Slashdot Mirror
SCO Missing 16,209 Files?
FileSortingZombie writes "After all the allegations by SCO that IBM is abusing or dragging out the discovery process, over in this story on Groklaw you can read about IBM's objections to what SCO is producing in discovery, not the least of which is that there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log, and IBM wants to know what's become of them. Are they unprivileged, lost, destroyed, already produced, or quite simply gone? As of yet, no one seems to know. All told, IBM found fault with some 76% of their claims, especially one case where IBM says that SCO appears to be trying to claim that a conversation it had with an IBM employee should be considered confidential. One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site for those interested in just how objectionable IBM found SCO's filing."
Is this crap still going on? This hasn't been thrown out yet?
Gotta hope they didnt empty their trashbins!
If you can't beat them, then make it disappear...
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
... seems to be the nature of SCO's whole case...
(the link produced errors when first posted.)
This is a great example of the corporate corruption plaguing the courts and, ultimately, the globe. Why were these files not seized by court officials if they are so important? In any case, IMHO there should be some form of penalty applied to SCO if these documents really could have had significant sway in terms of the court case. This is a criminal offence? (IANAL)
" there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log"
That's awfully close to 16,384 missing files. I wonder if SCO is using MS Excel to keep track of their privilege log.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
"How convenient"
/Homer Simpson
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
SCO is dead anyway.
Works every time!
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
We are lucky to have something Marshall Berman has enlightened us about and it's called modern progress -- companies can learn and evolve. They don't have to stay the same! They can change!
This is a great example of the corporate corruption plaguing the courts and, ultimately, the globe.
Just because people set up a corporation for the purpose of defrauding an industry -- don't blame all corporations. If we held every single corporation to blame for incorrect practices of employees and management, the economy would collapse. What many businesses are missing today are change mechanisms. Every company is doing something wrong right now. It's the duty of those who work there that see the impropriety to blow the whistle on bad practices, internally and if that fails, externally. If the company in question has the correct business systems in place to enable internal practice auditing to occur, then the company will survive.
Certain people are responsible for SCO's incorrect business philosophy. Let the focus be on them, and what they did wrong, and how they manipulated little old lady stockholders into shelling out big bucks for no reason whatsoever.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I just wanted to express my gratitude, that finally a legal expert wheighs in on /. with his well founded, well researched, well argued analysis of groklaw.
Just looking at the wealth of arguments you present to proof your point that groklaw is presenting "some of the worst legal analysis" you have seen during your distinguished legal career (well, I'm sure it was a very distinguished career, unfortunately you are so modest as to post as an anonymous coward, so as not draw the attention, that of course would be well deserved, to your person, but instead focus on the topic at hand, which of course leaves readers in the dark about exactly how distinguished your career was) makes my head spin.
Aweinspiring and impressive.
Thank you so much!
but Groklaw DOES cheerfully accept donations. I'm also sure that you went over and gave P.J. at least a couple of bucks didn't you? Didn't you?
You know folks the cure for FUD is an informed populace. God Bless you PJ. There is a place in heaven for you.
With many of their lawsuits being thrown out of court, It is just makings IBMs counter Suit so much easier. IBM at least early on in the process asked many of its larger customers to report to them any Time loss due to this lawsuit, including meeting on changing strategy away from Linux or talking about purchasing the Linux License. IBM seems to have a big counter suit coming that will probably cripple SCO. But they will wait untill SCO empties its funds before IBM fights back.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The thought occurred to me is that if SCOX, seems to have removed 16209 files from their privilege logs without reason, most likely clerical errors ect.; how is anyone ever going to trust them to maintain anything as complicated as a source tree?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
for SCO's customers. Ok - the management should be put in front of the firing squad, but the bulk of their employees and their customer base will turn out to be the real victims here. An ideal solution to this fiasco would be the incarceration of McBride/Stowell, and some reputable outfit picking up Unixware and OpenServer for a song, and continuing with their support.
someone just needs to hostile takeover sco and be done with them. they are as almost as bad as the riaa. just annoying enough to cause problems with progress.
"Ever have your heart shot out of season and strapped to the hood of a car?" -- Chopper Harley
all Saddam has to do is show us where the missing files are.
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
This doesn't seem like a stunning development in the case; more of a minor "whoops" with a variety of possible explanations. The documents now seemingly not covered by privilege may or may not be informative, the "whoops" may or may not have been strategic and/or intentional, those documents still claimed as privileged may or may not be disputed based upon lack of information demonstrating the privilege. But it's still inside baseball: there's nothing so new here as to warrant a major news flash.
