Steve Jobs Patent On iPhone Declared Invalid 247
An anonymous reader writes "Apple's most famous multitouch software patents are increasingly coming under invalidation pressure. First the rubber-banding patent and now a patent that Apple's own lawyers planned to introduce to a Chicago jury as 'the Jobs patent.' U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 covers a method for distinguishing vertical and horizontal gestures from diagonal movements based on an initial angle of movement. For example, everything up to a slant of 27 degrees would be considered vertical or horizontal, and everything else diagonal. The patent office now seems to think that Apple didn't invent the concept of 'heuristics' after all."
why was it even granted? (Score:5, Insightful)
Good riddance to this patent. It's yet another example of how the patent office will let just about anything slip by right now.
If putting ONE widget/idea/whatever on a machine is patentable, then putting multiple "things" on a machine is obvious. "Multitouch" is the same a "touch."
Another one: If putting wifi on a computer is patentable, then putting wifi on any computer-like device (tablets, phones, anything using a processor) is obvious.
The trolls are maybe less than half the problem. Letting these companies patent the kitchen sink just because there is a trivial change is a huge part. And they won't pay of examiners that actually know what they are doing because it means a pointy headed administrator will have to be paid less to do it.
Re:why was it even granted? (Score:4)
So, basically, the Patent Office simply "rubber stamps" this kind of thing and says "leave it to the courts"?
I wonder how these "patent examiners" live with their mediocrity? I'm envisioning Amadeus' Salieri...
Re:why was it even granted? (Score:5, Informative)
I wonder how these "patent examiners" live with their mediocrity? I'm envisioning Amadeus' Salieri...
In the past, like many government bodies, the Patent and Trademark Office was underfunded/understaffed.
This meant the Examiners didn't have enough time to do the job expected of them and meet their targets.
When Obama signed the America Invents Act, he changed the USA from a first-to-invent to a first-to-file system.
The law also changed how the Patent Office is funded. Previously, Congress got all the patent filing fees, then gave the PTO whatever they felt like.
Now, the PTO sets its own fees and any fees beyond the Congressional allocation are placed into escrow, instead of the general fund.
This means that Congress can no longer siphon off the PTO's fees for other projects and the PO can try to get the funds re-allocated later.
TLDR: The Patent Office was wildly underfunded/understaffed and the situation should improve sooner rather than later.
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While at the same time the courts trust the USPTO to have gotten it right.
Vicious circle.
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While at the same time the courts trust the USPTO to have gotten it right.
Vicious circle.
iVicious, iCircle, or just iNvalid.
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They are not letting it slip by.
They are deliberately turning a blind eye and rubber stamping bullshit on purpose.
Only 'preliminarily' invalid... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why those assholes take years to determine 'full' invalidity is beyond me.
Also, this patent show up Steve Jobs for the sociopath asshole that he was. Patenting a 'complete solution' is okay; patenting a small process or a way of operating a device is a fundamentally flawed approach to granting patents in the first place.
Meanwhile, millions have been lost fighting this useless patent, and HTC were idiots to settle, etc etc
Re:Only 'preliminarily' invalid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the patent office needs to be shut down.
Also, a complete rejection of all claims of a given patent is potentially more devastating than one affecting only some claims.
All of 20 claims mentioned in the patent and issued by the USTPO have been rejected. Does this not prove that the issuing office has no right to exist in the first place? Millions have been lost litigating this absurdity. .
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Apple would lose two iconic patents, but it would still have thousands of other patents, including hundreds of multitouch patents
More evidence that the patent office should suffer the 'thermonuclear' treatment that Steve Jobs spoke about. The two so called iconic patents have been completely rubbished; but hundreds more yet to come. So this Florian scourge is not just happy that millions have already been sunk to the lawyers and courts with 2 patents; he is sitting smug in his seat dreaming about how hundreds more such patents will keep him and so called 'patent-experts' like him, employed for life.
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Re:Only 'preliminarily' invalid... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why those assholes take years to determine 'full' invalidity is beyond me.
Also, this patent show up Steve Jobs for the sociopath asshole that he was. Patenting a 'complete solution' is okay; patenting a small process or a way of operating a device is a fundamentally flawed approach to granting patents in the first place.
