Hot off the presses: Judge Dale Kimball has issued a 102-page ruling [PDF] on the numerous summary judgment motions in SCO v. Novell. Here is what matters most:

[T]he court concludes that Novell is the owner of the UNIX and UnixWare Copyrights.

That's Aaaaall, Folks! The court also ruled that "SCO is obligated to recognize Novell's waiver of SCO's claims against IBM and Sequent". That's the ball game. There are a couple of loose ends, but the big picture is, SCO lost. Oh, and it owes Novell a lot of money from the Microsoft and Sun licenses.

Groklaw - Court Rules: Novell owns the UNIX and UnixWare copyrights! Novell has right to waive!

Shooting stars are set to grace the night sky with a spectacular light display this weekend.

The annual Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak during the early hours of Monday, but it will be visible from Saturday night until Tuesday morning.

well it's gone 2am Sat morning and i've just come in from the garden having spent some time drinking tea (decaff), listening to Joanna Newsom and then some Bach, and watching out for the first few meteors and i did see a couple and i'm hoping for more meteors and beautiful clear skies during the next few nights

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Stargazers set sights on meteors

Gaia is a mission that will conduct a census of one thousand million stars in our Galaxy. It will monitor each of its target stars about 70 times over a five-year period, precisely charting their positions, distances, movements, and changes in brightness. It is expected to discover hundreds of thousands of new celestial objects, such as extra-solar planets and failed stars called brown dwarfs. Within our own Solar System, Gaia should also identify tens of thousands of asteroids.

to boldly go and create a map of the neighbourhood in proper 3d
the next step after Hipparcos towards Star Trek's Astrometrics lab

parallax that

ESA - Space Science - Gaia overview

And a study by two economists formerly of the I.M.F., Raghuram Rajan and Arvind Subramanian, forthcoming in The Review of Economics and Statistics, concludes:

“We find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship between aid inflows into a country and its economic growth. We also find no evidence that aid works better in better policy or geographical environments, or that certain forms of aid work better than others. Our findings suggest that for aid to be effective in the future, the aid apparatus will have to be rethought.”

So does this mean we should give up on foreign aid?

Bono, Foreign Aid and Skeptics - New York Times

Development of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) stopped in 1999 with HTML 4. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) focused its efforts on changing the underlying syntax of HTML from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to Extensible Markup Language (XML), as well as completely new markup languages like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XForms, and MathML. Browser vendors focused on browser features like tabs and Rich Site Summary (RSS) readers. Web designers started learning Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the JavaScript™ language to build their own applications on top of the existing frameworks using Asynchronous JavaScript XML (Ajax). But HTML itself grew hardly at all in the next eight years.

Recently, the beast came back to life. Three major browser vendors—Apple, Opera, and the Mozilla Foundation—came together as the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WhatWG) to develop an updated and upgraded version of classic HTML. More recently, the W3C took note of these developments and started its own next-generation HTML effort with many of the same members. Eventually, the two efforts will likely be merged. Although many details remain to be argued over, the outlines of the next version of HTML are becoming clear.

New elements in HTML 5

Pro-anorexia websites offering tips on extreme dieting are nothing new, but their growth on social networking sites is a disturbing new twist and brings them within reach of a wider audience.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Seeking 'thinspiration'

In a time deluged by ideology -- when everyone is urged to take a side and join the political battle -- Shakespeare offers a different message: that the most important and dramatic choices are made in the human soul. Some steps, once taken, cannot be retraced. Some appetites, once freed, become a prison.

But the plays are not simple sermons. Fate can be indifferent to our best intentions. Even the purest love can lead to disaster. All our explanations of suffering are incomplete.

We watch the struggling souls in Shakespeare's plays with uncomfortable self-recognition. In their raw honesty we see our own nature, even those parts that are despairing and lawless. And as these characters are transformed, we see ourselves differently as well.

but then Shakespeare lived in an age far more consumed by idealogy even more than our own -- the religious conflicts, the wars, threat of foreign invasion and coup d'état (Richard II was used to incite rebellion)
Shakespeare rocks
The Tempest
Caliban says of Propero

'tis a custom with him
I' the afternoon to sleep: there thou may'st brain him,
Having first seiz'd his books; or with a log
Batter his skull, or paunch him with a stake,
Or cut his wezend with thy knife. Remember
First to possess his books; for without them
He's but a sot, as I am,

50 lines later this would be murderer, attempted rapist and rebel (traitor to his master in Elizabethean terms being a heinous crime)
has the most beautiful lines in the play and some of the best in Shakespeare -- like an uber Mike Tyson saying something so beautiful it makes you cry

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak'd
I cried to dream again.

part of Shakespeare's genius is that he demonstrates that just when we may think we have the measure of a character, there goes the rug from beneath your feet, you can never measure a person's soul

Michael Gerson - Ourselves in Shakespeare - washingtonpost.com

Multinational corporations have foreign policies, and the "home" country doesn't necessarily get special treatment:

In an effort to curb distrust, in 2003 Microsoft signed a pact with China, Russia, the United Kingdom, NATO and other nations to let them see the Windows source code.

A couple of thoughts:

1) Possession of source code has limited defensive value unless you actually build your software from that source. Based on press reports the agreement does not facilitate local compilation.
2) Is it really feasible for a third party to audit the Vista source? The people involved seem to think so, or are at least making a show of it. I am dubious.
3) The utility of this 'pact' would seem to be primarily offensive.

Consider:

Microsoft has reportedly signed a new government security program source code agreement with China Information Technology Security Certification Center, allowing CNITSEC and other approved institutions to look over the source code and relevant technical data of Microsoft's products, including Windows Vista ,so as to improve their evaluation on the security of Microsoft products. The agreement is an important part of the MOU signed between National Development and Reform Commission and Microsoft in April 2006.

Microsoft's Government Security Program helps government departments and international organizations evaluate the security of Microsoft products. CNITSEC previously signed an agreement with Microsoft on security source code in February 2003 and was authorized to check over the company's major source code and technical data.

From 2003:

According to sources at the software company, China is the eighteenth nation to sign such an agreement to view Microsoft's proprietary source code.

Surely the number has grown since then.

Craig Mundie's doublespeak:

This program is an integral element of our efforts to help address the unique security requirements of governments.

Microsoft Forges 'Pact' With Cyberwarriors Worldwide

Experts on language - the real ones, not those of us who merely use it - are having an intense debate about which species can talk.
...
In a new book called "The First Word," Christine Kenneally catalogs the complex debate over language and includes one particularly revealing experiment in which scientists put two male apes who knew sign language together. One might have expected these guys to start grousing about their keepers. But, no, they started madly signing at each other, a manual shouting match, and in the end, neither appeared to actually listen to the other.
...
With a hot August and a long political season ahead, we might venture that what really separates human from ape is not the ability to talk in complete sentences. It is our underused capacity to listen.

We never talk anymore - International Herald Tribune

Representatives of Israel's 250,000 Holocaust survivors are to demand more state support in a protest outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's house.

maybe the survivors should get pensions from the UN. They were victims of crimes against humanity so maybe humanity should stand up and support the survivors.

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Israel faces Holocaust protests