[Gllug] OUTRAGEOUS Apple patent for solar voltaic covered computer cases

[M.Blackmore]

On Wed, 2008-05-28 at 17:42 +0100, Ryan Cartwright wrote:

> 
> Really? It didn't show ;o)


You should see me when I am in a REALLY bad mood! Seriously ... grew up
in the toughest part of the toughest steeltown in Canada in a single
parent family, no social security or health services then, and only got
educated in mid 20s. The middle class veneer can be surprisingly thin.
You can get the boy out of the slum but not the slum out of the boy. One
fights back or one is prey - the tricky bit is being moral and not being
a predator. I dedicated my life to social justice politics so I suppose
you could call me a third outcome - retaliator (e.g spent 14 years in
*real* grass roots community politics in Brixton in 70s and 80s, but no
gentle pastures there). 

But the opiates and other medications I need to keep me going do create
a problem of intemperance and wandering coupled with a high level of
articulacy and very fast touchtyping - not a good combination for the
most succinct of list contributions, alas. So cut me a bit of slack
guys, sometimes I'm labouring under a heavy load of nasty
problems :-( and heavy medications just to keep enough steam up to look
after young kids.

But also seriously, Apple - they've patented stuff I've been in talks in
pubs and email what-ifs dating back to the mid 80s and my time with 3rd
world technology development - people were talking about first PVs and
Baylis generators, then thin film stuff plastered all over mobile
electronic equipment and in monitor display covers over 10 years ago
when organic flexible stuff was just beginning to be developed (now
reaching maturity, they said it would take a decade or more to reach
commercial production, and that was accurate). Same thing with cases
entirely made of OLDP membranes in a matrix.

Its a "Pirate Patent" just like biopiracy of plant seeds by US firms -
blatant stealing of the "commons" which has been talked about for 20-25
or more years! 

And free computers with free and open designs and low costs were
*always* part of the free software movement scenario - I was well into
my late 30s when Stallman kicked the whole thing off and around places
like Greenet and BBS's we were talking about the need to get out of
proprietary hardware design as an extension of the software movement, to
create an electronic commons (within the resource of the cash starved
3rd world movement in which I worked for from time to time in the 70s
and 80s). 

So thats the connection with free software - an OVERALL electronic free
commons available to anyone (check out MIT Fab Lab whilst you are about
it). 

They've just enclosed the common through a corrupt act of "patent
office" - stolen the common from the goose...
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