Most people using VMWare or Parallels use it to run a couple programs in "Unity Mode" while doing the rest with native apps. The students would need it to run those stupid-ass Windows-only CD's in the back of their textbooks.
They even have AutoCAD for OSX. And Eagle. So what was this mythical software everyone needed so badly they couldn't function without it?
It's also quite common to run a legacy OS environment using virtualization or emulation until native apps become available. Hell, being able to natively run Windows software is probably why OS/2 Warp sold more than 1 copy. This isn't proof that Windows is a good OS. This is proof that with a Mac you have many options for dealing with any computing environment even if native software is unavailable.
Go look at most Linux users' laptops (all 4 of them... each with SOMETHING lacking driver support) and you'll find VirtualBox and a Windows install on just about all of them too.
Seriously, Apple sold 5.5 million intel-pc's.... It's nothing on total pc sales. They took a great OS (freebsd) closed it down, put huge payed-garden-walls around it and made it idiot-proof and dumb enough for a 2 button mouse.... Of course there will be a couple million idiots buying it... Even including the apple-tax, for their customers, it's either paying up or learning to handle 3 mouse buttons. I don't think we can expect the intellectual effort of understanding 3 buttons, let alone a terminal, from someone who is paying for this. And that is just fine. It's good to see that the 'special' people also can use a 'computer'. But please... Don't go pretending that apple created something really good or unique with this rebranding of intel cpu's and freebsd.
I'm assuming this was a trolling attempt but I'll take the bait.
OSX is *NOT* rebranded FreeBSD. It's rebranded NeXTStep/OpenStep where they updated the userland w/ the FreeBSD userland to replace the ancient 4.2BSD underpinnings. It is a direct descendent of quite possibly one of the greatest workstation OS's of all time. And your comment on 2 vs. 3 buttons is so retarded I'm not going to even bother. Grow up and actually learn something before you spout off about things you know nothing about.
Uhhh.... no. I would bet the Amiga still has a larger desktop user base than Linux.
*MOST* major software packages have OSX versions available. Look around, Google is your friend.
Now, are there more packages available for Windows? Absolutely. Does that make Winblows a better OS? Hell no. Does that mean that you won't find a piece of Mac software to do just about anything you want? No.
Bah. The magsafe connector is a gimmick. The advantage of the magsafe connector was supposed to be that it would release easily from the laptop in the event of a snag. This does work most of the time. Not always, but most of the time.
What is falsely implied is that other laptop connectors don't come out under such conditions. In my experience, this is not true - I've had two other laptops where the connector slipped out easily under a relatively small amount of force.
The magsafe connector has saved my laptop a trip to the floor on several occasions when a kid or dog tripped on it. Generally you won't have USB cables strung across the floor.
I've repaired MANY HP, Dell, and Toshiba laptops with broken power connectors. Not a gimmick, this is/was a serious problem. Even now that I don't turn screws for a living, most of the laptop repairs I do involve soldering in a new power jack. The others are typically LCD panel replacements which are a 5-minute job.
If you don't like it, run Windows or Linux on the damn thing. It's a *PC*.
Or if you just want to try OSX out and learn more about its internals, build a hackintosh or play with a virtualized install of OSX w/ VirtualBox or VMWare.
If you want to tinker with the hardware... well Apple hasn't produced a "tinker-ready" mac since the last Mac Pro tower.
True, but since 10.4 you've been able to build a hackintosh with slots quite cheap. So the people whining about Macs costing to much while posting from their pirated copy of Windows could just as easily have a Mac clone if they learned how to read.
Nobody, zero people out there... runs Linux as a desktop.
Not quite true but close. I ran FreeBSD on my primary desktop for years until OSX 10.6 was released. Was actually quite capable and did what I needed it to do. Eventually I got more heavily into audio recording and Ardour doesn't compare to Logic. I also got sick of jumping through severe hoops to exchange data with people running PhotoShop or InDesign. OSX gives me the wonderful FreeBSD userland with a GUI layer that doesn't suck. Win-Win
OS-X is a hammer without a handle. It technically still is Unix, just like a hammer-head technically is a hammer. It is just badly crippled and requires inordinate amounts of research, trial and error, or experience to use as a proper Unix box.
So it doesn't act like your favorite pet Linux distro out of the box and you consider it crippled? It's no more crippled than Solaris or Tru64 was out of the box. No, compilers and X11 are not part of the default install. Neither is a package manager 90% of Mac users will never touch. And no, it doesn't come with your favorite package manager out of the box. There's a couple to choose from, both MacPorts and Fink work pretty well.
