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Perhaps you are trying to make a claim that "headers are not copyrightable", but that would be crazy.

So you think IBM was also crazy to argue that back in SCO v IBM where that argument was held up by the court?

Did IBM, in fact, argue that "headers are not copyrightable", stated that broadly, or just that the particular parts of the particular headers they were accused of copying in violation of the System V copyrights were not copyrightable? The parts of an IBM document for that case given in a Groklaw posting seem to me as if they were arguing the latter, not the former.

The list of highly questionable if not outright illegal activities is very long:

You can start here with "A History of Anticompetitive Behavior and Consumer Harm"
http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf

and then move on to a catalog of their attacks on standards:
http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history

and then any of these:
Illegal tying: http://www.ecis.eu/documents/ECISPressStatementonOperaSO1.pdf
Unethical marketing: http://www.nearsoft.com/blog/MS-test.html
Antitrust: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/600488.stm

Or these:
http://slashdot.org/story/00/05/02/158204/Kerberos-PACs-And-Microsofts-Dirty-Tricks
http://www.technologyevangelist.com/2007/02/microsoft_dirty_tric_1.html
http://techrights.org/2008/12/01/leaked-oem-vista-ad-incentives/
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/57261/index.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/368660.stm
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107100653
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/06/08/23/1251210/Microsoft-Admonished-by-US-District-Court-Judge
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-tried-to-muck-with-anti-linux-facts/235
http://www.zdnet.com/news/fact-and-fiction-in-the-microsoft-sco-relationship/139743
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110
http://lproven.livejournal.com/102128.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7654

All the citations (including specific court records and findings) can be found here: http://www.groklaw.net/

I've seen a lot of people linking the "Simple and accurate explanation" article.. and it claims that this reactor design had a "Core Catcher" as another layer of containment in case the core melts through the primary reactor vessel.. but in the comments, people say that reactor 1 didn't have a core catcher. So, anybody with inside knowledge happen to know the reality? What about reactor 3?

Read this

Also, the PhD's primary work is in risk management, so he has some authority to speak about odds and risks.

But he spends little time talking about risk management, mostly about technical details that he doesn't really understand.

And yet, it's not very good.

Summary of rebuttal - the writer is neither too bright nor careful. Just because his father works in the industry doesn't make him credible.

And yes, you get html preview, and you can change the set of tags that are allowed to regular posters, and a more permissive set to the admin.

the bad thing is
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050718204313749&query=ritchie

basically the guy that worked with the guys that wrote UNIX AND WROTE THE BOOK ON THE LANGUAGE IN QUESTION says in a buncha words SCO is Smoking something if they think there is 'stolen" code.

Here's a better dissection of Google's letter: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110216210828960

Some choice parts excluded from the OP's articles:

> materials identified by Oracle as infringing in fact created by a third party and released into the public domain

> the only two files allegedly containing "copied" code were created by Google and provided to Oracle for use in open source releases of Java

i like that they had the foresight to do this, but at groklaw there is a post that specifies:

"Note that the definition of FreeQt is X11 only, it explicitly excludes the Win/Mac/Symbian code."

http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20110212130941664&title=KDE+Free+Qt+Foundation&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=901933#c902096

Has [a claim of slander of title] been used in the past against a patent holder??

Have you asked Google? The first result is a Groklaw article from the SCO v. IBM era. It cites an article on FindLaw; the link there is broken, but I found it with Google. Slander of title is the malicious publication of false and disparaging words by which special damages were sustained, causing a plaintiff who owns the property disparaged to lose a sale. FindLaw's article cites Prosser and Keeton (apparently Prosser and Keeton on Torts) that patents or other intangible property may be the subject of such a claim.

No kidding. They even plan to subpoena Slashdot (not to mention Twitter). I don't know what they'll get out of that except for a lot of "in soviet Russia" jokes, but I guess their lawyers like wasting their client's billable hours on fishing expeditions?

