Markus’ Blog

According to this BBC article, Alcatel-Lucent sued Microsoft for violating MP3 patents. Microsoft said they shouldn’t have to pay Alcatel, since they already paid Fraunhofer Institute. The Federal District Court in San Diego agreed with Alcatel-Lucent and ordered Microsoft to pay Alcatel $1.52 billion. Microsoft appealed.

After this court decision, other companies using MP3 technology are concerned. Amongst them are Apple, RealNetworks and Sony. They fear that Alcatel-Lucent will come after them next.

While I have to say that at first glance, without any further knowledge of the case, it seems that Microsoft has a pretty strong argument going for them, it sure shows how software patents can come back and bite you.

Microsoft had the choice of going with the patent-free and fully open OGG format. Nobody forced them to use MP3. They chose to go with the patented, proprietary format instead (just like they love to create proprietary “standards” themselves) and now they may have to pay the price for that.

Brigette had to be downtown at 7:30am this morning, which meant getting up early — early as in the alarm goes off at 5:30am.

Since I wasn’t going to be able to sleep through this anyways, I figured I may as was well get up myself. Wouldn’t hurt me one little bit to get my butt out of bed before 7am for once.

So here I am, at my desk at work and it’s not even 7:45am yet. And I’m feeling good, less tired than some of the other days when I got here more than an hour later.

Well, of sorts. I’m not at my work, I accompanied Brigette to hers. I wanted to take the opportunity to see the offices. Biotech companies are cool.

Brigette decided to go in today, on Saturday, to clean up her office that is drowning in boxes and un-filed papers. I had heard about it on several occasions, now I wanted to see that in person, too. Her office will be re-organized pretty soon (new or at least different furniture, etc.), so the boxes and papers have to go, and they have to go now.

So now I’m here, typing up this blog entry on Brigette’s workstation and creating an inventory list of the boxes for her on the side.

It was four weeks ago that I got my left wisdom teeth removed. To day it’s time for the right side. Everybody “hold their thumbs” from 2:45pm-3:30pm or so.

The first time around it went really well, so now I’m not so scared. I hope there won’t be any bad surprises. I don’t think there will.

What sucks the most is that I won’t be able to eat properly for a couple of days. Saturday will be the worst: getting by a full day on not much solid food.

Oh well, it’s not the end of the world, just a minor pain in the rear. It could be so much worse (more painful, etc.).

UPDATE: It turns out that my upper right wisdom tooth is almost completely buried under the gums. That means that the dentist needs more time than the allotted one hour to get them both out. Why he didn’t clue into that when I was there four weeks ago, I don’t know.

Anyways, he gave me the option to just get the lower tooth done and come back for the upper tooth at a later time or get them both done later. Since I didn’t feel like dealing with the whole only eating liquids thing, etc. for a third time, I chose to go in at a later time and get them both done then.

That’s going to be March 16 the way it looks right now.

Yes, it’s time again for the next episode of the popular Bird Poop Story.

Like I said before, we filed our papers at Small Claims Court back in December, but couldn’t serve them, because the previous owner of our condo was on vacation — till January 29 (not January 15 like originally thought).

Anyways, we finally got their reply today and it couldn’t be more entertaining. They denied our claim, of course, which I kind of figured. If they were willing to pay for the cleanup, they could have offered that a long time ago. So no surprise there.

The fun begins once we look at the counter claim they filed. Yes, that’s right. They actually did file a counter claim, and an interesting one at that. They are claiming the filing fees — which makes sense, I guess. If you disagree with somebody’s claim, you want to make sure you get the money back you used to defend yourself, if the judge rules in your favor. So far, so good.

They don’t stop there, though. They are actually trying to charge us for lost wages. They are claiming 7.5 hours for each of them (husband and wife) at rates between $40/hr and $50/hr. Their reasoning goes like this: the wife missed a full day of contract work, because they had to go to court, hence we have to reimburse her. The husband had to take a vacation day to go to court, hence we have to reimburse him, too.

