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The Voice of Groklaw
Random BedHead Ed writes "LinuxPlanet has an interesting interview with Pamela Jones, the paralegal and blogger who created Groklaw. Groklaw has become an indespensible site for geeks who need even more SCO updates than even /. provides - and if the site's inclusion in the footnotes of one of IBM's court documents is any indication, it's been handy for people involved in the case as well. No wonder the site won Best News Site in O'Reilly's OSDir.com Editor's Choice Awards for 2003. It shows how useful and influental a well-run collaborative website can be."
It shows how useful and influental a well-run collaborative website can be.
Yes, unlike Slashdot.
That's one way to get revenge for /. not being chosen news site of 2003!
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Slashdot has a crush on Groklaw. Cowboy Neal, Pamela Jones, it could work.
If I got agitated every time about this like you do then, well, I wouldn't posting this message. (Unless someone writes an astral interconnect module for Perl.)
Someone making ridiculous claims and wanting a huge heaps of money isn't actually news. Much more people do this for a living than you might guess.
Over 90 years and counting !
I like the artistic touch in the top right... it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...
/. should get a new layout (or a choice of layouts)...
Isn't anybody else, even slightly, interest in just exactly what P.J. looks like?
Do they have anything on that frivolous lawsuit where someone spilled hot coffee on their own lap and sued McDonald's over it? If outrages like this can happen, no wonder the tech world is also full of utterly frivolous lawsuits.
I suspect that the site's relevance and appeal will dim considerably when the court starts handing down some harsh rulings in SCO's favor as its discovered that IBM engineers improperly released code into the Linux development stream.
The only way such rulings can happen is if the judges are corrupt, since the facts are not on SCO's side. Groklaw will become more and more relevant once judges step outside the line and harass people like this.
Groklaw is the best thing, so far, to come out of the case.
There is an ever increasing need for common ground between the legal and geek communities, and Groklaw appears to be it. Neither techs or lawyers understand each other's worlds, this goes a long way, to bridging the gap.
A hearty "atta boy" to Pam, and a nomination for whatever annual award there is on the web.
I don't buy it. The author of Grok Law is a paralegal, not a real laywer.
Which is her strength, she does research for a living. Many of the people who post on Groklaw are people who have worked on Linux for years. They know where the bodies are buried. If there was a smoking gun we would have seen it long ago. She runs a professional, well thought out site. She will be arround for a long time after Darl and Co. bite the dust.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
Do more reasearch before you start trolling
I did. You did not. You must be trolling.
Mickey D's was serving coffee within 10 degrees F of the temperature at which meat packing plants boil the skin off pigs.
Looks like you have partially researched pigs, but not coffee. The coffee temperature was well short of the boiling point.
McDonalds was doing this for the express purpose of saving a few bucks a week on coffee
No, they were doing it because the customers preferred nice hot coffee. When they were forced to lower the temperature, it is a fact that "cold coffee" complaints soared.
Further, the woman in question required multiple skin grafts and was hospitalized for ten days
Thanks to her OWN ACTION of pouring coffee in her crotch. The coffee was perfectly safe: they sold billions and billions of cups, Mr. Sagan, and had only 700 burn incidents. That's something to think about.
Trial evidence demonstrated that most fast food places did NOT serve coffee that hot
so? Look at the facts. No one had a problem unless they did something stupid with it.
The damages awarded by the jury were ONE DAYS' profits
The damages awared were outrageous, as McDonald's did nothing wrong. Even one cent is excessive.
Now, knowing the facts, flame away.
i knew the facts coming into this. She spilled the coffee, McDonald's did not.
Maybe because I realize that I'm a disenfranchised geek, unlike other /. readers, I never pay much attention to the SCO suit. I don't read Groklaw, since it seems the latest darling of ex-dot-bombers, you know, the kind who use 'teh', and own PS2 machines even though they're 30. Don't kid yourselves folks, the opinion of every geek on Slashdot comes to out exactly nothing.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You are wrong. Here are the facts:
Optimum coffee serving temperature: 185 to 200 degrees F (source. Coast Coffee)
Boiling: 212 degrees
McDonald's serving temperature that the frivolous lawsuit falsely said was "too hot": 180 degrees (5 degrees below optimum serving temperature. Also 32 degrees below the boiling point, not 10 degrees!)
