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Caldera vs. Microsoft Court Documents To Be Shredded

Geste writes "As now being reported in this brief story and on my local (Seattle) NPR affiliate, 3 million court documents from Caldera's unfair competition suit against Microsoft are to be shredded in Utah. The timing relative to Microsoft's recent licensing of SCO Unix IP is undoubtedly a complete coincidence. "

51 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. The AARD code story is immortal. by vegetablespork · · Score: 5, Informative

    And available here.

    --

    Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.

    1. Re:The AARD code story is immortal. by Red+Pointy+Tail · · Score: 2, Funny
      However, the WIN.COM code that produced this message turned out to be XOR encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated--all in an apparent attempt to thwart disassembly. The code also tries to defeat attempts for a debugger to step through it.


      What... they decrypted and unobfuscated it??? Sic em, DMCA! :>
  2. Toilet paper... by ryants · · Score: 5, Funny
    The company that is storing the reams of documents from the Microsoft case has been hired to shred the papers -- then they'll be made into toilet paper.
    This joke practically writes itself.
    --

    Ryan T. Sammartino
    "Ancora imparo"

    1. Re:Toilet paper... by jared_hanson · · Score: 5, Funny

      In related new, Microsoft has just announced that they are resuming the iLoo project.

      --
      -- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
    2. Re:Toilet paper... by loquitus · · Score: 4, Funny

      Is this paper going to be proprietary, only for use in MS-created iLoo toilets? How will they ensure compliance and introduce incompability for those of us who try to use "non-standard" products?

    3. Re:Toilet paper... by toxcspdrmn · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hi! I'm the Orifice Assistant.

      You appear to be trying to wipe your bum...

      --
      "E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
    4. Re:Toilet paper... by darkov · · Score: 4, Funny

      Hi! I'm the Orifice Assistant.

      Please, no more shitty Microsoft software.

    5. Re:Toilet paper... by sdamberger · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Like wiping your ass with silk...

    6. Re:Toilet paper... by unitron · · Score: 4, Funny

      You have to admit that the iLoo gives a whole new meaning to "Where do you want to go today".

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

    7. Re:Toilet paper... by yawble · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hi, I'm just some asshole, and I'd like this to get modded up to a +5 just to continue this amazing trend.

    8. Re:Toilet paper... by cgenman · · Score: 2, Funny

      Please, no more shitty Microsoft software.

      You can try Open Loo, but there are privacy concerns.

    9. Re:Toilet paper... by TCaptain · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well with OpenLoo you have to share with the world the results of your work, but if you use the iLoo, the details of what your doing get transmitted back to Microsoft for "debugging" purposes

      --
      "I'm not a procrastinator, I'm temporally challenged"
  3. How ironic... by VCAGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Most of it is then made into toilet paper.

    How ironic indeed...any word on which manufacturer will get the pulp (I want to get me some of that!)

    --
    Q: "Why do sound techs say 'check 1, 2'?"
    A: "Cause if they could count any higher they'd be lighting techs."
    1. Re:How ironic... by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why? Do you really want that stuff up your ass? Don't MS products already cause enough pain in that region as it is?

    2. Re:How ironic... by molarmass192 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Get to slam MS ***and*** SCO in one wipe!!!

      --

      Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
  4. Why... by Xeth · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...Is it even legal to destroy cour documents? To save space? Couldn't they digitize them? This just seems like a way to hide information, and information like this could hardly have a good reason to be hidden.

    --
    If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
    1. Re:Why... by jdray · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In the case of civil suits, I suspect that only judgements and relevant information (in summary) is kept, because, in civil suits, once the judgement happens, it rarely matters later why it happened.

      In the case of suits that are being dropped, no court would care.

      --
      The Spoon
      Updated 6/28/2011
    2. Re:Why... by ShmuelP · · Score: 4, Informative

      According to the article, they are being scanned in, and are only being destroyed one digitized.

      --
      Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out
    3. Re:Why... by Kircle · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not quite. I think Sun is scanning 40 boxes of documents. The other boxes along with those 40 are to be destroyed.

      --

      -- Kircle

    4. Re:Why... by Purple+Library+Guy · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Paper documents can be altered too. They call them "forgeries", like the one about Iraq buying uranium from Africa. Arguably, the legal system hasn't caught up to centuruies-old technology . . .

  5. Now I'll wonder... by jdray · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now I'll wonder, every time I use the john, if this piece of paper once made Microsoft embrace Unix...

    (okay, so I'm stretching things just a little)

    --
    The Spoon
    Updated 6/28/2011
    1. Re:Now I'll wonder... by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Funny
      Now I'll wonder, every time I use the john, if this piece of paper once made Microsoft embrace Unix...

      (okay, so I'm stretching things just a little)

      Don't wipe so hard.

  6. Ollie North by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 4, Funny

    And just this morning I was asking myself, what's Fawn Hall up to these days?

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  7. Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    it should make for a more comfortable wiping experience than the Windows 95 cd I currently use. Not as satisfying though.

  8. I'm in Utah, and I won't use it by dragoncortez · · Score: 4, Funny

    How will I know if I'm buying microsoft toilet-paper? I'll just feel it in my bones. This is why I've been reading /. for so long, so that I can just feel that sort of thing. Also, if I have to sign a EULA or something before using it, I'll know.
    Plus, I'm just going to use the single-ply sheets that look like normal paper- not the double-ply, flowery, squishy toilet-paper that I'm sure will have come from microsoft. Just something to get the job done, and something that won't break. That's what I need.

    --
    Making stupid comments so you don't have to.
    1. Re:I'm in Utah, and I won't use it by realdpk · · Score: 3, Funny

      Hint: If you feel toilet paper in your bones, you're wiping too hard!

  9. Quite a sight... by unicron · · Score: 4, Funny

    It is scheduled to be the single most interesting thing that has EVER happened in Utah.

    --
    Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
    1. Re:Quite a sight... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      What about the Sundance Film Festival and the Salt Lake City olympics? Lots goes on in Utah besides getting married and having kids when you're 14.

  10. Re:Toilet paper...supply for the ILOO by pauls2272 · · Score: 2, Funny

    "...they'll be made into toilet paper"

    For use in the new ILOO.

  11. Re:Who's doing the shredding? by vivekb · · Score: 4, Informative
    That suit was settled in January 2000, and Caldera -- now The SCO Group -- was paying up to $1,500 a month to store the documents. In October, the company persuaded U.S. District Judge Dee Benson to order their destruction.


    I gather from that bit of the article that Caldera, now the SCO Group, has ordered the shredding to reduce expenses by $1500 per month.
  12. Why don't you actually read the article? by spacefrog · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article doesn't say, who ordered the shredding?

    • Geeez, did you or any of the people modding you up to 5 even read the article?

      Oh wait, this is Slashdot, never mind. Oh well, I'm sure you will read it the next four times this story gets repeated.

      And I quote the article:

      • Caldera -- now The SCO Group -- was paying up to $1,500 a month to store the documents. In October, the company persuaded U.S. District Judge Dee Benson to order their destruction.
  13. Re:Who's doing the shredding? by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If $1500 per month is killing SCO, they're in worse shape than I thought.

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  14. Literacy by siskbc · · Score: 4, Informative
    The article doesn't say, who ordered the shredding?

    Yes it did. Shredding was requested of the judge in the Caldera/M$ case by SCO in October. Judge agreed. SCO contracted the schredding by some shredding company. Sun got an injunction to stop the shredding, got 40 boxes of documents, scanned them, returned them, and the rest is now being shredded.

    You got anything else you need read, you just let me know.

    --

    -Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

  15. Has anyone bothered to read the article yet? by MmmmAqua · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because I just did, and a few things just leap right off the page:

    1)In October, the company persuaded U.S. District Judge Dee Benson to order their destruction.

    Because, as we all know, in October Microsoft and SCO were already in collusion to cause this big ruckus. Or maybe SCO was just tired of shelling out the cash to store the documents related to a long-finished case, and was trying to save a little money.

