] It is a small but significant measure for a company with
] major efforts to patent its research, then license those
] patents. Still, the vast majority of IBM's 10,000
] software patents in the United States aren't being shared
] so freely.

IBM offers 500 patents for open-source use | CNET News.com

] Microsoft said Monday that it would expand its Redmond,
] Wash., headquarters to accommodate the hiring of more
] than 10,000 new employees over next 10 to 20 years.

It is not exactly a small campus at this point.

Microsoft to expand Redmond headquarters | CNET News.com

] As goes pornography, so goes technology.
]
] The concept may seem odd, but history has proven the
] adult entertainment industry to be one of the key drivers
] of any new technology in home entertainment. Pornography
] customers have been some of the first to buy home video
] machines, DVD players and subscribe to high-speed
] Internet.
]
] One of the next big issues in which pornographers could
] play a deciding role is the future of high-definition
] DVDs.

Porn industry mulls next-generation DVD | Tech News on ZDNet

] In fact, the three busiest days for support lines are the day
] after Christmas, the Monday after Christmas and the Monday
] after New Year's, said Jim Kahler, North American consumer
] support manager for Hewlett-Packard.

One has to wonder about what would happen if Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year were more evenly spaced apart. It seems like December is carefully crafted as the most stressful time of the year, where it perhaps does have to be. Massive consumer shopping and shipping means lots of spending and lots of seasonal jobs. Celebrations of Christmas and New Years means at least two days off, generally more -- the days between are generally seen as bonus holidays. And then we've got all the other New Year's issues such as a last call for taxable events. And college applications. And so on.

] Every employee in the WebTV division had to come in and
] work the support lines. Luckily, someone remembered to
] bring in a spiked bowl of eggnog, which made it easier
] for support personnel to stay calm when dealing with
] irate subscribers, he said.

Maybe we should make it policy to supply our support lines with a bar?

Get a gift--and a tech support headache | CNET News.com

] Mr. Murdoch is buying one of the city's most opulent
] apartments on one of the most elegant stretches of Fifth
] Avenue. The apartment is on the 14th through 16th floors
] of a building designed by the architect Rosario Candela
] and completed in 1931. It has 20 rooms making up about
] 8,000 square feet and about 4,000 square feet of terraces
] spread over the three floors. The monthly maintenance is
] $21,469.07.

The New York Times : New York Region : Murdoch Set to Pay Record $44 Million for 5th Ave. Triplex

] The lucky finder was showing off Lohan's California
] driver's license, her black American Express card and
] other things she'd rather we didn't mention.

New York Post Online Edition: gossip

] ...an even better and more audacious speculation is that
] once publicly free of the PC division IBM will either
] buy, or form a close joint venture with Apple to sell its
] PCs, which coincidentally are now built around IBM's
] PowerPC chip.

This consolidation would fascinating, but I'm not sure I see it. If we accept that IBM has caught the Open Source Bug, buying a company that makes money on software -- and who is working on eliminating need for support at all (IBM's bread-and-butter) (see old memeage about the new iMacs being fully user servicable)... doesn't make much sense.

But... maybe. Maybe Apple would sell its computing division to IBM and fully become an iPod/media company. Maybe they'd inherit enough design-crazed staff to keep up the sexy-hardware lifestyle branding. Maybe.

And that would be the gleeful cackling of the Gartner analyst, over the reduction to 8 of 10 major players in a single well-timed move, that you hear in the background

Apple of IBM's eye? | The Register

] Verified Rights Owner Program (VeRO) is eBay's version of
] the DMCA. Acrording to eBay, "eBay's VeRO Program was
] developed to facilitate cooperation between eBay and
] rights owners protecting their intellectual property
] rights." In other words, eBay just gave a select group of
] business owners carte blanche control over who can sell
] on eBay and what they can sell. This special class of
] eBayers can shoot first and ask questions later.

Interesting story. I think I agree with some of the comments about this having to be corrected by eBay or it will correct eBay. Choosing to adopt the principle of first sale or not is an important question for them -- do they expect to derive more as being an online authorized reseller, or is their real power from the small casual sellers.

I expect that if this keeps up, they will realize it is better to be eBay than Amazon. Because if people are just looking for bargains as authorized by the manufacturer, there are plenty of places. eBay is about being able to buy that super-obscure thing that someone happened to have. When I win an corporate branded Hummer, I want to be able to list it and not have the company revoke it.

VeRO: eBay's version of the DMCA || kuro5hin.org

] The folks at Merriam-Webster (publishers of the
] Merriam-Webster Dictionary) have released their Top Ten
] list for 2004. Topping the list is the word "blog," which
] most of us know all about from firsthand experience.

M-W announced top nine words of the year, tosses in "blog" -- story instantly blogged thousands of places -- M-W marketing exec gets bigger raise.

Geek.com Geek News -

] Psychologist Cleveland Kent Evans, who studies names and
] their social effects, says the unusual-name trend among
] celebrities is a kind of self-reinforcing phenomenon. "I
] don't think of these names as coming just from
] celebrities so much as coming from creative celebrities,
] or at least those that want to be thought of as
] creative," he says. "It's the musicians and actresses and
] to some extent the visual artists who give those sorts of
] names to their children. You don't find the politicians
] and athletes giving names like that to their kids."

And What Name Will Phinnaeus Have for Mommy? (washingtonpost.com)