Slashdot Mirror
MS Word File Reveals Changes to SCO's Plans
jfruhlinger writes "Ah, the joys of 'track changes' in MS Word: metadata in a document obtained by Cnet reveals some earlier plans by SCO's legal team. Among them: to sue in February (their original target date), to sue Bank of America, to 'impound ... all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings', and to accuse in court 'Linus Torvalds and/or others' of 'inclusion into one or more distributions of Linux with the copyright management information intentionally removed.' Good stuff." Also, SCO has announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates.
If all Sco's operating officers are put in jail whos going to write all the checks for the lawsuits? Also at what point does the Bar association of Utah step in and say if you sco lawyers do this anymore kiss your licenses goodby?
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
I'm sure that EV1 is very happy now about their investment and partnership with SCO. Maybe next time they'll partner with a more popular group like the KKK.
Here in Canada, it's so cold outside that I swear I saw a SCO lawyer with his hand in his own pocket. Sassan
Now I have to cut and paste!! Oh the humanity.. (yeah, i'm lazy....)
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
Ironically, UC Berkeley is also going to be a licensee!!
Slashdot should make a section for SCO!
Also, SCO has A HREF
What's a href and why are you yelling?
If there was a question as to whether this is just an SCO fishing expedition, I think the question has now been answered
I'm surprised SCRO don't just take the list of Fortune 100 companys they sent the notificiation to, and using mailmerge.
The SCO/Microsoft discussion can only go so long before it gets stale.
Not often you see 'joy' and 'MS Word' in the same sentence.
FYI... here's a free app that removes MS Word metadata (useful for sensitive docs for distribution)
http://www.docscrubber.com/download.html
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Are they even trying anymore?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
With SCO being all about their Unix IP, you would think they would prefer to use their own product when writing legal proceedings, instead they use Microsofts....
Memories become legend, Legend fades to myth, and even myth is forgotten by the time that age comes again.-Robert Jordan
All these revelations of the goings on between SCO and MS are so cute (or revelations on SCO thanks to MS tech in this case) .. like two smitten children fumbling and tumbling over themselves.
This has certainly been an entertaining year in tech.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yeeeeeaaaaah!
Anyone else find it ironic that they are using M$ Word to sue Linux companies?
Thats funny, SCO screwed by their biggest contrib.
I know this feature of word has let me find out some interesting things before. You would not believe some of the things people write in their resumes.
Im glad
I'd be interested to know how many companies got the warning letter from SCO and tossed it in the circular file instead of replying to it.
If I'm not mistaken, SCO filed suit against DC because they never received a response to their letter. I wonder how many more they'll file based on lack of replies.
I don't think you know what ironic means.
And no, I don't find it *anything*. Here in the real world, people use Word.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Whaaaaht!?
This is scandalous. There's no official confirmation yet, but apparently CmdrTaco of Slashodt.org fame leaked the source code to the story. The file contained a href and then something.
Will this be the end of Slashdot?
Anyone able to find a link to the word file? I'd like to see this for myself in its entirety. I did a quick search on Google and didn't turn it up.
in soviet russia you sue SCOX.....
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
It started out as an absurd lawsuit, then it got personal. Linus has tried to keep out of this as best he could until he got dragged into the whole thing. If there's anything that would unite an entire community more than an attack on Linux, letters by ESR and RMS, it's an attack on Torvalds himself.
If IBM would name MS in their countersuit with SCO as a backer of this arrangement (or at least have it investigated since their does seem to be some creditable evidence) and bring it up with the Justice Dept.
It would be amusing to have IBM having the last laugh of the MS/IBM competition over the years (starting with DOS, OS/2, then Windows, etc.)...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
I emailed you about this but you need to fix that link right there on the front page.
N cascolicensee_1.html">announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates.
You know, this one
Also, SCO has A HREF="http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/04/H
Maybe like this: Also, SCO has announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates.
This guy is way out there
The question is: Are they using MS Word on Windows, or are they emulating it on unix?
Well, honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they didn't use their own products; nobody else does...
$0.02
Most lawyers use WordPerfect, actually.
So, this to me seems like another example of security breaches that can get companies, organizations and governments into trouble because of their use of Microsoft products.
.doc formats for certain information transactions and instead relying on standard ascii text encoded files.
So, last time I heard, certain agencies are prohibiting the use of
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
"Next week we'll be covering one of the more amusing cases in IP. Make sure to read the case study on SCO before coming to class. It's Chapter 11, which isn't altogether lacking in irony."
More that its ironic that MS is bankrolling SCO to try and torpedo Linux, but their own technology is making it easier for the other side to obtain shreds of information we probably shouldnt be privy to.
"Old man yells at systemd"
even though you shouldn't encourage this fraud by giving them money to allow YOU to correct THEIR MISTAKES
Shareholders have already unseated Eisner and Lord Black because of stupidity/criminal self-dealing. Here's three more to add to the list.
What I find more disturbing than the fact the "editors" didn't catch the broken HTML that should make a link on the front page, but the tag was never even closed!
Oh, LORD!
don't you think?
Lying SCO whore-troll, BEGONE!
This isn't interesting, this is stupid. Everyone who's browsed a copy of "MS Office for Dummies" knows about the metadata feature.
Thanks. Now go ahead and waste your points modding me as troll or flamebait.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Is bloated, closed source, evil empire produced Word a good or bad thing ?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
~Darl
IANAL. But suppose a case is brought to court that includes, as part of its collection of evidence, a Word document that tracks changes in much the same way that the Word document in the article apparently did. Could a prosecutor who, for example, sees among the "invisible ink" Neo-Nazi writings by the accused, be able to use that as evidence against him? Could he furthermore deduce "motive" and "intent" from that evidence? On one hand, he is able to glean the evidence simply because something *WAS* there. But that's just the problem: It was in the past, but it has been editted out and substituted by the weekly grocery list of the accused. Would he then be able to point to the "change log", so to speak, and build his case on that?
Their earnings are down. They sued two of their own customers. Laura Dido is no longer brainwashed by them. They have been revealed to be sock puppets of Redmond. And they use Word, which revealed their alternate evil plans. This is by far the funniest SCO week ever.
I would have loved to have seen them try to impound all that equipment. BOA would have destroyed them outright.
Anyone know who SCO banks with?
"Not often you see 'joy' and 'MS Word' in the same sentence."
Oh, "Joy"! I'm not using "MS Word".
How did you read that article?
Where did you click to get to it?
I am using AOL 9.0 for OS.
This is getting beyond utter stupidity! The only thing Bank of America would have to do is remove any offending code or recompile their apps without using offending libraries. It's not that hard.
So far we haven't seen a single line of proprietary code from SCO - anything and everything they have shown us was and still is available in public domain. Just because they copied it from public domain and put it in their shitty product doesn't make it their invention.
As far as BoA is concerned, I think Darl remembered he had an account with them where he stashed his millions. Talk about sticky situation:
Darl: All your Linux are belong to us!
BoA: OK, *click*, all your assets have been frozen until further notice...
It's the only way I can see this activity making any business sense.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
For a second I thought that your post was mine. ;)
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I can't find where it says who got this document or why it was even in the form of a Word doc. Why don't they spend some dollars for some software to barf out .pdf's instead..?
p
under the DMCA or something?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
somehow this happened.
* SCO Group Inc (The) SCOX 11.66 +0.07 (0.60%)
How? What idiot would buy stock now? Microsoft, in a last ditch attempt to give them a shread of crediability? People willing to take a million to one odds that they win any of these lawsuits?
SAILING MISHAP
Doesnt this prove what many of us knew? Stupid, evil people use stupid evil applications...
