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Isn't DRM already available in the 2.4 series?

I do not know. Does the Linux2.4 DRM include the BIOS locking ability? Was there any BIOS with that capability when 2.4 was released?

A Linus quote:
I want to make it clear that DRM is perfectly ok with Linux! He does not like DRM, but feels it may have positive uses.

But could DRM in Linux ever work?
"Making DRM in Linux secure would be like winning a hand of poker against someone who can change all the playing cards at will," wrote [Tony] Mantler. DRM would require proprietary binary modules. How long until someone in the free world (somewhere without the DMCA) released a module that returned "passed" for every function in the verification API?

These quotes are from April 2003, so the kernel developers may still be debating it. I doubt any implementation available today has all the abilities we fear.

Is this a threat to Microsoft? Or is this "for real"?

If they actually distribute the CDs, is there a difference?

I consider this a followup on this story at Linux Today about their threat to use Linux instead of MS-Windows.

As such, we are definitely seeing the economics of competition and choice re-enter the marketplace, and no matter how you look at it, this is a GOOD THING.

Everyone in the IT community already knows what a poor reputation that company has actively worked hard to earn. Articles like the above serve only to provide free marketing and distract from active development rather than pump-n-dump.

Rather than doing free security and sysadmin work for Chairman Bill this holiday season, and rather than providing free publicity for his portfolio, could we please give it a rest and have a MS free week, weekend or at least just a MS free friday? i.e. no articles or press releases about the lastest vaporware, thneed, fud or spin, inlcuding news relays via MS-owned sources like slate, msn, msnbc, msnpr, newseek, etc. It seems every day there is a shameless, uneccesary plug or two. Now that international investors have divested and even their own emloyees have offloaded it is as irrelevant to the stock market as it is for the IT sector. The pyramid scheme has maxed out, if you weren't already bailing, then it's too late.

As far as security goes, businesses and home users alike are finding Gnome and KDE easy to use and the plaforms (Darwin, OpenBSD, Linux, QNX, etc.) more secure, more stable, and easier to maintain. So looking back at MS-Window [lack of] security in 2003, we can say good bye to the terminally insecure and hello to modern technology.

I Come Not to Praise Linux...

..written in 1998 (all links I believe are dead for this ZD article).

Claiming to be an "engineer", Mr. Surkan lures Linux people into responding either directly or to his survey. The information is then apparently used when discussing Microsoft products with companies that are using Linux or considering the use of Linux.

Mr. Surkan uses a similar technique for any market area for which Microsoft has a vested interest. Not just Linux.

You can read more: http://linuxtoday.com/news/1998111802110PS

The link I think is dead in the post... but look at the comments.

More...
http://slashdot.org/articles/98/11/23/2056205.shtm l

More... (guy really needs a psuedonym)
http://cma.zdnet.com/texis/techinfobase/techinfoba se/+0wo_qr+W_88Ks/zdisplay.html
(pay site link to original article)

Dig deeper and you find a lot more... a WHOLE LOT MORE. This guy has more titles than than the Library of Congress.

You can supposedly give input directly via email to lnq@microsoft.com or msurkan@microsoft.com

So, it does not necessarily forfeit their chance at a stable government, but it does risk forfeiting the open access and open communication needed to maintain a democracy or constitutional federal republic. Lastly, any DRM would create problems of sovereignity if internal government documents were freely available via backdoors and other tricks or where even the very file formats lived and died the marketing whim of a single supplier.

However, it would very much forfeit their chance at an independent IT sector.

Linus Torvalds himself said to not use it for a couple of builds.

http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2003112400826NWKNS W

"There is still something strange going on that seems to be triggered by preemption, so for now we suggest not enabling CONFIG_PREEMPT if you want the highest stability. On the other hand, I'd love to have more testing, so that we can try to figure out what the pattern is - but please mention explicitly that you ran with preemption if you have problems."

Someone else reported that it was just a mistake on the part of one of the testers, which was revealed http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/163190 .

