Open Source Software Trail

Apparently Microsoft has been granted a patent for ‘Page Up’ and ‘Page Down’ keystrokes.  This prevents anybody else from using the same feature to scroll up and down a page length of their documents.

Interestingly enough it comes a day after I read about Apple receiving a patent on its dock concept, 9 years after it filed for it.  So in the meantime are the developers of the dock I have been using on my SuSE notebook for the last two years in violation of this  patent, and can they get sued?

I just saw in a post on the Register that Mozilla labs released Geode, a geolocation extension for firefox.  I had a bit mixed feelings immediately because, while I have previously mentioned that I know there is no privacy for all that use electronic means to communicate, I am at the same time a bit hesitant to really take the step of being the one actively giving out information that I would rather not.. in this case, my geographic location to all kinds of personalised service location technology.

However, out of sheer curiosity as to how the whole thing functions, I tried to download it but sadly I got a message that it doesnt work on my build of firefox. (3.0.3 on Ubuntu hardy).  Will wait a little while and try again.. if I still remember or have interest!