In seeking relief from the courts, the original version of the document also said that it sought: "impounding all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings;"
What kind of drug were they on when they thought that a court would allow them to impound all "linux software products" (impounding the hardware would be easier) before the trial had been decided? Proving irreperable harm to SCO would be very hard, and taking all of these computers from BofA would cause incredible harm. No judge would allow such a thing.
Which makes me wonder... who even suggested this - SCO management or their lawyers? Is the management that clueless/reckless?
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
... Microsoft Word bites SCO in the a**.
:-D
Office XP/2003 Remove Hidden Data Tool
Let's hope they'll remember this... and let's see what effect it will have in US courts.
Looking here I don't see one yet? Any mirror sites for this?
You talk tuff mister anonymous fucking coward. Go fuck yourself!
According to Netcraft, they run Solaris, and have been for a long time...
No. If they were using Open Office to sue Linux companies, that would be ironic. The fact that they are using MS-Word just proves that they don't eat their own dog food -- perhaps they find Unix distasteful.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
CTRL-A
CTRL-C
CTRL-N
CTRL-V
CTRL-S
supply new file name and hit
Phew, that was tough.
you forgot the rimshot :)
CA, Questar Corp. and Leggett & Platt plus the recently announced EV1.
Nothing new there.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Caldera?!!! What's vulcanism have to do with UNIX? Cmdr Spock was half human!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
One possibility is that they're buying licenses so that SCO can be nailed for fraud when its case for owning Linux folds. Not likely, but it makes me smile.
Go fuck yourself, Mr Holier-than-thou moron!
You got owned and now you're mad!
Go cry me a river.
I just opened a few word documents i have on my computer and apparently i have this option to track changes turned off by default. What kind of moron would turn on such a feature? Im pretty sure i didn't turn it off, and had forgotten the feature had existed until this article.
Oh well sucks to be stupid like SCO. How many stupid things have they done now? I don't think i can count it on both hands anymore.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Sorry...never read the MS office for dummies book...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
these latest cases in SCO is suing their former clients make sense and bring clarity to SCOs assertions.
Imagine it from SCOs point of view. They see a flood of customers running from Unixware to the free linux. They want to stop that. They think, Linux came up to speed so quickly to an enterprise level something smells fishy. There would be tonnes and tonnes of kernel, network and library issues to have ironed out. Yet people are making seemless conversions.
Ergo they realize people are copyying the code to speed the results. Now who to sue. You could sue your clients who are copying the libraries for comaptibility. or you could sue linux because they are not your customer.
So you decide to sue linux, assuming linux copied stuff just like your clients did. Your corporate culture despises Open Source so its not hard to get the blinders on, make rash accusations.
You find some smoking guns and start down that road. Then you decide to draw in IBM since they were selling the migration as a bussiness model and they just stiffed you on your last best hope for a collborative bussniess.
but then suddenly you realize you made some mistakes, maybe there was not as much copying as you thought. And what ther eis will vanish the moment its revealed. So if there is a case here its against IBM for assiting the copies and porting for clients to linux. And since linux is a disperse target, go for the end users without licences indemnities.
Finally you bite the bullet and realize your after the wrong smelly fish. Its not linux or IBM since they have the manpower to and skill to make honest clean versions. its your clients who would not have had the manpower to do the conversions without cheating. Some lazy programmer copied code to speed the library conversions. Sue the clients!!!
While I'm doubtful of copying in the kernel, since its a hotly scrutinzed area, I would not be surpise to find copying in underfunded corporate backwaters such as migration libraries, in which core, boring compatibility issues in uixware had to be translated to Linux and some programmer got lazy or pressed for time.
Maybe SCo is finally going to create a winable case.
Hmm... this might sound weird.. but although I dislike SCO for suing Linux users..I certainly have no sympathy for big companies like these that absolutely have BIG bucks and don't give anything back to the Linux/opensource community.
.... :(
At leat the money from closed source software is used to hire developers.. on opensource it seems all the money saved goes into making rich people richer. Something's wrong
I have to wonder WTF SCO is thinking. do they really think that going into BoA and possibly shutting down a bank by confiscating their stuff is going to do them any good? What bank would continue to do business with them after that kind of action. Not to mention that it's going to take a lot more goons than SCO can muster to walk about with bank computer equipment.
What does that feel like?
The KKK and some other interesting organisations host in EV1's datacenter. I'm sure that's not the kind of relationship you meant but it's funny because there is in fact a relationship between them :)
he didn't have time to preview?
On March 4th SCO, within 24 hours of publication, I received word from Steven J. Vaughan at eWEEK.com that SCO had confirmed that the memo is legitimate.
Anyway ... supply new file name and hit Enter
i'm sure there's recipies for pasta, and other monstrosities buried in that zillion lines of winbloze code. but at least it recovers from all those crashes.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." -- The Princess Bride
On March 4th SCO, within 24 hours of publication, I received word from Steven J. Vaughan at eWEEK.com that SCO had confirmed that the memo is legitimate.
That's assuming you trust Microsoft to clean up the mess they created in the first place.
I think I see a pattern, Damiler, IBM, thinking about Bank of America. The strategy would seem to be "lets find a company with deep, deep pickets, legions lawers already on the payroll and sue them". Perhaps they will go after the NSA next, as it would seem that they have also been naughty Secure Linux
You don't need a lab to make mud.
MIT and CIT have also announced their licensing of the IP.
And no, I don't find it *anything*. Here in the real world, people use Word.
Here in the real world people use Open Office, and do not suffer from these issues. Just goes to show that some of us in the real world make smarter decisions than others of us also inhabiting the real world. Go figure.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Lawsuit bloodbaths
Durle McLame
CEO SCUMGROUP
I say according to logic, if everyone cross sues everyone for everything and countersues those countersuing, will the DOJ label them as Suers of Mass Destruction? On the flip side this could work out for everyone, if everyone spends all their money suing one another, eventually everyone will run out of money then we won't have to hear about anything lawsuit.
We henceforth move on with our plans to sue our lawyers
MoFscker
..Down on the farm, we call that karma.
Never by hatred has hatred been appeased, only by kindness - the Buddha
You should have gone with a user friendly distribution for your first linux installation. I would recommend Mandrake, Suse, or Redhat/Fedora. Also, this is either a completely off-topic and idiotic post.
After subsequently viewing your previous posts, I have concluded that you are a troll. Welcome to my foes list.
Damn...I've been living in some sort of fantasy world all my life. I should have known; the clues were all there: the weird feelings of deja vu, the fact that everything was just too perfect. Open source has been like a dream...and how can you tell if you're having a dream if you never wake up?
Thank you for opening my eyes, stratjakt. Now I have seen the real world for what it is...a vast, dead wasteland ruled by soulless monsters.
Just please don't go around shirtless giving inane speeches about not being afraid.
I know the change tracking feature has some uses, but the security problems it can result in just scare me. This incident is the perfect example. Why doesn't microsoft have a simple button or menu item labelled "Publish" that creates a file containing only what you see. No change tracking. No meta data. Just the document.
I think a better option is to keep the document in source control though. Has anybody out there intentionally picked a source control system for their Word documents over the built-in change tracking? How has that worked out?
I'm not *that* surprised about CA, to be honest.
Once did some contract work for them. A one year job had to be completed in two months because they had spent 10 months playing politics for who got to manage the project, and forgot to allocate anyone to do the work.
This company is about as self aware as World Wide Wickets, and I can totally see some clueless executive making the deal without consulting upper management or lawyers.
(sound of SCO' coffin being nailed shut)
Red-lining documents is what they do... although most use a third-party tool called Redliner to do it, so the other parties can't change their comments.
...so we can TURN IT OFF.
"And in other news, gravity continues to pull things together!"
Mac OSX comes with textedit which can read most simple word documents. But it does not parse complex ones or metadata. This last bit is a feature not a bug: open the document in TextEdit, if it renders well, save it again. and poof a clean document
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
open my resume in a hex editor and read the slack code, which says "fuck you if your paranoid enough to open this document in a hex editor. Maybey SCO should do the same.
