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SCO Change Their Name to Tarantella
GoodPint sent in a story so bizarre that you'll swear I made it up because nothing interesting is happening 'cuz its august and everyone is on vacation... Whats left of SCO is now renaming itself. The best name they could come up with was Tarantella... conjuring up warm fuzzy images for countless investors, as well as limitless mock fodder for folks like me. Reminds of an old Onion story... "New Corporate Logo Changes Everything".
The first thing I thought of was the director of 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Reservoir Dogs', but perhaps it's just me...
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What happened to SCO? The free software they released recently sucked badly (there are better tools under the GPL out there). SCO Unix seems to be dead. etc.
I was just wondering if they were related to the German Chocolate Spread maker...... Mmmm.. Tarantella...
OT Why are all these companies changing their names to dances? Why not change Microsoft to Tango or Cha Cha, or maybe Horah if they want to go with an eastern feel.
Viva Anales!
It's amazing what a name change can do. A new corporate image can completely change the meaning of the company, and it can motivate the employees. I'm not saying that this is necessarily happening in this casse, but a name change and even a new logo is healthy every now and then.
... would still file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Buh-bye SCO, Linux rules!
-- Oh Well
If the reverse had happened... if they were changing their name from Tarantella to SCO...
Would we all be making Sour Cream and Onion jokes?
(Really! That's what SCO makes me think of!)
I suppose the old name just got too loaded down with bad 'legacy Unix' mojo, though -- you can see that they're trying to reinvent themselves: 'very much like a start-up' -- ha!
Ten to one they haven't done a damn thing to change the way the company works internally, so they'll just churn out the same stuff yet again.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
And here I thought those years of piano lessons were useless... A Tarentella is not a reference to Tarantino, but a reference to a lively dance to stave off a tarantula bite.
You say you want a revolution?
I bet they got that from the World Wide Web. But isn't this particular spider's poisonous? Is that a friendly corporate image or what?
Renaming always helps. Look what "Itanium" did for "Merced" and "W2K" did for "NT 5".
I'm thinking about renaming my "Chevy" to "Jaguar", my scratch-built PC to "HAL 9001", and myself to "Bond, James Bond".
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Could they have used the word "Tarantella" once more in their propaganda?
Personaly, I am fed up with the derth of "Corp Talk" we have been seeing lately. There are too many company's with vauge buiseness goals, no visible product and and no leadership. Could someone explain, in plain english, just what these people DO? I get the sense many of these companys are just yaping dogs trying to make themselves look important by spewing imposible to understand press releases.
Dirty Pirate Hooker
When company are bought or want to restructure this what they do. Make a name change. This helps to create a new image. Does not always work but it could not hurt.
SCO, err Tarantella has a new product called, surprisingly enough, tarantella. It's basically a web app that allows different platforms to run applications through it.
There is a demo here
It's pretty cool, but it's dirt slow.
They've got it set up so you can run Word or Powerpoint, a few unix apps, etc. all on your web browser.
IS
Before anyone states the obvious, I know they produce SCO
Dirty Pirate Hooker
yah, my roommate keeps his Tarantella on top of my fridge...
...but why are we talking about pet spiders on slashdot?
Is their name for a fairly cool browser
technology which allows X clients and
Windows apps to run inside your browser.
A dance thought to cure disease once thought transmitted by big hairy Tarantula spiders.
mmmmmm...big hairy spiders. Good name for a company, or as Dave Barry likes to say "a good name for a rock band".
Sig=$lazyuser
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Sig it.
shiver
I suggest a nice fuzzy non-spider logo as those creepy little things give me the shivers.
--- This meme is memory intensive
It's a shame that all the cool names keep disappearing. I'm glad 3Com has let U.S. Robotics live on as a product line name at least.
--
I personally think that the time for non open sourced Unices for X86 has passed. The only thing that was left from SCO (except some memories) was the name, so I think its much harder to relaunch business using a different brandname... and there are more than enough other good OSses theill have to compete against.
