Friday, April 03, 2009

The US Patent Office's Secret Patents


I've come to realize that all of the patents currently held by the US Patent Office are secret. How do I know? Well, take a look at this screenshot from my computer (using Firefox Ver. 3.0.8 as my browser). I'm supposed to be looking at an image of a page from one of Edwin Armstrong's patents for frequency modulation. Instead, I'm looking at... nothing. Nothing at all. Why? It seems that the Patent Office, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to use Quicktime to display images. And Firefox appears to have, uh, *issues* with Quicktime.

So my question is simple. Why Quicktime? Why not simple images (JPG, PNG, whatever)? Even Internet Explorer can display those properly.

Sigh.