You keep saying this but it doesn't make it any more true. You have the ability to understand what they are, yet you insist on redefining them into something that is completely meaningless. Functionality is not irrellevant to a design patent. A design patent is really a special kind of utility patent. Design patents don't arbitrarily protect ornamental design, but the ornamental design of a functional item . The functionality of that item is absolutely rellevant to the patent. A real car can't infringe on the design of a toy car because NO ONE WOULD MISTAKE THE TWO. Its the same with Apple's iPad: every example of prior art you've used could not be mistaken for the iPad or visa versa. Samsung's tablet was intended to confuse the ordinary consumer into believing that it actually is an iPad.
You just don't know what you're talking about. Design patents are not utility patents. If a design has functional components, you get a utility patent on the design. You can also get a design patent on the same design if it's ornamental as well as functional. The guidelines on design patents from the patent office do specifically say: "It must be a definite preconceived thing, capable of reproduction, and not merely the chance result of a method or of a combination of functional elements ( 35 U.S.C. 171; 35 U.S.C. 112, first and second paragraphs)." So to get a design patent, the design can't be purely functional (although this is pretty subjective, obviously) and the design patent doesn't cover the functionality. Design patents only cover the ornamental aspects.
As for a real car infringing on the design of a toy car. You don't seem to grasp that the prior art of the toy car has a bearing on _obviousnous_. The way the rules are set up, it's quite possible that a suit from the toy car manufacturer against the car company would fail. However, a suit by the car manufacturer against another car manufacturer using the same design would probably fail also, if the defendant presented the prior art of the toy car.
As for the Samsung tablet being intended to deceive the "ordinary consumer" into thinking they're buying an ipad, I'm agog. I just can't imagine how stupid you think the average person is. I mean, I thought I'd lost faith in humanity...
Show me the tablet computer that Apple copied.
I already did. Here, again, I present the tablet from 1994. Maybe you'll actually pay attention this time. Both that and Apple's tablet are derivative of so many, many sources that it boggles the mind how anyone could think any of the ideas or design elements are original.
Long winded self-gratifying and Irrellevant treatment of monopolies ignored, Apple has no monopoly. Anyone is free to design a tablet computer that doesn't infringe on designs currently protected by a design patent.
Now you're just being a jerk. That long-winded treatment was far from self-gratifying. That was me expanding greatly on something I'd written in a previous post that you wrote: "You're not making any sense. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about, because you are being so vague as to be saying absolutely nothing" in response to. I removed the vagueness that you objected to by expanding greatly on it and now you're turning around and calling it "self-gratifying". That kind of passive-aggressive deceptive rhetoric doesn't impress me.
Also, I'll reiterate again: YOU ARE MISTAKEN. A design patent is granted for the ornamental design on a functional item. The "tablet" in the video was vaporware, NOT A FUNCTIONAL ITEM. No one would mistake something that doesn't exist for something that does exist. It doesn't meet the standard. This is why Samsungs attempt to use a prop from Kubrick's 2001 failed.
Wait, didn't I just go over this... Well, back into it anyway. The patent office hasn't required a working model to be submitted for what, a century now? "Invent
The difference between a car and a toy car is not arbitrary. One is a vehical and one is a toy. Let me make it easier for you to cast off your self-delusion regarding design patents: If you design a HAMBURGER, and patent the design, and 5 years later a car appears that resembles it, according to you the car manufacturer owes you for encroaching on your design patent. The PROBLEM is HAMBURGERS are not CARS. That is why your notion is ridiculous. An etch-a-sketch, or a chalk slate, or a digital picture frame isn't a tablet computer... thus the design of a TABLET can't infringe on the designs of these other products. Simple enough?
Functionality is irrelevant for design patents. They're on ornamental designs, not functionality. They are ridiculous. Like I said, they are the bastard child of trademarks and patents. They're basically trademark protection shoehorned into a patent format but, as patents, they don't cover only specific domains the way trademarks do. For a trademark, you can argue that food products and cars are different domains, but that doesn't actually apply to patents. Of course, the very existence of design patents is part of the slippery slope decline of "intellectual property" rights into utter chaos. I don't think they should be granted in the first place and, when they do, they need to be held to strict standards. Not matching an existing design is one of those standards.
