It is my opinion that any contracter sufficiently clued in to actually install a Linux system is also sufficiently clued in to say:
"These SCO guys are running a scam. If they weren't IBM would have simply BOUGHT SCO by now.
"Wait and see how SCO's numerous cases are turning out. SCO is currently fighting a delaying war on all of them. Germany's high court told SCO flatly: 'Shut up liars!'
"So we don't have much to worry about, since IBM is fighting this to the end, to kill this crap once and for all. Meanwhile, how's your uptime? Viruses?... Thought so."
Expensive boondoggle.
on
Hack Your Ride
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
According to the article, mod chip have two categories:
Normally aspirated: Add a small bit of horsepower (normally less than you can feel in a double blind test) and lose significant mielage.
Turbocharged: turn up the boost, wear out the engine in a hurry.
What the article doesn't point out is that over-boosting your engine will cause it to wear out in a hurry. The engines in today's cars are built to handle a specific amount of power, and when the power is increased the wear on components is exponentially increased.
For those curious, our head engineer tells me that there is a cubic relation between engine RPM's and stress. Stress causes wear, and that's not a linear only relationship either.
When stress exceeds a certain value, BANG + expensive crunching noises happen.
---- Back in the good old days, re-chipping your ride could actually help (though not always). However, as the engineers learned more and more, the cars got better and better. Also bear in mind, performance is very important nowadays. The factory is getting all the performance it can out of tuning cars, while keeping mielage and wear in check. Also remember that these engines were designed for performance from word one.
The only reason to start reprogramming the engine controls is when significant hardware changes have been made.
As to the "Premium Fuel" thing, I'm doubtful, since all engines i've ever worked with use knock sensors, and are always running at the ragged edge of detonation anyway. There's quite a bit more involved than just fuel octane. Different formulations of fuel from different gas companies burn differently (gas is actually about ~40 or so chemicals in a cocktail). Altitude, engine temperature, air temperature, humidity, air filter cleanliness, RPM, engine load, and spark plugs all play important roles in detonation. Consequently, the chips are continually adjusting for all that. Supposed octane levels are just one more factor. Granted, some cars, like the Acrua NSX:) demand 91 octane anyway, but that's due to engine compression issues. You don't need a chip to take advantage of premium fuel, just a good OEM computer.
Like our head engineers always says: It takes a lot of work to outsmart factory engineers. And several million dollars.
Attention Aus IT departments: GO AHEAD AND BUY LINUX SOLUTIONS, IF THERE ARE ANY PROBLEMS, OUR LAW SAYS IT'S NOT OUR PROBLEM!
Not to mention the fact that this only comes into play if
"Should SCO's claims on Linux be upheld in US courts."
No Australian government agency is going to "Negotiate" with SCO. They're beaurocrats, and given the decision between "Take Action" and "Pass the Hot Potatoe to Someone Else" no sane official is going to do anything but pass it back to the contractors.
It's not only the reasonable and intelligent thing to do, but for once, it's politically expedient.
All the article says, in essence, is:
There appear to be problems with using Linux in gov't, but by law, those problems belong to the contractors. Procurement agents: go right ahead, you're indemnified by federal law.
This is actually good news, although it depresses me how often my sig has been appropriate lately...
Yeah. You can do this with an entire PC with an encrypted file system. Just use an 802.11b network connection for it, and you can power it off when the black vans pull up outside.
I would recommend a journaled file system like ReiserFS. I wouldn't use a laptop for this, since killing the AC will only make it run on batteries.
If you're extra paranoid, just make sure you have a very similar looking PC with the same IP, and other names and plenty of legit files you need to access (I recommend harmless bikini-clad models), and the same encryption. This will prevent the "hey, why did we see lots of 802.11 traffic and you only having one WiFi device? What's it talking to?"
Also the "Why is it encrypted, what do you have to hide?" to which you reply "my mother visits a lot, and I don't want her stumbling on my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model collection".
Another alternative is the "hidden server". A server at University of North Carolina running Netware 3 was accidentally drywalled into an alcove. A network admin found it a few years later when trying to figure out the "extra machine" on the network. He finally traced it's ethernet cable to a blank wall.
You could do the same, and just unplug the ethernet cable. An easy way to accomplish this would be if you've wired up your home with CAT5. Just have one socket connected to the server on the back side, then when the thugs show up, or when you aren't using it, unplug the cable from the wall to the router.
I'd be inclined to put disease organisms and national governments in the same category of vileness.
Hey, disease organisms are just trying to live and reproduce, same as you. Governments, on the other hand, just try to absorb all excess wealth and wield complete power over their subjects.
I really think an apology to disease organisms is in order.
Come to think of it, if I had to choose one group or the other to hate me, I'd take governments. Disease organisms are rarely lazy or incompetent, and can never be bribed.
A fine is depriving someone of their right to property. In fact, it seems to care enough about property rights to punish those who abuse the system.
Impounding property is depriving someone of their right to property.
Governments are empowered to do this. They are also empowered to take other rights away.
Lots of them.
Taking away these rights is called "Punishments" They are generally used as a negative reward to discourage bad deeds. Bad deeds like Microsoft abusing the capitalist system to take away the property rights of others when they steal business.
Capitalism does have a few flaws, one of them being that if someone can get a monopoly on an essential product, it's quite possible to leverage that into a dictatorship. For study of this, look up "Water Empires" and "water rights in the old west." I further recommend looking into the "robber barons" "trusts" "Carnegie Steel" and "Standard Oil".
Most governments dislike the idea that they can be owned by an enterprising company or person, so they enact laws to keep anyone else from getting powerful enough to challenge them. These are called anti-trust laws.
I think my sig is entirely appropriate to the current discussion.
He said "traction in the marketplace". That can be gained through a number of methods. Open Source is but one option. MS seems to have been able to gain marketplace traction in other ways.
It doesn't matter how it competes, just the end result. The point appeared to me to be that FOSSing Java would help it out, since monopoly lock-in doesn't appear to be an option for Sun anymore.
Since they're so brilliant at marketing, they'll probably make a section titled "Extremely Alternative Music."
The first page of the new "EAM" section will probably say something like: If you're offended by really bad music, you'll probably want to hit your browser's "Back" button now.
If, however, your taste in music causes others to be offended, you might enjoy some of the selections available by clicking "HERE"
"by clicking here, I affirm that I'm over 18 years of age, but still haven't learned to think like everybody else"
This post isn't copyrighted, so if you're reading, Wal-Mart programmers, go ahead...
Just remember: I BOUGHT A COPY OF "THE BULLET HITS THE BONE" FROM YOU AND THERE'S NO FREAKING WAY I'M INSTALLING MICROSOFT DRM ON MY COMPUTER JUST TO LISTEN TO IT! SEND ME A NON_CRIPPLED VERSION!
Still, I've got friends who run IE, and now they'll have incentive to learn the true joys of Mozilla FireFox.
Thanks for the heads-up.
hanzie
I think this is actually a shrewd move by SCO.
on
SCO Aims For The Feds
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Looks like they bit off more than they can chew, even before winning a single case
No, they haven't bit off more than they can chew. Their business model isn't about winning court cases, it's about squeezing money. The fact they're willing to go after the feds means that they're not afraid of anybody, particularly YOU, Mr. CEO, so pay up now, before we drag you in too.
Meanwhile, MS has been having some problems with governments defecting from the 1 Microsoft Way) so this helps them out.
Microsoft has gone out of it's way to point investors at SCO because any crap SCOX throws at Linux only makes them look less awful. It's a classic case of MS saying "Lets you and him fight!"
Of course, if they can get federal agencies (who aren't playing with their own money anyway) to pay them to shut up and go away, so much the better! I'm suprised that they haven't thought of this earlier.
There's even a tiny chance that they'll be able to argue for a change of venue based on the courts using FOSS now, and therefore not being disinterested parties. It won't throw the case out, but it might be a good delaying tactic, and time really is money.
They don't have Comedy Central, which is 1/3 to 1/2 of what I watch: Child Development: South Park Sociology: Dave Chapelle News: Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart
There's even optional: geography: Dave Attel
As I wrote to the CEO of Dish Networks, lack of comedy central will be the deal breaker.
Check the price of land in Taiwan. Check the price of land in Peru.
An old adage in business: for enough money ANYTHING is for sale. Taiwan doesn't have to show up and say: How much for your lovely country, they could just start buying up real estate. Asian bankers have bucks and backing. It wouldn't take much to start developing Peru, or whatever other country was available.
