Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Patents The Task List
theodp writes "'Better not get too fancy with your grocery list, now that Microsoft has patented a glorified form of the to-do list.' Issued Tuesday, the patent covers the use of a 'task list' generated from 'TODO' comments in source code."
1. Patent double-clicks.
2. Patent this list.
3. ???
4. Profit!!!
Hmmm.
I haven't read the patent (it is Slashdot after all), but the Eclipse development environment does this.
...unless you generate it from comments in your source code. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
Hmm, at least one other IDE, Eclipse does this.
Hopefully they are not affected.
I can't believe this what next windows?
// TODO: remove this line or face retribution
I seem to remember using the TODO list feature in Eclipse before it showed up in Visual Studio. Am I wrong?
Sigs cause cancer.
This feature has been in Eclipse for I can recall 2.5 years (not sure on date). The program automatically notices TODO comments in the code and creates a list for you.
What the hell is M$ thinking here?
I was doing that in the 70's. Bill Gates hadn't even flunked out of Harvard yet.
Somebody with an old old usenet archive, grep through comp.emacs for crm@duke....
So when did eclipse do it?
We just need to beat 2000 (when the patent was filed)
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
Okay prior art-Borland delphi 5?
Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
3. Sue itself!
Intellij IDEA does this for Java. Not entirely sure how long it has been in, but its at least since version 3.0
what the hell is the USPTO doing these days. What kind of super weed are they growing and why don't they sell it, so they can hire more compitent patent reviewers.
eof
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
A beuracracy of legalities to work through before your project can ever be put in the public domain and Microsoft sueing people who bring us OSS.
Navigating all this will disuade a lot of potential help, and will only stifile Microsoft's competitors.
I can't be the only one seeing this coming.
~ Jon
It stands to reason that fixme notation is source code serves a purpose in all forms of programming and therefore it is a detriment to the community if we get rid of it. As long as M$ insists on behaviour like this, they will never be accepted in the FOSS world regardless of how many silly toolkits they put on sourceforge.
Keep the faith, share the code
oh the humanity. First SCO, not Microsoft. The sky is falling for sure.
I have been doing this for years. A simple "grep #TODO" would show me what I need to do in a file.
What will they patent next? Breathing?
They've actually had this in Visual Studio for a while: you can easily set any source or error (during the compile) as a "to do", which attaches itself to the project. In .NET, you can have "to dos" over different languages in the same project (which I haven't seen in too many IDEs).
Others may have it, but it's one of those quiet innovations MS has they don't make too much noise about. Like Autocomplete (can't run across a single browser nowadays that doesn't have this).
Microsoft's latest patents:
It's a lot like submitting a story for slashdot, but easier, and way more double posts
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
I'm too young for punch cards however my folks aren't. My father just let me know he has prior art. I'm sitting here with a very dusty item processing program on punch cards. On the cards themselves comments are written about things to be added and depricated. So where do I mail this 10lb stack of yellow cards?
What could possibly go wrong?
I have been doing that with things like doxygen (www.doxygen.org) for ages... how can such a thing even be patented?
There you have it folks. Patent infringment in one line.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
Since Microsoft is going around patenting everything they can possibly think of, as long as Bush and his pro-monopoly group doesn't stay in office forever, they may help everyone else out.
If they patent enough simple and obvious ideas, that will make great fodder for the argument for abolishing software patents. They're going so far out of their way to stiffle competition that, at some point, the government will have to realize that software patents don't help competition, but hurt it.
(Yeah, I know it's the guv'ment we're talking about, but at some point congress will get enough complaints from everyone else that even they might wake up.)
but I find the TODO: comments helpful during development. You can also define custom tags in Visual Studio .NET to easily annotate code and quickly find the tags later on using the task list.
Granted, I don't know if it's patent-worthy, but it is a helpful tool that I've not seen elsewhere.
Will it ever end? Funny that they get a patent on something I've been doing for 20+ years... I've always made it habit to use #TODO: in my comments for my code for pending things or things that need to be redone, then have a shell script parse my code for the comments and email them to me weekly prior to status meetings, etc. I wonder if any of these will count as "prior art" or its counterpart to fighting this atrocity?
That article is using an overly exaggerated headline to grab readership. But of course, the slashdot people aren't known to eat it up like candy...
eTrade SUCKS
All those claims read more like a way to pad employe performance evaluations rather than to represent a patent.
Isn't there a ton of prior art on this? I used //TODO for searching in files for my task list..
Not ro mention autodoc and other source parsing information availabe from source. What next, patent keystrokes?
Microsoft just patented the use of grep.
grep -r TODO * > tasklist
hopefully they won't catch me, this post infringes.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
I think it's funny that Microsoft on one hand is fighting the Eolas patent, which is a stupid patent, and on the other hand is grabbing all these equally stupid patents for themselves.
I guess your left hand does know what the right hand is doing. But they have no shame...
...any process of reserving rights to a methodology, concept, or product. All future patents issued must be licensed by me.
"Did you get permission to make this list?"
"WHAT-DID-YOU-SAY?"
"Bill Gates owns the patent on to-do lists now. Tell you what, here's the number to Microsoft's licensing department. I'll be on the golf course. Later."
Its going to be a joy when something important implementing Mono gets patented. Do you really doubt they are going to do it? Heck, they probably already bought a patent Sun got while doing Java.
It will be even more interesting when all of Gnome is implemented with Mono. Maybe I'm the only one who finds it ironic that a desktop environment founded because the KDE license wasn't free enough is falling over themselves to implement Microsoft technology.
The more you know, the less you understand.
$ grep -R TODO .
HAND
Several months ago there was a story on the Windows NT/2000 Source Leaks. They mentioned that only 700MB/40GB was stolen. I was wondering how in the hell the needed 40GB. now i get it...
TODO lists.
*ahem*
/dev/null {} \;
find . -name '*.c' -exec grep TODO
Any code monkey that has dealt with >1000 lines of C has probably done that. I don't need to look to guess the Linux kernel has a few...
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
So as we have all been reading Eclipse has been doing this since November 2001. Well, sorry! The Microsfot patent was filed on March 6, 2000. Does this mean we will see a lawsuit from Microsoft against Eclipse? Or perhaps forcing Eclipse to license that "feature"?
Hmmm.
I heard that Microsoft has a patent pending on smilies! It's absolutely true!!! ;-)
:-M :-I :-C ;-R =O :-S ;-O :-F :-T
:-D
So smile while you can, tomorrow a Microsoft smilies-subscription may cost ya about 5$ a month if you're lucky!!
I can't wait!
hehe
Another optimistic attempt to patent something. This is why software patents are wrong.. MS just has to flex its muscle, and it'll be crushing competition by forcing competitors to remove functionality.
Borland implement this todo stuff in Delphi 4 ( I think ), which in turn was apart of a freeware / opensource plugin.
This may also be a preparation for an attack of meritless lawsuits. Microsoft could build an arsenel of patents that are each possible to invalidate but each expensive to invalidate. Then, they launch suits against FOSS products and simply throw more lawyers into the mix than FSF can afford to react to.
I cheer every time one of these insane patents is granted. There is a breaking point for all this, and every dumb patent brings us an inch closer to the mainstream calling it all into question. The dumber the better.
I just hope we don't destroy the economy beforehand.
Cheers.
...but he still makes more money in one day than you will in your entire life. So there.
The US patent office needs to be shut down. This patents are getting ridicules. Tomorrow I'll probably see a patent on a new sex position.
I'm writing code all day, and sometimes I think of stuff I want at the store. Things get a little mixed up...so sue me.
Looks like penguin is biting Ballmer's ass harder than they first thought. Losing profit margin? hmm...
