When a judge sees "give up other rights," said judge might laugh and strike it down as overly vague or ambitious.
You can write anything you want, and the other parties can sign anything they want. That's the "gentleman's agreement" that is now a matter of record for a court case. It is not until a judge sees the terms of the agreement, that it is shown to be, or not to be, enforceable.
I agree that CmdrTaco should have kept his opinions as a sidebar or bookends to the letter in full. As I read, I skipped over the baldfac- er, boldface material and read the letter itself.
Aside from the interspersed comments, are we sure this is actually from a lawyer or official of this company?
There's several grammatical errors that make the letter sound like it's coming from, well, from a twenty-something hothead. "Would of"s and ranting allcap phrases are what I expect to see in the less decorous 'leet crowd, not from someone at the helm or hire of a respectable company.
Besides, if there was intellectual property litigation involved, the company would probably best be served by holding its temper and its collective tongue.
"Major asshole." --Dubya Bush "Big time." --Dick Cheney
Just because there's a clause in a license or contract, does not mean that it's enforceable.
"By agreeing to this, if later found in breach, you will kill your second son, and name your third daughter Shlep."
Just because the GPL says that someone found in breach of license gives away other rights, does not necessarily mean that the victi- er, breachor actually would lose their rights to the portions of software they actually did contribute or bundle.
Use 'an' where followed by a soft vowel sound. In cases of abbreviations or acronyms, consider the way the term is most often spoken, or more rarely, the way the term is expanded.
Thus, "...the only one to contain a YOO ARR ELL," or "...the only one to contain a UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR."
Perhaps the writer pronounces it like the Duke in that bebop tune: "...the only one to contain an EARL." I think those letters aren't well-suited to form a word (an acronym), but many people do. Slashdot Poll idea?
What the hell does "power" mean in a programming language, anyway? The word has no definition in a programming context.
Let's look at the general physics definition, taken from the American Heritage dictionary.
power: n - The rate at which work is done, expressed as the amount of work per unit time and commonly measured in units such as the watt and horsepower.
I'd suggest that power exhibited in the programming-language context would be something like this:
power: n - The rate at which programming work is done, expressed as the amount of programming tasks written per unit time and commonly measured in units such as statements or lines of source code.
This is only one interpretation, mind you. Higher-level languages would thus be deemed more powerful than lower-level languages, as the source-code to machine-code ratio is more extreme. It takes fewer statements or lines of source code to express a program task in a more powerful language.
The back of the medals for Sydney 2000 were originally planned to have a depiction of the Sydney Opera House. I imagine (though don't know) that they're a sponsor of the 2000 Games.
This was nixed, in favor of a more historically significant and less sponsor-oriented back image: the Roman Coliseum.
Of course, the Roman Coliseum was where Christians were put to entertaining death, not where the Olympic tradition started some hundreds of miles away.
What however would be really good would be a monitor mode which reported itself as 800x600 but whenever windows was called upon to render text it could use the extra resolution for excellent clarity.
You mention Windows, so I'll add that Win16 and Win32 have always drawn their GUI elements as a multiple of::GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXBORDER) (and SM_CYBORDER). However, none of the drivers I've ever seen have ever taken them up on it... all drivers define those metrics as one pixel.
It's probably a self-defining problem: since most app writers are lazy or don't know this, they write THEIR apps to measure in pixels and not border-multiples or logical points. Any driver manufacturer that experimented with adjusting these metrics probably found 30% compliance and 70% noncompliance with all the apps out there.
Thus, you can see why device drivers would find it hard to decide what gets drawn bigger, and what doesn't.
I would imagine the same sort of "uneven compliance with standard methods" would appear in X, Motif, Qt, etc., but I would also imagine that mentioning this will invite lots of followups that say such things wouldn't happen to their beloved platforms.
I've seen several arragant ignorant "that's wrong" posts correcting "flaws" in the main story, followed by the typical avalanche of corrections explaining how the commentor has it wrong instead.
I don't know the nationality of those involved, but if I were to guess, I'd say the arrogant ignorant ones were Americans. Maybe it's a failing of the schools, or a common misperception that the world follows all of America's "isms."
