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MS/DOJ: Judge accepts most of settlement agreement

"The "remedy" ruling is in effect for five years unless the court chooses to extend it, and orders Microsoft not to retaliate against computer makers who offer competing software products with the PCs they sell."

Judge Goes Easy on Microsoft

"In a related matter, Kollar-Kotelly ordered Microsoft to disclose and license communications protocols used by clients running on Windows to interoperate with Microsoft servers. The company is also required to disclose APIs and technical information that Microsoft middleware uses to interoperate with the operating system, but the disclosure provisions fall far short of the states' requests."

DRM is not subject to the order

"Microsoft does not, however, have to document, disclose or license APIs (application programming interfaces) or communications protocols that would compromise the security of systems used for antipiracy, antivirus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication."

MS/DOJ: Judge accepts most of settlement agreement

"The "remedy" ruling is in effect for five years unless the court chooses to extend it, and orders Microsoft not to retaliate against computer makers who offer competing software products with the PCs they sell."

Judge Goes Easy on Microsoft

"In a related matter, Kollar-Kotelly ordered Microsoft to disclose and license communications protocols used by clients running on Windows to interoperate with Microsoft servers. The company is also required to disclose APIs and technical information that Microsoft middleware uses to interoperate with the operating system, but the disclosure provisions fall far short of the states' requests."

DRM is not subject to the order

"Microsoft does not, however, have to document, disclose or license APIs (application programming interfaces) or communications protocols that would compromise the security of systems used for antipiracy, antivirus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication."

Netmeeting is no longer going to be a part of Windows. Windows and MSN Messenger are already performing much of what NetMeeting originally did. On a side note, does this mean Microsoft innovated with the IM clients? NetMeeting is a pretty old client app.

If you followed the third link, you'd see that he is someone else at InfoWorld who reviewed SpamAssassin back in July.

Here's a free tip. Never attack anyone personally. If you have a valid point, state it. Name calling is something that people revert to when they feel the point they're trying to make can't stand its ground on its own, and needs an intimidating muscle-showoff to help others get convinced. It screams at the reader that you yourself aren't buying into whatever it is you're saying. Here on /. it won't cut you any slack.

Now all you had to do was ask. Microsoft announced and revealed Palladium, and quite plainly As MS Employee states [Palladium] "is to be included in a future version of Windows, possibly in Windows XP successor Longhorn, scheduled for release in 2005".
Taking an educated guess based on the fact that their interest does lie there, that they announced it, that they're well underway developing it and that the DMCA was legislated, I'd dare say it will show up in Windows sooner or later. Sooner if they have anything to do with it.

If you do not yet realize the extent of the problem this poses, I strongly suggest you spend 10 minutes reading up .

Cheers mate.

The big thing about this new number portability feature (now it's not really a free feature, mind you -- we pay for it with a small fee on each montly phone bill -- but anyway, I digress) is that it will benefit enterprises who want to switch phone services easily.

No longer are enterprises locked into a bad contract for several years at a time. We are all now free to roam (pun intended, bitches!) across various telecoms and contracts and services. And that's a Good Thing(TM) for J. Foxy Consumer.

Read more about it at InfoWorld in this article URL

link here
"For all his success at bringing Microsoft's warring constituencies together, there are still things beyond Bill and Steve's control. "I was in a hotel in Sun Valley last week that was not wired," Ballmer recalls. "So I turned on my PC, and XP tells me there is a wireless network available. So I connect to something called Mountaineer.

"Well, I don't know what that is. But I VPN into Microsoft. It worked! I don't know whose broadband I used," he chuckles. "I didn't see it in Bill's room. I called him up and said, 'Hey, come over to my room.' So soon everyone is there and connecting to the Internet through my room."

So was that a crime?

Saw this one via google news earlier today on InfoWorld:

SCO: GPL threatens $229B software market

Citing WIPO data, McBride said that the value of the worldwide software market would approach $229 billion by 2007, and that it was being threatened by the ideas behind the Free Software Foundation's GPL, the software license that governs Linux.

