Elvira’s World

Cassandra Peterson is back in Elvira drag — back on the blood-red sofa, back in that agonizing position, back assuming the role of, as Elvira refers to herself, the piece everyone’s dying to rest in — because she’s coming back to TV — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Vast Majority Of Software Patents In Lawsuits Lose

Well, this is interesting (and quite surprising). A new study by John Allison, Mark Lemley, Joshua Walker looked at highly litigated patents to see how well they did in court, and came up with some really unexpected findings.

Digging deeper into the report, it looks at and tests a variety of different concepts around patents and litigation. In theory, if a patent is used in multiple patent cases, you tend to think that it must be a pretty solid patent, and one that has been vetted plenty of times. And yet, when the researchers looked at the 106 patents that have been involved in eight or more lawsuits since 2000, they found that the patent holder wins such cases only 10.7% of the time. For patents that have only been brought to litigation once, the patent holder wins 47.3% of the time — an astounding difference — via redwolf.newsvine.com

Mac 101: Preparing your old Mac for sale or recycling

It happens to all of us eventually (except for the Mac collectors). At some point, we decide that it’s time to take that old Mac that we’ve just replaced and try to get a few bucks out of it. Some of us donate our machines to schools or other worthwhile organizations, and if we have really old equipment, we may just recycle it. In any case, there are some things you’ll want to do to prepare the Mac for sale or recycling — via The Unofficial Apple Weblog