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ESR to Shred SCO Claims?

webmaven writes "According to this article in eWEEK, ESR has released a utility called comparator for analyzing the similarity of source code trees. The technical details are interesting, in that ESR says he is using an implementation of a refined version of the 'shred' algorithm, with higher performance (on machines with enough RAM) than other versions. ESR won't say whether he intends the comparator to be used to compare older Unix code to Linux so as to be able to refute SCO's claims, but it's obviously well suited for such a purpose. Interestingly, as the shred algorithm can run reports on source trees using only the MD5 signature shreds (once generated), it is possible to use it to compare trees without direct access to the source code itself, leading to a possible use in comparing various proprietary source trees with each other and with Freely available code bases such as Linux and *BSD without requiring actual disclosure of the proprietary source code (a neutral third party could generate the shreds on a company's premises, and leave without taking a copy of the source with them). I'll be interested to see if (or which of) the proprietary vendors allow their source trees to be 'shredded' for such comparisons, and whether this becomes a standard forensic technique in source-code copyright and trade-secret disputes."

16 of 554 comments (clear)

  1. Let us lobeth a grenade at SCO and be done. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I think he is just going to replace the 'offending' code with a big ASCII middle finger. I thought there was something fishy about all of this. I've got it figured out. And we certainly don't want to mash the SCO executives into a bloody pulp, either. You wouldn't want that to happen, would you?

    This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.

    1. Re:Let us lobeth a grenade at SCO and be done. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      The penis: mightier than the sword!

  2. This Is The Same Idiotic Grandstander wrote this! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly rich.

    I was at my machine, hacking, when I got email congratulating me on the success of the VA Linux Systems IPO. I was working on my latest small project -- a compiler for a special-purpose language I've designed called Scriptable Network Graphics, or SNG. SNG is an editable representation of the chunk data in a PNG. What I'm writing is a compiler/decompiler pair, so you can dump PNGs in SNG, edit the SNG, then recompile to a PNG image.

    "Congratulations? That's interesting," said I to myself. "I didn't think we were going out till tomorrow." And I oughtta know; I'm on VA's Board of Directors, recruited by Larry Augustin himself to be VA's official corporate conscience, and it's a matter of public record that I hold a substantial share in the company. I tooled on over to Linux Today, chased a link -- and discovered that Larry Augustin had taken the fast option we discussed during the last Board conference call. VA had indeed gone out on NASDAQ -- and I had become worth approximately forty-one million dollars while I wasn't looking.

    Well, that didn't last long. In the next two hours, VA dropped from $274 a share to close at $239, leaving me with a stake of only thirty-six million dollars. Which is still a preposterously large amount of money.

    You may wonder why I am talking about this in public. The first piece of advice your friends and family will give you, if it looks like you're about to become really wealthy, is: keep it quiet. It's nobody else's business -- you don't want to look like you're gloating, and you don't want to be deluged with an endless succession of charity appeals, business propositions, long-lost best friends, and plain bald-faced mooching.

    Trouble with the "keep it quiet" theory is that I've made my bucks in a very public way. When you're already a media figure, and your name is on the S-1 of a hot IPO, and email from friends and journalists starts coming in like crazy as the stock breaks first-day-gainplaying it coy swiftly ceases to look like a viable option.

    Besides, it wouldn't be fair to dissemble. I serve a community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread the idea of open source on behalf of that community helped galvanize the business world, and earned the respect and the trust of a lot of hackers. Larry thought that respect was an asset worth shelling out 150,000 shares of VA for. Fairness to the hackers who made me bankable demands that I publicly acknowledge this result -- and publicly face the question of how it's going to affect my life and what I'll do with the money.

    This is a question that a lot of us will be facing as open source sweeps the technology landscape. Money follows where value leads, and the mainstream business and finance world is seeing increasing value in our tribe of scruffy hackers. Red Hat and VA have created a precedent now, with their directed-shares programs designed to reward as many individual contributors as they can identify; future players aiming for community backing and a seat at the high table will have to follow suit. In this and other ways (including, for example, task markets) the wealth is going to be shared.

    So while there aren't likely to be a lot more multimillion-dollar bonanzas like mine, lots of hackers are going to have to evolve answers to this question for smaller amounts that will nevertheless make a big difference to individuals; tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, enough to change your life -- or wreck it.

    (Gee. Remember when the big question was "How do we make money at this?")

