7 ms·

So he was playing dumb earlier for the benefit of the jury - to make the advocates spell out their case clearly. This is what he was responding to: > This co

by 6ren 14y ago

So he was playing dumb earlier for the benefit of the jury - to make the advocates spell out their case clearly. This is what he was responding to: > This copying allowed them to use fewer resources and accelerate that. Suppose they > accelerated it two days. They're making $3 million a day now [...] If you just get > one or two days' acceleration, that's $6 million This is a good point; it's common to underestimate how long it takes to code something. And time to market is often strategically crucial - that is, productivity isn't just efficient, but can be the difference between success and failure. rangeCheck is trivial; but writing, testing, debugging, naming and documenting take time. A trivial typo bug in rangeCheck can cost a disproportionate amount of time - and it's amplified here, when rangeCheck was used to test other code. (Who shall unit test the unit tests?) To answer Groklaw's final question as to why Alsup couldn't decide on API copyrightability yet, he clearly said he needed to do a lot of reading. He not only has to decide according to law, he is in effect creating law, since this specific issue hasn't been decided earlier. His ruling has wider significance than just this particular case. Future potential litigants will read his ruling, and will avoid court if it's clear who would win. Although he is only one judge and so his precedent won't be binding on a full bench/higher court, those judges would also carefully read his judgment. He'd better get it right, not only in the result, but in the reasoning, and integrating it with related cases. It's great that Groklaw is making these transcripts - because the court is a public institution, I think the official transcripts should be available (and why not video too? The emphasis in oral argument sometimes isn't captured in a transcript.)