Who is a troll -- a person who follows what Linus says in official annoucements, or some random person who says, "works for me" in a rude way?

You Decide:

The original article: http://qrxx.4t.com/barbieOS.htm along with http://g0re.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=6586, http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id =7885 and http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id =7885.

Be nice if my daughter was on the same OS as her old man.

myke

first of all, a classic synflood is something that you and me can do from our home computers to some shitty webservers.. port 80 might stop accepting connections and simply time out. the box will still be up, every other service will be fine.

Yes, but the SCO Press Release states "The attack consumed about 90 percent of the available bandwidth of SCO's service provider for the entire Lindon, Utah backbone.". That does -not- sound like a synflood to me, and it *is* something that would affect servers that are accessed via the same link.

secondly, just because an ip is next to another ip doesnt mean they're connected to the same switch/hub

True. But here's a challenge for you: draw a network architecture in which two adjacent IP addresses, which are not network or broadcast addresses, do *not* have traffic passing through the same switch *somewhere*.

RTFPR

SCO originally claimed it was a DDOS.

"The ISP has identified 138 different machines as the intermediate source, but has not yet confirmed the identity of the original source."

If that's not distributed, I don't know what is.

I find the "Cyber terrorism hurts a business as much as any other crime involving destruction of property" quote rather interesting, as well.

March 2003. EXACTLY the same thing.

Venezuela also adopted Open Source in its government offices like a year ago.

I've been using Linux at home since 1995, and enjoyed every moment (even the learning, frustrating ones!); and whenever I can, I try to make my venezuelan friends become aware of GNU/Linux and Free (as in speech) Software.

Back to work!

"A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly rich."

I looked on ESR's vanity page, and NO he doesn't have this clinker listed as one of his essays.

Before clicking through, you should know about a little bit of background information.

Check this Linux Today article. James Turner wrote an article about how Linux is DOA on the desktop because it was missing two drivers he needed for his laptop. He was scathing and he basically baited the readers into giving him the takedown he deserved (and possibly was expecting, if as is suspected he was just trolling for clicks).

In response, he announced that he was going to use this as justification for another clickbait article about how immature the Linux community is. The article in question is the new one which this Slashdot story is about.

So don't expect any substance here. This is as much about taunting Linux users for clicks as any piece by Rob Enderle or Jesse Berst -- it's merely that this time, we have someone who writes for a supposedly pro-Linux publication stooping to this level.

If it exists, then they'd be hypocritical not to. I remember reading somewhere that the FSF only uses free software unless a non-free alternative is not available. And RMS has specifically stated that firmware is software.

"It's a very important technical advance," says Gerald Rubin, a molecular geneticist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "You can envision the day when one could sit down at a computer, design a genome and then build it. We're still inventing the tools to make that happen, and this is an important one."

Now imagine the parallels between modern computing and modern genetics & biology. I'm sure there will be DMCA-like legislation put in place to thwart attempts to infringe on corporate interests.

The problem with guarding knowledge is it prevents being able to "build on the shoulders of giants", like Linus Torvalds and others have done. Copyright laws need to change to not only protect the short-term financial gains that are necessary for companies to invest in new ideas, but release those ideas back into the public so that they can be built back upon.

Hopefully our lawmakers will understand this.

Then I actually read (well, skimmed) the webpage. Quoth ESR:

Why from you?

Because I maintain the How To Become A Hacker document, A Brief History of Hackerdom, the Jargon File, and am more or less the hackers' resident historian. It's my job to think of these things.

Well, damn. That almost seems reasonable. Okay, buddy (I get to call you "buddy" cause you've made yourself a public figure). In this case, damn you, you seem to have a good idea and a reasonable reason why you should be proclaiming it thusly.

Therefore... count me in! When do the Life-Hacker iconized coffee mugs appear in ThinkGeek?

Perhaps the Samba team could get a little cash out of SCO. Since SCO has no valid license to distribute Samba, yet they are distributing it.