35 U.S.C. 171 Patents for Designs
Whoever invents any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
The provisions of this title relating to patents for inventions shall apply to patents for designs, except as otherwise provided.
Meaningless dribble. Your responses are just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness.
Let me put it another way then. Judges are not always right. Legal decisions are not always productive or sane. In this case, the decision is a travesty. Samsung may have copied Apple, but it doesn't seem that Apple, whose design was copied in the first place, should be entitled to any protection from copying.
Also, you do seem to be aware that the article was only about the judge issuing a preliminary injuction, right? That's not the same thing as an overall victory for Apple. It most certainly is chaos and madness, however. Samsung is a big company and can absorb this. The uncertainty and danger of bringing a product to market that decisions like this create results in a chilling effect on the market. A decision like this against a smaller player could crush them, even if they've done nothing wrong.
The current intellectual property regime is having an absolutely stifling effect on the world. I don't understand why people need to be reminded again and again and again why monopolies are pretty much always a bad idea.
You're not making any sense. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about, because you are being so vague as to be saying absolutely nothing.
I will try to explain a little more carefully. I would think that my meaning would be obvious, but, as I've observed, we seem to be operating in different universes.
I will start with the concept of a monopoly. A monopoly is when one entity has near or absolute control over some good or service. Sometimes they arise naturally. Consider railroads. It's expensive to create a railroad network and, once you have one, you can run a lot of trains on it. Creating a second set of lines to the same destinations is a lot of expense with little extra benefit except competition. The problem is, once you have the first set of railroad tracks in, no-one can even build another set of railroad tracks without cooperation from the owners of the first set. It's a similar situation with telecommunications, roads, etc. Their very nature leads to natural monopolies. Monopolies can arise other ways as we
Believe me, I find the actions of the current Zimbabwe administration (that is to say, Mugabe) pretty indefensible. With a situation as hopelessly messed up as they currently have there, how exactly would free market distribution of insufficient food be any better? In that kind of emergency situation, any government will nationalize food distribution. The US effectively did so back during WWII.
But what percentage of that Medicare spending goes directly to paying for drugs. If Medicare was the actual producer of the drugs, it's hard to see how it wouldn't save them money.
I'm pretty sure Zimbabwe didn't nationalize food production. What they did was take farms away from people and award them to cronies. That's not the same thing.
I don't think the original poster was saying that people should be forced to work for free. I'm pretty sure the idea was that the people who do the actual R&D should be paid with public money and that all the layers of upper management, the shareholders and the people working in the departments in the pharmaceutical companies who don't directly support the R&D shouldn't be paid (at least, they should find other ways to be paid). In the long run, one way or the other, pretty much everyone needs to pay the cost of this research, so it seems best if they pay it without all that overhead.
They also come to market sooner than reference material.
So you're saying the drug companies start advertising before their research has been published? Something seems a bit wrong with that. If you're just talking about brick-thick pharmaceutical catalogs being sent round, aren't we living in the 21st century? Even without computers, hasn't it been possible to send around updates even for paper catalogs for as long as we've had paper catalogs?
I don't think you're correct. You're comparing apples and oranges, so to speak. By what you're saying, a car manufacturer should not be able to patent the design of a car if there was a toy manufacturer that created the same design 2 decades earlier... on a toy. That's ridiculous.
Why is that ridiculous? I think it's going to be impossible for us to see eye to eye. We don't even seem to live in the same universe. Design patents are on _designs_, not functional elements, otherwise they would be regular patents. If the design existed on a toy car decades earlier, then it should not be possible to get a new design patent on the existing design.
Did you read the story the you're commenting on? Case law now does indeed contradict your beliefs. Apple won, Samsung lost and lost the appeal. Its over.
