I completely understand what you are saying, but just so we are clear, I am not bitching about my current situation. I am in a relatively stable situation pulling in a decent amount, so that my new wife would be well fed and clothed. It's my other IT buddies who are having a rough time finding jobs. One friend had to relocate to Michigan to join his wife who just went to grad school, then had to sit through several interviews in which they told him he was "almost" their number one guy.
Here is the point: The execs are playing on two different fields - plain ol' competition and their bottom line. You may come out ahead in the first game, but the tie-breaker is their bottom line. I do understand how the games are played. But having Carly and others tell us that, on one hand, we must invest more in our education, but on the other hand they must preserve their right to export the very jobs that would have rewarded those who work hard, it does not add up to say the least. At worst, it is very condescending and demeaning to be told by these execs how to and how not to live.
Because, in this situation, it is SCO that is on dangerous grounds (or, to extend the metaphore, "dangerous waters"), not the other way around. We the Open Source community had no intention of doing anybody in - until SCO raised its middle finger and poked IBM in the eye. This really is a question that SCO ought to ask itself (or should have asked itself) before blasting away at Linus & Co.
On the other hand, the OP did raise some interesting points about various signs that suggest that SCO may not be on its way out - yet. In an earlier article from ComputerWeek (already/.'ed today), there were curious figures of SCO's financial performance this past year. It seems to me that, were it not for the $50 million infusion of badly needed cash, SCO would in fact be doing a lot worse in 2003.
(By the way, I hope we are on a general path of righting the wrongs committed by SCO, not squashing it like a bug. Doing so may set precedences that none of us will be prepared to face someday.)
This quote was attributed to R.A. Janek, and is the sentence that graces the page just before the beginning of Michael Crichton's novel "The Andromeda Strain". It would be most beneficial to science to see if we can use all of our technology to reduce the cost, even if only a little bit, from its(pardon the pun) astronomical level.
As several sources, including Bruce Perens' fine analysis of code fragments thus far disclosed, have indicated, some of what SCO is claiming as their IP in fact stems from material that were in the public domain as far back as the 70's. If this can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt in court, then they should have no right to keep private that which is already public and the codes can ultimately be disclosed.
It's somewhat similar to my attempting to keep the contents of "Encyclopaedia Brittanica" secret by claiming IP rights, only to realize later that I never owned it, do not own it, and will never own it. Therefore, I would have no right to keep it confidential since my original claim of ownership is debunked.
Actually, the review does contain a link to a usenet announcement on Deja that was sent on the 4th of September, just days after his passing, presumably by one of his colleagues. From the thread itself, it sounded like he contributed much to his field of work and to the lives of people around him. He will be missed.
If you read the article carefully, similar recommendation was also given to Linux users to delay large-scale deployment until the dust begins to settle a bit (i.e. 1st quarter of 2004). Granted, deep down Gartner probably feels, as many of us do, that SCO's days are numbered, but good sense calls for level-headed thinking that should apply to all who are involved - not just a particular subset of the whole.
One of my first gigs as a break-fix techie was a small company that had a megalomaniacal CEO/President. He hired a guy to write a song that sings praises about our company, and he insisted that we sing it every morning in our group huddle, just prior to opening time. Fortunately, by the time I started there as an employee, he stopped doing that. But it was very funny/scary to hear that from an old-timer there.
Another scary scenario would call for a terrorist or two boarding an aircraft with two laptops (one for backup). At some point during the flight, the primary whips out his Apple Titanium and compromises the avionics system. The hacker now has the option of wrecking the plane during landing or in-flight, directing the jumbo jet into the Sears Tower, for example.
This scenario will call for no explosives, no daily consumer items modified into weapons, no boxcutters. The terrorists won't have to "play fake" a hostage situation just to buy time, nor will they ever have to force their way into the cockpit so that our weapons-trained pilots could take aim with their Berettas. For all intents and purposes, the terrorists will never have to leave their seats.
At the terminal before boarding, the X-ray machines can scan the laptops all they want, but if they can't seen the software hacking tools on the hard drive (together with detailed schematics on the avionics control system of that particular aircraft, its vulnerabilities, etc.), then the flight is doomed.
There needs to be a better way of securing the flight control systems onboard against all forms of electronic interference, or we will still be wondering what happened when that plane goes into the Sears or the Empire State.
I have always been partial towards Abu Nidal myself... On the other hand, it would be a sick joke to walk in with a T-shirt that says "Osama Is My Hero".
