OT: Microsoft patents "timed button presses"

[Fairlight]

Is it just me, or did John Esak say:
> This sounds like the system used on the new Treo phone we just got... (and
> other cell phones... which means it is just about eveywhere already... does
> Microsoft say it invented it???)  Anyway, you hold the number buttons down
> to get B, and C from the ABC key... E and F from the DEF key and so forth.
> Most everyone is used to this already, no?

It's been around far longer than Treo's.  Many, many consumer electronics
devices have had buttons where if you held them down a sufficient length of
time, a menu would pop up either on-screen or in an LCD, so you could
configure them.  Hell, my CPAP machine is like that, except you hold both
buttons while plugging it in...cute safeguard.

Can't patents be overturned?

mark->
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