Qualcomm Seeks To Ban Imports And Sales of Apple iPhones in New Lawsuit (cnbc.com) 129
Chipmaker Qualcomm is asking U.S. trade regulators to ban iPhone imports, according to a new lawsuit. From a report: Apple has allegedly infringed on six of Qualcomm's patents, including technology that improves iPhone battery life, according to Qualcomm. Now Qualcomm wants Apple to pay damages. "Apple continues to use Qualcomm's technology while refusing to pay for it," Don Rosenberg, executive vice president and general counsel of Qualcomm, said in a statement. Qualcomm ultimately wants regulators to investigate which phones use cellular processors from Qualcomm's competitors, and halt sales of iPhones that violate the patents. Qualcomm said it has filed complaints in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California and with the United States International Trade Commission. It's not immediately clear how many iPhones that would affect.
How many? Perhaps none. (Score:3)
Depends on how credible their claim is, really.
I suspect this is just a negotiating chip more than anything else, to push Apple into giving them the rent they seek.
(geddit... chip? I slay me sometimes.)
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Believe it or not, I agree with you perfectly (I was being charitable.)
This is the industrial equivalent of SCO going after Linux users... and we all know how that turned out.
Re:How many? Perhaps none. (Score:4, Informative)
In fairness, this is the karma train hitting Apple. They tried to pull this same shit with Samsung over goddamn rounded corners.
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Not really - there's a difference between Samsung directly ripping off a design patent, and Apple being sued for buying chips for their phones from someone other than Qualcomm.
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This. Especially since the chip manufacturer would already have paid Qualcomm to license their technology, otherwise the chip manufacturer would be the one being sued or Apple would be willing to pay Qualcomm directly as part of their agreement with said chip manufacturer.
Exactly!
Re:How many? Perhaps none. (Score:5, Interesting)
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> there's a difference between Samsung directly ripping off a design patent, and Apple being sued for buying chips for their phones from someone other than Qualcomm.
There are Samsung "rounded corner" devices which predate Apple's bullshit "design patent"
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In fairness, this is the karma train hitting Apple. They tried to pull this same shit with Samsung over goddamn rounded corners.
Oh, it was a LOT more than just "Rounded Corners", troll:
http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/1... [cnn.com]
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nah, can't be them [cnn.com]
When are you people going to stop citing CNN as a credible source? What is it going to take?
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Is this the same money.cnn.com that declared math racist?
nah, can't be them [cnn.com]
When are you people going to stop citing CNN as a credible source? What is it going to take?
There's LOTS more sources. That's just the one that came up first with a good side-by-side picture.
Why not look at THAT. It tells you ALL you need to know.
Oh, I know why: Willful Blindness.
Battery patents are not FRAND (Score:2)
Apple has ignored patents and plundered tech before (Samsung [cnet.com] comes to mind - 5,579,239, 6,226,449).
Qualcomm is likely to have sufficient legal standing to prevail where Samsung failed - Qualcomm is a domestic company with stronger patents and a stronger legal department, and not quite so much corporate scandal.
I also hope that Qualcomm wins. An Apple victory limits the market and drives up costs. While Qualcomm has its problems, it helps the market much more than Apple does. Between them, Apple should suffe
CHiPs (Score:2)
I suspect this is just a negotiating chip more than anything else [..] (geddit... chip? I slay me sometimes.)
I think they just want Apple to chip in- either that or they have a chip on their shoulder and they want to get their own back by chipping away at Apple's success.
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The problem is most of these "inventions" are only small part of an actual invention and specified so vaguely in the patent that the documented "invention" or useful machine could not be recreated just using said documentation and has no function without being connected in just the right way to other "inventions". The whole point is to preserve, propagate and allow the use of inventions and devices while still allowing the "inventor" to make a reasonable income on said invention. Most of these patents are
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This is exactly why I think patents should only be valid when the invention has a physical component that is the novelty itself, which destroys software patents, and that any patent which is not sufficiently clear should be frickin' rejected (or at least sent back for clarification). Problem with the latter is that the USPTO has become less of a patent authority and more of a rubber-stamp mill. :/
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Patents originally only covered manufacturing processes. The intent being that superior processes become public information instead of trade secrets.
You know what can't be a trade secret? The Components or Designs of your product. Stuff on the store shelves arent a "secret."
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You are all missing the forest. Patents originally only covered manufacturing processes. The intent being that superior processes become public information instead of trade secrets.
Love to see the citation on that one, because the USPTO [uspto.gov] says "invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent". And it's been that way as long as I can remember. In fact, the first 10 patents [mentalfloss.com] all cover at least a machine, or a machine and associated process. Seems to me you're 100% backwards.
