🚀 go-pugleaf

               America is  becoming a lawless land, both in the streets and
          in the boardrooms and courtrooms.   Our legal  systems were never
          designed to  handle the  sheer volumn  of bullshit which they are
          having to deal with now and are simply no longer working.  On the
          streets, it  has reached the point at which, in order to actually
          get put in prison,  one  must  be  a  mother-raper  AND  a father
          stabber and then be on a waiting list for six or seven years, the
          decision the judge has to make being:

               "Is this dude bad enough for me to  want to  throw someone I
               KNOW is bad OUT of prison in order to make room for HIM?"

          rather than simply:

               "Is this  dude bad  enough for  me to  want to  throw him in
               prison?"

          as it used to be.

               On the  other side  of the  tracks, we  are seeing companies
          which obviously  and pitifully  lack the brains or talent to make
          it in  the  open  market  trying  to  make  their  living  in the
          courtroom, and  the worst  offender is Apple Corp., the erstwhile
          hippie commune which supposedly  had  made  it  to  the big-time.
          Those  people  obviously  see  the  law  as  a tool for the rich,
          whereby, like the trolls of legend  which infested  bridges, they
          can  earn  their  living  by  laying  claim  to  such  things  as
          techniques  for  walking  and   breathing,  driving  automobiles,
          programming  visual  effects  similar  to those of the Xerox 8010
          Star ( which Xerox, an honest company, has never fought  over the
          "look and  feel" of) etc., and charging the general public, or at
          least all such as use small computers, thereby.

               It is easy to see how Apple has come to  such a  pass.  When
          IBM  went   the  wrong  way  (with  Intel  rather  than  Motorola
          microchips), Apple was the one company in a position to challenge
          them by  actually doing  something with the 68000.  What they did
          was to produce two  machines  which  were  so  pitiful  that they
          convinced much of the world that the 68000 itself was a bad idea:
          a $10,000 machine which looked like  a  1946  TV  set  with  a 5"
          screen  (Lisa)  and  a  $3000  machine  which resembles a toaster
          (Mac).       Both   of   those   machines   are   totally  closed
          architecturally, both  are black and white only, both use up most
          of the 68000's compute power dealing  with screen  graphics, both
          have toy  rather than  real keyboards,  both come with one (slow)
          floppy disk, neither has any capabilities for expansion vis-a-vis
          color  monitors,  fpu's  etc.    Were  it  not  for the 8010 Star
          interface, which  Apple flagrantly  pirated from  Xerox Parc, the
          Mac probably  could not  be sold  even to  the most primitive and
          backwards peoples on earth.

               I personally am bothered by the  DRI affair,  which I regard
          as  totally  lawless  behavior  on  Apple's  part,  as well as by
          articles I have been reading in Info-World lately.  Apple  is now
          claiming rights  to any enhancements to the basic "look and feel"
          of the Mac interface created by  third party  software developers
          as well as launching new campaigns to prevent the "look and feel"
          of  the  mac  being  ported  to   other  architectures.     I  am
          particularly bothered  by the  idea that  any money which I might
          spend  on  software  might  end  up  in  the   coffers  of  these
          desperados.   I intend,  therefore, to  avoid purchasing software
          for which any kind of tribute  has  been  paid  to  Apple  by the
          developers or marketers.

               I would appreciate it if someone could compile and publish a
          list of software for which any form of compensation has been paid
          to Apple.  The latest report I've seen is that something like 150
          companies are involved in developing 8010  Star-like software and
          it figures to be a little bit hard to keep track of.

          Ted Holden,
          IMS