"The world, especially here in America, is shifting to one that is an information society," McBride said. "In the future, is that $229 billion in software still going to be there? Or in the case of the Free Software Foundation's goal, is proprietary software going to go away?"

What's shocking about this article isn't that S. Korea will be having 100Mbs 7 years from now, it's the $80billion cost.

NTT also plans on having the entire of Japan connected with 100Mbs by 2010 as well. Even though the vast majority of the population already has 100mbs access.

I'm not sure how much it's going to cost NTT, but I'm sure it's not $80billion even for a country geographically larger than S. Korea and with a larger population. Another difference is one company plans on undertaking the task, not the whole country.

Also, the wireless 4G standard is also due to be rolled out on 2010, which should also get 100mbs or more.

The fact is, some parts of Asia and Europe already have these speeds. The likelyhood is the US will also have 100mbs in most areas by 2010 as well (America is a whole lot larger than S. Korea or Japan). Let's ask this question, What was your internet speed in November of 1996? How much faster is it today?

I'm sure 7 years from now we'll all be having 100Mbs+ speeds on our Teraflop 50Ghz Pentium7s with 10 Terabytes of Harddrive space, we'll all be complaining about how 100Mbs is too slow to download our HDTV feeds encoded in MPEG7.

"Obviously Linux owes its heritage to UNIX, but not its code. We would not, nor will not, make such a claim." [August 28, 2002]

"This case is not about the debate about the relative merits of the proprietary versus open-source software models. This case is also not about IBM's right to develop and promote open-source software, so long as they do that without SCO's proprietary information." [March 7 2003]

"There will be a day of reckoning for Red Hat and SuSE when this is done." [April 24 2003] (for fun, contrast to motion to dismiss court filings in Red Hat v. SCO Group, particularily where it claims there is no "actual controversy", and Red Hat has no reason to fear a lawsuit from SCO... Well, at least not until they finish with IBM)

Yeah, I'm sure Darl has a much better understanding of the issues. Lets look at another perspective instead, shall we? When Darl took over, SCO was sinking fast. They needed income, and they needed it soon. Linux was never a moneymaker for SCO/Caldera, but they did have some of these old contracts over SVR4 source code with some pretty big names. As Darl so eloquently put it, "Contracts are what you use against parties you have relationships with." Maybe, just maybe they could rattle some sabres and see what money floats their way to shut them up.

Reminds me of how SCO used James Bond clips for their resellsers meeting.

Not among those seeking a Microsoft desktop alternative are customers in the United States, Schwartz said. "I will be blunt in saying North America has the least sensitivity to price of any nation on Earth," he said.

Company Executive Vice President Jonathan Schwartz Thursday said the
appetite outside U.S. for an alternative to Microsoft is "voracious".

Most of these articles are from 6 months ago, the last time MS released information on how its Xbox division was doing. But I would be very surprised if these unspecified manufacturing process improvements have made up for the estimated $100 per console hit MS was taking in May.

Look, there's no reason to resort to ad-hominem attacks. The Xbox is losing money. MS is buying a share of the gaming market. That's not an indictment of the product, or even the business plan. But it's a fact.

A company will be liable for using Linux OR a company is ALREADY liable due to noncompliance with Ms's licensing scheme?

How about the FUD of the BSA raiding your offices and trashing your business?

Bradley Tipp of all people should be well aware of M$'s BSA attack and smear campaign that coaxed Ernie Ball to convert to a happy Linux customer.

It's been said many times before, but it bears repeating:

First, they ignore you,

Then they laugh at you,

Then they fight you,

Then you win.

- Mahatma Ghandi

Apple's speed increase is a completely manufactured phenomenon. It got faster because OS-X was unbearably slow at first, painfully slow next, and has now improved to merely annoyingly slow.

10.2 was certainly not painfully slow, if anything it was much faster than XP on what is undeniably much slower hardware. 10.3 simply flies on my older machines.

Linux faster? ROTFLMMFAO! Right. Clearly you are lying here. I've watched KDE and Gnome in multiple distros get slower and more bloated. Nice try, though.