IANAPL, but I do have 18 issued patents to my name, and another dozen still pending...
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What you propose would be great for corpo
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but he doesn't get to submarine other's work 15 years down the line, like happens today with trolls.
This is why I stipulated monthly progress updates (which must show actual progress) until ac working model has been created. If progress stops for a period (we'll say 3 months), the patent is lost; if someone manages to keep up real and provable progress for 15 years without actually producing anything, well, I'd be amazed.
I also believe the patent holder should be able to file an injunction and prevent the manufacture, import, and sale of their invention while they're building their working model. I'm al
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a) I'd allowed for halting progress by limiting the "hold" period for up to 1 (2 or 3) years.
b) As for injunctions, why? If a company builds an infringing item, there are already means to recoup any lost revenue, including licensing (not everything needs to go through the courts, and a patent isn't a guarantee of "all your base belong to us" either, IMHO).
The trade-off for the protections has to be some limit on pre working copy restrictions, and having a working item as a sample should surely allow an in
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The problem is most of these "inventions" are only small part of an actual invention and specified so vaguely in the patent that the documented "invention" or useful machine could not be recreated just using said documentation and has no function without being connected in just the right way to other "inventions". The whole point is to preserve, propagate and allow the use of inventions and devices while still allowing the "inventor" to make a reasonable income on said invention. Most of these patents are on the equivalent of bolts and screws for the electronics industry.
Oh, please...
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/money... [turner.com]
SSDD (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same argument that it's always been. Qualcomm has patents that are necessary to use cellular networks, and in return for making them standards, they've agreed to license them (either in their chips or their competitors) for "reasonable" amounts of money. Unfortunately for Apple, Qualcomm is trying to charge a license for a percentage of the final value of the phone, instead of a unit price per radio. They've been in court several times to determine if Qualcomm is being "reasonable" or not.
It seems a pretty specious argument to me. Just like the article says, you don't charge somebody more for a sofa just because they want to put it in a more expensive house.
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It's my understanding that the patents that Qualcomm is contesting Apple using IP from are not the ones agreed upon to be placed under the 'common license'. Apple is going beyond that point and using Qualcomm IP that isn't licensed that way to other Qualcomm customers either.
However, Apple is involved, so people will climb out of Steve Jobs grave (where they live) to raise a hue and cry.
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It's my understanding that the patents that Qualcomm is contesting Apple using IP from are not the ones agreed upon to be placed under the 'common license'. Apple is going beyond that point and using Qualcomm IP that isn't licensed that way to other Qualcomm customers either.
However, Apple is involved, so people will climb out of Steve Jobs grave (where they live) to raise a hue and cry.
...and you can also be relied-upon to crawl out of whatever hole you inhabit, to put the most negative-spin on any and every Apple-related story posted on Slashdot.
Citation or it didn't happen.
So, what was your point, again?
Re:SSDD (Score:4, Insightful)
A citation for you [qualcomm.com].
The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... [qualcomm.com] While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.
These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.
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A citation for you [qualcomm.com].
The six patents, U.S. Patent No. 8,633,936, U.S. Patent No. 8,698,558, U.S. Patent No. 8,487,658, U.S. Patent No. 8,838,949, U.S. Patent No. 9,535,490, and U.S. Patent No. 9,608,675 enable high performance in a smartphone while extending battery life. Each of the patents does so in a different way for different popular smartphone features; https://www.qualcomm.com/iphon... [qualcomm.com] While the technologies covered by the patents are central to the performance of the iPhone, the six asserted patents are not essential to practice any standards in a mobile device or subject to a commitment to offer to license such patents.
These are not in the general patent common license pool, are not of any standards required for mobile devices, but Apple wants them anyway and is using them without paying for them.
How is Apple "using them without paying for them" in a device that uses a LICENSED Qualcomm chip?
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Here's the part I don't understand.
If Apple is using competitor chips, that have been licensed by the competitor to Qualcomm....hasn't that competing chip maker already paid the rent/licensing fee to Qualcomm at the chip manufacture level...?
If so, why does the secondary u
Re:SSDD (Score:5, Informative)
You are confused. Qualcomm is mad that their monopoly at Apple is being broken up by Apple using Intel's cell modems. So to get back at Apple the are accusing Apple patent infringement in another part of the iPhone developed by Apple, not Intel.
Personally I am very tired of the damage patent monopolies are doing to the US cell phone market. There are 100+ makers of cell phones in China. Only six or seven manufacturers sell in the US. LTE modems for the Chinese LTE bands are $15, same modem of US bands are $60. Average US cellphone pays $35 in patent royalties. Major cell phone companies like Xiaomi won't even enter the US market. in 2012 one sixth of all US patents [techdirt.com] were on cell phones.
