In the latest round of stupid patent tricks, the Social Software blog has news of a sick development regarding patents and RSS. It appears that Apple is trying to claim patents on techniques built over top of RSS, a technology that is itself OpenSource. Read my lips: O-p-e-n-S-ou-r-c-e. Shall I repeat that for you, Steve Jobs?

It's not bad enough that you absconded with the name of The Beatles record label and then went after anyone using the name, but now you have the cyberballs to do this?

What's effing wrong with you? You're not Bill Gates, so why're you being such prick? Maybe you'd sell more Macs if you weren't so zealously over-protective about your technology all the time. I would've bought a Mac or 5 a long time ago, were it not for the lack of 3rd party hardware. Your loss. I have 5 computers (of a lifetime total of 12), none of which are Macs. And didn't Big Brother, I mean Big Bill, have to bail you out with his own wallet a while back?

Seriously, how do you have the balls to patent stuff that Dave Winer and company have already patented? Did you get smacked in the head with an apple again, Newton? You deserve a cybersmack, as does the USPTO for all the stupid tech patents they've been granting the last 5 years or longer.

Oy, what universe did I wake up in this morning?

As someone who once worked on a project that indirectly helped the USPTO record all their paper documents and build a search engine, I'm highly disappointed with their general behaviour re granting unfair patents. There was always a clause that said that if a technique or any relevant bit of info was public for at least one year, it could not be patented. So why isn't it enforced?

'Nuff said.

Oh and by the way, since comments are still down, send your hatemail to me at webmaster-at-mathgurusonline-dot-com. I'll publish your comments here.