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The Silencing of Maya

niederfamily.blogspot.be

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Re: The Silencing of Maya

#3

Post by BMarkmann »

Sambdala wrote: post #2

Everytime I've heard a patent story in the last several years I've been thoroughly disgusted, but never to the extent I am after reading this story.

Agreed. Oracle and Google fighting it out doesn't really tug at your heartstrings -- but this is just sad. It puts a human face on the effects of patent hoarding / trolling.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#4

Post by smoyer »

I too have a handicapped child and I know how much work it can be to make even the littlest progress. I'm so glad to hear you've found such a great tool and love that you have also noticed such a big spike in ability ... my son's seem to come during and immediately after trips to Disney World.

And I can also sympathize with the idea that you might lose the sudden gains. Our son didn't walk until he was 3-4 years old, and then at about 9 years old his knees started degrading. Which leaves me with this ... sometimes all I can do for my son is to pray and I'll do that for you too. But I'm also going to send my elected officials your story. It needs to be heard.

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#5

Post by marquis »

This is unfortunate, I do hope there is some recourse for him. I am curious, are there similar cases of this happening for the Android platform? Would there be another opportunity to plead his case before being banned?

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#6

Post by jsprinkles »

Best solution here would appear to be never sync that iPad again, back it up to iTunes, disable its Wi-Fi, and consider it her speech appliance. Don't update the OS, don't sync to iTunes, never do anything with it again aside from using it for this essential purpose. If you have to buy another one, restore it from your iTunes backup. These are the 'legal' avenues, clearly with jailbreaking it's simpler.

Unfortunate that a legal battle puts you in that position, but if this app is as important to her life as she says, she should be perfectly fine freezing that iPad where it is and not treating it like an iPad any more. It is now a dedicated appliance, not a general-purpose iPad. Buy another one for everything else.

Sucks, but, best solution given the circumstances, I think. Obviously, it'd be great if the circumstances changed.

(Edited to add backup.)

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#7

Post by ChuckMcM »

Ok, I've read it twice. I'm not sure I understand the argument. It reads like the argument is "This technology helps handicapped people so you shouldn't allow it to be patented." Is that a reasonable argument? PRC seems to have a valid patent, they sell a device the people in the article could use, Speak For Yourself infringed without a license and they are the good guys why?

The patent argument would go, "PRC figured out how to do this thing (invented it), we give them a limited monopoly so that they will continue to invest in doing things like this."

Now I completely agree that if there is litigation in progress that it's uncharitable for Apple to pull the app without a court order but it is their playground. And as everyone points out its not like they reach out and delete it on your iPad (which is why VLC still lives on mine btw)

So what exactly is the question?

Re: The Silencing of Maya

#10

Post by btilly »

jsprinkles wrote: post #6

Best solution here would appear to be never sync that iPad again, back it up to iTunes, disable its Wi-Fi, and consider it her speech appliance. Don't update the OS, don't sync to iTunes, never do anything with it again aside from using it for this essential purpose. If you have to buy another one, restore it from your iTunes backup. These are the 'legal' avenues, clearly with jailbreaking it's simpler. Unfortunate t…

What do you do when it breaks?

Modern computer equipment is not designed to last forever. Computer equipment that is heavily used by a 4 year old is even less likely to survive. (I just was trying to talk in my pool/sandbox/mud/...!)

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