Having lived within broadcast of the metro Atlanta news for decades, I find the explanation that this was just a software glitch to be somewhat suspicious.
Blaming technology is an easy thing to do, and very common in Atlanta. It is an explanation that makes people laugh with frustration and lose interest quickly in the story. Even better, there's no one that has to take the fall and take the blame for the problem. It's a common tactic that's been used a lot. In a city that doesn't want to scare or blame any person or corporation, technology is an easy scapegoat.
Certainly the situation could have been a technology failure. The problem is that it took so long for them to let the public know what the cause was. The security lines were opened, what?, two hours or so after the panic that caused them to be closed. But no explanation then. No explanation came forth until the next day in fact. Either they opened up the security lines when they were unsure of what was on those screens (gleep!) or they knew what the explanation was and knew there was no real security risk. But why keep the cause secret for so long afterward if it was a simple technology error? My opinion was that they needed to find a better scapegoat; and concocting a plausible way to blame technology (as usual) took a bit of time.
While the baggage screeners might not know when random tests are run, their supervisors damn well should. If baggage inspection is a real time operation it'd be tragic if a "test" image with a fake bomb appeared over baggage with a real bomb. While the screeners are in the dark as to when the tests are run, the security system itself should clearly know when the tests are run.
Hey, here's an idea. Cut some metal words out of old scrap metal and make the phrase "This is a test" and put it inside your luggage. I wonder what kinds of things you could get through the screening system:-)
This is great news. There's a coffee shop in my town with a friendly college crowd and free Wi-Fi networking.
My problem arises when I take my old Powerbook in there and realize I need to use the restroom. The crowd is pretty honest and I'm pretty quick in the facilities, but I really hate packing up my whole setup and taking it into the stall with me. This might allow me that feeling of security to leave my old Powerbook out while I take care of business.
While there's still some risk involved, it sounds like this will be just the thing to make me:
Carefree and proud to be a Mac owner.
Careless about risks and have my computer stolen.
Embarassed when someone bumps my table and I'm caught with my pants down.
I'd probably risk this with my old model Powerbook, but I don't think I'd do so if I upgraded to a new MacBook Pro.
This sounds like a good thing from the perspective of those who have seen abusive lawsuits over questionable patent claims. I can't help but think that from a lawmaker or business perspective it's RIM's opinion that will be viewed as a "sore loser" rather than "moral reformer".
It's more likely this call for attention from RIM will encourage more curiousity of how to exploit these legislative loopholes rather than start the reformation of a broken system. It's a new way to milk your competitor. The only people hit by this will be the slow, poor, or legally-inept losers. And those are irrelevant voices in making legislation today anyway it seems.
I really hope I'm wrong though. Reformation has to start somewhere.
Of course it will. When marketing surveys indicate users don't understand the concept of version 10.10 (or they run out of Large Cats) then we'll see a rev of the major revision number. And a trend of naming releases after famous music groups. The first release will be...
Mac OS XI -- Spinal Tap
This one goes to 11!
A new lawsuit with Apple Records will start in anticipation of version 11.4 being nick named the "Fab Four".
what about the time it takes the image to be looked up in the database? i'm sure that would take it more time to verify...
I think the article is implying that the real utility will be in matching the physical face with the biometric data stored on the identity card. Whatever advances are made there are independent of the verification of the card to the government registry.
Create biometric data out of face holding attached to person with card.
Verify face to biometric data on ID card
Verify ID card codes to central database for authenticity
Biometric verification can be done parallel to waiting for the data about whether the card is authentic or not.
Heck, before the legislation setting up the ID cards passed, this speedy new biometric verification wasn't even broken to the public yet. All of the debate about verifying the biometric data in passing this ID card law was under the old school assumptions that it would be a friendly cashier or steward "verifying" that the person looked vaguely like the photo and was approximately the same height, weight, race, and age as listed in government records. Verifying the central records match the card is a problem that has to be taken care of regardless of the "speed" in verifying the biometric part with the human.
Of course, It's sort of disturbing that people knew this "recognition revolution" was in the pipeline but deliberately didn't say anything until after the legislative debate was over and all of the people worried about abuse of a system like this could be swept aside as science fiction freaks.
I'm still skeptical of the actual technique. (Heck, it's hard enough to verify "automatically" that a JPEG says HELLO WORLD when one has to deal with anti-aliasing and different fonts. How are they going to deal with people who gain or loose a lot of weight since the biometrics were taken.) But the real worry appears to be that the people developing it and supporting its development wanted it kept under wraps until all moral debate was silenced.
There are products out there like Sensage (http://www.sensage.com/) that can collect, centralize, and make available years of log data for an IT organization.
