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When was the last time someone died of a computer worm from some's priated copy of windows?

Considering that the SIIA says that as much as half of all software is pirated, there's a good chance that pirated copies of Windows contributed significantly to the situation.

Microsoft have, um, a bit of a reputation problem as it is :-) and I can't imagine it'd get any better if it became public knowledge that their security updates sometimes deleted the operating system.

Yeah, like that hasn't happened several times already.

p

Microsoft have, um, a bit of a reputation problem as it is :-) and I can't imagine it'd get any better if it became public knowledge that their security updates sometimes deleted the operating system.

Yeah, like that hasn't happened several times already.

p

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SCO community when IDC confirmed that SCO market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that SCO has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SCO is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by Accelerating GNU/Linux Adoption in Fortune 1000 companies by filing their lawsuit against GNU/Linux distributions.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SCO's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SCO faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SCO because SCO is dying. Things are looking very bad for SCO. As many of us are already aware, SCO continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood; the only prop to the entire edifice is from licensees who sought to use the lawsuit to their own advantage.

All major surveys show that SCO has steadily declined in market share. SCO is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SCO is to survive at all it will be among OS know-nothings who get licenses from SCO out of fear. SCO continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SCO is dead.

Fact: SCO is dying

These days it's risky to release information about a security vulnerability without having a patch in place first. Look at Blaster - I believe that the author *used a security bulletin* to write the worm and then just targeted unpatched machines.

Until managed applications become the norm, however, we need a better process for distributing patches. The Witty worm, released March 19, provides a good example of why this is true. The Witty worm affects products produced by Internet Security Systems Inc. (ISS). It exploits a vulnerability in the Protocol Analysis Module software component used across the ISS product line. Affected software products included the BlackIce firewall products and RealSecure security products (see story).

* * * *

Lastly, and most importantly, once the patch was released, the exploit was released the very next day. This wasn't a coincidence where the exploiters just missed having a zero-day exploit. If the patch had been released a week earlier, the worm also would have come out a week earlier.

The patch had the specific information embedded in it that the exploiters needed, and the exploiters already had the expertise and tools required to rapidly make use of the information.

This kind man responsible for finding this vulnerability is going to present this exploit at the security conference in Vancouver this Thursday. He then predicts "hackers will understand how to begin launching attacks 'within five minutes of walking out of that meeting.'"

Lastly, and most importantly, once the patch was released, the exploit was released the very next day. This wasn't a coincidence where the exploiters just missed having a zero-day exploit. If the patch had been released a week earlier, the worm also would have come out a week earlier.

The patch had the specific information embedded in it that the exploiters needed, and the exploiters already had the expertise and tools required to rapidly make use of the information.

This kind man responsible for finding this vulnerability is going to present this exploit at the security conference in Vancouver this Thursday. He then predicts "hackers will understand how to begin launching attacks 'within five minutes of walking out of that meeting.'"

Lastly, and most importantly, once the patch was released, the exploit was released the very next day. This wasn't a coincidence where the exploiters just missed having a zero-day exploit. If the patch had been released a week earlier, the worm also would have come out a week earlier.

The patch had the specific information embedded in it that the exploiters needed, and the exploiters already had the expertise and tools required to rapidly make use of the information.

Taking temporary jobs only seems to cause more problems. It only entrains management to accept a virtual reality as if it were real. Outsourcing is only an experiment, don't let it take root !

Alot of companies are only hiring temps to brain suck intellectual property out of them for outsourcing so accepting temp work only fans the flame.

If you do have to take contract work after years as an FTE, beware of the new problems you'll face. In my state, you can't collect unemployment unless you work at least 6 months straight. Unemployment benefits are "use it or loose it" so be sure to file the week after your contract ends. You may need that money for health care after dealing with all the stress caused by employers who now treat software developers as little more than gloried fork lift drivers.

Big companies are blamed by Indian service providers for pushing up salaries
Why every job doesn't translate well overseas
IT auditors worry that outsourcers may not provide the documentation needed to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley

Taking temporary jobs only seems to cause more problems. It only entrains management to accept a virtual reality as if it were real. Outsourcing is only an experiment, don't let it take root !

Alot of companies are only hiring temps to brain suck intellectual property out of them for outsourcing so accepting temp work only fans the flame.

If you do have to take contract work after years as an FTE, beware of the new problems you'll face. In my state, you can't collect unemployment unless you work at least 6 months straight. Unemployment benefits are "use it or loose it" so be sure to file the week after your contract ends. You may need that money for health care after dealing with all the stress caused by employers who now treat software developers as little more than gloried fork lift drivers.

