Except that the lawsuit against BSD already happened and BSD won because the UNIX programmers had stolen their code, not the other way round. This article proposes that there are SCO programmers who might testify the same is true here.
A source close to SCO, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told eWEEK that parts of the Linux kernel code were copied into the Unix System V source tree by former or current SCO employees.
That could violate the conditions of the GNU GPL, which states that any amendments to open-source code used in a commercial product must be given back to the community or a copyright notice must be displayed attributable to Linux, he said.
That would be the BSD license. The GPL requires a project that incorporates GPL code to be GPLed as well, which means the source must be made available to people who get binaries and their rights to distribute the program under the GPL cannot be infringed. If this does not happen the right to distribute the GPL code is revoked and its distribution is therefore a copyright violation. Therefore if SCO really stole GPL code for its Linux Kernel Personality it has a serious problem on its hands.
Does your phone vibrate? It would be interesting to see this is caused by the signal, the vibration, or the speakers in the phone... Other slashdotters have reported this but I honestly have never seen it happen. That does not mean it does not happen, but the cause of the phenomenon will determine its scope.
Ah, snopes. Yes, I ended up following a number of links today researching this topic. I also found information on the Exxon program referenced by the friendly attendant. It seems indeed to be the result of a series of urban legends which were believed by lawmakers and oil company execs who got scared and issued a bunch of warnings/laws/etc. Motorola also seems to have been trolled successfully.
Once again, like the cell phones + airplanes FUD, it seems to be a matter of bad/no science backing ridiculous regulations. Of course it is clear there is a growing prejudice against cell phone users which has resulted in a slew of nonsensical, reactionary laws that have nothing to do with real safety concerns.
Your post illustrates my point beautifully. The bad journalism on academic studies spreads misinformation all over the place. In short, you got trolled by a journalist. If you read the report on the study you will find that the sentence you quoted is wholly incorrect. The experiments did not test cell phone equipment, and the equipment they did use was used in ways in which cell phones would not be.
It turns out I misremembered the incident. The man actually did get up and go to the bathroom. Anyway, I had thought they tackled him when he got up to leave the airplane, but the article I read today (which was more complete than the original one I read) gave a slightly different scenario. Still he is currently on trial for a felony charge on this.
You did not read the study. You read the article. Once again you are just repeating rabid journalist misinformation and misreporting of bad science.
It's extremely common and equally annoying. Journalists regularly report "The latest study found X" usually without citing the study (at best you get the Uni or other organization that conducted the research and the promise that it was "a recent study" or "the latest." But usually what is claimed in the press releases (in the case of what you cited) or articles is not what is claimed in the study, and even then looking into the research shows serious flaws, if not with the way the search was conducted, at the very least (as in this case) with the claims being made on the basis of the outcome of the experiments.
In this study they used equipment operating beyond the normal capacity of cell phones in ways in which cell phones would not normally be used. Specifically they found that operating a radio device at the theoretical maximum power of a cell phone transmitter continuously at the frequencies of cell phone transmissions within 30cm of the cockpit instruments caused aberrations. It is specifically stated in the study that they did not use actual cell phones for these experiments.
Your wish has been granted. Don't you feel better? Now the Air Marshals are onboard to enforce the rules, ensuring you don't get up to go to the bathroom, or act too curiously. There have always been a whole bunch of crazy rules on airplanes, which carried the weight of federal law. Now there are air marshals watching everything you do to make sure you do not break those laws, though they cannot properly handle their firearms (I tried to find other articles, but the articles I linked mentioned several incidents of leaving firearms in bathrooms and one in which a firearm went off in a bathroom) and are not well trained. They are also overworked and underpaid, which has real consequences (for the click-challenged, sleeping air marshals with their guns openly available to terrorists present little protection).
Still, be that as it may, the short and sweet of it is don't fuck with air marshalls. They have guns, they are tired, cranky, and edgy, and have the right to shoot you with minimal cause and arrest you with no cause. So for those of you who wanted to have enforcement of the seatbelt rules, you now have it at the barrel of a gun. Ditto for smoking or using the bathroom or cell phones. In the article a man was immediately arrested in the UK for having his cell phone on (though not in use) and sentenced to 12 months in jail. That'll teach that terrorist bastard, eh? I would have to wonder what the US would have done.