I would say that this is simply the result of looking at a particular piece of innovation in unexpected and creative way. While engineers would probably be content with designing a piece of machinery to perform only a set of functions *and nothing more*, someone else may step in and say, "I don't care what it was *designed* to do. I want to know just what it *can* do." In many ways this is turning "conventional" research and development on its head and turning it towards other purposes. True, some purposes are more dubious and nefarious than others, but much of the strength of this country was built on looking at things unconventionally.
I do not mean to evaluate the moral/philosophical implications here. I am merely pointing out that this is nothing more than an exhibition of one strength of a free society where innovation is encouraged.
Another way of looking at the situation is that security is a total game. If an end user needs security, he/she usually can't be bothered with understanding stateful connections and "Man-In-The-Middle" attacks, so you have more user-friendly boxes that would do the job for him/her and all the user has to do is to know how to turn it on.
Someone like you who has been in the trenches and gotten a few battle scars should know much more than your average Joe. So now you start becoming a bigger part of the solution (by first understanding iptables, then making your own rulesets, then finally building your own box from scratch). You start owning a bigger and more serious piece of the security pie. The stakes are higher now not so much because the issue itself has suddenly grown, but because of your involvement in actively engaging the issue.
To me, that is the most important part of being involved in security, that people become educated and understand more than they did yesterday.
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/11/20/132259.sht ml ?tid=99
There was a subsequent story that describes how that NOC went back up fairly quickly as well, thanks in large part to selfless sys/netadmins who put the good of the larger community ahead of their own need to sleep or, for that matter, do much of anything else.
Slashdot Mirror
'nuff said.
If it can come up with the convincing arguments that SCO hasn't been able to cough up, then we got ourselves a winner here.
I completely understand what you are saying, but just so we are clear, I am not bitching about my current situation. I am in a relatively stable situation pulling in a decent amount, so that my new wife would be well fed and clothed. It's my other IT buddies who are having a rough time finding jobs. One friend had to relocate to Michigan to join his wife who just went to grad school, then had to sit through several interviews in which they told him he was "almost" their number one guy.
Here is the point: The execs are playing on two different fields - plain ol' competition and their bottom line. You may come out ahead in the first game, but the tie-breaker is their bottom line. I do understand how the games are played. But having Carly and others tell us that, on one hand, we must invest more in our education, but on the other hand they must preserve their right to export the very jobs that would have rewarded those who work hard, it does not add up to say the least. At worst, it is very condescending and demeaning to be told by these execs how to and how not to live.
Carly's is a "she", FYI.
But yes, I agree with your general sentiment.
So it is now, "It's not that you are stupid, it's just that you asked for the right to have some bread and water for your family."
Sucks to be a working (wo)man, I guess.
Because, in this situation, it is SCO that is on dangerous grounds (or, to extend the metaphore, "dangerous waters"), not the other way around. We the Open Source community had no intention of doing anybody in - until SCO raised its middle finger and poked IBM in the eye. This really is a question that SCO ought to ask itself (or should have asked itself) before blasting away at Linus & Co.
/.'ed today), there were curious figures of SCO's financial performance this past year. It seems to me that, were it not for the $50 million infusion of badly needed cash, SCO would in fact be doing a lot worse in 2003.
On the other hand, the OP did raise some interesting points about various signs that suggest that SCO may not be on its way out - yet. In an earlier article from ComputerWeek (already
(By the way, I hope we are on a general path of righting the wrongs committed by SCO, not squashing it like a bug. Doing so may set precedences that none of us will be prepared to face someday.)
...to correct for severe time differentials across "150 Federation planets, spread across 8000 light-years" (according to Jean-Luc).
...just like SCO.
This quote was attributed to R.A. Janek, and is the sentence that graces the page just before the beginning of Michael Crichton's novel "The Andromeda Strain". It would be most beneficial to science to see if we can use all of our technology to reduce the cost, even if only a little bit, from its(pardon the pun) astronomical level.
As several sources, including Bruce Perens' fine analysis of code fragments thus far disclosed, have indicated, some of what SCO is claiming as their IP in fact stems from material that were in the public domain as far back as the 70's. If this can be established beyond the shadow of a doubt in court, then they should have no right to keep private that which is already public and the codes can ultimately be disclosed.
It's somewhat similar to my attempting to keep the contents of "Encyclopaedia Brittanica" secret by claiming IP rights, only to realize later that I never owned it, do not own it, and will never own it. Therefore, I would have no right to keep it confidential since my original claim of ownership is debunked.
