Given Novell likely has whatever copyrights are left in SystemV Unix, presumably with SCOX dead and buried they'd scoop up the remaining customer base and offer them a sweetheart deal on SuSE migration...
After 30 days of trading below $1., they'll get a warning notice from NASDAQ. Then they have to trade above $1 for ten straight days out of the next 90, or get a second notice, and a second chance to get their stock above $1 for ten straight days.
What is *more* troublesome for the SCOundrels is that if they're under $1 on May 15, they're likely to be dropped from the Russell Microcap index, which would likely trigger a selloff from funds referencing it.
As much as this stock is being shorted by people waiting for the death plunge, either case may be enough to finally tip it over. And with the case obviously headed for oblivion, the likelihood of a Black Knight stepping in with bags o' money again is pretty slim.
The issue is less the infringement and more the strongarm tactics used by the RIAA lawyers in trying to force her into a settlement and admission of guilt. The "proof" offered is marginal, there appears to be an assumption of guilt vs. the presumption of innocence, and at the first whiff that the case wasn't going their way, they attempt to drop it (without prejudice, so they could re-open once the PR has died down?) so as not to have any failed cases show up as a possible precedent against the other active cases. This leaves the appearance of harassment vs. an honest attempt to recoup losses.
When a song track can be legitimately had for $1 retail, it takes some effort to believe the lost sales opportunity for said song runs up into the thousands per infringement. If I shoplifted a $15 CD from the local Big Box Store, I'd be charged with a misdemeanor; if I downloaded the same tracks from the Net, somehow I'm liable for tens of thousands in infringements? I thought there was a rule of proportionality in the law; this doesn't seem to follow it.
"Invest four years/many $$$ in a CS degree, then watch the work go to an H-1B worker anyway because he's willing to do it for half what you're asking." Hmmm, I think I'll take door #2, thanks.
I agree I'd prefer they not go bankrupt too soon, but I expect that IBM's motions for summary judgment, Novell's claims the copyrights never went to SCOX, Red Hat's Lanham Act claims (false advertising that Linux infringed UNIX) will torpedo them well before anything gets to a jury.
THEN they can go bankrupt, and we can all watch the principal parties doin' the perp walk.
The consensus from those following this circus is that the reason the judges have let this run on as long as it has it exactly to scuttle attempts at appeal; they've given the SCOundrels every opportunity to come up with some credible evidence, IBM has produced their entire source repository for them to look for infringing code in, and still the judge's comment at the end of discovery was "is this all you've got?". At this point they're trying hard to get any sort of disputable points into the record to keep this thing going. When the IBM counterclaims kick in there's going to be a glowing greasespot in Lindon where once stood Caldera, er, SCOX.
This has been one big nuisance suit by SCOX *HOPING* IBM would pay them off or buy them out to silence them. IBM's attitude has been "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute". They know paying SCOX off would prompt a flood of copycat suits from other busted vendors.
At this point it's pretty well proven (a) there's no infringing UNIX code in Linux (b) SCOX likely doesn't hold the copyrights, Novell does (c) SCOX' reading of the contract they inherited from AT&T & Novell is in conflict with their predecessors', and both have said so in depositions and (d) this has been a last-ditch attempt to keep their company afloat.
>>Why should anyone be entitled to all you can consume bandwidth for a miniscule amount each month?
Because that's what I'm *paying* for? The telcos are already offering all-you-can-call plans for a modest amount.
The issue is less the bandwidth I'm paying for, but the bandwidth providers trying to squeeze the content providers (many of whom they're competing with anyway) for fees to access their customers. It's like the cell companies of those people you call trying to charge you for that right vs. the current model of the carriers passing the traffic among themselves and basically assuming it all balances out.
The problem is that the bandwidth providers have effective monopoly status within their respective service areas, at the same time they are marketing their own content to their customer base. They are looking for additional revenue from other content providers for access to those customers, and all but threatening to choke access if they don't play along. The analogy would be SBC-Prime aka AT&T going to Verizon, Quest, T-Mobile, Sprint, etc. and telling them there will be additional fees to call into the areas they service.
This simply escalates into a tariff war among the carriers and results in pass-along costs to we the consumers. Our bills go up, access is restricted, and because of the effective monopoly status, no realistic alternative providers.
