[maqr]

> The number of actually novel, non-obvious inventions in the software industry that maybe, in some universe, deserve a government-granted monopoly is, perhaps, two.

Any idea to which two he might be referring?

[spolsky]

I sort of like http://www.google.com/patents/US4464650 (Ziv/Lempel compression), which doesn't seem obvious to me

[Tyr42]

Can't patent algorithms though, so, can't be that.

[msg]

RSA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(algorithm)#History

[cruise02]

He mentioned on a podcast that Amazon's 1-click is one of them.

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/podcast-43-false-facts...

[recursive]

My guesses are garbage collection and Carmack's fast inverse square root.

[zerohp]

Carmack didn't invent fast inverse square root.

[recursive]

Good thing it wasn't patented.