Microsoft would patent the English language if it wasn't for all those damn books to prove prior art.
then may be i'll look into buying their stuff.
yeah, like that's gonna ever happen....Serenity now, insanity later.
I just watched a Microsoft Webcast on Test Driven Development. They've hired a guy (James Newkirk) who has written a book on the subject (he also contributes code to the open-source NUnit) and gave this talk. In the talk, he added 'TODO' comments at the top of the code for each test task he had to write and functionality that had to be implemented.
I'm *sure* this part has done before... good thing Microsoft had the insight to *automate this task with a computer*. I'm sure nobody would've thought to do that
It's a shame that so much is getting through the patent office regardless of the obviousness of prior art existing. The least they could do is open up google and search for other, older projects that have done this. Of course, since patents are such a big deal, I would expect a lot more rigorous examination into the proposed patent... too bad we don't get that.
I created this sort of system in Hypercard for a massive stack development project. With abotu 50,000 lines of script in hundreds of stakc object, finding "TODO"s was a real pain so I made my own search & task list tool. A search tool on a card for developers found todo tokens in the stack's scripts and listed them for me. Double clicking a list item took me to the item. The thing also had a visitation counter so I could see which items I'd done.
The little tool was actually more versatile than the Microsoft system because I could search, list, and visit on any token (it search scripts for a string) - great for finding all the places that used a certain variable or accessed a particular stack feature. It also had a pull-down list for sorting the "task list" in several different ways. Other tools let me quickly visit "Next" and "Previous" or cull the list by deleting task list items that met different criteria.
The only thing different from my stack search tool and the patent is that my little tool did not change the script code in response to anything. But I suspect that someone with "ordinary skill in the art" could easily have do that.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Going through an ASCII file and consolidating every line that starts with a specific token is a patent that makes sense? You've taken to much prozac, mate.
... Microsoft's "win-win" strategy --
By burying the USPO with bazillions of laughable patents, they can accomplish one of two things:
Either draw attention to how ludicrous the whole system is, with the intention of dismantling it or reshaping it to serve their needs, or
Manage to generate so many bogus patents that one or more key areas goes unchallenged and they gain valuable bargaining chips to use with IBM and to lock out the Open Source movement, which is not nearly so prolific at the generation of bogus patents, and hence has little to trade.
In any case, their effort serves the collective and expands their sphere of control.
Resistance is Futile...
IDEs have been using TODO integration for years.
//TODO: in their comments and parsing them with shell scripts for decades.
And people have been using
Looks as though M$ are patenting all of these stupid prior art things to use up all of the money donated to challenge software patents. Borland Delphi had a TO DO list made from comments in the source code around 1997-8 and I'm sure they weren't the first and I'm sure M$ weren't either. Prior art and trivial. Throw it out and award court costs against M$ - oh, you can't do that in America can you? The richest company keeps it in court on appeal until you run out of money then you lose...
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Good grief. I think we need to institute some kind of reasonable editorial policy here. As is so often the case in articles about Microsoft or patents, the lead is patently misleading.
//TODO *.c". It's about a smart IDE offering a useful and creative way of managing tasks. Should software processes be patentable? Maybe not. Are they? Yes. Does this infringe on prior art? Not really. So might this be a patentable software process? Sure looks like it.
The patent is on a relatively complex system that I've never seen or heard of before. It's about an IDE tool that dynamically identifies syntax errors and TODO comments throughout your code, associates them with named tasks and gives them priorities.
It is not about the little notebook you keep next to your computer, nor about running "grep
If anyone of you out there have been working on this kind of thing for emacs or Eclipse 5 years ago, I suggest you speak up now...
I don't think we'll be hearing much.
Jan 2, 1900 - fix Y2K bug...
Your attempt at making it seem like an innovation is dissappointing even for Microsoft standards. Where's the jargoned up spiel about M$'s new paradigms and methods? That .NET reference and the mention of different languages, as if other compiler collections did not exist is a start. Oh wait, a new method is not something that deserves a patent is it? Now I see part of the problem. Let's see what you have again:
Others may have it, but it's one of those quiet innovations MS has they don't make too much noise about. Like Autocomplete (can't run across a single browser nowadays that doesn't have this).
Noise? Do you mean documentation? M$ surely has enough advertising.
Your claim that Microsoft invented this feature which is just now getting stuck into their products is preposterous. People have been doing this forever and it's outrageous that Microsoft would attempt to steal such an obvious idea from everyone else.
I like the way that KDE's IDE autogenerates html helpfiles and other documentation just like this. I'd like to see those morons at Microsoft try to extort money from anyone who would like to use or distribute KDE. Actually, I would not. I really want them to just take their ill gotten gains and leave the rest of us alone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As long as the U.S. Patent Office hands patents out like candy, this is going to continue. The fault lies in Washington, not Seattle.
soon microsoft will own the internet
Now I have to redo ALL my work!!
Looks like Microsoft's ridiculous patents posts have replaced SCO's ridiculous claims posts.
Oh well... At least got a couple of pointers to a few interesting IDEs.
No sig
they get paid by the claim .... someone got paid a pretty penny to file this one ....
could the creator of "the office" program please step forward...
EOF
As discussed by the founder of neo-Darwinism, William D. Hamilton in "Innate Social Aptitudes of Man":
Until civilizations solve this problem of benefits not accruing to the genetic correlates of innovators, they will continue to oscillate. That is unless, during some cycle, such as the present, the consequences of a collapse are so great that it extinguishes the possibility of future recovery.
Seastead this.
I received my gmail account from a kind Slashdotter who offered up the invite just because he was a cool guy. So now that I have a extra invite, I'll do the same - first person to reply with a valid e-mail address gets a gmail invitation.
And......go!
In 1998-9 I created a system that would automatically update the company's bug database (arguably a TODO list) whenever a developer checked in code with the proper comments inserted. It was obvious to me, and it's been obvious to thousands of developers for many years.
Sigh.
Just waiting for someone to patent the concept of Prior Art itself.
A patent is a description of an invention. It covers the WHOLE invention, and the
requirement of the patent office is that the description of the invention is very
very specific.
Microsoft's "double click" patent you all keep going on about does NOT patent
the double click. It patents differentiating between different lengths of time
holding a button on a PDA, in order to start different applications or
application methods - for the sole purpose of reducing the need for 100 buttons
on devices with crap input and no screen estate.
That they mentioned the double click does not mean they patented it. They may
have patented the use of the double click when combined with time-based
selection of the application to be launched, but that is FAR from the same
thing. And as far as I know - hasn't been done on any system anyway. Personally
I think it'd be rather unwieldy which probably explains why nobody did it
What THIS new patent covers is, and if you go PAST the f**king summary and
actually read the PATENT:
In an IDE (interactive!), adding
automatically, and in real-time, added to a task list. When comments are removed
or the task is clicked off on the GUI (and possibly in combination with revision
control) you can see what stuff has been done and has not been done. In real
time. From an IDE.
Note that manually running "grep" does not act in real time as you type, display
it in an IDE or generally do anything listed in the patent.
It does not patent TODO comments merely because of their mention. Nor is it
patenting any other COMPONENT of the patented methods. Just the methods themselves
when brought to a whole.
It was also filed in 2000. People are whining that Eclipse is prior art. Sorry,
but Eclipse came about 18 months after the patent was filed.
The next time I read a "Microsoft patents wiping ass with soft paper" story on
Slashdot, remind me to explain this again. I'm sure I'll have to, because the
amount of goddamned idiots here who can't or don't read past the headline (and
that includes you, story submitter and mr. moderator) and jump to conclusions
is incredible.
Before we get started on this whole patent argument: yeah I think Amazon's
one-click shopping thing is a bit rich. But that's different, it's a feature we
can all remember using since the dark ages when cookies first arrived, the
current batch of MS patents are actually quite original thinking from people,
and generally well thought-out well-defendable inventions.