/. and other sources, hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of individuals have read actual court documents, debated the meaning of standing, venue, attorney-client privilege, chain of evidence, discovery, and god knows what else.
What is interesting, at least to me, is the possibility that The SCO Group has unwittingly created an entire generation of technically literate individuals who have also closely followed the inside working of a major lawsuit. Through PJ and Groklaw, and secondarily through
This must be resulting in some sort of predisposition in young technogeeks for law school, or at least for thinking about legal issues. I don't want to say that it's a substitute for sitting through a contract law course, or even a legal textbook, but reading a year of comments on Groklaw must be preparing generations of youngish technology people for pursuing law as a career. It's like a real-time moot court on technology issues. The technically-minded can be drawn to the law as just another complex system, one with its own terminology, protocols, communications systems, manuals. Possibly, through following the inside baseball of this case, they might develop enough of an interest in law to choose to hack that system.
We'll call them the "SCO generation".
It's over now. That, or it's go time. One of the two. acts of gord
Surely *some* of those 16,000 and change documents are going to be covered by Sarbanes Oxley's data retention requirements. Do Darl McBride and Ralph Yarro have some kind of sado-masochistic desire to be investigated by the SEC or something, because this sure sounds like a hunting license to me.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
"We'll call them the "SCO generation"." ;-D
There is no need for insults.
Other than that, you are of course absolutely right. Thinkin about it, there is even one thing scarier, there are now a lot of people who are at least to some extend familiar with the american legal system through following this case, but who are not even americans.
I often get the feeling that I know more about the workings of the american legal system than I know about the workings of the legal system of my country (germany).
Scary, somehow.
If the abuse of the courts is so obvious why wait for an IBM counter suit.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
There was a time every single news item on the case used to boost the value of SCO scocks. Not anymore; the hype has died down.
Well, I am still not fully sure what a privilege log is but it seems to be a list of documents which were compiled between SCO and its lawyers and are to be protected from court enquiry.
I guess IBM can be happy that these documents are missing from the list now, since it means they can try to subpoena them.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
It makes you wonder. They sent out mail asking for money to make Linux 'legal', and yet they can't keep track of simple files. Hate to think where my money would have gone had I been dumb enough to actually pay up.
The current situation is not a result of a few individual isolated wrongdoings. There are fare too many of them, and lack of long-term/real perspective is so pervavise in so many aspects of the society is downright frightening.
Me, as a fairly anti-US government European see this very clearly in your foreign policy. Sanity/long-term strategy has been thrown out of the window (christ, you guys actually invaded both Afghanistan and bloody Iraq! why oh why?!) and replaced by short-term goals and quick profits. I'm fairly certain I'd find much of the same if I payed as much attention to European foreign politics as US ones, but I'm frankly too scared to look, and am starting to prefer to keep my illusions.
I think, in the end real changes come from the bottom. The poorer people in the west has had it too good for too long now, and isn't a factor to be feared anymore. I'm fairly certain, sadly enough, that is going go change.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
How conveniant that files just went "missing" like that. Gotta give SCO an A+ for brains. What were they thinking? "gee, nobody will think that maybe we removed them on purpose"
http://www.6765656b.com it's the ~ for us geek's.
... that what SCO did was an incredibly stupid idea.
Frankly, I'm not even interested in SCO bulletins anymore.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site and quickly had his server turned into a smoldering pile of ashes after the link was posted on Slashdot.
Is there a mirror anywhere?
I always wondered what happened to him... looks like he's been very busy at the shredders again...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
No, this is not the same SCO. From my hazy, it's 2:30 AM memory:
The Santa Cruz Operation was, by somewhere in the late '90s or so, not doing so well. Strangely, people seemed interested in this newfangled "Linux" thing. So SCO got borged by Caldera. I forget whether Caldera was already part of the Canopy group at that point, or became a part of it later, but bits of Caldera went into what's now called The SCO Group and what's now called... Tarantella, if I recall.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
No way. I want to be able to run real software like Office and Photoshop.
"Linux was based on Minix. A UnixLite OS designed to run on PCs. However, it was really only a teaching tool. Andrew Tanenbaum repeatedly refused to add the new (legitimate) features the users and even developers asked for. Linus Torvalds set out simply to add functionality to his own version of Minix (the copyright allows use to do so for your own personal use, but you cannot sell or distibute it).
