9.com patents HTTP-Redirects - once again a nonsense patent that was granted in the USA. And again, a long legal battle will presumably follow before this nonsense is eliminated. Extremely disgusting, but the audacity with which Jeff Bezos likes to stand out with such absurd patents (his One-Click-Buy patent, for example). Of course, the examination at the patent offices is usually worse than bad for Internet patents. But it also takes someone who is so bold to file such garbage as a patent in the first place.
Arc - does anyone remember the fuss Paul Graham made about the 100-year-language? And that he wanted to achieve it with Arc? Well, he has scaled back: Arc is now just a language for exploratory programming. If you look at it, it looks like Common Lisp without the advanced features, with a more compact (but incompatible with other Lisp) syntax and some ready-made libraries to relatively easily put together a web application. Not really particularly exciting. There was already Picolisp for that - and if he is already based on MzScheme, one could simply use that, it has a much larger library and is used by more than just a few grumpy-old-men ... (and the excuse he gives for supporting only ASCII as a character set is simply embarrassing - especially since his underlying infrastructure cleanly supports Unicode ...)
Billions are bubbling at Shell - will anyone ever notice that it's extremely strange when a corporation raises fuel prices "reluctantly due to rising oil prices" but ends up with higher profits from the game? They don't even bother to disguise the scam anymore. Sure, they make their money from oil production - but why do they have to raise gasoline prices along with all the others if not because of price agreements with the other gasoline corporations?
Jython 2.5 - possibly still this year? That would be fantastic. Python is still my preferred language, and the JVM world opens up large amounts of interesting libraries (the interesting ones usually don't come from Sun ...) and interoperability with Java programs, which makes it easier to place Python at work.
Patent on mobile entertainment device with phone - or something like that. The employees at the US Patent Office seem to be suffering from an acute lack of brainpower at the moment. There was already proven prior art for this patent, which was taken into account in the last application but is now being ignored. Well, it doesn't affect the poor, I think the lawyers from Apple will be happy to take care of the gentleman and his patent.
Post-Konkurrenten klagen gegen den Mindestlohn - even more companies whose only business model is the exploitation and ripping off of employees. Heartless scum that just wants to cash in and then presents itself as the great job creators - unfortunately, work that does not secure survival for a full week makes no sense. And indirectly, these companies are only ripping off the state and thus the taxpayer, but they themselves complain about having to pay taxes. Disgusting.
Sigma announces DP1 to be available spring 2008 - I'll believe it when I see it in the store. Although the concept - compact camera with APS-format chip - is quite exciting.