    2) However, just as the shredding was to begin, Sun Microsystem's attorneys halted it with a subpoena. The company, seeking evidence that might help in its own antitrust suit against Microsoft, eventually pulled out 40 boxes of the computer giant's secret internal communications for digital imaging.

    That's funny, by reading the /. post, it somehow seemed that I should find a picture in the article showing Darl McBride feeding reams of paper, all entitled "Damning Internal Documents of Antitrust Violations", into an industrial-strength shredder while Bill Gates, dressed in a Halloween Satan costume, danced in glee in the background. Funny how /. doesn't mention that some of the documents are being preserved.

    3)Meantime, the shredding and pulping of the remaining records has been under way for about two weeks.

    So, if /. thinks this is somehow important or damning to Microsoft or SCO, why wasn't this mentioned two weeks ago? Or in October, when SCO obtained permission to shred the documents?

    Look, guys, I'm all for the downfall of Microsoft and the phoenix rise of Linux (and OS X, but hey, I'm weird), but couldn't we try for maybe just a teensy bit of objectivity?

    ::adjusts asbestos underwear::
    Okay, flame away.

    --
    Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
  16. SCO lifting code from Linux? by bstadil · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Only marginally on topic but earlier today there was a Wifi story referencing Kernel Traffic. As I read it I saw the comment below:

    If someone have a copy of the SCO source code maybe make a Torrent file, so we can start analysing if they indeed stole something. A few nuggets will go a long way to quash the FUD from SCO. Anyone know where old SCO bug reports can be gooten?

    Quote:

    6. Possible License Violations Within The Kernel Source

    Elsewhere, Christoph Hellwig replied to the original post as well, saying:

    As somone who walked for SCO (or rather Caldera how it was called at that time) I can tell you this is utter crap. There were very people actually doing Linux kernel work then (and when the German office was closed down all those left the company) and we really had better things to do then trying to retrofit UnixWare code into the linux kenrel. Especially given that 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 :)

    It might be more interesting to look for stolen Linux code in Unixware, I'd suggest with the support for a very well known Linux fileystem in the Linux compat addon product for UnixWare..

    Jim Nance said, "Wouldnt it be halirous if whatever code SCO is talking about when they say there is Unix code in Linux turns out to be code some SCO employee ripped out of some GPL program and stuck it into Unixware. That is actually far more likely than what they alledge."

    --
    Help fight continental drift.
  17. Where's the Dupe? by Guppy06 · · Score: 3, Funny

    CmdrTaco posting an article first just doesn't feel right...

  18. try READING the article by dh003i · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Because most of the mindless masses can't be bothered to actually RTFA, I'll quote relevant excerpts:
    The 937 boxes of court-ordered documents
    .
    .
    .
    Sun Microsystem...seeking evidence that might help in its own antitrust suit against Microsoft, eventually pulled out 40 boxes of the computer giant's secret internal communications for digital imaging.
    In other words, not all of the legal documents are being destroyed. Most of those 937 pages of documents may just be legal thickness, with little relevant information...obviously, Sun thought so, as they only scanned in 40 of 937 boxes of documents.

    Irrelevant of the fact that SCO and MS are a bunch of lying cheating fucks, it's unreasonable to ask anyone to spend thousands of dollars to continue storing documents that are useless to them.

    You have a problem with these documents being destroyed? Get a court order to stop it, and scan in anything that you think is important. IBM may very well have cause to do so, as may the OSI. Undoubtely, the timing is obviously suspicious, but I doubt there's anything of particular value in the 897 remaining boxes of legal documents. If there is, then those interested in it should pay for the storage of the documents, not a corporation which has absolutely no use for them.

    1. Re:try READING the article by dcmeserve · · Score: 3, Funny

      > The 937 boxes of court-ordered documents
      > .

      Ok everyone, sing along:

      937 boxes of court-ordered documents on the wall,
      937 boxes of court-ordered documents!

      Take one down, shred it around,

      936 boxes of court-ordered documents on the wall!

