The JDAM is the most cost effective weapon now, and incidently, its one of the more accurate since it doesnt require a laser or any visability. its a $20k piece of hardware on an otherwise dumb (and cheap) bomb.
One of the advantages is the accuracy tends to produce lower collateral damage by itself. The primary benefit being the locals tend to rise up less when you don't kill lots of them, which is a good thing when you have to hang out for a few years.
There is also some degree of usefullness when the enemy knows you can program in coordinates x y z and the type and depth of penetration for the bomb, and make the bad guys eat it. The best bomb is one powerful and accurate enough that you don't have to use it. Using collateral damage as a form of control of the masses is one of the things we try to frown on now that we are all civilized, since it smacks of terrorism itself, although I would not rule out bombing civilian facilities myself, under certain circumstances.
In the US justice system, the actual trial does not expose any new information that has not been released. Before trial, you have "discovery" where both parties have to tell who they will call as witnesses, show any evidence they have, and make their claim. This is how cases get thrown out sometimes, from a lack of evidence. The whole purpose of the delay is based upon how long it takes to complete discovery. Usually the discovery phase is public record, but often parts will be sealed by the court to either protect the owner of a trade secret, or to keep from tainting the potential jury pool.
But the "last minute suprise witness" doesn't happen. It is unfair to the other side because they don't have the time to research the person/item, unless its extraordinary circumstances. I am not sure if its actually 2005, but that does not sound unreasonable in a case like this.
The actual trial is only were the evidence is presented to the jury, after the judge has decided what is admissable and what is not (during discovery). I would image that most other judicial systems are similar.
Govt. granting a small amount of money to some projects doesn't bother me. A Department of Software does. I took from the article, a more drastic approach. I know the Govt has contributed alot to the internet itself indirectly, and I do see that as a good thing in moderation. Just not the next level, where the programers are full time govt. programers for GPL software.
We do NOT need government paid for programmers providing "free software" for the masses. I found this idea so shocking and obvious, I can't believe it was posted to begin with. This is the perfect example of communism, and wrought with the same problems.
1. OSS developers develop what they like, not what they get paid for. Often, they are able to make money supporting what they give away for free, or by cross licensing, or other development. This is the why OSS generates good software, the developers do what they like.
2. Govt. programmers, where to start: the potential to become yet another govt. employee, and develop the "its not my job" attitude, will insure that govt. sponsored software will be even less appealing than the MS products. By having programmers as Govt. employees, you will be telling them what to develop, and insuring very low productivity.
3. Software is not a necessary service, thus has no place on the govt. payroll. Police, firemen, librarians ok. But we don't need a communistic system where software developers are being paid for providing a service that was previously done for free. The role of any govt. is supposed to be to only do for the public, those things that they can't reasonably do for themselves. Paving roads, building schools and national defense are good examples.
4. If you think software is expensive now, wait until its free. Just like healthcare, it would become a bloated office, infected with special interests, potentially corrupted by "donations" from certain vendors, and low in both quality and accountability.
5. Since I am not as proficiant as reading code as many, I would be unlikely to use "govt. generated" code, since I could not be sure there was not some type of tracking or backdoor to my system. Frankly, a little suspicion of the govt. is a good thing.
6. There is nothing wrong with the current system of proprietary software, GPL, BSD, and all the other licenses. Its not broke, why fix it? It is controlled by the individual and companies. By allowing govt. into the software business, not only are you giving it an unfair advantage in the market place with this "free" software (which isn't free, its tax subsidized) and you are potentially putting people out of business and costing jobs.
This is a very bad idea on many levels. An interesting topic over a beer, but a bad idea. I can think of 100s of reasons, but I think you get the general idea by now.
And don't forget OS/400, which I forgot in my original post. That's for the iSeries minis, formerly called AS/400s.
IBM is big on linux right now, no doubt about it, but when folks say stuff like it's their only OS they are way wrong.
I have never been under the impression that IBM would switch everything over to Linux ever. They have a perpetual license for unix already. By embracing Linux, they are providing support for the best potential operating system for microcomputers, and eventually minicomputers. By modifying AIX to play nice with Linux, and contributing parts of AIX to Linux, they are insuring their future success.
So now you can afford their low end computers since you don't pay for unix, and as your needs increase, the movement to their big iron is less painful because the upgrade path is all IBM. I see no evidence that IBM will abandon proprietary OS's, nor do I see why they should have to. They will trim them down by using Linux on the low end (and mid end eventually) and pump $$ and support to the OSS community to help raise Linux to true enterprise levels. This reduces their R&D costs by virtually outsourcing it to the OSS community, increases interoperability for all its OSs, generates goodwill (justifiably), and unifies their product line, a plus for customers.
I think the term we are all forgetting is: Defensive Patents. Designed NOT to enforce on a regular basis, but instead to say "sue us, and we will bitch slap you back". Lots of companies use defensive patents (especially IBM) in case they tread ever so slightly on someone else's patent. A type of insurance policy.
But what if SCO is right? What if there really is some of their code in the kernel and the court rules in their favor? Then what? I feel the same way as most... that they are a bunch of fools just trying to cause trouble but it will surely be a sad for Linux and for all of us who have been bashing SCO if their claims are in any way based in fact.
