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Sun has a Linux strategy?
Wow, that's news to me.

Sun bought Cobalt for their linux based appliances 2 1/2 years ago. You missed that? The purchase of one of the largest, more successful Linux-based product companies by one of the largest, most successful Unix product companies?

+3 Insightful?

It seems like Sun is playing with Linux

Sun isn't playing with Linux, they're shipping product with Linux. Sun store servers

And plan to ship more: Sun Linux PC cheaper

Sun and Microsoft will also learn that you must move or get out of the way when a disruptive market mover is coming.

Sun has been there, done that. What do you think happened to the minicomputer market? You've heard of them, right?

Sun has been part of more than one wave.

Yes, and its doing just fine, thanks.

The headline quotes "has a impact on Sun's shifting linux strategies". Since it doesn't give a lot of context it's a bit hard to know exactly what is ment by that. What happened is that days before it was anounced that Sun is considering striking up partnerships with mainstream Linux sellers such as Red Hat and SuSE (dated march 6). However a day later (march 7), the news breaks that The suit could affect SCO's relationship with Linux seller SuSE, whose version of Linux is the foundation of the UnitedLinux products SCO uses. Plus ofcource the posible implications for Linux patent violations at large such as forinstance the ELF binary format (SCO claims its a derivative of COFF), and other area's of linux..

Thus sun is in the mess that they decided to investigate how and if they should dive into the linux pool, but the day that news breaks, the pilar of their company (Unix servers, OS, etc) and the company they licence rights to use this from gets into a fight with linux and their bigest threat in the large-server-space.

It's gotta be shitty to be Sun to be in that position, they can't really afford to alianate either camp (openoffice, gnome2 and mozilla are contributed to or owned by them and linux seems to be a way to go for the future) but their current income comes largely from selling & maintaining large servers and they can not afford to give out the slightest impression that that market could be in any trouble, because customers buy them for the 'five nines' dream (99.999% availability)

To deep in either way to get out.. they'll have to do a switcherland if you ask me

The headline quotes "has a impact on Sun's shifting linux strategies". Since it doesn't give a lot of context it's a bit hard to know exactly what is ment by that. What happened is that days before it was anounced that Sun is considering striking up partnerships with mainstream Linux sellers such as Red Hat and SuSE (dated march 6). However a day later (march 7), the news breaks that The suit could affect SCO's relationship with Linux seller SuSE, whose version of Linux is the foundation of the UnitedLinux products SCO uses. Plus ofcource the posible implications for Linux patent violations at large such as forinstance the ELF binary format (SCO claims its a derivative of COFF), and other area's of linux..

Thus sun is in the mess that they decided to investigate how and if they should dive into the linux pool, but the day that news breaks, the pilar of their company (Unix servers, OS, etc) and the company they licence rights to use this from gets into a fight with linux and their bigest threat in the large-server-space.

It's gotta be shitty to be Sun to be in that position, they can't really afford to alianate either camp (openoffice, gnome2 and mozilla are contributed to or owned by them and linux seems to be a way to go for the future) but their current income comes largely from selling & maintaining large servers and they can not afford to give out the slightest impression that that market could be in any trouble, because customers buy them for the 'five nines' dream (99.999% availability)

To deep in either way to get out.. they'll have to do a switcherland if you ask me

Silicon Valley is now in India where the market is thriving as American employers move their operations oversea's to cut costs. Infact Sun and Microsoft are estimating that the current market will triple as more companies view IT workers as inexpensive and unimportant commidities that need to be valued down at any cost. It seems we are now viewed as or valued as an equal to a highschool dropout who works at Mcdonalds and should be paid as such.

After all the CEO's do the real work and we should be on our knees and begging for forgiveness to live in poverty like our fellow Indians. Microsoft and Sun are laying off programmers left and right and replacing them with cheap Indians working for less then minimal wage. Even Chinese programmers are viewed as too expensive and its getting rediculous.

You have to defend trademarks, not patents or copyrights. You can sit and let a patent stagnate for 10 years and then sue the balls off everyone later. The justification? They should have done their market research.

Look at Intergraph... CNet news claims (got this from the last posting about SCO vs. IBM): "In 2002, Intergraph's income from operations was $10 million, but its net income including legal settlements was $378 million."

