473,320 Members | 1,958 Online
Bytes | Software Development & Data Engineering Community
Post Job

Home Posts Topics Members FAQ

Join Bytes to post your question to a community of 473,320 software developers and data experts.

Microsoft Patents Saving The Name Of A Game

--> From http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040406/1349225.shtml

Microsoft Patents Saving The Name Of A Game
Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 @ 01:49PM
from the yeah,-that's-non-obvious dept.

theodp writes "As if there weren't enough dodgy patents, here's an
excerpt from one granted to Microsoft Tuesday for a 'Method and
apparatus for displaying information regarding stored data in a gaming
system': 'When saving a game, the saved game data may include a
descriptive name of the saved game, a graphic representation of the
state of the game when the game was saved, a description of the game
state when the game was saved, and a date and time that the game was
saved.'" I'm trying to figure out if there's more to this patent, but
the more I read, the worse it seems. How is this possibly
"non-obvious"?

--> Link to Patent

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...mber=6,716,102

--> Link to Patent File History (Shows Two Earlier Rejections)

http://pair.uspto.gov/cgi-bin/final/...mber=6,716,102
Jul 20 '05
138 6360
>>>>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.

That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.
Jul 20 '05 #101
In article <u8***********@news.dtpq.com>,
cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:

Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.

That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.


They "ported" some of the concepts. It was not a reaction against it;
the Unix developers were former Multics developers, and when they were
designing their OS for a minicomputer, they adopted some of the ideas
that they had previously developed for Multics. But since the new
system was much on less powerful hardware, they simplified many of them.

--
Barry Margolin, ba****@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
Jul 20 '05 #102
In article <u8***********@news.dtpq.com>,
cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:

Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.

That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.


They "ported" some of the concepts. It was not a reaction against it;
the Unix developers were former Multics developers, and when they were
designing their OS for a minicomputer, they adopted some of the ideas
that they had previously developed for Multics. But since the new
system was much on less powerful hardware, they simplified many of them.

--
Barry Margolin, ba****@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
Jul 20 '05 #103
Barry Margolin wrote:
In article <u8***********@news.dtpq.com>,
cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.
That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.

They "ported" some of the concepts. It was not a reaction against it;
the Unix developers were former Multics developers, and when they were
designing their OS for a minicomputer, they adopted some of the ideas
that they had previously developed for Multics. But since the new
system was much on less powerful hardware, they simplified many of them.

I admit to simplifying here. Yes, it wasn't a true port, but
arguably a downgrade of sorts. My Multics background is that
it was my first OS, back in the late 1960's - for less than a
year, and thus, I was never able to appreciate it. And then,
I had the honor of helping finally shut it down, somewhere around
2000. I was the attorney negotiating termination of the last
support agreement for it - the support had been farmed out to
a Canadian company. At the time, I worked for Bull, which had
acquired Honeywell's computer systems, that included both GCOS
and Multics. 20-25 years later, there was still resentment in
the developer ranks about Honeywell's decision to give priority
to GCOS over Multics, and essentially to kill the later. Many
of the Multics features did make it into GCOS (after all, many
of the Multics developers moved over to GCOS), including much
more sophisticated security than probably anywhere else at the
time. This was one thing that did not make it into UNIX.
I also got to dig through the original contracts with the
government so that I could show ownership of both the source
code and the Multics mark, in case it was donated to science.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 2004 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
My work may be copied in whole or part, with proper attribution,
as long as the copying is not for commercial gain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org
Dillon, Colorado bh*****@highdown.com
Phoenix, Arizona bh*****@copatlaw.com

Jul 20 '05 #104
Barry Margolin wrote:
In article <u8***********@news.dtpq.com>,
cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.
That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.

They "ported" some of the concepts. It was not a reaction against it;
the Unix developers were former Multics developers, and when they were
designing their OS for a minicomputer, they adopted some of the ideas
that they had previously developed for Multics. But since the new
system was much on less powerful hardware, they simplified many of them.

I admit to simplifying here. Yes, it wasn't a true port, but
arguably a downgrade of sorts. My Multics background is that
it was my first OS, back in the late 1960's - for less than a
year, and thus, I was never able to appreciate it. And then,
I had the honor of helping finally shut it down, somewhere around
2000. I was the attorney negotiating termination of the last
support agreement for it - the support had been farmed out to
a Canadian company. At the time, I worked for Bull, which had
acquired Honeywell's computer systems, that included both GCOS
and Multics. 20-25 years later, there was still resentment in
the developer ranks about Honeywell's decision to give priority
to GCOS over Multics, and essentially to kill the later. Many
of the Multics features did make it into GCOS (after all, many
of the Multics developers moved over to GCOS), including much
more sophisticated security than probably anywhere else at the
time. This was one thing that did not make it into UNIX.
I also got to dig through the original contracts with the
government so that I could show ownership of both the source
code and the Multics mark, in case it was donated to science.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 2004 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
My work may be copied in whole or part, with proper attribution,
as long as the copying is not for commercial gain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org
Dillon, Colorado bh*****@highdown.com
Phoenix, Arizona bh*****@copatlaw.com

Jul 20 '05 #105
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:32:12 GMT, cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C.
Stacy) wrote:
>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.

That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.


A few highlights to support that...

UNIX was first _publicly_ introduced in 1974 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken
Thompson but it was originally created by Ken in 1969. Others joined in
on Ken's idea shortly after.

Bell Labs had an unsettled computing situation in the period 1968-69 and
pulled out of the Multics project since it showed that it was unable to
deliver anything practically usable within a reasonable time frame.

UNIX in 1969 existed as blackboard scribbles, paper notes and general
discussions among those involved in the "project" where most of the
"design" actually came from Ken. He had this idea of "information
filing" as being the most important part of a new OS and as an addition
to that Dennis came up with the idea that it was feasible to look on
input/output devices as units that handled "information filing" too, and
thus could be incorporated in a generic OS filing system mechanism [1].

Also in 1969, Ken wrote a fairly detailed simulation, on Multics, of
this new proposed filing system.

The practical birth date of UNIX is not possible to pin down, but a
basic "UNIX" file system ran on a Digital Equipment PDP-7 in 1970
(practically as the result of the "Space Travel" game that Ken first
wrote on Multics and then ported to a PDP-7 in 1969-70).

Source;
Volume-5/Number-10 of "Microsystems", October 1984.
ISSN #0199-7955
Which really went into depth on the history of UNIX.

[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment. Why Intel turned down Gary's CP/M
proposal? I don't know. Intel produced their own "ISIS" system for the
"Blue Box" and I have used them both extensively "back in the olden
days" but still think that Gary's CP/M had the better approach as
compared to ISIS.

