Giants beat Patriots

Hated to see New York beat the Pats, but was glad the Pats did not end up with a perfect season. That record belongs to the 1972 Miami Dolphins. Brady seemed to be out of sync for this game and the defensive line could not stop the Giants. Personally, this was the most uninteresting game I have ever watched. I don't really see the Giants starting any kind of dynasty, or NE going downhill. Next season will be a lot more interesting.

Microsoft

Whats up with Microsoft's updates? I use XP for games, but make sure to keep it updated for the latest security patches, with it being a "swiss cheese" OS. After the last update my start page will come up with no icons, and no taskbar. Have to do a reboot. BSOD's are more common, and I get a message that windows explorer has encountered a problem and must close. Never had any of these problems before the last update. Computer is about 6 months old and does get a lot of use, but I could run 98SE for about a year before doing a format and re-install. Looks like I may have to do it with XP after 6 months. start up and shut down have slowed to a crawl and a lot of applications take a long time to open. My Linux partition is the same age and it is still as fast as the day it was installed. Of course I realize we are comparing apples and oranges here, a quality OS against a Microsoft product.

Dallas Cowboys VS NY Giants

Well, Dallas done it again! Dallas came to play and the Giants came to win. Offensive line could not protect Romo and the receiver's couldn't hold onto the ball. The one bright spot was Marion Barber,s running the ball. Pitiful performance by a team with a 13 and 3 record, and with opportunities to win the game.

VISTA is not an option.

Being a Linux user for 6 years, I was curious about VISTA. I signed up as an official tester for RC1 and RC2. My hardware consisted of an Epyx motherboard, 512 meg of DDR memory, AMD Athlon XP 2000 processor, Linksys NIC card, Sound Blaster audio board, NVIDIA FX 5200, 256 meg video card, Iomega 100 ZIP drive, 1.44 floppy, and a 80gig Western Digital IDE hard drive. I ran the tester to see if I met all the requirements of the OS. It said I could run any version, which turned out to be false. RC1 and RC2 failed to detect my NIC card, sound board, ZIP drive and my USB ports. I ran my Linksys disk and installed the driver for XP, and it worked. Got on the internet and started looking for drivers on the manufacturer's web sites. No one had drivers ready yet and most were not sure when they would be ready. Not a very good start for what is supposed to be the latest and greatest. I tried out all the apps and programs that came with the download and was very displeased with the speed. Very sluggish and unresponsive. Boot up time was around 2 minutes. There was no way I was going to downgrade from Linux to VISTA.
It has been a year now and Microsoft says VISTA is being adopted faster than XP was. But, in the real world people are buying new computers, preloaded with VISTA( you have no choice on branded units), removing VISTA and loading XP. Companies are not upgrading as fast as Redmond thinks, with new hardware requirements, increased license fees, training costs, and memory upgrades. There is no way I am going to downgrade from Linux to VISTA.
My Linux distribution, PCLinuxOS, is faster, more secure, needs less memory, is easier to install, and does everything VISTA does except get viruses, adware, malware, and trojans. The 3D desktop makes VISTA's aero look lame and only requires 32meg of video memory. Plus I am not tied down to the whims of the vendor, nor can they access my machine at will. Last, but not least, did I mention that it is all free?

Time Warner Cable

If are connected to the internet with TWC, you had better get used to poor service, no help, and intermittent connections. Mine has been interrupted 3 times today and several times yesterday. I'm rebooting my modem, router and Vonage telephone appliance at least once a week and sometimes several times a day. Downloads are lost and communication with the company is useless. They give all kinds of excuses as to the reason service is dis-connected and all of it is your fault, not theirs. I had Comcast before and never had a problem. Go to this site to read what other people have to say. Absolutely the worst company I have ever dealt with, in my 50 years of adulthood.

M$ protection racket

The following was written by Mr. Vaughn-Nichols.