(You cannot boil pigs at 190 degrees. Your facts and/or math do not add up)
Fact one the coffee is no where near the boiling point, it was at 130 F almost hundred degrees cooler than boiling.
The coffee in the lawsuit was 180 degrees, not 130 degrees. That is still well short of the boiling point, however (and within or below recommended serving temperature for coffee)
For some odd reason someone in the Appeals court thought it was dumb to stick a cup of known hot liquid in your crotch and blame someone else when it spilled.
And, for some odd reason, people here try to get us to forget this most important fact by trying to snow the issue with lies from ambulance-chaser web sites like Vanfirm.com
Having a graduate degree in a funky fusion of computer science and law, I know all to well about the challenges involved in getting the geeks, lawyers, and everyone else, involved or not involved, to understand one another. It is a challenge to write and explain things in a way with a goal of getting as many people as possible to understand what is written and where the fewest people feel like they are being patronized, belittled, hearing "old news," etc. From what I can see (maybe others think differently), Jones does a good job in meeting that challenge.
I hope to see other cases on Groklaw, in addition to all the SCO stuff, both from the US and the rest of the world. I'll be more than willing to contribute stuff. Just keep the site going!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
You must be a nazi to argue that way. It is as bad as Hitler. You are a nazi who would send old ladies to hot coffee concentration camps. Al Gore did not invent the Internet so we could learn that in SOVIET RUSSIA, Apple users are ghay and *BSD is dead. I, for one, welcome our Al Gore overlords.
If the legal department of IBM ever doubted Open Source and that model of cooperation, I expect Groklaw has convinced them of the success you can achieve by free discussion. If I were an IBM lawyer I would check Groklaw several times every day and keep notes. I really believe Pamela Jones has made a difference that will work in favor of Linux. Thanks, PJ!!
What is the sound of one hand clapping?
cat
Now if only someone would post a link to some Pamela Jones photos
- cnb
They stole our award! Let's DoS them into oblivion..
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
The damages awarded by the jury were ONE DAYS' profits
So, it is ok to lie in court and steal money as long as it is just one day's worth? OK, let's cut out the middleman. Just give me one day's worth of your earnings, and we won't even have to bother with the frivolous lawsuit.
The silly thing is that saying that McDonalds was unfairly treated
They were unfairly treated. This lawsuit should have never seen the courtroom. Just because McDonald's abuses the court elsewhere does not excuse any sort of frivolous lawsuit activity.
Another good example of this was when they sued private individuals in England for claiming that the food was not good
That does not excuse totally unconnected "Waa Waa I Spilled Hot Coffee" suits. Injustice in one place does not excuse injustice elsewhere.
A few big lawsuits are publicized to make the public believe that the suits are costing significant amounts of profits
They are costing significant amounts in payouts and insurance, and are a major reason why we need tort reform to prevent it. Did you know that a high % of the cost of a ladder has to do with payouts and insurance because a few oafs climb high and lean out and fall off?
Most of these are a result of the companies attempt to abuse the courts to hound customers into submission.
But that does not excuse the ladder cases and the McDonald's coffee suit which are customers harassing the companies.
To protect her against the fanatical army of pro-SCO terrorists.
(And every time groklaw gets
The only problem with this is that everybody knows what few techies they have left are probably too stupid to even know how to carry out such an attack.
My rights don't need management.
As long as you didn't accidentally spill it on yourself, in which case you required skin grafts and 10 days hospitalization.
Not true. They sold tens of billions of cups and had only 700 burn incidents. They probably had thousands of spill incidents without burns.
Sorry, dude, but you must be using a different dictionary for the phrase "perfectly safe" than the one I use.
I'm using the one that means perfectly save. The coffee? 700 incidents out of over 10,000,000,000 cups sold. That's like 0.00000007%. If you think that is not safe, nothing is safe. Have McDonald's ban napkins because you can die if you stuff them into your nostrils and mouth.
