Phil Knight is stepping down as CEO of Nike. He will remain Chairman Of The Board.

Stepping into Knight’s shoes as CEO and President is William Perez, currently President and CEO of S.C. Johnson & Sons, Inc., purveyors of Windex and Scrubbing Bubbles.

The shoes will be clean?

Jobless claims are down, including in my household. #1 Son has joined the ranks of working stiffs. Not that he ever actually filed for unemployment, because he’s never been employed before. But… well, you know what I mean.

When I picked him up last night after his first day at work, I asked him how it went. Was it fun? “No!” he said. “It was horrible and I’m really tired.”

Ah, yes, kiddo. That’s why they call it “work.” Congratulations on making it through the first day. I promise it will feel better when that first paycheck comes.

I’m really trying to get away from blogging about politics. Hopefully neither of my readers will be disappointed. Also hopefully I’m going to gain more of a life so I will have more to blog about. I’m not sure I want to blog about my own foray among the working stiffs, as I’m not really sure who those two readers are! In a world where an airlines attendant can be fired for posting a picture of herself in uniform on a blog where her employer is never named… well, one just never knows, do they. This may be “a job,” but it’s my job and it’s the only one I’ve got.

Use Linux, get sued. Micro$oft warned Asian governments that they may face patent lawsuits if they use Linux instead of Windows.

At Microsoft’s Asian Government Leaders Forum, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, said that Linux violates more than 228 patents. He declined to provide specifics. Quoth Ballmer:

Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property.

SCO group claims that Linux violates its copyrights for Unix. They have sued various companies, and have threatened to sue others, including Linus Torvalds. SCO refuses to allow access to the samples of code containing the alleged violations except under an NDA that would require signers to hold confidential even information that they knew before signing the agreement or seeing the code. The open source community refutes SCO’s claims.

SCO has been bankrolled by Micro$oft.

Singapore last month switched 20,000 PCs to run Linux instead of Windows. China, Japan and South Korea have agreed to jointly develop Linux applications.

The Chinese government considers Microsoft a potential threat due to conpiracy theorys that claim back doors in Windows code would give the US Government access to Chinese networks. Again, quoth Ballmer:

We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software.

Uh… sure, Steve… whatever you say…