[SpikeThurs] Groklaw has new chapter, It's official; Gartner says VoIP is hot! Beer from coffee, Christmas Fact#52

Groklaw has published Chapter20 of a new book being written titled, "The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin".  An interesting model unfolding here, with writers publishing their drafts publicly for people to correct them then and there. This chapter though, looks at the history of the Linux distributions and how they all evolved.  Fascinating reading.

• http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20051031235811490

Just how do they do it?  Gartner publish another ground breaking report telling the world what they already know.  The great soothsayers of the analyst world have uttered that a third of people by 2009 will be using VoIP to be making their calls, abandoning conventional phone lines.  But wait it gets better, they predict handsets to fall to as low as £14.99 by 2010!  within 5 years eh?  Go Gartner!  (pssst chaps check out eBay, way cheaper than that already!)

• http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4401136.stm

The crazy world of the patents knows no bounds.  The software industry is not alone in getting whacky patents snuck through the system.  This one will be particularly distressing to our inhouse brewer Mr Martin, but it appears that Nestle have gone and patented, beer brewed from coffee.  But wait, this is beer without the aclohol.  WHAT IS THE POINT OF THAT?!

• http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8248

Countdown to Christmas Fact#52:
The humble Christmas tree, was used well before the holiday was marked by the christians for Jesus.  It was used to signal the seasonal change around the 21st of December. Following on from this the wreath that usually adorns most doors through the festive period, welcomes and wishes them a long life for all that enter through that door.  But in Scotland, if you receive guests on new year, they must enter through the front door and leave through the back door.
Courtesy of http://www.20ishparents.com/holiday/cfacts.shtml

tags: nestle  coffee beer  skype  voip  linux  christmas  gartner  

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