yeah, and it's really, really stupid that any one has to play such stupid games to avoid lawsuits. the windows desktop is pretty much a mirror image of the mac os, left to right, really, really stupid. it only serves to confuse users, and it's another fine example of stupidity and the tremendous waste that always comes with "spy VS. spy" type of games, which sadly is eating up more and more resources that could go to actually making things better for the users, and the company. intelectual property is a good thing, as long as the concept isn't implemented in a stupid way, and it often is in current society. for instance, you aren't supposed to be able to patent a solution that would be obvious to any one working in that field, yet that's just the type of thing that most patents cover. i subscribe to the nasa tech briefs, and goverment agencies now try to patent all thier research, and some of it is incredibly obvious and clearly shouldn't be patented, but it makes the beurocrats happy, and the patent office hasn't been doing thier job on researching prior art and employing experts for a long, long time.
just yesterday, in a book that's over 50 years old and considered a standard reference in a particular field i found the very idea that someone patented not long ago, clearly they were aware of the prior art, and any one in that field should be. in this case, it was a design idea for a bullet that expanded well under diverse conditions, and has a striking resemblence to a "recent" invention by one of the amunition makers. the "new" invention is just a ripoff of someone elses idea, which was probably even patented, so the patent office should have easilly found that "prior art". not too long ago, the patent office had to take back a patent they issued to encyclopedia britanica, a patent that never, never should have been issued. the patent was for "a search engine capable of searching on multiple fields and criteria" or something like that, yeah, like they invented that idea when other people had already done it and when it was a standard feature of any decent database program. these days, with a good lawyer and a thick enough application you can patent anything no matter how obvious. i've done some patent research, and some of the patents that i've found are truly amazing in thier triviality and obviousness. again, i hope to have some REAL intellectual property eventually, and i've been intersted in patents and copyright for a long time. the current system is badly, badly broken. it makes lawyers rich and hampers development, because trivial things have been patented, and when you incorporate them into something truly clever you get sued. or you can't even make a simple and obvious product that you don't even want a patent for, and then some clown sue's because they had a trivial patent on some part of the process, a process that any one who spent a few hours thinking about it could come up with. patents are supposed to be about genious and creativity, not trivial ideas that someone happens to write down and apply for a patent on first when everyone in that field could come up with it if they cared and could patent, if they wanted to apply for patents that should never have been issued. Bruce Johnson wrote: --------- > They sued Microsoft over trademark issues and if you notice, the thing > on the desktop in Windows is called a 'Recycle bin' not 'Trash', and by > default, it's off on the left hand side in the middle of the screen, not > down in the lower right hand corner where God and Apple intended ;-) --------- -- Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