McDonald's heated it to over 180 degrees, possibly much higher, given the pressure it was kept under. Not the customer.
No, it was 180 degrees, (not "much higher") as agreed in court evidence. That was how the customers wanted it, and it is on the low end of optimum recommended coffee serving temperature. The greedy old bat had bought and consumed this coffee several times before she spilled it into her crotch.
And I'm not sure what universe you live in where 180 degrees is "well short of the boiling point",
It's 5th grade science. Look up the boiling point. Do the math. You are talking a difference of 32 degrees. Hot, but no where near boiling.
She was in the passenger seat. I'm pretty sure that people in the passenger seat aren't considered to be "driving" the car
That makes her case look even worse. She was so incompetant that she was able to endeavor to dump hot coffee into her lap when there was no other motion in the environment. I wonder if this lady ever heard of an amazing invention....cup holders!
& the case should be added as a corollary to Godwin's Law.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Do I give a damn about that damned coffe? No!! I'm freaking tired of reading that crap, STOP GODAMNIT!, the reason why Growlaw is GREAT is 'cos its users and posters are civilized and well behaved people no sub-sub-monkeys with a keyboard nearby, can't slashdot get a kicking option? you know like: get rid of all the crap-posters around this place, this not only sucks it stinks. the childish/retarded/stupid/plain a$$hole posters here are the reason this site sucks, I'll never register here! and no I'm not new here and go 1,12,3, profit yer a$$.
And posts with this kind of lang it's what I'm talking about.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated" by rand() heavy perl script nobody longer understands
OTOH, a paralegal will try to discover what things are true and what things aren't. It is important to know the all the facts, even if all those facts are not presented in court. This is so the lawyer does not ask a question that might lead to unwanted introdcution of evidence. The skill of a paralegal is discovery of such facts. The only thing one can say is that the second skill of the paralegal may be the highlighting of wanted facts at the expense of unwanted facts.
What is amazing is that the busiest person in most law offices is the paralegal. Long after the lawyers have left for a game of golf, the paralegals are winning the case.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
"It's 5th grade science. Look up the boiling point. Do the math. You are talking a difference of 32 degrees. Hot, but no where near boiling."
212 (boiling point) - 32 (freezing point) = 180
180 (range of temperature in degrees farenheit)
-32 (degrees below boiling point)
---
148
148/180 ~ 82% of the distance between freezing and boiling
Yep, 82%. Still looks pretty close to boiling to me.
140 degrees, give or take 10 according to taste and tolerance, is about the best temperature to serve coffee.
That's about 40 degrees too low. Look up any resource concerning serving coffee (that has nothing to do with lying attorneys).
"To maintain the freshness of brewed coffee's flavor, hold it at a uniform temperature between 175'F and 185'F in a closed and insulated container, without the application of direct heat."
- Milk Creek 'coffee school'
Not to mention that the number of customers complaining of burn incidents will most likely be a small fraction of customers experiencing burn incidents
The only ones there are evidence of are the 700. There is no evidence of any others, so there is no reason to believe "the small fraction" part. which you are pulling out of thin air. You are doing the "the real numbers are so low, so I'll pad it with made-up stuff even though there is no support at all"
Nor that the number of cups of coffee sold is likely a worldwide figure, where the complaint count is likely a US figure.
The coffee sold figure is a worldwide figure.
"Not true. They sold tens of billions of cups and had only 700 burn incidents. They probably had thousands of spill incidents without burns."
That's the sort of thinking that got us Challenger and Columbia.
Huh? Do the math. That's a burn incident rate of something like 0.00000007%. If the shuttles were as safe as McDonald's coffee, we could keep flying the things as we did during the 1990s and reasonably expect one to blow up somewhere around the year 12,654 AD.
For personal pleasure, I always turned to GNU/Linux
d00d, did she just say GNU/Linux??
Jones is a savvy user, and her ideas for what needs improvement would be valuable, provided we listen and react to input such as hers. The props are nice, but don't help identify what we need to improve as much as good, honest feedback does.
