In one of my favorite scenes in Star Wars (not calling it “A New Hope” that’s revisionist garbage), the ever-plucky and courageous Princess Leia and the evil imperial governor Grand Moff Tarkin have one of my favorite exchanges in all those movies (yes, cheeseball but I still love it):

Governor Tarkin: Princess Leia, before your execution, you will join me at a ceremony that will make this battle station operational. No star system will dare oppose the Emperor now.

Princess Leia: The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.

Now substitute Steve Jobs for Tarkin, and you’ll get a good idea of what is going on at Apple today.  Notice I didn’t say Jobs was the Emperor; that would be his ego.

Recently I came across Rock Sugar, a ridiculously talented and overall bloody amazing heavy metal mashup band.  As much as I wasn’t exactly a fan of hair metal back in the 80s, it’s grown on me… I don’t mind the cheese rock so much anymore.  And these guys take some of the Greatest Hits of Hair Metal and weave them together into some slick sounds.

And yet another sordid chapter in software patents begins, as Winksite files suit in Manhattan federal court for  infringment of yet another highly vague software patent, this time over using a mobile phone to connect to social websites.

Winksite, which I had never heard of until yesterday (and I bet you didn’t either), describes itself as:

As reported all over the net this week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and a number of other Facebook execs have been awarded US Patent #7,699,123: Dynamically providing a news feed about a user of a
social network, yet another highly vague, general software patent.  The abstract: