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Linus Not The Father Of Linux, According to Report
MrIrwin writes "According to this article on Yahoo, Linus is not the real father of Linux and Open source software is really just code nicked from other sources. " Groklaw has done a dissection of the press release. It's a press release by the Alexis de Toqueville Institution, who gets funding from MSFT, as well as believes that US IT troubles are because of free software. Oh, and terrorism works better because of open source, and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
.....and seeing as how they have such close ties to MS, perhaps they could run a study as to how Microsoft came to be born.
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
TFA also mentions that Kenneth Brown (braindead author of the book about the study) interviewed RMS, but I fail to see any references to GNU/Linux in the write-up. I call shenanigans. Is it April 1st?
And finally, cheers to Hemos. There five times as many links in the editorial insert than there are in the actual submission. Someone buy this man a beer.
"No... I am your father!"
Read to the bottom of the article:
Brown's study is part a book he is writing on open source software and operating systems. Excerpts from the book will be published at www.adti.net on May 20, 2004.
That says it all. Inflammatory statements preceding the release of a new book. This latest FUD is nothing more than a book promotion in the guise of a press release.
Trolling is a art,
so linus isnt on 'teh spoke'?
Thou shalt be excommunicated from the church of *nix!
-Imidazole2
Everybody knows that Cowboy Neal is the real father of open source. Come on, get with the times!
Linux is a bastard child!? I shall disown him from my house immediately!
Acutal out loud laughter. I don't think that I need any more proof that Microsoft feels very threatened when I see puff pieces like this.
There are so many studies on the same topics that the public never hears about, what good is the information in the few that the media choose to cover?
all the code originated from SCO ! we should thank darl for our OS...
"Oh, and terrorism works better because of open source, and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea."
Finally, a man I can agree with!
Yeah, and Gates is not the father of the BSOD.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Now it's installed on all my servers...
I have to know!!!
Who's my baby's daddy?!?!?!??
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Isn't Darl McBride the true father of Linux? This is why he wants his $699. Effective immediately, Linux will be renamed to Darlsux.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
They're obviously trolling. Don't feed.
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
Fri May 14, 5:49 PM ET. I think this guy smokes crack or works for Micro$oft or SCO...
It's a press release by the Alexis de Toqueville Institution, who gets funding from MSFT, as well as believes that US IT troubles are because of free software. Oh, and terrorism works better because of open source, and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
::grinz::)
What I don't understand is why they didn't also mention that Al Gore was the Father of the Internet. How could they have missed something this significant?
(Yes... it's a joke
Interesting how the whole report seems to be one big straw-man argument.
(i.e. claiming the other is saying something they're not, and then showing that it is false)
Their straw-man seems to be the idea (which noone, of course, has claimed) that Linux somehow was created in a vacuum.
From there they proceed to show how Linux was (*shock*) a clone of Unix!
(Probably leaving out the fact that there are literally dozens of them.)
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Here is a photo of the real father of *BSD. He now works at a major university.
Linux : "He told me enough! He told me UCB lost the important court cases"
Darl Vader : "No Linux! I am your father. Search your feelings. You know this to be true"
...an organization named "de Toqueville" seriously. Toqueville? WTF? City of knit caps? Geddouddahere.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
The Yahoo! article ends with a mention about this guy's (from AdTI) upcoming book. It sounds to me as if his claims are nothing more than a publicity stunt, generating interest in his book.
These guys are nuts. And SDI was/is a good idea. Unless they're talking about the movies, which, IMO, aren't really that great. I mean, the first one was fun, but I could have lived without the others.
And talk about awful? Don't even get me started on the books. Crap, utter crap to a one, with the possible exception of Zahn's original trilogy.
And Microsoft sucks.
>Linus Not The Father Of Linux
:
of course. by the way
War Is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
Al Gore invented Linux, duh.
Are you an open source warrior?
Which was cobbled together form the CP/M operating system and rebranded by an up and coming business guy.
He also admits to reading the assembly listings from for DEC Basic before writing his own completely original Basic interpreter.
I do wish this "institute" was based in France where it is illegal to falsify history.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
Why is anybody paying attention to this? It's just wrong. WRONG WRONG WRONG.
To be as nice as I can, he's talking out his asscrack. He's making satirists completely obsolete by doing their work for them. He's spewing the new kind of FUD: "FUcking Dumbarsed bullshit that is wrong on an infinite number of levels".
I think I need a lie down.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
... DNA tests are already on the way to contradict those pesky and false allegations... He surely must be the father
I fuse with Mercer every single day...
and I know because the version of "hello world" that's been shipping with Debian since 3.0 is virtually identicle to the one I slaved over five years ago. damn linux hippies...
> the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
Just wait 20 years, we'll get Linux FUD Special Edition.
Is it just North of Margaritaville?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
"De Tocqueville Institute president Ken Brown and chairman Gregory Fossedal refused to comment on whether Microsoft sponsored the report." "No..they didn't give us any money to make MS look better"..., hell give me 1.2 Million for research and I say MS is stable and then invest the money in my Beowulf cluster....
Sig removed by order of FBI Patriot ACT
Do us all a favor. If you happen to have candid photos of the conception, do not post them here.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Seeing how he interviewed Stallman, Ritchie and others, he will probably try and twist their words to defend his argument by saying all Linus did was copy an existing Unix clone to build a functioning kernel and other people contributed everything else. Which is essentially common knowledge anyways...I don't see how that detracts from the credit he should get for his ongoing work on Linux.
and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea
...but not the "Christmas on Endor" version.
Ryosen
One man's "Troll, +1" is another man's "Insightful, +1".
... downloading Linux is downloading COMMUNISM!
Shees! It sounds like the hard inner core of conservatve crackpots have finally discovered a replacement for Saddam Hussein....
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
As far as I can tell, the true father of Linux is in fact Al Gore. He invented it shortly after his fledgling idea of a net-inter caught on and became what we know now as the internet. It was originally called Alix, but had to be renamed due to copyright issues involving a book about wonderland....
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Actually, the correct spelling would be "Tokeville," to reflect a key component of their research methodology For obvious reasons they didn't get that right either.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
M.
--
Numismatica
Darth Vader.
De Tocqueville was a late French Enlightenment writer who traveled America and wrote in praise of American civil society, as opposed to French (which after having just gone throught the first revolution, and the dictatorship of Napolean, was looking pretty shitty.)
Anyway, it's way too early in the morning for me to pull out a page reference, but one of the major themes in his _Democracy in America_ is that American society functions well due to the large number of volunteer organizations that Americans joined in, fire departments, sewing circles, sports clubs, free publications and that sort of thing. These things raise community awareness, and allow the democratic process to work, since he believed that it would fall apart if all democracy was was everyone voting their own pocketbook.
Anyway, I'd say the Free Software movement in America is certainly a continuation of that civic spirit.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
OH, so I suppose this will tank my stock in Linux. :-P
OK, so first of all, wasn't the GNU project underway by the time Linux was written, thus making RMS much more of the "Father"?
In addition, according to the article: "Brown suggests the invention of Unix is an integral part of the Linux story," but isn't that the point of a Unix-like OS developed for the PC?
Oh, wait. I'm supposed to buy in to FUD tactics.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
Linus admits that he based his OS on Minix. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
Linux started out as a Minix clone. Though it is more than that now, it's roots lie much closer to Andy Tannenbaum than they do to the Finn.
can this be enough grounds for a slander or liable suite? or does it reach that point
Notice that this story is currently rated a 1.3 with 49 votes counted. On a scale of 1 to 5. Not many people get fooled by this drivel. But unfortunately, some people use this to support their arguments that MS is good, and Linux is bad.
Mod story -1 Troll.
/. for chrissakes.
Jesus Christ, posted on the front page of
Next story::
Tinfoil hats, snazzy wardrobe accessory or anti-M$oft mind-control device?
Or::
Bill Gates wants to control your fridge with NT4.0.
[/rant]
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
If only there were some large organisations who'd stand up for Linux when this kind of crap came out. That's the trouble with having no shareholders - no-one to start litigation.
The Slashdot Paradox: "100% Overrated"
The only case I'm aware of terrorists using "software" as apart of their "plans" was the 911 pilots triaining on MS Flight Sim... wtf!?
--
"we live in a post-ideological world..." - Billy Bragg.
why was star wars a bad idea? it was a factor that led to the fall of the soviet union.
What relevance is there to say that someone is the "inventor" of Linux since Linux is not an invention.
If they had said that Linus Torvalds is not the "originator", "creator", "maintainer" or suchlike of Linux then there would be something to argue about.
What if you had to come up with something completely original to get any credit for it?
Invent: To produce or contrive (something previously unknown) by the use of ingenuity or imagination.
You've probably noticed that people's noses get bigger as they get older. That's because old people are huge liars.
I've wondered aloud why Microsoft had pulled the rug out from underneath SCO, and now it's obvious. They're going to start using these idiots, and probably others, to spread the same stupid message.
Get used to it, folks, it's not going to get any better anytime soon. That's good news, too, since the credibility of this sort of stuff has been mostly destroyed by Darl's loud mouth.
Do you have ESP?
Lunux was created by Xerox labs. Linus toured the labs, and memorized some key lines of code. In order to obfuscate the origin, he renamed it Linux, and released it under the GPL.
What a bunch of cow manure...the specification for a POSIX compliant operating system existed long before Linux came on the scene - and is the basis of it.
The POSIX standard is an open standard that is the basis of many operating systems or parts of operating systems (in the case of Windoze). It was established to allow interoperability between systems that adhered to the standard.
This 'report' is nothing but slander and lies. Lawyers representing those individuals who were slandered should pin this so-called 'foundation' and its questionable 'fellows' to the wall.
FUD...
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
I know it would be more food for the troll (and SCO case), I know Linus is not quite the irritable guy, but couldn't he sue the Alexis de Toquevill Institution for libel ?
Maybe we deserve this world ?
While you cannot group all open source programmers and programs together; many are rigorous and respectful of the intellectual property rights, while others speak of intellectual property rights with open contempt.
Here's one immediate problem with the way this guy thinks - the two groups of programmers he mentions are not mutually exclusive as he implies. One can speak out about the problems with IP rights and still be respectful and careful about not violating them.
Esp about Star Wars. It's well known that SDI wasn't a serious program, but a big straw man program that scared the Soviets into building up their own program, resulting in the bankruptcy of the Eastern Block. SDI was the decisive event in winning the Cold War.
Al Gore is!
Linus Torvalds should sue the author for libel and defamation of character (and extend it to slander if the author is making oral statements publicly).
This is not only obviously false (and easilly provable), it is likely that it can be shown that anyone purporting to write a book on the subject (free software) should have had enough brain cells to rub together to do a modicum of background research that conclusively demonstrates what they are saying is false (groklaw for starters, fsf, eff, etc.).
Any profits from this libelous publication should go to the injured parties: Linus, whose professional reputation has been viciously besmirched.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
tells it like it is....
Rule #1 -- Politics always trumps technology.
Yea... and the code for the original MS dos came from a garbage can..
most of the people who ever used it wished it had stayed there..
Unfortunately it's trashy tradition lives on.
I think it's far more likely that open source coded is in closed source software. Since open souce, by defintion, is open for all to see, wouldn't companies have lawsuits (SCO excluded) over their stolen code? Since nobody can see the code to closed software, I think it's far more likely that open source code has been taken to be used in closed source software (since nobody that isn't involved in the project will be able to see it).
punk. You wanna start something? I'll zap you before your punch gets to me.
Tell me that isn't accurate.
And since Lemma 1.7 says "no communist is worth his own weight in dog excrement," it naturally follows that Linux must have originated elsewhere.
I propose one of the following:
I think you'll see the logic in all of this immediately.
Hasn't MSFT learned that FUD will get you no where? If I remember correctly, they (MS) did a survey in Japan that clearly showed that a negative ad campaign only caused people to distrust MS less than they already do. Same as politics. Mud throwing will only show that you are a loser, Mr. Bush.
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
I'm sure I'm not the only one to read more deeply into atdi.com. Lots of links don't work, and I haven't tried the Wayback to read them. But, most of the headlines seemed to be positioned pro-Microsoft, going well back into the 1990s. So, what should we expect? I can't comment on whether they are careful, reasoned analyses without reading them, but I certainly see the slant.
/dev/null dispenser from a particular major corporation.
I really like the last puff piece they promoted: are MCSEs good? 87-percent of HR mananger are aware of the program. 55-percent feel that an MCSE is more successful than a college grad. I guess it depends on how you define successful. Either way, it doesn't seem to point to the real truth about MCSEs, which is that the only valuable measure of their potential in your workplace is their experience.
Also, I'd like to find out more about the board members and their affiliations. That would be most helpful. The funny thing is to read the mission statement about "omnicurious journalism" and keeping alive certain liberal ideas. Yeah, lots of "liberal" ideas about business involve taking it in the
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Alexis de Tocqueville, French nobleman famous for "Democracy in America". Lately become required reading for poli-sci studies in fascism among republican youth.
