On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 03:16:19AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > On Mon, May 19, 2003 at 12:56:38PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote: > > Who is Branden supposed to send the royalty checks for patent #4,197,590 > > to again? (That's the XOR cursor patent.) > > Huh? What? XOR cursor? What's that?
I haven't read the patent (legalese gives me headaches), but I know that "XOR" is an abbreviation for "eXclusive Overwrite Rights", a variant of DRM. It enforces an author's moral rights by not allowing non-approved cursor shapes to be used to point at protected intellectual property. When a user moves a cursor over a window containing protected content, the display manager sends the cursor shape to microsoft^W the content vendor's representative for inspection, and disallows the motion until it receives approval. This way, serious documentaries are protected from being seen with banana-shaped cursors hovering over them, and similar abuses of the content provider's reputation and artistic integrity. To the best of my knowledge, the X server still lacks this important functionality. > Hint: do not reply to this message. :-P Huh? What? -- Richard Braakman to troll, v.: to explore, in an electronic forum, the subtle distinction between being an idiot and pretending to be an idiot.
