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SCO isn't right. Anyone with half a brain *cough*Cringely*cough* has figured this out by now.

However, let's suppose SCO is right...no, IBM shouldn't get away with it. Would they? Probably.

And would you be okay? Might wanna go back and read the Cringely article I linked to. ;)

With regards to tibet, the military significance of a country is influenced to a large degree by its economic importance. With massive mineral wealth, including minerals needed for high technology and the space programme, china had to invade them. Add that fact to the fact that the China-Russia oil pipeline is on schedule and underway, you can see why America has to take more resources from other nations just to maintain the balance of power.

Why do you think we went to war in iraq? If we were concerned with humanitarian issues, we would be all over Uzbekistan.

We're not.

Why? Their main wealth is derived from cotton, which is deminishing because massive use of agrochemicals has destroyed their environment and ariable lands. Furthermore, they're useless as a base right now, but that may change in future.

With regards to Imperialism, yes since the 20th Century empire building was frowned upon. Instead the superpowers started up client states which they armed, used to extract natural resourses and committed to proxy wars. The only major difference between a colony and a client state is that a colony has a Governer General, and a client state has a Benevolant-President-For-Life.

The bottom line is that Empires never went out of fashion since the day they were invented in ancient sumeria. Some people ran from them and settled out in Australia, or Northern Europe or Central America. Some empires fell over and died, because running empires is hard to do. But eventually one empire or another will come for you.

Unless you are an empire yourself, you are screwed.

You've got the attitude backwards, it is not "the rest of the world be damned so long as we are wealthy and safe."

The hard truth of the matter is "To remain alive, safe and reasonably well off, we must damn the rest of the world."

The planet earth is closed. Few things fall from the cosmos to provide us wealth. Under this atmosphere it is a zero sum game.

Anybody who uses a computer or a cell phone has funded the violence in the congo because both sides are arming themselves with the sale of the mineral coltan which is used to make capacitors for high technology electronics like cell phones and 802.11b. We don't stop buying from the militias, simply because there is no other source to mine. Instead we let people like you buy a computer or a car or a nice pair of jeans or a public transport ticket or any number of other blood soaked consumer products knowing that you will never truly find out how the atoms which come together to provide those products and services are actually the result of untold human misery.

This is the truth in which we live. Once upon a time, when the first human beings (or their ancestors) could travel faster than they could overpopulate and area, we were able to spread from messopotamia and walk over oceans during the great ice age. We didn't have to take the fruits of creation from another person's mouth just to feed our own.

I propose to use any means needed to go back to those days. If it takes a nuclear rocket to take us to the stars. So be it. If it takes research which might produce a stable negative strangelet (a particle which reacts with normal matter to produce more stable negative strangelets) so be it.

We have to get off the planet, and begin spreading the human empire to other stars. If we don't we will mine this planet dry and strangle each other fighting over the scraps. And if we somehow avert that, then somebody else who beleives in imperial power will get us.

In fact, I would even hazard a guess that somebody who belie

...for a few years, during wartime, when many civil liberties were suspended, and most people were too busy building airplanes or dying in trenches to worry about conspiracy theories. And even then foreign governments had spies within the Manhattan project. (See Klaus Fuchs, for example.)

Even then, security on the Manhattan project suffered from occasional comical lapses. Richard Feynman's Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman recounts some amusing incidents.

This was recently reran on my local station, and to be honest, I found it nearly painful to watch. As an individual who finds little redeeming qualities in TV beyond PBS, it was quite sad to see such a community that was doing quite well without the negative influences suddenly have to face a new reality. Although I feel TV has its potential, particularly in the realm of education (hence my favor for PBS) or as an avenue to facilitate political or social change, exporting WWE (or whatever its called now) to the world is hardly the most beneficial aspect of our increasingly interconnected world.

Also, here is the link, well, linked: Frontline: World Also, it has the actual video on the site, as most recent Frontline episodes are, and is worth watching.

Also, for those who have never seen Frontline, or Frontline: World for that matter, I highly recommend it as one of the last bastions of extremely high quality programming, particularly in the realm of journalism which has been so much under assault by the need to have a story make money rather than inform.