It just means we go back to kernel 2.2 for a bit, while we rewrite the potentially infringing code in kernel 2.4
As to the 'if', from what I have seen, the people here are not pissed that SCO is claiming they own the IP in the kernel, its the way they go about it. They begin with a lawsuit. They send extorting letters to Redhat customers saying they must PAY for a license, when a court of law has NOT established this fact. The methods they are using are offensive. If the court find there is SCO IP, then fine, if you use kernel 2.4 you can either rewrite the offending parts, downgrade to kernel 2.2 or pay a license to use the tainted 2.4
BUT A COURT HAS NOT FOUND THIS TO BE THE CASE. That is the big deal. SCO is acting in a way that indicates that even they do not think they will win, and is instead trying to cash in quickly. They have not indicated with much detail the actual IP that they supposedly own. They have insured that no 3rd party can verify their claims. Whether they really do own any IP in the kernel or not, they have acted in a way that most of us consider irresponsible and destructive to the industry.
In a nutshell: We aren't bashing them because they potentially own some IP in the kernel. We are bashing them because they are acting like total asshole in the way that they are dealing with the potential infringement.
Even if they were 100% correct, I would never consider purchasing any products from them because they are assholes, plain and simple.
Don't get me wrong: I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy. I think their business practices are deplorable. But I don't think they had a Monopoly or qualified for anti-trust prosecution, even for their extremely obnoxious licensing agreements.
Microsoft DOES have a monopoly. Monopolies are NOT illegal in the US, in spite of the incorrect statements to the contrary. What IS illegal is to use a monopoly to further monopolize a market, or to use it to act against the common good (price fixing, elliminating competition, etc). I agree that the whole court case against Microsoft is unnecessary, as the market tends to self correct (albeit, slowly) in a capitalistic society. Big companies have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot, or simply get too big to respond to market conditions quick enough.
But they do have a monopoly, and they did use it to their advantage in questionable ways. I just don't think the suit is what will knock them down to size. It will instead be their own customers who run servers in particular, and the fact that you can buy a working computer running Linux at walmart now for less money than a single copy of XP home at retail price.
Russian law would have no bearing. They subcontracted people in Russia to do some coding, that is all. those people in Russia own nothing, they were contract employees for the company. They may have had an office there, or perhaps hired the people from an employment agency in Russia, but who cares. The employees don't own any more of that software than a MS employee owns Windows code. Repeat after me: Russian law is irrelevent. Only pieces of code owned by this American company were developed there, and the American company owns the code as a whole and in parts.
All that matters is the company, and the laws where IT was incorporated. Like someone else said, most likely California or Delaware. Lots of companies incorporate in Delaware, since they have good pro-business laws.
If you go check out Russian copyright law, you will see that they do not respect copyrights in any reasonable fashion, thus no company would ever incorporate there. They consider most IP to be public domain.
I think you're wearing rose-tinted glasses here. Or, to put it less politely, I think you are out of touch with reality. Go ask a few gamers what they think about a system where one or two 'new' (read: the last six months to a year) games work on it, but oh-- oh-- we have GREAT Tetris games! I guarantee you they will laugh you right out of the room.
Actually, as a Windows user on the client side, Linux user on the server side, I have a pretty good perspective. Read what I wrote: I agree you need more native linux games. game makers are gaining linux experience on the server daemon side of the game. This I know because I have done more than TFC servers, TFC was just one of the first I know of. Im an old fart, but I still game most days.
Thanks for the links for Tux. But you took my comment out of context. As I stated, Linux has better smaller games, but it will take the big hitters to make a dent in marketshare. That IS the real world. Go back and try reading it again.
You're dramatically overestimating the size of the market. Cray's own website puts it at about $1.1bn worldwide, and it's not like cray will get 100% market share. The ongoing R&D costs are a staggering percentage of their revenue, to the point that if the NSA wasn't subsidizing them it's unlikely they'd be alive today. The same goes for other pure supercomputing ventures--without huge amounts of government largess they're sunk.
Well, exaggerating to make a point perhaps. I checked out their website as well, looking for more technical info on their servers, with no luck. Personally, I can see more of a market in the future than even the past. Their systems do certain things faster than beowulfs, and frankly, for some govt. agencies/companies faster is more important than cheaper. It would not shock me to see the pendulum swing in the other direction, to at least a degree. Obviously Tera thinks so, too, since they purchased them in 2000, and profits/sales ARE up...
What's more, to most of the people I've talked to about Linux, ease of use is not even a factor so long as commercial games won't run on Linux. (No, I'm not talking about WineX or VMWare. I'm talking about native support.) Most users are unwilling to talk about how easy Linux-based systems can be to use if they can't use them to game. You may poo-poo something that seems so frivolous, but it's a HUGE factor to many (most?) Windows users, particularly those under 30.
UT2003 has native support. I would interested to see the numbers of actual users on linux for it. Killer game to boot. And I agree with your basic premise for a few reasons: the younger you are, the more you upgrade anyway plus the computer is basically a gaming system for a thinking mind, so switching isnt an option until the games run on it. Personally, I would love to see someone like Maxis, who sells simcity3000 and simcopter plus other sim games for $5-$10, open the source up to allow it to be ported. Or port it themselves, which would be more expensive tho.
Then again, if you have ever played Tux Racer, its a totally kick ass game that isn't on Windows:D To be honest, Linux HAS better small games, like tetris, etc. than Windows does, and more of them. I just installed RH9 on a 2ghz optiplex i had laying around, and was pleasantly suprised with the quality and quantity of small games. (Tux is not really small, more like medium). The only problem was one game (I forget which) aborts with an error that is cryptic for just about anyone. Still rough edges, but objectively, better small games.
You may not know, but the game makers HAVE been supporting Linux on multi-player server daemons. I still run TFC game servers since 99, and most of the game servers are linux. Most any multi-player game coming out now has native linux support on the server side. So its coming, since they all have linux experience already. Now if we can get Valve to put out a native Half Life 2......
You are correct, Sun did give us StarOffice. Granted, its not perfect, but its one hell of a starting point. I'm not anti-Sun, btw. I also believe one reason they are free from SCO lawsuit is they signed a contract many years ago to NOT release any sysV code, and that may also be partially why can't give too much.
Don't get me wrong I'm all about nuclear testing being done in 1's and 0's instead of in the ocean or in the desert, but how big of a bomb do you really need when it's estimated theres enough nukes to blast the entire land surface of the earth 3 times over.
Well, the earth is over 2/3rds covered with water, and now we have the technology to reach the moon, mars, venus and beyond. Remember the spectical when a comet hit Jupiter? Just imagine a Beowulf of those, but really big nukes instead:D
On a more serious and less morbid note, I bet some other uses exist in physics, medicine and even cosmology. I even hear where they compare 'potential' cures for diseases using computer modeling to design drugs that we don't yet know how to make, good old biotech. You are correct that yes, this IS a very very limited market, but when you sell them for a billion bucks each, you don't need to match Dell's volume to make a profit. I wouldn't be suprised if the technology leads to some advancements in our pitiful micro world as well.
In short: IBM will float the bill only if it is in their own interest.
p.s. IBM pay my rent. They are ace. I love IBM. \0/
I can't necessarily argue with your point, but I do remember the old joke "how do you make a penguin fly?" with the picture of a penguin (with the word "linux" on it) duct taped to a giant air plane (with the letters "IBM" on it)...
Back when I first started messing with linux (redhat 4.2 days) it seems the best support for linux WAS IBM. I could be wrong, but either IBM was releasing enough info to write drivers or drivers, or all the hackers were using IBM servers. My experience was I could easily install an IBM box, but not so easy for other servers (think 5.2, 6.2 mainly) without patches.
Also, I have only had to call IBM twice for parts for their boxes. Both times they were cheap boxes, and needed parts out of warranty. Both times they sent them free, including postage. Maybe it was in their interest somehow, I don't know, I wasn't anyone on their radar at all. But I still have several of their servers NOW, and can't wait for 4x 970cpu boxes to come out. First because they treated a guy with a crappy 386/ps1 pretty nice. Second, every IBM I ever owned, workstation or server installed linux really nice and easy. Third, they embraced Linux with more than words (to the tune of $1billion). And they have done a few other things, like contribute code to the GPL, which is more than any other company I have seen. (Compaq? HP? Sun? Dell?) Perhaps the anti-trust background and lawsuits of IBM's past made them wake up, and turn into a responsible company. I also like the fact that they make damn good equipment. (still drooling over 970s)
Yes, they are another company out to make a buck, but my experience has shown they made it with ME by holding my hand, rather than walking on my back.
This is wrong, too. I'm not sure where you got this impression that you could just walk into a state, take a bar exam and *bingo* you're a lawyer. Good thing that bar examiners don't do other things, like background and credit checks.
It might be the years I worked for a law firm as a criminal defense investigator, and witnessed the laws change in several states, including Texas where I was working at that time.
Now most states have laws that REQUIRE you go to 7 years of college,
This is wrong, too. The requirement is for a 4 year degree plus three years of law school. This is far different than seven years of college.
Where I come from, 4 year degree and 3 years of college means 7 years of higher education. Whether you call it all "college" or not is purely semantics, it still means 7 years of education.
So now, the only people who can negociate, deal, sign on, and approve a legal matter all have the same education and experiences, with little or no influences (or significant influences) from individuals with a DIFFERENT background and/or interests.
That's right. If you walk into my local bar association meeting, you will find that we are all robots, cut from the same cloth. Just like you would find for engineers, teachers, firemen, policemen, or slashbots.
Actually, to narrow it down a bit, lets stick with firemen and police, two of your choices. You will find both occupations have employees that range from high school only, associate degrees in justice, 4 year degrees in virtually every field, a few masters and phd's as well. This is exactly what I am talking about. They have a varied background. Obviously, the most eduction you have, the better your chances to advance to higher levels, but if you take 100 policemen or firemen, you WILL see a HUGE differences in education and experiences. Much more so than on the purely justice side of the govt.
As to your indignation about robots, my point is still valid: Most lawyers and judges have educations (all 7 years) that are IMHO, TOO similar. It doesn't mean they all think alike, nor did I indicate they did. It means what it said: They all come from a very similar background, and this may not be so good.
Save the bold tags and sarcasm for when you're actually right, OK?
Settlements typically have to be approved by the judges -- judges can and will bar them if they feel they're not in the interest of the plaintiff or public. No doubt there are subtleties where a settlement doesn't require approval in some cases but I bet that's not what you're talking about.
Couldn't have said it better. Amazing how many otherwize intellegent and educated people don't understand that. Another point to make is that the vast majority of judges ARE lawyers. While this is probably a good thing since they need to understand the law, this means that only lawyers make decisions that touch many lives. When only lawyers have oversight of other lawyers, the potential for either 1) wrong doing or 2) self interested results are much greater. Add this to the fact that the majority of lawmakers (congressmen), both at a state and federal level are also lawyers, then obviously we have a problem.
It used to be that anyone could take the Bar examination in most any state, and if passed, was legally a lawyer in that state. Now most states have laws that REQUIRE you go to 7 years of college, raising the bar to entry, and protecting their own interests yet again. So now, the only people who can negociate, deal, sign on, and approve a legal matter all have the same education and experiences, with little or no influences (or significant influences) from individuals with a DIFFERENT background and/or interests.
Found a list of sites/reports about this guy, Peter Lynds. To prevent a slashdotting, I will just print them here. It was found at http://www.phy.cuhk.edu.hk/course/phy2002/forum/me ssages/299.html (remember to remove the space in the link if you MUST go/. them) but you should use the links here to prevent swamping them.
Im posting at +2 to make sure they get seen, so modding them up isn't necessary (dont need the karma). There are some serious questions about the guy, both ways, according the googling _I_ did. Don't have an opinion yet...
i think the limit is 1200 here. that could also mean I could take 6 license at a time. As to losing, I am not quite sure. The license DOES say you can get a refund. There really is no other way to interpret this. The only issue in court would NOT be IF I were owed the refund, but rather, how much. The license, while vague in almost every detail, is NOT vague about how you need to get a refund if you don't agree with the terms.
Unfortunately, small claim courts do not have court reporters nor record cases with enough detail for the case the article is based upon to be considered a precident. My guess is that a 'real' case may not be that far off, and once a real case is won (assuming) then the flood gate will be open. At the very least, it will change the way computer sellers offer operating systems, which is our REAL goal anyway. Choice.
One nice thing about this is that you can do it just once for a multitude of Windows licenses. In other words, a small company that just bought a dozen computers to use as Linux dev machines can get a $2400 refund! I'd say that's worth jumping through a few hoops.
That is exactly what I was thinking. I am about to purchase 15 new computers for the company I do work for, and I have almost convinced them to switch to a new online accounting system. This would mean we would NOT need windows, just anything with a browser. We will purchase name brand systems, mainly because of the 3 year warranty. That is $3000 in savings.
Its a shame that Dell doesn't allow you to purchase their computers without an operating system, except their servers. While Dell isn't the best performance, the boss knows the brand name, making it easier to sell the purchase to him, and my experience with Dell hardware has been pretty good. (i have a couple Dell low end servers, been great)
If you get RedHat installed on their servers, they charge you $159 anyway. Funny thing is, they come with a kickstart disk that will auto install the exact same operating system (if you provide the same version of RH disks) for free:D Then again, I custom install all my stuff anyway.
actually, due to redhat's recent decision to NOT support OSs 1 year after a new version comes out (even tho I PAY for the service, direct to redhat) I may be moving to another distro anyway. Debian is one obvious choice. Part of the problem is that I, just like you, am very lazy, and like the easy install of RH.
Typical to bitch that way, I just simply want my cake and eat it, too;)
im putting rh9 on 4 different dual ppro 200s as we speak. (ibm pc server 325) with ram varying from 128mb to 512mb. It works slick as can be, and each can handle more traffic than a t1 can throw at it.
It DOES take a while to install, mainly do to older cdrom and scsi drives (8x and uw40, respectively) but its mainly do to the bloated nature of rh9, which insists on an install of at least 1gb if you DONT install X.
Personally, I still like 7.2 best. RH is getting feature bloat more and more with each release. Even apache 2.x that ships with it takes up an extra 4mb for the parent and an extra 100-200k nonshared for each instance unless you do alot of tweaking. thinking about downgrading to 1.3.x for my static stuff.
But yea, it runs well with just a little patience.
Heck, I'm pretty hazy on the distant past, but I think you had to shell out some money to go from Windows 3.1 to 3.11, but I may be wrong.
IIRC you are correct. the.x1 was a huge difference in features and useability for a 1% version change (networking, win32s compatability, etc). But yes, there was no free upgrade path. It was a totally seperate product, and upgrades were a bitch back then. One FTP folder with a stupid amount of files and a single lame discription file. (i managed 12 boxes that shared a 28.8k then)
Then again, no one paid for it back then, since there were no serial numbers. Or at least they only paid for one copy. The rest of us had(have) USENET.
Slashdot Mirror
It appears that any kernel version 2.6 is royalty free, since SCO has only claimed IP in 2.4 and 2.5. so go wild.
The JDAM is the most cost effective weapon now, and incidently, its one of the more accurate since it doesnt require a laser or any visability. its a $20k piece of hardware on an otherwise dumb (and cheap) bomb.
One of the advantages is the accuracy tends to produce lower collateral damage by itself. The primary benefit being the locals tend to rise up less when you don't kill lots of them, which is a good thing when you have to hang out for a few years.
There is also some degree of usefullness when the enemy knows you can program in coordinates x y z and the type and depth of penetration for the bomb, and make the bad guys eat it. The best bomb is one powerful and accurate enough that you don't have to use it. Using collateral damage as a form of control of the masses is one of the things we try to frown on now that we are all civilized, since it smacks of terrorism itself, although I would not rule out bombing civilian facilities myself, under certain circumstances.
In the US justice system, the actual trial does not expose any new information that has not been released. Before trial, you have "discovery" where both parties have to tell who they will call as witnesses, show any evidence they have, and make their claim. This is how cases get thrown out sometimes, from a lack of evidence. The whole purpose of the delay is based upon how long it takes to complete discovery. Usually the discovery phase is public record, but often parts will be sealed by the court to either protect the owner of a trade secret, or to keep from tainting the potential jury pool.
But the "last minute suprise witness" doesn't happen. It is unfair to the other side because they don't have the time to research the person/item, unless its extraordinary circumstances. I am not sure if its actually 2005, but that does not sound unreasonable in a case like this.
The actual trial is only were the evidence is presented to the jury, after the judge has decided what is admissable and what is not (during discovery). I would image that most other judicial systems are similar.
The idea is not as radical as you think it is.
Govt. granting a small amount of money to some projects doesn't bother me. A Department of Software does. I took from the article, a more drastic approach. I know the Govt has contributed alot to the internet itself indirectly, and I do see that as a good thing in moderation. Just not the next level, where the programers are full time govt. programers for GPL software.
We do NOT need government paid for programmers providing "free software" for the masses. I found this idea so shocking and obvious, I can't believe it was posted to begin with. This is the perfect example of communism, and wrought with the same problems.
1. OSS developers develop what they like, not what they get paid for. Often, they are able to make money supporting what they give away for free, or by cross licensing, or other development. This is the why OSS generates good software, the developers do what they like.
2. Govt. programmers, where to start: the potential to become yet another govt. employee, and develop the "its not my job" attitude, will insure that govt. sponsored software will be even less appealing than the MS products. By having programmers as Govt. employees, you will be telling them what to develop, and insuring very low productivity.
3. Software is not a necessary service, thus has no place on the govt. payroll. Police, firemen, librarians ok. But we don't need a communistic system where software developers are being paid for providing a service that was previously done for free. The role of any govt. is supposed to be to only do for the public, those things that they can't reasonably do for themselves. Paving roads, building schools and national defense are good examples.
4. If you think software is expensive now, wait until its free. Just like healthcare, it would become a bloated office, infected with special interests, potentially corrupted by "donations" from certain vendors, and low in both quality and accountability.
5. Since I am not as proficiant as reading code as many, I would be unlikely to use "govt. generated" code, since I could not be sure there was not some type of tracking or backdoor to my system. Frankly, a little suspicion of the govt. is a good thing.
6. There is nothing wrong with the current system of proprietary software, GPL, BSD, and all the other licenses. Its not broke, why fix it? It is controlled by the individual and companies. By allowing govt. into the software business, not only are you giving it an unfair advantage in the market place with this "free" software (which isn't free, its tax subsidized) and you are potentially putting people out of business and costing jobs.
This is a very bad idea on many levels. An interesting topic over a beer, but a bad idea. I can think of 100s of reasons, but I think you get the general idea by now.
And don't forget OS/400, which I forgot in my original post. That's for the iSeries minis, formerly called AS/400s.
IBM is big on linux right now, no doubt about it, but when folks say stuff like it's their only OS they are way wrong.
I have never been under the impression that IBM would switch everything over to Linux ever. They have a perpetual license for unix already. By embracing Linux, they are providing support for the best potential operating system for microcomputers, and eventually minicomputers. By modifying AIX to play nice with Linux, and contributing parts of AIX to Linux, they are insuring their future success.
So now you can afford their low end computers since you don't pay for unix, and as your needs increase, the movement to their big iron is less painful because the upgrade path is all IBM. I see no evidence that IBM will abandon proprietary OS's, nor do I see why they should have to. They will trim them down by using Linux on the low end (and mid end eventually) and pump $$ and support to the OSS community to help raise Linux to true enterprise levels. This reduces their R&D costs by virtually outsourcing it to the OSS community, increases interoperability for all its OSs, generates goodwill (justifiably), and unifies their product line, a plus for customers.
This sounds like a win-win to me.
I think the term we are all forgetting is: Defensive Patents. Designed NOT to enforce on a regular basis, but instead to say "sue us, and we will bitch slap you back". Lots of companies use defensive patents (especially IBM) in case they tread ever so slightly on someone else's patent. A type of insurance policy.
But what if SCO is right? What if there really is some of their code in the kernel and the court rules in their favor? Then what?
I feel the same way as most... that they are a bunch of fools just trying to cause trouble but it will surely be a sad for Linux and for all of us who have been bashing SCO if their claims are in any way based in fact.
It just means we go back to kernel 2.2 for a bit, while we rewrite the potentially infringing code in kernel 2.4
As to the 'if', from what I have seen, the people here are not pissed that SCO is claiming they own the IP in the kernel, its the way they go about it. They begin with a lawsuit. They send extorting letters to Redhat customers saying they must PAY for a license, when a court of law has NOT established this fact. The methods they are using are offensive. If the court find there is SCO IP, then fine, if you use kernel 2.4 you can either rewrite the offending parts, downgrade to kernel 2.2 or pay a license to use the tainted 2.4
BUT A COURT HAS NOT FOUND THIS TO BE THE CASE. That is the big deal. SCO is acting in a way that indicates that even they do not think they will win, and is instead trying to cash in quickly. They have not indicated with much detail the actual IP that they supposedly own. They have insured that no 3rd party can verify their claims. Whether they really do own any IP in the kernel or not, they have acted in a way that most of us consider irresponsible and destructive to the industry.
