Slashdot Mirror
The Score is IBM - 700,000 / SCO - 326
The Peanut Gallery writes "After years of litigation to discover what, exactly, SCO was suing about, IBM has finally discovered that SCO's 'mountain of code' is only 326 scattered lines. Worse, most of what is allegedly infringing are comments and simple header files (like errno.h). These probably aren't copyrightable for being unoriginal and dictated by externalities and aren't owned by SCO in any event. Above and beyond that, IBM has at least five separate licenses for these elements, including the GPL, even if SCO actually owned those lines of code. In contrast IBM is able to point out 700,000 lines of code, which they have properly registered copyrights for, which SCO is infringing upon if the Court rules that it repudiated the GPL."
It'll be interesting to watch SCOs share price now...
At least the wikipedia article says so.
Is he lying or not? If the original unix comments are in there verbatim, it sounds unlikely that it was completely original.
I'm not saying it should be copyrightable or affect the suit at all, but it certainly bears on Linus' credibility, if he copy/pasted a header file then claimed it was a product of his genious.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I hope they get paid by LOC 'cos thats a whopping $9,202,453.99 each!
liqbase
IBM: All your code base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time.
Isn't this a bit like saying Serial Killer 5 - Rest of World 6 Billion? Surely the point is that there is may be infringing code. And the article only ventures to say that "most of" the selected code is not copyrightable.
ouch!
i have the following code copyrighted, get out your wallets and pay up or i will sue!
If (x){
Now that you have seen my copyrighted code, anyone who uses the above code in their programs must pay me a nickel!!!
Hold on, I just got a whisper from my patent lawyer, apparently some firm has trademarked the bracket ({) and my copyright is invalid. Carry on.
Is it sad that I am more likely to recognize you and your posts by your sig than your name or UID?
Looked like "emo.h". Which would be more than appropriate.
Fuck Slashdot
If you'd followed this case at all, you'd realize that SCO has done nothing BUT lie since day one of the case.
The wheel of Karma turns. Sometimes, you get roadkill.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Is it just me, or does Caldera's logo look like Mickey Mouse's ear (specifically, a sphere with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it, such that you can only see his ear) ?
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
SCO may have 326 lines of code IF the judge in the Novell case say that the rights to the code were transferred to SCO via the Amended Purchase Agreement.
SCO was funded to do this "legal dance."
While this maybe bad for SCO, those paying the the dance have more than got their money's worth.
They got some really big FUD going, plus the value of major distraction slowing down anyone following the play by play.
Clearly the long term play of MS is to get part or all of there free OS to be illegal. Illegal because they are TOOLS for ripping off copyright(s), or because they don't support legally mandated DRM, or because they they allow DRM to be by-passed, etc, etc., etc.
The only way around this is if more and more people use it and if the big box companies like Dell and Gateway ship boxes with Linux, etc.
http://www.hawknest.com/
> It doesn't matter if it is only 1 function that IBM has copied in there.
s oft-SCO+relationship+-+page+2/2100-7344_3-5450515- 2.htmld =36545
RTFA. They are talking about function prototypes, not functions. Big difference. Without actually seeing what the beef is, SCO's claims could be as ridiculous as "int foo (void);"
> Just the fact that SCO has not been lying is vindication enough for me.
Where does it say SCO has not been lying? RBC, Microsoft, SCO and Baystar capital* have been in on this pump-n-dump since day one. As far as I'm concerned, they are all crooks and should be brought to court and tried as such. It's no different than Enron and the other MegaCorp swindlers.
[*] http://news.com.com/Fact+and+fiction+in+the+Micro
http://www.newsforge.com/comments.pl?cid=87796&si
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Google
["It doesn't matter if it is only"] returned 45 results.
Google
["Even a simple one"] returns 15400
Google
["is vindication enough for me"] returns 6 results.
I accuse you sir of copyright violation! Even if those are only fragments of your text. It doesn't matter if it is only a few lines, or one, even a simple one is vindication enough for me.
Looks like SCO has the upper hand on IBM...
Summation 2
Parent should RTFA, or maybe just the GPL.