Meanwhile, millions have been lost fighting this useless patent, and HTC were idiots to settle, etc etc
Make the holders of invalidated patents pay back their license fees.
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Usually settlement agreements require the bullied party to forfeit all rights to appeal or retry the case later.
So someone puts a sue-gun to your head, forces you to settle by threatening to bankrupt you if you don't, you are fucked.
Too Easy (Score:2, Funny)
Re: "...Apple didn't invent the concept of 'heuristics' after all".
Wrong. Apple not only invented heuristics, they also invented the US Patent Office. Then patented them both!
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Oh ya? Well, I invented Al Gore!
As a satisfied owner of Apple products... (Score:5, Insightful)
As a (up till now) satisfied owner of Apple products, all I can say is: Good.
Maybe if they lose enough of these stupid patents, they'll start thinking less about suing the world into oblivion and go back to doing what made them the company they are now: Making products that delight their customers.
From recent events, it's clear that Apple forgot that part somewhere along the line.
Re:As a satisfied owner of Apple products... (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed.
I'm no Apple fan at all. But there's no denying that they make/made a kind of irrisistible candy that no one could actually duplicate. It was stupid of them to think anyone else was a threat.
I see lots of things wrong with Apple's products. It's not free enough for me. It's terrific for other people though and that's more than enough to keep them in business though. The problem is they never seem to be satisfied when they have "enough."
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Apple will be in business some time yet, the immediate question, how much time do they have left to bask in the glory of being the world's most valuable company? Down $170 since the introduction of the iPhone 5.
Re:As a satisfied owner of Apple products... (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't that capitalism at its finest?
Utterly wrong. This is a crude, barbaric brand of nihilism.
Capitalism believes in the unbridled accumulation of wealth. But the neurotic psychopath Steve Jobs was not after wealth. In his own words:
A pure nuanced capitalist would've licensed the thousands of patents at a realistic price and made lots of money for himself and his shareholders. But Jobs wasn't a capitalist, he was a self-confessed copycat, an anarchist, nihilist and narcissist rolled into one.
As a VERY HAPPY owner of non-Apple products (Score:2)
All I can say is: GREAT! Lets have more of this.
A patent grants a monopoly on an invention for about 19 years. Steve Jobs not only stole other people's ideas; he applied for and got patents on some of them. And worse, he was using those patents not just as a defense; he wanted to destroy alternate models of computing.
In the computing world, the WALLED GARDEN, or JAIL approach followed by Apple is a minority. Or atleast it is, in the desktop space. Apple's phenomenal success in the tablet and phone space is
Re:As a satisfied owner of Apple products... (Score:4, Informative)
back to doing what made them the company they are now: Fucking over their customers based on the whim of a man child!
Some of us actually remember when Apple introduced the Apple II, the Lisa, the (original) Macintosh, iPads and iPhones rather than having to be told of these ancient things by our elders.
Each of those products represented a significant improvement in both quality and capabilities of consumer electronics. However, they didn't break much new ground. Their specialty was always making tech accessible to the mass market.
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Other than that, their engineering may have looked pretty, but it wasn't that hot. Though their software used to be pretty good, but I can't say that now, too
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How are sup $1000 prices making things available to the MASS market??
Remember, just like during Magrathea's heyday, no one is actually poor... At least, no one worth speaking of.
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Oh, Wait ...
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I can't decide if you're a troll or just plain stupid. Whether deliberately or not, you've managed to completely misread the story summary AND my post.
Let me reiterate for you:
-Apple's at risk of having their portfolio of absurd patents squashed.
-I said that this is a good thing.
Now, do you want to try this again? Maybe with a little less frothing at the mouth anti-Apple-ism and a little more reading comprehension?
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Apple's at risk of having their portfolio of absurd patents squashed.
According to the referenced article by Florian, Apple has hundreds of touch related patents and thousands of phone related patents. Squashing just 2 patents (only preliminary, not yet final) has already cost the market millions of dollars, and billions more yet to come. At this rate it will take decades or centuries for Apple's portfolio of absurd patents to be squashed.
In the meanwhile, the only ones who will survive are the cash-rich gi
This is the price of going "thermonuclear." (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently Steve never learned the actual lesson and message behind the movie "War Games." There are no winners in thermonuclear war. The only way to win is not to play.
