All joking aside, you can bet that's what's going to come next. After all, the almighty shareholders, who upper management have sworn to please at all costs, will have seen the next quarter projection increases possible due to outsourcing. Employee salaries have always been a big number on the budget sheet, and the first target when times get tough. After outsourcing, the biggest numbers left on the budget sheets are going to be the people needed to manage... People who are no longer there.
And guess what? Times are going to be tough because they've stopped paying people enough to buy their products. Ooops.
Yeah, but to be fair, it has to respect the entire letter of the law. Not just "you can't copy/modify this, its mine", but everything. From (mostly theoretical, these days) copyright expiry to provisions made for fair use exceptions and changing legislation.
DRM as often spoken of is useless at best and harmful at worst. There might be some gems hidden there, but I doubt that allowing Holywood and Microsoft to follow through with their Evil Scheme of the Month is going to bring them to the surface.
the conventional media has pretty much refused to cover it.
Duh. The "conventional media" is 100% owned and operated by the same companies that are benefiting from this law. Do you REALLY think they're going to speak out against something that gives them all the powers of law enforcement with none of the restrictions?
Of course a manager can't run something he doesn't understand. But modern business theory says that the product (or technology) doesn't matter. All that matters - all - is your cash-flow strategy. Of course, this theory couldn't possibly be wrong and responsible for the collapse of the domestic tech industry (or the economic depression in general). No, that must be because tech is "commoditizing" and there's nothing new to do, right?
Of course, this doesn't work. Like outsourcing and moving jobs overseas to people willing to work for 1% of the salary because they need to avoid starvation, it winds up causing more economic harm than good. But it looks good on the next quarter earnings report, so it must be worthwhile.
Right, which is why a an actual buyout is unlikely. I'd expect a transfer of IP and upper management, and the promotion of some scapegoat (probably a techie) to take the fall. And there's still the question of whether the claims against SCO could be made - notice that they've not made many specific assertions? Mostly just general statements about "stolen code" and "corrupted IP".
Besides, as you point out, SCO is a small, independent company. What happens if they decide they've done enough damage (or made enough money off the stock) and file for bankruptcy? (Because, of course, of the damage caused by those evil Linux pirates!) Is there anyone left who can be sued?
I know they're lying. You know they're lying. Heck, even the PHB might know they're lying... About this. But they're right about one thing - Linus can't prove there's no stolen code in the kernel. The assertion's still out there, and it can't be disproven. Whenever it gets brought up, there'll still be this "stolen code" idea attached to it.
Its called "character assassination", and its doubly effective because Linus can't respond in kind. (He lacks the cash)
And for many things, IBM's no longer the "you'll never get fired" buy. MS is, and this just reinforces that. After all, everyone "knows" that IBM was big in the '80s but isn't anymore. Isn't supporting underhanded development just the kind of thing a company like that would do to get back on top?
For the record, I'm writing this on a Debian Linux box.
I have several friends at various Linux vendors who claim that sales are down and that customers have mentioned the suit very often as a reason to hold off on adoption of open source software. The BSA is lobbying foreign governments to avoid open source because of this case, even as we speak. We may be able to fix a few lines of snarfed code in 15 minutes and end the whole ordeal, but Linux may never get its credibility back if contributors can be shown to have caused the problem.
And finally, we come to the root cause of the suit. No, there's no any infringing code. There never has been, and there never will be. But now that SCO's made the accusation, it will be impossible to dispose of. Whenever someone mentions Linux, the "but didn't they steal code from Unix?" question will pop up. Whenever a Microsoft sales rep is talking to a PHB, and the PHB mentions "open source", or "Linux", or even (yes, even) "BSD", the sales rep will be able to say "Ah, but what about that stolen code?" And as the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA have proven so well, stolen's a little red-flag word. No-one wants anything to do with stolen. And not only is Linux tainted, but SCO's nebulous assertions about "Unix" and "SysV" derived works make all Unix-descended systems seem tainted. Which leaves guess who as the sole survivor?