From TFA: "The GPL, of course, grants IBM legal permission to copy, distribute and modify the software. Finally, SCO was a Linux company that distributed this code for years and encouraged the world and its dog to copy, modify, distribute, sublicense, whatever, this code, so they are estopped from suing IBM for doing what the GPL license SCO distributed under said IBM could freely do."
Having been suprised by the copyright charge and going directly to his link to read it and confirmed my belief that there was nothing against copyrights there. Red Hat names some types of copyrights but says nothing against copyrights. In fact a search of the page for the term "copyright" returns the following and nothing else.
As far as lobbying congress to remove software patents, thank you Red Hat and I wish you the best of luck in getting the government to stop this insanely stupid practice that can only impede advancement in the art of software. Yes, I called it art and yes I know its also mathematics but keep in mind, most if not all art can be expressed mathematically. Now here is a question for government, what would have happened if someone were allowed to patent the process of applying paint to canvas, the shaping of clay or stone, the process of adding, subtracting or multiplying numbers? What if it was patented by Disney? Would the processes ever expire? Would they be forever "patent pending"?
1) IBM didn't copy it in there
2) What is there is not one contiguous block of code
3) The lines that SCO do claim are theirs are not copyrightable
4) SCO has released these files under the GPL anyway
5) SCO hasn't proved it does own the lines in question
6) The code is question is less than 0.1% of Linux
7) Owning these lines of code does not mean they own any of the rest of Linux
8) Bankruptcy
Another one
8) SCO agreed to IBMs use of these lines of code in Linux
I'm having visions of future SCO moves prompted by their crack legal team:
1) Admitting an IBM model-M keyboard as evidence to the case.
2) Calling a monkey to the stand.
3) Yelling "objection" at random moments, even during recess.
4) Showing the court on the doll where IBM touched them.
Can we just throw out the case and stop with the wasting of money already?
More Twoson than Cupertino
Thanks Darl, your opinion is noted.
Nobody except sco is saying that anything was copied. It has finally boiled down to sco pointing to these few hundred specific lines as being the infringing code, rather than the millions of lines as had been claimed. Now, IBM knows what the entire turkey fuck has been over. Personally, I believe that sco has been grasping at straws and that it will be shown that there was no infringement at all. Time will tell.
Sorry, I know this is confusing.
Usually, in Slashdot stories, the large corporation is the evil bad guy and the small company or individual is the wronged party. The evil corporation produces an army of terrifying lawyers and destroys the individual in court on some trumped-up charge of copyright infringement or a patent violation. Usually, the RIAA, MPAA, the Republicans or Microsoft play the part of the evil corporation.
However, in this case, the large corporation (IBM) is actually the good guy! The smaller company, SCO, is the one making fraudulent IP claims regarding free software. When IBM wins the case, the findings will be good for free software and help strengthen Linux against allegations of IP theft.
Just to summarise:
- IBM = Good.
- SCO = Bad.
- SCO loses, we cheer.
Which, when you think about it, won't actually stop them. All bankruptcy will do is clear the slate of debts, meaning their lawyers will not get paid much if anything, and will probably quit. If SCO survives bankruptcy, the tricks will be to a) find a new source of capital and b) find lawyers stupid enough to take on the case.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
"It is paramount that the DMCA be given full force and effect, as envisioned by Congress." -- SCO
What a delightful combination of messenger and message. That should so be in somebody's signature. I'd take it, but I like mine the way it is.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Exactly what most people would do in building such a list of #defines...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
//This is a bug and needs to be fixed
//Copyright 1981 IBM
and
and
cout<<"Hello World<<endl;
and
cout<<endl;
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Repudiate it (i.e. "strike it down") and it will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
...}
{gawd, I am such a geek
Okay, the errno.h file is a list of errors.
POSIX.1, the specification, says you need to support X list of errors, and these are their names.
POSIX.1 compliance was a goal of Linux. If you RTFA carefully (or TFS) you'll note that Linus used different values for those same constants. Which, BTW, is a bone-headed move in terms of compatibility with UNIX but still within the letter of the specification. So clearly he wasn't using one as a crib sheet for the other.
