[Tfug] Courtesy Spacing: [WAS: Re: Microsoft reportedly wants...]

[Shawn Nock]

Jude,
    I don't necessarily disagree with any of the below content (it seems 
sincere), but please consider adding better spacing to future e-mails.

I've been at work for better than 8hr. That's eight hours of vim, emacs, 
and bash... not exactly eye friendly, right?  It was the layout of this 
email almost lost me the use of my left retina.

No disrespect intended, honestly. But, seriously... 26 lines, 
essentially a square block of unbroken text. That middle sentence (the 
incredibly unbroken comma delimited thing) just about made my eyes explode.

I don't know exactly why this bothers me today... I think it stood out 
do to it's formatting similarity to uuencoded data  (regular, dense and 
square).

I am not saying that you are wrong (I am implying it heavily...), but 
for the sake of my ocular health and that of others: Please consider 
carriage returns. Thank you.

Shawn (Maybe it's just me...) Nock

Jude Nelson wrote:
> The irony of the situation is perfect.  On one hand, Microsoft "claims" that
> there are 235 patents that Linux infringes upon, but fails to enumerate (in
> fact, openly refuses to enumerate) them or to show exactly how they are
> infringed, and has openly admitted that they aren't going to sue anyone at
> this time for using Linux without paying them royalties.  M$ has been caught
> in an awkward situation--no one is taking them seriously, and the
> shareholders won't be happy if M$ does nothing about the perceived
> infringement.  On the other hand, the only way M$ can make people take them
> seriously is to actually make an example out of one of the users by taking
> them to court, but unfortunately for them that would eventually mean taking
> on the likes of IBM, Sun Microsystems, Autozone, Chrysler, Google, HP, 30
> million pissed-off Linux users, the city of Munich, the US government, the
> EU, Dell, Red Hat, the FSF, Canonical, (maybe) Novell, etc., which have a
> net economic worth and net patent portfolio so vast that even if all of M$'s
> claims were valid, the legal fees alone would greatly outweigh any gains
> from damages they'd receive.  Not only that, but it's bad PR (almost
> RIAA-like), and there would be many legal backlashes regarding whether or
> not their patents were valid to begin with (seriously, does anyone think
> their patent on the concept of "sudo" will NOT be dismissed on grounds of
> prior art?).  I think we're seeing the beginning of the end of the M$
> hegemony--if 235 patent infringement cases is all the ammo they have, then
> they've been screwed for years.  Once GPL3 comes out in July, even
> cross-patent-licensing deals like the one they made with Novell will be
> illegal (they're starting to whine about the GPL3 "breaking our bridge
> between the proprietary and open source worlds"), preventing them from
> making money out of licensing fees.
> 
> Or they'll try to sue someone, and go the way of SCO.
> 

Peace,
Shawn


-- 
Shawn Nock (OpenPGP: 0xB64200E1)
Unix Systems Group; CCIT
University of Arizona
nock at email.arizona.edu