Now, I have been flying for years (though not since 9/11) and it has been pretty well obvious that being on a plane is serious business (for instance, even before 9/11 smoking or saying the words bomb, gun, etc could get you booted/thrown in prison in the US). I understand it is important to have rules for safety since a cock-up on a plane is no joke, and I follow the rules assiduously. But I have to wonder if what we are doing now is not too much of the keeping the ordinary passengers' seat belts on and not enough of the stopping the real terrorists.
I think the anti-cellphone people are the assholes, but that's just me. I dunno, who is more the asshole? Someone talking on the phone or someone running around beating people up for being on the phone? As for the idiot with the "shut up for four hours," hey, when you're making a million dollars a minute or losing it depending on split second decisions for which complex information is required four hours incommunicado is a long time!
In the case of the speakers, I would suspect these problem have more to do with the electric motors used to vibrate the phones (also known as Big Fucking Magnets) interfering with speakers (also known as Big Fucking Magnets) than with any radio interference.
As far as the TV, I have never seen a TV or monitor interfered with by a cell phone and use them all constantly and together and right on top of one another. But I wonder if this is similar to the old problem where the blender/vaccuum cleaner/etc caused TV interference. IIRC this is also a function of the electric motor.
Lightning would cause a problem mainly through heat and vibration (the loud noise lightning makes which you can hear for miles is air vibrating), but that heat would happen outside the aircraft, so its effect would depend on where the lightning hit, I would imagine...
Actually, if you RTFA yourself you would find that it has not been determined really. The research that was done did not reflect the actual application of cell phone technology. I would say the experiments essentially showed that current cell phones would not truly disrupt planes, but that could be shown as innaccurate.
I was once told by a gas station attendant who had come back from a safety course (it was EXXON. Ride the Tiger baby!) the cell phone fire scenario is also due to static electricity. The claim is that static from the antenna might cause a problem. There is the additional possibility of the electronics inside the phone igniting gasoline fumes which permeate the case, but I would think this is something that could be tested for. Gasoline fumes are volatile but I have to wonder if they are really volatile enough to be ignited by the amount of current running through a cell phone.
A new committee has been formed to study this phenomenon, consisting of The Verizon Guy "Can you hear me now? Good!", James Earl Jones, The Sprint X-Files Clone Guy, Laurence Fishburne, and the Kami the HIV Infected Muppet (as an education consultant).
Actually, I was mostly joking. I have read the actual research (well, I am reading through it now) and it seems that this is another example of bad science turning out an irresponsible academic paper with skewed results which are then sensationalized by "journalists" who don't even read the paper they are reporting on (but write at length out of their ass). Pretty much SOP.
What *should* have been the headline was "Researchers find it is impossible to affect airplanes with cell phones" though even that is kind of innacurate. They found that if you could get a device to transmit continuously on cell phone frequencies at the maximum power that a cell phone might be known to operate at and then put that device 30cm from the equipment in a cockpit there could be minor disruptions in instrumentation. Maybe someone who is more of a radio geek than I am could come up with a much more nefarious and effective device (effective from a longer range, for instance), but a cell phone does not fit the criteria of the device they used to disrupt service.
I have noticed that people tend to talk much louder on their phones than they normally talk. This is what ticks me off - when I am in a quiet setting like maybe a restauraunt and then someone uses their at-a-soccer-game voice.
This is because their phone/service sucks. On many phones if you do not yell no one can hear you (and even then it is sometimes problematic. This was the case with my previous Samsung/Sprint combination. With my nokia 3590 and at&t using gsm I can speak with a normal voice even with the phone slightly away from my face (like while taking down a number) and the other person and I have no problem hearing each other.
I think it is silly when cell phones do not have a higher range for their volume controls, since this is the cheapest thing to change and dramatically changes the customer experience w/r/t how the reception is perceived (if you can turn it way up and hear, then you will think you have ok service as long as you aren't cut off). Too bad everyone can't have phones designed by Spinal Tap!:)
Except that it is not. If you read the actual study that was done, you will find the conditions under which they were able to cause disruptions had nothing to do with the conditions under which a cell phone is operating normally. Though the study does present an interesting terrorist scenario with modified equipment.
IN short, this is something that should be worked on to prevent terrorist attacks, instead of being used against normal cell phone users. Since the airlines will continue to claim the problem lies with the passenger and not fix the real problem, they will create a situation that allows for terrorist attacks (just like when they refused to pay for a lock on the cabin door).
Unfortunately they spend a substantial amount of their money on Congresscritters. Probably more than they would spend on retrofitting, but the point for them is not to have to listen to you;).