Neko
The topic seems a little alarmist concerning patenting #TODOs in source code. After reading the article, it doesn't seem that outrageous of a patent. Putting code/greps in to find TODO's and saving them off is trivia. Going the extra mile and cataloging them, managing them and "removing after the task has been completed" is complex and a little ingenious . While I appreciate the article, who ever posted this to slashdot should have summarized it without all this chicken little tactics.
We all know development at microsoft has stopped for IE, Longhorn is not comming along, we know MS market-share is falling, and recent
With all that cash lying around, and 'doing business' gets you problems in the EU, it might be better to change from a 'software' business to a 'investment'-business...
Less hassle, less employees, less lawsuits..
To keep it in a
You must ask yourself though, why in the name of god would anyone want a patent on this for any other reason than monopolizing. This is trivial bullshit, not a formula for creating a gif!
The fact that I can't do anything about these injustices and obvious abuse of the patent system really frustrates me.
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
See here...
Task List Window
Microsoft patents "Making fun of MS patents via website featuring re-occuring articles"
All good software has comments... Someone should patent the comment! They'd make a mint from patent infringement...
I hate you Microsoft. I hate your corporate culture. I hate your business practices. I hate the fact that you feel the need to generate more money form your IP portfolio...I hate that fact the you call your collection of patents a protfolio, I hate the way you look Bill, Steve I also hate you.
I hate your take on the open source....as if a brother/sister helping one another out (for free...OH MY GOD ***gasp***) was really communism. I hope you die a slow creul death..(Bill). I hope hell is a mountain of uncommented buggy closed source code that you have to debug before you can talk to Peter at the pearly gates...I also hope that if you get to talk to Peter that he slaps you punk ass down...all the way down to HELL were you truly deserve to go. You are evil. Your patents are evil. Your OS sucks donkey dick and you, damn it, are one ugly assed geek.
what?
Even Anne Rand knew that limitless grants of patents places an insurmountable barrier to business. She was slap happy about "products of the mind" too, yet even a dedicated idealog can be walked down a thought experiment and convinced without causing the widespread harm Microsoft is determined to inflict. The case against software patents, where product life spans are shorter than any other field, is even easier to make. The case against pateting business methods and procedures is very simple. These obvious practices are not inventions and do not deserve patent protection.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...and I'll say it again:
"Someday, Microsoft will patent the alphabet. And when that happens, we'll find ourselves paying royalties every time we sit down at the keyboard."
Prior art? ill give you prior art, my bloody head! how do humans write to-do lists? by sitting down and thinking "hm now what the fuck do i need to-do today?" ie going through their head and writing everything down. Now I admit, back in 1904 if someone told me they had patented a wonderful new machine that could search through written text and take out all the occurences of the phrase /* TODO: */ and stick them on a new page i would say they were a genious and their new invention could change the world. But in 2004 this is really not something that promotes the advancement and innovation of technology. Its something that computers were already designed to do. Infact can we go as far as to say that anything that can be done in one line of unix shell is off-limits for patenting?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Hey, be fair to Microsoft!
I'm all for the usual baiting of Micro$oft as the evil monopoly that they are but this one's legitimate.
I think anyone who ever installed a copy of Windows ME will agree that Microsoft need all the help they can when it comes to itemising the TODO list in their source code.
Aren't patents supposed to protect *something of commercial value* (for a limited time only, void where prohibited or not enforced)? How the fvck is grepping source for document content extraction/summarization for use by the *programmers* *at the company* a benefit for me the consumer?
Were that I say, pancakes?
Of course it's helpful, that's one reason it's an outrage that it's been patented. There are lots of ways to do this and it's a common practice. Oh yeah, that it's obvious and common practice is another reason it's an outrage.
Is Microsoft now going to demand that KDE not distribute similar features with their IDE? Are posters here going to be threatened for recommending "grep TODO *.c > tasklist"? What dorks they are.
BS like this is the death rattle of any IT company. The sooner they go away, the happier everyone else is.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I've found that my posts don't format quite right w/o a sig.
while true; do grep -r TODO src/*; done
Doxygen has had this since release 1.1.4. Here is the changelog (grep down for 1.1.4). I'm not sure when v1.1.14 was released, but v1.0 was started in 1997 I think. This should be prior art...
This is getting absolutely ridiculous! What the hell is wrong with our government? How can they possibly let this go on?
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Microsoft patents the exchange of Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide via breathing. A spokesman was heard saying that with this innovation, the competition will be smothered.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Doxygen http://www.doxygen.org tags can be used to do lists on TODO since 1997. A nice example can is http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/lists.html
and Simonigger agrees with me.
If you want to know what the heck patents cover, read the damned "CLAIMS". If it isn't in the CLAIMS then the patent doesn't cover it.
Sheesh, just because a patent describes something in the abstract or specification section that sounds rather broad doesn't mean that is what the patent ACTUALLY covers.
rtfm
If Dyson owned that patent, and a tornado destroyed the Dyson factory, would Dyson be able to sue for patent abuse?
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
... common sence ideas... the sort of thing anyone working in such a field might come up with as a general common type of solution.
Right now I'm excluding stories about patents in my preferences page.
I am unsure if their claim is correct but, even if it is, it should have been thrown out as a totally obvious extension to routine, long standing software development methodologies.
FYI - you are now beginning to get a tase of the new Microsoft Linux strategy.
That is - patent the daylights out of everything, hopeing to catch, snag, and delay Linux somewhere along the way. (Well you didn't actually expect them to innovate did you?)
The next frontier in liberty - Project Libertopia
Benjamin Franklin would be astounded that in the age of Usenet the inventors who publish first disclosures weren't given full legal rights to their disclosed inventions.
Seastead this.
3. Patent the pigeonhole principle
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Borland Delphi had this feature in version 5, which was released 1999, and was definitely in use by October of that year.
You could do this in Visual SlickEdit since forever. Lets see how many instances of prior art we can find.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
good thing every thing i've ever codes doesn't have any // TODO:,
// FIXME: write this function
it's all just
Glad they only look for Todo...
That means XXX and FIXME are in the clear!!
Seriously, how is this different? Check off the task and the source code changes. Wouldn't it be easier to just delete the comment since you're already editing the source code?
This granted patent came from a patent application claiming priority to a provisional patent application filed in 1999, so you need to find art prior to Mar. 5, 1999.
I know! I know! How about we avoid it completely and change it all to DO-ME or STOP.BEING.LAZY.AND.CODE.ME That should solve the patent problem.
FuckTheFuckingFuckers.com - Post your th
government/business collusion on issues of power and wealth is a primary attribute of fascism. widespread refusal to abide this government sanctioned extortion racket could end up being the only way to do anything about it.
time to make our own salt, and to hell with anyone who tells us we can't.
(and yes, this is a new sig.)
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
And those FOSS projects just move their servers overseas and give Microsoft the finger...
Bob
Listen to my latest album here
When you protect ownership over a phisical object, things are clear, no two people can have it at the same time, or at least it can't be in two places at the same time. But when you patent an idea (and even worse, a simple one) if you think on something related (random thinking, trying to solve a maybe unrelated problem or a need), you are probably breaking the patent.
So, if a law makes everyone a criminal, maybe that law is very wrong.
Sheesh. For 20 years I've put "TODO" in my source code and generated a "task list" by running grep across it.
I'm posting this anonymously to keep from being burned beyond recognition by the many socialists here, but the parent is absolutely correct. The BIG problem is that it's also true of most government agencies nowadays.