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/bhutan/t hestory.html

There is a RealPlayer video of a "cable guy" operating a cable company out of his home. Nice rack and dish antenna farm. Even some of the old folks seem to see value in it all ... though also noting it is a distraction. (One elderly woman loses track of her Buddhist bead-counting while watching cable.)

It's not so much that it "just works" it's that they design things and, indeed do everything with a diffrent philosophy.

The old story about the pencil and the million dollar space pen may not be true, but it reflects the diffrence between the US and Russia perfectly.

Case in point contrasting the Russian Air Force with ours:

STACY KEACH: There are many striking contrasts between Russian and American airbases, not the least of which is overall appearance. In the United States, daily FOD sweeps -- for Foreign Object Damage -- clear the flight line of the smallest bits of litter that could wreck a jet engine. At Russian airfields, metal scrap is tossed in the open. The grass is allowed to grow tall, even on the runways. Birds, lethal to an engine if sucked inside, gather freely in the fields around the tarmac. To the Russians, there is an undeniable logic behind the mess. After all, the field of combat would hardly be cleaner.

JEFFREY ETHELL: Walking around a Russian airbase is quite a unique experience for an American, who is used to seeing everything picked up and nothing that can get in the airplane. And here, that isn't the case. It doesn't need to be.

STACY KEACH: Russian jets are designed to perform in less than ideal conditions. Retractable titanium grates protect the engine intakes on the SU-27, -30, and -35. The MIG-29 has doors that automatically shut on its intakes to keep them from inhaling debris. During take-off and landing, the MIG's engine breathes through slits at the top of the wings.

JEFFREY ETHELL: They build airplanes like tanks. The US Air Force and the West builds airplanes like fine watches.

STACY KEACH: The US builds sleek, sophisticated fighters that require teams of trained specialists to service them. Leading the pack are the Navy's big F-14 "Tomcat" and the F-18 "Hornet." Small and agile,the F-18 is good for both ground attacks and air combat. The heavier F-14 carries a larger weapons load and more fuel than the F-18. The primary jet of the US Air Force is the single-engine F-16 "Fighting Falcon." It provides excellent visibility, the fastest, tightest turn rate of anything in the air -- and pilot comfort. The lightweight plane fits around the pilot like a glove. He doesn't so much fly this jet as "wear" it.

LT. R. GORDON FOGG: The F-16 is the Porsche of airplanes. I mean, it handles great. It goes fast. It feels good. Your seats recline to help you with the G-forces. Everything's right out here like a big video game. And it's a sweet ride.

STACY KEACH: While the Russians admire American planes, they consider them almost too delicate for the rigors of war.

LT. COL. ALEXANDER GARNOV: Our military aircraft was designed for battle. It's built for war, not to just stand there and look pretty. Here behind me, you have an example of this. You can't break this plane. You could land it on its fuselage and they'd come out, pick it up, lower the landing gear, clear the engine, and you could take off again.

JEFFREY ETHELL: We go at it with a scalpel, trying to very, very carefully hone the capability, build the weapon. They go at it with a sledge hammer.

I saw this a couple weeks ago, on Scientific American Frontiers (or Alan Alda in Scientific American Frontiers, or Alan Alda Acts As Everyman or whatever they're calling it now), on PBS.

Down towards the bottom.

t_t_b

I have no idea if there really is a BSD common root to that code, but it's at least one possible explanation. Hard for anyone to tell when they won't tell people what they think is stolen.

check Cringely's latest posting.. UWB over copper, which survives conversion from copper to fiber and back.. If it's as good as promised, it'll bury DSL..

I. Cringely had a great article a while back about rolling your own DSL. All you need is a copper pair into your domicile. Good luck getting it though

frob

"P2P technologies can be used for totally legal purposes, even if they are also used for illegal purposes. Indeed, as they develop, the vast majority of uses of P2P technology will be legal. As the Supreme Court has rightly held, a technology is not illegal if it is capable of 'substantial noninfringing uses.' Every P2P technology that I have seen satisfies this test."

