Welcome to the world, Mary Thomas

Friends Jenny and Mike have added to their brood. Little baby Mary was born on Sunday 9th January, weighing in at 7lbs 5oz (in old money) and both mother and baby are doing fine. Her big brother Dan (aged 3) knows that she's not called Mary Thomas though, her real name is Mary Christmas.

Congratulations to the family!

Software Patents latest

In Europe, Poland's intervention stopped the European Union fast-tracking legislation that would allow us to have a software patent system as broken as the American one, much to the annoyance of a couple of big companies (*cough* Microsoft). Thank you, Poland!

The other side of the pond, Linux's biggest gunning friend IBM has decided that, whilst continuing to amass software patents that it can licence to companies wanting them for proprietary ends, it's going to start offering free licences to open source developers. Thank you, IBM!

Meanwhile, Microsoft have decided that the best way to continue lining their pockets from the use of flakey code is to continue bleating on about Digital Rights Management and getting into bed with other companies refusing to grasp the future with both hands - erm, record companies then, and movie studios - so that they can dictate to us precisely what we can do with what we buy. In the meantime, they plant seeds of doubt in minds by throwing in words like "communist" to anyone who disagrees with their plans, but this isn't really surprising from a company whose chief exec has previously provided media good-taste by likening Linux to cancer. If you're happy to continue using an operating system peddled by a company like this, what's your problem? =)