Here is the silliest patent ever.
Today I saw on slashdot a note that SCO was suing IBM over patent infringements. This story is covered in more detail at forbes.
#include &lt std_disclaimer &gt # I am not a lawyer
This is stunning to me. Not because I am shocked that someone has made IP claims on linux, but rather that SCO is taking on IBM first. As far as I know IBM has filed more patents that any other company on earth for quite some time. They are well known for using these defensively, or using these to cross-license needed technology. I can’t imagine what would happen at SCO to make them belive that they could win against the proverbial 300 pound gorilla. I expect IBM to squash this and I hope they do rather decisively. I expect the IBM probably can make counter claims that would probably force SCO to drop the suit, be forced into bankruptcy or be bought.

Today we here closing arguements and deliberate. I am looking forward to the court feeding us lunch.
The whole experience has been very positive. I am glad I live in a country where I have the option of a jury trial.
Can’t wait to see how it turns out in the end.

A few thoughts about jury duty, although I obviously can’t talk about the case.
It’s fabulous to live in a country where we have citizen juries. We trust ordinary individuals without training in law, to make difficult decisions on both civil and criminal trials. It’s contining evidence that people on the US don’t require kings or queens, popes, or lords. Ordinary people can think for themselves without the ruling class ursurping those roles.
Baliff is the ultimate job. You get to wear a gun and sleep on the job. I wish I could be a baliff. I suppose it’s more exciting in a criminal trial.

Today begins Day 1 of jury duty for me. I am to report to the county for Orientation and selection today.
It’s funny, I have always wanted to be on jury duty, ever since I was aware of the concept. Now that it’s upon me I don’t want to, mainly as I have a lot of work to do and don’t want the interruption. I suppose I should think of it more like voting. I vote not matter how busy I am.

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I was also in the paper. What a horrifying experience it was. I suppose everything has turned out ok, but I realize I value my privacy a lot more that I thought. The reporter Martha Allen was a good sport and quoted me accurately. http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/3726699.html

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Update: 7:20 P.M.
I was selected to hear a civil case, I can’t reveal any other details as this time. Suffice it to say that the jury selection process seems slow and rather random. Can’t wait to see what happens.

While probably no one else cares, I’ll note this for myself so I’ll have somewhere to look later.
Using gentoo, with the most recent muttprint and tetex. I was unable to use muttprint from another program, notably mutt. After debugging a but I realized, what was actually happening was that dvips was dying with an error like “dvips: ! couldn’t open output pipe”.
After a quick google search I learned dvips had a security problem with executing malicious code. So I was able to fix up muttprint to do the right thing.

A few days ago, I finally got around to setting up spamassassin. So far, I have had -0- false positives(mail I wanted, id’ed as junk), and only half a dozen spams get through. This is really remarkable, as I have been getting 100+ per day. It’s such a pleasure to read through my inbox and not have to wade through spam. Thanks to all the folks who create such good software. I am tightening up the filters which should reduce the number of email that get through.