I cannot believe companies are caving in to SCO and paying these bogus licensing fees. Can you believe Questar's logic?
"Our usage of (Linux) is so small and isolated that's why we went ahead and signed the contract.,"
The more companies that pay the more Linux looks like a tainted OS that is no longer Free.
I knew the whole IBM v SCO thing wasn't going to be a quick and dirty affair. I knew SCO would be getting help from Microsoft to fund its legal offensive. I never thought companies would be dumb enough to pay for IP which is contested. For the love of God why are they paying? Say Fuck You to SCO and let them sue you if they want money. No judge will pass judgment against you or even let the case go forward until SCO can prove via the IBM case their IP claims. Who are the lawyers for these companies that are saying its better to pay? Fire their asses and hire someone with a clue.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
FUD and crap, nothing to see.
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 04, @04:04PM from the now-this-is-just-scary dept. jfruhlinger writes "Ah, the joys of 'track changes' in MS Word: metadata in a document obtained by Cnet reveals some earlier plans by SCO's legal team. Among them: to sue in February (their original target date), to sue Bank of America, to 'impound
Hmmm... a broken link...
Worse yet, if they keep suing everyone, how long will it be before someone commits suercide?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Maybe CA will buy them. CA seems to have somehow built a business by buying up software products that are never heard of again. In the case of SCO Unix that would be a good thing.
Yeah, and some journalists found some similar hidden information from the Ken Starr Report WPD file -- mostly names of chicks Clinton had screwed.
SCO banks with First National Matress (FNM). They have a "Queen" sized account.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Well, preserving Undo history when the file is closed was supposed to be a "Feature", not an "Issue".
I'm actually rather surprised that OpenOffice does not do this -- every other commercial-quality word processor does. Or maybe OO does do it, and you don't know what you are talking about.
Ah yes. *That*, my friends, is irony. :-D
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
IANAB(roker) but maybe it moved up because there's so many demands to short stock that brokerages don't own that they're buying it to make available. Ah the hilarity.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
that's where that urban legend comes from... Alligators in the Suer
MoFscker
I don't like your TV show.
This is why any corporate documents that will be dessiminated outside the company should always be converted to Acrobat. It's the policy for many sites for this very reason.
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
After hearing about the possible involvement of Microsoft in the SCO lawsuits, I had this thought.
What are the chances that Microsoft is behind anyone buying SCO licenses? Could they some how end up giving money to Computer Associates in order to buy SCO licenses and further fund SCO, as well as attempt to give credit to their claims?
- Kevin
They're still running OS/2!
Seriously. Go there. Look at their PCs. Exclusively OS/2.
I get the feeling that all the recent news of SCO vs. Linux that it is really a question of good versus evil (linux is good). There are all of these companies attacking Linux and open source software to try to minimize or stop the Linux / OSS movement. Make no mistake, this is a battle between good and evil, because it could someday be "One Operating System to Rule Them All, and in the Darkness Bind Them".
Actually, this data, eventhough hidden from view normally, can be entered in a case directly against SCO. There was a similar case where Laywer A was attempting to setting with Laywer B, and there client was going to settle on a much higher amount, but Laywer B had them decrease it ... and you guessed it, they were using MS Word, so the orginial text of the higher amount was saved, and got sent to Laywer A, who noticed it, and then was able to force Laywer B and his client to settle on the higher amount. I could see this being entered as SCO was attempting to sue anyone, once there was ANY shred of proof the company was connected to Linux. This might just be another nail in the box for SCO, and for once, I have to say thanks to Micro$oft because there "feature" (and I use that term lightly) might just help SCO loose.
This signature was left intentionally blank.
No FUD there, only thoughtful speculation.
I work in a company that uses a mix of code as well as we write our own. Some of it is under BSD, others LGPL, and of course, GPL. I myself encourage this, but I always push that we need to obey the licenses. What I have found funny is that 2 people here are weak coders and basically like to steal GPL based code and say that putting it in a product we will give us a leg up. I have been fighting a huge battle on it and have finally won. But it was a close battle. In fact, the management wanted to go with the others, but it was myself and a lawyer who convince them to simply change the model.
I suspect that This goes on more than most realize. I would suspect that a number of small companies are "getting a leg up" in this fashion. So no, do not mod down.
Hmmmm. This gives SCO a whole new branch of litigation: Sue C/Net. SCO are just the sort of fools who would try to take on the press. "Never pick a fight with someone who buys (digital) ink by the barrel" -Samuel Clemens
If you forget about the future, the future will forget about you.
How is Word a "stupid, evil" application again?
Tracking changes is a huge plus for people that need it. It's turned off by default, you have to turn it on to use it.
Basically it looks more ike YOU are the one that is "stupid" and slamming something you know obviously know nothing about, makes YOU the one that is "evil" as well.
You might want to think about that next time you engage your mouth before your brain (Unless you LIKE looking "stupid and evil")
Frankly the fact that you make OS people look so bad is what bothers me the most, you are making ME look bad. That I won't sit still for...
"Blackadder: Baldrick, do you know what irony is?
Baldrick: Yeah, it's like goldy and bronzy only it's made of iron."
whatever the hell it is
Ask yourself: Is this the work product of a legal team that stands to gain many millions of dollars (and already has a few in the form of a retainer)? I don't think so. Get ready to see (God, it hurts just thinking about the recursion of it) SCO's lawsuit against its own lawyers.
As another respondant said, CA is in the business of buying cool products, killing R&D, flogging the product to death for a few years, and tossing the dried out husk to their intelectual property banks.
Open source probably scares them. Widespread adoption of Open Source would destroy their business model.
Zapman
IALOS...
I think there are a couple of interesting items.
The first question, is would the deleted material allowed in court? Since it was a draft of a legal plan, it would seem pretty clear that the content should ordinarally be protected by attorney-client privelidge? Especially if accidentally passed.
The next question, is, now that it has been exposed, are there actions that can be taken against, SCO or thier lawform for either releasing confidential information, or the actual content of the confidential information?
I can already hear lawyers screaming around the world, and this has to be good for Adobe...
Lawyers should not be providing editable documents like word files. Final format documents like PDF, or signed PDF would seem to be a lot better thing to be passing around legal documents.
That is the most insightful post in this story!
Have you tried looking for a job lately? Half the recruiters demand you send them a resume in MS-Word format. The other half demand you don't send the resume as an attachment, because they're so afraid of MS-Viruses.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Kind of like eating your own dog food.
And I'd love to hear the real reasons from everyone else aswell! Are they setting up for a counter-suit, dumb or in SCO/MS pockets?
... all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings'
to avoid the major inconvenience of all this
to 'impound
That could at least slow things down for a bit for a major player like CA. If no unlicensed property is found, they counter sue to get their cash back.
So, last time I heard, certain agencies are prohibiting the use of
Another example?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The two halves are partially co-incident. I'm sure there are people out there who demand an MS-Word format resume, but won't accept an MS-Word attachment.
....we'd appreciate if Chrysler could respond promptly.
Yours Truly,
Darl McBride
FUTURE CEO, CHRYSLER^z^z^z^z^z
OWNER, BIG BLUE^z^z^z^z
KING OF UNIX^z^z^z^z^z
"KING KERNEL"^z^z^z^z^z
CEO, SCO Inc.
It is horrific the way you Linux fanatics criticise poor SCO's actions. SCO is a small company trying to make an honest living and all you can do is launch denial of service attacks against them and laugh when huge evil companies like IBM steal their intellectual property. Shame on you!
...Darl McBride is what we call an "overcooked ham!"