SCO has no proof. IF this suit ever gets to court, and doesn't just vanish into the mist, they'll get smacked down so hard by IBM that they won't know what hit them. But that possibility will always be out there. After all, Linus cannot check every submission to make sure it wasn't "stolen" from some piece of proprietary software. Its impossible. Neither, however, can Microsoft check to make sure that one of their coders didn't "steal" code from proprietary software, or even a GPL'd program. Its a red herring, designed to make Linux look tainted and criminal for a problem that's common to ALL software.
I think everyone's first thought was right - SCO is looking to get bought out. But not by IBM - by Microsoft. The executives and top investors know they're on a sinking ship, and are currying favour with MS to try and get on what they see as more sure footing. And making a bundle off their investments while they're at it, by inflating their stock price and selling during the high.
I sincerely hope these suckers get smacked down hard by an FTA investigation, and whoever's backing them gets nailed with criminal charges.
Yup. And when it is finished, DotGNU and Mono will be sued out of existance, and anyone who was stupid enough to start using them will have to pick up the MS solution. MS has patents on the CLR, which you can bet it'll use offensively as soon as it looks like DotGNU or Mono could be a threat to its dominance of the market.
Yes. Unfortunately, they were found to have entered the country from Europe without a proper VISA, and were thus alien rights. They were deported in the mid-80s, and no-one in America has seen them since. Recent reports from the Department of Homeland Security and the White House suggest that they may be working with secret Euro-terrorist cells in Lichenstein, developing WMDs to be used to conquer the world, or possibly just rain on the President's parade.
Part of the problem is how slowly stuff migrates to Testing. Some maintainers (especially the GNOME/KDE guys) seem to have a policy of not moving anything to testing until its obsolete by at least two versions. Often, the claimed reason is because there hasn't been enough bug-testing... But the purpose of testing is to get more bug-testing from people who don't want to risk having to reinstall their system because they ran an apt-get upgrade without checking the news listings for system-destroying packages.
Right. And do you know why? The shuttle is stupid. Passenger travel and cargo travel have very different requirements. The railroads figured that out almost a hundred years ago, why hasn't NASA clued in yet? Yes, we need something cheap and fast for moving cargo into orbit. We also need something safer and (possibly) more expensive for moving people into orbit, so we have something to do with the cargo once its up there.
Of course, its important that the second vehicle doesn't get lost because autonomous systems are more efficient. Sure, they are, but its still important for humans to go to space. Why? Because we want to go. We don't need any other reason. We want to explore and colonize space, even if its inefficient. We need that second vehicle as much as, if not more than, we need the first.
Prove it. There's plenty of bad patents the courts have upheld. Why should this one be any different? Especially when its got Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar bank account behind it.
We don't. Its all tied up persecuting those who want to learn to be artists, who now have no choice but to infringe on someone's copyrights if they want to learn. (eg, downloading guitar tabs)
Scalia is most certainly not a literalist. Have you read the interviews with him about the 2000 election and numerous other decisions since? He believes Bush was "chosen by God", and thus he had no choice other than to elect him, law or no.(*) He claims to be a literallist, but is perfectly willing to shred the constitution when it suits his biases.
(*) - Note that I do not claim to debate the outcome of the 2000 election. The vote counts were well within the margin of error. However, THAT is what the Supreme Court should have said. Not "we elect candidate B because we think he's chosen by God".
Problem with that theory: The Democritanss persecuted one of the biggest judicial criminals in the country. (Microsoft) The Republicrats let them off the hook with a slap on the wrist, and haven't done a thing to move towards tort reform in their three-plus years of almost total control of the Senate and Congress.
Very true. The Maya added levels to their calendar as their civilization progressed because the dates kept rolling over. Apparently, the idea of an open-ended dating/counting system never occurred to them. The Maya "Great Cycle" was simply the last of these extensions - the priests who set it up figured a couple of thousand years would be enough for anyone.
