Kitty Mulls Mooning Sun Over Star Tag

Given the litigious society we live in, El Gato found himself pondering what legal options he could exercise against Sun after it announced its Starkitty Unix server.

“When anyone in the tech industry hears the words star and kitty in the same sentence, its yours truly who comes to mind and not a 52-processor machine,” huffed His Hirsuteness.

However, after watching Sun Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Schwartz testify in D.C. last week for tougher controls on Microsoft, El Gato doubted hed survive a legal battle with a major corporation. “Since the only smattering of legalese I have comes from watching Matlock reruns on late-night TV,” mused the Mouser, “Ill let McNealy and Co. slide on this one.”

Tossing his legal ambitions aside, the Tawny Titan forgot about tech rivalries and checked out hockey news at NHL.com. But the puck-passing Puss got a chuckle when he noticed that while the upper-left side of the page displays an “MSN Sports” logo, the right side sports a “Powered by Sun” logo. “Thats like selling Colorado Avalanche merchandise in Detroits Joe Louis Arena,” cackled the Kitty.

Spencer heard from some folks who were waging their own battle against Hewlett-Packards tech support. According to the tipsters, it seems downloading the latest HP 6300C Scanjet drivers for Windows XP may destroy the USB port on the scanner.

Checking out a thread that began in mid- February at a forum on HPs Web site, it seems the complaint that the scanners USB connector becomes unusable after downloading the driver software is a problem shared by many. A spokeswoman for HP told the Katt that HP support claims to have been unable to duplicate the problem, but the company will pull the drivers in question pending an investigation.

Take a trip to Encorebusiness.com, and youll see why the Kitty couldnt resist calling the folks there to ask if theyve been taking any friendly ribbing over their companys Enron-like logo. A spokeswoman for Encore, a Winnipeg, Manitoba, reseller of Microsoft Great Plains, laughed at the Furballs query and said the logo similarity had crossed her mind once, but she added that El Gato was the first to actually inquire about it.

The spokeswoman also informed the Furball that Encore develops accounting solutions primarily for the not-for-profit marketplace. “Mmm,” laughed the Lynx. “I wonder if that means Enron might actually qualify as a client these days.”

Spencer F. Katt can be reached at spencer_katt@ziffdavis.com.