I believe Jobs would have halted this as it got more ugly and apparent that Apple would lose. But since he died, there was no halting it and I suspect anyone at Apple who would want to "go against god's... err Jobs's will" would be branded a heretic or a traitor or something like that.
Apple is already losing the war over the touch screen smart phone. They are losing their intellectual property as well. They are causing harm to everyone in the industry and that includes the consumers whether they use Apple or Android or even something else.
The sooner this is concluded the better. Samsung needs a new trial. Apple's IP needs to be resolved as to what is valid and what isn't. It needs to be settled.
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I know that's what he told his biographer [v3.co.uk] but when it comes to taking his company down with it over it and essentially throwing it all away? I'm not so sure he was without some sense of reason.
Re:This is the price of going "thermonuclear." (Score:4, Informative)
There is no rational definition under which Apple is losing anything right now.
Umm, they lost $35B in market cap just a couple of days ago. That's something. Their stock is down about 23% from a couple of moths ago. They're losing something.
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He said rational definition. Markets can act irrationally. Not that the price going down is the irrational part, that the stock price was so high in the first place.
Re:This is the price of going "thermonuclear." (Score:5, Insightful)
Not gonna do all of that. I will, however invite you to review the market trends. The interest in iPad, iPod, iPhone have declined. Perhaps the market is saturated already. The stock market shows their value dropping. The intellectual property is also being lost as a direct result of their assaults. Their secret deals with other handset makers are being brought to light and weakening their cases against others.
Another point of failure is that while initially people were quite scared of Apple's thunder and initial success with their claims backed by doctored images and the like. They somehow won some injunctive relief along the way. But after much legal scrutiny, it is being shown that injunctive relief is inappropriate. Apple has yet to show irreparable harm which is a requirement for injunctive relief. If money can make them whole, then they are ineligible for injunctive relief.
Also, Apple did not invent the multi-touch anything. They didn't invent the ARM processor or invent the first devices using it... on the internet. We get it. Your a rabid, mouth foaming fan. But you really need to revisit your beliefs and balance them against the facts. It makes you look... well... you decide what it looks like when someone's beliefs lie in contrast to reality.
I think the most significant argument Apple has offered is "trade dress." But the problem with the argument they are making is that I don't think any device so far is similar enough to Apple's to be call infringing. I think Apple's devices are uniquely and unmistakably Apple's. And at least a judge in the UK courts agrees with me on that and has been successful at driving that point home. (I am sure you followed that story right? And their childish handling of the judge's orders?) So even in this, Apple is losing.
And the judges in cases being made all over the world are comparing notes and all that. Did you notice how the case of Samsung vs. Apple in Japan was getting discovery through the US courts? Apple thought it could file suits in various nations all over the world and collect different judgements, but it turns out every different loss it becoming a limitation on all of the other cases being filed everywhere else.
Apple started out big. They are no longer. Their cases are failing. Their market share is failing. The lines outside of Apple stores have all but disappeared.
I know you think that become I don't love Apple that I must hate Apple. I don't. I own and use a mac mini and my wife uses a mac pro for her web development and design work. I like the devices very much but I recognize their limitations. And the limitations of Apple's stuff are easy to recognize. I can simply do more in many cases than I can do more with other platforms than I can with Apple's. For example, can you connect an iPad to a bluetooth OBD2 module so you can get data from your car? I can with Linux, Android and Windows. Apple had decided that iHandheld devices can only use bluetooth for hands-free purposes. Why? I don't really care why. I just know that I can't do what I want to with Apple's gear. I can only do what is the intersection between what I want and what Apple wants. And that's a serious limitation.
Preliminary Invalidation, not end of the road. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is just a preliminary invalidation, not the end of the road for this patent. Many patents that are in this state survive (partially or wholly). This simply is the start of a process within the USPTO.
(Relevant Post taken from Mac Rumors discussion on this, this is not my post, but relevant for this discussion): http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=16445804&postcount=39 [macrumors.com]
Folks -- a preliminary invalidation is a non-event. Every patent you apply for is almost always initially rejected. It is the way the patent examiner pushes the burden back on the inventor. They reject, you appeal, they reject, you appeal, patent issues.
