Slashdot Mirror
CNET Patents Banner Advertising Networks
brer_rabbit writes "CNET was just today handed USPTO patent #6,073,241 titled Apparatus and method for tracking world wide web browser requests across distinct domains using persistent client-side state. The patent implies that CNET is able to track a browser across multiple domains for "advertisers to tailor their content to users."" We here at slashdot conducted our usual thorough legal review of the patent ("Hey guys, does this say what I think it says?") and we're agreed: the entire business method of DoubleClick, Matchlogic, 24/7 and other banner advertising networks has been patented. CNet now has a legal monopoly, issued and enforced by the U.S. of A., on banner advertising networks. CNet filed the patent on August 29, 1996; DoubleClick started operations in early 1996.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/07/151823 8&mode=thread
Yesterday's Dilbert Strip seems highly appropriate to this story.
I could be in a position of contributing to the crime of theft of intellectual property if I allow these things to come through my proxy server. So I guess I better block them all now.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
To add more to your idea... While the Gov't fees for a patent aren't that great the lawyers costs are. Alright, well, geeks are smart they don't need fancy lawyers to take their money. Nice idea, but the laws and legal cases on patents pretty much say that the lay person is unable to correctly file for a patent. Therefor, a patent that was prepared by the lay person is automagically throw out in court.
Remember, the majority of law makers are in fact lawyers by trade. The Judges are also lawyers. In the US we hate lawyers, yet they control most of the upper levels of gov't.
Well, I've started working with Enhydra. I almost surely wouldn't have given them a thought if I hadn't seen their banner ads on /.
But then again, Enhydra's ads did describe their product.
If this brings harm to the ability of advertisers to discover new ways to coerce the masses, so be it. Nothing comes for free, and every advertisement is paid for with a bit of our minds. "But we don't have to pay attention to advertisements" you say -- if that were true then advertisements wouldn't exist. We have to pay attention to the world around us, and you can't decide not to look at something until after you've looked at it. Free speach is fine and well, but I don't have to like other people's speach, and non-law based opposition to speach is essential. Especially when it's not even individuals speaking, but corporations -- who aren't individuals and shouldn't have the same rights that individuals have.
Of course, there's always junkbuster.
--
"My opinions are my own, and I've got *lots* of them!"
Worse yet - because many news sites break up their stories into two or three "pages", the Doublecross.coms of the world don't just know *what* you read, but how *fast* you read it, and whether you read just the first page and throw it away as "uninteresting" or the followup pages of the article.
What is wrong with this? If no one is interested in a topic then they shouldn't waste time writing about it. One way to gauge interest is by breaking up the article and seeing how far people get. I see nothing wrong with this - it a non envasive way to get feedback. Articles shouldn't be written in a vacum, and I don't think we need to have Nelson telling us everything.
You are getting content for free so why worry about it? I personally think banner ads are useless once you turn off animated gifs. Advertising networks also shoot themselves in the foot with all this tracking "technology." Occasionally I'll see an ad I have half a mind to click on - but when I see the URL points to some tracking cgi I say forget it. I want to know where I'm going to be sent before I click on something - and doubleclick is not a place I want to visit!
-- Virtual Windows Project
See this overview of patent law I wrote for Slashdot a while back.
Hope it helps.
Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
This isn't terribly a useful case to use as an example when arguing against broad business method patents, at least on a pragmatic basis.
"So, what's wrong with business method patents?"
"Well, uh, take Doubleclick.net, for example. They were driven out of business last year by C|Net's exhorbitatnt licensing fees[1]. EVEN THOUGH Doubleclick predates C|Net's patent application. Even if it wasn't obvious, C|Net got a patent on something they didn't even invent. Does that sound fair to you?"
"Ohhh... so that's why all those banner ads dissapeared. Cool! Bastards had it coming!"
* sigh *
* something mumbled about all your favorite sites becoming paid-subscription-only[2] *
---
[1] in reality, C|Net is more likely to charge just as much as they can get away with; completely destroying your licencees financially is not a good way to keep up your revenue stream
[2] I think in the long run, relying on banner ads alone for revenue will eventually fail. I'd just not have the issue forced yet, as the immediate and obvious alternative right now is paid subscription stuff.
