And yet, once they have amassed a large enough portfolio, what would prevent them from launching an offensive against lesser competitors?
The same thing that keeps IBM (mostly) in line: The Justice department.
Abusing their patent portfolio for an all out attack would likely bring the wrath of the courts down on their heads. Not just for being anti-competitive, but also for filing tons of baseless lawsuits. The courts tend to react far less when you're on the defensive.
On the other hand, MS actively lobbied for software patents in the recent EU brouhaha. Which suggests they may have some other role in mind for their portfolio.
No, I don't think so. Amazon has their one click patent, yet they are also lobbying for changes in the patent system. The key is that launching a full patent portfolio strike is akin to nuclear MADD. Both parties will drain their resources and be left in a dead or weakened state. It's far better then to simply destroy everyone's arsenal, and allow a bit of anarchy to rule. Until that time, however, Microsoft doesn't want to be the only one left without weapons of mass destruction.;-)
* 2. The old architecture is a dinosaur, harkening back to the 8088 and rather inefficient in many respects, where RISC processors were supposed to trump it. Which is still around? It seems you can come up with all the technological advances you like, so long as it is still a pumped up 8088.
Actually, only the instruction set harkens to the 8088. The actual core is much more similar to a RISC processor, but with microcode galore that makes it ACT like a CISC processor. Which is not to say that the current Pentiums are a *good* design (WTF is up with the 20 stage pipeline?!?), but they are certainly not souped up 8088s. In fact, I'd say that the original 286/386 architecture has a far greater effect on the crappiness of the current chips than the 8088 design ever did.
Methinks they saw the power of this approach and if the last round killed 4 leading nplayers, this round will kill off the remaining 2 (IBM & AMD).
Except for one problem. Everyone now thinks that Intel is the boy who cried wolf.
While Intel's FUD did destroy the high-end server market, they failed to account for AMD's move into that market. As a result, AMD has managed to take the development lead away from Intel. Any future attempts by Intel at new processor architecture will be met with a luke warm response at best. At worst, the entire market will shun Intels attempts. They're not in a good position at the moment to be spreading too much FUD.
I wouldn't be suprised if they just licenced Opteron technology from AMD
Intel already did that with their EM64T technology. It's already present in the latest Xeon processors, and is now considered the future of the x86 platform.
Intel has pretty much admitted that they got egg on their face for that one. Especially since one of the purposes of the Itanium design was to create an architecture under which the AMD cross-licensing deals wouldn't apply. Talk about backfiring.
One thing the article didn't make clear is what exactly Intel means by "A New Chip Architecture". i.e. Do they mean a new architecture as in the Itanic (but low power!), or a new chip architecture as in, "We're ditching the 20 stage pipeline in exchange for a more reasonable 6 stage pipeline, swapping out most of the control circuts for those from our StrongARM line, and rewriting the microcode to execute all of the Pentium instructions on a simple, low power RISC core."
While they could go either way, I hope they've learned from the Itanium and EM64T debacles that they should stick with a compatible microcode. Leave the super-instruction sets to the MIPS and SPARCs of the world.
I think its more likely that the patent is targeted at the various free word processing programs.
I don't think it's actually *targeted* at anything. Targeting something with a patent would imply that the feature exists. (Which would invalidate the patent.) Instead, Microsoft is simply building a large portfolio. The idea is that if they cast a large enough net, they can eventually threaten any would-be attacker with hundreds of vague claims. While none of them would probably hold up in court, the claims would tie things up for long enough to bankrupt or entirely block the attacker.
Just an interesting FYI, the Western Digital SATA drives have only one connector for data (SATA), but for some reason have two connectors for power! The first is the new SATA power connector, while the second is an old fashioned hard drive/cdrom power connector. Because of this, I didn't realize that SATA had a new power cable when I built my new computer, and I initially had the drives plugged into the old-fashioned drive connectors.