Personally, I found dealing with OSX much easier from a UNIX standpoint than Solaris. There's differences for certain, but if you're too lazy to learn anything new, go back to installing Ubuntu and living without commercial desktop software.
And if you're wanting to use KATE, why the hell are you using a Mac anyway? There's much better native options that don't require that antiquated stale windowing system.
"It don't werkz lik3 uBuntu or Windows so OSX is teH SuXorz" Chances are you aren't a seasoned Linux admin either, you just got tired of your latest activator for your pirated copy of Windows failing and thought running Linux would make you an er33t H@x0R D00d.
BTW, both FINK *AND* Macports both deal with dependencies. You are trolling. If you don't REALLY know what you're talking about, STFU.
The UK is the non-production beta test environment for scumbag policies the US wants to implement on its own citizens.
Laws don't apply the same way to the rich or well-connected the same way they apply to middle class scum here in the US anymore. It's been that way for a while.
Generally in my state (SC), murderers get life or the chair. And there's a good chance the jury you end up with would have a combined IQ somewhere around 82 and will assume you are guilty based on the fact that you were arrested and locked up. It's like the court scene in Idiocracy.
Battlebots was boring after the first season. This sounds more like Robot Jox or real-life Mechwarrior with restricted weaponry. Remember that movie? Yeah... guess I'm old now. Screw it, giant robots with humans in them shooting and beating the s**t out of each other sounds pretty cool to me! What the hell are you going to power it with though?
What this means is that all and any employees must (and this is essential) be plug-replaceable as a matter of policy. Those that aren't should either be unique individuals like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the actual owners of the company, or leaving.
Exactly, how else are you supposed to abuse people and crush debate if those people are actually needed and not easy to replace? Engineers are not plug replaceable, never will be and never really have been. Neither are good IT folks. And to suggest someone who's studied their craft their whole life should be "plug replaceable" while some exec whose daddy got him the gig due to family money shouldn't is laughable.
We are no easier to replace than a good exec. We have had to study just as long for our skillsets and we are tired of being abused and treated like commodity laborers. We aren't. We are white collar professionals and expect to be treated as such. We aren't the type to just shutup and make you money.
Wow.... Had the FBI and NSA followed the law to the letter, this sort of thing wouldn't be necessary. Now they've f**ked up and made their jobs harder. It's just so sad.... cry me a river. They've proven the FBI and the NSA *CAN NOT* and *SHOULD NOT* be trusted. By anyone. And for the record, you don't get to tell software vendors or users what they can and can't do with their property. Comey can go f**k himself and the horse he rode in on. We don't need him or the FBI.
Therac-25? LOL For a second there I thought that was totally made up. Turns out the Therac 25 was a radiotherapy machine responsible for cooking several patients due to horrible code. That's awesome. I learned something new today.
Besides, the PDP-11 that runs Slashdot doesn't have a spell checker (or Unicode).
Pretty sure you could get a spellchecker and VI to run well under 2.11BSD. Maybe even 7th Edition. You might be right on the Unicode aspect.
Anyway, I'm wondering when the Air Force plans on putting people in that thing. There are drawings floating around that have seating for, IIRC, up to five astronauts. They've got to be considering it.
It'll probably end up being 2 astronauts and a bunch of ammo/missiles.
I thought blue LEDs were cool when they first hit the scene but you're right, they're INCREDIBLY overused. Even on my PC case, they chose insanely bright blue LEDs for both power and HDD activity. It's really obnoxious when I'm trying to sleep. It also doesn't make much sense. Blue was supposed to be yet another color of LED, not replace all other colors of LED because a few retards think it looks neat.
1BSD for the PDP-11 was simply a few add-ons to AT&T UNIX. 2BSD was really backports of functionality from 4.xBSD. Especially the network stack. The PDP-11 was never a serious platform for BSD development as the CSRG at Berkeley moved to the VAX pretty fast once BSD became a real OS in its own right instead of a few addons for V7. It was THE platform for early AT&T UNIX development though.
