In no way is this picking on an easy target. This is not a novel patent, clear and simple. There was no excuse to patent a means to increase interoperability.
What they are trying to do is to make it less easy for competing products to use their own product which has significant market share. If they could shut OpenOffice out of the market, then they have just effectively caused the gain in market share that product has to slow.
You notice that it has the full document. I'm not going to post the entire document you know! As the article says, Microsoft have the patent office swimming in documents.
In case anyone is interested and wants to be fully informed what the patentactually says (so rare a quality in a slashdot reader I find these days), then here is the abstract:
Patent 525484
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components comprises a first component for reading a word-processor document stored as a single XML file; a second component that utilizes an XSD (XML Schema Definition) for interpreting the word-processor document, and a third component for performing an action on the word-processor document.
The computer readable medium can further comprise a validating component configured to validate the word-processor document or a fourth component for displaying the word-processor document. The XSD represents a word-processor's rich formatting and the XSD is published and is available to applications other than the word-processor. The word-processor document can include hints to applications that understand XML.
The action may be selected from parsing, modifying, reading, and creating the word-processor document and may be fully recreating the word-processor document according to a word processor's set of features.
It would be nice to have some non-monetary penalties apply for frivilous patents. Like, for instance, if a patent gets rejected for being obvious then the firm doing the patenting must wait six months before filing another patent. It would do two things:
1. Teach the business that they should be more careful when it comes to patents, and 2. Frees up the patent office to do better research.
I'm sure this has been said, but I'll say it again: who's fault is this? Is it the fault of the alternate browser programmers, or is it the fault of Microsoft for so tightly coupling their user-space web-browser into their operating system?
Is it suprising that Internet Explorer is a cause of major vulnerabilities in Windows? I can only say that I get a large amount of satisfaction watching as a highly dodgy business practice comes back and bites Microsoft on the arse.
Not necessarily. Though it's common to do this, you can organise LDAP differently. Another way a lot of companies do things is via company departments and divisions. It really all depends on what is most flexible for your company.
I guess that many books on LDAP just assume that you are part of a multinational company and use this as an example.
Wikipedia uses rel=nofollow in their links. This means that Google won't use the link in the article to increase the sites pagerank. Thanks the SEO guys for that.
Wikipedia might need to setup a new article called "List of online poker websites" and link to it from there. Then they add the websites to the article. Because Wikipedia uses rel=nofollow in hyperlinks those sites won't get a better page rank because Google won't follow up those links. It would make sense then for bloggers to link to the online poker entry on Wikipedia as there would be an article on Wikipedia that gives a list of poker related websites.
However, there are two problems: firstly Wikipedia is not a web directory and secondly that article would risk being deleted due to it's non-encyclopedic nature. Perhaps a link to a popular web-directory on that page might be a good idea.
Interesting. You picked up on a controversial topic in Wikipedia: how do we deal with potentially offesive images. The poll asks for whether we need a deadline to decide whether to include a potentially offesive image as an inline image or a link. Some would like a deadline to determine when the poll closes, others would like no deadline. I notice that Cantus has lead the charge, and very quickly an overwhelming consensus to use a deadline has been arrived at.
You seem to be a pretty angry sort of person when it comes to Wikipedia. I'm not sure what happened, but ALL your comments have been negative so far. Which is a pity. What happened to you on Wikipedia to make you so angry?
Not necessarily. It is possible, however it doesn't tend to happen. One thing is that the articles have remained of high quality but our selection criteria has become tougher. During the "brilliant prose" days we had some articles that were pretty good (see for instance triangle, however we recently removed this - not because it got worse, but because had it been submitted to FAC today it would not get through.
Incidently, I'm always glad to see someone who helps improve articles, and so I thank you for doing this. That's why I've added my baseline experiment: we can refer people to the "baseline", which people can't modify. As with any wiki, errors and disorganisation can occur. I've seen it myself.
Well, there are certainly lots of stubs and substubs, but as you say it's about quality and not quantity. I suggest you look at the featured articles. I have also started off a baseline experiment (the name may change) to find the best static page for each featured article. An example baseline is on the CUPS article. With the experiment I hope to find a properly reviewed page that shows the most accurate information. Then we mark this revision as the "baseline" - the most accurate revision of the featured article. Not sure if it will fly with Wikipedians, but I've given it a shot.
Can we get a copy of that on Wikipedia? Like a scan or something? We'd be interested to see what they have to say about us. We'll probably even update the Wikipedia encyclopedia article.
No, we're just like America in this regard. The police would have raided them after getting a court order. Unless, of course, they are a Perth bike gang. Hey.
The Wikimedia foundation and Jimbo Wales have guaranteed this will never happen. People have donated money to the project because of this. So it ain't gonna happen.
Slashdot Mirror
In no way is this picking on an easy target. This is not a novel patent, clear and simple. There was no excuse to patent a means to increase interoperability.
What they are trying to do is to make it less easy for competing products to use their own product which has significant market share. If they could shut OpenOffice out of the market, then they have just effectively caused the gain in market share that product has to slow.
Sounds like Word all right.