Linux has gotten significantly faster, however you are correct that Gnome and KDE have gotten slower as time goes by. Much worse than windows in fact. I recently switched to xfce4 for just this reason.

BSD? Don't know, haven't used it, suspect it's a lie like Linux.

Don't look now, but your uneducated bias is showing :)

MS slower? Well, XP is considerably faster than 2K on boot up, and the GUI feels faster.

Faster on boot up? Yes. Gui feels faster? Odd that you would get that impression since it is easily demonstrable that it is in fact slower.

Finkployd

This bounty is just a PR game to distract from anti-trust, patent violations, anti-competitive fines, security fines. Microsoft's executives and other investors have had enough time now to dump their stock. Game over.

Don Hopkins is the Bob Metcalfe of the "X" world.

The only good thing I can see about this is that we see one more major commercial player putting resources behind Linux. This may help convince the PHB faction (and perhaps some of the clueless investor community) that nobody real is taking SCO's FUD campaign very seriously. This could make life easier for clueful Sysadmins trying to develop Linux deployment plans.

I really hope Novell do good things with their new property, though their history is agin' 'em. In fairness, I believe that most of their really dumb moves were made under the reign of Ray Noorda. (I hear he's gone to some other company now that continues propagating stupidity.)

• USL/SysV Unix - The grand-daddy of the major commercial unices is turned into a lackluster thing called UnixWare that nobody is much interested in. Eventually Novell notice the moribundity of the "true" SysV and decide to sell it to some 3rd rate player. This has not been widely regarded as a cause for joy.
• QuattroPro/Paradox, etc. - Novell think it would be cool to enter the office suite market. This is greeted by tumultuous indifference. Unable to figure out what to do with it, they decide to sell it, along with...
• WordPerfect - Novell buy what was unquestionably the leader of the word processing pack (when Word was a distant #3); it is allowed to languish. They do confer on WP the distinction of being the only major word processing program not to come out with a Win95 version till it no longer matters. Sensing that they've held onto it long enough to insure its slide into oblivion, they decide to sell it, along with the rest of their office products. (Rumor has it that the deal also involved the sale of an undisclosed amount of management brain damage to the purchaser, but this has not been confirmed.)

There might be an interesting bit of insight (or hindsight) into Novell's strategy in this InfoWorld article (12 Sep 2003). Their copyright policy precludes quoting without getting permission (which no one here would do, of course!), but I'm referring to the last 3 paragraphs in the article, beginning with the quote from Laura DiDio. Guess we shoulda' seen it coming.

Enough with the gloom 'n doom prognostications about the death of Linux! Linus, et. al., don't work for SuSE (or RedHat), and Linux development isn't going to die because a handful of corporations are getting into merger & acquisition mode. These guys are just trying to figure out how to make money from a phenomenon they don't directly control. That's a new way of thinking, and basically a Good Thing.

And please, God, don't let some corporate behemoth buy up and bastardize Slackware!

$200 million in exchange for which they get to rule the computer industry and do absolutely anything they like, and the government bodies that are supposed to periodically stop in and enforce anti-trust laws will look the other way, because Microsoft's already had its "punishment".

For $200 million? That sounds like a pretty damn good deal to me.

Especially when you have the amount of money in the bank MS does. I mean, hell, $200 million is what they spent on keeping the x-box disaster afloat in just the first quarter of this year alone.

Would you like a bag of ice for that wrist there, Microsoft?

Those were the last of the bits of the U.S. government holding out on actually holding MS accountable instead of just settling with them, right? Is the EU still going forward with anything?

Here's an interesting, albeit incomplete change log.

Seems like microsoft isn't the only one having fun with this sort of stuff. They are just getting on the band wagon. In the end I wonder who or what will be left standing.

Dell's list price of a configuration similar to Lonestar is $1.9 million, with services and installation charges expected to bring the total cost to around $3 million, a Dell spokeswoman said.