(I still have an 8085 based "Blue Box" that runs both ISIS-II and
CP/M-80, any one out there that have some unused, not rusted, 8 inch
floppy's to sell? :-)

--
Rex
Jul 20 '05 #106
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 20:32:12 GMT, cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C.
Stacy) wrote:
>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.

That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.


A few highlights to support that...

UNIX was first _publicly_ introduced in 1974 by Dennis Ritchie and Ken
Thompson but it was originally created by Ken in 1969. Others joined in
on Ken's idea shortly after.

Bell Labs had an unsettled computing situation in the period 1968-69 and
pulled out of the Multics project since it showed that it was unable to
deliver anything practically usable within a reasonable time frame.

UNIX in 1969 existed as blackboard scribbles, paper notes and general
discussions among those involved in the "project" where most of the
"design" actually came from Ken. He had this idea of "information
filing" as being the most important part of a new OS and as an addition
to that Dennis came up with the idea that it was feasible to look on
input/output devices as units that handled "information filing" too, and
thus could be incorporated in a generic OS filing system mechanism [1].

Also in 1969, Ken wrote a fairly detailed simulation, on Multics, of
this new proposed filing system.

The practical birth date of UNIX is not possible to pin down, but a
basic "UNIX" file system ran on a Digital Equipment PDP-7 in 1970
(practically as the result of the "Space Travel" game that Ken first
wrote on Multics and then ported to a PDP-7 in 1969-70).

Source;
Volume-5/Number-10 of "Microsystems", October 1984.
ISSN #0199-7955
Which really went into depth on the history of UNIX.

[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment. Why Intel turned down Gary's CP/M
proposal? I don't know. Intel produced their own "ISIS" system for the
"Blue Box" and I have used them both extensively "back in the olden
days" but still think that Gary's CP/M had the better approach as
compared to ISIS.

(I still have an 8085 based "Blue Box" that runs both ISIS-II and
CP/M-80, any one out there that have some unused, not rusted, 8 inch
floppy's to sell? :-)

--
Rex
Jul 20 '05 #107
"Bruce Hayden" <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Assuming that a Msft patent lawyer could investigate a patent
and send a dozen letters relating to that patent in a week, then
I figure a cost of about $250 per letter.

Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?


Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.
Jul 20 '05 #108
"Bruce Hayden" <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Assuming that a Msft patent lawyer could investigate a patent
and send a dozen letters relating to that patent in a week, then
I figure a cost of about $250 per letter.

Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?


Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.
Jul 20 '05 #109
Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment. Why Intel turned down Gary's CP/M
proposal? I don't know. Intel produced their own "ISIS" system for the
"Blue Box" and I have used them both extensively "back in the olden
days" but still think that Gary's CP/M had the better approach as
compared to ISIS.


I was frankly surprised when I found CP/M and DOS looking
a bit like UNIX, first time I used them.

Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?

What makes interesting reading is Gary's unpublished autobiography.
I was lucky enough to read a copy of it owned by a guy who
was with Gary when he was injured and close when he died.
The autobiography paints an unsurprisingly negative picture
of both IBM and MSFT, with a lot of details that did not make
it into the TV special concerning those events. Hopefully,
some day it will get published....
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 2004 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
My work may be copied in whole or part, with proper attribution,
as long as the copying is not for commercial gain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org
Dillon, Colorado bh*****@highdown.com
Phoenix, Arizona bh*****@copatlaw.com

Jul 20 '05 #110
Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment. Why Intel turned down Gary's CP/M
proposal? I don't know. Intel produced their own "ISIS" system for the
"Blue Box" and I have used them both extensively "back in the olden
days" but still think that Gary's CP/M had the better approach as
compared to ISIS.


I was frankly surprised when I found CP/M and DOS looking
a bit like UNIX, first time I used them.

Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?

What makes interesting reading is Gary's unpublished autobiography.
I was lucky enough to read a copy of it owned by a guy who
was with Gary when he was injured and close when he died.
The autobiography paints an unsurprisingly negative picture
of both IBM and MSFT, with a lot of details that did not make
it into the TV special concerning those events. Hopefully,
some day it will get published....
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 2004 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
My work may be copied in whole or part, with proper attribution,
as long as the copying is not for commercial gain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org
Dillon, Colorado bh*****@highdown.com
Phoenix, Arizona bh*****@copatlaw.com

Jul 20 '05 #111
>>>>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 17:12:16 -0400, Barry Margolin ("Barry") writes:

Barry> In article <u8***********@news.dtpq.com>,
Barry> cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.
That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.


Barry> They "ported" some of the concepts.

Certainly _not_ the fundamental Multics concepts concerning processes,
memory, program linking, most of the IO and file systems, nor any of
the security features. Not the underlying reliability philosophy.
Not even the concept of writing in a high-level language: UNIX and
all of its programs were originally written in bare PDP-7 assembler.
Now, I happen to know that you are at least (and perhaps far more)
knowledgable about Multics than I am, and you know about UNIX, too.
So I ask you: What would you dispute in the list above, or what's
left that would you say are the fundamental concepts that were ported?

There were some totally superficial things, like some of the
short names of some commands. There are some faint ghosts of
ideas, like the shell PATH being vaguely functionally similar
to the dynamic link search path in a Multics session.

Another superficial thing might be the "roff" program, but that's
not a Multics concept. It was however, a port. It was based on
the RUNOFF program from CTSS, rewritten into BCPL for Multics,
transliterated into PDP-7 assembly code, and then ported into
PDP-11 assembly for UNIX. (And there were a bunch of other RUNOFF
knockoffs on many various operating systems back in those days.)

Some people might cite the shell (being a user-mode program),
and maybe one could say that's significant. While it's _not_
part of the operating system kernel, that's the idea!
But this is an older idea, from CTSS (RUNCOM), not Multics,
and it was present in some other operating systems of the 1960s.

Multics didn't really have pipes available in the shell, although
it did have primitive IO redirection (not a totally new idea with
Multics, either.) Anyway, The key concept of pipes is their
command-line utility for linking together a chain of smaller
programs to accomplish something. This represents a powerful idea,
and it really belongs originally to UNIX, not Multics.

Another feature was symbolic links, which UNIX picked up from Multics,
But I'm not sure if that originated on Multics, CTSS, or elsewhere;
I know of another system that had the symbolic file link feature at
least by 1968. (And you know which system I mean, and how it's about
as far away from the CTSS/Multics philosophy as you can get!)

A more substantial concept that did make it from Multics to Unix
is the concept of a hierarchical file system. Of course, Multics
did not have "files" -- it had "segments", and they are not the
same thing at all. But they are both in directories. But although
Multics was the first to realize them, the concept and need for
hierarchical directories were considered obvious and natural
(at least by some people) at the time (see recent writings
from Saltzer and Ritchie on this point).