Nasty stuff. Anyways, IIRC, Intergraph sued Intel and some other companies because of some kind of architecture design the Pentium used, specifically the system bus. Not sure if that's accurate, but try here and here.

Makes me want to get an arts degree, frankly.

You have to defend trademarks, not patents or copyrights. You can sit and let a patent stagnate for 10 years and then sue the balls off everyone later. The justification? They should have done their market research.

Look at Intergraph... CNet news claims (got this from the last posting about SCO vs. IBM): "In 2002, Intergraph's income from operations was $10 million, but its net income including legal settlements was $378 million."

Nasty stuff. Anyways, IIRC, Intergraph sued Intel and some other companies because of some kind of architecture design the Pentium used, specifically the system bus. Not sure if that's accurate, but try here and here.

Makes me want to get an arts degree, frankly.

You have to defend trademarks, not patents or copyrights. You can sit and let a patent stagnate for 10 years and then sue the balls off everyone later. The justification? They should have done their market research.

Look at Intergraph... CNet news claims (got this from the last posting about SCO vs. IBM): "In 2002, Intergraph's income from operations was $10 million, but its net income including legal settlements was $378 million."

Nasty stuff. Anyways, IIRC, Intergraph sued Intel and some other companies because of some kind of architecture design the Pentium used, specifically the system bus. Not sure if that's accurate, but try here and here.

Makes me want to get an arts degree, frankly.

Please MR Linus--

Please make them license the trademark from you! ;)

Not yet, anyways. Give it a couple of years

Wal Mart tried, but I guess they realized they would lose.

So what rights do I have with this data? I was kinda burned when FireFly sold all my record reviews (along with those by hundreds of other users). CDDB being sold to (and locked up by) Escient is a better example of this phenomenon. (For those who arrived late, freedb is an open source fork of CDDB, which is now called GraceNote).

No more submissions from me until someone tells me what happens to my work. I don't mind someone like Jon Katz quoting my /. posts, but I'm not willing to have my work turned into proprietary data.

Good project tho; I'm surprised it took this long to happen.

It fails on the first two counts, and probably a couple others too. (These were just the easiest to find examples of.)

1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media. (Good Morning, America)

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. (beware of elderly)

To see images or run programs in 3D on these screens, users won't need special glasses or additional software. Sharp already sells a cell phone with a 3D screen for the NTT DoCoMo network in Japan and is showing off a 3D notebook at conferences and press events that can run a 3D version of the game Quake.

nice to see these will be autostereoscopic displays. I was looking for a bit more information about the notebook, but I can't find much. There is some information in Japanese about the phones, though, as well as a few comments from this page.

...Three-dimensional monitors consist of two TFT panels separated by a parallax barrier. Each eye receives a slightly different image, which creates the illusion of depth....While objects in the background do not pose problems, viewing objects in the foreground can cause the eyes to shift back and forth rapidly.

This sounds like more advanced technology than the previous 3D displays occasionally discussed here, where the LCD panels were seperated by a larger space and there was less of a reliance on optics for a more limited 3D effect. I would imagine this will still have some negative side effects in terms of viewing angle though, can anyone comment on that?

free music downloads, games, and forums.

Don't forget the DSP chip announced Yesterday. This is really bad news for TI, as the chinese market for cell phones is growing much faster than US and almost saturated Europe.

Although I don't know about this particular fuel cell as it mentions more concentrated meths, one made by PolyFuel received air clearance and I think was mentioned on /. itself.

You "recharge" by popping in a new cartridge of methanol, which should be cheap ($3-5 initial starting price, probably down to $0.30 eventually. You don't actually have to plug the laptop in for a few hours to recharge it either, so on that long airline flight you can run the laptop indefinitely with enough little cartridges. I saw a pic of a prototype cartridge once somewhere, it looked about the size of a AA battery.

Call it the case of the disappearing security hole. Initial reports of a "back door" in Microsoft Corp.'s FrontPage server software -- a deliberate security hole put in to allow illicit access -- now seem to be, for the most part, incorrect. While Microsoft (msft) admits that a security flaw does indeed plague a software module in its Web server product, the giant software company contradicted statements by one of its managers confirming the existence of a back door with the pass phrase "Netscape engineers are weenies!"

