Notes and Jottings

Like “kittens”:http://homepage.mac.com/darkle/kitties/, do you? Hope so, or else don’t click that link…

Cupertino, CA, January 22-23 (plus holidays?)

Well, *that* was annoying. Anybody mind if I complain here?
I was going to +a nightclub+ to meet up with Michael &c. for his birthday, and got there at 1:15am. At that point, one of the bouncers asked me for ID. As I’m almost 26, and hadn’t been asked for ID in probably nearly two years, no I didn’t have ID with me. So could I go in? No. Could I leave my wallet and phone with a bouncer, and go in to tell the others that I couldn’t stay? No. I tried ringing a few people inside, unfortunately nobody picked up.

I was starting to head home when I saw John walking along—he said that he’d just been in with the others. I asked him for a favour, if he could just go in and tell everybody that I couldn’t meet them. However, even though John had just come out of the pub, and had only had *one* drink, the bouncers would not let him back in. When he asked why, they said that he was too drunk. He stated that he just wanted to go upstairs to tell some people that the person beside him (me) was not allowed in. Sorry, not allowed in. Lots of discussion/argument ensued. No, the bouncer would not let him see his ID. Is that legal (that the bouncer didn’t show his ID)? I’ve just had a quick look through the “statutes”:http://www.ucc.ie/law/irlii/statutes/statutes.php but can’t find anything that references that particular issue. John also talked with the manager, to no avail.

Complaints? That they wouldn’t let me in is fair enough—I didn’t have ID. But they could have been nice and let me in for a sec to tell my friends! Not letting John back in when he’d just left, and had just had one pint, was a bit ick too.

End of bitching session, but I’m definitely not going to +that nightclub+ again. I didn’t like it much anyway

Diego “wonders”:http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/002414.html what is up with the IBM/Novell deal, on the back of the SuSE deal. It strikes me more as a political play than as a strict need for the money. David Berlind at ZDNet “thinks”:http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/novell_suse.html that this is all about IBM wanting a version of Linux to exist which cannot be vulnerable if SCOX managed to win their cases against IBM and RedHat. Novell may potentially be secure against any fallout due to the rights they may still have to the UNIX codebase.

I would wonder if there was more going on behind the scenes than we know—could IBM have instigated this whole affair, by offering to buy part of Novell if they were to buy SuSE, allowing IBM to stay one step back from actually owning a Linux company?

For anybody interested in biology, or the human body, or DNA or genetic testing, or… well, I could have stopped at biology… have a look at the “PLoS Biology site”:http://www.plosbiology.org/plosonline/?request=index-html which has pledged to have open access to all journals published by them, so that it may over time become a resource of the quality of PubMed et al. I’m going to have to have a browse through it and see how extensive it is, but definitely one to revisit.

“Hallowe’en Photos”:http://www.lyranthe.org/gallery/main.php/view/criticalpath/halloween2003/

G.