Trademark Humor

Craig Barrett may have said the gloom was lifting from the IT industry during the Intel Developer Forum last week, but as the famished Furball wandered San Franciscos streets after four foodless vendor visits, he lamented that open buffets and copious refreshments still werent on the upturn menu at most Silicon Valley companies.

At a Chinatown eatery, the malnourished Maven of Murmur met three industry vets and invited himself to dine with them. As Spence sipped his first Tsingtao, his fellow feeders chattered about Salesforce.coms anticipated IPO. It seems the Benioff bunch will make a big announcement with Big Blue at its Customer Success Day Feb. 25 in the Big Apple, which, Spences table companions noted, could pique investor interest. The Kitty choked on his spicy orange chicken when one diner said SCO had just announced delivery of its OpenServer Update Pack 2, which includes the object-relational database management system PostgreSQL. "I forgot they did anything other than litigate," Spence expectorated, following a successful Heimlich maneuver performed by his companions.

Conversation then turned to the Kittys homeland, the Peoples Republic of Taxachusetts, which, it appears, is living up to its nickname. Seems the friendly state revenue folks have implemented an application called Discover, which can link taxpayer information to public—and eventually private—databases to broaden financial profiles on individuals who may be fibbing on returns. The Tawny One paled as he racked his brain to recall how much he claimed the black-velvet Elvis painting he donated to a Boston charity auction was worth. Fleeing before the check arrived, Spence skatted to SFO for a plane home. As he rummaged through his shoe box of receipts, his BlackBerry displayed a tip from a source stating that Oracle is considering changing the Standard Edition One version of its 10g database so that the HTML database developer tool pops right up, in hopes that users who arent hard-core programmers will have easier access to it. "Who cares?" shouted the overtaxed Tabby as he tore through the pastiche of papers he called a filing system. "I could be heading for the clink!" The Kitty relaxed when an eBay search confirmed his liberal estimate of the worth of his not-so-one-of-a-kind portrait, and he speed-dialed a source to schmooze.

When Spence brought up an anecdote that Microsoft never put the kibosh on Purax Feather Holdings, an Australian quilt maker, for touting its use of "quality Microsoft Dacron Hollofill," the pal pointed the Puss to lin---s.com. It seems the Lindows Linux legions have sidestepped a preliminary injunction handed down at Redmonds request by a Dutch judge to nix doing business under that name. Instead, theyve put in play a Web address that borrows from the old kids game Hangman, leaving several letter spaces open in its logo. "I hope they have a Clue that playing legal Stratego with a Monopoly is always a Risk," laughed the Lynx.