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…

For anyone who might wander here on a Mac, how does this site look? If this skin looks sucky, are any of the other skins better? I’m especially interested if you are using Safari. I have no access to either a Mac or Safari, so I have no way of telling of the CSS is broken or not.

Leave a coment and let me know!

Thanks!

1. When it appears that you have killed the monster, NEVER, EVER go check to see if it’s really dead.

2. Never read a book of demon summoning aloud, even just mumbling to yourself, if you can’t read silently you have no business with such a thing anyway!

3. Do not search the basement, especially if the power has gone out.

4. If your pets speak to you in Latin or any other language which they should not know, shoot them immediately. It will save you a lot of grief in the long run. However, it will probably take several rounds to kill them, so be prepared.

5. When you have the benefit of numbers, NEVER split up and go it alone or even pair off.

6. As a general rule, don’t try to solve puzzles that open portals to Hell.

7. Never stand in, on, or above a grave, tomb, or crypt. This would apply to any other house of the dead as well.

8. If you’re searching for something which caused a loud noise and find out that it’s just the cat, GET THE HELL OUT!

9. If appliances start operating by themselves, lights go on and off, a fire just appears in the hearth, or doors open and close by themselves – do not check for drafts, do not check for short circuits; just get out!

10. Why, why, why would you even think of sleeping in that house if that happened?

OK. So this is pretty cool. A fully functional WinXP machine… in the palm of your hand. The OQO Model 01 has arrived.

I have to admit this is a snazzy looking little doodad that warms the geeky cockles of my heart. It’s just 4.9″ x 3.4″ x .9″ and weighs just 14 oz., yet it runs standard WinXP. That means it runs standard XP software, although with a 1 GHz processor, a 20 GB hard drive and 256K of RAM it’s not going to set the town on fire. This is a word-processing, email-reading, contact-keeping, calendar-watching sort of device. It has a thumb keyboard and a trackstik with mouse buttons as well as a digital pen and a thumb wheel. It looks easy to use. It can be hooked to a docking station for full-size use if desired.

WiFi is integrated, as are Firewire and USB ports. But it has no CD drive, so an external USB drive is required in order to load software. There are reports that it runs hot, so be careful sticking it in your pocket!

As cool as this little goody looks, retail is a not-so-cool $1899. For that price one can pick up a small, slim full-function notebook. There are early adapters that will go for the OQO Model 01, but I don’t think I’ll be among them.

For my money, I’ll stick to my syncing my Palm Tungsten T3 with my laptop at work and my computer at home, since I need both of those computers anyway. And the inconvenience is worth around $1500 to me.

Anybody know what happened to ORBlogs? Their server has been down since yesterday.

Since they provide me with some good reading every day, I hope it’s a temporary condition. 😥

[edit 10/26/04 2:55 PM] Mystery solved… The server is being moved to Oregon. Cool! Expected to be back up tomorrow some time.

After being hit with comment spam over the last couple of days, I’ve gone looking for solutions. I’ve made some changes that hopefully will help.

Automatic’s free email Enkoder: This little goody translates an email address into numeric equivalent gobbledy-gook and wraps it in javascript. The result is a displayable email address that can’t be parsed by most spam bots. And that means I can once again have an actual, clickable email link in the side blog.

Installation is straightforward, although you have to know enough HTML to recognize where to put it: Simply type your email address and a few other fields into the online form, then paste the results into your HTML page where you want the address to appear. Voila!

I’ve also tightened up the rules that determine if a comment is spam or not, I’ve increased the time required between comment posts, and I’ve installed a plugin that uses semi-fuzzy logic to decide if a comment is spam and deletes it if it is. That will keep me from needing to delete every single spam comments. Which sucked.

I thought about installing a captcha system, but there doesn’t appear to be an easily-installed plugin for WordPress yet, and I’m not sure how much hacking I want to do. Besides, captchas can limit accessibility and aren’t 100% guaranteed. If the other measure I’ve taken don’t do the trick, then I’ll look at doing that. But not yet.

I also installed 2 new skins: Fabric Of Our Lives and Seafood Basket. Check ’em out!.