And the future is bleak. All of these patents serve to keep US cell prices very high compared to rest of the world. This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices. The patent mess and high prices as so bad that completely independent cell technology (LORA/SIGFOX) is being developed to bypass the existing cell network.
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Exactly. The US should have just done what China does: wait for someone else to go to the expense of actually inventing and developing something, then copy it without paying the inventors anything. Then just think of how 'advanced' the US cell phones would be!
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These inventors have been hugely compensated for their efforts. There is a difference between reasonable or even unreasonable compensation and monopoly rents. We are well into the monopoly rents arena. And that's way Qualcomm is the target of anti-trust actions in China, Korea and the US.
Re:SSDD (Score:5, Funny)
This is going to end up destroying the developing market for cell connected IOT devices.
I guess it's not all bad then.
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All of these patents serve to keep US cell prices very high compared to rest of the world.
Actually, the same phone is substantially cheaper in the US than in other markets. [phonearena.com]
Surprise! Lower-quality, shitty phones are being manufactured in China, exclusively for the Chinese market, that likely wouldn't be popular or even pass inspection in first-world countries. The same can be said about lower-quality shitty milk products or lower-quality shitty toys. Even the ones that do come over to the US, Blu or whate
Not quite. (Score:2)
Intel is not breaking up Qualcomm's exclusive access to Verizon, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular.
These are CDMA carriers, and they belong to Qualcomm.
Apple started out using the Infineon/Intel modems, and was AT&T only. Even then the WCDMA in GSM that was used by the old Infineon modems accessed FRAND IP owned by Qualcomm. GSM was originally TDMA.
Re:SSDD (Score:5, Interesting)
Because Qualcomm says so.
No, seriously. Qualcomm's position is that every step in the production chain that includes their IP/hardware needs to be individually licensed. Because company X makes a board that includes Qualcomm's IP, and then sells that board to company Y who makes a phone from it and sells said phone, then both X and Y need to be licensed.
It's a scenario that has been called into question many times before over the years. However no case has made it to trial to decide it and set any kind of precedent. In the meantime, because both X and Y technically have products that utilize Qualcomm's IP, both face the risk of an infringement suit if they don't pay royalties.
Probably the closest we came to that was NVIDIA's suit against Samsung and Qualcomm, which along with establishing IP infringement was attempting to sort out who is responsible for said infringement (is it the company who fabs the chips, or the company who designs the IP?). However since that case imploded spectacularly, the question was never answered.
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How is this not an open-and-shut case of patent exhaustion?
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No, seriously. Qualcomm's position is that every step in the production chain that includes their IP/hardware needs to be individually licensed. Because company X makes a board that includes Qualcomm's IP, and then sells that board to company Y who makes a phone from it and sells said phone, then both X and Y need to be licensed.
How is this not an open-and-shut case of patent exhaustion?
It is. And the Supreme Court has gotten tired of the Federal Circuit that keeps trying to maintain the fiction that it isn't. So they ruled [supremecourt.gov] in May. Qualcomm apparently didn't get the memo. They don't have a leg to stand on. The brief required to scuttle their entire suit, and dismiss with prejudice, is one page long and cites that link.
Re: SSDD (Score:1)
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SCO tried pulling the same stunt with Linux a decade or so back...
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SCO was copyright license trolling, not patent trolling. Very different kettle of fish. (The fact that SCO didnt even own the copyrights they where suing over, Novel did and told them to stop, made it even more ludicrous. SCOs entire board should have been thrown in prison for fraud, frankly, it was obviously bullshit to literally everyone, and it was designed to force IBM to buy out SCO. Fortunately IBM had the lawyers to fuck that plan up g
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Here's the part I don't understand.
If Apple is using competitor chips, that have been licensed by the competitor to Qualcomm....hasn't that competing chip maker already paid the rent/licensing fee to Qualcomm at the chip manufacture level...?
Yes and no. With chips that run embedded firmware, it is quite common to pay a "fee" for the chip as well as a separate license "fee" for the embedded firmware. This is common with MANY chip vendors, not just Qualcomm. You buy the physical IC, but you still may need to license any custom firmware required. For example if you want to use the pre-canned USB/PHY stack on many Cirrus DSPs, you need to pay for that separately. If you want to use AptX encoding on a CSR chip, you need to pay for that separate
Re: SSDD (Score:1)
I think it's a pretty reasonable model. Others (Samsung, LG etc) are in the same boat and this works for them.
Apple is too greedy and wants to charge a undeserved premium for the brand without paying anything extra. I hope Apple suck it up at the end.
