Slashdot Mirror
Lucky Green vs. Palladium
CodeTrap writes "Wired has an interesting story "Can a Hacker Outfox Microsoft" on a fellow named Lucky Green that is attempting to force the issue surrounding MS's Palladium Gambit using a very creative method involving patents. If his patents are granted, MS will be unable to use Palladium to enforce software licensing. If MS challenges his patent, then we all know thier true intentions. Very clever indeed."
Doesn't the fact that the guy's name is Lucky Green sort of tip you off that he's playing Patent Lottery?
Microsoft will make him An Offer He Can't Refuse, and they will buy his patent (if they even need to.)
Hmmm... I didn't realize there was one to be damaged.
Bill G. Hey 'Lucky', can I license your patented process?
Lucky Pound sand Gates, I 0wn j00!
Bill G. Here's 100 million dollars.
Lucky I'm your b1tch.
Trolling is a art,
He should exclusively license it to Larry Ellison...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
As seen on The Simpsons , all Bill Gates has to do is "buy him out".
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
But "lucky green" sounds like a cleaning agent and "palladium" sounds like some moldly crap growing on my sink... so "lucky green" vs "palladium" sounds like some commerical where a frustrated house wife is tired of scrubbing, so she sprays on the cleaner and voila, its brand spanking new...
then again, maybe its just me...
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
That makes me wonder. Why hasn't MS gotten around to buying themselves a small country yet? (Or, possibly, just buying an island and delcaring sovereignity, which might make them one of the first to do that and become actually recognized, as far as I know...) You'd think it'd be easier for them. They could just make up their own laws. (Open Source is illegal! Everyone must upgrade every product they own as soon as the next one comes out! )
Nope. Wouldn't work. Microsoft can demonstrate prior art.
TyZone
Well, I guess we could try patenting that, but I'm pretty sure people will stick with using water or foam. And I don't think MS will care either way.
This assumes that MS cares about what is legal and what isn't. Most likely they'll just ignore this guy and do whatever the hell they want to do anyway.
--Michael Luton
Lucky has a nice idea, but I don't think the timing is really going to work. Here's the problem.
He wants to know if Microsoft is going to use Palladium for copy protection. We'd all like to know that. Well, of course, we're going to find out sooner or later, at least by the time they release Palladium, maybe around 2005. And chances are we'll find out sooner than that, because Microsoft will release specs and APIs to the developer community in order to have applications ready when the technology is released. So maybe we'll find out about 2004.
Lucky wants to speed up this process, so he files a patent hoping that Microsoft will either challenge it, or it will turn out that they have a patent of their own. But it's likely to take a couple of years for his patent to go through. So he's not going to find out until around 2004 anyway.
The timing doesn't really work. Waiting to see if Microsoft contests the patent won't give information for a couple of years. And by that time, chances are Microsoft will have revealed enough information about Palladium that we'll know the answer anyway.
The one thing that isn't going to happen, I guarantee, is that Microsoft will say "Oh no! Our secret plan to use Palladium for copy protection is ruined due to Lucky Green! Curses, foiled again!" If Microsoft does plan to use Palladium like this, they'll have the patent protection in place well in advance.
"it's been proven time and time again that a hacker can outfox Microsoft. Look at all the copies of windows and office and other MS products out there that have product activation. There were hacks and cracks for that technology out before the software's release date."
Heh yeah, script kiddies are executing DoS attacks with patents instead of packets.