-- thinkyhead software and media
SCO seems to be morphing into IGOR. Yes, like the old horror movies character, evil, ugly and (leaving hidden plans in public as metadata?) obviously dumb.
I don't understand. Can someone detail the problem? I mean, if I create a doc, with track changes on, and then I "accept" (make permanent) the changes, doesn't that clear out the historical information?
I'm not sure what you mean by this, the PDF structure already allows for versions of objects. In fact, it's all built around a linked directory at the end of the file. If have a document with several linked directories and sever one of them, those objects will never be rendered.
If Microsoft has its way, once the business world implements encryption and secure distribution policies for word documents, we can say goodbye to whistleblowing.
This, to me, is a chilling prospect.
Something like originally their plan was "world domination", but now it is "keeping our sorry asses out of jail!"
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Looks like SCO's ammunition is $$$. In this case going up against Bank of America, they might need some more pocket change.
It was humerous on the Chapelle Show. Now it's recycled humor.
that was fun
First they will know fear.
Then they will know pain.
And THEN they will die.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
SCO has a standard M&F clause in their license. Is there a state that does not allow such clauses where SCO could be sued because Unixware is a POS and isn't fit for anything? Just wondering if one of the folks sued by SCO might do business in such a state and be inclined to sue SCO and make it stick?
Ooops...
Not only are we going after IBM; we're going after Daimler-Chrysler. We're going after AutoZone, and we're going to go after Bank of America. And then we're going to go to Finland to take back the source code. Yeeaaarrrghhh!!!!
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Big bloated office apps are bad, gotcha.
I'll promptly delete the 100MB+ source code to Open Office, that app which takes 15 seconds to load on my laptop after taking two days to compile (twice as long as it takes for Microsoft to compile all of Windows itself, which takes a day).
should have used vi.
I cannot believe companies are caving in to SCO and paying these bogus licensing fees. Can you believe Questar's logic?
I tried to work out what Questar was thinking, while compiling a post to this Ghost article (it got yanked 'cause bigger news emerged). Here's my theory:
Questar, one of the licensees mentioned in Heiss's letter, said that its decision to purchase the IP Licence for Linux was a matter of simple economics. "Our usage of (Linux) is so small and isolated that's why we went ahead and signed the contract.," said Chad Jones a spokesman with the Salt Lake City company. "This was small enough that we made a business decision based on the modest cost of SCO's claim that it was in our interest to settle rather than litigate this thing," he said.
If a company has "small and isolated" Linux useage, why would SCO even notice them?
The simple answer: the litigious bastards are just a few miles away from their helpless victim.
I figure SCO has simply decided to move up a notch in the gangster hierarchy, and move from lawsuit-slinging to leg breaking. Imagine a large guy in a tailored suit walking up to Questar's front office -- and he's no missionary.
"I hear youse gots some Linux boxes? Youse also gots some piplelines youse proud of. I'd hate to see them on the news tonight. Kapiche?"
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
dont buy ERwin data modeler
I've been a linux user for years, and I had no idea that Autozone, Daimler-Chrysler, and BofA all used linux on a widespread basis.
I'll just bet PHB's are thinking more about Linux, thanks to all the SCO press.
I love irony.
10 I sell stock I don't have to people that want it at an outrageous price
20 I buy stock when the price hits a bottom and profit the difference.
30 id10ts see me buying large amounts of stock and think it must be hot so they buy and the price goes up
40 GOTO 10
Investing is not about supporting a company, it's about taking peoples money before they take yours.
--Tsiangkun
If SCO actually sent it to someone -- used Word Docs as an interchange format! -- then they deserved to lose.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Look at it this way... every time SCO signs a customer to a license, they make some money.
But the silver lining is that Slashdot makes even more.
A half-dead 90 year old man with no pockets, and an 800lb gorilla standing behind him.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
"Blake Stowell, SCO's director of communications, acknowledged that the leaked memo is real." -- eweek
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Since you brought up Microsoft and EV1...
There is a Case Study on Microsoft's web site here. This discusses the addition of several Windows-based servers to their Linux environment.
So, are they bed buddies? You bet.
-m.
I have A HREF right here that tells the brief story of the origin of BofA. Given this history, maybe Darl and friends simply just wised up at the last minute when they realized who they would be messing with and feared seeing plastic sheets covering the carpet in any rooms they might walk into at the bank.
... I have concluded that you are a troll. Welcome to my foes list.
oooooooh - I bet you've scared him off now.
Autozone
Bank of America
Computer Associates
Daimler Chrysler
E...?
How about suing Bank of America? No - let's make it Daimler-Chrysler. They're German linux loving hippies.
Replace All.
CA Says It Didn't Pay SCO No Stinking Linux Tax
The Linux faithful have been hammering Computer Associates as a heretic since the British publication Computer Weekly quoting the SCO Group's CFO Bob Bench identified CA Thursday as one of SCO's rare Linux licensees.
CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.
Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.
As a "small part" of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.
But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, "It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction," he said.
CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in "stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats."
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has "nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics," they said.
CA was the mystery company SCO was thinking of when it announced last August that an unidentified Fortune 500 company had supposedly become a Linux license. SCO privately described the deal as "significant."
CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.
Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.
See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.
According to that letter, which is up on the Groklaw site, Heisse owed IBM a copy of the CA agreement on CD.
Barrenechea said that SCO was dropping CA's name to associate itself with the "third-largest software company in the world" and build support for its "lost cause."
But according to Barrenechea, not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a "trailing negative" on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then "SCO will be irrelevant,"
he said.
By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said.
In answer to CA's contentions, SCO said its lawyers think that CA has a Linux license.
Meanwhile, Bench also told Computer Weekly, whose story was picked up by sister paper InfoWorld and maybe other properties in the IDG stable, that SCO had signed between 10 and 50 Linux licenses.
CA is where software products go, not to die, but to become UNDEAD software. The majority of their products would be better off with a stake in their heart. So, with all the undead walking around, why is it suprising that they are associating with SCO Vampires, which are, obviously, just as Undead.
Funny though, open office is really really really really slow. I did some benchmarks with some monitoring tools, and oh boy is it slow.
Sometimes all people need is wordpad, other times, notepad.. other times they need the advanced features of open office..
Open office has all the stuff word doesn't.. spreadsheet functions within a table, multiple selection using the CTRL key..But it is SLOW SLOW SLOW. THe CPU load is terrible.
And no, I don't find it *anything*. Here in the real world, people use Word.
Ummm... I don't know what lame "real world" company you work for, but if I released a document externally in MS Word format I would have my nuts cut off and served to me on a platter.
Out here in the real real world, we release documents in formats like text, html pdf (yeah yeah
Assuming that the person who is going to read your document can deal with a
This is getting to be like a 3rd class movie where the bad guys start making stupid mistakes so that the heros can 'outwit' them.
Anyone got a picture of Darl ? I want to see if he is wearing a black hat.
They own UNIX, not Windows; they should have used groff, troff or tex with vi as the favorite editor (emacs stinks like communism, would not be a suitable choice for them)
In a sense, momentarily recording your thoughts in the electrical and magnetic states of a machine (computer memory) and then erasing them, is equivalent to that thought being confined within your head. (This point is arguable, hence my use of the phrase "In a sense", please discuss this point, dear Slashdot readers.)
Or, for instance, what if I tap out the message "I want to *** the President" (censored for moronic yet obvious reasons) in Morse code on my table top? The existence of the message in physical form outside of my head is only temporary. Would this be considered an actionable threat against the President?
At what point do we draw the line of "Sanctity of Mind," and why does it make sense to draw it where we do? Just because a thought momentarily exists in physical form, does that mean we should treat that thought any differently than if it had remained, secret forever, inside somebody's head?
And should we hold people accountable for information that exists merely because of a "technicality" (a piece of software being configured a certain way, in this case) when there was obviously no intent for that information to ever remain in concrete form?