The case law here is just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness. The current intellectual property regime is having an absolutely stifling effect on the world. I don't understand why people need to be reminded again and again and again why monopolies are pretty much always a bad idea.
It only seems obvious after Apple releases it. If it was so obvious then, as I said earlier, during the at least TWO AND A HALF YEARS that the technology existed to produce iPad someone would have released it. The reason? None of the other technology manufacturers have the ability to create markets the way Apple can. Apple sells like mad, everyone rushes to mimic their designs to cash in on Apple's work.
As people have demonstrated, the design was clearly obvious over a decade ago when a much larger, but virtually identically designed device appeared in a TV spot. It's also been obvious every time it's been used in a flat screen display, or in an actual tablet or notepad over the last few thousand years.
This is how the law works. A law isn't even quite The Law until it is questioned and tested in the courts. If it passes muster in the courts, then it becomes true law. This is how it works in America, how the law has always worked here.
The way your mind works is frankly terrifying. You don't seem to grasp the problem here. The problem is that the patent office works under the fundamental assumption that if they screw up, the courts will sort it out. Meanwhile the courts work under the fundamental assumption that the patent filing process did proper due diligence and that defendants must produce extraordinary evidence to clear themselves. Meanwhile, the courts are even more ignorant of the state of the art than the patent office. The "intellectual property" situation is ridiculous. Neither the patent office or the courts seem to grasp that "intellectual property" is an injunction on everyone granted almost arbitrarily by a rushed civil servant. That sort of thing should require an extremely careful hand. When the patent regime in the US started, for example, all patents were directly approved by the President. Things have changed tremendously over the year.
Generalizing without citations isn't helping your argument. No one agrees with you but people who hate Apple. Using them as an example is one thing, but in this case it is evidently clear that Samsung violated their patents.
You really are obsessed with Apple aren't you? I know that the particular Apple vs. Samsung case is the subject of the fine article, but for me it's just one more sad little episode. Plenty of people agree with me whether they love Apple, hate it, or are indifferent to it. There probably is a tendency for people who are opposed to the ridiculous state of affairs in "intellectual property" to be more likely to dislike companies like Microsoft and Apple who are generally the abusers in these situations. Certainly the cynical hypocrites who have run those companies like Jobs (used to sell blue boxes to exploit phone systems) and Gates (plenty of dumpster diving for code
Taking video of bright lights at night is notoriously difficult. The results are never as good as what the eyes (and other sensory organs) perceive while actually there.
What you're talking about is called a continuity test in the fireworks shows and model rocketry events I've participated in. They're notorious for accidentally launching the whole show, especially with people's custom gear. The annoying thing about a continuity test is that none of the regulations and organizations that require one, seem to provide any guidance or references on how a continuity test should be properly carried out. As a procedure it strikes me as about a good idea of stopping at all railroad crossings. I don't think I've ever heard of a car being hit by a train where the vehicle didn't either stall on the tracks or the driver actually saw the train but decided to race it.
Ok, but if you take the power usage of a swamp cooler, and add that to the cost of the water, the question is if it adds up to more than a closed system AC unit would cost. It's apples and oranges, of course. Hmm. Actually, I just tried putting it into pure cost terms, it looks like a single family water hookup in Tuscon only pays $1.26 + $0.36 + $0.07 = $1.69 for every 748 gallons of water on top of the $8.27/month basic service charge. So, for 150 gallons, that's about $0.34... Ok. It looks like I'm crazy then.
On the other hand, that just doesn't seem right. I'm sure water is more expensive where I live and we have plenty of it. Tuscon is an arid desert with the most expensive aqueduct ever supplying it with water from the Colorado river. A river which is seriously being bled dry. I mean, 150 gallons of water weighs around 3/5ths of a ton. That's a heck of a lot of travel for nearly a ton on $0.34. I have a feeling that doesn't necessarily reflect true market rates.
