Prose Hacking

I wrote a thumbsucker analysis for PBS’s NewsHour site about the odds of Washington getting anything accomplished in a few critical areas of tech policy. You’re not surprised to see me expect little from Congress, right?

First post in a series I’ll be writing for the Disruptive Competition Project, an offshoot of the Computer & Communications Industry Association to talk about issues in tech policy that don’t get enough of an airing elsewhere. Here, I unpack the nearly-complete absence of technology topics from this election. 

A bill introduced earlier this month would make patent trolling a modestly less-secure business model. I’d like to do better than that, so in this post for CEA’s blog I asked a few longtime critics of the patent system what other changes might make that business model less appealing. Do you have others to suggest?

One of my biggest complaints about tech-patent cases is the “OMG, Company [X] Is Doomed!” tone of a lot of mass-media coverage of them. This post is my attempt to counteract some of that and suggest ways in which Apple’s billion-dollar victory over Samsung (pending appeal!) might not be as sweeping as it appears.

I reviewed Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G LTE—that carrier’s version of the HTC One X sold by AT&T. After seeing so many promising Android phones wrecked by awful battery life, this one was a pleasant surprise. Too bad nobody can buy one while Customs determines if it infringes on an Apple patent. (Would anybody like to suggest how we as customers are supposed to deal with that kind of uncertainty?)