Details About the Transaction(S):
Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) is using unsubstantiated claims of their IP rights to the Unix and Linux kernel (The core of their respective operating systems and distrobutions) source code to raise it's stock prices and force consumers to purchase SCO licenses.
Any Additional Information:
I understand you will be getting a number of simmilar comlpaints from others as the result from the posting of this online complaint form on a popular technical website, slashdot.org. Let me speak for others and for myself in saying that this is a very serious issue and the thousands of contributors to Linux and the rest of the world-wide Open Source community are outraged at the slanderous and unethical business practices SCO has demonstrated in the past months. It is not only a harm to those who are heavily involved in Open Source development, but anyone who distributes Linux or Linux-related software. I have a small business in Northern California, in which I am currently focusing on providing Open Source solutions to other small and midsize businesses in order to save money spent on software licensing and related costs. I undoubtedly claim that the unethical practices SCO is taking will affect, either indirectly or directly, my success in providing other small and midsize businesses with Open Source solutions. SCO must be silenced in their allegations and blatant FUD (Fear, Uncertanty and Doubt) to the public until they provide substantial evidence to the public otherwise.
This just made me realise, if some cereal company were to make "Linux Kernels" cereal, the publicity would be tremendous!! Just think of the commercials!
"Look Ma, there's no holes in my kernels!" "I know dear, that's why they are so good!" "Ma, I love Linux Kernels!" "And I love you, Billy!"
"Linux Kernels. Get yours!"
There could even be Tux on the front of the box!! People would dig it!!
Game testing is very mundane.. I'm near Lucasoft in the Bay Area, and I've heard from a few testers that:
1) You are hardly EVER hired on full time (always a temp, which means no benifits) 2) You're jobs are things like "Click every single one of these buttons in the menu and tell us if anything crashes" 3) You're usually laid off at the end of your temp position 4) Very long hours (especially considering the kind of work you're doing).
Maybe most people think of instant messaging as only for personal use because AOL were the ones that had a huge part in bringing it to the masses. Tell me, if Jabber was portrayed as an incredibly useful, professional corporate communication tool instead of a "chat program" (see, that word "chat" just makes it seem so non-professional), and you didn't have the history of AIM or ICQ or anything like that, it would be a lot like E-Mail is today. Do you not remember when E-Mail was rarely used in business? It wasn't that long ago... And there was a big fuss about that, too.
is if Instant Messaging has become so popular, how come corporations haven't accepted standardization of it's platform (I.E. Jabber)? Everyone's got incompatabilities with AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, etc. etc. So you've always either got a half-ass client that tries to do them all, or you have a bunch of different ones open all at once to keep all of your contacts happy. Why isn't the Jabber server being used like a corporate E-Mail server, instead of a central server governed by one, multinational company? In my mind, that's just bogus. Would you use fileserver.aol.com to store all of your sensitive marketing/accounting information? I don't think so. So why use a central server for all of your correspondance about the same subjects? Why waste internet bandwidth transferring files to someone 10 feet away from you in the office when you can send it to them through a private IM server? Hell, you can even require SSL connections!! What else could you ask for?
I'm thinking that this program, like most other things related to Microsoft, has some hidden implimentations.
Think about it - Remember when
MS got hacked, and they admitted that the hackers stole Windows source code? This program could be a coverup to *WHEN* source code gets leaked on the net. "Oh, Russia/China leaked our code!! War!!" instead of "Oh man, that source code has been leaked from when WE got hacked, and it's OUR fault! We can't do anything about it!!"
I took the liberty of tapping the City of Houston's phones when the negotiations with Microsoft were happening. Here's what I found:
MS: We know you use our software and don't pay for it! HO: How do you know that? MS: Because everyone does. If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS (sound of pinky finger going in mouth) we will expose you and your city's pirating ways! HO: Well, actually we have a new company to give us our office software suite. MS: Ha, ha ha!! That will never work! EVERYBODY uses Microsoft Office, you will never be able to exchange documents without corruption! HO: We ran into that problem when we upgraded from Office '95 to '97 acutally. MS: Ha, ha ha!! That is because we love money!! Err... wait. I mean, that is because of all the new features in Office '97!! Ha, ha ha!! HO: That doesn't sound like a good reason to me. MS:....Hold on a second.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
Congradulations to the South African Government!! Now, if we can only convince our friends in the US about the *real* "Homeland Security" dangers. We should be very concerned about this as,
1) Parts of the Windows source is being handed out to government bodies
And
2) Microsoft themselves have admitted that handing out source code would be a national security risk.