I volunteer to be the Sensage system administrator!!!:-)
True, but it's also covered in BLAME 101 -- When something goes wrong you need to identify, control, and correct the problem. It does no good to acknowledge security issues to the press or in your financial report if you have no response to them.
While you may not know who the real criminals are or whether they are inside or outside your firewall, it IS easy to establish internal policies ("No iPods indoors!") or provide a subtext to layoffs ("We are tightening security!") rather than actually having to diagnose or deal with the real threats right away.
Are good security policies really on the rise in corporations or is the need for blame?
The biggest issue is that not everyone will work on polish and bug fixing. Some will be working on development of new features. A good version control system should allow this state of affairs, but what will happen when someone working on the development branch gets a major new feature developed in the long six week time frame that others are working on the polish?
One faction will say, "Don't commit any new features until the next major release after this one!" while another faction will say "This is too important to wait through endless patch releases and another major release cycle!" The temptation will be to "just risk a few bugs" for this "major new feature" by those who don't really see the value of the polish right now. The offense will be that "any new feature" will require more polish, patches, or in essence de-values the work the polish team has been doing. Great amounts of spite and venom will be launched at each side.
Set a firm, clear policy about what the polish window will be and about the firm exclusion of new functionality that's independent of any particular technology before this starts and make sure everyone knows what that policy is. Not setting a policy is bound to cause chaos. Setting and then breaking a policy is bound to drive off any future desire to work on future "polish" release work.
I know someone working in k-3 education and they have been given a number of nice computers to use for testing and education purposes. I hear daily stories of horror issues that just drive the teachers crazy. These are Mac's they've been given suprisingly enough. They have no staff trained to use them, and whoever set them up got clever by putting the Dock in a non-standard place with hiding turned on and all sorts of other special customizations.
The programs they're supposed to use are pretty basic "multiple choice question/answer" testing programs with data files the teachers either get from the home office or make up themselves. But the teachers don't know how to work the computers so basically they let the students free on them to play games and do anything that a non-admin user can do under Mac OS X if there isn't a data file for testing the particular student.
Open Source at this level would have a pretty low set of standards to achieve. The multiple choice testing programs are trivial. Adding some typical games for the K-3rd grade crowd and you could functionally replace what the machines are used for today. If you could make the machines be trivial to set up, then your only obstacles would be political and financial.
When I participated in some security tests related to the banking industry, one thing that was never played around with was the announced timing of the testing window. There was a type of security test that involved surprise (e.g. testing clarity of thought of a bank teller in a hold up situation) but these didn't have announced testing windows at all: you compromised the test if the test subjects knew it was "just a test".
The type of test I participated in wasn't invalidated by this lack of surprise because it was deliberately designed to expose procedural flaws and systematic gaps that fell between different areas of responsibility. The lack of surprise was a nuscience in the design of the test, but it was planned for and accounted from the very beginning. Having an announced testing window was a necessary security feature and not a flaw in the test.
These tests either were performed within the announced window of time or they were cancelled outright. Delay was out of the question. Delay was insecure. Cancelled tests were a nuscience for the test teams because it meant almost a month delay before they'd be allowed to perform the test, but the insecurity introduced by saying "Oh wait, the tests are back on schedule" or "Oh we'll just delay the test window a few days" was unnaceptable to security.
I've heard a time (though I didn't participate) in a test where a piece of equipment failed the day before the two day test window. Without this piece of equipment data measurements would be fuzzed by an order of magnitude on one part of the test. A replacement was ordered but on the day the tests were to begin it still required a day of prep time. To you and me our first inclination might be to simply delay the test a day. That was not acceptable to the security team. The test went on with the bad piece of equipment and the test results were compromised but in only that part of the test. Another test window was scheduled six weeks in the future and the test team's budget was increased to have redundant pieces of certain test equipment on hand and ready as part of the design of new testing procedures.
What seems almost absurd was the idea of moving forward the timeframe of an announced security test. There were times when test teams were very ready ahead of time, but they used the time to double and triple check their preparation, take documentation for next test, meet and discuss the game plan, and use the extra time productively while waiting for the arrival of the upcoming announced testing window. Why not just go ahead with the tests? Because once again, moving the announced test window was a security risk. And performing the test outside a test window was considered a break-in by security, and unnecessary for properly designed tests by the test teams.
