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Old 09-24-2009, 03:30 PM   #1
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Microsoft Patents Breakthrough Technology!

Whitespace!

Historic times, these are.
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Old 09-24-2009, 03:43 PM   #2
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I don't have time to read the patent in full, but it looks like what they are doing is using whitespace to encode proprietary keywords in such a way that non-Microsoft compilers will interpret these keywords as whitespace and ignore them. Ostensibly, this is to maintain compatibility between "C++" programs using Microsoft proprietary extensions, and existing standards-compliant compilers.

I could be wrong -- like I said, I don't have time to parse through all that right now. But it's certainly not a "patent on whitespace."
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Old 09-24-2009, 03:43 PM   #3
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Yeah I read it the same way as brewbuck.

Thank god they have patented this, otherwise it will spread.
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Old 09-24-2009, 04:00 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by brewbuck View Post
I don't have time to read the patent in full, but it looks like what they are doing is using whitespace to encode proprietary keywords in such a way that non-Microsoft compilers will interpret these keywords as whitespace and ignore them. Ostensibly, this is to maintain compatibility between "C++" programs using Microsoft proprietary extensions, and existing standards-compliant compilers.

I could be wrong -- like I said, I don't have time to parse through all that right now. But it's certainly not a "patent on whitespace."
I was obviously exaggerating, yes.

Still, this is hardly 'patentable' material, IMO. More like a clever hack, if anything...

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Thank god they have patented this, otherwise it will spread.
My sentiment exactly.
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Old 09-24-2009, 07:15 PM   #5
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Didn't they just lose their XML patent?
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Old 09-24-2009, 07:23 PM   #6
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Certainly not a new idea though. Look around and you'll find programs that compile in both C++ and whitespace for example.
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Old 09-25-2009, 11:54 PM   #7
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It's just another frivolous patent. It wouldn't hold up in court, but then it'd cost anyone who challenged it million of dollars just to get to court. Someone needs to get 50000 companies to simultaneously sue MS in a litigation version of a denial of service attack.
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Old 09-26-2009, 06:34 PM   #8
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Someone needs to get 50000 companies to simultaneously sue MS in a litigation version of a denial of service attack.
Shhh..... Don't tell anyone that! After Microsoft falls, this unholy legion of lawyers will move on to new prey, until the rest of civilization is destroyed. You heard it here first!
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Old 09-26-2009, 06:36 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by abachler View Post
a litigation version of a denial of service attack.
distributed denial of service attack
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