If you consider a Pascal compiler and a text editor a true BSD UNIX release, then yeah, you're right;-)
VMS remained the dominant OS on the VAX platform but most serious UNIX development still happened on the VAX until the later 4.3BSD days. By the time 4.4 hit, RISC workstations were all the rage and the 386 finally became a contender and the minis started dying out. The 4.4 VAX port wasn't even complete if I remember right. Later versions of Ultrix weren't terrible.... it's really dated and a mash-up of 4.2BSD, 4.3BSD and a little SysV but its quite functional. DEC moved to OSF/1 (aka DEC UNIX/Tru64) for the Alpha. There was an early port of OSF/1 for the DECstation MIPS boxes too but I don't know if it ever got released. IIRC, OSF/1 was a Mach/SysV/BSD hybrid.
I still have a VAXserver 3100 in the closet with Ultrix and NetBSD 4 installed. I fire it up from time to time. Slowest 32-bit machine I own but pretty entertaining. Even have an amber screen real VT220 for it. Clocked at around ~11MHz. Capable of about 2.8MIPS.
What Linux brought to the table was a whole new generation interested in working on Unix. That's big. It's not directly a technological edge but it translates into that.
Not really. A whole generation was already interested as PC's had just become powerful enough to make a full workstation-class UNIX port worth it. BSD got tied up in a big lawsuit and MINIX was a teaching tool. Linux arrived because folks wanted a cheap UNIX clone no one could sue them over. And it was pretty cool for a long time until most distros strayed from being a UNIX clone and adopted BS like systemd that's not even cross-platform..... or even UNIXy.
And I have plenty of idea what UNIX was like before 1990 because I directly used it daily, dialing in from my Atari 8-bit at first. And it was a hell of a lot nicer than most alternatives at the time. NextStep was also a fabulous BSD/Mach hybrid that I still use, they just call it OSX now. You know, the only UNIX variant with a desktop environment that doesn't feel like a perpetual beta release as well as being the only UNIX with a significant amount of the desktop market?
And silly bugs like you mention still exist in modern BSD/Linux distros. It was also probably fixed in a subsequent BSD release. BSD never died or went dormant. Linux never passed BSD from a tech standpoint. In fact, BSD is cleaner and performs better in a lot of scenarios. Even running Linux or SysV binaries.
BSD was and IS doing just fine. And BSD would be fine without Linux. The only reason Linux gained traction was because of the BSD lawsuit with AT&T that tied things up for years.
Does Linux suck? No, not really. Do I prefer BSD? Yeah, it's documentation is better, it performs well under load and runs Linux binaries as well. It's also very clean and minimalist out of the box.
Unix more than "just had potential". An entire global network was built on the back of BSD and various PDP10 OS's (the big 36-bitters).
And maybe you should try "rm -rf" btw. Apparently, you don't know BSD like you think you do. Anyway, I have a DEC VAXstation still running with a copy of Ultrix 4.5 with a full X-Windows based desktop environment. Yeah, *SOME* things have come a long way but for the most part it's reimplemented 30-year-old shit with a lot of kludges on top to make it behave in a more modern fashion while breaking the original network transparency model in the process.
Linux brought nothing new to the table, it just got big enough that video card manufacturers couldn't ignore it anymore. It does absolutely nothing no other OS could do, including other free and commercial UNIX-like systems.
BSD UNIX was born on the VAX. Ultrix was a commercial version of BSD marketed by Digital for the VAX and MIPS-based DECstation machines. NetBSD and OpenBSD are the only currently maintained VAX UNIX distros.
I don't know.... I really don't believe in software patents in any way shape or form. Hardware and actual physical tangible inventions? Yes. Software? No. That's like patenting a book or creative work IMHO. Copyright should apply but patents? No. The whole concept is retarded and significantly slows actual innovation and progress. Imaginary property is stupid. End of story. Things like this are often used to abuse smaller players rather than big rivals and only bolsters aggressive, rich megacorps like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc.
Even going back to the 80's. Remember GEM? Remember how Apple sued over the PC version but left Atari alone with the ST version? Because it was too mac-like? It was because DRI was a much smaller, easy target and the ST and Amiga had an uphill battle against IBM and Intel, a couple mutual enemies.
This hurt at a time after Kildall didn't launch a legal war over MS's crappy CP/M clone and it cost them the business market they once had. The way our system is set up, ethical innovators lose and vicious business tactics abusing the system win. MS should be writing nice BASIC interpreters, compilers and some decent office software. Not running half the planet's IT infrastructure.
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Most people using VMWare or Parallels use it to run a couple programs in "Unity Mode" while doing the rest with native apps. The students would need it to run those stupid-ass Windows-only CD's in the back of their textbooks.