On the whole, though, a pretty good interview...
>OTOH, a paralegal will try to discover what
... Advocacy (when acting as barrister in court).
>things are true and what things aren't. It is
>important to know the all the facts, even if all
>those facts are not presented in court. This is
>so the lawyer does not ask a question that might
>lead to unwanted introdcution of evidence.
What is the role of a lawyer?
They are the in the guise of hired guns. But the paralegal is manufacturing/loading the bullets (facts). In the modern-day trial by litigation (adversial approach as compared with European inquisitional), shootouts require both the {issue, question} of {facts, law}. IP is particularly complex in that you also toss in contracts/licensing and sometimes anti-competition/pro-business policy. Given that you're trying to convince intelligent but not necessarily expert people/judges, attempting to do a snow job on the facts to obfuscate the real questions can backfire. If people were persuaded by the clarity of arguments rather than the legal procedures, I suspect there would be less litigation. A good paralegal can supply pertinent background that can help experienced lawyers guage the likelihood of success and thus advise their clients accordingly.
LL
This is a lie. Just wanted you to know I saw it. Telling lies about people in public is a very fine way to get sued.
Groklaw has absolutely no connection to IBM. I know because I am PJ.
Duh! groklaw.net is hosted at ibiblio. Of course it is in Carolina. Back to square one.
The SCO case is to wannabes what the Condit case was to trailer trash.
Slashdot was (not at the expense of _is_) extremely influential in the beginning of widespread Open Source adoption among technologists and future-technologists -- Slashdot helped the up-coming generation of developers, admins and destined tech-management types to understand and appreciate Open Source. When I was in my late teens (early/mid 80's) Microsoft was cool, Apple was a religion and IBM was the "Big Brother" Monopoly. Since, oh, the late 90's the tide changed so that Microsoft is the "Big [DRM] Brother" Monoploy, IBM is cool and Apple is a religion (some things don't change). Slashdot was pivotal for this generational mindshift. Face it, the real victory with Open Source/Linux isn't measured by server installations or stock market capitalization alone; the compelling trend is the number of developers adopting the Free platform. Stunning, because a major component of business technology decisions is available talent pool. This is one reason VB/ASP, inherently brain-damaged, were so popularly implemented; better technology existed but there was no end of available developers (hence, Balmer's love of developers).
Groklaw provides a different purpose. FOSS is no longer in its infancy or adolescense. Proprietary software can not reasonably claim that FOSS is insecure, under-performing, amatuerish, or unproven. Proprietary software is on the defensive on those fronts; the technological hurdles have been jumped. Proprietary software has shifted to fight for its survival and relevancy based on fears of litigation and regulation. IP infringement worries, singled out in 2002's Halloween document (IIRC), was the biggest concern on business leaders' minds so we have SCO vs. IBM (which is a legal case primarily to give pretext to SCO slandering Linux and its developers in public). Not a coincidence. To counter this broadside, as proprietary software vendors must have hoped, the loosely banded FOSS community would have to pay for serious legal representation which it had no structure to begin to afford; akin to Walmart suing Joe And Betty's Corner Mart and Bovine Rendering Plant -- no contest.
What happened was two-fold, and I bet proprietary software antagonists behind SCO vs IBM were caught off-guard. First, IBM didn't do the less expensive alternative and settle with or buy out SCO, but chose to fight this fight. Also, Redhat didn't sit this one out in order to protect its necessary profit margins, choosing instead to answer SCO's slander and FUD with its own suit. Businesses don't like to litigate when it is cheaper to settle, thus the surprise.