Over time, in adding functionality to Minix, Linus Torvalds found that he had created an entirely new kernel. I was very similar to Minix but used none of the Minix source code..."
(Who modded the preceeding garbage "Informative!?)
Linux began as a development that was hosted on a pc running Minix. Linus set out, from the start, to create a posix compatible kernel of his very own. The idea that he created the kernel by accident is as laughable as it is insulting.
See here for a a rather more factual account of the development of the Linux kernel.
T&K.
Political language
I mean seriously, Haig McNamee, that's got to be a fake name right? McNamee? It sounds like someone couldn't remember the last name of the guy they talked to at IBM, thought it was Irish, and just threw McNamee down on the page. They're probably trying to protect it because it makes them look really stupid and a little bit racist.
Just a guess.
--
RumorsDaily
That would mean that one hour from now, the number of electronic records created has doubled, in two hours it's 4 times, in 3 hours its 8 times, and so on, for the next 10 years.
2 to the power of 87600 (number of hours in 10 years) is a decimal number with 26,371 digits. Contrast this to one estimate of the count of the number of atoms in the observable universe (a number with 79 digits). The claim is clearly nonsensical.
The quote is attributed to:
I checked out that paper and the original authors say something quote different. They say:
The authors are referring to a decrease in the amount of time required for the number of records on earth to increase. So eventually (within 10 years) they expect the rate to increase to a point where eventually the number will double after only 60 minutes. This may be possible, but such a rate clearly cannot be maintained for very long.
Well, Anonymous Coward does contribute a lot to this site. How do I donate to you without compromising your anonymity?
Good lord people, these documents aren't somehow gone. Go RTFA.
1. A while back they claimed a whole bunch of documents as privileged.
2. Now they don't.
What's "missing" is an explanation of why, not the documents themselved. Since they're not privleged, it would go to reason that IBM can now compell them to turn all of those over, only when they do this will we learn if the documents are missing.
just scares me about what would have happened if it wasn't SCO vs IBM but any small Linux based business vs SCO. In my opinion this just proves how corrupt courts can be: if law was truly money-blind, SCO shouldn't have been allowed to live six months after they made those obviously false claims.
so can someone tell me what is so special about these privilege logs ? What are they logs of and how would they go missing.. (i'm assuming they're digital with backups? )
that even though it may be a tactic, that they (SCO) happen to be lying little bastards.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
I was wondering why they never sent me a letter! They cant keep thier records straight.
I mean, really, otherwise you would just be an ignorant moron.
$4 a share for a company with no assets is a damned good price.
I'll tell you what...I have no assets, no income; I"ll sell a million shares @ $2/share.
Will the court put an end to SCO's misery?
Seriously, I want just one bit of SCO news from now on: A timescale.
One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site for those interested in just how objectionable IBM found SCO's filing.
/. up on my website.
I think that I will throw the one thing (ok other than Natalies hot grits) guaranteed to be looked at by all on
In the midst of this kind of controversy, it's important for people to take a step back and really analyze what's going on. Groklaw has done a wonderful job at this by posting all publically available documents regarding the case and level headed analysis of said documents. However, there are a lot of people with an agenda (to tear down Linux and Free and Open software) who want to muddy the entire situation into their chest thumping war against "communism". This vocal minority is doing everything within it's power to work up the fervor and frenzy of every capitalist/neocon in their favor. At this point they have resorted to little more than schoolyard name calling and teacher's pet-ism with the court. Fortunately, the judge is on the ball and isn't falling for it.
We have the SCO folks running scared. Although the litigators (sounds like alligators) have made a good deal of money from this whole situation, they know that the jig is nearly up. In their desperation they have set loose their final secret weapon: file stealing imps. While the rest of us have been playing fairly and trying to do the right thing in court. The litigators have made deals with the devil in the hopes that they can squeeze one last drop out of their turnip. After summoning satan himself, they requested that he provide them with these specialized imps at no cost to them because they are doing "his work". Satan agreed and brought these beings into existence. From reports that I've been provided access to, I hear that they look a lot like "Darl McBride Jr." with arms and legs (if you get my drift).
