Apple Patents Unlocking Touchscreen

[Renegade]

Here we go yet again... 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15461732

Apple has been granted a patent on unlocking a smartphone or tablet using a touchscreen gesture.

The application, which was filed in June 2009, covers a range of commonly used techniques including swiping and pattern entry.

As well as on the iPhone and iPad, such systems are built into Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.

I utterly fail to understand how that could be patented. There's nothing novel or innovative about it. Unlocking a system is a pretty standard thing, and the main input method on a touchscreen device is the touchscreen and finger. Gestures are old. Opera has used them since forever and a day.

This is the kind of lunacy that makes me wonder if I'm really human, and if I share the same DNA as the <insert profanity here /> that passed this patent.

[zridling]

Apple will soon be nothing more than a lawsuit factory (wait, it already is!). And they still attack people for their unlawful interpretation of their Apple trademark. This is the same company who used the Beatles' record label name and is now running around the entire globe suing anyone using any form of apple logo in their business. Here's the German cafe story from this week:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111022/01124516464/apple-continues-to-insist-only-it-can-use-apple-logo-threatens-small-german-cafe.shtml

[Jibz]

[Renegade]

(see attachment in previous post)

BWAHAHAHAHAHA~!

Nice one! Love it!

Apple will soon be nothing more than a lawsuit factory (wait, it already is!). And they still attack people for their unlawful interpretation of their Apple trademark. This is the same company who used the Beatles' record label name and is now running around the entire globe suing anyone using any form of apple logo in their business. Here's the German cafe story from this week:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111022/01124516464/apple-continues-to-insist-only-it-can-use-apple-logo-threatens-small-german-cafe.shtml

Out. Of. Control.

This is so far beyond idiotic...

Please.. God... Strike all the lawyers in the world dead and deliver us from evil. Amen.

[Stoic Joker]

(see attachment in previous post)

Absolutely BRILLIANT! 

[IainB]

I love the picture of the sliding bolt. Very apposite.   

What Apple have done here is simply characteristic of exactly the sort of thing that they should be doing as a legal corporate identity which has been set up under, and is operating according to the statutes/laws of the US. They can not do otherwise without breaching their legal obligations to stockholders to ensure that they maximise corporate profit.
The lawyers didn't create this situation, they are just feeding off of it - that's their role and legal duty.
We created it. We must accept responsibility for fixing it, if we don't like what we have created. The trouble is, what we have created has a will of its own.

Like I have said elsewhere - in the context of Coca Cola Corp.:

And don't be too hard on Coca Cola.
We created that.
[...Inset here the name of any Corporation or legal corporate entity...] is just another psychopathic Frankenstinian monster our society has created. It's a very efficient psychopath too. So, it should not surprise us to find that [Corporation name] are apparently doing something like [...insert here any reprehensible beaviour, death caused, or damage done by a corporation...]. Those actions would be typically characteristic of an efficient psychopathic corporation.

If you want to fix it, then fix the legal system that created it, not the creation itself - i.e., address the causal problem rather than the symptomatic problem. Meanwhile, that system continues to robotically create and support these licenced psychopathic legal entities, and teaches our society to value them highly as "successful corporations".

If you watched the movie "The Corporation", then you would have seen towards the end that they show how whole communities have daringly banded together to control these monsters in their midst, and make them less harmful and more beneficial to the community, humans and the environment.

[Renegade]

What Apple have done here is simply characteristic of exactly the sort of thing that they should be doing as a legal corporate identity which has been set up under, and is operating according to the statutes/laws of the US. They can not do otherwise without breaching their legal obligations to stockholders to ensure that they maximise corporate profit.
The lawyers didn't create this situation, they are just feeding off of it - that's their role and legal duty.
We created it. We must accept responsibility for fixing it, if we don't like what we have created. The trouble is, what we have created has a will of its own.

I'm on board there with much of the general sentiment, but I wouldn't let lawyers off the hook so easily. They're the front-line troops that have enabled the entire mess. They're the backbone of the broken system.

For too long people have dismissed dissent as "craziness", but the long term insanity is now becoming apparent. In a lot of ways, it's vindication for the tinfoil-hat community.

+1 for "The Corporation" - Bought the DVD a while back. It's a great documentary.

[zridling]

All the more reason the public should have a voice and vote on patents before they're approved. I figure Jobs probably submitted 10,000 more patents before he died, among them "air," and "finger."

[IainB]

I'm on board there with much of the general sentiment, but I wouldn't let lawyers off the hook so easily. They're the front-line troops that have enabled the entire mess. They're the backbone of the broken system.

What I wrote:

The lawyers didn't create this situation, they are just feeding off of it - that's their role and legal duty.

It may be true that "They're the backbone of the broken system., but they didn't make it broken - the lawmakers did that.