It's going to be a while yet before alternative models become feasible or popular.
DNA just wants to be free...
I don't think Doubleclick has much to worry about. Technically, all their ads come from the same domain (doubleclick.net or whatever), whereas this patent covers sending "unique identifiers" to servers on different domains.
Besides, AFAIK, cookies will only be sent back to servers in the same domain as the originating server (cookies can be attached to images, which is how Doubleclick does their tracking). This patent shouldn't affect cookies as we know them.
Now, if CNet has found a way to circumvent the (already pathetic) security and privacy protection on cookies, we have something to worry about.
don't make a right. I know it's cliched, but that's the case here - if B&N wants to use the courts to attack Amazon's business model, they can go right ahead; I see nothing morally wrong with that.
But abusing a patent that was knowingly awarded unfairly is just plain over the line. Have some faith in the US justice system, if nothing else - they did bust Microsoft =) [keep in mind that I'm not arguing that the laws are necessarily correct, but according to the terms of the Sherman Antitrust Act I'd be amazed if any court could rule FOR Microsoft]
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
I used to have doubleclick and a couple of other sites filtered in that way, but I did have problems with it (Only on one site that I can recall..). When I went to some press release site, newswire or something, the whole page would be replaced by my 404 error. Quite annoying. This was in netscape in linux. Anyone know why? I hate wasting valuble napster bandwidth on ads...
chris
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
Yes.
But IIRC, the wildcards don't work in the Windows version of HOSTS, though. So you can't just add "127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net" - you have to have an entry for each offending host. (Any Windoze folks who know otherwise, please enclue me - I don't think wildcards work on Windoze HOSTS files, but can't remember whether I tried it or not.)
On Windows, try the Ultimate HOSTS file.
While proxies are generally a Very Good Idea (and more elegant, since they can strip out the ad altogether or render it as a single-pixel GIF), I'm a fan of the philosophy of using as much stuff that's already built into your system as possible. Every application you add is another potential thing that can break. Using HOSTS on Windoze lets me fix it (and remove the fix) with a single command (and of course, the ever-present reboot). Nothing to "install" or "uninstall".
CNET putting DoubleClick et al out of business, or DoubleClick et al invalidating the patent?
--
--
We have fought the AC's, and they have won.
Try download.com - try downloads.com - try uploads.com - try freeware.com - try shareware.com
.net and .org -- this totally defeats the purpose of having different TLDs...
It shouldn't be this easy to do this. Every registrar service now, during a default availability search, lets you check boxes while registering to snag wahtever.com,
Regulation? Anyone? Anyone alive at ICANN?
Bold slashdot haiku:
Overused, stale, and cliched.
Please try something else.
DNA just wants to be free...
Hmm. The USPTO is bad, right? Slashdot doesn't like patents applied to technology processes, right? That's funny. You guys seem to be happy.
Just cause a corporation you don't like (DoubleClick) got screwed doesn't make this a Good Thing. C|Net is being just as bad as DoubleClick. In all likelihood, C|Net will just license the patent out and make loads and loads of money. Nothing will change by this.
If, as a community, we're going to be against tech patents, we'd best actually be against tech patents. It's not a selective thing; if the geek community doesn't think that patents should apply to technology processes (Actual technology hardware patents are often times good, but patenting a technology process is silly; prior art is difficult to find but almost always existant, and re-innovation with no interaction with the patented art is common. In today's fast-moving world of technology, patents on processes are silly and frivolous.), then it should stand up against every single one. Just cause DoubleClick got shafted doesn't mean the day has been saved. This is just another process that was patented, and with each process the idea of patenting technology processes is reinforced.
Mike Greenberg
http://www.yourmothernaked.com
I cannot count dude
the patents screw with my head
as I read Slashdot
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
If you read thru the preferred implementation in the patent, it details a kind of neat trick for allowing a group of servers who cooperate to in effect use the same cookie across all of them. While I don't think it's an appropriate thing to be patented, as far as I know it is novel (although not very complex).
f /1x1.gif, where 0xdeadbeef is the value of the cookie that domainA just set on the client. In the reponse from domainB back to the client, it includes the cookie value=0xdeadbeef. Now, both domainA and domainB have identical cookies installed on the unsuspecting client. While they are in fact two different cookies, it works just like a cookie that is served to both domainA and domainB. Tricky, eh?
