided on investing in the Nexus One, and ordered it. In all likelihood, I'll contact T-Mobile and ask to get a replacement G1 due to these issues, and cancel that line in a few days or weeks.

Hopefully no one else has to jump through the same hoops I did, but I suppose the bottom line is that I'm getting what I wanted.

Update (1/9/2010 3:12pm) : Despite the disclaimer that it would take up to 72 hours ship the phone out when it has been inscribed (as a free option), my phone actually shipped out last night... The very same day I ordered it! And given that there's free overnight shipping, I'll be receiving my phone on Monday! A full 2-3 days earlier than I was expecting it! Thank you Google!