I know banking security differs from computer security, but it still seems rather insecure and dangerous to move an announced test window period at all. What's worse is that it seems unnecessary, unusual, and odd to move the test period forward. If the test requires surprise, then it's either a poorly designed test or it was compromised by having an announced test window to begin with. If we're dealing with computer security on an international scope, then it would seem incredibly helpful to take the extra test time and double check the game plan. Tests inside a single banking company with far fewer issues of timing, language, and politics welcomed an extra week to plan and prepare before most tests of even moderate complexity. It seems arrogant, ignorant, or careless to say "Oh, we don't need this extra time before the tests. We'll deliberately tamper with our security and throw away this extra time we could use to prepare and coordinate this very complex international test."
So what's really going on here?
Is this just a poor test design that graduated to an international scope?
Is this good test being ignorantly executed by teams on an international scope?
I used to work in a big newspaper. This is all just my personal opinion and nonsensical rantings. Don't sue me.
A website's editorial content or journalistic determination isn't the problem. Despite hard working researchers and reporters, more than 90% of the news came from the people. Press releases, internal leaks, revelations about a competitor. The news flowed in to the fax machines and telephones like a sewer. The editorial and journalist jobs were filtering the garbage, checking for bias and veracity, and then making it understandable. Other than a few high profile "investigative reports" the newspaper got exclusive tips because people go out of their way to pass them on to a big audience publication. Some people read the paper for those "breaking news" stories. And because the newspaper has an established audience, it will continue to get the juicy news tidbits. Having seen so much crap and biased stories, the editors on the paper are better at throwing away crap before it runs. A news website that runs an "Exclusive" because of a tip from a competitor that doesn't deal with 500 hot tips a day may be really running an exclusive tip, but more than likely is being played like a piano.
There's also a lack of trust about the web. Yes, even today. Let's look at coupons. The Sunday paper always sold bigger than any other because of the massive coupons enclosed. Most of them were crap and really only designed as feedback that "Yes, your ads are being seen" to the retailers. In fact, it seems that a web coupon would work better because it could be customized with a serial number and much more information encoded about the viewer. The problem is that consumers think of coupons as money. They ones that are printed in color on high-gloss, heavy weight paper are thought of as more valuable than the black and white newsprint ones even if they offer the same value. If that's your attitude, what would you think of a coupon that you printed out yourself on your own printer? Even if it had a barcode, unique id's, and far more valuable information to the retailer about your statistics, most people would view these "print it yourself" coupons as just one step up from counterfeiting or writing "Save 20%" on a piece of notebook paper. Worthless. There are still many people who bend over backwards to clip and save "real" coupons and this still offers real feedback about the value of newspaper advertising today. Even with the great improvement offered by the web, it's not a trend that's going to be changed without a lot of re-education.
Many websites I've seen have a determined and energetic editorial crew. That's great, but the news stories and editorials people write are just the bait. They aren't what keeps the reader coming back. People who don't understand the difference are confusing the journalistic content with the data content of a paper. For example, back in the eighties when I used to be big into comic books there was a newspaper called the Comic Buyer's Guide. No idea if it's still around today, but it was a weekly paper that offered editorial content about trends in comics, reviews, highlights of new writers and artists, interviews. Most of this very niche content were opinions I agreed with or subjects I wanted to read, but a big portion of the paper was the release schedules of when Marvel and DC would be putting out the next crossover series. I may have started picking up the paper because of the big Alan Moore or George Perez interview, but I became a regular reader because I got my lists of upcoming comics from them. Heck, even after I started to disagree with their attitudes and editorial stances, I still picked it up because of the data dump I was familiar with. The data dumps in newspapers are the sports scores, television listings, movie schedules, stock market results and many more. This data can today be dumped into the newspaper with no human intervention so it's very lucrative. Even some things like the personals, comics, horoscopes, and paid obituaries are set up to be constructed in a sim
Any bets this extension to RSS will be like what they did to Kerberos?
It's probably related to security. It'll allow users to "subscribe" to the latest set of exploits automatically. Users won't have to depend on infected emails or auto-run programs on CD's.
Inteligent Design is "science" once you redefine the term "science" to be more broad minded. It's like Microsoft redefining "Open" file formats to include Microsoft Word. *Heh* Perhaps we'll see an "Intelligent Document" format come out of Redmond soon.
This is one of the few conspiracy theories that I might actually agree with. Apple, and Sony have the need to push their own products- and damn anyone who wants them to change.
HP iPod? Dead
Apple ][ Clones?
Mac Clones?
Apple likes to be the only source..it's more profitable that way.
The trouble is that all of these situations are different and don't really suggest any sort of pattern.
HP iPod
This was a rebranded iPod with HP nameplate, almost like the U2 iPod except that Apple did no promotion of the HP product. HP sold it in places like Office Depot where Apple really had no sales presence. Killed by HP after the shift of the CEO's and a desire for the non-Carly compay to be perceived as a business, rather than consumer, powerhouse. If there was more subversive motivation behind it, it was from an Apple competitor (e.g. Creative or Microsoft) encouraging HP to drop their iPod.