The problem with this MS/Novell deal is mostly on the MS side. Ballmer went off with the ink barely dried about how those *other* distro's were potential litigation targets because of possible MS patent violations in Linux, but Novell users were fine because of The Deal. He didn't go into details, but FUD isn't about details. This plays perfectly into MS' campaigns against Linux.
And with the cooperative development between the companies, you now have to wonder if any contributions by Novell will be seized upon by MS' spinmeisters as tainted with MS content and only "safe" if you run it on SUSE.
If Ballmer's so sure that Linux violates some MS patent, let's get it in the open and have it out. Otherwise, as many here have said, it's just polluting the well.
EXACTLY the sort of consideration this deal generates, all to MS' gain.
And why the developer community is so seriously dead-set against it. Any code contribution by Novell at this point has to be considered suspect against MS claims of infringement that Novell/its customers are supposedly safe from, but the rest of us are wide-open to.
I've run SUSE for a few years now, through 10.1, but with the Novell deal I've reimaged with Kubuntu 6.10 and I don't plan to look back.
Ballmer promptly started spewing once this deal was signed that customers of other Linux distros were at risk [somebody shut him up shortly afterwards]. This provides MS a wonderful FUD opportunity now that the SCOX farce is winding down. This implies that Linux actually infringes on Microsoft patents somehow without openly admitting it, and that Novell paid them off to stay legit. All of which is anathema to the FOSS movement that created this code to start with.
If Stevie B actually thinks there's patent violations in Linux, let him bring them forward. If not, he should STFU and try competing on the merits of his company's products. Oh wait...
The decision earlier by Massachusetts ( See articles here )to move all their documents to ODF may provide some of this data. A wider adoption by government bodies would probably provide the snowball effect you're looking for better than business, as it would be part of government regulations, etc.
The marketplace is being rewarded for shipping technical work offshore for desperately lower wages than here in the US, displacing existing workers. This discourages students from entering the field, reducing the available domestic workforce and pushing business to ship work offshore for desperately lower wages, lather/rinse/repeat...
The "Wal-Mart syndrome" has already succeeded in driving a large amount of manufacturing work offshore, now IT. If said "IT Czar" wants to seriously encourage the domestic workforce, make it less desirable to offshore the work so the locals see it as a viable career choice. If the H-1B supply of underpaid labor was to be constrained, more work might be "insourced" instead. Supply and demand.
After I RTFA, it looks like they're trying to spank Jackson for calling them on their accounting practices. He wouldn't settle on their terms, so "his services will not be needed".
The guy made them a bleepin' 10^9 bucks with the trilogy, and they assume they can slot in any schmoe that can aim a camera? And I suppose they're too damn cheap to go back to WETA Digital for the FX too, they'll get some folks from over at Sci-Fi Channel and it'll be just fine.
At this point we can only hope the project collapses from being nickle-and-dimed to extinction.
You're on company equipment, on company time; there should not be any expectation of privacy. At a previous employer, I boiled down the proxy logs daily to a list of sites and forwarded it to our security group. If they saw something suspicious, I was asked BY THEM to pull the detail records of IP and employee ID. In one case, it led to someone being walked out the door for surfing kiddy-pr0n sites at his desk.
Someone checking their e-mail over lunch is one thing, but someone spending half the day checking their portfolio/surfing pr0n/playing games is another. But the request *should* be coming from some group with personnel or security responsibility to avoid you being in the middle of some PHB's vendetta against some poor cube-rat.
If IBM chose to settle rather than litigate it through, it would likely encourage any other failing firms that had past dealings with IBM to try and salvage themselves by filing suit with the expectation of settlement money or acquisition. The legal expenses here to discourage others are no doubt much less than a series of 'payoffs' would be.
In this case also, as much effort as IBM has placed behind Linux, they need to have it seen as free of any legal issues to be able to market it effectively. I suppose SCOX was assuming IBM would rather give them a quick payoff to 'go away' then slug it out in court.
I got this with the last copy of Roxio EasyCD I picked up; it's Veritas backup for Windows. I have an old 40Gb drive from my previous system I added on, and this package backs up the C drive weekly in the wee hours of Sunday morning to the NTFS partition I created there. Once a month I do a backup to a stack of DVD-RW platters, and a weekly differential to one disc (belt AND suspenders, thank you). The software itself I keep on a mini-CD in the wallet with the DVD backups.
The software itself is fairly straightforward to configure and schedule with. So far for me it Just Works.
