Joe's Random Ramblings

In the apparently never-ending SCO saga, the judge has dealt SCO another blow that hopefully puts this zombie to rest once and for all. They don't get a new trial, and Novell can shut down their lawsuit against IBM.
Ars Technica has the details in their article aptly titled "SCOwned"

My favorite piece of the ruling:

Finally, while SCO?s witnesses testified that the copyrights were ?required? for SCO to run its SCOsource licensing program, this was not something that SCO ever acquired from Novell.

Is this what Sarah Palin had in mind when she advocated "Drill, Baby, drill"?
I am pretty sure drilling near the California coast is now off the table.

Update: CA's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has changed his stance on drilling off the CA coast, and now opposes it.
As I expected, drilling off the coast of California is dead.

Exactly two months back, Barnes & Noble had a nice free e-book offer. The offered book was available for free download for one day.
Unfortunately, that offer turned out to be a classic bait-and-switch.
I downloaded the book shortly before midnight, and was charged for it.
Needless to say, I called them up the next day and tried to get my money back.
They offered a $10 giftcard, but only sent a $5 giftcard
Numerous phonecalls to B&N support follow. They repeatedly lied to me. They told me another giftcard was sent out on March 5. Never showed up. They asked me to wait, blaming the delay on the postal service. They then claimed to have sent another card on March 25. Never shows up. Eventually, they agreed to send yet another giftcard via priority mail. Even that takes over a week for them to just process What in the world is there to "process"?
Finally, today, exactly two months after the original e-book download, I get the second $5 giftcard to make it the $10 refund that they promised on February 18. And contrary to what they promised, it wasn't sent priority mail...

This whole bait-and-switch affair has left a really bad taste.
I like my nook. But I won't recommend it to anybody else. Not after this experience.
And I will also take my printed-book shopping elsewhere.

The Republican primaries for California governor have already become a mud fight.
Steve Poizner is obviously becoming really desperate.
In his trying to rally the Republican faithful, he is giving the Democrats a nice opening to win in November. His anti-immigrant TV spots are guaranteeing defeat in November, even if he would manage to win the Republican nomination. The last Republican to win in CA on an anti-immigrant platform was Pete Wilson in 1994, and that resulted in US citizens of Latino descent signing up in droves as voters, and vote anti-immigrants (like Bob Dornan) out of office and Latinos (like the Sanchez sisters) into office.

The other interesting thing is that his TV spots paint the current CA governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, as not really a Republican. "After Arnold, isn't it time to vote for a Republican"...
Of course, that points to the main reason why the Republicans will lose in November. They are a bunch of right-wing idiots who do not have the public behind them. Arnold only won because he didn't have to go through a Republican primary election (he ran in the Gray Davis recall election.) He would have never made it through a Republican primary in CA. He got elected because of his name recognition.
He is the closest Republicans will ever again get to have a foothold in CA...
Poizner would never win. Even Whitman, while she has somewhat more appeal to the center, is likely to lose, because people still associate her with eBay, and such eBay blunders as buying Skype.

Now that the Apple iPad is out, we see why Apple's entry in the e-book business is bad:
They censor literature.
As Boing-Boing shows, Apple doesn't like the fact that the whale in Melville's Moby Dick is a sperm whale...
Apple: the right-wing, Christian-nutcase idiot's best friend.