RIAA Lies About Real Sales Numbers
The RIAA has been caught in a bold faced lie about the true nature their record sales (not that anyone seriously suspected anything different). According to Moses Avalon of Music Dish, the losses the RIAA reports aren't exactly that. In fact, they would come closer to, well, gains. Apparently, instead of counting losses as any normal business would (i.e:money that was made the previous year but not made the subsequent one), the RIAA reports losses according to the number of shipments made. How could the number of shipments differ from the actual number of units sold? Very easily in fact. To get the idea you will have to read the article, but here is a quote from the article to get the gist: "The industry sold over 13,000,000 more units in 2004 (1st quarter) than in 2003 (1st quarter) - the industry is still claiming a loss of 7% because RIAA members shipped 7% fewer records than in 2003." In further file sharing news, the Author of Winny, a Japanese p2p client has been arrested by Japanese police for crimes against copyright.

Apple Files for Patent on Transparent GUI Effects
According to the (rather snooty) article at Mac Observer, Apple has filed for a patent on transparent effects in GUIs. As the article points out, Apple is doing this to throw a wrench into the works on Microsoft's Longhorn, which is going to make heavy use of transparency. I want to see Microsoft irritated as much as the next guy, but software patents are never a good thing, and with all the prior art that must be out there on this particlar idea, this one is more egregious then most.

Germany Will Vote Against Software Patent Law
In further patent news, PJ of Groklaw points out an article on the German site Heise (here is a link to the always laughable computer transalation -- Groklaw has a much more serviceable transalation of select snippets of the article) that says that Germany will vote against the upcoming EU software patent laws. The proposed EU patent laws will reverse the EU's ban on software patents, making the European Union more like the United States in regards to patent law, and perhaps even worse.

Microsoft to Allow Pirates to Install SP2. No, wait, never mind
Last sunday came the surprising story that people owning pirated copies of Windows XP would be allowed to install Windows XP Service Pack 2, which would, of course, run against the entire idea of Windows product activation. Apparently, the idea was that unpatched copies of XP would be susceptible to worms, and allow them to propagate much more easily, and allowing pirates to install the patch would solve this problem, which seems to be sound thinking. Then on Tuesday came the news that, no, actually they wouldn't let pirates install SP2 after all. Microsoft officials claim that Barry Goffe, product manager for Microsft and source of the original story, misspoke. Draw your own conclusions.

Pentagon Bans Military Personnel From Reading Fox News Story
Normally, I would think people not reading Fox News is a good thing, but this story is special. The Pentagon has banned military employees from reading a leaked report on Fox News detailing the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison. The report was classified, and even though it had been released to the general public via fox news, the pentagon deemed it necessary to to send out a memo banning any of their employees from "...complicating the investigative processes by seeking information." Thanks Lawmeme.

Macintosh Trojan
As a quick follow up to last week's story wondering if Mac and Unix malware could be successful comes the story of a Trojan found on the Gnutella network that effects Mac OS X. It's not a worm, and since it just deletes the user's home directory it sounds more like a script then anything. But still, it's a pretty big shocker when a piece of malicious software is written to effect such a small percentage of computer users.

SCO Stock Watch
Down 14% to $5.15
Disclaimer:I own no stock or financial interest in any company or enity whom SCO has begot or was begotten by, or considered or wished it was begetting or being beggoten by, or has known or laid with in any godly or un-godly fashion.

SCO Quickies
While groklaw has all the SCO news fit to print (plus endless “2nd remand to the motion to recitfy the 4th objection to the motion to take a recess” stories) I'll put a little SCO roundup here when the news is sufficent: