Microsoft Assembles Patent Arsenal for Longhorn 571
stock writes "The heat is on. Inside eweek.com are some remarkable articles: 'You see, Microsoft is busy patenting everything it can lay its hands on with
all three. In fact, Microsoft is now building up its patent arsenal, applying
for a rather amazing 10 patents a day. The idea isn't to ensure that
Microsoft makes a fair profit from its patents; it's to make sure that no one
else can write fully compatible software.' An older article mentions some other patents."
the evidence that the day is coming is mounting... (Score:4, Interesting)
This will also be to make sure that DRM can succeed. If there were ways around their "innovations" for security what good would it do? First thing you have to do is break networking and make sure that only other secured machines can talk.
Remember people: the end of computing [slashdot.org] as we know it is coming fast.
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems a no brainter that they should not be allowed to protect any IP until a nonmonopolistic market restored.
"Right to innovate" be damned. You illegally got in top, now you can be made to share the top spot, a la the Sherman Act.
Re:Why? (Score:1, Interesting)
You know it was about preventing others from doing business?
You know Microsoft has not prevented anyone from doing business. I understand the 'predatory business practice' argument.
But this kind of nonsensical barrier to business development is what makes companies move offshore.
Backwards compatibility? (Score:5, Interesting)
How will Mono counter this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Time to start looking for prior art... (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess when Microsoft hands over a stack of patent applications, we should respond with a stack of examples of prior art (surely they must exist)? Either that or start applying for patents first and if they're granted make them publicly licensed under certain conditions (e.g. for OSS)? Of course, that makes open source the demon... argh.
Of course, knowing the patent office, they'll just rubber stamp Microsoft's applications. Right next to 1-Click and that new method of swinging one.
patents != antitrust? (Score:2, Interesting)
Im unclear if this would be considered the same thing, perhaps prior art could be used to stop blatant misuse, but it would give them an advantage...
Re:Well that proves it. (Score:1, Interesting)
Why cares??! The question is: Will Microsoft EVER use patents as a tool for gaining market control?
The answer is clearly yes. This is the entire point of patents, is it?
big filesystems, other stuff (Score:0, Interesting)
Is direct filesystem access really a must? With the price of boxes, are dual boot systems really a compelling business case? (I like them, but I have a house full of junk computers hehe)
Microsoft will have to play nice with the network, additionally, by the time longhorn comes out there may be enough samba servers around that compatibility (on the client side) may be important. Do you really have to be at version X of SMB fileservices with any given version of Microsofts software? Sure there are going to be shops that want the 100 percent Microsoft solution, but if Linux/BSD is up to it, theres nothing saying that in a few years running OSS will simply be the competitive thing to do.
Clearly Microsoft isn't going to lower their prices, not with this monster of a development project pigging out on excess product release schedules.
With Mono, compatibility was always a matter of how much paranoia the developers could tolerate in their planning.
As for patents, Microsoft is only doing what the patent office allows.
Nothing new (Score:1, Interesting)
This is why there needs to be "Defensive Patents" (Score:4, Interesting)
I also like the proposed reforms making large companies who apply for lots of patents pay much more and individuals pay much less.
Re:Oh, come now... (Score:1, Interesting)
What gobshite. People will still be able to write software for Windows, people who use Windows will still be able to use the Internet, FTP to and from Linux boxes, and communicate with Samba servers.
So tell me, genius, why is it that I'm able to connect to SMB shares on my Win2K server via Samba (OS X) but not those on my Win2K3 sever?
Re:If you can't win in the marketplace... (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm, but this is winning in the marketplace: you invent the technology first, so you gain temporary market monopoly for disclosing your invention through the patent system.
In other words, rather than _never_ seeing the internals of what makes Windows tick (until someone releases the source code
Rather than relying on trade secret / obfuscation to protect the ideas/concepts, now they're employing patents.
Of course the system is open to abuse (like any system, such as file transfers on the Internet
The standards bodies (W3C, IETF) should continue to act as guardians, and _only_ work on and approve standards that are not encumbered. Of course, just remember that there's no technical dictatorship in the world, so a standards body only has as much market power as its participants: which may not be good enough against a large monopoly like Microsoft: and this is exactly why we have large EU style antitrust rulings that are forcing Microsoft to open up interfaces and so on to competition.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:5, Interesting)
Read the book: Big Blue: IBM's use and abuse of power.
This book is literally an education on monopolist behavior. If you read it, you would amazed at how many of IBM's dirty tricks are practiced by Microsoft.
One very important lesson. The monopoly and especially lock in are the most important things. Even more important than short term profitability. Even more important than staying within the law.
After all the law will do is fine you. Maybe even painfully. But in the end, you still have a monopoly with locked in customers. You can charge what economists call "monopoly rents". So you're still in control of the game. Nothing is more important than maintaining the monopoly.