But none of those things above have much to do with the
fundamental concepts of Multics, having to do with reliable,
auditable, error-recovering, protected, mostly uniform system
based on a core flexible reference-monitored dynamically
linked large-address space backing-store model

I think they only "ported" the vaguest of ideas, infinitely far
from anything that I would use the word "port" to describe,
particularly in the context of a discussion about patents.

As for whether UNIX was a "reaction" (I am implying a negative one)
to the ideas in Multics, you might ask yourself why those guys left
the Multics project early on. I don't mean to suggest that they
thought the Multics ideas were not worthwhile. But the answer is
at least in part because the concepts in the system were not leading
to a computer system that was viable in their context of interest.
That is, those concepts were too expensive for the kind of computer
systems they wanted. Specifically, underpowered minicomputers of
the day, which is what became available to them back at Bell Labs.
(In those early days, Multics wasn't even viable on a large computer,
and was viewed in some respects as a failure!) UNIX was a very
different overall design using very different concepts, carrying
over none of the fundamental Multics mechanisms.

I would be interested in how Multicians view UNIX as a port of Multics.
If you're just appealing to authority by invoking the early designers,
pleas esee also (in Google) where Dennis Ritchie's responds to my
observations about the fundamental differences in the core concepts
of two systems by seemingly agreeing (and amplifying, with words
like "fairly radical difference".) However, Ritchie and others do
consistently cite Multics as having inspired many things in UNIX.
But not "port".

Certainly the UNIX inventors were inspired by Multics, and they
learned a few things from Multics, as did many other computer
operating systems. Windows NT might have more similarities
to Multics than UNIX does, but nobody tries to claim that it's
a port of Multics. Many of the concepts and ideas in operating
systems today came from CTSS, predating Multics, but we don't
say that those systems are a "port of CTSS", either.

I think that Multics people like to claim UNIX as a descendent mostly
so that they can feel that their beautiful life's work was not all
sadly pissed away in history by unfortunate Honeywell business decisions.
This is reinforced by the UNIX inventors citing their experience with
Multics as inspirational. And most UNIX folk today are entirely ignorant
about Multics, but have heard that is was somehow important and good,
and they would like to claim that therefore UNIX has some of the same
design goodness of Multics. There have been other operating systems
(unrelated to UNIX) that actually did use some of the Multics ideas,
but none of them caught on in the mainstream, either. Perhaps Multicians
would be better off nursing their feelings by recognizing that most things
that are popular are actually terrible crap, while Multics was much better
than most systems that have been invented over the subsequent several decades.

But any technical arguments you might have about how UNIX is
a port of Multics would be welcomed with great interest.
Jul 20 '05 #112
>>>>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 17:12:16 -0400, Barry Margolin ("Barry") writes:

Barry> In article <u8***********@news.dtpq.com>,
Barry> cs****@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 09:06:06 GMT, Bruce Hayden ("Bruce") writes:
Bruce> Remember, UNIX was essentially a port of MULTICS from a
Bruce> mainframe to a minicomputer.
That is not at all accurate: Multics and UNIX have almost nothing in
common; UNIX was a reaction against the directions that Multics went.
They do not share any programs whatsoever; no "porting" was involved.


Barry> They "ported" some of the concepts.

Certainly _not_ the fundamental Multics concepts concerning processes,
memory, program linking, most of the IO and file systems, nor any of
the security features. Not the underlying reliability philosophy.
Not even the concept of writing in a high-level language: UNIX and
all of its programs were originally written in bare PDP-7 assembler.
Now, I happen to know that you are at least (and perhaps far more)
knowledgable about Multics than I am, and you know about UNIX, too.
So I ask you: What would you dispute in the list above, or what's
left that would you say are the fundamental concepts that were ported?

There were some totally superficial things, like some of the
short names of some commands. There are some faint ghosts of
ideas, like the shell PATH being vaguely functionally similar
to the dynamic link search path in a Multics session.

Another superficial thing might be the "roff" program, but that's
not a Multics concept. It was however, a port. It was based on
the RUNOFF program from CTSS, rewritten into BCPL for Multics,
transliterated into PDP-7 assembly code, and then ported into
PDP-11 assembly for UNIX. (And there were a bunch of other RUNOFF
knockoffs on many various operating systems back in those days.)

Some people might cite the shell (being a user-mode program),
and maybe one could say that's significant. While it's _not_
part of the operating system kernel, that's the idea!
But this is an older idea, from CTSS (RUNCOM), not Multics,
and it was present in some other operating systems of the 1960s.

Multics didn't really have pipes available in the shell, although
it did have primitive IO redirection (not a totally new idea with
Multics, either.) Anyway, The key concept of pipes is their
command-line utility for linking together a chain of smaller
programs to accomplish something. This represents a powerful idea,
and it really belongs originally to UNIX, not Multics.

Another feature was symbolic links, which UNIX picked up from Multics,
But I'm not sure if that originated on Multics, CTSS, or elsewhere;
I know of another system that had the symbolic file link feature at
least by 1968. (And you know which system I mean, and how it's about
as far away from the CTSS/Multics philosophy as you can get!)

A more substantial concept that did make it from Multics to Unix
is the concept of a hierarchical file system. Of course, Multics
did not have "files" -- it had "segments", and they are not the
same thing at all. But they are both in directories. But although
Multics was the first to realize them, the concept and need for
hierarchical directories were considered obvious and natural
(at least by some people) at the time (see recent writings
from Saltzer and Ritchie on this point).

But none of those things above have much to do with the
fundamental concepts of Multics, having to do with reliable,
auditable, error-recovering, protected, mostly uniform system
based on a core flexible reference-monitored dynamically
linked large-address space backing-store model

I think they only "ported" the vaguest of ideas, infinitely far
from anything that I would use the word "port" to describe,
particularly in the context of a discussion about patents.

As for whether UNIX was a "reaction" (I am implying a negative one)
to the ideas in Multics, you might ask yourself why those guys left
the Multics project early on. I don't mean to suggest that they
thought the Multics ideas were not worthwhile. But the answer is
at least in part because the concepts in the system were not leading
to a computer system that was viable in their context of interest.
That is, those concepts were too expensive for the kind of computer
systems they wanted. Specifically, underpowered minicomputers of
the day, which is what became available to them back at Bell Labs.
(In those early days, Multics wasn't even viable on a large computer,
and was viewed in some respects as a failure!) UNIX was a very
different overall design using very different concepts, carrying
over none of the fundamental Multics mechanisms.

I would be interested in how Multicians view UNIX as a port of Multics.
If you're just appealing to authority by invoking the early designers,
pleas esee also (in Google) where Dennis Ritchie's responds to my
observations about the fundamental differences in the core concepts
of two systems by seemingly agreeing (and amplifying, with words
like "fairly radical difference".) However, Ritchie and others do
consistently cite Multics as having inspired many things in UNIX.
But not "port".