Zappa
CorrectoMundo Decision Networks, Inc.
Sunnyvale, CA. US
We specialize in providing custom control tools that offer solutions to understanding, analyzing and planning information about ordering information systems and networked enterprise decision software to help you design affordable creative marketing managerial methodologies which meet the challenges of professional business-to-business turnkey sales services and information product networks. Also Bull Semen.
http://www.mundo.com/correcto.html
Axel
Axel
mhm23x3, alt.fan.karl-malden.nose
They should have changed their name to SCONIX. :-)
:-9
Mmmmm... scones...
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Since they didn't offer anything (well, certainly nothing worth the price) that Linux didn't, they couldn't compete.
SGI, on the other hand, has the right idea. By giving up IRIX and supporting Linux development, they're
SGI makes out well, and Linux makes out well. This is how free software can help companies, not a half-hearted attempt at releasing stuff that the company doesn't even want.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
It can also act as a substitute for real change: "Oh, look! We're a completely new company! We may do everything the same, but look -- we have a new name! Whee!"
I'll believe in a new SCO when I see it.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The only part of SCO Caldera didn't bye was the Tarantella subsidiary.
Tarantella was an independant subsidery long before Caldera bought SCO.
Or 'Monkey Piss'... I've always been partial to 'Monkey Piss.'
Yes folks, you too could look to find a cool sounding name, and face-off against countless other companies trying to Trademark/Copyright the same name and attempting to protect their own companies... you can battle it out through local courts, state courts, even the supreme court for copywright infringment or something similar...
Or - for this limited time - you could show your true savy at making anything work and come up with a truly original name... I believe 'Monkey Piss' is indeed that name. Think about it...
1. Instant eye catcher: Tell me the title of this thread didn't instantly catch your attention (unless it was immediately moderated to -1/Troll)
2. People will remember your name - you instantly create name recognition... and I garountee any company named 'Monkey Piss' will instantly become the talk of the office and dinner table for that night.
3. There are thousands of public domain/national geographic pictures of just this which you can instantly use in advertizing.
4. You already have a mascott, and its way cuter than some creapy spider....even if it is peeing.
Ok, well, maybe I'm on my own on this one.
You say you want a revolution?
It's some sort of compressed/lightweight version of X that speeds up response when in use over the network. I understand that it works really well, but i don't have any direct experience.
Anyone else?
--
Liberty uber alles.
They used to be Silicon Graphics, Incorporated. And they had the coolest damn logo of any computer company, but now all it is is those rounded-off letters. Waaah! I want my cool cubey-thing!
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
For those who are not aware of the software SCO actually sells (and until the merger is approved, the software that they still sell), OpenServer and Unixware are only two of their offerings. They have been offering a virtual network server/client system called Tarantella for some time now. It mimics Citrix's VNC client for Windows, but Tarantella is run through any web browser (maybe Citrix's offering is as well; I haven't tried either, personally).
SCO is selling off their server and service divisions, but they're keeping their Tarantella division. It's only logical that they rename their company after the only product they're going to be selling. Everything that made SCO known other than this new product is being sold, so in essence what is SCO if it only sells Tarantella?
It's an odd name, yes, but the name change is logical IMNSHO.
...when a recording artist mistakenly sues SCO because they couldn't tell the difference between Tarantella and Gnutella.
"tarantella.. hmm.. tella.. that rings a bell! OH YEAH, PIRACY! LAWSUIT! LAWSUIT!" -Lars Ulrich, sometime in the future
It has nothing to do with tarantulae, as in spiders. It has everything to do with the city of Taranto.
...Scaldera
The long and short of it is that this is SCO's plan to destroy desktop computing - the desktop computing that kicked SCO's ass in the marketplace, and this is their revenge - by forcing us to rent OC3's to get our applications. With the help of Microsoft (.NET is just another name for the Tarentella idea), they will destroy the PC revolution out of fear of the Linux revolution. We must stop them!
