Sure first things first you have to consider that SCO and the intellectual property it holds are not the only ones running on multiprocessor systems. SUN, IBM, Cray etc etc have been doing it for years. IBM in fact has been doing it for ages before even UNIX itself existed. So why couldn't IBM have put their knowledge into Linux.
Not only that, but IBM et al have published in excruciating detail their basic methodologies for handling multiprocessor systems in hardware and software. I would not be surprised if a lot of their ideas were taught in certain decent universities for decades. It is not impossible for a good developer to be able to take publicly available ideas and code and start to work up something like multiproc support. Hell, Linus started the Linux kernel based on coursework and x86 docs he had at hand over a couple of months.
Clearly, IBM and others have improved Linux in these areas and they have many many decades of expertise in these fields. No one needed a drop of SCO code to do any of this.
"you'd be pissed when the dove finally made it back with host not found."
Especially since history indicates that the standard retry time was seven days long. 14 days to send a one-bit message ("host found" vs. "host not found") sucks pretty hard.
Better make sure you get the hostname right the first time....
That was very funny, but since this is Slashdot I must nitpick that you misread the passage. The lagtime for the packet to return was 1 day. However Noah did wait 7 days between retries.:)
" in Germany (where I live, and where copyright works a whole lot differently anyway), a retroactive change of law would clearly be inconstitutional. Is this really different in the US, or was that just some clever trick?"
Believe it or not, we in the US specifically wrote into our Constitution a prohibition against such 'ex post facto' laws - and our highest court has recently ruled in favour of this anyway.
A good example of why I'm now living in Sweden, and working night and day to learn the language.
The US has completely, as we say, 'gone to hell in a handbasket'.
Not that there isn't anything to complain about here in the Socialist State of Sweden. Far from it. Taxes, to begin with, are utterly ludicrous. The Swedes seem perfectly happy to vote in a bunch of Menschevic idiots every term, and so does the rest of Europe.
But, much as I hate to admit it, this is at the moment a far freer State than the Fascist Corporation of the USA. In the US instead of Menschevic idiots we have neo-Trotskyite geniuses, doing far more damage in shorter time periods, retaining more competent PR firms and so forth.
I honestly think I'm getting close to suicide. The state of the world is just too damn depressing for a man in any state vaguely resembling sanity to cope with.
I forget who originally said this, but I seem to remember a quote along the lines of "Anyone who feels comfortable and at home in the present world as it is cannot possibly be sane." Essentially either some level of insanity or at least indifference is required to get along in society as it is currently structured.
I wouldn't kill myself over humanity screwing things up; they have been doing it for millenia now and refuse to learn from history. Hell, they refuse to learn history and instead try steadfastly to erase, revise, or ignore it at every turn. So the person who becomes aware of these things and pays attention to what is going on, and then actually expects things to go right is guaranteed to be disappointed. Every observer seems to come to this conclusion eventually.
The state of the world is indeed depressing. Part of the problem comes from the amount of the world over which we have no control which intends to immediately control us. This is one of teh nuances of civilization. The primitive man controls his environment to a far greater degree thna the modern man, despite not mastering nature, and generally does not attempt to master nature. But the modern man has a gaggle of idiots controlling ever more of his life, and so as he becomes aware of this, becomes depressed.
Most people seem to deal with this by simple apathy and furiously ignore the entire world beyond their cubicle and the windows of their SUV. I have found this sort of existence even more depressing, and instead settle for a different approach. When you get a bellyful of news and feel suicidal, switch from CNN to the Cartoon Network and quit reading slashdot for awhile. seriously, take a news break and do something else, preferably mindless entertainment.
If you absolutely can't deal with that, another alternative I have taken is to work on something which is edifying but has nothing to do with current events. I read a lot of history and classical literature, and whereas the history can be depressing too because you find things all the time that you wish the current system had built/improved on it is at leats not about the current system and you can laugh at the barbaric Romans if you wish while ignoring the fact they had better plumbing, stadiums, and roads than we do. Come to think of it, skip the history and read something else.
Another option if you have the skill and inclination is to attack and squash bugs in software or play some video games. Make anothe Linux UI or incompatable text editor 5005 or something...
"Apache is not GPL, quite a bit of Free software is under BSD/MIT style licenses actually, but SCO has certainly terminated their own rights to use the stuff that is GPL because of that clause. It's just a matter of who has the money and time to C&D them and be ready to back it up with litigation."
Ehm, IANAL, but I don't think so. The GPL covers distribution, not use. You don't have to agree with the GPL to use software it covers, that's only necessary when you want to distribute that software or derrived works.
Firstly, you are right in that the GPL explicitly covers only distribution and says essentially that usage licenses are unneccessary for any software. However, SCO is currently distributing GPL software because they distribute Linux. Not only that, they have been beefing up UnixWare by adding Free Software like Samba, Apache, et al to Unixware, to say nothing of their Linux Kernel Personality which uses Linux kernel code.
They are distributing this code without giving their customers the rights they have under the GPL. Further, they are attempting to require Linux users to pay licensing fees, a practice which directly violates the GPL. All of this adds up to SCO not following the GPL when it comes to distribution, ergo they have no right to distribute any of the Free Software they are distributing.
