By a 220-to-175 vote, the House endorsed an amended version of the Patent Reform Act, which has been in the works in various forms for several years but previously was stalled amid lingering disagreements among disparate companies.

House OKs revamp of patent system | CNET News.com

Computers inside pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's network are spamming the internet with e-mails touting the company's flagship erectile-enhancement drug Viagra, along with ads for knockoff Rolexes and shady junk stocks.

Zombie Pfizer Computers Spew Viagra Spam, Security Company Reports

The Windows Genuine Advantage plan became a genuine disadvantage over the weekend when the server that verified users went down and began to disable operating systems around the world. At least, it disabled the operating systems of computers that checked into the home base to affirm their legitimacy.

Dvorak on the WGA outage over the weekend and by extension, the big problem with "software as a service."

Don't Trust the Servers - Columns by PC Magazine

NASA announced Tuesday that it has selected Houston-based Boeing Space Exploration to build the upper stage of the Ares I rocket the United States will use to launch astronauts into orbit after the space shuttle retires.

SPACE.com -- Boeing to Build Upper Stage of NASA's Ares I Rocket

This is the (extraordinarily obvious) point the Wall Street Journal missed when it chimed in yesterday in support of the Senator. As the Journal wrote:

Her answer was met with jeers, but what Mrs. Clinton was daring to tell her left-wing audience is that lobbyists are an essential means by which average Americans transmit their political concerns to Washington, and in turn hold their elected Representatives accountable. Not everyone in America can afford to trek to D.C., or has the clout to demand an audience with a Senator. Lobbyists represent the collective voice of groups with shared ideals, whether they be gun owners, union workers, corporate employees or the pro-choice movement.

Just the sort of reasoning that makes that page so famous: Look, lawyers represent their clients before a judge. Does it follow from that that judges must be free to take money from lawyers? Even just to redecorate their office?

On Clinton and lobbyists (Lessig Blog)

Stocks plunged on Wall Street again today in the latest reverberations of the crunch in the American credit market.

At 1 p.m., the Dow Jones industrial average was down more than 330 points, or 2.5 percent. And the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Nasdaq composite were down by comparable amounts, bringing the losses for all three indexes to more than 10 percent since their peak last month — the threshold at which the market’s fall is considered to have reached a correction.

Dow Down Sharply Over New Credit Worries - New York Times

Expanding passenger rail service capacity in the Bay Area - by laying more tracks, building more stations and running a second BART tube beneath the bay - could help prevent gridlock on the region's highways in coming decades.

That's the conclusion of regional transportation planners who have unveiled an ambitious blueprint to increase the use of train travel through the year 2050.

By 2050 ... ouch.

PLAN TO FIX BAY AREA'S GRIDLOCK: NEW TRAINS / Ambitious vision to add routes, track, commute stations by 2050

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!

A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that patients with terminal illnesses do not have a constitutional right to use medicines that have not yet won regulatory approval.

Court Rejects the Right to Use Drugs Being Tested - New York Times

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