This is how SCO intends to "go nuclear". They are relying on the sheer number of file stealing imps to scour the SCO source code and make certain that any evidence that THEY, in fact, stole from GNU/Linux is completely obscured. This is a frightful development, but if we can catch these imps and present them to the judge, perhaps we can prove once and for all that SCO doesn't have a case. Only time will tell...
Un-news
Because of your willingness to donate to my decesed father, I have decided that I can trust you in the fullest despite the fact that you may be supprised to be recieving this note. I am the sole surviving heir of the Honorable Mr Anonymous Coward. As you may well know, he was the leader of the Teritorial Region's Outer Limit and ammassed massive reserves of -$karmaks which have been deposited in an account here. Due to the new slashlaw imposed after his death, I am in need of a regular account into which I will transfer $100,000,000,000,000 (-K) . As a payment for your troubles, you can keep 100,000,000,000,000 (-K). In order for us to make this transaction swift, Send me your Username and Password as well as your Name, Address, SSN, DOB, Mothers maiden Name, phone number, and bank account number. I am trusting in your descritedness in this sensitive matter.
IAGO:(Extremely sarcastically)
/.
Oh, there's a big surprise. That's an incred--I think I'm gonna have a heart attack and die from not surprise!
makes me laugh anyway...
now back to your regularly scheduled
Nonsense. SCO is not a marketing company, they have no product. SCO is an IP litigation company. Also, clearly you do not follow SCOX, they may have once had "deep pockets" but that is no longer the case. Keep in mind that the objective is not to own Unix or Linux or anything else, the objective is for Darl and friends to suck SCO dry and hit the golden silk. Darl and his boys quite correctly guessed that Unix is dieing, and there is no money in selling Linux. So, they decided to cash out.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
see the part of my post where it says "open sores hippie please reply"? No? Nor do I.
look you open sores hippie zealot, if that's how you solve your computer problems please go back to your moms basement and stop harassing people who use their computer for something other than gay porn.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
If SCO gets bought, i.e., someone gives Darl a bunch of money in exchange for his shares in a worthless company, it just serves to encourage other parasites. It's bad enough that they made money out of selling stock when the hype peaked anyway, you don't want them to make even more.
Which is really why IBM doesn't do it. If you cave in to one bloodsucker with a frivolous claim, either by paying up or buying them out, you've suddenly got every single wannabe in the country doing that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A privilege log is a log of information covered by client/attourney privilege such as letters between councels, letters from client to councel, testemonies to councel, etc... It is logged to prevent your opponent from finding and submitting the information in court and then claiming it wasn't covered by privilege.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
Either that or it was BS overflow
They don't want to miss their tee time at Club Fed.
This is still the best explanation I have
come up with for their behavior.
They are not just incompetent, they are HELPING
confirm the GPL as a legally enforceable license
by continuing to distribute Linux. They sued
CUSTOMERS who had bought a PROPRIETARY version
of Unix for violating said license.
What else makes sense?
SCO was obviously full of it and as the slow wheels of justice turn and grind exceedingly fine the world is finding out just how baseless were their claims.
Are those claims not so baseless and trumped up, and have not various stock price fluctuations occurred as a result that have enriched various individuals?
I'm wondering if the machinations behind the SCO move are not so flagrant that they could constitute a reason for ultimately piercing the corporate veil of protection. At the least, I would expect a functioning SEC to look over the SCO history with a microscope.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
that all the SCO officers and their land sharks are missing their brains. Any company officer should know better than to attempt to build their business on (meritless) IP ligitation. Any (ethical) land shark worth their salt should have advice their client filing meritless lawsuits is against their client's long term interest. The fact SCO suits has been on going this long suggests both the SCO officers and their land sharks are not only missing their brains, but also their morals. Ye just watch, they'll be eating babies next.
They got to drop the "E" as of 21 April. They were never delisted, the "E" indicated potential deslisting.
They finally filed their paperwork, and NASDAQ said, "fine, you can drop the E".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your 0.02, so :P
At the current exchange rate, 0.02 euros gets you about 0.03 dollars. So I'm afraid my Euro is worth more than your dollat ATM. check it out here.
"I realise this is not a very popular opinion but it's the truth, and there for needs to be said" -Bill Hicks
OldSCO was never called The SCO Group.
Caldera bought OldSCO's Operating system division, and merged it into Caldera. What remained of OldSCO became Tarantella. Just before the fiaSCO, Caldera renamed itself "The SCO Group", allegedly for goodwill purposes, but now we see it was to confuse OldSCO and NewSCO.
