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SCO Aims For The Feds
MoFoQ writes "News.com reports that SCO is now targetting the Feds and their supercomputers (the Beowulf clusters, etc.). Looks like they bit off more than they can chew, even before winning a single case "
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I don't know who to root for?
Don't think they cannot pull this off.
IBM once almost bankrupted a whole state that was suing them because of their endless supply of money and lawyers.
SCO, because Microsoft is behind it, has even MORE money, and ultimately lawyers at their command to do this...
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Have you seen their stock price recently?
They need to make as much noise and annoy as many as possible, and they need to do it now. The bigger and more controversial the opponent, the better.
If they don't make noise, Microsoft doesn't get much value for their investment, right? So they need to capitalize every second SCO is still alive.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
This is a bit of bad reporting by news.com (surprise!). It's just referring to the letters SCO sent out in December, and it's JUST been released NOW that two of those targets were Federal institutions.
Just more lame press releases by SCO. Nothing out of the ordinary. Move along, please.
SCO sent the letter to every member of the Senate and House of Representatives, said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman
Could they be any more stupid?
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
I remember my mom used to tell me never to hit bee hives with my hockey stick. SCO never listens to this kind of advice, which comes up every time there's a story here about them; so what's their major malfunction? I just want it to end!
He calls for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, he should call for an amendment to ban SCO.
Or... cue the shock and awe campaign.
"I feel a great disturbance in Linux, as if millions of licenses cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced."
Same scene, later that day.
Random SCO employee: "Umm, Mr. McBride, sir, there are a whole lot of people in ill-fitting suits who want to 'talk' with you ...."
Best Slashdot comment ever
WE BELIEVE WE CAN PROPOSE SOLUTIONS THAT WILL BE AGREEABLE AND ECONOMICALLY FEASIBLE FOR YOU
It's the trolls who scream the most. I say we put them on /ignore and move on.
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
...who's just laughing his head off and thinks no commentary of any kind is really needed?
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The first is never get involved in a land war in Asia. The second, only slightly less well known, is this: never go up against a nuclear weapons laboratory when death is on the line!
Okay, this is just a little more than SCO to handle, even if they do have funding from Microsoft. The government, although horibly expensive and utterly dumb to most things geek, has their fair share of the alpha-geek. Besides, the government already has a thing for suing Microsoft and winning. Hopefully this will transend to SCO as well.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
heh....um, seriously folks, you are witnessing the death throes.
The end is near...thank god.
Now they are taking on someone else with enough $$ to fight for a while.
With any luck, this will be the beginning of the end for the SCO travesty.
How many fronts can they fight on at one time anyway?
Agile Artisans
Groklaw covered this yesterday - it's nothing more than confirmation that those institutions received the threatening letter that SCO's been sending out.
It was once said after World War II that the United States should be ready to fight two and a half wars at any point, anywhere in the world. Other conflict management is just like this idea. You can only have so many fights before you will not effectively be able to handle them all. SCO not only has too many fights right now, but their fights are way too large for the relative size of their company. Anyone who takes on IBM, an assortment of other companies, and then the United States Federal Government needs to have their heads checked.
I wanna see SCO fall big time for this effort, we still havent seen solid evidence of what theyre claiming to be true, Come on SCO - show your hand, we're tired of this bluffing game!
I wish they'd just get it over and done with and give SCO a good arse kicking when they show a hand full of Jokers..
-- Jim.
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
No, they haven't bit off more than they can chew. Their business model isn't about winning court cases, it's about squeezing money. The fact they're willing to go after the feds means that they're not afraid of anybody, particularly YOU, Mr. CEO, so pay up now, before we drag you in too.
Meanwhile, MS has been having some problems with governments defecting from the 1 Microsoft Way) so this helps them out.
Microsoft has gone out of it's way to point investors at SCO because any crap SCOX throws at Linux only makes them look less awful. It's a classic case of MS saying "Lets you and him fight!"
Of course, if they can get federal agencies (who aren't playing with their own money anyway) to pay them to shut up and go away, so much the better! I'm suprised that they haven't thought of this earlier.
There's even a tiny chance that they'll be able to argue for a change of venue based on the courts using FOSS now, and therefore not being disinterested parties. It won't throw the case out, but it might be a good delaying tactic, and time really is money.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
by the Fed.
Not a wise move to go after the University of California (who manage livermore and los alamos).
UC regents already won one lawsuit over this business... SCO may be violating BSD vs USL.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Bush administration likes Microsoft. Bush administration loves Microsoft. Bush really really loves Money.
If Feds vs SCO makes Judicial Precedent we are f*ck*d.
Barrapunto.com
Don't trust 'justice'.
...
With their so wide open mouth they *must* feel backing of the kind only B&B could give.
'B' could stand for Bill, Bush,
Don't forget CKK. She didn't have the guts to do what she wanted to do and ought to have done.
Coverage and discussion at Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200403192 34017885
Maybe John was right after all.
Mail? Put "slashdot" in the subject to pass the spam filters.
It's awefully difficult to believe the rediculous actions of this company.
""If you fail to respond to our efforts to pursue a licensing arrangement, WE WILL TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO OUR OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION," Pettit said."
This was amusing. For consideration of legal action? It's sad how they managed to turn the legal system into a circus. It painfully shows how we need to fix our system or face future SCO's.
""Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said. "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer.""
This will happen regardless of what happens in the US. Linux is all over the world in multiple distros. I don't think a SMALL company like SCO will ever be able to do anything about it. SCO is in it's death throws. Let's bury them before they stink up the place.
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
Sounds like Mr. McBride is really looking for any way to show linux is a danger. But does he really believe to make us think his goal is to protect the world from US enemies ?
And who is SCO to tell what the US should do with free software ?
-Matt
If you fail to shut the fuck up, WE WILL TURN YOUR IP RANGE OVER TO SCRIPT KIDDIES AND DoS YOU TO OBLIVION. Read More Here
Have a nice day,
Horst Simon
Director
NERSC
Indefinitely Detained US Citizen
linux networx is a canopy company like SCO/caldera is. see: http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/pr042800_canopy.h tml
Now in the news article it says:
"SCO sent letters raising the prospect of legal action for using Linux to two Department of Energy facilities, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)."
But in this press release it says that linux networx is the one that installed the linux clusters at the LLNL.
http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/8.28.2001.49-Lawr ence_Liverm.html
The new lesson of the day is if you do business with anyone funded by the canopy company you risk being sued by other members of the canopy group.
Read the article. This letter was obtained by a FOIA request by an attorney defending the case against Daimler-Chrysler I believe. It's from the round of letters where SCO claimed various header files were in violation of copyrights related to the UNIX ABI.
I imagine that the United States is going to scramble a B-52 out of Offut AFB and have it drop a large hydrogen bomb on SCO. End of SCO.
this is just TOO MUCH!
I thought they were waay over their heads when they started to mess with IBM, but with FBI, a god damned goverment law enforcement agency!