Big companies are blamed by Indian service providers for pushing up salaries
Why every job doesn't translate well overseas
IT auditors worry that outsourcers may not provide the documentation needed to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley

Taking temporary jobs only seems to cause more problems. It only entrains management to accept a virtual reality as if it were real. Outsourcing is only an experiment, don't let it take root !

Alot of companies are only hiring temps to brain suck intellectual property out of them for outsourcing so accepting temp work only fans the flame.

If you do have to take contract work after years as an FTE, beware of the new problems you'll face. In my state, you can't collect unemployment unless you work at least 6 months straight. Unemployment benefits are "use it or loose it" so be sure to file the week after your contract ends. You may need that money for health care after dealing with all the stress caused by employers who now treat software developers as little more than gloried fork lift drivers.

Big companies are blamed by Indian service providers for pushing up salaries
Why every job doesn't translate well overseas
IT auditors worry that outsourcers may not provide the documentation needed to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley

Won't announcing the vulnerabilities cause them to be expoited??

Shouldn't Microsoft as a result slow down the security patch cycle?

Why are call center workers who handle the private information of US citizens (banks, credit cards, etc) in foreign countries trained to sound like Americans? If outsourcing is so great, why are foreign workers forced to pretend that they are American?

Why are US workers forced to train their replacements, all the while being told that their job is being eliminated because it's the only way for the company to remain profitable?

Is it moral to outsource government services such as upgrading the system that provides aid to unemployed workers or customer service to food stamp receipients to workers who make one fourth of what an American worker would make?

Why are groups that are obviously lobbying groups for corporate interests being allowed to dictate our nation's policy on everything IT?

What effect does outsourcing have on innovation? The skilled workers in the US are not allowed to compete for jobs because American workers are too costly. The marginally skilled workers in countries where costs are lower are making the same types of technical mistakes that US workers made years ago. If outsourcing had been done for reasons other than pure price, would technology be on a different level now?

Why isn't the connection between the misuse of H1B and L1 visas and business access to cheap labor in other countries ever discussed?

What does this say about outsourcing VS IT security ... and India too.

What might that navigation system be?

• I can't make out the logo under the navigation display screen. A wave, followed by "ware"?
• ECDIS-N seems to be the Navy paperless navigation design. Electronic charts (maps) exist for navigation of federal vessels with ECDIS-N.
• Navy is using two navigation systems: USCG COMDAC INS and Litton Marine's (now Sperry Marine) IBS (VMS). The Swift seems to use a new IBS, thus it is using Litton's VMS.
• Sperry Marine makes Navy's ECDIS-N: In a separate effort to extend the open-architecture concept, PEO IWS in late 2003 awarded a contract to Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine in Charlottesville, Va., to act as the Navy's sole supplier of electronic charting, display, and information systems, called ECDIS-N, in a competition that rejected two Navy-developed systems. Confirmed.
• Search for ECDIS-N on Sperry Marine produces only the Military IBS page. Apparently ECDIS-N might be there. Sperry Marine products
• Apparently ECDIS-N systems must follow DII COE for the operating environment. POSIX is also involved.
• LynxOS might be involved in real time situations: LynxOS(R) was selected as the reference RTOS implementation for the DII COE configurable RT kernel.
• Thus there may be Unix influences in those designs for the navigation system.

The phrase Joint Interoperable Mission Planning and Rehearsal System is found by Google only in this document. There is a Joint En-route Mission Planning and Rehearsal System (JEMPRS), but no hints of its platform.

The COMBATSS site doesn't have much info. Another site mentions an HP Unix workstation with COMBATSS. And the COMBATSS Platform Equipment doesn't sound like a description of MS-Windows. Using Mozilla as an interface is mentioned in the original article, which doesn't reduce the possibilities much.

The company will initially try to commercialize the technology for using the battery as an emergency power source for computers, according to sources at NEC.

You mean so I can even get first posts when the power is out?

Though I'm curious with something...
Will this be plagued by the Mysterious Memory Effect of Rechargeable Batteries?

Isn't it comforting to know that this guy's playing a small part to keep democracy safe?

Where?
this looks liks windows to me. This even has the windows default titlebar fade action going on.

Where?
this looks liks windows to me. This even has the windows default titlebar fade action going on.