      936 boxes of court-ordered documents on the wall,
      936 boxes of court-ordered documents!

      Take one down, ***AGGGMMMPHHPHHH*** [wad of toilet paper shoved in mouth]

      --
      "Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
  19. Great... toilet paper... with an EULA by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Funny
    This paper is licensed for use on one arse.... come on help me out /.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  20. Re:Ironic. by pokka · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why is this modded +5? All you have to do is search for "murberry slocomb" on google and you'll get: "Your search - "Murberry Slocomb" - did not match any documents. " As a matter of fact, just search for any page with the two words "murberry" and "slocomb" and you'll still find 0 hits. According to switchboard.com, there is not a single business in the US with "murberry" in its name, and only one (listed) person in the US has a last name of Murberry. None of your links tie your statements together. You link to a generic page which shows SEC filings for VA, but nothing on that page ties it to "Murberry". You link to the board of directors for VA, but again, you don't link them in any way to "Murberry". And why didn't you provide a link to any page which links OSDN to "Murberry?" You claim that you found these links using lexis-nexis because you know that most people don't have a (very expensive) subscription to that database. Nice try. Anyone with an educational/legal subscription to lexis-nexis: Please do a quick search and refute this guy's claim completely.

  21. Re:when did scanned docs become accepted in courts by !Squalus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Scanned documents have been an accepted legal practice since at least the Pennzoil/Texaco lawsuit days. Pennzoil won a few Billion dollars from Texaco and went on a scanning spree and wasted few million when the market was just getting Windows for Workgroups (Yech - 3.11).

    The requirement is that the scan documents have to be written to WORM (Write Once Read Many) media. At the time we were using 5GB optical platters (pretty advanced in its day).

    I will never forget the MIS director Barbara saying that we should just "delete" the documents from the WORM platters so that we could use that room for other information.

    Seems that the concept of WORM was unknown to her. She didn't support macros either, thought everything should be hand-coded, even when it was boring and repititious. I used to write macros back then to massage the DB and would have them running on 5 or 6 PCs at once. Drove the suits crazy. They thought I wasn't doing anything (until they looked at the machines working - then they looked like deer caught in the headlights - didn't quite know what to do).

    This was back in 1988 or 89, so the concept isn't new - and has been around for a very longe time. Before that it was a little thing called Microfiche - film on tapes, often stored in little cassette like rolls. Of course, that just shows my age. ;)

    --
    All Ad hominem replies happily ignored as the sender shall be deemed to lack the faculties to comprehend the equation.
  22. OSI's rebuttal to SCO's claim by defile · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...says that there may be some useful information in the sealed documents in the court battle between Caledera/SCO and Microsoft.

    It's interesting that this airs today.

  23. Re:Ironic. by tmalone · · Score: 5, Informative

    I just did a rather (I'm sorry to say) extensive search of Lexis Nexis, and nothing came up. I looked through the regular news (nothing relevent came up) and business news. I also checked the Lexis-Nexis company listings, which also showed no results for "mulberry slocomb". You can tell it is a hoax just by reading the post though. It looks very similar to many other expose posts that have appeared on slashdot. I'm just pissed that I can't get myself to do some quick research on my final papers, but of course, I'll do some research on a fictional company that some guy on slashdot made references to. Oh well.

  24. Potty Humor.... by Tsali · · Score: 3, Funny

    Most of it is then made into toilet paper ... so does the EULA fit on one-ply or two-ply? Do you have to break the seal by peeling the sheets apart?

    --
    This space for rent.
  25. Before you get out of sorts... by rdean400 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The documents have been imaged for permanent storage, so the destruction of the paper records is not a big thing.

  26. Andrew is a shill. by twitter · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Qouth the nonsense you linked too:

    I've often had to publicly defend Microsoft against what I felt were acts of scapegoating from whining competitors (including Novell, Borland, Lotus, and Wordperfect), complaints which remind me of the way some Americans like to blame Japan for what are ultimately our own domestic problems.

    Funny how the US Government later decided that M$ did indeed engage is such practices. Andy and DDJ should be ashamed of that article.

