CNET News.com –
[Quote] Patent creates IM wrinkle: “America Online quietly secures a patent that could shake up the competitive landscape for instant messaging software.” [Quote]
If AOL ever does decide to go after other IM networks, well – that would not be a good thing.
Would a Unix chat system, or (IRC even?) count as prior art?
Wil Wheaton and I have something in common: we’re both blue-haired freaks
What a copy-cat. 😛
———-
The images may not be there for long – looks like they’re sucking his bandwidth…
my wife and I are out doing some christmas shopping – in the rain.
There is a new shopping center in Emeryville that we decided to check out. We just ducked into an Apple Store to get out of the rain for a bit. Just thought I’d hop on one of the iLamps and see if it had net access. It does. 🙂
(Yes, I am a geek, and a g-blog addict.)
I want one of these G4’s that are sitting next to the iMacs…
Anyway – back out into the weather we go!
I finally figured out why I’ve been so edgy since lunch.
The HVAC system in my part of the building is acting up again.
It used to buzz or whine in the mornings for a couple of minutes and for much longer at night. I’ve literally been driven out of the office at 4:45 a couple of time because the niose was giving me a headache. Our facilities people finally figured out what the problem was, and fixed it. (well – “MacGyvered” it anyway…)
Right now its not whining, but it is clicking – sounds like a pc doing some heavy HD writing over in the corner. (I thought that’s what it was at first, untill I walked over and saw that the machines over there are all powered down.) I really noticed it about 30 min ago – it probably took a while for the noise to register as unusual – I bet it’s been clicking away since at least noon.
The noise is driving me batty – music doesn’t seem to mask it, and I don’t have any headphones here. 🙁
I just read the FAQ for the current Phoenix release
Specifically – check out item 1:
[Quote]
1. What can I do to help?We need all the distribution we can get. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell your coworkers. If you’re a student, get it distributed at your college. Submit a story to Slashdot and other news sites about the release. Make some noise on your blog. Spread the word!
[Quote]
This entry takes care of that. What made me laugh were items 14 and 15:
[Quote]
14. I kept hearing that you were changing the name from Phoenix to something else. What happened?That was just a giant publicity stunt. We’ve observed that in the past, the open-source community has instinctively favored David when big corporations complain of trademark infringement. We wanted to cash in on this sympathy by asking the community to send us money to fight the legal battle (obviously we’d really spend it on cool stuff), but with all the taxing issues and whatnot we decided to can the idea.
15. Uhhhh…really?
No, not really. This isn’t like an action flick where the evil madman reveals the intricacies of his plans to hostages and then leaves them alone with a bomb set to detonate in like 10 hours. When we’re ripping you off, we won’t explain how in the FAQ. The truth is that we’d already had this 0.5 released planned for awhile, so it was okay to release under the Phoenix name. But under no circumstances will any future release be called Phoenix.
[Quote]
Gossip, I just wanted to let you know you are my friend.
🙂
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A variation of this link was sent to me by someone at work. In the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d post it here. You can personalize it by changing the first part of the url. Single names work, First/Last name combos (separated by a “.”) work. First/Middle/Last do not.
[Quote]
Greetings,W3C switched today its home page to a full CSS layout instead of the
previous table-based one. See:
http://www.w3.org/The techniques used in this layout has been documented at:
http://www.w3.org/2002/11/homepage
It is basically realized through the float property.As you may know, using CSS for horizontal layout has some important
benefits:
– respect of the HTML semantics (tables are really for tabular data)
– better accessibility
– better device scalabilityThe downside is that some non-CSS2 aware browsers do not render it as
intended; the page keeps completely readable though.The W3C Communication Team is interested in hearing comments on this
change on the publicly archived mailing-list site-comments@w3.org
[Quote]
Kinda cool
In addition to being married, having a steady job, regular bills, a home (an apartment, anyway,) and several friends who have started families, I have one more thing to add to my list of “come on, face it, you’re an adult now – NO NEVER!” list.
Today I turn 25.
I was curious to see what notable figures I share a birthday with. Here are a few that jumped out at me:
1932 Little Richard [Wayne Penniman] — Macon GA, rocker (Tutti Frutti, Lucille)
1901 Werner Heisenberg — German physicist/discovered uncertainty (Nobel 1932)
1901 Walter Elias Disney — Chicago IL, animator (Mickey Mouse)
1839 George Armstrong Custer — Major General (Union volunteers, of Little Big Horn fame)
My uncle sent me this link. Just thought I’d share:
Experiment points to new spin on storage
In an experiment that could bring the computing world closer to an advanced method of data storage, a team of scientists successfully reproduced an image that was digitally encoded and momentarily stored within a liquid crystal molecule.
Preview, Robert, Preview…
Edited on Dec 3rd 2002, 00:15 by Hooloovoo