A Quick Mental Musing

     My quick mental musing today is to whether or not Android, iOS, and Win Phone 7 really qualify as full operating systems, or just useful user interface, like the things your blue ray player run on?  Honestly, this is a question I've been ruminating on for some time now.  So many of the major changes going on in the computer industry are based off of these three systems, but are they really anything more than quaint toys we used to access greater content?  Without the functionality of the cloud, are these devices even worth messing with?  And if the cloud concept fails, will the fascination of the general public still be so fixated on the 'smart phone'?
     I have my opinion, but I'm not here to rant.  I want to know what the readers think.  Leave your thoughts and rants in the comments below, and let me know whether or not you think some changes need to happen to the current touch tablet interfaces, to make them into 'more of an OS'.  Thanks.

A Call Out For Reason

     As I read more about the Google-Oracle lawsuit that is going on right now, a suit which might decide the fate of the Android phones currently fighting the iPhone, I'm worried.  As I've read in this document, page 9 lines 25-27,  Oracle intends for all copies of anything Google is distributing that is using Oracles java must be disabled or destroyed.  Well, when you flip over to the Google Android source code page scroll down to the section that talks about building the source code, you can see that Android itself is built off of Java.  There is also a much more technical discussion here, from a gentleman that works in the programming field as a java programmer.  He discusses how Android is in fact an implementation of Java.
     Now, to why all of this worries me, and why it matters.
     The lines I sited from Oracles lawsuit documentation state their intentions should they win the suit.  From a source I have that is familiar with the previous owner of Java, Sun, a lawsuit like this one has been tried before, and Sun did win.  That sets legal precedence.  What Oracle wants isn't money, they want the destruction of any Android operating systems.  That means that a possible 33% of the US cellphone market could suddenly get shut down if Oracle wins.  That's staggering.  And as much as I feel the iPhone may have done the smart phone game better, I hate to see any open system go down because of stupid business decisions.
     So, as for the title of this post, I would like to make out a call for reason.  Anyone who thinks that software patents and copyrights on systems that are generally and publicly used do damage to the world of digital media and electronics, please post your comments in the form of a petition.  State that you've had enough!  Lets be heard.