Slashdot Mirror
Why Bill Gates Wants 3,000 New Patents
theodp writes "The NY Times looks at Microsoft's newly acquired passion for patents and wonders: What would Thomas Jefferson think if he were around to visit Microsoft's campus, seeing software patents stacked like pyramids of cannonballs? Jefferson might also be shocked by Microsoft's summer crop of patent apps, which includes Creating a note related to a phone call, Adding and removing white space from a document and Identifying when baseball is exciting. Gotta meet that quota of 60 fresh, nonobvious patentable ideas a week!"
3,000 sounds like the expected total for Longhorn/ "Vista" security gaps and bugs. Hmmm. Produce software, patent the bugs, sue for revealing trade secrets if anyone reports them. Profit!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You know im no Microsoft apologist, but it seems very odd that we bash microsoft left and right but never even mention IBM, which indeed is always number 1 every year in getting the most patents! What do we make of this bias here at slashdot?
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
IBM doesn't pump out buggy software year after year for insane prices, and almost-non-existant changes. Also, IBM actually carries out innovative research instead of trying to remarket office 950 which is exactly the same as office 97.