Just today I finally got around to watching that fanfilm.
I can't help but think that the dudes who put together "Starship Exeter" could probably get a lot more bang for the buck with that $3 million that anything Paramount could ever come up with.
Sure, the acting was obviously amature. Those guys are no professional actors. Strangely enough, it wasn't really that much worse than the average Shatneresque episode, and you had to give them credit for putting their heart and soul into those 35 minutes. And it showed.
And, heck, the audio and the video FX was far above than any computer-generated eye candy pablum that a few million bucks would buy you these days.
I say - if they can't raise enough cash to save the show, give whatever they got to the Starship Exeter dudes. They'll put it to good use.
I try to motivate myself into responding to that flunky, but I just can't. Please, there's no reason to state the obvious replies to this drivel.
This is so pathetic, so worthless, that I really feel some pity for Microsoft's utter inability to deal with Linux's threat to their business model, in any meaningful way.
They're totally reduced to thrashing around, looking for something, anything, negative they can throw against Linux, and make it stick.
"By blocking port 25, they say they cut Spam by 20% last week."
They're talking out of their asses. I have manually blacklisted their entire cablemodem space quite some time ago. Running a grep on the mail log files shows that this week I've already rejected approximately 20% more spam from Comcast than last week.
And the week ain't over yet. The log files rotate on Sundays.
I have concluded that Comcast is a lost cause. Damaged goods. The best thing to do is to blacklist their whole stinking sewer pit, and move on with your life.
These kids... They _DARE_ to call themselves geeks? Shame on them!
I just read their so-called "rules" of the game. What a disgrace. How could they forget one of the most important rules of Pacman???
They completely forgot that when the Pacman eats a power pellet the ghosts immediately change their direction 180 degrees. Somebody should call them up and set them straight.
The couple of times I've had a window seat on commercial flights (various Boeing 7x7s, and MD-80s) I distinctly saw movable flaps being used to change the shape of the wing during take-offs and landings.
I find it rather humorous that this outfit is probably going to make more money off what's SCO's doing than SCO's itself.
After all, they only need to break $20K, and now they're doing better than Darl & Co.
This is hillarious. Darl's been huffing and puffing for a year trying to squeeze water out of a rock; now here comes OSRM, and before long they made more money essentially by betting that Darl's got nuthin!
I protect my folks' PCs by shepherding them to use Mozilla to browse the web and read mail. The strategy has been quite succesful. In the last 5-6 years I never had to fumigate their PCs from any viruses, trojans, etc...
Remember that in California and (I think) New York, Cingular and T-Mobile are effectively the same when it comes to reception since they use the same towers.
Then explain to me why here, in Nyoo Yawk, at&t wireless had no signal in either my house, or my office building, while t-mobile keeps getting good reception in both cases.
Oh, and I completely forgot how LOVELY it is to watch at&t's phones telling you they're getting a strong signal, but as soon as you place a call, while standing in the same spot, the signal strength drops to zero and you get cut off ten seconds into the call.
I'd love to tell you that it was only a bum phone, but both me and my SO had suffer like this, but we were using different phones with at&t wireless.
Up until November of last year me and my SO were att wireless subscribers. It was rather obvious that at&t wireless service couldn't really get any worse than it already was. Phone call quality always sucked unless the signal strength is at least at the halfway mark. That is if you were lucky to be in an area with any reception whatsoever. Their local calling areas were piss poor, and we got hit with roaming charges every month.
As soon as number portability kicked in, we bailed out for t-mobile GSM. The difference was like night and day. at&t wireless showed no signal in my home. The new phones (free t610 camera phones, by the way, with bluetooth, infrared, etc...) now show a good signal. No roaming charges, the call quality is now much better, and there are hardly any dropouts even if the phone shows only a single blip on the signal strength meter.
When I called to cancel at&t they lamely offered an upgrade to gsm. No thanks. Even if gsm is supposedly a better technology, I'm sure that at&t would find a way to screw it up, somehow.
Cingular wants to swallow up at&t? I hope they choke.
The linked press release includes a link to a copy of the lawsuit filing by fatwallet.com
fatwallet.com is not just going for a declaratory judgement that these DMCA complaints are bunk. fatwallet.com's complaint also directly challenges the constitutionality of the DMCA (see paragraphs 40 and 41).
If fatwallet.com gets lucky, there's a small chance that this lawsuit might, just might, result in the DMCA being declared unconstitutional!
A small disclaimer: I haven't yet upgraded by RH9 boxes to FC1, so I might end up reaching the same conclusion, but I can already see a bunch of red flags in that "review".
The box I'm typing on now began its life running Red Hat 4.2. It's been upgraded countless number of times, and it's now on Red Hat 9. And it's rock-stable solid. And the reason that it's stable, and functional, is precisely because what I've been doing, for the last six years, was the exact opposite of what this "review"er did.
Notice that she began having problems when she tried to hack together an upgrade to some application. Lesson number one when running Red Hat: do not install any software yourself. Always use rpm, which checks in, keeps track of, and maintains, all the inter-library and inter-application dependencies. Once you begin flinging random libraries and applications into the system, some of which may or may not overwrite existing libraries or files, you're well on your merry way to Linux's equivalent of Windows DLL hell, when you've got ten versions of the same basic library installed in fifteen different directories, and you now have absolutely no clue whatsoever what you end up running when you start a given application. Which randomly crashes, I wonder why?
By the way, the same also applies to other Linux distros too, I'm sure. They all use some kind of a package management system, be it rpm or apt. The same principle applies in either case.
My box is very solid even though I have plenty of custom software installed which I've compiled and built myself. But the key difference is that all the software was installed by rpm. Rach time I upgraded to a new distribution release, the installer correctly detected that I have an application that has a dependency on an older version of the library. The installer then proceeds to load a compatibility library, in addition to the new, incompatible version of the library. After upgrading, I then recompile all my custom software and install the new RPMs, whenever I have some free time. Everything still works in the meantime, because all the dependencies are correctly satisfied.
Eventually, I get around to cleaning out my box, seeing which compatibility libraries can be removed. When I try to remove them, inevitable RPM complains because I forgot to recompile some application that still depends on the old library. After doing that, and when nothing no longer needs it, it gets removed by rpm without a peep.
I also see that the reviewer grabbed some random third-party RPM from some dark alley (strike 1). Unsurprisingly, rpm refused to install it due to missing dependencies (strike 2). The reviewer tried to fix the situation by, once again, grabbing a bunch of third party libraries, and installing them manually (strike 3). End result: a big, recursive mess (strike 4).
I wonder why?
Sheesh, what exactly are the qualification to be an "OS reviewer", these days???
I hate to say this, but this lawsuit does not have the slightest chance of being won.
Although it's quite obvious that RIAA's "offer" is full of shit, remind yourself that the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove their case. The only realistic chance of winning this case would be to come up with someone who did sign on RIAA's dotted line, but then got sued anyway. Has this happen to anyone, yet? Unless this happens, everything is mere speculation and hypothesis.
And what exactly are the plaintiffs' damages in this case anyway, to date? I can't figure this out.
The only way to hit RIAA where it hurts is to do absolutely nothing. They gotta be pulling these kinds of stunts out of desperation. Music sales are falling, and falling, and falling, and you're witnessing the last dying gasps of an obsolete dinosaur. You could argue whether or not the music sales are down because of piracy, or because contemporary mainstream music is shit that nobody wants to listen to, anyway. It doesn't matter. Whatever the reason is, so be it. Don't do anything that you're not doing already. And if you're not doing anything, keep on not doing anything. Whatever. Keep on going, keep on seeing music sales nosediving, until RIAA, and their ilk, are starved into non-existence.
Well, in that case, if GPL is invalid, it logically follows that SCO is guilty of copyright infringement. After all, if SCO has sold N copies of their Linux distribution, then SCO must be guilty of N-1 counts of copyright infringement for each and every software application that was included in the distribution under the terms of the GPL.
Obviously this is sheer nonsense. Yes, I'm trying to derive logic from an illogical fallacy. But, it's a slow news day, and I find that trying to make sense of SCO's legal argument is rather a cheap way to amuse oneself and pass some free time.
Certainly, they cannot be serious. That naturally leads to a question how could they possibly even think of coming up with such a big, fat whopper. I mean, you have to be doing some serious drugs in order for such a thought to enter your mind, through nothing but random, natural processes.
I think this is nothing more than a knee-jerk response to IBM's countersuit. SCO's got blindsided when IBM's countersued them for violating the GPL. I'm sure that SCO has planned their legal strategy (or whatever passes for one) in advance, and must've considered all kinds of potential responses from IBM to their original suit. They must've considered many possibilities, but it never considered that IBM would respond by countersuing them for violating the GPL.
Dollars-to-doughnuts SCO didn't even realize that large portions of the Linux kernel, which SCO themselves sold, were copyrighted by IBM, and licensed under the GPL, and IBM is now suing SCO not just for violating the GPL in general (which would be somewhat difficult, since IBM would have no real standing to sue) but IBM is now suing SCO as a copyright owner, and for full-fledged copyright infringement.
This is serious stuff. The GPL itself is not even the primary focus. Just forget about the "controversial" copyleft aspect of the GPL. Pretend for a moment that SCO had some kind of a license from IBM on IBM-copyrighted code, and they distributed the code in violation of the license agreement. Or they had no license at all. And now, IBM is suing them for copyright infringement. That's exactly what's happening here, and GPL just happens to be the terms of the original licensing agreement.
SCO didn't expect it this kind of a response, and got caught, flatfooted. So now they're scrambling to figure out how to respond to charges of full-fledged copyright infringement. I guess they figured that their best chance is to try to declare GPL invalid, and hence the idiocy from their legal beagle. So now, I'm waiting for them to explain exactly what kind of a license would then they believe to have to sell IBM's copyrighted code.
that they can't do anything outside of exactly what they're supposted to do.
My experience shows quite the opposite. They have no clue whatsoever what they're supposed to do.
I went to my post office the other day. I wanted to get a mailbox. First, they told me that they'll send a registered letter to my home address, and that I'll have to bring it back to the post office to prove that I did not give them a fake home address.
So, a few days later I don't get the letter, but a notice to go back to the post office to pick up the letter. Over there I had to sign for the letter, and show my ID. I open the letter, with the original application inside it, but I still can't get my mailbox. No, now those asswipes want to see a utility bill.
So I go back, and come back with my phone bill. No, the telephone bill isn't good enough. They want to see my electric bill. Still no mailbox.
I've had enough by then. I make sure that my middle finger becomes intimately familiar with that asswipe; tell him to go and screw himself; get into my car; drive to another post office four miles away; and show the dude over the same phone bill that wasn't good enough for the first dude. The second dude doesn't ask for anything wlaw, and doesn't try to spin any bullshit with any registered letter, whatsoever. I get a mailbox key five minutes later, right there on the spot.
According to the press reports I've read, there is no mention in IBM's counterclaim that it has the right to sell derivative software created by it. Now, it is just possible that the press reports are not the result of a careful reading of the filing, but I am surprised there is no mention of that and would be even more surprised if that were not in IBM's filing.
I highly doubt that this is the only counterclaim that IBM is going to make in this case. This is just an opening shot. They haven't even started yet. By the time everyone gets into gear, I would be surprised if IBM did NOT bring a few more dozen patent infringement claims against SCO.
You realize that this is only the first filing that IBM has made in this case. This is just their response to the initial complaint, and it weighs in at a few dozen pages at the most.
Typically, IBM's litigation paperwork is measured by the pound. Until they begin delivering paperwork to the courthouse on trucks, there's no need to pay any attention, because the show hasn't started yet.
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
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· Score: 2, Interesting
For most people, unsolicited email isn't the problem. Unsolicited bulk email is the problem. Generally, unsolicited, personalized, individually sent emails aren't sufficient to bother people.... Any solution which depends on security through obscurity (hiding my email address) or refusing unsolicited personal email from strangers, is unacceptable to me.
Ahh, but if your E-mail address is out there on some web site -- together with some arbitrary content -- and someone chooses to send you E-mail after reading said contents, and wanting to respond to you for some reason; then, well, from where I'm standing it looks to me like you've solicited that response, didn't you? You certainly didn't solicit some spambot sucking it out of the HTML, and then feeding it to a Viagra spam engine, of course. But, by the virtue of signing your name+E-mail address to some article, I would argue that you've solicited individual readers to drop you a note after they've read the article, if they felt like it. If you didn't want, or solicit, people to reply to your Slashdot posts, then you simply leave out your address, that's it. What good would posting your E-mail address here if you don't want people replying to it?
I mean that's what an E-mail address is for, I think: for people to know how to get in touch with the author, regarding the written subject matter.
Similarly, by signing your name to your Slashdot posts, I would argue that you've solicited, or invited, E-mails from anyone who've read them and wanted to give you a piece of their mind, for some reason.
I frequent other web discussion forums, where I do NOT use my E-mail address. That's because I really don't care for any replies on the subject matter over there. Here, if someone wants to flame me away for something -- go right ahead. I'll bitbucket it, of course, but I wouldn't say that it was unsolicited.
So, I think, it all comes down to "solicited" vs. "unsolicited". It's rather impossible to give a precise definition of "bulk". What is "bulk"? If "bulk" means a certain amount of substantially similar messages, then there has to be some number X where X is bulk, but X-1 is not bulk.
So, what is X, then, and can you provide a valid, cogent argument why X is bulk, and X-1 is not bulk?
I don't think this is going to work. I don't think you can make a common-sense based argument for bulk vs non-bulk. But I think an argument on solicited vs. unsolicited can be made, based on a common-sense definition of "solicited."
It appears that your definition of "solicited" means something that's exclusively a response to some previous written screed of yours. I think that a more liberal definition of "solicited" works better: meaning "did you reasonably expect to receive this kind of a message." Obviously, from the fact that you've posted a message of your own to a discussion group, with a valid E-mail address, it can be reasonably inferred that you've asked -- hence solicited -- replies. But, at the same time, if you put up an average home page, where you wrote that you're a graduate of East Side Nerd High School, and if you've provided your E-mail address, then it can be reasonably said that if an old buddy of your from East Side Nerd High accidentally stumbled across it, his E-mail wasn't exactly unsolicited. He didn't just sent something, addressed to your E-mail address, by random. It was in direct response to what he read -- hence it was solicited.
On the other hand, if some spambot lifted your address, and started sending you Viagra spam, then it can't be reasonably argued that you've solicited Viagra spam simply by the virtue of describing your high school follies.
Now, you might think that this approach is not going to work because "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder. Something may be reasonable to one person, but not reasonable to another person. Spammers will argue that using your E-mail address on slashdot can be inferred to reasonbly means that you want
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
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· Score: 1
A lot. Tell me, of all the spam you've received, how much of it came from a 100% legitimate source? A machine that wasn't hacked? A non-open relay? The spammer's box itself? Was it still up when you checked?
Yes, as a matter of fact today I blacklisted a spamhaus that began crapping into my INBOX from a new IP address range. I've had their primary spam spewer blacklisted for over six months now, they've been happily hammering away from their Exodus IP address space for a long, long time. But I guess that after pretty much everyone had them blacklisted they decided to start spewing from a new IP address range.
Granted, this kind of a situation comprises a small minority of my incoming spam. But that's only because there are other, easier spam delivery mechanisms available today. But I see nothing that would prevent everyone else from switching to this modus operandi once those other spam delivery mechanisms are eliminated by "son of SMTP": all the spamhausen will simply churn through "100% legitimate source IP addresses" at a much faster rate than they are doing now.
In the end, switching to "100% legitimate source IP addresses" would've bought very little benefit in the grand scheme of things, and we're back to square one: instead of thousands of hacked boxes and open relays, we'd have thousands of "100% legitimate source IP addresses" spamming away into the night...
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
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Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The key to solving the spam problem is to attack the definition of spam: "unsolicited junk E-mail." All that's needed -- really -- is a simple convention that may be used to designate whether a given E-mail message was solicited by its recipient, or not. That's it.
For example, you see one of your own message IDs in the References: header of an incoming message. That tells you that it's a solicited response to one of your own messages. Unless you're a troll, presumably each one of your messages merits a response from an interested party. Additionally, by the virtue of sending the original message you've implicitly solicited appropriate replies.
Now, I don't think anyone needs to keep track of every message they send. This is just a conceptual example of identifying solicited versus unsolicited E-mail. Once a method for doing so can be worked out, and put in widespread use, the spam problem will be gone.
Re:Check out Internet Mail 2000
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Replacing SMTP?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
D. J. Bernstein, the author of the supremely reliable and secure qmail mail server, wrote a proposal for a new Internet mail system a couple of years ago.
The key words there are "a couple of years ago." Yes, a few years ago he published that web page. And you know what happened as a result of that?
Absolutely nothing.
Why?
Because it makes no sense whatsoever.
Bernstein came up with a lot of stuff over the years which did make sense, and which did take off, and became accepted. This isn't one of them.
So what if the mail's contents are now stored on the sender's system? How's that going to prevent a spammer from keeping a copy of the spam stashed somewhere, and then spamming a few hundred million mailboxes with a link to the spam. So, what have we accomplished here?
The problem with spam is not where the bits and bytes that make up the spam are physically stored. The traditional definition of spam is "unsolicited junk E-mail". Jiggering the bits around, and saving them in a different directory, or on a different server, will not magically turn unsolicited junk into solicited E-mail.
Gee, a bunch of people get together at a "conference", talk to each other, and come up with an earth-shattering observation that...
Wait....
Get ready for it...
People sue other people in order to get some money!!!!!
Wow!!!! I would never be able to figure that one out myself!! Who said that Slashdot isn't an education web site? Thank gawd for all those smart'em folks, who go to 'em fancy conferences!
And I always thought that folks just liked pissing away money at lawyers, for some reason, or they liked seeing their names on thick bundles of double-spaced paper, in a butt-ugly fixed-width font. Or, I guessed that they get a hard-on climbing the concrete steps to the courthouse.
Well, I think I'll run this by my drinking buddies, over at the pub tonight. They sure to be impressed...
Slashdot Mirror
Just today I finally got around to watching that fanfilm.
I can't help but think that the dudes who put together "Starship Exeter" could probably get a lot more bang for the buck with that $3 million that anything Paramount could ever come up with.
Sure, the acting was obviously amature. Those guys are no professional actors. Strangely enough, it wasn't really that much worse than the average Shatneresque episode, and you had to give them credit for putting their heart and soul into those 35 minutes. And it showed.
And, heck, the audio and the video FX was far above than any computer-generated eye candy pablum that a few million bucks would buy you these days.
I say - if they can't raise enough cash to save the show, give whatever they got to the Starship Exeter dudes. They'll put it to good use.
Can this entire article be marked as flamebait?
I try to motivate myself into responding to that flunky, but I just can't. Please, there's no reason to state the obvious replies to this drivel.
This is so pathetic, so worthless, that I really feel some pity for Microsoft's utter inability to deal with Linux's threat to their business model, in any meaningful way.
They're totally reduced to thrashing around, looking for something, anything, negative they can throw against Linux, and make it stick.
I've seen better stuff on Usenet.
And, to add one more thing, nobody around here appears to have bothered to read what that fucking patch does anyway.
It doesn't add C++ support to the kernel, you blithering slashbots.
It adds native kernel support to C++ in userspace.
Doh!
Sounds like something James Bond could use.
Oh, wait...
"By blocking port 25, they say they cut Spam by 20% last week."
They're talking out of their asses. I have manually blacklisted their entire cablemodem space quite some time ago. Running a grep on the mail log files shows that this week I've already rejected approximately 20% more spam from Comcast than last week.
And the week ain't over yet. The log files rotate on Sundays.
I have concluded that Comcast is a lost cause. Damaged goods. The best thing to do is to blacklist their whole stinking sewer pit, and move on with your life.
These kids... They _DARE_ to call themselves geeks? Shame on them!
I just read their so-called "rules" of the game. What a disgrace. How could they forget one of the most important rules of Pacman???
They completely forgot that when the Pacman eats a power pellet the ghosts immediately change their direction 180 degrees. Somebody should call them up and set them straight.
Score: -1 (fake geek)
The couple of times I've had a window seat on commercial flights (various Boeing 7x7s, and MD-80s) I distinctly saw movable flaps being used to change the shape of the wing during take-offs and landings.
I find it rather humorous that this outfit is probably going to make more money off what's SCO's doing than SCO's itself.
After all, they only need to break $20K, and now they're doing better than Darl & Co.
This is hillarious. Darl's been huffing and puffing for a year trying to squeeze water out of a rock; now here comes OSRM, and before long they made more money essentially by betting that Darl's got nuthin!
See for yourself. TOON will replay all of Season 1 right before the first Season 2 episode.
So, if you read this in the next ten minutes, RUN TO THE TV :-)
I protect my folks' PCs by shepherding them to use Mozilla to browse the web and read mail. The strategy has been quite succesful. In the last 5-6 years I never had to fumigate their PCs from any viruses, trojans, etc...
Remember that in California and (I think) New York, Cingular and T-Mobile are effectively the same when it comes to reception since they use the same towers.
Then explain to me why here, in Nyoo Yawk, at&t wireless had no signal in either my house, or my office building, while t-mobile keeps getting good reception in both cases.
Oh, and I completely forgot how LOVELY it is to watch at&t's phones telling you they're getting a strong signal, but as soon as you place a call, while standing in the same spot, the signal strength drops to zero and you get cut off ten seconds into the call.
I'd love to tell you that it was only a bum phone, but both me and my SO had suffer like this, but we were using different phones with at&t wireless.
Up until November of last year me and my SO were att wireless subscribers. It was rather obvious that at&t wireless service couldn't really get any worse than it already was. Phone call quality always sucked unless the signal strength is at least at the halfway mark. That is if you were lucky to be in an area with any reception whatsoever. Their local calling areas were piss poor, and we got hit with roaming charges every month.
As soon as number portability kicked in, we bailed out for t-mobile GSM. The difference was like night and day. at&t wireless showed no signal in my home. The new phones (free t610 camera phones, by the way, with bluetooth, infrared, etc...) now show a good signal. No roaming charges, the call quality is now much better, and there are hardly any dropouts even if the phone shows only a single blip on the signal strength meter.
When I called to cancel at&t they lamely offered an upgrade to gsm. No thanks. Even if gsm is supposedly a better technology, I'm sure that at&t would find a way to screw it up, somehow.
Cingular wants to swallow up at&t? I hope they choke.
The linked press release includes a link to a copy of the lawsuit filing by fatwallet.com
fatwallet.com is not just going for a declaratory judgement that these DMCA complaints are bunk. fatwallet.com's complaint also directly challenges the constitutionality of the DMCA (see paragraphs 40 and 41).
If fatwallet.com gets lucky, there's a small chance that this lawsuit might, just might, result in the DMCA being declared unconstitutional!