Only problem with tort reform is that a sizable percentage of politicians and aides are or were lawyers. And will be lawyers again when their terms are up. Nope, there's no conflict of interest there!
The search engine that's up right now looks to be him thumbing his nose at the RIAA. Try doing a search for "Metallica" or "Linkin" (or other popular band names) and take a look at the results. Searching for "linux" also produces amusing output.
I approve. Very nice way to show that he's not intimidated by their legal protection racket.
What publicity? Members of my family watch Much Music constantly, and I get dragged into record stores whenever I visit a mall with them. I have never seen promotional materials for anything that's not in the RIAA-selected top 10 bands of the month. Never. Flip on the radio, what do you hear? The top ten bands.
So if the record labels are skimming off a large percentage of the artist's cut for promotion, someone's getting swindled.
What's with all the "brushed metal"-looking programs this time around? I thought Apple was going for UI consistancy. Surely having a bunch of built-in programs that look totally different from everything else on the system defeats the purpose here? And if you must violate your own UI consistancy standards, you should at least do it for something less ugly-looking than brushed metal. Ew!
The last Blizzard game I bought was Starcraft. They haven't gotten a cent of my money since then, precisely because of attacks like this. Though the fact that their games show even less imagination than FreeCraft helps a little.
No, game mechanics can't be copyrighted. But in case you haven't been paying attention to the whole DMCA fiasco, that doesn't matter anymore. Big companies use the law like a hammer - and it doesn't matter if you're in the right, because they're the ones with deeper pockets and crack teams of trained attack lawyers. They can force you into bankruptcy long before you've had a chance to "prove your innocence". Which is, BTW, exactly what you have to do, as most judges will rule in favour of big corporations by default, and the corp gets their choice of corts to sue you in.
Slashdot Mirror
All joking aside, you can bet that's what's going to come next. After all, the almighty shareholders, who upper management have sworn to please at all costs, will have seen the next quarter projection increases possible due to outsourcing. Employee salaries have always been a big number on the budget sheet, and the first target when times get tough. After outsourcing, the biggest numbers left on the budget sheets are going to be the people needed to manage... People who are no longer there.
And guess what? Times are going to be tough because they've stopped paying people enough to buy their products. Ooops.
Yeah, but to be fair, it has to respect the entire letter of the law. Not just "you can't copy/modify this, its mine", but everything. From (mostly theoretical, these days) copyright expiry to provisions made for fair use exceptions and changing legislation.
DRM as often spoken of is useless at best and harmful at worst. There might be some gems hidden there, but I doubt that allowing Holywood and Microsoft to follow through with their Evil Scheme of the Month is going to bring them to the surface.
the conventional media has pretty much refused to cover it.
Duh. The "conventional media" is 100% owned and operated by the same companies that are benefiting from this law. Do you REALLY think they're going to speak out against something that gives them all the powers of law enforcement with none of the restrictions?
Don't forget POP-DIVA-INNA-CAN. Or BOY-BAND-INNA-CAN.
Of course a manager can't run something he doesn't understand. But modern business theory says that the product (or technology) doesn't matter. All that matters - all - is your cash-flow strategy. Of course, this theory couldn't possibly be wrong and responsible for the collapse of the domestic tech industry (or the economic depression in general). No, that must be because tech is "commoditizing" and there's nothing new to do, right?
Of course, this doesn't work. Like outsourcing and moving jobs overseas to people willing to work for 1% of the salary because they need to avoid starvation, it winds up causing more economic harm than good. But it looks good on the next quarter earnings report, so it must be worthwhile.
Right, which is why a an actual buyout is unlikely. I'd expect a transfer of IP and upper management, and the promotion of some scapegoat (probably a techie) to take the fall. And there's still the question of whether the claims against SCO could be made - notice that they've not made many specific assertions? Mostly just general statements about "stolen code" and "corrupted IP".