I suggest they try Googling that key. I don't know how many results they'll find, but I'm guessing there will be thousands, if not more. It's kind of futile to tell the judge that you need expedited discovery and such when the cat is not merely out of the bag, but halfway across the galaxy, isn't it? But hey, I guess you guys might see it differently. You could go send a million nastygrams to everyone who reads the news and rack up $200/hr. Fact is, I just hate Sony. I don't have a PS3 because I've been boycotting Sony since the time they infected people with that rootkit, so this hexadecimal number you're trying to censor is utterly worthless to me. I can't very well circumvent the protections on a device I'll never own, now, can I?

direct download link, always contains url of the latest sony firmware:
http://fus01.ps3.update.playstation.net/update/ps3/list/us/ps3-updatelist.txt

currently it points to v3.56
http://dus01.ps3.update.playstation.net/update/ps3/image/us/2011_0127_6e070c96e0464e993aaf9deac3660863/PS3UPDAT.PUP

this firmware update can be installed without having to have a PlayStation network account or having to agree with the PS Network ToS & User Agreement

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110202220600258

Back in 2009 Unxis and SCO seemed to be the same company.

http://techrights.org/2009/07/14/sco-and-unxis/

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090711015440158

http://www.unxis.ca/
http://www.unxis.co.uk/
http://www.unxis.com/

So I would say it all seems like a scam to avoid having to do anything legal.

You are actually right it may well be Darl and this is unlikely to happen. If the submitter had read the Groklaw article on the subject before submitting he'd know that this is the same company which tried to buy SCO's UNIX rights before and was rejected by the court for not being serious. It's quite likely that this is some strange front for one of the SCO people and it's also likely that the court will reject this kind offer once again.

Hello, Groklaw seems to imply a relationship between the two: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20090711015440158 Regards, Aryeh Goretsky

LOL.

These "analysts" are using every logical fallacy in the book they can.

Ad hominem (as you pointed out), straw man (as doperative pointed out)...

I think we all know how MS sees "analysts" : http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20071023002351958

The real explaination is that you and I don't have a clue what microsoft is thinking the difference between us is that I acknowledge that fact where as you claim to know the mind of microsoft.

I think I will refer to Adams here:

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."

Microsoft's internal thinking has been well exposed in the Comes trial documents. Criminal and plagiaristic thinking is fundamental to the companies culture. It is true that it's a huge company; that many non-immoral people work there; probably people go through days at Microsoft without planning or committing crime. However, "Microsoft", a corporate body, has a clearly expressed systematic way of setting out to destroy not just competitors, but even potential future competitors such as their partners. They have clearly started planning to use patents. They are setting out to buy patents specifically to block growth of competing systems. The exact details of how Microsoft plans to compete unfairly are sometimes unknown or difficult to discern. The fact that they plan to do it is clear in advance.

Just because lots of people make political decisions based on emotion does not mean it's a good way to make decisions, from what I've seen of US politics such decision making behaviour is routinely manipulated to pursuade people to vote against their own interests.

I think I've given a number of specific facts here. If you actually read through the transcripts of Microsoft's various anti-trust trials rather than skimming the reports in the Microsoft funded media (that means most - Microsoft is a major advertiser everywhere) you will find plenty more. In what way is your claim that we cannot know Microsoft's mind more factual and less emotional than my claim that whilst their tactics are unpredictable their strategy and general state of mind is predictable and clear.

The real explaination is that you and I don't have a clue what microsoft is thinking the difference between us is that I acknowledge that fact where as you claim to know the mind of microsoft.

I think I will refer to Adams here:

"If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands."

Microsoft's internal thinking has been well exposed in the Comes trial documents. Criminal and plagiaristic thinking is fundamental to the companies culture. It is true that it's a huge company; that many non-immoral people work there; probably people go through days at Microsoft without planning or committing crime. However, "Microsoft", a corporate body, has a clearly expressed systematic way of setting out to destroy not just competitors, but even potential future competitors such as their partners. They have clearly started planning to use patents. They are setting out to buy patents specifically to block growth of competing systems. The exact details of how Microsoft plans to compete unfairly are sometimes unknown or difficult to discern. The fact that they plan to do it is clear in advance.

Just because lots of people make political decisions based on emotion does not mean it's a good way to make decisions, from what I've seen of US politics such decision making behaviour is routinely manipulated to pursuade people to vote against their own interests.