It’s actually quite amusing, because:

1. Only the husband was named in the claim. Why did both of them have to go to court? To do so was their choice.
2. They live in Vancouver, he works in Vancouver, she works at home. The court’s in Vancouver. How can you possibly spend a whole day at court for this matter. It took Brigette 15 minutes to file the papers. Then there’s travel time. How does that add up to 7.5 hours? — Easy. It doesn’t.
3. He took a vacation day. Why? He could have just taken two hours off. That’s all it should have taken him. Tops.
4. Since he took a vacation day, he already gets paid for it. He didn’t say he took an unpaid day of absence. So why does he want to get paid again by us?

So, quite obviously, they are trying to teach us a lesson here, getting as much money out of us as possible. “You dared to mess with us, now we are going to make you pay for that,” or something along those lines.

It’s going to be interesting when we actually go in and meet before the judge.

Stay tuned for the next episode. lol

I just found out about Ten Servers that Changed the World.

The funny thing is the box that made first place: Google’s very first server, a Sun Ultra 2 with two 200 MHz CPUs and 256 MB of RAM. I had no idea.

Why is this so funny? Because I have a Sun Ultra 2, myself. It used to host my website and was my e-mail server from December 2003 till September 2005, when the Internet provider where it was set up (in Vienna, Austria) decided to shut down. The server is still in Austria right now — sadly sitting turned off in a closet at a friend’s place.

My Ultra 2 has two 300 MHz CPUs and 512 MB of RAM and is thus better equipped than Google’s original server. I find that quite amusing — then again, I’m a Unix geek.

I got myself a new geeky book: The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System.

I have wanted it for a while, considering that I am working with NetBSD for a living. Yes, the book is over 10 years old at this point, but the concepts and descriptions provided are still mostly accurate. Some areas have changed, of course, but the heritage is still there.

Considering the age of the book, finding new, unused issues seems quite difficult, besides they are about $90. Luckily, Amazon.ca offers used books in good condition through third parties. I ordered the book Saturday night, at around 10:30pm from a seller in British Columbia (that’s all Amazon said about the seller) for $36. I was expecting to receive the book within about a week, so around Feb. 19 or so.

Didn’t quite happen that way, though. At noon yesterday, somebody buzzes downstairs and says: “You ordered this book about the BSD Operating System. I happened to drive by and figured I’d drop it off.” A little unexpected, but also quite welcome. Apparently, the seller is not only from BC, he lives in Vancouver.

So, here I am, with my new book, which I received just a little over 12 hours after ordering it (on a weekend). Not too shabby.

From what it looks like, there has been an attempted break and enter one apartment over, today.

When I got home from work, our next door neighbor was outside her condo talking to another tenant or owner (I don’t know if he owns or not). I learned pretty quickly that apparently her lock was busted and that she was unable to open her entrance door even after she had unlocked it. She has some kind of deadbolt or something that they suspected may have ended up jamming the door. Either that or the lock’s just toast. Somebody sure went to work on it.

After talking for a few more minutes, I went to take care of the hungry kitty, and Brigette looked up the phone numbers of our strata council president and the non-emergency number of the Vancouver Police Department (without access to a phone book or computer you’re kind of helpless).

Then I went back outside and took a few pictures. One never knows what good that may do later.

The entrance door in question.

Seen from the top.

The busted lock close up.

Of course we all went and checked out the other doors on our floor. No damage was visible on any other door. Also, we don’t know at this point if anybody managed to get inside that apartment or if they gave up or got scared away.

All in all, it doesn’t make one feel too secure. We’re actually in a pretty good neighborhood and I haven’t heard about break ins in our area, so the whole incident came a bit as a shock.

What sucks for the owner of the condo is that she is stuck outside her own apartment, doesn’t know what went on inside (if anything), and all of that happened on a Friday night after work.

Update

She’s back in her apartment as of 8:30pm or so. The locksmith had a hard time getting the lock open. Apparently the would-be thieves tried to pry the lock open, but it jammed, so they couldn’t get in. He was still out there hammering at 9:30pm, trying to fix the damage.

Since not much exciting stuff is happening, I thought I’d share two nice pictures taken from the second bedroom (office) window, looking North East.

The first picture was taken on January 7:

The second picture was taken a week later, January 14:

Same view, completely different atmosphere.