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December 11th, 2001, 11:50 PM
#1
Member
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."
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December 12th, 2001, 01:50 AM
#2
Member
mmmmmmmmmmmm..............no
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December 12th, 2001, 02:28 AM
#3
The Onion
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
"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
-Occam's Razor
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December 12th, 2001, 02:30 AM
#4
Senior Member
Stupidest damn thing I've ever read
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.
Risk everything, or gain nothing.
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December 12th, 2001, 02:35 AM
#5
lol! now this is funny ****.
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December 12th, 2001, 02:45 AM
#6
Member
lol... man i didn't believe it when my friend told me at school... this has to stop, they really should do something...
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December 12th, 2001, 02:51 AM
#7
Think...
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
"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
"entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity."
-Occam's Razor
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December 12th, 2001, 02:54 AM
#8
Well I know theonion writes bs stories for fun but I agree with you, the rest seems to take this serious.
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December 12th, 2001, 04:01 AM
#9
If the inventor of the abacus had anything to say about it, he'd be kix0r1ng Bill G's @$$ !
We the willing, led by the unknowing, have been doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to do just about anything with almost nothing.
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December 12th, 2001, 04:20 AM
#10
Man, some people will believe anything lol.... but it was pretty funny
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