Laptop dead. Will go no further than flashing the lights and starting the fan: normally the fan will then go up a step and then the maker's splash screen comes up before going on to boot, none of which is happening. Fuck: can't afford this and also I need my computer, right now.
When I was back in London last weekend I managed, in between the hangovers and the sleep deprivation, to find time to change my OS (for those who care, from Mandriva 2006, which isn't as good as its predecessors, at least so far as my needs are concerned, to Ubuntu, which seems fine). Rather than try and be clever I decided to do a complete wipe and clean install, backing up everything of course.
And so I did, and everything went perfectly fine. And then my colleague looked in and said "drink", and off we trotted to the Seven Stars for a while. Until I realised I was cutting it fine for Victoria-Gatwick Ex-checkin an hour before, you know the drill, so off I rushed, grabbed my bags from my office and off I went.
Without the pile of CD backups.
So far as work is concerned, that's fine, if necessary I have access to copies of that stuff by another route. What is missing is all the music I ripped to the computer when I came out here.
And so, for the present, I'm stuck with two CDs: a decentish recording of Mahlers 1&2, which at least has some mileage. And, err.. um. Culturniks of a certain vintage may be able to guess what the other one is. An album of seminal importance...
"I'm a Barbie Girl...."
The more computer-geeky among you almost certainly know a great deal more about the ongoing SCO v. IBM litigation on alleged IP infringements in linux than I do. Personally, given I know next to nothing about computers and not a great deal about English IP law, let alone that of the US and specifically the state of Utah, I have nothing worth saying about that itself, though I do find myself raising my eyebrows when I learn that SCO have taken two and a half years from issue to file what they say is their full particularisation of what IBM actually did, and then done so under court seal. I'd hate to have to defend that one on a wet Wednesday afternoon interim application in the commercial court or the TCC. As is often the case with legal stories (and also history) I'm in that comfortable position of knowing enough to know I know nothing...
What struck me about the story when reading about the latest developments yesterday was a separate point: 'SCO said, "The numerosity and substantiality of the disclosures reflects the pervasive extent and sustained degree as to which IBM disclosed methods, concepts, and in many places, literal code"'.
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