I think I've given a number of specific facts here. If you actually read through the transcripts of Microsoft's various anti-trust trials rather than skimming the reports in the Microsoft funded media (that means most - Microsoft is a major advertiser everywhere) you will find plenty more. In what way is your claim that we cannot know Microsoft's mind more factual and less emotional than my claim that whilst their tactics are unpredictable their strategy and general state of mind is predictable and clear.

I like how you left off the part about him lying to the EU commission about the effect on MySQL during the Oracle buyout of Sun:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091204095942328
When the FSF's Eblen Moglen has to side with Oracle against his FUD, clearly something is up.

Florian set up a FUD campaign against IBM in the TurboHercules:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953613
Pamela Jones stated "It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD."

Florian managed to delay and possibly kill the high-profile Munich migration to Linux:
    http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2006/03/29/munich-linux-migration-delayed-by-pr-stunt-39260037/
Then he bragged about it:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091021164738392
His attitude seems to be "the end justifies the means".

Of course, I'm sure it's a coincidence that Florian is connected with CCIA, which is a Microsoft-funded proxy:
    http://techrights.org/2010/04/11/florian-mueller-and-erika-mann/

Florian seems to have a lot to write about... well anyone that Microsoft needs to spread some FUD about. It's always quite timely too, where he can start streaming out articles on something he never seemed to care about a short time earlier.

Believe who you want, but I'm with the FSF and Groklaw on this one. In many cases I may not like the companies Florian is attacking (Oracle, for one), but that doesn't mean you can just start making stuff up (FUD about the Sun acquisition).

I like how you left off the part about him lying to the EU commission about the effect on MySQL during the Oracle buyout of Sun:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091204095942328
When the FSF's Eblen Moglen has to side with Oracle against his FUD, clearly something is up.

Florian set up a FUD campaign against IBM in the TurboHercules:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953613
Pamela Jones stated "It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD."

Florian managed to delay and possibly kill the high-profile Munich migration to Linux:
    http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2006/03/29/munich-linux-migration-delayed-by-pr-stunt-39260037/
Then he bragged about it:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091021164738392
His attitude seems to be "the end justifies the means".

Of course, I'm sure it's a coincidence that Florian is connected with CCIA, which is a Microsoft-funded proxy:
    http://techrights.org/2010/04/11/florian-mueller-and-erika-mann/

Florian seems to have a lot to write about... well anyone that Microsoft needs to spread some FUD about. It's always quite timely too, where he can start streaming out articles on something he never seemed to care about a short time earlier.

Believe who you want, but I'm with the FSF and Groklaw on this one. In many cases I may not like the companies Florian is attacking (Oracle, for one), but that doesn't mean you can just start making stuff up (FUD about the Sun acquisition).

I like how you left off the part about him lying to the EU commission about the effect on MySQL during the Oracle buyout of Sun:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091204095942328
When the FSF's Eblen Moglen has to side with Oracle against his FUD, clearly something is up.

Florian set up a FUD campaign against IBM in the TurboHercules:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20100408153953613
Pamela Jones stated "It seems Groklaw will have to open a new category, answering Florian Mueller FUD."

Florian managed to delay and possibly kill the high-profile Munich migration to Linux:
    http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/application-development/2006/03/29/munich-linux-migration-delayed-by-pr-stunt-39260037/
Then he bragged about it:
    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091021164738392
His attitude seems to be "the end justifies the means".

Of course, I'm sure it's a coincidence that Florian is connected with CCIA, which is a Microsoft-funded proxy:
    http://techrights.org/2010/04/11/florian-mueller-and-erika-mann/

Florian seems to have a lot to write about... well anyone that Microsoft needs to spread some FUD about. It's always quite timely too, where he can start streaming out articles on something he never seemed to care about a short time earlier.

Believe who you want, but I'm with the FSF and Groklaw on this one. In many cases I may not like the companies Florian is attacking (Oracle, for one), but that doesn't mean you can just start making stuff up (FUD about the Sun acquisition).

http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/SonyvHotz-19.pdf

Geohot's fighting back.

Well, no. The GPL is a contract for a license.

I hate it when people attempt to miss the obvious here and apply some inane ideology.

