Follow this link to the story at the Information Week website.

Is it just a coincidence that Microsoft is being slapped silly by the courts now that George Bush and his regime are out of office?

At first, I could not imagine a patent that could be granted in this area because patents must be non-obvious to practitioners in the domain.  I figured that if you wanted to process an XML document, the methodology would be pretty obvious.  The obvious method is described in the patent as prior art.

Follow this link to read patent No. 5,787,449. When someone tries to claim that the patent is obvious, I always ask the question, “So why wasn’t it invented before?”

As a software engineer, but no expert in the technology of document processing, this invention seems to me that it may be a significant break with all previous word processing methods. I say “seems to me” because I know that I am not aware of all previous word processing methods.  Apparently Microsoft was not successful in attacking the validity of the patent.  I have no idea of the details of Microsoft’s defense of the lawsuit. Perhaps they were trying to defend themselves on some other grounds than the validity of the patent.

I thought about finding and posting links to the debates among the candidates for Massachusetts Senator.

After hearing just a few words from the Republican candidate during the primaries, I decided that it was pointless to put any effort into the current round of debates.  There is no way that I would vote for anybody but Martha Coakley.

Follow this link to the story at the McClatchy News web site.

Follow this link to see the original rating as it appeared on the PolitiFact web site.

Apparently Palin never lets a good lie go to waste.  She is still using it.

As for Joe Biden’s supposed lie, when one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft., I think you would have to interpret it in a specific way that might not have been intended to think of it as a lie. It is a far stretch to even consider that remark in the same league as Palin’s remark.

Follow this link to the story about Biden’s remarks on PolitiFact.

going through the aircraft also could mean going through the aircraft filtration system.  This was also discussed in the PolitiFact article.  The explanation does explain why it is highly unlikely that the germs would pass through the filtration system.

PolitiFact consulted Dr. Tony Overfelt of Auburn University. Overfelt is the executive director of the National Air Transportation Center of Excellence for Research in the Intermodal Transport Environment. After debunking the idea of germs going through the filtration system, he did add the following:

That’s not to say that people shouldn’t worry about germs on aircraft at all, Overfelt said. But the concern should be more focused on not touching something that a sick person touched. Overfelt said that when he flies, he washes his hands frequently and tries not to touch his face, especially his nose or eyes.

Since you have no control over who sits near you, does it matter if the germs travel through the whole aircraft to get to you or travel only a few rows to get to you?

Moreover,  Biden’s press people retracted Biden’s overstatement of the hazard while Palin is still pushing her overstatement.