However; this could just be some FUD to make people convinced how "right" SCO has, sueing the feds will bring a lot of headlines, more than the ones against
IBM.
"Man, SCO is sueing the FBI! They must be right! We better not migrate to Linux until this is over.."
Oh sure, and as soon as they TURN YOUR NAME OVER TO THIER OUTSIDE COUNSEL FOR CONSIDERATION OF LEGAL ACTION their outside counsel will take one look at the prospect of jointly suing the feds and the UC system (which is now run by a former Bell Labs employee) and THEIR OUTSIDE COUNSEL WILL RUN SCREAMING FOR THE HILLS.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
linux networx is a canopy company like SCO/caldera is. see: http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/pr042800_canopy.
Now in the news article it says:
"SCO sent letters raising the prospect of legal action for using Linux to two Department of Energy facilities, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC)."
But in this press release it says that linux networx is the one that installed the linux clusters at the LLNL. http://www.linuxnetworx.com/news/8.28.2001.49-Law
The new lesson of the day is if you do business with anyone funded by the canopy company you risk being sued by other members of the canopy group.
He states a computer expert in North Korea can download Linux and create a super-computer. Yet I'm sure the same expert can download some ISOs of Windows from somewhere. Of course one method is legal and one is illegal, but I'm sure they wouldn't care about having unlicensed copies of Windows if they can't purchase legitimate copies.
I'm sure Darl would sooner they be running SCO software.
As far as Slashdot, we all know even the submitters don't read the articles. "now targetting" my ass.
Agreed. The fact that anything I know about the news seems to get wrong, scares me. How do I know if everything they are feeding isn't crap, and I just dont know enough to refute their claims?
The current news system is broken... forcing reporters to meet insane deadlines encourages bad reporting. I say place a deadline and give bonuses if the reporter meet the deadline but penalities for each factual error in the report.
Isn't it more traditional to do that from orbit?
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
Not to mention that Livermore and Los Alamos are heavily funded by the Dept. of Energy. and Dept. of Defense.
Politics aside, do you really want to go against the DOE and DOD, Mr. SCO?
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
NIH, The National Institues of Health, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services of the United States government, is using Beowulf clusters to help cure diseases such as cancer, Alzheimers, stroke, heart disease and kidney failure.
I'm definitely rooting for the Feds on this one.
This is disgusting.
Probably the only thing worse would be if SCO were to send out dunning letters to worthy chartible organization that happen to make use of free and open source software in an effort to save money for helping people.
The sooner that this company's fradulent claims are shot down in flames in the courts and its criminal executive officers charged by the SEC and led in handcuffs to join Ken Lay, the better.
Were it me, I'd send back a letter indicating that my attorneys were in the process of closely examining your claim and will be contacting you shortly. To expedite our process, please submit supporting evidence of your claim to our counsel.
I doubt you'd hear anything more from the litigious bastards.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
They're not trying to win a single case, they're trying to get back in the press in a positive or semi-positive light and get the stock back above $10/share. Suing the federal government will give them exactly what they want: attention.
Darl and company will likely end up enjoying the last of their days relaxing on a south pacific beach somewhere. Microsoft wants them to do as much damage to FLOSS before they have to flee the country. Winning the lawsuits isn't one of their goals. Understand those facts and the whole thing starts to make some amount of sense.
Do you have ESP?
True story: Once I dreamt that SCO was a really small company (moreso than they are--one of those odd dream things) and I bought them (don't ask). I then proceeded to fire Darl McBride (weird dream, you know-- I bought them...) during a press conference or something. You won't believe how good it felt. Seriously.
I have spent too much time here at Slashdot, and I fear it is showing.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Utah's law has been amended so that Darl McBride can't choose to have a final blaze of glory.
Get ready, Time Magazine! I think this has to go down as "The Dumbest Move Of All Time" and who other to take the prize... than SCO itself.
Yes, this is a BIT more than they can chew... and maybe the Feds will just decide to chew them up and spit them out.
What's next? SCO vs. Jesus Christ? Probably not. SCO won't last that long if they keep the shit with The Feds up...
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," [...] "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer."
The people who read this letter include people who think like this.
I'd hate to see make the beloved makers of KDE and QT get involved with suing Linux.
I wonder about those guys.
What with Canopy representatives on their board of directors and all.
SCO is either incredibly smart... or incredibly stupid.
No, it's news because the targets of the letters, save a few, hadn't been previously known publicly. An attorney for several of the targeted companies managed to snag these two letters from the gummint labs via a Freedom of Information Act request. FOIA requests are not fullfilled instantaneously.
/. (surprise). I posted this same story to /. early last evening, but it was ignored and then rejected by the editors.
I could say, by the same token, this is just a bit of bad reporting by
"SCO threatened US DOE labs in December letters
18:32 Friday 19 March 2004 Rejected"
To prove we mean business, we're typing this WITH OUR CAP LOCK ON! (evil, maniacal laugh)
This guy is way out there
two DOE labs. I am certain that other national labs have also recieved letters.
IANAL... But I play one on
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said.
Wow, I didn't know SCO was so concerned about saving the world from terrorists. Could someone give these people a humanitarian award please?
All of this reminds me of something my dad said growing up: Companies can get away with just about anything, until they burn either the government or the military.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
There was a good Advt beneath this article "Stop worrying about SCO !"
Mod me offtopic, but i found it funny.
The Federal government might have a pretty good case for Eminent Domain.
Those labs are multibillion dollar projects.
The value of the unix source code is not more than the fair market value of the company (ie $300 million dollars) , so the feds could easily begin eminent domain proceedings against SCO in which the US government would take the Unix source code in exchange for fair market value.
Considering the massive use of Linux in federally funded schools, colleges and universities, settling the IP question once and for all would be worth it.
Then the federal government could treat the unix source code as a public document.
Im sure Microsoft would whine but its good public policy to preserve a competitive market.
predicted that with their stock recently dropping in price (again) that they would stage another publicity stunt.
Quote from yesterday before this happened "every time their stock goes down, they escalate the circus"
This guy is way out there
Yeah, all the Fed's would have to do is declare a war on frivolous lawsuits. Utah could become a terrorist supporting rouge state and Darl an enemy combatant.
Once you start declaring war on non-states, everything becomes fair game.
Is it possible to rent penguins? I know their droppings are like any other birds, pretty nasty, kind of a pain to clean up and stink like hell in large quantities. Would it be possible to rent a flock of penguins and cage them in the sco parking lot for a work day? Everyone would have to walk through it and the penguins would probably hop up onto cars etc... Or just get a few pissed off male emporer penguins and leave them in Darl's office....
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I'm also sure SCO will start getting nervous. Sure, this is old news, but it IS now public. In an election year, this won't look good to those who most likely would defend SCO to the hilt against "commie" Open Sourcerers.
