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http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=10818216
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman"

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59551,00 .html also has a SCO spokesman refering to patents

Two things

1. According to http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2003/city_2003-0 7-03.cfm, Caldera bought DR-DOS $400K, but got from law suit $155,000,000.

As far as I know (I guess somebody could check) they didn't purchase the UNIX source, or value it in their SEC reports, for anything like $1bn, or $3bn, let alone $50bn... so how can they claim billions of damages, if they bought it for a few millions, and valued it of the same order?


2. I keep seeing patents in lots of news articles about the case. My understanding is the case is about alleged contractual violations, alleged trade secret issues and alleged unfair competition etc.,

http://www.internetwk.com/breakingNews/showArticle .jhtml?articleID=10818216
"McBride, who is fluent in Japanese, will visit with several founding members to show them code samples in which the Linux open-source operating system allegedly violates SCO's Unix patents, said an SCO spokesman"

http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,59551,00 .html also has a SCO spokesman refering to patents

So the obvious questions are:
- Is the press getting it wrong?
- If the press is indeed getting it wrong, why are they (and not just one news source) getting it wrong?

They claim to own patents.

Here is the relevant quote from a Wired article:
Since the lawsuit, people have "suggested that SCO doesn't own any Unix patents," Hunsaker said.

The Microsoft deal "is part of an ongoing effort to validate our intellectual property rights... (and) shows very clearly we own Unix patents because Microsoft just licensed them," Hunsaker said.

The truth however, is that Microsoft only licensed a single patent and not "patents". It a big secret which license Microsoft licensed. Although, SCO does own a few patents, the company doesn't own any relevant patents. The lawsuit is definately not about patents and only mentions patents in a random quote.

I wouldn't be surprised if SCO representatives told the reporter that the lawsuit was about patents.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the artists are not the ones running around suing people

Well, other than Lars Ulrich, of course

Do a web search on Asperger's Syndrome. There was a Slashdot article on it recently as well as a Wired story from a few years back.

It's true.

Just as many here on /. speculated, the RIAA's setting their sights on the end users is spurring the creation of P2P systems where the identity of the end user and/or what they are sharing are practically impossible to ascertain.

Nothing motivates people quite like the fear, however small, of being prosecuted and having to cough up your life's savings to a bunch of greedy bastards.

Memo to RIAA: Just give up, okay? You made your bed with the years of overcharging and price-fixing, now it's time to lie in it. Your customers are fed up with being overcharged and assumed to be criminals. If I have to pay you a piracy tax for every blank CD I'm buying, then I'm going to download some shit-- after all, I've already paid you for it.

Your business model has been obsoleted. Get with the times, give the people what they want, or prepare for termination.

that Stephenson has submitted a bug to Debian. (Read his In the Beginning Was the Command Line, it's excellent.) A skilled novelist who also participates in the open source process?

That gets him the same free pass that /. gives out to Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall. :-)

that Stephenson has submitted a bug to Debian. (Read his In the Beginning Was the Command Line, it's excellent.) A skilled novelist who also participates in the open source process?

That gets him the same free pass that /. gives out to Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall. :-)

The name and concept is supposed to be a spin of the Government's TIA (Terrorist Information Awareness) program that spys on citizens for terrorist activity. More information on TIA is available at DARPA and a story that Wired ran.

Anyway, horay for more animation (that isn't aimed at kids).

Just before I got to slashdot, I finished reading an article on the way people are using Sims to create their own sitcoms. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,59461,00.ht ml This is truly a way in which animation can be used by the masses for expression. I am sure other products using this concept will soon come in the market and make it a legitimate market.

What is interesting in the Sim's story is how many people are using the characters to deal with many deep issues. Right now it is being done using the Album feature, but for his part, "Wright hopes to incorporate the storytelling as a more prescribed feature in next year's The Sims 2, and would like to find a way to let players use motion in order to make movies. " The unintended use of the album feature as what Wright terms "a tool of self-expression" is an example of a phenomenon known as emergence. Eric Zimmerman, the CEO of gameLab and designer of the Web-based game Sissyfight, says emergent play is among the best parts of game designing.

Players "go to a lot of trouble to get the Sims to do things they don't want to do," Wright says, explaining that players must keep their would-be actors fed, clean, rested and happy before they will even consider playing their parts. "So in that sense, it's almost like they're a director.... It's almost like a real movie shoot." Initially, it was all superheroes all the time. But users quickly began making the albums richer, with multilayered characters and multiple episodes. "It went way beyond my expectations," Wright said. "They were sort of like small novels."

What no one imagined -- least of all The Sims' designers -- was that thousands of players would quickly bypass the album's intended use and instead use it to create dozens of staged snapshots, crafting what can be complex, scripted, multi-episode social commentaries, graphic novels or even movies, as it were, with the Sims starring in the lead roles.