Apple ][ clones
Competitors like Franklin were outright stealing the ROM code from Apple to power their clone. They didn't reverse engineer anything. There was no license agreement, no corporate cooperation; these examples were just outright theft but in an era when Intellectual Property laws weren't as clear in regards to computer code.
Mac clones
This was the pre-Jobs plan under Gil Amelio as CEO to license the classic Mac architecture and make money off of sales of the System 7.6 & System 8 OS. Many companies were interested. Steve Jobs returned with the "future" Mac OS and saw this initiative as both burdensome for future development and financially very unfavorable to Apple. If you recall new agreements were made and Apple made a couple of lame duck releases to fulfill the word of the old agreements. Companies lost interest in the new terms.
Now you're leaping to the ROKR and saying this fits the same Apple pattern? Not to my mind. Apple and Motorolla give the appearance that this is co-developed. Was it? That's debatable, but it's already a significantly different situation.
They're now saying that science class should include supernatural explanations--everything from leprechauns to poltergeists to the balance of bodily humours is now a legitimate part of Kansas' science curriculum.
Actually, we've been on this precipitous slope for years. I first noticed with Discovery... before long the Sci-Fi channel succumbed as well. Now my local Barnes and Noble files Anne Rice under Science Fiction.
Gah! Where will it all stop! Think of the children...
Unfortunately, it appears that Kansas does pretty well in standardized tests compared with other states (mid teens to mid twenties from the scores I've looked at). If this were Alabama which does pretty darn poorly and loudly screams that standardized tests shouldn't be the yardstick for judging education, then I can see this decision letting people just write off such a state's students' education completely.
My guess is that editorial cartoons and bumper slogans about this sad situation will focus more on the Oz connection than on the low intelligence angle.
"There's no sapien like homo!"
"Pay no attention to the Design behind the curtain"
"Lyings, and Teachings, and Boards, Oh My!"
"I do believe in spooks. I do! I do! I do! I do!" * "You'll believe in more than that before I'm finished with you."
But who knows, I thought "OUT OF VIETRAQ NOW!" would catch on.
I was looking for an email address for the Fisher College Dean of Students, but was only able to find a snail mail address.
Dr. Bonie Bagchi Williamson, Vice President
Co-curricular Life and Dean of Students
Fisher College
118 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02116
Actually, I think a written letter letting the Dean see that the scope and "bad press" of her action stretches far beyond Massachusetts would be better than a five emails expressing the same sentiment. I'm not familiar with this situation beyond the Globe's coverage but it's quite easy for positions in academia to be corrupted by their little circles of power and I think more than a few Dean's should be reminded that their little campus scuffles really effect people's lives for years.
But if anyone has an email address, I'd love to have it too:-)
Many have read the SCO demand as ignorance on their part; it repeated mentions in the text doesn't seem like a simple typo. Some have suggested that SCO simply referred to the result of an anticipated development schedule based on past development habits. But SCO has much more information produced from IBM than the public has. My first thought is that IBM probably made these 2.7 kernel references in the many emails and documents that we (the public) don't see. Perhaps SCO is referring to a remark in an IBM email or programmer note saying to "put this into kernel 2.7" or some such. I find it much more believable that SCO is trying to use IBM's words against them.
In this light, if IBM did make any casual remarks to 2.7 in its docs then it's IBM who looks like it's hiding development, code, or plans for a future development. Whether it existed or not, the 2.7 kernel was probably referred to as an abstract, future target. If it was mentioned in internal docs, then this call for the missing 2.7 information is just SCO putting IBM's lawyers noses to the grindstone and giving them a complicated distraction to have to explain away to the court.
True, it will amount to nothing in terms of their accusations of stolen code. The 2.7 kernel doesn't exist. But in the final weeks of discovery, it may be a more valuable way to pull IBM's lawyers' focus off other aspects of the case.
Since PostgreSQl is the successor to Ingres and is properly funded by DARPA - why would anyone bother with the older version?
Please note that this company is not specifically a technology company; their focus seems to be on investing. My guess is that they're going after the Intellectual Property and need the ownership of the proprietary code to set up a basis for sales, licensing, or litigation.
Perhaps they have other interests. Though they don't appear to be, they might be the Investor equivalent of Sanford and Son and see the Ingres code as having future value even if it isn't developed further. I don't see the appeal, but someone surely saw something in it. Their strategy may not be clear, but they certainly didn't buy it out of nostalgia.
If (as in SCOX's insane world) IBM did something wrong, and IBM has to pay them Five Brazillion Dollars
Actually, Brazil uses the Real as their currency and five Brazilian reais would be about $2.25 American bucks.
Jokes aside. This court case doesn't seem to be about money at all from IBM's side. They could have settled. They could have paid extortion fees. They could have gotten out of this mess much earlier and cheaper by just covering their own AIXsses. They have done much more for the state of Linux and the legal strength of open source by pursuing this as far as they have.
Corporations of course don't do things out of kindness or morality, but the results of this case show that IBM's open source speak and Linux efforts are really integrated into its profitability plans and not just marketing speak. That's probably one of the most re-assuring things that I've gotten out of this case and it has very little to do with the outcome of the SCO trial itself.
I know someone is going to comment to this saying that I'm wrong and that it would take too much space for all those filing cabinets, but I say that this is a perfect example of how I'm right. If they had another medium to check their data, this minor computer glitch could have been found and fixed, with no mess-ups.
Right now the jails are fighting for adequate storage space for the inmates. We could put the paper files in the jail cells to promote literacy. Once you learn to read and write well enough to alter your release date, you're considered rehabilitated.
I won't steal your thunder as many of the things you wrote of were the things that came to my mind when I read the links in this post and commentary. But since you beat me to the submit button, I'll post mine as a follow-up to yours.
Three Act Story Structure Variants
The long used outline of popular movies, genre fiction, and short stories. While the classic structure itself may not be patentable, variations from the "traditional" structure could be attempted. Someone patenting a science-fiction structure, or a wild-west structure, etc. I'd expect the comic book companies to take plot structure variants and get patents for a DC house structure, a Watchmen story structure, a treadmilll continuity structure and unlike trademarks (aka "house art styles") they don't actually have to be used to stay enforced. Say goodbye to being able to write creatively without a legal representation.
Presentation Variants
I've already heard before this ruling of some technical publishers pursuing patents on methods of e-document distribution and design. One design house I'm familiar with was patenting their variable resoultion layouts to accomodate European and American paper, their formats for their "tip" boxes on the page to "stand out", and their styling of words used in computer code uniquely from styles of regular book text. If those sorts of patents were already in the system, look out now for graphic designers patenting their unique page layout designs (such as in "Print" magazine or a coffee table art book). Let's hope this doesn't go as far as Manga and comics page layouts but I can't really see why it wouldn't if justifications could be assembled and the legal fees paid.
Fonts and Typefaces
Traditionally fonts and typefaces have struggled for even just copyright protection. I'd expect patent attempts on artistic expressions of certain bezier curves for issues of clarity, simplicity of implementation, ink conservation, attention drawing, and all sorts of other justifications people use for picking one font versus another. And the bigger font houses definitely have the lawyers and fees, they just need to get the law to agree with their threat letters.
I agree. I've measured a correspondence in my own interests with peaks of C8H10N4O2, but sometimes this chemical is overwhelming and I have to order decaf.
Slashdot Mirror
- Switch browsers from IE to Firefox
- Switch Operating Systems from Windows to Mac
- Switch Preferences from Women to Men
That leaves you in one of the smallest possible target audiences for... well... just about anythingHaving lived within broadcast of the metro Atlanta news for decades, I find the explanation that this was just a software glitch to be somewhat suspicious.
:-)
Blaming technology is an easy thing to do, and very common in Atlanta. It is an explanation that makes people laugh with frustration and lose interest quickly in the story. Even better, there's no one that has to take the fall and take the blame for the problem. It's a common tactic that's been used a lot. In a city that doesn't want to scare or blame any person or corporation, technology is an easy scapegoat.
Certainly the situation could have been a technology failure. The problem is that it took so long for them to let the public know what the cause was. The security lines were opened, what?, two hours or so after the panic that caused them to be closed. But no explanation then. No explanation came forth until the next day in fact. Either they opened up the security lines when they were unsure of what was on those screens (gleep!) or they knew what the explanation was and knew there was no real security risk. But why keep the cause secret for so long afterward if it was a simple technology error? My opinion was that they needed to find a better scapegoat; and concocting a plausible way to blame technology (as usual) took a bit of time.
While the baggage screeners might not know when random tests are run, their supervisors damn well should. If baggage inspection is a real time operation it'd be tragic if a "test" image with a fake bomb appeared over baggage with a real bomb. While the screeners are in the dark as to when the tests are run, the security system itself should clearly know when the tests are run.