You notice that it has the full document. I'm not going to post the entire document you know! As the article says, Microsoft have the patent office swimming in documents.
In case anyone is interested and wants to be fully informed what the patent actually says (so rare a quality in a slashdot reader I find these days), then here is the abstract:
Patent 525484
A computer-readable medium having computer-executable components comprises a first component for reading a word-processor document stored as a single XML file; a second component that utilizes an XSD (XML Schema Definition) for interpreting the word-processor document, and
a third component for performing an action on the word-processor document.
The computer readable medium can further comprise a validating component configured to validate the word-processor document or a fourth component for displaying the word-processor document. The XSD represents a word-processor's rich formatting and the XSD is published and is available to applications other than the word-processor. The word-processor document can include hints to applications that understand XML.
The action may be selected from parsing, modifying, reading, and creating the word-processor document and may be fully recreating the word-processor document according to a word processor's set of features.
It would be nice to have some non-monetary penalties apply for frivilous patents. Like, for instance, if a patent gets rejected for being obvious then the firm doing the patenting must wait six months before filing another patent. It would do two things:
1. Teach the business that they should be more careful when it comes to patents, and
2. Frees up the patent office to do better research.
Have you tried GQ?
I'm sure this has been said, but I'll say it again: who's fault is this? Is it the fault of the alternate browser programmers, or is it the fault of Microsoft for so tightly coupling their user-space web-browser into their operating system?
Is it suprising that Internet Explorer is a cause of major vulnerabilities in Windows? I can only say that I get a large amount of satisfaction watching as a highly dodgy business practice comes back and bites Microsoft on the arse.
Not necessarily. Though it's common to do this, you can organise LDAP differently. Another way a lot of companies do things is via company departments and divisions. It really all depends on what is most flexible for your company.
I guess that many books on LDAP just assume that you are part of a multinational company and use this as an example.
Oh. Didn't realise that by what you wrote.
Wikipedia uses rel=nofollow in their links. This means that Google won't use the link in the article to increase the sites pagerank. Thanks the SEO guys for that.
Edit the page yourself. Just remember that original research is frowned on at Wikipedia and you'll need to source your facts.
It offends his conservative right-wing Christian viewpoint. Plus the fact that he tried it once and near on broke his back.
Wikipedia might need to setup a new article called "List of online poker websites" and link to it from there. Then they add the websites to the article. Because Wikipedia uses rel=nofollow in hyperlinks those sites won't get a better page rank because Google won't follow up those links. It would make sense then for bloggers to link to the online poker entry on Wikipedia as there would be an article on Wikipedia that gives a list of poker related websites.
However, there are two problems: firstly Wikipedia is not a web directory and secondly that article would risk being deleted due to it's non-encyclopedic nature. Perhaps a link to a popular web-directory on that page might be a good idea.
Interesting. You picked up on a controversial topic in Wikipedia: how do we deal with potentially offesive images. The poll asks for whether we need a deadline to decide whether to include a potentially offesive image as an inline image or a link. Some would like a deadline to determine when the poll closes, others would like no deadline. I notice that Cantus has lead the charge, and very quickly an overwhelming consensus to use a deadline has been arrived at.
You seem to be a pretty angry sort of person when it comes to Wikipedia. I'm not sure what happened, but ALL your comments have been negative so far. Which is a pity. What happened to you on Wikipedia to make you so angry?
Making money does not necessarily equal evil, however it does lead to the neutrality of the project to be questioned.
Unless it's an encyclopedia article, this will get shifted to Wiktionary.
Not necessarily. It is possible, however it doesn't tend to happen. One thing is that the articles have remained of high quality but our selection criteria has become tougher. During the "brilliant prose" days we had some articles that were pretty good (see for instance triangle, however we recently removed this - not because it got worse, but because had it been submitted to FAC today it would not get through.
Incidently, I'm always glad to see someone who helps improve articles, and so I thank you for doing this. That's why I've added my baseline experiment: we can refer people to the "baseline", which people can't modify. As with any wiki, errors and disorganisation can occur. I've seen it myself.
Well, there are certainly lots of stubs and substubs, but as you say it's about quality and not quantity. I suggest you look at the featured articles. I have also started off a baseline experiment (the name may change) to find the best static page for each featured article. An example baseline is on the CUPS article. With the experiment I hope to find a properly reviewed page that shows the most accurate information. Then we mark this revision as the "baseline" - the most accurate revision of the featured article. Not sure if it will fly with Wikipedians, but I've given it a shot.
It's whinge. That's a real word. We use it all the time in Australia. HTH.
Can we get a copy of that on Wikipedia? Like a scan or something? We'd be interested to see what they have to say about us. We'll probably even update the Wikipedia encyclopedia article.
However, I would still like to see definitions of the word. I found that quite useful. Perhaps they should also pull from Wiktionary?
Sorry?
2005 - 1997 = 8 years.
What's wrong with it?
No, we're just like America in this regard. The police would have raided them after getting a court order. Unless, of course, they are a Perth bike gang. Hey.
The Wikimedia foundation and Jimbo Wales have guaranteed this will never happen. People have donated money to the project because of this. So it ain't gonna happen.