Saturday, May 22, 2004

Graffiti Doesn't Infringe -- 9:37 am CST, Update by A.T. Hun

After seven long years, a court finally decided that Palm's Graffiti text-entry system for its PDAs did not infringe on Xerox's patent after all because prior art made it invalid. A palmOne press release has all the details. I just wonder how long it's going to be before they release some mechanism for their newer PDAs to use the original Graffiti again. Thanks Slashdot.

In a related story, some time ago I started trying TealScript on my Tungsten E. TealScript is quite a bit like the original Graffiti by default. It also allows you to customize your own strokes. The theory is good, but in practice . . . I went back to Graffiti 2. TealScript really slowed down my system and my accuracy actually dropped substantially. If there were some official way to retrofit my PDA to use Graffiti 1 or 2, I'd try it (yes, I know there is a hack to get Graffiti 1 working on newer PDAs). The main thing I like about Graffiti 2 is that you can create the most common punctuation with a single stroke. Unfortunately, the less common punctuation requires at least three strokes.

Friday, May 21, 2004

More from Tanenbaum -- 9:44 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Andy Tanenbaum adds more information to his previous comments (story) about the Ken Brown book which attempts to discredit Linus Torvalds. The link above is a Slashdot mirror of the article, here is the original source. He even states that Brown made no attempt to contact Torvalds about the book at all. Just when you think they whole thing couldn't get stinkier . . . I can't wait until the book actually is released so Tanenbaum and others can rip it to shreds.

Cool -- 9:24 pm CST, Update by J.t.Qbe

The Science Channel has some cool marathon blocks this weekend. Particularly noteworthy is "The Secret Life of Machines", which is a really cool look at the way common devices work: TV, VCR, refrigerator, fax machine, etc. It's a very fun show. They're not running every episode, but I'm going to tape as many as they do show.

KIntersect Crash Fixed? -- 6:50 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Many people are reporting that they are no longer getting the KIntersect crash (story) in Unreal Tournament 2004 in Linux using the 3204 final patch (story). It took a long time to find, but it seems like this one may be squashed for good. I certainly hope so.

Update! The bug has officially been marked resolved-fixed. Huzzah!

In a related story, decals and dynamic lights are working in Linux now too. The render-to-texture stuff isn't working yet, so you still won't see your name on a Hellbender license plate. That's minor.

IBM Asks for Partial Summary Judgement -- 12:30 am CST, Update by The Master

You can read all about it here, but the gist of the matter is IBM is asking for immediate summary judgement on SCO's copyright infringement points in their lawsuit. IBM does an incredible job of pointing out just how manipulative SCO has been of the whole situation: filing lawsuits, then telling every judge that their case must pend based on another case in an infinite loop. Nice job, IBM.

A.T. Hun comments: In a related story, SCO's stock is hovering around its 52-week low.

Bleh -- 12:06 am CST, Update by The Master

Wow, that was fun. I just got my network running again, after having completely gutting our room in a rearrangement. Thankfully I was able to get everything back up and running after about an hour. Wheee.

Past Two Days' News

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