For the record,
America writes +1.0e6 as 1,000,000.00 whereas in many other countries, they use the notation 1.000.000,00 (side note: those digit symbols are Arabic in origin).
In English, we say "Germany." In German, they say "Deutcheland." The language is "german" or "deutche," accordingly. This reasoning is why German domains end in.de, Dutch sites are in.nl (Nederlands), Croatia ends in.hr (Hrvatska), and so on.
America writes "color" but the Queen's English is "colour". This is true of a lot of words with an -or ending. I'm not sure why the Colonials decided to be unique on that point, it often causes rancour among the uninformed.
Use of idiom is completely different between different countries, even with the same "language." For example, if a Brit says he'll knock her up, he intends to pay a respectable visit in person. If an American says that, it's a bit more intimate (and crass).
I wish more Americans would learn how they fit into the world, in history and society. It's cultural Ptolemism, and it's embarassing to be an American amongst such examples of ignorance.
... the gaming industry actually makes more money than the movie industry, and yet it's never taken seriously by any mainstream media
Hogwash. Show stats. I'm not an economist in either industry, but here's my thinking.
My guess at an average game: 100,000 copies of an "A" title computer software game, at $45. That's 4.5mil for the whole title.
My guess at an average movie: 10,000,000 tickets of an "A" title cinema release, at $7. That's 70mil for the whole title, and that's just in the theater. Now, 10,000 video tapes. 100,000 video tape rentals. Add any re-release and dollar-theater releases.
Figure 52 weeks with an average of three average games and two average movies each (amortized), and you still aren't close enough that you might think it comes out at all even. Even so, add one blockbuster movie (there's usually three per year), and games are left in the dust.
Oh, or maybe you were talking about gaming, as in gambling. The gaming industry has them both beat. More money flows through the back-water Laughlin Nevada in a month, than will ever be seen by a great movie release. The house only takes a cut, but it's never a losing proposition. Add to that all the government-sponsored state lotteries and off-track betting.
Writers to Recover Millions from Uncover: Ruling in favor of authors as copyright holders, U.S, District Court Judge Fern Smith last month awarded $7.25 million to a group of five freelance writers. The class action suit claimed that Uncover, an Internet-based document delivery service, illegally sold magazine and scholarly articles without obtaining permission from, or compensating, the authors.
A few choice quotes from the CEO of UnCover, too, about authors who are unreachable, as well as getting rights on multiple authorship works.
What Are Halons And How Do They Work? They are low-toxicity, chemically stable compounds that have been used for fire and explosion protection throughout this century. Today, Halon 1211 (a liquid streaming agent) is used mainly in hand-held fire extinguishers and Halon 1301 (a gaseous agent) is used mainly in total flooding systems. These halons have proven to be extremely effective fire suppressants, which are clean (leave no residue) and remarkably safe for human exposure.
Three things must come together at the same time to start a fire. The first ingredient is fuel (anything that can burn), the second is oxygen (normal breathing air is ample) and the last is an ignition source (high heat can cause a fire even without a spark or open flame). Traditionally, to stop a fire you need to remove one side of the triangle - the ignition, the fuel or the oxygen. Halon adds a fourth dimension to fire fighting - breaking the chain reaction. It stops the fuel, the ignition and the oxygen from dancing together by chemically reacting with them. Many people believe that halon displaces the air out of the area it is dispensed in. Wrong! Even for the toughest hazards, less than an 8% concentration by volume is required. There is still plenty of air to use in the evacuation process.
Um, C O2 (not C02 as you typed) is produced in normal mammalian cellular perfusion, and freed to the atmosphere every time you exhale. It takes a HUGE volume of carbon dioxide in an enclosed room, before it becomes a problem for further respiration. Your potted plants will thrive, as they take in carbon dioxide, and produce the free oxygen you need.
FrozenC O2 is called "dry ice," and is used to keep meats and dairy products cold in shipping. In normal room temperatures, it won't melt, but it will sublimate directly to the gaseous form, which, as stated above, is perfectly normal around we mammals. If you want some frozen carbon dioxide, go to an ice cream store and ask for a bag of it.
Dry ice, aka frozen carbon dioxide, is dangerous to handle. You need tongs or thick gloves. If you touch it directly, it'll freeze the cells of your skin and muscle tissue quickly, creating a burning sensation then killing the flesh. If you don't touch it with your skin, though, it's pretty forgiving.
This isn't like dealing with halon, or carbon monoxide. Halon is released as a fire retardant, and works by denying oxygen that fuels a fire. Carbon monoxide is a byproduct of petroleum burning, and reacts toxically with living cellular tissues. These are highly dangerous materials.
In short, carbon dioxide in its frozen form is slightly more dangerous than liquid nitrogen, is not as cold as liquid nitrogen, and has about the same health risks involved in breathing and direct contact.
If I were ready to buy 5000 HPs for my corporate net, and I wanted them all set up according to my corporate networking "standard" software configuration, I would:
Order 5000 Complete Systems from HP, minus hard drive and software,
Order 5000 hard drives from whatever vendor, that matches the ones that HP puts in,
Have my IT Department plug the new drives in.
If you buy 5000 machines at a time, you can dictate a LOT. "Please leave the empty drive bay panel off, and the case covers unscrewed, and an extra drive power plug handy."
Semi-related: Is it just me, or is American society becoming more lawsuit happy by the week? RIAA/Metallica sue over Napster, then the MPAA sues over DeCSS, now Apple sues over leaked pictures and info. Seems the lawsuits are getting more and more frivolous.
I tend to think of it in the same way the number of tornados may appear to be rising.
Only the tornados near populated areas are reported; the populated area has increased greatly over the past two centuries.
Only the lawsuits within your bailiwick (geekdom, computers, Internet, techno-whatever) hit your awareness or favorite newsfeed; the size of that bailiwick has increased greatly over the past two years.
In either case, tornados or lawsuits aren't increasing, so much as people such as yourself notice them more, because they're happening within your domain of awareness.
Sure, MacOS is optimized for a one-button mouse. Think of how much smaller and simpler programs are. You know, apps that handle left-button, right-button, wheel push, wheel roll, chording, middle button, side buttons, and so on.
These extra lines of code are just bloat and feature-creep, right? Everyone's a first-time user who feels comfortable with fewer options, for the first several years, right?
Sure, some operating systems or languages or chips hold the coder's hand and make some dangerous things impossible or difficult to do.
It's still the programmer's fault for not knowing what the (void*) they're doing.
This is the same argument as "C++ is slow!" It's only slow if you don't bother to learn what code a C++ compiler generates, using lots of mechanisms without realizing it. C++ implements its mechanisms as tightly as it can, but every mechanism you use takes some time to operate.
Back to buffer overrun security: If you are gonna accept data from an untrusted source, why are you (1) putting it on the must-be-kept-inviolate stack, (2) not doing everything in your power to accept no more than n bytes that have been allocated?
If the compiler docs specifically say "data in auto variables will never be put into an executable address space," and it does, then it's time to fix the compiler or docs. Likewise if the docs belie the behavior of a chip, time to fix the chip or docs.
Don't blame a microprocessor for your mess. Don't blame a language for your mess.
I'm sure there'll be a lot of people who think or moderate this as a flamebait, but it irks me to hear "I wish I could have..." from OS-zealots.
Say I use Win2000. If a really cool game comes out for the Mac, and I want to play it, I am free (as in speech) to find somebody who has a Mac and wouldn't mind me trying out the game for a while. Personally, I don't think any game would be enticing enough to make me borrow a friend's Mac. But it's my choice.
Say I use Palm. If a really cool p.i.m. comes out for the PocketPC/WinCE that would make my work more productive, I am free (as in speech) to find the bucks to get a WinCE. Personally, I don't think any p.i.m. would affect productivity enough to make me switch model of alkaline-draining widget. But it's my choice.
Say I use a Ford. If a really cool dashboard accessory comes out for the Honda,... But it's my choice.
If you're a bigo^H^H^H^H exclusive fan of a certain platform, then accept that you're shutting yourself off from nine tenths of all that is out there on other platforms. When you can, get things moved over to your platform, but don't whine about the things you choose not to use.
