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"Secret investigation" powers aside, the commisioners quoted don't seem to get it - spammers shouldn't need to be forced to "honour remove requests" - spammers need to be forced to shut down completely.

If I didn't ask to be added, I shouldn't have to ask to be removed.

Oh, they get it alright. They know exactly what they're doing.

The DMA has the best whores money can buy. They're going out of their way to legitimize spam.

Take a look at this, for example.

Short excerpt:

Tauzin said many points were akin to those in a House antispam bill that he co-sponsored last month, adding that the earlier proposal "may go even further than the FTC proposal as it allows consumers the opportunity to opt out of all commercial e-mail, not just unsolicited commercial e-mail."

Don't want spam?

No problem, sucka. You'll get no spam -- and, you'll get no "commercial email", period.

Oh? You say you WANT to get SOME "commercial email"? You want to be able to comm with companies you're dealing with?

No problem. Just shut up, and eat your spam.

Some slimy vermin toss out the baby with the bathwater. THESE slimy vermin are gonna make you take the sewage with the steak. No sewage, no steak. Want steak? Then eat your sewage.

They'll be joined at the hip.

What vile, despicable, absolutely disgusting pieces of feces roam the hallowed halls...

Kiss your email goodbye.

I'm not convinced that they need any additional powers. They can already arrest people for fraud. On the other hand, maybe they have too much red tape to do so effectively.

Another article on the subject (with better info, IMO) is at ZDNet.

I was thinking about the whole buyout theory today.

And it occurred to me that if SCO is looking for a buyout, IBM is the wrong place to be looking. IBM was split up in the 80's (internally) because of anti-trust hearings. If IBM were to buyout SCO, it would be percieved as an attempt to gain a monopoly on the proprietary UNIX market (something Sun wouldn't be too happy with).

What seems more likely to happen is that IBM will begin to move its customers away from AIX... It would certainly be good for the current job market if IBM were to begin focusing all of its attention on AIX customers porting their internal apps to Linux....not to mention the overnight increase in Linux support from hardware and software developers. If it were to play out this way, then it may very well be the driving force that brings the IT sector back on its feet.

I don't see anybody posted this link yet:

http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1016020.html

Best Quote: "What SCO is arguing seems instead to be that it didn't know what it was packaging."

Without further ado (ADO?), I give you MS SQL Data Translation Services.

Guess what, a PC manufacturer just did.

Are you now going to walk around saying "Gateway is teh gay" now? Because according to your logic, Gateway deserves the tag now.

Nah, Macs are too cool for you. Perhaps this shiny new Gateway Laptop is more up your alley. It's definitely your color!

I'd like to see a timeline.

I found a November 2002 article talking about SCO, high end computing work that they had done with Compaq in the clustering arena and a brief touch on LKP.

I found a February 2001 article just about Linux and SCO integration and LKP.

I found a 2002 SCO Newsletter touting LKP.

I also found Simon Baldwin's resume who has a long history at SCO and who was the "Lead Kernel Engineer and Architect for the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP)" from February of 2000 to "present".

So the LKP stuff was going on quite some time ago. Before or after IBM allegedly put the offending into Linux? Inquiring minds want to know.

According to a commentary posted on C|Net this afternoon, MS will phase out GeCad's existing antivirus products.

Look for the integrated A/V software to show up in Longhorn.

Four years later students loose their life savings.

This news comes at a time when DSL prices are beginning to be slashed. Verizon has lowered their service costs by upwards of 30%, while SBC offers promotional offers.

I switched to SBC/Yahoo DSL last December, and I pay $39.99/month with the promotional offer. The same service is now being offered at $29.99.

If cable providers are forced to increase rates, I'm sure DSL companies will be willing to lower costs (at least for an extended period of time), in order to drive potential customers away from cable.

Of course, Earthlink DSL has announced that they are actually increasing rates; but that doesn't affect much of the broadband-aware states that have signed the Internet Tax Freedom Act. Including my state of California.

On the ReiserFS 4 page you say that the new filesystem uses algorithms allowing the FS to do transactions only databases could do previously. Do you envision ReiserFS 4 being something comparable to MS' "SQL-FS" plans in Longhorn? How would ReiserFS 4 affect regular (oracle, postresql, mysql) database projects/companies?

File sharing is the only "killer application" for broadband, and most people with BB use file-sharing at least some of the time.