Look, they might need some new laws regarding percentage ownership, but it's not like they couldn't buy political influence too. I'm also not talking about throwing out the old population, just buy, develop and move in.
If Peru doesn't want the obvious economic benefits, there are certainly other countries that would take the deal.
Actually I lived in South Korea for a while. North Korea's best shot at surviving is to sell about 200 square miles of land along the DMZ to the highest bidder, and open up.
We're talking horribly rural land right next to some of the most highly developed urban land in the world. South Korea needs room and they'd pay the north big bucks for the development privlegd.
There would be some heavy social consequences (see East + West Germany) but North Korea is sitting on a ton of extremely valuable real estate (location, location, location) should the border open.
That'd work lots better than getting nuked (and yes, they would be).
I doubt Hyundai (South Korea) or Micron are particularly worried. In fact, they might prefer a war between the Chinas.
Personally, I wondered why Hong Kong banks didn't get together and go buy a small South American country, like Peru. Land is so expensive there that they're buying fill from mainland China to expand the island (with fiber optics and other necessary utilities built in as it goes).
If they had just bought Peru (or any other small, poor country) they could have done some terrific things.
Israel could do the same thing. Their neighbors would probably pay for the purchase. I'm certain they could even take the holy land with themselves. How many feet down? 6? load it onto freighters and ship it to wherever they bought. Bang, the mideast problems ends.
Slashdot Mirror
It is my opinion that any contracter sufficiently clued in to actually install a Linux system is also sufficiently clued in to say:
... Thought so."
"These SCO guys are running a scam. If they weren't IBM would have simply BOUGHT SCO by now.
"Wait and see how SCO's numerous cases are turning out. SCO is currently fighting a delaying war on all of them. Germany's high court told SCO flatly: 'Shut up liars!'
"So we don't have much to worry about, since IBM is fighting this to the end, to kill this crap once and for all. Meanwhile, how's your uptime? Viruses?
According to the article, mod chip have two categories:
:) demand 91 octane anyway, but that's due to engine compression issues. You don't need a chip to take advantage of premium fuel, just a good OEM computer.
Normally aspirated: Add a small bit of horsepower (normally less than you can feel in a double blind test) and lose significant mielage.
Turbocharged: turn up the boost, wear out the engine in a hurry.
What the article doesn't point out is that over-boosting your engine will cause it to wear out in a hurry. The engines in today's cars are built to handle a specific amount of power, and when the power is increased the wear on components is exponentially increased.
For those curious, our head engineer tells me that there is a cubic relation between engine RPM's and stress. Stress causes wear, and that's not a linear only relationship either.
When stress exceeds a certain value, BANG + expensive crunching noises happen.
----
Back in the good old days, re-chipping your ride could actually help (though not always). However, as the engineers learned more and more, the cars got better and better. Also bear in mind, performance is very important nowadays. The factory is getting all the performance it can out of tuning cars, while keeping mielage and wear in check. Also remember that these engines were designed for performance from word one.
The only reason to start reprogramming the engine controls is when significant hardware changes have been made.
As to the "Premium Fuel" thing, I'm doubtful, since all engines i've ever worked with use knock sensors, and are always running at the ragged edge of detonation anyway. There's quite a bit more involved than just fuel octane. Different formulations of fuel from different gas companies burn differently (gas is actually about ~40 or so chemicals in a cocktail). Altitude, engine temperature, air temperature, humidity, air filter cleanliness, RPM, engine load, and spark plugs all play important roles in detonation.
Consequently, the chips are continually adjusting for all that. Supposed octane levels are just one more factor. Granted, some cars, like the Acrua NSX
Like our head engineers always says: It takes a lot of work to outsmart factory engineers. And several million dollars.
This is supposed to be worrisome? HA
What this article actually says is:
Attention Aus IT departments: GO AHEAD AND BUY LINUX SOLUTIONS, IF THERE ARE ANY PROBLEMS, OUR LAW SAYS IT'S NOT OUR PROBLEM!
Not to mention the fact that this only comes into play if
"Should SCO's claims on Linux be upheld in US courts."
No Australian government agency is going to "Negotiate" with SCO. They're beaurocrats, and given the decision between "Take Action" and "Pass the Hot Potatoe to Someone Else" no sane official is going to do anything but pass it back to the contractors.
