Apple wants to patent Flash.

Over at patentlyapple.com, there’s talk of a new patent Apple has applied for what the site calls a “Breakthrough Platform Independent Word Processor,” one that could operate in the browser. This is the problem Apple wants to solve:

The recent proliferation of web browsers and computer networks has made it easy to display the same document on different computing platforms. However, inconsistencies in the way fonts are rendered across different computing platforms could cause the same document to be rendered differently for users of different computing platforms. More specifically, for a given font, the way in which metrics for various font features are interpreted, such as character height, width, leading and white space, can differ between computing platforms. These differences in interpretation could cause individual characters in a document to be rendered at different locations, which could ultimately cause the words in a document to be positioned differently between lines and pages on different computing platforms.

This inconsistent rendering could be a problem for people who are collaborating on a document. For example, if one collaborator points out an error on a specific line of a specific page, another collaborator viewing the same document on a different computing platform may have to first locate the error on a different line of a different page.

Hence, what is needed is a technique for providing consistent rendering for documents across different computer systems and computing platforms.

This is the solution:

Some embodiments presented in Apple’s patent application describe a system that typesets and renders a document in a platform-independent manner. During operation, the system first obtains the document, wherein the document includes text content and associated style information including one or more fonts. The system also generates platform-independent font metrics for the one or more fonts, wherein the platform-independent font metrics include information that could be used to determine the positions of individual characters in a rendering of the document. Next, the system uses the platform-independent font metrics to determine how the document is divided into line fragments and pages. Finally, the system uses the determined division while rendering the document, so that the division of the document into line fragments and pages is the same across different computing platforms.

Now, call me senile, but a consistent cross-platform experience is something that seems right up Flash’s alley. A swf on PC looks the same on a Mac, or Linux. They’ve been doing this for over a decade. But you’re probably thinking wait, Walt, you senile old bastard — I’m in your head — a consistent cross-browser experience that’s already built and already used by 99% of everyone online isn’t a word processor. True, it isn’t, but aside from the fact that Adobe purchased a product called Buzzword — a Flash-based wordprocessor — years ago and integrated it into Acrobat.com,  there was also Virtual Ubiquity, which doesn’t seem to exist anymore, but did.

So, you know, prior art, and all that.

I love how moist Patently Apple is getting at the idea of this, talking about how Apple, if they put out a cross-platform word processor, will change the landscape again. Look, I’m no Apple hater, but they’re clearly trying to patent something that’s existed for several years.

Is Patently Apple going to get all excited at Apple’s upcoming plans to replace the horse and buggy with an automated, mechanical machine? I hear it’s going to be goddamn huge.

Shut up.

Software patents are dirty scum.

This is Walt Mossberg; shut up.

In a move that came as no surprise yet sent a record number of industry observers to the emergency room with a broken wrist because of how fast and how hard they hit themselves in the face with the palm of their hand, Facebook was awarded a patent this week for “the feed.” For those of you who aren’t hip to these things like I am, the feed is Facebook’s name for the list of activities you see when you log in to Facebook.

You know where all your notifications get shown, and messages about who’s friends with who, who’s asking you to play some goddamn online game, asking for a trinket or a treasure or something? That’s the feed. It’s a list of information relevant to the user. You know, like every other list of information a user gets presented with when they go to practically any website in the world.

Let me just say straight away that I think the US Patent Office is scum, and that software patents are dirty scum. Are you with me so far? It boggles the mind that Facebook could be awarded a patent for something so obvious and ubiquitous as a list of information relevant to the user in a social context. What this patent means is that if Facebook wanted to, it could shut down half the internet because they now own the rights to everybody else’s core functionality. It’s insane! All software patents are insane, because the language of the patent can be general and doesn’t need to specify the way the thing was made, in what environment, or what language. Anyone who programs will tell you that just because you’ve achieved a result doesn’t necessarily mean you did it in a specific way; if you write a program in a different language, that represents a completely different challenge, and it should be regarded as such. The fact that it isn’t shows that nobody handing out software patents has any idea what goes into writing software.

Because a software patent — and, really, patents in general — can refer to the end result very vaguely, plus can be awarded without, you know, actually having built the goddamn thing, you run into serious problems, like people patenting hypertext several decades after others invented it in a specific way, and people getting patents for products other people have already brought to market.