To protect a design that is not functional, but is purely aesthetic, one can take out a 'design patent.'
This could protect certain floral-shaped wrought-iron gates, for example. The floral pattern is not a functional element of the design, and wrought-iron gates are nothing new.
The shapes of shampoo bottles can be patented similarly.
The key element is that there needs to be nothing functional in the choice of that design.
If you sold a hamburger, and on the menu you called your hamburger a BigMaq, you can be assured that the trademark lawyers would slam you into so much e.coli-tainted floorstain.
From the c|net article, Given Cobalt's history, a suit likely would take issue with the name, rather than the shape, of the computers. Cube Computer filed a suit against Cobalt in December 1998, alleging that Cobalt's Qube infringed on the trademark of Cube Computer. Cobalt settled the suit in December 1999, the company said in an SEC filing. "We acquired certain trademark rights for a one-time payment of $4.1 million, not including related legal costs," the filing said.
Thus, the trademark of officially calling a computer a "cube"(tm) has already been established, and Cobalt has purchased rights from the establishing party. Apple has not. NeXT never called their computer a "Cube", "Qube", or "Kyoob."
This has nothing to do with the markets served, the device characteristics, or even the shape.
Lots of people are raising issues, like "I won't be able to do CAD or Fluid Dynamics calculations or write kernel patches, if I don't have a keyboard!"
People... this is a laptop! Not the desktop. Most people I know only get a laptop after they have a non-mobile workstation they're happy with. (A few students, maybe, are unable to afford both and decide for the portability. Avoid a keyboardless laptop, if this means you.)
Plug a keyboard in the side if you need to type directly, or hot-synch it with your desk machine. Use it as you would use a clipboard. Collect data in the field. Browse the w^4 [wireless world-wide web]. Use it to preview your digital camera's results.
For the occasional passphrase or a few longhand commands, bring up a half-screen touch-sensitive keyboard, just like the tiny ones available on smaller devices.
Personally, I don't believe in "wrist rests" lining the keyboard, and most of today's laptops put the pointing device (pad, ball, nub) near the thumbs. I'd rejoice if I could return to laptop designs that delete that extra two inches. I'd like a flip-cover instead of a keyboard, or a case-hardened screen that didn't even need a flip-cover, most of all.
Slashdot Mirror
It remains to be seen in a court of law.
When a judge sees "give up other rights," said judge might laugh and strike it down as overly vague or ambitious.
You can write anything you want, and the other parties can sign anything they want. That's the "gentleman's agreement" that is now a matter of record for a court case. It is not until a judge sees the terms of the agreement, that it is shown to be, or not to be, enforceable.
I agree that CmdrTaco should have kept his opinions as a sidebar or bookends to the letter in full. As I read, I skipped over the baldfac- er, boldface material and read the letter itself.
Aside from the interspersed comments, are we sure this is actually from a lawyer or official of this company?
There's several grammatical errors that make the letter sound like it's coming from, well, from a twenty-something hothead. "Would of"s and ranting allcap phrases are what I expect to see in the less decorous 'leet crowd, not from someone at the helm or hire of a respectable company.
Besides, if there was intellectual property litigation involved, the company would probably best be served by holding its temper and its collective tongue.
"Major asshole." --Dubya Bush "Big time." --Dick Cheney
Just because there's a clause in a license or contract, does not mean that it's enforceable.
"By agreeing to this, if later found in breach, you will kill your second son, and name your third daughter Shlep."
Just because the GPL says that someone found in breach of license gives away other rights, does not necessarily mean that the victi- er, breachor actually would lose their rights to the portions of software they actually did contribute or bundle.
Use 'an' where followed by a soft vowel sound. In cases of abbreviations or acronyms, consider the way the term is most often spoken, or more rarely, the way the term is expanded.
Thus, "...the only one to contain a YOO ARR ELL," or "...the only one to contain a UNIFORM RESOURCE LOCATOR."
Perhaps the writer pronounces it like the Duke in that bebop tune: "...the only one to contain an EARL." I think those letters aren't well-suited to form a word (an acronym), but many people do. Slashdot Poll idea?