Well no... that simply is not the case - and this isn't inane ideology either. It's just how the law works.

A license is unilateral permission to use someone's property. A contract is an exchange of obligations. Groklaw gives a very good explanation of the difference and describes why the distinction is important: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20031214210634851

I'm not saying Groklaw is without flaws but I am saying that the deletion of posts that are designed to discredit the site is not one of them. This has nothing to do with a "lack of transparency" because the posts that are deleted do not reflect PJ or the Groklaw community. The deleted posts lack transparency because they are almost always anonymous and they are almost always by someone pretending to be a member of the community who is not.

The problem is the deletion and sandboxing of comments that don't discredit Groklaw and that are perfectly consistent with her rules. They are often not anonymous and often by members of the community. Another problem is PJ and some of her supporters who keep hiding and misrepresenting what is going on.

If you continue to insist that what you said is true, please explain why so many of comments in the first corrections thread to this article were hidden, causing nsomos to start a second corrections thread because no one could see the first corrections thread. How were they posted anonymously? How did they discredit Groklaw? Doesn't it look like they were posted by a members of the community in order to be helpful?

For that matter, how is the unannounced sandboxing of comments ever consistent with transparency? The intent is clearly to mislead members of the Groklaw community into thinking that their comments are visible to others when they are not.

I'm not saying Groklaw is without flaws but I am saying that the deletion of posts that are designed to discredit the site is not one of them. This has nothing to do with a "lack of transparency" because the posts that are deleted do not reflect PJ or the Groklaw community. The deleted posts lack transparency because they are almost always anonymous and they are almost always by someone pretending to be a member of the community who is not.

The problem is the deletion and sandboxing of comments that don't discredit Groklaw and that are perfectly consistent with her rules. They are often not anonymous and often by members of the community. Another problem is PJ and some of her supporters who keep hiding and misrepresenting what is going on.

If you continue to insist that what you said is true, please explain why so many of comments in the first corrections thread to this article were hidden, causing nsomos to start a second corrections thread because no one could see the first corrections thread. How were they posted anonymously? How did they discredit Groklaw? Doesn't it look like they were posted by a members of the community in order to be helpful?

For that matter, how is the unannounced sandboxing of comments ever consistent with transparency? The intent is clearly to mislead members of the Groklaw community into thinking that their comments are visible to others when they are not.

The people PJ exposes fight dirty.

Perhaps not relevant to the discussion, ...

It is relevant because the one of the dirty tactics is to post nasty comments that are then quoted or linked to if not immediately removed.

but I have to point out that when PJ dealt with GPL v3 (many articles on Groklaw when it was being drafted), she did not say anything about her involvement in the process(and so, potential conflict of interest) until *after* the license was approved.

That is so utterly not true. The entire GPL3 process was open to the public. There was no way for her participation to be secret. Everyone was invited to participate. PJ did her best to get as many people to participate as possible. She would be a hypocrite of she didn't participate. How is that a conflict of interest? She participated, she tried to get others to participate and she posted articles about the process on Groklaw. It's not like she gets a kickback every time someone uses the GPL3. Furthermore she talked about her involvement as early as 2005.

PJ was targeted with a very aggressive smear campaign (O' Gara and co.) that IMO went far beyond the limits of decency, but it doesn't mean she's perfect.

I fully agree. Like all humans, PJ is not perfect. That is exactly what I said in my first post. Twice. I think she does sometimes think something is an attack when it is not but I don't think that is paranoia. It is because she is attacked so vigorously and so regularly, it's normal that her number of false positives would increase. Something would be wrong with her if it didn't.

That point I mentioned was a major letdown for me.

You really need to explain how that was a conflict of interest. Participating in the drafting of the GPL3 and encouraging others to participate as well are perfectly compatible. If she has acted otherwise then you would have been able to complain about that instead. PJ did everything in her power to get you to participate. If you (or anyone else) didn't get your say then it is no one's fault but your own.

I like a lot the investigative side of Groklaw, but I like a lot less paranoia-induced articles like this one.

My tastes align with yours on this. I prefer the investigative articles. I disagree with your assessment that this one was induced by paranoia. If anything, I think PJ was a little naïve about how the world works and the article reflects part of her (perhaps rude) awakening. She is realizing that much of the world, especially the business world, acts without a shred of integrity. It is to her credit that she was surprised and shocked by this.

