Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Patents 'IsNot', Enlists WTO
Milhouse102 writes "I was just reading an article on The Register about Microsoft's offshore patent war following Ballmer's recent outburst in Asia. I came across this little nugget, it seems MS has patented BASIC's IsNot operator."
So there
I wonder if somebody will patent the voice of moaning women.
"Evil thrives when good men do nothing"
Looking at your sig, I am inclined to vent a bit on the patent system issue, and where it fits in the grand scheme of things.
Patents last less than 20 years. They are backed by the deadly force of the US government. This is the same deadly force that killed 300,000 Iraqi children. And continuous to kill them. In the grand scheme of things, most of the slashdot crowd will still be around when the patents expire. So let the sleezy corporations patent all the obvious stuff and twenty years down the road it will not be an issue for the stuff they are patenting today. The kids howerver are dead.
The world IMO is chaotically unruly. The patent mess and the dead kids are part of the same problem in this view. People are just not very reasonable. Unless you have more deadly force available than the government, there is not an easy solution to either of the cited problems. However, reality breaking into peoples lives has a tendency to make people a little saner. Encouraging sanity is however a troublesome endeavor. You could however start by finding a sig that makes people thougtful, as opposed to them responding emotionally to sound bites.