Why are you posting about this on Slashdot when you could be out making your fortune. Go get yourself an Android license and start cranking out $150 tablets. You're going to make a killing!

Well, why are you still here?

Trademark - a distinctive sign or indicator used by an individual, business organization, or other legal entity to identify that the products or services to consumers with which the trademark appears originate from a unique source, and to distinguish its products or services from those of other entities.

Trade dress - characteristics of the visual appearance of a product or its packaging (or even the design of a building) that signify the source of the product to consumers.

Design patent - a patent granted on the ornamental design of a functional item. Design patents are a type of industrial design right. Ornamental designs of jewelry, furniture, beverage containers (see Fig. 1) and computer icons are examples of objects that are covered by design patents.

Trademark is the least correct of the three in this case.

Then they should stop calling it open.

Here is the source to most of OS X (including the most recent version which was released mere weeks ago:) http://www.opensource.apple.com/

The AOSP is no more open than, and in some ways arguably more closed than Apple's OS, and yet Google is somehow the darling of the open source world.

Vouchers are equivalent to dismantling public education. Since every family will have a voucher worth $X the school with the best reputation will simply charge $2X. The well off parents will put their kids in that school, leaving the not so well off and poor for the bad schools. You may as well have not bothered with the vouchers in the first place. Not to mention that I want no part of a system that takes my tax dollars and sends them to religious schools that fill kids' heads up with dogmatic nonsense.

The goal of public education is not to reinforce the societal class system. It's not even to 'train' kids for their 'careers'. The goal of public education is to help democracy by ensuring a well informed citizenry. It's failing at that objective but that *is* the objective. Dismantling public education would guarantee failure indefinitely.

Unfortunately it isn't you whose rights are being violated because you don't have a constitutionally guaranteed right to fly on Delta's or American's planes. It is they whose rights are being abridged by the government making it mandatory on them to require that their passengers be screened by the TSA. And they aren't likely to sue to defend their rights. What we need is some airline to step up and refuse the TSA and then challenge it all the way up when they get shut down for it.

You don't understand? Apple is Slashdot's lesser Satan (Microsoft is the Great Satan around here.) Slashdot's willing to give airtime to any implausible FUD if it fits the prevailing narrative.

The environment with HTML widget tiles reminds of OS X's Dashboard. You pop into it to check the weather or movie times and then drop back to the traditional desktop to do real work.

It's interesting that you chose those 2 examples because I would assert that their success is due to similar reasons. They both benefitted by filling a void neglected by the top competitor. In Firefox's case Microsoft had allowed IE to languish. In Android's case Apple was stuck in an exclusivity deal with AT&T and Android was something that the other networks could run against the iPhone.

It's available for purchase in stores. It's either finished or people are getting ripped off.

Yes, of course. If it had been Android tablets or Linux netbooks that would've just made good practical sense to Slashdot.

It's as open as WebM (arguably more open - it's been accepted by a standards body), yet WebM is praised up and down Slashdot precisely for its supposed openness.

Could you define the word "open" so that it only applies to WebM and not OOXML?

I don't know what Microsoft would say, but I bet Vimeo would be thrilled.

Weren't those exactly the reasons Jobs gave?

Do you seriously believe that unregulated markets are immune to manipulation? My god, man! What's the free market price on a bushel of corn in Mogadishu this time of year?

The accomplishments you speak of aren't attributable to Islam any more than the Renaissance is attributable to Christianity.