Hey, here's an idea. Cut some metal words out of old scrap metal and make the phrase "This is a test" and put it inside your luggage. I wonder what kinds of things you could get through the screening system
My problem arises when I take my old Powerbook in there and realize I need to use the restroom. The crowd is pretty honest and I'm pretty quick in the facilities, but I really hate packing up my whole setup and taking it into the stall with me. This might allow me that feeling of security to leave my old Powerbook out while I take care of business.
While there's still some risk involved, it sounds like this will be just the thing to make me:
I'd probably risk this with my old model Powerbook, but I don't think I'd do so if I upgraded to a new MacBook Pro.
It's more likely this call for attention from RIM will encourage more curiousity of how to exploit these legislative loopholes rather than start the reformation of a broken system. It's a new way to milk your competitor. The only people hit by this will be the slow, poor, or legally-inept losers. And those are irrelevant voices in making legislation today anyway it seems.
I really hope I'm wrong though. Reformation has to start somewhere.
Mac OS XI -- Spinal Tap
This one goes to 11!
A new lawsuit with Apple Records will start in anticipation of version 11.4 being nick named the "Fab Four".
- Create biometric data out of face holding attached to person with card.
- Verify face to biometric data on ID card
- Verify ID card codes to central database for authenticity
Biometric verification can be done parallel to waiting for the data about whether the card is authentic or not.Heck, before the legislation setting up the ID cards passed, this speedy new biometric verification wasn't even broken to the public yet. All of the debate about verifying the biometric data in passing this ID card law was under the old school assumptions that it would be a friendly cashier or steward "verifying" that the person looked vaguely like the photo and was approximately the same height, weight, race, and age as listed in government records. Verifying the central records match the card is a problem that has to be taken care of regardless of the "speed" in verifying the biometric part with the human.
Of course, It's sort of disturbing that people knew this "recognition revolution" was in the pipeline but deliberately didn't say anything until after the legislative debate was over and all of the people worried about abuse of a system like this could be swept aside as science fiction freaks.
I'm still skeptical of the actual technique. (Heck, it's hard enough to verify "automatically" that a JPEG says HELLO WORLD when one has to deal with anti-aliasing and different fonts. How are they going to deal with people who gain or loose a lot of weight since the biometrics were taken.) But the real worry appears to be that the people developing it and supporting its development wanted it kept under wraps until all moral debate was silenced.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodies -- Juvenal
While you may not know who the real criminals are or whether they are inside or outside your firewall, it IS easy to establish internal policies ("No iPods indoors!") or provide a subtext to layoffs ("We are tightening security!") rather than actually having to diagnose or deal with the real threats right away.
Are good security policies really on the rise in corporations or is the need for blame?
The biggest issue is that not everyone will work on polish and bug fixing. Some will be working on development of new features. A good version control system should allow this state of affairs, but what will happen when someone working on the development branch gets a major new feature developed in the long six week time frame that others are working on the polish?
One faction will say, "Don't commit any new features until the next major release after this one!" while another faction will say "This is too important to wait through endless patch releases and another major release cycle!" The temptation will be to "just risk a few bugs" for this "major new feature" by those who don't really see the value of the polish right now. The offense will be that "any new feature" will require more polish, patches, or in essence de-values the work the polish team has been doing. Great amounts of spite and venom will be launched at each side.
Set a firm, clear policy about what the polish window will be and about the firm exclusion of new functionality that's independent of any particular technology before this starts and make sure everyone knows what that policy is. Not setting a policy is bound to cause chaos. Setting and then breaking a policy is bound to drive off any future desire to work on future "polish" release work.
I know someone working in k-3 education and they have been given a number of nice computers to use for testing and education purposes. I hear daily stories of horror issues that just drive the teachers crazy. These are Mac's they've been given suprisingly enough. They have no staff trained to use them, and whoever set them up got clever by putting the Dock in a non-standard place with hiding turned on and all sorts of other special customizations.
The programs they're supposed to use are pretty basic "multiple choice question/answer" testing programs with data files the teachers either get from the home office or make up themselves. But the teachers don't know how to work the computers so basically they let the students free on them to play games and do anything that a non-admin user can do under Mac OS X if there isn't a data file for testing the particular student.
Open Source at this level would have a pretty low set of standards to achieve. The multiple choice testing programs are trivial. Adding some typical games for the K-3rd grade crowd and you could functionally replace what the machines are used for today. If you could make the machines be trivial to set up, then your only obstacles would be political and financial.
The type of test I participated in wasn't invalidated by this lack of surprise because it was deliberately designed to expose procedural flaws and systematic gaps that fell between different areas of responsibility. The lack of surprise was a nuscience in the design of the test, but it was planned for and accounted from the very beginning. Having an announced testing window was a necessary security feature and not a flaw in the test.
