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Apple Patent: Translucency
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yoman said:
i hope they get it too. I hope M$ will have to rewrite that part of LongGoose, I mean Longhorn.
qubex said:
yes, you can. you have to pass a variable from page to page with the login and password. It is quite easy in cold fusion. Not all websites use cookies, many internal company websites will pass the login value as a variable from page to page. it is not very efficient, but quite possible.
dave
And yet think of how much money Amazon is unfairly making on OneClick royalties... the mind truly boggles.
Fiddling with Perl for five minutes: $0.50
Patent Application and Lawyer Fees: $5,000.00
Extorting money from everybody: Priceless!
Fiddling with Perl for five minutes: $0.50
Patent Application and Lawyer Fees: $5,000.00
Extorting money from everybody: Priceless!
Now, forgive me for being pedantic, but how does this process differ in a significant conceptual manner from that of a cookie? Isn't an SID a cookie by any other name? I think that for most purposes, SIDs and cookies are one and the same.sketchy said:
i_b_joshua said:
I think they are saying that after a certain period of time, the window "on top" is no longer regarded as being on top. That is, even if it is hierarchically first in a stack, after a period of time (and translucency) if you type or click in the body of the window the OS will assume you are actually interacting with whatever object is underneath that window.
qubex said:
You would allow your local software to sign you in automatically from a central account password vault like keychain on a page by page basis. The code writers would have compensated for this and made it transparent. As it is now cookies are doing all sorts of things you many not realize they do or would even want them to do if you were aware of it.
i_b_joshua said:
!@#!@!@!!@ someone beat me to it...
do any of you work for amazon? I highly doubt their one click system was written ten min. It is always easier to copy something that has been established then to create something from the ground up. And even when you think you are being original there is a good chance that you are plagiarizing anothers work.
qubex said:
Apple didn't STEAL it from Xerox. They bought it from them/was given to them. Xerox didn't think the technology had a future. It was all legal.
qubex said:
Totally different situation. Apple didn't steal the GUI from Xerox PARC as you wrongly suggest.
Steve Wozniak's comment on this:
"Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That's not stealing outright.*
Apple didn't get any stock from Microsoft. Nor was Apple dealt with openly in this area by Microsoft.* "
http://www.woz.org/letters/pirates/12.html
I'm not sure if I agree with that. They seem quite different to me. The only reason you'd normally use a session id on a complex site that needed some form of persistent state would be with a POST or GET alternative in case users have cookies turned off. I'm sure the patent for the cookie mentioned a small id file stored on the client's PC, I doubt it mentioned including it in HTML.qubex said:
That said, who cares. I agree with 123. If Cookies can be patented what's to stop someone patenting POST GET, HTTP etc etc and clamping everthing down.
i_b_joshua
Repost from another thread:
I have mixed feeling over this. On one hand I'm sick of Apple getting screwed over by MS in terms of copying their features. A few threads back I was defending MS's login screen as being the first to the market in terms of that "look" Diving further into the subject it was OS X 10.1 that came out with that look so it does look like MS copied Apple and its a forgone conclusion that this isn't the first time they did that at least in recent history. We all know about the original battle between MS and Apple.
However it works both ways. What if MS patented fast user switching? They had it first. Apple wouldn't have that feature right now. And that is the other end of the spectrum I'm feeling. Copying someone shouldn't be seen as a crime against humanity. It allows other OS's to adopt feature that in a litigious world would never make their way to that OS or if nothing else a company would most likely end up paying through the nose for a feature. Lets be real. If Apple had to pay MS to license fast user switching in all likelihood they would say screw that and we'd have never seen it.
I'm all for giving a company credit for a feature but not at the cost of stifling innovation. What if a company had a new and innovative method of using fast user switching but couldn't use it because they couldn't afford it?
No I don't think companies should be allowed to patent software techniques or if nothing else have a limited patent. Say 5 years?
Apparently Germany and I feel the same way:
Germany decides not to support the EC on software patents
I have mixed feeling over this. On one hand I'm sick of Apple getting screwed over by MS in terms of copying their features. A few threads back I was defending MS's login screen as being the first to the market in terms of that "look" Diving further into the subject it was OS X 10.1 that came out with that look so it does look like MS copied Apple and its a forgone conclusion that this isn't the first time they did that at least in recent history. We all know about the original battle between MS and Apple.
However it works both ways. What if MS patented fast user switching? They had it first. Apple wouldn't have that feature right now. And that is the other end of the spectrum I'm feeling. Copying someone shouldn't be seen as a crime against humanity. It allows other OS's to adopt feature that in a litigious world would never make their way to that OS or if nothing else a company would most likely end up paying through the nose for a feature. Lets be real. If Apple had to pay MS to license fast user switching in all likelihood they would say screw that and we'd have never seen it.
I'm all for giving a company credit for a feature but not at the cost of stifling innovation. What if a company had a new and innovative method of using fast user switching but couldn't use it because they couldn't afford it?
No I don't think companies should be allowed to patent software techniques or if nothing else have a limited patent. Say 5 years?