Since VT put the system together themselves we should really be comparing the $5.2M figure to Dell's $1.9M figure keeping in mind that Dell's number is list.

This same coworker points out that sustained performance is anywhere between 20% and 60% of peak on the top 500 list so that should be kept in mind. But he did get to do some preliminary QCD lattice simulation test runs on a dual G5 and he was getting 800 MFlops on one cpu and 1400 MFlops with both cpus on lattice sizes that did not fit in cache. This was an interesting result because the one cpu case was comprable to the best performance he has seen on x86 but the two cpu case beat the best dual cpu x86 he has seen by about 200 MFlops due to the better memory bandwidth on the dual G5.

The thing is that he has an SSE2 optimized version of the lattice code that beats the pants off of the G5 version. He expects to see a similar boast to the G5 numbers with AltiVec optimisations but cannot be sure. The trouble is that with AltiVec he can only do single precision. I am not sure which compiler he used on linux for the x86 numbers but he used the beta IBM compiler on OS X for the G5 numbers.

From Infoworld Dell delivers Linux cluster deep in the heart of Texas

Dell's list price of a configuration similar to Lonestar is $1.9 million, with services and installation charges expected to bring the total cost to around $3 million, a Dell spokeswoman said.

From the Inquirer: University of Texas kyboshes MacNN's cluster story.

Cost of supercomputer only part of $38 million

By INQUIRER staff: Tuesday 14 October 2003, 17:09

THERE'S MORE THAN MEETS the eye to a story published by MacNN and reported here today about the cost of a Dell cluster versus an Apple Mac OSX cluster.
See Dell Intel cluster costs 30 times more than Apple system.

Tina Romanella de Marquez, communications and development manager at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), says that the $38 million mentioned by MacNN is for far more than just a supercomputer.

She said: "The $38M total you refer to was not for a single supercomputer. It was announced in February for a total package that included:

"The establishment of the new Institute for Computational Engineering & Sciences (ICES) at UT, including:

our new endowed faculty chairs in ICES at UT
additional funding for the research endowment and the visiting scholars endowment in ICES
he completion of construction of the ACES building (the 4th floor) for use by ICES and TACC

"and the establishment of a terascale distributed computing infrastructure at UT, hosted by TACC, including:

two supercomputers at TACC (the cluster you refer to, and the other IBM system
two massive storage systems at TACC
three leading-edge components to increase UT's networking infrastructure
increases in operations funding over five years for ICES and TACC".

She adds: "There are many more things that were needed to create ICES and establish a terascale distributed computing architecture at TACC. This point was made by TACC Director, Jay Boisseau, during the Lonestar dedication ceremony. The value of the specific computer referred to was approximately $3.0 million. And, no tuition funds were used in this process. Most of the money did not even come from UT. The package included $8M in discounts and donations from about 10 leading technology vendors, and over $15M from a generous foundation." And, she continued: "The VaTech number ONLY includes the actual computer, not the cost of the building, power, cooling, people, or anything else needed to actually operate it."

So that comparison goes out the window, then.

the cost in that journal article seems much much too high. poked around and found this article at infoworld: http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/10/03/HNdellcl uster_1.html

they quote a dell spokeswoman saying that a configuration like that costs about 3 million with installation. it also states that UT gets an educational discount, but doesnt say how much they got off the $3million.
if the 38 million were correct, theyd be spending on the order of 120,000 per machine....a 2650 with highest processors and max ram only comes out to $13,500 on dells site...yeesh

Hey, it worked with Verisign! :-)

Whoops, here: http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/10/08/HNimpate nt_1.html

A basic discussion of the situation: Site Finder allegedly creates technical problems with Internet protocols VeriSign Inc.'s Site Finder service has caused problems with the way some e-mail and other Web applications function and collected more information about Web surfers than some other services designed to redirect mistyped URLs (uniform resource locators), critics of the new Web search site said Tuesday.

I think that you must think that I'm Jordan Hubbard. Sorry, I'm not. I'm not dumping on you either.

Check out this Ed Foster article. Here's a quote:

Many customers are discovering that the actual cost of acquiring used hardware may go beyond the price of relicensing the software.