How much is your bribery budget? Feed a Congresscritter today!:)
It would be interesting to find out. In the US, with the advent of Air Marshals, even the smallest infractions are now enforced (a man was tackled and arrested by the Air Marshals for *wanting* to go to the bathroom while the seat belt sign was on. He had asked the flight attendant repeatedly to let him go, but never actually went...) The Article, which no one reads, talks about a man being sentenced to 12 months in prison in the UK for having his cell phone on (and not using it) during a flight.
I am annoyed to find out, however, that the whole thing is bogus. Once again "journalists" (what passes for them these days) misreport findings in an uncited study that was flawed in the first place. The study *did not* find that cell phones disrupt flights. They did not even use cell phones for their tests. So the science behind this simply is not there.
Was this a personal aircraft? You know it would be interesting to hear from pilots of small aircraft on the effects (or lack thereof) on their instruments. I bet their stuff is more robust in this case.
I think the poster was talking about the possibility of terrorists purposefully bringing on cell phones to cause disruption, as cell phones in themselves, even multiples, would not arouse confusion (ok maybe 100, but if they said they worked for Sprint/AT&T/Motorola that might explain it away).
Also, I would say that whereas I would hope EMP bombs (or other bombs) would be recognizable to the high school dropouts our illustrious government employs for security and then refuses to train (ahem), I would say it would be fairly unlikely that such devices would be recognizable if they had been disassembled and smuggled into the plane for assembly there, particularly as parts of other electronics (like cell phones or radios). Yeah by the way can you tell that I am a little upset that the *ONE* thing the govt could have done to prevent another 9/11 is the thing they refuse to do, whereas they use it for an excuse for everything under the sun (including pig farm subsidies and rollbacks on environmental laws)?
No, one is enough. Now that it is known cell phones disrupt planes all Good Patriotic Americans will leave their cell phones in their SUVs. (As usual, Foreigners can go to Hell...) If you take a cell phone on a plane you are a terrorist. If you are not with us you are against us. Hallelujah!:):P:)
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Except that the lawsuit against BSD already happened and BSD won because the UNIX programmers had stolen their code, not the other way round. This article proposes that there are SCO programmers who might testify the same is true here.
From the article:
A source close to SCO, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told eWEEK that parts of the Linux kernel code were copied into the Unix System V source tree by former or current SCO employees.
That could violate the conditions of the GNU GPL, which states that any amendments to open-source code used in a commercial product must be given back to the community or a copyright notice must be displayed attributable to Linux, he said.
That would be the BSD license. The GPL requires a project that incorporates GPL code to be GPLed as well, which means the source must be made available to people who get binaries and their rights to distribute the program under the GPL cannot be infringed. If this does not happen the right to distribute the GPL code is revoked and its distribution is therefore a copyright violation. Therefore if SCO really stole GPL code for its Linux Kernel Personality it has a serious problem on its hands.
Unfortunately, congress just passed a law that they get automatic, yearly pay raises, and the supreme court said it was ok
As long as the pay raises were constant with inflation, I would be okay with that. Somehow I think that is probably not the case here :).
Does your phone vibrate? It would be interesting to see this is caused by the signal, the vibration, or the speakers in the phone... Other slashdotters have reported this but I honestly have never seen it happen. That does not mean it does not happen, but the cause of the phenomenon will determine its scope.
Ah, snopes. Yes, I ended up following a number of links today researching this topic. I also found information on the Exxon program referenced by the friendly attendant. It seems indeed to be the result of a series of urban legends which were believed by lawmakers and oil company execs who got scared and issued a bunch of warnings/laws/etc. Motorola also seems to have been trolled successfully.
Once again, like the cell phones + airplanes FUD, it seems to be a matter of bad/no science backing ridiculous regulations. Of course it is clear there is a growing prejudice against cell phone users which has resulted in a slew of nonsensical, reactionary laws that have nothing to do with real safety concerns.
Your post illustrates my point beautifully. The bad journalism on academic studies spreads misinformation all over the place. In short, you got trolled by a journalist. If you read the report on the study you will find that the sentence you quoted is wholly incorrect. The experiments did not test cell phone equipment, and the equipment they did use was used in ways in which cell phones would not be.
It turns out I misremembered the incident. The man actually did get up and go to the bathroom. Anyway, I had thought they tackled him when he got up to leave the airplane, but the article I read today (which was more complete than the original one I read) gave a slightly different scenario. Still he is currently on trial for a felony charge on this.
