I-man's lament

[Corey]

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060609-7024.html

[Intrigued]

What hits home for I.R. and use end-developers... is that these "patents" could really cause us some serious grief on multiple levels (stress, money, personal relationships--think marriage). Just because we developed a program and sold such! And it may happen years after we created such!

Will Nintendo be able to use this patent against Microsoft, or even Sony? At this point, it is hard to say. This patent is certainly indicative of the problems inherent to the patent system. Even though Nintendo applied for this patent in 2000, independently developed technologies that have emerged in the interim resemble it in many ways. Even though none of Nintendo's products include the features described in the patent, the game company could initiate legal action against a rival and use the patent to stifle development of new technologies.

[Corey]

How dare they potentially sully my beautiful marriage with their grubby patentry?! This is an outrage!! Oh yeah, I'm not married...

Anyhow there's a more sinister potentiality lurking 'neath this, what about the kids? The wee bairns and their apple cheeked pitter-patter? Surely they can nay be permitted to stress the wee bairns? And what of their money and marriages? And who will save the baby turtles?

Anyhow all joking aside at the end of the day we feed the machine with one hand and decry it with the other, so...

[gbrown]

What a crock... you folks have heard this from me before, but we had IM'ing in PLATO (see: PLATO-Cyber1) back in the mid 70's. List of players? Geez... I had that in a multi-user game in '79. Doesn't the paten office believe in looking for prior art? What is it... they say "Hey, Nintendo...you know anyone elese ever done dat?" "Oh no...NEVER..." Yeh, right.

What follows are screen shots from the current incarnation of PLATO. Remember, though, that this is essentially the system as it existed in the early 1980's.

The top shot is MY game. Looks like a user list to me, eh?



The following shot is a title page from a Star Trek game. Note the keys for looking at who is in the game. By the way... at the time I took that screen shot there were five users blowing each other up. Not bad for a game that is darn near 30 years old!



This is a list of options. Of special note is the "m" option. That lets you send a message to another user. Looks like IM to me!

[gbrown]

Oh yeh... note the copyright date on the middle image. Earliest is 1977.

GcB

[Corey]

You should send that to some hungry tech journalist. Maybe they'll do a story on it and maybe it'll stir the pot a little. Stir the pot! Stir the pot! Stir the pot!

"What are your orders aardvark?" would make a great name for a polka.