Turns out we aren't the only ones who like our privacy... Privacy-loving space aliens put the smack down on SETI: "A 'pulsating blue beam' streaked out of the sky and slammed into the 250-foot Rand Wilson telescope near Johannesburg, South Africa, lighting up the facility and a quarter-mile area surrounding it, witnesses reported to the [Weekly World News].
Bad patent abuser! From the CNet article, "According to one person familiar with the companies' deal, Unisys had requested as much as $3.8 million under one licensing scenario that Accuweather rejected."
It just dawned on me. Unisys and AccuWeather are competing providers of weather data, such as value added weather radar feeds. So my suspicion is that this may be more than just trying to get huge royalties. It may also be to try and cripple a competitor. I didn't see any mention of this in the CNET article, but I think it's important enough to bring up. It may even be relevant and further show why so many patents are really bad tools to put in the hands of business. It could help explain why they wanted so much from AccuWeather.
An interesting point made on Slashdot, proving once again that it is occasionally good for something:
In particular, one of the companies Unisys is chasing down is Accuweather, a weather forcasting service. As a result, Accuweather has committed to changing over to the graphic format known as PNG, for "Portable Network Graphic", which is a free and open alternative.
More Patent Madness: Patent demands may spur Unisys rivals in graphics market: "Unisys is expanding its efforts to license the technology behind the Web's most popular graphics format, as it continues talks with major Internet portals to pay for the right to use so-called GIF files."
(And enough with the companies with the same name as their only product! I'm sick of the confusion!)
It might seem despicable to "let" them get away with what they're doing, but Napster-the-company is not the problem, it's the ones distributing the MP3's. It's not like it's hard to find the distributors with the right tools.
Adding to yesterday's essay... consider the lawsuits against Napster. (Metallica and a probable one by Dr. Dre) The thing is, all Napster does is blindly index what's being made available on the service, by file name. If we hold them responsible for the use their service is put to, we'll open the door in this country to what I talked about in the essay.