What the hell does "power" mean in a programming language, anyway? The word has no definition in a programming context.
Let's look at the general physics definition, taken from the American Heritage dictionary.
power: n - The rate at which work is done, expressed as the amount of work per unit time and commonly measured in units such as the watt and horsepower.
I'd suggest that power exhibited in the programming-language context would be something like this:
power: n - The rate at which programming work is done, expressed as the amount of programming tasks written per unit time and commonly measured in units such as statements or lines of source code.
This is only one interpretation, mind you. Higher-level languages would thus be deemed more powerful than lower-level languages, as the source-code to machine-code ratio is more extreme. It takes fewer statements or lines of source code to express a program task in a more powerful language.
The back of the medals for Sydney 2000 were originally planned to have a depiction of the Sydney Opera House. I imagine (though don't know) that they're a sponsor of the 2000 Games.
This was nixed, in favor of a more historically significant and less sponsor-oriented back image: the Roman Coliseum.
Of course, the Roman Coliseum was where Christians were put to entertaining death, not where the Olympic tradition started some hundreds of miles away.
You mention Windows, so I'll add that Win16 and Win32 have always drawn their GUI elements as a multiple of ::GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXBORDER) (and SM_CYBORDER). However, none of the drivers I've ever seen have ever taken them up on it... all drivers define those metrics as one pixel.
It's probably a self-defining problem: since most app writers are lazy or don't know this, they write THEIR apps to measure in pixels and not border-multiples or logical points. Any driver manufacturer that experimented with adjusting these metrics probably found 30% compliance and 70% noncompliance with all the apps out there.
Thus, you can see why device drivers would find it hard to decide what gets drawn bigger, and what doesn't.
I would imagine the same sort of "uneven compliance with standard methods" would appear in X, Motif, Qt, etc., but I would also imagine that mentioning this will invite lots of followups that say such things wouldn't happen to their beloved platforms.
Probably just a typo, but to rescue is to save from a bad fate, and to recuse is to withdraw or disqualify.
I've seen several arragant ignorant "that's wrong" posts correcting "flaws" in the main story, followed by the typical avalanche of corrections explaining how the commentor has it wrong instead.
I don't know the nationality of those involved, but if I were to guess, I'd say the arrogant ignorant ones were Americans. Maybe it's a failing of the schools, or a common misperception that the world follows all of America's "isms."
For the record,
I wish more Americans would learn how they fit into the world, in history and society. It's cultural Ptolemism, and it's embarassing to be an American amongst such examples of ignorance.
What's the orbital equivalent of ecology? Vacuumology? La Grange-ology?
My first thought would be astrology, but that's already taken.
Hogwash. Show stats. I'm not an economist in either industry, but here's my thinking.
100,000 copies of an "A" title computer software game, at $45. That's 4.5mil for the whole title.
10,000,000 tickets of an "A" title cinema release, at $7. That's 70mil for the whole title, and that's just in the theater. Now, 10,000 video tapes. 100,000 video tape rentals. Add any re-release and dollar-theater releases.
Figure 52 weeks with an average of three average games and two average movies each (amortized), and you still aren't close enough that you might think it comes out at all even. Even so, add one blockbuster movie (there's usually three per year), and games are left in the dust.
Oh, or maybe you were talking about gaming, as in gambling. The gaming industry has them both beat. More money flows through the back-water Laughlin Nevada in a month, than will ever be seen by a great movie release. The house only takes a cut, but it's never a losing proposition. Add to that all the government-sponsored state lotteries and off-track betting.
I can see it now. The next movement in Open Source meets Mechanical Engineering:
"Free" as in "Free your hand from the vise-grips."
On Wired.com: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38203,00. html.
Writers to Recover Millions from Uncover: Ruling in favor of authors as copyright holders, U.S, District Court Judge Fern Smith last month awarded $7.25 million to a group of five freelance writers. The class action suit claimed that Uncover, an Internet-based document delivery service, illegally sold magazine and scholarly articles without obtaining permission from, or compensating, the authors.
A few choice quotes from the CEO of UnCover, too, about authors who are unreachable, as well as getting rights on multiple authorship works.