So you work for an educational establishment and you are trying to incite an outside party to send said establishment a million dollar bill ...
I'm sure your manager is going to love that one when he finds out :-)
Is anybody suprised that 0x54524F4C5C translated from hex to ASCII spells "TROLL"?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Half-dead and 90? Being in the presence of someone with a life expectancy of 180 years would sure freak me out!
I'm going to send a letter to EV1 claiming a patent on the concept of "breathing." I will offer absolutely NO evidence to back it up whatsoever, but I will offer a "license" for them to continue doing it.
Do you think they'll bend over and get out their wallets? No? Well then why in the hell should they be listening to the claims of The SCUM Group? They've offered not one shred of actual evidence to back up their bullshit claims either.
One of my best friends works for their IT ops in Dallas. The vast majority of their regular enterprise apps are all Windows-based. Exchange for corporate email, SQL Server for small and medium databses, etc, but they do run a lot of Oracle backend databases on really big IBM RS/6000 AIX boxes. Their website is via Netscape Enterprise frontend running on a huge-ass Sun cluster that hands everything off to Cold Fusion on Solaris which in turn hands a lot of stuff off to IIS on internal Windows boxes to do the dirty work behind the scenes. Linux is only used by some developer geeks, not in IT production use. All the stuff you see at your local BofA branch banks around the country is all Windows desktops. Hell even the ATMs are all Windows 2000 too. They got rid of the last of the OS/2-based ATMs some time ago.
I wrote a presentation in Powerpoint that ended up being over 400 meg.
SCO is a puny little company (compared to IBM) with a 160 million Market cap. IBM could buy em' and fire em'. Story would end there.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
So, SCO is showing some sanity. I bet they weren't thinking their whole little scam would end if they sued and seized Bank of America's software (finicial data). What jerks for even concidering it. I hope when this is all over, that the whole Federal system comes againt them.
Also, SCO has announced a few new licensees including Computer Associates.
I welcome Computer Associates to the club of the mighty Evil.
I think they are hoping to tie up the courts to the point where they are too busy to throw the book at the SCO executives while at the same time counting on their legal carpet-bombing strategy nets them some settlement profits.
They have a few more tricks up their sleeve...from another news(.com)^2 article:
Linux, which runs well on inexpensive Intel processor-based servers, has become increasingly popular despite SCO's actions. Linux has even spread to the Web site of the U.S. District Court in Nevada, where SCO filed its suit against AutoZone, according to site monitoring firm NetCraft.
Soooo...if the courts threaten to dismiss SCOs case and/or charge them with fraud, they can just sue the court system itself!
This is actually rather informative, wherever the AC pulled it from, assuming it's true.
The big statue of Joseph Smith in the center of Salt Lake City has his back to the Temple and his arms outstretched towards the Bank across the street. This observation isn't meant as a slight against Mormons in general, but it is strangely symbolic of the attitude of some Mormons.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
um. he posts at -1 due to beind modded down too much?
what is the object of putting him on your foes list? does it make you feel more masculine or something?
idiot
Google this: "canopy ca settlement"
Canopy Group (parent of SCO) and Center 7, another Canopy subsidiary, had a joint marketing arrangement with CA. Canopy claims that CA welshed. Canopy and Level 7 sued CA. The suit was settled with a $40 million payment.
I seem to recall, but I can't find a link, that other terms of the suit were that CA buy some Linux licenses. That would fit in with Canopy's plans.
Link to the settlement
If everybody just used vim or emacs to do all their important documents and Word for stuff they wanted to print.
I know I'd be a couple billion times happier. Would make for my Computing Science papers to be a lot easier to write on my linux box. Why are teachers so quick to use formats that cost the students $100? What's so wrong with text files for submissions? They're pretty cross-platform and avoid a lot of compatibility issues. Only thing you have to worry about is the whole carriage-return/new-line thing (WHY DOES MICROSOFT USE TWO?????). But a perl script on the submission server could bloody well solve that problem.
Karma: Non-Heinous
"We did agree to a one time payment" says marsh in your eweek link.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
You heard it here first!
"Do not drill any holes in your cat - it will not like it."
-- Nick Davies
Anyone who posts on a yahoo stock board automatically qualifies as not being 'in the know'.
Step-by-step instructions for removing SCO stories from your homepage, for morons:
Step 1: Type "slashdot.org" (without the quotes) into your browser's address bar.
Step 2: Type your username and password into the login box at the right hand side of the homepage. (If you do not have a Slashdot account, please refer to my 7-part guide "How to create a Slashdot account, for morons")
Step 3: Press the "Login" button. Congratulations! You are now logged in to Slashdot!
Step 4: Click the link "Preferences" under your username at the left hand side of the page.
Step 5: Click the tab named "Homepage".
Step 6: Check the checkbox labeled "Caldera" under "Exclude Stories from the Homepage." There are a lot of checkboxes, so you may have trouble finding it if you are an extreme moron. Just remember that the topics are in alphabetical order.
Step 7: Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page. Congratulations! You have successfully changed your Slashdot preferences! Be sure to tune in next time when we show you "How to change your comment sorting preferences, for morons"!
PS It's "completely different," not "complete different."
No shit! I'm glad I read the replys to my original post! I have a PO here on my desk for 17 copies of eTrust... I had already fired off a nastygram to CA... I was getting ready to toss the PO in the trash and go looking for another source for our antivirus & firewall needs.
I'm still pissed at EV1, since I am going to have to migrate off of 6 servers, but I will at least contact some of the names listed at CA and get the poop from the horses mouth... I have no problem apologizing for a nastygram if CA is indeed in the clear... If they're not, there are at least 80-some-odd computers where I work that will be uninstalling CA as soon as their licenses come up for renewal...
EV1... CA... This has been a shitty week at work!
The number 1 problem of working in a cubicle - 23 power cords, 1 outlet...
SCO owns the copyrights to UNIX, right ?
I know the actual details are in dispute, but the fact is that SCO/Caldera purchased _something_ from Novell, for around $100m. Whether it is the full UNIX copyright or not, lets just call it 'the intellectual property in question'.
Now that SCO is in it's final days, and will end up bankrupt and disgraced real soon now, what is the likely fate of this intellectual property in question ?
Who, or what is standing by the sidelines ready to collect this intellectual property in question when SCO falls down ?
Either IBM will buy it up and formally release it into the public domain once and for all, or Dr Evil will pick it up, and take off from where SCO left off.
Maybe we could do a blender, and put in a community effort to purchase this intellectual property in question, and then do the right thing by it.
"...a document obtained by Cnet reveals some earlier plans by SCO's legal team."
It's good to know that SCO's legal team has a plan and is sticking to it...
I wonder if they have the bankruptcy paperwork already filled out for when the shit really hits the fan?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
In a posting to his company's forum early Thursday morning, Marsh said he would discount any reports of a seven-figure cash payment. "We did agree to a one time payment," he wrote, "however we did not agree to pay a 7 figure cash payment as reported in the media."
You can clearly see from the exact literal quote from Marsh, he is not even slightly disputing that the deal is worth 7 figures. However, he is disputing that there was 7 figures of *CASH* in the deal.
It's entirely possible that BOTH SCO and Marsh are telling the truth (shock/horror, is this one for the record books). Perhaps it's several thousand cash and the rest in stock or other non-cash value?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Hell, amigo! An mere incongruity between my expectation and the actual result could just be my being wrong.
An irony requires a poetic twist (not Chubby Checker reciting a sonnet), or as this online dictionary notes, an aspect of poignancy:
- - -
Now, if the document had been in OpenOffice format, the irony would have been the contradictory revelation of SCOldera's attacking open-source software while using OSS because they can't afford Microsoft Office. (Actually, having seen their results, I'm sure they can't.)