The entire time I was wondering what those new-fangled connectors coming out of the power supply were for. Especially since there were so many of them! If anyone else makes the same mistake I did, then it shouldn't hurt anything. However, you might be a bit confused when others speak of "SATA power connectors".;-)
I still don't think that would trigger the patent (although you'd be flirting with the edge) because you've explicitly marked the data in the document stream. The claim states that the text stream is read in, analyzed, and visually marked on screen (NOT in the document stream!) in real time.
In any case, I seriously doubt that you'd see this applied to any cases except as a defense. In the past few years, Microsoft has become keenly aware of how legally naked the lack of a patent portfolio has made them. Considering that Microsoft and IBM are not on such great terms anymore (not to mention the various Sun lawsuits), Microsoft is deliberately positioning themselves to have legal teeth in the market.
That's right. For example, the military holds a patent on "A gene present in an Ancient space-faring culture, that is used as a security device for preventing alien access to sensitive technological equipment."
The claims made are:
"By inserting the gene into a compatible host via a retrovirus, that host becomes capable of using and activating advanced equipment left behind by our now dead anscestors who just happened to invent the Latin language."
I mean, does that sound rediculous or what? The patent office should go back to requiring working models of an invention as proof!;-)
For example, let's say I wrote a perl script that converted a text document to HTML. If I wrapped numbers and words believed to be numbers in bold tags, technically I'd be violating this patent.
Actually, you might not. According to the patent, one of the major features of the software is the ability to remove the highlighting. In fact, the highlighting is intended to be temporary, and is not embedded into the document stream. If you wrote software that embedded bold tags into the document itself, you'd be doing something similar yet quite different.
what it patents is if there is data in a document that should be brought attention to, microsoft has patented the idea of giving it a standout attribute like putting a box around it or underlining it or boldening it or making it a brighter color.
Actually, no. Mr. Hope's patent (which he assigned to Microsoft) is for a method of scanning through text and auto-highlighting numbers (e.g. 1,2,3,4), numerals (e.g. I, II, III, IV), numerical text representations (e.g. "one", "two", "three"), and mathematical formulas (e.g. "e=mc^2", "f=ma", etc.). Its function is intended to be more like that of a spell checker than a highlighting tool, with the difference that it only assists the user in finding the information, not changing it.
So you don't have to pay Microsoft $699 for using bold or highlighted numbers. However, I do charge a $699 fee for my services as a legal document interpreter. You can remit payment to: 1 Batcave Lane, C/O Alfred, Gothom City 55555.
Lord Grey (first post) already gave a fairly good description, but I'll repeat it here. Basically, the patent is for software that can detect all manners of numbers (e.g. 1, II, "three", etc.) and highlight them in a given document. Contrary to the explanation given in the summary, the method of highlight is not actually specfied. There is, however, a B&W drawing that uses a line box as a standin for highlighting (most likely yellow-marker style highlighting). My guess is that the submitter looked at the pretty pictures and jumped to conclusions.
The agency said in 2000 that it would see initial savings of at least £245,000 (US$439,000) from switching to StarOffice and Linux, and that the open-source deployment would allow it to bring productivity software to more of its officers.
The article also states:
In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, Stirling said. It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said.
Despite the focus on StarOffice, that last sentence obviously refers to the Linux Desktop, most likely in relation to its SMB and NT Domain support.
When the tire blew- it was on the pass side and the car pulled to the right, as I was driving along a culvert
Well, that would do it. Blowing a tire on a caddy tends to drop one corner down. If you were on a side slope, I could see control getting quite difficult.;-)
Amen to that. That's why I'm really glad that modern luxury cars use Microprocessors for everything. Only the wiring that's absolutely necessary goes into the cars. Everything else is on a few chips that can theoretically last hundreds of years longer than their highly corrosive ancestors.
BTW, all this talk of Caddys got me interested in checking out their latest offerings. It's times like this that I wish I really was Bruce Wayne, because I'd go and get myself a new Batmobile from GM. I mean 16 cylinders, 4 wheel steering, aluminum body, and a whopping 1000 horsepower!? I want one! (Or at least a chance to drive one through a state with no speed limit. YEEEEE-HAAAA!);-)
There's a *huge* difference between a 75 Caddy & an 85 Caddy.
Except that I had a 1980 Fleetwood. Only five years difference. Mine didn't have fancy computer, either. Just finiky control circuits and TONS of wiring.:-/
I have a 79 Coupe DeVille, and there's no airshock suspension
Really? I thought that it became standard on all Caddies during the 70's. In fact, this article suggests that air suspension was used in the Cadillac Eldardo in the late '50s! (Though this link suggests that they abandoned it at the time.) Oh well, guess you learn something new every day.:-)
The BSD is a great license, but [the ability to commercialize] is actually a -weakness-
No, it's not a weekness any more than the GPL's requirement to provide source code is. Choose the right license for what you want to do, and you'll have no problems. For example, the Apache project works on the idea that providing a common code base instead of reinventing the wheel at 500 different companies is a good thing. Thus they provide code (donated by many of those same companies!) under the BSD license specifically so the software *can* be commercialized.
In the case of Linux, control over the source code is a more important feature than not reinventing the wheel. Thus it's under the GPL license.
You people need to wake up and remember the programmer's addage, "Use the right tool for the right job!"
The fastest I ever had a blowout was at 35mph, but it was in a 1975 Caddy (19 feet long, 4600 lbs, 2 door!) and that puppy was not easy to control.
Eh? Where'd the power steering and airshock suspension go? I also had a blowout on a 1980 Cadillac Fleetwood doing about 45MPH. (Passenger side, rear.) The car continued to be smooth in its control, but the loud rumble and slight tilt told me something was wrong.
Caddies tend(ed) to have EXTREMELY advanced suspension and steering control to where they can often manuever far better than vehicles half their size. I'm very surprised that you had any problem at all. Was some of the equipment (e.g. airshocks) non-operational? It certainly wouldn't surprise me if that was the case. Cadillacs of the time were so full of wiring that *something* was always on the blink.
For the longest time, the auto-dimmers on my vehicle didn't work. Then one day I hit a rather hard bump on the road and suddenly the status lights on the hood lit up and started reporting info. (FYI to others: the little protrusions on the corner front of Cadillacs contains a set of status lights that are designed for the driver to see.) When I parked and turned off my headlights, I suddenly realized that I couldn't turn the gall-darn things off! So I popped the hood and started to consider disconnecting a battery terminal when the lights turned off leaving me in the dark!
Very funny.
Turns out that the bump I hit had reactivated some of the Caddy's sensor equipment. After that, the auto-dimmers worked, as did the timed headlight shutoff (what so nicely left me in the dark), the status lights, and a few other features. I was definitely happy about getting the use of the equipment back, but let's just say that I'm glad that modern caddies use modern microprocessors instead of the old-style mess of electrical wiring.;-)
I've been dying for someone to "hack" the patent system and using different words patent the same idea twice (or have two people approved for the same idea).
That exact thing happened with the LZW algorithm used in GIF files. Both Unisys and IBM ended up with patents, but only Unisys tried to enforce them.
Sorry, your Sun as you call it, violates my patent on placing unshielded fusion reactors into galactic orbit. All users of this Sun now owe me $699.99 for the priveledge of using it. Buy now, and you can get in on this deal BEFORE the judge finds I can't patent such technology!;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Ha ha. Real funny. ;-)
And yet, once they have amassed a large enough portfolio, what would prevent them from launching an offensive against lesser competitors?
;-)
The same thing that keeps IBM (mostly) in line: The Justice department.
Abusing their patent portfolio for an all out attack would likely bring the wrath of the courts down on their heads. Not just for being anti-competitive, but also for filing tons of baseless lawsuits. The courts tend to react far less when you're on the defensive.
On the other hand, MS actively lobbied for software patents in the recent EU brouhaha. Which suggests they may have some other role in mind for their portfolio.
