We knew this would eventually happen. Hell, SCO knew they would end up in this type of hot water. The whole problem with this mess is that they don't care if they lose.
The connection between themselves and Microsoft is firmly established now. I guess it is still open to debate if Microsoft was the company that came up with the idea of using SCO as a massive FUD machine against Linux, or if they simply started backing SCO once they realised what potential that would have. My personal guess would be that you could probably trace the very idea back to Redmond, but that's really irrelvant here.
For all the time this has been going on, there has been a blanket of FUD over Linux. Most people here saw through it, but even on Slashdot you could find posts along the lines of "...but what if SCO is actually right and their IP is in Linux..." The business world, getting their news from sources like Forbes, had a far different perception. To them, Linux suddenly became a poison pill that no IT manager would touch. You may believe Linux's reputation will eventually recover, but SCO was able to plant seeds of doubt in so many minds in the mean time.
The real trajedy here is that this type of tactic has made SCO management and board members rich, SCO employees unemployed, Linux tarnished in the eyes of the businessman, and most likely nothing will ever be done to punish those responsible for the lies.
Google is in an amazing position to take on eBay if you think about it. Aside from pre-existing brand recognition, imagine having the power of listing auctions knowing that they would be included in google searches? Instead of reaching the vast numbers of eBay browsers, you would be reaching the much, much greater number of Google users.
I forget the exact piece of software involved, but a few years ago an Irish friend of mine nearly went postal when the software he was using insisted on listing his Republic of Ireland address as being in the UK. That's a huge insult to anyone who lives in Ireland.
When the annual review comes up the people that take pride or work hard will move ahead.
A few years ago my job (programming) started to suck very very much. I started to slack, and I pushed to boundaries a little more every day. Over the coarse of a year I dropped from an 8-hour work day to 5-6, and most of those hours were spent surfing.
My manager called me into his office out of the blue, and I figured the time to answer had finally come. Instead, he gives me 1,000 stock options, a certification that said "Keep up the good work", and a 5% raise.
Mystery solved?
on
Life After Doom
·
· Score: 1, Interesting
Did the article get updated, or am I missing something:
Hollenshead also notes that an as yet unidentified developer with 'a name that people recognize' has licensed the Doom 3 engine.
From the article:
Raven Software has licensed the engine for the still-under-wraps "Quake 4".
A couple years ago a venture capitalist friend told me about a new startup he was involved with. It sounded promising. But the next time I talked to him, he said they'd decided to build their software on Windows NT, and had just hired a very experienced NT developer to be their chief technical officer. When I heard this, I thought, these guys are doomed. One, the CTO couldn't be a first rate hacker, because to become an eminent NT developer he would have had to use NT voluntarily, multiple times, and I couldn't imagine a great hacker doing that; and two, even if he was good, he'd have a hard time hiring anyone good to work for him if the project had to be built on NT.
Not trolling here, but this opinion piece is stupid. Hell, just look at that quote above. "He couldn't be a first rate hacker since he obviously chose NT voluntarily." According to the author, there's no way to succeed if you choose to build on NT.
Knowing Python doesn't make you a "first rate hacker". Any decent programmer can pick up a language like python in a day or two. A good hacker (i.e. a programmer that a company would want to hire) is someone who can take their previous experience and apply that to the problem at hand, using the tools available. Saying "...but I know Python" is the same as saying "...but I know Assembly" when you have a bunch of C++ code to write.
We all know that one of the main uses (I couldn't say the main for sure) for mod chipping is piracy. Theft of intellectual property is rarely, if ever, part of modifying one's car, clothing or house.
We have laws that forbid intellectual property theft, and Sony is free to go after anyone who copies games using those existing laws without needing draconian legislation like the DMCA.
If the only possible purpose of these chips was to facilitate IP violations then they might be on the right track...
My old company (a hardware company) just sold off its software division to another software company. Bottom line is that nobody was/is buying, and the budgets for multi-million software deals just aren't materializing.
For the past 4 years companies have been forced to tighten/halt their IT spending, and they may still be saying "if we could last the last 4 years with our current software, perhaps we can last a few more..."
The guy wasn't infringing on their patent. He didn't make those seeds. If I pulled my car up in front of your house in the middle of the night, threw an box full of books onto your front porch, and then drove off, could I then drive over to the police station and tell them that you stole my books? What if I waited a week, and in that time you sold those books? Are you a theif then?
I fail to see how this is any different. Except maybe that in the case of crops, cross pollenation not only adds the genetically modified stuff to this farmers field, it also reduces the amount of non-modified seeds, because only so many seeds can be produced in a given amount of space. That hardly seems fair to the farmer.
Reading through the comments, it's clear that people don't understand what this case is about. This isn't a case where a farmer had some Monsanto seeds blow into his field and suddenly was facing a lawsuit by Monsanto. He deliberately saved the seeds from the plants and admitted in court he knew they were from a Monsanto plant. Then he replanted the next year with those seeds.
Regardless of how you feel about this case, this guy wasn't caught with a few plants that had blown into his field. He was collecting the seeds from the patented plant and planting them himself.
Personally, I think (shudder) Monsanto deserved to win this case. The farmer was infringing on Monsanto's patent, and this case really is as simple as that.
The biggest complaint I'm reading is "who wants to pay for delivery?" Well, me, for one. The charge is $7, but otherwise the food isn't much more expensive (some more, some less).
Is it worth it? You bet. I hate grocery stores -- they are usually jam-packed with rude assholes, and even a modest shopping list will take an hour from your day. I'd happily pay $7 to avoid that frustration-filled hour of my life.
To properly illustrate all the privacy concerns would take hundreds of pages, but let's gloss over the main one.
We needn't speculate either, we can use a real world example -- Prada stores. Prada, in an RFID trial, put an RFID chip into their customer's "Prada Shopper Card." When a frequent buyer of Prada walked into their store, the scanner would pick up the RFID from the card, and a salesperson would immediately know who the person is, how much they've spent in the past, and what kind of clothes they liked.
Some of you are probably saying "That's great! They could offer better service to their customers." I'm sure that was the idea behind the use of RFID tags as well. While I don't disagree that this is potentially a positive use, the amusing thing is that Prada discontinued this trial when it became known that, though the customers didn't mind a salesperson being able to see all their past purchases, they did mind that they could also see the size of the clothes.
That's the whole point. There's always some information that you'd like to keep private. For the rich Prada shoppers it was their clothes size. For others it's their past shopping history.
I'm an independant contractor, and when I sign my contracts (usually through a headhunter-type firm) there are provisions in my contract for assumption of IP violation risks and liability for my work. In other words, I agree to take responsibility for any and all IP violations that arise as a result of my work.
Normally this isn't a big deal, as the gist of these types of clauses is to prevent contractors from plagerising existing code or assuming full responsibility if they do. However, if you are a contractor who is in a position where you have to recommend a software product or hardware vendor, this SCO shit can be a huge black market for open source adoption.
A normal, independant contractor should not and will not assume this type of risk if they are smart. Even if they are sure that SCO's case is bunk (as I am). They probably will lose their contract regardless, and the cost to an independant contractor would be huge.
In other words, good luck finding contractors who willingly will reccommend that a company adopt Linux now.
Thankfully my wife is an IP lawyer, so I'm ready for a fight if need be, but I don't think most contractors are as lucky as me.
The article is very clear: privacy groups aren't just arguing that Google is violating privacy, they are arguing that Google is violating the law (by violating privacy).
It seems that European privacy law is much more strict than US law, and by retaining a subscriber's email even after they have deleted it or cancelled their account Google is breaking those laws.
Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales, the researchers found after tracking sales of 680 albums over the course of 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. Matching that data with activity on the OpenNap file-sharing network, they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found.
I think this information needs to be approached skeptically, as there's no way to measure reliably "what would have happened." Given a lack of P2P sharing, can you say for certain how many CDs you would have bought/would not have bought? Of course not.
If CD sales for a popular download increase by 2%, can you ever prove they wouldn't have gone up 3% if not for downloading?
