Microsoft is the Industry's Most Innovative Company?

mjasay writes "According to a recent analysis by IEEE, Microsoft's patent portfolio tops the industry in terms of overall quality of its patents. And while Microsoft came in second to IBM in The Patent Board's 2006 survey, its upcoming 2007 report has Microsoft besting IBM (and even its 2006 report had Microsoft #1 in terms of the "scientific strength" of its patent portfolio). All of which begs the question: Just where is all this innovation going? To Clippy? Consumers and business users don't buy patents. They buy products that make their lives easier or more productive, yet Microsoft doesn't seem to be able to turn its patent portfolio into much more than life support for its existing Office and Windows monopolies. In sum, if Microsoft is so innovative, why can't we get something better than the Zune?"

Innovation

[$RANDOMLUSER]

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Re:Prediction for this thread:

[HTH NE1]

265 comments making "humorous observations" about Microsoft and innovation being used in the same sentence. 0 that contain any actual humor.

Just call it a hunch...

Damn, my mod points just expired moments before trying to mod you Insightful, AC.

As a software development professional

[Malevolent Tester]

I'm deeply indebted to Microsoft innovations.

For example, source control. Sure, Subversion, CVS etc all have their good points, but only VSS will randomly corrupt various setup scripts, thus giving me a free afternoon reading facebook while the the developers and DBAs try to fix our QA environments.
SQL Server. Can MySQL offer the same guaranteed crash every time I haven't saved my foreign key scripts? Can it bollocks. Restore from live, please.
Does Firefox have the ability to collect enough spyware that I can derive malicious pleasure from getting an underling to spend the entire morning reproducing a bug that was actually caused by some toolbar he'd inadvertantly installed? No

Fuck open source. Microsoft is the only thing standing between me and actually having to work to earn my paycheck.

Re:Are we done yet?

[rk]

640k is enough for anyone, especially Bob and Clippy.

Word Count

[Blakey Rat]

Words describing the article: 61

Words bashing Microsoft: 74

Re:Not that bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Visual Studio is a very good IDE.

Fuck you.

Re:Prediction for this thread:

[antek9]

Just 360 for now. D'oh! Innovation of the year: the shift from blue (screen of death) to red (rings of death).