This is basically like, Linus wanted to bake some cookies, so he looked at the recipe for his Mom's cookies and made a grocery list. Now his Aunt Martha has her panties in a knot because she thinks Linus stole her grocery list, because it has the same ingredients in it, because Linus' grandmother is the one who taught both his mom and his aunt how to bake chocolate chip cookies. And this is before Martha even bothers to notice that Linux is buying butterscotch chips and way too much baking soda.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
SCO is another poster child for the US Civil Court system to adopt a "Loser Pays" rule to interrupt the flow of ridiculous lawsuits.
I would assume that this may conflict heavily with the current "Lawyers Always Win" effect we have now though.
Point 1.
/. posts are emotionally detached).
SCO was flat out lying. If I run a file comparison utility over several million lines of code, and I find 326 identical lines (most of which are things like #include ) and then say that IBM stole thousands of lines of code, I'm lying my @$$ off. It's similar to me saying you owe me a million dollars because you borrowed $5 for lunch one day. Or calling you a gay prostitute because your wife dragged you to see Brokeback Mountain. Or saying I have proof Jedi are real after watching the 'Star Wars Kid' video. (Do I really need to continue? How is gross exaggeration NOT flat out lying?)
Point 2.
It is interesting to watch SCO stock. My bet is that it goes down a notch, and it seems to be doing that so far today (but just barely). Investors tend to be just as stupid and emotionally attached to things as anyone else. (Succesful investors are less so, just like some of the better
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
So you are commenting without having seen the actual code? If so, how can you even so boldly assert anything without potentially deceiving yourself?
9) IBM and Novell win counterclaims and the only fight left is how those two companies will divvy up SCO's carcass.
Because this... is... SLASHDOT!
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
From SCO's own March 1 PR
Legal and other expenses incurred in connection with the Company's litigation were $654,000 for the first quarter of fiscal year 2007, which was down significantly from costs of $4,010,000 for the comparable quarter of the prior year and down from costs of $2,220,000 for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2006. Because of the unique and unpredictable nature of the Company's litigation, the occurrence and timing of litigation-related expenses is difficult to predict, and will be difficult to predict in the future. While the Company expects to continue to incur legal expenses related to its ongoing litigation during the 2007 fiscal year, the Company's expectation is that those expenses will be less than they were for the 2006 fiscal year.
Perhaps they see the light at the end of the tunnel... and it's a train coming at them.
Science never settles, never rests.
You've missed the difference between Linux 0.01, written from scratch, and modern Linux, which has incorporated various items from the POSIX spec. Nobody lied... except for SCO, of course, but you already knew that.
TFA says: 11 of 12 files are header files, which aren't copyrightable. Header files don't do anything.
A header file can have complicated data structure definitions; it can define arrays that are used by other algorithms. Saying that a header cannot have copyrightable or even patentable information is wrong.
Burn Karma, Burn....
Vi tip of the day: yy p
or 20yy p
Vi FTW!
Can anyone tell me why this lawsuit takes so long? SCO says they say code they wrote was used without license. So what stops the judges from looking at those lines of code, establish whether or not there is a claim and be done with it? SCO vs. IBM is into its forth friggin year! More than 200 weeks. Almost 1500 days.
I started reading that article, that is linked from the story without checking the url and as my eyes were just openning wider and wider with each false claim and each line of FUD I finally reached the point where I had to know who the hell wrote it and so I look up into the address bar and I see www.sco.com
/. staff: PLEASE mark the SCO articles in a more visible manner, it's dangerous for health to read such tripe. Also can't we sue SCO for libel or something?
... ...
Pheew! Geez whiz, so as my blood pressure normalizes I just wanted to ask
I mean this is actually false information, they are knowingly lying to everyone with each breath they take.
Just read this:
However, there is a group of software developers in the United States, and other parts of the world, that do not believe in the approach to copyright protection mandated by Congress.
The software license adopted by the GPL is called "copy left " by its authors. This is because the GPL has the effect of requiring free and open access to Linux (and other) software code and prohibits any proprietary use thereof.
This stance against intellectual property laws has been adopted by several companies in the software industry, most notably Red Hat. Red Hat's position is that current U.S. intellectual property law "impedes innovation in software development" and that "software patents are inconsistent with open source/free software." Red Hat has aggressively lobbied Congress to eliminate software patents and copyrights. (see http://www.redhat.com/legal/patent_policy.html ).