Having cancelled cable more than a year ago, I find I still miss a few tv shows: CSI, Sopranos, [don't hate me] Survivor, etc. I've bought all the Soprano DVDs, and will probably buy the CSI DVDs as well, but what I really want is a way to download these shows for a small fee ($1?) and watch them add-free.
Right now, I download them for free.
I won't ever go back to watching TV, but the networks can get some money out of me by offering a show online.
The supermarket card is the perfect example of what can happen with RFID gone bad. Obviously, supermarket cards collect individual buying habits of customers. This really isn't in dispute or something to hide. The scary part is what can be done with that data that goes well beyond just marketing information.
There have already been two cases (that I'm aware of) in which data collected by supermarket cards has been used in court. The first was a case where the info was used to show that a man had a habit of buying very expensive wines, and was successfully used to argue that he could therefore afford more in allimony than he was initially supposed to pay. The second case involves a man suing the grocery store for slipping while shopping. The store attempted to use the man's buying history to show that he was likely an alcoholic.
Scared yet?
How about RFIDs? How can they be miss-used? Well, just look at EZPass, the toll-booth system that uses RFIDs to automatically charge motorists. That info, in the state of IL, has been supoenaed 11 times already. In one case to prove infidelity in a divorce case.
Now imagine how many places will use RFIDs. Every store. Public places. EVERYWHERE. Compile and cross-reference this data and you can assemble a complete picture of a person.
This is not "tin foil hat" material. It IS happening and it WILL continue if you don't do something.
Think of how this will change the life of a disabled person, who may be unable to type?
And as for presentations, who says you have to stop your speech to scream "NEXT SLIDE". Imagine a presentation package capable of picking up from your presentation exactly when you'd like the next "slide" (useless word since you could now do much more than you are constrained with using Powerpoint).
Imagine, during a presentation, being able to say "If you look at the sales figures for the year..." and have your presentation automatically display those figures.
Lawrence Goldfarb, managing partner of BayStar, says that senior executives at the software giant had telephoned him about two months before the investment. Would he be interested in investing in SCO, they asked? Goldfarb wouldn't identify the executives, but says neither Chairman William Gates nor CEO Steve Ballmer were among them. He says Microsoft didn't put any money into BayStar or the SCO investment. A Microsoft spokesman says that the company has no "direct or indirect" financial relations with BayStar, but declined to comment when asked whether execs called BayStar to suggest investing in SCO.
Help me understand this....
You manage a fund that has $400 million available for investment. Microsoft does not put any money in your fund. Senior executives from Microsoft call you up and say "Please put $50 million into this company called SCO."
I'm sorry, but why did the fund's managers do what they did? It doesn't add up. You do not just invest 1/8 of your available capital because some guy calls you up and says, "hey, please do this."
I'd rather pay $9.95 a month and have access to the label's
entire catalog
Not agreeing or disagreeing with you here, just pointing out that with Napster, if you pay the $9.95 per month you actually aren't given access to the entire catalogue. Many songs appear to be marked as "purchase only".
Since I've started looking a few months ago, every job lead I've gotten (over 20) have not been posted on any external job site. You either have to know people at other companies, or check out their individual web pages.
Slashdot Mirror
We knew this would eventually happen. Hell, SCO knew they would end up in this type of hot water. The whole problem with this mess is that they don't care if they lose.
The connection between themselves and Microsoft is firmly established now. I guess it is still open to debate if Microsoft was the company that came up with the idea of using SCO as a massive FUD machine against Linux, or if they simply started backing SCO once they realised what potential that would have. My personal guess would be that you could probably trace the very idea back to Redmond, but that's really irrelvant here.
For all the time this has been going on, there has been a blanket of FUD over Linux. Most people here saw through it, but even on Slashdot you could find posts along the lines of "...but what if SCO is actually right and their IP is in Linux..." The business world, getting their news from sources like Forbes, had a far different perception. To them, Linux suddenly became a poison pill that no IT manager would touch. You may believe Linux's reputation will eventually recover, but SCO was able to plant seeds of doubt in so many minds in the mean time.
The real trajedy here is that this type of tactic has made SCO management and board members rich, SCO employees unemployed, Linux tarnished in the eyes of the businessman, and most likely nothing will ever be done to punish those responsible for the lies.
Is Greedo still alive, and shown having a beer with Han while they share a joke about that trick Han played on the Cantina owner so many years ago?
Something to think about for them, I hope.
I forget the exact piece of software involved, but a few years ago an Irish friend of mine nearly went postal when the software he was using insisted on listing his Republic of Ireland address as being in the UK. That's a huge insult to anyone who lives in Ireland.
A few years ago my job (programming) started to suck very very much. I started to slack, and I pushed to boundaries a little more every day. Over the coarse of a year I dropped from an 8-hour work day to 5-6, and most of those hours were spent surfing.
My manager called me into his office out of the blue, and I figured the time to answer had finally come. Instead, he gives me 1,000 stock options, a certification that said "Keep up the good work", and a 5% raise.
Hollenshead also notes that an as yet unidentified developer with 'a name that people recognize' has licensed the Doom 3 engine.
From the article:
Raven Software has licensed the engine for the still-under-wraps "Quake 4".
Not trolling here, but this opinion piece is stupid. Hell, just look at that quote above. "He couldn't be a first rate hacker since he obviously chose NT voluntarily." According to the author, there's no way to succeed if you choose to build on NT.
Knowing Python doesn't make you a "first rate hacker". Any decent programmer can pick up a language like python in a day or two. A good hacker (i.e. a programmer that a company would want to hire) is someone who can take their previous experience and apply that to the problem at hand, using the tools available. Saying "...but I know Python" is the same as saying "...but I know Assembly" when you have a bunch of C++ code to write.
We all know that one of the main uses (I couldn't say the main for sure) for mod chipping is piracy. Theft of intellectual property is rarely, if ever, part of modifying one's car, clothing or house.
We have laws that forbid intellectual property theft, and Sony is free to go after anyone who copies games using those existing laws without needing draconian legislation like the DMCA.
If the only possible purpose of these chips was to facilitate IP violations then they might be on the right track...
My old company (a hardware company) just sold off its software division to another software company. Bottom line is that nobody was/is buying, and the budgets for multi-million software deals just aren't materializing.
For the past 4 years companies have been forced to tighten/halt their IT spending, and they may still be saying "if we could last the last 4 years with our current software, perhaps we can last a few more..."
Reading through the comments, it's clear that people don't understand what this case is about. This isn't a case where a farmer had some Monsanto seeds blow into his field and suddenly was facing a lawsuit by Monsanto. He deliberately saved the seeds from the plants and admitted in court he knew they were from a Monsanto plant. Then he replanted the next year with those seeds.
I've yet to see a more trollish headline...
Regardless of how you feel about this case, this guy wasn't caught with a few plants that had blown into his field. He was collecting the seeds from the patented plant and planting them himself.
Personally, I think (shudder) Monsanto deserved to win this case. The farmer was infringing on Monsanto's patent, and this case really is as simple as that.
The biggest complaint I'm reading is "who wants to pay for delivery?" Well, me, for one. The charge is $7, but otherwise the food isn't much more expensive (some more, some less).
Is it worth it? You bet. I hate grocery stores -- they are usually jam-packed with rude assholes, and even a modest shopping list will take an hour from your day. I'd happily pay $7 to avoid that frustration-filled hour of my life.
You aren't alone, and that's a shame.
To properly illustrate all the privacy concerns would take hundreds of pages, but let's gloss over the main one.
We needn't speculate either, we can use a real world example -- Prada stores. Prada, in an RFID trial, put an RFID chip into their customer's "Prada Shopper Card." When a frequent buyer of Prada walked into their store, the scanner would pick up the RFID from the card, and a salesperson would immediately know who the person is, how much they've spent in the past, and what kind of clothes they liked.
Some of you are probably saying "That's great! They could offer better service to their customers
That's the whole point. There's always some information that you'd like to keep private. For the rich Prada shoppers it was their clothes size. For others it's their past shopping history.
An industry that has started a warpath suing children, the elderly, and many more of its potential customers is suffering from poor sales. Shocking!
I'm an independant contractor, and when I sign my contracts (usually through a headhunter-type firm) there are provisions in my contract for assumption of IP violation risks and liability for my work. In other words, I agree to take responsibility for any and all IP violations that arise as a result of my work.