The whole thing took 30 minutes from initial power-up to first boot. And they say Win98 takes too long to boot.
Foghorn Leghorn says, "That, I say, that's a joke, son!"
What Are Halons And How Do They Work? They are low-toxicity, chemically stable compounds that have been used for fire and explosion protection throughout this century. Today, Halon 1211 (a liquid streaming agent) is used mainly in hand-held fire extinguishers and Halon 1301 (a gaseous agent) is used mainly in total flooding systems. These halons have proven to be extremely effective fire suppressants, which are clean (leave no residue) and remarkably safe for human exposure.
Three things must come together at the same time to start a fire. The first ingredient is fuel (anything that can burn), the second is oxygen (normal breathing air is ample) and the last is an ignition source (high heat can cause a fire even without a spark or open flame). Traditionally, to stop a fire you need to remove one side of the triangle - the ignition, the fuel or the oxygen. Halon adds a fourth dimension to fire fighting - breaking the chain reaction. It stops the fuel, the ignition and the oxygen from dancing together by chemically reacting with them. Many people believe that halon displaces the air out of the area it is dispensed in. Wrong! Even for the toughest hazards, less than an 8% concentration by volume is required. There is still plenty of air to use in the evacuation process.
I consider myself newly educated. :)
Um, C O2 (not C02 as you typed) is produced in normal mammalian cellular perfusion, and freed to the atmosphere every time you exhale. It takes a HUGE volume of carbon dioxide in an enclosed room, before it becomes a problem for further respiration. Your potted plants will thrive, as they take in carbon dioxide, and produce the free oxygen you need.
Frozen C O2 is called "dry ice," and is used to keep meats and dairy products cold in shipping. In normal room temperatures, it won't melt, but it will sublimate directly to the gaseous form, which, as stated above, is perfectly normal around we mammals. If you want some frozen carbon dioxide, go to an ice cream store and ask for a bag of it.
Dry ice, aka frozen carbon dioxide, is dangerous to handle. You need tongs or thick gloves. If you touch it directly, it'll freeze the cells of your skin and muscle tissue quickly, creating a burning sensation then killing the flesh. If you don't touch it with your skin, though, it's pretty forgiving.
This isn't like dealing with halon, or carbon monoxide. Halon is released as a fire retardant, and works by denying oxygen that fuels a fire. Carbon monoxide is a byproduct of petroleum burning, and reacts toxically with living cellular tissues. These are highly dangerous materials.
In short, carbon dioxide in its frozen form is slightly more dangerous than liquid nitrogen, is not as cold as liquid nitrogen, and has about the same health risks involved in breathing and direct contact.
When are people like this going to realize the differences between the words, trademark, copyright and patent?
You meant, trademark.
If I were ready to buy 5000 HPs for my corporate net, and I wanted them all set up according to my corporate networking "standard" software configuration, I would:
Order 5000 Complete Systems from HP, minus hard drive and software,
Order 5000 hard drives from whatever vendor, that matches the ones that HP puts in,
Have my IT Department plug the new drives in.
If you buy 5000 machines at a time, you can dictate a LOT. "Please leave the empty drive bay panel off, and the case covers unscrewed, and an extra drive power plug handy."
I tend to think of it in the same way the number of tornados may appear to be rising.
Only the tornados near populated areas are reported; the populated area has increased greatly over the past two centuries.
Only the lawsuits within your bailiwick (geekdom, computers, Internet, techno-whatever) hit your awareness or favorite newsfeed; the size of that bailiwick has increased greatly over the past two years.
In either case, tornados or lawsuits aren't increasing, so much as people such as yourself notice them more, because they're happening within your domain of awareness.
tongue in cheek
Sure, MacOS is optimized for a one-button mouse. Think of how much smaller and simpler programs are. You know, apps that handle left-button, right-button, wheel push, wheel roll, chording, middle button, side buttons, and so on.
These extra lines of code are just bloat and feature-creep, right? Everyone's a first-time user who feels comfortable with fewer options, for the first several years, right?
Fewer features, optimized. Think different.
:)
Blame the developer!
Sure, some operating systems or languages or chips hold the coder's hand and make some dangerous things impossible or difficult to do.
