July 2008
Monthly Archive
Beware of Foxconn Motherboards
Posted by dboth on 25 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Information
Foxconn is a motherboard manufacturer that is deliberately programming their BIOS to crash non-Microsoft operating systems, especially Linux.
Here is the link. Read for yourself and check out the disassembled BIOS code that this user found.
http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869249
Software Patents Ruled Invalid by PTO
Posted by dboth on 25 Jul 2008 | Tagged as: Comments, News
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) has basically ruled that software patents are invalid. This invalidates many patents by many companies, including those patents with which Microsoft sought to bludgeon the Linux ecosystem.
The ruling is particularly good news for the Open Source community. It makes it clear that Open Source software is, in general at least, free and clear of any issues having to do with software patents.
The Patent Law Blog, PatentlyO, has a long article bemoaning this ruling, but it is very interesting in that it discusses many of the issues that have concerned Open Source advocates for some time.
Read the text of the article, The Death of Google’s Patents?