decoration decoration
Stories

GROKLAW
When you want to know more...
decoration
For layout only
Home
Archives
Site Map
Search
About Groklaw
Awards
Legal Research
Timelines
ApplevSamsung
ApplevSamsung p.2
ArchiveExplorer
Autozone
Bilski
Cases
Cast: Lawyers
Comes v. MS
Contracts/Documents
Courts
DRM
Gordon v MS
GPL
Grokdoc
HTML How To
IPI v RH
IV v. Google
Legal Docs
Lodsys
MS Litigations
MSvB&N
News Picks
Novell v. MS
Novell-MS Deal
ODF/OOXML
OOXML Appeals
OraclevGoogle
Patents
ProjectMonterey
Psystar
Quote Database
Red Hat v SCO
Salus Book
SCEA v Hotz
SCO Appeals
SCO Bankruptcy
SCO Financials
SCO Overview
SCO v IBM
SCO v Novell
SCO:Soup2Nuts
SCOsource
Sean Daly
Software Patents
Switch to Linux
Transcripts
Unix Books

Gear

Groklaw Gear

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.


You won't find me on Facebook


Donate

Donate Paypal


No Legal Advice

The information on Groklaw is not intended to constitute legal advice. While Mark is a lawyer and he has asked other lawyers and law students to contribute articles, all of these articles are offered to help educate, not to provide specific legal advice. They are not your lawyers.

Here's Groklaw's comments policy.


What's New

STORIES
No new stories

COMMENTS last 48 hrs
No new comments


Sponsors

Hosting:
hosted by ibiblio

On servers donated to ibiblio by AMD.

Webmaster
Car analogies. A true story | 697 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Question: Court's Decision on Ability to Copyright SSO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 01:29 PM EDT
I've been partial to the calculator analogy.

Your typical calculator has various buttons for math functions that you use to
interact with it, but the actual code and calculations within the calculator are
hidden from view.

If someone were to create a new calculator for sale, they could certainly use
different symbols for the buttons, but no one who knew how to use a normal
calculator would have any idea how to use yours. On the other hand, you can
completely change how the internals work, while the outer buttons remain
substantially similar.

The core set of buttons on Google's calculator look a lot like that on Oracle's,
but the actual code they run is different, and there are a lot of differences in
buttons once you get outside of that core set as well.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Question: Court's Decision on Ability to Copyright SSO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 01:33 PM EDT
Note that the Judge views that the API being subject to copyright is a matter
for him to decide. The Jury was instructed to assume this so that if he rules
APIs aren't copyrightable, and is over turned on appeal there doesn't need to be
a new trial. (Of course as fair use wasn't decided there would likely need to
be one any way.)

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Question: Court's Decision on Ability to Copyright SSO
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 04:27 PM EDT
Actually, I think the car analogy is great! Sometimes in the
past there were no labels on thngs. One just had to know
via learning and experience where to look for various knobs
and switiches. Now they put icons on things! And, I for the
life of me, cannot figure out what half of them mean! So
its back to the try-it-and-see method for me and sometimes
that doesn't even work when there is some automated or
computerized control in the loop.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Car analogies. A true story
Authored by: Tkilgore on Tuesday, May 08 2012 @ 05:22 PM EDT
When it comes to cars, nobody mentions standard transmissions. One of the
standard arrangements of the gears on the old-fashioned three-speeds-forward
floor shift or column shift was, for years,

R 2
| |
---- <-neutral
| |
1 3

with the R and 1 side closer to the driver, whether on the column or on a stick
on the floor.

Well, it was not always so. This was settled on after some disagreement among
various manufacturers about where the locations of the gears should go.

My mother and grandmother used to tell me a story which, they said, happened
back in 1929 or so. The family was just leaving for home after an outing on
Mount Bonnell, just outside of Austin, Texas, where the non-standardization
nearly led to a catastrophe. There is a bridge about half way up the mountain
with a sharp curve in the road and a steep climb away from the bridge.
Grandfather had a new car with the whole family in it. The car had a different
gear arrangement from the one which had just been traded in. Grandfather drove
over the bridge, which required slowing down quite a bit, and then he had to go
up the steep climb. With the new car having a different arrangement of the
gear-shifting locations, he managed to put the car into reverse while trying to
put it in first gear, and hit the gas. The family had a very narrow escape.

It is very difficult even to imagine the idea of charging someone money and
license fees for the arrangement of the gears on a stick shift. But it seems
that is what the world has come to.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Groklaw © Copyright 2003-2013 Pamela Jones.
All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners.
Comments are owned by the individual posters.

PJ's articles are licensed under a Creative Commons License. ( Details )