[Yah I know it's a Windows package, but that's where this guy is. This is reasonably cheap ($30-40 US) and does the job.]
Obviously you didn't look through the initial deposition. They DID ask him about his arrest record, military service, marital history, income sources, etc. Given that this man was the AT&T UNIX contracts manager, signed off on both the IBM & Sequent SysV deals, and said in the first deposition that AT&T had clearly stated in 1985 they had no interest in any licensee's code as long as it didn't incorporate SysV source within , SCOX HAS to discredit him somehow or have their case torpedoed. So they're going to grill him again and hope he trips up somewhere in the four hours. Given his utter composure and clear recollections the first time around, they're probably wishing a stroke on him as we speak.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
You didn't see the initial transcript. They asked about his marital history, military service, arrest record, etc. Reason? Otis Wilson was *THE* AT&T UNIX contracts manager, signed off both IBM and Sequent's contracts, and his previous testimony knocks SCOX's "derivative works" argument into the sewer from whence it came. The SCOundrels are attempting to trip him up under grilling to discredit it. If you read the first transcript, though, he kept calm and collected while skewering all of SCOX's arguments, which apparently infuriated the SCOX attorney to no end.
A 'chipped' passport would be susceptible to drive-by scanning, adds nothing a mag-stripe couldn't, and will likely be more expensive to implement. What's the point?
When they interviewed that student about being on a Linux desktop vs. Windows, and the answer was "Who cares?".
If that response from a student aka future consumer hasn't got Ballmer looking for clean shorts, the guy deserves to be thrown to the curb at once (not that he doesn't deserve that already). Any businessman who's let their primary product become a who-cares to the next round of buyers has failed miserably.
The EU's been telling Microsoft for some time to provide a competent spec for their server protocols to allow interoperation. MS walked away from OASIS just before the ODF spec was approved. AD is a bastardized mix of MIT Kerberos & LDAP. IE still plays fast and loose with web standards.
Which side is it that needs to get serious about standardization? And what does it say about Microsoft's self-perception that suddenly they "want to talk"?
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Given Novell likely has whatever copyrights are left in SystemV Unix, presumably with SCOX dead and buried they'd scoop up the remaining customer base and offer them a sweetheart deal on SuSE migration...
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
After 30 days of trading below $1., they'll get a warning notice from NASDAQ. Then they have to trade above $1 for ten straight days out of the next 90, or get a second notice, and a second chance to get their stock above $1 for ten straight days.
What is *more* troublesome for the SCOundrels is that if they're under $1 on May 15, they're likely to be dropped from the Russell Microcap index, which would likely trigger a selloff from funds referencing it.
As much as this stock is being shorted by people waiting for the death plunge, either case may be enough to finally tip it over. And with the case obviously headed for oblivion, the likelihood of a Black Knight stepping in with bags o' money again is pretty slim.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
The issue is less the infringement and more the strongarm tactics used by the RIAA lawyers in trying to force her into a settlement and admission of guilt. The "proof" offered is marginal, there appears to be an assumption of guilt vs. the presumption of innocence, and at the first whiff that the case wasn't going their way, they attempt to drop it (without prejudice, so they could re-open once the PR has died down?) so as not to have any failed cases show up as a possible precedent against the other active cases. This leaves the appearance of harassment vs. an honest attempt to recoup losses.
When a song track can be legitimately had for $1 retail, it takes some effort to believe the lost sales opportunity for said song runs up into the thousands per infringement. If I shoplifted a $15 CD from the local Big Box Store, I'd be charged with a misdemeanor; if I downloaded the same tracks from the Net, somehow I'm liable for tens of thousands in infringements? I thought there was a rule of proportionality in the law; this doesn't seem to follow it.
"Invest four years/many $$$ in a CS degree, then watch the work go to an H-1B worker anyway because he's willing to do it for half what you're asking." Hmmm, I think I'll take door #2, thanks.
I agree I'd prefer they not go bankrupt too soon, but I expect that IBM's motions for summary judgment, Novell's claims the copyrights never went to SCOX, Red Hat's Lanham Act claims (false advertising that Linux infringed UNIX) will torpedo them well before anything gets to a jury.
THEN they can go bankrupt, and we can all watch the principal parties doin' the perp walk.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
The consensus from those following this circus is that the reason the judges have let this run on as long as it has it exactly to scuttle attempts at appeal; they've given the SCOundrels every opportunity to come up with some credible evidence, IBM has produced their entire source repository for them to look for infringing code in, and still the judge's comment at the end of discovery was "is this all you've got?". At this point they're trying hard to get any sort of disputable points into the record to keep this thing going. When the IBM counterclaims kick in there's going to be a glowing greasespot in Lindon where once stood Caldera, er, SCOX.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
This has been one big nuisance suit by SCOX *HOPING* IBM would pay them off or buy them out to silence them. IBM's attitude has been "millions for defense, not one cent for tribute". They know paying SCOX off would prompt a flood of copycat suits from other busted vendors.
At this point it's pretty well proven (a) there's no infringing UNIX code in Linux (b) SCOX likely doesn't hold the copyrights, Novell does (c) SCOX' reading of the contract they inherited from AT&T & Novell is in conflict with their predecessors', and both have said so in depositions and (d) this has been a last-ditch attempt to keep their company afloat.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
>>Why should anyone be entitled to all you can consume bandwidth for a miniscule amount each month?
Because that's what I'm *paying* for? The telcos are already offering all-you-can-call plans for a modest amount.
The issue is less the bandwidth I'm paying for, but the bandwidth providers trying to squeeze the content providers (many of whom they're competing with anyway) for fees to access their customers. It's like the cell companies of those people you call trying to charge you for that right vs. the current model of the carriers passing the traffic among themselves and basically assuming it all balances out.
The problem is that the bandwidth providers have effective monopoly status within their respective service areas, at the same time they are marketing their own content to their customer base. They are looking for additional revenue from other content providers for access to those customers, and all but threatening to choke access if they don't play along. The analogy would be SBC-Prime aka AT&T going to Verizon, Quest, T-Mobile, Sprint, etc. and telling them there will be additional fees to call into the areas they service.
This simply escalates into a tariff war among the carriers and results in pass-along costs to we the consumers. Our bills go up, access is restricted, and because of the effective monopoly status, no realistic alternative providers.
The problem with this MS/Novell deal is mostly on the MS side. Ballmer went off with the ink barely dried about how those *other* distro's were potential litigation targets because of possible MS patent violations in Linux, but Novell users were fine because of The Deal. He didn't go into details, but FUD isn't about details. This plays perfectly into MS' campaigns against Linux.
And with the cooperative development between the companies, you now have to wonder if any contributions by Novell will be seized upon by MS' spinmeisters as tainted with MS content and only "safe" if you run it on SUSE.
If Ballmer's so sure that Linux violates some MS patent, let's get it in the open and have it out. Otherwise, as many here have said, it's just polluting the well.
EXACTLY the sort of consideration this deal generates, all to MS' gain.
And why the developer community is so seriously dead-set against it. Any code contribution by Novell at this point has to be considered suspect against MS claims of infringement that Novell/its customers are supposedly safe from, but the rest of us are wide-open to.
I've run SUSE for a few years now, through 10.1, but with the Novell deal I've reimaged with Kubuntu 6.10 and I don't plan to look back.
Ballmer promptly started spewing once this deal was signed that customers of other Linux distros were at risk [somebody shut him up shortly afterwards]. This provides MS a wonderful FUD opportunity now that the SCOX farce is winding down. This implies that Linux actually infringes on Microsoft patents somehow without openly admitting it, and that Novell paid them off to stay legit. All of which is anathema to the FOSS movement that created this code to start with.
If Stevie B actually thinks there's patent violations in Linux, let him bring them forward. If not, he should STFU and try competing on the merits of his company's products. Oh wait...
The decision earlier by Massachusetts ( See articles here )to move all their documents to ODF may provide some of this data.
A wider adoption by government bodies would probably provide the snowball effect you're looking for better than business, as it would be part of government regulations, etc.
The marketplace is being rewarded for shipping technical work offshore for desperately lower wages than here in the US, displacing existing workers. This discourages students from entering the field, reducing the available domestic workforce and pushing business to ship work offshore for desperately lower wages, lather/rinse/repeat...
The "Wal-Mart syndrome" has already succeeded in driving a large amount of manufacturing work offshore, now IT. If said "IT Czar" wants to seriously encourage the domestic workforce, make it less desirable to offshore the work so the locals see it as a viable career choice. If the H-1B supply of underpaid labor was to be constrained, more work might be "insourced" instead. Supply and demand.