What's 2 + 2, again?
What a hopeful world we live in
on
Web Zeitgeist
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
When the top 100 searches on a search engine have mostly to do with entertainment (I.E. Spears, Football, Linkin Park, etc.)
If I was religious, I'd pray for the state of our people. What a horribly depressing top 100 list. Have we got nothing else to think about besides damned Brittany?
It's funny, just this morning (at 1pm) I was thinking of how cool SlashDot really is. I wake up in bed. What's the first thing I do? Take a whizz. What's the SECOND thing I do? Hop on SlashDot. Happy Birthday, everyone!! I don't post much, and have been reading Slashdot for only about 2 years, but you have brought the Internet and everyone that uses it an invaluble website that cannot be tarnished by corporations (besides the absolutely horrish MS ad I saw on one of the articles yesterday). The news is relevant, the news is to the point, and the news is interesting to us, the computer/science nerds of this age, in the year two-thousand and two. Congradulations, and I hope to see you at 50! (But definately not in person, Taco. =p)
I don't see how it would be so hard to create very general standards for a roaming profile to search a possibly mounted filesystem (USB Key?) for said information before going to defaults on the system (Bookmarks, address books, etc.). The key could be encrypted using open standards (Loopback encrypted filesystem). It could be mounted under a specific directory in the users' home (So you could use ~/keyring as a mountpoint for example) under *nix, so it would be easy for programs to search, and it would be secure (chrooted environments would still work). For PDA's/Cellphones, I dunno, make a USB port/chipset for them. =). Hey, you could even use Sun's newly donated elliptic curve technology for the smaller devices! And of course, just create standard databases (bookmarks, addressbooks, etc.) with XML.
You could even store your pr0n on the keyring too and not get caught by your gf. =)
I am absoloutely appauled at the behavior of Microsoft at this incident with MS Word '97 users. Wasn't it just a few months ago that Microsoft pledged to "Put Security First" in all of it's products? I guess this verifies that THAT entire thing was just a PR stunt.
You know, I have been thinking about this for the past few days, and I have to say - I've got a strange feeling that Microsoft is going down, HARD. And soon. They're just screwing themselves with every move they make.
Much like my old "slimeball of a boss" (Office Space quote intentional) which loved to confuse his customers into his overpriced tech. prices because "Well our techs had to clean out all of the corrupted DLL files *in the registry*... heh.. what an ass. He knew he had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe that's why he loved selling to our local retirement community the most. Easy sells.
I ran a BBS for 4 years as a teenager, (from 1996) and had a few "User Parties" myself. For some reason, especially after the first one, things went way differently afterward. The human element of virtual communities makes it very strange after you have talked with people with who you know only by their personality and words. Someone being older, or younger, or skinnier or fatter than you had expected changes your views on them weather you like it or not, weather you think it's right or not. Personally, I like knowing your friends through Virtual communities *only* through them, it makes it more interesting that way. There's no other way to have a relationship with someone without the assumptions/judgements that a physical world forces upon you.
I guess I'm a very lucky person to be a part of the generation that this article is talking about. My first experiences with computers at age 5 was with a Commodore 64, playing games like Zork, and fooling around with C-Basic with my brother for hours, days on end. When I was 13 I got a 286 with nothing but DOS on it. I called my first BBS at this age with an old friend at 2am. When it prompted me "What is your name:" we got totally freaked out - yet mystified that we had made a connection with a remote computer system somewhere in the world. We turned the computer off, unplugged everything from the wall (including the phone line), and went to sleep, shivering (not so much in fright but in excitement). This was the basis of my online experience. The next day came around and I called again, and chatted with the SysOp of the board, completely mesmorized that you could chat in real-time with another person over a computer. BBSes became my hang-out after (and before) school, playing online games like LORD and chatting in Message bases. When the internet came around, I was skeptical... And now that I've gotten used to it,... I'm *still* skeptical. User-friendliness has corroded the internet with flashy graphics and point-click garbage. That's why I'm sitting here on my Pent. 100 laptop with Linux, using Lynx to write this reply. =) I feel more at home here.