These tests either were performed within the announced window of time or they were cancelled outright. Delay was out of the question. Delay was insecure. Cancelled tests were a nuscience for the test teams because it meant almost a month delay before they'd be allowed to perform the test, but the insecurity introduced by saying "Oh wait, the tests are back on schedule" or "Oh we'll just delay the test window a few days" was unnaceptable to security.
I've heard a time (though I didn't participate) in a test where a piece of equipment failed the day before the two day test window. Without this piece of equipment data measurements would be fuzzed by an order of magnitude on one part of the test. A replacement was ordered but on the day the tests were to begin it still required a day of prep time. To you and me our first inclination might be to simply delay the test a day. That was not acceptable to the security team. The test went on with the bad piece of equipment and the test results were compromised but in only that part of the test. Another test window was scheduled six weeks in the future and the test team's budget was increased to have redundant pieces of certain test equipment on hand and ready as part of the design of new testing procedures.
What seems almost absurd was the idea of moving forward the timeframe of an announced security test. There were times when test teams were very ready ahead of time, but they used the time to double and triple check their preparation, take documentation for next test, meet and discuss the game plan, and use the extra time productively while waiting for the arrival of the upcoming announced testing window. Why not just go ahead with the tests? Because once again, moving the announced test window was a security risk. And performing the test outside a test window was considered a break-in by security, and unnecessary for properly designed tests by the test teams.
I know banking security differs from computer security, but it still seems rather insecure and dangerous to move an announced test window period at all. What's worse is that it seems unnecessary, unusual, and odd to move the test period forward. If the test requires surprise, then it's either a poorly designed test or it was compromised by having an announced test window to begin with. If we're dealing with computer security on an international scope, then it would seem incredibly helpful to take the extra test time and double check the game plan. Tests inside a single banking company with far fewer issues of timing, language, and politics welcomed an extra week to plan and prepare before most tests of even moderate complexity. It seems arrogant, ignorant, or careless to say "Oh, we don't need this extra time before the tests. We'll deliberately tamper with our security and throw away this extra time we could use to prepare and coordinate this very complex international test."
So what's really going on here?
I used to work in a big newspaper. This is all just my personal opinion and nonsensical rantings. Don't sue me.
A website's editorial content or journalistic determination isn't the problem. Despite hard working researchers and reporters, more than 90% of the news came from the people. Press releases, internal leaks, revelations about a competitor. The news flowed in to the fax machines and telephones like a sewer. The editorial and journalist jobs were filtering the garbage, checking for bias and veracity, and then making it understandable. Other than a few high profile "investigative reports" the newspaper got exclusive tips because people go out of their way to pass them on to a big audience publication. Some people read the paper for those "breaking news" stories. And because the newspaper has an established audience, it will continue to get the juicy news tidbits. Having seen so much crap and biased stories, the editors on the paper are better at throwing away crap before it runs. A news website that runs an "Exclusive" because of a tip from a competitor that doesn't deal with 500 hot tips a day may be really running an exclusive tip, but more than likely is being played like a piano.
There's also a lack of trust about the web. Yes, even today. Let's look at coupons. The Sunday paper always sold bigger than any other because of the massive coupons enclosed. Most of them were crap and really only designed as feedback that "Yes, your ads are being seen" to the retailers. In fact, it seems that a web coupon would work better because it could be customized with a serial number and much more information encoded about the viewer. The problem is that consumers think of coupons as money. They ones that are printed in color on high-gloss, heavy weight paper are thought of as more valuable than the black and white newsprint ones even if they offer the same value. If that's your attitude, what would you think of a coupon that you printed out yourself on your own printer? Even if it had a barcode, unique id's, and far more valuable information to the retailer about your statistics, most people would view these "print it yourself" coupons as just one step up from counterfeiting or writing "Save 20%" on a piece of notebook paper. Worthless. There are still many people who bend over backwards to clip and save "real" coupons and this still offers real feedback about the value of newspaper advertising today. Even with the great improvement offered by the web, it's not a trend that's going to be changed without a lot of re-education.
