I forget where I read it from, maybe Gizmodo, but they outlined the timeline of the relationship between Google and Apple, of Eric Schmidt meeting with Steve Jobs back in ‘06, around the launch of the iPhone. Steadily the two companies drifted apart, as they were not a match made in heaven (although it would be a very cool slate of white if they stuck together).

I’m biased towards Goog, being a user of their stuff much more so than anything Apple, and also I buy in to their open-ness philosophy. And it’s in that openness where the two businesses ultimately conflict. Apple is many things, but open was never one of them.

The lawsuit itself is actually not as big of a deal as people may suggest. The best way to think of it, is to read about the suit going on over at Nokia, where Apple is sued and suing for various patent infringement. If I recall correctly, the same kind of saber rattling has been made between Palm and Apple too, earlier on in the first days of Pre.

And this is really just saber rattling. I remember actually watching an episode of the Engadget Show where they interviewed this winsome Asian engineer who spoke for the Nexus One development team. He told us about multitouch, as it was a hot topic being pressed (as in, why didn’t the N1 have it). The way he deconstructs the terminology totally smells like a lawsuit coming down the pipe, at least to me. Some did consider the lack of pinch-to-zoom on the N1 default browser at the time as a result of some legal dealing. But as far as non-rumors go, the Google rep said that Android (1.6+) supports multitouch, and that support is most visible in the touch keyboard (to avoid key shadowing/jamming). On the other hand, most people mean “multiple-finger gestures” when they say multitouch, it is a bit of a misnomer. That is an application-side implementation, and really has nothing to do with Android technically.

This distinction is similar to how one approaches the interpretation of a patent claim. The difference between a patent lawyer and a, well, non-patent-lawyer person.

And if commercial litigation is not your customary cup of tea, let me just say that something with so much at stake, between large companies as Apple and HTC, is very rarely a surprise for either side. I believe when that episode of the Engadget Show went on air, Apple, Google and HTC were already talking about this. In fact by the response of the rep, it probably means he has been coached about it. And if you take the average speed of the corporate pipeline between your legal dept and your dev PR person, that is probably a good indicator of how long things have been in the talks, before it’s public. And even if it’s a “surprise,” it’s customary before filing a suit to at least tell your opposing counsel that “dude, we’re gonna sue, you cool?” After all this is still business as usual.

Also since one of their patents listed on the complaint was dated Feb. 2 2010, it’s a safe bet that the talks begin right around then.

How else can you assert your patent rights, if not via litigation? I mean it isn’t free to prosecute (create) patents. Make them work!

And companies like Palm and Nokia have made theirs work. Unlike HTC, who is still in the midst of transiting from a contract-manufacturer to a brand vendor (and only just that), both of these guys were drawing it up at the USPTO since the 90s at the latest. Patents are like weapons, where as you can use them defensively and offensively. And I guess Apple needs to flex its new-found muscle.

As to what Apple wants out from the suit, I presume they would be happy enough with just a licensing agreement. It is a no-brainer to see that Android phones will take up as the #1 competition for Apple’s device market–from eReaders to MIDs to smartphones (and dumb phones and photo frames and netbooks and whatever). And quite frankly, Jobs has nothing to gain by killing the competition this way; they’ll draw ire from too many people, consumers, competitors and governments. A controlled menace that serves as a perpetual second-in-market seems more suitable for long-term growth. Obviously everyone else who’ve had a sip of the magic Android juice will not likely to budge; essentially a negative ruling against HTC is a ruling against Samsung, Sony, Moto and LG…that’s like everybody but Nokia (who was already suing) and RIM, lol. Not to mention Dell, Lenovo, and whoever “owns” the Nook, among others. No way Apple is going to take them on.

The one thing that bothered me about the HTC lawsuit coverage is how people talk about cross-patent blocks on innovation. It is a point that is taken way too well in the patent community, but com’on; I mean, there is such a thing as the patent pool, and how people may have forgotten to take a dip in it.

I think at the same time, Apple does deserve something for consistently being the pioneer of their markets. Perhaps their fattened bottom line as a natural industry leader in the smartphone space is enough, I don’t know, but I guess an actual judge will be the judge of that now.

So what’s the takeaway?