I mean can't Red Hat for example sue them for libel? SCO is constantly insisting that GPL is anti-copyright, while GPL is only possible because of copyright law. They are misstating what GPL is about too by insisting that GPL does not allow any proprietary use (GPL requires that a distributor of GPLed code, follows GPL procedures, this is not about use.)
You can't handle the truth.
Note that I'm talking about the better posts being detatched (though the non-detached ones can be a great read). /. is a great place for everyone who thinks he's a genius to rant.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Yes, in the beginning this may have been enough to put some people off of linux. However, one must remember the old adage about "no publicity is bad publicity." The whole SCO case attracted quite a large deal of attention, and a lot of speculation on the legitimacy of linux and/or its licenses.
So if IBM is able to not only rip apart SCO's claims of infringement, but possibly nail SCO with their own infringement charges, then suddenly linux's image improves dramatically. Not only that, but the "common foe" scenario has in some ways strengthened to FOSS community, as well as IBM's commitment to linux.
http://sco.justgotowned.com/
Also, none of the code under question is C++. Go take your newfangled cout and fprintf yourself.
It may only be 326 lines, but SCO wants statutory damages of $750.00 per character infringed.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
IMO: anybody who thinks otherwise does not understand the scam.
Want to gloat about scox's share price being down, about scox not doing well financially? Fine, but remember this: scox's market cap is about twice as high now, as it was before the scam. And scox was as good as dead before the scam. Look at the financials, scox would have dead two years ago if not for this scam. Furthermore, darl and kevin mcbride are making out like bandits - each has made about two million since the scam started - not bad for small time Utah scammers. And remember, scox was a canopy company - not a real company. Canopy plays shell games with dozens of make-believe companies.
Msft financed the scam lawsuit, and msft got a great ROI out of the deal. The scam cost msft about as much as the cost to produce one TV commercial, and msft got a ton of grade-A FUD. The scox scam is nothing but about 1% of msft's continuing FUD campaign against Linux. Msft wants potential Linux users to know that Linux is a legal mine field. Msft also wants potential linux comtributers to know that they are risking a msft sponsered bogo-suit. Remember: just because the lawsuit is bogus doesn't mean the lawsuit won't cost over $50M in legal fees - and who wants that? Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to just not contribute to linux?
from the transcript of the hearing:
"THE COURT: Where does this illustration come from in 46? This cup with all this money?
MR. MARRIOTT: Someone on our team made that up, Your Honor."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Is a ridiculous waste of time and money that hurts not only the tax payer, but countless businesses that have been scared away from linux when it might have been a better option for their needs, and the businesses that would have supported that choice. Yes, it brought money to Microsoft's pockets, the pockets of lawyers, and the pockets of MS-related consultants and techies, but ultimately it has been a frivolous lawsuit that's cost an inestimable fortune.
SCO should have to pay a lot more than court costs. Maybe the IRS should have a long-term tax penalty for evil.
Surely you are kidding that SCOX might win. The 326 lines of codes:
#1 they dont hold Copyright on at ALL
#2 are in public domain
#3 are not even CODE!
#4 which IBM has 5 licenses to including redistribution of the code.
#5 the license from SCO to IBM includes warranty against lawsuit
SCO included all the lines in their GPL'ed Linux products
The truth shall set you free!
When I first read the headline, I thought IBM -(minus) 700,000, SCO -(minus)300. The thought that SCO was winning (albeit in a less negative way) was spooky. My next thought was who was moderating the trial! I gotta read less /.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Looking at SCO's statement at http://www.sco.com/copyright/ I note that: * they are supporters of the DMCA * they believe freeware should be made illegal, ie. programmers have no right to give away software that they themselves write * they think growth of the US economy between 1976-1986 was due purely to changes in copyright laws * freeware developers are trying to circumvent laws * it's OK for them to impose license conditions but noone else * they don't give a damn about anything except their own profits etc. I mean, we all knew this, but it's funny to see them so baldly admitting it.
500,000 dead Iraqis? Utter bullshit, sourced only from the completely discredited and non-peer reviewed Lancet "study":
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/
Evidence for weapons of mass destruction? A lot of problems in that area, and whole different subject than I will address. To let everyone else in the US Government off the hook (they also review the 'evidence', and most supported it) is disinguious at best.