Many websites I've seen have a determined and energetic editorial crew. That's great, but the news stories and editorials people write are just the bait. They aren't what keeps the reader coming back. People who don't understand the difference are confusing the journalistic content with the data content of a paper. For example, back in the eighties when I used to be big into comic books there was a newspaper called the Comic Buyer's Guide. No idea if it's still around today, but it was a weekly paper that offered editorial content about trends in comics, reviews, highlights of new writers and artists, interviews. Most of this very niche content were opinions I agreed with or subjects I wanted to read, but a big portion of the paper was the release schedules of when Marvel and DC would be putting out the next crossover series. I may have started picking up the paper because of the big Alan Moore or George Perez interview, but I became a regular reader because I got my lists of upcoming comics from them. Heck, even after I started to disagree with their attitudes and editorial stances, I still picked it up because of the data dump I was familiar with. The data dumps in newspapers are the sports scores, television listings, movie schedules, stock market results and many more. This data can today be dumped into the newspaper with no human intervention so it's very lucrative. Even some things like the personals, comics, horoscopes, and paid obituaries are set up to be constructed in a sim
Inteligent Design is "science" once you redefine the term "science" to be more broad minded. It's like Microsoft redefining "Open" file formats to include Microsoft Word. *Heh* Perhaps we'll see an "Intelligent Document" format come out of Redmond soon.
Gah! Where will it all stop! Think of the children...
My guess is that editorial cartoons and bumper slogans about this sad situation will focus more on the Oz connection than on the low intelligence angle.
"There's no sapien like homo!"
"Pay no attention to the Design behind the curtain"
"Lyings, and Teachings, and Boards, Oh My!"
"I do believe in spooks. I do! I do! I do! I do!" * "You'll believe in more than that before I'm finished with you."
But who knows, I thought "OUT OF VIETRAQ NOW!" would catch on.
But if anyone has an email address, I'd love to have it too :-)
In this light, if IBM did make any casual remarks to 2.7 in its docs then it's IBM who looks like it's hiding development, code, or plans for a future development. Whether it existed or not, the 2.7 kernel was probably referred to as an abstract, future target. If it was mentioned in internal docs, then this call for the missing 2.7 information is just SCO putting IBM's lawyers noses to the grindstone and giving them a complicated distraction to have to explain away to the court.
True, it will amount to nothing in terms of their accusations of stolen code. The 2.7 kernel doesn't exist. But in the final weeks of discovery, it may be a more valuable way to pull IBM's lawyers' focus off other aspects of the case.
Perhaps they have other interests. Though they don't appear to be, they might be the Investor equivalent of Sanford and Son and see the Ingres code as having future value even if it isn't developed further. I don't see the appeal, but someone surely saw something in it. Their strategy may not be clear, but they certainly didn't buy it out of nostalgia.
Jokes aside. This court case doesn't seem to be about money at all from IBM's side. They could have settled. They could have paid extortion fees. They could have gotten out of this mess much earlier and cheaper by just covering their own AIXsses. They have done much more for the state of Linux and the legal strength of open source by pursuing this as far as they have.
Corporations of course don't do things out of kindness or morality, but the results of this case show that IBM's open source speak and Linux efforts are really integrated into its profitability plans and not just marketing speak. That's probably one of the most re-assuring things that I've gotten out of this case and it has very little to do with the outcome of the SCO trial itself.
The real reason? Inter-Global Warming.
I won't steal your thunder as many of the things you wrote of were the things that came to my mind when I read the links in this post and commentary. But since you beat me to the submit button, I'll post mine as a follow-up to yours. Three Act Story Structure Variants The long used outline of popular movies, genre fiction, and short stories. While the classic structure itself may not be patentable, variations from the "traditional" structure could be attempted. Someone patenting a science-fiction structure, or a wild-west structure, etc. I'd expect the comic book companies to take plot structure variants and get patents for a DC house structure, a Watchmen story structure, a treadmilll continuity structure and unlike trademarks (aka "house art styles") they don't actually have to be used to stay enforced. Say goodbye to being able to write creatively without a legal representation. Presentation Variants I've already heard before this ruling of some technical publishers pursuing patents on methods of e-document distribution and design. One design house I'm familiar with was patenting their variable resoultion layouts to accomodate European and American paper, their formats for their "tip" boxes on the page to "stand out", and their styling of words used in computer code uniquely from styles of regular book text. If those sorts of patents were already in the system, look out now for graphic designers patenting their unique page layout designs (such as in "Print" magazine or a coffee table art book). Let's hope this doesn't go as far as Manga and comics page layouts but I can't really see why it wouldn't if justifications could be assembled and the legal fees paid. Fonts and Typefaces Traditionally fonts and typefaces have struggled for even just copyright protection. I'd expect patent attempts on artistic expressions of certain bezier curves for issues of clarity, simplicity of implementation, ink conservation, attention drawing, and all sorts of other justifications people use for picking one font versus another. And the bigger font houses definitely have the lawyers and fees, they just need to get the law to agree with their threat letters.
I agree. I've measured a correspondence in my own interests with peaks of C8H10N4O2, but sometimes this chemical is overwhelming and I have to order decaf.