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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."
I am going to patent "is too" and "nuh uh".
I hate sigs.
Somehow, this IsNot funny.
Hmmm Microsoft patents IsNot so we can't say Microsoft IsNot Linux or Mac, right? Maybe because they don't want us to say Microsoft IsNot good? IsNot fair? IsNot using best practice? I guess they are trying to surpress our complaining.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Unless I'm mistaken, they've only applied for a patent; it has not yet been granted. Sadly, given the state of the patent system nowadays, it would not surprise me if it is granted.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
If the whole idea of sanctioning a company because it formed and mainatined a monopoly through anticompetitive practices is to restore competition in the industry, why do we continue to allow it to secure a temporary monopoly in that industry? PARTICULARLY WHEN THEY ARE STILL BEING SANCTIONED?
I think it is a travesty that MS is allowed to aquire IP though the goverment that is sanctioning them. How does that restore competition? It is blatantly counter productive.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
For future applications, the patent office will have to pay them to say "This IS NOT original".
After a quick read of the patent, it seems to say that it is a test to see if two "variables" are actually the same entity, i.e. at the same address.
That would seem to imply
#define IsNot(A,B) (&(A) != &(B))
infringes?
Surely this is done in things like memmove() to prevent overwriting of data?
If so, the 'IsNot' operator is obvious and therefore not a good candidate to be patented. Of course what MS is really trying to do here is patent a representation of logic.
A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two variables point to the same location in memory.
Prior art:
The C operator !=, for comparing two pointers.
See what is going on? do you want this, too?
This is a direct attack against GNU/Linux, no longer will GNU be GNU isNot UNIX!
If ever there were an example of how completely broken and useless the current patent system is then this is it. This makes you think, what other obvious and trivial functions have been granted patents? Can I get a patent on strcmp? I'll just apply for a patent on my new, special function that I just recently came up with. It's called StringCompare!
As I right this my colleagues are writing up patent applications for the !=, ==, &&, ||, &, and | operators. I expect these applications to be granted shortly, after which we'll own all your code and Microsoft will be my bitch.
--
Sounds like a scam, but it works.
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infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
It depends on what your definition of "is" is...
In other news... (From an old Onion article)
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."
Read More.
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Sounds like a scam, but it works.
Free Flat Screens | Free iPod Photo |
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
But I do have the patent on IsToo non-enumarable infinity, witch is larger then IsToo infinity. I win!
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
There is a sublime although disturbing elegance in the fact that it is illogical to allow MS to patent a logic operator
I am currently trying to patent multiplication so all of you owe me a nickel everytime you times.
Lemme guess. "I'm not an English major."
I believe you mean, "I IsNot an English major."
The patent isn't easy reading, but if you plow through enough of it you get to an example in code
It looks like their patenting using the Basic IsNot operator on object comparisons in Basic. It's a pretty limited patent.
On the other hand, I'm baffled that you can patent overriding a specific operator in a specific language. There's considerable prior art in overrding operatorsin general.
Of course, the problem with patent abuse by a few people is that it prompts others to do the same. Don't want someone to patent a piece of technology out from under you? Patent it first!
If ever there were an example of how completely broken and useless the current patent system is then this is it.
Before you burst a blood vessel, this appears to only be a patent application, not a granted patent.
The USPTO "recently" changed its rules (to match the rest of the world) and no publishes applications before they are granted.
I know some patent applications are obfuscated enough that USPTO workers can't tell whether they're patentable so they just rubber stamp them--but this is absurd. If it weren't on uspto.gov, I'd assume it was a hoax.
The != operator does essentially the same thing in C++, and it's been around for decades. Why is applying a well-known, absolutely trivial concept to another domain patentable? Heads should roll at the USPTO for this.
Point 1:
"evaluating to true when the first operand and the second operand point to different memory locations"
The patent appears to cover a single operator (in BASIC, but that is an aside) which does JUST a comparison of whether the 2 operands in fact reside at the same memory address. (e.g. if they were 2 references to instances of the same class, it will tell you if they are in fact references to the same instance of that class)
The C operator != in fact tells you if 2 operands share the same VALUE. This is a different concept, though in the case of pointers you could use it to perform the same test as above. != is NOT an operator with that use as its sole purpose.
Point 2:
"When I compare the value of pointers, I'm comparing what memory address they point to... got that? Ok, so when I compare two pointers using != I'm testing that they don't point to the same memory adddress... ok?"
When you declare a pointer (to anything) in C, you in fact declare some form of integer; the exact type varies with your compiler and OS, but its just a NUMBER. When you use the != (or any other logical conparison operator) with that variable, you are in fact just comparing 2 numbers to each other. If you have written your program well, you may in fact be comparing 2 memory addresses, but consider that this is valid C code, and is using the != comparator on two "pointers":
int x = 3000;
void *a =
void *b = x;
int r = (a != b);
Depending on your choice of number to put in x, you might even manage to get a "true" result from that.