Certainly the UNIX inventors were inspired by Multics, and they
learned a few things from Multics, as did many other computer
operating systems. Windows NT might have more similarities
to Multics than UNIX does, but nobody tries to claim that it's
a port of Multics. Many of the concepts and ideas in operating
systems today came from CTSS, predating Multics, but we don't
say that those systems are a "port of CTSS", either.

I think that Multics people like to claim UNIX as a descendent mostly
so that they can feel that their beautiful life's work was not all
sadly pissed away in history by unfortunate Honeywell business decisions.
This is reinforced by the UNIX inventors citing their experience with
Multics as inspirational. And most UNIX folk today are entirely ignorant
about Multics, but have heard that is was somehow important and good,
and they would like to claim that therefore UNIX has some of the same
design goodness of Multics. There have been other operating systems
(unrelated to UNIX) that actually did use some of the Multics ideas,
but none of them caught on in the mainstream, either. Perhaps Multicians
would be better off nursing their feelings by recognizing that most things
that are popular are actually terrible crap, while Multics was much better
than most systems that have been invented over the subsequent several decades.

But any technical arguments you might have about how UNIX is
a port of Multics would be welcomed with great interest.
Jul 20 '05 #113
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 17:02:17 GMT, Bruce Hayden wrote:
Mike wrote:
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:09:25 GMT, Bruce Hayden wrote:
Let's clarify a little. Dependent claims further LIMIT the claim on
which they depend, not SPECIFY. ...


Okay, limit it is. Specify was not the best choice on my part, since the
patent specification is a separate part of the patent. In this case, I used
specify in the sense of stating something in detail, with the dependent
claims providing additional detail.


At one level you are right. But the reason we (patent attys and agents)
put the detail in the dependent claims is to try to broaden the claims
upon which they depend. Otherwise, we would just write what we call
"picture" claims - that include all of the detail in the first place.

As noted, by the very action of including claim 2, claim 1 is
essentially broadened to include more than just games. MSFT cannot
now go back and try to limit "applications" to games. This of course
works both offensively (which is why we do it) and defensively
(which is where I am coming from).

As an obvious note, the reason that I picked claim 2 was that an
argument could be made that a game console is limited to a box that
plays games. That won't fly, based on the interaction between
claims 1 and 2.


Thanks for the explanation. In this case, it seems like even the word limit
is something of a misnomer, since I'd normally consider limit and broaden
to be somewhat opposite in meaning. In any event, it's interesting to see
how the dependent claims can be used to broaden the independent claim.

....
Except of course, that a frame, a wheel, and a seat reads on bicycles,
trycycles, etc.

Hmmm... I can't resist: Is a trycycle a tricycle with flat tires?


Ok, got this right once (I think) and wrong once. I don't
know why I kept thinking bycycle and trycycle when typing
this. One problem that I have is that I am currently using
Mozilla, instead of Netscape. One of the few value addeds that
Netscape provides is a spelling checker. But Mozilla has much
better popup controls and the like. For example, I can tell
it to block images from certain sites (like doubleclick.net).
Netscape appears to honor the Mozilla programming, but cannot
itself do much of it (they are built on the same code base,
and share the same configuration files, mail boxes, cache, etc.)

Long way of saying sorry, and good joke.


No need to apologize - I'm just glad you weren't offended. As you might
have guessed, my involvement with patents is peripheral, and comes from the
interaction with patents that results my work as an integrated circuit
design engineer. In recent years I've been tempted to study for the Agent's
exam. Even though I doubt I could put it to much direct use, it would be
nice to know more about the details of patents. Do you have any thoughts on
how much work is involved, and whether or not it would be worthwhile?

-- Mike --
Jul 20 '05 #114
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 17:02:17 GMT, Bruce Hayden wrote:
Mike wrote:
On Thu, 08 Apr 2004 10:09:25 GMT, Bruce Hayden wrote:
Let's clarify a little. Dependent claims further LIMIT the claim on
which they depend, not SPECIFY. ...


Okay, limit it is. Specify was not the best choice on my part, since the
patent specification is a separate part of the patent. In this case, I used
specify in the sense of stating something in detail, with the dependent
claims providing additional detail.


At one level you are right. But the reason we (patent attys and agents)
put the detail in the dependent claims is to try to broaden the claims
upon which they depend. Otherwise, we would just write what we call
"picture" claims - that include all of the detail in the first place.

As noted, by the very action of including claim 2, claim 1 is
essentially broadened to include more than just games. MSFT cannot
now go back and try to limit "applications" to games. This of course
works both offensively (which is why we do it) and defensively
(which is where I am coming from).

As an obvious note, the reason that I picked claim 2 was that an
argument could be made that a game console is limited to a box that
plays games. That won't fly, based on the interaction between
claims 1 and 2.


Thanks for the explanation. In this case, it seems like even the word limit
is something of a misnomer, since I'd normally consider limit and broaden
to be somewhat opposite in meaning. In any event, it's interesting to see
how the dependent claims can be used to broaden the independent claim.

....
Except of course, that a frame, a wheel, and a seat reads on bicycles,
trycycles, etc.

Hmmm... I can't resist: Is a trycycle a tricycle with flat tires?


Ok, got this right once (I think) and wrong once. I don't
know why I kept thinking bycycle and trycycle when typing
this. One problem that I have is that I am currently using
Mozilla, instead of Netscape. One of the few value addeds that
Netscape provides is a spelling checker. But Mozilla has much
better popup controls and the like. For example, I can tell
it to block images from certain sites (like doubleclick.net).
Netscape appears to honor the Mozilla programming, but cannot
itself do much of it (they are built on the same code base,
and share the same configuration files, mail boxes, cache, etc.)

Long way of saying sorry, and good joke.


No need to apologize - I'm just glad you weren't offended. As you might
have guessed, my involvement with patents is peripheral, and comes from the
interaction with patents that results my work as an integrated circuit
design engineer. In recent years I've been tempted to study for the Agent's
exam. Even though I doubt I could put it to much direct use, it would be
nice to know more about the details of patents. Do you have any thoughts on
how much work is involved, and whether or not it would be worthwhile?

-- Mike --
Jul 20 '05 #115
And somewhere around the time of 04/06/2004 23:52, the world stopped and
listened as theodp contributed the following to humanity:
--> From http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040406/1349225.shtml

Microsoft Patents Saving The Name Of A Game
Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 @ 01:49PM
from the yeah,-that's-non-obvious dept.

theodp writes "As if there weren't enough dodgy patents, here's an
excerpt from one granted to Microsoft Tuesday for a 'Method and
apparatus for displaying information regarding stored data in a gaming
system': 'When saving a game, the saved game data may include a
descriptive name of the saved game, a graphic representation of the
state of the game when the game was saved, a description of the game
state when the game was saved, and a date and time that the game was
saved.'" I'm trying to figure out if there's more to this patent, but
the more I read, the worse it seems. How is this possibly
"non-obvious"?

