The Irish Penguin

It’s coming up to Christmas and it’s the time to be merry - especially if you are a certain thief, who has made off with 450 kegs of festive beer, including 180 kegs of the black stuff, from Ireland’s premier brewery! [source: Times Online] St James’s Gate, home of the famous pint that is Guiness, was the scene of the crime as the assailant drove off (staggered???) in a trailer drawing vehicle; the most exciting heist since The Cattle Raid of Cooley. Interesting it has come admist a police blitz in the nation’s capital - 160 police on the beat in the Xmas run-up. You’d think someone would have noticed the equivalent of half a mega-pint.

Only one person is believed to have been involved in the incident; who’s now shot to fame with the infamous title “The Beer Hunter”. Their whereabouts is currently unknown as a ‘thirsty-man hunt’ sweeps the nation. One thing is clear however, the sought-after thief does not have much respect for his/her taste buds - making off with an additional 180 kegs of Budweiser (which in Ireland tastes like a cross between a dog’s urine, and well… another dog’s urine - mostly drank by people who hate the taste of beer¹) and 90 kegs of Carlsberg. All in all, the liquid loot was worth in the region of 65000 euro. Quote of the day goes to Grainne Mackin, spokesperson for Guinness’ owner Diageo Ireland, who said “What could they possibly want with all that beer?” Hmm… Have a very merry Christmas perhaps?

¹ In your correspondent’s humble opinion

An anonymous source at Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters revealed today how the software giant plans to release Windows XP as the successor to the ill-fated Vista operating system in the next decade.

“User’s want choice and Microsoft will offer customers the choice of a mandatory upgrade cycle which will deliver value to the end user and a greater end user experience. Part of that experience will include the launch of Windows XP as the next generation operating system in 2010 and will replace Windows Vista as our flagship product.”

“We have listened to customers that have told us that they would like a responsive GUI that can offer productivity gains over Windows Vista technology. In particular, usability tests have shown that Vista’s “preparing to copy - calculating” feature, which gave the users the option to go and make a cup of tea whilst the underlying OS took 5 minutes to decide how long it would take to copy those two 4 kilobyte text files, are not proving to be the win we expected. Instead we shall revert to our patented MS-DOS technology which can perform the same task in a fraction of the time. A patent which Linux infringes.”

“Additionally we will be removing the patented ‘99 OK Click’ security functionality security feature that Vista introduced as many users asked how security was improved by providing an OK click without requesting any password. We just saw some kind of similar feature when we visited our friends at Novell called ’su ‘and ’sudo’ and we thought our users would also like that. But we also knew that they wouldn’t like entering passwords. This was borne out through extensive usability testing with rabbits in our lab scenarios. The rabbits also suggested that they liked the idea of a ribbon when working with the office programs. We were determined to deliver such productivity gains and value, not only to these rabbits, but also sheep and other users of our products.”

“We found Windows XP to be the most efficient way to deliver these gains to our users through a familiar and proven user interface as well as harnessing our synergies across the Windows brand. The good news for users is that through our software assurance policy means that their subscription plan will cover the licencing cost for the XP upgrade - unless its release gets delayed like Windows Vista. Existing Windows XP licence holders will only have to pay the licence fee one more time in order to continue to use their product.”

Rumour also has it that Microsoft are already even planning the next OS release after Windows XP which will be in 2015. The provisional codename for it is to be “Long Horn, Short Memory” and it is expected that it will be built on the Windows 3.1 codebase that delivered such rich functionality through much of the nineties…

And so the biggest legal saga to face Linux over the last few years was that of SCO trying to sue people for copyright infringement, saying that it owned the rights to UNIX. This has dragged Novell, IBM and more into the courts to fight for the right to party. Well today that party was in full swing as the judge in the case, Dale Kimball, has ruled in Novell’s favour saying that it is Novell, and not SCO, who own the UNIX and Unixware rights.

Kudos to Novell! It’s hard to see that there is much, if anything, left in the SCO locker that they can accuse IBM of infringing. In fact, it looks like they’ll be busy trying to organise a whip-a-round to pay up to Novell who will now be due a big cheque from SCO for the UNIX rights that Microsoft and Sun had previously paid SCO for. Yes, that sentence is a bit long and confusing. Perhaps it would be better to allocate IP addresses to each note in the UNIX rights cash pile and use traceroute to track its hops from one accounting subnet to another!

Interesting it was Microsoft who were reported to have set the SCO ball rolling back in 2003 by paying them for the first UNIX licence . Here’s one of the article’s from back then when the news first broke and the world looked a bleaker place. Once details of a Microsoft-SCO association had been reported it prompted one analyst, Gordon Haff of Illuminata, to say “Microsoft should certainly be worried about even a little bit of SCO’s stench rubbing off.” Well the only stench today will be from rear end of the trousers of the SCO management as they nervously wonder where to go next from here.

Given that Microsoft stumped up the initial cash to set SCO off like a bull in a China shop, it is possibly fitting that such money will now likely pass on to Novell to fund Linux development. Mind you, it’s hard to keep track of the amount of Microsoft cash that the Novell management are rolling around in these days. Maybe the Redmond team should just give up on Windows and focus on their Linux development entirely. Let’s be honest, it’s much more fun!

Groklaw has been covering this tale from the start of the case and and PJ is in bouyant mood as she covers the details whilst downing some chocolates. Thanks for a great site PJ, to keep the great unwashed up to date on the legal rumblings over the last few years, and please continue to do so as this fish gets reeled in.

And the results are in, YouTube 2 - 0 Hollywood! Mr Bay you have been beaten…

Easily, the best Transformer films of the summer are

• SuperNews! - Transformers 2? Michael Bay tries to talk Optimus and Co into doing a sequel
• Optimus Prime Gets Prostrate Cancer Despite it’s morbid title, this is hilarious!

Mee, Grimlock luv U-Tube!!!