182 months, actually.

According to Greg Olson, chairman and co-founder of Sendmail in this article he states "You have to understand that this is a very arcane security issue," he said. "It has been present in Sendmail code for 15 years and that code has been through multiple inspections."

Anybody else remember SGI and Microsoft started working on a 3D API standard called Fahrenheit ?[news.com]

I do because I was in the announcement...

Microsoft was supposed to bring their "vast knowledge of different hardware" and SGI their "vast knowledge in 3D APIs".

Why no one heard about it since? because the whole thing was scrapped. Microsoft bailed (assuming to develop DirectX 8...) and SGI continued work on OpenGL standard.

Microsoft's business plan is something in the lines of "let's take some one else bright ideas and implement them better" (which is actually what the SGI representative said in that announcement, in a more diplomatic way..).

So Microsoft is trying to do something new, innovative and brilliant with DirectX 10... who knows, maybe it will work.. but taking into consideration the limits of this field (hey, DirectX 7,8 and 9 are all about the equivalent of extensions in OpenGL, made more readable through APIs) I doubt it, moreover - DirectX is not multi platform, which is strange seeing how much M$ is putting into .net...

Think how much the industry is making on Plasma screens. Do they have any real incentive to start selling a cheaper alternative?

Yes they have tons of incentive, they can make more money! Currently, Profit margins on plasma screens are very high - about 30%. Simple econ 101 tells you that the manufacturers can do this because people are willing to pay that much. Even if the television only cost $500 to manufacture, people would still pay $4000+. So of course the industry has the incentive to sell a cheaper alternative - but that doesn't always mean that it'll cost less.

Here's an article from ZDNet that answers this question. It dates from 1999, but is still likely to be accurate, as the commercial web has grown leaps and bounds (along with the porn industry) since then.

Of course, this still doesn't include Usenet, P2P (which in 1999 was basically Napster), or anything like that. Usenet should be easy to calculate through file sizes and headers if you have access to an NNTP server, and I would guess that the majority of traffic on Usenet (by volume) consists of movies, CD images, and TV shows, not porn.

According to a study conducted by Dr. Steve Lawrence and Dr. C. Lee Giles for the NEC Research Institute, the Web contains about 800 million pages encompassing about 15 terabytes of data and about 180 million images. Contrary to popular opinion that the Web's a haven for porn, though, the study found that only 1.5 percent of Web sites contain pornographic content.

That might explain this strange ZDNET article. They say Microsoft wanted Connectix Virtual PC to provide compatibility with Windows NT4. What makes NT4 compatibility so different than say Win2K or WinXP compatibility in Longhorn? Seems like this article is a little short of the whole picture:

ZDNET: "Microsoft pushing NT 4 out the Window"

To most of these end-users, having or not having access to the source code is moot so why push something on them that they probably don't even want?

That is a fundamental, fundamental aspect of the GPL which RMS has expounded on many times.

In short, every end-user should have the power to select a programmer on the free market to improve the software he uses. If they don't want it, they simply aren't aware of the possibilities.

(The specific example of a military Tank Commander is one of the most extreme cases where the user wouldn't want to modify the code, because it'll be tied into painfully over-engineered software. Almost every other situation, including military users in R&D or training, will have greater utility from source code access. The X-Box in particular is someplace where users would love the source code.)

But the IT department has that right as agents for the corporation

According to the text of relevant laws and licenses, they have rights as individuals as well.

Corporations don't like that idea, though, and that is one reason why Bill Gates has been so successful in convincing them that the GPL is viral and evil. Gates often spreads misdirection (the word "viral" is inaccurate), but he can speak the truth too: when he tells CEOs that if their programmers modify GPLed code, the corporation might not be able to keep the changes from escaping to the public, he's right.

What he doesn't tell them, of course, is that public release will usually be non-harmful or even beneficial. (Letting that slip undermines his business model)

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The U.S. Copyright Office should not be used as an substitute yet uber-patent office. By adding any sort trivial addition to a mechanical device to lay a DMCA claim, one can create in effect a de facto patent protection of a commercial device, but with a much longer or unlimited term, and with a free ride of enforcement by the U.S. Government. This is clearly not what Copyrights are intended to protect.

