The story omits the rather important detail of the patent number. Without it (and a link wouldn't hurt) it's rather hard to tell how much merit there is. On a broader scale, it goes to show how messed up the patent system is. The scales lean so far toward "pointless patent trolls" that it's virtually assumed anyone suing over a patent is wrong. Kodak do hold several well-earned patents (though not photostatic copies - nya nya nya) and it's not a bad idea to get people paid for coming up with good ideas. Then again, you can't expect to get paid forever or for something that is blatantly obvious given the tech at hand at time of "discovery". The balance is horrible right now.

They said one day we'd be so high level we'd communicate our requests in interpretive dance. I figured saying "No way you'll get people to do that" was as safe as "640k will be enough for anyone". Ok, so you got me. Point an laugh. It's for sure what I'll do. I was thinking by now the backlash would have started. Sure, grind away the last few nanometers of the learning curve by shoving usefulness into the dirt and stepping on it. At some point, people will realize learning touch type wasn't such a bad idea because while it didn't work crazy good out of the box, it's way fast. Morse code with two switches beats T9. It's going to be a while until we beat the human brain for processing, so how about we use what we have?

The craziest thing is we have libraries. Generally, if you want to read a paper book for free you can do so. A while back I got stuck in a weird dilemma. I wanted to reread "Of mice and men". Sort of. Not enough to pay for it. I wanted an ebook copy. There were none legally at the time. I grabbed a non-legal one. I considered buying a copy, just to keep thing even. Then I realized the local library had a copy. Except of course it's a bit dumb to use *their* copy, just so that I have legal access to the text so that I don't feel bad about grabbing an illegal e-version. When it comes to a head like that, the absurdity becomes pretty clear. They're in no more jeopardy then when the Gutenberg press started. Chill and roll with the times.

Kind of thinking the same thing. Useful in the wild? Perhaps. Sometimes. Major blow for security? Hardly. Mindblowingly cool, especially given how frustrating much lesser limitations get? Totally. I've seen quite a few awesome "x86-with-harsh-limitations" (many just because, same reason as coding in brainfuck) but that's just out there. Hope they at least make an RSA poem..

This was my first thought as well. They're also big with teens, a market group where I could easily see the non-techies accidentally breaking a cockpit voice recorder (I don't know how dad! I was just putting it on my bedstand and it broke! GAWD!). Sure, tech has gotten flimsier since the bulletproofs of yesteryear but people take their tech much more for granted as well, not giving the TLC we used to show it.