If you've seen our slideshow -- "2009's 25 Geekiest 25th Anniversaries" -- you may have noticed No. 17: Kurzweil Music's K250, an electronic synthesizer made famous both by its cutting-edge capabilities and the fact that it was commissioned, in essence, by Stevie Wonder.

Well, it turns out that my Network World colleague (and musician) Brian Wood has a story to tell about the K250:

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The holder of a patent involving Internet music distribution is crying foul today after learning that the Electronic Frontier Foundation's tenacious Patent Busting Project has convinced the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to reconsider his decade-old successful claim.

This PTO decision makes the EFF team a nifty six for six in seeking and being granted patent reexaminations, with one already having been killed off and the others pending final disposition.

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Readers continue help with our expanding collection of corporate euphemisms for the word layoffs.

Today's come from David Wrisley: "In 2002 the company I worked for was acquired by Alcoa. Much of the staff in our corporate headquarters, such as IT, Finance, HR, and so on were called 'Redundant Overhead' and a schedule was created to remove the redundant overhead over the coming year or so."

Off with their redundant overheads!

You keep sending them and I'll keep sharing.

Prior to jumping aboard the Twitter bandwagon, I had heard tell of the service's reliable unreliability. Now I'm getting to experience it first-hand ... and better understand all the grumbling.

Twitter tells us on its status blog: "We're experiencing some delays in the amount of time it takes for updates to appear in timelines. Working on this now."

Some delays? My incoming tweets have been silent for 45 minutes now, which is an eternity on Twitter (or evidence that no one loves me anyone).

Not that it matters, of course.

(Update: Starting to get some of the tweets that were hung up who-knows-where. Seeing speculation that the trouble is related to heavy MacWorld traffic. If that's true, Twitter's on even shakier footing than ealier believed.)

From the Mac's legendary Super Bowl debut to the less flamboyant births of Cisco, Dell, RIM and the future founder of Facebook, 1984 provided a boatload of technological achievement and geeky infamy.

There was the break-up of AT&T, the advent of genetic fingerprinting, quantum cryptography, the book that popularized "cyberspace," and, let's not forget that Bernie Goetz was a hardcore geek before going medieval on that New York subway. NASA even crashed a jetliner ... on purpose. The media will revisit all of them one by one over the next 12 months, but here they are today, neatly alphabetized.

(And here's the much cooler slideshow version, for those who appreciate pictures.)

1. AT&T asplodes: In 1974, Uncle Sam decided AT&T was a monopoly that needed demolition. Ten years later, it was demolished. Recalls AT&T on its Web site: "The U.S. woke up on Jan.1, 1984 to discover that its telephones worked just as they had the day before. But AT&T started the day a new company. Of the $149.5 billion in assets it had the day before, it retained $34 billion. Of its 1,009,000 employees it retained 373,000. Gone even was the famous Bell logo and name, given under the agreement to the regional telephone companies, excepting only the name's use in Bell Labs."

P.S.: Today AT&T (formerly SBC) now includes four of the seven RBOCs, proving that old goes-around, comes-around thing still holds.

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DWT? That's driving while texting. Lawmakers in Washington state were among the earliest to recognize the insanity that is text messaging while operating a motor vehicle. They banned the practice in May 2007.

How has that worked out? Tough to tell.

TechFlash blogger Todd Bishop provides the analysis:

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Consumerist editor Ben Popken had told me earlier this month that the would-be buyer pursuing his watchdog Web site was "a good name everyone will be happy with."

Well, in the world of consumer advocacy, names don't get any better than Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, which today will formally announce the purchase of Popken's popular Web operation from Gawker Media.

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Danny Sullivan, one of the most influential voices in search, has clearly had it up to his eyeballs with Microsoft, in general, and Steve Ballmer, in particular.

In a Search Engine Land blog post this morning headlined "Tough Love For Microsoft Search," Sullivan pays due respect to the front-liners in Microsoft's development ranks, but pulls no punches when confronting the company's upper management. A good chunk of his indictment is built upon what he sees as Ballmer's refusal to personally get out in front of search-centric audiences -- in particular, Sullivan's own conference. He acknowledges that this complaint may make him "sound like a big-headed ass****," -- and, frankly, it will to some -- but there is much more to his case than failing to land Ballmer as a keynote speaker.