So far, PR has been lenient to good towards SCO, but it has started sliding down as time has gone on. This won't help matters.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
My colleagues and I were wondering if they'd have the guts to consider a suit against the labs. We're a seriously major player in terms of installed nodes and code contributions, and suing one or more of us would get a great stock price bounce. It would also some of the brightest geeks on the planet and lawyers with a bottomless checkbook involved in SCO's world (not that it isn't happening already via the existing suits). They'd also be suing a weapons lab in a time of war and telling them you want to confiscate their classified gear - if you thought the Nazgul were cranky, try threatening somebody with enormous amounts of restricted data and see what kind of badness shows up at your door.
:)
On balance, I just can't see them doing this. The government can really spank somebody in a million different ways if you irritate them (SEC, FBI, air strikes...) and SCO's got enough to worry about right now. Then again we're talking about a company that thinks it's a good idea to sue IBM, so who knows?
God, I hope they do it.
Well done - that's hilarious.
Of course I'm feeding a troll, but that link is brilliant. It's the funniest thing I've seen in ages - absolutely brilliant. Fake letters from a fake girlfriend....I have images of an old IBM connected up to a whole mess of dot-matrix printers slamming out letters en-masse - though I know that it's probably a bit more sophisticated. Like a bunch of old people in some old folks home somewhere or Asians imprisioned in some warehouse in New York transcribing.
Well done, barbarian....well done.
as in censorship....
I did mention that the German courts told SCO to stop making those claims before they are proven. (to paraphase my own words).
God.
I'm sure SCO has good lawyers....or maybe not, they haven't actually won anything yet... But I'm willing to bet the federal government has better lawyers than SCO does. There's no way they can possibly win this.
I just hope this doesn't raise taxes.
Despite all other thoughts (accidental launch on SCO targets and other humor like that), this seems really cyberpunk. An on the verge of collapse desperate IT company get's funded under the counter by a big evil IT company to make life miserable for the people who threaten the big evil IT company. It feels like a subplot in a Gibson novel... wierd. Life imitates art yet again.
NGSCB + SCO = Linux is dying.
"Free or low-cost open-source software, full of proprietary code, is grabbing an increasing portion of the software market. Each open-source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software," McBride said in a letter, republished by the Open Source and Industry Alliance. "This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate."
"We are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of open-source software, under the GPL (the General Public License covers Linux and many other open-source programs), is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize," McBride said. "
Notice that all of the above, sounds exactly like the MS party line. And like the MS line, has holes the size of a Buick.
"Microsoft wants them to do as much damage to FLOSS before they have to flee the country. "
Two things.
One-are they doing any damage to FLOSS?
Two-I doubt there's very many places McBride and friends can hide, in peace.
Of course, if they can get federal agencies (who aren't playing with their own money anyway) to pay them to shut up and go away, so much the better!
Fed agencies will certainly not cave in. In fact they are likely to become very incensed at this escapade and consider it to be a type of shakedown racket.
so next they have a press conference with a big American Flag behind them and announce suits against Iran, North Korea and Syria.
George Bush parades Darl as a father^H^H^H^H^Hhomeland hero in a tickertape parade and the courts auto-rule that SCO wins all suits real and imagined.
SCO is also added to the pledge of allegiance, replacing the word "justice".
'We are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of open-source software, under the GPL (the General Public License covers Linux and many other open-source programs), is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize,' McBride said.
Is McBride running a software company or running for public office? Sorry Darl, we've had Clinton and two Bushs over the past 15 years - your out of your league. Now he's suing the government; the man truly has a complex.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
You are mostly right, they need to make noise to pump the stock price again. However, there are some targets which we know they chose not to pursue. Bank of America, for one. Why go after Daimler/Chrysler instead? This is complex, and forgive the tin-foil hat sound of it.
BoA is big. More importntly BoA is VERY influential in the Banking and Investment Banking industry. Think it through. BoA has ties to virtually every financial institution on the planet of somekind and could very easily use its influence to ruin SCO in a heartbeat. A few phone calls from some BoA execs and suddenly SCO's line of credit dries up and loans are called-in. Even better, the Mortgages and auto loans, whatever debts, of SCO execs are called and there are suddenly no other banks anywhere willing to lend them money.
Not only that, but BayStar has all its credit affected also, as well as its execs. Sure all these SCO-scum and BayStar-bitches are probably rich enough to handle it, but it is going to hurt and hurt bad. Most Americans, even Donald Trump, are so heavily "leveraged" that if something like this were to occur it would destroy them. It would most certainly destroy SCO, et al.
SCO's lawyers probably realized this at the last minute and convinced Darl that BoA and any other super-sized Bank was capable of playing hardball at a level SCO can't survive. Otherwise, why change targets instead of just tactics? SCO could have just amended that letter to BoA to sue them just like Daim\Chrysler instead of trying to get the court to seize, effectively, all their computers. Answer: SCO isn't suing BoA because they are scared of what BoA could do to them. If not, why announce the Fed-suit instead of going back after BoA? A company that everyone now knows(thanks to MS-Word fun) was an initial target. Answer: Not even the Feds scare them as bad, as this headline proves.
Flash is the Herpes of the Internet.
your.opinion >
are simply an attempt to raise money by threatening legal action. Many companies will settle and buy the license before they spend the money on their lawyers. Many point out that these cases look like losers and they are. Just remember that ritht now winning these cases is not the point for SCO. They have no intention of taking these cases to trial.
These labs do not belong to the University of California. A while ago the phrase "National Laboratories" was tacked to the labs names to make this perfectly clear.
While they may lose ( or they may not.. that is still yet to be determined since there hasnt been a judgement on ANY of their claims, yet.. ) that wont instantly mean they goto jail.
.. If the people at SCO truely belive they are in the right.. then no *fraud* was commited.. just a lot of stupidity .. and last i heard that isnt a crime...
The SEC must prove there was intent to defraud
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The Federal Government is probably Microsoft's biggest customer. As if the anti-trust case wasn't warped enough, Microsoft aiding SCO and SCO going after the Feds is even more twisted. MS and the government have one serious dysfunctional marriage. Of course, this could flare up the anti-trust meter if SCO actually wins and the government has to switch to um ahem Microsoft.
Its ok he's dead now, we're safe...
AAAHHH!!! there he is again!!!
*stab* *stab* *stab*
ok now he's dead for sure this time... we can go on with our lives
AAAHHH!!! there he is again!!!
*stab* *stab* *stab*
and etc
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Dr. McBride or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love SCO
So now SCO attacks the US government?
I find this reminiscent of the activities of McCarthy in the post WW2 period.
The McCarthy investigation and activities were very successful in trying to root out left-wing people from jobs, on the basis that they were a threat to National Security. The world and its people were very weak after the second world war, so all sorts of nutty ideas could get talked about. As the USSR and the USA were involved in a turf war, it was alleged that anyone who supported the US communist party, was in fact undermining the security of the USA. I suppose the modern day equivalent would be any American who supported a pro-Iranian or Pro-Beijing party today, being accused of threatening US security.
Some particularly famous examples were show trials involving Hollywood stars.
Anyway, the whole investigation went on quite successfully until one day the "McCarthy-ites" decided to accuse the US armed forces of containing subversive activities. This was one step too far, and the investigations were halted, and became discredited in the eyes of many.