Normally this isn't a big deal, as the gist of these types of clauses is to prevent contractors from plagerising existing code or assuming full responsibility if they do. However, if you are a contractor who is in a position where you have to recommend a software product or hardware vendor, this SCO shit can be a huge black market for open source adoption.
A normal, independant contractor should not and will not assume this type of risk if they are smart. Even if they are sure that SCO's case is bunk (as I am). They probably will lose their contract regardless, and the cost to an independant contractor would be huge.
In other words, good luck finding contractors who willingly will reccommend that a company adopt Linux now.
Thankfully my wife is an IP lawyer, so I'm ready for a fight if need be, but I don't think most contractors are as lucky as me.
The article is very clear: privacy groups aren't just arguing that Google is violating privacy, they are arguing that Google is violating the law (by violating privacy).
It seems that European privacy law is much more strict than US law, and by retaining a subscriber's email even after they have deleted it or cancelled their account Google is breaking those laws.
Huge difference.
I think this information needs to be approached skeptically, as there's no way to measure reliably "what would have happened." Given a lack of P2P sharing, can you say for certain how many CDs you would have bought/would not have bought? Of course not.
If CD sales for a popular download increase by 2%, can you ever prove they wouldn't have gone up 3% if not for downloading?
I just don't think this can be proven either way.
Having cancelled cable more than a year ago, I find I still miss a few tv shows: CSI, Sopranos, [don't hate me] Survivor, etc. I've bought all the Soprano DVDs, and will probably buy the CSI DVDs as well, but what I really want is a way to download these shows for a small fee ($1?) and watch them add-free.
Right now, I download them for free.
I won't ever go back to watching TV, but the networks can get some money out of me by offering a show online.
I would love to know how the first post can be modded "redundant".
The supermarket card is the perfect example of what can happen with RFID gone bad. Obviously, supermarket cards collect individual buying habits of customers. This really isn't in dispute or something to hide. The scary part is what can be done with that data that goes well beyond just marketing information.
There have already been two cases (that I'm aware of) in which data collected by supermarket cards has been used in court. The first was a case where the info was used to show that a man had a habit of buying very expensive wines, and was successfully used to argue that he could therefore afford more in allimony than he was initially supposed to pay. The second case involves a man suing the grocery store for slipping while shopping. The store attempted to use the man's buying history to show that he was likely an alcoholic.
Scared yet?
How about RFIDs? How can they be miss-used? Well, just look at EZPass, the toll-booth system that uses RFIDs to automatically charge motorists. That info, in the state of IL, has been supoenaed 11 times already. In one case to prove infidelity in a divorce case.
Now imagine how many places will use RFIDs. Every store. Public places. EVERYWHERE. Compile and cross-reference this data and you can assemble a complete picture of a person.
This is not "tin foil hat" material. It IS happening and it WILL continue if you don't do something.
Think of how this will change the life of a disabled person, who may be unable to type?
And as for presentations, who says you have to stop your speech to scream "NEXT SLIDE". Imagine a presentation package capable of picking up from your presentation exactly when you'd like the next "slide" (useless word since you could now do much more than you are constrained with using Powerpoint).
Imagine, during a presentation, being able to say "If you look at the sales figures for the year..." and have your presentation automatically display those figures.
Here's the confusion:
'A Microsoft spokesman says that the company has no "direct or indirect" financial relations with BayStar'
Help me understand this....
You manage a fund that has $400 million available for investment. Microsoft does not put any money in your fund. Senior executives from Microsoft call you up and say "Please put $50 million into this company called SCO."
I'm sorry, but why did the fund's managers do what they did? It doesn't add up. You do not just invest 1/8 of your available capital because some guy calls you up and says, "hey, please do this."
Not agreeing or disagreeing with you here, just pointing out that with Napster, if you pay the $9.95 per month you actually aren't given access to the entire catalogue. Many songs appear to be marked as "purchase only".
Food for thought...
Since I've started looking a few months ago, every job lead I've gotten (over 20) have not been posted on any external job site. You either have to know people at other companies, or check out their individual web pages.