You did not read the study. You read the article. Once again you are just repeating rabid journalist misinformation and misreporting of bad science.
It's extremely common and equally annoying. Journalists regularly report "The latest study found X" usually without citing the study (at best you get the Uni or other organization that conducted the research and the promise that it was "a recent study" or "the latest." But usually what is claimed in the press releases (in the case of what you cited) or articles is not what is claimed in the study, and even then looking into the research shows serious flaws, if not with the way the search was conducted, at the very least (as in this case) with the claims being made on the basis of the outcome of the experiments.
In this study they used equipment operating beyond the normal capacity of cell phones in ways in which cell phones would not normally be used. Specifically they found that operating a radio device at the theoretical maximum power of a cell phone transmitter continuously at the frequencies of cell phone transmissions within 30cm of the cockpit instruments caused aberrations. It is specifically stated in the study that they did not use actual cell phones for these experiments.
Your wish has been granted. Don't you feel better? Now the Air Marshals are onboard to enforce the rules, ensuring you don't get up to go to the bathroom, or act too curiously. There have always been a whole bunch of crazy rules on airplanes, which carried the weight of federal law. Now there are air marshals watching everything you do to make sure you do not break those laws, though they cannot properly handle their firearms (I tried to find other articles, but the articles I linked mentioned several incidents of leaving firearms in bathrooms and one in which a firearm went off in a bathroom) and are not well trained. They are also overworked and underpaid, which has real consequences (for the click-challenged, sleeping air marshals with their guns openly available to terrorists present little protection).
Still, be that as it may, the short and sweet of it is don't fuck with air marshalls. They have guns, they are tired, cranky, and edgy, and have the right to shoot you with minimal cause and arrest you with no cause. So for those of you who wanted to have enforcement of the seatbelt rules, you now have it at the barrel of a gun. Ditto for smoking or using the bathroom or cell phones. In the article a man was immediately arrested in the UK for having his cell phone on (though not in use) and sentenced to 12 months in jail. That'll teach that terrorist bastard, eh? I would have to wonder what the US would have done.
Now, I have been flying for years (though not since 9/11) and it has been pretty well obvious that being on a plane is serious business (for instance, even before 9/11 smoking or saying the words bomb, gun, etc could get you booted/thrown in prison in the US). I understand it is important to have rules for safety since a cock-up on a plane is no joke, and I follow the rules assiduously. But I have to wonder if what we are doing now is not too much of the keeping the ordinary passengers' seat belts on and not enough of the stopping the real terrorists.
I think the anti-cellphone people are the assholes, but that's just me. I dunno, who is more the asshole? Someone talking on the phone or someone running around beating people up for being on the phone? As for the idiot with the "shut up for four hours," hey, when you're making a million dollars a minute or losing it depending on split second decisions for which complex information is required four hours incommunicado is a long time!
In the case of the speakers, I would suspect these problem have more to do with the electric motors used to vibrate the phones (also known as Big Fucking Magnets) interfering with speakers (also known as Big Fucking Magnets) than with any radio interference.
As far as the TV, I have never seen a TV or monitor interfered with by a cell phone and use them all constantly and together and right on top of one another. But I wonder if this is similar to the old problem where the blender/vaccuum cleaner/etc caused TV interference. IIRC this is also a function of the electric motor.
Take off every brassiere!
For Great Justice!
All your Breast are belong to us!
Lightning would cause a problem mainly through heat and vibration (the loud noise lightning makes which you can hear for miles is air vibrating), but that heat would happen outside the aircraft, so its effect would depend on where the lightning hit, I would imagine...
Actually, if you RTFA yourself you would find that it has not been determined really. The research that was done did not reflect the actual application of cell phone technology. I would say the experiments essentially showed that current cell phones would not truly disrupt planes, but that could be shown as innaccurate.
I was once told by a gas station attendant who had come back from a safety course (it was EXXON. Ride the Tiger baby!) the cell phone fire scenario is also due to static electricity. The claim is that static from the antenna might cause a problem. There is the additional possibility of the electronics inside the phone igniting gasoline fumes which permeate the case, but I would think this is something that could be tested for. Gasoline fumes are volatile but I have to wonder if they are really volatile enough to be ignited by the amount of current running through a cell phone.
A new committee has been formed to study this phenomenon, consisting of The Verizon Guy "Can you hear me now? Good!", James Earl Jones, The Sprint X-Files Clone Guy, Laurence Fishburne, and the Kami the HIV Infected Muppet (as an education consultant).