No, I don't think so. Amazon has their one click patent, yet they are also lobbying for changes in the patent system. The key is that launching a full patent portfolio strike is akin to nuclear MADD. Both parties will drain their resources and be left in a dead or weakened state. It's far better then to simply destroy everyone's arsenal, and allow a bit of anarchy to rule. Until that time, however, Microsoft doesn't want to be the only one left without weapons of mass destruction.
* 2. The old architecture is a dinosaur, harkening back to the 8088 and rather inefficient in many respects, where RISC processors were supposed to trump it. Which is still around? It seems you can come up with all the technological advances you like, so long as it is still a pumped up 8088.
Actually, only the instruction set harkens to the 8088. The actual core is much more similar to a RISC processor, but with microcode galore that makes it ACT like a CISC processor. Which is not to say that the current Pentiums are a *good* design (WTF is up with the 20 stage pipeline?!?), but they are certainly not souped up 8088s. In fact, I'd say that the original 286/386 architecture has a far greater effect on the crappiness of the current chips than the 8088 design ever did.
Methinks they saw the power of this approach and if the last round killed 4 leading nplayers, this round will kill off the remaining 2 (IBM & AMD).
Except for one problem. Everyone now thinks that Intel is the boy who cried wolf.
While Intel's FUD did destroy the high-end server market, they failed to account for AMD's move into that market. As a result, AMD has managed to take the development lead away from Intel. Any future attempts by Intel at new processor architecture will be met with a luke warm response at best. At worst, the entire market will shun Intels attempts. They're not in a good position at the moment to be spreading too much FUD.
I wouldn't be suprised if they just licenced Opteron technology from AMD
Intel already did that with their EM64T technology. It's already present in the latest Xeon processors, and is now considered the future of the x86 platform.
Intel has pretty much admitted that they got egg on their face for that one. Especially since one of the purposes of the Itanium design was to create an architecture under which the AMD cross-licensing deals wouldn't apply. Talk about backfiring.
One thing the article didn't make clear is what exactly Intel means by "A New Chip Architecture". i.e. Do they mean a new architecture as in the Itanic (but low power!), or a new chip architecture as in, "We're ditching the 20 stage pipeline in exchange for a more reasonable 6 stage pipeline, swapping out most of the control circuts for those from our StrongARM line, and rewriting the microcode to execute all of the Pentium instructions on a simple, low power RISC core."
While they could go either way, I hope they've learned from the Itanium and EM64T debacles that they should stick with a compatible microcode. Leave the super-instruction sets to the MIPS and SPARCs of the world.
Since IBM and Sun don't write word processing software anymore (AFAIK)
Really? *cough*SmartSuite*cough*StarOffice*cough*
I think its more likely that the patent is targeted at the various free word processing programs.
I don't think it's actually *targeted* at anything. Targeting something with a patent would imply that the feature exists. (Which would invalidate the patent.) Instead, Microsoft is simply building a large portfolio. The idea is that if they cast a large enough net, they can eventually threaten any would-be attacker with hundreds of vague claims. While none of them would probably hold up in court, the claims would tie things up for long enough to bankrupt or entirely block the attacker.
Just an interesting FYI, the Western Digital SATA drives have only one connector for data (SATA), but for some reason have two connectors for power! The first is the new SATA power connector, while the second is an old fashioned hard drive/cdrom power connector. Because of this, I didn't realize that SATA had a new power cable when I built my new computer, and I initially had the drives plugged into the old-fashioned drive connectors.
;-)
The entire time I was wondering what those new-fangled connectors coming out of the power supply were for. Especially since there were so many of them! If anyone else makes the same mistake I did, then it shouldn't hurt anything. However, you might be a bit confused when others speak of "SATA power connectors".
I still don't think that would trigger the patent (although you'd be flirting with the edge) because you've explicitly marked the data in the document stream. The claim states that the text stream is read in, analyzed, and visually marked on screen (NOT in the document stream!) in real time.
