Some mediocre good news...

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No, this has nothing to do with my stolen truck.

But, on a lighter note, at least we may see a decrease in spam for awhile...

Man described as a top spammer arrested

The Short Bus has left the building.

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My friends have been, for years, affectionatly calling my suburban the "Short Bus". I'm not sure if that's a reference to my intelligence (The Short Bus was the not so nice name kids would give to the bus that brought the special education students to school), or if there was something less politically incorrect involved.

At any rate, the Short Bus vanished this morning. No broken class. It wasn't towed.

It's just gone.

I just finished filing the report with the police. Now, all we can do is pray.

So, please pray that they find it soon!!!

We're all Linux users...

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That's what this article (linked below in the source for the quote) says. And you know what? It's true.

Taft asked DiBona what open-source software Google uses in deployment or production at Google. DiBona replied, "We use the Linux kernel -- every time you use Google, you're using a Linux machine. And then we have some fairly common open-source tools that we run on top of those, and then on top of those we run our proprietary software for serving Google, Gmail and all the different services."

- We're All Linux Users - by: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

Scary stuff

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Read this.

This directive, completely unnoticed by the media, and given no scrutiny by Congress, literally gives the White House unprecedented dictatorial power over the government and the country, bypassing the US Congress and obliterating the separation of powers. The directive also placed the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic "security".

- see above linked article

The RIAA is still evil.

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Just read this:
RIAA: Radio needs to pay up

Stories like this one are becoming common. It's a horrible mess that has everything to do with copyrights and the rights of content creators vs. the real world..

The Legality of Creator's Rights

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Patents and copyrights are two huge facets of the modern information age that are currently making me very angry. They exist to primarily protect an inventor or creator's rights to their creation and the benefits they bring. However, as we get into a more digital world where the advancement of technology is measured in months as opposed to years, they are begining to stifle innovation on the private sector and restrict it to the bowels of corporate might.

The average patent lifecycle here in America is around 20 years. In that amount of time, we have seen Microsoft become the booming pioneer in Operating Systems for computers. Because of the way computers work, there has been virtually no viable alternatives. As our society has grown more and more dependant on them, Microsoft has raised the prices more and more. Now, it's more like a tax of $300 (or more!) that they impose on every computer user every 3-5 years or every time they buy a new computer.

In response to this, there has been a revolt in the digital world. Over the last 10-15 years, we have seen the software engineers and true innovators on the digital forefrunt begin to establish a replacement. Like the American Colonists in the late 1700's, the software industry has been slowly creating, adapting, and pushing an free and open solution to the Microsoft tax: Linux.

Not only does this software solve the problem of the tax, but it also provides, for the first time, a real and viable alternative to the problem of Microsoft dependance.

Microsoft knows this.

As one of the richest, most influential, and powerful companies on the planet, it is now attacking the organizations that have grown out of this Linux/Open source movement. Recognizing them as a real and viable threat to their monopolistic tax, it threatens to stifle them with patent litigation.

Unfortunatly, this is not a situation where the contestants decide the victor. In this case, because of patent and copyright law, the courts will decide. Furthermore, they will decide under laws that date back to the time of the beginning of America, when technology and innovation had nowhere near the speed of the technology sector today.

"Innovation and progress is precisely what Microsoft aims to protect, and it does so using patents. Patents are the life blood of the software industry, and if patents did not exist then innovation would not progress the way it has been, according to Microsoft."

- Microsoft Wants Royalties From Linux and Open-Source

What I fear is that the courts, in siding with antiquated law, could possibly uphold Microsoft patents (that's asuming that they actually have any that are being violated here! see: Show us the code!). There is a lot of doubt over whether Microsoft is actually holding any patents that are being violated. There is a lot of doubt over whether any patents are being violated or whether, if there are any here, these patents are valid. There is currently a huge cry out for patent reform. There is a crisis at hand because of the liberal granting of patents by the Government in recent history. In fact, very recently, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision stating that the stand being used to measure whether patents should be overturned or not by lower courts was not proper. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:

"Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress and may ... deprive prior inventions of their value"

- quote taken from : Supreme Court makes it easier to invalidate patents by: Pete Yost

I agree with what he is saying there. Namely that "Granting patent protection to advances that would occur in the ordinary course without real innovation retards progress..."

What needs to happen is that there needs to be a completel overhaul of patent and copyright law. Seeing the chaos that has come from the RIAA's suing everyone from grandmothers to teenager's parents over downloaded music should have been an obvious wakeup call for the need to rewrite copyright law. Unfortunatly, Congress does not always recognize the actions of the people as a call for change, but instead waits for the lobbyists to bring them money and gifts first.

The popularity of Linux and the Open Source community is a call for changing the status quo from a Microsoft dominated software world.

The popularity of programs like Kazaa and Napster in the past were a call for change in the Music industries business model.

The threat of patent litigation and a unsubstantiated cry for royalties based on these undisclosed patent violations should be a cry for change in the patent law.

Likewise, the RIAA's rampant suing of average people should of been a call for change to the copyright law.

In a Democracy, when so many people act together, it should be viewed as a call for action and change. It was not, and our legislature let us down by not acting properly on copyright law then. (Instead, they gave us the horribly restrictive DMCA) They should act now to introduce law that is desirable to the massive numbers of people seeking change. They should not to the lobbyists that speak only out of special interests and with their wallets to stifle change and public desire.

I think that true innovation should be rewarded. I think that's obvious. But, I think that, in our modern era, we need to have patent law that limits the lifetime of a patent to a reasonable period of time. 20 years is far too long for a software patent. I think 2 years should be the utmost max. We also need these laws to seriously protect the rights of the consumers and the hobbyists. Without this protection, we face a world where the corporations will rule with litigation and legislation and enforce, through our own tax dollars, their will upon us, the consumer.

Before then [the adoption of the United States Constitution], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.

Abraham Lincoln, Second lecture on discoveries and inventions, February 11, 1859

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.

Thomas Jefferson, quoted in letter to Isaac McPherson

In the field of industrial patents in particular we shall have seriously to examine whether the award of a monopoly privilege is really the most appropriate and effective form of reward for the kind of risk bearing which investment in scientific research involves.

F.A. von Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order

Patents are the best and most effective means of controlling competition. They occasionally give absolute command of the market, enabling their owner to name the price without regard to the cost of production... Patents are the only legal form of absolute monopoly.

Edwin J. Prindle, America By Design

If one does not know whether a system “as a whole” (in contrast to certain features of it) is good or bad, the safest “policy conclusion” is to “muddle through” – either with it, if one has long lived with it, or without it, if one has lived without it... If we did not have a patent system, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge of its economic consequences, to recommend instituting one. But since we have had a patent system for a long time, it would be irresponsible, on the basis of our present knowledge, to recommend abolishing it. This last statement refers to a country such as the United States of America – not to a small country and not a predominantly nonindustrial country, where a different weight of argument might well suggest another conclusion...

Fritz Machlup, An Economic Review of the Patent System (U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Patents, Trademarks and Copyrights, Study No. 15), pp.79-80 (1958)