zerohp 14y ago
Are you kidding me about rangeCheck? How much writing, testing, debugging and naming do you think this takes? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683
- adgar 14y ago
  Your parent poster didn't imply agreement with the line of reasoning he explained. He was just illustrating why the question is important to begin with.
thezilch 14y ago
A good point? I think it is false to equate a day's worth of work -- were rangeCheck to take a day of "writing, testing, debugging, naming, and documenting" -- to a day's worth of profits, but say you [they] are right, I expect Oracle can get away with $2083 -- 3e6/(24*60) -- of Google's earnings, assuming the first days of Android can be as profitable as "now." We'll see how Oracle equates their "nexus" between those lines of code and their profits, but it can't be as simple as Boise is trying to elide in this statement.
- tomdtpink 14y ago
  Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets. They will delete my comments :) CENSSORHIP IN ACTION. Bubble is here escape while you can.
Bikepump 14y ago
I don't think it's a good point at all. I think it's completely disingenuous. The analysis quoted assumes that the implementation of the rangeCheck function is on the critical path to shipping, which is preposterous in my opinion.
- scott_w 14y ago
  I think you've hit the nail on the head. On a related point: what would have happened had Bloch not been able to come up with a rangeCheck function quickly? Would Google have stopped Android from shipping until it was complete? It's more likely they would have just left it as a bug to be fixed later.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    He only copied it because he was planning to submit the code to the OpenJDK and writing his own would have led to unnecessary duplication of code. The copied code would no longer be needed when the new code was added to the same package. Bashing it out cowboy style would have been faster and in no way harmed Android. It's Oracle's codebase he was spending time and energy improving with good engineering practice.
    - scott_w 14y ago
      I don't dispute your statement. My point is specifically related to Oracle's claim that Android couldn't have shipped without a rangeCheck() function, which is patently nonsense.
      - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
        My point is that it's worse than nonsense, it's actually arguing the opposite of the truth. The "copying", rather than speeding up Android development to Google's benefit, actually slowed Android development in an attempt to help OpenJDK/Oracle. That this is the only direct copyright infringement they could find is highly ironic, but I guess either the lawyers didn't understand the subtleties here, or thought the jury wouldn't as this argument wasn't made (except obliquely in Bloch's statements).
jabr 14y ago
While the basic line of reasoning is valid, it is absurd in the context of the rangeCheck function. There might be a nine line function that takes a day or two to get right, but for even a bad programmer, rangeCheck would take a few minutes. With thorough tests, maybe ten minutes. I've barely touched Java code in over a decade, but I could write that function -- with tests -- in less than two minutes. RangeCheck is the kind of function you'd get on a quiz in your first week of your first CS class in college.
- Drbble 14y ago
  You could not type that function and tests 2 minutes.
  - nknight 14y ago
    Maybe not if you're a very poor typist, I suppose, but most developers I've met are at least marginally competent typists.
    - tomdtpink 14y ago
      Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets. They will delete my comments :) CENSSORHIP IN ACTION. Bubble is here escape while you can.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Official transcripts are available, usually, but the transcriptionists are private contractors rather than employees of the court, and are hired by one or both sides to create a record of the trial for appeal - essentially the attorneys are outsourcing that bit. Most documents in a court case are easily accessible online at moderate cost (typically ~$0.08 per page, to cover the cost of hosting) but transcripts can be insanely expensive, running into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. It's a bit of a racket to be honest, but court-employed transcriptionists would either raise the cost of filing in court or require more taxes, and legislatures keep courts on pretty tight budgets. I don't like the idea of court video that much...bad memories of the OJ trial.
greiskul 14y ago
Even if it took 1 engineer 2 days to program rangeCheck, it doesn't mean Android would have been delayed by 2 days, since development of this magnitute is done in parallel.
- 6ren 14y ago
  Note he said "suppose". His argument also applies to the copied test code (that was removed). Parallelization is limited similarly to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law (usually called critical path when applied to development). I don't know the dependencies for this code, though it is part of a sort (Timsort) which was likely used by a few things, being a utility. As for test code, although TDD advocates doing it first, it's not a functional dependency. But, given the crucial importance of compatibility in this situation (reverse-engineering standard libraries), you might well want it first, to catch problems ASAP when they are cheaper to fix. > Q. Why did you copy the rangecheck function for Timsort? > A. It's good engineering to reuse the same function if possible That's Joshua Bloch (it was his own code he copied). http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120419221941261 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120419221941... I think "good engineering" includes the accelerating factors I mentioned above (also, future modifications/bugs-fixes can be made in one place, when the same code is called, which was Bloch's long-term expectation). BTW: Some other people are responding without reading fully - please take the time to do so. It elevates the discussion, making it interesting and engaging. I am really delighted to be shown wrong and to learn something, but it's hard for a response to a comment to be persuasive if it doesn't address that comment.
tomdtpink 14y ago
Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets. They will delete my comments :) CENSSORHIP IN ACTION. Bubble is here escape while you can.
mseebach 14y ago
Releasing two days earlier or later doesn't imply loss/gain of market share. Practically nobody buys mobile phones on a horizon of days. Thus, if we do suppose that Android was accelerated two days, the benefit wasn't $6 million - it was having that money in hand a little earlier. The interest on $3 million for a day at 7% pa is $575/day - or $1725 total. Or less money than it costs Oracle's counsel to sneeze.
- 6ren 14y ago
  It's an interesting point, about which Oracle might argue entertainingly. e.g. if a market has a limited life, then 2 days delay means 2 days less to make money (markets don't last forever). e.g. being earlier to market is well known to does make a difference for getting a foothold in a market (mindshare, word of mouth, technical feedback, supplier relations), but especially because you are judged relative to your competitors - releasing your next version before their next version helps you win.
  - roc 14y ago
    Except that Android's first release was a beta and SDK, almost a full year before phones shipped. From that, it's not remotely clear whether saving 2 days to beta would have even resulted in 2 days of savings in the creation of any device. To say nothing of whether Google/TMobile/HTC pre-selected a launch date in advance for the Dream, in which case they easily may have squandered a handful of days waiting for their desired PR timing.
- mokus 14y ago
  Furthermore, adding two days' development time doesn't mean shipping two days later, especially if that time is spent reimplementing functionality for which you already have a perfectly useful (although not shippable) alternative. All it means is you'd have had to allocate two more days worth of some programmer's time away from some less important task. For something like this, the programmer wouldn't even need to know thing one about the Android project - just that "we need our own implementation of this standard Java function".
codeka 14y ago
The thing I don't get is, rangeCheck doesn't actually _do_ anything. If it was taken out, the code would still function exactly the same, you just wouldn't get a nice exception when you pass in the wrong parameters (it'd still be an exception, just not as useful). Actually, that's not entirely true. If you swapped the "hi" and "lo" parameters, the function would return an unmodified array if rangeCheck were taken out, rather than throwing an exception. But that's the only functional change. So the idea that rangeChange is in any way significant is disingenuous at best, I think.