The copyright holders would be well within their rights to offically inform SCO that they cannot distribute Linux, Samba, et al if they insist on breaking the GPL and especially since they have declared it invalid, and if they persist they will be sued for copyright violation. It would also be poetic justice.
Come to think about it, it woudl be just plain justice. SCO has wrongfully appropriated the IP of others and had the gall to try and turn the whole situation on its head. The company now known as SCO has created 0 IP no matter what they say they own. Now I am willing to concede they own some IP which they have purchased (though what exactly they bought is something they and the people from whom they purchased the IP do not agree on), but the fact of the matter is they are claiming to own all kinds of things, including AIX and Linux which they did not create. They are trying to make themselves the sole licensee for Linux and therefore own Linux.
Their argument that Linux users just do not want to pay for software just does not hold water. After all the people who paid RedHat $2500/pop for Advanced Server or whatever would beg to differ. Besides that they make no sense. If Linus and friends create something and give it away for free, how is that something SCO has anything to do with at all? Why is it that we should pay SCO because "Linux is just too good to be free?" They did not create Linux; it is not for them to be charging jack shit.
Again, much of what you're saying SCO is claiming is not stuff I've read myself, and I've been trying to keep up on this case. If you have links to where they've explicitly retracted their contributions or those made by their employees in good faith, let me know. As I understand it, the things they're claiming are infringements aren't even things they wrote-- but things they think they have the rights to because of some old contract with Sequent or IBM.
They have specifically avoided addressing anything regarding direct employee contributions directly. They have, however cast aspersions on sections of code which have contributions from SCO employees (or where they donated equipment, or both) such as multiproc support. The current SCO vs. IBM case is mostly regarding the SCO's onerous interpretation of the old UNIX license from AT&T and burnt feathers over Monterrey, but SCO has made a lot of wild claims lately and the acusation of wholesale copying has been levelled at the Linux Community generally. They have also declared the GPL invalid which would have the effect of voiding the previous releases/contributions they have made (at least functionally, though not legally, as using them invites more legal brouhaha).
I would say the safest thing is to avoid them altogether because otherwise you are inviting them to come back and sue with the acusation that they did not know what employee X@sco.com was doing or that there was misappropriated IP. It's not worth risking disruption to a Free Software project IMHO.
Just incase anyone missed it, he was trying to say "unless you build it to the same specs as a 3000-5000 mac, which most x86 boxes really aren't".. I think.
Try again. The $5000 Mac does *not* come with a monitor. What I was saying is that even if you tried to spend $5000 on a PC, I really don't think you could. Such an attempt would probably include a motherboard with dual 4hz P4's, much of the same hardware except a more hefty video card, and still be cheaper.
The original Agenda came out. You could buy it for a while from the original Agenda Computing, and can still from Softfield the maker of this new MX-7. The Agenda may have been a piss-poor PDA that suffered many long delays, but it was released and it was for sale.
The Delays IIRC were over a year, and a year after announcing it Slashdot announced that the company was no longer shipping to US customers (despite having a big backorder). Yes, some people got them, but I was left with the impression taht a lot of peopel never got theirs after ordering it. To me that does not constitute having something for sale. If it is really for sale then you get what you order after paying for it.
Is this PDA going to actually come out, or is it more vapourware (like the original Agenda) or will it really, truly be available? It was a complete outrage what happened with the Agenda, when/. hyped the hell out of it, they took a bunch of orders and money and then did not deliver. I was going to buy one, and was glad I kept my money so they did not get it. So the question (beyond the unanswered question of what happened to everyone's money the first time) is will this "new company" actually deliver or just rip off the Linux community again?
Very ancient Unix which Caldera (SCO) licensed to everyone under the BSD license as soon as they bought it, you mean. Besides, I would be surprised if this code was not in the public domain anyway given how old it is (predating Senator Disney) and its presence in numerous textbooks, etc. It's easy to see how it would have "made its way into Linux" as when Linux was being written people were using textbook examples and their knowlege thereof to make linux as UNIX-alike/POSIX-compliant as possible.
Is BeOS still under the wings of Palm? Why don't they use the thing, or simply open the source?
When Palm bought Be, Inc. they promised there would never again be a BeOS release. They refused to license the IP or allow anyone to work on it ("Omigod, they killed the BeOS!" "You bastards!").:P
However, a German company (yellowTab) which had wisely started negotiating to work on BeOS long before the sale (during the period where Be was "refocusing on Internet Appliances") and somehow had the rights to work on a BeOS, or something. Their version of events is here.
For some reason, none of the Be sites is linking to them, and googel does not like them either. I had to find the old slashdot article to find them at all. They also seem to be calling the OS Zeta instead of BeOS. Perhaps the people at Palm have the reverse midas touch w/r/t brands and anyone who has a good brand but associates with them loses it altogether. By the way can you tell I hate the new name and wonder why in the hell they would change the most recognized name in PDAs? Perhaps this is bad karma for trying to crush BeOS on purpose.
Still if you want you can buy zeta from yellowTab and it does come with lots of software, apparently...
2) I can't afford one because I'd rather spend 3000$ of my own time fixing Windows than the extra 1000$ it costs to buy a Mac.