Second, the community didn't just flock to Slashdot and bitch about how SCO sux, nor did it mount DDoS attacks against SCO (which would have brought the wrath of public condemnation against it, as SCO must have hoped, since they obviously had prepared Press Releases for such an occasion; the DDoS attacks SCO did experience were not community based, and, in fact, the community worked to stave off such attacks). Nor did the community just rely upon RMS (notably silent, BTW), ESR, Bruce Perens and many other FOSS heavy weights to answer SCO's charges (though their input is important). What happened was unexpected and in the truest spirit of Open Source: a beneficiary of Open Source development offered her special skills to solve a threat against the community which earned her appreciation. Groklaw was born: Open Source, community-based legal research and analysis, lead by Pamela Jones. She has donated her expert skills, time, sweat, and resources. Moreover, others who appreciate FOSS have donated their expertise, time, resources, as well bring clarity to the fuzzy fog of FUD from SCO and others who would destroy Free and Open Source Software. The community has accepted her as the maintainer of this project, much as it accepts the maintainers of technical projects. As a result the legal briefs and backgrounds along with the quotes from all parties in the press and media are available for public scrutiny. Indeed, this resource
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I think most people already have.
Clark and Dean is the contest for the Caorlinas.
I hope it is not decided before the Carolinas
primary. A lively debate would do some good.
mike
Groklaw has become an indespensible site for geeks who need even more SCO updates than even /. provides
/. come from Groklaw?
Don't most SCO updates on
Hope both sites keep up the good work in 2004 and both post the headline "SCO case thrown out of court" soon.
Mod parent up!
So you're going to sue slashdot to get their IP logs and track down this feller to sue him?
Wow! That's gonna really help you build your cred in this community.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Oh, brother. Oh, sister, as well. This is a huge amount of FUD and misrepresentation of facts. Should be modded as either -1, troll or +5, funny.
Don't you feel shame for lying like that?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You copied that from blurb text of the brochure you got in the mail when you sent in the 'Find a Career In The Legal Profession' matchbook cover, didn't you?
Reminds me of the old 'Get Rich Doing TV Repair' back cover ads on Popular Mechanics magazine.
A Good Intro to NetBS
No, you're not PJ. If there is one thing I know about PJ, it's that she wouldn't post something here as an anonymous coward.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
"...If so, note that the heater's thermostat probably doesn't even go up to 180F. Try setting your heater to as close to that temperature as you can achieve..."
This is why coffee pots exist. If you could make coffee with hot tap water, you would not need them.
180F may very well be a good temperature for preparing or storing coffee. But it isn't a good temperature for drinking it
Yet, it is an excellent. They have sold billions of cups at that temperature, with no consumption problem (except for 700 abberations)
and it isn't a good temperature for handing it to somebody who is sitting down in a car where they are prone to drop things...
The dropping is entirely the droppers fault
We have tort reform so such silly and frivolous lawsuits never reach court.
The greedy old bat who filed the suit pays back all her ill-gotten gains, plus court fees for McDonalds.
McDonald's is allowed to raise the coffee temperature to the optimal serving temperature the customers always preferred (but are not getting right now due to the frivolous lawsuit)
If you can't stand the trolls, get out of the cave.
If you don't like hot coffee, don't buy it. (Don't expect to get rich by lying in the courtroom cuz it hurts when you spill it in your crotch).
If you don't like Slashdot, there is always www.ilovemicrosoft.com. They'll welcome you there.
Actually, once you put it all into degrees Celsius, it becomes even more obvious how clueless "Tort Reformer AC"'s arguement is.
Are you turning this into Celsius to try and confuse things? Convert your argument back to degrees F and try again.
the proper temperature at which to serve coffee (185-200F), whereas everyone with common sense is telling him that's nuts, and that 50 - 60 C is probably a better temperature at which to serve coffee
No, everyone with common sense knows that 140 degree F coffee is too cold. Do some research on some coffee sites, to check the optimal serving temperature. There is a big lack of common sense on the pro-frivolous-lawsuit side at this time.
I urge you to test this for yourself. Please take photographs, so we can all fall off our chairs laughing at your self-inflicted third degree mouth burns
Better yet, Hey McFly! Take the time machine back 15 or so years to the heyday of nice hot pre-lawsuit coffee. Go to McDonalds. Better yet, go to the one related to the frivolous lawsuit. Show up about 7:30 in the morning, sit in the parking lot. Watch all those hundreds buy the nicely hot 180-degree coffee and take it away and drink it with NO problem at all.