by 6ren 14y ago

zerohp 14y ago

Are you kidding me about rangeCheck? How much writing, testing, debugging and naming do you think this takes? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3940683

adgar 14y ago
Your parent poster didn't imply agreement with the line of reasoning he explained. He was just illustrating why the question is important to begin with.

thezilch 14y ago

A good point? I think it is false to equate a day's worth of work -- were rangeCheck to take a day of "writing, testing, debugging, naming, and documenting" -- to a day's worth of profits, but say you [they] are right, I expect Oracle can get away with $2083 -- 3e6/(24*60) -- of Google's earnings, assuming the first days of Android can be as profitable as "now." We'll see how Oracle equates their "nexus" between those lines of code and their profits, but it can't be as simple as Boise is trying to elide in this statement.

tomdtpink 14y ago
Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets. They will delete my comments :) CENSSORHIP IN ACTION. Bubble is here escape while you can.

Bikepump 14y ago

I don't think it's a good point at all. I think it's completely disingenuous. The analysis quoted assumes that the implementation of the rangeCheck function is on the critical path to shipping, which is preposterous in my opinion.

scott_w 14y ago
I think you've hit the nail on the head. On a related point: what would have happened had Bloch not been able to come up with a rangeCheck function quickly? Would Google have stopped Android from shipping until it was complete? It's more likely they would have just left it as a bug to be fixed later.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  He only copied it because he was planning to submit the code to the OpenJDK and writing his own would have led to unnecessary duplication of code. The copied code would no longer be needed when the new code was added to the same package. Bashing it out cowboy style would have been faster and in no way harmed Android. It's Oracle's codebase he was spending time and energy improving with good engineering practice.
  - scott_w 14y ago
    I don't dispute your statement. My point is specifically related to Oracle's claim that Android couldn't have shipped without a rangeCheck() function, which is patently nonsense.
    - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
      My point is that it's worse than nonsense, it's actually arguing the opposite of the truth. The "copying", rather than speeding up Android development to Google's benefit, actually slowed Android development in an attempt to help OpenJDK/Oracle. That this is the only direct copyright infringement they could find is highly ironic, but I guess either the lawyers didn't understand the subtleties here, or thought the jury wouldn't as this argument wasn't made (except obliquely in Bloch's statements).

jabr 14y ago

While the basic line of reasoning is valid, it is absurd in the context of the rangeCheck function. There might be a nine line function that takes a day or two to get right, but for even a bad programmer, rangeCheck would take a few minutes. With thorough tests, maybe ten minutes. I've barely touched Java code in over a decade, but I could write that function -- with tests -- in less than two minutes. RangeCheck is the kind of function you'd get on a quiz in your first week of your first CS class in college.