The basic gist of it is this. A new client connects to a server say www.domainA.com. DomainA sets a cookie on the users client as it serves up the web page. It also includes in the web page a reference to something (such as a 1x1 GIF) at www.domainB.com. Now, normally, your browser prevents domainB from accessing the cookie set by domainA. To work around this, the URL for the GIF on domainB is really a notice from domainA to domainB about the value of the cookie it just set. For example, it would be http://www.domainB.com/set-cookie/value=0xdeadbee
I have nothing against the site splitting the article and tracking users. If wired.com is supplying me with content, I'm happy to tell wired.com, through my mouse clicks, which wired.com stories I read all the way through. It's already in their server logs. So why do they need Doublefsck?
The only use of the LAYER tag on Wired is to send that information to third parties. Doublefsck isn't telling Wired what I'm reading - Wired's server already knows what I'm reading.
Doublefsck is trying to accumulate a profile that tells them what I read on every site that has doublefsck.com links in LAYER tags. Wired is the one I mention because it's so blatant - I see five or six LAYER tags being loaded in my browser's status bar with every mouse click. Sheesh. But how many other sites do I visit that are using the same technology, but only send one transaction and I've therefore missed? Salon? NY Times? The political parties and special interest groups? nakednatalies.com?
What I read off a site belongs between me and the content provider. Wired can tell I'm interested in MP3s, free speech, and cool hardware. mp3.com knows what kind of music I listen to. Nakednatalies.com knows I'm into hot grit pr0n. The political sites know what kind of a jackass, elephant, or neither I'm likely to vote for in October.
But if all four of those sites use tracking technology, then doublefsck knows all about my hobbies, my sexual tastes, and my politics.
I have a major problem with that.
Why should doublefsck know that I'm the type of guy who likes to watch elephants and jackasses mating on TV while pouring hot grits down Natalie Portman's pants while the Cocky Sticks play "I'm a Catholic Girl, of course I swallow!" in the background?
> when I see the URL points to some tracking cgi I say forget it. I want to know where I'm going to be sent before I click on something - and doubleclick is not a place I want to visit!
I think we're in complete agreement here. It's just that Doublefsck is sneaking a slimy tentacle into more than just banner ads through use of the LAYER tags and other invasive technologies.
I think we need a voice of reason here - we're instantly assuming that since companies like Amazon abuse their patents, CNET will do the same. Before hyping this up any further, how about contacting CNET ASAP and asking if they will either A) hold the patent defensively and not use it as basis for a suit against any other comapnies (except maybe doubleclick, they deserve it =), or B) release the patent into the public domain.
Wile the USPTO may be out of control, we're not helping any by ranting and raving here If CNET won't agree not to use the patent offensively unless otherwise provoked, THEN we can start worrying/complaining/DDoSing =)
On a side note, recall that Microsoft has a patent on the scrollbar, and IBM has a patent on pressing a "more" button - while M$ may be an "evil" company, you don't see them threatening gnome (yet). Most likely CNET will hold this patent defensively, since, judging by the USPTO's recent actions, if CNET wasn't awarded with it, someone else likely would be - and it's a good thing that's not doubleclick.
On the other hand, a web without any ads would be interesting - and I wonder what would happen to journalistic integrety without those monetary incentives. Unfortunately, that would also stifle innovativion and make many truly good sites - like slashdot - unfeasible to maintain.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Molog
So Linus, what are we doing tonight?
So Linus, what are we going to do tonight?
The same thing we do every night Tux. Try to take over the world!
Lionel Hutz
Dewey Screwem and Howe
1 Shylock Alley
Springfield, NT
---
If they tried tracking your movements in a shopping mall, you could have them arrested. Same should apply here.
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
The problem is with cookies. Destroy the reputation of
cookies and you put a major dent in client-side persistence,
as well as in overcommercialization on the Net. By the way,
Slashdot has chocolate-stained fingers on this issue too:
How to post to Slashdot under your boss's Slashdot name,
and at the same time find out if he surfs porn sites.
