Some time ago, Microsoft started a new campaign against open source. They claim that different open source projects violate 235 patents. Now anyone with more historical knowledge then a gold fish and more then half the brain of a monkey [1], knows this is just the marketing department talking nonsense. To scare corporations away from using anything that smells like Free Software. In other words, it is just the old FUD once again.

([1] there is a reason hard drugs are prohibited in the Netherlands)

Now "Microsoft details patent charges". Mind you, all they /had/ to do is say what software project is violating what patent. That wouldn't have cost anything, wouldn't give away any proprietary information since all patents are open for the public anyway. But then, all they could win was egg. On they face of Bill. Since doing this would start people to investigate if the patent was legal in the first place . The patent office is braindead and there are numerous patents out there that have "prior art", maybe even from an open source project. And if it would be true that an OSS projects violated a real patant, active open source projects would -if possible- make a patch and fix any issues that might have been there.

Note that "deatils" means nothing here. All its says is:

...that the Linux kernel violates 42 patents, and the Linux GUI violates an additional 65; email programs infringe on 15, and other open source apps violate an additional 68 Microsoft patents. OpenOffice – a direct competitor with cash cow Microsoft Office – violates 45 patents, Microsoft claims.

Note that OpenOffice.org (no, not OpenOffice Intranetjournal!) is the only other project besides the Linux kernel that has been named. Linux and OpenOffice.org are two projects that will be seen by the general public as direct competitors of the MSFT offering. Mozilla being a good candidate as well but less in the corporate world.

So what are the other open source projects? According Webpronews there are some options. They state:

How will this affect you? If a court finds that these programs do infringe upon MSFT’s patents, programs like Linux, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Apache, Drupal, or Joomla will no longer be available.

Note that it is pure speculation, nobody knows what patent is violated by what open source project, even Microsoft doesn't until they start their randomizer. It might be Wine, close to Microsofts' business. But yes, It might also be Drupal. The journalist writing the article doesn't know more then we do. In fact she might know less even if she is writing on a Drupal site.

Drupal developers are not aware that it /might/ be the case and as Linus pointed out, that is a good thing! Yet, we -as a community but also the Drupal Association- must be aware that the ballgame will be harder. And playing against The Beast means there will be lot of mud throwing between the fastballs. Some think that "getting even" by countersuing is the solution, I am too European to think of that as a solution.

It also raises another question. Drupal owes much to the hosting party OSUSL. The quality of service we get, the bandwidth we use, it sums up to a couple of K's dollars per month if we would buy this commercially. However, they /are/ located in the United States and hence "spreading" Drupal is under American law where software patents are deeper embedded in the legal system then for example in the EU where they are still banned, despite Bolkestein's actions.

The rules are changing. We are no longer just a nice hobby project. We have top customers (including Sony and IBM to name a few) and hence we have entered the corporate arena where the bully is watching us. We are however amongst many friends.

I hate clowns. I did as a kid. And for a good reason! Just look at this clown...

He must be eating kids for lunch.

31/12 2006, the end of a great year

In my private life, I became dad (again) of my son Aart. Had a great time with my daughter Brecht and still in love with my girlfriend Francis.

In my working life, I changed functions internally again and went back to the Businss Unit I seem to come back to every 2 years or so for the last decade. The Business Unit is doing high end webhosting and I am a Business Consultant helping sales, operations and most of all customers.

I my blogging life, this website hosted on a very old pentium was finally stable after a period where the uptime was very very low. The website also grew in number of visitors. I measure the hits in three ways;

• my raw apache logging that is analyzed with two opensource tools
• the logging via a javascript send to Google Analytics
• the page impressions of Google Adsense

Now my own logging says I have about 5k pageviews (not hits and excluding RSS feeds) per day. Analytics says I have about 2.2k pageviews per day and I have about 1.9k page impressions in Google Adsense. So tell me the truth, how much pageviews I get?

It is logical that my raw logging has more hits, it also counts the localhosts access to cron.php for example and the robots -that dont understand Javascript- are counted as well. And I also know that nearly 9% of all browsers have Javascripts disabled. The fact that adsense is even lower, is caused by the fact that many people block Adsense. So I know I have about 3-3.5k pageviews per day.

And what are all those visitors doing on this site.? 80% is comming from google. and they are looking for:

1. download youtube
2. download from youtube
3. how to download from youtube
4. download youtube videos
5. pijpen
6. save youtube videos
7. hack wep
8. goegle
9. free porn
10. how to save youtube videos

Dirty bastards!

Some other stats:
Total nodes published in the last year: 694
(breakdown: bertboerland 672 items, mikew, 20 items, gaele 2 items)

How To Download And Save Youtube Videos 12346 reads
Useful MythTV links 4063 reads
Drupal! Free! Porn! 3016 reads
PVR, the drug of a generation 2195 reads
For the Dutch MythTV users 1186 reads

Given this history, what holds the future? I decided

1. I will stop blogging daily! Up to now I have blogged daily. Every day. Every day new fresh content. But not all the postings had any quality text. From now on, I'll blog every 2 or 3 days but with a higher quality.
2. I will be more focussed: I'll blog about my family, Drupal (agile software / disposable technology / web2.0) and the Dutch media market

So, less postings next year but with more quality and more focus. Do you think it's a good move?

Who can forget the iconic image of Lynndie England, the ugly she-man, grinning and pointing at an Iraqi prisoner-of-war's cock?

The image has shocked, sickened and outraged people. But more importantly, it has captured the imagination of young men and women up and down the country who don't give much of a shit about anything. The result is a new craze called "doing a Lynndie". If you aren't "doing a Lynndie" now, you soon will be.

Ideally, you should refrain from telling the victim what you're about to do. Victims who are unaware, bemused or angry make for a Lynddie that is more in keeping with the original.

bad gas! BAD!

One of the best movies I saw: Fight Club! Dont be mislead by the tittle, yes it is absurd violent, but also absurd deep. I have blogging about fight club earlier in Dutch. However, today I found something new.

Le me start by some random linkdumping:

The narrator (unnamed in the movie, meaning he is unnamed, not that he is called jack!) has an excellent fan page with some nice colourfull buttons.

Some fight club trivia here:

Some of fake names used by the narrator in the self-help groups are names of characters in Planet of the Apes (1968), as well as classic roles played by Robert De Niro.

. And unless you are an ape yourself, the spoilers at the bottem of the page wont be new to you when you have seen the movie.

Nice wikiquotes can be found here and more and better quotes at the imdbase.

Richard Chesler (asking Narrator which blood on his shirt): Is that your blood?

Narrator: Some of it, yeah.

and

Marla Singer: My God. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school. (was: I want to have your abortion)

Either way, today I learned that there is a game comming tittled Fight Club, based on the movies (which is based on the book). And the game, is nothing more than a very nice done 3D fighter. Too bad of all the good stuff that is in the movie... See the raytraced intro of the game. No spoilers there.