The Starwars program WAS a good idea. It was the threat of this, plus continued spending on defence, that convinced Gorbachev that Russia could never afford to "win" the Cold War and encouraged him to start Glasnost etc.
After many interviews with astronauts and rocket scientists, I have determined that the moon is probably made of cheese.
I tell all in my soon-to-be-released book.
Find out how NASA lied!
Excerpts to be published on my website.
(Note: This is not a shameless self-promotion gimmick. It's not. Really.)
I am genuinely impressed at the 'water off a ducks back' attitude that guys like Linus have to this kind of BS - just let it roll off, and let the strength of the product sell itself, regardless of the nonsense going on around it.
But surely they should be entitled to sue for libel or slander or whatever it is.. everyone knows that Linus coded the original kernel way back in the day. Why can't these companies understand this?
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
people have chosen to scrupulously borrow or imitate Unix.
I guess he's saying this to contrast the way Microsoft unscrupulously imitated CPM/DOS, Lotus 1,2,3, Macintosh, WordPerfect, Stac . . .
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Ya know, I have doubts to this story, since A) I've never heard of it, and B) it looks like a bad attempt at humor. "Insightful", my posterior.
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth. (from Wikipedia)
Now, if they are speaking figuratelly as the original creator of the kernel, that is one of the most documented things in history, or at least, in internet. Of course, maybe some of its components were created before, but is like saying that the father of the car in fact is someone from centuries ago with the invention of the wheel.
_Star Wars_ was a good idea. The same way successive U boat campaigns against the British were a good idea, the same way Sherman's march to the sea was a good idea. IOW, hit them in the wallet or flatten their production capability. Because of the great debate on Star Wars and the intransigence of the Reagan administration on the issue, the Sovs had to take it as something plausible, and thus we were able to force them to divert funds and resources to a possible chimera.
It doesn't matter whether you think Star Wars can work now or not, it's been almost 20 years since it was first proposed, so the reality now has no bearing on then. For what it was used to accomplish, Star Wars was a great idea.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
Debian Troll's Best is already on my friends list for his previous work -- if only there were some avenue to further reward him for this gem, like an IRC-ish 'gives Debian Troll's Best a kiss'!
Fact: AdTI employs James Kilpatrick as a senior fellow. Kilpatrick made a career defending segregation and apartheid.
Fact: AdTI employs John Norquist, the not-so-big-time younger brother of big-time conservative activist Grover Norquist.
Fact: AdTI president Ken Brown's sole research qualification is a BA in English from George Mason. He has built a career out of milking shady publications, agent-of-foreign-power lobby groups, and dubious business-academica-government incest groups.
Half of the links from the AdTI front page are broken. The other half send you to repositories of op-eds and recorded radio shows.
This is not a research institute. Not even a bad research institute. This is a demi-journalistic hack shop where goldbricking bottomfeeders of right-wing policy studies and editorial-writing filch cash from gullible corporations in return for hastily-written hokum.
Please do not post any more from these con artists. I'm sure they get paid by the hit.
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
Seriously, do the fucking mods even read the posts?
Their accomplishments? :)
Not Found!
According to their own website
Just what I thought.
(www.adti.com -> mission -> accomplishments)
And Honda cars are a 'stolen product' because they have steering wheels and gearshifts just like Fords.
Go People's Primary!
Sometimes the messenger deserves to get shot. Even with wanton abandon.
I'm guessing that wasn't on their radar screen...
what's funny is that the star wars program is still very alive. Star wars was not simply the missile blowing up bigger missile plan. It is just the idea that we can and should defend ourselves from the larger missiles (such as the ones that can carry nuclear warheads). "they" are still working on star wars, it's just that now they are leaning towards the laser idea.
The same guys did the report about the weapons of mass destruction in Irak, no?...
--JC
What a wonderful summary of all of SCO's FUD.
This sig no verb.
Hehe, its really funny seeing a post like this parents getting modded +5 interesting, and not +5 funny..
The first paragraph is obviously read by the moderators, whilst the second (which is twice the size) are just beeing skimmed, and not read with a critically mind. (Noticed this username and post-record?) Nice work :)
But yeah, the parent is right about that FUD isn't a serious threat to Linux, and it probably never has been.. An OS survives by being good, not by how its being received by other competitors in the market
I have to say, the whole of this so-called "Institute" is starting to look pretty damned suspicious. Certainly, the world is not wanting for fools, and they do tend to organize into groups, but adti, with its history of poorly-produced, error-ridden, false & inflammatory "studies", really has all the markings of a couple of guys in their basement, making shit up, and then playing on the news media's tendency to spew out whatever is fed to them.
For example, their staff page lists a dozen or so people, including a "webmaster". Try clicking around the site, and notice that:
So the best conclusion you could draw about their "webmaster" (assuming he exists) is that he is about as smart and competent as Ken Brown, the "President" of adti. I'm appalled that Yahoo! parroted this press release as legitimate news -- I think they are being suckered.
P.S. Groklaw rocks. Happy Birthday Groklaw
Pirates of Silicon Valley
www.imdb.com/title/tt0168122/
Linux started out as a Minix clone. Though it is more than that now, it's roots lie much closer to Andy Tannenbaum than they do to the Finn.
... not using a single line of Tannenbaum's available, but not open source or free, source code.
... that is to say, partially true, but also not really correct, and an overall mischaracterization of the effort (an OS written completely from scratch, not copied from another) and the goal (a usable, free UNIX-clone, not a usable, free, specific-UNIX-implimentation clone).
There is nothing to "admit." Linus wrote Linux as a i386 replacement for MINIX (which only ran on 80286 machines) because he wanted a UNIX he could use and play with on his hardware. He wrote the entire thing from scratch
Anyone looking at the old Tannenbaum book (which has the source code to MINIX in it) and the early Linux kernel code can easily tell they were written independently of each other. Anyone, that is, without an anti-free software agenda and ax to grind...
Calling Linux a MINIX clone is about as accurate as calling Linux an AT&T Sys V or generic UNIX clone
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Enter Bill Gates
[Darth Vader voice] Linux ... I am you father [/Darth Vader voice]
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
OSAMA BIN LADEN!
Thus, by using Linux, you're supporting the terrorists.
Everyone please report to the near Homeland detention center for "reprogramming".
I would like to mod the whole story down this time.
love slashdot. populate it. use it. abuse it. hate it. kill it. miss it. stop following links, they only kill servers.
* Fud
* I can't believe it's not fud
* Tofud (Fud for vegetarians)
I think this internet thing sounds like a good idea
he had used a modified apt-get to "install packages of anti-Perens propaganda on the Debian mailing list server", and quoting "the superior ability of apt-get to deal with flamebait and troll dependencies over our own RPM tool".
Great stuff guy.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Warning! Surazal's link in his signature is a re-directed link to goatse.cx! Mod down!!
I love the Linux Mainframe comparison, they compare Linux on an IBM mainframe to Windows 2003 Server on a dual Xenon server. Then cite the Linux machine as having a higher TCO becuase of the cost of the mainframe, the power bill, the maintenance contract, etc.
Or how about the Windows vs. Linux report that does not put a cost on the security breaches and malware attacks on Windows systems?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If Linus were not the father of Linux, then who would not be Linus' father? His mother? Huh?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
The writer didn't do much dissecting. It's mostly ridiculing it (which is deserved), but there's definitely no analysis of the document and counterclaims to refute the arguments therein.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
then they laugh at you
then they attack you --> (you are here)
then you win.
M. Ghandi
+4 Interesting? Should be -1 Bullshit.
Fucking idiot moderators.
This "study" which is about as credible as a plagarized term paper proves it.
Linux is Microsoft's latest, last, and to date, MOST DANGEROUS competitor. NONE of Microsoft's classic tactics can defeat it, as:
1. Linux is cheaper (how do you get cheaper than free
?).
2. Linux is regarded to be as good if not better in quality and functionality.
3. Linux cannot be bought.
4. Linux cannot be "embraced, extended, extinguished" because of the GPL license.
So, what MS has tried to do over the years is slander it. Which, even they have admitted hasn't worked.
I'm abut this cynical... I think that MS backed SCaldera merely so the could try to make the "Linux has higher TCO" argument fly... Then, when Darl proved to be his own worst enemy, they've pulled the plug and now are back to slander.
This piece is out and out slander and defamation against Linus Torvalds. This "institute" which I won't name because they are slandering yet another great name by using it needs to be sued.
Corporatism != Free Market
Just ask the former Soviet chiefs of staff... I forget the name but I've seen an interview in which one of them said Star Wars had them FREAKING OUT, they could not POSSIBLY spend the money to keep up, and it was a big part of their change in attitude in the late '80s.
Oh, how I wish I had registered for an account a few days earlier so I could weigh in with a "You must be new here."!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is almost like saying Bill Gates didn't write MS DOS! ...oh wait...
He didn't.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
While in the previous paragraph, they said...
"Brown's account is based on extensive interviews with more than two dozen leading technologists including Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum.
At least it eventually went out of fashion to hammer him relentlessly here on /. Now we can move on to more important targets like Sun.
I can see it now...
Jerry: And now the results of the DNA testing... Linus, you are... not the fater!
Linus: You slut! I knew it. F**k you! [throws his chair back and walks off the set]
---
Lousy rotten karmic retribution.
Exactly!!! except for the fact that it actually works and has bizzarre superpowers such as swap etc...
Ok, so their claim boils down to: Linux is a UNIX clone and doesn't attribute that fact. They throw around terms like stealing, but failure to attribute ones sources is at worst plagarism, not theft. And is Linux plagarism? No, as noted in their quote, it's an imitation, which is not plagarism (MS Windows after all is imitation of Xerox Parc and UNIX).
So, what of this failure to attribute one's sources?! Where does Linus get off?! Well, actually:So there you have it. Linux started as a Minix clone, which was, itself, a UNIX clone for low-end hardware. Nuff said, troll press releases suck, sigh.
So, if that argument holds for Linux and OSS, then it also holds for Microsoft's software: just about every single piece of Microsoft software has been "stolen" in that sense. Windows, Word, Excel, C#, the NT kernel are all rip-offs of other people's ideas, inventions, and developments. Even software that Microsoft supposedly bought or licensed, like InternetExplorer, constantly had "stolen" ideas put into it to the point that it's pretty much all a rip-off now. Microsoft "steals" in many ways. Most commonly, they copy other people's ideas outright or they hire away people who spent decades developing some technology at some other company.
In fact, that kind of "theft" is how the industry works--it's, in fact, not "theft" at all, it's how engineering, science, and art works: you build on other people's ideas. Microsoft may do it, and so may Linux, and everybody else.
#1 F/OSS software does not help terrorism, the flaws in Windows helps terrorists break into it more easily. If everyone ran Linux or *BSD Unix, there would not be so many crack attempts or malware infections.
#2 IP Theft, most commercial developers steal from open source and free source code and then claim it as their own. Since commercial developers do not release their code to the public, it is hard to tell what they stole. Tons of "free source code" web sites out there to support my theory on that.
#3 Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) software has a higher TCO over OSS due to licensing issues, support costs, and the hardware upgrades required to run the COTS packages. F/OSS has virtually no licensing issues, a low cost support package (free if you get your support off Internet sources), and runs on older hardware mostly (Linux still runs fine on 486 and Pentium 1 systems).
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Fucking idiot moderators.
Warning! Poster has disguised goatse.cx link in this comment! Mod down!
That is still nothing as compared to the cosntant, unrelenting and massive FUD that spews out of the open source community against Microsof ever single second of every single of every year.
Speaking of copying.. Don't he sound like a Linux Zelot?
He should. This is a word verbatum rip of the typical diatribe done by a Linux Zelot in the past.
(We are more creative now)
He dosen't even bother to swap out the terminology.
FUD: A marketting tactic taken on by a corperation. Stands for Fear Uncertanty and Doupt.
It works becouse the vast majority do not have the system in question and don't get to see for themselfs that it's litterally bull pucky. Often slander.
But to clame the open source community is commiting FUD on Microsoft your first clamming the open source community has a marketting department that can start such a marketting campaign and your also clamming Microsoft has less than 45% marketshare.
I repeate less than 45% and hope that 45% won't be vocal.
However most any platform will have a good precentage of supporters.
So realisticly you need less than 5% so you can call the few who stand up and challange your FUD "Fanatics" or other nasty names and discredit the only people who'd actually know your lying.
try FUDing air...
"It's toxic man stop breating it"
Or sunlight "Dude it'll give you cancer just stay inside."
Of course FUD needs a droplett of truth.
Linux was built from many sources.
But SCO, this jerk and the AC parent would all have you believe Linus ripped off Linux from the start.
You know what. The original Linux source can be downloaded for historical reasons. It won't compile, It has none of the POSIX standards or POSIX code (the code SCO is laying clame to) in it, It's possitively worthless trash.
Everyone wana lay clame to THAT?
Sure... Here's the Doggy poop that started Linux. You want us to believe THIS is what passes for a stable Unix?
Sure sure...
Hay Microsoft wana lay clame to an operating system I made? I'll be more than happy to let you have it if you'll just publicly say this is what Microsoft calls a stable operating system.