Their stuff (Like most software) gets written "from dusk till dawn" anyway.
IBM's doing much the same thing that SGI is, they compete for a similar market, and IBM's on much more solid financial footing. I'm not saying there's room for only one company in the free software world, but there may only be room for one in the commercial world. SGI's decided to play in IBM's space, so they're going to have to be pretty creative when it comes to product differentiation.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Axel
Axel
mhm23x3, alt.fan.karl-malden.nose
Isn't SCO the Santa Cruz operation that made some excellent skateboards back in the late 80's??? I don't know but everything seems to have gone downhill from there. Should have stayed in hardware...
Tarantella? What the heck is that supposed to mean? Nobody's going to buy a skateboard from a company called Tarantella!
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
Hmm -- on their 'look what SGI stuff can do!' page, most of the applications are still computer graphics-based, like the glowing first down line for the Super Bowl, VR software for a University and 3D simulations. As I understands it, IBM works more with the mainframe/enterprise-server crowd. They may be competing head-to-head with *Sun*, but I still don't see SGI abandoning the graphics market any time in the foreseeable future.
-grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Tarantellent.
Much better, isn't it?
If you don't get the joke (or even if you do), go read this extremely funny and informative article on branding/naming over at Salon.
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They probably had lots of cool names but tarantella was the only name for which they could still get a domain.
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
Of course it changes everything! Its Log!
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Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
When you say "slow" do you mean the time you have to wait for the Java client to load, or the sluggishness of the user interaction? If the former, then that's a one-time thing. (Java, caching, yada yada yada.) If the latter, then that's a characteristic of thin/terminal/GUI systems, which is why I hate using such systems. (Did you click me? I guess you clicked me. I guess that means I gotta invert myself. OK, I'm getting ready to invert myself...) Despite behavior reminiscent of the ancient Age of Timesharing, terminal servers are all the rage. The only question is why the former SCO thinks it can compete with the established players in the area. Probably because it's they only product they've got left.
No, you are half right. It has to do with Taranto...but it has to do with Tarantullas:
And I quoteth:
"The St. Vitus' dance became a real public menace, seizing hundreds of people, spreading from city to city, mainly in the Low Countries, in Germany, and in Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries. It was a kind of mass hysteria, a wild leaping dance in which the people screamed and foamed with fury, with the appearance of persons possessed. In these convulsive, frantic, and jerky dances, religious, medical, and social influences probably interacted in response to such things as the epilepsy-like seizures of persons suffering from the Black Death. Italy was afflicted with tarantism, an epidemic presumably caused by the bite of venomous spiders. Its effects had to be counteracted by distributing the poison over the whole body and "sweating it out," which was accomplished by dancing to a special kind of music, the tarantella."
Source: Britannica.com
Thank you...come again.
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Sig it.
I'm not sure if the original submitter really understands what's going on here. Tarantella has been a product of SCO for some time. When SCO sold itself to Caldera they essentially spun this product off as a new company "Tarantella". The reason for this being that they thought the product could stand by itself as well as the fact that it has zero to do with the SCO Unix. We use Tarantella currently on Solaris (it has been ported to a number of platforms). Many people within our company swear by it (I'm not much of a fan myself but...). We have in fact standardized on it for a subset of our users who need the sort of access it provides. Tarantella is a good solid product (though, yes, a bit slow) and thus it makes absolute sense to make it it's own company. Matt Fahrner Manager of Networking Burlington Coat Factory
In case that's what you were thinking.
conjuring up warm fuzzy images for countless investors, as well as limitless mock fodder for folks like me
*** hates it when Slash editors don't do their research
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The problem with the 'Monkey Piss' name is that it is too easily turned into an epithet. 'Monkey Pus', obviously an undesirable association, will instantly be used by corporate detractors. Mock web site and fake ads will immediately start using a parody logo feature a festering sore on the ass of a simian, guaranteeing ridicule the world over. Competitive ads will feature tags lines like 'Monkey Pissing into the Wind' or 'Tired of being Monkey Pissed off?"
No, 'Monkey Piss' is just not the right choice.
I'd recommend 'Monkey Spunk.'
ADDON: (Sorry..forgot to add the cross reference)
.com
Source 2: Britannica
Sorry, just didn't want to get sued or something.
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Sig it.
This product has been around for ages. Guess this is the only thing left from SCO.
- sigs are for wimps.
Why does Slashdot seem so anti-SCO. Not that I am "for" SCO, but there always seems to be a negative bias towards them.
Tarantella is written by SCO. As it's pretty much all that was left after the Caldera deal, and because it was already a separate business unit, SCO are quite sensibly killing off the SCO brand and going with Tarantella Inc.
It's a big, slow spider which usually comes out in the late fall to breed.
;-)
Why not DragonsWest? Then I could sell them my domain name
I really think SCO (pronounced: sko) is much better. But then, look what the name Fatbrain did for Computer Literacy. Who would have thunk a name which sounds too close to Fathead would be a success.
I wonder if DogPoop.com is taken yet...
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Considering their involvement with Microsoft this seems very apt.
I mean, if I install MS Excel I have to click on a licensing agreement that puts certain restrictions on my use of the software, etc etc. Amongst other things doesn't such a user agreement usually state that only one person can use the software at a time, or that it can only be installed on 1 machine?
I went to their Tarantella demo page and made a useless little excel spreadsheet that adds two numbers together. I saved it on their system using their software. Therefore I have just used a copy of Excel which I (AFAIK) do not have the legal right to use - unless they have some special deal in the works with MS.
The software ran rather slowly, but then I am on a cable modem - if I was directly on a highpowered internal corporate network connection it would probably work just fine.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
"Agilent" is a completely made up word that is supposed to connote "agile."
I put it right alongside other meaningless words, like "Sapient," "Integra," and many other recent names of corporations or cars.
However, a "Tarantella" has nothing to do with spiders like others have said... It's a type of dance. A Spanish or Mexican dance I believe, in an energetic fast-3 feel (more like a fast 6/8 that's counted in two).
It would be like naming your company "Waltz" or "Tango." Or Lambada if that's your thing.
But "Tarantella" is obscure enough to leave many people scratching their heads... and thinking of arachnids!
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Upon reading further down, I see that it's actually Italian in origin, not Spanish or Mexican like I said...
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
I have fond memories of the Old SCO! The Santa Cruz name was great! It conjured the image of hippie dope-smoking surfer dudes, which they were. They had a hot tub in their old building; I remember seeing the engineers walking naked through the hall to get to/from the hot tub! Those green-haired, dotcommers of today think *they're* cool--they should have seen the SCO of 12 years ago. That place rocked! -- ib
--- Speaking only for myself,
Second, employees might just see this as another spastic shift in direction. People notice such things, as well as the pile of pink slips. If it comes with equally empty slogans, count on moral to sink.
Oh wait a minute, I detect sarcasm. The more I read that note the harder I laugh.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
--
Or Samba? :-)
Actually, AFAIK, the tarantella does have something to do with spiders. Supposedly, the dance originated as a way for sufferers of a tarantula bite to sweat the venom out of their systems!
Read that in the Childrens' Brittanica when I was a kid, before all this Web nonsense started...
... Post trails off into incoherent old-fart mutterings...
Reminds of an old Onion story... "New Corporate Log Changes Everything".
The logo is the log. There's an Italian dancing on it, and a spider hiding uner it.
SaCcO is dead, Long Live Anarchy. http://partners.nyt.com/learning/general/onthisday /big/0823.html
Always crap on company time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
That's from here:
http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/
Nowt to do with Citrix.
