The code in question is most certainly not TimSort, but the rangecheck() method within it, which is copied verbatim from arrays.java, which Bloch wrote while at Sun. It's what Oracle is using to show that Bloch did reference Sun code and Android is not a clean-room implementation. It's there in the Groklaw piece, but glanced over very quickly because, well it's groklaw.
"Q. Why did you use the same rangecheck() function in Timsort as was in arrays.java?
A. It's good software engineering to reuse an existing function.
Q. But why use the exact same code?
A. I copied rangecheck() as a temporary measure, assuming this would be merged into arrays.java and my version of rangecheck() would go away.
[Discussion of Timsort dates and Android work dates.]"
"...Josh Bloch (the Google employee who checked it into Android) wrote it in the first place and gave it to Sun."
What does that mean exactly--'gave it to Sun'? He was a Sun employee at the time. It's silly to say the Java code he wrote while working at Sun was given to Sun by him. Likewise, it's silly to say that then by extension when he went to work for Google he just took his code with him and gave it to Android.
"As we are constantly reminded here, Apple takes 80% of the phone industry profits and thus deserve proportionate blame for working conditions."
Blame needs to be proportional to amount produced, not amount profited. If I have one phone manufactured and I charge $11 million for it (and actually find a buyer), but you produce a million $10 phones, your impact on the workers is far greater.
"On the other hand, many other companies like Amazon and Microsoft sell the hardware for a loss, hoping to make it up on software and media purchases."
So if tomorrow Apple decided to sell their phones at half price, thereby eliminating all profits, then suddenly no one will be able to say anything to Apple about their manufacturing and worker treatment?
"Meanwhile, the other companies are not doing very well, and labor cost increases for them might put them out of business entirely and then the workers won't even have a job. ... This is why Apple is criticized more since it has most leeway of all the companies mentioned in the article to increase wages."
So it all amounts to how much you charge the end user. If a company charges more for their product they must ensure the workers of the companies they contract with are paid/treated fairly, but if a company chooses to sell devices at little to not profit, they can treat the workers however they want.
It sounds to me more like if a company makes a device and provides it to you cheaply, you'll look the other way on how they handle manufacturing.
Not trying to refute you, but how can that be the problem? From the email you cite,
"Please be assured that your Adsense account remains in good standing and any actions taken on this domain do not affect the performance of your other Adsense ads."
The author of the blog post states after receiving that email he took the Adsense ads off. This was also in Feb. 2009 and the account was closed in April 2011.
Does the Adsense team (or whoever) go back and look at incidences from 2+ years in the past when looking for people to ban?
You mean the non-smartphone that was announced a couple weeks before the iPhone? I forget, how was multitouch on it? And the web browser, was it any good?
So "a consistent experience that users expect" == user tracking for ads?? I don't think so. That's quite some spin on Google exploiting a bug to track me.
The Battelle link is a horrible explanation. His position is that user tracking for ads is a normal function of the web people want and therefore it is Apple's fault for blocking it by default. Unreal.
The post in question by itself means nothing. There is no context.
We know Google and Sun were in talks about Java. This post could have very well been posted when Google made it clear they were going to use the Java language, but before making it clear to Sun they weren't going to license anything. Without a timeline or any other details this proves nothing.
" A common algorithm for succeeding in the App Store is take Popular App A from 2009 and re-implement it with new graphics and perhaps an additional gameplay mechanic and release it as Hopeful Popular App B in 2011."
Not disagreeing with you, but isn't this the common algorithm for most things? I can think of TV Shows, movies, books, websites etc. that use the same algorithm.
It's going to be hard to get the 'best' framework, but you'll certainly get a lot of responses of frameworks that definitely work for people. I'll add: