Year: 2012

spoon.net – run any desktop application on deman

spoon.net – run any desktop application on deman

I haven’t tried it myself yet, but a few people mentioned to me that this is mighty useful for cross-browser testing during web development and design.

Is PersonalWeb Technologies a new SCO?

Linux Weekly News reports that:

Personalweb Technologies and Level 3 Communications have filed a lawsuit [PDF] against Rackspace, alleging that Rackspace’s hosting of GitHub infringes upon a long list of software patents.

One of the comments lists a few possibly related law suits:

PersonalWeb Technologies LLC et. al. v. Yahoo! Inc. filed yesterday in Texas Eastern Civil Action No. 6:12-cv-00658
PersonalWeb Technologies LLC et. al. v. Apple Inc. filed yesterday in Texas Eastern Civil Action No. 6:12-cv-00660
PersonalWeb Technologies LLC et. al. v. International Business Machines Corporation filed yesterday in Texas Eastern Civil Action No. 6:12-cv-00661
PersonalWeb Technologies LLC et. al. v. Facebook Inc. filed yesterday in Texas Eastern Civil Action No. 6:12-cv-00662
PersonalWeb Technologies LLC et. al. v. Microsoft Corporation filed yesterday in Texas Eastern Civil Action No. 6:12-cv-00663

Given the description of the company:

PersonalWeb is a proud member of the East Texas community. We are now 14 employees strong and growing. We own 15 key pending and issued patents that are critical to the development of a wide range of established and emerging distributed computing based industries and fundamental for cloud computing, distributed search engine file systems, content addressable storage and social networks.

That leaves a horribly familiar SCO aftertaste.

P.S.: More on Slashdot.

Human population on Mars

In the world where plenty of projections are done for today and project deadlines set for yesterday, it’s nice to once in a while read about someone who thinks a bit further than that.

British billionaire Richard Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company is backing the development of SpaceShip Two, has told CBS News he is ‘determined to start a population on Mars.’ He said, ‘I think over the next 20 years, we will take literally hundreds of thousands of people to space and that will give us the financial resources to do even bigger things. That will give us the resources then to put satellites into space at a fraction of the price, which can be incredibly useful for thousands of different reasons.’ Branson isn’t the only billionaire interested in the Red Planet. Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), wants to put humans on Mars in the next 12 to 15 years.

Via Slashdot, of course.