Still, it looks like I'm beaten on this overall. On the other hand, considering that there are times of year when the swamp coolers just won't work, and they happen to be some of the times of year that you would most want cooling, I think I'd still go with the closed system AC unit.
But design patents cover a design, not technology. Design patents are the bastard child of patents and trademarks, with a smattering of copyright thrown in. The fact that the same designs existed with slate or whiteboard instead of a touch-screen should invalidate the patent. US Law doesn't contradict my beliefs. US Law states that patents need to actually be original and non-obvious. Such an incredibly derivative design is, in fact, obvious. The USPTO is fundamentally broken and follows a mentality of allowing pretty much everything and letting the courts sort it out. A slippery slope of bad precedents has also broadened and broadened the scope of what is patentable up to our current situation where software and even business methods (which once upon a time were one of the standard examples of what sorts of things were explicitly _not_ patentable). Whether or not any company imitated any other company in the superficial design elements of their tablet computing device should not be legally relevant. Designs should not have any IP protection unless they truly are original.
Copycatting to ride on Apple's coattails to degree is a possibility. It's irrelevant, however. A certain amount of originality needs to be required for any sort of intellectual property protection. Even design patents need to have some originality.
Insignificant compared to the water used in agriculture certainly. The important comparison is to the resources used for a closed system air conditioner, however. A swamp cooler is only "efficient" because water is essentially free. When huge amounts of money and energy have been expended to provide the water, it gets a bit more complicated. It may still be the case that the swamp coolers are more efficient even when you consider the true costs of the water. You can't just ignore the externalities. It's just like the tremendous power density of hydrocarbon fuels vs. batteries: a big chunk of it vanishes if you take away all the free oxygen.
Plus, the original poster mentioned that, for fairly large blocks of time, the humidity can get too high for the swamp coolers to work. When that happens, anyone with a swamp cooler is out of luck, but the people with air conditioners are ok. So, if you want to be efficient for environmental reasons, you have to figure whether the increased water usage is worse, or the increased power usage. The problem is, there are too many factors to consider to make an easy determination. I do know, however, that the power situation there isn't worse than many other places, but the water situation is.
Because a deeper understanding of fundamental physics could _never_ lead to new discoveries and understanding in materials science. I mean, just because it always has in the past...
The big problem with portables is that people don't seem to understand how air conditioners work. Many will take those portables and set them up in their living room without running the vent hose to the outside.
Without the Santa Cruz river as a water source, Tuscon gets its water from groundwater and from the Colorado river via the Central Arizona Project, which is a massively expensive aqueduct project. As such, I'd be a little cautious about calling a swamp cooler in Tuscon "energy efficient" vs a closed system like an AC unit.
But since most of the rotational energy that the Earth is losing is being used to push the moon further away through tidal interactions then doesn't the increased distance of the moon mean that its gravity is pulling on you less when it's overhead so your average weight over an entire lunar orbit might be the same? Of course, some of that tidal energy turns into heat. On the other hand, heat has mass and therefore gravity. Some of it radiates away, however. The moon should be more efficient at radiating away inner heat than Earth, but I haven't got any idea which one gets more tidal heating. Trying to do accounting for the universe makes my head hurt.
Seriously? Clearly your ideas about this are pretty fixed and I'm not going to change your opinion with my reply. Nevertheless, I'll persevere.
Tablets/pads have been around for hundreds/thousands of years. I had a chalkboard virtually identical to the design in question as a child. It simply wasn't invented by Apple. The first person to develop a design like the one Apple thinks is infringing is lost in the mists of history. Maybe even pre-history. Advancing technology such as large, thin, low-power multi-touch screens, higher power-density batteries, Micro Electro-Mechanical Sensors, etc. have made modern tablets possible, and the designs are derivative of those advances.