Anyway, I'm off topic. But the book is a very interesting read of things done in decades past that many here are too young to remember.
Re:If you can't win in the marketplace... (Score:3, Interesting)
Umm, but this is winning in the marketplace: you invent the technology first, so you gain temporary market monopoly for disclosing your invention through the patent system.
Which is exactly what MS is not doing in this case. Christ, they're trying to patent image compression [uspto.gov], as if (a) this hasn't been done a gajillion different times before, (b) they'll be able to force it on the marketplace, and (c) they won't abuse this patent and sue people who implement related but non-patented algorithms like SVG.
In other words, rather than _never_ seeing the internals of what makes Windows tick (until someone releases the source code ...) we're actually seeing the internals now.
No we're not. The patents describe the technologies, not how to implement them. And what good does it do you, anyway? If you know how something is done but are legally prevented from implementing it, it might as well be closed.
Re:Backwards compatibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
The cheese stands alone (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, with every other OS based on a *nix core, not only does Microsoft continue to ignore this trend but they try to 'go it alone' and isolate themselves through locking down their interfaces with patents and tough to engineer interfaces. Sounds like the Great Wall of China, and that set back China a century or two when they were ahead of the world by about that much.
I think this strategy might have worked 5 years ago before OS X and Linux - particularly now that Linux has hit critical mass on the server. It's probably too late now to try and get users to walk from Linux just for a few killer features in Longhorn.
Re:This is why there needs to be "Defensive Patent (Score:5, Interesting)
Publication has most of the properties the grandparent wanted: turnaround time is typically 6 months to a year (depending on whether you go conference or journal), costs are minimal (usually a few hundred dollars for a conference, less for journal), and it gets disseminated to a wide audience.
The downside is that the bar for patents appears lower than for publication; it seems like I'm always reading on Slashdot about patents that are successfully granted for ideas that do nothing to advance the state of the art, which leads me to suspect that there may be a "gray area" of ideas that are patentable (at least under our current system) but would have difficulty being accepted for publication. This is probably where "defensive patenting" would be useful.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot Article is Flamebait (Score:2, Interesting)
Of course I may be proved wrong over time, but I just think they are doing what all other major US companies are doing.
Re:Not to pick on just Microsoft... (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, copyright is automatic. The only reason to file a copyright is to prove the date when something was created. This can also be done, BTW, by sealing the work in an envelope or box and mailing it to yourself. The unopened box can then be presented in court and the postmark will verify the copyright date.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:5, Interesting)
In the mind of everyone who would learn about and understand such an action, Microsoft's image has already been damaged. For most of their customers, however, such an attack by Microsoft would slip under the radar... which is probably why Microsoft apparantly has no moral objections to making such threats [advogato.org] against small targets and why people like this blogger can talk about that situation as if it were a hypothetical "view" rather than a recent occurance.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:1, Interesting)
Its funny. MS lovers have always said that its hard for MS to design thier OSs to work flawlessly because of all the hardware they have to support. They control the PocketPC hardware spec and their OSs are still shit!
Re:I'm fixing a hole, where the rain gets in... (Score:2, Interesting)
Say Longhorn does take another couple of years, and say desktop PC penetration - since PC horsepower is already easily enough for most home users - reaches a point where a lot less are selling. How are they going to get us to take up this new OS, with unpalatable DRM built in and a lack of backwards compatibility?
Worms, stability issues etc increasing general cynicism, are they even going to have a market in two years?
Compromise (Score:1, Interesting)
Samba2 vs. DMCA (Score:3, Interesting)
Why isn't microsoft jumping on the DMCA wagon, and making it illegal to reverse engineer their protocol?
Microsoft innovations (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft is not innovative company as far as Computer _Science_ is concerned. This is more or less true statement. However, they shine in other aspects. It is too be predicted because they're in a unique position in the history and have to come up with ideas to maintain this position.
Here's a list from the top of my head:
- Triple E: Embrace-Extend-Exterminate
- Psychological take-over: MS annouces it will
start competing in market X. Customers in market
X stop updating their software waiting for MS
to release their thing. Market X vendors
stock goes down, MS acquires one of them only
to lay off everybody and butcher the software.
- Including court system in business process:
it's OK to be fined for being a monopoly as long
as Wall Street expectations are met.
Any others?Forget about Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC, TCPA doesn't have to be enabled. That means you can still use newer hardware, just without the abilities granted by "trusted computing."
I'm not really a consumer of streaming multimedia, so I don't see a problem for me.
That doesn't mean I don't fight it...I've written my congressmen several times, even if I only get boilerplate letters back saying "blah blah blah we don't have the authority to pass laws regarding blah, so blah..."
Don't worry (Score:3, Interesting)
3 words, 2 phases:
China, Russia, OSS, hordes of programmers, laughing at US patents.