It looks like the elite hackers left some evidence that they in fact gained access to MS Servers, including their main ftp servers:
----
C:\> ftp
ftp> open ftp.microsoft.com
Connected to ftp.microsoft.com.
UR 0wn3d!!! M1cr0s0f7 h4x0r3d by dr. d00m, m4st3r 0f d1s4st3r, & ul7t4 l4z3r!! Gr33tz t0 4ll 1n th3 7o7!!
User (ftp.microsoft.com:(none)):
----
Is a spell checker part of the OS?
on
Is UNIX An OS?
·
· Score: 1
Some of the more extreme Unix geeks disagree. Many of them are academic purists who were raised to believe that only the kernel is the operating system, and that everything else is not. But they are ignoring the history of computers and how computers have evolved. Ihey have not kept up.
"Ihey have not kept up"?? Maybe this guy should invest in an operating system that comes with a spellchecker... =p~
It's people like that you wanna slap around with a large trout. Nobody else - Just them.
Slashdot Mirror
Details About the Transaction(S): Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) is using unsubstantiated claims of their IP rights to the Unix and Linux kernel (The core of their respective operating systems and distrobutions) source code to raise it's stock prices and force consumers to purchase SCO licenses.
Any Additional Information: I understand you will be getting a number of simmilar comlpaints from others as the result from the posting of this online complaint form on a popular technical website, slashdot.org. Let me speak for others and for myself in saying that this is a very serious issue and the thousands of contributors to Linux and the rest of the world-wide Open Source community are outraged at the slanderous and unethical business practices SCO has demonstrated in the past months. It is not only a harm to those who are heavily involved in Open Source development, but anyone who distributes Linux or Linux-related software. I have a small business in Northern California, in which I am currently focusing on providing Open Source solutions to other small and midsize businesses in order to save money spent on software licensing and related costs. I undoubtedly claim that the unethical practices SCO is taking will affect, either indirectly or directly, my success in providing other small and midsize businesses with Open Source solutions. SCO must be silenced in their allegations and blatant FUD (Fear, Uncertanty and Doubt) to the public until they provide substantial evidence to the public otherwise.
This just made me realise, if some cereal company were to make "Linux Kernels" cereal, the publicity would be tremendous!! Just think of the commercials!
"Look Ma, there's no holes in my kernels!"
"I know dear, that's why they are so good!"
"Ma, I love Linux Kernels!"
"And I love you, Billy!"
"Linux Kernels. Get yours!"
There could even be Tux on the front of the box!! People would dig it!!
A few shots were shown with Gollum with his hair dyed pink and standing on end, another with his eyes floating out away from his eyes.
Wow, his eyes floating away from his...EYES? That's some pretty damn good special effects, if ya ask me!!
Game testing is very mundane.. I'm near Lucasoft in the Bay Area, and I've heard from a few testers that:
1) You are hardly EVER hired on full time (always a temp, which means no benifits)
2) You're jobs are things like "Click every single one of these buttons in the menu and tell us if anything crashes"
3) You're usually laid off at the end of your temp position
4) Very long hours (especially considering the kind of work you're doing).
I'd rather work in an assembly line, myself...
"WOW! A shiny new Dell with a cool monitor!! Where can I get one? Slashdot likes it, so I simply *MUST* have one!!"
(Thoughts running through the marketing droids' heads at Dell 2 weeks ago when they submitted this "News Story" to Slashdot)
Slashdot: News for nerds, free marketing for corporations.
Mod me down!! DO IT! I *dare* you.