--> Link to Patent

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...mber=6,716,102

--> Link to Patent File History (Shows Two Earlier Rejections)

http://pair.uspto.gov/cgi-bin/final/...mber=6,716,102


Or even previous art as I have quite a number of non-Microsoft games
that do this very thing...Some even date back to the 1980's!!

--
Daniel Rudy

Remove nospam, invalid, and 0123456789 to reply.
Jul 20 '05 #116
And somewhere around the time of 04/06/2004 23:52, the world stopped and
listened as theodp contributed the following to humanity:
--> From http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040406/1349225.shtml

Microsoft Patents Saving The Name Of A Game
Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 @ 01:49PM
from the yeah,-that's-non-obvious dept.

theodp writes "As if there weren't enough dodgy patents, here's an
excerpt from one granted to Microsoft Tuesday for a 'Method and
apparatus for displaying information regarding stored data in a gaming
system': 'When saving a game, the saved game data may include a
descriptive name of the saved game, a graphic representation of the
state of the game when the game was saved, a description of the game
state when the game was saved, and a date and time that the game was
saved.'" I'm trying to figure out if there's more to this patent, but
the more I read, the worse it seems. How is this possibly
"non-obvious"?

--> Link to Patent

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...mber=6,716,102

--> Link to Patent File History (Shows Two Earlier Rejections)

http://pair.uspto.gov/cgi-bin/final/...mber=6,716,102


Or even previous art as I have quite a number of non-Microsoft games
that do this very thing...Some even date back to the 1980's!!

--
Daniel Rudy

Remove nospam, invalid, and 0123456789 to reply.
Jul 20 '05 #117
Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Bruce Hayden:
Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?
It is indirect. They induce a cloud into the usage of competing products,
including GNU/Linux.
One problem with hiring patent attorneys for this, whether inside
or outside, is that you need to be able to justify their cost.
Something as nebulous as slightly reducing competition from
mom and pop operations will not be easy to financially justify.


Mom and Pop operations like IBM or HP?

--
Trust your data to a Linux server or desktop!
Jul 20 '05 #118
Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Bruce Hayden:
Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?
It is indirect. They induce a cloud into the usage of competing products,
including GNU/Linux.
One problem with hiring patent attorneys for this, whether inside
or outside, is that you need to be able to justify their cost.
Something as nebulous as slightly reducing competition from
mom and pop operations will not be easy to financially justify.


Mom and Pop operations like IBM or HP?

--
Trust your data to a Linux server or desktop!
Jul 20 '05 #119
Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:
"Bruce Hayden" <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?


Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.


You mean like MikeRoweSoft.com?

--
Trust your data to a Linux server or desktop!
Jul 20 '05 #120
Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:
"Bruce Hayden" <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?


Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.


You mean like MikeRoweSoft.com?

--
Trust your data to a Linux server or desktop!
Jul 20 '05 #121
Linønut wrote:
Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:
"Bruce Hayden" <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?


Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.


You mean like MikeRoweSoft.com?


That was a trademark issue. Completely different from patent infringement.

Trademarks must be vigorously enforced in order to remain viable. Why
do you think the Slackware developer asked the Slax developer to change
the original name of the latter distro? Because he's a big evil
monopolist? You can't say, "Oh, I'll make an exception in your case
'cause I like you." If you do, you set a precedent. Then when someone
you don't like comes along with a variation you don't like, it becomes
more difficult to defend the exclusivity of your mark.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael M. ~~ hf********@msbx.net ~~ New York City, NY USA |
| "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely |
| under conditions of absolute reality;..." --S. Jackson |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
Jul 20 '05 #122
Linønut wrote:
Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:
"Bruce Hayden" <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?


Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.


You mean like MikeRoweSoft.com?


That was a trademark issue. Completely different from patent infringement.

Trademarks must be vigorously enforced in order to remain viable. Why
do you think the Slackware developer asked the Slax developer to change
the original name of the latter distro? Because he's a big evil
monopolist? You can't say, "Oh, I'll make an exception in your case
'cause I like you." If you do, you set a precedent. Then when someone
you don't like comes along with a variation you don't like, it becomes
more difficult to defend the exclusivity of your mark.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael M. ~~ hf********@msbx.net ~~ New York City, NY USA |
| "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely |
| under conditions of absolute reality;..." --S. Jackson |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
Jul 20 '05 #123
Rahul Dhesi wrote:
[...]
Claim 1 would thus appear to cover almost every game-capable computer
system that has two hard disks; presumably including high-end TRS-80 and
Apple-II models from the 1970s.


i haven't read the entire thing yet, but to the extent you're accurate,
this one won't survive even one simple challenge. the difficulty lies
in arcane language and claim dependency -- one claim depends on a
preceding claim, depends on next previous one, and so on. you must do a
lot of digging to find the basis of the patent, and it could be quite
narrow.
Jul 20 '05 #124
Rahul Dhesi wrote:
[...]
Claim 1 would thus appear to cover almost every game-capable computer
system that has two hard disks; presumably including high-end TRS-80 and
Apple-II models from the 1970s.


i haven't read the entire thing yet, but to the extent you're accurate,
this one won't survive even one simple challenge. the difficulty lies
in arcane language and claim dependency -- one claim depends on a
preceding claim, depends on next previous one, and so on. you must do a
lot of digging to find the basis of the patent, and it could be quite
narrow.
Jul 20 '05 #125
>>>>> "Barry" == Barry Margolin <ba****@alum.mit.edu> writes:
How to modify the above scheme to separate the various games is
*trivial* to anyone trained in the field. So, that patent claim fails
the novelty requirement.


Barry> Putting a game's files in its own subdirectory is certainly
Barry> trivial. *Preventing* other applications (including other
Barry> games) from accessing them takes a bit of work.

That's trivial on Unix, and most multi-user operation systems.

It may take a lot of work to do it on a system designed for only one
user and with no concurrent sessions (i.e. no remote login when you're
on the console).
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Jul 20 '05 #126
>>>>> "Barry" == Barry Margolin <ba****@alum.mit.edu> writes:
How to modify the above scheme to separate the various games is
*trivial* to anyone trained in the field. So, that patent claim fails
the novelty requirement.


Barry> Putting a game's files in its own subdirectory is certainly
Barry> trivial. *Preventing* other applications (including other
Barry> games) from accessing them takes a bit of work.

That's trivial on Unix, and most multi-user operation systems.

