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Amazon Sued For Recommending Books
localman writes "Cedant, the owner of Super 8 motels and Days Inn, is suing Amazon for patent infringement for recommending books with it's 'customers who purchased X also purchased Y' technology. Heh. 'Technology.' It's always fun to see Amazon hoist by its own petard, as it were, but it would really stink if no website could offer it's customer's recommendations. Got Prior Art?"
Seems like something that librarians have been doing for centuries. "If you liked that Trixie Belden book, why don't you try Nancy Drew?" I've seen reading lists along the same lines to suggest other works to people on waiting-lists to borrow the most popular books.
Don't mess with the librarians.
~
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
to all these trivial patent suits. Since it seems that common business methods can be patented, let's patent the business model of patenting something common and suing someone to get money we didn't earn.
Then anyone who brings a stupid patent suit up owes us money!!!
But how did you get to be the last person in the world remembering to place a quote mark (or what passes for one) outside the period?
Since you mention "the world", I'll point out that the stylistic guideline you're referring to is peculiarly American. The British have always had the (far more sensible, IMO) rule that the punctuation only goes inside the quotes if it's actually found in the material being quoted. And over the last twenty or thirty years, the so-called "British Rule" has become acceptable in American English as well.
Here's a tip for ya: The Elements of Style is a great book for improving your own writing, but it absolutely fails to distinguish between rules, guidelines, and mere suggestions, which makes it a terrible resource for criticizing the works of others. For that, I recommend you obtain the Chicago Manual of Style, which (unlike Strunk & White) is used by professional editors throughout the US.