Slashdot Mirror

• Broken patches
• Doesn't work + make a new hole
• Innadequate

People with production systems are reluctant to alpha test microsoft's patches on their production machines. That's not happenstance, that's policy. Microsoft Senior Vice President Craig Mundie recently suggested that in the name of security, it may be appropriate to force you to install Microsoft patches or updates, and if that breaks your existing applications, well, it's for your own good.

If you think about it, if MS-Support keeps breaking third party apps and/or keeps recommending wiping the hard drive and doing a clean install, they get rid of all third party apps through attritition. It's by wearing down the flunky doing the install or using up all the flunky's time or the end user being unable to use the app until the flunky can fix it. Rather clever, I think, even when considering that Microsoft is more of a marketing company or pyramid scheme than a tech company.

Is SCO Smoking Crack?
96.68% Yes and counting...

What the world needs is a PC that really is an appliance. Something that's simple and just works, requiring zero knowledge of the inner workings. So far, many companies have tried and failed. Unfortunately many common computing tasks are so simple at a high level but get complex very quickly at lower levels. So is it even possible to have a drop-dead simple system that accomplishes the modest goals of average computer users? Or is this a paradox? I'm not sure. Some of the best code adheres fiercely to the KISS principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), but the complex requirements of common tasks often preclude us from providing truly simple solutions from the inside out.

I wonder when computers reach a point where artificial intelligence, voice and language recognition, etc are actually usable, will this problem go away? If the computer is intelligent enough to know what a simple user wants and to go do it properly, then presumably we have reached our goal. Yet interestingly, this would be a case where the underlying system is insanely complex, but I suppose smart enough to hide all that from the user. Right now, modern computers and operating systems simply don't do a good enough job at that.

Of course, for those of us reading this website, we enjoy the complexity of our computers and wouldn't have it any other way. But the computing world will never again be like it was 20+ years ago, when people like us were the only ones using computers. But obviously there's a ton of work that can be done to make the experience more satisfying and useful to those who don't compute just for the sake of computing.

Did anyone notice the definition of RCU in the eweek article
(McBride Bullish on the Battle Over Unix - 6th paragraph from the bottom)

They call it:
Read Copyright Update (RCU)

How appropriate

Feel free to call them and follow up.....

From the following Forbes article we have chief technology strategist from Merril Lynch Rick Carey who is "staking his reputation" on Linux. I'm sure he should be easy to find. Also Steve Yatko who is the CTO of CFSB should be making some calls to the SEC. Someone suggest it to him.
Wall Street Embraces Linux

And from this CRN New Zealand article we have a quote from Merril Lynch VP of Linux strategy Mark Snodgrass. I think he should give the SEC a phone call.
Linux gaining interest from Wall Street (Reseller News)

How about Mark Hunt, Global Directory, Enterprise Product Marketing for Reuters? Or Jeff Birnbaum, CTO of Morgan-Stanley?
Wall Street's Secret Affair With Linux (CIO Update)

How abou Robert Ryan, Linux product manager for JP Morgan Chase? What is Evan Bauer, former CTO of Credit-Suisse First Boston doing these days? Is he calling the SEC to stop the SCO FUD damage? Apparently Robert Liefowitz who is the Director of Meryll-Lynch's Technical Architecture Group thinks Linux is the secod coming of Christ. Has he called the SEC?
Wall Street Gaining Respect for Linux

An excellent quote from Ryan...

"TCO is king. If Windows was really a cheaper alternative and offered a more stable platform, we would not be able to sustain our arguments around Linux," said Robert Ryan, Linux product manager for JP Morgan Chase. "Linux ensures that the best-of-breed can win. In an open-source world, better technology has a better chance to succeed. Everyone's prices have dropped because of Linux. All the proprietary system vendors have dropped their prices because of it."

These trading firms need to put their money where their mouth is. Something like 3 trillion dollars a day flows through wall street. They have benefitted from Linux more than anyone else.

Unable to afford scalpers' price for a Red Sox ticket, the Tawny Titan heard from an East Coast paralegal while he watched the game from a saloon near Fenway Park. The legal eagle claimed two large Linux customers are eyeing racketeering charges against SCO for asking for money before it proves its case. They would need about four more companies to come forward, claimed the tattler. "Seems like a dream come true for some attorney general," said the Furball. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1224399,00.as p

Unable to afford scalpers' price for a Red Sox ticket, the Tawny Titan heard from an East Coast paralegal while he watched the game from a saloon near Fenway Park. The legal eagle claimed two large Linux customers are eyeing racketeering charges against SCO for asking for money before it proves its case. They would need about four more companies to come forward, claimed the tattler. "Seems like a dream come true for some attorney general," said the Furball. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1224399,00.as p

I submitted this story yesterday, but my karma is still in the shithole from submitting a pro-windoz story. 30 submitted, all rejected. Whatever. BUT.... An eWeek article has the SCO veep telling us they have ROCKET SCIENTISTS working for them. No shit. From the story: "We have rocket scientists who have applied their spectral recognition and pattern analysis to software, which has yielded amazing results. We have found needles in the Mount Everest-sized haystack"

SCO did a big dog and pony show yesterday at their conference. They also raised their claims, and according to them, there are "millions of lines" of offending code which they have identified by "rocket scientists" using "spectral recognition" and "pattern analysis".

To convince SCOforum attendees of their case, SCO showed obscured slides which supposedly proved copying.

Research reveals that the code fragment SCO showed in one of their slides, doesn't even belong to SCO - it's from BSD. See for yourself, the code originated from, and is Copyright 1986 Regents of the University of California! And, while they might have more up their sleeve, it's is revealing that the most compelling example they can show at their forum, doesn't even belong to them!

SCO did a big dog and pony show yesterday at their conference. They also raised their claims, and according to them, there are "millions of lines" of offending code which they have identified by "rocket scientists" using "spectral recognition" and "pattern analysis".

To convince SCOforum attendees of their case, SCO showed obscured slides which supposedly proved copying.

Research reveals that the code fragment SCO showed in one of their slides, doesn't even belong to SCO - it's from BSD. See for yourself, the code originated from, and is Copyright 1986 Regents of the University of California! And, while they might have more up their sleeve, it's is revealing that the most compelling example they can show at their forum, doesn't even belong to them!

According to the last page of this article, RCU means "Read Copyright Update."

Darl "The Man Who Couldn't Spell Daryl" McBride was quoted as saying "The very DNA of Linux is coming from Unix". Later that day Tler McBride, the father of Darl, moved for an injunction in federal court to prevent Darl from living. "His DNA is unfairly derived from mine," Tler said, "and unless he's willing to pony up $699 per cell for a license I just can't allow him to continue stealing from me like this."

Darl replied with a lawsuit of his own. "Copyright law specifies that you're allowed to make one, and only one, copy of your DNA, for archival purposes only. We've convinced people who have signed our NDA, and we will prove in court that Tler McBride created billions of copies of his DNA over the course of several years, and distributed those copies to the public using the GPL (Governmental Public Lavatories) as a cover." McBride added, "Free as in beer may have brought him and my mother together, and may have brought Bill and I together, but if you pinko commies think you can stop us from exploiting the marketplace for personal gain, you've got another thing cumming! Except for the DNA, of course, which is constitutionally protected."

The last paragraph of the Rumor Central column of eWeek this week claims that a couple of big unnamed linux shops are considering racketeering charges against SCO because of their recent actions. The clip states that at least four more companies would have to come forward.

One a similar note eWeek is also reporting that members of the open source community have approached SCO with a proposal for viewing the supposed offending code.

The last paragraph of the Rumor Central column of eWeek this week claims that a couple of big unnamed linux shops are considering racketeering charges against SCO because of their recent actions. The clip states that at least four more companies would have to come forward.

One a similar note eWeek is also reporting that members of the open source community have approached SCO with a proposal for viewing the supposed offending code.

I was disturbed enough by Darl McBride's statement last Friday (which he repeated again today in Vegas) that the "silent majority" of companies in the IT industry support SCO's recent actions that I had my company release a public statement of opposition to SCO. It would seem that the latest thing SCO is trying to claim ownership of is the opinion of companies that have been silent on the issue, so I am calling on companies to break the silence. If you have control over such things in your company, please get them to either copy the statement of opposition to SCO that I wrote to your company's website or write and post your own statement of opposition. Let the world know that SCO is strongly opposed within the industry and that they are truly fighting to destroy the intellectual property rights that they claim to be championing.

