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Slashback: NIC, Dastar, Defects
Was it ahead of its time or vice versa? BreadMan writes "After limping along for years, the New Internet Computer (NIC) company finally went under. Founded by Larry Ellison, NIC sold a diskless workstation running Linux targeted at home users that wanted internet access. From the spec sheet it looks like this would be fun as a hacking platform if you can get one on the cheap."
Way to GNU! xarium writes "Seems that in response to pressure from the FSF OpenTV has released the source code to all of its compilers. You can download the full package here (~18meg)."
Because a hard drive should not be a rhythm section.
Dynamoo writes "As previously noted in Slashdot, Fujitsu MPG3xx series hard drives have been failing in huge numbers. The U.S. law firm, Shepherd Finkelman Miller & Shah is currently conducting a class action against Fujitsu and HP for knowingly distributing faulty drives. According the this article in The Register, Gateway has now been lined up as a defendant.
The fault appears to impact MPG3102AT, MPG3204AT, MPG3307AT and MPG3409AT units manufactured in early 2001. If you have one of these, then it has probably failed already, if not you should replace it asap. If you're a customer of HP/Compaq you can visit the HP Hard Disk Drive Replacement Program site.
We had about 40 of these things fitted to Compaq DeskPro EXDs, and I can assure you the failure rate is pushing 100%."
In the public domain, no one knows you're a dog.
smiff writes "United Press International reports on Dastar v. Twentieth Century Fox. Reversing lower court rulings, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Dastar did not violate the origin-of-work provision of the Lanham act. Dastar had taken public domain video, made some modifications, and sold it as its own product. Twentieth Century Fox sued claiming they should have been given credit for the video. According to Antonin Scalia, Dastar would have violated the Lanham Act if it had simply repacked the material and sold it as its own. But since Dastar made some minor changes, the Lanham Act doesn't apply.
While Dastar has been cleared under the Lanham Act, the Supreme Court sent the case back for a rehearing. The Fox video entered the public domain in 1977, but the book it was based on is still protected by copyright."
... or get off the pot. Brazilian Joe writes "The LinuxTag folks, as you may know, are responsible for a restraining order against SCO's claims in Germany. As a result, SCO has shut down its Germany web site. Story here."
R.I.P.N.I.C.
... thankfully, I have an IBM Death^H^H^H^H^HDeskStar :-/
purchased 8/02 dead 10/02
Well, SCO is still not out of cash... aparantly. So, for them to stop, they need to run out first. Since they have to pay for bandwidth... I guess using a little wouldn't hurt.
/dev/null them if you don't want to use disk space, but still want to download them...
z ip
So, got bandwidth? Mad at SCO? Want to learn more about their products and/or hear them talk? Last time they pulled the file when slashdot wanted to know how to administrate their Linux server. This time...
Download a 36.6mb ZIP from the SCO Authorized Eduaction Partner program from here
(for all you non-English speakers)
a 12.9mb Italian OpenLinux manual pdf from here
a 10mb Unixware administration pdf from here
a 7.9mb mp3 of a Caldera confrence call (May 2002) from here
a 4.2mb mp3 of a SCO confrence call from here
a 4.5mb vector image of the Caldera logo from here
OR
a 6.8mb SCO education Linux courseware pdf from here
***If you want to get these interesting files easier, you can also launch an unspecified number of wget processes. You can even -O
36.6mb: (removing the space in 'zip')
wget sco.com/images/pdf/education/SCO_AEP_posterfiles.
12.9mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/edesktop/edesktop_24_it.pdf
10mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/aep/UW7NET~1.PDF
7.9mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/06032002.mp3
4.2mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/q2.mp3
5.4mb:
wget http://www.sco.de/images/pdf/12-11-01.mp3
9mb:
wget sco.com/images/pdf/aep/OS5NET~1.PDF
4mb:
wget sco.de/images/pdf/unixware/946000000b.pdf
And, if you need their entire website for offline viewing... not wanting to waste bandwidth downloading things multiple times:
wget -r -l0 http://www.sco.com/
MPG3xx series hard drives have been failing in huge numbers.
"Pulling a..."
Nope, just doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Pulling a Deskstar."
The coolest voice ever.
After undertaking a comprehensive textual analysis of the provided link, I am able to confirm that, yes, the site is in German.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
Q:We are constantly losing PCs and PC parts to thieves. The NIC is physically smaller. Do they make a more attractive target for thieves?
A:You shouldn't be losing any. The NIC will not function as a standalone computer so if a machine is stolen, the thief will soon discover that there is no market for the machine.
Uhhhm, no market? Well to me it feels like they are dooming their own device right there and then from the start...
...did anyone else momentarily think they were talking about the mythical Daystar?
From the NIC Hardware FAQ page:
"...there is no market for the machine."
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
...only without the hassle of learning how to use a trojan...
You should always use protection.
Could someone set up a bittorrent for those?
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
ROFL! This is the biggest laugh I've had all week. See SCO's list of business partners. Suing your business partners and customers... RIP SCO.
You know, I've thought for a while now that if you could come up with a simple, sealed box that could browse the web, read email, play audio and video, keep track of appointments and todos, and maybe do simple spreadsheets, word processing, and sell it to first-time consumers, you'd make a fortune. Imagine a ~1Ghz CPU with onboard video and sound, a modem and NIC, and a couple of USB ports, nailed up tight like the original Macintosh. It's not upgradeable, and you can't play games on it, but that's okay, because it costs 500 bucks and your market doesn't care about games. They take it home, plug in the monitor and keyboard, turn it on and go. They can't really install anything, so they don't have to worry about viruses or spyware. It doesn't run Outlook or IE, so they're pretty safe online.
It wouldn't be for everyone, but my dad would want one, and so would a whole lot of other people who didn't ever want to hassle with their computer. If you think about it, this is the direction that handhelds and cell phones are going, but who really wants to use a 2 inch screen for that? If the price was low enough, and the design was cool enough, it could be a hit.
Of course, now I've mentioned it on Slashdot, so there goes another business opportunity. Oh well, back to thinking up cool new porn site themes.
What if life is just a side effect of some other process and God has no idea we exist?
Putin has been involved in a SCO Summit in Russia and France!! See the article. You have to search, but buried down in the third question to Putin, you see these words:
after the SCO summit and the series of major international meetings in St. Petersburg and Evian
What do you want to bet that the German court's attempt to shut down the SCO website was just a smokescreen to hide the fact that they are involved as well.
I bet you that Evian water is designed to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids!!!
Oracle8 - A Beginner's Guide by Abbey and Corey (1997) contains the following about NICs:
OT, but still amusing:
And finally, we have a section title that's about as far from the truth as you can get:
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
In the article found at news.com, McBride is quoted.
Sounds as if SCO got the corporate equivalent of a EULA.
The most interesting line from it:
Maybe the same way you buy software and not be allowed to sell it again?Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I was going to point out that that was probably the first time anybody had ever used 'minimal window manager' and 'enlightenment' in the same sentence. I was wrong, AltaVista (since Google doesn't support the 'near' keyword) says it's the second. Of course, the first time was the sentence "blackbox is a minimal window manager where enlightenment is a full featured window manager"...
There's a contract that comes with my Happy Meal?
I looked up the Happy Meal EULA on google and found: By opening this Happy Meal (tm), Grimace can come over and sleep with your sister whenever he wants.
Geez, Grimace. She's only 8.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle