C++0x news

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Walter Bright" <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:hnm9ot$2og9$1 at digitalmars.com...
> anton smith wrote:
>> Walter Bright Wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Herb! It's hard to find anything truly original in language design, 
>>> somebody somewhere always did something sorta like it first somewhere 
>>> else. Most of D's features are inspired by features from a long list of 
>>> languages, some alive, some dead.
>>
>> For some reason Oleg Kiselyov often finds original ideas in language 
>> design and its usage.
>
> I don't know enough about Haskell to comment on that. But I do know that 
> there's a lot of grey area between an original idea and something similar 
> that was done before. How different must it be before it is considered 
> "original"?
>
> That's one of the reasons the software patent system is busted.
>
> There's a lot of patentable stuff in D (not just my ideas, but some ideas 
> from others, too), but I've chosen not to attempt to patent them.

To prove how bad the USPTO is, there was some guy that applied for a patent 
on a method of swinging on a swingset. It was approved. So under the current 
syetem, pretty much anything at all is patentable. A person could come up 
with patentable claim just by farting on a piece of paper.