--
Peter
SGI isn't giving up Irix. Their roadmap shows continued support for the MIPS R14k and R16k processors. Irix is still better than linux on MIPS cpus. The last I checked linux for MIPS didn't even have an X server. Thats gonna be tough for doing graphics.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
IIRC, Kingston was the company where the founders sold the company for big Buck$$$, and instead of keeping it all for themselves, gave bonuses to all the employees. The average bounus was about $300K.
:-) they were inundated with applications the next month...
It made big news here in LA (they're based in LA County), and for some reason which I don't understand
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Ah! A Tarentella!"
and the music begins... This is, I believe, the uplifting self-adulatory yet creepy tune that rings out with such stirring choruses as
An interesting association indeed.
--netmouseSeems like the perfect metaphor for SCO to me.
;)
Vovida, OS VoIP
Beer recipe: free! #Source
Cold pints: $2 #Product
OK, so they're named after a folk dance done to avoid the effects of spider stings. Shall we expect them to do fancy ASCII art within robots.txt files?
Theme song: "The Safety Dance" by Men Without (Red) Hats.
Intarantellent
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Sounds like ... tarantula!
-JD
I'm suprised SCO lasted as long as it did. I STILL run into doctor's offices and other such places that run there whole business on a single app, with Wyse60 terminals (9600 baud of course) into a small PC running one of the above.
I actually had the pleasure? of working with OpenServer before it was called that, back in the days when SVR3 was new, and TCP/IP was an OPTION! What I discovered was that Openserver and Unixware STILL (i.e. today) have TCP/IP as an add on. That along with the ridiculously expensive licensing fees associated with the SCO product lines are what killed the company.
Its kind of like the old token-ring versus ethernet discussion: Sure token is "better", deterministic, rant-rant-rant, but when it comes down to signing on the dotted line everybody wanted to buy $150 ethernet cards (1992) not $600 token cards. The same is true for the SCO product line. The only reason ANYONE is running SCO or Unixware at this point is because the VAR developers still get a cut of the licensing fees from SCO, so that's the platform they sell to their customers; even though the same App could run unmodified on BSD or Linux.
Personally I'm glad to see SCO gasping its last breath. I'm just sorry that Caldera picked up those Unices. It seems that anyone that handles Unixware in particular gets hammered.
It is an Italian dance, and actually is related to the arachnid. There was an old myth that if you got bitten by a tarantula, you could dance very, very fast and force the poison out of your body. That resulting dance was the tarantella.
:)
I don't think it ever actually worked, though.
-rainbowfyre
Vericon is coming!
I use to be employed at SCO's only US tarantella distributor. We held a release party sometime in early '98 or so, as I recall (some strange pictures came out of that vodka drenched evening...something about breakdancing, but I digress). The thing with SCO is that they are yet another of those companies that can make a decent product but can't market it to save their lives. They should get together with the folks from Commodore and form a support group or something. I forget the actual number, but I remember being told that SCO had spent multiple millions of dollars developing Tarantella, but $500,000 world wide on marketing the thing. That, of course, explains why you're just hearing about it now. 8^)
IMO, Tarantella (the name and the product) is not enough to save SCO.
noah
Tarantella
Tarantula
Hmm, one less l, swap an e for a u, and...
Somehow I don't think that's the corporate image they were after.
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Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
That was stupid... "The santa cruz opperation" was a damn cool name. But I guess they all got old, and boring, and decided they coudln't have a cool name anymore...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
a type of spider?
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SCO was on sale.
Caldera was insterested.
SCO is old and lacks the image of an innovative company that it therefore is rather than an old companyosaur (IMHO their products SCO*Unix and UnixWare were reliable enough for server use).
So, it sounds like that before getting bought SCO wants to refresh its identity with a new name.
SCO doesn't rhyme with Caldera...
Hence Tarantella ?
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
According to WHOIS it's been registered since May 2, 2000. If find this surprising because they've been selling the product for much longer than that.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.