In any case, I seriously doubt that you'd see this applied to any cases except as a defense. In the past few years, Microsoft has become keenly aware of how legally naked the lack of a patent portfolio has made them. Considering that Microsoft and IBM are not on such great terms anymore (not to mention the various Sun lawsuits), Microsoft is deliberately positioning themselves to have legal teeth in the market.
That's right. For example, the military holds a patent on "A gene present in an Ancient space-faring culture, that is used as a security device for preventing alien access to sensitive technological equipment."
;-)
The claims made are:
"By inserting the gene into a compatible host via a retrovirus, that host becomes capable of using and activating advanced equipment left behind by our now dead anscestors who just happened to invent the Latin language."
I mean, does that sound rediculous or what? The patent office should go back to requiring working models of an invention as proof!
For example, let's say I wrote a perl script that converted a text document to HTML. If I wrapped numbers and words believed to be numbers in bold tags, technically I'd be violating this patent.
Actually, you might not. According to the patent, one of the major features of the software is the ability to remove the highlighting. In fact, the highlighting is intended to be temporary, and is not embedded into the document stream. If you wrote software that embedded bold tags into the document itself, you'd be doing something similar yet quite different.
what it patents is if there is data in a document that should be brought attention to, microsoft has patented the idea of giving it a standout attribute
like putting a box around it or underlining it or boldening it or making it a brighter color.
Actually, no. Mr. Hope's patent (which he assigned to Microsoft) is for a method of scanning through text and auto-highlighting numbers (e.g. 1,2,3,4), numerals (e.g. I, II, III, IV), numerical text representations (e.g. "one", "two", "three"), and mathematical formulas (e.g. "e=mc^2", "f=ma", etc.). Its function is intended to be more like that of a spell checker than a highlighting tool, with the difference that it only assists the user in finding the information, not changing it.
So you don't have to pay Microsoft $699 for using bold or highlighted numbers. However, I do charge a $699 fee for my services as a legal document interpreter. You can remit payment to: 1 Batcave Lane, C/O Alfred, Gothom City 55555.
Lord Grey (first post) already gave a fairly good description, but I'll repeat it here. Basically, the patent is for software that can detect all manners of numbers (e.g. 1, II, "three", etc.) and highlight them in a given document. Contrary to the explanation given in the summary, the method of highlight is not actually specfied. There is, however, a B&W drawing that uses a line box as a standin for highlighting (most likely yellow-marker style highlighting). My guess is that the submitter looked at the pretty pictures and jumped to conclusions.
This has NOTHING to do with Linux.
That's not 100% correct. From TFA:
The agency said in 2000 that it would see initial savings of at least £245,000 (US$439,000) from switching to StarOffice and Linux, and that the open-source deployment would allow it to bring productivity software to more of its officers.
The article also states:
In the past, when the agency deployed a new police application on StarOffice and Linux, the application had to be customized to work with the open-source software, Stirling said. It was also more difficult to configure the open-source software so that police officers could access their files from any police station, he said.
Despite the focus on StarOffice, that last sentence obviously refers to the Linux Desktop, most likely in relation to its SMB and NT Domain support.
When the tire blew- it was on the pass side and the car pulled to the right, as I was driving along a culvert
;-)
Well, that would do it. Blowing a tire on a caddy tends to drop one corner down. If you were on a side slope, I could see control getting quite difficult.
One thing is for sure, all that wiring sucks.
;-)
Amen to that. That's why I'm really glad that modern luxury cars use Microprocessors for everything. Only the wiring that's absolutely necessary goes into the cars. Everything else is on a few chips that can theoretically last hundreds of years longer than their highly corrosive ancestors.
BTW, all this talk of Caddys got me interested in checking out their latest offerings. It's times like this that I wish I really was Bruce Wayne, because I'd go and get myself a new Batmobile from GM. I mean 16 cylinders, 4 wheel steering, aluminum body, and a whopping 1000 horsepower!? I want one! (Or at least a chance to drive one through a state with no speed limit. YEEEEE-HAAAA!)
