06.13.10
Reader’s Observation: Microsoft ‘Innovates’ Wake-on-LAN (and Renames it`Sleep Proxy’)
Summary: Microsoft needs to wake up and realise that it merely imitates other people’s work and then claims credit for it
In the following new article, IDG forgets to point out that there is extensive prior art:
From the article:
Microsoft’s sleep proxy lowers PC energy use
[...]
Microsoft researchers have slashed desktop energy use with a sleep proxy system that maintains a PC’s network presence even when it is turned off or put into standby mode.
[...]
Although Microsoft is using the system with Windows, it is designed to be agnostic to the operating system.
Other operating systems have had this functionality for many years. They don’t need Microsoft’s so-called ‘innovation’. Has Microsoft attempted to patent this yet?
Microsoft was asleep (as in ‘sleep proxy’) while its competition was innovating. █
dyfet said,
June 13, 2010 at 11:56 am
I believe what they are claiming is not simply “Wake-On-Lan” by itself, but in any case, this is actually what is described here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_Proxy_Service
The proxy simply sends the WOL packet to the mac address of the sleeping target when it needs to be awoken and otherwise just answers arp requests on behalf of the sleeper, so there is nothing non-standard, and the code is already OSS. It is in fact also a standard part of zeroconfig.
dyfet Reply:
June 13th, 2010 at 11:57 am
It also of course was NOT “invented” by Microsoft. It is pre-existing stuff…do they plan once again to patent other people’s work?
Dr. Roy Schestowitz Reply:
June 13th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
That’s what the reader who sent me this would like to know.
Needs Sunlight said,
June 14, 2010 at 6:00 am
Users of Microsoft need to wake up and realize that it merely imitates other people’s work and then claims credit for it. Their continued patronage of the company underwrites not just crapware, but these destructive business methods.
It’s the ‘ecosystem’, stupid: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”