The whole thing started with him labeling the app as if it is from CBC, brand name, logo and all. I think that's a pretty serious case of infringement, and CBC's attitude most likely stems from that.
"The stream URLs can be accessed with any web browser, the streams can be played by any media player. If my app is infringing, so are iTunes, Windows Media Player, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Firefox. So is your car radio, for that matter."
None of those are charging for the access. And I think that is the only reason for CBC's aggressive approach.
The judge's justification here sounds flimsy at best. Both tablets are "minimalist and modern" with "flat screens and round edges"? So Samsung can only make archaically designed tablets, if possible with a curved screen?
And then: "The court is of the opinion that Apple's minimalistic design isn't the only technical solution to make a tablet computer," Brueckner-Hoffmann explained, "other designs are possible."
I'm not a lawyer, so I might get laughed out here, but this just seems like a ridiculous claim. Other designs are possible, that much is true. You can make a car with 5 wheels and the engine in the passenger's seat too, doesn't mean there's going to be a market for it.
My common sense might be too common, but I hope this gets thrown out at higher levels of the court.
Edit: To clarify, I own neither, and I am not interested in either, I just found the situation too absurd not to chime in.
The only time I've ever been remotely satisfied with the download manager in Firefox was when I completely replaced it with an add-on, so I'm looking forward to this change.
What surprised me even more was that it was only the 14th largest donation in history made to higher education. Here's the list if anyone else was wondering: http://chronicle.com/stats/big_gifts.htm
I think this is a very subjective viewpoint, which is understandable considering the website we're on, but it still overlooks how huge the PC market really is, along with the Windows userbase, and the nature of a lot of its users. There's a huge segment of the Windows userbase who will always be beginners at computers, and their habits and methods are usually mindblowing to any "knowledgeable" user. One such example was the mass of people who typed "facebook login" into Google any time they wanted to log-in into Facebook, and got thoroughly confused and angry when the first hit suddenly led them to ReadWriteWeb's article on Facebook's log-in, filling the comments section with cries of where is the log-in, what is this crap, shitty re-design, let me in!, etc.
Because of users like this, Microsoft is where it is. Any big revamp, and they'll just get millions of confused customers who suddenly can't make sense of the most basic functionality. It is Microsoft's own doing that they made their users get used to interfaces like this, but it's not as easy as just scraping it and throwing up something new.
It's also easy to forget that Windows has a userbase 10 times its nearest competitor (which is to say this brings in challenges which competitors might not face).
One thing I was left wondering about and maybe someone here can shed some more light on this, what happens to the supposedly enormous amount of "serial killer" white blood cells after they're done with the cancer cells? Do they function normally, until a new "infection" comes, basically serving as a permanent leukemia antidote?
(I hope no one is offended by my quite flimsy grasp of medicine and the human body)