It's not only the reasonable and intelligent thing to do, but for once, it's politically expedient.
All the article says, in essence, is:
There appear to be problems with using Linux in gov't, but by law, those problems belong to the contractors. Procurement agents: go right ahead, you're indemnified by federal law.
This is actually good news, although it depresses me how often my sig has been appropriate lately...
Yeah. You can do this with an entire PC with an encrypted file system. Just use an 802.11b network connection for it, and you can power it off when the black vans pull up outside.
I would recommend a journaled file system like ReiserFS. I wouldn't use a laptop for this, since killing the AC will only make it run on batteries.
If you're extra paranoid, just make sure you have a very similar looking PC with the same IP, and other names and plenty of legit files you need to access (I recommend harmless bikini-clad models), and the same encryption. This will prevent the "hey, why did we see lots of 802.11 traffic and you only having one WiFi device? What's it talking to?"
Also the "Why is it encrypted, what do you have to hide?" to which you reply "my mother visits a lot, and I don't want her stumbling on my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model collection".
Another alternative is the "hidden server". A server at University of North Carolina running Netware 3 was accidentally drywalled into an alcove. A network admin found it a few years later when trying to figure out the "extra machine" on the network. He finally traced it's ethernet cable to a blank wall.
You could do the same, and just unplug the ethernet cable. An easy way to accomplish this would be if you've wired up your home with CAT5. Just have one socket connected to the server on the back side, then when the thugs show up, or when you aren't using it, unplug the cable from the wall to the router.
Good luck.
They work. They've been used for many years in high security areas.
Generally, when something very sensitive was going to be discussed, folks would say "Let's talk about that behind the screen door"
Hey, disease organisms are just trying to live and reproduce, same as you. Governments, on the other hand, just try to absorb all excess wealth and wield complete power over their subjects.
I really think an apology to disease organisms is in order.
Come to think of it, if I had to choose one group or the other to hate me, I'd take governments. Disease organisms are rarely lazy or incompetent, and can never be bribed.
A fine is depriving someone of their right to property. In fact, it seems to care enough about property rights to punish those who abuse the system.
Impounding property is depriving someone of their right to property.
Governments are empowered to do this. They are also empowered to take other rights away.
Lots of them.
Taking away these rights is called "Punishments" They are generally used as a negative reward to discourage bad deeds. Bad deeds like Microsoft abusing the capitalist system to take away the property rights of others when they steal business.
Capitalism does have a few flaws, one of them being that if someone can get a monopoly on an essential product, it's quite possible to leverage that into a dictatorship. For study of this, look up "Water Empires" and "water rights in the old west." I further recommend looking into the "robber barons" "trusts" "Carnegie Steel" and "Standard Oil".
Most governments dislike the idea that they can be owned by an enterprising company or person, so they enact laws to keep anyone else from getting powerful enough to challenge them. These are called anti-trust laws.
I think my sig is entirely appropriate to the current discussion.
Thanks,
hanzie.
I think ESR's point was 'It's better to be the acknowleged guru and consultant on an open system than the sole owner of an igonored language.'
It seems to me that ESR's opinion is that Sun has two choices with Java:
1: FOSS (Free Open Source) it, and as it grows, people will come to Sun for Java applications, service and consulting.
2: Leave it closed source, and watch Java be ignored and die.
--
Anyhow, that's what I think the entire debate is about.
He said "traction in the marketplace". That can be gained through a number of methods. Open Source is but one option. MS seems to have been able to gain marketplace traction in other ways.
It doesn't matter how it competes, just the end result. The point appeared to me to be that FOSSing Java would help it out, since monopoly lock-in doesn't appear to be an option for Sun anymore.
My 2 cents.
What do you believe the current problems are, and why wouldn't it have anything to do with them?
Since they're so brilliant at marketing, they'll probably make a section titled "Extremely Alternative Music."
The first page of the new "EAM" section will probably say something like: If you're offended by really bad music, you'll probably want to hit your browser's "Back" button now.
If, however, your taste in music causes others to be offended, you might enjoy some of the selections available by clicking "HERE"
"by clicking here, I affirm that I'm over 18 years of age, but still haven't learned to think like everybody else"
This post isn't copyrighted, so if you're reading, Wal-Mart programmers, go ahead...