If you want, we'll give you Superman's X-ray vision so you can examine their crotches and lips for burns later in the day. (after this experiment, you'll probably want to keep this ability for personal use).
The next day, we can order management, somehow, to serve it at 140 degrees (cold coffee). Now watch the drive-up line become a revolving door as everyone who buys coffee drives back because it is too cold.
Coast Coffee knows coffee. You do not.
I really don't understand this way of thinking. Do you just not understand the concept of degrees of risk?
Degrees of risk? Must be -270 Kelvin in this one: billions of cups sold, 700 burn incidents (a risk factor of something like 0.00000007%).
you admit that at some point McD's takes responsibility
There is nothing to admit: McDonald's has no responsibility in this. They did not spill the coffee.
But how on earth could she or anyone else know the insane temperature they sold her the coffee at?
Because it was revealed in the court that this same lady had purchased coffee at the SAME McDonalds at the SAME temperature many times before. She knew the "sane" temperature from experience.
If I knew coffee that hot was being sold to me I'd refuse it
Almost no coffee-drinker would. You must either not drink coffee, or you prefer ice-cold Frappucino's.
It's called risk analysis, and McD's misled her by introducing a variable which a reasonable person WOULDN'T expect.
It was quite safe. Look at the danger rate.
"McDonald's Coffee Lawsuit Shows Stupidity of American Juries"
That is not my point. I believe it shows the flaws of wasted time and injustice in the court system. Such cases (where someone does something to themself but sues someone who has nothing to do with it) should be quickly tossed out so they don't take the time of a judge OR jury. Tort reform where someone attempts this kind of robbery gets jail term would do a lot to improve the situation.
Since, oh, the late 90's the tide changed so that Microsoft is the "Big [DRM] Brother" Monoploy, IBM is cool and Apple is a religion (some things don't change). Slashdot was pivotal for this generational mindshift.
Essentially, what you are admitting to here is the massive, biased groupthink that goes on. Have people already so easily forgotten IBM's past sins? Oh, they've adopted Linux, so let's welcome them into our arms with praise on Slashdot! It's sheep-like.
Second, the community didn't just flock to Slashdot and bitch about how SCO sux, nor did it mount DDoS attacks against SCO (which would have brought the wrath of public condemnation against it, as SCO must have hoped, since they obviously had prepared Press Releases for such an occasion; the DDoS attacks SCO did experience were not community based, and, in fact, the community worked to stave off such attacks).
I guess you missed all the posts endlessly bitching about SCO or linking to some page on their website and saying "Click here, and be sure to refresh it several times to make sure you're up to date," modded up as Funny, of course.
Pay It Forward is not just a cute ideal, its' the underlying concept of the FOSS community -- enjoy the fruits of my labor and in return benefit others.
Much like communism--and I say this with no intent to troll, because communism in itself is not bad, but the implementations of it in the past have been--it has very positive and workable ideas that are good ideas, but it is bogged with politics and, well, human faults that hinder its progress. I fully expect Linux users in 5-10 years to be still be trudging along with X and KDE and proclaiming the benefits of 20 or so windowing libraries and ways to do things. There is a fear of consolidation that I disagree with, because it has spread a lot of energy thin which could have been concentrated into lesser but much more effective projects.
I really hope that changes this decade.
"Sufferin' succotash."
because communism in itself is not bad, but the implementations of it in the past have been--it has very positive and workable ideas that are good ideas, but it is bogged with politics and, well, human faults that hinder its progress
...and, well, human faults that hinder its progress
So, in other words: "Communism is not bad, except when you implement it". I agree with that! However, it has no "positive and workable" ideas any more than Nazism does, unless you count trivial things like "making the trains run on time"
[communism]
In other words, it doesn't work with humans. Sounds about right.
No, just very well informed about the history of communism, that is all. The results have been nothing but disastrous, and its ideals have had no connection with reality.
Impeccable spelling and grammer?
Active sex lives?
Proper literary quotes, instead of HHGG and the Simpsons?
Fit bodies and sound personal hygeine?
The brain reels at the mere thought...