"I made the mistake of showing a visiting Cisco rep the 2611 router I'd purchased on eBay for $1,200," says Mark Payton, director of IT at the Vermont Academy, a school in Saxtons River, Vt. "Not only are they asking me to pay to relicense the software, but they are expecting me to get a one-year SmartNet maintenance agreement and to pay an inspection fee."

Although Cisco is only asking Payton for slightly more than $300 each for the software relicensing and the SmartNet agreement, the inspection fee alone is more than $850. Payton is still negotiating with Cisco. "If my sales rep can't get some of those costs waived, the total cost to me for the 2611 router is over $2,700. Brand new through CDW without my additional discounts, I could get this same unit today with one year of SmartNet for $2,300."

Sun had previously reported a $12 million profit for the quarter, but in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Monday it revised those results. The company is now reporting a loss for the quarter of $1.039 billion, or $0.32 per share.

source

Sun had previously reported a $12 million profit for the quarter, but in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Monday it revised those results. The company is now reporting a loss for the quarter of $1.039 billion, or $0.32 per share.

source

Infoworld has some details.

I know that all of SCO's statements have been, shall we say, disingenuous, but Stowell's comment today, if quoted accurately, is the clearest lie I have yet seen issued from an officer of that company:

"If we want to continue to distribute Linux to our existing customers, we can do that because we own the copyrights on that Unix software."

cf. Infoworld

This just in.

Stowell disputed the idea that SCO could no longer distribute Linux. "We're the copyright holder for the core Unix operating system. If we want to charge someone a licensing fee for using our copyrighted software that's gone into Linux, then we have that prerogative," he said. "If we want to continue to distribute Linux to our existing customers, we can do that because we own the copyrights on that Unix software."

I'll just let that... sink in.

I wonder what kind of hammer they put over his head to force him to shut up.

At least you know where folks stand by their reaction to the SCO crap.

I can't decide if this Infoworld piece is a statement of the rags position or simply a consultant looking for more business. Either way, it's something I wouldn't have expected from Infoworld, it's nice to see where they stand so I can ignore them from now on.

So, who else has made their stand and is in need of ignoring?

This is a decision based upon consumer experiences, child protection and our strategic investment to build up MSN Messenger.[my emphasis]

This would be a good opportunity to turn people on to cross-platform IM clients like GAIM. I doubt anyone in the tech communities is naive enough to take the children argument as more than a red herring to keep IM from joinging the OS/Broswer/Mediaformat/Office format anti-trust action. It does, however, provide a very good cover for pushing people into MS-Passport, despite its reputation, and for locking out non-Microsoft IM clients.

Alternately, this can be seen as just another product or service being dropped or postponed as the company sheds weight to try to stay afloat.

Lastly, regarding the link. This is being covered by everyone and his dog, even Reuters, so no need to plug poor sources..

IANAEE either, but this made a little more sense to me after I read this Inforworld article, which talks about two other aspects of Sun's DARPA-funded project: clockless "asynchronous logic", and building processors with interchangeable and upgradable modules. They absolutely need these busless "proximity" interconnects for the processor modules to communicate at close to on-chip speeds, and the clockless architecture lets them get rid of the bus. Or vice versa... or something like that.

Working prototype computer about six years away, according to the article.

Security software industry veteran Amit Yoran is expected to be named the new head of federal cybersecurity by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Tuesday. ... Yoran stayed on as Symantec vice president of worldwide managed security services operations, according to Symantec spokesman Cris Paden. Yoran was well regarded at Symantec, Paden said. Infoworld

All aboard!