Our local city government is characterized by two main traits - incompetence and corruption. Sad to say, but it's the result of piss-poor education and a general decline of any decent culture that we ever had. So, go ahead and learn Ebonics, drop out of school, and play games all day. The government will hire you.
Does this qualify? grep TODO *.cpp > task_list.txt
Not on political, pro-Linux grounds, but because the company is starting to look a little desparate. First was this article where MS announced they were significantly lengthening support periods for older software versions. This was a dramatic reversal of its previous practice of using strong-arm tactics to force corporate customers into frequent and regular upgrades.
Then there was this article, discussing how Microsoft has begun making changes to its previously onerous licensing terms in favor of its customers.
Now we've seen two patents in recent weeks which seem to be the overly-broad type normally associated with companies who are desparate to produce licensing revenue, and not real products.
Combine this with the fact they have been forced to delay much new product development because they must finally start focusing on security, and it all adds up to clear indications of bad times coming for them. (Of course, they have plenty of cash to tide them over for quite a long period.)
Not that most of you weasels would believe it, but BillG was originally against software patents. But once they started being issued he said words to the effect of "We've got to have them or we'll be put out of business." One might add, "by litigation" from every podunk nitwit with $10k to spend playing lotto investor in the fleece Microsoft game.
So, if Microsoft patents every little thing it will do one of two things:
1) protect it from endless lawsuits by hapless dweebs;
2) get them to reform the !#@$#!@ Patent Office have them stop issuing idiotic patents which are "OBVIOUS TO THE SKILLED PRACTITIONER OF THE ART".
This patent is not state of the art. It does not advance society. It is not what the founding fathers had in mind when they created patent system.
Now that Microsoft has patented stuff like the todo list and the double-click, no one else will be able to patent it later. All we have to do is wait 17 years and then we can start using them again without paying a tribute to Microsoft.
Next MS patents XXX as a comment denoting a point for code review or later functionality improvment
maybe I should've went ahead and patented note taking years ago, then this to-do list can eliminated as it is a form of note taking.
O well, hopefully the FTC will do something about it. USPTO is way too overloaded and passing too many obvious patents. You never know, the next patent might be "to patent obvious ideas as a business model" or something like that.
One way to help reform is to b*tch to ur local Congress-person and rep. Think of the slashdot-effect in a good way with politics. (The bad one is if u'r a website admin and ur server can't handle the load).
sharks this is getting crazy - is "able to type in Word" the only qualification you need to be an officer at the patent office or what?
On a related note, Bill Gates reveales he is, in fact, a leftie and exempt from paying his own wiping licensing fees.
TIA
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
WTF?
...richie - It is a good day to code.
For the last several decades I've been sticking TODO items in code written in PL/SQL and Advanced Revelation. Both programs store code in relational tables. A SQL statement finds the TODOs and displays them in a box next to what ever silly text editor I am using at the time.
An IDE is basically a friggin' little text editor. With the TODOs displayed in a SQL query screen and a text editor that brings up the line in question...I am now in serious violation of a Microsoft's patent. Damn.
This means that by doing the obvious, I am violating a trivial patent. I am ticked at trivial and obvious patents because they block us from being able to write code in the obvious way to write the code.
On the bright side, I am now morally excused from ever having to complete any of the TODOs marked in past code since I would have to get a license from Microsoft to be allowed to query the database for said items.
REFERENCES TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/123,102, filed Mar. 5, 1999, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference
The important date isn't March 6, 2000 but March 5, 1999. A provisional application is a rough application filed without claims. When an application claims priority from a provisional (it has 1 year but it can roll to the next business day if 1 year falls on a weekend) it gets that filing date.
The Palm OS features a very prominent Todo list. It's been a focal point (deserving a button) for years (I think about 10 now).
Didn't the Newton have one too?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I suppose Microsoft will now patent logic states. Why is the patent office even granting these frivolous patents? The people working at the patent office are obviously grossly incompetent. To me, patenting the basics of computer and software operation in an attempt to stifle it's growth and muscle out any competition.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
What they actually get their money for is issuing patents.
And they are proud of the fact that they're one of the few parts of government that is a revenue center.
And other parts of government are hungry for their revenue.
This is one of those cases where following the bottom line is going to get you the wrong result.
Tweet, tweet.
All we need for prior art is a shell history showing that someone knew how to use grep before 2000. I mean, they're basically claiming that 'searching a text file for string x' is a major innovation over 'searching a text file for a string'.
What's next? What about patenting the Start button? I don't mean just having the words "Start" on the lower left button, but the whole idea of having a button which opens up directories and links to various programs/utilities in the computer. Can they do this (if they haven't already, that is)? So what's going to happen to KDE?
Original thought*
.... somehow I doubt I'll get used to burned toast no matter how much jam is on it.
*Parent Pending
I suppose we'll start to see "Microsoft Brand Bread(TM)" on the stores next. "Because "Microsoft Brand Bread(TM)" is the right bread for your "Microsoft Brand Smart-Toaster(TM)".
"Microsoft Brand Smart-Toaster(TM)"
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
And how exactly is a patent shield going to help against a company-- such as Eolas-- with no products that's basically a walking patent lawsuit?
We'll have 3/4 of a million slash-sheep get all riled and tell eachother what a bunch of bullshit the USPTO is and how EVIL Microsoft is for abusing it. At the same time, none of them will actually do anything about it.
Do you hear me? Don't preach to the choir! Go out and tell *other people!!!*
The patent is titled "Task list window for use in an integrated development environment" at the patent office. So, run your grep on other machine. Then, you will have a DISTRIBUTED, not INTEGRATED development environment. Do not show results in "window", but call it "virtual screen". Patent showing results in window, especially if you have a 30 years old prior art.
Or, use emacs. That's a platform, not IDE....
There you are, staring at me again.
To the poster: I agree that many of the MS patents that have been popping up as front page news on Slashdot are ridiculous at face value. Whether that is because they are really so ludicrous, or because the details of a 100+ page patent can't be bioled down to a 1 paragraph summary by one of Microsoft's opponents, I can't say (because I am too lazy to read the stinkin' article). Perhaps it is a 50/50 split. Anyway, this patent doesn't look ludicrous to me from the summary. MS didn't patent a grocery list. They patented the autogeneration of coding task lists based on 'TODO:' comments in the code. This doesn't seem like a glaringly obvious idea to me, and I'm not aware of any prior art. If you are, or it seems glaringly obvious to you, speak up. But don't overgeneralize the patent just to make it sound overly ridiculous - that delegitamizes your argument.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
It really shows just how out of touch they are with the computing world outside of Microsoft.
/. ad for serverbeach advertises asp.net web matrix with rapid reboot! Is that really a feature I desire?)
(I write this has a
A todo list from comments in source code? Possibly triggered by *FIX* tags? Come on!
If silly patents keep being granted, eventually other Patent Offices will also get somewhat "creative" and this whole thing will more or less end up like the invention of the airplane: even New Zealand claims the invention after those 2 impostors said their mock up worked -- a plane that can't be made to work a century later! And by people who put Man on the Moon!
He who wants everything, loses everything...
Does it mark the items complete when the task is completed? If not it doesn't meet the claims and doesn't affect the validity of this patent.
Many of my makefiles already do this with my FIXME and TODO comments in my code. Fortunately, it's not "in a window" (unless you count an xterm), nor is it technically in "real-time", so perhaps I'm immune to this patent... because I don't use as many useless or stupid features as they seem to want to include.
I put comments in my source... @cbf @1234 @whatever
And then I use grep to search for them. And presto-chango!!! there is my list.
To me, it's more than obvious.
...that way all future non-MS applications would be bugfree for fear of infringing patents. :)
Suddenly no-one uses MS's bugged products anymore!
