Friday, February 21, 2003

Freelancer Demo Released . . . Sort Of -- 3:29 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Microsoft and Digital Anvil have released a demo of their much-anticipated space sim Freelancer. Unfortunately, you need to be a FilePlanet subscriber (not just registered) to download it. The Lancers Reactor is reporting that the demo will be available for us plebians on Monday. From the comments I've read so far, this move is earning intense hatred for FilePlanet.

M$ SQL Customers Face License Fees? -- 9:29 am CST, Update by The Master

There's a story up over on The Register discussing the possibility of royalty payments from Microsoft customers using Microsoft SQL Server to a company that Microsoft licensed patents from. Here's an ugly case of patent law rearing it's ugly head.

So, when are all of these stupid software patent laws going to finally get shot down?

J.t.Qbe comments: About the same time all the stupid tort laws get shot down. It's getting ridiculous. In my book, SCO's tinking with the idea of trying to enforce patents on Unix is about a ridiculous as it gets. So far. Do patent claims finally have to kill the computer industry completely before something is changed?

The Master comments: Most of the stuff surrounding the SCO issue has to do with people putting OpenServer libraries on Linux so they can run OpenServer software. I can see the complaint in that. But I have heard they're talking about other parts of their patent portfolio, which makes for a completely different story. On patents (quoting Michael Abrash): "The idea of software patents is precisely that eventually eveyone will own parts of our communal knowledge base, and that programming will become in large part a process of properly identifying and compensating each and every owner of the techniques you use. All I can say is that if we do go down that path, I guarentee that it will be a poorer profession for all of us--except the patent attorneys, I guess."

A.T. Hun comments: Actually, M$ knew what they were getting into. Either a) somebody screwed up royally, or b) they lied through their teeth. I suppose people could always move to MySQL :). At any rate, this case will be moot. Microsoft will either tie this up in court forever or use some of their vast supplies of cash to buy the company outright.

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

Mandrake 9.1 RC1 Released -- 6:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

MandrakeSoft has posted ISOs for Mandrake 9.1 Release Candidate 1 to their FTP servers. If you're feeling adventurous, download it and help hammer out the remaining bugs. I know I'll be upgrading as soon as 9.1 final comes out.

No Old News

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