Actually, I was mostly joking. I have read the actual research (well, I am reading through it now) and it seems that this is another example of bad science turning out an irresponsible academic paper with skewed results which are then sensationalized by "journalists" who don't even read the paper they are reporting on (but write at length out of their ass). Pretty much SOP.
What *should* have been the headline was "Researchers find it is impossible to affect airplanes with cell phones" though even that is kind of innacurate. They found that if you could get a device to transmit continuously on cell phone frequencies at the maximum power that a cell phone might be known to operate at and then put that device 30cm from the equipment in a cockpit there could be minor disruptions in instrumentation. Maybe someone who is more of a radio geek than I am could come up with a much more nefarious and effective device (effective from a longer range, for instance), but a cell phone does not fit the criteria of the device they used to disrupt service.
I have noticed that people tend to talk much louder on their phones than they normally talk. This is what ticks me off - when I am in a quiet setting like maybe a restauraunt and then someone uses their at-a-soccer-game voice.
This is because their phone/service sucks. On many phones if you do not yell no one can hear you (and even then it is sometimes problematic. This was the case with my previous Samsung/Sprint combination. With my nokia 3590 and at&t using gsm I can speak with a normal voice even with the phone slightly away from my face (like while taking down a number) and the other person and I have no problem hearing each other.
I think it is silly when cell phones do not have a higher range for their volume controls, since this is the cheapest thing to change and dramatically changes the customer experience w/r/t how the reception is perceived (if you can turn it way up and hear, then you will think you have ok service as long as you aren't cut off). Too bad everyone can't have phones designed by Spinal Tap! :)
Except that it is not. If you read the actual study that was done, you will find the conditions under which they were able to cause disruptions had nothing to do with the conditions under which a cell phone is operating normally. Though the study does present an interesting terrorist scenario with modified equipment.
IN short, this is something that should be worked on to prevent terrorist attacks, instead of being used against normal cell phone users. Since the airlines will continue to claim the problem lies with the passenger and not fix the real problem, they will create a situation that allows for terrorist attacks (just like when they refused to pay for a lock on the cabin door).
I'd like to see the pile of moderator crack it took to mod your thread redundant and offtopic. Damn moderator trolls!
Unfortunately they spend a substantial amount of their money on Congresscritters. Probably more than they would spend on retrofitting, but the point for them is not to have to listen to you ;).
How much is your bribery budget? Feed a Congresscritter today! :)
It would be interesting to find out. In the US, with the advent of Air Marshals, even the smallest infractions are now enforced (a man was tackled and arrested by the Air Marshals for *wanting* to go to the bathroom while the seat belt sign was on. He had asked the flight attendant repeatedly to let him go, but never actually went...) The Article, which no one reads, talks about a man being sentenced to 12 months in prison in the UK for having his cell phone on (and not using it) during a flight.
I am annoyed to find out, however, that the whole thing is bogus. Once again "journalists" (what passes for them these days) misreport findings in an uncited study that was flawed in the first place. The study *did not* find that cell phones disrupt flights. They did not even use cell phones for their tests. So the science behind this simply is not there.
Was this a personal aircraft? You know it would be interesting to hear from pilots of small aircraft on the effects (or lack thereof) on their instruments. I bet their stuff is more robust in this case.
I think the poster was talking about the possibility of terrorists purposefully bringing on cell phones to cause disruption, as cell phones in themselves, even multiples, would not arouse confusion (ok maybe 100, but if they said they worked for Sprint/AT&T/Motorola that might explain it away).
Also, I would say that whereas I would hope EMP bombs (or other bombs) would be recognizable to the high school dropouts our illustrious government employs for security and then refuses to train (ahem), I would say it would be fairly unlikely that such devices would be recognizable if they had been disassembled and smuggled into the plane for assembly there, particularly as parts of other electronics (like cell phones or radios). Yeah by the way can you tell that I am a little upset that the *ONE* thing the govt could have done to prevent another 9/11 is the thing they refuse to do, whereas they use it for an excuse for everything under the sun (including pig farm subsidies and rollbacks on environmental laws)?
No, one is enough. Now that it is known cell phones disrupt planes all Good Patriotic Americans will leave their cell phones in their SUVs. (As usual, Foreigners can go to Hell...) If you take a cell phone on a plane you are a terrorist. If you are not with us you are against us. Hallelujah! :) :P :)
Terrorist Threat Level for this message: Taupe! :)