Three lovely gems (via Slashdot). Firstly, the travesty that is EU Software Patents. The Register seems to have decomposed the issue quite well. this article describes what's going on very well, and also explains why this is just going to happen, no matter what has been said. It's too polite to say that the people involved (particulalrly those voting on it) are thoroughly clueless and need to understand the bigger picture of life, not just "I might get the sack if the US walks out of WTO meetings". Given the right encouragement, other continents could work out just fine.

Secondly, here's an example of patent abuse. It's of course SCO's case against IBM. I personally see this as a cynical bit of litigation bourne by an overly litigious legal system and a company who isn't quite making it in the world because of changing business models. (article)

Lastly, a slightly thin article about the marriage of viruses and email spam. I have to agree that the two will eventially be used in the same way. The sort of are already, so it's only a matter of time until the two factions organise themselves. I think the answer is cleverer mail transfer agents (MTAs) that filter viruses and spam. I suspect secure, certificate authenticated email would be incredibly useful too. (article)

This article (Via Bifurcated Rivets) is about recent adminstration enacted changes to America. It's a bit "inflamatory" and certainly written in an angry-so-you-should-be-too sort of way, but points out some important things. As a Brit, I don't think much of the American administration, much less the legal system. Things like the Total/Terrorist Information Awareness programme scare me, not least because it might be a template for similar measures elsewhere, but because it has such broad ranging and subtle effects (many that could not easily be articulated by opponents of such a programme). The Homeland Security thingy is just jingoistic, untrusting and frankly deplorable. Every country's national security is something they need to take seriously, but this, again, seems to me to be an overly broad brush which will ultimately tar many things.

The big issue with many web applications is that they're not Search Engine Friendly. That is, they use URL query strings to navigate to documents, which search engines won't follow (most search engines will ignore URLs that have question mark (?) in them). Unless the search engine has specific support for the web application in question, then you'll be happily ignored by the majority.

I've got Tiki working with nice URLs that work with search engines. Here's how...

TikiWiki is one cool product. It's incredibly configurable, customisable and extensible (and many other buzzwords besides). You can get it running in about 10 minutes, but also spend ages getting it "just the way you want".

I say, good on you, chaps!

Why do IBM refuse to produce good software? Websphere will cost you more money to install, develop on, test on and run that any other application server. If you're "playing to win", don't use Webpshere, and do use something else, like Weblogic, JBoss or SunOne (Oracle AS is worse than Websphere, so don't bother with that). Websphere will require you have a greater number of more highly skilled administrators available to get it running, keep it running and make changes. You'll also spend longer doing any kind of development or testing because it's so painfully slow.

After complaining to the CEO of British Gas (and getting a very efficient and thorough response), I really started to think they might be okay. But today, I get home to find they're up to their old tricks again. Evidence that they're a big company with bad service and poor inter-departmental and managerial communication.

Got it all running on the new server. It's a Netbox Cubit 2, and is a thing of beauty. I hope you enjoy it!