"And, when you rip the CD, you do not open up your computer to all of the spyware and other viruses that are part and parcel of most illegal P2P services."

"P2P technologies can be used for totally legal purposes, even if they are also used for illegal purposes. Indeed, as they develop, the vast majority of uses of P2P technology will be legal. As the Supreme Court has rightly held, a technology is not illegal if it is capable of 'substantial noninfringing uses.' Every P2P technology that I have seen satisfies this test."

"And, when you rip the CD, you do not open up your computer to all of the spyware and other viruses that are part and parcel of most illegal P2P services."

I'm so glad i wasn't the only one that picked up on that!!! Incentivize WTF? Otherwise, not a bad read.

Casey Muratori from Kirkland, Wash. asks:

Does the U.S. Constitution rely on patent and copyright laws as way to advance the arts and sciences? Or, does the Constitution promulgate copyright laws for the sake of profit and entrepreneurialism?

You are right that the basis for copyright protection is in the Constitution, and that its goals are to further the arts.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution provides that: "The Congress shall have the power⦠To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

As our society has grown and our economy has developed, Congress has extended the term of copyright protection a number of times.

"We have recently seen copyright durations and extensions increased a times over. Does this serve the Constitution's stipulation that copyright be instituted to serve the development of arts and sciences for the public interest, or does it serve to increase corporate profits?"

"You are correct in stating that the Constitution instates copyright law to advance the arts and sciences. As our economy has matured, we have extended the term of copyright protections numerous times."

Does "Lenny G. Arbage" seem like a fake name to anyone else? Lenny Garbage? I mean, it's possible that it's real, but considering that no one else with a question gave their middle initial, it seems suspect to me. I think we have an Anonymous Coward (I mean, besides the one who was actually anonymous).

This is a paraphrase of what Cringely said a couple of weeks ago:

IBM will simply indemnify its customers against an unlikely SCO win and go on selling AIX as usual.

I pay property tax.

We don't need Kazaa because the transcript and an audio clip is posted on the website at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june03/do wnloading_4-24.html.

Why was the parent a troll? Have a sense of humor, asshats.

Rewanda - A Historical Chronology

Google search: rwanda genocide extremist radio

This is exactly the kind of scenario that Cringely pointed out in his latest column about the SCO vs. IBM situation on his PBS.org website:

I, Cringely: Technician, Steal Thyself

Related past columns:

May 22, 2003
May 29, 2003

This is exactly the kind of scenario that Cringely pointed out in his latest column about the SCO vs. IBM situation on his PBS.org website:

I, Cringely: Technician, Steal Thyself

Related past columns:

May 22, 2003
May 29, 2003

This is exactly the kind of scenario that Cringely pointed out in his latest column about the SCO vs. IBM situation on his PBS.org website:

I, Cringely: Technician, Steal Thyself

Related past columns:

May 22, 2003
May 29, 2003

There are many games set in fictional countries and even fictional universes, but somehow the signs are written in perfect English. I don't ask the developers to adopt an actual language, be it Russian (although that would be nice), Ukrainian, Serbian, Mongolian or any other, but making the signs at least readable to anyone familiar with Cyrillic would be nice. Even people whose native language is based on latin alphabet, would probably be happy to invest a little time to learn a few extra letters if they are going to spend 50+ hours playing the game.

The developers decided to use meaningless babble-speak a la The Sims, but I doubt that they made it sound like some sort of Geonosian.

In any case, I am sure that the problem is deeper than the wish of developers to create a fictional country. Here is just one example of many.

Film: The Bourne's Identity, Time: 0:17:10 (in Swiss bank)

The Russian international passport shown in this scene is issued for Foma Kinaev. Everything looks authentic enough, except that the name in Cyrillic sounds more like Lsh'f Lshtshfum. But it's written in those cryptic Cyrillic letters (note, how the filmmakers favoured the letters which aren't also in English alphabet) and so probably no viewer will understand it. For some reason, Brazilian passport is done correctly, as well as the rest of them.