Maybe most people think of instant messaging as only for personal use because AOL were the ones that had a huge part in bringing it to the masses. Tell me, if Jabber was portrayed as an incredibly useful, professional corporate communication tool instead of a "chat program" (see, that word "chat" just makes it seem so non-professional), and you didn't have the history of AIM or ICQ or anything like that, it would be a lot like E-Mail is today. Do you not remember when E-Mail was rarely used in business? It wasn't that long ago... And there was a big fuss about that, too.
is if Instant Messaging has become so popular, how come corporations haven't accepted standardization of it's platform (I.E. Jabber)? Everyone's got incompatabilities with AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, etc. etc. So you've always either got a half-ass client that tries to do them all, or you have a bunch of different ones open all at once to keep all of your contacts happy. Why isn't the Jabber server being used like a corporate E-Mail server, instead of a central server governed by one, multinational company? In my mind, that's just bogus. Would you use fileserver.aol.com to store all of your sensitive marketing/accounting information? I don't think so. So why use a central server for all of your correspondance about the same subjects? Why waste internet bandwidth transferring files to someone 10 feet away from you in the office when you can send it to them through a private IM server? Hell, you can even require SSL connections!! What else could you ask for?
Slashdot.org "unexpectedly" recieves a large sum "donation" from Kodak, Inc.
"Kernel WHO?"
"It's the system command processor. The BRAIN!"
"..No, I mean in the airplane!"
"...It's the Linux kernel, damn it!"
"...What's that?"
"Somebody get her a $*@!ing manual to read!"
I'm thinking that this program, like most other things related to Microsoft, has some hidden implimentations.
Think about it - Remember when MS got hacked, and they admitted that the hackers stole Windows source code? This program could be a coverup to *WHEN* source code gets leaked on the net. "Oh, Russia/China leaked our code!! War!!" instead of "Oh man, that source code has been leaked from when WE got hacked, and it's OUR fault! We can't do anything about it!!"
They have *all these features*, but no CD-ROM?? What are these guys THINKING?!
I took the liberty of tapping the City of Houston's phones when the negotiations with Microsoft were happening. Here's what I found:
....Hold on a second.
MS: We know you use our software and don't pay for it!
HO: How do you know that?
MS: Because everyone does. If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS (sound of pinky finger going in mouth) we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
HO: Well, actually we have a new company to give us our office software suite.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! That will never work! EVERYBODY uses Microsoft Office, you will never be able to exchange documents without corruption!
HO: We ran into that problem when we upgraded from Office '95 to '97 acutally.
MS: Ha, ha ha!! That is because we love money!! Err... wait. I mean, that is because of all the new features in Office '97!! Ha, ha ha!!
HO: That doesn't sound like a good reason to me.
MS:
MS: Ha, ha ha!! If you don't give us ONE MILLION DOLLARS we will expose you and your city's pirating ways!
Congradulations to the South African Government!! Now, if we can only convince our friends in the US about the *real* "Homeland Security" dangers. We should be very concerned about this as,
1) Parts of the Windows source is being handed out to government bodies
And
2) Microsoft themselves have admitted that handing out source code would be a national security risk.
What's 2 + 2, again?
When the top 100 searches on a search engine have mostly to do with entertainment (I.E. Spears, Football, Linkin Park, etc.)
If I was religious, I'd pray for the state of our people. What a horribly depressing top 100 list. Have we got nothing else to think about besides damned Brittany?
It's funny, just this morning (at 1pm) I was thinking of how cool SlashDot really is. I wake up in bed. What's the first thing I do? Take a whizz. What's the SECOND thing I do? Hop on SlashDot. Happy Birthday, everyone!! I don't post much, and have been reading Slashdot for only about 2 years, but you have brought the Internet and everyone that uses it an invaluble website that cannot be tarnished by corporations (besides the absolutely horrish MS ad I saw on one of the articles yesterday). The news is relevant, the news is to the point, and the news is interesting to us, the computer/science nerds of this age, in the year two-thousand and two. Congradulations, and I hope to see you at 50! (But definately not in person, Taco. =p)
I don't see how it would be so hard to create very general standards for a roaming profile to search a possibly mounted filesystem (USB Key?) for said information before going to defaults on the system (Bookmarks, address books, etc.). The key could be encrypted using open standards (Loopback encrypted filesystem). It could be mounted under a specific directory in the users' home (So you could use ~/keyring as a mountpoint for example) under *nix, so it would be easy for programs to search, and it would be secure (chrooted environments would still work). For PDA's/Cellphones, I dunno, make a USB port/chipset for them. =). Hey, you could even use Sun's newly donated elliptic curve technology for the smaller devices! And of course, just create standard databases (bookmarks, addressbooks, etc.) with XML.
