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50K Linux Man Bites At Merkey.net
magnany writes "In a recent article, former TRG CEO Jeff V. Merkey had offered to pay 50K USD for a BSD-licensed Linux. Groklaw did a followup on his offer, to which Jeff responded by notifying the FBI of Groklaw's 'hate crimes violation.' Merkey doesn't exactly have a great record, either, which is made even more apparent by his recent threats to file suit against Merkey.net for slander and trademark infringement, amongst others. In addition, he has also reported Merkey.net to the FBI's hate crime department. What could Merkey.net do to get Jeff V. Merkey off their backs?"
After weeks of spreading FUD to the point you would think the guy is mentally challenged, he posted what might be seen as an apology:
l /0410.3/0506.html
http://www.uwsg.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux/kerne
Check the kernel mailinglist archive - Merkey *is* a troll! Or at least seriously mentally handicapped.
Here's the FBI's take on hate crimes. Who knows, maybe Jeff Merkey will read it and learn something.
Huh? I thought it was named after the "Yellow Kid" comics. That's a racial slur exactly how?
Actually it was from the cheap paper the sensational papers of the time were printed on.
Actually, the hate crime law mentions nothing about being "a fucking annoying GUYS LISTEN TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! GUYS!? GUYS!!! hasbeen"
That said, if you were willing to think outside the box, this could be construed as a (mental) disability (which would be covered)
From the FBI website;
Although the Hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990 (amended in 1994 and 1996) defines a hate crime as a crime against a person or property motivated by bias toward race, religion, ethnicity/national origin, disability, or sexual orientation, the FBI does not have any federal jurisdiction to investigate hate crimes motivated by a sexual orientation bias. The FBI's authority to investigate hate crimes motivated by a disability bias is generally limited to incidents interfering with the victim's housing rights.
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Yup.
From this Groklaw thread, one estimate put it at $176 million, while another (more realistic) at ~$612 million for Linux kernel 2.6.
And this, the redevelopment costs alone.
I'd wanted to post the actual figures, but ofcourse Slashdot's _brilliant_ lameness filter blocked it.
Heh, funny - Slashdot these days seems to block more content than it allows for.
Actually, it was from the Yellow Kid.
Ahh, another step towards this lovely age of "if it moves, litigate it, if it doesn't, litigate its next of kin".
It's so pathetic. When does it all end?
When the nightly news decides that highlighting extreme lawsuits and creating a mountain out of a mole-hill won't increase ratings.
When people educate themselves about "frivolous" lawsuits and see that some of them aren't that frivolous[1].
When certain groups stop using lawsuits as the sole blame for increased costs[2].
When Americans realize that out of millions of lawsuits and thousands of judges that yes, there will be a few cases decided the wrong way and a few bad judges, but it does't mean that the legal system is flawed.
The very few times I've been in court, on either side, I've found that the US legal system seems to be pretty fair. Most of the "problem" cases that I've heard about seem to be, on closer inspection, not as clear-cut as one would think. Sure, there are abuses, but I wouldn't want to trade the US legal system for any other legal system in the world.
[1]Re: McDonald's Coffee Case, for one.
[2]Re: Medical profession, for one (or didn't you know that 5% of doctors are responsible for 50% of all malpractice claims?)
No. NTFS is neither patented, nor dangerous to use.
The history. All started about 5 years ago. The old NTFS driver was written for NT4 NTFS but Windows 2000 introduced some improvements. The changes were important enough not to work with the NT4 driver. Unfortunately the driver didn't check the NTFS version, developers vanished thus it thrashed quite many people's filesystem. Unfortunately nobody cared to fix it for a long time.
Here comes Merkey to the picture. He generously offered people a Linux utility, free of charge that had Windows fix NTFS itself (aka run fsck during boot). Unfortunately he had an NDA with Microsoft, not to reveal internals of NTFS. According to him, Microsoft threatened him with a suit. Microsoft claims that it never threatened him or his company with a suit. More about the issue here.
The story got Slashdot attention but with some twists: Microsoft Litigation vs. Linux NTFS Kernel Support. The minor problem was, that the Linux support for NTFS had nothing to do with Jeff Merkey or his company. Still, the Linux community thought they were directly threatened by Microsoft.
Conclusion? Linux NTFS development slowed down a lot. Red Hat has removed NTFS support completely and after 4 years, they still refer to non-existent NTFS patents, even if they would be void due to laws, e.g. the project is for the purpose of writing interoperable software under Sect. 1201 (f) Reverse Engineering exception of the DMCA.
And why NTFS isn't dangerous? Write support was disabled about 3-4 years ago and a new driver was written from scratch for 2.6 kernels that doesn't implement write, except file overwriting.
Quite likely. Look at his previous pearls of wisdom in the LKM archive.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I'll let Merkey speak for himself, and let other judge who and what he is...
All about me
you can find it here.
Merkey came recently into the limelight due to more lkml posts, which were again clearly the product of his insanity. He's not an agent of SCO, Canopy, or Microsoft; he's just deranged. He didn't go to the press. If slashdot and (especially) groklaw hadn't picked up on the "story", this would have mercifully died away. His bizarre reversal should be ample evidence of that.
The best thing for him and for us would be to ignore his unfortunate condition. I can only find the current situation wasteful and tragic.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Well, since the American Bar Association is as much a government regulatory body as the American Automobile Association, the answer to "how well" is "only well enough to keep the government from actually regulating us". The ABA is a professional association of lawysers run by lawyers and really has no business being the regulatory body in charge of lawyer certification.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
>No?
So long as you stay out of any situation where someone could literally have you prosecuted for issuing a credible death threat, then you're right.
But there is a line that you don't want to cross.
If you're getting serious, and you threaten someone,
then later you get into a situation where you need to use force in self defense against that person, you have already given up your justification of self defense by provoking violence.
Of course, 12-year-olds don't get into situations where they are over the line very often. Don't make any death threats that can be construed by anyone as credible. Don't expect to be justified in a self defense situation if you have provoked violence against you.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What fraction of doctors are OBGYNs? Neurosurgeons?
Some medical specialties are more lawsuit-prone than others, because they--by their nature--perform procedures with a greater risk of negative outcome, or deal with patients who are more likely to receive large jury awards (new mothers and babies...), or both.
In the United States, a 2002 survey revealed that 76 percent of all obstetricians have been sued at least once. Forty percent have been sued three or more times. Does anyone seriously believe that nearly half of all obstetricians can be that incompetent?
Other risky specialties see similar problems. Unfortunately, malpractice lawsuits take place--and are often successful--in the event of any negative outcome, rather than one caused by actual incompetence or dereliction. About 1 in 5 suits are filed where there is no negative outcome whatsoever, but these are still settled for an average of nearly thirty thosuand dollars apiece (mostly legal bills.)
True--there are some problem doctors, but their numbers are decidedly few. As you say, the situation is not black and white.
~Idarubicin