P.S. Nice try on the sig. Those are for APPLICATIONS not Linux you dolt. Here is my new sig

31 Unpatched IE security holes
Server attacks stump Microsoft
Credit card theft feared in Windows flaw
Microsoft issues patch for "serious" XP hole
Windows flaw threatens PC services
Microsoft's Source Code Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Why I hate Microsoft
bsod_videowall
bsod_airport
License to plunder
Microsoft Media Player logs users' DVD picks
MS wanted to 'extend, embrace and extinguish' competition
Microsoft Palladium
Control with fine print
Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software
Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
Microsoft software "riddled with vulnerabilities", trade body claims
Microsoft Issues Five New Security Warnings
Why Open Source Software / Free Software

P.S. Nice try on the sig. Those are for APPLICATIONS not Linux you dolt. Here is my new sig

31 Unpatched IE security holes
Server attacks stump Microsoft
Credit card theft feared in Windows flaw
Microsoft issues patch for "serious" XP hole
Windows flaw threatens PC services
Microsoft's Source Code Actions Speak Louder Than Words
Why I hate Microsoft
bsod_videowall
bsod_airport
License to plunder
Microsoft Media Player logs users' DVD picks
MS wanted to 'extend, embrace and extinguish' competition
Microsoft Palladium
Control with fine print
Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software
Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design
Microsoft software "riddled with vulnerabilities", trade body claims
Microsoft Issues Five New Security Warnings
Why Open Source Software / Free Software

There is no XML "standard" for Office documents.

KDE recently announced that KOffice would embrace the document formats of OpenOffice.org.

This means that a Windows user running OpenOffice.org could save a document, send it to a KOffice user on Linux, and expect it to open.

There is an effort to make a standard XML based office document format. Two office suites, so far, embrace it.

Article in InfoWorld

OASIS charter

XML for the masses

"At no time did BulletProof have access to either the source code or object code of the OpenRes program, and, hence, Navitaire's code was not copied," BulletProof says in its complaint.

In the last link in the article.

Paragraph about 2/3 down, which reads:


"At no time did BulletProof have access to either the source code or object code of the OpenRes program, and, hence, Navitaire's code was not copied," BulletProof says in its complaint.


Cheers . . .

... from the desk of the reporter

... from the desk of the reporter

Tiny little SCO is struggling to survive, yet is being assailed non-stop by Open Sores bullies, such as Mr. Lunix Torewads (please read his cruel letter in the last third of this article) and gun-toting madman, Eric "Stinky" Raymond.

Won't you help a tiny company survive?

For just $699, the price of a single cup of coffee every day for the rest of your life and those of your children, you can help us litigate against these selfish bastards, and once again -- Justice will be done.

Doubtless you haven't yet heard of our tiny case. Please consider visiting Slashdot, clicking on "Older Stories," and clicking on every single damned link.

Peace out. Scotty, one to beam up. Set course for EFNet #gnaa.

I don't know if I have missed this here on Slashdot, but here it is (again?):

"Open letter to Darl McBride -- please grow up. Dear Darl, Thank you so much for your letter. We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing. However, we have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money (that it made off a Linux IPO, I might add, since there's a nice bit of irony there), and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand. Also, we find your references to a negotiating table somewhat confusing, since there doesn't seem to be anything to negotiate about. SCO has yet to show any infringing IP in the Open Source domain, but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about. All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with. Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission, Yours truly, Linus Torvalds"



As seen in an InfoWorld article.

I don't know if I have missed this here on Slashdot, but here it is (again?):

"Open letter to Darl McBride -- please grow up. Dear Darl, Thank you so much for your letter. We are happy that you agree that customers need to know that Open Source is legal and stable, and we heartily agree with that sentence of your letter. The others don't seem to make as much sense, but we find the dialogue refreshing. However, we have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all its money (that it made off a Linux IPO, I might add, since there's a nice bit of irony there), and now seems to play the US legal system as a lottery. We in the Open Source group continue to believe in technology as a way of driving customer interest and demand. Also, we find your references to a negotiating table somewhat confusing, since there doesn't seem to be anything to negotiate about. SCO has yet to show any infringing IP in the Open Source domain, but we wait with bated breath for when you will actually care to inform us about what you are blathering about. All of our source code is out in the open, and we welcome you point to any particular piece you might disagree with. Until then, please accept our gratitude for your submission, Yours truly, Linus Torvalds"



As seen in an InfoWorld article.