1. It sucks, but that’s how the game is played. The consumers are the ultimate tax paying source. HTC and those hardware vendors live on thin margins relatively speaking. Google really will have to lend its legal muscle to its cause.

2. IBM. IBM is the #1 entity in the world at contributing to open-source development. Android is an open source platform. What is different between IBM’s work and Android? IBM is the #1 patent player in the world, and uh, they’re mostly about D. And as I always say, good D wins in the playoffs.

Because she post pics like these.

It’s not exactly a secret, but I can’t read Japanese. So why do I read Japanese blogs? I’m subscribed to Makkun’s blog, out of some misguided sense of duty–the same reason why I buy almost every solo CD she puts out I guess.

I also follow ItoShiz’s blog, but because she usually posts some interesting pictures and she doesn’t post much anyways, so it isn’t as if it makes a difference.

I follow a few other Japanese blogs for non-informational purposes, but they usually have some actual utility even if I can’t read it.

(BTW this post will get crossposted to omonomono.com in a slightly different form.)

PAX East would be fun, but it could also be just a waste of my time. It is slotted in early April, so if Japan were to happen this will not, and vice versa. But either is sufficient for idle amusement, tho PAX is much affordable.

Boston also means I can meet up with some folks. Steve, Alex, Wah. Whoever.

I guess I have to make a call in the next week at any rate.

Drilldown to pro/con:

Pros:

• Hang out with Moy (and others?)
• Maaya’s big concert
• TAF?
• Cherry Blossoms
• [new!] UBW, Eden, Nanoha, MacF films on screen!

Cons:

• BAD for budget constraints, really bad.
• May not have enough vacation days, need to survive on boss’s graces
• Going now means means no fun for later on in the year, and I can always just go later on in the year when the cons are not so … con.

The exact date range is going to be late march to early april. Maaya’s show is on 3/31, and TAF runs to like, April 3rd or so.

Maria and JP already set their travel plans for the last 2 weeks of March. I know I can probably run into Dave if I try. If fortune shines, maybe even Seizo. If I feel daring, maybe Taguma. Or Qix.

If you know any good (meaning very simple) single column themes (no sidebars!) that offers page templates like “archives” and “links” etc and must have a dynamic mouseover page link implementation, let me know.

Another 2010 thing is I joined a gym. Because it was $20 a month and they have a pool. Now it’s just a matter of seeing if I can make the time to go. I am plenty motivated if the facilities are good, actually.

Maybe I can squeeze in some time to actually migrate this thing today. Or perhaps a blog post…

More importantly, how many 19-game winners can you find on the market at the price Wang was paid? This is why free agency is most likely going to rob him from another year playing for the Bombers. The only thing is that he is in mid-rehab, and there’s no way to tell if his injuries since 2008 has permanently changed his game, and if his climb back to his number one game will happen, and how soon it is going to be. 2009’s free agent market is relatively soft, so this means supply for this kind of a pitcher is low (especially now that the Braves have dealt and we’re probably done with the blockbuster pitcher trades this season). This is what the other 29 teams have in store for them if they want to poach him. In some ways, those two 19-win seasons are what is keeping him in this limbo, but playing for the Yanks means you have to perform, after all.

Certainly my hopes are that Wang sticks with the Yankees via a incentive-based contract, but it’s more likely that a team like the Dodgers will pick him up at this time, especially Vasquez resolves their rotation problem. There’s just no space on the roster for Wang.

Less can be said of Hideki Matsui’s tenure. Everyone knew he was gone even before the end of the post-season and he isn’t going to stick around, so that cut was clean and it ends his career in pinstripes(thus far!) on a very positive note. Good luck Godzilla.

Oh, which Yulin is this? Taken from here.

I’ve looked around. The kind of cabinets I want run usually for about $300-400. If I get a break on price I can probably score something I like for under $250, but, well, that’s still a lot more than $60. And the DETOLF is serviceable. If anything, picky people can try to repaint the top and bottom slaps of wood to match their interior decor. I just went with what the walls were painted like.