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You keep saying this but it doesn't make it any more true. You have the ability to understand what they are, yet you insist on redefining them into something that is completely meaningless. Functionality is not irrellevant to a design patent. A design patent is really a special kind of utility patent. Design patents don't arbitrarily protect ornamental design, but the ornamental design of a functional item . The functionality of that item is absolutely rellevant to the patent. A real car can't infringe on the design of a toy car because NO ONE WOULD MISTAKE THE TWO. Its the same with Apple's iPad: every example of prior art you've used could not be mistaken for the iPad or visa versa. Samsung's tablet was intended to confuse the ordinary consumer into believing that it actually is an iPad.
You just don't know what you're talking about. Design patents are not utility patents. If a design has functional components, you get a utility patent on the design. You can also get a design patent on the same design if it's ornamental as well as functional. The guidelines on design patents from the patent office do specifically say: "It must be a definite preconceived thing, capable of reproduction, and not merely the chance result of a method or of a combination of functional elements ( 35 U.S.C. 171; 35 U.S.C. 112, first and second paragraphs)." So to get a design patent, the design can't be purely functional (although this is pretty subjective, obviously) and the design patent doesn't cover the functionality. Design patents only cover the ornamental aspects.
As for a real car infringing on the design of a toy car. You don't seem to grasp that the prior art of the toy car has a bearing on _obviousnous_. The way the rules are set up, it's quite possible that a suit from the toy car manufacturer against the car company would fail. However, a suit by the car manufacturer against another car manufacturer using the same design would probably fail also, if the defendant presented the prior art of the toy car.
As for the Samsung tablet being intended to deceive the "ordinary consumer" into thinking they're buying an ipad, I'm agog. I just can't imagine how stupid you think the average person is. I mean, I thought I'd lost faith in humanity...
Show me the tablet computer that Apple copied.
I already did. Here, again, I present the tablet from 1994. Maybe you'll actually pay attention this time. Both that and Apple's tablet are derivative of so many, many sources that it boggles the mind how anyone could think any of the ideas or design elements are original.
Long winded self-gratifying and Irrellevant treatment of monopolies ignored, Apple has no monopoly. Anyone is free to design a tablet computer that doesn't infringe on designs currently protected by a design patent.
Now you're just being a jerk. That long-winded treatment was far from self-gratifying. That was me expanding greatly on something I'd written in a previous post that you wrote: "You're not making any sense. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about, because you are being so vague as to be saying absolutely nothing" in response to. I removed the vagueness that you objected to by expanding greatly on it and now you're turning around and calling it "self-gratifying". That kind of passive-aggressive deceptive rhetoric doesn't impress me.
Also, I'll reiterate again: YOU ARE MISTAKEN. A design patent is granted for the ornamental design on a functional item. The "tablet" in the video was vaporware, NOT A FUNCTIONAL ITEM. No one would mistake something that doesn't exist for something that does exist. It doesn't meet the standard. This is why Samsungs attempt to use a prop from Kubrick's 2001 failed.
Wait, didn't I just go over this... Well, back into it anyway. The patent office hasn't required a working model to be submitted for what, a century now? "Invent
The difference between a car and a toy car is not arbitrary. One is a vehical and one is a toy. Let me make it easier for you to cast off your self-delusion regarding design patents: If you design a HAMBURGER, and patent the design, and 5 years later a car appears that resembles it, according to you the car manufacturer owes you for encroaching on your design patent. The PROBLEM is HAMBURGERS are not CARS. That is why your notion is ridiculous. An etch-a-sketch, or a chalk slate, or a digital picture frame isn't a tablet computer... thus the design of a TABLET can't infringe on the designs of these other products. Simple enough?
Functionality is irrelevant for design patents. They're on ornamental designs, not functionality. They are ridiculous. Like I said, they are the bastard child of trademarks and patents. They're basically trademark protection shoehorned into a patent format but, as patents, they don't cover only specific domains the way trademarks do. For a trademark, you can argue that food products and cars are different domains, but that doesn't actually apply to patents. Of course, the very existence of design patents is part of the slippery slope decline of "intellectual property" rights into utter chaos. I don't think they should be granted in the first place and, when they do, they need to be held to strict standards. Not matching an existing design is one of those standards.