A small disclaimer: I haven't yet upgraded by RH9 boxes to FC1, so I might end up reaching the same conclusion, but I can already see a bunch of red flags in that "review".
The box I'm typing on now began its life running Red Hat 4.2. It's been upgraded countless number of times, and it's now on Red Hat 9. And it's rock-stable solid. And the reason that it's stable, and functional, is precisely because what I've been doing, for the last six years, was the exact opposite of what this "review"er did.
Notice that she began having problems when she tried to hack together an upgrade to some application. Lesson number one when running Red Hat: do not install any software yourself. Always use rpm, which checks in, keeps track of, and maintains, all the inter-library and inter-application dependencies. Once you begin flinging random libraries and applications into the system, some of which may or may not overwrite existing libraries or files, you're well on your merry way to Linux's equivalent of Windows DLL hell, when you've got ten versions of the same basic library installed in fifteen different directories, and you now have absolutely no clue whatsoever what you end up running when you start a given application. Which randomly crashes, I wonder why?
By the way, the same also applies to other Linux distros too, I'm sure. They all use some kind of a package management system, be it rpm or apt. The same principle applies in either case.
My box is very solid even though I have plenty of custom software installed which I've compiled and built myself. But the key difference is that all the software was installed by rpm. Rach time I upgraded to a new distribution release, the installer correctly detected that I have an application that has a dependency on an older version of the library. The installer then proceeds to load a compatibility library, in addition to the new, incompatible version of the library. After upgrading, I then recompile all my custom software and install the new RPMs, whenever I have some free time. Everything still works in the meantime, because all the dependencies are correctly satisfied.
Eventually, I get around to cleaning out my box, seeing which compatibility libraries can be removed. When I try to remove them, inevitable RPM complains because I forgot to recompile some application that still depends on the old library. After doing that, and when nothing no longer needs it, it gets removed by rpm without a peep.
I also see that the reviewer grabbed some random third-party RPM from some dark alley (strike 1). Unsurprisingly, rpm refused to install it due to missing dependencies (strike 2). The reviewer tried to fix the situation by, once again, grabbing a bunch of third party libraries, and installing them manually (strike 3). End result: a big, recursive mess (strike 4).
I wonder why?
Sheesh, what exactly are the qualification to be an "OS reviewer", these days???
I have no doubt whatsoever that by the end of the day these documents will be mirrored in hundreds of places around the world.
I hate to say this, but this lawsuit does not have the slightest chance of being won.
Although it's quite obvious that RIAA's "offer" is full of shit, remind yourself that the burden will be on the plaintiff to prove their case. The only realistic chance of winning this case would be to come up with someone who did sign on RIAA's dotted line, but then got sued anyway. Has this happen to anyone, yet? Unless this happens, everything is mere speculation and hypothesis.
And what exactly are the plaintiffs' damages in this case anyway, to date? I can't figure this out.
The only way to hit RIAA where it hurts is to do absolutely nothing. They gotta be pulling these kinds of stunts out of desperation. Music sales are falling, and falling, and falling, and you're witnessing the last dying gasps of an obsolete dinosaur. You could argue whether or not the music sales are down because of piracy, or because contemporary mainstream music is shit that nobody wants to listen to, anyway. It doesn't matter. Whatever the reason is, so be it. Don't do anything that you're not doing already. And if you're not doing anything, keep on not doing anything. Whatever. Keep on going, keep on seeing music sales nosediving, until RIAA, and their ilk, are starved into non-existence.
Well, in that case, if GPL is invalid, it logically follows that SCO is guilty of copyright infringement. After all, if SCO has sold N copies of their Linux distribution, then SCO must be guilty of N-1 counts of copyright infringement for each and every software application that was included in the distribution under the terms of the GPL.
Obviously this is sheer nonsense. Yes, I'm trying to derive logic from an illogical fallacy. But, it's a slow news day, and I find that trying to make sense of SCO's legal argument is rather a cheap way to amuse oneself and pass some free time.
Certainly, they cannot be serious. That naturally leads to a question how could they possibly even think of coming up with such a big, fat whopper. I mean, you have to be doing some serious drugs in order for such a thought to enter your mind, through nothing but random, natural processes.
I think this is nothing more than a knee-jerk response to IBM's countersuit. SCO's got blindsided when IBM's countersued them for violating the GPL. I'm sure that SCO has planned their legal strategy (or whatever passes for one) in advance, and must've considered all kinds of potential responses from IBM to their original suit. They must've considered many possibilities, but it never considered that IBM would respond by countersuing them for violating the GPL.
Dollars-to-doughnuts SCO didn't even realize that large portions of the Linux kernel, which SCO themselves sold, were copyrighted by IBM, and licensed under the GPL, and IBM is now suing SCO not just for violating the GPL in general (which would be somewhat difficult, since IBM would have no real standing to sue) but IBM is now suing SCO as a copyright owner, and for full-fledged copyright infringement.
This is serious stuff. The GPL itself is not even the primary focus. Just forget about the "controversial" copyleft aspect of the GPL. Pretend for a moment that SCO had some kind of a license from IBM on IBM-copyrighted code, and they distributed the code in violation of the license agreement. Or they had no license at all. And now, IBM is suing them for copyright infringement. That's exactly what's happening here, and GPL just happens to be the terms of the original licensing agreement.
SCO didn't expect it this kind of a response, and got caught, flatfooted. So now they're scrambling to figure out how to respond to charges of full-fledged copyright infringement. I guess they figured that their best chance is to try to declare GPL invalid, and hence the idiocy from their legal beagle. So now, I'm waiting for them to explain exactly what kind of a license would then they believe to have to sell IBM's copyrighted code.
that they can't do anything outside of exactly what they're supposted to do.
My experience shows quite the opposite. They have no clue whatsoever what they're supposed to do.
I went to my post office the other day. I wanted to get a mailbox. First, they told me that they'll send a registered letter to my home address, and that I'll have to bring it back to the post office to prove that I did not give them a fake home address.
So, a few days later I don't get the letter, but a notice to go back to the post office to pick up the letter. Over there I had to sign for the letter, and show my ID. I open the letter, with the original application inside it, but I still can't get my mailbox. No, now those asswipes want to see a utility bill.
So I go back, and come back with my phone bill. No, the telephone bill isn't good enough. They want to see my electric bill. Still no mailbox.
I've had enough by then. I make sure that my middle finger becomes intimately familiar with that asswipe; tell him to go and screw himself; get into my car; drive to another post office four miles away; and show the dude over the same phone bill that wasn't good enough for the first dude. The second dude doesn't ask for anything wlaw, and doesn't try to spin any bullshit with any registered letter, whatsoever. I get a mailbox key five minutes later, right there on the spot.
According to the press reports I've read, there is no mention in IBM's counterclaim that it has the right to sell derivative software created by it. Now, it is just possible that the press reports are not the result of a careful reading of the filing, but I am surprised there is no mention of that and would be even more surprised if that were not in IBM's filing.
I highly doubt that this is the only counterclaim that IBM is going to make in this case. This is just an opening shot. They haven't even started yet. By the time everyone gets into gear, I would be surprised if IBM did NOT bring a few more dozen patent infringement claims against SCO.
You realize that this is only the first filing that IBM has made in this case. This is just their response to the initial complaint, and it weighs in at a few dozen pages at the most.
Typically, IBM's litigation paperwork is measured by the pound. Until they begin delivering paperwork to the courthouse on trucks, there's no need to pay any attention, because the show hasn't started yet.
For most people, unsolicited email isn't the problem. Unsolicited bulk email is the problem. Generally, unsolicited, personalized, individually sent emails aren't sufficient to bother people. ... Any solution which depends on security through obscurity (hiding my email address) or refusing unsolicited personal email from strangers, is unacceptable to me.
Ahh, but if your E-mail address is out there on some web site -- together with some arbitrary content -- and someone chooses to send you E-mail after reading said contents, and wanting to respond to you for some reason; then, well, from where I'm standing it looks to me like you've solicited that response, didn't you? You certainly didn't solicit some spambot sucking it out of the HTML, and then feeding it to a Viagra spam engine, of course. But, by the virtue of signing your name+E-mail address to some article, I would argue that you've solicited individual readers to drop you a note after they've read the article, if they felt like it. If you didn't want, or solicit, people to reply to your Slashdot posts, then you simply leave out your address, that's it. What good would posting your E-mail address here if you don't want people replying to it?
I mean that's what an E-mail address is for, I think: for people to know how to get in touch with the author, regarding the written subject matter.
Similarly, by signing your name to your Slashdot posts, I would argue that you've solicited, or invited, E-mails from anyone who've read them and wanted to give you a piece of their mind, for some reason.
I frequent other web discussion forums, where I do NOT use my E-mail address. That's because I really don't care for any replies on the subject matter over there. Here, if someone wants to flame me away for something -- go right ahead. I'll bitbucket it, of course, but I wouldn't say that it was unsolicited.
So, I think, it all comes down to "solicited" vs. "unsolicited". It's rather impossible to give a precise definition of "bulk". What is "bulk"? If "bulk" means a certain amount of substantially similar messages, then there has to be some number X where X is bulk, but X-1 is not bulk.
So, what is X, then, and can you provide a valid, cogent argument why X is bulk, and X-1 is not bulk?
I don't think this is going to work. I don't think you can make a common-sense based argument for bulk vs non-bulk. But I think an argument on solicited vs. unsolicited can be made, based on a common-sense definition of "solicited."
It appears that your definition of "solicited" means something that's exclusively a response to some previous written screed of yours. I think that a more liberal definition of "solicited" works better: meaning "did you reasonably expect to receive this kind of a message." Obviously, from the fact that you've posted a message of your own to a discussion group, with a valid E-mail address, it can be reasonably inferred that you've asked -- hence solicited -- replies. But, at the same time, if you put up an average home page, where you wrote that you're a graduate of East Side Nerd High School, and if you've provided your E-mail address, then it can be reasonably said that if an old buddy of your from East Side Nerd High accidentally stumbled across it, his E-mail wasn't exactly unsolicited. He didn't just sent something, addressed to your E-mail address, by random. It was in direct response to what he read -- hence it was solicited.
On the other hand, if some spambot lifted your address, and started sending you Viagra spam, then it can't be reasonably argued that you've solicited Viagra spam simply by the virtue of describing your high school follies.
Now, you might think that this approach is not going to work because "reasonable" is in the eye of the beholder. Something may be reasonable to one person, but not reasonable to another person. Spammers will argue that using your E-mail address on slashdot can be inferred to reasonbly means that you want
A lot. Tell me, of all the spam you've received, how much of it came from a 100% legitimate source? A machine that wasn't hacked? A non-open relay? The spammer's box itself? Was it still up when you checked?
Yes, as a matter of fact today I blacklisted a spamhaus that began crapping into my INBOX from a new IP address range. I've had their primary spam spewer blacklisted for over six months now, they've been happily hammering away from their Exodus IP address space for a long, long time. But I guess that after pretty much everyone had them blacklisted they decided to start spewing from a new IP address range.
Granted, this kind of a situation comprises a small minority of my incoming spam. But that's only because there are other, easier spam delivery mechanisms available today. But I see nothing that would prevent everyone else from switching to this modus operandi once those other spam delivery mechanisms are eliminated by "son of SMTP": all the spamhausen will simply churn through "100% legitimate source IP addresses" at a much faster rate than they are doing now.
In the end, switching to "100% legitimate source IP addresses" would've bought very little benefit in the grand scheme of things, and we're back to square one: instead of thousands of hacked boxes and open relays, we'd have thousands of "100% legitimate source IP addresses" spamming away into the night...
The key to solving the spam problem is to attack the definition of spam: "unsolicited junk E-mail." All that's needed -- really -- is a simple convention that may be used to designate whether a given E-mail message was solicited by its recipient, or not. That's it.
For example, you see one of your own message IDs in the References: header of an incoming message. That tells you that it's a solicited response to one of your own messages. Unless you're a troll, presumably each one of your messages merits a response from an interested party. Additionally, by the virtue of sending the original message you've implicitly solicited appropriate replies.
Now, I don't think anyone needs to keep track of every message they send. This is just a conceptual example of identifying solicited versus unsolicited E-mail. Once a method for doing so can be worked out, and put in widespread use, the spam problem will be gone.
D. J. Bernstein, the author of the supremely reliable and secure qmail mail server, wrote a proposal for a new Internet mail system a couple of years ago.
The key words there are "a couple of years ago." Yes, a few years ago he published that web page. And you know what happened as a result of that?
Absolutely nothing.
Why?
Because it makes no sense whatsoever.
Bernstein came up with a lot of stuff over the years which did make sense, and which did take off, and became accepted. This isn't one of them.
So what if the mail's contents are now stored on the sender's system? How's that going to prevent a spammer from keeping a copy of the spam stashed somewhere, and then spamming a few hundred million mailboxes with a link to the spam. So, what have we accomplished here?
The problem with spam is not where the bits and bytes that make up the spam are physically stored. The traditional definition of spam is "unsolicited junk E-mail". Jiggering the bits around, and saving them in a different directory, or on a different server, will not magically turn unsolicited junk into solicited E-mail.
Gee, a bunch of people get together at a "conference", talk to each other, and come up with an earth-shattering observation that...
Wait....
Get ready for it...
People sue other people in order to get some money!!!!!
Wow!!!! I would never be able to figure that one out myself!! Who said that Slashdot isn't an education web site? Thank gawd for all those smart'em folks, who go to 'em fancy conferences!
And I always thought that folks just liked pissing away money at lawyers, for some reason, or they liked seeing their names on thick bundles of double-spaced paper, in a butt-ugly fixed-width font. Or, I guessed that they get a hard-on climbing the concrete steps to the courthouse.
Well, I think I'll run this by my drinking buddies, over at the pub tonight. They sure to be impressed...