This is Slog. There are no home team fans.

Goldy, are you just playing dumb to get a rise out of us? Do you seriously not understand the difference between a phrase that is generically descriptive and one that is not? And you write for a living?

Here, let me help you with a little thought exercise. Please answer the following 2 questions:

1) Where does one go to buy apps for a computing device?

Was your answer "an app store"? Of course it was, because that is a generic description of a place that sells apps. Get it?

2) What kind of software manages all of the basic functions of a computer?

Was your answer "a windows"? No, that doesn't even make sense. Unless you are a half-wit, you said "an operating system", because that's a generic descriptive phrase for this kind of software, whereas "a windows" is not. Nor, for that matter, is "a tiger" or "a leopard" or "a festering pimple on Steve Jobs' taint".

Please, enough with the dumbshititude.

I came here to say what @2 said.

You're just an idiot, Goldy. "Windows" is no more generic than "Tiger" or "Leopard" or "Red Hat." Similarly, a "Malibu" is not a generic term for a car, even though it's not an invented word, nor is "Tiffany's" a generic term for jewelry even though Tiffany is a common first name.

This just isn't how trademark law works. You could probably look it up on the Internet and avoid making such a fool out of yourself, if you care. I'd be happy to show you how to use The Google if it's a problem for you.

Microsoft don't innovate shit. That stopped about 1.5 decades ago. Except maybe in games, which I don't care about.

Mmm... apple tits.

What @4 and @5 said.

Two cores and two cameras ftw.

@7: I don't think Apple made up the term "app" for software (if so, I take back what I said, but I suspect you can find a number of prior uses). As such, "app" is probably a generic term for an "application," and thus an "app store" is a generic term for a store where you buy..."apps."

A "window" is a generic term (yes, even in computing), but not a generic term for an operating system. That's the key point here. The only use of "Windows" in reference to an operating system is in reference to Microsoft's operating system (which was 2's point, I think--you could say you are "typing in a window," but you would never say, "I can't boot my Mac into its windows").

As an example, @7, imagine I opened a bike store called "Wheels." "Wheel" is, in fact, a generic term *in* *bicycling*, but it's not a term for a bike store (you would never say, "I'm going to head down to the wheels to get a new inner tube"). As far as my knowledge of trademark law goes (and it doesn't go very far), that makes it a non-generic use.

@9 they didn't. We called them apps decades before.

That said, mess with the trademarked W for the UW and you'll have your 1912 hat handed to you after a round of fisticuffs.

@11, "we" didn't call "them" anything. You're not part of any "we".

Even your intention is wrong, though. "Decades ago", applications were not generally called "apps". They were called "programs", and you'd buy them on diskettes from someone's "shareware archive". You might even have bought them on cassette if you were old-school enough.

I now anticipate one of your long discursions on your history as one of the great programmers of our age, filled as always with dozens of inaccuracies, anachronisms, and outright lies. As you always do. Just to anticipate a little, you're wrong, and you don't know what you're talking about.

You guys are the best.

Out of curiosity, have you ever met face-to-face?

@13, yes. He's creepier and more boring in person. If you're lucky he'll tell you how many minutes long every movie at the last ten SIFFs was, or what really hot stocks he bought, or some really fascinating stuff about life in Canada in the early eighties. If you're female, he'll corner you and never let you go.

I on the other hand have been told that I'm quite charming, if a little rude on occasion. And I can't remember people's names.

I always associate the term "app" with hardcore gamers. They've been shooting off about the next "killer app" as long as I can remember, and probably before that.

@14:

That's so cute.

I'm a little surprised. I'm not *usually* this much of a cock to someone I've met in person. Usually.

@12 pshaw, Fnarf. If you were truly old-school you bought them in text form and handcoded them into your machine.

"our nation's leading innovator in the use of generic brand names"

Goldy, keeping in mind the distinction so ably given by @2, can you cite examples, please? Because the only one I can think of is Flight Simulator. Which, incidentally, Microsoft doesn't claim to have a trademark on: http://www.microsoft.com/About/Legal/EN/…

@17, young man, if you were truly old-school, you wouldn't have bought anything; you would have written them yourself, and stored them on paper tape or possibly punch cards if you were sad enough to be working on an IBM mainframe. I can still remember the skritchy sound punchtape made when you tightened the roll around a pencil before slipping the rubber band on.

Or you might have had to toggle them in with front panel switches, if you didn't have any storage devices at all, on an Altair kit computer, for instance.

But yeah, I remember when the computer mags all had pages of programs in BASIC printed in the back, and you'd type them in. Usually for something really lame, like being able to print giant 3D letters from some text input that you could then spend the next three hours watching clatter out of your dot-matrix printer.

@18, perhaps you are familiar with a little program called "Word"?

@20:

In the list @18 linked to, I don't see "Word" listed.

But in principle, I'm not aware of "Word" being used generically to refer to a word processor. I guess some MS lawyer thought that was a bridge too far, but in fact it doesn't strike me as particularly outlandish--Google asserts trademark over "Docs" (http://www.google.com/permissions/guidel…), for example. Would you use that to refer to a generic word processor? "In comparing (docs|words), I prefer iWork to Word?" Probably not.

@20: If it was called "Word Processor," you'd have a point.

Goldy, why in your original article did you cross out "app store" and replace it with "place where you buy apps"?

Think about it.