I had a permenant link to MathWorld and saw that announcement shortly after it was put up. It was also on SlashDot back in October. That the Patent(ly absurd) TO would allow this travesty suggests that soon we will all have to be paying royalties for using the word "THE" on a website. If that patent is allowed to stand the patent holders could also extend "THEIR" Intellecutal Property "Rights" to scholary journals, dissertations, etc... Pascal, Newton, Legrand, Gauss, et.al., established a HUGH body of PRIOR ART but the PTO apparently didn't give any of them credit for being smart enough to think up integration, differentiation, transformations, etc.. BOYCOT THE CRC! JLK On Sunday 11 March 2001 05:54, you wrote:
If you ever saw mathworld you will understand why I find this bit of bad news upsetting.
The term 'news' isn't quite correct from my perspective because I've know about this problem for some time. Nonetheless, mathworld was a superlative resource for mathematical information. If you never saw it, it is linked collection of definitions of mathematical terms. And when I say 'math terms' I mean *real* math.
Steve