    The first part of my answer is "I'll do nothing, until next June". Because I'm a VA board member, under SEC regulations there's a six-month lockout on the shares (a regulation designed to keep people from floating bogus offerings, cashing out, and skipping to Argentina before the share price crashes). So it's not strictly true that I'm wealthy right now. I will be wealthy in six months, unless VA or th

  3. Re:In Soviet Russia... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    source code shreds ESR!

    Too complex. It really works better as, "IN SOVIET RUSSIA, Source Code Shreds YOU!"

    Actually, if you read the title too quickly, it looks like "ISR to Shred SCO Claims?" Of course, the answer to that question is, "ISR, SCO Claims Shred YOU!"

  4. In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
  5. ESR: Surprised by cock! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    A few hours ago, I learned that I am now (at least in theory) absurdly gay.

    I was at my machine, my 386 with 4 megs of RAM running Linux, masturbating to pictures of RMS, when I got an email congratulating me on the success of Slashdot. I was working on my latest small project-- a clever little text parser that takes input from the user and puts it in a little cartoon-style word balloon coming out of-- get this!-- a giant, erect ASCII penis's bulging head! Hahaha! It's called COCKSAY. You can download it here.

    "Congratulations? That's interesting," said I to myself. "I didn't think Slashdot was coming out until tomorrow." And I oughtta know; I'm on VA's Board of Directors, recruited by Larry Augustin himself, to be VA Linux's "corporate conscience," and it's public record that I hold a substantial share in the company's semen pool. I tooled on over to Linux Today, chased a link like it was a naked hippy's ass-- and discovered that Rob Malda had taken the fast action we had discussed at the last board meeting. Slashdot had come out first thing that morning with a headline on its own site-- and I had become the figurehead of the Gay Faggot Slashdot Empire while I wasn't looking.

    Well, that didn't last long. In the next two hours, 369 VA employees also disclosed that they had AIDS, leaving me with a bit of the proverbial semen on my face.

    You may wonder why I am talking about this in public. The first piece of advice your friends will give you, if it looks like you're about to come out of the closet, is: keep quiet! It's really nobody else's business-- you don't want to look like you're lusting for cock, though you may want to be deluged by an endless succession of men dressed up as Navy sailors demanding blowjobs from you; fat, hairy men (the bears) wanting to fuck you in the ass; and sweet, young, hairless boys offering you the beauty of their youth.

    Trouble with the "keep it quiet" theory is that I've always solicited gay male faggot sex in a very public way. When you're already a media figure, like myself, and your name is on the Faggot Manifesto your whole organization chose to use to come out, and email from friends and journalists starts coming in like crazy as the gayness of your empire breaks records even on the first day, playing it coy swiftly ceases to look like a viable option.

    But it wouldn't be fair to dissemble. I serve the gay community. I'm wealthy today because my efforts to spread faggotry and venereal diseases on behalf of that community helped infiltrate the business world and earned the trust of a lot of young, naive boys. Fairness to the twinks

    1. Re:ESR: Surprised by cock! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      You're quite the comedian Mr. Gates, or is this Mr. McBride? You silly scamp!

  6. fire the "laser" by La+Temperanza · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I can't decide which is funnier - the point about IBM orchestrating all the outrage, or the point that SCO is somehow more "relevant" to the tech community because they've filed a bunch of press releases! SCO has committed the most vile of sin. Ok, I'll stop now.

    This Comment was generated with the Comment-O-Matic for SCO Stories.

    --

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    est modus in rebus
  7. Re:In Soviet Russia... by CERDIP · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It's not as funny when you have to explain it...

    --
    ---- ---- --- -- --- ------ Keep Cool But Do Not Freeze
  8. Slashdot to present all headlines as questions? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    just wondering....

  9. ANNOUNCEMENT! GNOME 2.4 IS A PIECE OF SHIT! by anonymous+coword · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    I am sorry to announce this, but the eagerly awaited gnome 2.4 is a piece of SHIT! Please either stick to Gnome 2.2 or use the new KDE 3.2 alpha!.

    Here is why GNOME 2.4 is shit!

    • Still has that shitty file dialog!
    • File roller has removed the extract here option from the right click menu, now you have go through about 5 menus just to extract a file
    • Metashitty still dosen't support button reordering
    • Nautilus still dosen't have split pane support!
    • The new panel architecture sucks! Its harder to use and configure
    • Epiphany, which was once going to be a lean browsing machine, has been turned into an AOL clone! Its a shameful 1.0 release, and they removed Bookmark folders, now all your bookmarks will be cluttred
    • Still no colour scheme changer
    • Wanda the fish stil looks gay
    • Totem still crashes on avi files
    • The documentation is still half assed
    • The anti feature nazis have taken over 100 features away from Gnome since 2.2, I can't list them all, figure it out for yourself
    • bonobo-slay still owns your dialogs
    • The smelly foot is still there, with NO WAY TO change it, since the feature police took it away.


