It's not a hoax. However, it is probably one of the many, many patents
that are applied for, most of which that are granted, whose only purpose
is to lock the market on that idea. In this case, the optimist in me
hopes that no one, schools or otherwise, are dumb enough to accept such
a deal. And, I don't expect that MS expects to ever actually implement
such a system. But, if the market is ever accepting of this sort of
thing, they are now the monopoly holder and so the market is squashed.
IMO, patents mostly have two purposes:
- - The original purpose is to foster innovation by granting the inventor
a temporary monopoly to financially benefit from his idea.
- - The secondary side effect purpose of restricting markets and
competition by holding patents but never actually implementing them in a
product. I lump patent holding companies in this group.
Most unfortunately the latter, side effect use is by far the most
prevalent today.
Alan
jdawgaz@cox.net wrote:
> this IS a hoax, right?
>
>
> ---- "der.hans" <PLUGd@LuftHans.com> wrote:
>> moin moin,
>>
>> http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37568
>>
>> Ugh!
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