    Let's see how the US government saw things. The jucky bits about DRDOS have been dug up by others. Have a look at M$ email for yourself. It was orchestrated from the start to crush an admitedly superior technology, included abouse of Microsoft's own custormers and malicious PR. Anyone who says differently has been proven a fool.

    The destruction of court records is evil because it burries evidence of wrongdoing by a convicted monopolist that has yet to be punished and is proceeding as if nothing at all had happened. These letters may be published elsewhere, but they need to be preserved in context if an objective history is to be written. There's no telling what goodies the Caldera folks dug up before they became M$'s next shill. Evidence of Microsoft's concerted effort to eliminate free software is going to be lost.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

    1. Re:Andrew is a shill. by mdielmann · · Score: 2, Informative

      I disagree. Sure, he says: Whether in spite or because of the books Undocumented DOS and Undocumented Windows, I've often had to publicly defend Microsoft against what I felt were acts of scapegoating from whining competitors (including Novell, Borland, Lotus, and Wordperfect), complaints which remind me of the way some Americans like to blame Japan for what are ultimately our own domestic problems.

      But, he also makes that statement in a section of the article named "Maybe It's a Bug?" (good grief! It's the first paragraph in the section!) and then he goes on to say this: In fact, much of Microsoft's practice, far from targeting competitor's applications, points in the opposite direction: Microsoft sometimes goes to extremes to maintain compatibility, even with competitor's mistakes (see, for example, the crazy GetAppCompatFlags() function discussed in Chapter 5 of Undocumented Windows).

      *sarcasm*Personally, I find this shocking. Company A has a bug that makes their code incompatible, but they blame Company B.*/sarcasm* That's almost as old as the "It's the hardware." "No, it's the software." game. Besides, are you going on the record as saying that Novell has never had bugs in their products? Good luck.

      The way I see it, he has nothing good to say about what MS was doing in that article, but he doesn't condone attacking MS every time something goes wrong. It also has no relevance with your comments, or the article you linked to - it's quite clear that they are in the wrong there...

      --
      Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
  27. take the lens cover off your mind, please. by twitter · · Score: 2, Insightful
    In other words, not all of the legal documents are being destroyed. Most of those 937 pages of documents may just be legal thickness, with little relevant information...obviously, Sun thought so, as they only scanned in 40 of 937 boxes of documents.

    You expect Sun to fight for free software? Nope, they only care about java and other Sun stuff.

    Irrelevant of the fact that SCO and MS are a bunch of lying cheating fucks, it's unreasonable to ask anyone to spend thousands of dollars to continue storing documents that are useless to them.

    SCO did not think $1,500/month was an unreasonable price between the 2000 settlement and six months ago. All this shows is that SCO changed their business model in October of 2002. That must be the date that they gave up fighting M$ and being a software compnay once and for all. This silly Linux suit came shortly thereafter.

    Important evidence of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior and longstanding hatred of free software is going to be destroyed. I imagine that the EU, which is also investigating M$ anti-trust, will not be amused and it's just one more reason to get away from M$ junk. They have to burn these records because they are lying to you.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

  28. Send them here. by uberdave · · Score: 3, Funny

    They can store them at my house for a mere $500 a month.

  29. Okay, here's a better solution by MickLinux · · Score: 2, Funny

    Just auction it off on ebay.

    "937 boxes of documents from the SCO vs. Microsoft case; you must register this with the appropriate judge, and may not destroy it, but you can have your own little piece of Microsoft dirt! This lot contains boxes #237-244. A digitized list of the contents of each box is as follows:..."

    --
    Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
  30. So are they in it together? by johannesg · · Score: 3, Interesting
    People here thought it was a bit farfetched when I theorized that Microsoft could be behind SCO's lawsuit against IBM. What do you think now, guys? Are they in bed together? So far we have:

    - SCO attacks Linux.

    - Microsoft supports SCO by paying them a lot of money for their patents, at the same time validating SCO's lawsuit.

    - SCO destroys evidence that Microsoft is a monopolist.