----
"send a card today - make someone happy"
"SCO sent the letter to every member of the Senate and House of Representatives, said Blake Stowell, a SCO spokesman." No, no, they did not send the extortion letter to congress. This refers to Darl's letter warning congress about the danger to our way of life posed by the and their GPL.
All I can say is, WOW! Darl has completely lost his mind!
B-52 is more dramatic =)
GMcB: "Give me the money, and I may forget I found you."
Han Fed-o: GZZZAT!
GMcB: THUD!
Han Fed-o: "Sorry about the mess..."
None of SCO's desperate attempts to prop up the stock price have worked. Even the announcement of a stock buyback propped up the price for only one hour, between 0930 and 1030 last Tuesday. SCOX continues its long slide. SCOX closed at 8.71 on Friday. It started the week at 9.5, and the year around 20.
SCO has reached the point where nothing they can say can help them. Only winning some of their lawsuits can help them, and that looks increasingly unlikely. They have to win three separate suits (against Novell, IBM, and Red Hat) to even start collecting from end users.
Watch out, everyone! Kim Jong II is going to hack whitehouse.gov with his new Copyright Infringing Beowulf cluster and leave the message
Dude, where's my packet?
This is a good move for two reasons:
;) )
1) If the government decides to settle, SCO will be able to twist the truth and claim that the US Government backs their side of the case.
2) If the government doesn't settle, SCO will be able the claim the government biased against them, which may help with PR.
Hopefully SCO and their supporters pay for what's going on, now. I'm thinking of closing my account at Royal Bank to avoid indirectly funding SCO. That's a pretty big deal given the fact that when I grad I'm going to be a lawyer with an MBA. (And now I'm officially hated by slashdot
The CIA and the FBI and your Grandmother and your unborn children and China and Germany and then were going to sue ourselves and then the planet Earth! AAArrrrgggghhhhh!!!
Can you say shitting on your own door-step? Im surprised at them, SCO being a corporation should know how it works in America - there is no justice, you piss off the feds: they find whatever obscure 60 year old law they can to make your life hell.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
SCO's house of cards finally tumbles McBride and Co. will cash out, ..
... nothing. ... scream bloody murder.
I think this should read";SCO's house of cards finally tumbles McBride and Co. will have cashed out,"
This is what the stock buy back plan is for.
Exercise employee stock option.
sell stock, SCO buys like amount of stock.
employee happy.
stock price (on open market) not affected.
repeat;
What does BayStar do about this?
1. If they are in on it
2 If not in on it
> He states a computer expert in North Korea can download Linux
> and create a super-computer. Yet I'm sure the same expert
> can download some ISOs of Windows from somewhere.
Crikey, you're on to something! Imagine a Beowulf cluster running
Windows ME......you can't put anything past those filthy Commies!
With that sort of computing power they could develop any sort of
weapon you can imagine....knives, axes, sticks....anything is possible
Clippy: I see you're trying to develop a WMD, can I help?
If the prospect of that doesn't constitute a clear & present danger
then I don't know what does.
I'm for GWB carrying forward the "War On Terrorism" and
pre-emptively nuking Redmond. Who's with me?
The Machine stops.
This came from English common law.
You literaly could not sue the king without
his permission.
I remember my mom used to tell me never to hit bee hives with my hockey stick. SCO never listens to this kind of advice, which comes up every time there's a story here about them; so what's their major malfunction? I just want it to end!
They hit one, then run to the next, hit that, run some more, hit another one.... currently they have a shitload of bees after them, and their legs are getting tired...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I think SCO is a slashdot troll... It took the obvious comment of "Imagine a beowulf cluster of those" and applied that line of thought to filing lawsuits.
I think they have a rating of 1120945.57 BogoSuits
Friday was "quadruple witching day".
L
Trading was feverish due to what's known as quadruple witching -- the expiration of all index and equity options and futures contracts -- and investors took the opportunity to adjust their portfolios and move into more defensive stocks. Technology shares, led by a sharp drop in semiconductors, suffered the biggest declines.
Wacky price movements were completely expected last week. No evidence of something fishy going on.
An attorney was requesting info about what SCO did.
Who's attorney?
Was this an attorney just having fun?
What might this be used for?
The attorney in question IIRC , is a specialist in
copyright law. Does this thicken the plot any?
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said. "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer."
There are so many things wrong with what he's saying. Linux is not an American product. Who's to say N. Korea can't buy their Linux servers from some company outside the U.S.? Turbolinux is from Japan right? There must be dozens of Linux distros from all over the world. Hey I know, N. Korea could use that commie distro being developed by the Chinese government.
Maybe I'm wasting my breath even pondering what these guys are talking about. I admit I haven't delved deep into this SCO fiasco but I guess I'm starting to see what other ./ers are talking about.
All of this reminds me of something my dad said growing up: Companies can get away with just about anything, until they burn either the government or the military.
I've recieved a lot of SPAM, but nothing selling votes (what the government cares about) or weapons (that the military cares about). All else seems to pass by...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
But why are they doing this, then? It does seem suicidal...
SCO has been suicidal ever since they decided to go after IBM for IP violations. It's like firing a spud gun at someone armed to the teeth with ICBMs.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
"I don't know any 'large men' "
These threats are a good thing for the community. Eventually Mr. McBride and friends will have to testify in court, and that means taking an oath.
Correct me if I am wrong, but a court canot accept sworn testimony from someone that does not have the capacity to take the oath because off incapacity or mental defect. It seems to me that threatening to take the computers of geeks that have access to nuclear materials is prime evidence of premium, high grade, enriched looniness.
So, do we have a lunatic thats chewing on the biggest dog in the junkyard? I don't know. I'm off to try to install Debian on one of my machines. It's my second distro, after fiddling with Knoppix for awhile. How's that for evidence?
Yeah yeah, I know. The nuke geeks have good characters and won't become vindictive. But it does make me wonder why a guy with the name McBride would risk federal time. Time to start hitting the McWeights and start taking McShiv lessons.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Interesting, UC is the only people (just about)
that SCO could sue that could look at the USL vs UC
secret settlement.
Is the attorney who gt the letters working for UC?
He is IIRC a copyright attorney.
Has anyone on the SCO board thought about getting Darl checked for mental illness?
I mean, seriously... his quotes get more and more outlandish and now he wants to PICK A FIGHT with the government? There is something suicidal and crazy going on here...
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Imagine SCO won some hilarious claim in the US - pretty much every other nation in the world would ignore them. Imagine all the American businesses that would have to pay licence fees to SCO - and all the non-American businesses that would not. That would hurt the US economy for real.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Just spam in SCOs name and then aol will block access to their website. That ought to shut them up a bit.
SCO: I'm calling the FBI to confiscate all your computers and do an investigation!
FBI: Sir. We are the FBI.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Is this a "SCO-Killer"? (sorry couldn't resist another death toll around here)
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
...All your beowolf clusters are belong to us...