Time is money, and this is where people get the equation wrong.
Actually, if you build it yourself, a very decent x86 box can be had for $600. Then again, you can get one from Dell or IBM or Compaq that is not horrible for that price with a monitor. The last machine I built cost me less than $500. The one I am building this week was around $200. New hardware.
As for Windows problems, I have none. You see there is this littel OS called Linux. Prhaps you have heard of it?
It would be pretty tough to build a $3000 - $5000 x86 desktop these days, and if you did, it would probably have at minimum twice the Ghz of the G5 per proc.
Why do I keep hearing this myth of Macs outlasting PCs? The reason Mac users use their Macs longer is because they are too darn expensive to allow more frequent upgrades!
In my experience, generally Macs, Sparcs, and IBM PPC boxes are all far more expensive than PCs (though ever since 1999 that has not quite been true with Macs) but all of these have the distinction of being able to run current versions of the OS in question on old-ass hardware. People were able to continue using 10 year old macintoshes (and more) without having to upgrade.
The current model at Apple seems to be to make it more compelling to upgrade your Mac, and part of the carrot here is that they are much cheaper nowadays (but still more expensive than PCs). in fact, this lawsuit underscores the fact the old paradgm has not completely gone away. After all, people were complaining that their 5 year old Macintoshes, which ran the latest version of the OS, did not run it as well as brand new Macintoshes. They *expected* the new version of OS to run perfectly on a 5 year old Mac because they were used to that. On the PC only the Free OSs (like Linux) give such satisfaction. Try running WinXP on a PC from 1998 and see how far that gets you. MS sure as hell is not going to settle a lawsuit over a thing like that!:)
The ftp server (daemon) was not the source of the exploit. The exploit was a local root hole in teh Linux kernel and was taken advantage of because someone obtained shell access (which they were providing to maintainers at the time).
I was unaware that Linux (the kernel) provided FTP services...
Linux (the kernel) was the source of the root exploit which was not fixed for a week, during which the gnu.org ftp site was cracked. Somewhere Theo De Raadt is laughing...
Granted, the exploit was a local hole and was only exploitable because the FSF gave the maintainers shell access. But what do you expect from an organization run by a man who finds passwords morally repugnant?
You go 48 hours without saving!? I wouldn't even fault windows for that!
Very funny. The poster was talking about a render which took 48 hours to complete. That is acually a pretty modest job. Digital renders for movies, etc. might take a week or sveral for an individual job depending on the computing resources thrown at the task and what the task actually is. This isn't something you can "save" until the job is finished, AFAIK. It takes the computers that long to finish processing the job.
And you cheapen the term "terrorist" when you use it inappropriately. McVeigh was part of a terrorist group (two actually, the U.S. Army, and a small group of conspirators most of whom were never charged). The DC snipers were terrorists by any reasonable definition. But people who try to save unborn babies from being cruelly murdered are not. You may not agree with them. But they are not terrorists.
Yes, lets stop the babies from being cruelly murdered by cruelly murdering doctors, nurses, and innocent bystanders. Then say we are pro-life and God is on our side. Strike the fear of God into all those unwed mothers and dirty doctors... but we are not terrorists.
Right. Did you take your medication this morning?
I happen to disagree with both the ideology and methods of the abortion clinic bombers. You seem to agree with both. But the definition of a terrorist has zero to do with whether we agree with the ideology or even the methods of the terrorist. A terrorist is someone who uses violent methods to strike fear in the hearts of the populace to support their agenda. m-w.com defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" and dates that definition to 1795.
The abortion clinic bombers are by any definition terrorists and have admitted that terror is their chosen method. It is absolutely a proper application of the term.
The DMCA gives these people the power to send the notices to take down "infringing material." The DMCA also requires the complainant to make the statement that they represent the copyright holder of the material that is being offered under penalty of perjury. Therefore if they are lying, they are indeed under penalty of perjury.
Some people have tried to nitpick that the "penalty of perjury" only applies to the fact the complainant indeed represents or is the copyright holder of the offending material. That was not my reading of the DMCA last I looked at it, but it honestly does not matter. Even if they do represent the copyright holder of Pac-Man, they do not represent the copyright holder of teh material offered on the net, and would still fall under the penalty.
The whole point of this clause in the DMCA was to prevent what is happening now by requiring the complainant to excercise due diligence to ensure that they do not falsely accuse people. It is a simple matter to detenrmine whether the offending material is really what they are claiming it is. In the recently publicized cases (Professor Usher, OpenOffice, Gentoo) it was blindingly obvious to the meanest of minds these were not infringers.
It would have taken a few seconds to download the material to see it was not offending material. In fact a brief look at context would have easily revealed the truth. There is not a court in the world that would rule that having automated systems do text searches for strings constitutes due diligence. The prosecution currently stands derelect in their duty by not bringing these criminals to justice.
That said, I'd completely support GCC and the FSF if they would not only begin refusing patches from SCO, but also actively removing SCO support from the compilers. I don't see how SCO was "poisoning the well" by clearly contributing code under the GPL-- and in the case of their GCC contributions, they must assign copyright to the FSF in writing. I know they're off the deep end, but unless you can support the claims you've made they just sound like hysteria.
