Oh man that's a riot. Thanks for sharing. There are several classes of problem that really seem to bring out the patent crackpots, of which perpetual motion is

Oh man that's a riot. Thanks for sharing. There are several classes of problem that really seem to bring out the patent crackpots, of which perpetual motion is the most classic. Apparently data compression is another. The one I've personally run into is "secure" or "trusted" embedded systems. I've been contacted by a lot of people who believe that they can make a perfectly secure and trustworthy secret storage system just by building it out of an embedded Linux system. When I try to explain how a secure element is basically exactly the opposite of a Linux box, the excuses and bluster prevent me from actually making any progress in explaining. There's a term for this: "Not even wrong." That is, so off base that "wrong" is generous! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_even_wrong