Just remember: I BOUGHT A COPY OF "THE BULLET HITS THE BONE" FROM YOU AND THERE'S NO FREAKING WAY I'M INSTALLING MICROSOFT DRM ON MY COMPUTER JUST TO LISTEN TO IT! SEND ME A NON_CRIPPLED VERSION!
Sorry for the caps, folks, I had to get that out.
Thank you.
Just make sure you return it by 2001...
Heh.
Had me worried there for a second.
Still, I've got friends who run IE, and now they'll have incentive to learn the true joys of Mozilla FireFox.
Thanks for the heads-up.
hanzie
No, they haven't bit off more than they can chew. Their business model isn't about winning court cases, it's about squeezing money. The fact they're willing to go after the feds means that they're not afraid of anybody, particularly YOU, Mr. CEO, so pay up now, before we drag you in too.
Meanwhile, MS has been having some problems with governments defecting from the 1 Microsoft Way) so this helps them out.
Microsoft has gone out of it's way to point investors at SCO because any crap SCOX throws at Linux only makes them look less awful. It's a classic case of MS saying "Lets you and him fight!"
Of course, if they can get federal agencies (who aren't playing with their own money anyway) to pay them to shut up and go away, so much the better! I'm suprised that they haven't thought of this earlier.
There's even a tiny chance that they'll be able to argue for a change of venue based on the courts using FOSS now, and therefore not being disinterested parties. It won't throw the case out, but it might be a good delaying tactic, and time really is money.
I'm one.
Tonight, and I hope it won't be the last!
I love the picture. The caption says "The Previous Time Lords" and the picture is of three Daleks.
They don't have Comedy Central, which is 1/3 to 1/2 of what I watch:
Child Development: South Park
Sociology: Dave Chapelle
News: Daily Show w/ Jon Stewart
There's even optional:
geography: Dave Attel
As I wrote to the CEO of Dish Networks, lack of comedy central will be the deal breaker.
Parent should be modded to 5, insightful.
Check the price of land in Taiwan. Check the price of land in Peru.
An old adage in business: for enough money ANYTHING is for sale. Taiwan doesn't have to show up and say: How much for your lovely country, they could just start buying up real estate. Asian bankers have bucks and backing. It wouldn't take much to start developing Peru, or whatever other country was available.
Look, they might need some new laws regarding percentage ownership, but it's not like they couldn't buy political influence too. I'm also not talking about throwing out the old population, just buy, develop and move in.
If Peru doesn't want the obvious economic benefits, there are certainly other countries that would take the deal.
Actually I lived in South Korea for a while. North Korea's best shot at surviving is to sell about 200 square miles of land along the DMZ to the highest bidder, and open up.
We're talking horribly rural land right next to some of the most highly developed urban land in the world. South Korea needs room and they'd pay the north big bucks for the development privlegd.
There would be some heavy social consequences (see East + West Germany) but North Korea is sitting on a ton of extremely valuable real estate (location, location, location) should the border open.
That'd work lots better than getting nuked (and yes, they would be).
I think Micron qualifies.
I doubt Hyundai (South Korea) or Micron are particularly worried. In fact, they might prefer a war between the Chinas.
Personally, I wondered why Hong Kong banks didn't get together and go buy a small South American country, like Peru. Land is so expensive there that they're buying fill from mainland China to expand the island (with fiber optics and other necessary utilities built in as it goes).
If they had just bought Peru (or any other small, poor country) they could have done some terrific things.
Israel could do the same thing. Their neighbors would probably pay for the purchase. I'm certain they could even take the holy land with themselves. How many feet down? 6? load it onto freighters and ship it to wherever they bought. Bang, the mideast problems ends.
Walmart gets a very large portion of their stuff from China. It would probably cause prices to rise on darn near everything in the US.
That would not necessarily be a bad thing. Probably help out domestic manufacturing.
Sorry I just burned my mod points, or I'd give this +1 insightful.
Who would be stupid enough to host SCO'S website? They obviously have a contract* with their current ISP.
I can't imagine any ISP being willing to accept the hits that SCO is probably getting.
Let's face it, SCO is in the middle of stealing free software from MILLIONS of people. Some of them are going to retailate.
(*Contracts are what you use against people you have relationships with -- Darl)
How do you see the 500/hour raw submissions? I imagine it would be an interesting read every now and then.