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
I just double clicked my TODO list and Clippy popped up and said "Looks like you just broke a couple Microsoft Patents. Would you like to settle this out of court?"
your signture, ... I had a job when Clinton was president. You didn't work in one of the factories that moved to Mexico thanks to nafta I guess. Clinton was a joke.
Even if Eclipse is too late, perhaps it's worth a look at IBM's first Java IDE offering - VisualAge for Java. I used version 3.0 around 1997, and I'm fairly certain it had this feature (though it was quite some time ago).
Last time I checked, http://www.nat.org/dashboard/ has been doing this for a very long time.. So this patent probably isn't legal.. http://www.nat.org/dashboard/fixme.php3 thats their automatically generated todo list.. So, I guess this patent wont last long...
Don't look at quotes out of context. Read one of the your child posts which showed this.
You're a disingenuous asshole, or an asshole who was too lazy to look up the context.
You owe slashdot an apology.
Photos.
This is one of those cases where following the bottom line is going to get you the wrong result.
Similar to the reason why prisons must never be allowed to use convicts for profitable labor. Allow anyone to earn money from something, and they'll just naturally attempt to optimize earnings.
An alternative strategy is to patent everything in sight, sue everyone possible, and bring the Patent Office to its knees with a Denial of Service attack. That would stop anyone else from getting in Micro$oft's way with patent claims of their own, like Eolas. Remember that the US government exists to protect the people; killing it off is in the interests of powerful corporations which would have their way with us. Killing the PTO while preserving, eg., the DoD and its IT budget is a great combination strategy to keep the money flowing to M$ coffers. Next step: a flurry of antitrust suits, to keep their old parking spots at Justice's monopoly enforcement offices filled with M$ company cars.
--
make install -not war
Not if Software Patents come to Europe...
Mind Booster Noori
or the buffer overflow
"Yeah, and if you were really as smart as the inventor, you'd have patented it
first."
That really assumes that the whole world is in favour of software patents - a big assumption.
In our Neo-con world it is still possible that people with good ideas want to share the ideas out of altruism. That altruism should be protected, at least by a diligent patent office - which we don't have - or better yet by a rethink of the patent rules.
dunno when they applied for this patent, but I have seen this feature before plenty of times
Are they going to patent curse list generator? I mean, with the size of Windows, curse management is nightmare (see the leaked Windows course code). Would it not be easier if Microsoft has a feature to generate list item when a curse is written and automatically generate relevant statistics. It could go the other way too. Choose a curse like fuck, piss off, hell from a pull down menu and automatically insert that in the appropriate places.
We don't comment
If it's hard to write it should be hard to understand.
Talk about a useless pattent
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Yep. We all have.
$ find . -name '*.c' | xargs grep TODO
I've seen programmers littering the code with initialed comments like "FIX ME [NAME]" and running the highly complex "grep" and "find" utilities under *nix and Windows for a couple decades.
The fact that someone formatted it in a pretty dialog box is about as innovative as changing the color of your shoelaces.
The fact that anyone would apply for such a patent just demonstrates how sad and pathetic the American legal system has become as it self-destructs on a diet of lawyers and political kickbacks feeding on the very businesses that used to drive the economy. It's a shame, really. Probably no more than 10-15 years before the nation starts looking to India or Poland for handouts.
OTOH, maybe we should worry. Broke bullies with guns tend to become muggers, not beggars.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The problem is that the whole way the USPTO works is that it is geared towards passing patents.
Specificly, its better finantially for the PTO to pass a patent than to reject it.
This has to change before anything good will happen.
Simply change the way the PTO works so that its no longer finantially better for the PTO to pass a patent than it is to reject it.
Then (assuming they do what they are supposed to and use patent examiners who are qualified in the field they are examining patents in), crap like this wont be granted patents anymore.
Whats that thing about not being able to patent something if its obvious... I mean come on, who hasn't fricken grep'ed out the TODO comments from their code before?!??!!?
JESUS BLOODY HELL!
TODO: write shell command to apply above regex to all source files.
Enough with the "Microsoft patents Common Everday Item" stories!
Tell me when they even hint at enforcing them.
grep -i todo foobar.c
I'm quite certain I was grepping for to-do's in unfinished code long before anyone even cared Microsoft was too big for its own good.
Ok, so possibly not a great idea. However I wanted to expound it anyways to the Slashdot crowd as a kind of sounding board.
Does anybody have other suggestions about how to write code to get around this specific patent but acheive almost the same functionality? I'm sure many others including myself would be interested in reading such ideas ...
Change TODO to t0d0.
That Microsoft is compiling an even bigger list, legal one at that too. This list will show evrey one who has ever written "Hello World" about innovation. From now on *no one* will be able to make the same mistakes as M$ or well they will sue you.
;)
The great thing about this is that it will not stop people from coding or collaborating on a job it will just make evreyone aware of what they can't do and do something else. With as far as we've come do we really want to reinvent the icon and desktop. Not really. Slowly but surely M$ doesn't even realize what they are doing. The feel they are "protecting" their "investments" but what they are really doing is influencing something people have wanted since they mastered the SINGLE click
Innovation...
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
grep "TODO:" *
Boom. Task list.
paintball
Vote this weekend so that the software patent law is stopped by the EU parliament. If you're planning on not voting, go do it anyway, for this reason if nothing else.
I can't be the only person who uses #WARNING statements in his code to do just that, create a task list.
My name fits again.
Have you ever in your life heard someone refer to "an internet"
Yes. An internet is a WAN, a wide area network, a set of LANs bridged by routers. The big-I Internet is merely the connected internet that has the most workstation-class nodes.
grep -r '^TODO:' source/
so complex.
And I read this Slashdot article... I might be forced to avoid any non-Microsoft product that had this functionality. This is what this patent is about, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, no more. I doubt Microsoft really needs to bring this into court for it to have its desired effect, just publicize the fact that they have it. Through, say, a public news source...
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
But didn't VisualAge for Java (for which Eclipse was effectively the replacement) have this feature too?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
What he means is the list will allow you to jump to the line the TODO/error occurs on by just doubleclicking the item in the list.
I have used DOS based IDEs from 1995 or so that will let a developer go to the source code file that triggered an error or warning line. If you start each task item with #warning then the compiler will report the task items on stderr along with the rest of the errors and warnings it sees. (Those playing at home who have never seen the #warning and #error preprocessor directives should read this.)
But was all this accomplished inside of a single IDE application that updated the list in real time?
If "every time it compiles" counts as real-time enough, then yes. The C language preprocessor's #warning directive will insert a warning that will show up in your IDE's error list every time you compile your program.
Well the next time you run it, the task won't be there if it has been completed.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I had enough of such worthless patents. Whenever one thinks of
a simple obvious idea, one is forced to think "is this patented already?".
What a waste of time!
Here's an idea:
- a independent patent-rating site
(cross-linked to various gov patent sites worldwide)
- free membership
- members rate patents
- not all patents to be rated. reasons to rate a patent could be outragiousness, and history of patent abuse by patent holder
- members belong to various 'groups' which have their own
(enforceable) philosophy on admitting members, and rating patents
- patents ranked by 'patent worthiness rating' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- corporations ranked by 'patent abuse ranking' (as ranked by group you subscribe to)
- members to a 'default group' that (hopefully) would rate
the RSA 'PK crypto' patent valid, but the Eolas 'ActiveX' one invalid.
- maybe a federation of such sites internationally
I'd LOVE to see companies I buy things from, 'utilize' the patent system.
A computerized TODO list is NOT the same as a grocery list.
What is an application? On my old digital watch, the double click used to start the stop-watch, and the long click started the timer. If you had those two features on a PDA, they would be considered applications, so why aren't they considered applications on a digital watch?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
All I know about Bush is I had a job when Clinton was president.