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1542915,00.as p
details at http://blogs.cocoondev.org/dims/
Makes a sick sort of sense to me - SCO looses, then you sue them for whatever IBM & RedHad leve as leftovers...
Oh wait, there might not be anything left...
The hype surrounding the SCO vs Linux issue is pointless. Some Open Source code writer will post a patch that replaces the SCO mentioned code with new code. Call it reverse-engineering. Call it reinventing-the-wheel. Whaterver. I bet that this patch would be implementd quickly, thus negating SCO's case and putting another failed company out of it's missery. This could have been ended months ago!
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Actually the so called mere 70 lines of tainted code SCO claims they own is from BSD 2.x.
Is SCO getting a license and transfer of technology from it?
If SCO is trying to buy or license it, will they now sue Free,Open,Netbsd as well as Linux.
After all the BSD code is a derivitive of Unix and now Berkeley licensed SCO the code so they own it!
I seriously hope not but that is my guess. To claim ownership of the internet and freesoftware just goes to far. BSD started the free software movement.
Time to torch the Lindon headquarters indeed.
http://saveie6.com/
EV1 is bad and evil.
And karma says they're dogmeat. I hope they fold spectacularly and maybe they'll take a few clueless customers out with them.
When the dust settles it should be known that the karma gods frown on anybody who is associated in any way with SCO.
"I'm a teaching assistant (TA) at Harvard who grades students' code to support my graduate studies."
No, you're a sick man who is into little boys.
I hope they catch you and put you in jail.
Man in suit: Hey kid, nice software you have there. What's it called?
Kid: Um, Linux, why?
Man: Because I'm from SCO/Microsoft and I think it looks like my
software now.
Kid: No way, in fact I wrote some of it myself
Man [pushing attorneys in front of him]: Moose! Lefty! Help the kid
find his wallet.
I doubt what you say is true for two primary reasons:
1) The interfaces to any modern OS are virtually the same. And particularly amongst Unix-like variants, there are certainly fundamental differences in system code, but experienced programmers will use standard c/c++ libraries that are implemented on pretty much every unix-like OS. So if you're trying to do a port of a simple text-based application, the user interface code is a piece of cake because you're writing VT100 level stuff. And the back-end is generic "C" code that will probably compile on any machine with little tweaking.
2) More importantly, without the source code to SCO, how could customers do all this code stealing? Unless SCO distributes source with their OS, but I never heard that before. So how can you steal what you don't have access to?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
What's the difference between "offer[ing] to defend you if you get sued," as you claim Red Hat offers with respect to SCO's claim of a monopoly on code that IBM contributed to Linux, and an indemnity?
Uh, you're aware that OO can save files in M$Word format... right?
<grrr>
Or maybe just hand out ridiculously wrong moderations to piss off all the asshats telling you how to spend your mod points.
"Finally you bite the bullet and realize your after the wrong smelly fish. Its not linux or IBM since they have the manpower to and skill to make honest clean versions. its your clients who would not have had the manpower to do the conversions without cheating. Some lazy programmer copied code to speed the library conversions. Sue the clients!!!"
Now ask yourself. What does the former Caldera programmer's contributions to Linux do to your argument?
Funny how the SCO stuff started up about the same time as Gates & company started to target Linux.
.doc files the posted. A simple text editor was all that was need to pick out the information.
It is also humorous that the article points out another Microsoft flaw. Word has always had problems with keeping data in the file that no one wanted. It used to be a lot worse when Word docs included all data out to the end of the sector they were written to. I freaked out a couple of Windows users by posting information found in the
I guess this "feature" is useful for some people who need to track changes but the final document should be "clean" of all other information that was previously in that file. Perhaps Microsoft should add a "clean for distribution" command to Office. If not people may start to think twice about using Word and its features to release information to anyone. Makes using Adobe PDF files for document distribution look very, very good!
If I found that an instructor was using Undo to detect plagiarism in an MS Word document, I'd do this:
If enough students did this (substituting different fetishes in step 1), the instructors might become afraid to test submitted files for plagiarism.
[[I feel EV1 is getting to much heat. I mean if a thug leans on some little guy and extorts money from him do you blame the little fellow or the thug?]]
This is war.
I feel for the little guy who runs away. We don't blame foot soldiers who desert--we shoot them.
Why would SCO want EV1 stock?
Marsh isn't weaseling words around some sort of cash-equivalents transfer here; he would refer to such things as cash. The most likely explanation seems to me to be SCO Group's habit of deceitfulness.
It really makes you wonder when you know that all these big companies and even government offices (yes this sort of thing is not isolated) arnt some magical place full of infallable important people, they are actually just full of morons bashing at keyboards who arnt quite sure how to use a calculator.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
CA is not noted for throwing their money around. This move could well make sense for them, if the price was right. Now lets see:
Actual value of a license from SCO: $0.00
Value of CA's name as a licensee: $(negative to CA)
Value of above if it is known that SCO actually PAID CA to take the damn license: $0.00
Value to CA of it's competitors believing CA paid for SCO licences: $(slight, but positive)
Therefore, it is most likely that SCO paid CA some amount (middle 6 to low 7 figures) on condition that
1.SCO could announce that CA bought (or got, what word did they actually use) licenses from SCO, and
2.CA would not discuss the terms of the license publically.
Yes, ESR gets the math wrong.
Stowell of course is just trying to spin it favourable for SCO. Stowell and McBride are well known liars in my opinion, so why would we trust them?
But forget that, here's another and possibly better SCO story:
Note the word 'insurance'. McBride basically is admitting to racketeering!
I'll bet this will come back to haunt him in court filings in the future.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I knew one of their lawyers, what you have described is almost exactly how she described their business model. One of her jobs was to calculate the financial liability of discontinuing products that they had contracted to support. Once: cost of settlement .lt. cost of support, the product would be discontinued. The ethos depressed her so much she left. Hard to believe, I know, but there are some lawyers with ethics.
The word within CA is that the SCO claim is a lie. The following article is doing the rounds internally - it claims to have been published but I can't find it on the web, if I did I would provide a link instead...
CA Says It Didn't Pay SCO No Stinking Linux Tax
The Linux faithful have been hammering Computer Associates as a heretic since the British publication Computer Weekly quoting the SCO Group's CFO Bob Bench identified CA Thursday as one of SCO's rare Linux licensees.
CA senior VP of product development Mark Barrenechea says that Bench's claim is nonsense. CA has not paid SCO any Linux taxes, he said.
Drawing up short of calling SCO a liar, Barrenechea claims that SCO has twisted a $40 million breach-of-contract settlement that CA paid last summer to the Canopy Group, SCO's biggest stockholder, and Center 7, another Canopy company, and has turned it into a purported Linux license.
As a 'small part' of that settlement, Barrenechea said, CA got a bunch of UnixWare licenses that it needed to support its UnixWare customers. SCO, he said, had just attached a transparent Linux indemnification to all UnixWare licenses and that is how SCO comes off calling CA a Linux licensee.
But when CA agreed to that settlement, Barrenechea said, 'It was not CA's intention to become a Linux licensee. It has nothing to do with CA's product direction or strategic direction,' he said.
CA has absolutely no sympathy for what SCO is doing, Barrenechea said, and in fact, he said, reading from a formal statement, it stands in 'stark disagreement with SCO's tactics and threats.'
Barrenechea and CA's Linux chief Sam Greenblatt are worried that CA will be tarred with the SCO brush and that CA's considerable Linux ambitions will be damaged by a disaffected, if not hostile, open source community when in reality CA has 'nothing to do with SCO's strategy and tactics,' they said.
CA was the mystery company SCO was thinking of when it announced last August that an unidentified Fortune 500 company had supposedly become a Linux license. SCO privately described the deal as 'significant.'