This is true and not true. IBM was ordered to divest itself of major components as well as to do other things. The US Government put restrictions on what it could or could not do. This is the only reason Compaq was able to reverse-engineer the PC and to create clones. Further, IBM fought (and lost to some degree) the clone wars. What really happened in the background was that IBM finally gave up trying to stop the proliferation of PCs and instead drastically dropped the price of leasing the rights to their BIOS information. By the time they had done this though, the other companies who had created their own BIOSs were gaining popularity and the rest is history. IBM shut down it's plants to create PCs and/or laptops and IBM does not even make its own micros or laptops today. They are made by other companies who just slap the IBM logo onto them. (Apple's PowerPC also comes to mind. Motorola used to make Apple's CPUS. Motorola's CPUS though were really IBM creations. But Motorola did the actual production of them.)

As for cheap hardware - that is a natural process of economy. The overhead inherent in a technologically advanced country will make, at some point, it more feasible to outsource things to other countries where the labor is cheaper. Since the labor is cheaper the items are produced at a cheaper rate. That rate, even with import duties, is still cheaper than it would have been to create the item in the original country. Which is why it is cheaper to have some place like India produce your software. Not exactly a great thing (since I was laid off for quite a while myself because of this effect) but I can understand why it is happening.

Or maybe here

By the way, Gmail not a joke, says Google .

If they can do what they say, I'd definitely consider the service. I'd be more than willing to pay for a non-ad-infested if I could access it via IMAP as well as through a web interface. Especially if it had some really great anti-spam features and/or procmail filter access.

Does anyone know how to move downloaded e-mail back up to an IMAP server?

The system which is pre-installed at time of purchase determines what system will be used for the life of the hardware in most cases. Thus you have a situations where OEMs, by preloading an OS, decide what the public buy and use.

Talk of compiling applications makes it sound like it's been more than 5 years since you've installed or even used any of the major Linux distros (except Gentoo) or have been run them on a very unusual or uncommon architecture. Both Gnome and KDE are as easy to use or easier (definitely more flexible) than the various MS-Windows incarnations, even when measured using MS-Windows users. Yes, OS X has them all beat.

Furthermore, installing Linux based software is very easy for the major distros, especially if you run using most common architecture, Intel. There are graphic interfaces to manage any dependencies, it's just click and run. Look for that to improve further this year as good parts from Yast, RPM and APT are extended. But that's for mainstream packages, you're always going to be able to pull some weird package off the net which will give you a hard time regardless of your OS.

If OEMs like Compaq/HP, Dell, IBM, Apple, and others provided pre-installed Linux, there would be even more software. Most people want a computer + OS + applications to work off the shelf, thus you need OEMs to install and configure things. Most users don't want to worry about maintenance, security or viruses, thus the need for Linux, BSD, or OS X.

Like, for instance, BlackIce. THEN your Windows box will be secure fer SURE!

Uhmmm... Oops.

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X
for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens

IBM has 15K Linux desktops now,
increasing to 40K in the next 9 months.
That's still only 12% of the total but it's getting there.

"And C++ programming languages, we own those,"

Geesh. parent poster was not kidding.

Darl: "several dozen requests a month just to come in and see AIX or HP-UX code base."

Didn't they ask IBM to show them the AIX source in their case against IBM? Then what is this about?

Maybe this was the interview where he had to prove to the rest of the 'gang' that he was capable of lying through his teeth without blinking?

Actually, googling around this article a little, extrapolating the trend: Will he sue the US Courts for migrating to Linux next? (btw wouldn't that be some sort of chicken-and-egg problem (ergo very likely for SCO to do)?)

Darl: "NASDAQ, for example, runs all of the trading machines in their brokerages on OpenServer."

Oh, and the trade 'floor' that lists their stock, NASDAQ too? Actually in that article NASDAQ "wants to eliminate the company's Unisys Corp. mainframes and migrate the trading-floor functions that run on those machines" and "Nasdaq currently uses about 300 Unix servers running a mix of HP's Tru64 and HP-UX operating systems as well as Sun's Solaris". I see mentions of Unisys, HP Tru64, HP-UX, and Solaris: Where is the SCO OpenServer that Darl was speaking about? Not mentioned, so not even close to OpenServer on 'all of the trading machines', likely even none at all, given the specific mention of Unisys for trading functions...

So, from where I am viewing the market from the perspective of an end user, Apple's market position is looking pretty good to me.

Yeah, real good.

And what about all those announcements?

Microsoft asks Mac users, "How can we get your business?'