They even have AutoCAD for OSX. And Eagle. So what was this mythical software everyone needed so badly they couldn't function without it?
It's also quite common to run a legacy OS environment using virtualization or emulation until native apps become available. Hell, being able to natively run Windows software is probably why OS/2 Warp sold more than 1 copy. This isn't proof that Windows is a good OS. This is proof that with a Mac you have many options for dealing with any computing environment even if native software is unavailable.
Go look at most Linux users' laptops (all 4 of them... each with SOMETHING lacking driver support) and you'll find VirtualBox and a Windows install on just about all of them too.
Seriously, Apple sold 5.5 million intel-pc's.... It's nothing on total pc sales. They took a great OS (freebsd) closed it down, put huge payed-garden-walls around it and made it idiot-proof and dumb enough for a 2 button mouse.... Of course there will be a couple million idiots buying it... Even including the apple-tax, for their customers, it's either paying up or learning to handle 3 mouse buttons. I don't think we can expect the intellectual effort of understanding 3 buttons, let alone a terminal, from someone who is paying for this. And that is just fine. It's good to see that the 'special' people also can use a 'computer'. But please... Don't go pretending that apple created something really good or unique with this rebranding of intel cpu's and freebsd.
I'm assuming this was a trolling attempt but I'll take the bait.
OSX is *NOT* rebranded FreeBSD. It's rebranded NeXTStep/OpenStep where they updated the userland w/ the FreeBSD userland to replace the ancient 4.2BSD underpinnings. It is a direct descendent of quite possibly one of the greatest workstation OS's of all time. And your comment on 2 vs. 3 buttons is so retarded I'm not going to even bother. Grow up and actually learn something before you spout off about things you know nothing about.
MacOS remains more like Linux in this regard.
Uhhh.... no. I would bet the Amiga still has a larger desktop user base than Linux.
*MOST* major software packages have OSX versions available. Look around, Google is your friend.
Now, are there more packages available for Windows? Absolutely. Does that make Winblows a better OS? Hell no. Does that mean that you won't find a piece of Mac software to do just about anything you want? No.
Get a grip.
Bah. The magsafe connector is a gimmick. The advantage of the magsafe connector was supposed to be that it would release easily from the laptop in the event of a snag. This does work most of the time. Not always, but most of the time.
What is falsely implied is that other laptop connectors don't come out under such conditions. In my experience, this is not true - I've had two other laptops where the connector slipped out easily under a relatively small amount of force.
The magsafe connector has saved my laptop a trip to the floor on several occasions when a kid or dog tripped on it. Generally you won't have USB cables strung across the floor.
I've repaired MANY HP, Dell, and Toshiba laptops with broken power connectors. Not a gimmick, this is/was a serious problem. Even now that I don't turn screws for a living, most of the laptop repairs I do involve soldering in a new power jack. The others are typically LCD panel replacements which are a 5-minute job.
If you don't like it, run Windows or Linux on the damn thing. It's a *PC*.
Or if you just want to try OSX out and learn more about its internals, build a hackintosh or play with a virtualized install of OSX w/ VirtualBox or VMWare.
If you want to tinker with the hardware... well Apple hasn't produced a "tinker-ready" mac since the last Mac Pro tower.
True, but since 10.4 you've been able to build a hackintosh with slots quite cheap. So the people whining about Macs costing to much while posting from their pirated copy of Windows could just as easily have a Mac clone if they learned how to read.
Nobody, zero people out there... runs Linux as a desktop.
Not quite true but close. I ran FreeBSD on my primary desktop for years until OSX 10.6 was released. Was actually quite capable and did what I needed it to do. Eventually I got more heavily into audio recording and Ardour doesn't compare to Logic. I also got sick of jumping through severe hoops to exchange data with people running PhotoShop or InDesign. OSX gives me the wonderful FreeBSD userland with a GUI layer that doesn't suck. Win-Win
OS-X is a hammer without a handle. It technically still is Unix, just like a hammer-head technically is a hammer. It is just badly crippled and requires inordinate amounts of research, trial and error, or experience to use as a proper Unix box.
So it doesn't act like your favorite pet Linux distro out of the box and you consider it crippled? It's no more crippled than Solaris or Tru64 was out of the box. No, compilers and X11 are not part of the default install. Neither is a package manager 90% of Mac users will never touch. And no, it doesn't come with your favorite package manager out of the box. There's a couple to choose from, both MacPorts and Fink work pretty well.