    Please boycott gnome until they put the features back, A REALLY PISSED GNOME USER! WHEN KDE 3.2 ALPHA COMES OUT I'M SWITCHING! WILL YOU?
  10. Re:Could Linux users BE any gayer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    You sir are 100% correct! Mod parent up!

  11. Re:Could Linux users BE any gayer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    yessthhh thirrr!

  12. Here is the real message from Allah Oh' Brother by Teahouse · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Terrorists Suprised to Find Themselves In Hell
    From: The Onion . com

    JAHANNEM, OUTER DARKNESS--The hijackers who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon expressed confusion and surprise Monday to find themselves in the lowest plane of Na'ar, Islam's Hell.

    Above: Mohammed Atta (top) and Ahmed al-Haznawi.
    "I was promised I would spend eternity in Paradise, being fed honeyed cakes by 67 virgins in a tree-lined garden, if only I would fly the airplane into one of the Twin Towers," said Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11, between attempts to vomit up the wasps, hornets, and live coals infesting his stomach. "But instead, I am fed the boiling feces of traitors by malicious, laughing Ifrit. Is this to be my reward for destroying the enemies of my faith?"

    The rest of Atta's words turned to raw-throated shrieks, as a tusked, asp-tongued demon burst his eyeballs and drank the fluid that ran down his face.

    According to Hell sources, the 19 eternally damned terrorists have struggled to understand why they have been subjected to soul-withering, infernal torture ever since their Sept. 11 arrival.

    "There was a tumultuous conflagration of burning steel and fuel at our gates, and from it stepped forth these hijackers, the blessed name of the Lord already turning to molten brass on their accursed lips," said Iblis The Thrice-Damned, the cacodemon charged with conscripting new arrivals into the ranks of the forgotten. "Indeed, I do not know what they were expecting, but they certainly didn't seem prepared to be skewered from eye socket to bunghole and then placed on a spit so that their flesh could be roasted by the searing gale of flatus which issues forth from the haunches of Asmoday."

    "Which is strange when you consider the evil with which they ended their lives and those of so many others," added Iblis, absentmindedly twisting the limbs of hijacker Abdul Aziz Alomari into unspeakably obscene shapes.

    "I was told that these Americans were enemies of the one true religion, and that Heaven would be my reward for my noble sacrifice," said Alomari, moments before his jaw was sheared away by faceless homunculi. "But now I am forced to suckle from the 16 poisoned leathern teats of Gophahmet, Whore of Betrayal, until I burst from an unwholesome engorgement of curdled bile. This must be some sort of terrible mistake."

    Exacerbating the terrorists' tortures, which include being hollowed out and used as prophylactics by thorn-cocked Gulbuth The Rampant, is the fact that they will be forced to endure such suffering in sight of the Paradise they were expecting.

    "It might actually be the most painful thing we can do, to show these murderers the untold pleasures that would have awaited them in Paradise, if only they had lived pious lives," said Praxitas, Duke of Those Willingly Led Astray. "I mean, it's tough enough being forced through a wire screen by the callused palms of Halcorym and then having your entrails wound onto a stick and fed to the toothless, foul-breathed swine of Gehenna. But to endure that while watching the righteous drink from a river of wine? That can't be fun."

    Underworld officials said they have not yet decided on a permanent punishment for the terrorists.

    "Eventually, we'll settle on an eternal and unending task for them," said Lord Androalphus, High Praetor of Excruciations. "But for now, everyone down here wants a crack at them. The legions of fang-wombed hags will take their pleasure on their shattered carcasses for most of this afternoon. Tomorrow, their flesh will be melted from their bones like wax in the burning embrace of the Mother of Cowards. The day after that, they'll be sodomized by the Fallen and their bowels shredded by a demonic ejaculate of burning sand. Then, on Sunday, Satan gets them all day. I can't even imagine what he's got cooked up for them."

    --
    "Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
  13. Circumcised penises are GROSS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    They look like skinned rats. The circumcision scar makes me want to puke. They are dry, seemingly unfeeling, and hurt after long periods of fucking. They look disgusting, I would never have sex with a guy who has a circumcised penis.

    Unfortunatly there are too few uncircumcised men in the USA. Good thing there are guys like Alan Cox who is uncut. His penis is beautiful. I love tugging on his long foreskin with my lips.

    Sincerely,

    --Linux Chick

  14. Speaking of shared source.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic