Open Source Victory

Image via CrunchBase

There was a time when open source felt like a crusade. It was considered rebellious. Microsoft talked it down. Now the biggest corporations depend on open source to do cutting edge work. Open source is like this big ocean you fish in.

Open source won

open source is now mainstream and a new norm .... After more than a decade of the low-cost, lean startup culture successfully developing on open source tools, it’s clearly a legitimate, mainstream option for technology tools and innovation. ..... large organizations are actively adopting many of the open source technologies we track, e.g., web development frameworks, programming languages, content management, data management and analysis tools .... MySQL appears as popular as ever and remains open source after three years of Oracle control and Microsoft is pushing open source JavaScript as a key part of its web development environment and more explicit support for other open source languages. Oracle and Microsoft are not likely to radically change their business models, but their recent efforts show that open source can work in many business contexts. ..... open source permeates most interactions on the web. ..... the collaborative, sharing culture that permeates the open source community spreads to the enterprise and government with the same impact on innovation and productivity.

You have to ask, what drives and sustains the open source contributors? A lot of people toil on open source projects with no monetary return in sight or mind. I think they are responding to a basic creative urge.

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The Casimir Effect

English: Illustration of the Casimir effect. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Engineers Unveil First Casimir Chip That Exploits The Vacuum Energy

One of the strangest effects to arise from the quantum nature of the universe is the Casimir force. This pushes two parallel conducting plates together when they are just a few dozen nanometres apart. ..... So instead of being hindered by uncontrollable Casimir forces, the next generation of microelectromechanical devices should be able to exploit them, perhaps to make stictionless bearings, springs and even actuators.

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Kindle Fire Accessories

Movies And Books To Buy

Handwrite

The mobile experience is different. There are few places where that is as starkly obvious as when you try to type. The mobile screen is not conducive to typing.

Make your mark on Google with Handwrite for Mobile and Tablet Search

speaking your queries, getting results before you finish typing, or searching by image. Now there’s a new way for you to interact with Google: Handwrite for web search on mobile phones and tablets ..... Handwrite enables you to search by just writing letters with your finger most anywhere on your device’s screen—there’s no keyboard that covers half of the screen and no need for hunt-and-peck typing. ..... Since you can write anywhere, you don’t have to look back and forth repeatedly from the keyboard to the search box...... Handwrite is experimental, and works better in some browsers than others—on Android devices, it works best in Chrome. For now, we’ve enabled Handwrite for iOS5+ devices, Android 2.3+ phones and Android 4.0+ tablets—in 27 languages

Make your mark on Google with Handwrite for Mobile and Tablet Search

Handwrite is a leap. And it just might be the friendliest way to type yet on the mobile screen. When you speak commands, you disturb people around you. And hopefully you are surrounded by people often.

This is so good people might demand it on their laptop screens. Although laptops might come with a warning sign. Do not burn your fingers from too much handwriting.

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Apple Sued In Asia

Apple is in a glass house. It should not be throwing stones. Instead it should team up with companies like Google to bring forth global patent reform. Call a truce and get to work.

Taiwan university sues Apple over speech recognition patents

over the iPhone maker's Siri speech recognition system ..... Earlier this month, Apple paid $60 million to Proview Technology (Shenzhen) to end a protracted legal dispute over the iPad trademark in China. ..... two U.S. patents it was granted in 2007 and 2010 that relate to voice-to-text technology. ..... Two small Chinese companies have filed suits against Apple in China, with Jiangsu Xuebao charging trademark violations for the use of Snow Leopard as the name of its computer operating system and Zhi Zhen Internet Technology targeting the voice assistant functions used in Siri

Apple earns a place on Chinese blacklist

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Apple Samsung Trial: Big Implications

Common sense has to prevail. Common sense is that Apple needs to go back to the lab if it wishes to win the innovation war.

Apple v. Samsung: The patent trial of the century starts today

The highly-technical confrontation pits the world's most valuable company, whose iPhone once dominated the touchscreen smartphone market and whose iPad still has the largest share of tablet computers, against South Korea's largest manufacturer, which makes tablets and phones that run Google's Android operating system and whose smartphones are now outselling Apple's. ..... Samsung's brief: "In this lawsuit, Apple seeks to stifle legitimate competition and limit consumer choice to maintain its historically exorbitant profits." ...... Dozens more pretrial motions were unsealed last Thursday in a legal data dump almost too large to digest. ..... For its part, Samsung is reportedly demanding 2.4% of Apple's sales for use of its mobile communications technology. ...... Samsung's version of the chart will show at least 10 iPhone-like designs created in Samsung's labs before the iPhone was unveiled ..... Samsung will claim the iPhone's design changed after Apple hired a designer from Sony and got wind of their plans. Apple fought hard to keep the jury from seeing that evidence. ..... Samsung tried to prevent Apple from showing the jury five slides in its opening presentation because the images of Steve Jobs they contained might prejudice the jury. ..... Apple, on the other hand, has so far been able to keep Jobs' remarks about "thermonuclear war" out of the record, despite Samsung's objections.

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