I'm not sure when Caldera/newSCO became part of Canopy. And with the settlement of the Yarro case, I'm not sure Canopy owns any of newSCO anyways. I think part of the settlement was that Yarro got all of Canopy's newSCO stock.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
"Can we have those tapes now, Mr. Nixon?"
I'm not good in groups. It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent. - Q
The bloat-rate for Microsoft's Office and Windows alone accounts for that . . .
hawk
Maybe these are all the AIX files that found their way into OpenServer?
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
As EU citizen I am far, far more concerned about the Brussels bohemeth then whether Bush and Cheney make more money on the Iraq war than the UN did on the food-for-oil scandal.
As an EU citizen, you aren't going to have to clean up Bush/Cheney's mess.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm still alive you insensitive clod!
So send the money to me... err.. nevermind.
Not that the SCO case is even close in terms of viewership to this but the Alger Hiss hearings and Watergate both had interesing effects. Watergate in particular because of the tremendous detail (live coverage of the issues for months and months and months) educated millions about the details of how the federal government actually works.
They're now getting closer to the point where they'll have to justify their privilidge claims before the court, so they've dropped the ones they don't think they'll be able to defend.
I am trolling
As we all know, SCO's not in the business of marketing, it's in the business of suing everyone...
They own it after all, since S-OX uses a substantial portion of thier ecxlusive and proprietary NASDAQ stock symbol. Since they own it, they can ignore it, and sue you for ignoring it.
Right on. I wish I had some mod points. I bring this up every time I am dealing with a corporate apologist. As far as the courts are concerned, corporations are the same as people. The only large legal difference is that corporations can't vote. Whats so sickening about this fact is that its established on a 100 year old interpretation of the 14th amendment that was intended to aid former slaves.
This "a corporation is a citizen" bullshit is why the political system in the U.S. can't be fixed. What needs to happen is that the amount of corporate money pumped into campaigns needs to decrease. Now its just a big corrupt racket. Yet the few decent representatives that want to do something (such as John McCain) can't because any law that would limit these funds would "infringe on a corporation's right to free speech."
A corporation shouldn't have a right to free speech. Only people should. Fuck apologists.
Open Source Sushi
This is accomplished by sheer manpower. Cravath is a team operation - everything important, and most of the little stuff, gets checked by several different people. Cravath and IBM introduced the litigation support systems decades ago, and by now, they're wel integrated into the operation. Everything in the case goes in and gets indexed and linked.
Dumping a ton of documents on Cravath will not help your case. Buildings will be filled with clerks, paralegals, and servers, until every document disclosed has been examined for anything that will help their side. If there's a contradiction in there, it will be found and used.
It's not impossible to beat Cravath, but you have to have a strong case. Handwaving will not work. Opponents who try that will be shot down again and again by "You said that your company had never done that. But in document #B13549034, page 374, paragraph 5, your company admitted doing exactly that."
Since Cravath's approach is well known, it's surprising that Boies let SCO go forward with their bogus arguments. This case is consuming about 0.01% of IBM's revenue. They're not going to cave.
In your dreams. Some of them run to several hundred pages per doc.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
IBM: "See that smoking, glowing crater in Utah? The one by the blackened, half-molten, twisted and bent 'DEAD END' sign? In some places the rubble splashed for miles!
IBM: "They did not survive. Not they, nor any of their kinsmen, nor pets, nor anybody who loaned them money, or borrowed from them, or ran their advertising, or wrote articles favourable towards them. Not their lawyers, nor any of the lawyers' kin or pets or houses or BMWs or Rolexes, real or otherwise. Such is the fate of all who would jerk our chain to satisfy their own greed."
Supplicant: "Who were 'they'?"
IBM: "Nobody remembers. It is... unhealthy... to mention their names."
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
does this become a capital crime?
If you kill a person, the state can kill you.
But what if you waste four minutes of 10 million peopl's lives? that is roughly equivalent to one lifetime. Shouldn't the death penalty be considered?
The problem, AFAICS, is that over the years, corporations have been given rights and conceptual properties by court decision or decree, that don't stand to reason. Many disagreements over just what rights are properly accorded to a publicly funded private entity, but I think it's fair to say that even some corporations disagree as well. Therefore, even an 'ethical corporation' can be party to abuse, especially if the primary job of the corporate board of directors is to maximise the value to stockholders or other minority partners by any legal means, which is what I have been given to understand is the case.