Honestly, I cannot find any reason behind this other than simple ignorance or outright idiocy (if Bourne's Identity makers got a Russian passport, they must have had someone who also knows how to spell a Russian name).

Iraq was not at all stable, if it was the Bath party would not have taken power.

BTW, it's usually rendered Ba'ath in English, not "Bath".

Really?

A lot of people seem to think they had some help.

An interesting quote...

We were better informed on the 1963 coup in Baghdad than on any other major event or change of government that took place in the whole region in those years. from
Frontline.

Where do you see yourself in the Political Spectrum?

Until we get past the idea of a "spectrum", we're stuck.

Politics is a multi dimensional space.

Plot me somewhere between the Greens and the Libertarians. I often self-indentify as a libertarian socialist. If we get into theory, I'll talk about Zenarchy :

ZEN is Meditation. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation.

As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.

I'm in favor of personal liberty, including the repeal of laws against drug use, prostitution, or pretty much any act between consenting competent adults. I advocate economics based on the free exchange of labor rather than state-created property, ecological protection, the right to self-defense including the RKBA, smaller government, private property as a means of promoting personal freedom rather than as a core value, and the recognition of natural resources as the common property of all humans present and future.

I advocate smaller and decentralized government. But I recognize that government is a vector quantity, with direction as well as magnitude - to say you want a smaller government is no more informative than to say you want to drive at 50 mph instead of 100 mph. It's a safer journey, but which direction are you headed?

I want a smaller military and a less agressive foreign policy, dedicated to defending the U.S. rather than to imperialism and neocolonialism. Maybe even, as the Founders intended, eliminating the standing army.

I believe that we must see that everyone has basic access to basic necessities of food, shelter, and public health, that the cost of this is our ante for organizing as a civilization (as well as fundamental to our long-term self interest).

This combination seems to confuse the hell out of many people. "You sound like a liberal! Oh, but wait, you're against gun control!" (Gun control isn't a left/right issue, think of the Black Panthers and Mulford Act gun control law Reagan signed as California governor. And how is leaving the police, the agents of "The Man", the only ones with guns a liberal idea?) "You sound like a libertarian! But you say you're against capitalism?" ("Libertarian" was orginally a socialist term. Captialism requires a large, strong government to create and enforce property rights on economic resources. "Anarcho-capitalism" is inherently contradictory.)

Let's assume that SCO is right. Assume that the 80 lines of code from the kernal are from Unix, copied line by line. That doesn't prove their case. In order to win, they have to prove copying and that IBM did it. If they can't show that IBM is the company that copied the code, they aren't entitled to jack at trial. And I seem to remember a certain company called Caldera (you may know them better as SCO now) bragging to no end about how they were going to merge Unix and Linux into a single product. If you don't think IBM is going to harp on that like crazy at trial, then you obviously aren't paying attention.

The code with comments would be a strong indication that Unix code found it's way into Linux, but not that it was stolen or that IBM did it. Read the Cringley column for a much more reasonable explination and history of how these changes likely got into Linux, by a company that openly stated they were Unifying Unix with Linux for Business , SCO itself! Now they are trying to blame IBM with absolutely no proof at all (those 80 lines do not indicate they were added by IBM) and are already making a profit by threatening to sick lawyers on major Linux users if they don't pay SCO a license fee.

After you read the referenced article, see if you still think those 80 lines are proof that the code is ripped off.

This whole 802.11 home brew stuff is pretty interesting. I live less than a mile away from a buddy of mine and have been kicking around the idea of setting up our own little wireless lan using something like this (doubt I'll be building the antenna out of floppies though).
Ran across this: Reach Out and Touch Someone. Warning: Engmish!

One of the funniest things about the aricle is him going door to door offering to pay for DSL service to get help with the expirement. Most people turned him down! Show's how paranoid and distrustfull we've become (not surprising)... And man if he'd been caught peeping around at houses with his binoculars or telescopes! The big problem I have is that it took him $1400 to get it going. Seems like it could be done way cheaper to me.

Easy.

Joe Hill.

Any Utah-hater worth his salt'd know that one!

