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Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Thu, 02 Mar 2000 13:00:00 GMT
I got the standard reply to my letter yesterday to Amazon concerning their patent warfare.

Wired - Another Amazon Patent Furor: Wired comments on Tim O'Reilly's open letter that I linked to on Tuesday. He's got over 1000 signatures as of yesterday. "'Maybe you can apply for a patent on aerobic oxidization, also known as breathing,' wrote M. Pare, one Web user who signed on to O'Reilly's letter." [script]

Dave Winer says, "While we were having lunch Tim [O'Reilly] got a phone call from Jeff Bezos! They had a long talk. Afterwards Tim said he now understands why Amazon is doing what they're doing. I said I'm looking forward to reading his report." No sign of the report yet. [script]

Scripting News - Press release: Earthport claims prior art in Amazon patent: "An UK based internet company has entered the storm surrounding Amazon's patent over affiliate programmes, which enable web sites to exchange customers for a small commission." I couldn't find the press release at Earthport.com. ["script"]


The Happy Virus

I caught the happy virus last night

When I was out singing beneath the stars.

It is remarkably contagious -

So kiss me.

-- The Subject Tonight is Love, versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky


BBC News - Satellite snaps a mighty sandstorm: "A giant sandstorm the size of Spain has been spotted off the north-west coast of Africa. Neat picture!" [faisal]

The Sierra Times now has a joke page. The cartoon at the top is great. Also, look for "Johnson" to find a great joke about LBJ.

Scott Courtney at LinuxPlanet - S/390: The Linux Dream Machine. You can now run Linux in a VM (virtual machine) on an IBM S/390 mainframe. The possiblities are very interesting. [coworker]

Greg Knauss at sendmail.net - Email, Privacy, and the Law: "The notion of 'private' email makes most lawyers laugh. There's nothing private about it, no matter how many layers of cryptography you've wrapped around it or how well you've squirreled it away... Like any document - physical or electronic - email is 'discoverable,' meaning that it can be demanded as potential evidence during litigation... Failure to produce the requested information will result in a contempt of court citation and either a hearty fine or forfeiture of the case." [/.]

Tom Phelps at Berkeley - Robust Hyperlinks and Robust Locations: "URLs can be made robust so that if a web page moves to another location anywhere on the web, you can find it. Even if that page has been edited... Although web browser support is desirable for complete convenience, Robust Hyperlinks work now, as drop-in replacements of URLs in today's HTML, web browsers, web servers and search engines." Looks complicated to me. Relies on the web server to go to a search engine if it can't find a document at the canonical location. [/.]

Sacramento Bee - Transcript of Davis' remarks on judges: Governor Gray Davis of California expects the judges he appoints to make rulings that follow his political opinions. Law? What law? [sierra]

CNN - Suspect, reportedly unarmed, shot dead by NYPD officer in Bronx: One more notch for the guns of Herr Rudy's street crime unit. [market]

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