1) Your boss must use Explorer 4.0 or later on a Win32
platform, and use an HTML-enabled email client, and
have JavaScript enabled. This is the default for perhaps
70 percent of the corporate environment. Better yet,
if your boss uses Outlook Express, all he has to do
preview your innocent-looking email message. He may
not notice anything happening. Or, you may get exposed
and fired. It's your problem.
2) Go to http://www.pir.org/nocookie.html and read up on
this exploit. Near the bottom of the page, enter YOUR
email address for this exploit. But first read up on
some more details on the next page, under "How to
steal your boss's New York Times password and find
out if he surfs porn sites." Mentally substitute
Slashdot where it reads NYT on this page, except that
Slashdot has NOT bothered to improve their password
system, while the NYT at least started doing this
one week after the Explorer vulnerability was
discovered. (Slashdot uses a double URL-encoding
scheme. But this demonstration appears to decode
several times if necesary, merely to get the QUERY_STRING
back to something approximating the cookie that it
started with. Therefore, your Slashdot password ends
up in plain text in this demonstration. Slashdot cannot
claim to be using encryption of any sort.)
3) After you enter YOUR email (because YOU will receive
your boss's cookie report), click on the domains you
want. Slashdot uses at least two, www.slashdot.org
and slashdot.org, so be sure to click both to get both.
Add a few porn sites; hitbox.com is always a good bet.
4) You get the spam from the demonstration, which you
must receive on an email client that is NOT automatically
enabled for HTML. Then you paste the JavaScript code into
another email for your boss and send it. As soon as your
boss previews this email (there is NO attachment), you
will get emailed a report on the cookies you clicked.
You boss probably won't notice anything happened, as
he ignores yet another astute missive from you.
5) If your boss changes his Slashdot password after
discovering that someone posted in his name, you have
to do this again to get his new password. And again
and again, until a) Slashdot starts encrypting their
cookies, or b) you get discovered and fired. It's
an even bet; it's been almost a year since someone
complained about Slashdot's lack of cookie encryption,
and they still haven't addressed the issue.
6) Microsoft is the baddest boy. They've been aware of
the security problems of making email clients automatically
enabled for receiving HTML since spring, 1996. Yet so
far there has been no indication that they plan to make
this feature switchable, and switched OFF by default.
...that are worse than banners.
.GIFs.
/etc/hosts on a UNIX box, as this is basically the *opposite* of what /etc/hosts was designed for. But it's a damn effective solution on Windoze.)
For instance, I can surf with images off if I don't have a proxy handy, and avoid the animated
But there are other ways to track you that don't require banner ads. Look at all the layer tags:
<LAYER SRC="http://ln.doubleclick.net"></LAYER>
...in stories on http://www.wired.com lately.
Worse yet - because many news sites break up their stories into two or three "pages", the Doublecross.coms of the world don't just know *what* you read, but how *fast* you read it, and whether you read just the first page and throw it away as "uninteresting" or the followup pages of the article.
*THAT*'s the value of breaking news articles up into dozens of 2-paragraph pieces, by the way. The extra banner impressions aren't worth it, but the tracking information you get as to which users read which stories all the way through is worth its weight in gold.
What we need is a HOWto on route. One per platform, covering all the idiosyncrasies. Don't write it for sysadmins, write it for everyone, like the guy who just installed DeadRat and has a root prompt.
We need to make this:
# route add -host ln.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 -blackhole
...a part of our setups, and we need it to scale up to all the tracking sites. (I'd guess at least 1000, maybe 2000 hosts at present.)
We need to tell our users what to put in what files, and how to extend it to the rest of their network, and how to make it *stick* no matter how many times DNS tries to bring it back from the dead. (Fscking Slowaris fscking fsck fsck fsck! I should *NOT* have to run that route command more than once per bootup!)
Windoze users have the ability of creating a huge HOSTS file in their system directory. It's a one-step thing. Trivial.
A quickie HOWTO on how to do the same thing, for all the various Unices, would be a welcome addition. (It's kinda an ugly fix to do this in
From the patent:
The next processing step shown in FIG. 2 is to set a cookie corresponding to the unique identification value and return a page of the requested information (step 82). In general, the setting of a cookie (persistent client-side state information) is a known process. However, in accordance with the invention, the returned page includes instructions to convey the unique identification information to additional server computers that are observing the same protocol.