Apparently Germany and I feel the same way:
Germany decides not to support the EC on software patents
123 said:
But they still thought of it and patented it. Patents and copyrights are to help people that do creative things to be able to do more creative things for our benefit as per the constitution. Though copyrighting has gotten totally out of hand, patents are still very time limited in comparison and a just reward for creativity. If you try and charge too much for your patent people will just do something else and wait your patent out if it has the legs for it.
qubex said:
You've read the full patent and claims then? The little blurb attached to the lead article on this thread is hardly enough to claim that prior art exists...
Actually, from the blurb, most of us can't figure out what it's even describing... It's almost certainly from the opening text of the patent (perhaps a preferred embodiment) and not from the claims themselves.
Thanks Mullmann, but I still don't see the logic. Why would you have a window in the foreground that you weren't using?mullmann said:
i_b_joshua
TranceMin said:
Patents cut both ways. If there is some concept or mechanism you want to use for your product and someone else has a patent to it, you have to either:
1) Pay some kind of licensing fee to the patent owner and use it
2) Come up with something on your own.
I would say option two clearly does NOT discourage innovation. Neither option is ALWAYS the correct course of action in every situation, but to make a blanket statement that basically "all software patents are bad" ignores the realities of what it takes to develop and successfuly sell a product. I think most successful companies that develop products (not just software related) are probably good at knowing which option (of the ones above) to take given the situation. They understand that in some cases it may be better for them in the long term to just pay a fee and use someone else's idea. They also do not hesitate to patent their own ideas when they have the opportunity so they can have a chance to be at the other end of that equation
Personally speaking, I think that's nice but nothing that special. To me, it's just a cosmetic thing to make the new OS more attractive. But, well, it's cool anyway.
But, if you want to see a truly innovative GUI, take a look at this:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details.html
But, if you want to see a truly innovative GUI, take a look at this:
http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details.html
qubex said:
Yes you can, if the website is dynamic, like a forum and most online stores these days.
You just have to add something like "&userid=2845&sessionid=284f8ac823ef" to each URL and the functions to process these, which isn't hard in any way. You'd encode the IP address into the session id somehow as well for security reasons. It also makes logfile analysis *much* more powerful, you can see where a single user has browsed just by grepping their userid in the logfile!
Heh
mullmann said:
This seems like an idea that sounds cooler than it would actually be in practice. First off, the notion of slowly "fading" a window with translucency would be nice eye candy, but if at some point the window actually changes state from active to non-active, such a gradual change in translucency won't provide a clear cue as to when that point is reached. In other words, the window can be in one of two states, but the translucency change is continuous, and doesn't map directly to the dichotomous window state. (I suppose that the translucency maps to something like "window age", but that information isn't all that critical -- what matters is whether the window is topmost or not.)
More fundamentally, I think the notion of fundamental aspects of the UI changing over time without user input runs contrary to most good UI principles, and user expectations. Things shouldn't change their functionality unless the user specifies they should.
It's good to know that the past lies in the past and that all is forgiven. I'm sure Apple is on the verge of returning the monies it recieved as settlements from those it sued. (This is a polite way of saying your line of argument is exceptionally weak.)Kid Red said:
Make no mistake, I'm as avid an Apple user as anybody else on this forum. But just because I like their products, and just because overall I consider Apple Inc. to be a reasonably good corporate citizen, does not mean I condone every action they take - especially when I consider those actions to be morally misguided and even deceitful.
qubex said:
cookies are files stored on a local machine containing information pertaining to infomation entered into a website. Local machine is the key idea of the patent. A seperate patent would need to be filed to own variables passed through a server.
And you main argument -- patents restrict innovation. Why should we have patents for anything then? No one would develop software if they knew anyone could freely copy it. companies would stop developing processors if they knew that the competition could blatently copy it.
Having something new or unique generates profit, all companies strive for profit. Patents create competitive advantages, knowing that competition cannot copy designs without repercussions encourages companies to compete, thus innovate.
Why would nVida build a new card to compete with ATI if ATI can just carbon copy the nVida card when it comes out?
qubex said:
IIRC the Apple/MS suit wasn't about the concept of a GUI-- it was that MS was appropriating the MacOS "look and feel" which is a much more nuanced but broader ranging charge.
The argument wasn't that Windows had a mouse and clicked on things, it was how that similar functionality was implemented. To the extent that MacOS differed from the Xerox Smalltalk interface, they had a unique implementation. To the extent that Windows reproduced the MacOS interface, they were copying the Mac "look and feel".
As with the arguments about how there is prior art defeating the patent in question here, you'd have to look at the actual court documents to determine what Apple was claiming.
Hattig said:Yes you can, if the website is dynamic, like a forum and most online stores these days.
You just have to add something like "&userid=2845&sessionid=284f8ac823ef" to each URL and the functions to process these, which isn't hard in any way. You'd encode the IP address into the session id somehow as well for security reasons. It also makes logfile analysis *much* more powerful, you can see where a single user has browsed just by grepping their userid in the logfile!
Heh
Sure that can easily be done without cookies, but that's not what cookies are primarily used for..
A cookie is a file stored on the client's computer that holds important information specific to that user on a specific website. So, for example, if I register today at Amazon, and log in to my account, Amazon will place a cookie on my hd, so when I visit amazon.com again tomorrow, I will be logged in automatically, without having to re-enter my password.
The method described in the above post only works when you are shifting from page to page when staying in a specific website. If you close that browser window, and open it again, you'll still have to login, cause there is no way the browser knows your login & pass without the use of cookies
Klaus