CA couldn't disassociate itself from the rumors that identified it as that licensee because of an NDA that the Canopy side had insisted on hedging in the $40 million settlement with, Barrenechea and Greenblatt said.
Barrenechea said that SCO now regards that NDA as being off because of the legal discovery that's been going on in SCO's $5 billion suit against IBM.
See, SCO lawyer Mark Heisse in a letter dated February 4 to IBM lawyer David Marriott at Cravath Swain identified CA, Questar and Leggett & Platt as Linux taxpayers.
According to that letter, which is up on the Groklaw site, Heisse owed IBM a copy of the CA agreement on CD.
Barrenechea said that SCO was dropping CA's name to associate itself with the 'third-largest software company in the world' and build support for its 'lost cause.'
But according to Barrenechea, not only are SCO's IP ambitions doomed, but its Unix interests are a 'trailing negative' on the road to dropping from 10% of the market to 3%-5% in a few years and then 'SCO will be irrelevant,' he said.
By the way, CA doesn't have enough UnixWare licenses to cover all its Linux servers, Greenblatt said.
In answer to CA's contentions, SCO said its lawyers think that CA has a Linux license.
Meanwhile, Bench also told Computer Weekly, whose story was picked up by sister paper InfoWorld and maybe other properties in the IDG stable, that SCO had signed between 10 and 50 Linux licenses.
Wow, these guys had high hopes!
I actually bought into their InnoculateIT several years ago, again, since it advertised Windows/Linux/Mac compatibility. The system was advertised as being able to manage all my Linux and Windows systems from a Linux server.
..|..
The Windows version choked the start menu. I actually held the Start menu open on as server once out of disgust and frustration, thinking it would have to work eventually. Had to force/reboot the server. The Linux side was complete crap and the Mac version looked like it was MacOS7.x version. The only virus it could detect in MacOS 9.x was the test one included with it.
License this CA
sig mind freed
No, it's Teaching Fizzags.
SCO worked directly with Orson Wells to facilitate the Invasion of Earth from Mars. When they could not produce Martians they opted to wait for litigation to start to cripple American life and use lawsuits as the new business model and attempt to take over the world.
This memo was copied to Pinky and The Brain.
Older memos may exist in the form of cave art, but Archeolgists have yet to make the solid connection between the picture of a pile of dung to SCOBCE (SCO Before Common Era) and their exclusive licensing of sticks, mud, dyes, and air.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
but their [Microsoft's] own technology is making it easier for the other side to obtain shreds of information we probably shouldnt be privy to.
It's called "Trusted Computing".
I know who have been screwed over by Mormons are other Mormons. I'm not standing in a bigoted position. I'm in South Florida.
Now we're getting somewhere. You wanna talk about crooks? We got crooks. Big ones, little ones, you get the idea.
How about we RFID the crooks? The RFID could be made (extra large with solar cells) to intrude on all electromagnetic radiation making them unable to make a cell phone call or use a computer.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Do not blame the coward, blame the honest Mormons.
As long as the 99% of the Mormons who are not involved in scams are passive, and allow folks like Darl and company to remain as public active Mormon members, The Mormon religion deserves anything it gets as far as comments.
The fact is most SCO execs are not only Mormons but are very high in the leadership of the church.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
The letter was worded like the old joke, "Do you still beat your wife?" There was no way to answer the question without incriminating yourself.
One succinct way of responding is "mu".
Hacker's Dictionary: mu
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I found SCO code inside of the leaked Windows code so when will SCO sue MS for violating their ip? And will they go back to MS and ask for more money to pursue the claim against MS?
Who thought of their ticker symbol also, better yet maybe we know what they were doing at the time SuckingCOX?
I hear the SCO lawyers are great at playing pool....
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The had just settles a lawsuit with the Canopy Group for $40 million and the IP license was thrown in for free.
I just have to say wow. I hate speaking to people who drop the H-bomb (Harvard) for the hell of it. Most of the people I know who went/go to Harvard don't like to bring it up at all. Unless we're trying to get a job or into grad school it is just something you don't do.
It's considered more tactful to say: I go/went to school in Boston. And if you're asked, 'Where?' Most students reply 'in Cambridge.' It usually takes three rounds of questioning before a Harvard Alumnus gives it up in general conversation.
Learn some manners and be a little humble outside The Yard. It goes a long way in life. And, what's more, you'll be considered classier for it.
Cheers,
Akoni
Ahhhh! My host, EV1 has AiDS. I mean, "The customer is always right, even when he's a blithering idiot asking for a Windoze host," can only justify so much. I wonder if that fancy console or the scripting has a hands free reboot for all those 18 minute boxes they are burdening themselves with. I can only hope the dissease is contained quickly and does not do my poor host too much damange. It's apparent that the disease has already damaged their mental faculties. Why else would they have paid off the SCO extotion?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Funny.
I installed slackware just fine, recognized my DVD, SCSI devices, IDE devices, logitech 6 button mouse (wireless USB I might add), my crappy SiS motherboard, CrystalSound system, and full graphics.
And all I had to type was 'gasp' startx to do it.
Maybe your desktop has 'SCO inside' and refused to load properly.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Clippy was behind all this CRAP!
So in reply to a SCO threat you fire up Word.
SCO's copy reads, "Dear Sirs, In reply to your letter of..."
The metadata reads "F**k you Darl."
No they are not. I'm wondering what your source is on this one.
Maybe they got the license in exchange for these seven figures. That would be more of a fair exchange, I think.
On stereophonic equipment, the monaural sound obtained through multiple channels will enhance your listening pleasure.
A bit like a lot of Jews are just Jews for the business relations. They never practice their faith, they just pronounce themselves Jews when it suits them, generally to make contacts, or to claim anti-Semitism just because they dont get their way.
If Utah has a larger than average percentage of con artists and dodgy business practices, then we should have a look at the reason. What makes Utah's population so different to make it more prone to these con artists? Or is it a subject we are not allowed to talk about?
Why is it OK to make jokes about Catholic priests, but the moment Mormons or Jews are mentioned we must talk in hushed, reverent tones? Do you think that having a lot of money in a religion makes it beyond question?
They behave the same as Jews, why not just call them the Latter Day Jews?
Nobody is allowed to say anything against them. They work as a group, but if you criticize the group, they straight away say "No, we have a few bad people, but we are not all the same"
Posted by Terry, on Groklaw on why SCO is not currently going after Bank of America:
If you look at the time frame involved it makes sense. In TSG's second motion to amend against IBM they use the DMCA as part of the complaint based on the removal / alteration of copyright material.
In the analysis of some of the files presented on Groklaw it appears that there exist quite a variety of copyright information on the same file depending on its ancestry. If TSG could make a basis of a copyright claim this could trigger certain DMCA violation.
So on 2/6/2004 we have the 2nd amended complaint with DMCA charges in it. We also have TSG with registered copyrights conflicting with Novell. But that's OK, as TSG is working on clarifying this in court. Plus, it is possible for two parties to have valid compilation copyrights that reflect "version" or "derivation" content.
Then, on 2/9/2004 Novell throws a big wrench in the works with the Motion to Dismiss. Up till that time the copyrights were contested, however with the motion to dismiss Novell stated in a legal document that they were not transferred. That line drawn, no party can pursue DMCA charges until ownership is cleared up by the courts.
The BA thing was using the "takedown" provisions of the DMCA. Post official notice of contest on 2/9 in Utah court, no judge in the USA was going to use a takedown based on unclear title against some company like BA.
Then some legal eagle's secretary just recycled the BA complaint to fit the new victim. Wonder who's going to lose their job? The nice thing is that this may help wake up corporate America as to how dangerous the DMCA can be in the wrong hands. Maybe some of the "mainline" press will pick up on this also.
This is very disturbing. If true, these are the
height's of an evil Microsoft's mind...
May god help the penguin !
