Confronting the 'Tech Innovation Deficit'

Mar 06, 2009, 22:02 (1 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by David Needle)

This story marks the creation of a new category on Linux Today: "Seriously." You'll see this in the Contribute Story category selection menu. The idea is to share the occasional jaw-droppingly clueless take on the tech industry, FUD, or piece of propaganda that is so splendidly amazing it deserves a special mention. I believe the following story is a wonderful piece to launch this new category, because it's about the titans of tech sitting around bewailing the very world that they have, at great expense and effort, created.

I don't want to go overboard with this because there are so many good, useful, and interesting Linux and FOSS stories that I don't want to take away from them. However, some stories are so over-the-top "OMG, are they serious?" that they are worth sharing, and now they have their own special category. --.ed

"Cheng's remarks drew the second biggest round of applause of the night. Rick Rashid, Microsoft's vice president of research, drew the biggest applause partly at Cheng's expense. After hearing dour assessments from other panelists on the state of innovation, Cheng noted IBM continues to generate patents at a healthy clip.

""The number of patents is a horrible metric," Rashid broke in. "That just shows how much money you wanted to spend on lawyers," he added to sustained applause. Rashid should know; his employer, Microsoft was just awarded its 10,000th patent last month."

Complete Story

Related Stories:

• Software Wars Map(Mar 07, 2009)
• Linux companies sign Microsoft patent protection pacts(Mar 06, 2009)
• The Real Reason for Microsoft's TomTom Lawsuit(Mar 05, 2009)
• Bruce Perens: Analyzing Microsoft's Linux Lawsuit(Mar 02, 2009)
• India Fights Patents with Huge Prior Art Database(Feb 13, 2009)
• Behind the scenes of Microsoft's ongoing patent war against Linux(Feb 10, 2009)