Microsoft is the Industry's Most Innovative Company?

mjasay writes "According to a recent analysis by IEEE, Microsoft's patent portfolio tops the industry in terms of overall quality of its patents. And while Microsoft came in second to IBM in The Patent Board's 2006 survey, its upcoming 2007 report has Microsoft besting IBM (and even its 2006 report had Microsoft #1 in terms of the "scientific strength" of its patent portfolio). All of which begs the question: Just where is all this innovation going? To Clippy? Consumers and business users don't buy patents. They buy products that make their lives easier or more productive, yet Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to turn its patent portfolio into much more than life support for its existing Office and Windows monopolies. In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?"

Comments

Re:MS does have some valuable patents

[Anonymous Coward]

A word on Microsoft's ClearType "innovation":
http://www.grc.com/ctwho.htm

Re:My only guess is that it is the handheld OS!!

[FredFredrickson]

As far as I know, T-SQL only allows top(). Whereas MYSQL allows Limit X, Y, which allows you to basically "page" results to show, say records 5-10. T-SQL makes it redundant:

MYSQL:
SELECT * FROM records LIMIT 5, 5

T-SQL
SELECT TOP(5) * FROM records WHERE id NOT IN (SELECT TOP(5) * FROM records)

They both select records 5-10, but one is more redundant. (and possibly more memory intensive, slower, etc)