Typically the findings for an initial patent application are really weak and easy to overcome.
The re-examination process is the same way. The patent examiner places himself in the position of the person trying to shoot the patent down. That is because the other party to communicate with is the original inventor and obviously they are going to push for maintaining the application. So in order to do proper due diligence, the examiner needs to find reasons to refute the patent, and then there is an appeal, and then possibly another invalidation, and another appeal and then the patent likely holds in some form.
In short... nothing to see here... move along.
I don't know the actual percentage, but I'd bet 99.9% of all patents for which a reexamination was requested receive a preliminary invalidation. And I don't think the patent office can refuse to do a reexamination on a patent.
Full Discussion here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1503872&page=1 [macrumors.com]
Steve Jobs iNventions (Score:2)
Patent Reform (Score:2)
Re:I hear millions of ifans (Score:5, Funny)
you mean iGony
Re:I hear millions of ifans (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a sample:
_____________
Rubbish. Here’s our own government handing the keys to our future economic prosperity over to Korea wholesale.
The sound of the jobs being flushed down the toilet may be your own.
Jubei
Friday, December 7, 2012 - 5:53 pm Reply
_____________
Agreed. All this hard work from Apple invalidated giving the green light to slavishly copy them. The US is heading down irrelevancy by its own government.
khryshimself
Read more at Link [macdailynews.com]
Re:I hear millions of ifans (Score:5, Insightful)
The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming. Apple has made most of it's billions by utilizing slave labor in third world countries. Suddenly, they are worried about American jobs? The few jobs they are moving to America are nothing more than a publicity gambit, IMHO.
If I had a few tens of thousands of people employed directly or indirectly, and I decided to move several hundreds of those jobs to the United States, the total impact on anyone's economy would be negligible. And, the cost to me would have little impact. I would still have almost all my work performed by slave labor in third world countries.
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Not quite, but that's now starting to happen with some South Korean companies getting stuff built in a North Korean technology park. That's getting into true slave plantation working with the threat of death situations.
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Re:I hear millions of ifans (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't worry, you can keep slave jobs here in the U.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries [wikipedia.org]
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Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Funny)
They'll just re-apply using a 26.5 degree angle.
arctan(1/2) (Score:5, Informative)
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atan2 is a transcendental function (Score:4, Insightful)
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I'm not sure it matters, considering that the time to compute either one of those is going to be on the order of nanoseconds. This isn't a performance-critical function.
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Actually I'm in the UK. But there is a limit to when efficiency becomes worthwhile. I would not be surprised if we have not burned more energy fueling our brains to have this discussion than could be saved by changing the angle-finding algorithm, even summing every iDevice over its lifetime.
Re:atan2 is a transcendental function (Score:4, Informative)
"We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil", Donald Knuth
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, that's because it was denied when he applied for it in the first place.
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He maybe passed on to Nirvana and taken his rightful place next Allah, Buddha and Jesus and he may of done great things while is was a mortal, pre and post resurrection (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/11/09/250834/index.htm) and of course we'd all like to this that he was superhuman and invincible.
The truth is he was none of the above and was simply a mortal human being who's also done a lot of fucked up stupid ass things, this is one of them amongst many.
I'd say its better to l
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
IFF there is a god, I am pretty sure he/she/it is against hoarding cash like crazy.
So to find out whether there is a god, we just have to find out whether you are pretty sure he/she/it is against hoarding cash like crazy. :-)
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If there is A god, he's hoarding his universe.
On the contrary. He got bored and abandoned the experiment, like so many back of the fridge self contained ecosystems.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't think of anything great that Jobs did. He didn't invent or build anything, high level direction doesn't count for squat in my book. He was the best marketing droid/pitchman of recent history, but that just a shitty thing to be around for the rest of humanity.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Interesting)
From wikipeida: Steve Jobs "was assigned to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout. According to Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little specialized knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the fee evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari engineers, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line.[further explanation needed] According to Wozniak, Jobs told him that Atari gave them only $700 (instead of the offered $5,000), and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.[53] Wozniak did not learn about the actual bonus until ten years later, but said that if Jobs had told him about it and had said he needed the money, Wozniak would have given it to him."