It may take a lot of work to do it on a system designed for only one
user and with no concurrent sessions (i.e. no remote login when you're
on the console).
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Jul 20 '05 #127
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Richardson <wa*****@eskimo.com> writes:

Jim> No, just give the games their own uid, and chmod the files 700, no-one
Jim> without that uid can read the game (except root)

Even root is disallowed to do that... WHEN it's NFS-mounted from
another machine. :)

(Of course, root can 'su' and then do whatever he wants.)
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Jul 20 '05 #128
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Richardson <wa*****@eskimo.com> writes:

Jim> No, just give the games their own uid, and chmod the files 700, no-one
Jim> without that uid can read the game (except root)

Even root is disallowed to do that... WHEN it's NFS-mounted from
another machine. :)

(Of course, root can 'su' and then do whatever he wants.)
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Jul 20 '05 #129
On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 00:09:29 GMT, Bruce Hayden <no************@ieee.org>
wrote:

[hoping that this is still of some historical interest for a few in the
ciwah NG, I know its OT so for any further posts in the thread I will
remove ciwah]
Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment...
I was frankly surprised when I found CP/M and DOS looking
a bit like UNIX, first time I used them. Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?
Not that I know of. The story has it that when IBM called on his
doorstep to ask for a OS, targeting their new PC design, Gary was not
physically there to open the door. He was out flying (he loved to fly
his planes him self) to a business meeting in some other part of the US.
...Gary's unpublished autobiography...
...paints an unsurprisingly negative picture of both IBM and MSFT,
with a lot of details that did not make it into the TV special...


I just think he was not visionary enough to see the business potential
that was coming his way. He already "ruled" the 8-bit micro computing
field with something like half a million registered CP/M installations.
At that time such a "momentum" got looked on as "non-destructible" so
IBM could wait a day or two to get what they needed.

OTOH, the PC incentive, inside IBM, was internally looked on as
something "that the cat dragged in"; no real value computing could be
done without mainframes, as every decent IBM'er already knew as a fact
and truth of life :-)

So; the IBM-PC guys that visited Gary's office did not have time at hand
to "wait a day or two", they had a stranglehold budget and a fixed
timeline to meet.

It is exactly at this point where Bill Gates shows his only talent, as
in how to find a product - tweak it into "my" product - and sell it to
the one in need of it.

The full size of Microsoft today is built on the same procedure in all
parts of its products; i.e. no MS product today started out as a
"invented here" thingy, but instead it is "purchase some one else's work
and make sure to move him out of the system while you do it".

I'm totally convinced that the guy(s) behind QDOS[1] are still biting
their nails for selling away the 16-bit CP/M hack they had made, at such
a low price to Bill G, just to see him make his fortune from it in the
times to come.

The name "QDOS" vanished of course and got replaced with "MS-DOS" but
from the IBM start of things it was essentially "QDOS" that IBM
purchased.

[1] QDOS = "Quick'n Dirty Operating System" One of the first free
standing ports of CP/M from an 8-bit environment over to a 16-bit
version.

--
Rex
Jul 20 '05 #130
On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 00:09:29 GMT, Bruce Hayden <no************@ieee.org>
wrote:

[hoping that this is still of some historical interest for a few in the
ciwah NG, I know its OT so for any further posts in the thread I will
remove ciwah]
Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment...
I was frankly surprised when I found CP/M and DOS looking
a bit like UNIX, first time I used them. Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?
Not that I know of. The story has it that when IBM called on his
doorstep to ask for a OS, targeting their new PC design, Gary was not
physically there to open the door. He was out flying (he loved to fly
his planes him self) to a business meeting in some other part of the US.
...Gary's unpublished autobiography...
...paints an unsurprisingly negative picture of both IBM and MSFT,
with a lot of details that did not make it into the TV special...


I just think he was not visionary enough to see the business potential
that was coming his way. He already "ruled" the 8-bit micro computing
field with something like half a million registered CP/M installations.
At that time such a "momentum" got looked on as "non-destructible" so
IBM could wait a day or two to get what they needed.

OTOH, the PC incentive, inside IBM, was internally looked on as
something "that the cat dragged in"; no real value computing could be
done without mainframes, as every decent IBM'er already knew as a fact
and truth of life :-)

So; the IBM-PC guys that visited Gary's office did not have time at hand
to "wait a day or two", they had a stranglehold budget and a fixed
timeline to meet.

It is exactly at this point where Bill Gates shows his only talent, as
in how to find a product - tweak it into "my" product - and sell it to
the one in need of it.

The full size of Microsoft today is built on the same procedure in all
parts of its products; i.e. no MS product today started out as a
"invented here" thingy, but instead it is "purchase some one else's work
and make sure to move him out of the system while you do it".

I'm totally convinced that the guy(s) behind QDOS[1] are still biting
their nails for selling away the 16-bit CP/M hack they had made, at such
a low price to Bill G, just to see him make his fortune from it in the
times to come.

The name "QDOS" vanished of course and got replaced with "MS-DOS" but
from the IBM start of things it was essentially "QDOS" that IBM
purchased.

[1] QDOS = "Quick'n Dirty Operating System" One of the first free
standing ports of CP/M from an 8-bit environment over to a 16-bit
version.

--
Rex
Jul 20 '05 #131
Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?
Not that I know of. The story has it that when IBM called on his
doorstep to ask for a OS, targeting their new PC design, Gary was not
physically there to open the door. He was out flying (he loved to fly
his planes him self) to a business meeting in some other part of the US.
...Gary's unpublished autobiography...
...paints an unsurprisingly negative picture of both IBM and MSFT,
with a lot of details that did not make it into the TV special...


I just think he was not visionary enough to see the business potential
that was coming his way. He already "ruled" the 8-bit micro computing
field with something like half a million registered CP/M installations.
At that time such a "momentum" got looked on as "non-destructible" so
IBM could wait a day or two to get what they needed.


There is a saying that the victors get to write history. And in this
case, absent publication of that autobiography, MSFT and IBM probably
will have done so.

There are two points of interest in Gary's autobiography. First,
IBM apparenlty continued to negotiate with Gary up until the PC
announcement, long after they had signed the MSFT/QDOS agreement,
but not of course telling Gary that they had that alternative already
covered. He tells of feeling completely betrayed by IBM, as he
had talked to them the day before.

The sticking point was not that IBM was in a hurry, but rather that
they were offering too little. Their offer was apparently a flat
$500,000 for unlimited usage. The problem was that DR already had
millions in CP/M sales, and wanted a per box license. They felt
that this would canabalize the 16 bit CP/M sales.

The other interesting factoid in this entire mess came from a couple
of other sources, incluuding Gary's second wife (his first wife was
the one who initially talked to IBM). A couple of years later, DR
signed a hold harmless agreement with IBM. In return, IBM was to
put CP/M in its catalogs. Unfortunately, their price point was
somewhere in the range of $250, and you could get DOS for maybe $50.
The conversations with her were in a bar in Austin about two years
after Gary's death.

