The Canucks did what??
The 2006/07 hockey season (NHL) just got under way and I placidly expected the Vancouver Canucks to be bottom feeders all summer after trading away Bertuzzi, Allen and a draft pick to Florida for an uninspiring Roberto Luongo and Krajicek. I know Luongo's always gotten high ratings from scouts, including a berth as an alternate goalie for Canada's Olympic squad in Torino -- an honour I thought he couldn't possibly deserve given the way he played any time I saw a Florida game (and without excessive spending on Pay-Per-View and satellite channels, that wasn't much).
So they go to "the Joe", home of the Detroit Red Wings and, come playoff time, dead octopuses, to meet the many-time President's Trophy winners in their opener and I thought, natch, they're going to lose, badly and embarassingly.
And I was prepared not to care very much -- the local lads in the WHL, the Vancouver Giants, were so very satisfying to watch after the Canucks failure to make it to the post-season, that I thought I could get my "fix" of hockey in some other way. Here in Canada, hockey is big, almost like soccer is in England, or rugby in New Zealand, or like basketball in inner-city USA. I'm embarassed to say how much I enjoy seeing a good hockey game, regardless of the teams -- but there's something about the home squad doing well. It just sort of gives you a lift.
So imagine how much I enjoyed driving home with the 3rd period commentary on Vancouver holding a 3-1 lead! (something they haven't been able to do with any team for three years or so) And succeeding! It almost made how light the traffic was between 5:45 and 6:30 unnoticeable (maybe everyone had gone home early to see the game? it sure was light...),
And they won. Very confidently. Go figure. And held Detroit of all teams, to zero goals on nine powerplay attempts? Who are these guys? Same team, new vitamins I guess... Or perhaps Nonis (the General Manager -- in hockey a different individual than the coach most often) knows more about hockey than we all thought he did.
I'll still probably never get to more than one game in five years but it'll be more fun to drive home hearing about a winner on the ice. Can they do it again in Columbus tonight? 23h30 GMT will tell...
2006-10-06
2006-10-03
One of my distractions...
As some of you know, I read groklaw somewhat regularly. The other morning, I may have waken someone up with my belly-laugh when I read (after too many days hearing about Hewlett-Packard Inc.-- I understand why: PJ's stock in trade as a journalist are this kind of leak and there is some need for journalists to be able to do their thing without being spied on -- and the "d" link above is truly chilling but still. Did it need THAT many articles? I thought not.) that Novell had amended their counterclaims against SCO to require them to pass along their SCOSource license fee revenue back to Novell: if their heretofore collected license fees are ruled as belong to Novell, then this slander of title suit brought by SCO against Novell may serve to strangle their case against IBM to death. And that wouldn't be entirely a bad thing, I think.
(I remember thinking some time ago, that it was odd that given the tenuous hold SCO had on Unix IP, they should then be able to claim license fees on Unix IP from all Linux users without so much as a breath about paying any portion of them to Novell. And now Novell has said so plainly...)
Still, it might be better if SCO v. IBM could continue, at least to the point that it would be a matter of accepted case law in the US that Linux does not contain infringing material from Unix. There's already more than enough noise in the Linux market over the GPLv3 process (and I plan to post my opinion on that front some time...) to have lingering threats murmuring out from any other shadows. The extent to which Linux has been developed out in the public eye is probably a cautionary lesson towards anyone else who might try this on other fronts but even so, it'd be good to have a conclusion reached, appeal-proofed and in the books for all to refer to.
Back to SCO, though, and its claimed right to collect license fees (and then hang onto the loot), IANAL (but like other groklaw readers, I have been attracted to the idea of becoming one through the description of the SCO odyssey and some of the IP law issues that still remain to be settled) but it seemed to me pretty clear that all SCO ever had the right to do was collect monies on behalf of Novell. I wonder that anyone ever took them as having more value than that? If Martha deserved to do hard time for her small insider trading misdeeds, Darl and the top management of SCO deserve more for their pre-meditated pump and dump on a wing and a lie. Much more. I wonder if any indictments against them are in the works?
As some of you know, I read groklaw somewhat regularly. The other morning, I may have waken someone up with my belly-laugh when I read (after too many days hearing about Hewlett-Packard Inc.-- I understand why: PJ's stock in trade as a journalist are this kind of leak and there is some need for journalists to be able to do their thing without being spied on -- and the "d" link above is truly chilling but still. Did it need THAT many articles? I thought not.) that Novell had amended their counterclaims against SCO to require them to pass along their SCOSource license fee revenue back to Novell: if their heretofore collected license fees are ruled as belong to Novell, then this slander of title suit brought by SCO against Novell may serve to strangle their case against IBM to death. And that wouldn't be entirely a bad thing, I think.
(I remember thinking some time ago, that it was odd that given the tenuous hold SCO had on Unix IP, they should then be able to claim license fees on Unix IP from all Linux users without so much as a breath about paying any portion of them to Novell. And now Novell has said so plainly...)
Still, it might be better if SCO v. IBM could continue, at least to the point that it would be a matter of accepted case law in the US that Linux does not contain infringing material from Unix. There's already more than enough noise in the Linux market over the GPLv3 process (and I plan to post my opinion on that front some time...) to have lingering threats murmuring out from any other shadows. The extent to which Linux has been developed out in the public eye is probably a cautionary lesson towards anyone else who might try this on other fronts but even so, it'd be good to have a conclusion reached, appeal-proofed and in the books for all to refer to.
Back to SCO, though, and its claimed right to collect license fees (and then hang onto the loot), IANAL (but like other groklaw readers, I have been attracted to the idea of becoming one through the description of the SCO odyssey and some of the IP law issues that still remain to be settled) but it seemed to me pretty clear that all SCO ever had the right to do was collect monies on behalf of Novell. I wonder that anyone ever took them as having more value than that? If Martha deserved to do hard time for her small insider trading misdeeds, Darl and the top management of SCO deserve more for their pre-meditated pump and dump on a wing and a lie. Much more. I wonder if any indictments against them are in the works?
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