Joel Patrick

Patent Law - Coming soon to a classroom near you

There was a recent ruling that overturns at least part of the State Street decision that basically opened the door to software patents. Typically there is a good write-up on this on Groklaw.

You need to know about Groklaw, especially if you are going to be working on Open Source legal issues. One of my typical responses to anyone thinking about a legal career after CICS is "go for it" unless you hate money and power. Everything still points to legal aspects of IT being a particularly interesting and well-paid field because, like patent law, the number of attorneys who are both good lawyers and scientifically grounded is limited.

Pay close attention in 642. You will need to in order to keep from doing damage to your grade-point average, and it could reward you someday.

Looking forward to being in Muncie for the election

I am so happy to be able to be back home for the election. I decided not to file my absentee ballot because I think I can get up early an hopefully not face too long a wait to cast my ballot. Aside from being an historical occasion, it is great to be able to take things in in Muncie. For techies, this site is pretty amazing. An interesting perspective I just read comes from a Wall Street Journal article.

Disfunction corrected

There was a file error that caused the sites not to update correctly. The entries were saved, but due to excessive disque usage the site pages could not be written. The problem is fixed. The scoreboard has continued to function.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Evidence of a demorcratic spirit

The Alfred E Smith dinner roasts were pretty amazing this year. Thank heavens there is still a shared sense of humor in this process.

John McCain roasts Obama

Barack Obama roasts John McCain

At the same time a rash of newspapers are endorsing Obama. The Chicago Tribune has endorsed him saying, "This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president:"

The recent Washington Post endorsement went to Obama yesterday. It is worth reading as a stunning piece of writing in its own right..

Scoreboard updated

I have updated the scoreboard to take into account the link count including the links that are entered into the "Extended Entry" areas. There are several authors who are putting a good chunk of their text there.

Do not forget that you can style your blog differently by applying a different style. There is a demo of this through the HOWTOs for CICS Blogs.

Why theory is important

This is a great TED talk.

For more on the reptilian brain see Clotaire Rapaille.

Links I want to keep

Here's an early common use for blogging. Weblogs were (maybe are) part log, or records of things found while on the Internet. Bloggers often posted key links to a weblog entry to be able to find them again, at least before it became more fashionable to be read. I found a few very cool links recently.

One was about the election and power projection. It is by one of my favorite scientists Frans de Waal who is with the Yerkes Primate Research Center. After the first of the McCain / Obama debates he wrote an fascinating piece in response to a journalist's statement that McCain was the alpha male of the evening. A scientist actually thinks he can take on a journalist. Go figure. I first became aware of de Waal through his marvelous presentation at Pop!Tech.

Another is a very long interview with Warren Buffett.

And lastly a provocative set of resumés. (I still find it ironic that we call them resumés and the French call them Curriculum Vitae, actually they say "CVs".) In any case when I see writing about resumés, I naturally think about CICS.

Cell phone contracts endangered !

There has always been some fascinating guessing at what Google is hatching. But a little article in Wired may point to a fascinating high-tech strategy that could conceivably be used with the Android.

Now the iPhone can be purchased unlocked, if you are in Hong Kong.

Scoreboard up and counting

The blogging scoreboard is up and running. If you have made a blog entry of more than 150 characters since the beginning of September, you should see some evidence of activity there under your name.

We just enjoyed a wonderful pair of days that are celebrated all over Europe known as "Les Journées du Patrimoine": Roughly translated they might be called the Heritage Days. It is a day when a host of buildings usually off limits to the public are opened for the crowds. Here in Paris the big attraction is typically the "Elysée Palace" where Carla Bruni lives with her husband President Sarkozy. Not your run-of-the-mill first lady.

One of the things we saw was this amazing piece of architecture. A beautiful wind tunnel that has been reworked into an elementary school.

Getting cracking on the weblogs

Now that Movable Type 4.2 is out, it seemed like a good opportunity to move up a notch in technology. It installed without much of a hitch until I started working through the customizations we need for the CICS site. Then I find that plugin after plugin does not work in the new system. If I had "world enough, and time", I might be able to fuss my way through getting these back in service, but I need to catch up on my sleep.

So we will be staying with the old system at least one more year.

Other Christmas Ideas

I have been looking a while for a a way to have Internet radio in the kitchen without a computer. I think I may have found the device that will do it. In any case, I do wish I had stock in this company. It is a little limited in many ways for now, but it is programmable, and so I seems likely that it will keep getting better even after I get it.

Server problem

Something on the server chewed up some files. I am not sure what did it, but it was not fun trying to fix things. Please let me know if you think there is still something amiss. Sorry about the disturbance.

Making Links "count"

I received a very good question about link counting on the CICS blogging scoreboard. The question was why there are blog entries with links that are not counted. The answer is that the links are not active links. Here's the difference:

• Here is a link that is not active: http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2007/db071111.gif
• Here is the same link made active: http://images.ucomics.com/comics/db/2007/db071111.gif
• Here is the link in the text.

The first example is not counted by the scoreboard because the algorithm does not find a link unless the html grammar of is used. If you are puzzled by this, you can learn more at the following two links that are a short browse from the CICSWorld home page:

• From the link "Learning Movable Type" you can find this entry on adding links.
• From my howtos you can watch: Adding some value to a blog entry.

How much did you pay?

How much did you pay? What do you think it is worth? Where is this bunch's record company? How dare they?

Last Lecture

I am sure you know what Andy Warhol was right about.

I would like to see this whole lecture.

There is a write-up on him here.