Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

1. Are you going to school this year?
No. Not unless someone gives me lots of money and tells me to go do an MBA or something. I am spending too much time writing about ICT in Higher Education, though. Perhaps that counts?

2. If yes, where are you going (high school, college, etc.)? If no, when did you graduate?
1988 and 1989.

3. What are/were your favorite school subjects?
Physics and Electronics. I wouldn't be where I am today without those two courses. I also enjoyed General Studies, where we did a "The Best Books" course, and where I also started learning about Douglas Hofstadter and Soft AI.

4. What are/were your least favorite school subjects?
PE and German. I wasn't particularly athletic, and I think I chose the wrong course for my second language O-level. I got on well enough with French, and now think I should have done Spanish instead of German.

5. Have you ever had a favorite teacher? Why was he/she a favorite?
I guess it was probably Mr Macready, back in primary school. He taught me it was good to love books and that it was good to play with the English language. Yes, it's true. The puns were his fault.

A word or two for our time. Or at least for the web geeks amongst us. The rest of the definitions are well worth blogging...

[yet more random linkage from the living RSS feed that is codepope]

While putting together my last entry on the Devils Dictionary 2.0, my random MP3 playlist was playing Steve Hackett's Hammer Horror hammed-up cover of Thomas Dolby's often forgotten early track ( The Devil is an Englishman. ) Dark and funny at the same time... Excellent stuff.

Putting all conspiracy theories aside, as fun as they are (especially if you're ESR), I'm actually pretty convinced that the real state of affairs in SCO vs Linux is the result of cock-up rather than conspiracy.

My gut feel is this: SCO used the lawyers to make a quick buck, by waving an IP portfolio and a license agreement for the Unix System at people and expecting them to fold quickly. Their first two targets paid up - MS because it didn't want to face another big lawsuit with so many on the go at once (and one against UNIX would just be sooo much bad publicity), and Sun because it's getting enough bad press at the moment over its financials and didn't want to take any risks over Solaris.

IBM weren't so quick to fold. SCO went legal to try and push for payment. The lawyers came out, and then the bills started arriving, and SCO was out of its depth, as IBM decided to play a waiting game.

The rest is history.

(originally posted as a comment in another place)

...come as Flash.

Wiggle the mouse to see what it does...