Or to put it another way, when enough people violate a patent and post it free for download...
Really I can't see how any of the doomsday scenarios posted here can come about without an unprecedented national policy of isolationism that includes a pretty totalitarian U.S. National Firewall. Dell and MS are going to have us ALL arrested? I don't think so.
"Do you think it could happen here?"
In this context the whole interweb thingy changes everything about the word "here". For our purposes today "here" is Earth. No I don't think it could happen here. As long as we keep hacking xbox's, building community WLANs, cheering on our Skylarov's, and writing OSS, we'll keep ahead of the Corporate Nobility.
Worse comes to worst, there will be a black market here for foreign non-DRM hardware and a string of International WLANS along the borders pumping free software inwards. They don't have a Department of Corporateland Security everywhere.
Re:IBM is still the King of Patents (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe. They are licensing some of their patents to Linux, which means it works both ways. I.e. Microsoft can't use certain things from Linux. Linux seems to be part of a shadow IP war between Microsoft and other players. Very strange.
The death penalty works! No witchcraft in Massachusetts since 1692.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:2, Interesting)
Even after the rollout it will be years before any complaints hits the courts, by then MS will have made billions and be ready with the next anti-competive plan for the marketplace. The court cost and fines will be microscopic in comparison to the profits that have already been booked.
Just remember how long the AT&T and Standard Oil monopolies were allow to live before the US courts stepped in to actually break them up.
--laz
Re:And Microsoft will win. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure apple sold 70 million songs with DRM, but how many people haven't bough from apple because they only have devices that play mp3s?
DRM has to fail, market pressures against it will be enourmous. The only problem is that the RIAA hasen't even tried to sell mp3s on line yet. When they do there are people that will buy, lots and lots and lots of people, me included. Market forces (if allowed to) will destroy the DRM movement. The only thing stopping the market from making this right is ogolopies and monopolies refusing to change.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:3, Interesting)
Hopefully, now that they've realized the game is much more fun when all can play, IBM will make sure their portfolio stays ahead that Microsoft will have to cross license everything to legally sell their system. At least until the rest of the world realizes how much power not implementing software patents will give them over the US.
Don't think they will? It doesn't take a genuis to figure out that if everyone but Americans could freely use American ideas America's IP based economy would be royally screwed.
Re:IBM is still the King of Patents (Score:4, Interesting)
No surprise that a giant diversified tech company pumps out the patents (legitimate or not). IBM has roughly 40,000 products and services. It's, what, an order of magnitude larger than MS in that respect? Much of that is hardware, with real engineering behind it. Simple math. I think their R&D horizon is something like 50 years, too.
BTW, it's 10/week, in TFA.
Re:Zealotry in action (Score:2, Interesting)
1) Read a slanted article about MS
2) Let others on
3) ???
4) Flame Microsoft!
You can see this over in the Worm thread where you can branch a few ways...
a) if a problem arises and MS doesn't have a patch blame them for being too slow
b) if a problem arises and MS has a patch, come up with excuses why you didn't patch and blame MS for that
c) if a problem arises under Linux and there is no patch, say that the beauty of OSS is that a patch will be available soon. Blame MS somehow.
d) if a problem arises under Linux and there is a patch blame anyone who has reasons why they can't use the patch as clueless morons, blame MS somehow.
You must be reading their mind (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:3, Interesting)
Never forget that MS was there and is partly responsible. And Joe Blow in his dorm room was really named Michael Dell.
Re:Backwards compatibility? (Score:1, Interesting)
So they have already mucked with NTFS; any further mucking will be business as usual.
Re:the evidence that the day is coming is mounting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Software requires the interaction with a machine. Lots of patents require the interaction with people in order to work. An internal combustion engine needs someone/thing to provide it with fuel or else it wouldn't work. Just because a book must be read to be useful is not valid justification for why it is not patentable and software is.
Patents apply to the technique or method used to accomplish something, perhaps a way to make elevators safer
I'll take your example and expand it. Let's say I have an idea on making elevators safer. My idea is to put a scale in the floor of the elevator with an analog read out so that you could actually know when the weight limit is near. This idea would not be patentable because it is merely a combination of existing technology in an obvious manner. But, if I took a bunch of electric scales, tied them together, then wrote some code that calculated the amount of weight, and then had the computer audibly announce the weight, I could theoretically get a patent on the code. It is the same idea, I only made it more complicated and then added "software" to the mix.
My whole point is that the majority of the software patents are being awarded for obvious things. Things, that in the absence of "software" would not be patentable because they are merely a combination of existing technology in obvious manners.
Another part of my disagreement with software patents is that there is no standard for reverse engineering and writing a similar, yet different, application. Maybe I would change my tune if someone could implement "similar yet different" products within the patent system. Currently I do not believe that is not the case. Some good cases in point are the AMD vs Intel on processor patents (AMD reverse engineered Intel processors) and Amazon vs Barnes and Noble on software patents (The One-Click Patent).