OK, you make a valid point that journalists should not always be taken at word. My only point was that I don't believe this guy should be moderated as troll and flamebait for saying that he thinks x86 architecture is in the future. He does have a point, no matter how invalid you may believe it is.

A quote from an article pertaining to Apple's recent share holder meeting:

At the company's shareholder meeting in April, however, Jobs asserted that Apple has "no plans" for a switch to Intel. When a shareholder argued that a move could be beneficial to the company, Jobs replied, "That is an opinion."

This is amongst discussion about internal projects at Apple that involve porting Darwin to x86.

First, let me state that I am an avid supporter of Apple, I love their stuff. However, I am less than enthused by most of the rabid Apple followers. It's a religion so feverishly followed that any speculation is considered fallacy. If it doesn't come from the mouth of the highest power, Steve Jobs, it should be ignored.

People speculate in their comments posted to slashdot all the time. Under normal circumstances, they get moderated up as Insightful or Interesting. Speculation on Apple promptly gets moderated down as Troll by the people who save points waiting for Apple stories so they can squash the thoughts of false prophets.

Anyway, see my amendment to my comment. I don't think the poster is all that intelligent with regard to his knowledge of Apple. But, the comment does not deserve troll or flamebait. Leave it unmoderated if you don't like it. Or give it an Overrated if you feel so strongly.

Apparently, at least from this report at eWeek, Microsoft's official story is that they took the site off-line intentionally to avoid the Blaster attack. Bolstering this is that the page was a redirect; however, discrediting their argument is the fact that getting to the same data is rather clumsy. You think they'd be able to have something better in place.

Apparently, at least from this report at eWeek, Microsoft's official story is that they took the site off-line intentionally to avoid the Blaster attack. Bolstering this is that the page was a redirect; however, discrediting their argument is the fact that getting to the same data is rather clumsy. You think they'd be able to have something better in place.

Great, now I am gonna read this tutorial, learn Tivoli and apply for a job with Lego. If you don't know what I am talking about, check this story on eWeek.

-- Sig
TODAY'S REJECTED STORY:
This story on Reuters says that Linux is gaining ground in India and according to RedHat, about 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004. Besides the plain switch of desktop operating systems to Linux, analysts say the bigger worry for Microsoft is the growing use of Linux among India's pool of an estimated 400,000 software developers, many of whom churn out code for giants such as General Motors and American Express. CNET , ZDNet and Hindustan Times are running related stories on the rapid growth of Linux in Asia.

eWeek also runs an article on MadHatter and LookingGlass:

link here

does anyone know of photo's of the GUI?

You say you've signed the NDA and seen the code in question. I am assuming since you seem to think that SCO will win their case case, that you've seen identical code in Linux and in System V.

Have you seen this eWeek article? Here's a quote from the article:

A source close to SCO, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told eWEEK that parts of the Linux kernel code were copied into the Unix System V source tree by former or current SCO employees.

Well, according to an eWeek story from today, this News.com article is entirely wrong:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1212139,00.as p

SAN FRANCISCO--Novell Inc. dismissed reports that it is planning to phase out new NetWare development in favor of Linux.

A Novell executive Wednesday told eWEEK that the Provo, Utah, company has no plans of cutting NetWare development in favor of Linux, as some reports had indicated.

Chris Stone, vice chairman of the company, said NetWare will continue in maintenance mode, comments Novell officials said were taken out of context.

Chris Stone speaks out on Ximian, Microsoft and SCO. Read his interview with Microsoft Watch.

"We're into Linux, that's why we're here," said a Novell executive, who asked not to be identified. "That's why we bought Ximian. And we said that with Version 7.0 you'll have a choice of either upgrading to the NetWare base or moving to Linux. But with $400 million of our revenue in NetWare, that would be ridiculous for us to abandon development on it."

Bruce Lowry, top spokesman for Novell, said, "The bottom line is no. The whole thing with Linux is an additive thing. We're not dumping NetWare, we're adding Linux."