The current Bank of America is the result of legacy BofA's 1999 acquistion by NationsBank. The new organization is headquartered in Charlotte, NC - the second largest banking center in the US, behind NYC.
Bank of America has a several major points of presence across the US, including TX, CA, points in the great plains, and now in NY and New England, as a result of the recently announced merger with Fleet.
BofA, or any other North Carolina bank can hardly be considered "some southern outfit" - many of the top banks, brokerage firms, and other financial services companies in the US are headquartered there, or have major offices in there. Bank of America, Wachovia (formerly First Union National Bank), BB&T, First Charter, TIAA CREF, and Compass Group all have major presences or headquarters here. Deutsche Bank, ABN AMRO, and Citigroup are all adding sizable operations to the Charlotte area.
Any way you look at it, by fake-slapping Bank of America, SCO sends a message to that entire sector - an industry that is very risk adverse. Essentially saying "BOO!" to that bunch of scared children in our legal department.
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
And as a shameless plug, I will refer to my rant about how MS-Word is not a document exchange format
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
And then they'd pass after they see you can't use contractions.... of course Data couldn't either... but do THEY know that?
Insightful criticism from someone who can't keep a sentence in one tense.
There are two tenses in his sentence, no doubt ("would pass", "couldn't [use]" and "can't use", "do know"). But is it grammatically incorrect? I don't think it is.
"I wouldn't date a woman works on an oil rig." This sentence has the same features as his quote, but I don't think it's incorrect. You cannot change either tense and retain meaning.
(Please correct me if "wouldn't date" isn't a different tense than "works". I don't know diddly about grammar.)
Phiwum's law: anyone that names an obvious law after himself and then puts it in his own sig is just pathetic.
Dear DaimlerChrysler, It is our intention to fuck you up the^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hinstigate proceedings against you for..
>to avoid the major inconvenience of all this
... all Linux software products in the custody or control of Defendant through the pendency of these proceedings'
>>to 'impound
>That could at least slow things down for a bit for a major player like CA. If no unlicensed property is found, they counter sue to get their cash back.
I would be absolutely amazed if such a motion on the part of the plaintiff were granted. All that the defendant would have to do is to cite SCOX versus IBM and SCOX versus Novell to demonstrate ambiguity in whether or not SCOX even owns what they are suing for.
In this current filing against Daimler Chrysler, SCOX is left in the dubious position of suing a partially German company, whose national courts have told SCOX to go pound hot sand. Daimler Chrysler can just shift alll Linux-related stuff to Germany and it'd be difficult for SCOX to do much through the US courts.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Note that David Boies' firm represents Paradigm Advanced Tehnologies, Inc., whose website www.powerloc.com runs on RedHat and uses an open source web server. This for an IP matter. Can you say "conflict of interest?"
.. and porn"!
Film at 11 - exclusive to Playboy PPV.
SCO's a pimp -- he never'a could've outfought IBM. But I didn't know until this day that it was -- Micro$oft all along...
(actually i did)
= CUT TO SCENE 2=
I want you to find out where that ol' pimp SCO is hiding -- I want his ass now -- right now! (and -- don't forget to bring the license)
v==hal if
I'm guessing that EV1 cut a deal and paid a relatively small amount for their licenses. It gives SCO the ability to say that they sold "7 figures" worth of licenses to a big-name ISP, and EV1 gets immunity (for a good price) in the (very unlikely) event that SCO somehow manages to win their court cases. And if SCO loses, EV1 might have a case against SCO for selling them something that they didn't own. Who knows...
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"Track changes" may be one thing, but using it overtly to propagate dis-info (since its 'hard-won', it must be true) is another thing.
What are the chances we're seeing these 'back-alley hacker-obtained details' about SCO/Microsoft as part of a wider campaign to spread disinfo?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'm not sure qhy, exactly, but CA always struck me as being the epitomy of useless corporate shiteware vendors. All their products are designed and marketed (so far as I can tell) purely to non-technical PHBs, which is to say, people who are not qualified to evaluate whether or not it's any good. Anyone have anything good to say about CA, to correct me? Bueller?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
Darl and his cronies are true law hackers: they do things with the law system never intended by its inventors...
Anyone noticed that a Unixvendor is using word? Why don't they use their own software...
Who uses SCO unix anyways?
That is the worst distribution I ever met in my professional life and I do not know anyone that uses that... I think that they are desperate and are just waiting for the worms to come, because they're already dead.
Ronaldo Faria Lima
E-mail:ronaldo@ronaldolima.eti.br
Home page: http://www.ronaldolima.eti.br
Hmm, while there is no official statement from CA (yet), one of their senior architects in the web services group has to say a word or two in his blog regarding this matter:
'CA Says It didn't Pay SCO no stinking Linux tax', to use the blog entry's title.
Seems SCO spins it a bit differently from what really happened...
Windows Security: The oxymoron for the new millennium. "Oxy moron"? You maybe mean "Bully moron"?
WYSIWIG, but what you see might not be what you need
No. 1 is EV1Servers.net who announced SCO lied about how much they were paid (Microsoft is a fan of EV1)
(little did the CEO know when he made the deal that SCO planned to 'worth' him out of seven figures)
No. 2 is CompterAssociates who announced SCO lied about "linux licenses" which are really from an unrelated settlement
No. 3 is Leggett and Platt who shockingly is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000
No. 4 is Questar Gas who just wanted to get things over with and also runs Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) on Windows 2000
Make sure *you* are Legally Unencumbered(tm) by getting a SCOsores license
and don't forget to head over and sign your Clean Slate contract with the RIAA
$20,000.00. I count seven figures, don't you? ;-)
SCO lies once more
Leggett & Platt was even clearer. "I have now talked to our people who handle our Linux systems and, at least at a corporate level, we have not bought such a licence from SCO Group," said the company's VP of human resources, John Hale. "To their knowledge they would not have an interest in doing so."
Off topic, but you can easily edit PDF as well. Adobe sells an editor, that is why they give the reader away for free. Not to mention that PDF is one of Mac OS X's native file formats.
If you are worried about people changing the contract then you best compare the original with the signed copy even if it originated in PDF format.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
.... I hope you are feeling vindicated today.
No?
Oh well, not to worry, if people fall for Nigerian scams what can we say about ISPs....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yes, Utah is known for stock scams and MLMs. But do not base the entire problem on the people. Many religions impose such a huge sense of superiority upon their members, that it is hard for the members to overcome obvious smugness. The smugness is what makes these types hard to do business with. It is unfortunate that 1) the Mormon "faith" is extra extra smug, and 2) that so many of the "faith" are concentrated in such a small area.
4 96 3.asp
l
Having lived in Utah for many years, I saw it all. The odds are clearly against "non-members", but thats all they are...odds. Finally I packed up and left - I just couldn't make a good living with all the upending going on behind my back. Nonetheless, I still met some nice folks there, some of which I remain close friends with. Again, unfortunately, these same friends get taken advantage of by their own counterparts.
As for the previous post comment on reading the paper, check this out:
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03052004/utah/14
Utah's own glorious Senator is mentioned along with another shady issue. This guy has been in front of roughly five ethics inquiries, and has also been linked to the HealthSouth scandal. Proves the smug can still be incredulous outside of their home state.
Also, take a look at this:
http://www.mormonstoday.com/010119/B4MSI01.shtm
Note the mention on Dell. It will be interesting to see how that business proceeds, with the latest developments.
I bet you do, fucking crazyass.
In most cases, it's probably a better idea to use PDF than DOC if you're intending to distribute a document. This avoids problems of having copies modified, avoids viruses, avoids folks having to have the same fonts and version of Word you do, and avoids potential exposure of internal data.
The only time you'd want to use DOC is if you were trying to hand out a document that you wanted people to modify and hand back.
May we never see th