The purpose of this patent is to work around the necessity of hosting banner ads on a central server and then passing those banners out to member servers. Instead, you host the banner on your own site, and then using this method people who browse the ads are forced to report themselves back to the central server.
Advantages:
1) ad company doesn't have to host banner GIFs - less expense for them
2) faster response times for the user due to fewer connections
3) works around junkbuster-type filters that forbid ads from certain domains or that do not render images from off-site
This is clearly not the double-click method at all. I wish that the slashdot editors would actually read the patent before posting it, let alone trashing it publicly to tens of thousands of people who hang on their every word.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Also check out these missing artciles:
Solar Flare vs. Plasmasphere
Apache 2.0 alpha 4 released
Linux Directory Services
I think at least one doesn't even have a first post yet.
numb
Not meaning this as a flame, but on most websites, the only thing you ever see moving is the stupid banner. This wouldn't be so bad if they weren't flashing, acting like user interfaces, or simply wasting bandwidth. I don't click on them, I don't know anyone who does, and I wonder who in this Ponzi scheme makes out? Obviously it's the banner companies, not the advertisers. When advertisers could go for more proven broadband media such as radio or tv, I wonder why anybody would bother with banners.Generally:
Since I run Junkbuster proxy on most of the systems I use, I have no problem avoiding them. Currently, /.'s banner says "click here for 3000+ mg of caffeine!" which tells me nothing. I know what the ad is for only by clicking it. Just like I wouldn't a link that goes to "file:///nul" at work, I wouldn't click on an ad that leaves me hanging.
Lowmag.net
Patents are *so* old economy! Who cares! In the time it takes to get a patent on something related to the Internet, it becomes irrelevant.
If it is still relevant, then chances are damn good that the patent is invalid, or the patented "technology" is already in such widespread use that the patent is practically unenforceable. What is C|Net going to do? Sue every single web site that has banner ads?
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I already block things like doubleclick - for obvious reasons - using squid_redirect (search freshmeat), but now I'll have to train myself to not visit news.com.
:P
The cnet news has taken a downturn over the last year anyhow. Too bad, as it used to be one of my top 10 news sites (I'm a news junkie, OK?). Now they have pissed me off... such arrogance!
Oh yeah, I know I should be more mad at the US Patent Office... given our 2 presidential candidates I can only see this problem getting *worse* (and the really outragous stuff they won't support, just policy launder it! Send it to Europe as a treaty, so we can bypass Congress like they've done with the recent Privacy acts).
Can we declare a subterranian nation? Who needs the sun anyways. I was thinking of moving to a more liberal nation like the Netherlands, but then I realized why the conservatives here are fighting clean air laws... THOSE folks will be the first to be flooded by the melting icecaps.
Oh hell. Where is a 1 mile wide asteroid when you need one? Everything is so depressing...
I don't feel differently. I think slashdot should be a dotcom, and I would think the .org should be put back into the pool if I didn't know it would get absed beyond measure.
.cow and .goat for all they really mean these days.
.grits joke. I've been here too long....
Hell, CNet would probably register it.
TLDs are different for a reason. This is theoretical, in actual practice they serve no purpose. They could be
OMG, I almost made a
The difference between CNet and DoubleClick is that CNet only tracks your usage on sites *that they own.* Not that I'm defending even this practice (let alone the overall issue of net patents).
:-)
Lenny
Disclosure: I do own a couple shares of CNet. If they try to enforce this patent, you could own a couple shares of CNet
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
If you're going to moderate a post at least read past the title next time. How could encouraging people to destroy the integrity of web-tracking databases be considered flamebait on Slashdot? sheesh
numb
Not necessarily. If doubleclick started publicly using the technique more than a year before the filing date then that IS a "statutory bar" against the patent claim; If it is less, then cNet MIGHT be able to "swear behind" the earliest date DoubleClick could establish by proving they had reduced the invention to practice prior to DoublClick's date.
I will not even comment about Obviousness, proper subject matter for patenting, whether intellectual property is EVER good, etc.