Imagine an automotive company wishes to force people to purchase only tires manufactured by themselves. They first attempt to force consumer choice by patenting the idea of round tires, but the US Patent Office rules (correctly) that their design has not unique and denies the application. All the MBA's in upper management are crushed.

"Fear not," their lawyers cry, "we'll get something better...we'll get you protection -- and not for a patent's measly 20 years. No we'll give you 120 years of protection...AND the U.S. Government will investigate violations and enforce this 'uber-patent' for you."

"But How?" cry the hopeful executives grateful disbelief.

"But won't our better priced competitors just put the same dime's worth magic in their tires and we'll be back where we started?" wails a VP from under the table of the conference room where they've all gathered.

"...Patents?..." offers a hopeful senior manager.

"But the car's owner...isn't he already the, um, owner of the car and can do what he wants with his property?" worries the CEO aloud. "Isn't he allowed to buy from the competition? Won't we have to forced him to signed a service contract or something that say he must make all future purchases from us."

--

For those concerned that 120 years isn't long enough, a company needs only every 119 years just to change the "Quality Verification Tag" and get a whole new Copyright to fend off any and all competition -- for literally until the end of time (or at least the end of the DMCA)." Disney's aspirations ain't go nothin' on Lexmark.

Those who help create the U.S. Constitution wrote in Article I, section 8,

"Congress shall have power . . . to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries..." [Note: though already clear, emphasis added]

Since I don't support pedophilia, I won't use Java.

C|Net ran a little blurb about this the other day. (Scroll down). Interestingly, the site's founder used to work for VersionTracker itself. It must be nice to spit out a little bile after having to be objective about some of the crap that gets posted up there.

Oh, and they are open to expanding onto other platforms: "I'm not much of a Windows guy," he said. "It's certainly possible if we got some contributors that were interested in highlighting the worst of Windows or Linux we might go there."

Perhaps submitter "kmitnick" is experienced with criminal law, but the sentence "Jon Johansen will be back in court, tried again in an appeals court, because Hollywood knows better than the Norwegian legal system." makes no sense. The Norwegian legal system is the one prosecuting, appealing, and deciding the case. Hollywood "filed the complaint" -- exactly as it is done in the US -- but doesn't the Norwegian legal system take the blame for heeding it?

The article says, "There is no specific legislation in Norway to protect digital content, but Johansen's program has been criminalized in the United States under the Digital Copyright Millennium Act" -- a strange comment, too. Who cares about the DMCA with Johansen in Norwegian court? Another article explained better, "Johansen was accused of violating Norway's computer crime law by helping to create the DeCSS DVD-descrambling utility."

On the double jeopardy angle, I looked around and can't find enough info. I assume that, as in several other countries, the appeals court looks for mistakes of law committed by the judge, not the weight of the evidence. I doubt he would be "tried again in an appeals court," notwithstanding the submitter's implication; it probably goes back to the Norwegian trial court. But who knows. Anyway, American double jeopardy has a surprising number of holes in it, such as the dual sovereignty doctrine that allows reprosecution up to 3 times in state/federal/military courts.

The US has some especially strict criminal rules. Whether Norway's system is a violation of fundamental civil rights is Norway's question, not Hollywood's. To compare Norway's system to, say, the United States, we'd want to weigh all their criminal rules as a batch, plus their discretion and fairness in executing those laws.

Disclaimer, I think this prosecution is a bunch of cr*p, but am totally confused by the reporting as to what's actually happening.

Obviously, IANANL. (Norwegian lawyer.) Be glad to hear from one!

I've got an rev. b iMac (the almost-original bondi blue style) with a dead monitor. As near as I can tell the electronics are all fine, but without a working display it won't boot. I'd love to get it running again, minimallly as a "hidden in the closet" server, or better still by finding someone with another dead iMac with a working display where I could merge the parts together into one working machine.

But since just fixing it doesn't seem feasible (a new CRT has been quoted to me for around $500, so that's not an option), and I haven't been able to find anyone for the "franken-mac" idea, my fiance has been trying to get me to throw it away instead, and sooner or later I'm sure she'll have her way on this one.

