Cygnus Systems Sues Microsoft, Google, Apple
Just when we started seeing the light at the end of the dark tunnel known as SCO vs. Novell, Cyngus Systems, Inc. seems hellbent to enforce a newly granted patent against three of the computer industry’s biggest corporations.
From an article posted at Mac World by Robert McMillan:
A small Indiana company has sued tech heavyweights Microsoft, Apple, and Google, claiming that it holds the patent on a common file preview feature used by browsers and operating systems to show users small snapshots of the files before they are opened.
Cygnus Systems sued the three companies on Wednesday saying that they infringed on its patent with products such as Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome, which allow users to view preview images of documents on the computer. Mac OS X, the iPhone and Safari also infringe, the company said in court filings. Apple uses this technology in its Finder and Cover Flow Mac OS X features, the filings state.
A quick look at Cygnus Systems’ website shows at least a strong relationship with one of those named defendants:
I guess I don’t quite understand the politics behind it, but suing a vendor which you’ve been named a partner of and for which a large part of your business is based on doesn’t sound very logical. Given the nature of the patent which the lawsuit is based on, other companies could be considered future defendants.
A more in-depth article now exists at Ars Technica.
Ubuntu Tweak
Moved to RebelZero.com
Obesessed With Mines
Lately, I’ve been obsessing over the game Mines. Very few people have never heard of the game. Those of us who enjoy Linux and the Gnome desktop environment know it as Mines (or Gnomine). Windows users know it as Minesweeper and KDE users know it as KMines. You get a grid of blocks with a number of mines hidden beneath them. You click on blocks to reveal numbers that give clues to how many mines surround that one numbered block. You then flag surrounding blocks you think may have mines beneath and you keep going until you have successfully flagged all of the mines or inadvertently click on and uncover mine. And no true player ever uses a small (beginner) or medium (intermediate) field. Go large (expert) or don’t play.
The minesweeper game itself has been re-coded and re-worked over the years to include grids of shapes other than square/rectangle. There’s also been a few incarnations of three dimensional cubes such as emMines (pictured next to this paragraph) from Eagle Mode.
My obsession is the result of not having completed a game for longer than I can remember. If I don’t lose because of miscounting proposed mines around a certain number, it’s from coming down to a group of blocks with a known number of mines left but no discernible pattern to the numbers that sufficiently describe where they might be. And I hate guessing wrong. The picture at the top of the page represents my last attempt where the last two mines needed to be guessed. They could have been in either of the two sets diagonal blocks. As usual, I lost.
Aside from trying to win, I’ve found a couple of other goals that makes this simple game a little more complicated. For instance, ones, twos, and threes are found in great quantities. Fours and fives are found sparingly. Sixes are rare and surprising to find. I have yet to see a seven or an eight. As if hoping to capture the sight of an endangered species in the wild, I look forward to the day I can print-screen the sight and share it with the world.
Another interesting aspect I found is at the beginning of each game when you’re forced to click blindly. Lots of times, you uncover just one block with an arbitrary number beneath. Having just the single number surrounded by unknowns doesn’t give you enough information to flag the surrounding mines with any confidence. Your best hope is to uncover the largest non-mined group of blocks as possible in which to start. However, I found that there are some times when you uncover a lot of single non-mined blocks before you get your large grouping or hit on a mine. A small competition of some kind to see who can uncover the most single non-mined blocks could certainly be entertaining.
Aside from my own personal goals, the international community has been watching completion times for some time now. There are such places as The Authoritative Minesweeper and Planet-Minesweeper that keep track of international rankings of the best in that field.
ZDNet: Annoying Software: A Rogues’ Gallery
Source… ZDNet.co.uk
ZDNet has chosen to highlight 10 of the most annoying pieces of software to emerge from the internet era. From Java, Flash, and RealPlayer to Windows Update, they take a stab at a well rounded collection of ideas that were great at the start but were eventually transformed into what can loosely be described as monstrosities set loose upon the masses to cause havoc and disruption across the ethereal computing plane. (I may have embellished a little with that last bit.)
Bunting Is For Baseball Or Decoration
As you may have noticed, I am a slight fan of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. And there are a few flavors of Ubuntu available depending on your needs and wants. One that has attracted my attention recently is one called Mythbuntu. It’s goal is to create an environment focused on multimedia presentation. The idea is to connect a computer to a home theater to provide music, movies, tv, slideshows, etc, with a clean and simple interface much like that of DVRs and TiVo service.
On YouTube, there’s been a few demo videos posted that showcase the abilities of Mythbuntu and the ways in which others have been tweaking the interface. One that shows a default installation of Mythbuntu is THIS one using a 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon base. My pet peeve surfaced almost immediately during playback when the narrator has decided to pronounce Mythbuntu as “Myth Bunt Too”.
Now I admit that the American male ego might be too fragile to use a word that sounds like how a child may refer to a cut or a bruise, but that is the way it was intended to be pronounced. There is a video clip of Nelson Mandela in the /usr/share/example-content directory of an Ubuntu installation which is linked to by ‘Examples’ in the home folder. YouTube has it hosted HERE. You can clearly hear how it it is pronounced.
