This Week In Techdirt History: March 29th - April 4th
from the from-osborne-to-ipad dept
Five Years Ago
In the wake of the Apple iPad announcement, the company was scrambling to secure a trademark on the name, and this week in 2010 it succeeded. Meanwhile, publishers were scrambling to take advantage of the new device, while grappling over what that meant and the iPad's future in general. Plus, as expected, patent holders were also scrambling to bring claims against the new tablet.
In the world of patents, there was a major ruling: a district judge declared gene patents to be invalid, leading many to discuss what would happen next. We also discussed the fact that software patents violate the patent bargain, while over in New Zealand some politicians were looking to explicitly ban them. Nearby, Australia was looking into a great-firewall-esque censorship scheme, drawing criticism from President Obama and responding with a barely-related attack on Google.
Copyright extortion schemes based on automated threat letters started picking up steam in the US, with tens of thousands of letters sent by a group of filmmakers. One of these was Uwe Boll who, it turned out, registered his copyrights too late. Meanwhile, some online scammers were using mock copyright threats to spread malware.
Ten Years Ago
The entertainment industry's history of blocking innovation runs deep. This week in 2005, we noticed how much control they were exerting over new mobile phones, blocking some devices and crippling features on others to prevent piracy. Sony was demanding the courts solve its innovation problems while pitching a weak plan for an "iTunes for movies", and the FCC was still pushing for a broadcast flag at the behest of Hollywood, and facing opposition from librarians and hobbyists.
Also in 2005: yet another study showed that red light cameras are dangerous, while Illinois was gearing up to use speed cameras that take your license away; HP seemed to be attempting to patent refilling printer ink, while the patent office seemed to suddenly realize that online auctions are obvious; and ISPs mocked the very concept of net neutrality by seeking to block VOIP usage, while Japan's lack of public wi-fi spurred by near total mobile data penetration (in 2005!) provided a rude wake-up call to Americans about how crappy their service is.
Fifteen Years Ago
Had a few court cases gone differently back in these early days, deep-linking might be illegal and the web would be a very different place — but thankfully, this week in 2000, this didn't happen. Another thing that didn't happen is any meaningful impact from the Patent Office's supposed changes in the way it handles internet patents.
It was the early days of the DivX codec for video; online bill paying existed but had yet to take off in a big way; laptop thefts at the airport were worthy of a scare-story or two; and the social experiment of personal weblogs was in full-swing. Salon was telling the music industry that it had to get used to Napster and learn to adapt to technology, but unless this is your first time reading Techdirt and you skipped directly to this sentence in this post, you know they didn't exactly listen.
Thirty-Four Years Ago
This week in 2010 everyone was buzzing about the iPad's April 3rd release, so it's fitting that all the way back on the same day in 1981, the world saw the release of the first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne 1. It cost $1,795 (just under $5000 in today's cash), weighed nearly 25lbs, and was described as looking like "a cross between a World War II field radio and a shrunken instrument panel of a DC-3":
By Bilby (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Reportedly, its sales tanked after the company prematurely announced a superior successor machine — a phenomenon dubbed the Osborne effect and applied to similar situations like Sega's early discussion of the upcoming Dreamcast after releasing the Saturn. However, it appears that the effect's original, titular example may have been a myth.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Ah, back to the future!
My last laptop was a Lenovo Carbon X1 - weighed about as much as a feather, had a battery that would last the day, 8GB of RAM, a dual core 3+GHz i7 processor, plus a 250GB SSD. Ah, progress!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Ah, back to the future!
Because I'm insane, about 15 years ago I networked all of them together and modified CP/M to allow them to be used collectively as if they were a single multiprocessor system. The speed boost was impressive. It almost reached the lower boundary of the throughput you could get from low end modern systems of the day.
Those were the days...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Ah, back to the future!
My O1 was truly portable, because I had a battery pack. This was like a leather lunch box that weighed 20 pounds and put out 120V DC, so you just plugged the computer into it like a wall socket. It was a "D'OH" moment for me when I realized that switch mode power supplies work equally well on AC or DC.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Ah, back to the future!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I'm pretty sure that wasn't in 2010 /corrections
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Red Light Cameras Are No More Dangerous Than Guns
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
:)
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]