Articles, notes and random thoughts on Software Development and Technology
If you’re installing an apk into the Android Emulator and seeing this error (INSTALL_FAILED_MISSING_SHARED_LIBRARY), it may mean that the app relies on the Google APIs (e.g. for Google Maps and the other Google Android apps) and your AVD that you’re running was created without the Google APIs.
Create a new AVD from the AVD Manager using the one of the Google API targets at the API level that you need and you should be good to go.
If you haven’t been following, Oracle’s lawsuit against Google and their allegations that they ‘stole’ Java to develop Android is in court this week. Groklaw as usual are doing a stellar job to report on the proceedings (Monday, Tuesday, &Â Wednesday), although nothing earth shattering has happened so far.
Here’s the summary, wording is entirely my own, somewhat loosely based on my understanding of the facts 🙂
Ellison: you stole Java Page: no we didn't Ellison: ok, then you didn't license it Page: we didn't license it because we couldn't come to an agreement on the terms with Sun, so we developed our own version based on Apache Harmony Judge: did Apache Harmony license Java? Page: no, because they didn't agree to Sun's licensing terms either, in particular the 'field of use' restrictions that limited what types of devices a particular version (SE vs ME) of the JVM can run on, that limits SE for example to only run on desktops and not on mobile devices Ellison: but the fact is, to develop your own version of Java, you should have licensed the TCK to verify that this was/is a valid version of Java Page: but it's not Java, its Dalvik. We've never said it is Java or is called Java Ellison: ok, then you should have licensed Java to build a new version of the language using the Java API spec Page: is there a license for the API spec? The Java language API is freely available without a license, is it not? Silence.
Ok. In a nutshell this is my understanding of where the discussions are so far. There seems to be a disagreement whether a license is required or even available to take the API spec for Java and develop your own version of the language. Based on the summaries from the Groklaw site, I get the impression Ellison’s team are accusing Page of things that they’re not sure of themselves – is a license available and/or required to use/read the Java language API spec? I’m not sure, but this is what seems to be the current discussion point.
Also if you build something that is functionally similar to Java, but you don’t call it Java and you don’t pretend to even call it Java, is it Java? If you haven’t blatantly copied copyright code, you rewrote the code again yourself in a cleanroom environment, then have you broken the law? Stay tuned as the court case continues in the coming days (weeks… months….)
About time. I’ve seen people trying to use Siri to get it to do things just like in the tv ads, and 9 times out of 10 it never works as you’d expect. Gives comic relief as everyone sniggers while said user is repeating themselves in a variety of different ways trying unsuccessfully to get it to work just like the ads and then giving up, yes, but working as in the tv ads? No. Far from it.
Android has always had support for voice actions, and while it’s more simple in that it uses simple recognized commands (‘navigate to [place name]’), and least it works the majority of the time.
According to their original claims in 2010/2011, Oracle’s lawsuit against Google for Android violating Java related patents and copyright was worth somewhere between $1.6 billion and $6 billion in damages.
As the courts continued to throw out an increasing number of the claims, the estimated damages has come tumbling down. Right now, Oracle’s estimates are around $32 million. Google’s estimates are around $37 million.
At this rate, I wonder if it’s possible for Oracle to actually lose money on the case due to legal costs? $32 million is hardly big bucks for Google.
If Oracle had any sense, they should have licensed Android from Google as the replacement for Java ME, and not try to remove Android from the picture with legal action. Android is everything that Java ME should have been from the beginning but has always been so far from the mark.