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Another Garbage Patent
*no comment* writes "Literally "garbage patent" that is, Apple was rewarded a patent for the "Garbage" icon in Mac OS X. The patent documents can be found at the USPTO by clicking here. More on this and other Apple patents are in this article over at the macobserver."
Is I'm looking at a Slashdot ad of Xerox.
fp
their own company symbol for trash now.
For the whole garbage OS that was MS-DOS
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Patent the "Start" button!! QUICK QUICK before Jeff Bezos comes out of the woodwork!! :)
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Well, RedHat or Google DIDN'T do it, so lets see it's the 3rd phase of the second moon(you know the invisible one) and a Tuesday. So we hate Apple, or is that hate Spam. I dunno it has something to do with food. Anyway, It's only karma what the hell
Happy Noodle Boy says "F###ing doughnut! Mock me? You fried cyclops!!"
This was probably done in collusion with Children's Television Workshop (CTW) so that they can prevent someone from making an OS X version of "The Grouch", one of the greatest MacOS hacks ever.
It was great. Empty the trash, and Oscar the Grouch would come out of the trashcan singing. Then CTW sued the the muppety pants off the author and it pretty much disappeard.
Share and Enjoy!
There is this possibility: countless children twist it into a legal reason for not having to take the garbage out.
...
/me drags patent to the trash
All your icons are belong to us...
What I can't wait for is when Apple patents the space character in file names. Whew! Imagine the royalties on the "Program Files" (c:\Progra~1 to 8.3 folks out there) folder.
This just in: Apple patents the technique of "double-click launching" to launch applications visually.
I'm afraid of Apple lawsuits.
As a result, I've just been leaving my trash on the floor, just outside the garbage can.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
If not I'm making one right now!!!
Check my .sig soon to know when its available for download.
I'm so lucky my surname isn't MacIntosh (McIntosh) or anything Mac :)
Apparently my appendage goes here
Steve Jobs: We need to file some more patents quickly. My stock options are dropping.
Terrified Employee: Well sir...umm...(looks around room) how about our round corners?
Jobs: Already in heavy use. You're fired
Employee 2: How about the idea of color coding computers to go with your decor?
Jobs: Nah, we already cornered the artist market. You're fired.
Employee 3: Well....how about this (picks up trash can)
Jobs: Brilliant! Get a picture of that to the Patent office as soon as possible.
Will the crowd spew a diatribe against intellectual property in general
How about just a diatribe against the patent office. Did you actually take the time to look at the patent? Probably not. Here, I'll save you the trouble.
The ornamental design for a user interface for computer display, as shown and described.
That's it. And a picture of a trash can, which the patent office would be happy to sell you a copy of. This is an invention? If this is an "invention", then I think I can literally patent my ass. Why not? By this precedent, I should be able to send them a picture of my ass, with the claim "The design for a sitting device as shown and described."
One of the most voiced fears is "I'm afraid I'll hit the wrong button and wipe out everything!".
Years ago('94-ish), I was a total PC kiddie and didn't know anything about Mac's. At one point I had to load a program on a mac, and put a floppy in the computer. We spent forever trying to figure out how to eject the disk. Eventually someone told us to trash it, and my answer was, "are you sure?" Of course, it worked and since then I've realized that Mac's are far too logical for me.
-Sean
The best part about this is that after the patent expires, EVERYONE can use their garbage can icon.
Heh.
Education is the silver bullet.
The real reason to patent the garbage can picture is to keep slashdot from choosing to use it to refer to macos in the future instead of the shiny silver apple.
Am I the only one who thinks that dumping floppies into trash should REFORMAT instead of EJECTING?:)
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Consulting the chart, it seems that today, we hate... stupid generalizations. Oh, crap! :)
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
On the bright side, Amazon can't make one-click trash anymore.
Table-ized A.I.
I know this is a design patent, but will i have to get rid of my metal mesh trashcan b/c it looks like the aqua one. I hope not, it really matches my desk.
You'd think the Northern California latte liberals at Apple would care more about their environment than Microsoft folks do, but that isn't the case. While Apple's filling up our landfills with garbage bits, Microsoft recycles them so they can be used again.
Best Buy can have you arrested
are you sure they didn't mean they wanted to have a patent on THROWING Macs in the garbage?? Now that would be interesting...
As patents get sillier, the jokes almost write themselves. I withdraw my joke on the grounds that it's just too easy.
So many cartoons represent garbage with crumpled papers and apple cores. It figures that a half-eaten Apple would end up associating itself with the trash. This is funny. I'll try to remember this for the next time some Apple-whacker starts telling me, as if I were utterly unaware of its very existence, of the inarguable superiority of his preferred platform. "Yes," I'll say, "Apple is so innovative, they even patented garbage. . . . No, it's not that it's an innovative technique, but it's that no one else would have ever thought of it. That's what makes it art. It's like the guy who patented silence, except more audacious."
I just downloaded the patent to my OS X desktop, and threw it in the garbage. It gave me a warm feeling.
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Considering he thinks they released Windows 95 into "the public domain", I don't think this guy is the sharpest tool in the shed.
just 3: Chaudhri; Imran A. (Santa Cruz, CA); Carrera; Cesar (Sunnyvale, CA); Coleman; Patricia J. (Montara, CA)