This whole thing did exactly what it was meant to do.
Microsoft, whose new Vista operating system was woefully late, give a buch of money to SCO to cuase some FUD against a rival OS that is making strong inroads. The simple action of SCO filing a lawsuit and seemingly whole heartedly beleiving in it, is wnough to make some people quesiton the viability of Linux and FOSS in general. This has the desired effect of slowing the addoption of linux, buying MS some time to get Vista out the door. Suddenly a bit after Vista is released the code in question is revealed to be nothing of consequence.
Food for thought!
I'll sue everyone that used the header
//Included header defines standard io library
#include
as well as the comment
because I first used it, oh and also belongs to me.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Um, the linux kernel is written in C, not C++. they would be printf("Hello World\n") and printf("\n"), respectively.
(intentionally missing the joke in favour of the gold medal for pedantry)
Well, if you are trying to be pedantic,
cout &grt "Hello World" cout
Anonymous Cowards suck.
crap. Hit the wrong button! Again, to be pedantic: streaming endl to cout is not quite the same as printf("\n"); It's closer to: printf("\n"); fflush(stdout);
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Let's get the Security and Exchange Comission involved and see if there is enough evidence to charge McBride and the others with fraud. I expect an article on this in the next 6 months.
Hello there, Captain Obvious.
Got any news for us that everybody doesn't already know?
Indeed.
As the IBM guy points out in the hearing (online over at Groklaw, of course) the error values are in alphabetic order with increasing integer values.
And since Microsoft owns the copyright on alphanumeric ordering, and THEY back SCO, IBM's wrong. Right? RIGHT?!!!
Watch SCOX soar. I'm buying some SCOX right now. It's even pleasing to say. SCOX, SCOX, SCOX.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
This is basically like, Linus wanted to bake some cookies, so he looked at the recipe for his Mom's cookies and made a grocery list. Now his Aunt Martha has her panties in a knot because she thinks Linus stole her grocery list, because it has the same ingredients in it, because Linus' grandmother is the one who taught both his mom and his aunt how to bake chocolate chip cookies. And this is before Martha even bothers to notice that Linux is buying butterscotch chips and way too much baking soda.
This is SLASHDOT, we don't "do" cookie analogies here, we do car analogies only
So here goes: I guess this is like Linus wanting to bake a 1997 Honda Civic. He looks at his Mom's car, a 1970 Volvo and made a parts list. Now his Aunt Martha has her panties in a not because.... and so on and so forth.
SCO announces it is moving its headquarters to Dubai.
© coastin 2007
I lost my sig...
wtf dude take your meds
relax
no friggan crap etc etc
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
And if I have to explain why, then you obviously don't understand the court system well enough.
Been there, Done that, Sold the t-shirt to the next idiot in line
SCO rides up shows the string of skulls; and asks for "Earth and Water".
It went downhill from there, IBM will not submit, ever.
The difference here is, the SCO millions were fakes.
In this case it's more like 300 Persians against 1 Million Spartans.....
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
...isn't it interesting the lines that are most common?
I can tell that you're coding in C++ because of the private/public and the }/}; (that inconsistency has always bothered me: is it a statement or not?).
I ran this* on the Python files of the Django project, and got some interesting results:
Interesting comments:
Interesting stuff. I wonder what it would look like in Haskell, or Lisp...
* I wrote a modified version in Python that walked the directory tree and stripped lines of whitespace, otherwise it was pretty much the same: Simple statistics. Yes, I know it's somewhat messy. I tried to clean it up a bit before putting it up. A few simple modifications would make it work with any extension.
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
If I write a recipe for a cake it may be a completely original cake with a completly NEW taste that will amaze all who try it, nonetheless some lines will be similar to other cake recipes.
How many ways can you say "preheat oven to 180 degrees" without starting to sound like a japanese highschool girl?
Same with "3 medium eggs" and countless other lines.
If you bake regular cake the ingredients are in a 1:1:1:1 relation, flower, sugar, butter and eggs. 2:1:1 for the cake that is used for eh, cakes (god translating this stuff to english for dutch is damned hard) (eggs, flower, sugar (if I recall correctly).
The last one especially forms the base for a lot of different cakes with different fullings and toppings and whatever it is called yet all these different deserts share the same lines for making the base.
By your logic the ones I once created we not created by me because some standard parts of it I copied from textbook examples?
No, Linus Torvald could well have written the file in question himself, he would just have been following the textbook examples as a guide.
Next thing SCO will be claiming is that they own the english language and that therefore any comments included in code that are in english belongs to them.
If your logic and that of sco worked then no architect can create an original work because all blueprints share the same layout with the same default values and even the same symbols!
It is just such a wrong idea that it is almost impossible to explain just how silly it is.
In real life you can create something while still using standard material. The difference in in the fine details.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
We already have a system where, if the lawsuit is frivolous or malicious, the instigator has to pay. You just don't hear about that because the media only reports on failings of our court system.If you change the system, lawyers will still win, because their skills are needed in court battles. I tell you what: next time you go into court, since you hate lawyers so much, don't hire one. We'll see how far that gets you.
326 lines ought to be enough for anybody!
Is the poor judge, who must be mainlining Red Bull to stay awake while SCO's lawyers repeat the same lies and nonsense, over and over and over again.
And go to the menu item called 'successes': http://www.sco.com/successes/
And what does the page that is returned say?
"Document Not Found
To find the document you're looking for, please see our company"
LOL!
They funded this and it backfired. In essence this is a trial by fire for linux and the GPL and so far it seems to have stood up with flying colors.
FUD stands for Fear, uncertainty and denial. What MS absolutly does NOT want is for uncertainty about the legit nature of Linux to go away. Anymore then they want it to be made certain that the GPL is a legal license that can hold its own in court.
In the Netherlands by a place called Oudewater was a "waag" a large scale, a person acused of witchcraft could be weighed there and if the measured weight was in correspondce with their build they would be a given a certificate that they were not a witch. The unique thing about this one is that it was not fixed. Hence nobody ever was denied a certificate for obvious reasons.
Witchhunters HATED it, they rely on FUD since the facts offcourse are that witches do not exist. A unbiased scale that ALWAYS reports the persons true weight therefore is the enemy of their FUD.
And the same with SCO now, they called Linux a witch and Linux has been weighed and been given a certificate. Anyone else who now calls linux a witch is going to look extremely silly and some people might well start to ask how it comes that not a single person who has been accused and weighed has been found guilty and start to question NOT the people accused but the accusers as to their true motives.
But things don't happen fast, sucks if you are about to be burned to the stake but nowadays we don't just round up people because somebody with dubious motives tells us too. Right US of A? Right EU countries that gave the CIA free access? Right?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
you know, some of us are both. I made a lot of money shorting SCOX the summer after the lawsuit was announced...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
I notice one thing....
If you read IBM lawyers remarks to the court they relatively easy to understand as a layman. However, I try to read the SCO responses to the court and I can not understand why the hell they are try to say.
Since business won't be adopting Vista until at least the next service pack and that is the trail blazers, the companies the like to live on the edge.
Offcourse my own daily experiences of companies still running NT4 are probably not at all relevan.
Second remains the question of how many people who were in a position to choose linux over windows and were actually willing to contemplate that honestly in the first place believed any of this.
Simply put, the only people that bought the fud were MS shops that will stay MS shops if god himself decended from the heavens to proclaim Linux the second coming and that users of closed source all are invented to go to a ruin in Irak wich some dude claims is called Sodom.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I would love to see where you are in life in twenty years. Unshaven in a cardboard box would be my guess!
If you don't believe it, just ask us!
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
Put words in my mouth, I never said I "hate" all "lawyers".
With over a million attorneys in the US, there are plenty of ones that specifically deserve scorn... Gloria Allred comes to mind.
A. Your what-ifs about the effects of "Loser Pays" are unfounded speculation
B. I would love to see you provide a few examples of the instigators of a frivolous lawsuit paying damages, especially in the amount they were suing for.
No, loser pays is not an awful system. It would be if the loser paid whatever number the winner thinks up. But that isn't the case; the loser pays a suitable amount, determined by the court, that constitutes a penalty for not having a (provable) case.
That makes "loser pays" a winning system, and a far more just system than America has, which is basically "whoever has the deepest pockets wins the case", unless it's something blindingly obvious like "famous footballer murders his wife"...oh, hang on, no, "monopoly company abuses their position", no, that doesn't work either...hmm...
Because what the loser pays is determined by the court, not the winner, it does mean that the winner has to keep a lid on costs. They can't go hiring a £10,000,000,000 per second lawyer because there's no guarantee that if they win they'd get all that back. So the winner can still lose out financially, and that fact is the winner's motivation to settle out of court. Look into it, properly I mean, rather than jumping to (inevitably wrong) conclusions, and you'll find there are reasons why countries with "loser pays" don't drop it in favour of something like the American joke-stice system.
Bzzt, wrong answer, a newline alwyas flushes the buffer. Thanks for trying though
I think it would be even better to point it to groklaw.net...
Just the thought of that would give Darl heartburn.
(Not necessarily in IBM briefs, since it is external to the SCO-IBM relationship)
#6 SCO's predecessor-in-interest (AT&T) covenanted with the Regents of California that AT&T would not sue anyone over this code.
I am fully qualified for a profitable career. I have fulfilled my responsibility.
Maybe you're trolling (posting from the mountaintop of financial wealth) but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt: How much debt do you have?
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
While this is probably true, it's also the Achilles' heel of the "frivolous lawsuits are killing us" argument. If you made a list of all the attorneys you think you make a good case for having pickled and shipped to Antarctica, that'd still be a very, very small fraction of the attorneys out there, right? Now apply that to lawsuits.
The thing is, there are hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of lawsuits filed annually asking for monetary damages. Many of them probably are frivolous--and many of those are probably being thrown out. The issue here is that when the court system works, it isn't news. If your sample set for "the way lawsuits work" is comprised chiefly of "lawsuits that attract media attention" (and for most of us, that's the only sample set we really have access to), your data is severely skewed.
I'm not saying that the "loser pays opposing court costs" approach is necessarily bad, although I've seen some good arguments made that it tends to have a chilling effect on valid lawsuits as well. Valid cases are still occasionally lost in court, particularly if the defendant has considerably greater access to expensive legal resources--which leads to a serious catch: you're probably most likely to lose a lawsuit if you're suing someone who can spend orders of magnitude more money on their legal fees than you can. If you know that you will, upon losing, be required to pay those fees, you very well may not sue even if you think your case has merit.
I am, though, suggesting that the dangers of frivolous lawsuits tend to be highly overstated these days. And frankly, I'd rather suffer with a small percentage of those than take any corrective action which has the side effect of limiting anyone's access to the courts.
That's what? A 4-for-1 reverse split and having the stock fall back down to a dollar? :-)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here's how "loser pays" played out in a case involving a friend and co-worker of mine a while back. His father died, and the estate was sued in a palimony suit by the deceased's "girlfriend" who had known the father for less than a year. My friend lived in Chicago and his father in Florida. He had to hire a Florida attorney, who advised him that if the plaintiff won even a single dollar, he would have to pay her court costs and lawyer fees in the $10's of thousands. Since the estate was only worth 5 figures, he was advised to settle, and did, for almost half of the estate.
> Interesting stuff. I wonder what it would look like in Haskell, or Lisp...
:-)
I have a strange feeling that the list for Lisp would look something like
)
))
)))
))))
)))))
(car
(cdr
(cadr
(cddr
(cadadddadddddaaaaaadddadadadadadadadadadadr
Well, you get the idea
'' Here's how "loser pays" played out in a case involving a friend and co-worker of mine a while back. His father died, and the estate was sued in a palimony suit by the deceased's "girlfriend" who had known the father for less than a year. My friend lived in Chicago and his father in Florida. He had to hire a Florida attorney, who advised him that if the plaintiff won even a single dollar, he would have to pay her court costs and lawyer fees in the $10's of thousands. Since the estate was only worth 5 figures, he was advised to settle, and did, for almost half of the estate. ''
That's not how "loser pays" in a sensible system. You say five digits, say $50,000. In the German court system, the judge has a chart which says: $50,000, that will cost $2500 for the court, $2500 for the defendants lawyer, $2500 for the plaintiffs lawyer. That's how much the lawyers are allowed to charge, and that will limit the amount of work they do. "Losing" is defined by how much the plaintiff got. If she asked for the whole $50,000 and got $10,000, that's 20%, you pay 20% of the cost, she pays 80%. She'd better ask for say $20,000 which keeps the cost down in the first place and reduces her percentage of the cost. You can offer some small payment (for example if your lawyer tells you it is likely the court will ask you to pay $10000, then you just offer to pay that before the case starts).
