Restaurant without a kitchen

Interesting idea for an entrepeneur in the food services realm:

Amsterdam's Food Facility [is] a temporary restaurant without a kitchen, hosted by Mediamatic. Diners at the venue go online to check out menus from existing take-out restaurants in the area, while a food advisor informs them about the quality of the food and estimated delivery times, and then places their order. A food DJ takes the order from the delivery person and does away with the packing materials, before the food advisor serves the food at one's table. Mixing and matching is encouraged: negotiating with other guests makes it possible to have Tom Ka Ka as a starter, spareribs as a main course and tiramisu for dessert...

Restaurant without a kitchen

Avoiding Rookits by disabling CD "Autoplay"

In the aftermath of the Sony DRM rootkit debacle, it may be wise to disable the "autoplay" feature that is -- by default -- enabled in Windows XP. Here's how to do it without touching the registry: "Totally disable AutoPlay in Windows XP with no Registry editing".

Fighting terrorism without military options

Interviewed on Fox News, Mort Kondracke notes:

I think this has been a disastrous week for the Democrats across the board. When they're not incoherent, then they're defeatist.... And then we have John Kerry who's back in the picture. Made another speech today, which basically said that George Bush is doing nothing except military operations in order to -- in order to fight Islamic terrorism...

'Nothing except military options'? Is there another option against suicidal extremists who target women shopping, children at toy hand-outs, and civilians lined up for jobs? What would Kerry do? Sit down in the Brussels Hilton conference room, hand out courtesy gift bags commemorating the event, and negotiate terms of surrender with Al Qaeda?

If there are other options besides terminating the fanatics with extreme prejudice, I haven't heard about them. And this is example #4,323 in my continuing series entitled, "yet another reason why the Defeatocrats can't be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in this country."

I guess I was wrong

Headline: "Suicide-bomber bicyclist kills seven, wounds dozens in Bangladesh".

That's weird. I didn't think the Bangladeshi Army was in Iraq. I guess I was mistaken. Because, according to the Democrats, the extremists are only blowing up civilians because Allied countries are "occupying" Iraq.

BlackBerry: Summary of 11/30/05 USPTO Filing on NTP Patent

Interesting tidbit from the Right to Create blog:

...the USPTO has issued a non-final rejection of the patent at the core of the BlackBerry case, according to new reports (additional coverage here). The summary of a USPTO document dated Nov. 30 states, "the next office action is expected to be a final rejection of all current claims."

Combined with the US Government's intercession -- asking the court to delay any injunction at least 90 days -- it looks like RIMM may be in better shape than Gartner had anticipated. And if RIMM escapes without paying a cent to NTP, albeit by the skin of their teeth, the shareholders should throw one hell of a monster party.

The US Government intercedes in the BlackBerry dispute

I've carefully read the US Government's statement to the court regarding the NTP patent lawsuit against RIMM (the maker of BlackBerries). And I've noticed some interesting tidbits that haven't been mentioned in the news. The government stated:

...in the formulation of any injunction, it is imperative that some mechanism be incorporated that permits continuity of the federal government’s use of BlackBerry™ devices and establishes some procedure for identifying those devices that lie outside the scope of any injunction entered in this action...

Okay, the US Government wants to keep their BlackBerries operational whether or not an injunction occurs. Fair enough. But...

...in NTP’s Proposed Scheduling Order, filed November 1, 2005, it stated that it will propose an injunction with exceptions for federal, state and local governments, as well as first responders, such as the American Red Cross...

If this interpretation is correct, then, in the event of an injunction, RIMM must be permitted time to acquire and filter all federal, state, and local user network traffic. That is, someone will have to assemble a comprehensive list of all federal BlackBerry users, government contractors, the affected personnel in all fifty states, a countless number of localities and first responders, etc.... before the injunction can be levied!

And, to complicate matters further:

...according to RIM, it does not maintain a listing of e-mail addresses associated with government users, so that one might attempt to segregate addresses that end in .gov or .mil... Rather, RIM relies upon a PIN (Personal Identification Number) as a means of uniquely identifying every BlackBerry™ device. Thus, there is no simple way in which federal government users can be easily identified to assure that their service is not being cut off along with commercial users. The same would apply to state and local governments, and any other authorized users...

No wonder RIMM seems to be dawdling. Just assembling that that list might take longer than the US Patent and Trademark Office's final determination on the patents.

And here's another interesting tidbit:

...After recognizing that BlackBerry™ devices permitted emergency communications during times when other communications systems were inoperative, Congress issued them to every member...

Every member of Congress has a BlackBerry? That's quite a constituency.

The Government also mentions the patent review, in which the USPTO has ruled (in a preliminary determination) that some of NTP's patents may be predated by "prior art", which would render them useless.

...It is further worth noting that the five patents involved here are all undergoing re-examination by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). Given the potential complexity and expense involved in inventorying the government’s BlackBerry™ devices, it may make sense to stay any consideration of the reimposition of the injunction for at least 90 days, during which time the PTO may issue a final decision regarding the re-examination...

The phrase "may issue" is interesting. Why would the PTO make a final determination within 90 days? Unless, of course, something is happening behind the scenes...

Lastly, the government notes that civilian users will be impacted:

...There may also be a substantial public interest that would be impaired by enjoining commercial use of BlackBerry™ devices... it is quite possible that there is a strong public interest in being able to convey health or public emergency warnings to non-governmental users who have BlackBerry™ devices, and can take immediate action in response to such information...

Having read the entire statement, I think I now understand why RIMM is playing "four corners".

US government steps in to BlackBerry litigation

Update 12/10/2005: Forbes notes that in the few cases the Government interceded with a similar sort of patent dispute, the Judge determined no injunction was necessary and/or threw the case out. While the latter possibility is unlikely, patent lawyer Jesse J. Jenner, partner at Ropes & Gray called the letter 'very powerful' and likened it to eminent domain.

Streamlining CSS using PHP

Tyler Hall has published a clever treatise on improving CSS files using PHP. Imagine being able to define constants in your style sheets. Say you've come up with a great foreground color that's used repeatedly in your CSS. Wouldn't it be nice to just define that once? Here's how.