DEPLOYING UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE
ACQUIRING TARGET
LOCATION: LINDON, UTAH, USA
TARGET DESTROYED
SEND NOTIFICATION
TO: LEGAL DEFENSE TEAM
CONTENT: It's Miller time!
bitch slap coming up real soon.
This is too good to be true...
But this isn't SCO vs. the Feds. It's Microsoft taking on the Feds in an arena of Microsoft's choosing.
,'stock swaps', and probable other deep business secrets. MS is using the remains of SCO to destroy the corporate credibility of Linux and then continue to force the Open Source movement into its organization through fees and licenses.
At this point it is fairly clear that SCO is a shell corporation, shilling for Microsoft who is their primary funder through background 'loans'
The US Federal government threw everything it legally had at Microsoft in the 1990's and lost. MS used bribes (campaign contributions) and massive legal expenditures (tax deductable) to defeat the Feds.
Now they are on the offensive against their enemy. Personally I wouldn't take on the Feds so blatently (given their 25000 Hydrogen bombs, state-of-the-art assassination teams, and the fact that they are incorporated in the same country controlled by millions of middle-aged female bureaucrats), but I guess the richest man in the world believes that he has a good chance of bending them to his indomitable will.
Woah, saying "linux" nowadays is like shouting "bomb!" inside of an american airport.
Diego Rey
diegoT
There are laws against the being cruel to aminals. I mean subjecting the penguins to direct contact with such sub-lifeforms as SCO lawyers and employees. If we just kill all lawyers we wouldn't have problems in the world like this.
We need more penguins and less lawyers in the world. It would even smell better
"If not, why announce the Fed-suit instead of going back after BoA?"
Keep your tinfoil hat on; there's plenty of other oddities about this thing of SCO's, but you're a little off on this one point.
1.) SCO hasn't sued the fed labs yet and announced nothing yesterday.
2.) The letters were part of one of the threatening spam runs SCO did in December; the revelation now comes because an attorney representing several recipients of the sco scam spam just now has been able to obtain them, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the letters.
Kind of an adaptation of the MS ploy of insulting the judge until he reacts, then win on appeal based on the judges 'unproffessional conduct.'
If your enemy is all dead from laughing at you, you still win.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Except that it's misleading and there's not enough clarification:
It's not an idle threat, though many Linux fans dismiss the Lindon, Utah-based company's assertions. SCO's attorneys, Boies Schiller & Flexner, have indeed sued AutoZone for its use of Linux, claiming that the open-source operating system infringes on SCO's Unix copyrights.
Unless author clarifies his point, it's misleading. SCO did not sue AutoZone simply because AutoZone uses Linux. They sued AutoZone because SCO had a licensing agreement with them which SCO felt was violated by AutoZone's use of Linux. Author's point seems to imply that if you are a large company and use Linux, you are at a risk of getting sued. This is not true. What legal principle can SCO use to sue Linux users that have no contract or licensing agreements with them? None, as far as I am aware.
This is a problem with most mainstream press reporting on this issue. They follow SCO's FUD more than do their research and report facts.
..Ever. Seriously, I like it.
at least I won't be near Utah when a nuke from Navada 'accidently' wanders off course and turns the whole place into a parking lot.
"We are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of open-source software, under the GPL (the General Public License covers Linux and many other open-source programs), is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize," McBride said.
Of course it is dumbo!
But is a capitalist system a neccessarily good thing?
Not when the world is full of assholes like McBride it aint!
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
Each open-source installation displaces or pre-empts a sale of proprietary, licensable and copyright-protected software," McBride said in a letter, republished by the Open Source and Industry Alliance. "This means fewer jobs, less software revenue and reduced incentives for software companies to innovate...We are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of open-source software, under the GPL (the General Public License covers Linux and many other open-source programs), is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize," McBride said.
This is desperate war talk, folks. It's a sign that SCO has got its back against the wall. However, if the open source community does nothing to counter this kind of bullshit, there is a chance that their alarmist message will be heard. What I want to know is, what is the best way?
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
"His remarks sound like he's trying to appeal to our current neo-con regiem's inability to comprehend issues that affect anyone except fellow members of Skull & Bones fraternity."
Oh... You mean like John Kerry?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I think that people who see the U.S. government as some behemoth that can devour SCO are missing something. Four years ago, that might have been a reasonable analysis, but now you have people in charge of the govenrment who are actually much more hostile to the institutions that they nominally govern than they are to the industries they nominally regulate or serve.
This is actually a perfect oppotunity for SCO to walk in, whine about lost IP value, and have a truly sympathetic ear on the other side of the table. The government shut down several nominally free services provided by the government because private industry concerns complained that they were too successful and taking away business from the private sector.
The Bush administration loves anything that makes a buck, and probably hates things like Open Source software because it sounds too much like Communism.
About the only interesting things here are that we now know they've been sending these letters to (pseudo) government organizations, and they've managed to threaten the Regents of the University of California ( thus re-igniting USL vs BSD).
It's also increasingly unlikely that they did any sort of vetting in terms of who they sent the letters to. Dead Tree SPAM.
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
That proves nothing except the amount of the contribution. Where does it prove your allegations that GWB came down on the DoJ?
it's to blow up SCO headquarters.
What is their legal department thinking?
Does anyone else see a parallel between SCO's allegations and the McCarthy hearings? If we can learn one thing from the trials, it's that the government is the last entity you want to accuse when you don't have firm ground to stand on.
Who wants to see Darl go to Gitmo?
<kiddieVoice>Oooh! Me! Me!</kiddieVoice>
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
...with such big brass balls?
Well, I'm guessing first the feds will laugh at them and then maybe they'll start the process of trying to get funding to pay them. By the time all the paperwork is done I would guess sco would be long into chapter 11, one can hope. In either case it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize suing feds is prob not going to help you much.
:(){
If they actually win some or all of the suit against IBM alone does that not bring there value into the billions?
.
Would eminent domain consider the entire value of the company or just the current value of the product?
Doesn't the legal principle of sovereing Immunity imply that you can't sue the Feds without their permission? Something tells me that using the Federal Court system to screw the Federal Government out of money isn't going to be terribly productive. Why can't the government say "You wanna mess with us? Fine! We refuse to enforce ANY of your 'intellectual property rights'. Unix is now officially public domain!" or something to that effect...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
"We are firm in our belief that the unchecked spread of open-source software, under the GPL (the General Public License covers Linux and many other open-source programs), is a much more serious threat to our capitalist system than U.S. corporations realize," McBride said. Right. That's why much larger corporations than SCO, like IBM and HP, are avidly supporting Unix... because they want to destroy our capitalist system! McBride, if you honestly beleived this, shouldn't you buy shares in these companies, and institute a shareholder lawsuit? Obviously the destruction of capitalism can't be good for the shareholders of IBM or HP, can it?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
At the end of the article, they mention letters that SCO sent to every congressman saying:
"Open-source software--available widely through the Internet--has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by U.S. law," McBride said. "A computer expert in North Korea who has a number of personal computers can download the latest version of Linux...and in short order build a virtual supercomputer."