In a statement, Jack Messman, chairman, president and chief executive of Novell, addressed the issue firmly. "A recent news report coming out of the LinuxWorld Conference suggests that Novell is considering stopping development of NetWare. We're not," he said. "Despite Novell's firm and frequent statements concerning continued development and support for NetWare, discussion of Novell's Linux strategy invariably leads to concern over Novell's NetWare commitment. Let us put those concerns to rest.

"We have also announced that NetWare 7.0 is in development, that it will run on both the NetWare and Linux kernels, and that we will have more to say on it when it is appropriate. This is hardly a sign of reduced commitment. NetWare is not going away. Period," Messman said in his statement.

Of EXTREME interest is the "IBM is seeking ... an injunction requiring SCO to refrain from misrepresenting its rights, and to cease further infringement of IBM's patents." part. An injunction would shut down SCO's sales of any of the identified infringing software.

Seems like CNet jumped the gun and didn't get confirmation -- see this eWeek article:

"SAN FRANCISCO--Novell Inc. dismissed reports that it is planning to phase out new NetWare development in favor of Linux.

A Novell executive Wednesday told eWEEK that the Provo, Utah, company has no plans of cutting NetWare development in favor of Linux, as some reports had indicated.

Chris Stone, vice chairman of the company, said NetWare will continue in maintenance mode, comments Novell officials said were taken out of context.

Chris Stone speaks out on Ximian, Microsoft and SCO. Read his interview with Microsoft Watch.

"We're into Linux, that's why we're here," said a Novell executive, who asked not to be identified. "That's why we bought Ximian. And we said that with Version 7.0 you'll have a choice of either upgrading to the NetWare base or moving to Linux. But with $400 million of our revenue in NetWare, that would be ridiculous for us to abandon development on it."

Bruce Lowry, top spokesman for Novell, said, "The bottom line is no. The whole thing with Linux is an additive thing. We're not dumping NetWare, we're adding Linux.""

And there's more but I'm not going to paste the whole article.

And I quote:

As for the Apple connection, Schwartz said that the practically every Sun employee owns an Apple desktop at home.

We most certainly have "touched upon" and known about the late date for some time. I myself noted and knew of the date from an eweek article that I cited almost three weeks ago.

No big mystery there. What we're all wondering is how the SCO-shell game is supposed to survive for so long. I expect a couple of more hysteric announcements; MS licensing linux for their labs and updated prices when kernel 2.6.0 is released first and foremost.

But after that, what crack induced pronouncements can we expect from crackhead Darl?

I hope their next earnings are bad, even with them minting new shares to lower the apparent loss/share, which I'm sure is a fact they'll spin, spin, spin.

according to this eweek story, sun believes it SCO can screw off:

In the early 1990's, Schwartz said, Sun chief executive Scott McNealy agreed to spend several million dollars to take a broad license with AT&T, essentially granting Sun legal rights equivalent to ownership of Unix code.

"As a result of that decision in 1993, we can do whatever we want (to the code)," Schwartz said. "We can drive forward and indemnify our customers too," a basic responsibility of any intellectual property provider, he said.

As located here, RedHat calls SCO's practices "likely to cause confusion, mistake or to deceive". Is that legalese for "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt"?

Just a thought,

Joe

Speaking of Red Hat -- SCO released some of their legal threats which I found to be entertaining. Excerpts are in this story...

Linux Brings In $1 Billion in Revenue for IBM
This was reported on Slashdot. Additional stories: 1 2 3 4
Why do you think he just made up the number? You don't know, so noone else does either?

This is the end of the Sun's "Mad Hatter" project?

read this

An ex-SCO employee did already drop a bombshell. He claimed that SCO stole code from Linux for their LKP (Linux Kernel Personality), that let them run Linux binaries natively.

SCO stole code from Linux

I'll be ecstatic if a Treo 600 will be under $500, but let's get a little realistic at least.

Um, not to be rude, but RTFA. ;) I wasn't pulling the number out of my ass. ;)

As always there's humor in all things SCO. This is from an eweek article on the German injunction against SCO:

SCO's legal counsel also felt that the temporary retraining order had been sought "too quickly, so we believe it may be a bit of a publicity stunt"

Pot, meet...? He also went on to say this about lifting the order:

"We expect to be able to have a hearing within the next two weeks on this, where we will be able to present affidavit and testimony to support those issues subject to the temporary restraining order."

That was the 30:th of May, almost two months ago. How is lifting that order going for you Ryan? Let's see:

Der deutsche Web-Server der SCO Group GmbH ist derzeit nicht erreichbar.

Ah.

(not really gloating, would really want to know if anything's happening on that front)

The groups aims sound familiar. Oh yeah, there a lot like my LUG's mission statement:

The Baton Rouge Linux User Group's (BRLUG) mission is to advocate the use of Linux both in the home and the enterprise, to support the existing base of Linux users in the city of Baton Rouge, and to have a great time. In addition, we encourage our members to use the LUG as a platform for forming both non-profit and for-profit organizations to better establish Linux within the community. As such, we welcome both business and hobbyists discussions at our meetings and on our mailing list.

The name is a little fancier than "User's Group", but that's what they are doing. Similar things can be found:

• Casting a shadow on Microsoft
• Deep in the heart of Texas.
• In New York City
• Moscow
• Shanghai
• and most likely, where you live. Neat, huh?

What you have to realize is that all of these groups are fighting SCO everyday. Everyday, millions of free software users voice their opinion of the SCO's ownership of Unix, the Linux kernel and everything. Don't you hear them? Neither do SCO's accountants. Microsoft is about the only company that's bought into this extortion. The people who know, think SCO is full of bull and don't waste much time on it.

Reasonable opinions have been delivered by the Open Software Initiative, the Free Software Foundation, Linus Torvalds and the German court system. The local LUG would be happy to talk to you about this, and their mailing lists are amazingly free of Astroturf. Not even Microsoft can buy enough fake roots to cover all the LUGs in the world. It's nice to hear from this OSV, whether you call it a LUG, marketing, advocacy and focus group, or friend of the court.

The groups aims sound familiar. Oh yeah, there a lot like my LUG's mission statement:

The Baton Rouge Linux User Group's (BRLUG) mission is to advocate the use of Linux both in the home and the enterprise, to support the existing base of Linux users in the city of Baton Rouge, and to have a great time. In addition, we encourage our members to use the LUG as a platform for forming both non-profit and for-profit organizations to better establish Linux within the community. As such, we welcome both business and hobbyists discussions at our meetings and on our mailing list.

The name is a little fancier than "User's Group", but that's what they are doing. Similar things can be found:

• Casting a shadow on Microsoft
• Deep in the heart of Texas.
• In New York City
• Moscow
• Shanghai
• and most likely, where you live. Neat, huh?

What you have to realize is that all of these groups are fighting SCO everyday. Everyday, millions of free software users voice their opinion of the SCO's ownership of Unix, the Linux kernel and everything. Don't you hear them? Neither do SCO's accountants. Microsoft is about the only company that's bought into this extortion. The people who know, think SCO is full of bull and don't waste much time on it.

Reasonable opinions have been delivered by the Open Software Initiative, the Free Software Foundation, Linus Torvalds and the German court system. The local LUG would be happy to talk to you about this, and their mailing lists are amazingly free of Astroturf. Not even Microsoft can buy enough fake roots to cover all the LUGs in the world. It's nice to hear from this OSV, whether you call it a LUG, marketing, advocacy and focus group, or friend of the court.

Does anyone have a followup on that story? It seems only logical to put a restraining order on anyone or anything that tries what appears to be blackmail or extortion.

Actually, Microsoft will not indemnify you for patent infringement for using their product.

"So, when Transmeta Corp. came along in early 2000 and announced a processor that was 85 percent to 90 percent of the mobile Pentium's performance with a fifth of the power consumption, it was a no-brainer," Hipp said.
The result was the RLX System 324, a blade configuration that packs more punch into a smaller space than any other server on the market?up to 336 blades in a single, 42-unit, industry-standard rack (..)

It goes without saying that a box that necessitates 80-90% less power than an equivallent Intel or AMD, produces less heat. (from an older but insightful eWeek article.)