I discontinued working on it becouse it had a tendency to erase itself and trash it's own database.
I don't actually exist.
I have experienced, on many occasions, the burn of a scrutinous pedant seeking to demerit my efforts. In this particular case K. Brown is deliberately misunderstanding Linus' "invention of Linux". Linus has never claimed to be the father of open source nor has he ever claimed to be the father of the POSIX standards upon which *NIX-like operating systems are built. As Linux has achieved a mild popularity those in the public who are not familiar with the history of computing have begun to associate Linus with the invention of *NIX-like operating systems since they only know of one: Linux. They have associated Linus with the inception of open source software because they are ignorant of the origins of software and only know of one open source arena: Linux.
Linus is being attacked because of common perception built upon a basis of ignorance. This is a common tactic used to discredit and undermine support for anyone who stands at the forefront of a collection of ideas which challenges the established financially successful, and often monopolistic, "powers-that-be".
If this even bothers Linux, if he even takes more than a few moments out of his day to be concerned with it, then I can empathize with him. For his sake I hope he takes the higher road: ignore it and concentrate on what he does best.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Oh, wait. We're the bastards.
Hasn't anybody seen the IBM ads? Unless of course Linus gave birth to an Albino son, there is no way that Linus is the father of Linux.
My Favourite Meme
SCO is being named to SD Times 100 in a category called "influencers." Here's the link. Note how SCO is the "owner" of UNIX. *shakes head*
This is top-level flamebait. Everything they have said has been debunked. For example, Bruce Schneier in his paper about Microsoft Windows creating a computer monoculture which makes it easier for crackers and terrorist to exploit. Linus himself has said, "Show us offending code, and we will take it out", in response to claims that Linux contains plagiaristic works. What has happened is nothing, nobody has come forward with proof. The people making these claims have never come forth with any evidence to support their claims.
Now that I have made that statement. I wish to make another.
By getting angry with these people, you only draw more attention to their claims. When people make hasty generalizations out of anger their arguments are shot down fast. So by arguing with them, you are giving them more power.
I say to all of you who read this, "Ignore them, they will go away". They haven't claimed any truths and they don't have any evidence to support any of it.
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
I haven't seen anyone here actually indicate that they have read this report in full or the book that is coming out... No, I admit I haven't read the book yet. Did read the article. I had a question. Did the AdTI actually interview Linus?
and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
The SDI was and is a good idea.
So it seems obvious that this obviously inflammatory "news" has been released as a publicity stunt, to boost the sales of a book by seeding the author's name and his association with open source software into our minds a little while before his book release.
Thanks to Slashdot, he got even more publicity than he ever deserved. It's a pity that this author will end up being helped by the same people who would rather see his work gathering dust on the shelves of a dollar-store.
Thanks for the info. Go Google..
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
A custody battle between Linux and SCO
(Disclaimer:Just Joking)
Yes, I actually invented Linux. My name is Mr. Anonymous Coward, I am the grandson of Noel Coward and with my literary millions, I bankrolled a secret project with help from SCO and Microsoft to create "competition" for the Desktop which has stalled things and allowed Windows XP to take over the world.
This "Linus" fellow is just some guy I met while pub crawling through Europe....I just recently sobered up and am making the TRUTH known now.
It doesnt matter now. The Open Source movement is too great. You cant stop it.
When it is released, make sure to visit amazon, bn, et al and rate this book for what it's worth
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
Holy page-widening Batman. Here's the text:
.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water. . . more FUD attacks.
This is so stupid I think we need a parody done by Scott Lazar. But I'll do my best to tell you the news with a straight face. The Alexis de Toqueville Institution, who as you may recall admitted it gets funding from Microsoft, has put out a press release on a "study" they have done that suggests that Linus isn't the father of Linux after all. Another "independent" study with Microsoft peeking out from behind the curtain.
It's good when you are opposed by Larry and Moe. How dumb do you need to be to attack Linus Torvalds? As I've said before, it's like kicking Dorothy's little dog, Toto. All you get for your trouble is a lot of really offended folks who seriously dislike you and all your supporters.
Their press release provides no proof, no facts, no details, but it claims the author, the head of the Institution, Ken Brown, did extensive interviews with Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum before discovering Linux's "questionable" roots. Linus, unbeknownst to us, is not the man of integrity we know him to have proven himself to be. Instead, I gather they mean to say he is a common thief, or so the Institution hints, who stole from UNIX. Because they provide no explanation, beyond the hints, we are compelled to draw the conclusion that this is what they seem to mean:
"Brown suggests the invention of Unix is an integral part of the Linux story commenting, 'It is clear that people's exceptional interest in the Unix operating system made Unix one of the most licensed, imitated, and stolen products in the history of computer science.'"
I guess Linus'd have to be a liar too, because he has stated publicly that the origins of Linux were not UNIX (Cf. Minix reference in this historic Linus email). The article about their "study" is here. Here is a taste:
"Popular but controversial 'open source' computer software, generally contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds. . .
"Among other points, the study directly challenges Linus Torvalds' claim to be the inventor of Linux."
Maybe Linus would lie and steal other people's code if it's like that movie, "Invasion of the Cabbage People", or whatever that horror movie was called, where people's brains were taken over, and they were then pliable and did things they never would do as their true selves.
This press release is disgusting, and I hope Linus sues, not that he is the type to sue. He may not be able to, because in true FUD fashion, the headline says "probably", as in "Torvalds claim to 'invent' Linux probably false, says new study." Of course the "study" itself is not available, consisting, I gather, of what is in Mr. Brown's head and notes. You can buy the book, and they probably put out the press release because they want you to, and there will be "excerpts" available on May 20.
If this group is the new SCO, we have lucked out. They incompetently provide a link from their article to what they say will be a UNIX and Linux timeline, but the link takes you instead to a Linux page, which is a bit out-of-date, listing Caldera Linux, which then links to the UNIX page. Except there is no timeline.
Not to worry. We are working on one. The Grokline research project, which will result in a ownership-history-of-UNIX timeline chart to amplify Eric Levenez' chart, will be going online this week. I'll tell you more soon, and I hope you will help us beat off the dark side's UNIX nonsense once and for all by contributing your knowledge and skills to that project, so we can prove where all the code came from and who owned it, making future "studies" like this one impossible. Not to mention future SCO's.
Anyway, when you get to the Linux page, it sings Linux's praises and correctly attributes Linux's aut
I like music
Uh, I think Linus's claim to the first Linux kernel is quite valid and he cited prior art:
c t5.0541 06.4647%40klaava.Helsinki.FI
"As I mentioned a month(?) ago, I'm working on a free version of a minix-lookalike for AT-386 computers."
I think the lineage to Unix via minix is obvious. Linus wrote his own kernel. The other pieces may have already existed, but the kernel was new. Unless he stole it from another Linus who conveniently named the project "Linux" after himself.
Over the last 13 years, many others contributed to the kernel and development which, according to SCO, may have included some questionable copy-paste commands, but I think the beginning is clear and the origins are clearly cited.
See here:
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1991O
I'm not sure the author of the article really understands what Linux is and what Linux is not. He is right about varying degress of fanaticism and the very loose definition of "open source." No matter where you get your software, you're at the mercy of the developer to maintain it--commercial or open source. For example, I think the Linux community has been very good about responding to security issues compared to much larger corporations who have a very loose definition of quality control. When those corporations begin to loose money to smaller groups who out perform, then those corporations pay for studies that skew the truth and spread FUD.
Read the article--the math isn't all that fuzzy.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
LOL.
You have to agree it's funny. Microsoft is paying money so that The Register will call the company "Beast Central".
Marketing people: If you do something that gets your company called "Beast Central", you have failed.
If this is the case, then why do we, as SysAdmins, have to patch Windows machines at least twice a month. Completely disregarding the fact of weekly anti virus updates for Windows work stations.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Anyone else have to scroll forever to get to the end of the lines in the groklaw article? Anyone have a link where I can look at it in a readable format?
Right, just like it could be immensely valueable "intellectual property" if you were to be able to get away with selling thousands of pirated copies of Microsoft Software.
People who want to be able to what they want with GPL source code with no strings attached seem to be forgetting that other people wrote that code, and that they categorically do _NOT_ have permission to release any of it without the permission of the copyright holder(s). As for why derivative works should also be subject to the GPL, it's because said works would certainly still contain a lot of code that was written by those original copyright holders, and even though you have the right to do with your own code as you please, that doesn't include the right to do what you want with other people's code, even if that code is required in order for your own code to be useful
People like these need to get a clue.... it's called "Copyright", and it's a good thing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Try to reduce the Linux community by litterally annoying their followers to death. Particularly the zealots will get issues if they have weak hearts (which most have since geeks don't exercise) while composing their forum posts. A very clever plan indeed...
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The brutal irony, of course, is that most of the people reading this realize that windows is not a particularly good operating system. Nor has windows survived on its virtues as an operating system.
It is easy to see that windows has 'succeeded' for reasons other than being a good operating system. It is difficult to realize that linux could 'fail' for reasons not related to its value as an OS. There are forces at work beyond a single user's choice of 'good' and 'bad'. I think this is an important point to consider.
At the same time, this is the classic struggle of the virtuous vs. the mighty. My vote lies always with the virtuous.
The benefits of good programming practices scale with computational power.
No it isn't.
I have been on several projects where millions of dollars have been spent to force exceptionally complex solutions into very simple jobs, often because someone thought the project would look cool on their resume. And most of the time those projects run years late and way over budget and the company won't kill the project because "The IT Guys said this is the way we have to do it."
This guy is obviously just another IT guy who thinks he's better than everyone else when in reality he just sucks.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Chewbacca offense?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
ha!
if that doesn't work, they'll try something really desperate like patching Windows.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I don't think Linus should bother. As it is, everyone who matters can see how ridiculous that is. If Linus places a rebuttal in major news outlets, it'll give credibility to these people (or at least more public controversy, as they will post a response themselves, then Linus will have to reply, and this will continue to go on fueling publicity for Brown's book). They WANT people to take them seriously and reply. They're powerless if we don't.
Really...I'd just rather see Linus's usual witty replies in a board somewhere, definitely not in a major news outlet. It won't give them fuel to their campaign and I'll be able to laugh, perhaps as much as I laughed after reading their press release.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
>Linus is not the real father of Linux and Open >source software is really just code nicked from >other sources.
Bill G: Tux, I *am* your father.
Tux: Noooo!! (translated from Penguin)
Bill G: Search your flippers, you know it to be true.
If you actually wrote software, then you would know that that creating software and the process of invention are (often) one and the same. Perhaps you are implying that because programmers make use of tools and shared libraries written by other programmers, that their creations are somehow merely cobbled together components that happen to work well. Programmers are NOT assembly line workers, nor does software write itself. Where a problem appeared unsolvable, a software "developer" has invented the solution.
Here's another angle. Chip design these days is usually done completely in a description language like VHDL or Verilog. The engineer does not lay out the transistors by hand. Hence, the engineer's creation is literally software cum hardware. You would have us believe that just because the electrical engineer has produced something he can touch that he is an "inventor" while the software engineer is merely a "developer".
Or perhaps you mean that the pot that cooks AND drains pasta is an invention, and Bayesian spam filtering is just a bunch of 1s and 0s.
I am not sure if terrorism works better because of open source, but that Nicholas Berg video appears to have been encoded in WMV format.
(reposting my post on Groklaw, slightly edited)
This PR wants to divide us, by presenting things as if RMS (or others) would have revealed stuff against the linux kernel community. Of course he hasn't. This is a trap. This PR states the obvious: Linus has not invented everything but he has never claimed so, instead he used publicly and legally available material such as POSIX. Linus has not written everything, but he has never claimed so, instead he accepted patches from many contributors.
But hey... Isn't that what open source / free sofware is all about? A collaborative process in which everyone can and should be rewarded such as the GNU folks for instance?
What is bullshit in this article, of course is that part of the kernel have been stolen. Common, AdTI, bring the facts, people have already broken their teeth on it.
An article like this posted on /. will get these people far more publcity than a simple Yahoo press release alone.
At first reading I saw this as a deplorable move to sway public opinion against Linus, Linux, and other open source providers. After a few moments of thought, however, I see that this may be the forefront of a larger, even more deplorable, endeavor. Consider the following quote:
-----
"The report," according to Gregory Fossedal, a Tocqueville senior fellow, "raises important questions...While you cannot group all open source programmers and programs together; many are rigorous and respectful of the intellectual property rights..."
-----
Could this be a movement to undermine Linus' right to release Linux under GNU/GPL? Could this even be the beginning of legal research to undermine GNU/GPL itself?
If enough lawyers and businessmen can be swayed to believe that Linux itself is a product of UNIX then, though a convoluted interpretation of patent law and prior art, is it possible to invalidate GPL as it applies to programs written to conform to POSIX standards? Can the publishing rights for POSIX compliant programs then be assigned to the creators of the POSIX standards or the organizations that have implemented them first: ie. Bell Labs, AT&T, and UNIX?