Like most of their previous assertions, they don't let logic get in their way on this either.. As if Linux is the threat here.. By this same logic, you would need to outlow Solaris-x86, Windows, *BSD, and anything else running on x86's.. They key to these systems is not the OS, it's the price/performance of these commodity CPU's.
Darl, do you have any idea how many Linux clusters those Mafia guys are running? And they're loaded! Go get 'em!
OK, so SCO's claims and actions are ridiculous but work with me here:
Suppose SCO offers the feds a blanket license at an extremely low price? What happens if the feds settle? Think of the bragging rights. Think of the precedence.
I submitted this story yesterday MORNING with much better links. Again, I guess it's a matter of BLOW JOBS.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I suspect that George W. Bush doesn't have a problem with 'anticompetitive practices' if they are done in the name of a higher good (billion dollars profits are, by God, a higher good). An executive that proclaims his right to a preemptive doctrine is not really one that cares about fairness, only about keeping his company (to use the word loosely) on top of world.
====---====
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
In other news SCO has launched a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice for using the words "litigate" and "lawyer" without any remorse for SCO's intellucual property.
We all live in a #FFFF00 submarine...
You sued WHO???? Don't you know that they have nukes?
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
Wow! I have a bunch of old i386 (33mhz, 66mhz) machines downstairs in the basement. I didn't realize installing the latest Linux distro on them would turn them into Supercomputers... I thought my current Linux boxen ran fast because of the modern hardware.
Thanks Darl! Maybe you're smarter that we think.
SCO wanted the general public to think of this case as one of David v. Goliath. However, it is becoming clearer and clear that it is not a David v. Goliath case at all. In the historical David v. Goliath, Goliath picked the fight. In fact Goliath taunted the Isrealites. The would-be David in this case is SCO, and SCO picked the fight. But it seems that SCO did not just limit the fight to one Goliath. Oh no. Getting cocky, while swinging its sling, and a limited supply of ammo, SCO has gone on to pick a fight with a couple of other Goliath's; some of the Goliaths are bigger and some are smaller. But now SCO has decided that by threatening to sue the Feds, SCO has decided to pick on the biggest Goliath of them all. But that is not the best part -- this new Goliath (we'll called it the US Goliath Family) has a family, one that has deep pockets and several methods of persuasion. Between the members of the US Goliath Family you have the FTC, with power to investigate and criminalize the actions of SCO; the FBI, which has the power to investigate rackateering and extortion amoung other things; the SEC, which can investigate the claims of M$ involvement and bring criminal charges for securities fraud; the IRS, which can look into the finances of the company and conduct an expensive and lengthy audit; and several others in the family. SCO has just opened a can of worms, and they had better hope that they are right, becasue if they are wrong, they will have sealed their own coffins.
The tables have now turned. Several government agencies have said this is a copyright issue. Now that there is a threat that government agencies will be dragged into the equation, there is now a huge financial incentive to look into possiable criminal conduct. The US government does not take well to extortion attempts. Perhaps SCO is doing this out the "spirit" of capitalism. Who knows. But one lesson that I learned quickly well growing up in the Wash, DC area is that when the government gets pissed off at a company things get rather unconfortable for the company. And forget the congressional support. When things start to hit the fan, you can bet that some General is going to have way more power in swaying a Congressman's opinion than SCO will.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
After that, we can use all those insecure boxes to hawk viagra and penis-enlarging products to morons.
I call it "capitalism"!!
"Looks like they bit off more than they can chew..."
But through it all, when there was "FUD";
They ate it up and litigate it out;
They sue them all and they stood dull;
And did it Microsoft way!
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
> Wacky price movements were completely expected last week.
Yes, but the grand-parent noted this has been happening for longer than just "last week".
I don't think SCOX and it's executives are heading anywhere but jail for a multi-year fraud. The only thing baffling me anymore is that the big bad American government which is so willing to send the troops overseas doesn't have enough 'nads to reign in a lunatic like Darl and his cohorts.
Guess it's a lot easier to blow billions on overseas troop movements and "liberations" than it is to have the justice department simply make a phone call and put an end to a fraud that is hurting the entire computing industry outside Microsoft.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This is really about MS controlling the world. See, MS already won a fight against USA. (The towel was thrown in from the corner). MS has made so much of the world dependent upon MS, that they can basically be accused of global blackmail these days. They control the code, but more importantly, they control the bug fixes, which apparently are always lacking. Yes, they *could* fix the exploit holes, but MS can exert *much* more control by *NOT* fixing the exploits.
If you have a LAN or WLAN to deal with, and there is an MS machine on it, you should be concerned about the security of your non-MS machines that are also on that [W]LAN *EVEN IF* the [W]LAN is behind a firewall-router.
The odds are good this will be moderated down by the MS astroturfers. Prove me wrong dudes!
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Think about it, they're already neck-deep in shit if they don't win everything. Pissing off the feds isn't going to screw them over any more. The chance that they're taking is that the way government agencies deemed important enough to be allowed supercomputing clusters, adding on a charge for linux licenses won't bother anyone enough to raise a stink about it. They then get the credibility of a federal agency paying up to voice their threat with.
That said, I think they *will* get hammered in court, but that doesn't make their behavior irrational from where they stand right now. Proving criminal fraud would basically require audio tape of them saying "No, we don't own the code, but we can still extort them for lots of money." which is unlikely, so all they really have to lose here are attorney's fees.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
There was something I was wondering. Many people make the "mistake" of associating Linux with the GNU operating system. Linux is just the kernel. GNU can run on several kernels, Linux is the most popular one, the default one.
When I started using FreeBSD I noticed that the kernel was really not that big of a deal compared to the Linux kernel, which was more of a bigger deal, or seemed to be, anyway. I remember I swapped an OpenBSD harddrive between minor architecture changes and had to compile a new kernel. It wasn't a big deal, it only took short period of time, and involved just editing the file directly, then compiling it and reboot.
So here is what I was wondering. When they say AIX - the accusation there is AIX code in Linux - they mean the kernel, right? Or are they talking all of AIX. I am even wondering how these things match up; because, technically, calling what most people call Linux Linux is incorrect, it's actually GNU/Linux to begin with, and then perhaps some proprietary stuff thrown on top like YaST was up until yesterday or so.
So I wonder how much people realize that we are just talking about a kernel here, or are we? Is it more than that? And how does the logic of these accusations draw the dividing line between kernel and OS? The accusations seem to be based on the fact that everyone is "using Linux" and "not using Unix" anymore, but identifying infringing code seems to be an afterthought, with no specific facts as of yet (probably ever). The accusations don't appear to be primarily about the technical details, they appear to be of a broader nature, about the fact that ex-Unix customers are now "using Linux". It's almost as if the individual(s) responsible for these legal actions don't know the difference between Linux and GNU - why would they be asking for "AIX" and not the "AIX kernel"?