There's a *huge* difference between a 75 Caddy & an 85 Caddy.
:-/
:-)
Except that I had a 1980 Fleetwood. Only five years difference. Mine didn't have fancy computer, either. Just finiky control circuits and TONS of wiring.
I have a 79 Coupe DeVille, and there's no airshock suspension
Really? I thought that it became standard on all Caddies during the 70's. In fact, this article suggests that air suspension was used in the Cadillac Eldardo in the late '50s! (Though this link suggests that they abandoned it at the time.) Oh well, guess you learn something new every day.
The BSD is a great license, but [the ability to commercialize] is actually a -weakness-
No, it's not a weekness any more than the GPL's requirement to provide source code is. Choose the right license for what you want to do, and you'll have no problems. For example, the Apache project works on the idea that providing a common code base instead of reinventing the wheel at 500 different companies is a good thing. Thus they provide code (donated by many of those same companies!) under the BSD license specifically so the software *can* be commercialized.
In the case of Linux, control over the source code is a more important feature than not reinventing the wheel. Thus it's under the GPL license.
You people need to wake up and remember the programmer's addage, "Use the right tool for the right job!"
The fastest I ever had a blowout was at 35mph, but it was in a 1975 Caddy (19 feet long, 4600 lbs, 2 door!) and that puppy was not easy to control.
;-)
Eh? Where'd the power steering and airshock suspension go? I also had a blowout on a 1980 Cadillac Fleetwood doing about 45MPH. (Passenger side, rear.) The car continued to be smooth in its control, but the loud rumble and slight tilt told me something was wrong.
Caddies tend(ed) to have EXTREMELY advanced suspension and steering control to where they can often manuever far better than vehicles half their size. I'm very surprised that you had any problem at all. Was some of the equipment (e.g. airshocks) non-operational? It certainly wouldn't surprise me if that was the case. Cadillacs of the time were so full of wiring that *something* was always on the blink.
For the longest time, the auto-dimmers on my vehicle didn't work. Then one day I hit a rather hard bump on the road and suddenly the status lights on the hood lit up and started reporting info. (FYI to others: the little protrusions on the corner front of Cadillacs contains a set of status lights that are designed for the driver to see.) When I parked and turned off my headlights, I suddenly realized that I couldn't turn the gall-darn things off! So I popped the hood and started to consider disconnecting a battery terminal when the lights turned off leaving me in the dark!
Very funny.
Turns out that the bump I hit had reactivated some of the Caddy's sensor equipment. After that, the auto-dimmers worked, as did the timed headlight shutoff (what so nicely left me in the dark), the status lights, and a few other features. I was definitely happy about getting the use of the equipment back, but let's just say that I'm glad that modern caddies use modern microprocessors instead of the old-style mess of electrical wiring.
Only The Open Group can decide the trademark. Wikipedia has the info on this crazy, screwed up situation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNIX#Branding
Just in case you're wondering, The Open Group has the power to happily brand MS Windows as UNIX(TM) without it actually being UNIX.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Me thinks he should go read Linux From Scratch, then follow up with a few books on Linux Design and Programming.
If the current is DC, then they do indeed flow. Just very, very slowly.
Developers and SysAdmins are mortal enemies! What's with this "Appreciation" stuff?
(I kid, I kid!)
I've been dying for someone to "hack" the patent system and using different words patent the same idea twice (or have two people approved for the same idea).
That exact thing happened with the LZW algorithm used in GIF files. Both Unisys and IBM ended up with patents, but only Unisys tried to enforce them.
Sorry, your Sun as you call it, violates my patent on placing unshielded fusion reactors into galactic orbit. All users of this Sun now owe me $699.99 for the priveledge of using it. Buy now, and you can get in on this deal BEFORE the judge finds I can't patent such technology! ;-)