35 U.S.C. 171 Patents for Designs
Whoever invents any new, original, and ornamental design for an article of manufacture may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
The provisions of this title relating to patents for inventions shall apply to patents for designs, except as otherwise provided.
Meaningless dribble. Your responses are just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness.
Let me put it another way then. Judges are not always right. Legal decisions are not always productive or sane. In this case, the decision is a travesty. Samsung may have copied Apple, but it doesn't seem that Apple, whose design was copied in the first place, should be entitled to any protection from copying.
Also, you do seem to be aware that the article was only about the judge issuing a preliminary injuction, right? That's not the same thing as an overall victory for Apple. It most certainly is chaos and madness, however. Samsung is a big company and can absorb this. The uncertainty and danger of bringing a product to market that decisions like this create results in a chilling effect on the market. A decision like this against a smaller player could crush them, even if they've done nothing wrong.
The current intellectual property regime is having an absolutely stifling effect on the world. I don't understand why people need to be reminded again and again and again why monopolies are pretty much always a bad idea.
You're not making any sense. I wish I knew wtf you were talking about, because you are being so vague as to be saying absolutely nothing.
I will try to explain a little more carefully. I would think that my meaning would be obvious, but, as I've observed, we seem to be operating in different universes.
I will start with the concept of a monopoly. A monopoly is when one entity has near or absolute control over some good or service. Sometimes they arise naturally. Consider railroads. It's expensive to create a railroad network and, once you have one, you can run a lot of trains on it. Creating a second set of lines to the same destinations is a lot of expense with little extra benefit except competition. The problem is, once you have the first set of railroad tracks in, no-one can even build another set of railroad tracks without cooperation from the owners of the first set. It's a similar situation with telecommunications, roads, etc. Their very nature leads to natural monopolies. Monopolies can arise other ways as we
Believe me, I find the actions of the current Zimbabwe administration (that is to say, Mugabe) pretty indefensible. With a situation as hopelessly messed up as they currently have there, how exactly would free market distribution of insufficient food be any better? In that kind of emergency situation, any government will nationalize food distribution. The US effectively did so back during WWII.
But what percentage of that Medicare spending goes directly to paying for drugs. If Medicare was the actual producer of the drugs, it's hard to see how it wouldn't save them money.
I'm pretty sure Zimbabwe didn't nationalize food production. What they did was take farms away from people and award them to cronies. That's not the same thing.
The market takes care of food just fine
Riiiight. Seriously, do you live in a cave.
I don't think the original poster was saying that people should be forced to work for free. I'm pretty sure the idea was that the people who do the actual R&D should be paid with public money and that all the layers of upper management, the shareholders and the people working in the departments in the pharmaceutical companies who don't directly support the R&D shouldn't be paid (at least, they should find other ways to be paid). In the long run, one way or the other, pretty much everyone needs to pay the cost of this research, so it seems best if they pay it without all that overhead.
They also come to market sooner than reference material.
So you're saying the drug companies start advertising before their research has been published? Something seems a bit wrong with that. If you're just talking about brick-thick pharmaceutical catalogs being sent round, aren't we living in the 21st century? Even without computers, hasn't it been possible to send around updates even for paper catalogs for as long as we've had paper catalogs?
I don't think you're correct. You're comparing apples and oranges, so to speak. By what you're saying, a car manufacturer should not be able to patent the design of a car if there was a toy manufacturer that created the same design 2 decades earlier... on a toy. That's ridiculous.
Why is that ridiculous? I think it's going to be impossible for us to see eye to eye. We don't even seem to live in the same universe. Design patents are on _designs_, not functional elements, otherwise they would be regular patents. If the design existed on a toy car decades earlier, then it should not be possible to get a new design patent on the existing design.
Did you read the story the you're commenting on? Case law now does indeed contradict your beliefs. Apple won, Samsung lost and lost the appeal. Its over.
The case law here is just part of a long slippery slope to chaos and madness. The current intellectual property regime is having an absolutely stifling effect on the world. I don't understand why people need to be reminded again and again and again why monopolies are pretty much always a bad idea.