In a nutshell: We aren't bashing them because they potentially own some IP in the kernel. We are bashing them because they are acting like total asshole in the way that they are dealing with the potential infringement.
Even if they were 100% correct, I would never consider purchasing any products from them because they are assholes, plain and simple.
Don't get me wrong: I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy. I think their business practices are deplorable. But I don't think they had a Monopoly or qualified for anti-trust prosecution, even for their extremely obnoxious licensing agreements.
Microsoft DOES have a monopoly. Monopolies are NOT illegal in the US, in spite of the incorrect statements to the contrary. What IS illegal is to use a monopoly to further monopolize a market, or to use it to act against the common good (price fixing, elliminating competition, etc). I agree that the whole court case against Microsoft is unnecessary, as the market tends to self correct (albeit, slowly) in a capitalistic society. Big companies have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot, or simply get too big to respond to market conditions quick enough.
But they do have a monopoly, and they did use it to their advantage in questionable ways. I just don't think the suit is what will knock them down to size. It will instead be their own customers who run servers in particular, and the fact that you can buy a working computer running Linux at walmart now for less money than a single copy of XP home at retail price.
,em>It was a very strong individual indeed that modded this insightful.
or maybe the moderator has read Orwell's 1984...
Russian law would have no bearing. They subcontracted people in Russia to do some coding, that is all. those people in Russia own nothing, they were contract employees for the company. They may have had an office there, or perhaps hired the people from an employment agency in Russia, but who cares. The employees don't own any more of that software than a MS employee owns Windows code. Repeat after me: Russian law is irrelevent. Only pieces of code owned by this American company were developed there, and the American company owns the code as a whole and in parts.
All that matters is the company, and the laws where IT was incorporated. Like someone else said, most likely California or Delaware. Lots of companies incorporate in Delaware, since they have good pro-business laws.
If you go check out Russian copyright law, you will see that they do not respect copyrights in any reasonable fashion, thus no company would ever incorporate there. They consider most IP to be public domain.
I think you're wearing rose-tinted glasses here. Or, to put it less politely, I think you are out of touch with reality. Go ask a few gamers what they think about a system where one or two 'new' (read: the last six months to a year) games work on it, but oh-- oh-- we have GREAT Tetris games! I guarantee you they will laugh you right out of the room.
Actually, as a Windows user on the client side, Linux user on the server side, I have a pretty good perspective. Read what I wrote: I agree you need more native linux games. game makers are gaining linux experience on the server daemon side of the game. This I know because I have done more than TFC servers, TFC was just one of the first I know of. Im an old fart, but I still game most days.
Thanks for the links for Tux. But you took my comment out of context. As I stated, Linux has better smaller games, but it will take the big hitters to make a dent in marketshare. That IS the real world. Go back and try reading it again.
You're dramatically overestimating the size of the market. Cray's own website puts it at about $1.1bn worldwide, and it's not like cray will get 100% market share. The ongoing R&D costs are a staggering percentage of their revenue, to the point that if the NSA wasn't subsidizing them it's unlikely they'd be alive today. The same goes for other pure supercomputing ventures--without huge amounts of government largess they're sunk.
Well, exaggerating to make a point perhaps. I checked out their website as well, looking for more technical info on their servers, with no luck. Personally, I can see more of a market in the future than even the past. Their systems do certain things faster than beowulfs, and frankly, for some govt. agencies/companies faster is more important than cheaper. It would not shock me to see the pendulum swing in the other direction, to at least a degree. Obviously Tera thinks so, too, since they purchased them in 2000, and profits/sales ARE up...
What's more, to most of the people I've talked to about Linux, ease of use is not even a factor so long as commercial games won't run on Linux. (No, I'm not talking about WineX or VMWare. I'm talking about native support.) Most users are unwilling to talk about how easy Linux-based systems can be to use if they can't use them to game. You may poo-poo something that seems so frivolous, but it's a HUGE factor to many (most?) Windows users, particularly those under 30.
:D To be honest, Linux HAS better small games, like tetris, etc. than Windows does, and more of them. I just installed RH9 on a 2ghz optiplex i had laying around, and was pleasantly suprised with the quality and quantity of small games. (Tux is not really small, more like medium). The only problem was one game (I forget which) aborts with an error that is cryptic for just about anyone. Still rough edges, but objectively, better small games.
UT2003 has native support. I would interested to see the numbers of actual users on linux for it. Killer game to boot. And I agree with your basic premise for a few reasons: the younger you are, the more you upgrade anyway plus the computer is basically a gaming system for a thinking mind, so switching isnt an option until the games run on it. Personally, I would love to see someone like Maxis, who sells simcity3000 and simcopter plus other sim games for $5-$10, open the source up to allow it to be ported. Or port it themselves, which would be more expensive tho.
