Archive for the ‘Google’ Category

Google has had some success with it’s Android operating system (which it gives away for free).  The Android operating system has been implemented in a variety of devices including cell phones, computers and televisions.

When Google developed Android, it choose to implement a method whereby code written using the programming language called “Java” would be able to run on the Android devices.  Since Google wanted a “free” operating system, they developed a java like implementation that used features from the Apache Harmony Project. Oracle (which actually bought the company that had developed Java) states:

the source code in Android’s “PolicyNodeImpl.java” class is nearly identical to “PolicyNodeImpl.java” in Oracle America’s Java, not just in name, but in the source code on a line-for-line basis

Carlo Daffara has compared the code himself, and his results are not as “cleaned up” as what Oracle presents to the court (and the public), and seem to show reasonable differences (some of the structures are actually standards that are to implemented by common agreement).

Google could have worked from the OpenJDK code base, but instead Google wanted to avoid using what is called the GPL license for some reason.  And this is really the problem.  Google wanted to let hardware manufactures write code and not have to release it with the phone (this is explained better at End Soft Patents), by avoiding the GPL license grant on OpenJDK, Google created a special problem for itself, that it could have avoided.

Another part of that problem might be due to Google having former Sun (which developed Java originally) engineers work on reinventing Java, and they basically wrote code the same way as when they worked for Sun (before Oracle bought Sun).

In any case, Google is a big company and should be able to sort this whole thing out with the courts and Oracle.  I think the patent claims are not going to stand up well under scrutiny, but Oracle might have some arguments for Google having infringed on some copyrights.

Posted by shane.vincent on October 28, 2010 at 7:07 pm under Computing, Google, Intellectual Property, Law.
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I am sure by now you have heard about the beauty queen who couldn’t even give any kind of coherent answer to why so many American students can’t find the United States on a map.

Some of you may have even watched the 20/20 show called “Stupid in America” (click here to watch it if you haven’t).

I’m beginning to think that this is a deliberate effort, what put me over the edge was learning that there are teachers in United States public schools that don’t even speak English, don’t teach classes in English and these are the teachers that are supposedly teaching the children English (see article here).

The public school system seems to want to hire “native Spanish speaking” teachers, regardless of whether they are going to teach Spanish, for some strange reason that makes no sense to me, other than encouraging U.S. citizens to become Mexicans, which given that Mexico has some really strong laws that favor Mexicans more than the U.S. laws seem to favor U.S. citizens, that might be better than what we currently have.

Unfortunately Mexico doesn’t want U.S. citizens to become Mexicans. So all that learning of Spanish isn’t going to help U.S. citizens become Mexicans. And it’s not going to help reduce the trade deficit with China, good instruction in reading, math and science would do that.

But the science that is “commonly” accepted as true isn’t even always a consensus. For instance, less than 50% of all peer reviewed scientific papers blame global warming on the factors that Al Gore claims are the cause (see link here), yet rather than teach real science students are taught politically correct platitudes (which, like Mao’s little red book, won’t feed them). Unfortunately students in America today are taught to be dependent morons who can do little more than dress themselves and use a computer to print out a poor excuse for resume.

It might be a great way to ensure that we won’t need a draft, because we’ll have a nation full of people too stupid to do anything but join the military (and barely able to do that), especially since we’ve shipped all the manufacturing jobs to China (and there isn’t a big focus on teaching Chinese in schools).

With all the billions of dollars that the United States spends on education, these trends show that Ron Paul is on the right track when he says that we should eliminate the department of Education, because what we really need is for parents to be able to have real choices, not for more centralized nightmares.

Posted by shane.vincent on August 31, 2007 at 11:48 pm under Google, Old, Politics.
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I just saw this video and now I have to wonder what is up with Google.  Maybe there is a sea change at Google, and maybe it was upgrades, but the actual people at Google seem pretty enthused about Ron Paul.

Well it seems that Google has a new feeling towards Ron Paul, much like the Democrat Doug Thompson of Capital Hill Blue.

Once people get past their reflexitive “all politicians are liars” it seems that they like the idea of living in a country with a constitution that means something, unlike the repressive regimes of the USSR.

Posted by shane.vincent on July 27, 2007 at 7:48 pm under Google, Old, Politics.
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Over at theInquirer.Net, there is an article about U.S. Senators debating on how to ensure that children are not exposed to any thoughts that the government does want them to have.