It only seems obvious after Apple releases it. If it was so obvious then, as I said earlier, during the at least TWO AND A HALF YEARS that the technology existed to produce iPad someone would have released it. The reason? None of the other technology manufacturers have the ability to create markets the way Apple can. Apple sells like mad, everyone rushes to mimic their designs to cash in on Apple's work.
As people have demonstrated, the design was clearly obvious over a decade ago when a much larger, but virtually identically designed device appeared in a TV spot. It's also been obvious every time it's been used in a flat screen display, or in an actual tablet or notepad over the last few thousand years.
This is how the law works. A law isn't even quite The Law until it is questioned and tested in the courts. If it passes muster in the courts, then it becomes true law. This is how it works in America, how the law has always worked here.
The way your mind works is frankly terrifying. You don't seem to grasp the problem here. The problem is that the patent office works under the fundamental assumption that if they screw up, the courts will sort it out. Meanwhile the courts work under the fundamental assumption that the patent filing process did proper due diligence and that defendants must produce extraordinary evidence to clear themselves. Meanwhile, the courts are even more ignorant of the state of the art than the patent office. The "intellectual property" situation is ridiculous. Neither the patent office or the courts seem to grasp that "intellectual property" is an injunction on everyone granted almost arbitrarily by a rushed civil servant. That sort of thing should require an extremely careful hand. When the patent regime in the US started, for example, all patents were directly approved by the President. Things have changed tremendously over the year.
Generalizing without citations isn't helping your argument. No one agrees with you but people who hate Apple. Using them as an example is one thing, but in this case it is evidently clear that Samsung violated their patents.
You really are obsessed with Apple aren't you? I know that the particular Apple vs. Samsung case is the subject of the fine article, but for me it's just one more sad little episode. Plenty of people agree with me whether they love Apple, hate it, or are indifferent to it. There probably is a tendency for people who are opposed to the ridiculous state of affairs in "intellectual property" to be more likely to dislike companies like Microsoft and Apple who are generally the abusers in these situations. Certainly the cynical hypocrites who have run those companies like Jobs (used to sell blue boxes to exploit phone systems) and Gates (plenty of dumpster diving for code
Taking video of bright lights at night is notoriously difficult. The results are never as good as what the eyes (and other sensory organs) perceive while actually there.
What you're talking about is called a continuity test in the fireworks shows and model rocketry events I've participated in. They're notorious for accidentally launching the whole show, especially with people's custom gear. The annoying thing about a continuity test is that none of the regulations and organizations that require one, seem to provide any guidance or references on how a continuity test should be properly carried out. As a procedure it strikes me as about a good idea of stopping at all railroad crossings. I don't think I've ever heard of a car being hit by a train where the vehicle didn't either stall on the tracks or the driver actually saw the train but decided to race it.
Ok, but if you take the power usage of a swamp cooler, and add that to the cost of the water, the question is if it adds up to more than a closed system AC unit would cost. It's apples and oranges, of course. Hmm. Actually, I just tried putting it into pure cost terms, it looks like a single family water hookup in Tuscon only pays $1.26 + $0.36 + $0.07 = $1.69 for every 748 gallons of water on top of the $8.27/month basic service charge. So, for 150 gallons, that's about $0.34... Ok. It looks like I'm crazy then.
On the other hand, that just doesn't seem right. I'm sure water is more expensive where I live and we have plenty of it. Tuscon is an arid desert with the most expensive aqueduct ever supplying it with water from the Colorado river. A river which is seriously being bled dry. I mean, 150 gallons of water weighs around 3/5ths of a ton. That's a heck of a lot of travel for nearly a ton on $0.34. I have a feeling that doesn't necessarily reflect true market rates.
Still, it looks like I'm beaten on this overall. On the other hand, considering that there are times of year when the swamp coolers just won't work, and they happen to be some of the times of year that you would most want cooling, I think I'd still go with the closed system AC unit.