The problem, from an IP attorney's point of view, was that when
MSFT bought QDOS and repackaged it as DOS, cloning an operating
system interface was not copyright infringement, since at that
time, infringement required copying of the actual code. But a
couple of years later, the pendulum swung in the other direction,
and non-literal (including, but not limited to "look and feel")
copying became potentially infringing. I think that an argument
could be made that, esp. at the height of this, that DOS non-
literally infringed CP-M, et al., even in the 9th Circuit, and
more likely in others - esp. in the 1st Circuit (Lotus v. Borland).
But that is where that hold harmless came in - by then DR had
signed away their rights to sue.

Note BTW that as far as I know, MSFT never sued DR-DOS for C/R
infringement, and DR-DOS only sued MSFT for antitrust.
(Prof. Hollaar is the expert on that litigation).
OTOH, the PC incentive, inside IBM, was internally looked on as
something "that the cat dragged in"; no real value computing could be
done without mainframes, as every decent IBM'er already knew as a fact
and truth of life :-)

So; the IBM-PC guys that visited Gary's office did not have time at hand
to "wait a day or two", they had a stranglehold budget and a fixed
timeline to meet.
Again, see above. This conflicts with Gary's autobiography.
Of course, you can always claim that he was bitter about this.
He managed to get rich enough to buy himself a private jet, but
never got anywhere near Bill Gates.
It is exactly at this point where Bill Gates shows his only talent, as
in how to find a product - tweak it into "my" product - and sell it to
the one in need of it.

The full size of Microsoft today is built on the same procedure in all
parts of its products; i.e. no MS product today started out as a
"invented here" thingy, but instead it is "purchase some one else's work
and make sure to move him out of the system while you do it".
But in this case, the product arguably ultimately infringed another
company's product.
I'm totally convinced that the guy(s) behind QDOS[1] are still biting
their nails for selling away the 16-bit CP/M hack they had made, at such
a low price to Bill G, just to see him make his fortune from it in the
times to come.


But remember, it was a hack/clone and IBM was still negotiating
with Gary until the last minute (at least apparently, until the
day before the IBM PC announcement) for exactly what the QDOS
guys would have wanted - a per box license. But I would suggest
that IBM would have done the deal with Gary first on those terms,
since QDOS was the clone.

Obviously, pure speculation on all of our parts. I will suggest
that we will probably never really know everything that happened,
at least not in the forseeable future.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 2004 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
My work may be copied in whole or part, with proper attribution,
as long as the copying is not for commercial gain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org
Dillon, Colorado bh*****@highdown.com
Phoenix, Arizona bh*****@copatlaw.com

Jul 20 '05 #132
Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:
Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?
Not that I know of. The story has it that when IBM called on his
doorstep to ask for a OS, targeting their new PC design, Gary was not
physically there to open the door. He was out flying (he loved to fly
his planes him self) to a business meeting in some other part of the US.
...Gary's unpublished autobiography...
...paints an unsurprisingly negative picture of both IBM and MSFT,
with a lot of details that did not make it into the TV special...


I just think he was not visionary enough to see the business potential
that was coming his way. He already "ruled" the 8-bit micro computing
field with something like half a million registered CP/M installations.
At that time such a "momentum" got looked on as "non-destructible" so
IBM could wait a day or two to get what they needed.


There is a saying that the victors get to write history. And in this
case, absent publication of that autobiography, MSFT and IBM probably
will have done so.

There are two points of interest in Gary's autobiography. First,
IBM apparenlty continued to negotiate with Gary up until the PC
announcement, long after they had signed the MSFT/QDOS agreement,
but not of course telling Gary that they had that alternative already
covered. He tells of feeling completely betrayed by IBM, as he
had talked to them the day before.

The sticking point was not that IBM was in a hurry, but rather that
they were offering too little. Their offer was apparently a flat
$500,000 for unlimited usage. The problem was that DR already had
millions in CP/M sales, and wanted a per box license. They felt
that this would canabalize the 16 bit CP/M sales.

The other interesting factoid in this entire mess came from a couple
of other sources, incluuding Gary's second wife (his first wife was
the one who initially talked to IBM). A couple of years later, DR
signed a hold harmless agreement with IBM. In return, IBM was to
put CP/M in its catalogs. Unfortunately, their price point was
somewhere in the range of $250, and you could get DOS for maybe $50.
The conversations with her were in a bar in Austin about two years
after Gary's death.

The problem, from an IP attorney's point of view, was that when
MSFT bought QDOS and repackaged it as DOS, cloning an operating
system interface was not copyright infringement, since at that
time, infringement required copying of the actual code. But a
couple of years later, the pendulum swung in the other direction,
and non-literal (including, but not limited to "look and feel")
copying became potentially infringing. I think that an argument
could be made that, esp. at the height of this, that DOS non-
literally infringed CP-M, et al., even in the 9th Circuit, and
more likely in others - esp. in the 1st Circuit (Lotus v. Borland).
But that is where that hold harmless came in - by then DR had
signed away their rights to sue.

Note BTW that as far as I know, MSFT never sued DR-DOS for C/R
infringement, and DR-DOS only sued MSFT for antitrust.
(Prof. Hollaar is the expert on that litigation).
OTOH, the PC incentive, inside IBM, was internally looked on as
something "that the cat dragged in"; no real value computing could be
done without mainframes, as every decent IBM'er already knew as a fact
and truth of life :-)

So; the IBM-PC guys that visited Gary's office did not have time at hand
to "wait a day or two", they had a stranglehold budget and a fixed
timeline to meet.
Again, see above. This conflicts with Gary's autobiography.
Of course, you can always claim that he was bitter about this.
He managed to get rich enough to buy himself a private jet, but
never got anywhere near Bill Gates.
It is exactly at this point where Bill Gates shows his only talent, as
in how to find a product - tweak it into "my" product - and sell it to
the one in need of it.

The full size of Microsoft today is built on the same procedure in all
parts of its products; i.e. no MS product today started out as a
"invented here" thingy, but instead it is "purchase some one else's work
and make sure to move him out of the system while you do it".
But in this case, the product arguably ultimately infringed another
company's product.
I'm totally convinced that the guy(s) behind QDOS[1] are still biting
their nails for selling away the 16-bit CP/M hack they had made, at such
a low price to Bill G, just to see him make his fortune from it in the
times to come.


But remember, it was a hack/clone and IBM was still negotiating
with Gary until the last minute (at least apparently, until the
day before the IBM PC announcement) for exactly what the QDOS
guys would have wanted - a per box license. But I would suggest
that IBM would have done the deal with Gary first on those terms,
since QDOS was the clone.