All I know about you is that you're ignorant.
My other first post is car post.
Standard disclaimer: Don't take this or anything else you read on Slashdot as legal advice.
The patent was filed in March 6, 2000, based on a provisional application filed Mar. 5, 1999. It has 75 claims; I'll do my best to translate the first few from legalese into colloquial English. Here's claim 1, the key claim on which claims 2-23 depend:
Prior art for this claim is many IDEs' handling of the C preprocessor #warning directive, which the patent calls a "comment token." Claims 2-5 seem to cover filtering the warnings with tokens such as #warning PORTABILITY and #warning TODO.
Claim 6 covers scrolling to a warning generated by a #warning directive. IDEs have let the user click on a warning and scroll to it since I tried CodeWarrior for Mac in 1996 or so.
Claim 7 covers inserting the source code around a #warning into the view of a task list. This may in fact be novel. Now we're getting somewhere.
Claim 8 covers IDEs that categorize a #warning list by developer name, which may be novel as well. Claim 9 is claim 8 plus putting the #warning just before the appropriate location in the source code; claim 10 is claim 8 with the #warning containing text other than the name of the developer.
Claim 11 covers IDEs that give each #warning a priority value, which I personally haven't seen. Claim 12 covers putting syntax errors above prioritized warnings as in claim 10. Claims 13 and 14 add prioritizing warnings by keyword and sorting syntax errors by priority, respectively.
Claim 15 covers putting linker errors in the same list as #warning lines. Seems we're back to 1996 here.
Claim 16 covers generation of files containing #warning lines by another program. Could be novel.
Claim 17 covers IDEs that parse the #warning lines, filter them, and display a subset. Prior art. Claim 18 adds hiding completed tasks (possibly novel), showing only tasks in a given category (possibly novel), showing only tasks in a given file (prior art: recompiling only one file), and showing only tasks in a given location (prior art; many compilers stop entirely at the first #error). Claim 19 adds subcategories to claim 18's categories.
Claim 20 covers sorting the #warning lines, and claims 21 and 22 cover sorting on the same criteria of claims 18 and 19. However, one could sort warnings by category by sorting them alphabetically, and many IDEs likely did, making these three claims a bit more likely to have prior art.
Claim 23 merely covers removal of #warning lines after a build in which they no longer exist. IDEs do this for all warnings. Prior art.
So how much is the fee for doing "grep TODO *.php"?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
In an IDE (interactive!), adding /* TODO */ comments or suchlike are
automatically, and in real-time, added to a task list.
C IDEs can already do things like that, except the comment marker is #warning, and the task list is the log of build errors and warnings. You might want to read my analysis of the first 23 claims.
Nor is it patenting any other COMPONENT of the patented methods.
Each claim does patent a component. If you infringe one claim (and all the claims it depends on), you infringe the whole patent.
Sorry, but Eclipse came about 18 months after the patent was filed.
Borland C++ had a warning list that reads on many of the present patent's claims in 1997 or much earlier.
I bet a reexam would cut the patent's claims in half.
grep
Free as in mason.
I can't be the only person who uses #WARNING statements
Damn right. Here's my analysis of #warning as prior art.
grep TODO src/ -R
'nuff said
The patent is so that people who invest considerable time and effort in doing something have a chance to recoup their investment and profit from their labors.
It isn't to allow the first person to do something obvious to prevent people from doing it. Even something that any competent person would do when confronted with a problem has to be done by someone first.
Using a cathode ray tube to draw a picture? That's an invention. A power button to turn said device on and off is obvious.
A ball in a box with sensors that detect which way the ball rolls when you roll it on a table and buttons to do things? That's an invention.
Clicking a button on the mouse to submit an order, that's obvious.
paintball
This should be a no-brainer! If there is only one opens source program that uses this, and was published before the patent the patent should be void. Am I right?
/John Sjolander, project manager Contribio
I use "XXX".
Everything you wrot is true except it wont be ibm, it will be red hat and they cant defend them self....
grep TODO * is now forbidden? Someone at USPTO needs to get a clue, fast.
Not relevant... HOLAND based... IPSO bulles only regard US stuff... not foreigner... (as if in software borders count for something!)...
Hmm then again looks like we (.eu) will be in the same farce soon.
So, Borland has this TODO Task List feature and it's really cool, but they're not a$$holes about it, hey it's a free world and they supply the source code to the majority of their inner workings for Delphi, et al.
So along comes Mr Gate$ and sees a cool idea waiting to be stolen! Not unlike the Windows Platform! Kinda like everything they sell!
I can imagine the board meeting for this one:
'Hey, Steve-o! Guess what I done seen - uh, lemme rephrase that! Guess what I just done thought up my self - an automatic list built from those daft notes developers use in their - what was that thing again - oh, yeah,comments. Ya know, like maybe we can patent this and then make Borl- ah, I mean any patent offenders Cough Up, like we got spanked on the ActiveX deal!'
Godwin's Law is just a "social experiment". Or to be more precise, he never said anything about the discussion ending when nazis or Hitler was mentioned. He just stated that the longer a discussion is, the more likely it is to mention these things.
Clever signature text goes here.
For AutoDoc references, Google search for:
autodoc source code todo
Also I (and others) emailed Microsoft about 10 years ago, asking them to add what sounds like the patented functionality to their C++ compiler. They were keen on the idea, but eventually it wasn't high enough priority to make the cut.
No way is this a recent Microsoft invention.
- Pete Austin
Welcome people,
...
I would encourage you to use a legacy Operating System such as Windows coz it has been around so long that it is neanderthal and known by all the old guys in the IT market.
Of course, when the old guys die off
Prior Art:
patent no: 1d10t
copyright 2004
ps. i made a todo list way back in high school. it was actually a list of subjects i had to study for my "o" levels. thats also prior art.
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
"Method and system for computer-based examination of patent applications."
First Embodiment (abbreviated):
int main(void) {
int next_patent;
int current_application;
while(more_apps_in_queue) {
current_application = get_next_app();
patent_approve(current_application,next_patent)
next_patent++;
}
}
IANAPBASOTI
I said overseas, not specifically Europe... Besides, there are European countries that aren't in the EU, such as Switzerland. Bob
Listen to my latest album here
First post! (just in case I am...)
Delphi has supported the TODO tag in code too, at least form version 3 (1997) if i am right...
Have a nice day!
The patent for teh cyclonic vacuum is EXACTLY what patents was designed to do, protect the small inventor.
:)
When James Dyson developed the cyclonic cleaner, he nearly went broke trying to patent it. But that secured him when he set up his company, otherwise large companies like Hoover would have sunk him. He is not a patent parasite either, for he used his patents well, building up a company from scratch and he really took on the big multinationsals (at least here in Britain).
I myself own a dyson cleaner, and we bought that after havign a torrid time with a Hoover "so called" bagless model (the Hoover used a filter, which although was supposed to be reusable for up to 6 motnhs, in reality it had to be chanegd very fequently) The Dyson cleaner was much more expensive than other models, but was far more cheaper to run. even the "lifetime" HEPA filters are washable (just chuck it into the washing machine). Since buying it, we have only had to replace the baseplate twice, and once was done under their (addmittedly good) warranty.
Their customer service is excellent, and polite, and spare parts are cheaper.
All in all we have a vacuum cleaner that outperforms nearly all in the market in its core function - sucking dirt from the carpet. It is reasonably priced when you consider the genuine innovative features it uses and a reduction of ongoing costs, which compares well to kirby which is an over priced metal boatweight that just slaps a lifetime warranty on old technology. And its customer service is top notch.
Without a decent patent system, Dyson simply woudl not have existed, as they simply could not have competed against Hoover et al.
