Patently Absurd

Via Engadget, and apparently not an April 1 post, Microsoft has filed for, and received, a patent that "essentially amounts to Page Up / Page Down functionality." That is:

A method and system in a document viewer for scrolling a substantially exact increment in a document, such as one page, regardless of whether the zoom is such that some, all or one page is currently being viewed. In one implementation, pressing a Page Down or Page Up keyboard key/button allows a user to begin at any starting vertical location within a page, and navigate to that same location on the next or previous page. For example, if a user is viewing a page starting in a viewing area from the middle of that page and ending at the bottom, a Page Down command will cause the next page to be shown in the viewing area starting at the middle of the next page and ending at the bottom of the next page. Similar behavior occurs when there is more than one column of pages being displayed in a row.

Now I see no reason to be shy about submitting my patent for "A method and system on a keyboard for turning a lowercase letter into an uppercase letter. In one implementation, pressing a Shift key while simultaneously pressing a letter key causes that letter to appear on screen as a capital letter."