I don't doubt you, but I just think you think too higly of Slashdot, in the end it's nothing more than an IT-gossip site, basically. Hugely popular, of course, but that doesn't really translate into quality.

Many of my (IT) friends and co-workers never "set foot" on slashdot exactly because it's so difficult to find the informative gems among the rubbish, the rants and the flames.

So I imagine there are many who prefer a site where most posts are informative or at least well-mannered knowing all the while that moderators are actively deleting anything vile, rude or off-topic (although Groklaw always has a special thread for that allows for that). To me at least Groklaw's comment policy seems reasonable.

I think that rules of conduct (with or without moderation) is almost always necessary in one way or another when you want to build and nourish a community that actively tries to "build" or accomplish something (look at the discussions within the Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora communities about this subject). Slashdot does not fit that bill IMHO.

The funny thing about corporations is that they can be bought or sold by other corporations.

In this case, Attachmate bought Novell. Once it purchased Novell, it split Novell into two units, and sold off a bunch of Novell's patent assets.

It's funny how quickly PJ is to point out how Old SCO and New SCO were different companies, but doesn't appear to recognize that old Novell and new Novell are different companies...

Isn't that what the OIN is for?
PJ wrote about that a few weeks ago as well.

The site has been offline for two years, but the Internet Archive has most of it is HERE .

Read it and weep. Nothing will be done because most Windows users, like you, prefer to not believe that they are being spied on, or that former Microsoft employee James Plamondon trained "Technical Evangelists" who astroturf websites making fun of such claims.

You should read James Plamondon's mea culpa concerning his training of PAID "Technical Evangelists" to do the "Slog", the "Stuffed Panel", Astroturf congress and various websites with pro Microsoft and/or anti-Apple or Linux lies, etc...

Plamondon had to do a mea culpa because his activity was exposed in the Combs vs Microsoft lawsuit where the training documents he wrote were released to the public. As an example of how TE's work, read exerpts from Plamondon's training manual for the phrase "stacked panel", "The Slog", and other techniques here.

When Joe Barr wrote SLIME in 1994, he didn't know about the TE's Microsoft had unleashed on the world, but he described them to a tea:
http://slated.org/more_microsoft_dirty_tricks_history

Internet Achive has the "SLIME" article here.

A more complete, but not exhaustive list of dirty tricks by Microsoft are listed here:
http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/Dirty_Tricks_history

Then there is the Free Software Foundation ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Software_Foundation ) with whom is associated Eben Moglen ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Moglen ). Both could use a hand, and both are rich sources of interesting cases from which your friend could pick one (all in the interest of keeping his commitment manageable) to help with.

Groklaw does a lot of good, too.

Has been covering this one. Allen's Interval has patented things that absolutely everyone has been using for decades, if not longer, and this may just help with the fight against software patents generally, as virtually no one is untouched -- he's only sued less the half the relevant world so far -- big media is a possible target for some of his claims as well. GoodLuckWithThat, they are even feared by lawmakers. Let's hope they go all out so this stupid mess can be ended. Here's the groklaw current link.

Here is a definition of 'license' from Steven H. Gifis' "Law Dictionary, 2d Edition: "LICENSE: A right granted which gives one permission to do something which he could not legally do absent such permission; 'leave to do a thing which the LICENSOR [the party granting the license] could prevent.'"
A contract, on the other hand, is defined like this: [1] "a promise, or set of promises, for breach of which the law gives a remedy, or the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty. I Williston, Contracts Section 1. The essentials of a valid contract are 'parties competent to contract, a proper subject-matter, consideration, mutuality of agreement, and mutuality of obligation.' 286 N.W. 844, 846: 'a transaction involving two or more individuals whereby each becomes obligated to the other, with reciprocal rights to demand performance of what is promised by each respectively.' 282 P. 2d 1084, 1088. 'The total legal obligation which results from the parties' agreement as affected by law.' U.C.C. Section 1-201."

found that on http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20031214210634851

One thing to note about this action is that it does not make a final determination. It's simply a case of the bank attaching to the property in case it wins the actual suit -- just to prevent Peters from getting rid of the property before the actual lawsuit finishes. There is a lot of fighting that could go on in the case, (e.g. the SCO litigation) and it's not absolutely clear that the bank will be the clear victor in the end (even the judge in the case raises some questions).

