should we patent air too?. An article from News.com: America Online has quietly secured a patent that could shake up the competitive landscape for instant messaging software. Ouch. Granting such a patent - I can only imagine that the responsible official was asleep at the wheel. After all, there are almost certainly cases of "prior art" - that is, previously existing implementations. Moreover, such general patents are even dumber than patents themselves already are, since they can be applied to just about anything imaginable.
Well, eventually Billyboy, Elly or one of the Steves will probably patent the 0 and the 1 and then we'll have to pay licenses for every bit in the computer ...
[original link via Abort, Retry, Fail?]
Found at Abort, Retry, Fail?.
Bundestag says goodbye to the Committee for Internet Policy - well great, the only place in the Bundestag that dealt directly with the net and the net community and didn't try to regulate the net with various special interests (like the alternatives proposed by the Union in the article) is being shut down. Idiotic. But of course, the committee opposed the Union's clientele a bit too often, something like that has to be prevented at all costs.
Update: It looks like the committee is getting a reprieve and can continue to exist for now.
Found at heise online news.
Relief in the Union - Regret in the SPD - whether I want anything to do with the identity of Germany, which according to Stoiber is preserved by the rejection of the immigration law, I seriously doubt. The rejected form is already far too strict for me. But what one really ought to explain to the Union is this: the court did not judge the law or reject the matter, but rather the circus act in the Bundesrat. And a Brandenburg Union politician had no small part in that either. Found at tagesschau on the internet.