SCO employees personally contributed code in several areas which SCO now says are in contention (such as multiproc support). They are now saying that the company did not endorse conributions in those areas. They have not specifically said whether this includes the contributions form the SCO employees or not; heck they have yet to clearly define what they are complaining about. The current SCO v. IBM case is supposed to be essentially baout IBM breaching their SysV contract by helping Linux, but SCO has said this is only the beginning of their overall strategy.
There is still some question as to where to draw the line with respect to employees of companies contributing company IP to Free Software . Clearly if an employee is acting as a representative of the company and contributes IP which the company has decided to contribute that IP has been contributed legally. The question arises when an employee decides to do this on their own or there is otherwise some dispute within the company as to whether the IP should be contributed. There are many shades of gray in between, of course.
Just because someone@sco.com contributed the code does not mean they have company sanction to do what they are doing (or indeed even that the company knows they are doing it). IANAL, and there is probably plenty of precedent/case law defining the roles of employees and when an employee is considered a representative of the company and when they are not, but there is none directly involving Free Software, and I am not sure how much involves the disclosure of IP.
Whether SCO would sanction an employee to contribute code with one hand and then swat a Free Software project with the other may be a question smacking of conspiracy theory, but they clearly have done something that smells a lot like it. They have certainly objected in very general terms to helping Linux which to me puts a bad smell on any code from SCO that purports to help Linux. Again, how do we know that the Darl McBride, outranking any direct manager who could have sanctioned the employee's involvement, is not going to start a lawsuit over the contributions saying it was not with company sanction? It is not worth endangering an entire project for a few snippets of code from an organization bent on the destruction of Free Software and computing in general as we know it.
"Honest policyholders will have nothing to fear and combating fraud will make things better for them anyway by helping to keep premium costs down."
Of course they leave out:
1) He was lying.
2) Since he is a practiced glib liar there was no hint of stress in his voice at all.
First off, I have to laugh when I read an article where lie detectors are described as "scientific" "sophisticated" and "accurate." They are frequently described as such, but it is clearly not the case. Even proponents, when pressed, always end up admitting that the "lie detector" is supposed to test stress levels; in other words, proponents of lie detectors usually lie in order to push them as a panacea.
Secondly, the biggest, oldest lie any insurance company can tell is that their rates are going to go down if you allow them to implement something. Insurance companies have historically tried to push legislation, promising practically every time that such legislation / policy change / newfound power will result in lower rates (mandatory automobile coverage comes to mind) but it never does. I go so far as to say I would think anyone would be hard pressed to come up with a single form of insurance in which rates have *ever* gone down, in fact.
Thirdly, the insurance company says that lie detector tests have been successful in reducing fraud. They do not qualify this at all, but I would think being able to point to a number and say "We were able to deny X million dollars worth of claims on the basis of lie detector tests alone!" would be considered a success, especially considering that the avoidance of paying claims, at any cost, any way they can is a goal to all insurance companies second only to raking in your cash.
What I want to see is lie detector tests for lying insurance agents.:) Probably going to happen about when that law which dictates the flogging of spammers followed by their head being placed on a pike as a warning to others is finally passed...
In my tired state, I misspoke. Clearly a GPL license cannot be revoked at whim. However, since they are in violation of the GPL itself, they have no license to distribute anything. Calling attention to that fact and forcing them to cease and desist distribution is the right way to handle this.
So it's not like Joe GCC-Developer is out there writing SCO-specific patches. It's SCO doing what a sensible participant in the Free Software development process would do: contribute patches upstream.
I have to laugh when someone claims SCO is a sensible participant in Free Software. In my opinion, the fact a SCO employee is contributing to the project is the heart of the problem. After all, how do we know what they are contributing is blessed (or SCO isn't going to change their mind the morning after) like they did with the Linux kernel. The employees of the company now known as SCO, the employees of the original SCO, and the employees of SCO-as-it-is have been contributing to and profiting from Free Software for years, but now any code they contributed is becoming a poison pill as they threaten to take their ball and go home (it does not help that they lay claim to everyone else's balls, as well...).
If it were me running a project I would make everyone sign a statement "Are you now or have you ever been a SCO Employee..." and if they are they don't get to contribute to the main branch. It is too dangerous now that SCO is deliberately trying to lay claim to every OS on earth and go to war with Free Software. There is substantial evidence they have been "poisoning the well" by having employees contribute things they can object to already. Why give them more opportunities?
I say cut them off utterly. Revoke their license to every piece of Free Software we can, do not accept their changes and do not support their OSs including their Linux Distribution. Honestly they should be sued to hell and back for their blatant GPL violations in any case.
That is why you shoot the damn dog the first time and get it over with. That should be enough to send the message to the rest of the mutts might get the ideal. If not, you shoot the next one. Sooner or later they will get the message or you will run out of dogs.
Shoot the dog, then leave his head on a pike in the lawn as a warning to the others. Then urinate in a circle around the lawn. Grrrrrrrr!:) Yes, that is the ticket...