Google already has a license for these patents via OIN. About Those 882 Novell Patents: This is Where OIN Comes In

Everyone can join OIN and get a license to these patents if they do so before January 23rd of next year. I highly recommend doing this since it is free to join. (as an individual, company or whatnot)

As the rhythm designed to bounce
What counts is that the rhymes
Designed to fill your mind
Now that you've realized the prides arrived
We got to pump the stuff to make us tough
from the heart
It's a start, a work of art
To revolutionize make a change nothin's strange
People, people we are the same
No we're not the same
Cause we don't know the game
What we need is awareness, we can't get careless
You say what is this?
My beloved lets get down to business
Mental self defensive fitness
(Yo) bum rush the show
You gotta go for what you know
Make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be
Lemme hear you say...
Fight the Power

This could lead to a replay of Microsoft's dirty old past

How so with Apple, EMC, and Oracle being part of CPTN Holdings LLC? Also Groklaw has the article About Those 882 Novell Patents: This is Where OIN Comes In - Updated saying those patents were licensed to Open Invention Network (OIN) in perpetuity by Novell. Anyone who joins OIN by the proposed 23 January 2011 closing date of the sell can use those patents.

Falcon

Google already has a license for these patents via OIN. About Those 882 Novell Patents: This is Where OIN Comes In Everyone can join OIN and get a license to these patents if they do so before January 23rd of next year. I highly recommend doing this since it is free to join. (as an individual, company or whatnot)

So its results are unquestionably incorrect and/or irrelevant?

They may be technically true in some sense or other. However, in past such situations, Microsoft has been seen commissioning several similar reports; possibly even iterating the instructions for running the reports; then throwing away (under NDA) all the ones which don't match with their marketing wishes. You can basically assume that whatever it says is the opposite of the truth in some way or another because if it was true they would be able to just say directly it instead of commissioning someone else to say it to they can avoid claims of false advertising (for example, their old "Get the Facts" campaign was one of the few things of this type the ASA has clearly stated was misleading). And yes; most companies do this to some extent, but few other companies could come near to sustaining the level of deception Microsoft does because eventually some employee would become disenchanted and start leaking results. For example, have a look at the Comes documents, which only came out because of a lawsuit, to get some idea of the kind of things they can keep secret. Nowadays Microsoft's data destruction policies are much stricter and they ensure that all deals are finalised by lawyers and so are legally privilaged. This kind of secrecy and professional deception means that almost any marketing claim from them should be disregarded completely until there is some level of independent confirmation.

This is specific to sound recordings in the USA, but it appears that EVERY recording EVER made and sold in the USA is STILL under copyright. I know it sounds incredible, but the upshot of Capitol Records vs. Naxos in 2005 is to affirm perpetual common law copyrights on sound recordings prior to 1972. According to some legal experts, no sound recordings in the USA will enter the public domain until around 2060 at the earliest.

GrokLaw has an old article on this for the curious. http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20050412225604578

On a story where it's neither possible to be interesting nor informative, how did seventeen comments (by my preference settings) make it to +5?

I Googled for "microsoft obnoxious shill" expecting Allchin to make the cut. Turns out he was elbowed out in grand style by James Plamondon. I missed that one at the time. After the financial meltdown, he inexplicably leaked on himself.

How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style

Here's a Microsoft hater with some serious elbow grease:

Former Microsoft Shill Openly Confesses, Alleges Microsoft Still Does This
How Jim Allchin, Gartner and Enderle Lied to the Whole World

I read a piece by Allchin once that forever set my normalization basis for all things Microsoft. Dang, it's hard to divide by mucous.

What Microsoft says about momentum is true. Exchange == U.S.S. Bismarck.

From the bathroom wall of all knowledge:

Dorsetshire and Maori stopped to rescue survivors, but a U-boat alarm caused them to leave the scene after rescuing only 110 Bismarck sailors, abandoning the surviving crew in the water. The next morning U-74, which had heard sinking noises from a distance, and the German weather ship Sachsenwald picked up 5 survivors. 1,995 of the ship's crew of 2,200 died.