(Actually, for the record, I don't completely hate Utah. It just can be frustrating at times. Whoever has that .sig about "democracy dies behind closed doors" has it right. So very right.)

- Blenderfish

Bob has some interesting thoughts this week. The column is about how, IF there is UnixWare or OpenUnix code in Linux, it was most likely Caldera itself that put it there, not IBM. This isn't a new idea, but he provides quotes from Ransom Love at the time which sound pretty damning.

SCO/Caldera's motto at the time was "Unifying Unix with Linux for Business". To the extent that wasn't just hype, how can they blame anyone but themselves for migrating their UNIX code into Linux?

As long as we're linking net pundits, here's Cringely's latest Pulpit on the SCO/IBM thingie. He has an interesting take on the rationale behind Microsoft's licensing from SCO.

according to reports from local authorities they tried, nobody answered the phones

PBS has been covering the FCC media ownership rules on NOW with Bill Moyers and the NewHour.

PBS has been covering the FCC media ownership rules on NOW with Bill Moyers and the NewHour.

After Monday, the only impartial media out there will be public radio and television.

Support it, or it will die.
Find your local radio or television station and join up.

It was a one-man thing, and he couldn't do anything against the release of `Citizen Kane'....

Hearst managed to prevent Citizen Kane from being widely distributed when it was released. It wasn't generally recognized as a great picture until some twenty-five years later. It lost every Academy Award nomination except Best Screenplay, and was booed at the ceremony. Hearst convinced the FBI to investigate Welles, and leaked stories labelling him a Communist, homosexual, and adulterer. And Orson Welles never had full control over a movie again. He became a broken man who had to beg producers for money to make pictures. He even ended up appearing in TV commercials to make ends meet. You should watch The American Experience documentary that comes with the Kane DVD. You'll find Hearst had a great deal of power in his day.

Wasn't taking security for granted the problem in the first place? We see where that got Microsoft...

I'd also like to point out (love 'em or hate 'em) what Bob X said about cleaning up code...

"...Linus Torvalds found a Linux-kernel mailing list (lkml) posting from Christoph Hellwig, a former employee at SCO, then called Caldera. Hellwig pointed out the impracticality of actually getting copied code from UnixWare accepted by the tough critics on the mailing list. "The kernel internals are so different that you'd need a big glue layer to actually make it work and you can guess how that would be ripped apart in a usual lkml review," Hellwig wrote..."

t_t_b

This is an interesting side note on some massive MS document destruction, and Cringely's latest posits the spectre of Windex. We have all been cursed to live in interesting times...

SCO is saying: "License our stuff or we sue Linus".

This reminds me eerily of an ad billboard posted in my town by a local radio station. It had a guy pointing a gun at a dog and a caption saying "Listen to us or we shoot the dog".

Every dog lover around here protested and they hastily changed the billboard to say "Listen to us or we shoot the DJ", which didn't raise any protest. Pet lovers must hate humans.

I guess Linus should be glad he can muster as much sympathy as a dog!

Seriously, it's very sad SCO has to scoop that low. They really must be getting desperate. What next? "Pay us or we'll kill your horse"?

In his latest column, Robert X Cringely says he wouldn't be surprised to learn that a tentacle of the Microsoft poulp is behind this whole lamentatble affair. Neither would I. It does smack of an MS PR job, complete with outrageously bogus claims and botched execution.

-- SysKoll

Cringely's current article has his take on SCO. He mentioned that he wouldn't be surprised to find Microsoft bankrolling the legal,even though he wasn't predicting it either.

In the end though, he concedes he doesn't know what is going on, and neither do other people in the field. Me? I'm guessing it will end up being a totally ill-informed upper managemnet decision that is going to roll heads.

During Galileo's day, longitude was hard to determine. Ships at sea had no sufficiently good clocks to determine position. Galileo proposed a system using the moons of Jupiter, but it never worked well enough. John Harrison ultimately solved the problem, but I guess "Harrison" does not sound as good as "Galileo." Nova had a good program on the longitude problem. There was also a bestselling book about Harrison and his feat, but I have not read it.

The paper that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) uses to produce our currency is "distinctive." A paper manufacturer produces it according to BEP specifications. It is composed of 75 percent cotton and 25 percent linen. The paper also contains red and blue fibers of various lengths that are evenly distributed throughout the paper.

Currency paper has a unique feel and is extremely durable. Is it really 'paper' in the traditional sense? There are no wood fibers or starch in currency paper. Instead, like high quality stationery, currency paper is composed of a special blend of cotton and linen fibers. The strength comes from raw materials continuously refined until the special feel of the currency is achieved. People who handle money on a regular basis, such as bank tellers, can easily determine if a bill is counterfeit by this distinctive feel.

if you happend to like that sort of thing, can be had here.

"Anyone interested in the activities of secret U.S. agencies may have been interested in a segment of the CBS show "60 Minutes" about the secret involvement of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the killing of General Rene Schneider of Chile. The show aired on Sunday, September 9, 2001. General Schneider was a strong supporter of democracy. Here are links to information about U.S. interference with democracy in Chile:

"National Security Archive Chile Documentation Project

'PBS News Hour: "... evidence of a policy to undermine democracy in Chile and to support dictatorship there"

"Hinchey Report, CIA Activities in Chile This is a U.S. government document."

1. Afghanistan, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003
2. Bosnia, 1994, 1995
3. Cambodia, 1969-70
4. China, 1945-46
5. Congo (now Zaire), 1964
6. Cuba, 1959-1961 ("Bay of Pigs" invasion)
7. El Salvador, 1980s
8. Grenada, 1983
9. Guatemala, 1954, 1960, 1967-69
10. Indonesia, 1958
11. Iran, 1987
12. Iraq, 1991-2000, 2003 (The U.S. government used radioactive bombs in the first war against Iraq. See United States War Crimes Against Iraq for what appears to be an accurate history.)
13. Korea and China, 1950-53 (Korean War)
14. Kuwait, 1991
15. Laos, 1964-73
16. Lebanon, 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
17. Libya, 1986
18. Nicaragua, 1980s
19. Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it "Operation Just Cause". The link is to a U.S. military web site.
20. Peru, 1965
21. Somalia, 1993
22. Sudan 1998. There are doubts that the pharmaceutical plant that was bombed was making weapons.
23. Vietnam, 1961-73 (An estimated 2,000,000 Vietnamese were killed.)
24. Yugoslavia, 1999

There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [

The FCC has already decided that it will allow companies to own much more than they can now. The FCC director stated that this oh so important decision does not need any debate. He tried to shut down the debate by refusing to fund town meetings around the country debating this and informing the general public. He has definitely been bought by the likes of Clear Channel. This will further erode democracy in this country, and if you now hate DMCA and its ilk, wait until the next pass. Laws like DMCA and PATRIOT 2 get passed because there is a lack of healthy debate. It has been shown time and time again that Clear Channel refuses to report on such items. If you don't believe me, when was this particular debate even mentioned on any of Clear Channel's stations? The only time that I saw this reported was on a PBS program called "NOW with Bill Moyers". This was an excellent program that tried to look at the issue from all sides. You can find an in-depth discussion at http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/bigmedia.html
Little by little our rights are being taken away from us. Just look at all of the recent laws implemented, DMCA, copyrights, PATRIOT act etc.

We need to act now, before the decision has been rendered. Once it has, there is very little chance of getting it changed. What's at stake is the very nature of democracy in this country. There is no way to rectify this if a bad decision is made. How do we rectify this in 10 years from now, once Clear Channel has bought up the few remaining independent stations? Do we really expect that at that point, a healthy debate about breaking up Clear Channel will be allowed by Clear Channel?

Clear Channel says it needs to be allowed to buy the remaining independent stations in order to become profitable. If they haven't become profitable at this size, what makes us believe that will become profitable when they have taken over the rest? Lets face it folks, these guys are lying to us saying that they are not profitable. They are quite profitable now, and what's really driving this is pure greed at the expense of this country's core values. They are destroying this country at the expense of a few bucks. Enough is enough.

I, Cringely had some thoughts on OS X in Jan 2002 that seem as relevant now as they did then ...