"monopoly company abuses their position"
Microsoft were convicted, they just managed to delay the penalty phase until their friends took power and all but dropped the case.
Who cares about evidence? The damage has already been done. Large corporations avoided Linux for years now hoping to avoid useless litigation. The damage has already been done. Hope MSFT is happy.
PHB: "And don't get me started about your overuse of the colon."
Dilbert: "They remind me of you, sir."
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
You can Bzzt all you want, then take a look at the standards. Neither the C, nor the C++ standards, guarantee any such behavior. C streams are flushed on exit or direct calls to fflush. C++ streams are flush via endl or flush(). As a matter of fact, it is undefined behavior in C++ to exit a program having NEVER sent endl to your stream. If you want to run your mouth off and make such BS claims, at least have a backbone and don't post as an AC.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
Agreed - I bankrupted myself at one point just hiring a lawyer to get a suit against me dropped, basically to explain that I was a broke individual, and that there wasn't a damn thing they could possibly squeeze me for. Had the civil court system worked like this, "Loser Pays", my lawyer would've taken it all the way wherever it had to go, without charging me a dime, because the suit wouldn't have lasted in a court session.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
While you have more calmly explained the "con" position, the US courts routinely deny defendants any worthwhile legal representation via public defenders. This class of attorneys underperforms every other class, and may as well be denying people meaningful access due to their substandard representation (compared to fee for service defense attorneys).
The chilling effect could be solved if enough people cared. Medical malpractice suits are out of control, and the constant advertising for them, as well as drugs like Vioxx being shoved off the market due to statistically insignificant risks only underscores my point.
This is not "nothing to see here, please move along", unless of course you are a civil attorney. Go chase an waahhmbulance.
Fascists, anti-war (at any cost) insanity. Lie about deaths, go ahead.
There may be no point to buying it if it is proven in court that Novell still holds the copyright on Unix.
Perhaps some financial gurus can field this one...is it possible for a publicly traded stock to go negative? I mean, will Wall Street start attempting to collect from SCO stockholders soon? Stay tuned!
Does anyone remember Microsoft in the wings giving SCO courage to proceed?
Than also remember Microsoft NEVER takes its eyes of the ball. So any of you are still supporting Novel?
Imagine my surprise to see Google encouraging me to buy SCO Open Server 5:
g
http://img250.imageshack.us/my.php?image=addj4.pn
I was meaning to indicate that, despite the initial nastiness aimed at linux, it was not bad publicity for linux. At some point, I suppose "publicity is good", but in SCO's case it goes along with "shooting yourself in the foot is rarely a smart idea."
First you say:
"Every time someone attacks the court system in the US, they take approximately 1/1000th of the cases ever filed in the US and cite those as proof of the brokenness of the system. You do that now. Our system works, but the media doesn't report the cases that come out rightly; they only report those that come out wrongly. "
And then, after criticising people for making unfounded assumption, you do the same:
"Loser-pays is not a solution to "rich guy always wins"; in fact, it would perpetuate the system because poor guy would never ever sue someone richer than him."
There are many countries which have "loser pays" systems where "little guys" sue big rich ones quite frequently and win, which you would know if, like the others who cited a admitted minority of US cases, you'd actually had the courtesy to do the same for one or more "loser pays" countries instead of getting all hot and bothered because somebody dared to suggest that the US legal system might not be as wonderful as Americans keep telling themselves and everyone else.
It's a big world with many countries and therefore many legal systems, and as astonishing as this may seem to some people in the US, some of them are better in certain (but by no means all) respects than yours, while others are of course notably worse in every conceivable way.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Anyone know what these 325 so lines look like or are? Any links?