And for $60, I’m rather satisfied with it. The only real issue I have with it is that, well, it’s flimsy like most Ikea furniture. In essence, the DETOLF is 3 tall panes of safety glass held together by two slabs of wood top and bottom. The thing that keeps the cabinet together are these two sets of metal railing, in which you screw into the top and bottom wooden pieces. It also holds the glass shelves inside the case. The two railings are flimsy as all heck! If they were solid and doesn’t vibrate when you walk next to them on hardwood floor, maybe I would be a happer man. If they don’t hit the glass sides of the cabinet when the shelves are empty and make that cheap rattle sound, I’ll be even happier. For extra credit, if the DETOLF was about a foot shorter, I would also be very happy because then I can set it on top of this drawer/desk combination, rather than setting it on the floor.

Setting it on the floor, if you’ve seen a DETOLF (top link has picture), means it is a display case meant for a larger room with more open spaces. Or how else can you see the stuff in the lower shelves? Elevating the DETOLF is the only other way to go. Those more expensive display cabinets all do this, of course. There’s another issue–a lot of figures I own (and probably a fair reflection on what’s on the market) tend to be sculpted with a frame of reference that is even or below the horizontal plane of the figure. In other words, a lot of these figures are meant to be looked UP at, rather than looked down at.

I think my dad’s pottery collection goes better than animu figurines on these shelves.

At any rate, I got a pair of these set up. I also tore into a backlog of figures that I bought over the past 12 months which remained in their boxes. That half-price Ciel I bought via AmiAmi was quite nice, to my surprise. Ureshiko-san donned her umbrella. Tamaki-nee’s chains were a pain to put on, but now she kneels like the eroge giant that she is. Also need to figure out where to put that OTHER Ureshiko-san and the SUPER LARGE Mai Tokiha (is she 1/6? Way too big for 1/6). I probably should also move that surprisingly lovely Itsuki Kannagi/Musumi Shimoyama figure, since that is just 1/10 and looks ridiculous next to a 1/6. Aegis Figma was cute, but probably funnier than cute; my first Figma, too.

As for the bottom shelf, I stuck Etopen there. It’s quite large for a little thing like that, or rather, I think the scale of it in the anime is spot on.

That is on top of all the other figures I already had out in display. Sigh.

A serious, big-picture look at the IT system I employ at home determined that the next “real” upgrade I should get is a systemic backup. At least, this is something I’ve been thinking about for a year or so. So I ended up buying a ReadyNAS Duo and a couple 1TB drives to go with. Cyber Monday and all.

(Man, did December snuck up on me or what.)

I’ve already done the research on home NAS for some time. And if you’ve understood the average fail rates of consumer-grade SATA drives (and its older relatives), and what data loss really means to most users, it becomes no surprise that Apple would even bother something like Time Machine.

However, backups are still a luxury, not a necessity. It might be necessary to back up important data, but it’s something that can be easily done. A totally computing-illterate person can upload all his documents onto google docs or something, achieving the same practical effect at no cost and some inconvenience. It’s spending on things you don’t really use just in case when something goes wrong.

So if we’re going to spend money, we should do it “better” than just randomly copying file to external drives. What Time Machine and the like does is regular system imaging, which can restore hosed systems easily. It’s automated, so once you set it up, you can forget it. With something like ReadyNAS you are given those capabilities and much more. And in addition you could set up file-based backup from the NAS itself, as it’s really just a Sparc-powered linux box. ReadyNAS Duo is about as big as a shoe box, so it’s quite convenient.

I am still in the process of setting it all up completely, because I’m also in the middle of a switch/expansion for the home network. Once that’s done I’ll set up automated backup for my mechanical drives as well. I have already set up a weekly cron job for the system drive, although in retrospect that drive is not going to fail any time before the other drives I’m using.

Anyways, I think ReadyNAS Duo justifies its price tag. Enterprising buyers can also try for a ReadyNAS NV+ or a used NV, as they are basically 4-drive versions of the same thing, and with more flexibility.

I wonder if this is due to some kind of perpetrated virus or something.