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As someone who has just recently dipped a toe into Twitter -- you can follow me there by clicking here -- the prospect of diving into yet another social networking community holds little appeal. However, others continue to boldly go wherever the cool kids take them and lately that has meant FriendFeed.

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I'm on vacation. This is what I overheard at the mall today and I can't help but share with the group:

Teen girl No. 1: "Why don't you buy him a calendar?"

Teen girl No. 2: "He won't use it."

Teen girl No. 1: "So?"

Ah, young love.

(Note: Here's next Monday's print edition 'Net Buzz column; a bunch of reader e-mail sent in response to earlier dead-tree versions. Some of you have seen this one here already, but the others are new. -- Paul)

It's been a long time since we've done this, so let's take a moment to lighten the mail sack, which this time of year does double duty, what with Christmas around the corner:

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Regular readers know we have of late been collecting silly and demeaning euphemisms that companies foist upon workers receiving layoff notices.

Two of the best were: "synergy-related headcount restructuring," and "force management plan."

Here's another classic from reader Darin Bush:

"I worked in IT for Coca-Cola Enterprises in Atlanta for five years ending in 2005.  During that year, they laid off about 300 of us technicians.  I was called into a meeting with my manager and his boss.  She looked at me across the table, and had the gall to say with a straight face (as Dave Barry says, I am not making this up):  'You have been chosen to not be part of the go-forward team.' "

Go team.

Having done this journalism thing for some time now, it's not uncommon for me to encounter a name and say, "Hey, I interviewed that guy ... but I cannot for the life of me remember why."

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Yes, it's corny and, yes, it's been done a thousand times, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation's version at least has top-notch production values ... and it's for a great cause. Give a listen. Consider a donation.

The blog search site Technorati had a boatload of IT difficulties over the weekend, according to Web monitoring company Pingdom. If you're interested in the details, they're here.

I understand that not everyone has cause to use a blog search engine, so some of you may not be familiar with Technorati and what it does. That's OK, but be forewarned it may cost you should you ever find yourself riding in the "Cash Cab" ... like those folks on an episode aired last week.

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That's the gist of an article in the Wall Street Journal this morning that also hints strongly at the impending death being a murder conspiracy hatched by the victim's own inner circle and led by its most charismatic leader: Google.

Or maybe I've been watching too many TV crime dramas.

What does appear certain is that purists within the network neutrality debate are losing powerful allies at a rapid clip mere months before a congressional moratorium on premium "fast lane" Internet services expires. Google apparently can't wait for the green flag to drop.  

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The irresponsibility of television news broadcasters never ceases to amaze me.

Exhibit This Morning is Channel 5 in Boston, which just informed my wife and me that a tanker truck carrying deadly something or other had overturned, closing a major highway and forcing the evacuation of a nearby neighborhood.

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The true fanatics seem to love their iPhones almost as much as their children. It's not true, of course, because sometimes the kiddies just can't hack the competition.

I'm going to presume that Louis Gray -- tireless blogger/twitterer, marketing professional, father of 5-month-old twins -- falls into the former category and only seems to love his phone more than his children.

Gray writes on his blog:

It's really getting to the point where I believe my iPhone can do anything. You've already heard me say I sleep next to it, and that it should practically run unopposed in the smartphone market. But what you don't understand is that it is rapidly finding new roles and new ways to get intertwined with my life. The newest role is helping to put the twins to sleep, thanks to the AOL Radio application, and that app's Lullabies radio station - which shockingly extends beyond the Brahms Lullaby, offering music even I found fun to hear, from new mixes of U2's "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" to a cover of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters."

As a father of triplets, I can empathize, and appreciate the use of any means at one's disposal ... although I'm not sure about the Metallica business.

When news broke last month that Gawker Media was essentially folding Valleywag and placing The Consumerist up for sale, my reaction was "meh" on the gossip rag and "hope they land on their feet" regarding the watchdog.

The Consumerist -- champion of the little guy, tormenter of shoddy businesses everywhere -- has long been one of my favorite Web sites. They fight the good fight with wit and style, witness their long-running series on the Grocery Shrink Ray, which NBC News is scheduled to lean on in a report Thursday night.

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As a relatively new and still somewhat skeptical passenger on the Twitter bandwagon, I continue to find interesting the question of how the company behind all those tweets intends to make a living.

Short answer: It's unclear.

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