A Tech News Afternoon

After a rather grueling weekend of learning how to write Chinese, I decided to take the afternoon off to catch up on some news. While I will most likely regret it in the future, I haven't removed the Google desktop program that came bundled with DIVX, and it pops up to give me links to the latest news postings. Every once and a while something hits my interest and I have to take a look. I also had the chance to looks through my EFFector email newsletters for the first time in a long while. Here are some interesting stories I've picked up and wanted to pass on:

Microsoft agitates for open-source patent pacts: Apparently the world is exploding with Microsoft and Open Source (again -_-). This time Microsoft is accusing Open Source software developers of over 200 patent infringements. Microsoft is, however, taking a long time to contemplate whether or not to proceed to court on the issue. It could open a pandora's box that the company may never recover from.
The issue: Microsoft is bellyaching over patents that haven't been tested in a court of law. Untested patents are dangerous, as a patent has no legal weight until it is upheld by a court. If the patents are not upheld, then the code currently being debated would be "up for grabs".
This is also another bullying exercise to limit competition from Open Source software. You can talk bull all you want, Microsoft, Open Office is still a million times better than your overpriced, inefficient Microsoft Office. The PDF export feature is worth the program alone.

Using Technology to Enhance Humans: This is an interesting think article that will be rendered irrelevant as soon as IBM starts marketing the Intel Neuron Chip Set.

403 Checker: This is a safe piece of software that takes a large sampling of URLs and tests whether or not they are blocked by your country's government.
A shout out to my Chinese friends: use this software. I would like to know what the results are, especially after reading this article.

That's all currently. I've been looking through some old drawings, so I should be posting them in the near future.

再见！茴芹