13. August, 2003 - some days I hate computers
- Jury Rules Against Microsoft in Patent Case ordering MS to pay $521 million to a guy holding a patent on a system allowing a user of a browser program on a computer connected to an open distributed hypermedia system to access and execute an embedded program object. It probably applies to other browsers, but the guy sued Microsoft because they have the most money. Okay, so maybe the idea of embedding a crapplet in a web-page is patentable. Maybe Doyle was even first to think of it (though some would disagree). And if he did, he probably deserves to get some money for it, but the idea of client-server applications that are distributed via the web seems to me to have been around since before 1998. Heck, Java was around in 1995, and didn’t that have provisions for an applet to talk to the server? And a buck-and-a-half for each copy of windows that’s been sold? It’s almost enough to make a guy feel sorry for Microsoft.
- Fast Spreading Worm Attacks Microsoft Windows, except it’s not really that fast-spreading, and it’s crashing machines because of bugs in the worm. More about how it affects Mac networks and why expecting people to patch their own machines doesn’t work and finally some information from CERT. If the folks writing the worm had gotten it right, there’s a good chance most people running Windows wouldn’t have even noticed it until next Saturday, when the worm started its denial of service attack on windowsupdate.com. As for the companies hit by it, there were an awful lot of them that weren’t sending email or serving up web pages the past couple days. I suspect most of them were running Microsoft servers. I wonder how a couple days of downtime compares in cost to setting up a strategy so this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. I also wonder how many places will follow through on the plans they make in the next couple days. I’d bet on it being a pretty small number.
- Maybe there’s something to this Trustworthy Computing noise after all. After all, if it’s getting Microsoft to security audit all their code, that’s a good thing, right? Even if it is about seven years after some other folks decided that was a good idea.
- Says here that cellphone carriers are Dreading November 24th and hustling to keep customers happy. Based on my recent experiences with T-Mobile, I haven’t seen any evidence of that (though I’ve read of evidence to the contrary). Then again, after about six months of using my hiptop a lot, it’s spent most of the summer sitting at home when I go out unless I know ahead of time I’m going to need to make a phone call. I think with the next phone, I’ll go back to the smallest voice-only phone I can find that offers a decent plan. I’d probably just dump the phone entirely if it were still possible to find a payphone, but they’re disappearing as more people carry cell phones.
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Wed, 13 Aug 2003 00:04:49.