(Oh! ... and no obscure Firesign Theatre sig lines, either!)
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
Some might say the same about American Democracy. You take the good with the bad and try to work with what you get.
Except with communism (theory and praxis) there is precious little good to work with. It is quite similar to Nazism.
Interesting, though, that you think translating the argument to Celsius weakens it.
It is because it takes us onto a tangent where translation is necessary. It is the same thing done with the lying attorneys who won the case, when they shifted to celsius to make the distance to the boiling point much lower than it actually was.
On the other hand, you think that drinking 180 degree Farenheit (82 Celsius) coffee is a safe thing to do
So do McDonald's coffee customers.
Whoa, I just realized something. You're not very smart.
A lot smarter than you. Smart enough to realize that if you do something, it is your own fault. Smart enough to realize that a product purchased and consumed 10+ billion times with only 700 burn incidents is "pretty damn safe". Smart enough to realize that pouring coffee into your crotch is downright dumb.
What part of "blatantly obvious facts" do you not understand?
Communism wasn't about one giving to others out of appreciation of the labor of another but about outlawing private ownership of property
Communism does not abolish private property. Rather, private property becomes the exclusive privilege of the dictators.
On the last page, though, Sun get thrown in with MS again, for being "the other licensee".
This is not a particularly clear-thinking view:
- Sun, as a Unix developer (unlike MS) have a legitimate reason for licensing UNIX from the current holders, and making sure they've got everything they need for their future plans.
- Those plans, as claimed by Sun, is to improve Solaris on the x86 platform and beyond (yes, even getting to SCO's level of support for some hardware would be an improvement
:( and for a big corp it's quicker to buy it than to write it). With big development around Opteron, wasting time working on a 3COM 3c5x9 driver would be stupidity. Buy the thing and be done with it. Given Sun's other (Linux) plans, this was not a smart move politically with the slashdot crowd, but this seems like a purely corporate move, without moving far enough down the ladder to check it out with techies first. Such decisions tend to be made by management, not techies. Then again, Sun's Linux strategy is currently aimed more at CEOs than geeks, too. They're the ones who make the big (500k desktop) type decisions which Linux needs.
- Sun have made the biggest move of anyone out there (especially including IBM, who make money selling MS software) to kill Microsoft Windows - planning to reduce the software business from $20b to $3b, by actually pushing a Linux-based desktop out there to genuine enterprises and governments.
I'm not at all convinced that saying "MS and Sun licensed UNIX from SCO recently" leads to "MS and Sun have even remotely similar views on the industry".Author, Shell Scripting : Expert Re
Where does the funding for Groklaw come from? Who provides the serious amounts of hardware for Groklaw? Isn't Groklaw just another yes-man in the OSDN's ongoing propaganda war?
Anyone else get these two sites confused?
No, Dennis is in the pockets of a left-wing totalitarian fringe. Thankfully, he is so far out of the mainstream that the Democrats even can barely bring 1% to support him.
He is no friend of the MPAA/RIAA. He'd probably have all copyrights seized and held by the government.
...Second, the community didn't just flock to Slashdot and bitch about how SCO sux, ...
/. and Groklaw have little to do with either Marx's ideas of collectivism or his ideas about economics. These effects reach far beyond anything Marx could have imagined. We see the barest outline of an unanticipated property made possible through the ability of people to communicate and organize through the internet.
The operative word there is "just." The implication is that the community did MORE than just complain. Concerning "communism" the effects we see in
SCO attempted to use the "big lie" approach to achieve its intents. What the present owners of the TSG and their backers (represented by commentators such as Yankee Groups DiDio) did not anticipate was that interested parties could counter their "big lies" so effectively and quickly with "big facts." The internet makes available historical information about the development of unix, Linux, and the legal histories of SCO, Caldera, TSG, IBM, Novel and other movers and shakers that would be impossible to fully access, let alone properly employ in any vision of the future Marx had, or for that matter, the owners of SCO and the Canopy Group.