• Service, known in the Sims community as nsknight, has created several albums that are highly ranked by her peers. Among them is her six-part Vanderbilt series, which took her months to write and stage and which revolves around the story of three sisters separated by the murder of their mother.
• Other users have conjured up such storylines as a young woman's drug addiction and recovery;
• an African-American girl's adoption by a white family;
• and, naturally, poor girls falling in love with rich guys.
• Andrea Davis, known as VioletKitty, uses the albums to build narrative Sims tutorials. "Since my Sims weren't 'acting,'" she explained, "it (is) more like reality TV."
• This month Maxis is preparing to announce the creation of the 100,000th album.

Users' sophistication in the current version continues to impress him, [Wright] particularly given the difficulties of getting Sims to perform the roles required of them.

Wired (and slashdot??) did a writeup on this a while back:

Feel the Noise

I guess 48,000 Watts just ain't what it used to be.

Wired Magazine did an entertaining story about this a couple of years ago. My favorite part was the description of riding around West Palm Beach with one of the guys, setting off car alarms with sound pulses:

Eager to crank up the system, he hands me a set of earplugs. "Let's hear some bump."

I stick the plugs in, and he hits the burp button, a red switch on the center console. It's difficult to describe what happens next. The noise sounds like "BRRROONNNNKKKKK!" The vehicle vibrates like a jackhammer, but much lower and deeper. I feel air blowing the back of my hair, and my body starts to rise out of the seat. My pant legs are flapping. Everything in the car is rattling like crazy, and I realize my vision is blurred as my face pulls back taut against my skull. The only reaction left is to laugh out loud. I look over at Billy E gripping the steering wheel, squinting and grinning maniacally. He lets up on the button, and the chaos stops.

"If you're drinking a Coke, your throat will shut." I'm amazed I can actually hear his voice. "It's like being underwater. Your ears don't ring; they're just muted. After a day, everything opens up again," he says.

What sort of innovations does the future hold? I can't say for sure. But I can say for certain that they will bring pornography to us in more detail than ever before.

Well, according to this article, it looks like the future of porn is FUFME...

Good for them! But who will first find life in starfield HD70642? Wired.Com has this about life-possibilities in outer space. British astronomers say they found the first sun-like star with a giant gas planet in an orbit similar to Jupiter's, which leaves plenty of room for worlds like Earth and Mars.

Too late!

Maybe it's a piezo-electric device, stiffening through means of generating electricity upon kinetic stimulus. There are tennis rackets (look down a bit, under the heading "Power Surge") that do this. Of course, it would have to be pretty damn efficient in this particular case, but the elves and dwarves might know something we don't.

*duck*

Wired has also had some great articles. My favorite has been the plan for the space elevator. Thick as a piece of paper and a few feed wide, create a ribbon made of nanotubes miles long. Attach one end to a platform in the middle of an ocean. Attach the other end to a station in geo-cync orbit. Have a simple platform crawl up the ribbon into space.

Plus it would make one hell of a great Freefall ride at Great Adventure.

Spam means, when talking about email, unsolicited bulk email. Enlarge your penis, debt-free now, viagra online - you know the drill.

I believe the Spam Co. will loose this case, due to the fact that "spam" now has become a generic term in the e-mail world, like Sony did over the "walkman" trademark.

Here's a good story, in case you want to read more about earlier trademark disputes.

Actually some time ago, I think they did attempt to sue over the use of the word SPAM..

I would think that the previous outcome would have some kind of effect on this.

See this recent article ("The Right Stuff") on Wired from their current issue.

Corrected strands link.

works for china.

90% of all software in China is pirated.

Well, someone spilling the key on purpose is one possibility, but the other, more likely IHMO, is that someone spills it by accident.

After all, it seems to me that if every piece of equipment that can play media has to have DRM, odds are that *someone* will screw up somewhere and leave the backdoor wide open...

After discovering the basic principle of electromagnetic induction in 1831, Michael Faraday was asked by a skeptical politician what good might come of electricity. "Sir, I do not know what it is good for," Faraday replied. "But of one thing I am quite certain - someday you will tax it."

Here's a previous Wired article about Tanya Grotter from last November.

Here's a previous Wired article about Tanya Grotter from last November.

There's no video game rating similar to NC-17...

What about Adults Only? Content suitable only for adults. May include graphic depictions of sex and/or violence. Not intended for persons under the age of 18.

The way I see it, the M ESRB rating is closer to an R movie rating since both recommend being 17 or older.

You just don't see either the NC-17 or Ao rating that often since some stores don't carry either.

Ok, if you want to go into the consipiracy theory bit, then here we go... The FBI wouldn't use RFID because it's already deprecated technology. They would instead send in their Microsoft (ie, root of all evil) developed spy roaches equiped with the newest micro camera/audio recorder. These would communicate directly to the agents outside wearing their new invisibility cloaks watching the whole event (the roaches are just for hard evidence) with their X-ray glasses (the real ones, not those clunky things used in the airport).

And all this because a group of dissenters wants to cook up wild stories about black helicopters. What do you think?

Seriously, RFID as surveillance sucks. You still have to be within feet of the device. And anyone will be able to buy equipment to look for devices searching for a signal. Just not very practical for subterfuge. The gov't has much nicer toys.

This is the wrong battle.

The danger to planes is going to be shoulder launched missiles from near airports. (Few planes are going to be highjacked now without a HELL of a fight, no matter what weapons the bad guys have, and explosives...well, who knows if they'll be identifiable even with a great view)

And the danger to the nation is in PORTS people...those thousands of semi-anonymous crates coming in ever day, with almost no inspection what so ever. That's how a little baby nuke would get into this nation, and Bush and Ridge are doing very little about it. (There was some good coverage of some technological helps to this problem in)

These issues are all raised subtly, this is no sermonizing sociology text masquerading as a novel.

I think it's unlikely that evidence of extraterrestrial life will change too many people's minds. I think most folks who are gonna be convinced, have been. As far as fun games like logic and reason go, well, good luck.

This Wired article points out the fact that, even during the middle ages, Christian scholars found that extraterrestrial life would not seriously challenge their faith. You can bet these guys weren't big advocates of evolution, either.

I'll also mention that the Pope is an evolutionist, also noted in the article, although he almost certainly believes in creationism, as well.

Cheers -- Quothz

Uh, the Wired article you yourself linked to?

You mean this? (from TFA):

The source of the problem on the Yorktown was that bad data was fed into an application running on one of the 16 computers on the LAN. The data contained a zero where it shouldn't have, and when the software attempted to divide by zero, a buffer overrun occurred -- crashing the entire network and causing the ship to lose control of its propulsion system.

You'll notice I included the link referenced in the article. Follow it. It references an IE 4 flaw. Do you know who writes IE?

But while we're following links, let's check out some of yours...

"Over the past 18 months, approximately 20 versions of software have been tested at the GTSLBES."

Looks like one of the "lessons learned" was to evaluate other software for the Smart Ship platform. I seriously doubt NT has very much to do with it anymore.

I believe you've already illustrated why I've got you marked as a foe. Doesn't mean I can't argue with you.

Perhaps, but it sure makes you look stupid when you lose.

Wired Mag had a good profile of Fossil a few months back, covering both the SPOT watches and the Palm OS ones.

I asked Ballmer about an internal Microsoft document concerning Microsoft's licensing of Java, which had come to light in the DOJ's investigation. In it, PaulMaritz stated that the company's goal was to "get control of" and "neutralize" Java, [...] Scott McNealy had told me he considered the document prima facie evidence that Microsoft had signed its contract in bad faith. I asked Ballmer if McNealy was right.

[...]

His voice quickly rising, Ballmer continued, "Sun wasn't confused. We weren't coming in there saying, Hallelujah, brother! We love you, Sun! We said, We don't like you as a company - nice people; I like Scott - and you don't like us! We said, Hey Sun, you want to get on the back of us and ride, baby, ride You want on? OK, here's the terms!"

Ballmer's face was beet-red now, and he was screaming so loudly that, had there been any windowshades, they would have been rattling. Up on his feet, leaning across the table so that his face was no more than 6 inches from mine, pounding his meaty fists on the tabletop so hard that my tape recorder leapt and skittered, he roared, "Nobody was ever one little teeny tiny bit confused that we and Sun had this wonderful dovetailing of strategic interests! Those sub-50-IQ people who work at Sun who believe that are either uninformed, crazy, or sleeping!"

I took this as a Yes.

Yeah, I told you so.

"No major problems yet" ...

What about USS Yorkdown being 'dead in the water' for 2 and a half hours ?

Okay it's 5 years ago, but even so ...

--
pjk

Yeah, it works so well that the glorious US army is attacking one weak country on the verge of self implosion after the other instead of going after someone who can defend himself, like, for example, uh, North Korea?

I suggest you read this Wired article to see how well it works. They are using Microsoft Chat on the battlefield, for crying out loud! Yes, the one with the comic characters, where the staff seargant looks like a big breasted bimbo. Nothing inspired a feeling of technical superiority like that, if you ask me.

At least the important systems run Linux.

We all do remember what happened to the USS Yorktown in 1998, yes?

Army's Apple Shines in the Desert

The nasa page the parent points to seems to be describing red sprites, first photographic evidence in 1988/1989. This looks to be something different.

From the article:

Other types of high-altitude lightning events also have been documented in the past decade using high-flying planes and cameras carried aboard the space shuttle fleet. One, called blue jets, also streams upward but does not rise as high or spread over as wide an area as the giant jets in the new study.

Red sprites, another form of high-altitude lightning, travel downward toward clouds but appear to stop short of reaching the top of thunderclouds.

Su noted that while the other types of jets seem to occur over most parts of the world, the six gigantic optical jets observed so far have all been connected to thunderstorms over the open sea.

Also, from the Wired article:

Scientists had found plenty of evidence of sprites in the 1990s, but the larger, upward streaming lightning jets had escaped detection -- possibly because they may only occur over oceans, Inan said.

Lightning Jets Blow Sky High

You don't know how close you really are.

Take a look at this device that you do put in your mouth. It will let you see with your mouth, or sense other things like G-forces when you fly and put this thing in your mouth.

They now have to....
Wired news story about the decision

I just finished reading a large supplement to last week's Wired magazine that pooh-poohed 3G in favour of 802.11x. They even interviewed T-Mobile's CEO and how they're providing internet access in Starbucks restaurants. Articles can be found here.

Wired must really hedge their bets because I see on their home page they now have Analysts Sour on Commercial Wi-Fi. Aaah, the "news".

I just finished reading a large supplement to last week's Wired magazine that pooh-poohed 3G in favour of 802.11x. They even interviewed T-Mobile's CEO and how they're providing internet access in Starbucks restaurants. Articles can be found here.

Wired must really hedge their bets because I see on their home page they now have Analysts Sour on Commercial Wi-Fi. Aaah, the "news".

As a Blockbuster sister company, it [Paramount] has no revenue-sharing arrangement with Netflix. So while Netflix stocks Paramount movies, it doesn't promote them in any way. No matter how many Mel Gibson romantic comedies you rate highly, What Women Want will never be recommended to you. The Netflix effect? What Women Want was the second-most rented film of 2001 overall but didn't even make the top 100 on Netflix.

RFID tags are much smaller. You'll find some pictures here:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,52343, 00.html

Mom: Hi. The power went off over here and now I can't get my computer to work.

Me: Uhm, OK. Does it do anything at all?

Mom: Well, the printer is on, and the screen says "Check connection".

Me: Hmmm. Alright. Is everything plugged in?

Mom: Yes, it looks like it. All the little doohickies are in the back of the computer.

Me: (avoiding this until the last--it just can't be the cause) Is the computer turned on?

Mom: I think so. There's something on the screen.

Me: Uhm, I meant, did you actually push the power button on the computer?

Mom: Nooo. Should I?

Me: (after a pause) Yeah, that might be a good idea.

Mom: Oh! There it is! Now it's working!

Me: (sigh) Well, there you go. Let me know if you have any other problems with it.

Now, if they'd tried their test with my mom, I don't think they would have faired quite as well.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the adoption of Linux on the desktop has been the nerdish nature of the whole installation, configuration and user experience. Your average PC user (and most likely non-/. reader) is doing good to figure out how to get a printer connected to their Windows machine. The typical Linux distro is a no-go for these folks. Forget configuring a NIC, modifying the defaults for Gnome or KDE, or trying to figure out how to FTP a file from an xterm shell prompt. It just won't happen. MS has made Windows what it is not on its technical merits, but because it's been dumbed-down to the point where almost anyone can make it do something useful right out of the box with only a modest amount of coaching. A while back Russ Mitchell offered this rather negative view of Linux's chances on the desktop. While not everything he says is golden, a lot of it does apply, and should be seriously considered by anyone with dreams of seeing MS pushed into the backseat. Apparently someone at Lindows did bother to pay attention and start to make the Linux experience less painful for those without the inclination or ability to fiddle around under the hood.

And before you poo-poo those poor sods who can't grok a regular expression or launch a background task from bash, just remember this: They're the ones with most of the disposable income, not us nerds, and Bill Gates et. al. know it.

Let's say my information was out of date.

Transvirtual Technologies was founded to commercialize Kaffe, and for several years, Transvirtual drove the development and direction for Kaffe. Microsoft made a significant investment in Transvirtual (see the Wired article), after which I stopped paying attention to Kaffe, since all Microsoft was interested in was Java 1.1 compatibility.

Apparently in March, 2002, Tim Wilkinson (the original creator of Kaffe, and the one-time CEO of Transvirtual) was no longer associated with Transvirtual, and had turned over maintenance of Kaffe to Jim Pick (see announcement here). Transvirtual faded in July, 2002 (see note here), leaving Kaffe free to go its own way.

I've looked through the Kaffe.org website, and I can't tell what version of Java it supports. It looks like they've added some Java 1.2 support, but LOTS of work would need to be done to bring it up to Java 1.4, which is my development target these days.