You could even store your pr0n on the keyring too and not get caught by your gf. =)
"How about ....Master of Disaster? Ultra Lazer. Doctor...DOOM!"
I am absoloutely appauled at the behavior of Microsoft at this incident with MS Word '97 users. Wasn't it just a few months ago that Microsoft pledged to "Put Security First" in all of it's products? I guess this verifies that THAT entire thing was just a PR stunt.
You know, I have been thinking about this for the past few days, and I have to say - I've got a strange feeling that Microsoft is going down, HARD. And soon. They're just screwing themselves with every move they make.
Much like my old "slimeball of a boss" (Office Space quote intentional) which loved to confuse his customers into his overpriced tech. prices because "Well our techs had to clean out all of the corrupted DLL files *in the registry*... heh.. what an ass. He knew he had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe that's why he loved selling to our local retirement community the most. Easy sells.
I ran a BBS for 4 years as a teenager, (from 1996) and had a few "User Parties" myself. For some reason, especially after the first one, things went way differently afterward. The human element of virtual communities makes it very strange after you have talked with people with who you know only by their personality and words. Someone being older, or younger, or skinnier or fatter than you had expected changes your views on them weather you like it or not, weather you think it's right or not. Personally, I like knowing your friends through Virtual communities *only* through them, it makes it more interesting that way. There's no other way to have a relationship with someone without the assumptions/judgements that a physical world forces upon you.
I guess I'm a very lucky person to be a part of the generation that this article is talking about. My first experiences with computers at age 5 was with a Commodore 64, playing games like Zork, and fooling around with C-Basic with my brother for hours, days on end. When I was 13 I got a 286 with nothing but DOS on it. I called my first BBS at this age with an old friend at 2am. When it prompted me "What is your name:" we got totally freaked out - yet mystified that we had made a connection with a remote computer system somewhere in the world. We turned the computer off, unplugged everything from the wall (including the phone line), and went to sleep, shivering (not so much in fright but in excitement). This was the basis of my online experience. The next day came around and I called again, and chatted with the SysOp of the board, completely mesmorized that you could chat in real-time with another person over a computer. BBSes became my hang-out after (and before) school, playing online games like LORD and chatting in Message bases. When the internet came around, I was skeptical... And now that I've gotten used to it,... I'm *still* skeptical. User-friendliness has corroded the internet with flashy graphics and point-click garbage. That's why I'm sitting here on my Pent. 100 laptop with Linux, using Lynx to write this reply. =) I feel more at home here.
I seriously doubt that MS leaves their servers at default security for their internal network....
Of course,...well, ya never know... =p~
It looks like the elite hackers left some evidence that they in fact gained access to MS Servers, including their main ftp servers:
----
C:\> ftp
ftp> open ftp.microsoft.com
Connected to ftp.microsoft.com.
UR 0wn3d!!! M1cr0s0f7 h4x0r3d by dr. d00m, m4st3r 0f d1s4st3r, & ul7t4 l4z3r!! Gr33tz t0 4ll 1n th3 7o7!!
User (ftp.microsoft.com:(none)):
----
Some of the more extreme Unix geeks disagree. Many of them are academic purists who were raised to believe that only the kernel is the operating system, and that everything else is not. But they are ignoring the history of computers and how computers have evolved. Ihey have not kept up.
"Ihey have not kept up"?? Maybe this guy should invest in an operating system that comes with a spellchecker... =p~
It's people like that you wanna slap around with a large trout. Nobody else - Just them.
-The Darkener
It's times like these that make me wanna get cable.
That and The Simspons. =)