Merrill Lynch, whose technology group recently began coverage of Apple, noted in a research note last week that "open source and Mac adoption is still in infancy in the enterprise market." However, "we should see explosive growth in the years to come as corporations look to achieve cost savings within their IT departments."

Using IDC's own estimate for G5/OSX server shipments through 2007, as well as its internal data on OSX operating system attach rates and server pricing, Merrill reckons that the enterprise G5 market could be worth $529 million by 2007. "This represents a [compound annual growth rate] of 61 percent over the 5-year period from 2002-2007," the note said.

Japanese telco to aid Mac phone development

Mac, G5 systems move out enterprise's mainframe

New G5 chips, but no 64-bit OS X for at least two years (too late).

"We're saying that OSX/G5s will eat Unix," Gantz said

Is Computer Associates contemplating dumping Windows?

If you have been following Microsoft attempts to hold onto counties, cities, states, governmental bodies, governments, corporations and people, you know the headlines have gone from talk to action.

The governments that are starting to move over tend to be mostly poorer countries, or ones with large, largely computer-free populaces. Brazil and China are good examples of this trend. In those places, OSX/G5 adoption has been picking up steam to the point that if a second world country told MS to take a hike, it would hardly rate a Slashdot story on a slow day.

THE NATIONAL HEALTH Service is considering using the OSX operating system; G5s in a 2.3 billion deal that could affect as many as 800,000 PCs if a pilot is successful.

Nine German cities poised to adopt OSX/G5

Official: China to invest in OSX/G5-based software industry

The US Army has abandoned Windows and chosen OSX for a key component of its "Land Warrior" programme, according to a report in National Defense Magazine. The move, initially covering a personal computing and communications device termed the Commander's Digital Assistant (CDA), follows the failure of the previous attempt at such a device in trials in February of this year, and is part of a move to make the device simpler and less breakable.

According to program manager Lt Col Dave Gallop this is part of a broader move towards OSX/G5 by the US Army: "Evidence shows that OSX is more stable. We are moving in general to where the Army is going, to OSX/G5-based OS."

Sun Microsystems is the odd man out. It has an impressive array of powerful enemies: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Red Hat, Apple, Novell, and more. It has only a weakened Oracle as a friend, and Oracle too has made a "bet the company" move to OSX/G5. OSX/G5 threatens many of Sun's traditional products as sharply as it threatens Micr

Not very many companies are making a killing on OSS right now. Some, like IBM, are subsidizing it from their HW sales.

IBM's middleware strategy is based on the WebSphere products, which are based on Tomcat, Apache, and Eclipse. That middleware business alone is worth over $11 billion a year, and it is profitable. And that's without considering any money made by the consulting part of the company, which is separate from the Software Group.

IBM keeps careful track of exactly which parts of the company are making money, and has clearly shown that it is willing to sell or abandon those (like Aptiva, its typewriter business and its hard drive business) which aren't contributing enough to the bottom line. If IBM wasn't making a profit by selling software solutions based on OSS, it wouldn't be doing it.

• Hook up Miss Psycho Bitch with Mister Nobody's Using It. Obviously made for each other.
• Submit this story to Shark Tank.

A simple search shows the documentation on TMS' customers and the only thing this large that requires this size index is keyword searches of e-mail intercepts.

Besides, apple wants to make money on the music, not the hardware.

• "So our philosophy is that traffic to the music store will lead to iPod sales and iPod sales will lead to the sale of Macs."

• "Apple's goal with iTunes -- which has yet to make a profit despite sales of more than 15 million songs -- is not to sell music but to sell its music player, the iPod."

From the article @ Windows XP SP2 could break existing application
according to Tony Goodhew, a product manager in Microsoft's developer group:

"SP2 will break some applications because they are insecure," he said. "Security is important, and it is not just a Microsoft problem but a developer community problem. We all need to work together to create a more secure computing environment."

"It doesn't really matter how long it is going to take you to do the work; security is an important issue, and developers need to start doing that work now," Goodhew said.

Me: "Sorry sir, there was a power outage and the machine you need to dial in to is down."

Caller: "But I'm a tenured professor !"

Obviously not a rocket scientist. In three months on helldesk for a major West Coast medical university (take the "N" line) I heard "But I'm a tenured professor" four times. I do not have a magic button that I couldn't be bothered to press, unless you're a tenured professor in which case everything will be made All Right immediately. This is also the position where I had to explain the right mouse button; 20 minutes - my boss listened to half of it and gave me an extra break when I was done. One fellow, doctor or student I'm not sure which now, actually returned his new PC to the store (Gateway) after the preinstalled AOL setup popped up and he thought he had been hacked and given them his password - his university password . Gaaaghh. That was his second call, and not his last... I'm honestly surprised he got it plugged in and a little sorry he didn't autodarwinate. Come to think of it, I'm also surprised about that last.

