My thought is that it is not novel in any way save that it witholds root access from the owner of the machine. Graham Lally wrote:
Michael Motyka wrote:
Since it seems that the possibility to accomplish what Microsoft has patented has existed for years prior to their disclosure isn't their patent a bit weak?
While I must admit that the implementation of such an idea is intriguing from a purely technical point of view (and has probably been much discussed in various circles), the transition to patenting it with an eye to produce a working product makes its threat to consumer choice all the more real. This is the next, logical step following application/hardware-specific DRM that we are seeing now. After that, it's a small jump to global AOLness - an OS that will only accept content from specific sources, rather than a source that will only play on a specific OS...
The patent was filed Jan 8th 1999, so they've obviously been keeping it in consideration for a while before that, I would assume. It also proves that MS haven't just filed this in light of the recent paranoia or the increasing tension amongst the music industry over the past year or so - according to the kids' FAQ at the USPTO it does take about 22 months to get a patent, so this would have happened in spite of the fearful state of the current music and film industries. This probably means MS have code written for it, a database set-up waiting for the INSERTs to come flooding in, a launch party planned and years of security patches waiting...
BTW - what is pedanty? Peasantry? Pedantry?
Definition in a previous mail, but it's an assembly of pedants... There's probably an amusing collective noun for it too :)
.g
-- "Sometimes I use google instead of pants."