It's still the programmer's fault for not knowing what the (void*) they're doing.
This is the same argument as "C++ is slow!" It's only slow if you don't bother to learn what code a C++ compiler generates, using lots of mechanisms without realizing it. C++ implements its mechanisms as tightly as it can, but every mechanism you use takes some time to operate.
Back to buffer overrun security: If you are gonna accept data from an untrusted source, why are you (1) putting it on the must-be-kept-inviolate stack, (2) not doing everything in your power to accept no more than n bytes that have been allocated?
If the compiler docs specifically say "data in auto variables will never be put into an executable address space," and it does, then it's time to fix the compiler or docs. Likewise if the docs belie the behavior of a chip, time to fix the chip or docs.
Don't blame a microprocessor for your mess. Don't blame a language for your mess.
You have only yourself to blame.
I'm sure there'll be a lot of people who think or moderate this as a flamebait, but it irks me to hear "I wish I could have..." from OS-zealots.
Say I use Win2000. If a really cool game comes out for the Mac, and I want to play it, I am free (as in speech) to find somebody who has a Mac and wouldn't mind me trying out the game for a while. Personally, I don't think any game would be enticing enough to make me borrow a friend's Mac. But it's my choice.
Say I use Palm. If a really cool p.i.m. comes out for the PocketPC/WinCE that would make my work more productive, I am free (as in speech) to find the bucks to get a WinCE. Personally, I don't think any p.i.m. would affect productivity enough to make me switch model of alkaline-draining widget. But it's my choice.
Say I use a Ford. If a really cool dashboard accessory comes out for the Honda, ... But it's my choice.
If you're a bigo^H^H^H^H exclusive fan of a certain platform, then accept that you're shutting yourself off from nine tenths of all that is out there on other platforms. When you can, get things moved over to your platform, but don't whine about the things you choose not to use.
To protect a design that is not functional, but is purely aesthetic, one can take out a 'design patent.'
This could protect certain floral-shaped wrought-iron gates, for example. The floral pattern is not a functional element of the design, and wrought-iron gates are nothing new.
The shapes of shampoo bottles can be patented similarly.
The key element is that there needs to be nothing functional in the choice of that design.
If you sold a hamburger, and on the menu you called your hamburger a BigMaq, you can be assured that the trademark lawyers would slam you into so much e.coli-tainted floorstain.
From the c|net article,
Given Cobalt's history, a suit likely would take issue with the name, rather than the shape, of the computers. Cube Computer filed a suit against Cobalt in December 1998, alleging that Cobalt's Qube infringed on the trademark of Cube Computer. Cobalt settled the suit in December 1999, the company said in an SEC filing. "We acquired certain trademark rights for a one-time payment of $4.1 million, not including related legal costs," the filing said.
Thus, the trademark of officially calling a computer a "cube"(tm) has already been established, and Cobalt has purchased rights from the establishing party. Apple has not. NeXT never called their computer a "Cube", "Qube", or "Kyoob."
This has nothing to do with the markets served, the device characteristics, or even the shape.
Lots of people are raising issues, like "I won't be able to do CAD or Fluid Dynamics calculations or write kernel patches, if I don't have a keyboard!"
People... this is a laptop! Not the desktop. Most people I know only get a laptop after they have a non-mobile workstation they're happy with. (A few students, maybe, are unable to afford both and decide for the portability. Avoid a keyboardless laptop, if this means you.)
Plug a keyboard in the side if you need to type directly, or hot-synch it with your desk machine. Use it as you would use a clipboard. Collect data in the field. Browse the w^4 [wireless world-wide web]. Use it to preview your digital camera's results.
For the occasional passphrase or a few longhand commands, bring up a half-screen touch-sensitive keyboard, just like the tiny ones available on smaller devices.
Personally, I don't believe in "wrist rests" lining the keyboard, and most of today's laptops put the pointing device (pad, ball, nub) near the thumbs. I'd rejoice if I could return to laptop designs that delete that extra two inches. I'd like a flip-cover instead of a keyboard, or a case-hardened screen that didn't even need a flip-cover, most of all.