I cannot believe this!

[Ashley Rimmer]

Is it any wonder everyone knows us as rip-of Britain. I really get P****d of with this Island sometimes, and it's all the big players making the money as well.
Very angry
Ash

[rtyp3]

Hey now Ash- I don't think you can take this and use it to stereotype all British people/companies are this way! American companies have done plenty of things like this to make money, and that doesn't mean that all Americans are greedy! (Although I have to say, many sure are.)

[Ashley Rimmer]

Don't get me wrong rtyp3 ordinary British people are good its the big boys who let us down. And anyone interested we are out of the football beaten by Romania 3goals to 2goals
Ash

[Ultima]

Ya mean England lost????

I just hope we win against France this wednesday!!!

I'm from Holland, so that is closeby!!!

If ya wanna talk about soccer more, I suggest you do it over icq or email, cause it ain't good to do it over the board, if ya know what I mean!!!

Pim

[Warthog]

American soccer = everyone elses footbal

Could cause a lot of confusion.

Warthog

*edit lol just noticed i had that backwards

[This message has been edited by Warthog (edited 01-18-2001).]

[BBA]

Well...I read the patent application.

It details using a telephone modem.
So, If ISP's don't use telephone modems...then the patent does not apply!

Sounds like a good case to promote cable and DSL access. Thanks, you Brits!

[rtyp3]

Oh really, I didn't notice that. That is a relief, now maybe I can get my parents to switch over sooner when they notice that they are paying the same prices for this slow connection as a much faster one!

[brandon184]

hehe.. If they do something that does not benifit us at all, we will most likely do something right back at 'em which doesn't benefit THEM at all.

[Glynn R Harris]

Am I wrong, or didn't Amazon.com try to claim property rights on the "shopping cart" method of handling e-commerce? Whatever happened there?

I think our concept of "intellectual property" is due for a revision, anyway. Patents and copyrights are limited monopoly privileges granted by governments, and certainly they have had their uses, but I believe they have, over time, metamorphosed into a system where would-be "forty-niners" mine for that next big vein of gold. This is counter to what was intended by these laws.

If BT got there first, great. So... now what did they actually DO with it? Given the patent was actually granted in 1989 (!), and Mosaic was circa what, 1994? and no help from BT, weren't researchers at CERN in Switzerland involved?

This is important. Patents require (or used to) a working implementation of the idea or concept, and the patent NEVER applied just to the concept, but the details of how to implement it... Did Prestel EVER make use of Hyperlinks? As I remember it, there was nothing ground-breaking about videotext/teletext delivery-- it had been explored research territory before the government ever got involved.

I am patenting the "time-machine". If any of you invent one, just let my lawyers know and they can provide a schedule of royalty payments for you to pay....

[rtyp3]

Yeah, and I'm patenting words. For each word anyone writes from now on, you can email 10 cents via paypal to:

[rtyp3]

Ok I found this and I just wanted to share it with you all, and now we have a forum specifically to so... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/11450.html
British Telecommunications says that it owns the patent for hyperlinks and wants ISPs in the US to pay cash for the privilege of using them! What next? Is Microsoft going to patent the 1 and 0?

[krusty the klown]

Quote from BBA:

Well...I read the patent application.
It details using a telephone modem.
So, If ISP's don't use telephone modems...then the patent does not apply!

Sounds like a good case to promote cable and DSL access. Thanks, you Brits!

This is very interesting 'cos ..... Hmmmmm.... let me see..... a telecom company.... ISP.... dial-up (a phone bill!).... make the company lots of money....

The words 'ulterior motive' spring to mind!!

But wait.... BT's ADSL service (much better than ISDN) uses a regular telephone line..... so BT is either shooting itself in the foot, 'cos a rival telecom company provides cable modem access, or they are being very underhand and sly.... I can't work out which one it is??????????

[jad1097]

This is not good at all!

[rtyp3]

I fear that if this passes, and most say that it should, then won't ISP prices skyrocket? Oh no... Maybe those Broadband prices won't come down as I was expecting!

[SysOpt]

Greedy bastards. The description is so ambiguous though, they could claim that they own the rights to just about any information anywhere - how about the rights to the card catalog system used in libraries, and make them pay for it. Or the algorithms used to store data on hard drives, make the hard drive companies pay, and OS companies.. Losers..