I had always understood patents to be about the mechanism of the device, not it's effect. E.g., a particular mouse trap design, not the idea of catching mice.

But what do I know? Squeak blogger Torsten turned me on to this article about some courtroom pirates suing Apple over the User Interface in their latest operating system release. The original patent was for an old Xerox UI implemented in Interlisp-D, and now owned by a holding company.

Apple's Tiger operating system isn't implemented in Lisp. Do you suppose the lawyers are basing their argument on Greenspun's Tenth Rule?

How will it change the world to give millions of children low-cost computers and open source software? The first real effect is to provoke a response from Microsoft.

Initially Wintel executives dismissed and ridiculed the OLPC project. But now Microsoft is employing the infamous embrace-and-destroy practice that it has always used to subdue competition.

People are already reporting that Microsoft now plans to give away crippled versions of their software for as little as $3 a copy. But take a look at the real deal. Professional edition can be had for a dollar. Most importantly, the program offers cheap used junk Wintel computers, with Microsoft paying half the cost. In order to place their software in the world's hands, they intend to undercut the complete OLPC package cost by roughly half. Never mind that the crap boxes consume massive amounts of unavailable power, require massive wired infrastructure through the rainforests, are full of toxins, not hardened against sand and kid use, etc. And of course, the software is the same crap they foist on the rest of us.

Clever, no?

This funny video features a scribe who is used to dealing with scrolls. He contacts the help desk to deal with the new “book” technology.

My colleagues at the office see it as a send-up of users. I'm thinking it's making fun of programmers...

A Japanese sex club advertisement robot. What could I possibly comment further...?

I've been getting a lot of “getting started as newbie developers” questions lately. I know I've got to get this cleaned up, but better to share what I've got as is... [Read More!]

Sometimes someone tickles a bug, and you find you cannot connect to the Collaborative at all. I that happens, send mail to croquetcollaborative at charter dot net and we'll reset it.

But even when things are working, it can often take as much as three or four minutes to connect. Here's why.
[Read More!]

There's a lot of work being done on so-called 3D desktops. I think it's worth getting some finer-grained terminology. There's 1-, 2-, and 3-D, and the fractional 2.25-D and 2.5-D. And there's the non-spatial dimensions T-D, G-D, A-D, C-D and O-D. [Read More!]