Personally, I found dealing with OSX much easier from a UNIX standpoint than Solaris. There's differences for certain, but if you're too lazy to learn anything new, go back to installing Ubuntu and living without commercial desktop software.
And if you're wanting to use KATE, why the hell are you using a Mac anyway? There's much better native options that don't require that antiquated stale windowing system.
"It don't werkz lik3 uBuntu or Windows so OSX is teH SuXorz" Chances are you aren't a seasoned Linux admin either, you just got tired of your latest activator for your pirated copy of Windows failing and thought running Linux would make you an er33t H@x0R D00d.
BTW, both FINK *AND* Macports both deal with dependencies. You are trolling. If you don't REALLY know what you're talking about, STFU.
The UK is the non-production beta test environment for scumbag policies the US wants to implement on its own citizens.
Laws don't apply the same way to the rich or well-connected the same way they apply to middle class scum here in the US anymore. It's been that way for a while.
Generally in my state (SC), murderers get life or the chair. And there's a good chance the jury you end up with would have a combined IQ somewhere around 82 and will assume you are guilty based on the fact that you were arrested and locked up. It's like the court scene in Idiocracy.
We already have that, it's called Orangeburg, SC.
Pretty much, if you aren't voting Green or Libertarian you're most likely part of the problem.
Battlebots was boring after the first season. This sounds more like Robot Jox or real-life Mechwarrior with restricted weaponry. Remember that movie? Yeah... guess I'm old now. Screw it, giant robots with humans in them shooting and beating the s**t out of each other sounds pretty cool to me! What the hell are you going to power it with though?
What this means is that all and any employees must (and this is essential) be plug-replaceable as a matter of policy.
Those that aren't should either be unique individuals like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, the actual owners of the company, or leaving.
Exactly, how else are you supposed to abuse people and crush debate if those people are actually needed and not easy to replace? Engineers are not plug replaceable, never will be and never really have been. Neither are good IT folks. And to suggest someone who's studied their craft their whole life should be "plug replaceable" while some exec whose daddy got him the gig due to family money shouldn't is laughable.
We are no easier to replace than a good exec. We have had to study just as long for our skillsets and we are tired of being abused and treated like commodity laborers. We aren't. We are white collar professionals and expect to be treated as such. We aren't the type to just shutup and make you money.
Wow.... Had the FBI and NSA followed the law to the letter, this sort of thing wouldn't be necessary. Now they've f**ked up and made their jobs harder. It's just so sad.... cry me a river. They've proven the FBI and the NSA *CAN NOT* and *SHOULD NOT* be trusted. By anyone. And for the record, you don't get to tell software vendors or users what they can and can't do with their property. Comey can go f**k himself and the horse he rode in on. We don't need him or the FBI.
Don't tread on me. 'nuff said.
Therac-25? LOL For a second there I thought that was totally made up. Turns out the Therac 25 was a radiotherapy machine responsible for cooking several patients due to horrible code. That's awesome. I learned something new today.
Besides, the PDP-11 that runs Slashdot doesn't have a spell checker (or Unicode).
Pretty sure you could get a spellchecker and VI to run well under 2.11BSD. Maybe even 7th Edition. You might be right on the Unicode aspect.
Anyway, I'm wondering when the Air Force plans on putting people in that thing. There are drawings floating around that have seating for, IIRC, up to five astronauts. They've got to be considering it.
It'll probably end up being 2 astronauts and a bunch of ammo/missiles.
I'd rather listen to a robot tell me to reboot 600 times than an unintelligibly thick Indian accent.
I thought blue LEDs were cool when they first hit the scene but you're right, they're INCREDIBLY overused. Even on my PC case, they chose insanely bright blue LEDs for both power and HDD activity. It's really obnoxious when I'm trying to sleep. It also doesn't make much sense. Blue was supposed to be yet another color of LED, not replace all other colors of LED because a few retards think it looks neat.
1BSD for the PDP-11 was simply a few add-ons to AT&T UNIX. 2BSD was really backports of functionality from 4.xBSD. Especially the network stack. The PDP-11 was never a serious platform for BSD development as the CSRG at Berkeley moved to the VAX pretty fast once BSD became a real OS in its own right instead of a few addons for V7. It was THE platform for early AT&T UNIX development though.