If it comes to that though, rather than toss it in the trash, I'd rather pay a service like this to recycle it if I could -- the toxins in modern PCs are *nasty* and worth trying to recycle or dispose of properly. Tossing it in a dumpster really isn't the best idea, as a major recent reports (and several related news articles) have highlighted:

• http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/spec ial_packages/marchmania/4605025.htm
• http://news.com.com/2100-1040-844195.html
• http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,50645,00 .html
• http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/pubs/technotrash.htm

There's a reason that the phrase "reduce, reuse, recycle" has the terms in that order. It's better to re-collect the production materials to be used in new products than to throw things away & need more raw resources, but it's better to stretch out the lifespan of existing products before giving them up for scrap at all. Even beyond that through, it's better to consume less at the outset than to stretch out the life of things that you maybe didn't need *or* recycle.

So yeah, it's better to reuse that old working Mac, but when the time comes to give it up -- and that time *will* come, sooner or later -- then it's better to dispose of it responsibly. Recycling isn't necessarily a very clean option, as the report in that last URL illustrates, so the longer you can avoid that the better.

And if anyone in the Boston area has an old iMac with, say, a dead motherboard, let me know :-)

Here's a look at the Bells' work to tax VoIP in a similar move to the ones they made in the early days of DSL. The eventual goal of moves like this would be to push non-Bells out of VoIP so they can then have yet another monopoly.

The Newton died because Jobs didn't like it since it wasn't from "his" Apple Co.

That's a good excuse. This was also a couple months after Microsoft told apple to Knife the Baby and a couple months after Microsoft released Windows CE 2.0, the first usable version, and six months after Microsoft invested $150 in Apple.

Of course, it could all be a coincidence.

Wow! Now that was fast.

Perhaps they aren't going down for the third time. Strange they should rest all their hopes in a game though.

Oh. Wait....

DID YOU COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE!

How do you spell 'synchronicity' again?

Yes. Why do you think MS chose the whimsically converse word Longhorn to signify the development version of desktop Windows? Someone at MS clearly has a sense of humour. We know it can't be BillyG, so that leaves ... who?

..software.

Since they are coming out with this new CRM software, if it has the ability to do email 'Customer Relationship Management' (read: spam), they may be trying to get a break to keep their customers from being flagged as spammers by sending out unwanted email updates.

However, the UltraSPARC V will have an architecture that differs from the UltraSPARC VI. In other words, Sun doubts that the UltraSPARC V will be a good design, so Sun has planned early to terminate its architectural descendants. Sun is willing to forgo recouping its financial investment in the architecture of the UltraSPARC V.

Sun switching from the UltraSPARC V to the Afara-based UltraSPARC would be like Intel switching from the Itanium 2 to a 64-bit x86. If Intel did this switch, we would conclude that Intel does not believe in the Itanium 2. Same goes for Sun.

Just wanted to let people know that some a group of spammers (Avenue A, DoubleClick, 24/7, Real Media, ValueClick and Digital Impact) who are trying to redefine spam as that the kind they don't do set up this yahoo group. The group is called "I did not recive my email."

The catch here is that not only does the group allow them to be ACs, allowing them ot astroturff and push their agenda, but it is also members only. Just another example of their "it is ok for us, but not for you" hypocrisy.

From News.com and The Register, plus a big discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Maybe you should read this for some hints as to what might be in store for UltraSPARC in the future. Suddenly it doesn't look as bleak as the nay-sayers would have us believe.

http://download.com.com/3000-2340-10125156.html?ta g=pop
http://download.com.com/3000-2346-10188001.html?ta g=pop
http://download.com.com/3000-2341-10170479.html?ta g=pop

http://download.com.com/3000-2340-10125156.html?ta g=pop
http://download.com.com/3000-2346-10188001.html?ta g=pop
http://download.com.com/3000-2341-10170479.html?ta g=pop

http://download.com.com/3000-2340-10125156.html?ta g=pop
http://download.com.com/3000-2346-10188001.html?ta g=pop
http://download.com.com/3000-2341-10170479.html?ta g=pop