Microsoft Patents Breakthrough Technology!

Whitespace!

Historic times, these are.

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."

Yeah I read it the same way as brewbuck.

Thank god they have patented this, otherwise it will spread.

Originally Posted by brewbuck

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...

Thank god they have patented this, otherwise it will spread.

My sentiment exactly.

Didn't they just lose their XML patent?

Certainly not a new idea though. Look around and you'll find programs that compile in both C++ and whitespace for example.

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.

Originally Posted by abachler

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!

Originally Posted by abachler

a litigation version of a denial of service attack.

distributed denial of service attack