Microsoft wants to copyright 1 and 0

This is from http://www.theonion.com:

REDMOND, WA-In what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but necessary step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented the numbers one and zero Monday.

Above: At a press conference beamed live to Microsoft shareholders around the globe, Bill Gates announces the company's patenting of the binary system.
With the patent, Microsoft's rivals are prohibited from manufacturing or selling products containing zeroes and ones-the mathematical building blocks of all computer languages and programs-unless a royalty fee of 10 cents per digit used is paid to the software giant.

"Microsoft has been using the binary system of ones and zeroes ever since its inception in 1975," Gates told reporters. "For years, in the interest of the overall health of the computer industry, we permitted the free and unfettered use of our proprietary numeric systems. However, changing marketplace conditions and the increasingly predatory practices of certain competitors now leave us with no choice but to seek compensation for the use of our numerals."

A number of major Silicon Valley players, including Apple Computer, Netscape and Sun Microsystems, said they will challenge the Microsoft patent as monopolistic and anti-competitive, claiming that the 10-cent-per-digit licensing fee would bankrupt them instantly.

"While, technically, Java is a complex system of algorithms used to create a platform-independent programming environment, it is, at its core, just a string of trillions of ones and zeroes," said Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy, whose company created the Java programming environment used in many Internet applications. "The licensing fees we'd have to pay Microsoft every day would be approximately 327,000 times the total net worth of this company."

mmmmmmmmmmmm..............no

I love the Onion...(peddles his wares)...I have a subscription! The Onion
Comes from my hometown, no less.

Ouroboros

(For the lovers of sarcasm, you may also want to check out The Ripsaw

Now this has to take the cake. Hopefully M$ will convince everyone who runs the school system to stop all Mathematics classes as well or they won't make anymore ****ing money to add to the damn vault full they already have. It's pretty damn low when a company thinks that it can copyright the very foundation of computers throughout history. They might as well want to know that 1's and 0's are part of machine language, so every hardware manufacturer is gonna have to pay big bucks except for the M$ hardware. This is so sad, think about it, the very basics into which all computer data is read and transferred is going to be copyrighted because someone isn't rich enough.

lol! now this is funny ****.

lol... man i didn't believe it when my friend told me at school... this has to stop, they really should do something...

Hey folks...this isn't true!

Like I said, "for others interested in sarcasm..."

It's popular satire...M$ is not trying to copyright binary! The article is just for shits and giggles...

Doesn't anyone know sarcasm when they see it?

Ouroboros

Well I know theonion writes bs stories for fun but I agree with you, the rest seems to take this serious.

If the inventor of the abacus had anything to say about it, he'd be kix0r1ng Bill G's @$$ !

Man, some people will believe anything lol.... but it was pretty funny

:confused:

i got this from:
http://groups.google.com/groupsq=bil...%40cpmsnbbsa07

what do u think about this...........?

From: junkychrist

Think about this for a minute.

I am a computer programmer, and by that I mean my native language is C. I
also code in assembler & other languages.

I do not nor have I ever worked for MS. I have worked with mainframe as
well as PC systems. If you are old enough like me or have studied the
details of the computer industry prior to 1995, you will know that:

1. IBM ran and runs the mainframe world. Read the license agreement on
their software, noting the GSA clause. They are currently scrambling to
update their archaic user interfaces to Microsoft quality (they are there
except a marked absence of wizards and online help). The market is not
booming for mainframe paperweights, otherwise I would say they will always
run the mainframe world. To keep up with Microsoft, they are becoming a
more responsive company.

2. Novell had a monopoly on PC networking for about a decade until NT 4
hit the mainstream in 95. In fact, Novell bought Unix from ATT around 87
until 93 or so; most people don't know they owned the net until NT. (BTW,
Novell sucked, sucks and will always suck. I imagine that it is through the
massive security holes I found in Novell as recently as '98 and brass balls
that Mitnik did much of his stuff.). Fortunately for us, the lack of any
standards and competition made the industry tricky and the bastads sold
their interest, perhaps phearing what has ultimately happened to MS.