Microsoft scratched SCO's back - SCO is just scratching back. It's pretty odd that SCO would license Microsoft's protocols and them and then incorporate Samba3 into SCOServer. That whole "we respect IP" crap isn't flying
I don't think it's fair that they're counting this puppet when trying to go after the puppet master.
-B

They might be doing Linux, but they are certainly not keen on the idea and are only doing so because their customers keep asking for it. Well, at least they are listening to their customers I suppose, so there is that, but it still feels to me like Sun has seriously lost its sense of direction recently. I suspect a lot of FUD filled editorial is going to be written under banners like "Has the SPARC gone out for Sun?" real soon now.

Still, at least Apple's star seems to be rising at the moment. ;)

Why didn't the story mention that this is the fool Enderle?

Good question. This guy seems to have an extreme dislike of everything Open Source. He claims he's trying to build an open-source-free computer room in his house, or somesuch. This guy is a grade-A FUD expert.

For more of this guys excreta, check out LinuxTodays listing for both Rob and Robert Enderle. This guy's amazing, in a terrifying sense.

Why didn't the story mention that this is the fool Enderle?

Good question. This guy seems to have an extreme dislike of everything Open Source. He claims he's trying to build an open-source-free computer room in his house, or somesuch. This guy is a grade-A FUD expert.

For more of this guys excreta, check out LinuxTodays listing for both Rob and Robert Enderle. This guy's amazing, in a terrifying sense.

Why didn't the story mention that this is the fool Enderle?

Good question. This guy seems to have an extreme dislike of everything Open Source. He claims he's trying to build an open-source-free computer room in his house, or somesuch. This guy is a grade-A FUD expert.

For more of this guys excreta, check out LinuxTodays listing for both Rob and Robert Enderle. This guy's amazing, in a terrifying sense.

Thanks for the link. Check out the zinger from this article

No doubt the most paranoid Linux fans will view this indemnification issue as just another example of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) being spread by the invisible hands of companies like Microsoft and Sun, whose proprietary systems are threatened by Linux.

But some CEOs might fret. They are, after all, writing hefty checks to companies like IBM and Red Hat for maintenance and support. Red Hat charges up to $2,500 per server per year for maintenance and in its last fiscal year (ended February 2003) generated $91 million in revenue.

Wow, he has already silenced his critics in advance! "Take that Slashdot." This guy must get reams of anonymous hate-spam.

Whoah there! It ain't over until a fat judge sings

I would think Microsoft was proceed with caution in this area if push came to shove.

They've always got Macedonia.

I've been using Multi monitors at work for years. I can't go back!!
When I got my Dell C840 laptop I noticed the Gforce card was showing 2 monitor support so I quickly moved the monitor off the docking station, junked the stand and opened up the laptop screen. Wow 2 monitors!

Throw on Ultramon or Multi-mon for complete control over the desktop (for the winders crowd)

Or your favorite Linux setup

Prople kept stoping as they walked by my pit( err cube) and saying how cool it was. We got the manager over helpdesk interested enough to spring for a Matrox G550 Dual DVI card to test out for the Help desk operators.
They like it so much the desks for the new help desk office space are being designed for 2 monitors.

We tried 2 cards out.. We had an ATI Radion card but under Win2k it only works as 1 big desktop space over 2 monitors.. They Hydramon software they use to make it feel like 2 desktops really blows.. The G550 with Ultramon proved to be the way to go.

"We're going to be evaluating all projects to ensure conformance to open standards as we move forward and to retroactively move legacy systems to open standards," Kriss said. "We want to make sure what we build is interoperable and interchangeable, so that different applications can use the same data, so we won't have to be constantly reinventing and rethinking basic functionality."

The state will also give preference to open-source software, although it will continue to purchase proprietary products if they are found to be superior technologically or otherwise, Kriss said.

So, despite the misleading title of that story, they are not "outlawing" proprietary software. They are simply making the sound fiscal decision to go with open source and open standards over closed, unless such a choice doesn't make sense. The fact that the CAGW would charactetize this as giving a "monopoly" to "open source software" seems to indicate that they think no proprietary software could be considered superior, technologically or otherwise. If that's what they beleive, then it seems contrary to their stated goal of "small government" to argue that this policy is bad. Unless, of course, they have an alterior motive.

Surprisingly enough, at least one famous Libertarian agrees with me.

This was covered by Linux Today about two weeks ago.

Worst case scenario, about 4500 servers may have switched from Linux to Win2003. I can easily see that as a result of statistical noise, or of pointy-haired management thinking, "Ooooh! Shiny new toy! Microsoft says it's secure! I want one! I wonder what's in the cafeteria for lunch."

File this one as being from the "So what? Me, worry?" department.

Actually it's nothing new. Do you remember golgotha? That game doesn't even have a website anymore.

I haven't seen this anywhere yet, but yesterday Raymond apparently announced that he had written a "Comparator" program to compare source trees and that now he is 'grinning a grin that should frighten the thieves and liars at SCO out of a week's sleep...'

Remember, ESR has previously stated that he has a copy of the SCO Unix source tree. He could theoretically now do the full analysis.

Here is the Linux Today article about Raymond's Comparator:

-braddock

Well, after RTFA, it has everything to do with the SGI crap which has since been removed for being a kludge. This is the code snippet which we are aware of anyways.

Yes, but according to the submission someone else has already broken it down for us. Essentialy Perens was misquoted in a very deceitful manner (Darl decieve us? NO! :) ) Darl claims Bruce admitted the code was illegally copied. But Bruce had said it was legally copied under the license SCO provided for this code, and that the code was useless anyway and removed from the kernel.

Likewise, Darl is lying outright about ESR as usual. He claims that ESR has admitted that the DOS was from a Free Software developer. But ESR not only said that such a DOS would be wrong but on several occasions

I had to search really hard to find an article which even quoted ESR in a way that Darl could misquote the way he did. Darl was not nice enough to give a reference. Even so, it is clear form the article that despite Darls claims, ESR did not know the hacker and was only guessing by the nature of the attack that it was a Free Software developer who did it. He also had said from the beginning (in the above quotes) that DOSing SCO would be wrong and if it were happening it should stop. This is the source of Darl's quote that ESR asked the attacker to stop. Darl claims ESR knew hwo it was, admitted he knew who it was, and asked the person to stop but did not give him up to the authorities. THis is a complete fabrication as have been most of SCO's comments on Bruce Perens and ESR.

Here's a LinuxToday article and the original Slashdot thread covering that May 20, 1999 announcement.

Three months later, in August 1999, Slashdot covered that the XFS donation would be GPL (not just 'open source')

A year after that, the XFS beta arrived on Slashdot (September 2000), and

After two more years, XFS was merged into the Linux 2.5 kernel September 2002.

On Linuxtoday.com there's an article by a guy who says SCO won't sell him "the license" because apparently their salespeople don't know what they are supposed to be selling. Are they afraid to sell small licenses for exactly this reason?

So, could this be the reason why the successful DoS attack on SCO by an overly zealous open source advocate was so successful?

You forgot:

DoS your enemies - imaginary or real.

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Why is Slashdot silent about the DoS attack on SCO perpetrated by an open source zealot who apparently was inspired by ESR's ridiculous militant rant?

Yeah, they are getting DDoSed. Here's what ESR sez

Use the link at the bottom of the page to email this article to SCO to highlight their hypocrisy.

Investor Relations Contact:
Kathy Martens
Investor Relations
(801) 932-5802
kmartens@sco.com
-or-
investorrelation s@sco.com

Heres's the email link from the linux today site.

At least give a link please.

Open source needs more CAREFUL representation. If one quotes this article to literate people, putting the '[sic]' disclaimer after every pitiful grammar and spelling mistake, it becomes a sic, sic article. A good cause and informed debate can carry the day, Mr. Stevenson, but why handicap yourself with such juvenile writing? How about asking your English-major girlfriend, of SOMEBODY, to look things over before you publish them? Did the information on that CD contain such poor and distracting writing?

[troll]

Maybe if he had at least typed it in Word, he would have gotten some spelling and grammar checking?

[/troll]

I'm sorry, but open source word processors have spelling and grammar checking too. You couldn't tell from this article. If that CD Ken Barber is passing around is this pathetic, he is hurting the cause at least a little.

IRA McGee over at LinuxToday had a brilliant suggestion, if you get one.

Call your local USPS or FBI and claim MailFraud

the objective of mail fraud is to accomplish a desired result by deception, trickery, concealment, and/or dishonesty, albeit through the use of the United States Mail Service or other private/commercial interstate carriers

This is taken serious and hopefully will result in Darl getting his behind serviced on a regular basis.

Someone has posted a list of SCO top staff and the amount they have sold off recently on linuxtoday. They link to a source on the sec website, but the link doesn't seem to work.

Tom

Caldera/SCO's plans from year 2000 were described in an October 2000 article at LinuxToday:

Drew Spencer, Caldera's chief technology officer, and the supplier's legal department were now looking at the ramifications of licensing the Unix kernel and UnixWare personality under a GNU General Public Licence - one of several ways to license open source software.

This means that the source code would be made available to the open source community for free to allow them to tinker with it, but that any changes would have to be handed back so that others can benefit from them.

As a result, the aim is to encourage kernel and application developers to work on the code and to "give them added insight into the way the OS works".

Original equipment manufactures, such as IBM and Hewlett Packard, would still have to pay a fee to license the SVR5 Unix kernel source code, however, if they wish it to remain the basis of their own commercial iterations of Unix."

Make sure you see the accompanying newsgroup talkbacks at comp.unix.unixware.misc via this juicy link.

Exciting reading as it vividly predicts what is actually happening today. Some remarks seem unexpected in hindsight and indicated that "only one of the kernels would remain within the next 18 months.":

"It will not be a two kernel situation into the future. As the Linux kernel develops and the Unix kernel is open sourced, the solution will be whichever works the best. It will be the survival of the fittest. People are not doing a lot of development on the Unix kernel these days because people see Linux as exciting and the future."

Edgie Donakey, Caldera's vice president and chief of staff

I do not wonder how IBM could take such public claims as a go-ahead from Caldera/SCO; these remarks seem very clear to me, as they come from the vice president.

--

4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

Thomas C. Carey, a partner at of the Boston IP and business law firm Bromberg & Sunstein and chairman of the firm's Business Practice Group, thinks Red Hat has a very good case. "Assuming for the moment that SCO is off-base in its allegations, this complaint is enough to rock SCO to its foundations." Still, "A lot will depend upon the vigor with which the matter is pursued. My presumption is that the suit is serious and will be pursued with full force."

But Carey warns, "SCO is in some danger even if its allegations are correct, simply because SCO has put everyone in an impossible position. What can they (a Linux distributor or end-user) do if they don't know which code is infringing? If, to that unfairness, you add a conclusion that SCO has its facts wrong, then SCO's liability to Red Hat and others could be very substantial. And if SCO knows (or should know) that its facts are wrong, then you can kiss the company good-bye."

Last, but far from least, Carey thinks that there's "a potential securities fraud action is buried within the pleadings. Red Hat speaks of Canopy Group (SCO's primary owner) having raked in millions in cash since the start of this affair. Red Hat notes that its own stock price has declined 20% in a month. This is the stuff of securities lawsuits. Red Hat could amend its claims to include a securities law claim, or another law firm could bring a class action lawsuit against SCO on behalf of selling Red Hat shareholders who have been harmed by the low price they get. Finally, it is conceivable that the SEC or the Justice Department could take an interest in this, viewing it as market manipulation."