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It seems a pretty specious argument to me. Just like the article says, you don't charge somebody more for a sofa just because they want to put it in a more expensive house.
Interesting comment given that more and more vendors, shops, ... are introducing variable prices. Go on-line, look for a hotel/flight/... and the price that you will see is often different from what someone else sees. If you are known to be wealthy you are often charged more.
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Problem is, that argument fails miserably under FRAND rules concerning certain patents.
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Clearly, if Apple is fighting this, the license fees have been paid somewheresomeone. Qualcomm is too big for Apple to bankrupt with
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At any rate, we're both just talking out our asses right now. Since it looks like Apple intends to take this to court, though, we'll get to see soon enough which of us was right.
You may be, but I am not. I've done this kind of licensing of chips before, several times, with the exact same IC but different sets of firmware for different prices. In fact, vendors like it because it's hard to discount chips in volume beyond a certain point, but firmware licensing? That can be cut much more aggressively. So you may see a 20% cut on costs on an IC when you move from 1K to 1MM production, but you'll see a 75% cut in licensing over that same increase in volume.
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My understanding is that Qualcomm is bitching about patents relating to silicon, not software. Of course, none of that is actually public, which is why we're both talking out our asses right now and will have to wait to hear Qualcomm's actual complaints in court.
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most people just license up for the firmware and options they want. Except Apple
Again: Where is Apple getting Qualcomm's firmware if not from Qualcomm? Seems if they're getting it from Qualcomm they must've paid for it and, if they're getting it from elsewhere, that source should be named in the complaint, as well.
But let's look at those patents, shall we? (and thanks, I hadn't seen this previously)
Patent 8,633,936, entitled "Programmable streaming processor with mixed precision instruction execution", is for a silicon design. That is, it's for a chip, not firmware.
Patent 8,698,55
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Again, Apple isn't so stupid as to take that to court where they know they'll lose.
We'll surely learn more when that time comes.
But, until then, let me leave you with this:
The "programmable streaming processor" described in 8,633,936 is a GPU, it runs the program loaded on it at runtime by whatever software is using the display. It isn't fatcory-programmed and, in fact, mentions "a non-transit
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If the suppliers stopped paying, Apple should pay licensing for all parts acquired for which the supplier did not. However, if Apple asked suppliers to stop paying and the suppliers did not stop, well, licensing is still being paid and Apple doesn't owe shit.
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you don't charge somebody more for a sofa just because they want to put it in a more expensive house.
GREAT analogy!!!
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It is 'almost never mentioned' because it is not true. Sales tax is on the transaction, not the 'full retail price'. The only time you are paying tax on the 'full retail price' is when you get a rebate on the purchase.
Re: I think a temporary ban would be hilarious (Score:1)
most the users who don't have a Mac want a Mac and those who have a Mac want an upgrade
That's the way it goes. They think that somebody, somewhere out there has a good Mac.
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I've got a story about that.
We have a $10,000 Mac up in our studio. It's about three years old, but it's fair to compare it to a system I just built because Apple hasn't really updates their line.
A guy in our digital department (not part of the studio) needed to do his own video editing and wanted a $6,000 Mac to do it on. He wanted a quad core system with plenty of RAM. The company isn't spending much money these days.
I explained to him how Adobe and Apple have sort of been at war for about ten years an
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What it does have that the Mac doesn't is PCIe slots which I think are better if you're only going to have one anyways.
You're comparing a 3-year-old box to one built within what, the last month? That is seriously apples-to-oranges.
I say this because Macs generally come standard with PCIe nowadays (and the internal drives are connected to it by default.) Pick any four-year-old high performance PC (if it's still operational - too many die off within 24 months) and you can likely beat that old Mac too.
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That's four years old.
Funny, that's the same benchmark you set for beating the three year old Mac.
Re: I think a temporary ban would be hilarious (Score:1)
That 3 year old mac is still being sold by Apple in stores for the same day1 price, so it is certainly a valid "apples to apples" comparison.
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Or in this case, an "apples to microsofts" comparison.
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The previous two replies are right on target.
I built this thing shortly before Ryzen came out. It is a AMD 4 GHz FX-8370 per my order history, and per Wikipedia was release 2014-09-02. (I built it in December thank you very much).
That same Mac is still on sale in the same config today and it's still about $10,000 and still pretty close to the best Mac Pro you can buy.
I'm running a consumer AMD CPU which only sort of has 8 cores since it has 4 floating points against a Xeon monster system.
That Mac has dual
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Guess you're not on a SAN.