BTW, have you heard about their new washing machine!
www.dyson.co.uk
Have a nice day!
Money is overrated when you're an ugly bastard. It only serves to help you forget the fact that you're an ugly bastard.
Cheers
Stor
"Yeah well there's a lot of stuff that should be, but isn't"
Does Bush really have the IQ to Rule the most
developed country ? Did he undergo a test before
heading to take over ? From what happens now
it seems like the wagon is driven by a a person of subnormal intelligence. This fiasco is the result of the mad driver in charge ? Or he is too damn smart.
=
George U(nder) Bush
M$ aren't really as bad as people make out. Clearly their guys have been sitting about, smoking some quality weed and thought to themselves: "...right, let's have a giggle, what's the silliest patent we can come up with...we know the patent system is fucked, now let's help the World out and provide the most definitive, most comprehensive proof yet". At this rate I could get to like Bill.
'Microsoft quiere partentarlo TODO!' (castilian) :)
What's ina sig?
What's in a sig?
I claim earliest prior art (from 1983) when I wrote a BBC BASIC program that scanned BASIC bytecode for TODO remarks and printed the list to my dot matrix printer, complete with line numbers.
Granted it's a little more primitive but I might have to sue the fuckers for this.
And they are proud of the fact that they're one of the few parts of government that is a revenue center.
Wasn't government was supposed to be a loss leader? That was, you know, the idea.
The ______ Agenda
fgrep -r 'todo' *
:)
wow, good job no one's ever done anything like that before
Borland has had this feature in Delphi since at least version 5. I don't use C++ Builder but I'm sure that it has a similar feature. This whole patent thing is out of control.
Meddle thou not in the affairs of Dragons, for thou art crunchy and with most anything.
That's an interesting idea and a really distrubing one if the USPTO really operates that way. I can understand prior patents being a US only thing, but prior art too? Are you sure that this is the case? This site says "foreign art" can invalidate a patent. Doesn't mean they're right but I'm curious.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
And to me, using "grep" doesn't even remotely match even the first claim of the patent, so what's your point?
I do not think this word means what you think it means.
Prior art anyone?...
so did saddam hussein.
Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes
REDMOND, WA--In what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday.
With the patent, Microsoft's rivals are prohibited from manufacturing or selling products containing zeroes and ones--the mathematical building blocks of all computer languages and programs--unless a royalty fee of 10 cents per digit used is paid to the software giant.
"Microsoft has been using the binary system of ones and zeroes ever since its inception in 1975," Gates told reporters. "For years, in the interest of the overall health of the computer industry, we permitted the free and unfettered use of our proprietary numeric systems. However, changing marketplace conditions and the increasingly predatory practices of certain competitors now leave us with no choice but to seek compensation for the use of our numerals."
A number of major Silicon Valley players, including Apple Computer, Netscape and Sun Microsystems, said they will challenge the Microsoft patent as monopolistic and anti-competitive, claiming that the 10-cent-per-digit licensing fee would bankrupt them instantly.
"While, technically, Java is a complex system of algorithms used to create a platform-independent programming environment, it is, at its core, just a string of trillions of ones and zeroes," said Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, whose company created the Java programming environment used in many Internet applications. "The licensing fees we'd have to pay Microsoft every day would be approximately 327,000 times the total net worth of this company."
"If this patent holds up in federal court, Apple will have no choice but to convert to analog," said Apple interim CEO Steve Jobs, "and I have serious doubts whether this company would be able to remain competitive selling pedal-operated computers running software off vinyl LPs."
As a result of the Microsoft patent, many other companies have begun radically revising their product lines: Database manufacturer Oracle has embarked on a crash program to develop "an abacus for the next millennium." Novell, whose communications and networking systems are also subject to Microsoft licensing fees, is working with top animal trainers on a chimpanzee-based message-transmission system. Hewlett-Packard is developing a revolutionary new steam-powered printer.
Despite the swarm of protest, Gates is standing his ground, maintaining that ones and zeroes are the undisputed property of Microsoft.
Above: Gates explains the new patent to Apple Computer's board of directors.
"We will vigorously enforce our patents of these numbers, as they are legally ours," Gates said. "Among Microsoft's vast historical archives are Sanskrit cuneiform tablets from 1800 B.C. clearly showing ones and a symbol known as 'sunya,' or nothing. We also own: papyrus scrolls written by Pythagoras himself in which he explains the idea of singular notation, or 'one'; early tracts by Mohammed ibn Musa al Kwarizimi explaining the concept of al-sifr, or 'the cipher'; original mathematical manuscripts by Heisenberg, Einstein and Planck; and a signed first-edition copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's Being And Nothingness. Should the need arise, Microsoft will have no difficulty proving to the Justice Department or anyone else that we own the rights to these numbers."
Added Gates: "My salary also has lots of zeroes. I'm the richest man in the world."
According to experts, the full ramifications of Microsoft's patenting of one and zero have yet to be realized.
"Because all integers and natural numbers derive from one and zero, Microsoft may, by extension, lay claim to ownership of all mathematics and logic systems, including Euclidean geometry, pulleys and levers, gravity, and the basic Newtonian principles of motion, as well as the c
So they pattented building tasklists from the word TODO scattered throughout the source code. Of all of the stupid things that they have patented, this is probably one of the more (read still not) legitimate ones. I mean Ok... from now on all my "Stuff to Accomplish" list items start by a STA: comment in code. This wouldnt be their to do list and would function the same.
Just browse their version control for prior art.
Damn good vacuums if you ask me. I've had two of them.
The first one bust after a plasterer we hired used it to clean up an entire rooms worth of plaster dust (every part of it inside and out was covered in a fine layer of plaster dust that would just not stay gone even after cleaning. The motor eventually burnt out since it too was clogged up).
Steve.
You have to look at it both ways.
Sure it seems as if Microsoft is trying to patent everything but the space bar, but I think there is a good reason is behind it.
I doubt they will start sueing people and companies about such rediculous patents , they are just trying to play safe. A judge will be MUCH more likely to make MS pay big $$ to some bs company because they patented something equally stupid, then the other way around.
Microsoft has realised what a turd the software patent system is , and is trying to shield itself from companies that try to make a buck by doing nothing else then suing left and right.
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
1) patent task list
2) ???
3....******Dear Hard_Code, please cease and desist from using patented "task lists" in your jokes.******
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Help the organizations that are fighting them Pubpat Electronic Frontier Foundation
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
Actually I think this is just another defensive patent. The idea is that large companies can all have huge portfolios of patents, so if one sues the other, the other can always sue back on something else. This way, the companies can keep doing what they're doing, the lawyers get rich, everyone's happy. Well, except the smaller developers, who are completely at the mercy of the large companies.
And they are proud of the fact that they're one of the few parts of government that is a revenue center.
Good points. They are certainly a revenue centre and profitable within their own walls. But are they really a profit centre if you take into account the "total cost of ownership" for the patent system?
To help determine that, I would subtract the costs of handling patent cases by the federal courts and other related non-USPTO expenses, which are costs to the government and taxpayers that are directly incurred due to the policies of the patent system.
Putting aside the traditional arguments about the impact on innovation and other indirect economic issues, the point at which it costs more (or even nearly as much) for the courts to evaluate and uphold or throw out patents as it does for the USPTO to rubber stamp them is the point at which no one could deny that the system is broken.
The USPTO would make a lot less "profit" if it didn't defer all the real work to the courts and the private sector.
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
I'm patenting the act of patenting.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
First another prior art item. The ilisp mode for emacs editing of common lisp has had a very similar mechanism for a long time. One could gradually build up a set of modified function definitions as a change set and compile them together. This is actually a very similar mechanism, underneath.