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
That story really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
Woz: A brilliant engineer and a genuinely good person.
Jobs: A liar who will happily screw over even his closest friends to make a buck.
Which one does the media celebrate?
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one that most closely resembles all the other media personalities (make believe personalties). Now I wonder why?
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Informative)
That story really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?
Woz: A brilliant engineer and a genuinely good person.
Jobs: A liar who will happily screw over even his closest friends to make a buck.
Which one does the media celebrate?
Jobs did this to a lot of people, often to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. For awhile his trick was insisting that a written contract was unnecessary and would get in the way of friendly future business relationships, but that he'd guarantee if person X delivered Y, Jobs would compensate him with Z. Then when Y was delivered Jobs would say that there was no way he would have made such an arrangement and that X was up shit creek without a contract.
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Jan Pieterszoon Coen?
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:4, Insightful)
The highest market valued one, but certainly not the most valuable one.
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I built the most valuable company in human history.
Steve is that you?
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dang, Jobs who died richer than belief, and started a crusade against Google for "stealing" something Jobs never owned, gets seated next to Allah, Buddha and Jesus. But Einstein, Tesla, Maxwell, Newton, and countless others who actually contributed something useful to the world never get mentioned...
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Yeah, i bet he's really upset, too.
Oh wait, he's dead, shut up.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Funny)
the last mac I bought was not even a year old when saint jesus jobs deemed my very expensive computer unworthy of OSX... 8 years later someone figured out if you swap two bytes in ram you could run upto os 10.2 on the fucker.
So making a decision to fuck over customers cause he wanted basically the same machine in a dumb shit blue case is just one of a billion reasons that arrogant con-artist deserves a boot up his used car salesman ass, both in life and in death.
Course now that he is dead, he cant dazzle you morons with a new toy
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Funny)
8 years later someone figured out if you swap two bytes in ram you could run upto os 10.2 on the fucker.
That's probably what killed him.
(Too soon?)
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Informative)
That's probably what killed him.
(Too soon?)
Not soon enough! Jobs was a class 'A' douche-bag. He openly flaunted patents, stole IP (every "original" design he ever produced or commissioned was a direct copy of an existing item from another company, Baun suffered greatly from this http://www.idigitaltimes.com/data/images/full/2012/09/04/1223-braun-or-apple.jpg [idigitaltimes.com]) and bullied countless REAL innovators out of business. The only "multi-touch" he ever created was what he did to customers' wallets, or it would be if screwing idiots over was anything remotely original. Jobs also abandoned and denied paternity of his first child and summarily ended all philanthropic programs (that's charity if anyone is wondering) sponsored by Apple when he took control. The only thing he ever achieved personally was to make sure anyone wearing a turtle neck (skivvy in local parlance) look like even more of a douche. What did Jobs ever do to us? He screwed us. All of us. Even those who have never and will never buy any iShit suffer because of what he's done to the industry as a whole.
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More Multi-Touch Prior art [ted.com]
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Informative)
For a while Steve Jobs made his living peddling "blue boxes" that got free long distance calls by hacking the telco switching equipment. He even stole money from his friend Steve Wozniak. [gawker.com] And made a habit of parking in the handicap space. And smelled bad, which is some kind of crime against those in the immediate vicinity.
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Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Blue boxes were created to explore phone networks.
"Explore" as in getting free long distance phone calls. [wikipedia.org] Say, you would be an Apple employee, wouldn't you? Your attitude matches perfectly.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Informative)
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Steve Jobs merely tread upon a road well worn by those that came before, and he charged as much money as he could to those who weren't in the know.
Wow, that works both specifically and generally. I'm impressed with what you did there.
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You seem to be having difficulty understanding the notion of toll fraud. [wikipedia.org]
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However you label it, it's still fraud.
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I've said it before; The man was such a douche-bag that his coffin probably still smell smells springtime-fresh. We're going to be a very long time before the industry recovers from what he started with the latest run at the closed eco-system. Unfortunately, we're still on the downhill slope, as now Microsoft has a closed system for their wonderful new interface as well.
