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

MP3 Rifles?

[Santos L. Halper]

All my rifles play ogg.

Re:Yes

[SuperCal]

Fair and balanced.... like Fox News?

they have a CD?

[SHEENmaster]

So I didn't have to "wget -r" their entire FTP server from the local college's multiple T3 lines? Sorry guys.

(Just a joke, no need for you to do the same to my server.)

Re:Yes

[The Bungi]

Didja mean Faux News? =)

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

[philovivero]

Yeah, this is huge news. A U.S. congressman spent $18,000 to go to Taiwan and Thailand? I know for a fact that at the most expensive hotels and with the most expensive food, you can only spend about $8,000 on a trip to those countries. So the other $10,000 went to prostitutes, drugs, and... what? Into his pocket?

Re:um

[Otter]

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

No it's not. "Fact-finding"junkets like this are perfectly routine. You may find that reassuring or you may find it cause for even more concern. (In any case, the story of a British MP taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from an Iraqi intelligence agency has gone almost unnoticed in the US.)

Meanwhile, I had a story rejected today that seems like it would be of interest: Boycott Hollywood had their domain revoked after legal threats from the William Morris Agency. They posted contact information for anti-war celebrities and their agents, incurring the wrath of a powerful firm.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear Susan Sarandon and Martin Sheen whining about being silenced.

Re:um

[abe ferlman]

It's not huge news because the junket was paid for - It's huge news because Sensenbrenner, the Chairman of the *House Judiciary Committee*, was actually *criticized* for it - and Rupert Murdoch's news empire took notice. It even ran on the front page of foxnews.com for a while.

Unfortunately, THAT is not at all routine, and should be front page news here.

Re:um

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

Already mentioned the prostitutes.

Just in case MIT gets slashdotted...

[baximus]

PlanetMirror has the UHH here.

Enjoy (yeah, second time i've posted this - the last time got deleted - thanks guys)

Re:Just in case MIT gets slashdotted...

[Doom Ihl' Varia]

MIT? Get Slashdotted? Pardon me while I die of laughter.
These guys have more bandwith than Jesus. Of course Jesus never owned a computer but if he did you could betcha he would have some pretty heavy fiber.

Re:Just in case MIT gets slashdotted...

[alouts]

Well, I'm not sure how much bandwidth they have, but as an aside, I do remember they have an insane amount of IP space.

In fact when I was there in the early 90's, the student paper kept making jokes about how even the lightsockets in the hallways had their own IP addresses. the entire 18.x.x.x space is (or at least *was* at the time) MIT, giving them over 16 million IP addresses to assign to students.

Microsoft propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

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

I note that since the original story was posted, a disclaimer has been put up at the site (no doubt in response to the humorless):

Due to being announced on Slashdot.org, the book has gotten a lot of fresh attention. I've added this page so that those downloading the book can be aware of some history before starting their read.

• This book is ten years old . I started work on it in 1992 (maybe even 1991) while I was a professor at Stanford. My co-editors took over after I started work at Microsoft. (So no, it's not a Microsoft conspiracy.) A lot has happened in the intervening decade.
• This book's target audience was people who themselves have noticed certain weaknesses in Unix at that time and could relate to our stories. Our goal was humor. Many readers have told us we succeeded in this. Even Eric Raymond liked it (his name is in the acknowledgements).
• The book is not meant to be balanced, it is a screed, pure and simple. Is it over the top? Yes.
• We wrote the contract with our publisher to have the copyright revert to us once the book went out of print. So yes, we have the right to publish it online. Feel free to mirror it where ever you want, print it out, and bind it.
• 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. (We were young and had a lot chutzpah then.) He read the Preface, and then sent back his essay. We thought it was great and tremendously funny, so we added it in (with permission). To this day, I don't know if he expected us to publish it.)
• If you enjoyed reading this book and felt it was worth the price of a least a movie and popcorn, send a $10 check to your favorite charity.

Affirmative action for a right

[Ozan]

I don't exactly know what the u.s. equivalent is, but in Germany there is something called negative Feststellungsklage which means that Suse could apply for a court order declaring that SCOs claims are false and prohibits them to repeat their allegations.

If SCO seeks to achieve a precedent by sueing Suse this might be the appropriate backfire.

Just a thought.

Re:Affirmative action for a right

[Cyberdyne]

I don't exactly know what the u.s. equivalent is, but in Germany there is something called negative Feststellungsklage which means that Suse could apply for a court order declaring that SCOs claims are false and prohibits them to repeat their allegations. If SCO seeks to achieve a precedent by sueing Suse this might be the appropriate backfire.

There's a similar mechanism in the US (nothing to do with "affirmative action", at least in the US sense): you can petition the court for a "Declaratory Judgement". Effectively, winning such a judgement in your favor would mean SCO had already lost the first court case - they'd have to start off by appealing an existing ruling in your favor, instead of starting a new case against you. Definition here.

Another mirror for everyone

[mrt300]

I grabbed the UHH from the MIT guy and threw it on a Purdue server. Download away.

