I asked an opera singer, a friend of mine, who studied with the same coach as Pavarotti, what made the difference. Because there were many singers on that stage at that concert, and only one of them made my ears tremble pleasurably with their singing. Literally. He said it's a technique of tongue placement, placing it right behind the bottom teeth. It doesn't sound so romantic, telling it that way, but I assure you it's an experience I'll simply never forget, because it was unique. I'd never experienced it before, and I never have since. It's not every man who can say he can do something for a woman that is unique.

It's fair to say my favorite single piece of music is him singing Nessun Dorma. I wrote to him once, because I just had to tell him how I felt. I asked a friend to help me so I could write it in Italian. I wasn't looking to meet him or anything like that. I just wanted to tell him and share a thought or two. And he wrote me back, a very warm and friendly note. He'd written it on an old fashioned typewriter, the kind you have to bang on to get the keys to hit the ribbon, like my mom prefers. And he'd signed it personally. I still have it. Of course.

So when I read that he had died, I cried. Next, I started wanting to hear him sing once again. But I wanted to see him too. So I looked on the Internet, and I found two videos I decided I wanted to share with you, on a certain website that shall be nameless in this context, one of my favorite, Nessun Dorma, and another of him and James Brown (It's a Man's World) in a collaborative duet, Pavarotti in Italian, and Brown doing his thing. It's very special. But, then I was stopped in my tracks. My paralegal brain started working. I started thinking about copyright law.

• SCO's Motion in Limine to Exclude All Evidence Related to Other Litigation and Commentary Thereon [PDF]
• Novell's Memorandum in Opposition [PDF] and
• SCO's Reply [PDF]

It isn't always practical to do this, because of length, but this is a very short motion. So here they are. This is one of the motions that will be argued on September 11th, so those planning to attend can use this as a way to prepare before they go.

During the state of the Linux round-table discussion on the first day of the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, James Bottomley (Linux kernel developer) had asked the panelists what are the top two things each panelist would like from the Linux community. Among the panelists was Google’s Chris DiBona, who is the open-source program manager at Google. His response was interesting when he had said the following: “I would love to get either NVIDIA and ATI to actually give us the specs on the drivers we want or let’s just reverse engineer everything and do it ourselves.”

It looks like AMD may be making good on a promise made at the Red Hat Summit in May. AMD is working with the community to release a 2D-accelerated Linux graphics driver, with 3D acceleration being part of the future plans. The official AMD press release states: “In the coming months AMD also plans to accelerate efforts to address the needs of the open source community as well.” But what does this mean? Are they opening up the fglrx driver? Are they providing specifications? Are they just making a better binary blob so the open-source community will just want reverse engineer it more?

?As client computing on Linux continues to grow so has our support and focus on delivering best-in-class performance and compatibility for our products,? said Ben Bar-Haim, vice president of software, Graphics Product Group at AMD. ?In the second half of 2007 we plan to deliver the most significant enhancements for ATI Radeon graphics ever for Linux and reaffirm our commitment to consumer users and the community as a whole.?

With companies like Dell and Google encouraging AMD/ATI to offer open source 2D and 3D graphics drivers, it looks like there is finally enough pull in the market to make it happen!

For sure I don't want any patents getting approved that might be used against FOSS someday because I wasn't paying attention. My worry is that because we have been busy elsewhere, the Microsoft patent submission might slide by, get approved by default despite there being prior art we neglected to mention, and then the FUD machine can start up about how it's now a super strong patent that made it through a FOSS community examination. I can see some Microsoft blogger now: "Hey guys, this is so great. Groklaw approves of this patent and says it's valid."

EEK. What a nightmare! Please, get to work. There is only a month left to comment on that application.

As reported on consortiuminfo.org, the official vote tally is in and ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Ecma 376 Office Open XML file formats) did not gain approval. However, you could never tell it failed by reading a Microsoft press release entitled Strong Global Support for Open XML as It Enters Final Phase of ISO Standards Process. This article simply emphasizes the unprecedented level of participation and highlights the “qualified” positive voting results.

Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp states, “This preliminary vote is a milestone for the widespread adoption of the Open XML formats around the world for the benefit of millions of customers. Given how encouraging today’s results were, we believe that the final tally in early 2008 will result in the ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard.”

I’m not sure what milestone means in this case. Basically, the possible ratification of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 has now moved out to 2008. Microsoft states that technical input will enhance the standard. So, I suppose the next phase for the OOXML community is to address the technical flaws sited in the comments of the voting members.

At the end of the day, the world may actually end up with two open document standards. To support a vibrant ecosystem around an open document format, the standard chosen by developers must yield document security (free from vendor lock-in and proprietary extensions) and ubiquitous acceptance across operating systems and applications (free from legacy encumbrances). If Microsoft wishes to create a document format that is better able to address the problems of the many editable legacy documents created in their older proprietary formats, they are welcome to help extend the existing ODF ISO standard in order to add the capabilities they require.

The de facto acceptance of a standard is of far more importance than the ratification of a standard. Application developers can vote (and have voted) by developing office suites, document management systems, and tools around the existing ODF ISO standard.

At long last, the SCO Group's ugly, often farcical legal crusade against Linux appears to be over.

SCO has spent four and a half years arguing that it owns the copyrights to Unix, and that the free Linux operating system includes code stolen from Unix.

Its claims suffered what is likely a death blow Friday when a judge in Utah ruled that SCO does not, in fact, own the copyrights to Unix.

SCO issued a statement saying it would carry on with other claims against Novell, and hinted that it might try to appeal Friday’s ruling.

Passionate fans of Linux, a free operating system developed collaboratively by programmers from around the world, have argued from the start that SCO’s claims lacked any merit. On pro-Linux Web sites, they’ve been celebrating since Friday, viewing the ruling as vindication.

For SCO, it’s a fizzle of an ending to a case that began with loads of bluster and bravado. In March 2003, SCO Group, a tiny company based in Lindon, Utah, sued IBM, claiming IBM took code from Unix and put it into Linux. SCO also warned hundreds of customers that they might be in legal trouble for using Linux.