Slashdot Mirror
Sure first things first you have to consider that SCO and the intellectual property it holds are not the only ones running on multiprocessor systems. SUN, IBM, Cray etc etc have been doing it for years. IBM in fact has been doing it for ages before even UNIX itself existed. So why couldn't IBM have put their knowledge into Linux.
Not only that, but IBM et al have published in excruciating detail their basic methodologies for handling multiprocessor systems in hardware and software. I would not be surprised if a lot of their ideas were taught in certain decent universities for decades. It is not impossible for a good developer to be able to take publicly available ideas and code and start to work up something like multiproc support. Hell, Linus started the Linux kernel based on coursework and x86 docs he had at hand over a couple of months.
Clearly, IBM and others have improved Linux in these areas and they have many many decades of expertise in these fields. No one needed a drop of SCO code to do any of this.
Especially since history indicates that the standard retry time was seven days long. 14 days to send a one-bit message ("host found" vs. "host not found") sucks pretty hard.
Better make sure you get the hostname right the first time....
That was very funny, but since this is Slashdot I must nitpick that you misread the passage. The lagtime for the packet to return was 1 day. However Noah did wait 7 days between retries. :)
" in Germany (where I live, and where copyright works a whole lot differently anyway), a retroactive change of law would clearly be inconstitutional. Is this really different in the US, or was that just some clever trick?"
Believe it or not, we in the US specifically wrote into our Constitution a prohibition against such 'ex post facto' laws - and our highest court has recently ruled in favour of this anyway.
A good example of why I'm now living in Sweden, and working night and day to learn the language.
The US has completely, as we say, 'gone to hell in a handbasket'.
Not that there isn't anything to complain about here in the Socialist State of Sweden. Far from it. Taxes, to begin with, are utterly ludicrous. The Swedes seem perfectly happy to vote in a bunch of Menschevic idiots every term, and so does the rest of Europe.
But, much as I hate to admit it, this is at the moment a far freer State than the Fascist Corporation of the USA. In the US instead of Menschevic idiots we have neo-Trotskyite geniuses, doing far more damage in shorter time periods, retaining more competent PR firms and so forth.
I honestly think I'm getting close to suicide. The state of the world is just too damn depressing for a man in any state vaguely resembling sanity to cope with.
I forget who originally said this, but I seem to remember a quote along the lines of "Anyone who feels comfortable and at home in the present world as it is cannot possibly be sane." Essentially either some level of insanity or at least indifference is required to get along in society as it is currently structured.
I wouldn't kill myself over humanity screwing things up; they have been doing it for millenia now and refuse to learn from history. Hell, they refuse to learn history and instead try steadfastly to erase, revise, or ignore it at every turn. So the person who becomes aware of these things and pays attention to what is going on, and then actually expects things to go right is guaranteed to be disappointed. Every observer seems to come to this conclusion eventually.
The state of the world is indeed depressing. Part of the problem comes from the amount of the world over which we have no control which intends to immediately control us. This is one of teh nuances of civilization. The primitive man controls his environment to a far greater degree thna the modern man, despite not mastering nature, and generally does not attempt to master nature. But the modern man has a gaggle of idiots controlling ever more of his life, and so as he becomes aware of this, becomes depressed.
Most people seem to deal with this by simple apathy and furiously ignore the entire world beyond their cubicle and the windows of their SUV. I have found this sort of existence even more depressing, and instead settle for a different approach. When you get a bellyful of news and feel suicidal, switch from CNN to the Cartoon Network and quit reading slashdot for awhile. seriously, take a news break and do something else, preferably mindless entertainment.
If you absolutely can't deal with that, another alternative I have taken is to work on something which is edifying but has nothing to do with current events. I read a lot of history and classical literature, and whereas the history can be depressing too because you find things all the time that you wish the current system had built/improved on it is at leats not about the current system and you can laugh at the barbaric Romans if you wish while ignoring the fact they had better plumbing, stadiums, and roads than we do. Come to think of it, skip the history and read something else.
Another option if you have the skill and inclination is to attack and squash bugs in software or play some video games. Make anothe Linux UI or incompatable text editor 5005 or something...
"Apache is not GPL, quite a bit of Free software is under BSD/MIT style licenses actually, but SCO has certainly terminated their own rights to use the stuff that is GPL because of that clause. It's just a matter of who has the money and time to C&D them and be ready to back it up with litigation."
Ehm, IANAL, but I don't think so. The GPL covers distribution, not use. You don't have to agree with the GPL to use software it covers, that's only necessary when you want to distribute that software or derrived works.
Firstly, you are right in that the GPL explicitly covers only distribution and says essentially that usage licenses are unneccessary for any software. However, SCO is currently distributing GPL software because they distribute Linux. Not only that, they have been beefing up UnixWare by adding Free Software like Samba, Apache, et al to Unixware, to say nothing of their Linux Kernel Personality which uses Linux kernel code.
They are distributing this code without giving their customers the rights they have under the GPL. Further, they are attempting to require Linux users to pay licensing fees, a practice which directly violates the GPL. All of this adds up to SCO not following the GPL when it comes to distribution, ergo they have no right to distribute any of the Free Software they are distributing.
The copyright holders would be well within their rights to offically inform SCO that they cannot distribute Linux, Samba, et al if they insist on breaking the GPL and especially since they have declared it invalid, and if they persist they will be sued for copyright violation. It would also be poetic justice.