Consider that MS didn't invent HTML, TCP, SMTP, or other common standardized protocols yet they seem to have an enormous amount of intellectual property assigned to them which prevents other people from producing software which competes with them in those arenas on the MS platform. I don't know the nature of the POSIX organization, where it's funded, or how cohesive it is with respect to legal and business support. However it does seem possible that malicious lawyers could argue that *NIX type operating systems, patented by corporate entities, are the first major implmentation of POSIX standards and that any products which come afterwards are an infringement of those intellectual property rights. This then leads to the arena of the status and age of the patents and how willing the original patent holders would be in funding the legal endeavor to pursue this track.
It sounds far-fetched but we all know that this similar roundabout claim of intellectual property has been pursued by SCO. With MS grasping for straws to slow the advance of Linux it could be a legal filibuster to sandtrap Linux. MS and their allies can afford enormous teams of lawyers that can turn out legal briefs by the thousands and the stories of their rapid acceleration of patent submission have also become popularly known. With enough patent filings and a popularly accepted, however untrue, argument about the nature and origin of Linux and its right to be distributed under GPL it might be their strategy to legally discourage organizations from adopting it.
With enough legal clout it is conceivable that, if the legal community could assign POSIX standards and *NIX operating systems as prior art preceding Linux, that they could force Linus to legally accept being bought out by the major operating system vendors who could choose to shelf it or turn its direction into nonproductive, bloating development.
The 100 mpg carburetor may be tin-foil but this situation is certainly real.
Consider this analogy: intellectual property is like a liquid beverage. It's everywhere and everyone has some. One day a large corporation patents lemonade. A week later a local company begins producing lemonade and giving it away for free charging only for the cost of distribution and the container (a cup, glass, mug, whatever). A month later the large corporation claims that its lemonade patent incorporates the property of any similar beverage based on lemons and sends a team of lawyers to shut down the local lemonade company. In this analogy software is a beverage. POSIX is a lemon based beverage. The large corporations would be those who made *NIX type operating systems and the local distributor would be Linux.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Perhaps you could please refer us to an accurate version (e.g. long before Windows 3.1 there were Windows 286, Window 386 and Windows 3.0), preferrably written in English?
Copyright and patent monopolies are outrageous, and I don't think I should lie about it because alot of business folks don't want to have their dainty little ears hurt. In fact, they are the ones who should be the most offended by it, beacuse if anything - they are NOT free market.
If the government gave someone a monopoly on growing grapes, and then called it a free makket property right because people could buy and sell shares of that monopoly - most right minded business people would see it for what it is - another bullshit government regulation that inteferes with free markets, and in the long run hurts business and consumer alike. Well it is even more so with 'intellectual' 'property'. It is not property at all, it is a fraud at best, and destroyes lifes and culture to say the least.
*MS* funded? Shocking! This smells like SCO.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
If this is the best controversy this idiot can come up with to promote his book, he's in deep shit and needs to get a real job.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Odds are when the book hits the shelfs you won't see ANY of this in the actual book.
He's doing this to hype it.
I mean if he actually did print this stuff in detail there are already a number of security experts who'd trash his butt.
In the end however this book belongs with such greats as Madonas sex book, OJs "I didn't do it" book and the Green Card spam lawyers book on e-commerce.
If his book did actually contain thies suggestions then I think some of the chapers in the book are
Security by obscurity: Sticking your head in the ground.
Back doors: Pretend they don't exist.
Ignore the man behind the curtan: If he's selling something he's honnest if he has nothing to gain by lying then he's lying.
And of course
Buy everything: If it's free it sucks if it's for sale it's good. Now my kid sister sells a program just like the free one you can get from the top rated security experts.
Only hers is better becouse she's selling it.
For a "hippy like" community we are pritty paranoid.
You would be too if you were told you aren't allowed to know what is happening on YOUR OWN COMPUTER.
The very software your trusting to do your taxes and run your home yet your not trusted with the terrable secret of how it works?
I'm going to trust you over someone who gives away the code for free and let's me see how it works.
You know what? You want you trust the "Space robots" and stand at the top of the stairs while I'll do the Hampster Dance.
I don't actually exist.
It's true. I saw an advanced screening of a Michael Moore film on the topic. However, you'll never see it. Disney is blocking its general release. Just fyi.
Come on.
We all know microsoft was a virgin birth.
Bow down and pray to the geek god gates!
Take not the name of microsoft in vain!
Worship no other gods before microsoft!
wake up and hold your nose
From the Groklaw review: "I'll tell you more soon, and I hope you will help us beat off the dark side's UNIX nonsense once and for all by contributing your knowledge and skills to that project, so we can prove where all the code came from and who owned it, making future "studies" like this one impossible."
:)
."
If it's all the same, I'm with them in spirit but am going to take a pass on the call to beat off the dark side.
"Luke, I am your . . . ohhhhh, that's it, that's it, a little faster, ohhhhhhh . . .
"The bigger the lie, the more they believe." - Det. Bunk
It's a simple scam: Make up a false straw man claim by substituting the word "inventor" for "developer," "creator," or "father." Then point out that the victim didn't literally invent the item in question. If anybody calls you on it, look blank and insist that "inventor" is essentially a synonym for the real word.
"Toqueville"? Sounds familiar...
:)
Wasn't that the mental condition were people have a compulsion to express themselves frequently and loudly with profanity?
That would make sense...
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Your post begins with some promise, pointing out the dubious intellectual heritage of key AdTI fellows, but then... somehow makes the leap into generalisations about conservatives?
Not to belabour an obvious point, but... Not everyone who is stupid is a conservative, and not every conservative is stupid. You aren't helping your cause (whatever that is), by picking up some limp hack, and shaking him about as an example of the "Evil Neocon".
In an attempt to paint all conservatives with the AdTI brush, you have made the same error that AdTI makes -- taking a shallow understanding of a concept, and make inflamatory generalisations about a group.
As both a conservative and a supporter of software Libre, I find your persistent rantings both tiring, and comical. Surely all "liberals" can't be as shallow as you are? If you are going to continue searching for examples of "Neocon" evil, at least try to come up with some examples worthy of disdain, instead of derision.
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
Yeah, he goes off a cliff while chasing Lane down the ski slope, but in the very last scene when the credits start to roll you see him again, furiously pedaling his bike across the baseball field. I hope Darl falls off a cliff (soon) and doesn't come back.
Now that's an even more evil-sounding name than Cardinal de Richelieu, Marquis de Sade, Tomas de Torquemada or even Ming The Merciless. So the article must be wrong.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Al Gore created *NIX.
If you go to the adti ADTI Public Accomplishments page, (Can be found from the "mission" on the main page.) You get a return of
Not Found
The requested URL http:// was not found on this server.
Wow, that is some really amazing FUD:
By this logic, MSWindows and MacOS were invented by Xerox. Notice how they do not speak about the fact that only the kernel was invented by Linus. They also leave out the fact that just because something can run Unix programs does not make it Unix and the fact that running Unix programs does not magically change the OS into Unix.This quote is fun, too:
Who cares if programmers have "open contempt" for "intellectual property"? Abiding by the law is not the same as agreeing with it. Since when does everybody have to believe that all laws are good? Is this a communist system where no dissent is allowed? I hope we still have the freedom to think and say what we want. They are trying to say "borrowing = stealing". Even copyright (as opposed to maritime) piracy is not theft.This article is really a work of art. The fact that someone could say this about Linux and not the BSDs, which are genetic unices, blows my mind. Then again, the BSDs have already cleared themselves in court.
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
The problem with AdTI isn't that they're conservatives, or even Neocons. It's that they're goldbrickers. Their intellectual heritage may be fine and dandy, but their financial and organizational connections are shady, their "research" shoddy. Similar situations exist on the Left as well. (BTW: I voted for Bush, and plan to again.)
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
It's not a yahoo article, it's a press release.
Quoth Kenneth Brown:
Gotta love how he makes the scrupulousness of the FOSS community sound like a bad thing.
The dog ate my
Steve Balmer turns to the OS community and says: 'No... I am you father!'
Balmer: Linus, you do not yet realize your importance. You have only begun to discover your power. Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to cyberspace.
Balmer: Join me, and together we can rule Cyberspace as father and son.
To you perhaps.
And to the small but loyal linux community.
But FUD like this works well on the suits who don't have all the facts, don't have time to get the facts, and think they know better than their IT people.
"Because here the bad guys can WIN!"
What absolute drivel. His explanation that Windows 95 crashes all the time is wrong, his explanation of why Windows 98 exists is wrong. I mean, everything is wrong. Way wrong.
I'm not MS fan, but this is crap. Don't waste the 5 minutes it takes to read. Its completel crap. Its so wrong that GWB could write something more coherent. Yes, its *that* bad.
Wikipedia has a good article about Alexis de Tocqueville. Seems that this people learned a lot from him: "Alexis de Tocqueville once observed that it is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth."
MS is cranking up the FUD machine.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
[...] the Alexis de Toqueville Institution [believes several absurdities, including] the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
Gosh, Hemos. Last time I looked the Star Wars program had done EXACTLY what it was intended to do: Convince the Soviet Union / Russian Empire that it could no longer afford to play the superpower game. This led to its attempt to give the people JUST ENOUGH freedom to get some innovation done, and from there to its collapse without a thermonuclear shot fired.
Maybe the Star Wars program would never have been able to shoot down incoming ICBMs. Or maybe it would have. Or maybe it would have but not enough of them (and missing even one would ruin a lot of people's whole day). We'll never know. But it definitely ended the Cold War without having to fight WW III.
"Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting." Sun Tzu would be proud.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Alexis de Toqueville Institution announced today that they are clairfying their name to Alexis de Toke'n Some Institution.
In addition to their name change, they also announced that effective immediately, their corporate cafeteria would only serve grilled cheese sandwiches.
Alrighty this will no doubt be redundant, but where do they propose Linux came from, and if accused party is named does it really matter?
The only thing they're attempting here is:
1) Sell a book 2) Take away Linus's thunder
I hope they get burned on the cost of a BS book and get a taste of the Linux community's rath.
Some aim to please, I aim to tease.
I also read that Amerigo Vespucci is not the father of America. Kthxbye.
Torquemada... don't beg him for mercy.
Let's face it... you can't Torquemada anything." -Mel Brooks (The History of the World)
= 9J =
There is a creative process involved with writing software, but its no more invention than the act of writing music is called "inventing music".
Music is "composed".
Software is "developed".
There's nothing "inventable" about software.
Unless you think Hayden should have took out a patent on the "Symphony"
"Collection of music that is played by many musicians such that music is broken into theme, counterpart, resolution in 1 to multiple parts. Music is group together to form a sound picture which is then used to inspire both performer and audience. It includes the following elements:
1) White pages with black dots on them to represent exact musical score
2) Wood or metal instrument which is plucked or blown to create sound
3) Sound in claim #2 is used in accordance with claim #1 to produce sound that has coherence
4) Each musician has a slightly different copy of the music
5) The claims in #4 when performed in exact time increments produces sound variations that are impossible with a single instrument.
6) Additional performer (known as conductor) will stand and wave arms
7) Said conductor in claim 6 will wave arms in unique motion depending on type of time in part 5 above such that there is a distinct way of waving arms according to number of beat in measure
8) As music is broken into movements, time may be taken to give audience a rest. Audience may leave to get drinks in the lobby at this time.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Somebody better check with Tove and find out where his daughters came from ..
In another study from the same group - Linus isn't Linus at all, but was actually stolen from Linus Pauling.
language is use
If Windows is so great, then fix it. Dumb it down. Simplify it. People don't need 75 services running in the background in order to have a working computer. Microsoft's "overwhelm the user with useless toys" attitude of designing an operating system has come back to bite them in the ass once again, hasn't it? Why on Earth would a user need some useless, animated dog to help locate files. "Please Mr. Gates, just locate my damn files quickly and thoroughly without tap dancing dogs, music videos and buffer overrun holes, thank you."
Sincerely,
Joe User
P.S. "Oh, By the way, please starting adding pop-up blocking code in your browsers. Mozilla has had this forever now and I think it's time you catch up and add some features people can ACTUALLY USE for a change!"
It turns out the Pope is /not/ Catholic, nor do bears shit in the woods, as was previously thought.
are all ripoffs of "the first car" and therefore we shouldn't drive them because they are illegal, and so on.
Seriously, if he actually claims it was stolen, he needs to be sued. I hope it happens. It's a unix like system, that's it. there's really only a few basic ways to make an operating system work, they all mimic themselves more than they are different. Well, I guess so anyway. You click on stuff it goes do something, or you type commands it goes do something. I know that is simplistic, but really, you got your two ways to go about things with a computer.
You can also see the anti free software forces of e-vile are getting desperate. the end users consumers (joe business community I mean more specifically) are at the crossroads of admiting that tools are for working in your *regular business*, that working and business is not "just" the tool. That's the major difference between closed source and propietary/for sale and open source/freely distributable and free.