Then again, if you have ever played Tux Racer, its a totally kick ass game that isn't on Windows
You may not know, but the game makers HAVE been supporting Linux on multi-player server daemons. I still run TFC game servers since 99, and most of the game servers are linux. Most any multi-player game coming out now has native linux support on the server side. So its coming, since they all have linux experience already. Now if we can get Valve to put out a native Half Life 2......
You are correct, Sun did give us StarOffice. Granted, its not perfect, but its one hell of a starting point. I'm not anti-Sun, btw. I also believe one reason they are free from SCO lawsuit is they signed a contract many years ago to NOT release any sysV code, and that may also be partially why can't give too much.
Don't get me wrong I'm all about nuclear testing being done in 1's and 0's instead of in the ocean or in the desert, but how big of a bomb do you really need when it's estimated theres enough nukes to blast the entire land surface of the earth 3 times over.
:D
Well, the earth is over 2/3rds covered with water, and now we have the technology to reach the moon, mars, venus and beyond. Remember the spectical when a comet hit Jupiter? Just imagine a Beowulf of those, but really big nukes instead
On a more serious and less morbid note, I bet some other uses exist in physics, medicine and even cosmology. I even hear where they compare 'potential' cures for diseases using computer modeling to design drugs that we don't yet know how to make, good old biotech. You are correct that yes, this IS a very very limited market, but when you sell them for a billion bucks each, you don't need to match Dell's volume to make a profit. I wouldn't be suprised if the technology leads to some advancements in our pitiful micro world as well.
In short: IBM will float the bill only if it is in their own interest.
p.s. IBM pay my rent. They are ace. I love IBM. \0/
I can't necessarily argue with your point, but I do remember the old joke "how do you make a penguin fly?" with the picture of a penguin (with the word "linux" on it) duct taped to a giant air plane (with the letters "IBM" on it)...
Back when I first started messing with linux (redhat 4.2 days) it seems the best support for linux WAS IBM. I could be wrong, but either IBM was releasing enough info to write drivers or drivers, or all the hackers were using IBM servers. My experience was I could easily install an IBM box, but not so easy for other servers (think 5.2, 6.2 mainly) without patches.
Also, I have only had to call IBM twice for parts for their boxes. Both times they were cheap boxes, and needed parts out of warranty. Both times they sent them free, including postage. Maybe it was in their interest somehow, I don't know, I wasn't anyone on their radar at all. But I still have several of their servers NOW, and can't wait for 4x 970cpu boxes to come out. First because they treated a guy with a crappy 386/ps1 pretty nice. Second, every IBM I ever owned, workstation or server installed linux really nice and easy. Third, they embraced Linux with more than words (to the tune of $1billion). And they have done a few other things, like contribute code to the GPL, which is more than any other company I have seen. (Compaq? HP? Sun? Dell?) Perhaps the anti-trust background and lawsuits of IBM's past made them wake up, and turn into a responsible company. I also like the fact that they make damn good equipment. (still drooling over 970s)
Yes, they are another company out to make a buck, but my experience has shown they made it with ME by holding my hand, rather than walking on my back.
This is wrong, too. I'm not sure where you got this impression that you could just walk into a state, take a bar exam and *bingo* you're a lawyer. Good thing that bar examiners don't do other things, like background and credit checks.
It might be the years I worked for a law firm as a criminal defense investigator, and witnessed the laws change in several states, including Texas where I was working at that time.
Now most states have laws that REQUIRE you go to 7 years of college,
This is wrong, too. The requirement is for a 4 year degree plus three years of law school. This is far different than seven years of college.
Where I come from, 4 year degree and 3 years of college means 7 years of higher education. Whether you call it all "college" or not is purely semantics, it still means 7 years of education.
So now, the only people who can negociate, deal, sign on, and approve a legal matter all have the same education and experiences, with little or no influences (or significant influences) from individuals with a DIFFERENT background and/or interests.
That's right. If you walk into my local bar association meeting, you will find that we are all robots, cut from the same cloth. Just like you would find for engineers, teachers, firemen, policemen, or slashbots.
Actually, to narrow it down a bit, lets stick with firemen and police, two of your choices. You will find both occupations have employees that range from high school only, associate degrees in justice, 4 year degrees in virtually every field, a few masters and phd's as well. This is exactly what I am talking about. They have a varied background. Obviously, the most eduction you have, the better your chances to advance to higher levels, but if you take 100 policemen or firemen, you WILL see a HUGE differences in education and experiences. Much more so than on the purely justice side of the govt.
As to your indignation about robots, my point is still valid: Most lawyers and judges have educations (all 7 years) that are IMHO, TOO similar. It doesn't mean they all think alike, nor did I indicate they did. It means what it said: They all come from a very similar background, and this may not be so good.
Save the bold tags and sarcasm for when you're actually right, OK?
Settlements typically have to be approved by the judges -- judges can and will bar them if they feel they're not in the interest of the plaintiff or public. No doubt there are subtleties where a settlement doesn't require approval in some cases but I bet that's not what you're talking about.
Couldn't have said it better. Amazing how many otherwize intellegent and educated people don't understand that. Another point to make is that the vast majority of judges ARE lawyers. While this is probably a good thing since they need to understand the law, this means that only lawyers make decisions that touch many lives. When only lawyers have oversight of other lawyers, the potential for either 1) wrong doing or 2) self interested results are much greater. Add this to the fact that the majority of lawmakers (congressmen), both at a state and federal level are also lawyers, then obviously we have a problem.
