Slashback: Hatred, Glass, Identification

Slashback brings you another source for the Unix Haters' Handbook, along with more news on the Caldera v. IBM lawsuit and other updates on topics from XPde to creating a stained-glass computer. Read on below for the details.

Why Yes, you can sell the Free books. ProteusQ writes "Project Gutenberg has released a 'Best Of' CD, April 2003 Edition. The CD compilation is copyrighted and licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows unlimited non-commercial duplication and distribution. You can even sell it, provided that you share 20% of the gross profits with Project Gutenberg. It contains almost 500 books, and the 'Best Of' project itself based on the Open Source model. All of the work was performed by volunteers (mostly by me, in this case), with the goal of building a volunteer base to create about three editions per year."

Welcome to the American legal system, mind your footing. An anonymous reader submits: "In an e-mail discussion that took place 24 and 25 April, SCO-Caldera Senior Vice President Chris Sontag told MozillaQuest Magazine that there is SCO-owned code in Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions. He also told MozillaQuest Magazine that the tainted code is not in the Linux kernel that Linus [Torvalds] and others have helped develop. We're talking about what's on the periphery of the Linux kernel."

On this topic, Random BedHead Ed writes "IBM has released its denial of SCO Group's charges that it borrowed proprietary UNIX code in its development of the GNU/Linux system. Story at News.com.com.com.etc. The battle continues.

Also, check out PCLinuxOnline.com for a good summary of the events thus far. They also have a Boycott SCO page if you're interested."

The height of practicality. Jerami Campbell writes "I just saw your article in Slashdot 'Building a stained glass computer case?' I have made several stained glass computer cases, I thought you might be interested in checking them out. You can see all of my cases at lucentrigs.com. I will have a new one finished in a couple of days. It is black glass with a red lava lamp mounted in the front."

Gun buffs have well-adjusted sights. In regards to the MP3-player-in-a-rifle-magazine posted the other day, Mat S. writes "I would be reaaaaally surprised if this fit a standard AK-47, as it is an SVD (Russian infantry rifle, as opposed to the AK, which is in fact a carbine, although called an assault rifle) mag. It accommodates much more powerful ammo, and the cartridges are about 50% longer than the AK's. Thank you for your attention. I still WANT this player. Might be a bit on the heavy side, though. this case is stamped steel, about 3 mm thick :)"

Fair and balanced, naturally. An anonymous reader writes "For those of you who were unable to obtain the Microsoft propaganda about Unix, it's up at MIT."

Note for the humorless: the UHH is not "Microsoft propaganda."

The best Congress money can buy. If you thought Hilary Rosen writing Iraq's copyright law was an isolated incident, don't worry, she's not alone. theodp writes "The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand to make it clear to government officials that the pressure to enforce U.S. laws against pirating of music and movies 'is a unified message coming from all levels of the U.S. government.' Watchdog groups say the trip may have violated House ethics rules, and one is calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he could have used committee funds to pay for the trip but, 'I thought I would save the taxpayers some money on this.'"

Thanks a bundle.

A considerate way to fool your friends and family. We've mentioned the blink-twice Trompe L'Oeil Windows-looking desktop XPde a few times before; now xexen writes "On April 26th 2003, I received an email. The XPde Team released XPde 0.3.5, a major upgrade to the XPde desktop environment and window manager. Check out the announcement, view the screenshots, or read the detailed ChangeLog."

Build up your frequent flyer miles. A few weeks ago we mentioned that the proceedings of the most recent linux.conf.au (a Linux gathering Down Under) were available as an ISO; hemos, who was on hand at the conference, passes on word that the CDs have been sent out, and points to some more info on the next LCA.

Comments

um

[GigsVT]

"The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand

Why is this buried in a Slashback? Come on! This is huge news.

Re:um

[maxume]

perhaps his staff?

SCO/Caldera have destroyed any claim vs. RedHat

[whoever57]

IANOAL, But, the article states that SCO/Caldera will eventually make a copyright claim against RedHat and other GNU/Linux distributors.

Yet, since SCO/Caldera have released the same code under the GPL, they have given away their rights to make copyright claims while RedHat and others only re-distribute according to their rights under the GPL.

$18000 eh ?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand

Now you know what they needed those students' money for.

MP3 Player Ammo-mag sounds silly

[WalletBoy]

I'm sorry, I'm sure this has been brought up before, but to me the whole idea of an MP3 player in ammo-mag sounds really silly to me. If you have your MP3 ammo-magazine plugged into your gun, you can't shoot it. In essence you no longer have a gun and instead you just have a bulky gun-shaped iPod. Wouldn't it make more sense to have something like an MP3 playing laser scope that you attach to your gun? That way you can shoot your gun and listen to MP3s at the same time?

Interesting thing about the Unix haters people

[hayden]

The book was published before Windows NT was released. They then went quiet after Windows NT was released.

Given a choice between Unix and Windows ...

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

[Otter]

Basically, the guns that have been singled out for special restrictions have been:

• "Saturday Night Specials" (cheap handguns)
• "Military-style handguns" (expensive handguns)
• "Assault rifles" (cheap rifles)

And then last summer, they started in on "sniper rifles", or expensive rifles. If I didn't know better, I'd think they were trying to eliminate guns entirely!

Re:Microsoft propaganda

[Zeinfeld]

Do I have any regrets? Yes, that the funniest item in the book probably isn't anything we wrote, but is Dennis Ritchie's anti-forword. (We had asked Dennis to write a forword, thinking that since he was doing Plan 9 at that time, it would give him an opportunity to talk about how he had moved on from Unix and fixed its flaws in his next OS.

Well first off, Plan 9 did not attempt to address a single one of the problems identified in the haters handbook. So it should not be a surprise that Ritchie did not read the book as a fix it

One of the curious things about the UNIx crowd is that they are the only people who had that degree of success that when asked what they would have done different seem to always answer 'nothing'. Ask Tim or me or any of the Web crowd what we did wrong and you get a laundry list, like top of mine is that we did not put a lightweight compressed encoding into the default libraries from the start. That would have saved a mass of bandwidth and speeded up dialup links two to threefold.

Second, I think Dennis tried to give the MIT guys the exact opposite of the answer they wanted because he knew that it would be funnier than the other content.

Re:Hey, the story doesn't say that

[Random BedHead Ed]

You're right. But the problem with using the term Linux for the OS is, for me, not related to a movement, and nothing against Linus, and not because I am a zealot. It's for clarity. SCO has said that none of the "tainted" code is in the kernel itself. So the legal battle between IBM and SCO promises to be very confusing when both sides argue about code in "Linux" and each side is speaking about a different thing.

Re:lava lamps

[billtom]

Huh? This guy is building *stained glass* computer cases and you're pointing out that he's not being very practical by including a lava lamp?