Come to think about it, it woudl be just plain justice. SCO has wrongfully appropriated the IP of others and had the gall to try and turn the whole situation on its head. The company now known as SCO has created 0 IP no matter what they say they own. Now I am willing to concede they own some IP which they have purchased (though what exactly they bought is something they and the people from whom they purchased the IP do not agree on), but the fact of the matter is they are claiming to own all kinds of things, including AIX and Linux which they did not create. They are trying to make themselves the sole licensee for Linux and therefore own Linux.
Their argument that Linux users just do not want to pay for software just does not hold water. After all the people who paid RedHat $2500/pop for Advanced Server or whatever would beg to differ. Besides that they make no sense. If Linus and friends create something and give it away for free, how is that something SCO has anything to do with at all? Why is it that we should pay SCO because "Linux is just too good to be free?" They did not create Linux; it is not for them to be charging jack shit.
Again, much of what you're saying SCO is claiming is not stuff I've read myself, and I've been trying to keep up on this case. If you have links to where they've explicitly retracted their contributions or those made by their employees in good faith, let me know. As I understand it, the things they're claiming are infringements aren't even things they wrote-- but things they think they have the rights to because of some old contract with Sequent or IBM.
They have specifically avoided addressing anything regarding direct employee contributions directly. They have, however cast aspersions on sections of code which have contributions from SCO employees (or where they donated equipment, or both) such as multiproc support. The current SCO vs. IBM case is mostly regarding the SCO's onerous interpretation of the old UNIX license from AT&T and burnt feathers over Monterrey, but SCO has made a lot of wild claims lately and the acusation of wholesale copying has been levelled at the Linux Community generally. They have also declared the GPL invalid which would have the effect of voiding the previous releases/contributions they have made (at least functionally, though not legally, as using them invites more legal brouhaha).
I would say the safest thing is to avoid them altogether because otherwise you are inviting them to come back and sue with the acusation that they did not know what employee X@sco.com was doing or that there was misappropriated IP. It's not worth risking disruption to a Free Software project IMHO.
Just incase anyone missed it, he was trying to say "unless you build it to the same specs as a 3000-5000 mac, which most x86 boxes really aren't".. I think.
Try again. The $5000 Mac does *not* come with a monitor. What I was saying is that even if you tried to spend $5000 on a PC, I really don't think you could. Such an attempt would probably include a motherboard with dual 4hz P4's, much of the same hardware except a more hefty video card, and still be cheaper.
The original Agenda came out. You could buy it for a while from the original Agenda Computing, and can still from Softfield the maker of this new MX-7. The Agenda may have been a piss-poor PDA that suffered many long delays, but it was released and it was for sale.
The Delays IIRC were over a year, and a year after announcing it Slashdot announced that the company was no longer shipping to US customers (despite having a big backorder). Yes, some people got them, but I was left with the impression taht a lot of peopel never got theirs after ordering it. To me that does not constitute having something for sale. If it is really for sale then you get what you order after paying for it.
Is this PDA going to actually come out, or is it more vapourware (like the original Agenda) or will it really, truly be available? It was a complete outrage what happened with the Agenda, when /. hyped the hell out of it, they took a bunch of orders and money and then did not deliver. I was going to buy one, and was glad I kept my money so they did not get it. So the question (beyond the unanswered question of what happened to everyone's money the first time) is will this "new company" actually deliver or just rip off the Linux community again?
This is very very ancient Unix.
Very ancient Unix which Caldera (SCO) licensed to everyone under the BSD license as soon as they bought it, you mean. Besides, I would be surprised if this code was not in the public domain anyway given how old it is (predating Senator Disney) and its presence in numerous textbooks, etc. It's easy to see how it would have "made its way into Linux" as when Linux was being written people were using textbook examples and their knowlege thereof to make linux as UNIX-alike/POSIX-compliant as possible.
Is BeOS still under the wings of Palm? Why don't they use the thing, or simply open the source?
When Palm bought Be, Inc. they promised there would never again be a BeOS release. They refused to license the IP or allow anyone to work on it ("Omigod, they killed the BeOS!" "You bastards!"). :P
However, a German company (yellowTab) which had wisely started negotiating to work on BeOS long before the sale (during the period where Be was "refocusing on Internet Appliances") and somehow had the rights to work on a BeOS, or something. Their version of events is here.
For some reason, none of the Be sites is linking to them, and googel does not like them either. I had to find the old slashdot article to find them at all. They also seem to be calling the OS Zeta instead of BeOS. Perhaps the people at Palm have the reverse midas touch w/r/t brands and anyone who has a good brand but associates with them loses it altogether. By the way can you tell I hate the new name and wonder why in the hell they would change the most recognized name in PDAs? Perhaps this is bad karma for trying to crush BeOS on purpose.
Still if you want you can buy zeta from yellowTab and it does come with lots of software, apparently...
you mean
2) I can't afford one because I'd rather spend 3000$ of my own time fixing Windows than the extra 1000$ it costs to buy a Mac.
Time is money, and this is where people get the equation wrong.
