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Can Lotus Notes R3 Prior Art Save The Browser? 522

theodp writes "Apparently stunned by the implications of Eolas vs Microsoft, Ray Ozzie of Lotus Notes and Groove fame offers up Notes R3 as prior art for the notorious Eolas patent. To bolster his argument, Ozzie used the Notes R3 feature set to recreate a scenario close to what was described in the patent. After the hard part of putting together a Notes R3 computing environment that included MS-DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and a circa-1993 copy of Excel 5.0 obtained from eBay, it only took Ozzie about 15 minutes to knock out a demo without any programming using the out-of-the-box UI of Notes and Excel."
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Can Lotus Notes R3 Prior Art Save The Browser?

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  • Sad (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:15PM (#6953300)
    "it only took Ozzie about 15 minutes to knock out a demo without any programming using the out-of-the-box UI of Notes and Excel"

    He really needs to get laid.
  • I hope (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:19PM (#6953320)
    He has valid licenses for DOS 6.22, Windows 3.11 and Excel! Otherwise, he could be in some trouble with Microsoft.
  • by SILIZIUMM ( 241333 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:24PM (#6953344) Homepage
    yeah but why billions when we can have... millions ?
  • Re:Sad (Score:5, Funny)

    by thebatlab ( 468898 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:31PM (#6953386)
    No no. That was getting married.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/11/183423 5&mode=thread&tid=99 [slashdot.org]
  • by christophe ( 36267 ) * on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:34PM (#6953397) Journal
    >copy of Excel 5.0 obtained from eBay,

    Does that mean that Microsoft did refuse to send any free copy of an obsolete software to anybody who may spare them half a billion dollars?!

  • by Cylix ( 55374 ) * on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:35PM (#6953405) Homepage Journal
    I like your thinking...

    You are most definately not new here.

  • by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:38PM (#6953421)
    I hate MS, but hopefully this thing can be beat. (Did I sum up the first 50 posts properly?)
  • by un4given ( 114183 ) <bvoltz@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:45PM (#6953451)
    From the article:

    These documents, applications and solutions are hosed on a server analogous to today's "Web application servers".

    That's a true assessment of Lotus Notes if I ever saw one.
  • by Eric Destiny ( 255168 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @05:59PM (#6953523)
    PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you.

    God was my copilot. Until we crashed into a mountain and I had to eat him.
  • by saden1 ( 581102 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:11PM (#6953588)
    Sun Tzu's old adage of the enemy of your enemy is my friend always applies, but in this case we know the enemy of your enemy will be tunning on you soon which is why you should strike down all your enemies and potential enemies as soon as possible.

    Microsoft crashing and burning along with Eolas is fine by me.
  • by Brandybuck ( 704397 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @06:17PM (#6953616) Homepage Journal
    even PHBs would find it easy to understand

    Hee, hee!

    Moi: This patent will make Mozilla illegal.

    Boss: I don't understand. I'll have to schedule a meeting with the IP guys sometime next year.

    Moi: This patent makes Internet Explorer illegal.

    Boss: Horrors! I'll get the lawyers digging for prior art right now!
  • by CyberDruid ( 201684 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:09PM (#6953860) Homepage
    PS - God loves you and longs for relationship with you.

    Watch out for that guy, I used to go out with him a few thousand years ago. He was violent, vain and had a bad temper. A classic anal/territorial military type. When I broke up with him, he went completely psycho and tried to smite my first-born.

    I doubt he'll violate the restraining order though. My current gf, Reason, can be pretty fierce when she has to.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:13PM (#6953886)

    Well, to make pages easier to email and bookmark, they should come up with a header that has the session ID, instead of putting it in the URL. It could work like this, from the server:


    Set-State: session=123ae289d3e; path=/the/path


    And then the client software would remember that whenever it visits http://your.site/the/path, it should send back a header like this:


    State: session=123ae289d3e


    So you'd be automating the process you describe, but keeping the ID out of the URL. Of course we could add some features to have the state expire after a while, or maybe even let the server suggest when it should expire.

    I'm surprised more browser makers or the W3C haven't picked up on this, considering all the privacy concerns that cookies have. ;-)
  • Re:Nuts (Score:5, Funny)

    by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:15PM (#6953895) Homepage
    Where is the downside?

    Here's one. Microsoft did say that they were not releasing a stand alone IE 7, that IE 6 was the last, right?

    Microsoft Internet Exploder 666.NET! It has many new cool proprietary features. Its advanced features are tightly integrated to the powerful graphics, sound, multimedia, and DRM features of Windows! And this is all accomplished using proprietary code integrated into IE 666 without any of the patent-infringing plug in's that other evil infringing browsers are using.

    Now meet... FrontPage 666.NET! Its advanced features are tightly integrated to IE 666.NET. Its wizards allow you to quickly and easily turn out glossy, glitzy, brightly colored, blinking, twitching, jumping, scrolling, seizure inducing web pages in an instant! The FrontPage 666.NET server extension component only runs in Windows servers, but it allows your FrontPage 666 pages to track which IE 666.NET users are seeing your pages, how long they stay, what links they read, even what parts of the page they scroll to or resize the window to cover up!

    We're sure you'll agree that replacing your Apache servers with Windows, in order to run the FrontPage 666 extensions will be worth it.

    Clippy: It looks like you're trying to write a web page. Would you like me to help you make it sound like you know what you are talking about?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:21PM (#6953917)
    Oh man! That's sooo funny! What happens when I click the link?

    It's fires up Acrobat Reader in my browser window...

    Where I live, that's called entrapment.
  • by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @07:28PM (#6953940)
    Yes, but drinking alone is generally considered a bad sign.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @08:23PM (#6954197)
    Why does everyone have to incessantly shout

    IANAL
    IANAL
    IANAL

    over and fucking over again? Yes, we know that you are one of, I don't know, 5 and a half billion NONLAWYERS.

    Christ, do people who sit around in the pub aruging politics and football routinely interject:

    By the way guys, you might not want to listen to what I have to say next because--crap!--I just realized, I'm not a lawyer.

    No, they don't. Now, will you people quit it already?. It is perfectly acceptable to make an observation without being a lawyer--if you're wrong, someone who knows better will inform you.

    This meme, much like the people who use the word meme, ought to be shot.

    Thank you and goodnight,

    Anonymous Coward.
  • by beej ( 82035 ) on Saturday September 13, 2003 @10:04PM (#6954513) Homepage Journal
    We obviously know what's obvious and what obviously isn't. There should be a meta/moderating system for patents. This way we slashdotters can vote on new software patent applications, like so:

    • This was obvious in 1974
    • Completely obvious
    • Still frickin' obvious
    • Obvious
    • Clever
    • Cowboyneal

    Tell me we wouldn't do a better job than the patent office...

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 13, 2003 @11:15PM (#6954805)
    If i do this Strong bad is gonna come to my house and beat me up.

The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh

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