You are currently browsing the daily archive for August 7th, 2007.
social operating system - n. A social networking site like Facebook or MySpace that seamlessly integrates activities, including entertainment and shopping, to become a platform for online living. (Wired News)
I’m always on the lookout for new words. This one isn’t especially innovative, but the last phrase caught my notice. Online living. Indeed. Now I like Facebook and actively maintain a profile as a way of keeping in touch with family and friends. But online living? I think that day is still a long ways off.
Extreme Weather Making History — Discovery News
Of course this comes as no surprise and years like this one are probably going to become the norm. I’m actually kind of hoping for the weather system to do some crazy flipflop and plunge us into an ice age. That’ll show those big corporations and the evil politicians who support them!
(courtesy of the ever-awesome xkcd.com)
I mean, aren’t they just crazy cute? Unfortunately they are also crazy. Willow has been dividing her time between dropping balls at my feet, pestering Daedalus (which makes him squirbble like mad), and trying to dig under our couch. Balls keep rolling under there, so when she’s bored, regardless of whether there’s actually a ball there, she tries to claw her way under the couch.
It appears that Facebook has just had another lawsuit filed against it, this time for patent infringement. Cross Atlantic Capital Partners (hereafter referred to as the Patent Trolls) claim infringement based on patent 6,519,629: “System for creating a community for users with common interests to interact in”. So it appears they are targeting the Groups functionality. I don’t pretend to know anything about patent law, but from what I have read in the patent, it does appear they have a case. However, I believe this is just one more example of how issuing patents for software is fundamentally flawed.