Actually, if you build it yourself, a very decent x86 box can be had for $600. Then again, you can get one from Dell or IBM or Compaq that is not horrible for that price with a monitor. The last machine I built cost me less than $500. The one I am building this week was around $200. New hardware.
As for Windows problems, I have none. You see there is this littel OS called Linux. Prhaps you have heard of it?
It would be pretty tough to build a $3000 - $5000 x86 desktop these days, and if you did, it would probably have at minimum twice the Ghz of the G5 per proc.
Why do I keep hearing this myth of Macs outlasting PCs? The reason Mac users use their Macs longer is because they are too darn expensive to allow more frequent upgrades!
In my experience, generally Macs, Sparcs, and IBM PPC boxes are all far more expensive than PCs (though ever since 1999 that has not quite been true with Macs) but all of these have the distinction of being able to run current versions of the OS in question on old-ass hardware. People were able to continue using 10 year old macintoshes (and more) without having to upgrade.
The current model at Apple seems to be to make it more compelling to upgrade your Mac, and part of the carrot here is that they are much cheaper nowadays (but still more expensive than PCs). in fact, this lawsuit underscores the fact the old paradgm has not completely gone away. After all, people were complaining that their 5 year old Macintoshes, which ran the latest version of the OS, did not run it as well as brand new Macintoshes. They *expected* the new version of OS to run perfectly on a 5 year old Mac because they were used to that. On the PC only the Free OSs (like Linux) give such satisfaction. Try running WinXP on a PC from 1998 and see how far that gets you. MS sure as hell is not going to settle a lawsuit over a thing like that! :)
Let's get the subtle homoeroticism out of /. please, KTHXBYE
What's subtle about it? I see someone forgot to invite you to the /. bathhouse... :)
The ftp server (daemon) was not the source of the exploit. The exploit was a local root hole in teh Linux kernel and was taken advantage of because someone obtained shell access (which they were providing to maintainers at the time).
I was unaware that Linux (the kernel) provided FTP services...
Linux (the kernel) was the source of the root exploit which was not fixed for a week, during which the gnu.org ftp site was cracked. Somewhere Theo De Raadt is laughing...
Granted, the exploit was a local hole and was only exploitable because the FSF gave the maintainers shell access. But what do you expect from an organization run by a man who finds passwords morally repugnant?
Darnit, I WANT MY MATROX BACK!!
So what's stopping you from buying one?
You go 48 hours without saving!?
I wouldn't even fault windows for that!
Very funny. The poster was talking about a render which took 48 hours to complete. That is acually a pretty modest job. Digital renders for movies, etc. might take a week or sveral for an individual job depending on the computing resources thrown at the task and what the task actually is. This isn't something you can "save" until the job is finished, AFAIK. It takes the computers that long to finish processing the job.
And you cheapen the term "terrorist" when you use it inappropriately. McVeigh was part of a terrorist group (two actually, the U.S. Army, and a small group of conspirators most of whom were never charged). The DC snipers were terrorists by any reasonable definition. But people who try to save unborn babies from being cruelly murdered are not. You may not agree with them. But they are not terrorists.
Yes, lets stop the babies from being cruelly murdered by cruelly murdering doctors, nurses, and innocent bystanders. Then say we are pro-life and God is on our side. Strike the fear of God into all those unwed mothers and dirty doctors... but we are not terrorists.
Right. Did you take your medication this morning?
I happen to disagree with both the ideology and methods of the abortion clinic bombers. You seem to agree with both. But the definition of a terrorist has zero to do with whether we agree with the ideology or even the methods of the terrorist. A terrorist is someone who uses violent methods to strike fear in the hearts of the populace to support their agenda. m-w.com defines terrorism as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion" and dates that definition to 1795.
The abortion clinic bombers are by any definition terrorists and have admitted that terror is their chosen method. It is absolutely a proper application of the term.
The DMCA gives these people the power to send the notices to take down "infringing material." The DMCA also requires the complainant to make the statement that they represent the copyright holder of the material that is being offered under penalty of perjury. Therefore if they are lying, they are indeed under penalty of perjury.
Some people have tried to nitpick that the "penalty of perjury" only applies to the fact the complainant indeed represents or is the copyright holder of the offending material. That was not my reading of the DMCA last I looked at it, but it honestly does not matter. Even if they do represent the copyright holder of Pac-Man, they do not represent the copyright holder of teh material offered on the net, and would still fall under the penalty.
The whole point of this clause in the DMCA was to prevent what is happening now by requiring the complainant to excercise due diligence to ensure that they do not falsely accuse people. It is a simple matter to detenrmine whether the offending material is really what they are claiming it is. In the recently publicized cases (Professor Usher, OpenOffice, Gentoo) it was blindingly obvious to the meanest of minds these were not infringers.
It would have taken a few seconds to download the material to see it was not offending material. In fact a brief look at context would have easily revealed the truth. There is not a court in the world that would rule that having automated systems do text searches for strings constitutes due diligence. The prosecution currently stands derelect in their duty by not bringing these criminals to justice.