After I RTFA, it looks like they're trying to spank Jackson for calling them on their accounting practices. He wouldn't settle on their terms, so "his services will not be needed".
The guy made them a bleepin' 10^9 bucks with the trilogy, and they assume they can slot in any schmoe that can aim a camera? And I suppose they're too damn cheap to go back to WETA Digital for the FX too, they'll get some folks from over at Sci-Fi Channel and it'll be just fine.
At this point we can only hope the project collapses from being nickle-and-dimed to extinction.
You're on company equipment, on company time; there should not be any expectation of privacy. At a previous employer, I boiled down the proxy logs daily to a list of sites and forwarded it to our security group. If they saw something suspicious, I was asked BY THEM to pull the detail records of IP and employee ID. In one case, it led to someone being walked out the door for surfing kiddy-pr0n sites at his desk.
Someone checking their e-mail over lunch is one thing, but someone spending half the day checking their portfolio/surfing pr0n/playing games is another. But the request *should* be coming from some group with personnel or security responsibility to avoid you being in the middle of some PHB's vendetta against some poor cube-rat.
If IBM chose to settle rather than litigate it through, it would likely encourage any other failing firms that had past dealings with IBM to try and salvage themselves by filing suit with the expectation of settlement money or acquisition. The legal expenses here to discourage others are no doubt much less than a series of 'payoffs' would be.
In this case also, as much effort as IBM has placed behind Linux, they need to have it seen as free of any legal issues to be able to market it effectively. I suppose SCOX was assuming IBM would rather give them a quick payoff to 'go away' then slug it out in court.
I got this with the last copy of Roxio EasyCD I picked up; it's Veritas backup for Windows. I have an old 40Gb drive from my previous system I added on, and this package backs up the C drive weekly in the wee hours of Sunday morning to the NTFS partition I created there. Once a month I do a backup to a stack of DVD-RW platters, and a weekly differential to one disc (belt AND suspenders, thank you). The software itself I keep on a mini-CD in the wallet with the DVD backups.
The software itself is fairly straightforward to configure and schedule with. So far for me it Just Works.
[Yah I know it's a Windows package, but that's where this guy is. This is reasonably cheap ($30-40 US) and does the job.]
Obviously you didn't look through the initial deposition. They DID ask him about his arrest record, military service, marital history, income sources, etc. Given that this man was the AT&T UNIX contracts manager, signed off on both the IBM & Sequent SysV deals, and said in the first deposition that AT&T had clearly stated in 1985 they had no interest in any licensee's code as long as it didn't incorporate SysV source within , SCOX HAS to discredit him somehow or have their case torpedoed. So they're going to grill him again and hope he trips up somewhere in the four hours. Given his utter composure and clear recollections the first time around, they're probably wishing a stroke on him as we speak.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
You didn't see the initial transcript. They asked about his marital history, military service, arrest record, etc. Reason? Otis Wilson was *THE* AT&T UNIX contracts manager, signed off both IBM and Sequent's contracts, and his previous testimony knocks SCOX's "derivative works" argument into the sewer from whence it came. The SCOundrels are attempting to trip him up under grilling to discredit it. If you read the first transcript, though, he kept calm and collected while skewering all of SCOX's arguments, which apparently infuriated the SCOX attorney to no end.
SCOX DELENDA EST!!
I think some of us are a little too US-centric here: The Doctor has been around far longer ('63-'89, '05-present)
A 'chipped' passport would be susceptible to drive-by scanning, adds nothing a mag-stripe couldn't, and will likely be more expensive to implement. What's the point?
When they interviewed that student about being on a Linux desktop vs. Windows, and the answer was "Who cares?".
If that response from a student aka future consumer hasn't got Ballmer looking for clean shorts, the guy deserves to be thrown to the curb at once (not that he doesn't deserve that already). Any businessman who's let their primary product become a who-cares to the next round of buyers has failed miserably.
Somehow I think this is a little too low-level to come up at a summit like this.
But I'm sure it makes great press for the British recording association to push at their membership to show why they're paying them dues...
The EU's been telling Microsoft for some time to provide a competent spec for their server protocols to allow interoperation. MS walked away from OASIS just before the ODF spec was approved. AD is a bastardized mix of MIT Kerberos & LDAP. IE still plays fast and loose with web standards.
Which side is it that needs to get serious about standardization? And what does it say about Microsoft's self-perception that suddenly they "want to talk"?