If only C-net is allowed to do it, then that's only one database for us to flood with false tracking information ;)
numb
I don't know about everyone else but I have never really had any problem with advertising, per se. I do, however, have a problem with a company that I know nothing about tracking/logging all (or even many) of my page-loads, browses, surfs, downloads, clicks, double-clicks, responses, emails, keystrokes, likes, dislikes, pets' names, beverage choices, et cetera, et cetera. . .
Advertisements will be a part of our society as long as it is based on a market economy and statistics say that people buy things they see on TV. As long as they're relatively unobtrusive and easily ignored by those of us who're not interested in the wares they hawk, they're acceptable. I don't believe, though, that anyone should keep track of any little thing I do so they can "customize content" for me. I want to be the one who decides what I want and what I see. That is, IMHO, the power and promise of the internet: that the individual has the power to control the information they recieve, not the Big Corporation.
When I find out that the DoubleClicks have been tracking 1/2 or 2/3'rds of the web pages I choose to go to (and not having knowledge about the rest, creating a possibly very inaccurate picture of my tastes), without my knowledge, much less consent, I feel violated. Things I did that I assumed to be (at least relatively) private are now found out to be logged in some huge database and used to filter what information is streamed to me. My choice has been taken away.
I suppose that's what I feel it's about, really. The individual's choice. *shrug* I know it's an out-of-date, out-of-style thing but I miss it. (Or maybe it was always just an illusion created by the Big Co's to placate us dissidents. Who knows.)
</RANT>
Ad companies don't have to host banner GIFs -- thanks to the 302 HTTP result type.
The modus operandi of all modern ad networks is to do all the ad-jugling magic on the control message only and then do a redict to a static URL of an actual banner image. This not only frees the ad company from serving the actual image data, but also helps the Internet as a whole to cope with banner traffic by making efficient caching of banners possible.
Marko Karppinen
All the "Evil Patent" articles ignore the point. The USPTO grants all kind of stupid patents because it's not fundamentally their job to determine if the patent is valid. All they do is run down a procedural checklist and grant the thing. If they find a glaring example of prior art, they might reject it, but usually not.
Where prior art comes in to play is in the enforcement part.
Example:
CNET makes the patent.
I ignore it and violate it right and left.
CNET sues to stop me.
Now, my defense will be my examples of prior art. And in the case of almos all these tech patents, it would be a very sucessfull defense.
The moral: This patent is so weak I (having watched the trials, but without training) could break it with 90%+ confidence. A real lawyer could do it 98%+
Quick, somebody patent spam, and then file a big class action suit against all spammers.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
From my understanding of patent law, this isn't the case, always, anyhow. IANAL, but it isn't cut-and-try. I think this was discussed to death in a previous /. thread on patent law.
Kudos
..don't panic
-Brandon
Here's my Microsoft parody, it's better than Travis's
LostBrain
Yes folks, now the patented way of wiping after defocating. If you use 6 sheets folded neatly to the size of one, please mail $.02 to Charmin U.S.A. for each passing of the tissue over the soiled area. Back to front or front to back, your choice.
If this patent holds up, CNET will just charge
licensing fees from companies like DoubleClick.
CNET would would have a financial incentive for
the banner-ad companies to remain viable.
For those who have intelligently blackholed nearly all banner ad servers:
Banner ads are those little broken image icons you see on some web sites. Some people see these as annoying, animated, often slow loading ads for companies no one is interested in.
I hope this helps.
Finkployd
You want to try Guidescope. I think it is better than junkbuster.
CNet has all of the simple domain names because they got them first. CNet was grabbing domain names before the net became commercial and crowded. They were simply first.
Some would say that CNet's domain names are the main reason they've succeeded on the web. Their competition has addresses as simple as www.cnn.com, but they have addresses even simpler to find -- www.news.com.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
The "primary examiner" and the "assistant examiner" are listed on the patent form if you click through to the link.
Would it even be worth it to bring this to the attention of their bosses? Not that they're any better or worse than any other patent examiners, but this does show gross ignorance in their field that they would grant this patent.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
CNet bought most of them a couple of years ago from other people. I'm sure it wasn't TOO easy for them...
jf
Bad slash, take adfu down right now and wipe that smile off your face.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG