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ExtraBITS for 28 November 2011

If you have some podcast-listening time, you can queue up a couple of Adam’s recent appearances, or, for quiet-time reading, we link to an academic paper talking about the cost of patent trolls and a Macworld article explaining what the iTunes Match status messages mean.

Listen in on Adam Speaking to Two MUGS — With MacNotables host Chuck Joiner keeping the conversation moving, Adam presented to both the Bay Area Macintosh Users Group and the Hershey Apple Core via Skype, talking about the loss of Steve Jobs, what Adobe’s discontinuation of Flash for mobile devices means, where Mac users should look for databases other than FileMaker, why aspects of Lion may be troubling for long-time Mac users, and more.

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Adam Discusses iTunes Match on Tech Night Owl Live — iTunes Match features in this podcast, along with the Kindle Fire, how Android-using smartphone manufacturers think about updates, and more about the problems with COPPA-driven age requirements on common Web sites.

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The Real Cost of Patent Trolls (PDF) — In this academic paper from the Boston University School of Law, the authors show that patent trolls have cost defendants — mostly large technology companies who invest heavily in R&D — $500 billion from 1990 through 2010, and over the last 4 years, the cost has averaged $80 billion per year. Moreover, very little of this money ever makes it to the actual inventors, meaning that the money lost by defendants doesn’t incentivize other inventors. In short, software patents (for most of this behavior surrounds
them) are simply a drag on innovation and real progress.

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iCloud Status Messages for iTunes Match Decoded — Over at Macworld, Jason Snell decodes the messages that appear in iTunes 10.5.1’s new iCloud Status column to explain each song’s status in your iCloud storage.

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