The onerous Nuremberg Files anti-abortion hit list appears to be gone. Perhaps MindSpring pulled the plug on them.
Finally, a story covering Microsoft’s style sheet patent. In the Wired News story, Microsoft tells people that they have nothing to worry about because they only use their patents defensively. Now I can rest easily …
This flotsam came in from the Interesting People mailing list: someone has posted to the ZDNet forums that Microsoft is encouraging its employees to contribute to online forums under false identities to push the company’s cause in the DOJ case. Take this one with a grain of salt.
O’Reilly and Associates continues to hire open source pioneers. According to News.com, Brian Behlendorf (one of the people behind the Apache Web server), is joining O’Reilly’s payroll. This is certainly good news, as he’ll be spending his time hacking Apache for a living.
Just in : Microsoft has been awarded a patent which covers pretty significant chunks of the CSS and XSL standards. Apparently they applied for this patent in 1995 even as they were contributing to the original standard in the CSS working group at the W3C. It remains to be seen whether this is an extremely onerous and dishonest intellectual property land grab, although that’s how it looks right now. Here’s a local copy of the story.
Salon Magazine tells the fascinating story of Internet day traders, who speculate on stocks all day every day in hopes of making their fortunes. The writer makes an apt comparison to the hordes of money seekers who migrated to California in the 1800’s hoping to strike it rich in the gold rush. What a strange life these people lead.