What that does to the software "industry" is up for grabs now, but I can speculate that tool costs are dropping fast,all the way to free, and anyone depending on just selling tools better think and rethink of another way to make full time money at that. USE the tools, improve the tools, do some work with the tools, but the tools in and of themselves are mostly free/cheap now and the trends are for that to continue. One of them there paradigm altering periods in history.
*clicks 1*
It seems to me that, at the superficial level of the Yahoo account, there is serious confusion between the idea of something (e.g., the Unix model) and the expression of something in code. The development of Unix established many ideas in an integrated way that has influenced operating-system designers ever since. Some of these ideas were not original with Unix, but their integration was a marvel. That has nothing to do with the intellectual property (copyright) in the code. Let's see if the forthcoming book is more accurate on that count or is simply poor scholarship through the blinders of a strongly-held prejudice.
> I was reffereing to the fact that Paul Allen and Bill Gates started Microsoft porting Basic interpreters from a "borrowed" open source base.
.Net authentication protocols, DRM.
.Net), possibly CodeWeavers (promoting MS Office on Linux, and ActiveX on the Internet), possibly Xandros and a couple of other Linux distributers (proprietary Linux admin tools, Qt-only desktop environment, promoting MS Office on Linux, etc.), possibly Macromedia (Flash), and who knows who else.
Why stop there? Almost every victory that Microsoft can claim has been achieved through dishonest, if not criminal means. Consider...
MICROSOFT DEFEATS DR-DOS BY:
- Fraud: Windows issues a warning about DR-DOS that MS knows is false.
- FUD: The DR-DOS evidence includes Microsoft memos planning the FUD campaign.
- Sabotage: Windows 95 has secret calls to prevent it from running on DR-DOS.
- Sabotage: MS purposely keeps DR-DOS out of the Windows Beta-test program (also documented by evidence).
MICROSOFT DEFEATS GEOWORKS BY:
- Sabotage: New MS-DOS release causes Geoworks to fail.
MICROSOFT DEFEATS WORDPERFECT BY:
- Fraud: MS publicly announces that OS/2 is the future direction.
- Sabotage: MS provides WordPerfect with faulty Windows APIs.
MICROSOFT DEFEATS OS/2 BY:
- Fraud: Microsoft pretends to support OS/2, then abandons it.
- FUD: Microsoft pays people to disparage OS/2 in posts in forums, letters to the editor, etc.
- Suspected Theft: Microsoft is believed to have borrowed OS/2 IP to use in Windows 3.1.
- Suspected Sabotage: Microsoft is believed to have provided less than their best code for OS/2.
MICROSOFT DEFEATS AMIPRO BY:
- Sabotage: Windows 95 causes AmiPro function-keys to break.
MICROSOFT DEFEATS NETSCAPE BY:
- Contract Interference: Microsoft pays sites to stop using Netscape (thus "cutting off Netscape's air supply").
- Extortion: Microsoft threatens VARs who preload Netscape.
- Extortion: Microsoft threatens Apple with the cancellation of MS Office for the Mac, unless Apple drops Netscape.
MICROSOFT ATTEMPTS TO DEFEAT JAVA BY:
- Sabotage: Microsoft tries to "kill cross-platform Java by growing the polluted [J++] Java market."
- Fraud: Microsoft memo shows plan to keep quiet about the incompatibilities so that J++ users will unintentionally create Windows-only code.
AND NOW MICROSOFT IS ATTEMPTING TO DEFEAT LINUX BY:
- Fud: Obviously.
- Fraud: False claims, planted by partners like Toqueville.
- Legal Attacks: Microsoft funded the SCO attack.
- Patents: Future.
- Legislation: DRM, etc.
- Proprietary Internet Protocols: MS Multimedia formats,
- Secret Hardware Protocols: Working with partners like NVidia (closed source drivers), ATI (closed source drivers), and AMD (the unpublished memory-access fix).
- Locking-in Linux: Working with partners like NVidia and ATI (closed source drivers), possibly Trolltech (the proprietary version of Qt, Qt support for
- Infiltration: MS plants joining Open Source projects to cause interference, wearing out the leaders through constant complaining, driving away other developers by acting like jerks, pushing the project in bad directions, etc.
- Infiltration: MS plants joining Open Source projects and pretending to be die-hard supporters, then pushing for overly-tight licensing, convincing others to add special restrictions that limit the software's use (possible examples: DotGNU, XFree86), using LGPL for what should be BSD (CodeWeaver's Wine), using GPL for what should be LGPL (MySQL), and so on.
AND JUST GENERAL DESTRUCTION...
They stole the original DOS, the user interface for Windows, swiped BSD code, embraced, extended, destroyed, etc.
Mickey knows about "nicked" code.
YOU FORGOT THE LINK
Oh, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
Why does anyone with a crappy web site and a domain name gets attention by the press? Who is AdTI and why should we care anyway? Why is there even an article about them on Yahoo! News? This is nonsense, these guys should just be put aside and be completely ignored, let them spew out their crap and die. But no, everyone has to react and that's exactly what they want. Like a kid who's being a pain in the neck and is crying to his parents so they buy him his latest toy, let him cry, he'll eventually shut up and let go.
if open-source is such a piece of crap to MS, then why the hell are they even doing all of this to give the open-source world a bad name.
i sense fear.
-- The box said Windows 2000 or better... so I installed Linux
You're joking, but something like year or two ago MS itself published an interview with Dave Cutler, who said that the name NT came from Intel's i960, code-named N-Ten, which was under construction at that time and was also the RISC chip that NT was originally coded for.
After it became clear for MS that i960 would never became a generic-purpose processor it was first meant to be, and that its release would get significally delayed, MS started quickly to work with an i386 port of NT. It did not took long, as at that time they did not have much except kernel ready, and it was quick to port as Cutler had insisted portable code without excessive asm optimisations.
(Disclaimer: everything IIRC)
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus
MSDOS was built upon the a 3rd-party package called QDOS which Bill had quickly purchased when the IBM-PC contract fell into his lap.
:-)
Windows was a reaction to the first MacIntosh. Bill wanted top copy and embrace the PC graphic interface market. Apple is not blameless in hijacking Xerox Parc technology and employees in this regard.
Other groupls wrote the first graphical word processor (Xerox), spreadsheet (Visicalc), slideshow program (Harvard), and so on. MicroSoft perfected them and integrated them fairly well.
NT was developed by Digital Equipment Corp emigrees to MicroSoft. Lets just say that if Daryl McBride worked for DEC, he'd have stronger case of matching code
It's a simple scam: Make up a false straw man claim by substituting the word "inventor" for "developer," "creator," or "father." Then point out that the victim didn't literally invent the item in question. If anybody calls you on it, look blank and insist that "inventor" is essentially a synonym for the real word.
Yep.
And what Al Gore did with respect to the internet was to push the legislation to open the net (which was limited to research, education, and military) to commercial use.
This got a lot of people connected.
Unfortunately, it gave spammers the argument that they were a legitimate commercial use. This makes it much harder to cut them off.
So if you want to slander Gore, just point out that what he REALLY did was legalize spam.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Do not sue this shill! Look what happened when Fox sued Al Franken and his book sales went through the roof!
...?
I will promise to write an anti-Linux book, or for that matter, an anti-anything book, if you will just sue me and issue a lot of really provocative announcements about how I'm the most hated man in software or whatever.
I will even cut you in. Oh, wait, doesn't work if I publicly
Oh, nevermind.
SCO: Slashdot never told you what happened to your father.
LINUX: They told me enough! They told me you killed him!
SCO: No, Linux. I am your father!
LINUX: NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
I think it's quite funny to read:
"Since 1988, the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution has studied the spread and perfection of democracy around the world.
But still if you click "2. Accomplishments" you end up with a 404.
Same thing happens if you click on "Opportunity Africa", "Democracy China", "Cuba" or "Democracy Switzerland".
What have these guys been doing the last 16 years?
...so many comments for just a lousy FUD.
As it is, everyone who matters can see how ridiculous that is.
Do you really think so? Because I don't. I doubt that many PHBs looking at this report would say, "Oh, that's a lot of balderdash," or whatever. They'd look at it, see that it came from a (supposedly) reputable institution, and believe every word. Because most of them don't know much about Linux, or the roots of the modern technopolitical climate.
I suspect that any ordinary mortal reading it would be similar. They'd say, "Oh, so this guy who has been claiming to have invented Linux all along has been lying? And he actually stole it from someone else? I guess I probably shouldn't use it, if it's stolen..." or something like that.
Regardless of their immediate reaction, I strongly suspect that it would have the desired effect upon those who don't frequent sites like Slashdot: the effect of sowing fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Thus making people want to stick with what they know, which, in the vast majority of cases, is Windows--and in the cases of PHBs, that can mean that no one under their control is allowed to use anything else.
So do you still think we're the only ones who "matter"?
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
This is just another skirmish in the linux/freebsd holy war. :-)
Yeesh! How about trying to address their hypothesis for a change rather than running the old ad-hominem "The argument's wrong 'cuz they're funded by Microsoft!!!"
So, anyone care to refute the point rather than babble anger?
I agree that writing software is a creative process, but I disagree that it is an artistic discipline. Writing software is an engineering discipline. Software can be elegant, or entertaining, or masterful, but the purpose of software is to solve problems.
I return to my original question - why is it that you believe that a microprocessor advancement or the pot that cooks and drains pasta can be patented, while software should not be? If I create, nay, invent, a new program which solves a problem which before had no obvious solution, do I not deserve a patent for it?
From the article:
" Brown's study is part a book he is writing on open source software and operating systems."
Here's a suggestion for the author. When submitting a press release to news organizations for national publication, checking the spelling means more than hittng F7.
emeritus@adti.net
I think you might find that Linus always said that he based Linux on Andrew Tanenbaum's 8-bit Minix OS which itself was designed as Comp Sci project material to teach students about OSes -- like UNIX.
majority of corporations, which are run by people, are slow to wakeup to the realization that most of us /.ers know. In time, the truth will be self-evident, and is becoming so for more and more. As this quote says.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
I believe it's only a matter of time. It doesn't mean we're complacent, we still have to continue our efforts at debunking the FUD.
Scientia et Potentia
He's not the father?! Sounds like an episode of Maury...
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
*Ahem* I hate to spoil that nice thought, but Hemos appears to have taken all of those links from my (rejected) submission last night, and then forgot the media transparency link on where they get their funding. The rest appear to be exactly the same ones I submitted...
Speaking of which, here's an other good source of links to information.
Oh, and here's my other post from Groklaw, concerning what I think they're up to by throwing out inane nonsense like this press release:
There are no straw man arguments, explicit or implied, in the article text. You are conjuring one ostensibly, in true Slashdot fashion, based on your notion of the article that you have grokked by reading other replies and the summary at the top.
Don't argue, I know you haven't rtfa... you admitted it with your first and last sentences, to wit:
Interesting how the whole report seems to be one big straw-man argument.
(A definitive statement about "the report", from which the reader is to infer that you read it)
(Probably leaving out the fact that there are literally dozens of them.)
Wha... probably? You mean (*shock*) you didn't read it?
"Linux was invented by some foreign terrorist designed to steal good jobs away from greate American company such as Microsoft" -- AOL(oser).
Well that publication has changed my whole presception about the origins of open source. By applying the rigid scientific premise of proving their given statement by reiteration of the orginal hypothesis.
:~$ sarcasm off
WOW! Its pure genius. I mean even Einstein could never have thought it up.
*Bow down worshipping* - were not worthy! were not worthy! were not worthy!
So if you are ever comfronted with truely great works of stupidity, like this one clearly is, just use sarcasm.
don't forget about those terrorist group of seniors in florida who caused the chads issue (sarcasm).
Claiming that Linus isn't the father of Linux just because he put it together from open source projects and code that he borrowed and such is bogus. It's like saying that Henry Ford isn't the father of the automotive assembly line just because he didn't build the factory or produced the metal in which it was made himself (rather he had others do it). It's also similar to claiming that one person was responsible for the internet which isn't true. It was a result of the various inventions and advancements in telecommunications (including the invention of the fiber optic telecom cable which brought an abundance of bandwidth and with that brought new ideas on its use).
Same goes to building a house. Abe Lincoln didn't grow the trees he used to make his log cabin; he just put them together.
In fact, inventions not only include things that ppl come up with from scratch but also new ways of using existing inventions and ideas (aka the improvements and new use of things). Who knew back when phones were new that in the future ("In the Year 2000..."), we would be b*tching about politics, the world, and such over some sort of telephone-inspired telecommunication line in a world that doesn't have a real physical form?
Doesn't it seem odd to you that MS is stooping such silly tactics? Are they admitting that they have no real convincing argument to make for windows so they compare a mainframe to a PC? And funding these so called "thinktanks", what's the point? Are they ashamed to defend windows themselves?
It looks like they have completely thrown in the towel and are just grasping at straws. It would be sad if it wasn't so funny.
evil is as evil does
...these April Fools Day articles.
Linus Torvalds should sue the author for libel and defamation of character (and extend it to slander if the author is making oral statements publicly).
...
