A young man in the United States stands accused of a horrible crime. Federal agents recently raided his home, and he faces as much as ten years in a federal prison. According to his accusers, his wanton illegal acts are many and varied, and all necessary steps should be taken to insure he pays for his crimes.
SCO used to sell operating systems and related software based around Linux, Unix, and in their early years Xenix. A few years ago they decided to start suing everyone they could think of with the claim that companies like IBM, Novell, and RedHat had “stolen” their Unix intellectual property. You can read all about the legal history of it here at Groklaw. After years of losing every legal battle they started, facing counter-suits from the people who *really* own the Unix intellectual capital, and filing for bankruptcy, they are doing the only reasonable (at least in America) thing: they are selling all of their real assets so that they can continue the legal battle
A judge in Washington, DC, is apparently very easily stressed out. His life was ruined when a pair of pants he dropped off at the dry cleaners were lost. And the terrible mental trauma this has inflicted upon him is worth a mere $54 million dollars. He initially sued the ordinary working class owners of the dry cleaning shop for $67 million, but apparently concluded that he could shave $13 million off of that since the pants were used.
I found the following today during my usual morning coffee + web browsing session:
Wayne Crookes, a former campaign manager of the Green Party of Canada, said he “suffered an immense amount of frustration and emotional distress†over postings on Google’s Blogspot.com, a free blog-hosting website, within an entry under his name in Wikipedia, and on openpolitics.ca, an interactive political forum set up by Michael Pilling, an Ontario and federal Green Party activist.
I was reading a disclaimer today regarding the Internet that was written in response to/was inspired by an equally thorough disclaimer written for a rock preserve (whatever that is).