If you consider a Pascal compiler and a text editor a true BSD UNIX release, then yeah, you're right ;-)
VMS remained the dominant OS on the VAX platform but most serious UNIX development still happened on the VAX until the later 4.3BSD days. By the time 4.4 hit, RISC workstations were all the rage and the 386 finally became a contender and the minis started dying out. The 4.4 VAX port wasn't even complete if I remember right. Later versions of Ultrix weren't terrible.... it's really dated and a mash-up of 4.2BSD, 4.3BSD and a little SysV but its quite functional. DEC moved to OSF/1 (aka DEC UNIX/Tru64) for the Alpha. There was an early port of OSF/1 for the DECstation MIPS boxes too but I don't know if it ever got released. IIRC, OSF/1 was a Mach/SysV/BSD hybrid.
I still have a VAXserver 3100 in the closet with Ultrix and NetBSD 4 installed. I fire it up from time to time. Slowest 32-bit machine I own but pretty entertaining. Even have an amber screen real VT220 for it. Clocked at around ~11MHz. Capable of about 2.8MIPS.
What Linux brought to the table was a whole new generation interested in working on Unix. That's big. It's not directly a technological edge but it translates into that.
Not really. A whole generation was already interested as PC's had just become powerful enough to make a full workstation-class UNIX port worth it. BSD got tied up in a big lawsuit and MINIX was a teaching tool. Linux arrived because folks wanted a cheap UNIX clone no one could sue them over. And it was pretty cool for a long time until most distros strayed from being a UNIX clone and adopted BS like systemd that's not even cross-platform..... or even UNIXy.
And I have plenty of idea what UNIX was like before 1990 because I directly used it daily, dialing in from my Atari 8-bit at first. And it was a hell of a lot nicer than most alternatives at the time. NextStep was also a fabulous BSD/Mach hybrid that I still use, they just call it OSX now. You know, the only UNIX variant with a desktop environment that doesn't feel like a perpetual beta release as well as being the only UNIX with a significant amount of the desktop market?
And silly bugs like you mention still exist in modern BSD/Linux distros. It was also probably fixed in a subsequent BSD release. BSD never died or went dormant. Linux never passed BSD from a tech standpoint. In fact, BSD is cleaner and performs better in a lot of scenarios. Even running Linux or SysV binaries.
BSD was and IS doing just fine. And BSD would be fine without Linux. The only reason Linux gained traction was because of the BSD lawsuit with AT&T that tied things up for years.
Does Linux suck? No, not really. Do I prefer BSD? Yeah, it's documentation is better, it performs well under load and runs Linux binaries as well. It's also very clean and minimalist out of the box.
Unix more than "just had potential". An entire global network was built on the back of BSD and various PDP10 OS's (the big 36-bitters).
And maybe you should try "rm -rf" btw. Apparently, you don't know BSD like you think you do. Anyway, I have a DEC VAXstation still running with a copy of Ultrix 4.5 with a full X-Windows based desktop environment. Yeah, *SOME* things have come a long way but for the most part it's reimplemented 30-year-old shit with a lot of kludges on top to make it behave in a more modern fashion while breaking the original network transparency model in the process.
Linux brought nothing new to the table, it just got big enough that video card manufacturers couldn't ignore it anymore. It does absolutely nothing no other OS could do, including other free and commercial UNIX-like systems.
BSD UNIX was born on the VAX. Ultrix was a commercial version of BSD marketed by Digital for the VAX and MIPS-based DECstation machines. NetBSD and OpenBSD are the only currently maintained VAX UNIX distros.
VMS was cool too though.
Like pesticide research and ways of making unskilled labor more efficient.
The Googstapo?
I don't know.... I really don't believe in software patents in any way shape or form. Hardware and actual physical tangible inventions? Yes. Software? No. That's like patenting a book or creative work IMHO. Copyright should apply but patents? No. The whole concept is retarded and significantly slows actual innovation and progress. Imaginary property is stupid. End of story. Things like this are often used to abuse smaller players rather than big rivals and only bolsters aggressive, rich megacorps like Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, etc.
Even going back to the 80's. Remember GEM? Remember how Apple sued over the PC version but left Atari alone with the ST version? Because it was too mac-like? It was because DRI was a much smaller, easy target and the ST and Amiga had an uphill battle against IBM and Intel, a couple mutual enemies.
This hurt at a time after Kildall didn't launch a legal war over MS's crappy CP/M clone and it cost them the business market they once had. The way our system is set up, ethical innovators lose and vicious business tactics abusing the system win. MS should be writing nice BASIC interpreters, compilers and some decent office software. Not running half the planet's IT infrastructure.