This is a private organization, as far as I can see, that relies on donations (e.g. the ones from Microsoft...). Granted, they don't seem to be a 501 (c)(3), but I suspect they would still call or consider themselves some kind of charity for media purposes.
Now then, if you see my other post, you'll see that I think that they want us to react strongly so that they can portray us in a negative light, and "Linus sues charity" is probably just the sort of headline they would like. Who, you might ask, would be crazy enough to give a headline like that? I can name at least two such people, Enderle and Lyons, both of whom should be familiar to anyone who has followed SCO vs. IBM
That's not to say, however, that he wouldn't be right to. Of course, we pretty well have to wait until they say more than they did in that blurb. It may be recklessly false, but they haven't published very much of a statement to base a lawsuit on just yet, IMHO. Apparently, they plan to publish a book soon, however, and that might have more substance (e.g. more lies), were Linus considering suing over it... My suspicions, as above, are that they're using this to get free publicity to hype their book, since curious folks would have to buy the book to read it, generating royalties for them...
Seems odd that an opensource-bashing site would be hosted on FreeBSD; at least that's what Netcraft appears to report.
Netcraft - ADTI
I wonder what the webserver is? Apache maybe?
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Actually, the "Star Wars" program IS a good idea. Missile defense in general is a good idea. If it can be done with lasers from space (which may not be that far off), why do it any other way?
Anyways,
Slashdot listings should attempt to be neutral. Let the forums handle the biased comments.
What the US calls terrorism in other times and places shall be called: natural self defense to an hostile dominating power.
IT
Sigh, you mean Linux is a Unix-like operating system?! Well golly gee Blanch, imagine that!!! Nothing to see here, move along.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
I'm pretty sure the Linux mainframe would have a lower TCO than the Aegis cruiser.
The One must return to the source.
Who is the One?
You're right that emphasizing AdTI's conservative links is pretty much pointless (save that it's sure not to win them many friends here), but I would like to point out that the rest of it is spot-on, specifically the bits about how AdTI is little more than a hack publication hired out to write flamebait articles and generate controversy.
I refer you to my prior musings as to what they're up to here, my speculations being the only reasonable angle I can see Microsoft as having here. As for AdTI, I think that their angle on this is to hype the book they're publishing.
Anyone who knows the history of Linux already knew Linus wasn't the "father" of the code from scratch.
Andrew S. Tanenbaum is.
Author of MINUX.
Linus just added his own features and managed the intergating of 1000's of other developers' features. Lazy ass coasted his way into fame =) j/k
or his bloody followers to come up with a completely inept conclusion to what most of us know better.
To be precise:
Brown suggests the invention of Unix (news - web sites) is an integral part of the Linux story commenting, "It is clear that people's exceptional interest in the Unix operating system made Unix one of the most licensed, imitated, and stolen products in the history of computer science." Brown writes, "Over the years, many have envied the startling and pervasive success of Unix. For almost thirty years, programmers have tried and failed to successfully build a Unix-like system and couldn't. To this day, we have a serious attribution problem in software development because people have chosen to scrupulously borrow or imitate Unix."
What the bloody hell does this have to do with Linus Torvalds? Besides, Linux is the Linux kernel, not the whole f*cking distribution.
-- I'm so ashamed to comment on such stupidity, I won't even use my sig --
Because he was gay, Alan Turing was arrested and in 1952, he was constrained to take feminizing hormones. He killed himself in 1954 with a poisoned apple like Snow White did.
Live in our memmories Alan Turing.
"I was reffereing to the fact that Paul Allen and Bill Gates started Microsoft porting Basic interpreters from a "borrowed" open source base."
Why stop at that? Where Micro-Soft's original corporate home was is very intresting. The Sundowner Motel in Albuquerque. The Sundowner was a seedy little Motel that was widely used by drug dealers and Hookers for their business.
Microsoft was born in a Whore House! Dosen't that explain their Business ethics?
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
true about microsoft, the fact that a lot of microsoft's code is pieces of everyone else's work, and the fact microsoft's name wasnt even thought up by gates or anyone involved.
not to mention dos wasnt even bill gates' creation.. only thing gates created was basic.
and even that is shady.
sounds like someone's jealous and upset that someone actually made something, and it's better.
prolly the fact that torvalds is a college graduate, and gates is just a junior high graduate.
I've been told that all programs can be traced back to a copy & paste of Hello, World. In this limited case, I actually believe what I've been told. The first open/free code was that very same Hello, World example in the first coding manual, wherever it is now, and there are likely a handfull of possible "ultimate parents" of every application that's out there.
.. whenever I try to edit a Java file that doesn't exists. My ADO.NET code was likely originally stolen from the MSDN help files (will likely only work if you've got the .NET SDK installed). My Java networking code likely started somewhere in Mr. Harold's Java IO book from O'Reilly. My Swing code came, in large part I imagine, from The Java Tutorial.
Really, though, when's the last time you started a piece of code to be used in production from a completely blank text file? I've even got a VIm macro that shoves in...
public class fileName
{
}
Are any of these sources the "father" of my crappy shareware app, much less my "professional code"? Of course not. Nor would they want to be!
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
i mean come on
with a hammer i can build a shelter
or i can crush your skull
i could build a terrorist hide out
or defend myself against intruders
whatever the case...
the hammer is not at fault, and blaming it is not logical
back in the day we didnt have no old school
In this jurisdiction, parternity is an inalienable, imprescritible, constitutional right.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
But we really don't need a Microsoft link to demonstrate the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution's grotesque ideological bias. While the think-tank positions itself as an independent, libertarian research group designed to "study, promote, and extend the principles of classical liberalism: political equality, civil liberty, and economic freedom," they function, more often than not, as a shill for Big Business and the far political right.
AdTI is a fellow-traveler of neoconservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and shadowy groups like the "Defenders of Property Rights," with whom they are aligned as part of an anti-Clean Air Act hit squad ironically misnamed the Cooler Heads Coalition. These are the folks who have been grinding out the industrialist propaganda which has allowed the Bush Administration to roll back environmental laws a couple of decades.
The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute can always be counted upon for a convenient white paper discounting the risks of tobacco smoking or in favor of vastly expensive weapons programs of dubious utility.
It's tough to source the funding of private institutes, but the folks at Media Transparency have taken a stab at AdTI. Big sugar daddies include the Bradley Foundation, which gives away millions each year to attack social programs and support the privatization of government services. There's also the John M. Olin Foundation, which has lavishly funded a host of robber baron nonprofits over the years.
So it's no surprise that the Alexis de Tocqueville Institiute -- which seems to exist to provide a moral compass for the richest and most powerful interests in the West -- should be seen to carry water for anti-Open Source reactionaries. What's bad for big business must be bad for the nation. Linux must be discredited before it causes more distress for the market planners at Microsoft.
The only freedom being defended by groups like AdTI is the feedom to buy what the Establishment is selling. And at a price they decide.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
You have a naive view of the media. If/when someone posts a reasonable reply to this garbage, the news media will pick up on it as "controversy" and portray each sides as having a legitimate difference of opinion. They won't bother to try to find the truth of the matter, in fact they will even paper over facts that make them appear to favour a particular "side".
501 Not Implemented
I notice that the parent is receiving more "Overrated" and "Troll" mods.
I guess the truth hurts, especially now, when Microsoft is trying to change its image (without actually changing its behavior).
Hey hey, that Tocqueville site sure has done a lot for the world. Click here to see their mission and then take a look at their accomplishments.
I've been watching this just like everyone else.
And although I do not understand it to it's fullest extent, all I can say is, hold on it's going to be a bumpy ride.
SCO is not as dumb as you think, actually after reading this article I'm convinced they are a lot smarter than we all thought.
During discussions with a friend we tried to figure out SCO's plan.
After deciding that they must be taking pointers from MS, and watching their tactics from the past, we decided to apply MS thinking to SCO's actions. And the outcome is scary.
While not printed in stone, it is now painfully obvious what is going on.
For SCO to win, just like MS does, all they have to do is make a case in U.S. courts (Important point there), that states that Linux is a Unix imitation.
This study is part of that.
Also while we sit around laughing at SCO for losing their funding, and getting beat up left and right, it makes it all the better for them. They would then have more and more damages to sue for.
What makes this even more obvious is the fact that they don't give a shit about Unix, they haven't developed it to compete any more. It's merely there, being owned.
While I love Linux, and wish SCO would just frikken die already. I think it would be foolish not to look at how MS has won in the past, and apply that to SCO now. Evil or not, it HAS worked. And will continue to work, especially with the courts we have in place now.
Don't be fooled one bit by SCO looking stupid.
DeifieD
http://www.issues2000.org/askme/internet.htm
Read and learn.
...there are ninjas on the front lawn trying to kill us!!!
MSFT is a bunch of wankers! Give them a bit of spit.
Meanwhile, SCOX is down to 5.00. It looks like someone is trying to support the price at exactly 5.00. The price is bouncing around, but never goes lower than 5.00. There was a similar attempt to support the price back at 6.00, and what appeared to be an earlier attempt around 10, none of which worked. If it's SCO's own buyback program, support should stop half an hour before the market closes, in compliance with SEC Rule 10b-18. So wait until 3:30 EST and watch the movement then.
It wasn't nick berg in that orange suit with his hands and feet bound, twas linus , and it wasn't an islamic psycho that pulled the RUSTY knife out and cut off linus's *THICK* head slowly, twas bill gates.
(two minutes in the gimp - anyone?)
--
New 5in1 DVD can quickly delete Gigs! and even Terabytes and higher!
Actually...yes, I do. Don't get me wrong, If you take a look at my sig, I don't prentend to guarantee my opinion on any subject to be the only correct one, in fact, I say they're biased (which would lead it to be incorrect often, depending on how strongly I feel about something). However, before you dismiss me completely, let me explain my reasoning, and you may agree with me or not, I welcome you to make up your own mind.
PHBs see articles about things all the time. Everytime there's a press release on the benefits of Open Source, it doesn't mean that all companies running windows will switch to Linux the next day because they heard it's better. Vice-versa for article claiming Microsoft's model is the way to go and Linux shops.
So what will happen is...they'll see this press release once. Ask their professionals about it (that would be us), who will tell them that this is a bunch of BS. If they see minor media attention to it, they'll believe us, and forget about the subject within the week.
Now, if Linus makes a big deal about it and they get more publicity...well, given their lack of knowledge on the subject, it really boils down to an advertising war. They start seeing this a lot in the press, they start getting worried...and then our opinion is suddenly not that valuable anymore, after all, we're not lawyers, we're zealots. It suddenly looks like Linus is worried, and is on the defensive...he must have something to hide!!!
Now, I would agree with you that something needs to be done if they continue getting press regardless. However, I think their claims are so outrageous that unless we start reacting, the media won't touch them. After all, the media only likes to publish controversial articles when it actually does cause a stir...articles without an audience don't generate money.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
50 billion dollars sitting in the bank and the monopoly in one or too extremelly lucrative markets.
... and of course all good ideas from multics where "stolen" by Dennis Richie to write his first Unix
I mentioned the disagreement he had with Tanenbaum, on kernel design. I quoted Tanenbaum's comment, that if Linus was one of his students, he would flunk him. And I asked him if Tanenbaum had ever apologized, or recanted.
It was a perfect opportunity for Linus to play at a rivalry, dump on Tanenbaum, and so on.
But he didn't do that. He gave a very gracious answer about where he expressed sympathy for Tanenbaum, who had put in years of work on Minix, feeling annoyed at people trying to use the minix newsgroups to discuss something else.
So I wonder exactly what Tanenbaum said to the clowns writing this report? I've read some of Tanenbaum's books. He is a funny, entertaining writer. I'd really like to believe that he too was gracious, and that the Microsoft shills unfairly used juxtaposition to imply he had criticized Linus. I know he knows Linus didn't rip off any of his code.
I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. BB
"it is a fundamental principle of illusionists to
misdirection with flashes and loud noises so that you will miss where the slight of hand is actually going on."
I think its Baystar, I suspect there is a money trail from Microsoft to Baystar.
I think Baystar needed to explain telephone calls between themselves and Microsoft and that was why they felt the need to explain 'informal low level discussions'.
I think that, as Baystar realized this could end up as a securities fraud case they got cold feet and wanted to bail.
I suspect there is a money trail from Baystar to Royal Bank of Canada or from MS to Royal Bank of Canada. I suspect Royal Bank of Canada faced possible securities investigation and wanted to bail too.
I think that Baystar had no choice but to buy Royal Bank of Canada's stake or risk them going to the SEC.
I think that this is going to go tits up soon.
So whatever you do, don't look for any money trail between MS to Baystar and Royal Bank of Canada, instead look at these ridiculous claims.
Note: I have no evidence, I'm guessing, or rather betting.
Linux is really Bill Gates's illegitimate black child.
Insert smart ass comment here.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
In my high-school free time.
:-)
My name is Aster, and I pronounce it Asterix.
1) My personal opinion.
2) Trademarks etc. belong to respective owners.
3) Lawyers suck.
4) Just a joke.
5) Things really FUBAR when disclaimers are longer than the jokes.