Steve Ballmer, the Sopranos and the protection racket.
I was walking down the street when a limo pulled up beside me and Big Steve Ballmer emerged. "I need to talk to you Vaughan-Nichols," he said, as two large men in expensive, but badly fitting suits, followed him out. ADVERTISEMENT "Hey, anything the Redmond Mafia wants to say to me, they can call me about. You know the number." "Listen to me," Ballmer said. "The only reason I'm doing this is because you're well-known. If it were anybody else, they would've gotten this intervention through the back of their head. Capiche?" I sighed. "OK, speak your piece." "Why are you making so much trouble about me talking about how open source and Linux owes us money?" "Because they don't, Tony. Er, I mean, Steve. What you're doing is trying to set up an extortion racket." "Oh, yeah? Who knows more about extortion, me or you?" In this case, I think it's me. Microsoft isn't just spreading FUD—albeit they're doing that as well. The explicit message is that Linux companies owe money to Microsoft because of patent violations. The only problem is that even when Ballmer first started making these claims in 2004, the only authority he has every cited for his claims said Ballmer had gotten it all wrong. Every time Ballmer makes these increasingly vague claims—this makes the fourth go-around in the last four years by my count—open source and legal experts jump all over him. He ignores them and life continues. To read more about Ballmer's patent threats against Linux and open source, click here. Ballmer is sending two other hidden messages though. Mark Shuttleworth, CEO of Canonical, Ubuntu's corporate Linux backer, pointed them out to me in a recent conversation. The first is that there's something unsavory about Linux and open source. Ballmer starts his accusations against Linux with the assumption that everyone agrees with him that there's something illegal going on with Linux. He implies, without any proof at all, that the patents, or whatever he's talking about that day, are only the tip of the open-source IP (intellectual property) iceberg. Never mind that Microsoft refuses to ever give a specific example, or that after years of claims SCO has completely failed to show any evidence that Linux has stolen any copyrighted material from Linux. Ballmer keeps talking as if there's something dirty in Linux's closet. This connects directly with Ballmer's other unquestioned assumption: that there is no innovation or creation in open source. If you argue with Ballmer on his grounds, you must also assume that open source is just a way of copying the ideas of proprietary developers. What nonsense! Just look at the name "open" source. It's all there. I can look at it. You can look it. It there's something illegal in the code, I think it'd be pretty easy to point it out, don't you? As for new ideas, open source is the new idea of the 21st century. After decades of thinking that only way software can be valuable is if it's hidden and proprietary, open source has shown that you can create new things faster and better. It's an idea that's so radical people are still trying to get their heads around the notion that you can make money by giving something away. Nevertheless, we must continue to challenge Ballmer on both his explicit and implicit attacks on Linux and open source. If we don't, we end up in a situation where his arguments that Linux and open-source software buyers should pay protection, excuse me, buy a Microsoft patent covenant begin to sound like the sensible, prudent thing to do. It's not. "So, with all due respect Steve, until you're willing to start talking sense, and stop making empty threats, I won't pay. I know too much about extortion." Check out eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis.

It appears as though the first patent suit against Linux — targeting Red Hat and Novell — is now official. According to Groklaw’s Pamela Jones:

IP Innovation LLC has just filed a patent infringement claim against Red Hat and Novell. It was filed October 9, case no. 2:2007cv00447, IP Innovation, LLC et al v. Red Hat Inc. et al, in Texas. Where else? The patent troll magnet state…… [this is] The first ever patent infringement litigation involving Linux. Here’s the patent, for those who can look at it without risk. If in doubt, don’t. Here’s the complaint [PDF]….The plaintiff is asking for an injunction, along with damages.

Jones goes on to cite some relevant points of the complaint but then, like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, unearths a potential connection to Microsoft. According to a story posted by Patent Troll Tracker well before this lawsuit turned up, IP Innovation LLC is a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation which the site classifies as a patent troll. This past July Acacia hired Jonathan Taub away from his job as Director, Strategic Alliances for the Mobile and Embedded Devices (MED) division at Microsoft and then, just last week, it hired Brad Brunell away from his job at Microsoft where, among other jobs, he served as General Manager, Intellectual Property Licensing.

The blogosphere is likely to have a field day with this connection and I suspect that dumpsters will be dived in hopes of finding a less tenuous connection to Microsoft. The timing of the suit seems rather serendipitous given both the timing of Brunell’s move as well as the threats that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer issued last week — ones that specifically mentioned patents (vs. the other form of intellectual property; copyrights). Even so,

Is there a connection? Well, there’s no smoking gun at this point. And if there was such a connection, you can’t help but wonder why Novell would be named in the suit since Microsoft and Novell are now working together to better integrate Windows with Novell’s Suse Linux and the arrangement includes patent protection for Novell. So, you’ll have to judge for yourself what’s going on here.

This is from David Berlind, writing for ZDNET.