Part of the secuity on the patient records we had was that they were remotely accessible only via the modem pool. Fifteen minutes into one call I finally established that this woman, an RN, had her computer hosed by an AOL 5.0 install. That's a reinstall. That version of AOL would overwrite system DLLs and leave you with only AOL for dialup connections - which wouldn't talk to our terminal emulators nor our RADIUS setup. Since her kids installed it (those damn free disks do work !) the EULA would not apply so I gleefully mentioned the class action suit to her. Then I directed her towards getting Windows reinstalled.

That IT organization made the cover of Computerworld while I was there. Their merger with Stanford Health Care failed miserably due to a lack of due diligence and sheer incompetence. Let me just say that the Axe belongs in Berkeley.

Lastly, I would like to say that the helpdesk manager was probably the best possible manager for such a job. She treated the employees like people and that's all it took. Well, that and Boomtime salaries - I'm running an office solo and making a lot less now. Sigh.

But there's a difference between healthy venting and obsessive, pointless bitching. Not sure which kind this site represents.

Well, let's see...

• DaimlerChrysler is testing the Nokia Communicator, which "runs on an operating system from Nokia-controlled Symbian, a rival to Microsoft's Windows Mobile" ... " also promoting it as an alternative for companies that do not want to use only Microsoft software."
• DaimlerChrysler Corp. is working on a Linux-based management and navigation system for its cars.
• Related company: DaimlerChrysler Services used Unix and IBM software to merge its financial systems.
• Reporters say that DaimlerChrysler did not like Microsoft's annuity licensing plan and was examining Linux.
• DC using IBM Linux for car crash simulations.
• DC is a German/US merger, as is Novell/SuSe. Affecting DC may affect SuSe in its home market
• "IBM and the German government are getting together to implement Linux as the government's computing platform of choice."
• June 17, 1999, the Financial Post, Canada, Business Group Makes Push for Software Competition (pdf)

  The Canada Europe Round Table, launched yesterday, wants governments to take the lead in using operating systems such as Linux instead of Microsoft's proprietary Windows. The group of 28 companies -- which includes Bombardier Inc., Nortel Networks Corp., Corel Corp., DaimlerChrysler AG and Ericsson AG of Sweden -- suggests "competitive systems" such as Linux should be endorsed at the next round of World Trade Organization (WTO) talks. ... "CERT member Corel" ...

• "Ferrari, Volvo and DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler Group are among the companies that have turned to IBM for systems built around Linux."
• DaimlerChrysler Services Management Awarded 'Best Service' for Progress-Based Application With SonicMQ Integration: Award-winner Uses Progress(R) OpenEdge(TM) (Both Progress and SonicMQ can run on Unix/Linux)
• MySQL has acquired full commercial rights to develop and market future releases of SAP DB, of which there are roughly 5,000 customer installations. SAP DB users include Intel, DaimlerChrysler, Braun, Bayer, Colgate, Yamaha and Toyota South Africa. MySQL and SAP are also developing a future MySQL enterprise database that uses both MySQL and MaxDB.
• DC has been a user of MS products (2003)

AutoZone...

• SCO had claimed that IBM interfered with a contract (which SCO has not provided) and helped AutoZone migrate from SCO software to Linux. But there already is evidence that AutoZone used no SCO software after the change and its own employees did the change. The same statement also indicates that SCO drove AutoZone away, not that IBM interfered. The Red Hat distribution and support was chosen.
• AutoZone is using Wincor Nixdorf Linux store/POS tools.
  Wincor Nixdorf customers:

  * AutoZone * Books-

Heh... note the email address Annalee Newitz is using here... she evidentally creates a new mail alias for every column: sugarpill@techsploitation.com

Ah, slash ids pushing a billion and whining about what a sewer it's become...

Read about it at. A few persons were actually injured.

Read and here a report from consumer organization in case you tend to take press releases from corporations with a grain of salt.

You would not try producing drugs yourself, will you? The high capacity cells are the same sophysticated chemistry these days.

Here is a link to a Computerworld interview with James Gosling. I don't think it's the one I read, but it says a similar thing.

(Oh, that's what I get when I accidentally hit the Enter key....)