Here we go again. This is almost as bad as the SCO mess, except with even less evidence (at least so far).
I'm reminded of the famous quote from Carl Sagan, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Give me the facts before you expect me to give credence to your allegations.
The article claims this is something new. Linus took Minix, a Unix-derivative (clone? I don't know the particular history) and, as many people did, made his own modifications to it and released it as Freix.
I skimmed the article but I don't really see how this is relevant to anything. All Minix code has long been replaced by superior, original code.
This article is nothing more than flame-bait.
POSIX is a set of interoperability standards and is protected by US copyright law.
UNIX is a brand name owned by the Open Group, and is licensed for software that passes their certification process.
The entire point of POSIX and UNIX is that there is a standard interface, but differing implementation. Individual developers (including Linus) and the FSF own the copyrights to the code of the kernel and userland. Linus owns the trademark "Linux," but there are not patents on UNIX or POSIX.
If AT&T couldn't play the patent card when they sued Berkeley (BSD Unix), no one will or can now.
Sit back and enjoy your open code...
Windows New Technology (WNT) is one letter off VMS just
like HAL is one letter off IBM...Interesting.
RJ
Before I read that festering mound of lies, I had a small speck of respect for mankind. That "study" has completely obliterated all hope I ever had in the world. That does it; All I can do now is sit my basement, listen to my 90 Gigs of mp3s (with xmms of course ;) and rock back and forth in the fetal position. Goodbye, cruel, lying, and generally worthless world.
..about where he got that FUD.
emeritus@adti.net
As with many politically driven sites they seem to have a few things right but a great many others completely WRONG. They look like a confused CATO Institute
TT
If you take the letters the make up V-M-S and move one letter offset forwards on the standard English alphabet you get W-N-T, aka Windows NT! M S V ABCDEFGHIJKL OPQR U XYZ N T W So will Longhorn be called MJOVY?
I can't begin to do it justice (Groklaw is already linking to it). Enjoy!! (I will reveal in advance only that Torvalds "comes clean" about a lifetime of deception...)
If it was only to be used as a bargaining chip against the Soviet Union, why is the US still developing it, under the new label of National Missile Defense (NMD), when the Soviet Union doesn't exist? Oh, right, the Bush administration says it's a way to defend against terrorists -- and we all know how likely it is that terrorists will use a complex ICBM when a nuclear device in a shipping container would be so much simpler.
More about the "Farce and Fraud" of the National Missile Defense program can be found via this chart and accompanying document.
Sounds like a government jobs program to me, and a dangerous one at that. I'll just keep hoping for "Regime Change 2004"...
No Laughing Allowed!
So MS is scared shitless. It knows it has many enemies but believed it had them under control. Linux is removing that control. Linux is turning up in the strangest places. Sony has now several real products on the market with linux inside, not some tiny upstart company hoping to sell a few thousand products world wide but Sony the giant who makes nearly everything. This is not good if you are MS and want the world to think Computers == Windows.
The more linux is out there the more OS might become like diesel vs gas vs petrol. A choice based on your needs. MS doesn't want you to have a choice. People with choice might expect all kind of weird things. Performance. Reliabilty. Security.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
To see Torvald's startling true confession, the missing link is here.
Minix was commercial as far as I remember, but cheap, and open source.
I still have the binder and all the floppies. Wonder if they can still be read.
That was surely open source unix before Linux
Headlines: Linus not really Linux's Father SCO not really evil
It sure as hell wasn't anybody at Microsoft.
Q: How do you get a blonde to marry you?
A: Tell her she's pregnant.
Q: What's the first question she'll ask.
A: Is it mine?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
First we will have to laugh at them...
Then we will have to ignore them...
Then we will have to fight them...
???
Profit!
If it was only to be used as a bargaining chip against the Soviet Union, why is the US still developing it, under the new label of National Missile Defense (NMD), when the Soviet Union doesn't exist?
Two words: North Korea.
Their latest missile can make it to everything but maybe the southern tip of Florida and the Keys.
Oh, right, the Bush administration says it's a way to defend against terrorists -- and we all know how likely it is that terrorists will use a complex ICBM when a nuclear device in a shipping container would be so much simpler
Something that I've been more than a little concerned about - given the big stack of COSCO containers at their Oakland facility, a similar one down in LA, and container-trains and trucks toting them all over the country.
(In case you're not familiar with it, COSCO is the Chinese Overseas Shipping COmpany, formerly known as the Chinese "Red Army".)
You can put a REALLY BIG H-bomb, a LOT of nerve gas, or even a small military unit with equipment and supplies, in a standard shipping container. The US recently intercepted six of 'em on their way to South America full of parts for military weapons. And it was clear there were more that got missed, since this was just the accessories.
Fortunately, you can easily spot nukes with a radiation detector. And the US has started stopping shipping far offshore for inspection.
Try doing that with a missile.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Hi. On slashdot, anyone with an ID lower than 10,000 is allowed to use the phrase "You must be new here" any time they damn well please. You must be new here ;-)
Nurse! Where's my pills? Damn kids these days!
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Where is this man/woman that Linus has wronged? Why has this person not found them to dispute their stolen property? Why is it that since day one it has been availible to all to review and dissect why has that person not realized the similarity from thier work to Linux? Even in grade 9 english classes when preparing a paper that would challenge current views you are required to back up your sources. Or did they just rent this guy from the National Enquirer?
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
De Toqueville was of the same opinion as John Adams. Basically that American government could only work with a moral people.
We're pretty screwed then, aren't we?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Brown's account is based on extensive interviews with more than two dozen leading technologists including Richard Stallman, Dennis Ritchie, and Andrew Tanenbaum.
The Tocqueville Institute may be MSFT funded, but what about the fellows interviewed by Kenneth Brown? Do they think their work was stolen by Open Source developers throughout the years?
Anyhow, the Disinfopedia wiki keeps track of organizations such as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution. It is a wiki, so anyone can add information about them (including you).
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Actually, the issue of paternity comes down from English case law, which doesn't care about feminism in the slightest. English and American case law is most concerned about ensuring the financial support of the children.
Before dna tests (and blood tests before dna tests were available) if a man was married to a woman he was the father (despite the possibility that the wife was fooling around on him). This has been established for centuries in English case law. Even if the man was gone for a year or two (i.e. on a Crusade or war) he was the father of the child.
Nowadays, the law is still weighted to the issue that the courts have deemed the most important: the support of the children. To that effect, the name listed on the birth certificate or attested to by the mother is the father, and it takes a lot more work to get that cleared off. You can do it through dna tests, or by having an alibi ("Honest, I was in Botswana all last year, and never came home!"), but you still have to go to court. Major caveat, though, is that once the man finds out he has to act asap.
In short, case law doesn't care most of the time, it wants to have someone provide financially for the kids, and case law is fairly well settled.
If I understand this article at all, then most of it should be based on the interviews of two dozen professionals from different parts of the world. One or many of these professionals must have outlined the tone of this book, intentionally or by accident. Who would have this kind of views towards Linux and what is there to be gained?
Any opinions? I'm not following so closely to this issue to give any insight.
I agree that North Korea is a threat, but it would be suicide on a national scale for them to launch a ballistic missile attack against the US. Tracking a shipping container attack would be difficult if it was even possible; tracking a missile attack would presumably be in progress before the attack was complete, and I assume it would be done with pinpoint accuracy (courtesy of our non-NMD Cold War leftovers). The US could very literally annihilate North Korea if it so chose. Some factors would surely mitigate a US counter-strike, but I think there's little doubt that the North Korean government and military would be utterly destroyed. We don't need NMD to prevent that missile attack, we just need what we already have -- "peace through superior firepower."
North Korea is still a serious threat, but I'm less concerned about their launching a direct attack against the US than I am about what they could do within their own region. And for that region, NMD is meaningless.
No Laughing Allowed!
It occurs to me that these are the sort of people who would name a restaurant Le Brasserie.
This sig no verb.
We need a Linux Truth website, one that dispells the myths, exagerations, and lies that Microsoft spews about Linux and has fallacious research done on that does not have enough details to be replicated. Because they do not release the details of the conditions to have someone replicate the results, it is not a valid scientific research.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
An even cursory search of "Kenneth Brown" and "AdTI" reveals that AdTI recieves it's funding from Microsoft.
Move along, nothing to see here.
"Pirates pillage. Pirates steal. Pirates take advantage." --Rupert Boneham
I heaby oficially change the name of the title from "Linus Not the Father of Linix" to "Linus Not the Father of Unix(Duh!)"
Creative Demolition
Hey, the right wing has coopted "liberal" to mean "limp-wristed unamerican god-hating pinko", so why shouldn't the left redefine "conservative" as "braindead corporate-fascist stooge"? Fair's fair, after all.
There is not enough in the article from which to draw any solid conclusions. The Groklaw backlash makes it appear as if they're being suspiciously defensive. Maybe they should try and take it easy until they get enough to understand exactly what they're dealing with.
The degree of artfullness in any project varies though: some buildings are simple rectangular constructions by piecing together known standard elements (walls, doors, windows...) while other buildings are real artworks (like the St.Peter's Cathedral in Rome, the Eiffel-Tower in Paris or the Brooklyn-Bridge in NY).
Architecture is art. And as an analogy programming is art too.
The building may be an artwork, and a piece of software may be an artwork too. But neither the building, nor the software should be patentable - thats crazy!
Hey, my laptop does, so it must be true! I guess everything works better because of open source...
"Popular but controversial 'open source' computer software, generally contributed on a volunteer basis, is often taken or adapted from material owned by other companies and individuals, a study by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution finds."
I think the whole point of this was to get out the adjective "but controversial". The adjective was repeated verbatim in the Yahoo article without a quote attribution. That means that everyone who read it on Yahoo thinks that the reporter is making that characterization.
I think MS has a new strategy, one borrowed from the Bush administration: In the run-up to the Iraq war Bush and his cronies would answer every question about Iraq using the words 'war on terrorism' and 'september 11th'. Even though they never once claimed that Iraq was involved in 9-11, just from word association 53% of Americans believe Hussein was personally involved in it and 44% believe that most or some of the hijackers were Iraqis.
I think MS wants to put this word-association strategy to work for itself. By getting attack dog think-tanks to put out press releases connecting Linux with words like 'controversial' or 'unscrupulous' in the first paragraph, MS would be able to damage Linux's credibility without having to put forth an actual argument. If they can get their blurbs read often enough, it might even stick.
why Microsoft is a slashdot sponsor. There is so much anti-MS stuff here you would think they would steer clear of OSDN all together.
Bill Gates probably never lies, and Windows probably never crashes.
My faith is expressed through Nihilism. Do you understand?
I like vi too, especially when its spelled e-m-a-c-s
Microsoft calling linux a bastard OS???
Quote from this publication:
"many are rigorous and respectful of the intellectual property rights, while others speak of intellectual property rights with open contempt."
Since when is speaking with contempt of something wrong? Does that make you a "software pirate"? Let's see how these guys define "intellectual property" in a previous publication about intellectual property theft linked by Slashdot:
"Today, intellectual property is not just patents, copyrights and trademarks, it is processes, techniques, methodology and talent; described by many experts as intellectual capital."
This apparently means that:
1. My talents are the property of my employer because the value of my talents is part of the capital valuation of the company on the market. If I leave that constitutes intellectual property theft.
2. If intangible capital valuation on the market decreases because someone else is doing the same things better or cheaper than you that constitutes intellectual property theft (instead of competition).
I do not know what they are trying to promote, but it surely is not freedom or competition. This conception of intellectual property is based on a fundamental misconception of the value of knowledge. It is also a great threat to freedom and world peace.
Seems not a lot of people are buying it. Would you recommend this story? Not at all 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 Highly Avg Rating: 1.38, 677 votes
People say my sig is the best thing about me.
In a close sourced patented world of the AdTI's making, Henry Ford makes a car with 4 circular wheels and 100 years later, we're arguing about whether the car should have 3 or 5 square wheels.
Unix is a 30-year-old idea because Unix is a 30-year-old good idea... enough said.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
...why in the hell POSIX was stablished as a standard?! Linus has tried to make a POSIX compatible kernel since the very beginning. AFAIK he never claimed be "inventing" anything.
As having a very long experience in the Digital (DEC) product range (Since 1975: PDP8, PDP11, VAX780.....) and having written many lines of Macro32 code for VMS apps including device drivers I make the following comments:
:-(
1. Cutler used VMS architectectural ideas in WinNT (Published fact)
2. One MAJOR ommission - probably the most important - was the Distributed Lock Manager (DLM) - which made VMS clustering work
3. Oracle via its purchase of Digital RDB IP and later licensing from Compaq have made the DLM the basis for their Real Application Cluster (RAC) technology
4. Had the DLM been licensed by M$ then WinNT etc may have had decent clustering (NB: A good DLM is critical to making clusters scale) - M$ didnt and suffer today because of that
5. HP are sitting on a goldmine of formerly Digital IP and like Digital cannot market it - very sad
6. Oracle are making huge forward steps standing on the shoulders of others
You want a signature? You can't handle a signature!!