How this will differ from the Chinese censorship of the internet would remain to be seen. Since the free exchange of ideas on the internet has already been eroded over the years (in the name of protecting people from terrorists, drugs, etc) it is only a logical next step before the only voices on the internet would those that have government licenses to speak.

Kinda like radio, where the FCC goes after micro broadcasters and other seemingly harmless people to control what Americans can (and more importantly) can’t hear.

Unfortunately only one person running for president of the United States has shown a commitment to the constitution and the principles of liberty that are there:

Ron Paul

While some people may pillory Ron Paul because he didn’t vote for some bill with a cute name like “Save the Children” or “Net Neutrality”, the point is that the federal government is supposedly not supposed to be some big brother entity that listens to everything and stores all that information to be used for some purpose (purely benign we are always assured, and after all it’s to protect the children).

While I hope and pray that people will wake up, I am amazed at the hypnogogic states that most people seem to be in, where they go from a job where they don’t think to their house where they watch controlled (and to me substantially the same) media performances.

Posted by shane.vincent on July 26, 2007 at 5:36 pm under Censorship, Computing, Google, Old, Politics.
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I’ve written about Google’s apparent bias before, and every day it seems like someone brings something new to my attention.  One of the things that Google has is “google news”.  Whoever decides which sites are news has an obvious bias, while allowing sites that make up much of what they report to stay on, they ban other sites because of their political positions.

It’s not that the example site that is included in Google News doesn’t spew speech that is hateful, misleading and flat out wrong, it’s just that that site attacks republicans, so it’s ok.

Of course Google can at any time remove CHB from it’s list of “news” sites, but the point is that they didn’t do it on their own initiative, unlike what they have been doing to so called conservative sites (which I tend to disagree with about many things, I am pointing out a bias that Google has).

Posted by shane.vincent on July 24, 2007 at 4:02 pm under Censorship, Google.
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For whatever reason, I have begun getting an error that states, in part,

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

whenever I try to do a “blogsearch” for Ron Paul lately.  Apparently one way that Google has decided to “cool” interest in Ron Paul is to decide that only fake people want to find out about him.

If you can’t search for something, then traffic goes down, then you can claim there is no support for Ron Paul.

I’ve gotten emails from other people claiming:

… Google has stopped (this had to be done manually) retuning results from my blog if the words “Ron Paul” are searched for.  However, if you search for another word in the article, it will show up.

Apparently someone at Google has decided that the Ron Paul support is the result of automated spyware and spam, not frustration with the fascist police state mentality.   So the answer to Ron Paul support is more fascist police state methods.

Posted by shane.vincent on July 24, 2007 at 9:49 am under Censorship, Google, Old, Politics.
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According to Dave Martin, google is censoring his articles about Hillary Clinton:

….I reveal the devious methods by which the paid shill Klein promotes Hillary’s candidacy while appearing to do the opposite.  I’m sure the powers that be don’t want you reading things like that, but that’s probably not what got the article blacked out from Google.  I also have a great deal of information in the article about Hillary’s personal life that you won’t find in the hundreds upon hundreds of pages in the aforementioned books. So what is the evidence that Google has banned reference to the article.  Try searching for the odd combination of words that appear in the article, “Hillary Klein veterinarian.” (I did it without quotation marks.)  But before you do it on Google, do it on Yahoo.com, Ask.com, and AlltheWeb.com.  In each of the latter three search engines, the “Crude Propagandist” article is the first thing that comes up.  But on Google, the near-monopoly search engine, the article doesn’t come up at all.  You can even add “Parade of Lies” and “David Martin” and who knows what else from the article to the search string, and it still doesn’t come up.

I think that it’s unfortunate that the trend is to present people with seems to initially be an open source of information, and then slowly push people into whatever thought frames are desired.  Google, et al. can claim that the blame lies with “Search Engine Optimization” companies, but I think that there is are connections between the big players, and Google does sell it’s services to the highest bidder.

Maybe this is just an unfortunate side effect of the special privileged  status that corporations enjoy in the United States.  Corporations are given super rights, while individuals are granted limited privileges.  Corporations have only one overriding duty, to make profits.
Quite a turn around from when people were recognized to have natural rights granted by their creator.

Posted by shane.vincent on July 5, 2007 at 11:27 am under Censorship, Computing, Google.
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