Yes, Windows gets 17% higher TPC-C... with twice as many processors. The word "Pyrrhic" immediately springs to mind.

Yes, Windows gets 17% higher TPC-C... with twice as many processors. The word "Pyrrhic" immediately springs to mind.

After the pro-Linux folks read the article, "Huawei admits to a little copying", most of them support Cisco and condemn the Chinese who deliberately stole intellectual property (IP) from Cisco. The Chinese culprit literally copied the computer code verbatim from the Cisco diskette. So, if we condemn the Chinese in the aforementioned article, we must condemn whoever stole SCO's Unix IP.

Does supporting SCO mean that we put a stake into the heart of Linux? Of course, not. The courts have repeatedly ruled that companies are permitted to build clean-room clones. AMD's Athlon is a good example.

We merely delete the stolen code from Linux and write compatible code to replace. We can get some Ph.D. student from Carnegie Mellon University to write the code. It really is not difficult.

Then, we trace the stolen code back to the person who stole it, and we send her to prison. We then strengthen the open-source development process by establishing a certification process by which we certify every piece of open-source code, guaranteeing that it is original IP. The open-source development process right now is broken because it is just too easy for someone to use stolen code and to submit it as original IP. No one is really checking the code's authenticity. Poor Linus is just too overloaded as the sole proprietor of Linux.

What is all the fuss? IBM will be fined. A rogue programmer goes to prison. Linux? Well, it will survive and prosper.

News.com.com has a similar story a fews days back. What's strange is this one says Linux is nearly as good.

Merrill Lynch research shows that deploying Linux internally that could save the company millions of dollars, an executive at the investment banker said.

During a presentation Friday at the Enterprise Linux Forum, Mark Snodgrass, vice president of Merrill Lynch's in-house technology provider, the Global Technology & Services group, said that the company has found that re-architecting its information infrastructure using Linux can reduce administration costs dramatically.

In fact, Snodgrass found that, while the software licensing costs of Windows was higher than Linux, the highest cost was in managing traditional Windows infrastructure.

"It's the people that cost the most," he said.

Merrill Lynch's new plans for its information infrastructure call for running much of its Linux applications not on their own physical machines but in virtual machines running on high-end servers. Such a scheme simplifies management and allows for rapid deployment of new Linux "servers" by activating a copy of a stored pre-configured image in as little as 2 minutes 14 seconds.

"We are not trying to promote Linux," Snodgrass said. "We are just trying to reduce the cost of ownership."

Using such virtual Linux servers to store files could cut costs dramatically, he said. Keeping their file systems on Windows servers would have cost the company $600,000 in hardware and five times that to pay for the personnel to manage the servers.

"We know that Linux is not for everything," he said. "But there are not many applications that require more than Linux can give us."

Snodgrass's group proposed replacing the company's Microsoft Exchange servers with a Linux-based solution that would have all the same collaboration features and have a cost savings of 70 percent to 80 percent. However, for other reasons that Snodgrass wouldn't discuss, the company's executives decided to stick with Exchange but outsource the management of the groupware to save money.

Not everyone agrees that Linux saves money, however. Last year, market researcher IDC released a report, heralded by Microsoft, that indicated that the five-year cost of ownership for four out of five applications would be lower if Microsoft software was used. The sole Linux winner was Web server software, according to the report. (and for the slashdotters/windows users hanging on this bit of hope, note that this study was decimated when it was examined and certain facts, like license renewals being omitted, the timeline favoring unrealistic (over 5 years for the same release) use of windows, no hardware upgrades for newer versions of windows, no accounting for the fact that linux/unix admins can run more systems per admin, no patching/crashing problems with windows, downtime costs, and more).

Snodgrass said he wasn't familiar with the study, but his own data indicated that running virtual Linux servers saves a lot of money compared with running those same services under Windows.

"We've done our numbers, and we are a bank, so we know our numbers," he said.

Other companies apparently have crunched the numbers and come to the same conclusion.

Telecommunications provider Verizon disclosed that it saved nearly $6 million in equipment costs by moving its programmers to Linux from proprietary-Unix and Windows workstations. In October 2001, Amazon.com revealed that it had replaced Web application servers running on a proprietary-Unix platform with Linux, saving millions of dollars.

