I wouldn't call the results of this study so surprising as the Slashdot story describes. The biggest and most destructive patent exploitations that I remember were all done by big and formerly respectable companies, from Unisys and the Santa Cruz Operation in the old days to Apple today. Of course most of the patents were just stupid - I mean gif? Linux? Rectangle? Come on! Don't even remind me the "click" or "exclusive or" patents. But the harm to the industry is big in my opinion and the much more important conclusion that can be drawn from this research is not who is doing the harm, but to whom the harm is done, and for what reason. We have to answer one question: Do the patent system still stimulate innovation? Because if it doesn't then it is useless and should remain a relict of the past that may have been needed at some point but would never be used again, like slavery.

Microsoft was helping to oppress innocent people by a totalitarian regime to get a chance to sabotage the Free Software movement? Wow. Just wow. This is low. Even for Microsoft. Is there anything that the richest man in the world won't do to get even richer? With all of that money he should be dating supermodels in Paris for the rest of his life but no, he prefers to help putting heroic individuals in jail for having guts to say what they think so that he could sell more of his precious licenses! How do such bastards sleep at night is completely beyond me. I won't repeat what I have already said about corporations that help to maintain dictatorships all over the world. I will only add that sabotaging the Free Software movement adds insult to the injury. We should all be outraged and never buy anything from Microsoft ever again. I call for a boycott of Microsoft until they explain themselves and repair the harm.

Well, according to Wikipedia, HP's Office of Strategy and Technology has four main functions: (1) steering the company's $3.6 billion research and development investment, (2) fostering the development of the company's global technical community, (3) leading the company's strategy and corporate development efforts, and (4) performing worldwide corporate marketing activities. Under this office is HP Labs, the research arm of HP. Founded in 1966, HP Labs's function is to deliver new technologies and to create business opportunities that go beyond HP's current strategies. An example of recent HP Lab technology includes the Memory spot chip. HP IdeaLab further provides a web forum on early-state innovations to encourage open feedback from consumers and the development community.

It is hard to say at this point what could it mean to WebOS but I've heard rumors about some experiments with Android at HP. Some speculate that HP is thinking about making the WebOS just a thin UI layer on top of Android, just like Mac OS X did with UNIX. It may seem strange at first but after thinking about it for a while it could be the only way that HP could survive in the not so distant future after the Apple-Google war is over and still have original software advantage without the hassle to develop and maintain the entire operating system stack.

In other news, Verisign is trying to get non-stupid companies to pay to prevent their brands from being registered as company-is-stupid.com sites. After all, what serious book publisher or university, for example, would want to have sites such as amazon-is-stupid.com or mit-is-stupid.com floating around the Internet?

I have written many times about it (here and here in just the last week) and usually my messages get ignored for some reason but the point is that it shouldn't be surprising at all that intelligence agencies are using false certificates just like I am not surprised that they are using false passports. This is the way such agencies work. They have been doing this since the Gutenberg and there is no reason they should stop now. If you don't like it then just use hard-coded certificates for the most important sites that you use and get over it.

Just another reason to not use the .uk domain at all - the other one being that it should be .gb by ISO standard. Fortunately everyone can use the .com domain which quite frankly is the only professionally looking domain for any company that ever plans to do any business worldwide.

Is this really new to anyone who hasn't lived in the cage for the last 80 years? This business model is a de facto standard since Phil Taylor Farnsworth invented the tele. Nothing to be upset about. You don't have to use Google if you don't want to. Besides, I'd rather be a product of a company that does no evil than a client of some other companies that do.

I clicked the link and here's what I got: "Server Error 500 - An unexpected error seems to have occurred. Why not try refreshing your page? Or you can contact us if the problem persists." with a cute parallax scrolling animation of GitHub logo falling down the Grand Canion. I've never seen 500 error on GitHub before.

Linus writes: "since I did a github account for my divelog thing, why not see how well it holds up to me just putting my whole kernel repo there too?"

Why not? Because you just broke GitHub! That's why!

And now let's all remain silent while the instant, distributed, cpu-intensive, encrypted https slashdotting of GitHub starts in 3... 2... 1...

I wrote: This is the only place where the word "security" is used in the article. Of course it should be: This is not the only place where the word "security" is used in the article. It is interesting to search for "security" only to see lots of promises and no real content. Here are some direct quotes from the article:

meets the growing security concerns convincingly ... contemporary security benefits ... security is a big issue ... dispel those remaining security doubts ... rising clamor of a weak security model ... extinguish such doubts of security ... security issues are set to be dispelled ... security advantages would be available ... more security protection than ever ... enhanced security ... would help stop invalid manipulation of the site to add to the security concern of the users globally ... updated for security purposes ... deal with the constantly growing security issues ... security is the foremost issue that would be solved

Yes yes, I get it. Security. Right.

"The newest version meets the growing security concerns convincingly"

Convincingly to whom? This is the only place where the word "security" is used in the article. Sorry, but I am not convinced until I see a good evidence that the community of PHP content management systems has finally started to take our security concerns seriously. Will Joomla stop being the laughing stock on DEFCON? This is what I am interested in, not just words that don't seem particularly convincing to anyone experienced in Web security.

Can't they just wait to learn more about what's in a store display window till the store is open? I feel sorry for them. It is called oniomania and I don't really think that we should use technology to worsen the suffering of people who are seriously addicted and need our help instead of blatant exploitation of their condition.

The correct order should be:

1. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by H.Abelson and G.Sussman with J.Sussman
2. Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics (sic!) by G.Sussman and J.Wisdom with M.Mayer
3. Operating Systems Design and Implementation by A.Tanenbaum and A.Woodhull
4. Modern Operating Systems by A.Tanenbaum
5. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 1 by D.Knuth
6. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 2 by D.Knuth
7. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 3 by D.Knuth
8. The Art of Computer Programming Volume 4 by D.Knuth

I am sure that The Art of Computer Programming Volume 5 by D.Knuth will be next on the list. I have seriously been counting the years to the estimated 2020.

I only regret that Gerry Sussman hasn't written more books and hasn't recorded more talks. I will buy everything he writes and I will listen to everything he says. Please, Gerry! If you read this then please drop everything you do and just start talking to the camera. I have watched your every talk and lecture that I could possibly find on the Internet many times - from the 1986 lectures at MIT to your lecture on mechanical watches. I seriously believe that everything you say should be recorded for future generations. I don't know anyone else who can talk about anything at all and I listen breathlessly like I was hypnotized. I'm sure that many people here could say the same. Let this be an open letter to Gerald Jay Sussman: Please write more books and please record more lectures for the sake of the future of computer science. And thank you for your outstanding contribution that you have made so far. It is something that has shaped literally generations of passionate enthusiasts of programming. Thank you.