On Wednesday of this week (March 15), the European Parliament will vote on this joint motion introduced by the chairmen of the three largest political groups in the EP. The motion is related to the EU’s Lisbon Agenda. Item 43 of the proposed text contains some pro-patent propaganda of the worst kind:

“43. Stresses the need for reforming the current intellectual property rights legislation; notes that the cost of registering a patent in the EU varies between ? 37 500 and ? 57 000 while the same process only costs around ? 10 000 in the USA and that the length and complexity of the patent procedures are major obstacles to small SMEs; calls on the Commission to ensure proper protection of …

On January 16, the European Commission (EC) announced a consultation on the future of the European patent system. An SAP official has already said that “it’s starting again”, meaning that this is the next round of the European software patent debate!

Companies, organizations and individuals who would like to tell the EU their opinion on what its patent policy should look like have until the end of this month to answer the EC’s questionnaire. But in order to do so, one has to wade through hundreds of pages of legislative proposals and related documentation. That’s why I wrote up a position paper that everyone can use to make his or her contribution and write to the EC:
www.no-lobbyists-as-such.com/PATSTRATpositionpaper.pdf …

I just got a Google News Alert that contained the URLs of two great articles on the issue of software patents: one by eWeek’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols and another one on Computerworld.com by Martin Goetz, who in 1968 received the first US software patent ever. Both articles appeared on the occasion of the settlement of the patent dispute over BlackBerry, which I mentioned in my first blog entry here.

There have been plenty of columns on US Web sites that talked about the negative implications of software patents. However, a mistake made by most US columnists (as well as some over here in Europe) is that they falsely believe one could …

This is my first posting in my own blog. Previously I posted a few comments to my Slashdot Journal, but other than that I’m a newbie WRT blogging. I also have a German-language blog (accessible via the German-language section of the Web site, which has its own URL).

The Web site will soon be fleshed out with a lot more content. In a few weeks I’m going to a announce in greater detail my forthcoming book No Lobbyists As Such - The War over Software Patents in the European Union. I decided to start the site and this blog on a preliminary basis because, within a matter of days, I’m going to publish a position paper here in reply to the European Commission’s questionnaire on patent …

There are four .NET specific sessions at the MySQL User Conference this year:

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

Creating .Net Applications with Linux and MySQL
Matt Lord, Support Engineer, MySQL AB

MySQL and Windows: Playing Well Together
Reggie Burnett, Software Developer, MySQL AB

Wednesday, April 26th, 2006

MySQL Connector/Net: Work the Way You Want To!
Reggie Burnett, Software Developer, MySQL AB

I was browsing through the session grid for the MySQL User Conference when I cam across a session titled My Second Life Runs on MySQL: War Stories from the Metaverse:

Second Life is a 3D online world where the users call the shots; from creating simple objects to writing complex distributed programs, they build and do pretty much whatever they feel like. And what they feel like doing is often something we never predicted.

This talk will cover the evolution of Second Life’s database architecture over the past three years, as they’ve gone from a handful of users to tens of thousands. Wilkes will discuss the biggest hurdles they’ve overcome along the way, and give an overview of where they plan to go over the next few years.

Second Life is an interesting system and reminds me a lot …

If you can’t get a discount to the registration fees for the MySQL UC, you are either waiting too long or not trying hard enough.

First off, there’s the $200 early registration discount that ends March 6, then there are the various other discounts:

It gives us great pride to announce the release of MyComponents V4.3 native Delphi/Kylix VCL suite. This update includes mainly fixes to issues as it has been reported to Support and on this forum, as well as Delphi 2006 certification.

What's new?

TMySQLDataset:
New: doSingleSQL option which allows an SQL script to be executed as a single SQL statement, thereby enabling you to use the SQL property to define functions and procedures in MySQL.
Fix: Various issues as has been reported to SciBit Support

This update is free of charge for all customers whom own a 2005.4.x MyComponents serial. Everyone still using a pre-2005.4 MyComponents may upgrade to the newest version by logging into their Secure accounts: simply click the Secure link at the top of this …

Well, it's official. I've been accepted for at least two sessions at the 2006 MySQL User Conference.

Get ready to register and you could be watching:

Managing Hierarchical Data in MySQL
The Sakila Sample Database

Which of course means I need to get the Sakila sample DB released *soon* so that I can tweak it before the conference gets too close.

I'm looking forward to this year's conference, every year is bigger and better than the last.

Thanks to all those who have provided feedback on my session ideas so far.

I have another session proposal that I would appreciate feedback on at:

http://www.openwin.org/mike/index.php/presentations/the-sakila-sample-database-proposal/

This one discusses the new MySQL Sakila sample database, how to use it, and how it was implemented.