See - I have to worry about users breaking things. The users that are on a SAN have to all stay on the same version of the OS as a the meta-data controllers or it breaks everything. To me that's fine - but due to the nature of what those particular users do they have to have admin on their own systems.
So when you give the monkeys the keys they tend to break stuff constantly. Oh, I upgraded my computer to the latest OS release because I really really need it. Of course now they'
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I've had to get some Magma or Lava or whatever it was PCIe boxes for our Mac people so they could still connect to the SAN and use a Black Magic card or two. They work rather well, but I would rather the new Mac Pro's still be "cheese graters" with a Thunderbolt upgrade than a little tube with no slots.
I am not an Adobe fan. In fact I really despise Adobe's attention whoring - Acrobat reader has NEVER needed as much attention as it demands during the more than 20 years I've been doing this for a living.
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Well, we're not stuck with Radeon and we don't have to put our souls in escrow by joining a developer program. I think it compares quite favorably, though I do dislike proprietary connectors.
I've seriously considered seeing what would happen if I put a graphic card in one of those Thunderbolt boxes we have and plug it into my Lenovo laptop. Of course that would only be Thunderbolt 2.
Nexus 6p is likely better than the Pixel... (Score:2)
...for the sole reason that it is unlocked and 64-bit capable. It will be supported for a long, long time by the AOSP rerolls.
With the surprising speed that Google has dragged it's phones to the guillotine, LineageOS on the 6p will likely outlast several Pixel models.
At least some Pixels will also die a forced death, since the Verizon model's bootloader is locked. Google would have every reason to similarly lock the entire line at the final update.
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That's the difference between working with cultist and tech people.
The I.T. department is full of tech people who use Macs the way you're talking about. The creatives are a bunch of cultist who cling to lock-in and love it.
(BTW, I love iTerm2. I started with something else that did a Quake style drop-down but that wasn't supported anymore an OS release or two ago, so it's a reasonable sub)
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Ubuntu on WIndows is not ready for prime time. Every complicated build I try on it fails. For example AOSP won't build, WebRTC won't build, etc. All of those work fine in a VirtualBox. I keep hoping, but it isn't there yet.
Re: I think a temporary ban would be hilarious (Score:2)
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I last tried about a month ago after that last big Windows update.
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Little stuff builds ok. It is the large projects that make use of 1000's of features that fail. For example AOSP hits undefined syscalls. And WebRTC fails because of shell incompatibility.
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I think the best part of this thread in general is the moderation on my original comment. I've triggered the cultist but I've also caught the attention of real thinkers. I've been everywhere between a +4 for funny down to a current 0 for overrated - AKA I'm one of those hipsters and I don't like you making fun of me.
Correction... (Score:4, Informative)
Apple continues to use Qualcomm's technology while refusing to pay for it twice
Someone makes the chips Apple uses in their phones. Those chips implement Qualcomm's patented technologies and whoever makes them, therefore, must be licensing those technologies, which means they're paying for them and passing that cost along to Apple who, by paying for the chips which incorporate Qualcomm's technologies, made by the company who already paid for Qualcomm's technologies, has already paid for the use of Qualcomm's technologies.
I realize that's hard for some people (namely Qualcomm's leadership and council) to follow, so let's look at a similar situation with a different type of product.
Coca-Cola uses high fructose corn syrup in their products. They buy this high fructose corn syrup from a supplier. They pay for this high fructose corn syrup when they buy it, then they incorporate it into their products, which they then sell to stores. The stores, then, sell the products to consumers. The stores do not owe the high fructose corn syrup manufacturer anything for the use and sale of their product, because Coca-Cola already paid for that.
Rephrased to fit the Qualcomm situation, with edits bolded to make them clear:
Chip manufacturers use Qualcomm technologies in their products. They license these Qualcomm technologies from a Qualcomm. They pay for these Qualcomm technologies when they license them, then they incorporate them into their products, which they then sell to Apple. Apple, then, sells the products to consumers. Apple does not owe Qualcomm anything for the use and sale of their technologies, because the chip manufacturers already paid for that.
Re: Correction... (Score:1)
Apple has asked their suppliers to not pay the Qualcomm royalties any longer.
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Re: Correction... (Score:1)
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If you designed a product and one of the components of that product was an iPhone, literally integrated into the product itself as part of a larger whole, would you pay licensing fees to Qualcomm?
I ask this because that's what Qualcomm would expect you to do, although the manufacturers of the chips in that iPhone have already paid licensing fees and, if Qualcomm gets their way, so will Apple. So they'll have collected licensing fees on, say, a $10 chip and an $800 phone, an
Re: If Trump was honest... (Score:1)
When did they support Trump? Attending a meeting with a president is not "supporting"