Drbble 14y ago
You could not type that function and tests 2 minutes.
- nknight 14y ago
  Maybe not if you're a very poor typist, I suppose, but most developers I've met are at least marginally competent typists.
  - tomdtpink 14y ago
    Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets. They will delete my comments :) CENSSORHIP IN ACTION. Bubble is here escape while you can.

anigbrowl 14y ago

Official transcripts are available, usually, but the transcriptionists are private contractors rather than employees of the court, and are hired by one or both sides to create a record of the trial for appeal - essentially the attorneys are outsourcing that bit. Most documents in a court case are easily accessible online at moderate cost (typically ~$0.08 per page, to cover the cost of hosting) but transcripts can be insanely expensive, running into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. It's a bit of a racket to be honest, but court-employed transcriptionists would either raise the cost of filing in court or require more taxes, and legislatures keep courts on pretty tight budgets. I don't like the idea of court video that much...bad memories of the OJ trial.

greiskul 14y ago

Even if it took 1 engineer 2 days to program rangeCheck, it doesn't mean Android would have been delayed by 2 days, since development of this magnitute is done in parallel.

6ren 14y ago
Note he said "suppose". His argument also applies to the copied test code (that was removed). Parallelization is limited similarly to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law (usually called critical path when applied to development). I don't know the dependencies for this code, though it is part of a sort (Timsort) which was likely used by a few things, being a utility. As for test code, although TDD advocates doing it first, it's not a functional dependency. But, given the crucial importance of compatibility in this situation (reverse-engineering standard libraries), you might well want it first, to catch problems ASAP when they are cheaper to fix. > Q. Why did you copy the rangecheck function for Timsort? > A. It's good engineering to reuse the same function if possible That's Joshua Bloch (it was his own code he copied). http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120419221941261 http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20120419221941... I think "good engineering" includes the accelerating factors I mentioned above (also, future modifications/bugs-fixes can be made in one place, when the same code is called, which was Bloch's long-term expectation). BTW: Some other people are responding without reading fully - please take the time to do so. It elevates the discussion, making it interesting and engaging. I am really delighted to be shown wrong and to learn something, but it's hard for a response to a comment to be persuasive if it doesn't address that comment.

tomdtpink 14y ago

Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets.Trolls kill HN. They are fooling every one. Bring out the sockpuppets. They will delete my comments :) CENSSORHIP IN ACTION. Bubble is here escape while you can.

mseebach 14y ago

Releasing two days earlier or later doesn't imply loss/gain of market share. Practically nobody buys mobile phones on a horizon of days. Thus, if we do suppose that Android was accelerated two days, the benefit wasn't $6 million - it was having that money in hand a little earlier. The interest on $3 million for a day at 7% pa is $575/day - or $1725 total. Or less money than it costs Oracle's counsel to sneeze.

6ren 14y ago
It's an interesting point, about which Oracle might argue entertainingly. e.g. if a market has a limited life, then 2 days delay means 2 days less to make money (markets don't last forever). e.g. being earlier to market is well known to does make a difference for getting a foothold in a market (mindshare, word of mouth, technical feedback, supplier relations), but especially because you are judged relative to your competitors - releasing your next version before their next version helps you win.
- roc 14y ago
  Except that Android's first release was a beta and SDK, almost a full year before phones shipped. From that, it's not remotely clear whether saving 2 days to beta would have even resulted in 2 days of savings in the creation of any device. To say nothing of whether Google/TMobile/HTC pre-selected a launch date in advance for the Dream, in which case they easily may have squandered a handful of days waiting for their desired PR timing.
mokus 14y ago
Furthermore, adding two days' development time doesn't mean shipping two days later, especially if that time is spent reimplementing functionality for which you already have a perfectly useful (although not shippable) alternative. All it means is you'd have had to allocate two more days worth of some programmer's time away from some less important task. For something like this, the programmer wouldn't even need to know thing one about the Android project - just that "we need our own implementation of this standard Java function".

codeka 14y ago

The thing I don't get is, rangeCheck doesn't actually _do_ anything. If it was taken out, the code would still function exactly the same, you just wouldn't get a nice exception when you pass in the wrong parameters (it'd still be an exception, just not as useful). Actually, that's not entirely true. If you swapped the "hi" and "lo" parameters, the function would return an unmodified array if rangeCheck were taken out, rather than throwing an exception. But that's the only functional change. So the idea that rangeChange is in any way significant is disingenuous at best, I think.