Snodgrass said the next target for deploying Linux could be on the desktop. The company plans to do a pilot project that will allow thin clients--computers with minimal hardware requirements--to be used as workstations. The applications would actually run on Linux and Windows terminal servers. To the user, the result would be the same, but to the company's

the game is shareware. get it here

The corporate cultures of Oracle and PeopleSoft couldn't be farther apart, according to some former employees. Oracle is a haven for aggressive personalities who thrive on intense competition. To motivate the sales staff, managers have posted an individual's progress in achieving his or her sales goals on the wall during quarterly meetings. The competitive atmosphere leads to routine reorganizations. By contrast, PeopleSoft, founded by a Cornell University graduate, Dave Duffield, projects a Hewlett Packard-like image of being more collegial. The sales staff often relies on customer recommedations to complete a deal. To some extent, this was necessary because the applications market had already been well established by Oracle and SAP by the time PeopleSoft emerged.

Instead of looking at this acquisition from a purely rational, coldly analytical perspective, we should and must begin to look at the quality of the lives of the employees. I would prefer to work for an organization like PeopleSoft. It is an organization that cares.

Oracle is cut from the same cloth as Sun, Siebel, and Cisco. Brutal, cut-throat, survival of the fittest. Increasingly, with the influx of H-1B's and "free" trade, American companies are becoming the ruthless of ogres of the early part of the 20th century. Most of my American colleagues do not want an America where employees are savaged. We gladly accept a small reduction of economic expansion in exchange for a kindler and gentler American workplace and society.

It is this kindler and gentler America that has drawn tens of millions of immigrants to this country.

We shareholders should oppose this hostile takeover and send Larry Ellison back to the Orient that he so admires.

The MSNBC story was ripped (credit on the bottom of the article) from cnet.news.com.com.com.com.

I sent an email to the author of the .com.com.com.com story. I asked him, and it isn't mentioned in the msnbc article either, about IPV6.

If the RFID tags are to get off the ground, IPV6 needs to get here. But no mention in either article of this.

Isn't this relevant?

The status of IPV6 is extremely poor in the US and Europe. Apparantly, China will be the driving force in IPV6 because of their low allocation of IPV4 numbers, and their exploding use of the internet.

Journalists just aren't trying hard enough these days.

Dunno about microcode.c, but it's pretty much common knowledge that Alan Cox wrote the SMP code using hardware loaned/donated by Caldera.

I think the sco-vs-ibm article at the OSF mentions that. It also points out that Unixware maxes at I think 8 CPUs. Currently linux maxes at 32. In fact, Intel just recently did a 32 CPU test that scored nicely. Story at news.com

Yes, me. Here's that story.

After all the hoopla about whether SCO or Novell owns the UNIX copyrights - News.com is reporting that a recently rediscovered contract between Novell and SCO dated 1996, seems to indicate that SCO do infact own the copyright (but not patents) for UNIX.

Meanwhile over at InformationWeek, the first analyst to report back on seeing SCO's "proof" under NDA, says she did find matches between Linux and SCO code. Laura DiDio, a Yankee Group analyst says she finds this "very damaging" - although of course Penguin lovers will probably be already be speculating about other possible reasons for any possible matches.

After all the Novell hoopla, SCO does apparently own UNIX copyrights but not the patents - according to a 1996 contract amendment.

Ahhh, another company damaged by Ellen Hancock.

• IBM's PRGS ("Programming Systems") Laboratories, of which she was the overall manager
  
• Apple Computer Corp, as the right-hand of Gil Amelio
  
• Exodus Communications, where she was CEO
  
• Global Crossing, the poor sots that ended up with 108 million worthless shares of Exodus
  

• Cable and Wireless, another batch of poor sots that bought parts of Exodus
  

So, what other companies and organizations are on the watch-list?

• Aetna
  
• Colgate-Palmolive
  
• Marist College
  
• Santa Clara University
  

Disclaimer: Well, duh ... of course I am a disgruntled ex-employee of Ms. Hancock back when she was a IBMer. I just did not realize how bad she really was ... even if none of this was her fault, she has still been at the epicenter of many closed office buildings over the years.

This is also known as guilty until proven innocent, for those of us that may show up as a false-positive on the illegal P2P scale.

