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News roundup
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004 08:56 pmI won't comment on the Butler Report, since I'm sure just about all the other Brits will writing about it. So here is my review of the news which it may have eclipsed.
The breaking news is, of course, that the Senate has voted against the amendment to ban gay marriage. (Interestingly, it's Kerry and Co. who, while claiming to be against gay marriage, are defending states' rights.) The upshot is that gay couples will now enjoy the same inviolable right to hire expensive divorce lawyers and screw each other for alimony. While I'm all for gay rights, I have to point out that one sure-fire way of avoiding marriage - being openly and exclusively homosexual - has now bit the dust. It's almost enough to make Quentin Crisp rise from the grave, crying "I warned you!" This is the man who wrote "living with another person is always difficult, unless it's someone you think you love. Then it's impossible."
On to the techie news. As the EU gets ready to debate software patents again, we learn that Microsoft have been granted a patent on human skin. Well, not skin as such, just the idea that skin conductivity could be used to transmit information between wearable electronic devices. Note that they haven't patented a device that can actually do this, they just thought it would be a nice idea. (IBM also thought it was pretty neat, and showed that it could be done some years ago.)If that strikes you as rather speculative basis for establishing a monopoly (which is what a patent grants you, albeit temporarily - if twenty years strikes you as "temporary"), consider that Amazon hold the exclusive right to e-mail the intended recipient of a gift order to find out their snail mail address. That's right. Any company who e-mails someone to ask where they live should pay Amazon for the privilege or get a good lawyer.
Meanwhile, Microsoft have finally got round to issuing a patch to fix seven vulnerabilities, including the notorious Windows Shell vulnerability, which allows an intruder to ... well do pretty much what they want. Microsoft rated this gaping hole in their security as "important" rather than "critical" because, to quote ZDNet, "it would require 'significant user interaction' to work. This means that a user would need to open an e-mail attachment, or download a file from a malicious Web site." And we all know computer users never do silly things like that, do they? Viruses exploiting the security hole are expected within a week, which is plenty of time to install Linux on your computer.
Steve Ballmer sounds, by the standards of a Microsoft CEO, chastened: "We've made, I think, at least a year or more of progress on security in the last year, we're not perfect. We're not where we need to be." I did say "by the standards of a Microsoft CEO." Saying that Microsoft is not where they need to be is like saying that Norway is not close to New Zealand. I will pass over the semantic implications of making more than a year of progress in one year.
In other news, my LiveJournal, if printed in full, would come to 619 densely-typed A4 pages, which is one good reason why it will never be printed in full (the current record is over seven thousand pages). And I thought I would never have the stamina to write a novel - hell, in the time I've spent on LJ, I could have written an epic fantasy trilogy!
The breaking news is, of course, that the Senate has voted against the amendment to ban gay marriage. (Interestingly, it's Kerry and Co. who, while claiming to be against gay marriage, are defending states' rights.) The upshot is that gay couples will now enjoy the same inviolable right to hire expensive divorce lawyers and screw each other for alimony. While I'm all for gay rights, I have to point out that one sure-fire way of avoiding marriage - being openly and exclusively homosexual - has now bit the dust. It's almost enough to make Quentin Crisp rise from the grave, crying "I warned you!" This is the man who wrote "living with another person is always difficult, unless it's someone you think you love. Then it's impossible."
On to the techie news. As the EU gets ready to debate software patents again, we learn that Microsoft have been granted a patent on human skin. Well, not skin as such, just the idea that skin conductivity could be used to transmit information between wearable electronic devices. Note that they haven't patented a device that can actually do this, they just thought it would be a nice idea. (IBM also thought it was pretty neat, and showed that it could be done some years ago.)If that strikes you as rather speculative basis for establishing a monopoly (which is what a patent grants you, albeit temporarily - if twenty years strikes you as "temporary"), consider that Amazon hold the exclusive right to e-mail the intended recipient of a gift order to find out their snail mail address. That's right. Any company who e-mails someone to ask where they live should pay Amazon for the privilege or get a good lawyer.
Meanwhile, Microsoft have finally got round to issuing a patch to fix seven vulnerabilities, including the notorious Windows Shell vulnerability, which allows an intruder to ... well do pretty much what they want. Microsoft rated this gaping hole in their security as "important" rather than "critical" because, to quote ZDNet, "it would require 'significant user interaction' to work. This means that a user would need to open an e-mail attachment, or download a file from a malicious Web site." And we all know computer users never do silly things like that, do they? Viruses exploiting the security hole are expected within a week, which is plenty of time to install Linux on your computer.
Steve Ballmer sounds, by the standards of a Microsoft CEO, chastened: "We've made, I think, at least a year or more of progress on security in the last year, we're not perfect. We're not where we need to be." I did say "by the standards of a Microsoft CEO." Saying that Microsoft is not where they need to be is like saying that Norway is not close to New Zealand. I will pass over the semantic implications of making more than a year of progress in one year.
In other news, my LiveJournal, if printed in full, would come to 619 densely-typed A4 pages, which is one good reason why it will never be printed in full (the current record is over seven thousand pages). And I thought I would never have the stamina to write a novel - hell, in the time I've spent on LJ, I could have written an epic fantasy trilogy!