But this is the system we have, right? It’s a stupid zero-sum game, but because there’s money riding on it, everyone takes part, because who wants to be the jerk who goes all noble and doesn’t lock down his creation, only to have someone else file a patent for it, so that the person who’s actually developed a certain piece of software has to pay royalties to some goddamn patent squatter? That’s right!

So the stupidity of the patent system means companies lock down every single thing any of their developers ever do, just in case they decide at some point to bring whatever they’ve done to market at some point in the future, or because it’s close enough to their plans that they don’t want anyone getting anywhere near it. When companies like Apple do this, since they’re fantastic and have amazing ideas, it do two things:

One, it makes it so that other people can’t develop whatever it is they’ve worked on, which is a goddamn shame because even though there’s probably a good reason why Apple doesn’t make products out of everything they patent, so many of them — like physical object recognition on your computer monitor, a list of contacts on your phone’s lock screen and a rubber dock that conforms to fit any device you shove in it — are so amazingly cool that it would be great to see other companies be able to make them, even though their executions would be subpar, since they’re not Apple.

Two, it makes idiot bloggers write about all of these patent filings as though it means anything, as though it necessarily reflects anything other than Apple covering its bases, and getting the greatest value for their R&D dollar, and it makes idiot bloggers say stupid stuff like this:

A patent filed seven years ago for a solar powered media device was uncovered today. Ecologically sound AND fantastic, Apple is sending a clear signal to batteries everywhere: your days are numbered! Subscribe to my newsletter!

Dear blogosphere: Searching through public patent information and “discovering” a filing from half-a-decade ago does not give you any special insight into what Apple’s plans for the future are, and claiming so is pretty pathetic. Just take your hands off the keyboard, get out of your mother’s basement, and step outside. See that big ball of brightness in the sky? That’s the sun: you should stare at it until the world goes away, so you can’t bug me with this piddly crap any more.

In conclusion, the patent system, which is supposed to encourage innovation, can lead to innovation stifling, and can lead to idiot bloggers really chapping my ass, neither of which I like. Unless I’m paying extra for the latter.

This has been Walt Mossberg: shut up!

STUPID: Facebook granted a patent for a list of information.

So the crapdamn US Patent Office again showed how irrelevant it is and how little it knows about technology when it recently granted Facebook a patent for the “the feed,” which refers to that list of information happening on Facebook. This is the patent claim:

A method for displaying a news feed in a social network environment, the method comprising: monitoring a plurality of activities in a social network environment; storing the plurality of activities in a database; generating a plurality of news items regarding one or more of the activities, wherein one or more of the news items is for presentation to one or more viewing users and relates to an activity that was performed by another user; attaching a link associated with at least one of the activities of another user to at least one of the plurality of news items where the link enables a viewing user to participate in the same activity as the another user; limiting access to the plurality of news items to a set of viewing users; and displaying a news feed comprising two or more of the plurality of news items to at least one viewing user of the predetermined set of viewing users.

Why was Facebook granted a patent for this? More to the point, why do software patents exist at all? Does anybody at the patent office have even the slightest goddamn idea of what it means to make software? Do any of these crapasses even have computers?

Here’s my question: Aside from the fact that this patent, like a great number of sofware patents, is vague and relates to activities performed on a great majority of sites for a really long time (prior art, much?) it’s all built on existing languages, and all that anyone can do when building software is use existing languages and systems. And before any of you bastards say:

But, Walt, a developer could use existing tools and APIs, but they could also develop their own languages!

Let me say:

Shut up.

Sure, Facebook could, in this case, write a new language to power the feed. They wouldn’t in this case because it has to work on the internet, but even if they did, so what? It all eventually goes down to Assembler, and ultimately, binary. How can any piece of software imaginable not be negated due to prior art? Answer: It can’t. Software patents are stupid.

And this is aside from the fact that a patent if enforced could mean that people who develop something on their own, in private, would be prevented from actually, you know, enjoying the fruits of their labor simply because they didn’t take the time to patent what is just their daily work, or because someone else did it first, or because some jackass got a patent through that is so vague it could reflect nearly anything.

In conclusion, software patents are stupid and should be destroyed. Make it happen, crapcakes. Make it happen.