But design patents cover a design, not technology. Design patents are the bastard child of patents and trademarks, with a smattering of copyright thrown in. The fact that the same designs existed with slate or whiteboard instead of a touch-screen should invalidate the patent. US Law doesn't contradict my beliefs. US Law states that patents need to actually be original and non-obvious. Such an incredibly derivative design is, in fact, obvious. The USPTO is fundamentally broken and follows a mentality of allowing pretty much everything and letting the courts sort it out. A slippery slope of bad precedents has also broadened and broadened the scope of what is patentable up to our current situation where software and even business methods (which once upon a time were one of the standard examples of what sorts of things were explicitly _not_ patentable). Whether or not any company imitated any other company in the superficial design elements of their tablet computing device should not be legally relevant. Designs should not have any IP protection unless they truly are original.
Copycatting to ride on Apple's coattails to degree is a possibility. It's irrelevant, however. A certain amount of originality needs to be required for any sort of intellectual property protection. Even design patents need to have some originality.
Insignificant compared to the water used in agriculture certainly. The important comparison is to the resources used for a closed system air conditioner, however. A swamp cooler is only "efficient" because water is essentially free. When huge amounts of money and energy have been expended to provide the water, it gets a bit more complicated. It may still be the case that the swamp coolers are more efficient even when you consider the true costs of the water. You can't just ignore the externalities. It's just like the tremendous power density of hydrocarbon fuels vs. batteries: a big chunk of it vanishes if you take away all the free oxygen.
Plus, the original poster mentioned that, for fairly large blocks of time, the humidity can get too high for the swamp coolers to work. When that happens, anyone with a swamp cooler is out of luck, but the people with air conditioners are ok. So, if you want to be efficient for environmental reasons, you have to figure whether the increased water usage is worse, or the increased power usage. The problem is, there are too many factors to consider to make an easy determination. I do know, however, that the power situation there isn't worse than many other places, but the water situation is.
Because a deeper understanding of fundamental physics could _never_ lead to new discoveries and understanding in materials science. I mean, just because it always has in the past...
The big problem with portables is that people don't seem to understand how air conditioners work. Many will take those portables and set them up in their living room without running the vent hose to the outside.
Without the Santa Cruz river as a water source, Tuscon gets its water from groundwater and from the Colorado river via the Central Arizona Project, which is a massively expensive aqueduct project. As such, I'd be a little cautious about calling a swamp cooler in Tuscon "energy efficient" vs a closed system like an AC unit.
But since most of the rotational energy that the Earth is losing is being used to push the moon further away through tidal interactions then doesn't the increased distance of the moon mean that its gravity is pulling on you less when it's overhead so your average weight over an entire lunar orbit might be the same? Of course, some of that tidal energy turns into heat. On the other hand, heat has mass and therefore gravity. Some of it radiates away, however. The moon should be more efficient at radiating away inner heat than Earth, but I haven't got any idea which one gets more tidal heating. Trying to do accounting for the universe makes my head hurt.
I think you're confused about the role of the EFF in this case.
Seriously? Clearly your ideas about this are pretty fixed and I'm not going to change your opinion with my reply. Nevertheless, I'll persevere.
Tablets/pads have been around for hundreds/thousands of years. I had a chalkboard virtually identical to the design in question as a child. It simply wasn't invented by Apple. The first person to develop a design like the one Apple thinks is infringing is lost in the mists of history. Maybe even pre-history. Advancing technology such as large, thin, low-power multi-touch screens, higher power-density batteries, Micro Electro-Mechanical Sensors, etc. have made modern tablets possible, and the designs are derivative of those advances.
Only minute amounts. A few minutes in traffic would probably expose you to more.
More or less. It's more if it gets into the air as fine particles. Long exposure to that would give you black lung disease.
I would say that a pretty large percent of Excel usage involves mis-using it as a database program instead of a spreadsheet program.
Which fails to explain Joel Shumacher and rubber batnipples.