Thanks to Amanda, here is a really nice page describing the basis of patents and the real meaning of "ordinary skill in the art." The article goes over a patent on a solution to triangular matrices and one of the compression-related patents (leading to the Stacker case). In the end …

An article from Gnutella News summarizes Apple's meeting with independent music producers on Thursday. Lots of good information about the current state of the service and about how it is set up. Here are the points I found most interesting: 6-7 million copies of iTunes currently in use (presumedly iTunes …

If you, like I, have been wondering why some files that are clearly disk images download from Apple and leave only an application in their place, here is the answer: Internet Enabled Disk Images (or IDI's). If Then Software has released a tool to enable the bits that make IDI's …

CNET is carrying an interview with Lawrence Lessig (noted copyright and internet privacy expert from Stanford University). The interview was brought on by the petition started earlier this week (and featured here on Tuesday) which Lessig has backed. The interview contains some nice quotes, including "Before the Internet, long copyright …

According to an article on CNET, file sharing company Altnet may begin suing competitors for "violating" it's recently-licensed patent for finding identical files based on a hash of their contents. This may eventually win the prize for stupidest patent when such a prize is given, considering the whole purpose of …

Three french cellular companies have agreed to allow roaming on their WiFi networks throughout France, according to this article from IDG Hong Kong. The move is not too surprising considering the European GSM philosophy of having everybody roam on everybody else's network for reasonable prices. Unlike AT&T in the …

A settlement between Microsoft and the state of California has been changed to avoid complaints by Apple Computer. According to this article in The Detroit News, Microsoft has dropped the proposed provision that would require that much of the money be spent on Microsoft products. Apple had rightly claimed that …

This is just an off-the-wall thought on my part. But, with Cable and Wireless getting out of the US, it makes me wonder if they're going to ask MCI to take their internet services business off of their hands. You remember, the one that MCI was forced to sell to …

Local Fairfax company PromiseMark was acquired this past week, according to an article in the Washington Post. They were acquired by a credit monitoring firm and the acquirers are moving the company (sans the CEO) to California. I first met these guys when I was at Inter.net and they …

Wired has a recap this morning of a variety of new ways to restore the internet iTunes sharing capabilities to your Macintosh. Of course, they don't point out that Apple's DRM still works correctly when this is used over the internet, so the only files that are completely shared outside …

Last year, I found an article somewhere that pointed to FreeColorPrinters.com, a site where you could go to get a "free" color printer. Being one to always be skeptical of getting anything for free, I checked it out to find out what the real deal was. Much to my …

Over the last few weeks, I've been trying to balance between providing pointers to interesting information and editorial content. I've received some complaints that there are too many story references, and not as much original content and editorial about the stories on the Pages as there used to be. So …

An article from CNET reports that Sun is preparing a huge marketing blitz (advertising and awareness-raising badging) for its Java technology. But, this leaves me wondering if the folks at Sun are still missing the point. Comments made in the press release indicate that they will be liberalizing the license …

According to an article on CNET, SCO announced Thursday that it has an amendment to the contract with Novell that grants them the copyrights to most of what they need to prosecute their case against IBM and the Linux community. Although this bolsters the rationale for SCO's right to actually …

An article on LinuxJournal includes a copy of the NDA required by SCO of anyone who wants to look into their claims about trade secret/patent/copyright infringement vis-a-vis Linux. It's not surprising to me that this NDA is as rock solid as it appears to be. In particular, they …

It looks like there will be a third player in the Macintosh OS X Unix tool installation game soon. Gentoo (open-source creators of Gentoo Linux) is bringing their Portage software configuration and installation platform to OS X. For Gentoo, it will be their first foray off of the Linux platform …

A number of articles this morning, including this one from BBC News talk about Fast TCP. Unfortunately, the examples that each of them give, about TCP breaking transmissions up into 1500-byte morsels, sending one packet and waiting for an acknowledgment before sending the second one are patently untrue, so what …

Local non-profit radio stations at colleges and the like are breathing a sigh of relief if they either have or want to provide web simulcast. According to an article from Wired, the RIAA reached an agreement with the stations this weekend that will allow them to broadcast an average of …

Marking a sad day, Verizon will hand over the names requested by RIAA members according to an article from CNET. Although Verizon will continue the fight in court over the legality of the subpoena, which through the DMCA was not required to go through a court, the DC appeals court …

According to this article from CNET, SCO has reopened their German web site, with content modified to comply with the court order there.