Even more interesting, as mentioned in the News.com article, is a related story from yesterday morning that I missed. It seems the Republicans are getting it right... or at least are trying to. Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas is seeking to regulate how digital rights management (DRM) is incorporated into consumer products. Also, the proposed bill would require that a copyright holder gets permission from a judge before receiving the name of any alleged illegal P2P user.

Of course, DRM goes against everything I believe in, but any kind of regulation of how this technology is deployed is a step in the right direction. Allowing the marketplace to intelligently decide what amount (if any) of copy protection is reasonable is a Good Thing.

If I put up a web page on my machine or in the FTP headers and such, on my IP saying that site cannot be accessed by the RIAA, its affiliates or anyone working for the RIAA for any reason and that doing so constitutes illegal intrusion into my system, would that make the RIAA liable for accessing my system illegally. Is there any kind of electronic tresspass law which people could use to make it illegal for them to send their web crawlers and such over your website and such?

Given that I don't host their crap on my site, what gives them the right to eat up my bandwidth constantly by randomly searching for mp3's? (My personal webserver has been crawled by a suspected RIAA bot about 15 times this week) I know they are doing this as they have Embarrased themselves in the past by searching harmless systems.

This makes going over my log files when I need to a real pain too when I have access logs showing some damn bot pouring over every file name on the system.

So do those of us who are sick of them using these abusive tactics have any recourse to go after the RIAA for intruding on our systems with annoying bots? I for one am tired of them cataloging my web server and trying to FTP in anonymously every 10 hours or so just because I *might* have something of theirs posted up.

I submitted this story earlier today, but it didn't make it. Basically, Sen. Sam Brownback from Kansas is announcing the "Consumer,Schools, and Libraries Digital Rights Management Awareness Act," which will, among other things, require that a copyright holder win a lawsuit in order to obtain the name of an alleged peer-to-peer pirate.

In the meantime, I say turn about's fair play: let's all of us accuse the RIAA of illegally distributing our copyrighted material and invade their privacy without bothering with the courts. Let's rat out every music executive out there who's downloading kiddie porn or sending naughty emails to their mistresses. Hey, if they can do it to us, why can't we do it to them?

my 2 cents...

We will sell no WINE before its time either. Hell at the rate they are going, Linux will be running windows programs better than the present release of windows.

I think it is no small exaggeration that the folks at Samba understand CIFS better than the folks in Redmond do. It's only a matter of time before the executables are the same way.

About the only way Longhorn is going to sell big is by doing something completely different. About the only way it can be completely different is by ceasing to support what already exists. If it breaks everything that exists, you cease to have any advangtage over Linux. Indeed, since most Unix apps can be simply recompiled for Linux, you are at a disadvantage.

I think they are going to stretch Longhorn out as far as they can. Let the folks who bought Win2k and XP get a few useful years out of their systems, and then introduce this radically different and wholly incompadible new way of processing. And pray you can keep the customers locked in through licensing inertia.

If I was Bill and Steve, I'd be selling my shares of Microsoft and planning a quiet retirement in the Islands. This plan has NEVER worked. Anyone remember Atari? How about Commadore? Apple is about the only company I can think of that has pulled not one, but two major technological upheavals off successfully. (Depending on your definition of success I suppose.)

So Ballmer is off-base when he says software is not reaching commoditized status?

Ballmer Memo to Troops

Ballmer also disputed suggestions that software and other aspects of information technology are reaching commodity status. "There is an interesting debate emerging in the industry today about the value of information technology," he wrote. "Some pundits are suggesting that IT no longer matters; that what was once a transforming technology has reached the end of the road in terms of innovation, that it ceases to be a source of business advantage once everyone has it, and that customers should just optimize for costs and outsource IT for efficiencies.

Does television hardware/software rule now, or does television service and content rule?

High-profile attorney David Boies and his firm still are handling SCO's Unix legal action, SCO said. SCO is paying Boeis' firm with a contingency agreement, under which lawyers are typically paid not by the hour, but with a percentage of their client's case winnings.

Which clearly states that Boeis is still aboard and looking to get his out of the winnings. Good thing he doesn't need the money.

The most interesting line from it:

"It doesn't make sense. How would you transfer the product but not have the copyright attached? That would be like transferring a book but only getting the cover," McBride said.

"It doesn't make sense. How would you transfer the product but not have
the copyright attached? That would be like transferring a book but only
getting the cover," McBride said.

