Another weird thing about those books: great as they are (Pirsig's was my instinctive answer to the question posed) both of their sequels (Lila, Te of Piglet) are quite terrible, dull and to be avoided. For some reason they both lapse into a similar mode of complaining about the modern world, feminism, etc, etc...

;) +1 insightful!
Not entirely true, though: people like Karim Rashid and Philippe Starck are the real high-priests. SJ did believe that the user experience wins over everything else - it's just he also believed in polling a user-group of precisely 1 person.

You're right: the summary dramatically undersells what Bill Moggridge achieved: he was a passionate believer that the experience of a product was the true definition of success (not the look or even the functionality), and that only you could only design great products by deeply understanding your users. Essentially, he took design out of the hands of the 'high-priests' of taste and aesthetics, and put the power back in the hands of the users.

This drove him to co-found IDEO (full disclosure - I'm an ex-employee), which gave him the leverage take interaction design (a term he invented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design#History) beyond GUI's to all products and services, and to define a lot of what matters most about design today.

Well, if you're willing to trust uncited Wiki-facts, Carl Sagan negotiated with the rights-holders specifically to get permission for playing the pieces of music copyright-free outside of the solar system. It's a cool work-around: of course pretty much any recorded performance has copyright restrictions, but Carl Sagan figured the disk itself wasn't intended to be played by any human so legally he just needed rights outside some geographically restricted zone (say, the entire solar system) to have all the rights he needed to create potentially the widest distribution mixtape of all time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record

We're arguing across each other: You're arguing about about what Apple will do with this patent, based on past example, and I'm arguing that the patent, as filed, is entirely reasonable and valid. Both can be true.

Feel free to take the last word...

I think you're arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to patent their designs because they are too simple, right? Their 'efficiency' is the problem. I can't imagine how you'd decide whose designs are 'complex enough' to be worthy of protection.

I've looked at this patent 3 times and I don't see how you decided that Apple are doing what you say they are: it's honestly just a set of pictures of their product. There's no 'claims'. In the text they describe it as "an ornamental design". I think you're saying that it's not ornamental because it's too simple, but what can be done about that? Disallow simple design from any protection? Force Apple to add curlicues?

At the end of the day, the decisions on infringement are made by a court based on whether it would cause confusion with customers. On the issue of wedge-shaped computers, there is plenty of prior art (passim) that means this is not a 'wedge-shaped' land-grab, and wouldn't work if it was. Design patents do not include prior art searches, AFAIK.

If you take a look at the linked patent, you'll see it is essentially nothing but pictures of the MacBook Air, with no commentary on what features are/aren't protected. You'd expect Apple to do nothing less, and they aren't make any specific claims about edges/corners/wedges. Just 'something that looks like this'.

Design patents are (by intent) subjective. If you came up with a soft-drink with a logo in your hand-writing, there has to be a process to decide if you were deliberately trying to mislead people into thinking it was Coca-cola, but we don't want rules defining what your hand-writing is supposed to look like. So Coca-cola just submit pictures of the logo, and we figure the rest out later.

If your objection is the existence of design patents, then fair enough. A judge taking a point of view on 'generic elements' is healthy and normal part of the process.

This is a DESIGN patent, not a UTILITY patent. It protects a very specific appearance of a thing. Essentially, if you made something similar enough to this that it could be easily confused by a customer, you infringe.

You can make all the wedge-shaped laptops you like. Apple is not pretending to ANYONE that they "invented" wedge shaped computers.

We do this EVERY time a design patent comes up on Slashdot. Editors: please take 15 mins to learn the difference between design and utility patents if you're going to persist in posting up flamebait articles on the topic.

Your example could hardly better contradict your point:
Universal healthcare in the UK (the NHS) was implemented nationwide in about 3 years, covering 50million people with comprehensive and free healthcare (give or take a modest prescription fee at the time). It replaced a complex network of private, state (county) and charity organizations, and came up against bitter opposition from the vested interests in private healthcare at the time. It has its limitation, but public support for it is consistently very strong.

I appreciate your point on IT systems is probably true, and this project is clearly a disaster - but expanding it to general provision of healthcare ignores every functional single-payer system in the world.

"Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day"

You can tell the Roadster served it's purpose because "Besides building its own cars, Tesla has a business partnership with Toyota Motor Co (TM) to produce a plug-in electric version of the RAV4 SUV and a deal with Daimler (DDAIF) to provide batteries for an electric version of the Smart ForTwo minicar."

That's Toyota, developer of the Prius, admitting that Tesla have technology and know-how that they need. That's what the Roadster bought Tesla.

Well, I don't think anyone knows yet, but the 'medication schedule' reference probably refers to this comment hanging off this Yahoo News article that I personally found pretty convincing (sorry - I don't know how to link to the comment directly, but it's from 'John')
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110329/ts_yblog_thelookout/fbi-asks-public-for-help-breaking-encrypted-notes-tied-to-1999-murder#mwpphu-container

I checked out the reference (since removed, oddly) that people who are bipolar often keep long-term records of medication schedules and effects (page 2) and historic record of major 'episodes' (page 1) so that they can use them to try and build a personalized medication schedule over time on a bipolar support forum, and it checks out. It's also true that people with bipolar disorder are encouraged to keep them secret, and so would be like to keep coded versions of these notes in case they were found.

----
(from the comment - 'John')

It is a shorthand log of historic episodes in the mid seventies on (page 1, actually written second, but numbered one to keep events in chrono order) and medications taken with the effects listed. The key at the end is day week month year morning day latenight. It was started on page 2 and then page 1 was added as a log of the earlier childhood which is the basis for diagnosis and the "page 2" is indepth records of changes in meds. The 3 month periods are normal with bipolar episodes in the 4th QTR (September through December in the seventies. These seasons suggest seasonal disorder.

ALPNTE GLSE-SE ERTE

A: Latenight, Phenergan, taken in evening G: Latenight Serenace/Seroquel or Seroquel/Serenace Extended Release Taken Evening

VLSE MTSE-CTSE-WSE-FRTSE
V: Late Serenace Morning take Serenace

On page 1 are lists of manic episodes

(FLRSEPRSEONDE71NCBE)

From late september really severe episode on December 1971: No cause before episode
(CDNSEPRSEONSF/DE74NCBE)

Chronic Depression in September, really severe episode on the start of December in 1974, no cause before episode

26MLSE74SPRKSE29KENOSOLE173R7RSE

2x 6mg Serenace in 1974 or 2x 600mg Seroquel in 1974
99-84.B2UNEPLSENCRSEAOLTSENSKSENRSE

1999 through 1988
NSREOUSEPUTSEWLDUCBE(3XORL)

D-W-M-YH/MD/IL XDRLX
Day weekday month year: morning day or latenight

--- (further comment from 'John')
I'm bipolar and we are told to keep such logs in short-hand because, though we are protected by laws, we are told to stay in the closet, because so many violent crimes are caused by bipolars. If we just came out of the closet, people might realize that those of us who are medicated are fully functional and safe. And we are 2 to 10 % of the population, possibly from recent environmental and stress related aggrevators. But it does take very detailed traking to get our medication right and knowing the triggers is key: week days might relate to work triggers, months to seasonal disorder and times of day are critical to knowing when to take meds and how much. The nature of this note suggests that he is having an episode and is thinking faster than he can write.

...and I say thank all that's holy for that. Anything that keeps airplanes as the one place that I'm not going to be bothered by "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?" or disturbingly personal/intimate conversations of total strangers is entirely welcome to me. Give me one refuge from connectivity, please, just one.

Someone mod this up: I noticed this too and it pretty much means it has to be a fake.