Friday, October 13, 2006
10/14 SNR
- Here's a list of the latest batch of sworn declarations in SCO v. IBM, courtesy Panglozz on IV
- Slashdot ran a story recently where some random clown was bragging (in pseudo-lament form) about his oh-so-terrible dilemma of having to choose between job offers from M$ and Google. One wag suggested he ought to consider SCO instead, which was moderated "4, Funny".
- A piece wondering whether it's time to "reconsider" Intel's Itanium. The author seems to have recently discovered that Itanium may not be the default Unix hardware of the future, and offers several rather obvious suggestions on where to go from "here". SCO gets a mention in connection with the ill-fated Project Monterey. If a CPU architecture can be doomed by the mere absence of a ported AIX, well, it can't have been on very firm ground to begin with.
- Computerworld Australia picks up a mid-August piece by PJ titled Linux's legal world after SCO. The phrase "after SCO" has a nice ring to it, but I'm not entirely convinced I'll see it in my lifetime.
- PC-BSD, a fork off of FreeBSD, has been "acquired". The article attempts to explain what "acquire" means in the BSD context.
- Elsewhere in the BSD world, MacOSX has been a BSD since the old NeXTStep days, way back in the 80's, but it hasn't been an official certified UNIX(tm), in the eyes of The Open Group, owner of the "UNIX" trademark. A while ago, it looked like Apple and the Open Group were going to lock horns over the trademark's validity, but instead it looks like Apple's going to get the upcoming OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") release certified as an Official UNIX. Which is fine, so long as they don't have to add all sort of useless cruft just to meet some arbitrary standard.
- And for the true geek, a piece about the nuts & bolts of binary emulation, including a section on how FreeBSD's Linux emulation works.
- If you search Google Scholar for "SCO Group", the #1 hit relates to a form of male infertility. (*snort* *giggle*). So I'm not 100% sure whether this paper refers to "our" SCO or not.
- Right now, if you search MySpace for "SCOX", you'll get a banner ad offering you the chance to buy SCO stock for $4. Which would be a great deal if it was actually trading over $4, which it isn't.
A few recent articles about patent trolls:
- "Beware the Patent Troll" at GameDaily
- A piece at WRAL LocalTechWire is more sympathetic to the trolls' perspective. Needless to say, the author is a lawyer, not an engineer.
- A press release claiming that patent trolls foster innovation and market liquidity. Again, the author is a lawyer, not an engineer, and it seems likely that a lawyer and an engineer would define "innovation" in starkly different ways. The press release is by the law firm itself, so we can pretty much chalk this one up as "scambulance chasing".
- EDN writes about a pending SCOTUS case that just might make it easier to challenge the validity of patents. Towards the end, the author daydreams about how a favorable judgment might encourage companies to invest more in basic R&D, and says hopefully:
And if the value of a patent depends on my ability to defend it, might I not want to give the actual inventor—remember her?—a piece of the benefits, rather than making her sign a confiscatory assignment agreement upon hiring?
Yes, that would certainly be nice. Wake me up when it happens. - A piece about Audible.com vs. the trolls.
- A panel discussion at Law.com discussing thorny issues around patents, copyrights, and trademarks. One panel member states:
Defining patent trolls reminds me of how comedian Jeff Foxworthy defines what it means to be a redneck. For example, you might be a patent troll if: You make no products and you sell no services; your only employees are patent lawyers; and you actually like Marshall, Texas.
For those of you who don't know, Marshall, Texas, is one of those so-called plaintiffs' paradises. It's where patent trolls like to file litigation for a number of reasons, not the least of which is 90 percent of the jury verdicts are in favor of the patentee. Awards in the hundreds of millions of dollars are not uncommon. - Besides being a paradise for patent trolls, Marshall, TX, is also the self-proclaimed "Pottery Capital of the World", according to Wikipedia. Keep that in mind when the locals hand out another major decision that impacts the tech industry. Yikes.
By brx0 @ 3:58 PM 