Pretty funny, the way you reacted to not the rotting carcasses, but to the fact that it was running SCO Unix... :-)
Actually, the review does contain a link to a usenet announcement on Deja that was sent on the 4th of September, just days after his passing, presumably by one of his colleagues. From the thread itself, it sounded like he contributed much to his field of work and to the lives of people around him. He will be missed.
...when professors join the action.
Will they now object to *OBVIOUSLY* suggestive, even lewd, references to anatomically correct parts???
"No, you may NOT call it male or female connectors. Instead you must work with us and call it 'vreeba' and 'boombai', and snap to it!"
*sigh*
If you read the article carefully, similar recommendation was also given to Linux users to delay large-scale deployment until the dust begins to settle a bit (i.e. 1st quarter of 2004). Granted, deep down Gartner probably feels, as many of us do, that SCO's days are numbered, but good sense calls for level-headed thinking that should apply to all who are involved - not just a particular subset of the whole.
One of my first gigs as a break-fix techie was a small company that had a megalomaniacal CEO/President. He hired a guy to write a song that sings praises about our company, and he insisted that we sing it every morning in our group huddle, just prior to opening time. Fortunately, by the time I started there as an employee, he stopped doing that. But it was very funny/scary to hear that from an old-timer there.
Heh... maybe then you could get paid in "foreign currency" for your troubles...
(Sorry, had to say it)
Another scary scenario would call for a terrorist or two boarding an aircraft with two laptops (one for backup). At some point during the flight, the primary whips out his Apple Titanium and compromises the avionics system. The hacker now has the option of wrecking the plane during landing or in-flight, directing the jumbo jet into the Sears Tower, for example.
This scenario will call for no explosives, no daily consumer items modified into weapons, no boxcutters. The terrorists won't have to "play fake" a hostage situation just to buy time, nor will they ever have to force their way into the cockpit so that our weapons-trained pilots could take aim with their Berettas. For all intents and purposes, the terrorists will never have to leave their seats.
At the terminal before boarding, the X-ray machines can scan the laptops all they want, but if they can't seen the software hacking tools on the hard drive (together with detailed schematics on the avionics control system of that particular aircraft, its vulnerabilities, etc.), then the flight is doomed.
There needs to be a better way of securing the flight control systems onboard against all forms of electronic interference, or we will still be wondering what happened when that plane goes into the Sears or the Empire State.
It's time for Spammer Hammer to pull out his Rail Gun and fire up the QD to see how many dirt bag spammers he can frag...
"...forever!!!"
I have always been partial towards Abu Nidal myself... On the other hand, it would be a sick joke to walk in with a T-shirt that says "Osama Is My Hero".
...on your mugs, T-shirts, cameras, and even boxcutters!!!
I would say that this is simply the result of looking at a particular piece of innovation in unexpected and creative way. While engineers would probably be content with designing a piece of machinery to perform only a set of functions *and nothing more*, someone else may step in and say, "I don't care what it was *designed* to do. I want to know just what it *can* do." In many ways this is turning "conventional" research and development on its head and turning it towards other purposes. True, some purposes are more dubious and nefarious than others, but much of the strength of this country was built on looking at things unconventionally.
I do not mean to evaluate the moral/philosophical implications here. I am merely pointing out that this is nothing more than an exhibition of one strength of a free society where innovation is encouraged.
Well said.
Another way of looking at the situation is that security is a total game. If an end user needs security, he/she usually can't be bothered with understanding stateful connections and "Man-In-The-Middle" attacks, so you have more user-friendly boxes that would do the job for him/her and all the user has to do is to know how to turn it on.
Someone like you who has been in the trenches and gotten a few battle scars should know much more than your average Joe. So now you start becoming a bigger part of the solution (by first understanding iptables, then making your own rulesets, then finally building your own box from scratch). You start owning a bigger and more serious piece of the security pie. The stakes are higher now not so much because the issue itself has suddenly grown, but because of your involvement in actively engaging the issue.
To me, that is the most important part of being involved in security, that people become educated and understand more than they did yesterday.
We had a similar story from a while ago:
t ml ?tid=99
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/11/20/132259.sh
There was a subsequent story that describes how that NOC went back up fairly quickly as well, thanks in large part to selfless sys/netadmins who put the good of the larger community ahead of their own need to sleep or, for that matter, do much of anything else.