Rainy morning

It's raining, gently. The sky is grey and beautiful, and the air is washed clean. Driving is a little dangerous -- people forget how to drive in the rain over the summer -- but it's worth it.

IP Wars: news from the front

Some good news, for once, from the front lines of the Intellectual "Property" wars:

Techdirt: Big Guns Come Out In Effort To Show RIAA's Lawsuits Are Unconstitutional.

In the past, it's been noted that the RIAA has curiously avoided suing any Harvard students, with one of the theories being that Harvard had made it quite clear to the RIAA that it would fight back hard. And, with Harvard law school at its disposal, and various professors there indicating that they had serious legal problems with the RIAA's strategy, the RIAA simply decided to ignore any file sharing going on at that prestigious university.

However, for RIAA critic and well known law professor, Charles Nesson, waiting around for the RIAA to sue someone at Harvard was getting boring, so he went out and found a case to participate in. Along with two third year law students, Nesson has hit back hard on the RIAA's efforts in a court filing, where it's noted that the very basis for many of the RIAA's lawsuits is very likely unconstitutional.

Groklaw: The Bilski Decision Is In: Buh-Bye [Most] Business Methods Patents - As text & updated 3Xs

Pop some champagne! The Appeals Court decision is in on Bilski: I'm still reading it, but on first quick reading, one thing is clear: it's a win! Eligible patent matter just got smaller. Here's a snip from the opening:

Some additional analysis on Techdirt:

I don't say this often, but it looks like the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) -- or "the patent court" -- got a big one mostly right. In the rehearing of the Bilski case concerning the patentability of software and business method patents, CAFC just came out with its ruling that will significantly limit software and business method patents, bringing the rules way back towards what they were years ago, and effectively rolling back some of the earlier, dreadful, CAFC decisions that opened the barn doors towards tons and tons of software and business method patents.

This news cheers me greatly, though not enough to make up for the jump in the interest rate on my home equity line of credit. Ouch!

(7:35 locked in a significantly lower interest rate than the one I saw on the web and panicked over. May have been a bit of an overreaction, but I'm glad I did it anyway. I'd been putting it off for too long.)

Trainwreck postponed?

When I went to pay my bills this afternoon (after a walk and a couple of good, long conversations, one with a coworker and one with cflute), I sat down to pay some bills and, out of curiosity, went to the detail page for the equity line of credit. And saw a rate that was more than a point and a half higher than what was printed on the bill I got in the mail last week.

At this point, I completely lost interest (as it were) in work, and was starting to contemplate the fact that, if I did have a heart attack, the insurance would at least cover the mortgage. Time to head for the bank to see what could be salvaged from the wreckage -- the line-of-credit has an option for converting to a fixed rate.

As it turns out, I'd missed something important: the LOC rate and the fixed rate are pegged to different indices. The fixed rate is tied to a fairly slow-moving average on T-bill rates, and was a lot closer to what I'd been paying on the variable rate loan up until now. Came out of it with a 20-year fixed-rate mortgage at less than the payments I'd been in the habit of paying for the LOC. So that's a win.

But it was close. Another couple of weeks into the meltdown, and...

Got home at about 4:30 and had a good-sized glass of gin. I hope not to have that scary a Halloween again for a loooooong time.