It's just kind of strange, if you asked me. It's basically tying software to hardware, because the kernel is all about hardware, all kinds of hardware. Since there is no evidence, and no infringement has taken place, these court cases are obviously going nowhere; but shouldn't tying hardware to software be at the discrection of the hardware manufacturer/chipmaker?
Some one with better understanding of the law and SCOs tomfoolery than me should be sending letters to every congressman as well.
Please say someone is doing this!
C'mon, those poor little rep's are like confused children, they just need a little guidance to see past the lies.
I wonder if a company semi-secretly paying another company to smear its competition could be construed as a violation of the RICO act? Probably a stretch, but it would be oh-so-fitting if Microsoft could be brought down the same way the Mafia were. It worked on Michael Milken, after all...
Like most of their previous assertions, they don't let logic get in their way on this either.. As if Linux is the threat here.. By this same logic, you would need to outlow Solaris-x86, Windows, *BSD, and anything else running on x86's.. They key to these systems is not the OS, it's the price/performance of these commodity CPU's.
Where have you been the past 10 years? The U.S. gov has strict export limits on machines that are deemed "supercomputers." SGI, and more recently, SUN have been busted for selling certain configurations to China and other countries. This is fact.
Note to Taco: what is with all the modding up of such idiocy? Don't you have any journalistic integrity? Ohh, wait, I forgot, this is Slashdot. (:
SCOX will eventually set up a patsy to lose a case to ensnare gnu/linux.
And this affects Open Source BSD how?
Would it be possible for me to offer SCO stock, just a few shares at a much lower price, say 6.50, thus bringing down the ticker price for closing? This immediate drop would most certainly cause some panic within SCO investors. Granted this is all illegal as ehll, but it would be cool to really screw darl in the pocketbook wouldn't it? I mean a decrease in 3-4 dollars for a stock at 10 is huge for darl's stock.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
The simplest answer to SCO alegations; They are going down !
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
The dirt in Utah is pretty reddish, isn't it?
(I'm really not being a little shit, I just like word jokes.)
We're talking about national labs here, not the FBI. National labs don't have any such power.
Thanks /. for the constant hyperbole.
now just imagine... SCO kill linux in USA, 699$+equipment per additional CPU. the Enemy: only equipment cost. now who will have the fastest computational power?
Bank of America can't simply call every financial institution in the world and get SCO shut down. That is retarded.
Besides, don't you imagine BoA has competitors?
Wow. The open exchange of information amongst programmers is a threat to the capitalist system? Since when was sharing knowledge a threat to the advancement of society??
...has not been charged. He is under the protection of the Vice President!
Is this what they call the SCOoby defense? Now, if we can just get the RIAA to raid the Feds' offices as well, we'll be set...
Now that this will involve the Feds as defendants, can we just let the Navy Seals have a training mission in Utah?
SCO goes to their offices on Monday and finds nothing but an empty shell, not even a fingerprint.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
I work for a contractor at one of the DoD High Performance Computer Modernization Program supercomputer sites. (HPCMP www.hpcmo.hpc.mil) The HPCMP has purchased several Linux Networx machines for this coming year in addition to other Linux clusters from IBM and SGI. In all cases the vendor had to assume all risk for the SCO issue. No taxpayer money went into SCO coffiers.
Interesting.... I guess that would explain why they're not going after various other national labs that have beowulf clusters.
What is the Latitude, Longitude and Altitude of SCO headquarters again?
."
I so Really would like to see the USA government put SCO in its place (-back under a rock-) Just like the Government of Germany did to SCO!!!
Isn't threatening the government a terrorist act?
If so - does that mean all SCO employees will be classified as Enemy Combatants, and shipped of to the happy little camp down south?
"Abdul, meet your new roommate Daryl . .
The chances of anyone outside of IBM ever seeing the JFS1 source code is practically nil. AFAIK, it is pretty scattered and embedded all over the AIX kernel.
Now, JFS2 is a different beast. IIRC it was developed as part of "Project Owl" by a bunch of programmers and one of the primary goals was it to be a clean implementation of JFS based on specifications of the operation of JFS1. To ensure it is 'clean', it was developed on OS/2 and then subsequently ported to AIX.
The Linux port of JFS2 was based upon the "Reference Source"... ie, the OS/2 version of JFS2.
-- The universe began. Life started on a billion worlds...
-- Except on one where stupidity was there first.
Does it run linux?
China!
do they shoot bees at SCO?
well if SCO mess up the energy of department, :P
get ready to be nuked... cuz china has lots of linux boxes
...sure they are aiming for SCO, but even if they miss just a little still no major lose (kidding Utah people...well a little bit anyway)
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Well I just emailed SCO UK telling them I run a couple of linux servers on my home network without licenses, and asked "what do you plan to do about it?".
My expectations are 99% no reply and 1% legalese gobble-de-gook.
The editor read the first paragraph and just assumed the rest.
Which isn't necessarily wrong. I'm studying journalism, and one of the first things we learnt is that most people only read the first paragraph of a story. Therefore, when you're writing a news article, you use what's called the "inverted pyramid structure", which basically just means you dump all your facts at the start of the story, so that all the lazy readers get the general gist.
If the editor can't get the gist of the story from the first paragraph, the story is probably poorly written. This is assuming, of course, that the editor didn't simple mis-read the paragraph.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
There's a legal doctrine which addresses this issue. I can't remember the precise term for it, but the Judiciary is allowed to be a litigant before itself. It's somewhat frowned upon, but the logic goes as follows: under the Constitution, the only branch of the government with standing to hear grievances against the government is the Judiciary. If the Judiciary has a grievance against another branch of the government, it is the Judiciary's Constitutional duty to hear its own case.
For obvious reasons, this is really frowned upon. The Judiciary tends to judge itself much more harshly than it judges others.
For instance, under the Constitution the Federal government is not allowed to reduce the pay of a judge during his/her term of good behavior. Sounds straightforward, right? Up until you consider that Federal judges haven't had a COLA (Cost Of Living Adjustment) in a decade. Due to inflation, Federal judges are getting paid about fourteen percent less today than they were in the '80s.
During this time, Congress has made it a priority to give itself frequent and generous COLAs (when they haven't been giving themselves outright raises). It's outraged a large number of judges, who are--in terms of real buying power--getting their salaries cut by over an eighth despite the Constitution's guarantee that Congress is forbidden from doing that.
So some particularly outraged judges filed a lawsuit against Congress, suing them to compel them to give the Judiciary a proper COLA. The Judiciary heard this lawsuit, because (a) nobody in their right mind could say the judges didn't have a legitimate grievance against the government, and (b) the Judiciary is the only agency authorized to hear these grievances.
In the end, the suit was dismissed before trial. A trial is for the determination of facts, but there were no facts in disagreement. The disagreement was purely one about law, and those disagreements tend to be handled in pre-trial motions. The plaintiffs claimed that Congress' refusal to pass a COLA amounted to an unconstitutional cut in salary, and the respondent (the United States Solicitor-General, I think) claimed that Congress only says their salary shall not be cut, not that they're entitled to COLA increases in salary.