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Xbox was on some serious life support for quite a while after its birth. Nintendo seems to have done well in what they do so far.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Jobs fucked music so bad that I gave up. I was touring Europe, the states, and Asia lined up. After seeing what he did, there was no reason to continue. Unless I was stupid. I hope he burns forever... If I meet him in the afterlife, I will do anything I can to hurt him. BURN you miserable fuck
Burning in an afterlife is something that Christians (and possibly Muslims?) fear. Does Buddhism have a similar type of Hell in its afterlife? If not, then it is unlikely Jobs is burning anywhere in the cosmos. In fact, most likely, he is simply not existing in any conscious form any more, while his body decomposes in its grave, just like everyone else who is no longer among the living.
And for the record, wishing eternal torture on anyone for anything they may have done while alive (infinite punishment f
Re: What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:2)
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Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:4, Insightful)
the last mac I bought was not even a year old when saint jesus jobs deemed my very expensive computer unworthy of OSX... 8 years later someone figured out if you swap two bytes in ram you could run upto os 10.2 on the fucker.
So making a decision to fuck over customers cause he wanted basically the same machine in a dumb shit blue case is just one of a billion reasons that arrogant con-artist deserves a boot up his used car salesman ass, both in life and in death.
Course now that he is dead, he cant dazzle you morons with a new toy
What Mac? Give us the actual product code too.
A year old and unable to run OS X? So it was a PPC G3 or something? No, it must be older, since G3's could run OS X. PPC 603?
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Patents like this are incredibly stupid. It ostensibly doesn't matter who filed them, except that the higher profile the owner is, the more damage it does. The downfall of the patent should be celebrated.
Re:What wrong has Steve done to you? (Score:5, Funny)
Apple would have filed a patent on distinguishing right from wrong, except they never got that one to work.
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The downfall of this particular patent?
How about they just invalidate about 90% of the patents granted in the past 30 years. And, take ALL of that 90% from the computer technology industry. So much of it is prior art, or obvious based on prior art. So much more is just frivolous nonsense.
Most definitely invalidate all software patents, and methods that depend on software. Patents should only apply to tangible items, everything else is copyrightable, unless specifically excluded from copyright protection
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Probably not, as patent applications are higher now than 30 years ago.
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http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FtrDlDJ07bo/TlbCEzDMZoI/AAAAAAAAAGA/FqLGxHqAgm4/s1600/Slide2.JPG [blogspot.com]
From the chart things were pretty steady at around 100,000 per year from '64 till '82. Doubled to 200kpy by '94, and doubled again to 400kpy by 2005.
Or roughly put, the number of patents filed between '64 and '84 is close to the number filed between '05 and '10.
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That you have to go picking at him like this? Really, this is the new classy Slashdot? Picking on Steve Jobs? Really?
Yeah, LEAVE BRITNEY SPEARS ALONE! err.. make that steve jobs. LEAVE STEVE JOBS ALONE!
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First of all, I don't see anywhere in TFS where Steve Jobs is being bashed. I haven't read TFA.
But more importantly, if Steve Jobs were an honest and well-meaning engineer, don't you think they would want to commemorate him more with a branding of some functional product rather than a legal device which takes away others' ability to do the same?
The is the reason you're looking for. Steve Jobs was not a good person, and the public perception of him is largely that of an idol. In truth, he was a selfish, mist
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that was background for the article which was dated 7.12.12, which was based on office action from 3.12.12..(ddmmyy, it's just the smart notation, bitches).
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No "smart" notation uses 2 digit years.
Bitch.
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Or little-endian.
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Actually the international standard notation [cam.ac.uk] is YYYY-MM-DD.
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Someone probably already has a patent on that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Great!!! USPTO must stop accepting patent crap.
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
You're not part of the old boys club, so your patents would not be honored.
Re: (Score:2)
I can tell you that. The end will come about a year after their new headquarters is opened.
Re: (Score:2)
How do I patent shooting a big fat load up some hipsters nose after they smoke my pole because I have the latest iShiny? I call it the "Snowy Walrus"
Oh my, I could see someone opening a hipster artsy type shop and calling it that. That is almost as amusing when me and my little brother were talking recently about our hometown's music store (actual musical instruments and stuff like that) closing down. I commented that next time someone opens up such a place, if they are trying to think of a name for it, he should suggest "The Rusty Trombone".
Curse you, Urban Dictionary...