Obviously, pure speculation on all of our parts. I will suggest
that we will probably never really know everything that happened,
at least not in the forseeable future.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------------
The preceding was not a legal opinion, and is not my employer's.
Original portions Copyright 2004 Bruce E. Hayden,all rights reserved
My work may be copied in whole or part, with proper attribution,
as long as the copying is not for commercial gain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org
Dillon, Colorado bh*****@highdown.com
Phoenix, Arizona bh*****@copatlaw.com

Jul 20 '05 #133
In article <40******@news.peakpeak.com>,
Bruce Hayden <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Roger Schlafly wrote:
"Rahul Dhesi" <c.*******@MicrosoftX.usenet.us.com> wrote
Patent attorneys are
not cheap, even when on staff in a corporation....
How expensive are they? The web site mentioned below says that patent
attorneys in the USA with 5-8 years experience earn in the range of
$105,000 - $127,000 annually. Presumably one would add around 30% for
the employer's cost in overhead/benefits/taxes.
Assuming that a Msft patent lawyer could investigate a patent
and send a dozen letters relating to that patent in a week, then
I figure a cost of about $250 per letter.


Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?

One problem with hiring patent attorneys for this, whether inside
or outside, is that you need to be able to justify their cost.
Something as nebulous as slightly reducing competition from
mom and pop operations will not be easy to financially justify.
It is just too hard to quantify.


What you overlook is the following situation. Your "mom and pop"
operation doesn't even have a lawyer involved. They are pressed to
sign some agreement put before them that looks like the least trouble.
This agreement includes a secrecy clause.
Nobody even knows what is going on.
The same tactic can put a a programmer contributing GPL-software
out of action.

I would value your opinion about adding a clause to
patent law that make such agreements unenforceable unless
registered with the patent office (or an appointed instance.)
At least this would allow to quantify the damage done to
free enterprises.

<SNIP>
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org


Groetjes Albert.
--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
Jul 20 '05 #134
In article <40******@news.peakpeak.com>,
Bruce Hayden <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
Roger Schlafly wrote:
"Rahul Dhesi" <c.*******@MicrosoftX.usenet.us.com> wrote
Patent attorneys are
not cheap, even when on staff in a corporation....
How expensive are they? The web site mentioned below says that patent
attorneys in the USA with 5-8 years experience earn in the range of
$105,000 - $127,000 annually. Presumably one would add around 30% for
the employer's cost in overhead/benefits/taxes.
Assuming that a Msft patent lawyer could investigate a patent
and send a dozen letters relating to that patent in a week, then
I figure a cost of about $250 per letter.


Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?

One problem with hiring patent attorneys for this, whether inside
or outside, is that you need to be able to justify their cost.
Something as nebulous as slightly reducing competition from
mom and pop operations will not be easy to financially justify.
It is just too hard to quantify.


What you overlook is the following situation. Your "mom and pop"
operation doesn't even have a lawyer involved. They are pressed to
sign some agreement put before them that looks like the least trouble.
This agreement includes a secrecy clause.
Nobody even knows what is going on.
The same tactic can put a a programmer contributing GPL-software
out of action.

I would value your opinion about adding a clause to
patent law that make such agreements unenforceable unless
registered with the patent office (or an appointed instance.)
At least this would allow to quantify the damage done to
free enterprises.

<SNIP>
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org


Groetjes Albert.
--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
Jul 20 '05 #135
In article <ba**************************@comcast.ash.giganews .com>,
Barry Margolin <ba****@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

I'm not sure why Microsoft considers this an important feature of the
invention. Even if one game can access the saved game files of another,
they're not likely to make sense to it. It hardly seems necessary to
take special steps to prevent the access. Maybe this narrowing of the
patent's scope was necessary for them to get the patent approved.
Similar to taking a garden variety mouse trap. Then add the requirement
that it should be made of gold plated titanium which doesn't relate to
its functionality of catching mice?
I hope not that if you get this past the patent bureau, you could start
using makers of ordinary mouse traps.
Barry Margolin, ba****@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA

--
--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
Jul 20 '05 #136
In article <ba**************************@comcast.ash.giganews .com>,
Barry Margolin <ba****@alum.mit.edu> wrote:

I'm not sure why Microsoft considers this an important feature of the
invention. Even if one game can access the saved game files of another,
they're not likely to make sense to it. It hardly seems necessary to
take special steps to prevent the access. Maybe this narrowing of the
patent's scope was necessary for them to get the patent approved.
Similar to taking a garden variety mouse trap. Then add the requirement
that it should be made of gold plated titanium which doesn't relate to
its functionality of catching mice?
I hope not that if you get this past the patent bureau, you could start
using makers of ordinary mouse traps.
Barry Margolin, ba****@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA

--
--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
Jul 20 '05 #137
In article <40******@news.peakpeak.com>,
Bruce Hayden <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
<SNIP>
But there is a subtle distinction here that may have some
relevance. In those systems (including UNIX), access control
is/was by user or group of users. As noted, this is essential
for effective multiuser or timesharing systems. But in the
MSFT system, access control can be by application. It was not
clear from the patent why that was that overly useful, but there
it was, logically somewhat orthogonal to the typical practice.
For all practical purposes a user that can't login (like uucp)
and is only used to run a program or a couple of cooperating
programs is the same. So if this has relevance for patentability
there is something wrong with patentability: "assigning
a temporary monopoly as an incentive for progress."
Note that the user id, group id solution has broad application
and solves a great many similar access control problems.
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org

--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
Jul 20 '05 #138
In article <40******@news.peakpeak.com>,
Bruce Hayden <no************@ieee.org> wrote:
<SNIP>
But there is a subtle distinction here that may have some
relevance. In those systems (including UNIX), access control
is/was by user or group of users. As noted, this is essential
for effective multiuser or timesharing systems. But in the
MSFT system, access control can be by application. It was not
clear from the patent why that was that overly useful, but there
it was, logically somewhat orthogonal to the typical practice.
For all practical purposes a user that can't login (like uucp)
and is only used to run a program or a couple of cooperating
programs is the same. So if this has relevance for patentability
there is something wrong with patentability: "assigning
a temporary monopoly as an incentive for progress."
Note that the user id, group id solution has broad application
and solves a great many similar access control problems.
Bruce E. Hayden bh*****@ieee.org

--
Albert van der Horst,Oranjestr 8,3511 RA UTRECHT,THE NETHERLANDS
One man-hour to invent,
One man-week to implement,
One lawyer-year to patent.
Jul 20 '05 #139

This thread has been closed and replies have been disabled. Please start a new discussion.

By using Bytes.com and it's services, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

To disable or enable advertisements and analytics tracking please visit the manage ads & tracking page.