🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <13151@helios.TAMU.EDU> mcl9337@aim1.tamu.edu (MARK CHRISTOPHER LOWE) writes:
>I just read that thing about the case between Apple and Microsoft.
>
>Man... it's a damn pathetic day when you can't put a window on top of another
>without getting slapped with a suit.  What's so proprietary about overlapping
>windows?  What the hell else are you going to do with them?
>
>And icons??  Big deal!  How else are you going to graphically represent files?

	If you think that's silly, how about the suit AT&T has against MIT
over X?  (For saving the bitmap of an obscured window for fast refreshing...)
Or how about the patient (recently upheld in England) concerning alpha
channels?  Or what about 'XOR' cursors?

	*Sigh*  Fundamentally it is not Apple's fault; it is the fault of the
court system to allow such absurdist suits to happen in the first place.  Apple
is only behaving as a corporation using any and all techniques at it's
disposal to dominate the market.  (Somebody give me a count here; how many
law suits has Microsoft filed in the last 10 years against other, smaller,
companies over improper use of propriatary information?  I seem to remember
a couple...)

	However, Apple should never have launched the lawsuit in the first
place, but should instead have settled out of court.  Or (better yet) never
filed suit in the first place.

>I hope the hell Apple doesn't win this.  Who uses Macs anyway??  {:-<
>People that are afraid of computers!!

	Inflamatory statements will not help the issue, which is a court
system who allows overlapping windows, 'XOR' cursors, alpha channels, bitmap
backstore, and other clearly software techniques to be patiented, copyrighted,
and protected, explicitly outside of the relm of protection that patients,
copyrights, and the such are supposed to protect!

	After all, fundamentally a user interface is a graphical 'language'
the user uses to talk to a computer, and languages are NOT copyrightable.
And software (the codified expression of a method or procedure in a language
which can be executed by a machine) is NOT patientable.  (Copyrights explicitly
omit languages; patients omit codified procedures or algorithms.)

>Damn liberal judges!!

	No, the right statement is "Damn stupid lawyers!"  Most lawyers who
work with suits having to do with computer science are NOT REQUIRED to have
any formal training in computer science.  (Unlike lawyers for architectual
engineering mishaps, who are required to have FORMAL TRAINING in architectual
engineering!)

>PS-You know Apple is losing business to a superior product when they start
>   suing people!

	Uh, by the way:  Apple is gaining ground against IBM PC compatables.
But Apple is still worried about Windows 3.0, as can be found from Apple's
comments to it's developers.  (I am a Macintosh software developer, as well
as a Windows software developer, BTW.)


						-- Bill

-- 
	William Edward Woody		   | Disclamer:
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