Finally caught Matrix Reloaded tonight and my opinion is split. The fight scenes do get a little tedious at times no matter how many copies of Agent Smith you throw in. The Twins are the new Darth Maul with a decent amount of hype in the trailers and whatnot with very little development in the movie itself. They look like extras from an Urge Overkill video or something. Like Darth Maul they were much more interesting in the trailers. I’m sure they function very well as sunglasses models though so the marketeers will be stoked out.

Other upsetting elements:

1. Don’t fucking end movies like that. This is not the Batman television series. The audible groan from the rest of the folks in the theater echoed my feeling. It’s cheap, cheap, cheap.

2. The bringing Trinity back to life by reaching into her chest cavity stunt was terrible. Why not just punch the cheese throttle all the way up and show up stop motion shots of flowers blossoming while you’re at it and then Neo can find his way back to Zion by following a trail of Reese’s Pieces. Then we threw up.

Pissing and moaning aside I will see the next episode. I’ll give the Bros W some breathing room to drink a little of their own Kool-Aid this time around. I probably need to see this movie a couple of more times before I can absorb all of the details. Yoon did notice that the Oracle’s candy was red. Red pill. Hint. Wink. Nudge.

Man. If I read about the whole SCO fiasco in some Clancy-esque thriller yankfest I’d have called it completely unbelievable. It’s still pretty unbelievable but keeps getting more surreal each day, each time one of the board members shoots their mouths off about who they’ll see next in court. If they aren’t MS pawns they’re so fucked that no one has to worry about them. SCO will be out of money before the case with IBM actually sees a judge. Trying to trace the chronology of the whole thing makes me feel like I’m going crazy. So now SCO is threatening to sue Novell which is utter insanity on top of the (indirect) threats against Linus and whoever else isn’t paying up. I imagine Lindows is next.

Since Kenneth was kind enough to share a copy of the freshly Slashdotted and accordingly disappeared Waste (link for reference only because the file itself is long gone) I will do the same and offer it here for your downloading pleasure. Grab yourself some source cow[boy||girl].

Although I still have not seen the multi-gazillion dollar version of The Matrix I have indeed seen Matrix XP in all of its goofy glory. At very least all of the laughs in Matrix XP are intentional. Well worth your 2 minutes of downloading until it gets Slashdoted into oblivion that is. It still isn’t posted there as of this second but I actually submitted it which is a fine example of my own bipolar behavior or at least a geek imperative to share even if it destroys the site.
Nevermind
Per usual any time I actually bother to submit something to /. it is quickly rejected and later accepted in typo laden format submission by someone else. Go figure or rather not…

Oh yeah. Just the thing to further skew my bedtime: Movable Type 2.64. I did it in under ten minutes not counting the rebuild and nothing appears broken. I wish upgrades were always so smooth. Big old changelog is in the usual place. Looks like bugfixes which is fine with me since I’m about two releases away from a bloat reduction change of software. This isn’t to say that MT is not a totally fucking fabulous piece of coding but it’s probably way too big of a hammer for what I’m doing here. I don’t suspect that the kids will be recalling this release unlike a shadowy apparition to the NW we’re all tired of hearing me rant about.

Yesterday’s problem child (the help call I referenced in the previous post) was all about rampant porn consumption. If you’re going to surf pr0n at work I suggest using an account that isn’t yours. That way when you call tech support and they look at the machine when you’re logged in a simple scan of your browser history won’t give you away. Threatening to permanently close Port 80 silenced all protests. My patience is limited.

I’ve seen a flurry of posting on news sites about Lindows having agreements with Caldera (the larval SCO) that may invalidate the lawsuit claims against the entire Linux kernel. I’m not buying that since loadable kernel modules (like the Nvidia drivers) are not necessarily covered by the GPL. I hope the Lindows deal is less superficial than that. I hate to wish well to a company that I openly despise but in this case I’ll punch the moral time clock and stick with the lesser of evils. We’ll get back to the exorcism when this lawsuit blows over. The press release in question in case you haven’t already clicked through three dozen times already.

Hey. Go grab yourself some Shavian fonts. I’m typing up scads of utter gibberish in another console right now. Or you could just buy a t-shirt in honor of Shaw’s (mostly) forgotten alphabet. If I had more than a few paltry dollars in the bank I might buy one myself just to be annoying. You can also grab IPA alphabet fonts if you’re more practical. The geekery just doesn’t stop.

Linux Planet has a nice summary of the friction between Novell and SCO and the connections they share. The more facts surface the more I’ve got to wonder if Boies hasn’t considered bailing from this sinking ship before the whole thing goes under. The continual vague threats probably aren’t helping matters at least in terms of public opinion which is going to haunt SCO regardless of their actions post-lawsuit. This is of course assuming the company will exist which is doubtful.

Gotta go clean up some more ad ware — the same computer as last week. Time to crank up the security settings in IE to “useless.” Silly kids…

I’ve speculated a whole lot on exactly what genus of assclown the SCO CEO belongs to since the beginning of this whole SCO vs. IBM train wreck but it seems like the folks that move dollars around with bulldozers have finally pricked up their ears as well. Right now SCO’s stock price is taking a shit slide back into hell from whence it came. Someone posted that link in a comment over at Slashdot and I think it’s very telling about the general confidence people have in SCO’s ability to shoot itself in the foot over and over and over again.