3. Apple computer is a hardware company that manufactures computers
with a proprietary OS. Most importantly, during the late 80's when
standards were evolving from the grassroots up, every manufacturer who
didn't support the de facto standard imploded, which includes Apple, AST,
ALR & competing standards for NICs, CDROMs & sound cards. Microsoft didn't
destroy Apple, Apple's inability to adapt to the standard and competitively
price their wares destroyed them. In fact, lets go one step further: IBM
released their PC spec to the public domain around '83 because the US
government was threatening to do to them what they did to Microsoft. This
resulted in a global rush to make 'IBM compatable' PCs, the resulting
competition drove the price down, pricing Apple out of the main market,
leading to their downfall. One can infer that IBM destroyed Apple. Be glad
they did, unless you feel that a basic PC should cost about $5000 US. Thank
your uncle Sam for leaning on big blue.

In this frame of reference Bill Gates aided the success of the PC with
MSDOS. The worst you can honestly concede is that MS did beat PCDOS, and
only by updating their product. Novell extended MSDOS to bring network
capabilities to PCs, and through fair competition MS integrated networking
support into their 95 & NT OS. This only took them ten years; they didn't
gun for Novell, they aimed to please their consumers. Ever heard of 'LAN
Manager'? If you are reading this you should be pleased: I would give an
83% probability that you are on a PC have a Microsoft OS... and at least a
20% probability that you didn't pay for it.

So through timely and superior product development Microsoft was first
to deliver USER FRIENDLY state of the art operating systems and compilers
that actually compile executables that work consistently across industry
standard platforms. I can't tell you how many years I have wasted patching
my perfectly logical code to compile, only to track the bugs to compiler
errors. As standards were agreed on, the last biggie (before OpenGL) being
plug & play, Microsoft emerged in the industry with truly excellent
operating systems and applications, forged over many years. Not the
maturity of big blue or unix, but not the crap offered by hundreds of
companies that no longer exist.

Do you remember when IBM & Microsoft contracted to co-develop Windows & OS2?
I can't imagine IBM, with their platoon of lawyers in New York to
'accidentally' share with Microsoft the information they are alleged to
have. Anyway, I think the development methods were probably more valuable
to Microsoft. IBM relaxed their sphincter long enough for Bill to get a
running start; I think they intended to use Microsoft to get the fed off
their back but did not expect Bill to gain as much market share as he did,
as small client-server PC networks displaced terminal-server environments.
With the advent of the internet consumers voted with their dollars to make
Microsoft #1: so who are you angry with? (especially if you didn't pay for
your OS)

So to wrap it up, IBM is big brother and Bill Gates is some guy who
failed to stay out of the light. As Ken Kesey said (referring to John
Lennon), the public eye has a cross hair on it. I don't like humans enough
to to give as much as Mr. Gate has, and you couldn't pay me enough to put up
with what he has. I would have closed Microsoft & given you all the finger.
The predatory government of the United States has in recent years since the
fall of soviet communism turned on its citizens, beginning with the tobacco
industry, moving on to Microsoft and recently the utility companies. With
Bill Clinton & Janet Reno out to pasture maybe, just maybe this madness will
stop. I doubt it. Check caltrans.com and know that there are surveillance
cameras every 0.7 miles on every freeway in California capable of counting
your eyelashes a mile away, and also in most major cities in California. Of
course, the government will not share these videos with you even if you are
a victim in an accident; they assert that they are beyond the law. This is
what the turd Bill Clinton liked about California.

Bill Gates is big brother? Hardly. Please think for yourselves and form
your own opinions and stop being brainwashed by tv.

does anyone have a copy right on hex yet.... iwant it.

wow?! that's new... how come anyone can patent numbers? therefore, we should ask permission to 'Bill Gates' that we should use 1 and 0 to use them in our daily lives.
hmmm... does the 'egyptians' know this?

PEOPLE THIS IS NOT REAL!!! THIS IS SATIRE!!!

But if you still believe it....I have the copyright on the words "Hacker", "Cracker", and "Flame"... if you want to use those words please email me we can arrainge price per word deal...but act now, prices are going up.

I also have some Beach Front Property in SouthDakota that I would like to sell you guys. E-mail me if ur interested!
[email protected]

This sale is only good for 1 more hour. Anyone?

Does it have Internet Access? If so I might be interested.