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82-Year-Old Coder Trumps BT's Hyperlink Patent

Posted by timothy on from the old-ways-are-best dept.

grendelkhan writes: "According to Wired News, 82 year-old programmer, Bob Bemer, claims his creation of escape invalidates British Telecomm's hyperlink patent. He has no intentions on cashing in, he just wants BT to quit suing people and prove, in his own words: 'All this new patent stuff is crazy and counterproductive.'"

15 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Quote from Miguel de Icaza by RMSIsAnIdiot · · Score: 2, Funny

    "Can we get him?"

    --

  2. Old-Timers strike back by lord_ashaman · · Score: 4, Funny

    That'll show big business what the old-timers can do! I reckon as punishment, BT should have to listen to one of his stories about either his long walks to school, duking german bullets and hiding from japanese commandos, or about the time he took a walk in the park, then went on the ferry and found a dime, that dime looked......

    The Pain will be never ending... Death to Stupid Lawsuits!!!!

    1. Re:Old-Timers strike back by NecroPuppy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nah, he can hit them with a, "Back when I invented COBOL" story.

      That's more than enough...

      --
      I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
    2. Re:Old-Timers strike back by sphealey · · Score: 2, Funny
      The fax machine was invented around 1820 so I guess the basic patents for that one have expired! Unless Disney bought them...

      sPh

    3. Re:Old-Timers strike back by CaptainSuperBoy · · Score: 3, Funny

      He was the major force in developing ASCII (contributing 6 characters --
      ESCape (see that key), FS, GS, RS, US, and the backslash)

      Backslash? And we're actually praising this guy? If it weren't for him, I might be able to move between UNIX and Windows without getting a throbbing headache.

    4. Re:Old-Timers strike back by Anthony+Boyd · · Score: 3, Funny
      I reckon as punishment, BT should have to listen to one of his stories about either his long walks to school, duking german bullets...

      Good God. If this man can actually duke it out with German bullets, then even I want to hear that story!

      --
      My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
    5. Re:Old-Timers strike back by Ooblek · · Score: 3, Funny
      Or how about C:!WinNT!System32

      How horrible would it be to have to define a path to a resource by separating the elements with bangs....oh, wait...

    6. Re:Old-Timers strike back by nomadic · · Score: 2, Funny

      I just hope *I'm* still going at 82 like this guy.

      I hope that when I'm 82 I spend my days lying on a beach, being served cold drinks by my 18-year-old wife.

    7. Re:Old-Timers strike back by PurpleBob · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not just that... without his backslash, the spinning ASCII progress indicator |/-\ could only wobble sadly back and forth.

      --
      Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
  3. He oughta get the patent... by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and license it to everyone in the world for nothing, except BT which would have to pay $1 billion.

    --
    You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
  4. Fuck BT... Go after MS.. by Nathdot · · Score: 3, Funny

    If there's anybody claiming patents built on 'escape' technology then it's MS.

    Ctrl-Alt-Esc is the way I usually shut down my MS applications for godsake.

  5. Invented the escape key huh? by goten · · Score: 4, Funny

    Next thing you know, he'll be making other outragous claims, such as he invented the question mark and will accuse chestnuts of laziness.

  6. Re:old school hacker. by haruharaharu · · Score: 5, Funny

    What OS?

    The ITS at MIT. (lameness filter cram cram stuff adding more words so taco won't get pissed at me and ruin his engagement high)

    How was it interpreted?

    It crashed the system. (crash crash boom click whirrrrr...)

    Where did you type it?

    On the command line, where else? (lameness filter cram stuff wodge spank spank WHUMP!) (byt the way, the lameness filter really bites.

    --
    Reboot macht Frei.
  7. So he was the one that invented 'the escape' by Nathdot · · Score: 3, Funny

    Which one played him in the movie.

    Wasn't Bemer portrayed by Steve McQueen. Those damned Nazis. If it wasn't for the 'escape' we never would have witnessed one of the finest war movies of all time.

    I dunno what it is but it's funny to think of an 82 yr old programmer throwing a baseball back forth against his cubicle wall.

    :)

  8. KILL SYSTEM Re:old school hacker. by StandardDeviant · · Score: 2, Funny

    it was developed to take the intellectual challenge out of crashing the system, thus removing any motivation to do so (for the old school hackers anyway, not the testosterone-pissfest-let'sfuckshitup 14-year old script kiddies of today :-/). ISTR i learned of it reading Steven Levy's _Hackers_, but ICBW... see ITS on jargon.org for some background on the OS it was "featured" in.

    --

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