That said, I'd completely support GCC and the FSF if they would not only begin refusing patches from SCO, but also actively removing SCO support from the compilers. I don't see how SCO was "poisoning the well" by clearly contributing code under the GPL-- and in the case of their GCC contributions, they must assign copyright to the FSF in writing. I know they're off the deep end, but unless you can support the claims you've made they just sound like hysteria.
SCO employees personally contributed code in several areas which SCO now says are in contention (such as multiproc support). They are now saying that the company did not endorse conributions in those areas. They have not specifically said whether this includes the contributions form the SCO employees or not; heck they have yet to clearly define what they are complaining about. The current SCO v. IBM case is supposed to be essentially baout IBM breaching their SysV contract by helping Linux, but SCO has said this is only the beginning of their overall strategy.
There is still some question as to where to draw the line with respect to employees of companies contributing company IP to Free Software . Clearly if an employee is acting as a representative of the company and contributes IP which the company has decided to contribute that IP has been contributed legally. The question arises when an employee decides to do this on their own or there is otherwise some dispute within the company as to whether the IP should be contributed. There are many shades of gray in between, of course.
Just because someone@sco.com contributed the code does not mean they have company sanction to do what they are doing (or indeed even that the company knows they are doing it). IANAL, and there is probably plenty of precedent/case law defining the roles of employees and when an employee is considered a representative of the company and when they are not, but there is none directly involving Free Software, and I am not sure how much involves the disclosure of IP.
Whether SCO would sanction an employee to contribute code with one hand and then swat a Free Software project with the other may be a question smacking of conspiracy theory, but they clearly have done something that smells a lot like it. They have certainly objected in very general terms to helping Linux which to me puts a bad smell on any code from SCO that purports to help Linux. Again, how do we know that the Darl McBride, outranking any direct manager who could have sanctioned the employee's involvement, is not going to start a lawsuit over the contributions saying it was not with company sanction? It is not worth endangering an entire project for a few snippets of code from an organization bent on the destruction of Free Software and computing in general as we know it.
"Honest policyholders will have nothing to fear and combating fraud will make things better for them anyway by helping to keep premium costs down."
Of course they leave out:
1) He was lying.
2) Since he is a practiced glib liar there was no hint of stress in his voice at all.
First off, I have to laugh when I read an article where lie detectors are described as "scientific" "sophisticated" and "accurate." They are frequently described as such, but it is clearly not the case. Even proponents, when pressed, always end up admitting that the "lie detector" is supposed to test stress levels; in other words, proponents of lie detectors usually lie in order to push them as a panacea.
Secondly, the biggest, oldest lie any insurance company can tell is that their rates are going to go down if you allow them to implement something. Insurance companies have historically tried to push legislation, promising practically every time that such legislation / policy change / newfound power will result in lower rates (mandatory automobile coverage comes to mind) but it never does. I go so far as to say I would think anyone would be hard pressed to come up with a single form of insurance in which rates have *ever* gone down, in fact.
Thirdly, the insurance company says that lie detector tests have been successful in reducing fraud. They do not qualify this at all, but I would think being able to point to a number and say "We were able to deny X million dollars worth of claims on the basis of lie detector tests alone!" would be considered a success, especially considering that the avoidance of paying claims, at any cost, any way they can is a goal to all insurance companies second only to raking in your cash.
What I want to see is lie detector tests for lying insurance agents. :) Probably going to happen about when that law which dictates the flogging of spammers followed by their head being placed on a pike as a warning to others is finally passed...
In my tired state, I misspoke. Clearly a GPL license cannot be revoked at whim. However, since they are in violation of the GPL itself, they have no license to distribute anything. Calling attention to that fact and forcing them to cease and desist distribution is the right way to handle this.
So it's not like Joe GCC-Developer is out there writing SCO-specific patches. It's SCO doing what a sensible participant in the Free Software development process would do: contribute patches upstream.
I have to laugh when someone claims SCO is a sensible participant in Free Software. In my opinion, the fact a SCO employee is contributing to the project is the heart of the problem. After all, how do we know what they are contributing is blessed (or SCO isn't going to change their mind the morning after) like they did with the Linux kernel. The employees of the company now known as SCO, the employees of the original SCO, and the employees of SCO-as-it-is have been contributing to and profiting from Free Software for years, but now any code they contributed is becoming a poison pill as they threaten to take their ball and go home (it does not help that they lay claim to everyone else's balls, as well...).
If it were me running a project I would make everyone sign a statement "Are you now or have you ever been a SCO Employee..." and if they are they don't get to contribute to the main branch. It is too dangerous now that SCO is deliberately trying to lay claim to every OS on earth and go to war with Free Software. There is substantial evidence they have been "poisoning the well" by having employees contribute things they can object to already. Why give them more opportunities?
I say cut them off utterly. Revoke their license to every piece of Free Software we can, do not accept their changes and do not support their OSs including their Linux Distribution. Honestly they should be sued to hell and back for their blatant GPL violations in any case.
That is why you shoot the damn dog the first time and get it over with. That should be enough to send the message to the rest of the mutts might get the ideal. If not, you shoot the next one. Sooner or later they will get the message or you will run out of dogs.
Shoot the dog, then leave his head on a pike in the lawn as a warning to the others. Then urinate in a circle around the lawn. Grrrrrrrr! :) Yes, that is the ticket...