Woz and the RCA Character-generator Patent 219
doperative writes with this quote from Steve Wozniak:
"A lot of patents are pretty much not worth that much ... In other words, any fifth-grader could come up with the same approach ... And then we find out RCA has a patent on a character generator for any raster-scanned setup .. And they patented it at a time when nobody could have envisioned it really being used or anything ... and they got five bucks for each Apple II, based on this little idea that's not even an idea. Y'know: store the bits, store the bits, then pop in a character on your TV."
Re:Don't stop at Paul Allen (Score:4, Funny)
You're right! Here's a photo of one of Allen's charities:
http://d2omthbq56rzfx.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Megayacht-Octopus-plus-Paul-Allen.jpg [cloudfront.net]