Your knowledge of how pointers actually work seems a tad lacking. You probably think there are no pointers in Java too...
First off, the IsNot operator is not part of VB 6.0 or VB.net 2003 (I haven't checked 2005, which is still in Beta)
Second, if you undestand VB's "Is" operator, IsNot makes more sense.
"Is" is a memory location comparison commonly used to see if two variables point to the same object, e.g. . It does not compare the values of the variables, only that they are pointers to the same object.
Because there is no inverse version of this operator like there is with "=" and "", you end up with non-natural-language statements such asMuch more natural looking isWhether this is patentable is another issue. But you can certainly patent a published idea -- it's the only way to protect it.
Design for Use, not Construction!
The dependent claims (2, 3 and 4) are merely shorthand to avoid writing the entire claim out each time, but for purposes of what they cover, you should read the claims like this:
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
On the other hand, this patent does not apply only to the BASIC language. Each claim of a patent is treated as a seperate patent. Thus claim one covers any system that does the particular operation. Claim two covers a system where the compiler is a BASIC compiler. Claim three covers any system where the operator used is "IsNot" regardless of whether or nor the language is BASIC. Claim four covers any system wherein the compiler comprises a scanner, parser, analyzer, and executable generator (regardless of language).
Come play Heroes of Might and Magic Mini online.
10 DIM A 10 ... ... ...
15 REM this is equivalent to A=malloc(10)
20 B=A
100 IF BA THEN
So this tests to see if two variables point to the same memory location, in a variant of Basic which has been in use since about 1982.
BBC Basic supports pointers, proper indirection, indexed indirection and dynamic allocation.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2003/11/1 7/243.aspx#Comments
And he writes that they "had requests for this in the past", so they did not even invent it, but some users suggested it.
Finally check out the comments of the VB users below wetting their pants for this little feature. Now isn't that really sad?
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Microsoft's incredible insight here seems to involve taking Python's 10-year old technology, porting it to BASIC, and heavily optimizing it by removing the whitespace sytactic sugar between 'is' and 'not'. (This saves over 16% space!)
If anything was more worthy of patent protection, I don't know what it could be.
Actually, it's pretty obvious that the motivation for such a stupid little patent that applies to one language is simply to prevent people from reimplementing the language as a whole. Nobody cares about IsNot itself, including Microsoft. However, since 100% code compatibility is required to do a full reimplementation, this essentially would grant them a 20-year monopoly on compatible implementations of VB.
This is one of the worst things about the current patent system. Patent holders are allowed to use patents on small things to control access to huge things. Patents should somehow be changed to only protect the claims in the patent, they should not be allowed to use compatibility issues to amplify small patents into generalized barriers to entry of a whole industry.
So, just sent a registered letter to the patent examiner with a registered copy to the attorneys pointing out that there is prior art for claim one. this 1998 ISO comment, this 1997 IBM document or a few zillion others.
GNU is Not Unix.
....
Pine Is Not Elm.
Wine Is Not an Emulator.
Now, some claims refer to other claims... so, you can kill multiple claims by killing the underlying claim.
But, claim #1 says absolutely nothing about BASIC.
Also, when I read it, I get the impression that BASIC is mentions for demonstration purposes only, that the claim is for everything like BASIC.
For example, I see this:Which mentions derivitaves of BASIC and BASIC like languages. And, it mentions in one embodiment of the invention, the memory locations represent objects.. (Can you say dot net?)
Here is another part that makes me think it isn't just BASIC:Again, the mention of a browser and the web make me think of dot net.
Then, in paragraph [0041] we see this sentence:Which tags two non-BASIC languages (.net and delphi/pascal)
I think that if you read it closely you start getting the impression that they are trying to patent an idea that is expressed in many programming languages.
Not just an implementation in one language.
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
NonMSVisualBasic (NMSVB for short) is identical in every respect to Microsoft Visual Basic [trademark owned by Microsoft, all rights reserved by them] except that it lacks an IsNot operator. Instead, please use one of the following methods:
- !Is()
- MicrosoftSucksAss()
- SoftwarePatentsSuckAss()
- NotIs()
We apologize for the inconvenience; please direct all further questions on this issue to billg@microsoft.com.It so happens that IAMAITL (I am an international trade lawyer). I can assure you that the article, in that regard, is utter bullshit on various levels:
If you check the PTO web site, it is for "published patent applications."
Microsoft applied for a patent on "IsNot" on May 14, 2004, and the patent was published 18 months later on November 14, 2004.
This doesn't mean that the patent will issue and that Microsoft will receive patent protection for the operator. The author is getting ahead of himself...
probably a vi user. I bet his ESC key is worn out also.
been there. done that.
Say, this is bad for GNU. You know, GNU isNot unix.
... at a store near you.
probably a vi user. I bet his ESC key is worn out also.
No, but you should see his colon....
Never mind, forget I said that.
It depends on what the definition of "IsNot" is.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Die, my brilliant metal asshole?
:)
Is that a Babelfish translation or did I screw that up entirely
-- n