Longtime aficionados of the Palm OS were very displeased when the entity now known as PalmOne lost a patent infringement suit to Xerox over their single-stroke text entry system called Graffiti.
This time, the good guys finally won one. The suit has been invalidated.
I sincerely hope that PalmOne will now bring back Graffiti as an option in their operating system. The new version, created because of that dratted lawsuit, sucks.
Spent a lovely weekend more or less offline with my parents at their summer home CT. Today, I helped them move their sailboat from its winter home in Mamaroneck, NY to its summer slip in Rowayton, CT.
It took about 7 hours, because although there was a reasonable amount of wind, it was blowing from the wrong direction and we had to beat all over Long Island Sound to get where we were going. I hadn’t been on a boat in more than 4 years and was a bit nervous that I’d be no help, but to my pleasure discovered that I can still stand a trick at the wheel and trim a sail, although I had to think a lot harder about whether what I was doing was right than I used to.
The last hour was a little stressful, as we started sailing right towards a fairly powerful thunderstorm. It was a warm day, and I had some spare dry clothes with me, so getting wet wasn’t that big a deal, but the frequent bolts of lighting were a little scary to watch when you’re out on the water with a really tall metal mast inviting the lightening to come pay a visit. I saw one particularly brilliant lighting strike hit a flagpole right on the edge of the shore. That got me nervous. However, the lighting decided to steer clear of our boat and we made it back to shore drenched but otherwise unharmed.
Tomorrow, I get together with a few more family members in NYC and Tuesday I’m back in SF.
Thought I was done with blogging for this day but found one last headline that makes me feel sick: Son mistreated to make father talk.
The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.
Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.
And what would have happened to the son if the father had not broken down? We’re supposed to be better than this.
You know it’s getting silly when what Dan Brown left OUT of “The Davinci Code” is newsworthy.
Dan Brown said that when he wrote the best seller that dissects the origins of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion.
It’s a reasonably entertaining novel but it’s not going to sit next to “Wuthering Heights” or “I, Claudius” in the annals of classic fiction. I have to assume that it’s the subject matter, and that some people are having a hard time having their religion treated as fodder for fiction.
I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. The amount of traffic my little review of “The Davinci Code” has generated is still regular, more than six months after I posted it.
I’m currently in the middle of a Daniel Silva novel, “The Confessor.” It’s a decent read so far. I hope he doesn’t have the same third-act problems that Dan Brown has.
Greetings from New York City. It’s warm and muggy.
Quote of the day, from Senator Joseph Biden by way of the Guardian:
“With at least 82% of the Iraqis saying they oppose American and allied forces, how long do you think it will be before the Iraqi government asks our departure?”
Ouch.
I’m travelling to NYC today. See ya on the flip side!