Actually, this seems like a simple extension to any number of literate-programming style comment preprocessors. One could almost do this just with the facilities offered by pod. [with a little evil scripting, one probably could do it with pod...]
What all this prior art suggests to me is not that this patent should be thrown out on the grounds of the prior art, but on the grounds of obviousness. Seems like any competent practitioner, offered a tool like grep and some scripting infrastructure, could come up with a similar facility.
Would this patent cover up a "TO DO" list generated by pulling comments containing common curse words out of source code and assigning priority by use of language? IE, the use of F#$K would rate higher than $h!t, and a nice combination of these even higher?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
In 1986, while working on a project for Amdahl in Sunnyvale California, I encountered a technique that appears to me to be exactly like MS ToDo.
The method used the "REMIND" macro to leave footprints in code not-yet-finished. Source code administration tools kept track of REMINDs in source code and reported on same.
This patent cannot stand.
FAQ shows todo list support:a ngelog_1.2 .html
g en/VERS ION
http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/ch
CVS establishes release date:
http://www-kp3.gsi.de/cgi-bin/cvsweb/~doxy
Another poster pointed out that Borland's Delphi 5 had these features in 1999. This is true, of course...it predates both the provisional and actual filing of this patent.
t es /pro.html
/ in dex.html
For those interested...the documentation for Delphi 5 (including notes on the TODO feature) can be found here:
http://info.borland.com/techpubs/delphi/v5/upda
Borland's press release announcing the Delphi 5 product in July 1999 is listed here:
http://www.borland.com/news/press_releases/1999
Preview is showing spaces in those URLs, so check'em before you click.
Umm, no. The whole "Jews are teh debhil" thing in Nazi Germany was based on WW1.
Of course, everybody hated the Jews in WWI, except perhaps certain elements of the British armed forces who saw them as a valuable ally against the Ottoman Turks in Palestine (or what became known as the British Mandate of Palestine, later Israel). I suspect that even the mainstream British were anti-Semetic in the proper sense of the work (being against Jews, Arabs, Ethiopians, etc). Indeed I suspect that the Balfour Declaration was supported at least in part by a paternalistic racism directed *against* the Jews. The Balfour declaration essentially offered to give "Zionists" land in the "British Mandate of Palestine" so long as the this was not burdensome to the inhabitants there at the time (the Palestinians). It therefore set the stage for the Israeli War of Independence in 1948 and 1949. Far too few people realize that there is a strong historical reason why the Jews in general and Israelis in particular have come to be so fast to assume that everybody hates them. I think part of it is the fact that for many many centuries in Christian Europe, everybody did (this was not the case necessarily in the Muslim world).
So it had to be the Bankers and Industrialists (the Germans had as many "war-profiteering" myths as everyone else). And those Bankers and Industrialists were largely Jewish (due to a medeival peculiarity, the really rich people in Germany were largely Jewish), or appeared to be.
Just to be clear, the medieval peculiarity you are referring to was the prohibition against Jews owning land. Hence they became those who delt in small valuables: moneylending being one example, goldsmithing being another.
Also, most Germans didn't believe that their newspapers/radio/other news were "independent". Especially since, historically, they had never been entirely independent.
If you read the documents which lead up to WWI, you will see that one of the main issues between Germany and Serbia was the fact Germany wanted Serbia to censor their press due to the fact that some newspapers were expressing the opinion that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was a good thing for Serbian nationalists.
The concept of a free and independent press is completely foreign to the German government at least as late as WWI, and they express disbelief that such a system could exist.
And it probably would offend you no end to know that most German and Japanese POW's were kept in "prison camps outside the borders". And we didn't let them talk to lawyers either.
No, but we did, at least in theory, apply prisoner of war rights to them. THis is something that the Bush administration tries to refuse to do at every opportunity.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Maybe software stacks and queues, linked lists,
autoincrementing variables, strings, arrays, constants and bits fields.
Maybe basic,assembly, hand coded binary.
Wasn't government was supposed to be a loss leader?
You know, that comment may be far more insightful than my original. People often think that money the government gets is simply money down the drain, and while there are problems with letting govt spending get out of control, it's worth remembering that it's also an investment in a platform for trade and society (and also, that the government money goes to private individuals and businesses, who eventually spend it back into circulation).
Tweet, tweet.
really - because Government can only be supported by taxes, therefore the more they lose, the higher your tax?
or am I missing something completely radical?
Patents must also be non-obvious to experts in the field.
MS's button response patent: Let me hold down the power button on my Palm Pilot so I can get a back-light. How about holding down the power button on an ATX case for 5 seconds to force a power-off. Two examples of how we already have reactions based on length of time that a button is depressed. Combine that with the ol' double click mouse speed adjustments and it's obvious to experts in the field.
The To-Do list patent. This is a variation on two things. First, the context-based features in IDE's where the methods and variables that you declare are added to GUI trees as you go along. You can click on one of those elements and jump right to the code in question. Second, the idea of specialized comments to indicate things in code. JavaDoc, SGML, etc are examples of this. Again, obvious to an expert in the field. (Apparently MS had this ToDo functionality in their IDE years before they filed for the patent to boot.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Is to distract you open source weenies from the main game, by making frivolous patent claims, while they rake in the cash.
An I am serious here.
so it doesn't then, guess its not readable on the claims and doesn't count against the patent. sorry, please try again
USPTO takes anything from anywhere. They even have a team of translators to translate things into english if they look relevant.
The anonymous moron asked, "Does it mark the items complete when the task is completed?"
I said it did, because when you fix the tasks, they no longer appear.
Therefore whereas you are right that it doesn't count against the patent by itself, you are completely off the mark with your reasoning.
The real reason it doesn't count against the patent is that it is not shown in an IDE. If it were shown in an IDE, then the Doxygen implementation would be a 100% fit.
But never mind that IDEs like Visual Age had this feature long before the Visual Studio betas even thought of it.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Deleting a task is not the same as marking it complete. The task list of the Microsoft patent keeps a record of completed tasks while your "run the program again and it won't be in the list" solution does not. The fact that it is not in an IDE is just another strike against it.
Also, the time Microsoft actually implemented this in in a public product is entirely irrelevant under US law, they could have come up with the idea, but not used it in Visual Studio until a later date. If Visual Age had this feature prior to the priority date of this application then it would be important, if they had it after that date then it doesn't count.
Yeah, and it's really hard to write a script to make Doxygen work the same way... and anyway, Visual Age did have this feature before the patent was even lodged, like I've said already.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I saw a post in which reference is made to a legal situation in which a judge ruled in favour of MS to be able to use a graphical interface for an OS (in a ruling against Apple), because of the competition aspect; similar in some ways to this scenario. Let's hope that there are people in positions of power who are wise enough to counter this of trend.
In another vein: MS is stockpiling IP - why? Are they planning to stop innovating software and just make money from lawsuits like other industry dinosaurs?
The difficulty in implementing the idea is irrelevant as far as the validity of the patent is concerned. Under US law you need to prove that the idea existed somewhere in the public domain at a date prior to the date of the application. Obviousness and difficulty of implementation aren't related.
You've never actually provided any proof of Visual Age's having of this feature, no date of release, no link to a changelog, product manual or anything of that nature, so why should I believe that it contained this feature if you can't prove it.
Why should anyone have to prove anything to someone too cowardly to use a real user account?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Ad Hominem arguments are logical fallicies and usually get you absolutely nowhere. If you want to discuss this in a civilized manner I am willing to, however if insist on ignoring the argument completely, then it really is pointless for me to continue.
As if I care. The person on the other end of the line doesn't even have an identity. :-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
so be it
He was just trying to sound cool and it backfired on him
The stark contrast between your position on this issue, and the position of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn, the two guys who really did invent the internet, could not be more clear.