It looks like we’ve gone from speculating whether we’re headed into recession depression, to speculating just what that depression is going to look like. Yihong Ding, over on the Thinking Space blog,predicts that we’ll have a “Golden Age” of the Web thanks to millions sitting at home with little else to do than putter around on the Web:

U.S. innovation slowed this year for the first time in 13 years as the recession cut into budgets, and costs to protect inventions rose. The system is broken.. Pushing patents through the system is easier said than done: The decline in filings this year has brought to light a number of problems with the antiquated American patent system.

WHILE THE GLOBAL recession may have many down in the dumps, it's apparently good news for Linux, with market research outfit IDC claiming it's going to come out of the crunch a winner.

The Bordeaux Technology Group is proud to announce a 50% off recession busting sale on Bordeaux for Linux, Mac, FreeBSD, PCBSD and OpenIndiana. With the current US unemployment rate hovering near 10% and rumors of the possibility of a double dip recession. We want to do our part to help save individuals and small business as much money as we can on their Wine related software needs.

Dell may not have the absolute best laptop deals available — you can often do better with the HP/Compaq/Acer/Gateway specials in Office Depot's Sunday newspaper circular (see, there IS a reason to subscribe to a genuine dead-tree newspaper like our own ever-lovin'

Normally IT gets walloped in a recession, with new projects put on hold until the economy thaws. Take the 2001 recession, for example, which saw IT budgets that had been growing 12.9% per year shrink to a 2.8% growth. In such circumstances, enterprises have traditionally placed existing projects on life support while cutting off the air supply to new projects.

MANY technology firms are floundering amid the recession. But many of the ones that offer services tied to open-source software—free programs written by volunteers who collaborate online—are boasting double-digit growth.

In the old "pre 2000" day, the objective of most technology companies when they applied for patent protection was to ensure that their products and technologies were not copied by their competitors. The idea was that thanks to the patents you enjoyed about 20 years of exclusive use of your technology, after which everyone was free to use it because by then it was considered obvious.

On any given day you can find thousands of words of reporting, advocacy and debate over the role of patents in technology. One side promotes the availability of patent protection as the source of much innovation, while the other contends that patents have exactly the opposite effect, and many other vices besides.