Robert Pogson

“it is in the public interest that the state of New Hampshire consider using open source software in its public computing functions.”

That’s from the preamble of a bill that just passed through both houses in the state’s legislature. The preamble is concise and eloquent touching on everything that’s wrong with Wintel without mentioning M$ and “partners” by name. The writing is on the wall. Monopoly can take a hike in NH. Continue reading ‘WOW! New Hampshire Gets FLOSS’

M$ v Barnes and Noble took a comical turn this week. M$ decided to drop several of its claims of patent violation. They now only have three claims left and those three are weak, terribly weak.

• Patent #6,957,233: Making annotations in read-only documents Chuckle. In Computer Science 101, students have been taught about data structures where diverse items may be associated. This “patent” is about associating some notes with a read-only file…
  structure
begin
filename:string;
note:string
end;
  Yes. Patentable invention… NOT!
• Patent #6,891,551: Highlighting and selecting elements of electronic documents ROFL!!! As if cut-and-paste was novel in 2001 when M$ filed the patent application with USPTO without relevant prior art disclosed…
• Patent #5,778,372: Quickly downloading documents from a browser Yes, finally, some innovation that would have been useful with dial-up in Lose 3.1 but which is irrelevant in 2011 and which the Nook e-reader does not practise…

M$ is being hammered by a book-seller who chose to stand up to the bully. Others who agreed to the extortion are probably having regrets now. M$ is probably having regrets now. If they had left B&N alone, M$’s patent portfolio might still be useful for extorting money from users of Android/Linux but M$ did what they did and now the whole world gets to read about how toothless the old beast is.

see also GROKLAW – Some Really Good News for Barnes & Noble; and Microsoft Withdraws Another Patent ~pj