SCO reopens German Web site

News.com.com.com has an article up dissecting the contract between Novell and SCO that assigned some right over UNIX to SCO. It seems to be a pretty "murky" agreement as one of the lawyers describes it, but it does show that Novell retains the rights to all the UNIX patents and copyrights.

But some people close to him suggest his recent projects are a sign of his unhappiness in his role at AOL. One source close to Nullsoft (the name is a dig at Microsoft) said Frankel is counting down the days before his stock options fully vest next May. In fact, this source said, the release of AIMazing was a jab that Frankel intended to push the buttons of executives in Dulles, Va.

Anybody catch this article on CNET?

Metallica then:

Napster has built a business based on large-scale piracy. Facilitating that are hypocritical universities and colleges who could easily block this insidious and ongoing thievery scheme...

Metallica now:

We've always wanted our fans to experience our music online .. But up until now, the existing distribution methods have not passed the kind of 'quality' standards our fans have come to expect from us.

Despite the heated charges, the band now says its early grievances were merely about the quality of music offered through Napster file-swapping, not about the theft.

Yeah, whatever Lars! How about sticking with writing MUSIC? How about coming over to my house and setting up my stereo for me? You know, so that the quality is better. Or better yet, buy me a new one!

some article

You can get a similiar story at CNET.

As most of you know, Canopy Group is a backer of both SCO and Trolltech, which has lead many an Anonymous Coward to decry them. Most of these comments have been dismissed as irrelevant, but...

This CNet story has me a little worried. Quoth the article:

"The Canopy Group said SCO has got to hire somebody in-house to manage the IBM litigation," Tibbitts said. "My background is litigation. With the firestorm that has started, they need someone who can manage and oversee the litigation."

I think we have reason to believe that Canopy not only knows about the lawsuit but is encouraging it. I'm seriously thinking that the hordes of AC's have a point now. Should we be concerned about the Canopy-KDE connection? (I'd divest from them simply because they like the word "synergy"...)

Microsoft and AOL/Time Warner are running fast to get their own online Apple-like music store up and running, now that Apple's has been the success it has been -- doubly so since Apple's planning a Windows version of iTunes and the music store by the end of the year. Microsoft could probably beat them to market with a shoddy music store without even sweating.

So Apple needs to get ahead and stay ahead. To do that, ease-of-use isn't enough (or Apple would have the 95% user share, not Microsoft) -- they need to have the biggest, most comprehensive, most searchable library of online music anywhere. Consumers won't get iTunes if Microsoft's store is already installed, but they will get it if iTunes offers three times more songs.

I think that once Apple gets a large number of indie labels in the store, the rest will eventually come on their own. That, plus a $100 iPod of any size, will be all they'll need to stay ahead of the competition for some time to come.

Legal action hits SCO Web site

Lawyers representing LinuxTag, the German Linux group, told SCO on May 23 that the Lindon, Utah-based company was engaging in unfair competitive practices when it sent to 1,500 large companies letters that said using Linux could pose legal problems because SCO proprietary Unix source code had been copied into Linux, according to a statement from the group.

"SCO must not be allowed to damage its competitors by unsubstantiated claims, to intimidate their customers and to inflict lasting damage on the reputation of GNU/Linux as an open platform," LinuxTag's Michael Kleinhenz said in the statement. LinuxTag demanded SCO make its evidence public by May 30 or retract its claims.

SCO removed copies of that letter from its Web sites as a result, but later, LinuxTag succeeded in obtaining a temporary restraining order against SCO, said Ryan Tibbitts, SCO's newly appointed chief legal counsel. Because SCO hasn't been able to see the actual contents of the order, the company ordered the entire site shut down to be on the safe side, he said.

Kazaa is old news. Direct Connect has overtaken it. It's a much more decentralised system.

http://www.eff.org/bernstein/

http://cr.yp.to/export.html

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-225508.html?legacy=c net

clickable link http://news.com.com/2100-1023-978176.html

Try google.com someday. But here's a story on C-Net. Notice that the central contractor for this project is Ross Perot's company. (Here's another article which mentions different defense contractors doing the work, plus other big IT jobs)

you forgot the new one: xD. Less than half the size of CF cards, but hold up to 512 mb as of now. Cheap, fast, and stable. A new player? Time will decide...

This Article in ZDnet India shows what the President of India thinks of the whole thing. But Unfortunately the President (like the Queen of England )is a rather ceremonial post.