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Even Microsoft employees hate Microsoft


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Microsoft is open to the possibility of filing patent suits against Linux in the interest of their shareholders. Ballmer said: 'Well, I think there are experts who claim Linux violates our intellectual property. I'm not going to comment. But to the degree that that's the case, of course we owe it to our shareholders to have a strategy.' Microsoft filed more than 3000 new applications for software patents in 2005 and already owns more than 4000 patents, including many patents on fundamental, but trivial technologies, like double clicks."

 

What a joke.

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LMAO. Microsoft stole windows from Apple who stole it from Xerox

Yup. Microsoft are the masters of cheap mass reporduction. They are the "China" of software.

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter who made something first. It only matters who has the patent. This is why the free software community is so against software patents. If implemented, it means that wealthy companies can buy up all the patents and prevent ANYONE from making software without buying a license.

 

Imagine if things like basic sorting algorithms, double-clicking, or even GUIs were all patented? Imagine all the small time hobby software, or even small 10-man or less software houses that would go bankrupt just trying to pay for patent licenses?

 

Software patents are retarded. Patents were designed to promote competition, not stifle it. Unfortunately when the American founding fathers came up with the idea of patents, they never imagined an Orwellian world filled with almost infinitely wealthy super-companies who had stockpiles of cash and nothing better to do with it than kill off competition.

 

Microsoft have a well documented internal policy that they must apply for one patent per day. 365 patent applications per year. Even if only 50% of those are successful, that's a bloody lot for one company to own. And the problem with patents is that the US Patent Office is so slow and stupid that the old fogeys there can't even fathom researching a patent application in depth enough to find instances of "prior art" for themselves. End result, a vast majority of technology-based patents end up being given to the wrong people, because the right people are completely unaware that they were filed in the first place. Reversing patents is an even harder process than granting them.

 

The legal and patenting systems are so grossly out of touch and out of date with the technology industry it's not funny. 1 year in technology is the equivalent evolutionarily of 100 years in law. The problem is that old copyright law dealing with archaic copying technology such as the printing press is currently what's applied to digital media. It's obvious that this sort of logic is flawed to begin with, but unfortunately the legal system has cemented it's position as a necessary evil thanks to their legal double talk.

 

Once apon a time the biggest hurdle the world had in moving forwards in the fields of science and technology were the lack of processing power. In today's world we have more processing power than we could have ever imagined. But we face another hurdle: greed, and laws made to ensure the rich stay rich. It saddens me that intellect and forward movement of the human race across many generations are halted in their tracks because of the immediate and stupid greed of a few men. Talk about losing all long-term focus. He who dies with the most money is still dead. Stop thinking about today, and think about the world in 1000 years time.

 

Woo... the air is thin way up here on my soapbox and I'm getting light headed. Time to climb down.

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The problem is that old copyright law dealing with archaic copying technology such as the printing press

 

Whoa! Printings isn't as archaic as you'd think! It's a million dollar industry. (just had to mention it, I work at a newspaper! ;))

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Woo... the air is thin way up here on my soapbox and I'm getting light headed. Time to climb down.

 

nah, your rants are a good read! :D

 

He who dies with the most money is still dead. Stop thinking about today, and think about the world in 1000 years time.

 

That's if the world is still around!

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Whoa! Printings isn't as archaic as you'd think! It's a million dollar industry. (just had to mention it, I work at a newspaper! ;))

Again, archaic in IT terms (heck, 2 years is "archaic" in IT terms). Technology has moved beyond the need for me to buy a million-dollar printing machine to reproduce the written word en masse. An FTP server and $200 worth of computer is all I need now.

 

Yet the laws that apply to the printing press are the same as the laws that apply to FTP servers. Pretty stupid, when you think about it.

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Have a read of the masters of Doom. In it the guy who created the 3d engines for pcs John Carmac said to the other owners of Id software he would quit and take his technology elsewhere if they ever suggested that he patent his technology. He would put all of his code he made for Doom and quake on the net so hackers could do what they want with it.
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He would put all of his code he made for Doom and quake on the net so hackers could do what they want with it.

And a few years later he's done just that. For every new release of a Quake/Doom engine, he releases an engine 3 generations old as GPL.

 

So when Quake2 hit the world, the Doom engine was made GPL. Likewise Quake engine at the Quake3 release, Quake2 engine at the Doom III release, and so on.

 

Carmack understands that old tech lying around on a hard disk does the world no favours. He's 100% self-taught in his 3D knowledge (something that is totally unfathomable to me, having tried to understand even 10% of that code). He knows that releasing 5+ year old code won't hurt him financially, and will only help the hackers and tinkerers out there to get a better understanding of 3D graphics, and in turn, go on to become members of the 3D game-making world (a plus for the industry as a whole).

 

It's nice to see at least one rich dude out there remember his roots, and give away what is no longer useful to him as a tool for others to learn from, rather than seeing that code rot and disappear forever simply because it won't make him a buck any more.

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