Besides, as you point out, SCO is a small, independent company. What happens if they decide they've done enough damage (or made enough money off the stock) and file for bankruptcy? (Because, of course, of the damage caused by those evil Linux pirates!) Is there anyone left who can be sued?
I know they're lying. You know they're lying. Heck, even the PHB might know they're lying... About this. But they're right about one thing - Linus can't prove there's no stolen code in the kernel. The assertion's still out there, and it can't be disproven. Whenever it gets brought up, there'll still be this "stolen code" idea attached to it.
Its called "character assassination", and its doubly effective because Linus can't respond in kind. (He lacks the cash)
And for many things, IBM's no longer the "you'll never get fired" buy. MS is, and this just reinforces that. After all, everyone "knows" that IBM was big in the '80s but isn't anymore. Isn't supporting underhanded development just the kind of thing a company like that would do to get back on top?
For the record, I'm writing this on a Debian Linux box.
I have several friends at various Linux vendors who claim that sales are down and that customers have mentioned the suit very often as a reason to hold off on adoption of open source software. The BSA is lobbying foreign governments to avoid open source because of this case, even as we speak. We may be able to fix a few lines of snarfed code in 15 minutes and end the whole ordeal, but Linux may never get its credibility back if contributors can be shown to have caused the problem.
And finally, we come to the root cause of the suit. No, there's no any infringing code. There never has been, and there never will be. But now that SCO's made the accusation, it will be impossible to dispose of. Whenever someone mentions Linux, the "but didn't they steal code from Unix?" question will pop up. Whenever a Microsoft sales rep is talking to a PHB, and the PHB mentions "open source", or "Linux", or even (yes, even) "BSD", the sales rep will be able to say "Ah, but what about that stolen code?" And as the MPAA, RIAA, and BSA have proven so well, stolen's a little red-flag word. No-one wants anything to do with stolen. And not only is Linux tainted, but SCO's nebulous assertions about "Unix" and "SysV" derived works make all Unix-descended systems seem tainted. Which leaves guess who as the sole survivor?
SCO has no proof. IF this suit ever gets to court, and doesn't just vanish into the mist, they'll get smacked down so hard by IBM that they won't know what hit them. But that possibility will always be out there. After all, Linus cannot check every submission to make sure it wasn't "stolen" from some piece of proprietary software. Its impossible. Neither, however, can Microsoft check to make sure that one of their coders didn't "steal" code from proprietary software, or even a GPL'd program. Its a red herring, designed to make Linux look tainted and criminal for a problem that's common to ALL software.
I think everyone's first thought was right - SCO is looking to get bought out. But not by IBM - by Microsoft. The executives and top investors know they're on a sinking ship, and are currying favour with MS to try and get on what they see as more sure footing. And making a bundle off their investments while they're at it, by inflating their stock price and selling during the high.
I sincerely hope these suckers get smacked down hard by an FTA investigation, and whoever's backing them gets nailed with criminal charges.
Yup. And when it is finished, DotGNU and Mono will be sued out of existance, and anyone who was stupid enough to start using them will have to pick up the MS solution. MS has patents on the CLR, which you can bet it'll use offensively as soon as it looks like DotGNU or Mono could be a threat to its dominance of the market.
Does the US have a concept of inalienable rights?
Yes. Unfortunately, they were found to have entered the country from Europe without a proper VISA, and were thus alien rights. They were deported in the mid-80s, and no-one in America has seen them since. Recent reports from the Department of Homeland Security and the White House suggest that they may be working with secret Euro-terrorist cells in Lichenstein, developing WMDs to be used to conquer the world, or possibly just rain on the President's parade.
Part of the problem is how slowly stuff migrates to Testing. Some maintainers (especially the GNOME/KDE guys) seem to have a policy of not moving anything to testing until its obsolete by at least two versions. Often, the claimed reason is because there hasn't been enough bug-testing... But the purpose of testing is to get more bug-testing from people who don't want to risk having to reinstall their system because they ran an apt-get upgrade without checking the news listings for system-destroying packages.
Right. And do you know why? The shuttle is stupid. Passenger travel and cargo travel have very different requirements. The railroads figured that out almost a hundred years ago, why hasn't NASA clued in yet? Yes, we need something cheap and fast for moving cargo into orbit. We also need something safer and (possibly) more expensive for moving people into orbit, so we have something to do with the cargo once its up there.
Of course, its important that the second vehicle doesn't get lost because autonomous systems are more efficient. Sure, they are, but its still important for humans to go to space. Why? Because we want to go. We don't need any other reason. We want to explore and colonize space, even if its inefficient. We need that second vehicle as much as, if not more than, we need the first.
Prove it. There's plenty of bad patents the courts have upheld. Why should this one be any different? Especially when its got Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar bank account behind it.
Strangely, this fact seems to be constantly ignored by those driving the .GNU and Mono projects. I wonder why?
We don't. Its all tied up persecuting those who want to learn to be artists, who now have no choice but to infringe on someone's copyrights if they want to learn. (eg, downloading guitar tabs)
Scalia is most certainly not a literalist. Have you read the interviews with him about the 2000 election and numerous other decisions since? He believes Bush was "chosen by God", and thus he had no choice other than to elect him, law or no.(*) He claims to be a literallist, but is perfectly willing to shred the constitution when it suits his biases.
(*) - Note that I do not claim to debate the outcome of the 2000 election. The vote counts were well within the margin of error. However, THAT is what the Supreme Court should have said. Not "we elect candidate B because we think he's chosen by God".
Problem with that theory: The Democritanss persecuted one of the biggest judicial criminals in the country. (Microsoft) The Republicrats let them off the hook with a slap on the wrist, and haven't done a thing to move towards tort reform in their three-plus years of almost total control of the Senate and Congress.
Very true. The Maya added levels to their calendar as their civilization progressed because the dates kept rolling over. Apparently, the idea of an open-ended dating/counting system never occurred to them. The Maya "Great Cycle" was simply the last of these extensions - the priests who set it up figured a couple of thousand years would be enough for anyone.
Only problem with tort reform is that a sizable percentage of politicians and aides are or were lawyers. And will be lawyers again when their terms are up. Nope, there's no conflict of interest there!
The search engine that's up right now looks to be him thumbing his nose at the RIAA. Try doing a search for "Metallica" or "Linkin" (or other popular band names) and take a look at the results. Searching for "linux" also produces amusing output.
I approve. Very nice way to show that he's not intimidated by their legal protection racket.
What publicity? Members of my family watch Much Music constantly, and I get dragged into record stores whenever I visit a mall with them. I have never seen promotional materials for anything that's not in the RIAA-selected top 10 bands of the month. Never. Flip on the radio, what do you hear? The top ten bands.
So if the record labels are skimming off a large percentage of the artist's cut for promotion, someone's getting swindled.
What's with all the "brushed metal"-looking programs this time around? I thought Apple was going for UI consistancy. Surely having a bunch of built-in programs that look totally different from everything else on the system defeats the purpose here? And if you must violate your own UI consistancy standards, you should at least do it for something less ugly-looking than brushed metal. Ew!
The last Blizzard game I bought was Starcraft. They haven't gotten a cent of my money since then, precisely because of attacks like this. Though the fact that their games show even less imagination than FreeCraft helps a little.
No, game mechanics can't be copyrighted. But in case you haven't been paying attention to the whole DMCA fiasco, that doesn't matter anymore. Big companies use the law like a hammer - and it doesn't matter if you're in the right, because they're the ones with deeper pockets and crack teams of trained attack lawyers. They can force you into bankruptcy long before you've had a chance to "prove your innocence". Which is, BTW, exactly what you have to do, as most judges will rule in favour of big corporations by default, and the corp gets their choice of corts to sue you in.