If you have watched the film The Corporation - and I agree, I think it's a great documentary too - then you can probably appreciate the distinction between the lawmakers and the lawyers:

The lawmakers (e.g., such as the senate members in the US, or members of parliament in the UK) would have been the ones who enacted the laws/statutes that enable a corporation to exist as a legal psychopathic person and with more rights than an individual person. They may have done this as a result of lobbying by lawyers and others representing corporations.

The lawyers are independent agents and will accept the role of representative in a court of law for whoever wishes to pay them for the representation (i.e., the client). The role of lawyer must be focussed on what is best for the legal person (client) being represented, regardless of how preposterous or hopeless or hostile to another (e.g., as in divorce or patent infringement claims) the client's position may seem at first sight. It has to be the adoption of a highly subjective/biased position in favour of the client. For this, good lawyers can often command what are arguably well-deserved and high fees.

Mind you, I'm not sure how it works in the US, but, in the UK where the lawyers are involved in (say) a dispute over a contract, then the practice of Case Law mandates that the court (and the judge) considers previous cases of a same/similar type, to see what precedent (ruling) was set, and follow the precedent in that case. If the precedent does not suit his client's case (i.e., he would lose the case), then a good lawyer will seek to differentiate the precedent case from his client's case. If this ploy is successful, then a new ruling will be made, and this becomes part of Case Law. I think this is the limited extent to which a lawyer might be directly involved in the actual creation of a new law.

Having said this, I should add that what I sometimes personally think of lawyers is probably unprintable.    

[IainB]

10,000 more patents before he died, among them "air," and "finger."

ROTFL. This exactly expresses my own sentiments on the matter. 
Thankyou for putting it so well. 

[Renegade]

@IainB - Got it. I sort of included lawmakers in the same group as lawyers as many/most are lawyers. Your distinction is better though. Still, at best it's a Nuremberg-type defense when it comes to their guilt.

[IainB]

...it's a Nuremberg-type defense when it comes to their guilt.

Wow, that's a bit harsh isn't it?
I mean, the Nazis were tried at Nuremberg for war crimes committed against humanity. The crimes they committed were variously - for example - in the shape of mass executions, genocide, and eugenics. I'm not sure how many Nazis were tried in each category - I think quite a few of them escaped trial by fleeing to Argentina, and going incognito elsewhere. Mind you, of the latter, at least one of them brazened it out in public office - that was Kurt Waldheim as the fourth Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1972 to 1981, and the ninth President of Austria, from 1986 to 1992. This speaks volumes about the Austrians.

But the lawyers never did anything like that! Some people might say that lawyers have effectively aided/abetted legalised theft, but that would arguably be the worst they have done in the course of "doing their duty". The Nazis theft was much worse, via State-authorised theft of property (e.g., appropriating the artworks, gold, diamonds and anything else of value from the Jews) - and they stole from the corpses (e.g., the gold fillings from the corpses of people massacred in the death camps). Then they transferred a great deal - if not the bulk - of that stolen wealth to anonymous Swiss bank accounts, and the Swiss bankers never let on until it was leaked in the '80s (I think it was then), and they still keep that wealth locked up in their coffers - probably because they have to as it is the foundation of their economy. That all speaks volumes about the Swiss - and bankers in general.

Equating the lawyers with Nazis? Meh. Even in jest that is not only grossly unfair to lawyers, but also it ameliorates the perceived heinousness of the Nazi's crimes against humanity - which latter should never be forgotten, otherwise we will forget the lessons of history.

This kind of Nazi comparison was the sort of thing that sparked off "Godwin's Law":

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

[attach]

[Renegade]

...it's a Nuremberg-type defense when it comes to their guilt.

Wow, that's a bit harsh isn't it?

...

This kind of Nazi comparison was the sort of thing that sparked off "Godwin's Law":

It's not a Nazi comparison. It's a legal defense. "I was just following orders." I think that's pretty accurate. i.e. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

I don't think it's harsh at all.

I think we all know that I can be much harsher than just that.

Shame on me...

This rant is so horribly vicious, that I can't even link to it properly: 24504.msg223184#msg223184

[IainB]

I think we all know that I can be much harsher than just that.

Welll,  I followed your link and read your comment with interest. I think I had read it before and perceived it as quite a good rant.
I also thought that you were just blasting off about the symptoms of Apple being YAP (Yet Another Psychopath).
I think most people would probably tend to admit that they (Apple) ARE (or seem to be) very good in that role.

[40hz]

I know another gesture.

I'd like to share it with Apple.

[Renegade]

I know another gesture.

I'd like to share it with Apple.

Hahahahahaha~!

Gotta love the Trudeau salute~!

(Thanks for the laugh!)