How long have you worked for Microsoft?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Saying VMS plus one implies that it was an improvement, but considering that NT only went truly multiuser recently, I would say that would be misleading. It's a pity that NT was not based on VMS. Lots of things have been said about VMS, but if every OS had as little as 10% of the documentation of VMS we would be very happy.
One of the worst aspects of life in post-Ronald America is the hostility the Bushwackers and their fellow travelers have to any sort of idea other than their simple minded hatred. Liberalism, the thoughts of Adams, Jefferson and Washington, is an banned ideology and term "liberal" an insult. "I think all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights." "What?" "Are you some sort of Liberal!" If you can't even discuss Jefferson without being hounded from public life, imagine the difficulty in opening a work by Marx. However, when it comes to describing the way Capital works few thinkers have been as accurate as comrade Karl. Capital, says Karl, allows one to hire workers. Workers have value, but, the person holding Capital is able to pay them some amount less than the true (or intrinsic) value. In /. terms:
1. Find worker's intrinsic value.
2. Pay them less than that 'cause you have Capital.
3. Profit!
Thus, those who have Capital can take from those who do not the difference between the intrinsic value what they are paid. This is the concept of expropriation of labor.
The capitalist takes great pleasure in extracting labor from the working class. The capitalist is the protagonist; he is in his element. It is the worker who feels unfulfilled, ripped off. The worker is alienated from the process of the exchange of labor, from him to the capitalist. The nature of this alienation is absolute for Marx, it transforms the human into a slave of production, a slave of objects, a ghost and a socially broken animal. For the worker now, labor becomes external; it "no longer belongs to his essential being" (From Manuscripts, p.74). The proletariat is bashed down into ruin, his mind and body broken on the wheel of woe.
Modern times exemplify this; schizophrenia, suicides, school massacres, gangsterism, drug and food addiction, sexual deviance and sexual and physical abuse are all symptoms of a period of super-alienation. The expropriation of labor has always created alienation, as part of a human animal's self-examination and perception of the world. Never before, however, has labor been extracted in such vast quantities, and then transformed into a vast financial and industrial powerhouse.
Now that labor has become more thinking than craft, is there any surprise that the Bush-lovers want to own what we think?
I agree that North Korea is a threat, but it would be suicide on a national scale for them to launch a ballistic missile attack against the US.
It was suicide to fly aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and wherever the fourth one was headed (capitol hill? white house?). That didn't keep it from happening.
Yes, North Korea is a different culture. But that doesn't mean their leaders won't "push the button" if, for instance, their government is collapsing. (You KNOW they'll blame us for it, and if they're on their way out deterrence makes no difference.)
Then there are OTHER countries, with DIFFERENT cultures, that might have or at some point obtain missiles.
And rich individuals controlling terrorist organizations.
And the possibility that the missiles of countries who wouldn't use them as a policy move, might be misused by rogue military personnel or captured and fired by terrorist organizations or organized criminals. (Osama apparently shorted a bunch of stock in US financial institutions just before 9/11. Self-funding war, eh?)
I could go on.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
DNA testing should refute any spurious claims, and is admissable in every court today. If it's really not yours, and the claim is baseless, then you can sue her for damages,AND recoup the testing fees.
..........FULL STOP.
not finnish. Swedish is a germanic language, and actually quite similar to English in many ways.
Can't argue with that...!
-- -pjk Perry Kundert perry@kundert.ca http://kundert.2y.net
and the "Star Wars" program was a good idea.
Our government's program scared the soviet military leadership pretty badly and contributed greatly to their decisions that led to the freedom of hundreds of millions of people. I'd say it was a great idea. Now, if we can just get Russian oil refining and pipelines secured before we transition off that fuel source, we can finish helping restore those people's economy. In the mean time, "just say no" to getting sucked into developing free (as in beer) software, unless you are part of a public university. Communism is gone and socialism is right behind it...
The article is correct in that, did you notice that Stallman was interviewed by that guy writing the book?
Also, the Linux OS resembles Unix rather closely. Of course, when you make something like Posix a government procurement standard, you rather lose your right to complain when people conform. Still, it would be nice if Linux attributed better. We aren't as bad as MS in attributing (ever see MS documents explaining that some idea had its origins outside MS?), but we definitely should improve.
is the the same as a UPS Store. No doubt #119 is just a PO Box.
I'm too young to know pretty much anything about the Star Wars program. Anyone got some good links? I want in on the joke.
VMS was pretty much bulletproof by then (it was a *long* road to get there) but back then you could look at the VMS SYSGEN parameters related to the memory model and see the same cryptic names you saw in the depths of the NT Registry, and a couple of the kernel-mode bugs relating to system services and security made it across, too. The RTL became the model for DLL's, (.NET finally brought a lot of the DLL rubbish back into a single RTL, one of the principles that made VMS a fairly easy OS to code for - pick your language, forget the baggage, any language could call any other no sweat). The hardware abstraction layer was buggy, because the Intel instruction set didn't have the isolation the Vax chip set did; VMS had Kernel-Exec-Supervisor-User modes & associated instruction address ranges, which matched the hardware (they were designed together, like IBM's System 360 and OS/360) and the separate modes provided very effective execution isolation -- not a lot of opportunity for the hackers.
The memory model was brilliant and very tunable for different results, but was oriented toward extremely expensive memory -- 512 byte page sizes, for example. But you could get the sucker to run hard if you knew what to tweak. And IMNSHO DCL still beats Perl hands down (ok, a bit of personal preference there).
No, the OS2 stuff belonged to IBM, different team, different compost heap all together. Yes, the urban legend about the character shift is true, too.
It was a drag watching Digital fall apart, first selling off the excellent RDB to Oracle, then dumping AltaVista, then the pathetic attempts to capture the small market with the Rainbow and their own brand of brain-dead PC's, Compaq's ripoff of the clustering technology, then the labels coming off the buildings.
The icon is dead, long live the icons!
-- old, sad, unemployed systems programmer
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
We all know that Alexis is the vindictive first wife of Blake Carrington, who will lie, cheat, steal - stop at nothing, really - to stake her claim to the Carrington oil fortune. Not satisfied with her twisted little poker hand of kidnapped babies, amnesia, pregnancy, infidelity, and treachery, she has armed herself with a new weapon - FUD.
Yes, Alexis claims that Linus Torvalds could not have been the father of Linux, because he was with HER the night Linux was conceived. While the story sounds somewhat plausible (what self-respecting male geek wouldn't go for a little Edith Keeler?), but she's gotta be about the crustiest piece of British crumpet this side of the Guardian of Forever. Sheesh. Even the Nordic winter can't tone that image down.
One can only wonder what peccadillo Linus had committed to incur the wrath of such a parasitic, psychotic banshee. Perhaps he simply didn't grovel to her liking. Sadly, it seems Linus has been added to the long list of poor innocent bastards who crossed Alexis, and will forever bear her scar.
Anybody want a peanut?
"However, the open source strategy is a triple-edge sword. First, most free software such as Linux, (the most popular because of its operating system capability), comes with a license that dictates that any all development of the product (which would have been valuable intellectual property) becomes community property and must subsequently become free as well...."
So I suppose computer science is only valuable to mankind if it controlled/dicatated by a corporation?
_________________
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
-- William James
... and furthermore
it's more like MS making the Web available to the masses is what turned it into a wasteland.
Monday's daily chart is interesting. I mentioned earlier that it looked like someone was trying to prop up the price. It wouldn't go below $5.00, even momentarily. If that was SCO's announced stock buyback in action, the buyback had to stop half an hour before the market close to comply with SEC Rule 10b-18. And, sure enough, half an hour before market close, the price goes into a dive.
SCO's stock buyback has failed to stem the decline. They apparently tried to support the price around 10, and that failed. They seem to have tried at 6, and that failed. Now it looks like they tried at 5, and that failed.
How low can it go? Well, SCO's all-time low, reached around two years ago, is around 1.
It was suicide to fly aircraft into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and wherever the fourth one was headed (capitol hill? white house?). That didn't keep it from happening.
True, but there's really no valid analogy to be drawn between the 9/11/01 attack, which was performed by an essentially-landless terrorist group, and a ballistic missile launch from a land-based nation like North Korea.
To annihilate their own people in order to knock out -- what, two or three US cities? -- they would have to hate their own people more than the US. The same goes for other countries that have, or may later obtain, missiles with the range to strike the US. There's a vast difference between sending over a few missiles and getting missiles rained on you in response.
I'm not saying that a missile attack against the US is impossible, but I do think the odds are substantially lower than a WMD attack delivered by an alternative, more convenient mechanism. And, as the earlier-linked documentation and this new chart indicate, the odds aren't even good that the NMD system would actually do what it needs to if there ever is a ballistic missile attack against the US. Again, I only see it as a dangerous government jobs program -- any "bargaining" usefulness of it is distant history at this point.
No Laughing Allowed!
At least you got two out of the three correct. The Strategic Defense Initiative, not "Star Wars" as it's called by the biased media, was one of the most important moves by the United States that caused Communism in the U.S.S.R. to fall apart.
The Soviet Union had been held in place for half a century by violence, lies, and fear. Something had to be done by the United States, or today, George Orwell's world might be a reality everywhere.
Says Sean Hannity, in his New York Times Bestselling book, "Deliver Us From Evil,"
In 1986, President Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev in Ireland to discuss all kinds of arms reductions. The Soviets were desperate at this point, because they knew that their system, based on the aforementioned fear and lies, was falling apart. All the terms sounded good to Reagan, until, at the last minute, Gorbachev insisted that the U.S. drop its SDI program. To which Reagan replied, "The meeting is over. Let's go. We're leaving." Shortly thereafter, the Soviet Union fell apart.Laugh all you want about the Strategic Defense Initiative. But if it weren't for that bargaining chip, you might be a slave in some gulag right now, mispronouncing the Russian words that Stalin didn't know how to pronounce properly, because if you didn't, you might be sent to, er, a worse gulag.
Linus said that he thought adti.net might have been hijacked or let their DNS lapse. Interesting because its down now.
Site Temporarily Disabled
This site has been temporarily disabled. If you are the owner of the site, please contact customer care.
here and here
http://www.adti.net:
Site Temporarily Disabled
This site has been temporarily disabled. If you are the owner of the site, please contact customer care.
btw, adti.net points to geo.yahoo.akadns.com....
Looks like adti's site has been disabled (as at 0937 GMT on 2004-05-18) because of all the (F|OS)S fans trying to read it to experience yet more righteous indignation. According to netcraft yesterday they were running anonymous web s/w over FreeBSD, which is somewhat ironic.
--AC
Linus couldn't be anyone's father. Security blankets are real turn off for chicks.
Yahoo News = Sensationalist Rag, i.e National Enquirer, et al. Yahoo News posts anything, the vreacity or legitimacy of an article is not a concern for them - integrity is not a concept over there. Why is anything found on Yahoo News posted on slashdot? That is like debating whether Aliens is based ona true story :/
You accuse the grandparent post of sensationalism, yet what you are spouting is pure ignorance.
7 4922
For example, you said:
"Sabotage of java? Are you insane? Microsoft have had licensing issues with java, but you can blame sun for that just as much as microsoft. Portraying them to be an evil corporation for rathern inane business decisions shows how much you really want to believe in microsoft being bad."
But the grandparent post is correct, and you are uninformed. The fact that Microsoft intentionally set out to sabotage Java is well documented in Microsoft's own memos, as presented in court. The most blatant evidence was the Microsoft marketing presentation that stated:
The "strategic objective" is to "kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market."
You must be the only one who has never read that, well, you and the fools (or astroturfers) who modded your post up as insightful.
There is plenty more evidence of Microsoft's dishonesty, covering many, if not most of the points in the grandparent post.
Lastly, you said:
"Next time, cite sources. Use facts, not what you heard someone talking about on IRC or slashdot."
But if you had bother to read the thread, you would have seen that, when asked, he _did_ cite sources. He cited them in this post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=107859&cid=91
ADTI accepts money from Microsoft, but Brown refuses to say how much. "We don't talk about money with anybody ... but we'll accept money from anybody," he said.
I'm sure money has nothing to do with it. I'm also sure that MS can pay much more than the open source community can, and that's what counts.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
I just meta-modded you unfair. The parent post is Offtopic, not Troll. The grandparent post is Troll, but not the parent.
> skin (allergic to spermicide), fuck up my body (hormones make me
> crazy), or fuck up my mind...
Condom without spermicide. Or, even better, condom with spermicide on the inside. HTH.
(This is intended as a helpful suggestion, BTW, not a snide comment. I know how annoying it is to have problems like this; my GF is allergic to latex.)
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
buy the expensive lambskin condoms.
My other first post is car post.
1. Intra-Uterine Device (IUD)? May use hormones. Not sure.
2. Condoms without spermicide. Normal condom problems.
3. Diaphrahm (sp?). I think those are usually used with a spermicide though.
My other first post is car post.
actually ford himself was embroiled in a copyright suit himself because he refused to pay royalties to some group of comapines.