“If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “no” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important thing I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life, because almost everything–all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure–these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
– Steve Jobs (stanford talk)
Right.
Apple finally succedeed to obtain the approval for the “dock” patent.
While, on a class scale, they’re still very far from the big champions, I believe this patent could bring them a pretty good score 
.
This is just yet another reminder of how non-sense the software patents are (actually, on how stupid are all of them) and why we should not allow them in Europe (as I understand, most of europe is still free from the plague).
On a side note, I believe Apple plays usually far worse than Microsoft and, we’re still lucky to have Microsoft as a global OS monopolist rather than Apple.
As for Ubuntu, I guess Cairo Dock and similar software have to be moved to Multiverse or Medibuntu immediately, as a consequence.
Would you prefer to check better, here’s the link to the sucky patent.
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” And I have always wished that for myself, and now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Thank you all, very much.
– Steve Jobs (stanford talk)
Thank you Steve.
ps: digg it.
Forgot: I am not a “dock” user myself.
I saw on youtube the Steve Jobs’s stanford talk, and i loved it!
I read about this on slashdot and people there kept wondering about the strange patent Apple filed. AWN and Cairo Dock probably won’t be affected by this as Apple was so uncommonly specific that it apparently only protects the Apple Dock from 1:1 copies.
Part of the specs are for example the _exact_ relations in size.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,434,177.PN.&OS=PN/7,434,177&RS=PN/7,434,177
I think we’re pretty safe on this one.
On a side note, I’m not a very big Apple fan myself but we shouldn’t forget about their OpenSource contributions of the last couple of years.
http://developer.apple.com/opensource/index.html
So far the folks on the debian-legal list serve don’t see much of a threat: http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2008/10/msg00006.html
From a response to that post:
“FWIW, the patent is more about zooming docks like the OSX one than plain
docks. I don’t know how the different claims are to be understood
individually, but some are detailing the zoom factors with algebraic
formulas.
IANAL, but patents are not supposed to “protect” ideas, but
implementations. It is at least true in the hardware industry. It often
happens that companies circumvent competitor patents by implementing the
same idea in another way, sometimes even filing a patent for the new
implementation.
Maybe different implementations of the same idea would be fine.”
If it wasn’t that sad about global patent systems, I’d probably laugh at them (patenting the Dock… M$ once tried to get one for the double click
)
[...] Forenza: Idiotic Apple. Another cross post from the Ubuntu Weblogs, but Apple has received a patent for their dock. AWN [...]
I’ve always found the way the patent system of the USA works. This really makes it worse. What a non-sense. Lets see if Emerald can get a patent on window borders with opacity!
patenting the Dock… M$ once tried to get one for the double click
M…soft actually got one patent for their ribbon interface – Office 2k7 – not that I’m using it anyhow.