"Linux users also will not get clarity from the courts soon. SCO's Stowell said the Utah court is not scheduled to hear the company's application for a permanent injunction to stop IBM from shipping AIX until 2005." -- eweek.

"Carey said this indicates that SCO's strategy is to let "the pot simmer for years and let people get increasingly worried about the legal risk."

More like it's their way to pump'n'dump the stock to make thousands on insider trades. Fucking scumbags.

You haven't a clue... you can't build a 1 CPU based off of the next generation PowerPC 970 from IBM. Each chip has two CPUs.

Um, Apple's PPC970s have one CPU per chip. Presumably IBM will be using the same chips.

Actually, it was the IBM Power4 that had two CPUs per chips. The 970 has only one. (See this article)

However, the article does say, "2U two-way and 4U four-way configurations." "Way" in this context usually means CPU, so this means that there will be exactly four CPUS in the 4U configuration. So $3500 sounds like a very competitive price.

Maybe because SCO does not seem to understand the GPL. In addition to the circumstances described in this article, SCO distributed Linux under the GPL while simultaneously claming that it violated their copyright, something which is not allowed by the GPL.

More info here, here and here. Here internetnews.com state that 3 vulnerabilities (not 2) where patched.

Here is the report from the people who found the vulnerabilities (or at least one of them) which includes a proof-of-concept paper and code.

Yeah, I know, the "Free Software" community will keep Mozilla alive. Except where have they been up till now? Mozilla has been open-source for five years, and still almost all development has been done by Netscape employees.

Face it, Mozilla is dead. It's not the standard browser anywhere, except for a few zealots and the small number of people who do everything on Solaris or Irix. Not even Apple backs it.

Mind you, I'm not happy about this. I hate Microsoft being able to ignore web standards. I hate that you can only use SVG in plugin-based "objects". But fighting battles that were lost years ago is not going to change any of this.

Maybe, and I say maybe there is hope for the kHTML engine, which is the basis of Sonqueror and Safari. I've always like this engine, even when it was new and buggy. It's small, it's fast, and every time I look at it, it's drastically better.

I very much doubt if Internet Explorer will ever lose its supremacy. But if you just can't tolerate this, forget the bloated Gecko engine and start thinking about a Windows port of kHTML.

... courtesy of the rejected post machine. The government sector news sites are always good - and usually better - for details about contracts of this sort:

Microsoft/Dell Gets $90-$120 Million Homeland Security Contract

Microsoft has been awarded the five-year, $90 million Department of Homeland Security contract for desktop and server software. The contract will be managed by Dell and will provide the DHS with 140,000 desktops running Windows XP and Microsoft Office Professional. When consolidated with current agreements, the contract amounts to a six-year agreement covering 144,000 desktops, worth between $110 million and $120 million. This follows the $478 million, six-year deal with the Army announced last month. More at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Washington Post, InformationWeek, the Register , eWEEK, and Reuters.

"So instead MSFT pours money into MSN and leverages its dominant products of Windows, Office and Explorer to subsidize MSN. As AOL dies slowly over a few years, this will be viewed as "OK", the marketplace in action."

This is why Ximian and Sun are going for the jugular.

IMHO, it's a national security issue. We don't need to be exporting our expertise, we need home grown expertise that will stay in America.

Big buisness uses H1-B and L-1 visas to hire employees that they can pay well under the going rate for U.S. citizens. Small buisness doesn't have the overseas connections to hire folks with this so it only serves to give big buisness even more power over the start-ups.

Additional information on H1-B and L-1 visas:

Washtech.org

L1s Slip Past H-1B Curbs

Re: H1B and L1 visa influence US unemployment

After H1-B visa, L1 now bytes IT

Sorry, but I don't buy it. The speed with which Sun pounced on the lawsuit to attack IBM tells me that they have a vested interest in the whole thing. Their total silence (unlike Novell) on the implications for Linux, offering absolutely no assistance to the community to fight this harassment lawsuit tells me that they are using it in the same way as Microsoft. That is, to spread fear through the Linux industry and slow its progress. Don't kid yourself, buddy, Sun is playing hardball here and we're up for bat.

Then explain this

Plus this: http://www.bsd-laptop.org/