They'll be a lot more subtle this time around... (Score:3, Interesting)
The EU is adding another layer, distanced from the national parliaments. The US has long since done that with an election system where the only stable constellation is a two-party system.
What EU is passing now, may be law here literally years from now. In the US, rider bills are tacked onto anything. In either case, the people doesn't know what's going on. There are political debates but those are galleon figures.
The actual issues are almost forgotten. It's all about style, profile, personality and character, not to mention doing your worst to the opponent's. Politics is merely the arena they attack each other in.
The real politics are decided afterwards. Not by the people, but by those in permanent power. Those that have created a circle of power around them, those you can not afford to be on bad terms with. Lobbyists, supporters, business interests, leaders of other government agencies all encircle them.
Dictatorships of yesterdays gave no choice. Dictatorships of tomorrow will give you choice that is no choice. The great masses will be fooled into thinking they are making a difference.
And you will be written off as a conspiracy theorist. Discredited is far more effective than disappeared. Those create questions, martyrs. Internet gives you a voice. But a voice that noone believes is no voice at all.
Kjella
Swastika and the Cresent (Score:2, Interesting)
Both ideologies hate Jews, and fundimentaly, are anti-Christian as well. Christianity, like it or not, is the underpinning of western civilization, particularly in America. Read the founding fathers' works sometime. Props also to the Roman Republic.
Anyway, Hitler was hell-bent on world domination, as was Islam in its early days, and still is if these alleged "extreamists" aren't that "extream" afterall, which they may not be. Osama bin Laden won't stop until everyone is on a prayr rug facing Mecca or dead. It doesn't matter if you vote for Bush or Kerry or Godzilla. It doesn't matter if you are in the KKK or marching in the streats with a red flag advocating utopian socialism. It's all evil unless it is fundamentalist Islam. The same could be said of people like Pat Robertson, but no one ever hijacked an airplane or murdered children in a shopping mall because of Pat Robertson. Sure, people have done some diabolical things in the name of Christ. However, the crusades were a military operation bent on keeping evil invaders from the east out. Rome and Persia had been going at it for centuries before. Christianity v. Islam is just an extension of taht fight.
Sure, not all muslims are evil terrorists. There was also Schindler, so I guess not all nazis were bad people, either.
People like my mother (a spanish teacher who was a romance language major at Princeton, now working on her masters and doctorate in Spanish and 2ndary Education via William and Mary), and persumably yourself, will point to the so-called "golden age" of Spain, durring the time the Moores ruled. Well guess what, the alleged "golden age" is a bullshit story concotaed by the British as a propaganda measure to justify alling with the Ottoman Empire. Islam is fundimentally agaisnt Christianity and Judaism. They were brutal and oppressive just like the Soviet Union, the DPRC, Cuba, et cetera.
Frankly, I do not belive that the Persians and Arabs went from worshiping dark angles, djins, and the necronomicon to comming back into favor with the Hebrew God, when they have been the sworn enemies of the Jews since Abraham stuck his dick in that whore and knocked her up while thinking that Sara was barren and unable to have kids. I firmly belive that the Islam is a guise for Satanism and that if there is ever going to be a last "great battle" between "good and evil," it is going to be the Christian West vs. the Islamic and/or Communist East.
Religion aside, as frankly all theocracies are bad (Civil Government should be composed of individuals who are moral and realize that all rights come from God and that government protects rights, not grants/restricts rights), the establishment of a totalitarian regime that is fundimentally anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, anti-free thought, et cetera, is exactly the aim of Hitler and Bin Laden. It was the goal of Stalin, Mao, and Castro (not Che; he was a good man). It is also the traditional goal of Satan throughout the centuries. Therefor we can assume that they are all in league.
Saddam thought Stalin was the greatest thing since sliced bread. It has been proven that Al Queda gave money to Neo-Nazi groups in Europe just because they were anti-Jewish.
I am all for "tollerance," but that means I'll put up with Islam. I will never accept it, nor do I expect them to accept Christianity. I believe I am correct and they are not, but they believe the same thing. People shouldn't change beliefes without imperical data showing them to be wrong, or at least a VERY sound Philosophical argument. Otherwise I do not respect them (like John Kerry. Vote Michael Peroutka in '04).
However, tollerance can only go so far. Everything has a place. Everyone has a place (while I am a believer in oligarchy and the Roman Republic, I believe everyone should have the chance to better their station in life and then recieve the extra rights
Re:Backwards compatibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
WinFS is just an abstraction above NTFS, but the core is still NTFS. So if Linux/etc can interact with NTFS, then I bet they can still work with Longhorn.
!?? Yeah, but maybe all they can see is C:\WINFS.db