Do the Right Thing
Dare wants to know our thoughts on Microsoft's reaction to the Fortune article earlier in the week. I think that it sounds totally disingenuous to me. "We have no plans to litigate" is totally different from outright un-encumbering the patents in question. Saying they have no plans to litigate is like saying they haven't found someone worthy of suing yet. Ballmer said as much in the last sentence of the Fortune article.
If push comes to shove, would Microsoft sue its customers for royalties, the way the record industry has? "That's not a bridge we've crossed," says CEO Ballmer, "and not a bridge I want to cross today on the phone with you."
— Gordon Weakliem at permanent link
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My Aunt, Vera Ruth Filby, died on Tuesday, May 15, around 4 PM. My dad (her brother) and mom got a call from the in-home nurse around noon that things weren't looking good, so they drove from New Jersey down to Maryland as quickly as possible, only to find that she had passed away only minutes earlier. Vera worked her whole life in Intelligence, first at the OSS and later making the transition to the NSA. Apparently, she was one of the codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II; I knew her late husband P.W. "Bill" Filby was at Bletchley, but until recently I never connected that they had probably met there. She was used as a source for Body of Secrets. The story I heard is that she was very upset over the publication of The Puzzle Palace, but when James Bamford went to write Body of Secrets, he had won over enough of the NSA that she was willing to be interviewed. She took secrets very seriously. I remember visiting her and Bill in 1995, and they were incensed over a former NSA officer who had been the subject of a series of interviews with the Washington Post. "I gave the Queen a solemn promise that I would never divulge secrets without permission," Bill said, as Vera nodded in agreement. I asked Vera a few years back if she would write down some of what she worked on. She told me that most of what she could say she had already published, the rest was still classified. Most of what's become unclassified is related to VENONA.
After she retired from the NSA, Vera volunteered at the NSA museum at Fort Meade, MD. Vera was also very interested in genealogy. Most of what we know about our family came from her research. She had been house-bound for a number of years, however. She died at home, which is what she wanted, in the care of her long-time nurse.