I’ll break it down into sections–

Impression:

• SSD is hella fast. When people say it’s the best upgrade you can get, I believe it. Then again I was always a fast-disk-ftw kind of guy.
• Win7 is pretty okay. Being 64 bit didn’t cause any problems, besides the $30 upgrade program needs an upgrade, and a fresh install probably means I had to do it twice.
• I like windows gadgets, but the one gadget I want/need (VPU temp) seems like a pay-only dealie, as it requires a component software used by hardcore tuners. I am not.
• The Antec 1200 is a beast. Huge. I can raise a hamster in it if I didn’t have to weave like 2 additional cords from the matching-heug Antec CP-850 just to power up all the fans in the case. And there are SIX of them that comes with the case, with space for one additional more on the side.
• Airflow in the case is serious. It’s definitely like an air tunnel. My VPU used to run on average 85-90C in my old case, now it runs 75-80C. That’s impressive; in fact it’s so impressive the VPU fan is off unless I play a game, which it rarely spins past 30%. I think this means “mission accomplished” in a different sense; it saved me the money of buying a VPU HSF upgrade or a new, quieter VPU. Kinda wish for a switch to turn off the fans short of unplugging them.
• Airflow in the case is also curious. Like a typical full tower case, one side of it is the “top” end and it is about 50% perforated. It’s also where you can install the additional (120mm) fan. Go google up an Antec 1200 review if you’re curious how it looks. In the box there are two pieces of clear plastic wrap covering it. I am thinking of leaving it like this; this way it’ll create a more linear flow of air from one side of the case to the other, and possibly a stronger positive pressure. It just looks dinky.
• The three forward case fans are the loudest thing in the box. And instead of a typical Antec “H M L” switch, they have dials that you can turn to full, mid, min, or anywhere in between. Kind of neat I thought
• Oh, the fans are decked out with blue LEDs. The top 200mm fan have LEDs on a switch. How thoughtful. But the rest of them don’t, and it kind of sucks :( Why not? It’s freaking annoying.
• I don’t entirely regret buying the Antec 1200 by accident, because it did solve one problem I’ve had, but it’s just too much for poor omo. At the very least it makes my stock CPU coolers more than sufficient. As you might have heard, the new i5/i7 have low profile HSF compared to even my socket 775 Conroe. Not that it matters–
• Overclocking this generation of i7s is like overclocking old school 80486, where you can wire a switch to the case for that “turbo” button. It’s more complicated nowadays, because there are more than a few power settings you have to change on the BIOS side, but also some CPU features like that Intel Turbo thing which OC’s single cores for single thread apps, and obviously your multipliers will be off the spec so it’s wonky and you might want to turn it off. MSI has literally a button on their boards that does this. Gigabyte does not, but in the BIOS there’s a preset feature which does this for you basically. Oh, it helps to have 1600 DDR3 ram. Which I do \o/ And of course, a reboot to turn it on/off. So it’s not quite as easy as the days of old. It really doesn’t take much to run my i5 up to 3.6GHz without breaking a sweat. And I mean by ME breaking a sweat trying to find the best values to tune the rig. As far as I can tell the CPU only runs hotter because the powersaving features are off, so when it idles it still clocks at 3.6ghz and not downclock to 1.1ghz as it would stock.
• Did I mention the heug case + the heug power supply is heavy? I guess one thing to note about the PS is that it really is quiet, and pretty quality. I don’t regret getting it even if I’ll never use anywhere close to 850w that it is specc’d for.
• So much of what I installed with this box is already in Win7’s came-with drivers, I ended up forgetting installing random crap, lol.

To Do:

• Need to move crap around so I spare out a drive for the old box. I already have an image
• Since I inadvertently solved the VPU heat/noise problem, and I doubt I’ll overclock any more than “stock OC” I might just cancel the CPU HSF, or use it in the Sonata. I’ll probably leave out the heat pipe crap this time.
• Wish I can engineer a light switch for the 5 other sets of LEDs in the Antec 1200. Time to google up a mod. Srsly, that is almost a deal breaker right there. Good thing they’re not that bright and I can point them away from me.
• Still have to figure out a backup solution. I would like a NAS but given this monster case I might just settle for 2x or 3x 1tb drives and run RAID 5. Just hope my currently 1tb will last when 3x 1tb drive is < $200 (not far in the future I think).

Regrets:

• I spent too much money.
• Related to that, it isn’t difficult to reconfigure some stuff and eek out enough cash for an i7 860. The improvements are notable simply because of hyperthreading… But rly, I’m sure my CPU can handle hyperthreading, but it’s just disabled in the hardware. Wish some magic can unlock that lol.
• Related to that, too, is the RAM. I mean I guess I have 1600 ram but I should’ve known better that I’ll rarely use it. Could’ve saved maybe $10-20.
• It’s freaking heavy. Again, and gaudy, and the light problems.