Thinking Inside a Bigger Box

Any reader of my blog should not be surprised by the fact that I think software patents are pretty bogus. So y’all will forgive a little rant brought on by the examining the (pretty bogus) eolas patent.

Here is the introduction to the patent, taken from eolas “technology” page:

The Web Application Platform
Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document

U.S. Patent 5,838,906, Filed in October, 1994, Issued November 17, 1998. Inventors: Michael D. Doyle, David C. Martin and Cheong Ang

First demonstrated publicly in 1993, this invention lifted the glass for the first time from the hypermedia browser, enabling Web browsers for the first time to act as platforms for fully-interactive embedded applications. The patent covers Web browsers that support such currently popular technologies as ActiveX components, Java applets, and Navigator plug-ins. Eolas’ advanced browser technology makes possible rich interactive online experiences for over 500 million Web users, worldwide.

Eolas is currently suing Microsoft for $521 million (whoa!) over this patent, claiming that ActiveX is a violation of the patent. Microsoft has tried a “prior art” defence, claiming that the functionality of the Viola browser was an example of the same idea. The court ruled the Viola “not teach nor fairly suggest that instant ‘906 invention, as claimed.” This may or may not be a fair assessment, but it is beside my point.

The main problem with the patent should be appearant by just reading Eolas’ page about it: If their “technology” “enabling Web browsers … to act as platforms for fully-interactive embedded applications”, how can it be that no web browser obtained a license from Eolas? The plot thickens: It seems that they ALL invented it separately, without using the patent. Eolas on the other hand, sat on their patent seemingly without using it for anything at all.

IANAL, but an idea has to be non-obvious in order to be patentable under US patent law. As far as I can tell, there is a pretty simple test of non-obviousness: If several inventors use the same idea independently of the patent, it must have been pretty darn obvious. According to Eolas’ own testimony, ActiveX (which is a development of OLE, by the way) and applets are both covered by the patent, the same would hold for Flash, or course.

Now, I wasn’t very involved in these things in 1993, but, come on Eolas, that is a pretty bloody obvious idea! What’s next? A patent for comb-overs?

I don’t know about you, but I find this pretty illustrative of the silliness surrounding patents. I have seen a lot of bad software patents, and nary a good one. They proof of the patent system, as they say, is in the eatin’. Oh yeah, and isn’t it cute how Eolas is trying to make it seem like they invented this great thing for the world, and then nobody went on to use their idea about it, just reinvent it! Losers.

For a long time, I have been plagued by comment spam on my blog. To battle this problem, I have now installed a Movable Type plug-in that verifies that posters are not robots. This will hopefully improve the situation.

The plug-in is called scode. It displays a number in an image that the user needs to type to verify that he is not a robot. The plug-in was a bit of a pain to install: My version of the perl GD image creation library did not support PNG, so I had to use GIF, which took some time to find out. Also, scode required a fair amount of manual work to into the comment web-pages. But now it seems to be working. All is well.

Just a little reminder list to myself. Check out this Java technology before next Java project:

• Pico Container


• eXo portlets


• Hibernate

welcome spammers Dear Spam Robot: I don’t have much time to read emails, and I especially don’t have much time to read unsolicited commercial emails. But I have decided to make an exception. If you would like to send me unsolicited commercial emails, then I agree to read them on the condition that you promise to pay me $500, and subject to the additional conditions mentioned below. You can accept this offer by sending unsolicited commercial email to me at mailto:make-my-day-q2wxe4q1@pobox.com. In accepting this offer, you also agree (1) to be subject to the laws of California for the purpose of enforcing our contract, (2) to pay any costs, including attorney fees, incurred in enforcing our contract, (3) to pay your obligation under this agreement within 10 days of sending the email, by mailing a check to me at the address referenced in the Contact section of this site, and (4) to accept service and costs associated with any bill collector that I hire to help collect obligations owed me under this contract. Good luck with your business.

The best thing to happen since the inceptions of C#: “anonymous methods” are .NET delegates cum closures. Finally we can write syntax like:

addButton.Click += new EventHandler(object sender, EventArgs e) {

list.Add(new ListItem());

}

Even better: Anonymous methods will be closures, so you can use variables from the scope. This is a much needed amendment. Why was it not there from the start? (whine, whine)

1. Attributes. Keeps getting better ‘n better. Check out Extensible C#, Clemens Vasters new demos, and the underutilized ContextBoundObject


2. ADO.NET. The ADO.NET model for modeling and transporting data hits right on the spot.


3. Better FFI. P/Invoke wins against JNI, hands down (too bad it is probably overused, though)


4. Not EJBs! Getting rid of the defunct EJB model saves a lot of headaches.


5. Better UI. For the user, that is, not the developer!

1. Open Source Community. The number of excellent open-source tools for Java is staggering. Look at HSqlDb, BeanShell, Eclipse, Recoder, JGraph, Tomcat, JBoss, and many more. More importantly, the Java community has proven much more interested in doing it the open-source way.


2. Eclipse. Already mentioned, but it deserves a point of its own. Eclipse is a better IDE than VS.NET!


3. Checked Exceptions.


4. Less Native Code & more code reliability. .NET still has some weird crashes. Despite much improvement, I have still experienced DLL-Hell light.


5. More mature libraries.

This is exactly the kind of thing I have been looking for in C#. I am still some ways away from having looked at it as thorough as I would like, but it looks very good.

Basically: Attributes that are processed compile-time with any code you like. This is the basic building blocks for AOP.