Microsoft

On August 19, 2008, Microsoft was granted a US-Patent:


Dave Lewis claims this means that Page-up and Page-down is hereby patents owned by Microsoft. I think Microsoft now also have patented using arrows to navigate - if you use your arrow-up or arrow-down in MS Word, you are taken one line up or down - or you are "scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document...".

The same happens using the elevator shafts - moving left/right, or up/down. It may also apply to the shortcuts to jump forward/backward to pages, columns, tables and images.

I agree with Dave that the US Patent system is long overdue for a revision. If it continues like this, anyone with a bit of cash and a way with text can claim patents for anything and everything.

What does this mean to your business? You may risk that someone shows up one day and ask you to pay a license fee for using things you take for granted - like your keyboard. But the most likely scenario is for someone to take your technology - the technology you have spent time, money and effort on developing - and register a patent on it. Using that patent, they own the rights to the technology you developed, and they will cash in on it.

How can you avoid this scenario?

Be sure to register your patents as you go. Spend the money - as it is the only way to ensure that no-one else does it. To SME's the cost of patents may seem high, but consider it an investment - if you fail to register, the whole value of your development is gone (since if your technology have any chances for making money, someone will register it as a patent, and you will pay them to use your own technology...).

What are your experiences with patents?

Sources:
ZDNET
Liquidmatrix (Dave Lewis)

entrepreneurs, small business, patent, microsoft, liquidmatrix

Just came about this KB at Microsoft.

Excerpt:

Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords.

This no longer is an issue, after the Windows 2000 Service Pack 3.

Let's just conclude that this must have been a pretty secure password policy! What a brute forcer would have been required to break this password?

The biggest risk here would be to remember the password, the second biggest would be to type it correctly! Perhaps this is one of those times you really wished you had one of those password-saving smart-cards?

And with regards to the part that you are not to repeat the last 30 689 passwords? My bet is that there is easier to get the full Lotto payout than to be able to come up with the same 18 770 character password twice (or 30 689 times).

Only too bad Microsoft decided to remove this security from their Windows 2000 server with the Service Pack 3!