It used to be that anyone could take the Bar examination in most any state, and if passed, was legally a lawyer in that state. Now most states have laws that REQUIRE you go to 7 years of college, raising the bar to entry, and protecting their own interests yet again. So now, the only people who can negociate, deal, sign on, and approve a legal matter all have the same education and experiences, with little or no influences (or significant influences) from individuals with a DIFFERENT background and/or interests.
This is probably not a good thing.
Found a list of sites/reports about this guy, Peter Lynds. To prevent a slashdotting, I will just print them here. It was found at http://www.phy.cuhk.edu.hk/course/phy2002/forum/me ssages/299.html (remember to remove the space in the link if you MUST go /. them) but you should use the links here to prevent swamping them.
= 827792003
0 030801.utime0801/BNStory/International/
c -gwi072703.php
9 .html
r yID=3515588&thesection=news&thesubsection=gene ral
1 059697327.html
u ltimahora/N205769.asp
m l
3 .php
/ 6440571.htm
i /news/pa/2003/08/02/technology/amateurclaimssoluti ontotimepuzzle.html
0 &id_news=64588
http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/international.cfm?id
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.2
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/ic
http://www.dagbladet.no/kunnskap/2003/07/31/37484
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?sto
http://iblnews.com/noticias/08/83260.html
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2003/08/01/ciencia/
http://www.rsnz.govt.nz/
http://www.elcorreogallego.es/periodico/20030801/
http://actualidad.eresmas.com/articulos/704306.ht
http://brightsurf.com/news/july_03/ICC_news_07310
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local
http://www.tiscali.co.uk/cgi-bin/news/newswire.cg
http://www.diariodigital.pt/news.asp?section_id=6
Im posting at +2 to make sure they get seen, so modding them up isn't necessary (dont need the karma). There are some serious questions about the guy, both ways, according the googling _I_ did. Don't have an opinion yet...
i think the limit is 1200 here. that could also mean I could take 6 license at a time. As to losing, I am not quite sure. The license DOES say you can get a refund. There really is no other way to interpret this. The only issue in court would NOT be IF I were owed the refund, but rather, how much. The license, while vague in almost every detail, is NOT vague about how you need to get a refund if you don't agree with the terms.
Unfortunately, small claim courts do not have court reporters nor record cases with enough detail for the case the article is based upon to be considered a precident. My guess is that a 'real' case may not be that far off, and once a real case is won (assuming) then the flood gate will be open. At the very least, it will change the way computer sellers offer operating systems, which is our REAL goal anyway. Choice.
One nice thing about this is that you can do it just once for a multitude of Windows licenses. In other words, a small company that just bought a dozen computers to use as Linux dev machines can get a $2400 refund! I'd say that's worth jumping through a few hoops.
:D Then again, I custom install all my stuff anyway.
That is exactly what I was thinking. I am about to purchase 15 new computers for the company I do work for, and I have almost convinced them to switch to a new online accounting system. This would mean we would NOT need windows, just anything with a browser. We will purchase name brand systems, mainly because of the 3 year warranty. That is $3000 in savings.
Its a shame that Dell doesn't allow you to purchase their computers without an operating system, except their servers. While Dell isn't the best performance, the boss knows the brand name, making it easier to sell the purchase to him, and my experience with Dell hardware has been pretty good. (i have a couple Dell low end servers, been great)
If you get RedHat installed on their servers, they charge you $159 anyway. Funny thing is, they come with a kickstart disk that will auto install the exact same operating system (if you provide the same version of RH disks) for free
actually, due to redhat's recent decision to NOT support OSs 1 year after a new version comes out (even tho I PAY for the service, direct to redhat) I may be moving to another distro anyway. Debian is one obvious choice. Part of the problem is that I, just like you, am very lazy, and like the easy install of RH.
;)
Typical to bitch that way, I just simply want my cake and eat it, too
im putting rh9 on 4 different dual ppro 200s as we speak. (ibm pc server 325) with ram varying from 128mb to 512mb. It works slick as can be, and each can handle more traffic than a t1 can throw at it.
It DOES take a while to install, mainly do to older cdrom and scsi drives (8x and uw40, respectively) but its mainly do to the bloated nature of rh9, which insists on an install of at least 1gb if you DONT install X.
Personally, I still like 7.2 best. RH is getting feature bloat more and more with each release. Even apache 2.x that ships with it takes up an extra 4mb for the parent and an extra 100-200k nonshared for each instance unless you do alot of tweaking. thinking about downgrading to 1.3.x for my static stuff.
But yea, it runs well with just a little patience.
Heck, I'm pretty hazy on the distant past, but I think you had to shell out some money to go from Windows 3.1 to 3.11, but I may be wrong.
.x1 was a huge difference in features and useability for a 1% version change (networking, win32s compatability, etc). But yes, there was no free upgrade path. It was a totally seperate product, and upgrades were a bitch back then. One FTP folder with a stupid amount of files and a single lame discription file. (i managed 12 boxes that shared a 28.8k then)
IIRC you are correct. the
Then again, no one paid for it back then, since there were no serial numbers. Or at least they only paid for one copy. The rest of us had(have) USENET.