Anyway... :-) ... I meant to post a nice link to Actuality Systems. Their site has neat closeup color pictures of their system which works on the same technology as this Hitachi system, and which has been working since at least 2002; Hitachi has done nothing new, and from the specs that I can make out, their system actually seems to operate at a far lower resolution than Actuality's.

The AMD Opteron and Athlon 64 chips already
have the buffer overflow protection in their hardware and the
feature is already supported by both Linux and Windows XP 64-bit
edition. AMD calls this "Execution Protection" and the
basic idea is that the processor will not allow code that arrives to
the system via a buffer overflow to be marked as
executable. The slashdot story says "will have" for both
Intel and AMD when it should read "AMD already has and Intel will
have..."

They are claiming rights on Linus?

* Copyright (C) 2002, Linus Torvalds.

This is getting stupid, especially in light of this Computerworld article. AT&T Trips Up SCO

In that 1985 copy of $ echo, AT&T said they would "assure licensees that AT&T will claim no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T." In a recent Computerworld article, Frank Hayes calls that a clarification of the license's derivative-works clause:

Of the million lines of Linux code that SCO claims IBM hijacked from Unix, SCO hasn't identified a single line that came from the original Unix source code. It was all created by IBM. According to AT&T in 1985, that means it's IBM's to keep -- or give away. And SCO's theory that it owns Linux code appears to be kaput.

Long story short, if SCO inherited from Novell the rights Novell inherited from AT&T, SCO has no claim over derivative works, only over the original AT&T code, and, of course, whatever they have written themselves.

Here's a quick link in case you have to explain this whole mess to a PHB (again).

-Ted

This computerworld story seems to have it sorted out:

1) AT&T licenses SysV to IBM and Sequent
2) IBM writes a bunch of cool enterprise level stuff for their flavor of SysV, and acquires Sequent
3) AT&T writes a letter to their newsletter ($echo) saying their license doesn't cover the derivative stuff, just the basic system
3) IBM eventually kicks their stuff into Linux
6) SCO buys up all the old licenses
7) SCO says the work is derivative after all, and they ownzors it

At some point the chewbacca defense starts to look a lot more rational.

When you're too lazy to do your homework, what do you do? You cheat. And that's exactly what SCO's trying to do. Rather than do their homework and realize they have no case, they're trying to make others do it for them, and in a sense cheating. Case in point is this article which seems to pretty much clearly show that SCO is full of their own crap. There's a saying that if you tell a lie long enough, you'll start to believe it. And that's exactly what SCO is doing. They're trying to push the lies so that people will believe them. In reality, its organizations like IBM, Novell, AT&T, and groklaw that are doing all of SCO's homework for them. Heck, SCO even tried to compel IBM to show source code for AIX and Dynix which would effectively cause IBM to make SCO's case for them. This is turning into nothing more than sensationalism for SCO. Any bets on how much SCO stock is sold off tomorrow?

The only thing necessary for Micro$oft to triumph is for a few good programmers to do nothing". North County Computers

From the same Computerworld article:

AT&T said it wanted "to assure licensees that AT&T will claim no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T."

In other words, AT&T never intended for Unix licensees to give up ownership of code they added to their versions of Unix. That was never part of the deal.

And then Darl Vader sez: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further.

But regardless of whether SCO has already sued a user or is just running a little behind schedule, winning any Linux lawsuits may have just gotten a lot harder for SCO.

Who said so? AT&T -- in 1985.

Check it out for the juce..

But regardless of whether SCO has already sued a user or is just running a little behind schedule, winning any Linux lawsuits may have just gotten a lot harder for SCO.

Who said so? AT&T -- in 1985.

Check it out for the juce..

I too have seen memtest fail to find bad memory, but only once so far. (I switched out memory and since then, no problems.) Also keep in mind, that due to the way it works, memtest errors could be power supply, motherboard, or CPU related in addition to memory related.

I've also seen the hd tests fail to spot a hard drive that was bad too. I spent over a week on one of them trying to figure out why it kept having problems. Since it was in my possession, I didn't have to worry out the cleaning crew causing the problem (see this story under neat idea..)

I've come to the conclusion that there is NO test that can say if the hardware is good, only tests that can say its bad. Between memtest and knoppix (and the hd tests), I can USUALLY spot faulty hardware quickly, but every so often..GRRRR

BTW, I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but the ultimate boot CD (free!) contains lots of useful tools all on one CD. These include memtest, and the various hd manufacturer's tests.