The judge hearing the case decided the Solicitor-General had the correct view of the law. The question of law was resolved in the government's favor, and given that there was no violation of law, the plaintiff's lawsuit quietly vanished.
All of this is if-I-recall-correctly. I may be in error on some details, but I think that I'm right on the major points.
(Also, a sidebar: the next time you hear about how government jobs are cushy and high-ranking spots like judicial appointments are overpaid, consider this: on average, a Federal judge gets paid less than a quarter what they would make in private practice. The Judiciary is facing an exodus of judges into the private sector because the $120,000 salary of a Chief Judge of an Appellate Court simply doesn't compare to the $1-million-or-more they could make in a law firm. Are judges paid well? Yes. Are they paid market rates? Not even close.)
(b) If the Closing Sales Price of the Common Stock is less than $10.50 (as adjusted to reflect any stock dividends, distributions, combinations, reclassifications and other similar transactions effected by the Corporation in respect to its Common Stock)for at least twenty (20) consecutive trading days, the Corporation shall have the right to redeem any shares of Series A-1 Preferred Stock then outstanding at price per share of Series A-1 Preferred Stock equal to the Face Amount plus all accrued and unpaid Dividends thereon through the closing date of such redemption.
I just found a perfect place to test fire your 30-megajoule rail gun.
Funny. It looks like 1984 DID happen. It's just wierded than anyone could have ever imagined.
Be secure.
"Tuez-les tous; Dieu reconnaitra les siens" reads the original French. "Think of it as evolution in action" is the modern paraphrase. Either way, the whole idea sucks. Much better to do a surgical strike on a handful of TSG execs.
And of course, if you're thinking of rooting the Feds involved, think about this quote:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
SCO thinks it owns the C++ programming language according to one article:
S tory03.html#C++_Issues
http://www.mozillaquest.com/Linux03/ScoSource-02_
Excerpt:
MozillaQuest Magazine: C++ appears to be one of the properties that SCO acquired through Novell's acquisition of AT&T's UNIX Systems Laboratories and subsequent purchase of Novell's UNIX interests by SCO. At this time most Linux and/or GNU/Linux distributions include C++ compilers and editors. Is this something for which SCO currently charges? If so, just what are the current arrangements? If not, will C++ licensing and enforcement be added to SCO's licensing and enforcement program?
Blake Stowell: C++ is one of the properties that SCO owns today and we frequently are approached by customers who wish to license C++ from us and we do charge for that. Those arrangements are done on a case-by-case basis with each customer and are not disclosed publicly. C++ licensing is currently part of SCO's SCOsource licensing program.
MozillaQuest Magazine: How about GNU C++? Does GNU C++ use SCO IP? If so, could SCO license and/or charge for use of its IP in GNU C++?
Blake Stowell: I honestly don't know.
According to the article, Blake Stowell works for SCO, but I don't know who he is. He goes on say that SCO would have to research any violations on the part of the GCC team.
I know that the C++ language is developed by ANSI and ISO, but the language was developed by Bjorn Straussop (sp) as work property owned by AT&T. Am I correct?
SCO claims it acquired C++ from AT&T or Novell. Despite being a programming language, C++ itself is still a technology no different from a hammer.I can't just create a language and call it C++. If I did, ISO couldn't sue me, but SCO would have us believe SCO could. So if I create my own language and call it Borland C++, I would be liable to both SCO and Borland (who is also liable to SCO).
I know it's always in good form to bash Microsoft. Can we honestly believe that Microsoft is somehow behind this, or that Microsoft is still the evil empire? It looks like we have a new contender. I think it's about time we see more cartoons lampooning SCO like we saw for Microsoft. Where's the pic of McBride as a Borg?
instead of "extend foot, take gun, aim, fire!", now it's
extend foot, look for guy holding the biggest gun(*), yell "I date you to shoot!"
(*) OK... maybe the second biggest, after all the US govt did loose against Microsoft.
Hang on.... who's backing up SCO again?
It's all making sense now!
...but the "wind" part of "kamikaze" is unquestionably there. It's a bit of an insult, really, since the WW2 kamikaze had courage, but D'ohl only has chutzpah.
Speaking of kamikaze, is anyone to willing to attach an "I break penguins" bumper sticker to D'ohl's car? Logo featuring a chained-down, angry penguin as it tears the first of the staples out of the wall...
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Darl will have a hard time letting go of the popularity he enjoys among the /. crowd.
/. members ;-).
In order to keep it, he'll start a new career in modelling. He will become the new, hmmmm, face of the reborn Goatse.cx
$699 fee for linking to the site will be waived for the registered
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
bout freakin time.
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
His remarks sound like he's trying to appeal to our current neo-con regiem's inability to comprehend issues that affect anyone except fellow members of Skull & Bones fraternity.
Sucks that both major contendors for the Presidency this November are members of the Skull & Bones. One "neo-con regiem" to another.
Maybe the courts should consider non-lawyer judges. I know a few out-of-work slashdotters who might fit the bill :)
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
The project was started due to US export controls preventing the purchase of an off the shelf solution.
GNU/Linux was chosen over *BSD, at least in part, due to the GPL. The team wanted to share their work, even though it freaked the military out.
>>>>truth; beauty; unix.<<<<
I was involved in a similar situation in a different government agency (not Univ. of California) and the government patent lawyer advised us to just pay up. These license fees are chump change for a Federal agency and the lawyer didn't want to deal with the court case. In order to get competent legal counsel, most government agencies should hire a team of non-government lawyers.
This kind of move is going to backfire on SCO, just watch.
It's $52.7 billion in cash and short term investments. $62.4 billion in total current assets. Effectively cash and equivalents. Money that can be had now if necessary.
Interestingly, "intangibles" (accountant-speak for intellectual property and related) is only $345 million. You'd think those Windows and Office sources were actually worth something. That's 0.7% of total valuation.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Looks like both of these have connections to the University of California. NERSC is located at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory - it's probably a strategic thing to sue University of California (not a smart strategy if you asked me, but it might help to get to the bottom of things). Looks like both of the facilities are operated by University of California for/with US Department of Energy.
I get the distinct feeling that SCO just makes a list of potential defendants and then pays the lawyers millions of dollars to choose from among them - this is, in fact, probably not too far off from what is actually going on, and getting the "Regents of the University of California" on that list probably isn't going to help SCO's case at all, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone thinks it might just impress the lawyers or something.
PRINT CHR$(ASC("V")+1 + CHR$(ASC("M"+1)
+CHR$(ASC("S"+1)
-- Qu'est-ce que la propriété intellectuelle? It is thought control.
Sounds like Darl & Co. think they'll be safer if there is no remnant of SCO left behind after they finish pumping and dumping.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
/* Kirk johnson */ I am teh Goatse guy!
I have a fetish for traffic cones
ok, so its set! from now on the comment goes as follows: imagine a "Evolocity cluster" of [insert new technology here]