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~anthontj/random/ugh.pdf

Saved all but one of four tax payers...

[yeoua]

So which of the 4 poor saps sued by the RIAA (and then settled) paid for the congressman's trip?

The XPde FAQ thought about everything...

[MoThugz]

including this personal favourite of mine:

I'm a avid reader of Slashdot, I'm a Linux guru, I'm a BOFH, I'm a geek, Why the hell would I want this f#@#ng software?

Sorry, but I think this is not the project for you. (well, at least geeks like any kind of tech, so if you want to look at the source code.. ;-)

Re:The XPde FAQ thought about everything...

[BigBlockMopar]

I'm a avid reader of Slashdot, I'm a Linux guru, I'm a BOFH, I'm a geek, Why the hell would I want this f#@#ng software?

Heh... Yeah, I liked that, too.

Actually, I think XPde goes a long way toward getting Linux ready for mass adoption on the desktops of the corporate world.

Microsoft has spent millions of dollars on focus groups to have ordinary Joes and Janes sit down and play with Windows, telling them what's good and bad, from a user's perspective.

The open source desktop metaphors don't have that resource - but Windows XP - ugly and inefficient as it may be to most Slashdot readers - does represent a lot of UI design experience.

XPde goes the right way to adopting and trying to learn from the expertise of Microsoft and Apple.

Having a Linux distro ship KDE with fluorescent pink menus and background wallpaper that looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old Run Lola Run fan from East Berlin does very little to encourage IT buyers that they can take the risk and leave Microsoft's comfortable if expensive and unreliable embrace.

XPde also works to try to migrate casual users who don't have very specific or great requirements. There's one in every office: the 66-year-old executive to whom Outlook *is* e-mail, and who gets confused when you present another program with exactly the same features and operations but different icons. Just as there's no way to explain to this user that the Send button still sends e-mail and have him confidently understand it, there's also no reason for that person to run Windows with its vulnerabilities to mailbox Klez and Nimbda attacks.

I can think of a few desktops which I'm going to migrate from XP to XPde.

And I won't tell them they're running Linux until they've been using it for a couple of weeks.

Boycott SCO?

[Omega Hacker]

Wow, that'll affect all of SCO's 3 customers...?

from the FAQ of XPde

[vivek7006]

Can this project be sued by Microsoft?

We don't know, we are not lawyers. But in any case, we are ready for that. We don't use any of Microsoft's registered trademarks, graphics, logos, or anything. This means someone could create a complete theme that mimics the Windows XP environment - where the dialogs are the same, the controls are positioned in the same places and with the same text.

Maybe that would be illegal, but *we* don't include *copyrighted* material. In the case Microsoft have ownership over (for example) a-dialog-that-shows-running-processes (i.e. TaskManager) and our dialog has the controls in the same positions as the Windows one, we are right now creating the translation system. This translation system will also allow "anyone" to position the controls of any dialog in any place. We can create a version with completely different dialogs (the same controls in different places) and *someone* could create a theme which modifies these controls to the Windows XP places.

But this is not our problem. Could Microsoft have copyrighted an environment like the taskbar concept? Could Microsoft have copyrighted the start menu concept? Could Microsoft have copyrighted the tray icon concept? Could Microsoft have copyrighted the desktop concept? In that case every desktop has a problem ;-)

The solution here is that we are not going to ship a complete Windows XP interface clone out-of-the-box, but it will be so easy to configure that *someone* could make it look *exactly* like the Windows XP interface. We won't provide this configuration.

oh

[labratuk]

At first I read that line

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

as

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

Telling thing is, it made perfect sense to me the first time I scanned it.

Unix Lover...

[philovivero]

I know Unix like I know the back of my hand. I love Unix like I love the palm of my hand.

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

[bobbozzo]

A carbine is a short rifle (barrel length under 20").

"assault rifle" is a general term some anti-gun activists and politicians and media have created.
In the People's Republic of California, it is (defined by law as) a semiautomatic centerfire rifle with any of the following characterics:
a pistol grip
a flash suppressor
magazines holding more than 10 rounds
folding or collapsible butt stock ...
See here or here for more exact PRC legal info.

PG favourite book

[r00zky]

Best PG book ever:
Square Root of 4 To A Million Places, The
A must read...

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

[Zirnike]

Just to be clear, until about 1990 or so, any dictionary and encyclopedia (as people have been missing the obvious lately, I feel the need to say 'that I was able to get my hands on to look at') defined assault rifle with the additional charactaristic 'Must be capable of burst fire and fully automatic fire'.

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

[JimmytheGeek]

the term was in use circa WWII to denote automatic weapons firing cartridges more powerful than pistol ammunition (used in submachine guns), but less powerful than a typical rifle bullet. The rationale is that most infantry combat took place at shorter range than what made a regular rifle necessary, and it's difficult to fire an automatic rifle using the more powerful cartridges.

Germany had a couple in WWII, the Russians had one too, I think. The U.S. went with the M14 (looks a lot like the M1, but has a detachable magazine and automatic fire) for a while, which was an automatic rifle by this definition. Then the M16.

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 ...