The whole ballyhoo started when everyone started linking this news story where the head clown says very stupid things to the tune of:

McBride added that unless more companies start licensing SCO’s property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.

The “fwhoooo” sound that came out of me when I read that paragraph sort of hurt.

One of the readers over at PC Linux Online pointed out (by research into SEC filings and quarterly reports mind you) that Novell has a valid point about the intellectual property SCO claims to own. The comment says:

his is so cool! If you read Novell’s 1995 and 1996 annual and quarterly earnings reports filed with the SEC you see that Novell acquired UNIX System Laboratories, Inc. (USL) by issuing approximately 11 million shares of Novell common stock valued at $332 million in exchange for all of the outstanding stock of USL not previously owned by Novell and assumed liabilities of $9 million. Bear in mind they were already part owners of USL.

Then they sold Unixware to SCO for stock that only amounted to a 17 percent ownership in SCO common stock. The agreement also called for Novell to receive a revenue stream from SCO based on revenue performance of the purchased UnixWare product line. This revenue stream was not to exceed $84 million net value, and ended by the year 2002. That’s certainly not a $340 million dollar plus value. In addition, Novell was to continue to receive revenue from existing licenses for older versions of UNIX System source code.

All of that indeed looks like they were only swapping the product line for part ownership in SCO – while retaining the licensing rights to the UNIX IP. That last sentence at least indicates that the Novell executives certainly thought they were retaining permanent rights to at least some of the existing UNIX IP and made public representations to that fact with the SEC. That contradicts SCO’s claims today that all of the Novell and SCO executives who were involved at the time thought that SCO was acquiring all of the IP rights.

Even when Novell mentions selling BOTH it’s UNIX AND Unixware product lines, it specifically mentions the continuing revenues from UNIX licensing.

You’ve gotta love folks who do their homework. I’m pretty curious at this point if there is any legal plan on the part of SCO or if they’ve given up any hope of a real lawsuit in hopes of finding a magical pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I hope Darl McBride finds himself out of a job in the near future especially as a representative of the company that causes stock value to plummet simply by running his mouth. I’m sure the countersuits have only begun. Microsoft still might play a role in this somehow by throwing more money into the mix but hopefully they’ll see past their blind hatred for all things not Microsoft and recognize a losing horse before dropping a load at the bet counter.

Things keep breaking today and unfortunately they’re largely things that I depend on. For some reason during the usual round of updates today Evolution broke which isn’t the biggest deal in the world but was pretty annoying. I ended up setting up Sylpheed Claws because Kmail has got one too many problems for me to get my head around. So, yeah, minor setback that took ten minutes to fix but grrr…

The New York Times is also climbing up the petty annoyance ladder by turning its NewsTracker service which is marginally handy to begin with into a subscription based commercial service. This in itself is not as annoying as the four pieces of mail I’ve recieved today informing me about all the great features I’ll be missing out on. Tedious. Very tedious.

Fresh News is also broken at the moment. I’m more sad than angry about because I actually went directly to Slashdot for the first time in like a year.

So there’s a Macintosh port of my old pal Uplink which is really, really fun for like two days. It was a great two days, though. This is probably going to be a big hit with the Mac folks if only because it’s relatively new and runs on the pretty hardware.

I think that the actual playing interface needs to change at some point. The “desktop” gets to be a little tiresome after a while. I do enough of telnetting from server to server and destroying important (albeit accidentally and ones that belong to me) documents in real life. The lack of mouse stickiness also drives me crazy. I’ve never been a fan of sloppy focus in windowing environments and the “softness” (now I’m just making shit up) of this emulation of a sloppy focus desktop is maddening. Surprisingly the looped pseudo-ambient music is not at all irritating. I was pretty excited about it a year or so ago so I imagine newer versions are probably better. I actually tried to play the game a couple months ago but it would just segfault and die. Not like I need to be wheedling hours away gaming in the first place but still..

Uh, this is kinda cheap but I’m too weak to take the high road here. From an article about another “threat of terrorism” arrest comes this blue ribbon motherfucker:

“Since Sept. 11, you pay more attention to what people are saying,” said Sgt. Randy Horton, a 28-year veteran of the Emeryville Police Department. “Unless you know the person you’re dealing with, you have to take everything a little more seriously.”

Last month, two Oakland High School sophomores got a visit from the Secret Service after their teacher heard them make comments about “getting” Bush.

I’m sure that’s precisely what they were talking about.

Why does stuff like this always get turned around into some apocalyptic rant about the mean spirited nature of open source/free software developers? What I’m talking about it this thread on the PHP.net buglist that I’ve seen linked a few places already usually with commentary about what assholes developers are. Not really. Would-be developer places bug report about an old version of the software. Bug bot says: upgrade! Developer gets all bent out of shape about the lack of ready and willing support (despite having his question answered) on a bug list. That should end the story. Don’t call an ambulance when you need the police. Or a hug. Or one of the many books out there on the subject of PHP. Or a steaming hot mug of shut the hell up.

I love that he brings up the free software angle — if I’d paid for this software you’d have to deal with me differently — sort of approach. Do you want polite mediocrity or do you want solid code and the truth? Look at your desktop and tell me you want function.