GSPride - Slashdot User

Comment Re:NSA patenting it because... (Score 5, Interesting) 161

by GSPride on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:52PM (#26202911) Attached to: NSA Patents a Way To Spot Network Snoops

The NSA can not only file for patents, they can do so secretly.

From wikipedia:

The NSA has the ability to file for a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office under gag order. Unlike normal patents, these are not revealed to the public and do not expire. However, if the Patent Office receives an application for an identical patent from a third party, they will reveal the NSA's patent and officially grant it to the NSA for the full term on that date.

Submission + - What is Bill Gates learning from Open Source? (zdnet.com)

Submitted by

christian.einfeldt

on Saturday December 15, 2007 @02:14AM

christian.einfeldt writes: "In the world of Free Open Source Software communities, Microsoft is often viewed as the very epitome of the Cathedral-style model of software production. But is Bill Gates learning from the software development phenomenon that he once compared loosely to communism? In commenting on the results of a Microsoft-commissioned survey of approximately 500 board-level executives about the importance of interpersonal skills versus raw IT coding skills, Gates starts to sound a bit more like a member of the Apache Foundation than the take-no-prisoners king of cut-throat competition: 'Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people, and to sit down and talk with customers and get their feedback and understand their needs.' [Emphasis added]. One wonders how long until 'sharing ideas' starts to become 'sharing source' code. Nah. it'll never happen."

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