Apple Steps Into Patent Fight To Unnecessarily Silence A Little Girl

I know the character limit on the lead is a suggestion - but the lead on this article is HUGE compared to most. Kinda annoying to scroll past.

~Jeff

Reduced for your reading pleasure..

Hey now it's too shor

Have I ever mentioned I now have the same loathing for Apple as I have for Microsoft ? No?? Consider it done right here. But also for the two companies who are busily exerting their rights and thereby produce the possibility of destroying a little girl's ability to communicate. And at the centre of it all: patents and their use as a commercial weapon to prevent competition. Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe patents ? Especially where computers and IT are concerned. No ? Consider it done.

Some Android developers are working on creating an Open Source clone of the app for other platforms,... So there IS good in the world...

Yes, it was a little long.

On the other hand, the source is very up-front more concerned with getting his content out there, than in controlling access/asserting rights, so I was pretty sure he wouldn't mind me including the second paragraph.

(I don't think he'd mind if I'd used the whole thing, as long as it was properly linked and attributed, but I saw no point in going that far, and it probably would not be in keeping with LXer policy, either.)

A couple helpful tips from the LXer Story How-To:

# Lead - Provide a little blurb about the story to get readers' attention. Sometimes the story may have such a blurb, or you can use the first paragraph. You can also make up your own.

# Body - If this is an article you have written, and are publishing on LXer, you should paste the main body of your text here. If the article is published on another website, you should just leave the body section blank. Otherwise, make sure you section off your article. If your article is a lengthy one, consider adding sub-headings for readability.

You are all arguing about the length of the lead - what the h#ll about the outrageous and inhumane use of patent law?!!

This article should be plastered all over national media to alert the general public just how evil their Big Business Nation has become!

@albinard......Thankyou.

Personally, I don't give a **d@mn** about the lead. I most definitely DO care about a little girl and the constant, disgusting, execrable, unethical, amoral, power and greed-driven use of software and IT patents by enormous American based corporations, patent trolls and non-American corporations who have also learnt the legal route of the "American Way" is the best way to destroy a competitor. So !! What do we do about that little girl ? How do we help her ???

Develop, develop, develop. I haven't the faintest notion of how to program anything, but it seems to me that it would be time for an Android app expert to come up with something that can skirt the most vulnerable parts of the patents (IF, in fact, it's not just patent bluster). Autism has ballooned in the past few decades, and there is precious little parents can do by themselves to help.

The other thing I can do is post the Ars Technica article on the same topic here again, and see if the TOS Nazis strike again. Doing that now.

I'm having trouble seeing what's actually patentable, here.

Ridcully wrote:constant, disgusting, execrable, unethical, amoral, power and greed-driven

You forgot "slimy, filthy, pestilent, pox-ridden, smelly, uncultured, inconsiderate, backwards, pathetic, worthless, feckless, mendacious, philistine, ignoble, asinine, hateful, and self-centered..."

@gus3.......Well, done; if the little girl's plight was not so serious, I'd still be laughing. The problem though, is that those extra adjectives are all equally accurate in building a descriptive image of the mores of those big IT firms. I suspect Albinard is right.....a FOSS alternative, if one can be built, sounds like a plan. And publicise the disgusting attacks that have penalised a child for no other reason than, greed, .....and the rest follows.

Ars Technica is giving this situation the "Feature Story" treatment.

LXer appears to have decided this is more an "Apple story" or something, and didn't accept it as a story submission. (I guess one posting about the matter was deemed sufficient. I can understand that.) But in case anyone is interested in a fuller treatment, here's the link.

App Store enigma: the patent holder, the developer, and the voiceless child http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/app-store-enigma-...

It's right there in the Latest Newswire list. I know.because I approved it.

So it is -- my apologies!

(Been having trouble with my contact lenses, today -- I think my allergy meds have gone stale or something)

edit: I even clicked on the story directly above it. What can I say? I definitely goofed.

You can say "root beer floats for everyone!" That always fixes stuff.

Sorry, tc, that doesn't fix things, it only makes us feel better. Kind of like Windows updates.

Quoting:Kind of like Windows updates.

But root beer floats taste much better, and don't leave a bitter taste.

click here: http://make-everything-ok.com/

greetings, eMBee.

Aw, everything is OK now. And I have a root beer.