If Microsoft ever loses the Bismarck, they had better be prepared to rescue their own.

Do I think Linux is a form of UNIX? Yes, I do... just from having used *NIX's since the mid 1980's in academia, & into professional environs years afterwards (you can't avoid it. It's there, nearly everywhere).

First of all, I understand what you mean, since I come from a similar background.
But if you've followed the SCO vs. the World litigation from the past 7 years (e.g. on Groklaw's IBM lawsuit timeline), you'd understand that there are forces at work which would bend such a statement made with a technical slant and use it to prove that legally, Linux is "a form of Unix" (e.g. claiming that it contains code copied from Unix) and try to sue the pants off of any company or individual which is in the way of certain Large Corporate Interests(TM).
Posted anonymously to not lose modpoints.

Hmm, no mod points today for me. Otherwise +1 Informative.

Even more insidious is the claim made here at Groklaw that Microsoft never actually transferred the copyrights in Xenix to SCO. Now that Novell is pretty clearly the owner of the copyrights to SVR4 UNIX®, how much of *nix does Microsoft own now, or at least litigate over?

It's not hard to imagine a scenario where Google+Android is the target of choice here.

"since the AT&T vs BSD decision is closed."

It was released under FOI. Summary: most of it is actually public domain, not even BSD-licensed.

> Think about it: Novell hold the copyrights and trademarks to UNIX. They would make for a nice addition to Microsoft's portfolio, don't you think?

Maybe not. According to this old press release, Novell sold the UnixWare IP to Santa Cruz in 1996.

Followup with link to and quote from the relevant source material:

"Critical mass" is a term borrowed from nuclear physics, in which it means "a sufficient mass of fissionable material to sustain a chain reaction," in which a chain reaction is defined to be "a self-sustaining nuclear reaction yielding energy that causes further reactions of the same kind."

"Self-sustaining" is the key phrase in this definition. Once started, the nuclear reaction naturally reinvests its energy in perpetuating and growing the reaction. Once the point of criticality is reached, no additional external energy or intervention is required to maintain the reaction. - James Plamondon, Microsoft, 1/11/2000. From the Groklaw Comes Vs Microsoft Collection, exhibit 3096.

By the way, when somebody talks about "cannibalization" as if it's a bad thing, it's because the referenced platform has already reached this "critical mass" state. The petrification process has set in, and innovation is the "cannibalization" being stifled as a housekeeping cost of maintaining the monopoly for as long as possible. Once critical mass is reached progress is the only threat, and a small one because developing momentum is difficult from a static position. Cannibalization is an artful label to tag progress with to trigger a visceral defensive reaction from you, the audience. From the static state an innovator has to step entirely outside the field of action like Apple and Google did to build up enough forward motion to make a significant change.

If you're considering moderating this post informative, please bump the parent instead. I'm collecting +5s for my achievements, and subscriber and karma bonus points don't count.

say what?

google pretty much just shot oracle in the face, and expects to fight the hell out of this and possibly invalidate patents on java.

Google not only expects to succeed, but is fighting everything. It is oracle who expected a fast settlement and a win, not google.

It's been widely reported that there's a duplicated file, and indeed it there is something close to that. BUT! One thing you'll find missing in Oracle's Exhibit "J" are the package headers at the top of the file. There's a good reason for that. On the Android side the file is in package org.apache.harmony.security.tests.support.cert, in directory support/src/test/java. You can see this in the git repository for android. It's sitting in a directory of test support classes.

So the matching file that we have here is part of the test suite to ensure compliance with the interfaces. It is NOT part of the implementation itself. So the real question is, is it OK to have this kind of file sitting in the test branch, to ensure that the real implementation of it complies?

The fact that the package headers have been removed and that this file is from the test suite can't be anything other than a deliberate attempt to deceive, well, someone. ;)

It's rather unbelievable that with thousands of stories out there on this file nobody is talking about WHERE it fits into the android tree.

For actual coverage of Google's counterclaims, I suggest Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101111114933605