Slashdot Mirror
82-Year-Old Coder Trumps BT's Hyperlink Patent
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.'"
...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.
I'd like to get /. to do a question and answer with this guy.
Programming since the '40s!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Find the parallels between this (the BT case) and this patent lawsuit that SightSound is bringing against CDNow but potentally all music/video sellers. (SightSound claims they own the common methods of selling music and video over the Internet, and the judge has allowed the case to go to trial).
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
sPh
This can't be said enough. Read my other post here
Both markup languages (HTML; embedded link) and escapes are out of band metadata. Escapes allow an xterm, a real terminal, etc, to show bold, underline, and so on. I believe some data terminals use escape to mark protected fields for "editing" a page on the screen, then hitting SEND to send the unprotected fields, or maybe the entire screen, back to the computer. And of course you know all about HTML markup :-)
In both cases, the escaped / embedded metadata is not visible on the screen, yet has important information about the page. It is not far fetched at all to consider escaped data as a link. I don't know if it has ever been done, but it could be.
Infuriate left and right
Today it's more abstract, http:// is an escape sequence indicating that the following characters are to be interpreted as a hostname followed by a path name, which make up a hyperlink aka URL.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Off-topic? Moderator, follow the link.
Anyway, here is more on Mr. Bemer for others who do not follow the link:
At Lockheed, he devised the first computerized 3-D dynamic perspective,
prelude to today's computer animation.
At IBM, he developed
PRINT I (the first load-and-go computer method),
FORTRANSIT (the first major proof of intercomputer portability,
and the second FORTRAN compiler),
Commercial Translator (a COBOL input), and
XTRAN (an ALGOL predecessor).
In 1957 March he was the first to describe commercial timesharing,
which you now see as the Worldwide Web.
In 1959 his internal IBM memo proposed word processing.
The Identification and Environment Divisions of COBOL are due to him,
as is the Picture Clause, which could have avoided the Year 2000 problem
if used correctly.
He coined the terms "COBOL", "CODASYL", and "Software Factory".
He was the major force in developing ASCII (contributing 6 characters --
ESCape (see that key), FS, GS, RS, US, and the backslash). He invented the
escape sequence and registry concept, and is called the "Father of ASCII".
He wrote the original scope and program of work for international and
national computer standards, and chaired the international committee for
programming language standards for eleven years.
He was Program Chairman for ACM 70, promoter of National Computer
Year (when the Y2K problem should have been solved), and edited the
proceedings as the book "Computers and Crisis".
Three Pioneer Days have honored him -- SHARE, COBOL, and FORTRAN.
As editor of the Honeywell Computer Journal (the first A4-size publication
[1971] in the U.S.) he innovated fiche-of-the-issue and multimedia publishing.
He has published more than 110 articles in technical journals.
In 1995 he received the Albion College Distinguished Alumnus Award.
In 2000 he was named in the Delta Tau Delta "Rainbow" as one of the "100
Most Influential Delts of the 20th Century".
He is recognized as the first person in the world to publish warnings of the
Year 2000 problem -- first in 1971, and again in 1979.
He mentions then term 'escape sequence' and then somehow binds that to the escape key. The only relation between an 'escape sequence' and an escape key is that the begining on the traditional ansi escape sequence starts with the same code the escape key generates.
An 'escape sequence' according to Webopedia is:
The fact is that the escape sequence in a traditional hyperlink is the information encoded after the filename (that's encoded with URL-encoding). It's all those neat %20 characters.
Check out this quote:
Escape's powers are huge but at its most basic level, it is a command that tells a computer to make a shift in its processing - allowing a user to move up, down or sideways through files, programs or networks. For example, every press of a phone key that allows a user to move through an automated information service is an invocation of Berner's escape principle.
This is just absurd. Escape sequences special sequences encoded other data. A telephone navigation system is merely a command driven system. Nothing is escaped. By this logic, every time anyone tells anything to do anything they are invocating Berner's escape principle.
I understand the guy's position, but Wired really blew it on this story. I'm suprised this made it past the technical editors...
BTW: The article mentions the '/' character as being an escape sequence, but this is not true. If they are referring to the href of a URL, then since the protocol preceeds the '/', this would not be an example of an escape sequence. I think the real issue is the escape sequences preceeded by '%' signs.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
He put the slash in Slashdot (a slash being an interupt, i.e. http\
He put the backslash in ASCII code (without it, where would DOS be now.... oh, I mean.. nevermind)
He Texas Plates are "ASCII". That just rocks in itself.
He helped invent COBOL. I learned to program on COBOL. I can't even imagine the fortitude trying to make an entire programming language. The old programmers had it really tough. Imagine wanting to program in a high level, so you have to design and implement a high level language yourself.
The whole reason this got out is simply because he is fed up with all of these outrageous patents. Hyperlinking... bah, One click purchasing.
He is one of us (albiet probably the oldest)
Slashdot would do good for itself to do an interview with him, maybe even make him the honorary "grandpa" of slashdot.
Blah Blah Blah.
It occurs to me that it is a sad thing that we have to rely on someone like Mr. Bemer to do the job of the government and protect the hapless consumer from the wrath of the corporation and its bevy of lawyers.
There was a post on here which expressed optimism that Mr. Bemer seemed like a responsible enough person to grant the patent. What patent? Why should this be patented to begin with? The system should be rigged such that philanthrophic caretakers should not have to appear; what happens next time when BT decides to patent the power button?
The system is failing the consumer/citizen here. I think deeper introspection is required of the legal system and the IP code.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
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.
Ummmm... Ted Nelson is neither British nor a scientist. He merely invented hypertext and hypermedia.
"Other examples of hyperlinks also predate BT's patent, including a 1965 book by British scientist Ted Nelson..."
How do I know? Because I co-implemented the first working hypertext and hypermedia on personal computers, for Ted, and demo'd it at the world's first personal computer conference, in Philadelphia, in -- was it 1976?
That was before Radio Shack, IBM, or Apple even made personal computers...
Ted Nelson is merely a grandfather of the World Wide Web. Remind me -- what exactly did BT do except shove electrons through wires?
Wired and BT are BOTH wrong.
I say: fly Ted Nelson by Concorde to the trial and treat him as the VIP he is, pay hom $1,000 and hour as an epert witness, and then give him a share of the winnings in court!