Groklaw reflects the crystalization of a group of interested researchers, users and legally knowledgeable individuals around an issue that really falls within the realm of law rather than software. It reflects serious effort to collect, analyze and interpret relevant information and advocate a legal position. It redefines the idea of amicus curia(e??). PJ provides that critical property around which the effort could crystallize.
If you are interested in social phenomena, the potential of Groklaw is, to put it mildly, fascinating. While the immediate point of interest is the SCO-IBM lawsuit, there is absolutely no reason to think that such legal effects will be limited to opensource vs. proprietary software legal issues, regardless of the success or failure of the various parties in the present suit. The relevant fact is that Groklaw is about law not software. You are watching a potential change in legal affairs that could easily be more important in the years to come than any particular computer system, or even the internet it self. We have always argued that "many eyes" makes for better software. Could "many eyes" lead to better law?
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
There is nothing inherently wrong about reporting controversy. It's the way these reporters do it...
Citing a controversy, then wrapping generalities around it as expression of "facts", or evidence to back it up, is what these reporters do, IMO.
PJ cites the controversies, pulls facts, real facts or evidence, together and offers knowledgeable insight to the reader.
Yeah, its different, and refreshing. I guess the typical reporter doesn't have the time, nor the inclination, to invoke critical thinking and uncover the issues surrounding the controversy. Groklaw doesn't seek the facts so much as identify the law(s) or precedence, requirements for evidence and how the controversy relates to that law. Critical thinking is vital to this type of reporting and PJ obviously has deep experience in this area, as well as an appreciation for OSS.
Her enthusiasm is infectious, as well.
Mark
You, in fact, are using one of the favourite tactics of those scum-bag lawyers you say you so detest, keep repeating a single fact that happens to be true ad-nasuem no matter that IT DOESN'T APPLY HERE!!!
Except that the lawyers who won the McDonald's case were repeating lies. I'm just repeating the obvious FACTS that you are too boneheaded to understand, facts which apply to the situation.
OK, stupid, lets take this slowly. 185F is the recommended SERVING temperature, i.e. for the coffee to come out of the coffee machine
Well. duh! And that is how the coffee was served. Nothing wrong with that. End of subject.
Any med student will tell you that pouring 185F liquid onto human skin has a 100% burn risk factor.
Which means you should not do it, right? The greedy old bat was 100% at fault, since she pouted it, not McDonalds. End of subject: this case was 100% frivolous.
Shhhh. We can't burst his bubble with words from someone who has actually studied Marx at great length and lived under the system proscribed by him.
Don't forget about Che Guevara, who was to the USSR what Christopher Columbus was to Spain in the 1500's (Conquistadore of New World colonies for the Old World empire). He expressed that his main problem with the USSR is that it was not brutal enough.
It is a bit of a misnomer to compare the FOSS effort with communism. It is probably more productive to think of it in terms of something like barn-raising by the Amish (in these days and times) or countless other similar collective efforts throughout human history.
A community forms around a common objective, for the good of that community or as payment for past/future assistance by that same community when they were/are needed. hmmm - does that make sense? Your statement regarding consolidation is quite correct, however I think it is both positive and negative; +'ve because FOSS never rests on it's laurals and is thus always seeking better ways to do things, -'ve for exactly the reason you state - resources are spread thin and energy wasted. Overall though I believe the positives outweigh the negatives. But that is just MHO
"It is a bit of a misnomer to compare the FOSS effort with communism. It is probably more productive to think of it in terms of something like barn-raising by the Amish"
If the Communists did this, you'd have the community enslaved to burn down the barn. A few would be shot along the way because they did not move fast enough. A few more would be shot if they complained they they were hungry because the food was in the barn they burned down. The rest would starve because the communists order them to destroy their farm.
This was how Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin did things. To a lesser degree, Lenin and Castro. Communism isn't about "sharing", it is about being robbed by dictators.
Just plain crap. Sorry, but this article is less about honest research than cheerleading the open source movement with a veneer of legal validation by 'research.' Please, stop with the pep rally. Be a GPL/Linux advocate if you wish, but if true research is intended, then provide the whole story and let your readers decide for themselves.
Flame away.