Now it may be a word with many meanings, but it IS pronounced one way: “Ooo Boon Too”. Using simple logic, Mythbuntu would be “Myth Boon Too”. There is no bunting in Ubuntu. Let’s stay on the same page, people.
Hardy Heron and the DVD-ROM Conundrum
Moved to RebelZero.com
Designed For … Linux?
Source … Linux.com
The last Linux Foundation meeting in Austin brought representatives from Asus, Lenovo, Dell, and and HP who said they would be telling their hardware vendors to start designing their components with Linux in mind. That means supplying drivers openly with full source code, a strategy that wasn’t considered economically viable until the multi-billion dollar computer makers deemed it necessary.
During the next round of contracts between the big computer houses and OEM hardware suppliers, language will be inserted to require the OEMs to deliver Linux drivers or open APIs in which to build the drivers. One company, VIA, didn’t wait for any such encouragement. They’ve got the VIA Linux Portal web site, complete with a bug tracker and forums, through which they’re already supplying graphics drivers for use with Ubuntu and Suse.
Atheros and Broadcom, big names in Wi-Fi chip suppliers, have privately agreed to change their ways in how they support Linux. This may be due in large part to Intel’s support of Linux helping them gain more of the Wi-Fi marketshare.
If you’ve been resourceful enough to install a Linux distribution of your own and feel the “Made For Windows” badge is now out of place, look to TuxMobil for instructions on how to remove it. The best thing about removing the old Windows badge is putting a Linux badge in its place. It was one of the first “upgrades” I performed on my Eee PC after installing Ubuntu.
I Don’t Do Windows
It’s been longer than I can recall. While looking at a calendar, I couldn’t point to a date when I last used it. It’s roughly the same amount of time that’s passed since I lasted played a game off of the Steam client. I can now officially proclaim that I have kicked the Microsoft habit.
I was going to go into a whole MS vs. Linux debate with witty metaphors and sarcasm, but it was getting too long-winded. To keep it short…
I guess you need to cut through the marketing campaigns and the legal mumbo-jumbo to see that there are other alternatives out there. They might not always be better. But I can no longer justify paying big bucks for Vista, which has it’s own broken areas, when I can I use Linux everywhere for just about everything for zero dollars.
Hardy Heron Is Set Loose Into The Wild!!
As if the slow loading of ubuntu.com isn’t evidence enough, then the slowness of the update manager proves it: Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, Hardy Heron, has officially been released. I’ll wait until the weekend to initiate the upgrades. The way it looks now, it may take until the weekend if I started today!
My Computer Lost Some Marbles
Had a day last week when it seemed that (one of) my computer(s) decided it didn’t know how to work any longer. Since it seemed only the Mozilla products weren’t behaving, I thought someone broke a dependency during the last round of updates out of Ubuntu. Segmentation faults at key moments can be quite startling, but then other non-Mozilla applications began acting peculiar and forced me to investigate.
On a whim, I decided to let MemTest86 run at boot-up. Low and behold there were errors. Big, fat, red, scary memory errors. Jumping Jehosophat! After further reviewing the errors, they were appearing from a distinct range of memory where I guessed correctly in that it was only one of the two sticks that were bad. This in turn was the good news.
These sticks, like many of the top name brands these days, come with a Lifetime Warranty. It’s not a _true_ lifetime warranty as they are only good as long as the computer industry still has a use for them. Once the technology has moved far enough beyond these sticks of ram, the warranty becomes worthless. However, I am still within the warranty so that meant contacting Corsair’s tech support team through their website.
Together, we had a fun-filled six days of correspondence through the Tech Support Express system. There I enjoyed repeating myself to an unknown human somewhere else in the world who must have found it difficult to read previous entries in order to understand the full scenario. (I may have to add this to the rant category). Eventually, I was approved for an RMA to send the defective stick back to them. Here’s when the bad news came. They requested I return both sticks to ensure that I get two of the same “version” back guaranteeing dual-channel support.
Even though Corsair has graciously offered to replace both the functional and the faulty sticks for free, I can’t let this machine sit offline for the week or two that it’ll take to get the replacements. Fortunately for myself, I anticipated this setback and planned ahead by placing an order at Newegg for some brand new sticks. Instead of opting for a new set of the same ram, I have arriving on Friday 8GB worth of A-DATA ADQVE1B16K that should turn my frown upside-down.
Newegg has a killer price (at the time of this writing) of $69.99 for a pair of 2GB sticks with free shipping. $139.98 to max out my Asus’s motherboard and enjoy a screaming system. Considering the entire Ubuntu installation covers a paltry 3.8GB of hard drive space, I could conceivably load it all into memory with plenty of room to spare.
The last question to answer is: what am I going to do with the new Corsair sticks when I finally get them. I’m currently leaning towards auctioning them off on eBay or getting my brother to finally upgrade with the incentive that he wouldn’t need to purchase memory. Decisions, decisions….
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