Re: Who is the heck Eolas?

[Christopher Pall <christopher.pall@wmich.edu>]

He's full of crap.

There are three things reasons (based on three (but not the complete listing)
irrefutable laws of computers) 

Laws/Rules
----------
1) You make more money selling out to many people rather than exclusively
selling out. (note:This is where EVERYONE goes WRONG with Microsoft. This is
where IBM has gone RIGHT with it's research division, don't sell the company to
Microsoft, sell the technology!)

2) Computers never de-innovate. Technolgy once out of the bottle, is
excessively difficult to get back into the bottle. 

3) There are millions of innovators on the internet, to suggest that one person
has done something first is ignorant of reality. There was no creator of email,
there was no creator of the wordprocessor. It's all evolution. 

Why it means to this case
------------------------
a) If this all fit so well into EOLA's lap, then they would sell it to as many
companies as they could. Even if Microsoft could pay EOLA big ol' bucks, it's
never going to be more than EOLA would get out of both AOL and Microsoft and
third party. 

b) This isn't going to fit so well into EOLA's lap. It's very much like the GIF
copyright and/or PGP encryption. This technology has effectively been in use
for over 6 years. It's not going exclusively anywhere. There will simply be a
development rebellion for/against the standards imposed by EOLA, and they'll
come out the losers either way (should they choose not to license freely.

c) The patent should have never been issued for various reasons: a) This is
essentially a redescription of technology that has existed since the 80's. It's
not like some concept that took EOLA to create, it was going to come about,
just because EOLA sent in the patent request first doesn't mean that they ought
to be rewarded so highly. If they do, it's a travesty of innovation.

Mitch Stone wrote:
> 
> According to Bob (don't call me "Robert X.") Cringely, a tiny company
> called Eolas recently secured a patent to embedded objects that will
> knock the props out from under all similar technologies promoted by
> Microsoft, Netscape, and Sun. He predicts that Eolas will quickly make a
> licensing deal with Microsoft, simultaneously finishing off the others
> _and_ the government's case.
> 
> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19981203.html
> 
> But a search of the web, and a perusing of the Eolas site, turns up
> nothing to support these claims. Has Cringely finally flipped out
> entirely?
> 
>    Mitch Stone
>    Editor, Boycott Microsoft
>    http://www.vcnet.com/bms
>  +---
>    Windows 95 is what Rube Goldberg would have designed if he'd
>    studied cartooning at M.I.T. --- Russell Baker