The problem with that is you cannot just bring suit to compel a company to open up its proprietary code for you to check for violations. You have to make a realistic case that there are violations *before* getting access. Otherwise, what's to stop every out-of-work coder from bombarding software companies with nuiscance lawsuits saying "You used my sekrit weeblefetzer quicksort variation without a license! Spend $500,000 responding to my demands for evidence or settle (buy a license) for $69,900!"
Second and more interesting there is actually a tort in the UK that covers this exact type of case.
Interesting--can you give a bit of background on this? The barratry thing doesn't apply until after SCO starts sueing aix or linux users, which probably won't happen. The general point I'm trying to make is that sueing or threatening to sue people for profit (hello Canopy Group) is a riskier endeavor in the UK than in the USA.
Doesn't the UK have a law against barratry, something the USA desperately needs? SCO could get royally fucked by playing their legal games in the UK. We can only hope.
As part of their pump-and-dump strategy based on the premise of a viable lawsuit, SCO will try to attach themselves to every week's top news story. In coming weeks:
SCO bills NASA! (suspects Linux installed on Mars Rover)
SCO sues to stop presidential election tally! (unlicensed linux used in vote-counting machines)
SCO demands 25 million dollar reward for capture of Saddam! (We withheld a linux license so he couldn't legally use that terrorist O/S)
SCO requests injunction to stop sales of Ipod (Darl says they "could be hacked to run Linux")
You're right--in the dutch auction everybody who bid above the settlement price gets that price. The sfgate website has Hambrecht among the investment bankers, and Hambrecht is known for trying dutch auctions, so maybe it'll happen in a limited way.
It will be interesting to see the financials in the prospectus. Everybody "knows" that Google is profitable, but by how much? How long? What are the main sources of income?
Another thought, the smart thing to do would be a dutch auction, where every interested party posts blind bids in advance for lots of stock, with the highest bids being filled first, then next-highest, etc, until all the stock is sold. This means Google gets every penny they should and prevents investment bankers from underpricing the IPO to create a first-day "pop" in share value, where the IB and favored clients get to flip the stock for the difference between IPO price and pop price.
Sigh. The email address on her contact page bounces. Looking around at other assembly-persons' pages, the correct format for the email address appears to be:
We once again apologize for the fault in the patch process. Those responsible for patching the patchers who have patched the patch process, have now been patched.
I don't work for you. I work for the systems. They are my "customers" if you will.
Wrong. You work for the company (or organization--judging by your other posts, I suspect you're admining for a university, because you're cheerfully ignoring real-world business imperatives). Sometimes its more important to be first, to recognize revenue, to get "good enough" out there in the hands of users. Business pressures didn't disappear along with the dot.com boom. That doesn't excuse fundamental screw-ups, but your self-righteous tone and implication that developers are incapable of architecting a functional, deployable system appear very self-serving.
Knocking down straw men and delaying releases to make them more perfect doesn't make money (usually).
You, sir, are a BOFH (google for it). Get a clue, before you get thrown out on your ass. Your bugaboo about developers having (gasp) root access on dev/testing boxes is costing your company serious money while developers contort their architecture to cope with your control fantasies. Grow up.
If you're trolling, then congratulations, but I've dealt with sysnazis before.
Too much security backfires
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 1
As you layer on more and more security, the organization will start working around the security measures in order to get their jobs done in a timely manner. Any organization that is crippling itself with overly cumbersome security measures becomes very vulnerable to social engineering.
As an example, take forced password rotation. If you make your users change passwords once a month, I guarantee you about a third of them will include the current month in their password, and another third will have a yellow sticky with the password written down either in their wallet or in their desk.
Print TWO receipts, place one in a an old-fashioned ballot-box, to be used for spot-checking the electronic voting system. The voter keeps the other receipt. In the event of a manual recount, allow any voter to demand to compare his receipt with that in the contingency ballot-box. Yes, it costs a little more. But not as much as fixed elections will cost.
The problem, then, is verifying the integrity of a paper trail.
You verify the paper trail by spot-checking precincts--eg. exit pools showed this precinct with 600 voters voted 52% for candidate Foo, yet the voting system showed only 45% for candidate Foo. Invite all supporters of candidate Foo to bring in their PKI signed paper voting receipts, when you get to 46% receipts for candidate Foo, you know you have a problem.
Missing the biggest stupid software fashion
on
Software Fashion
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The biggest stupid software fashion is IT outsourcing--it has reached the point where every corporate middle manager feels they have to have a story on how they're outsourcing, long before (if ever) outsourcing has proven any reliable ROI.
Unfortunately, unlike other stupid fads applied to software such as TQM, ISO9000, RUP, etc., outsourcing does real economic damage to the victims, (as opposed to just the psychological damage represented by trying to work around the others).
So, it looks like Nasa's as fucked up as any corporation, but unlike software where the failure cycles are measured in months and jobs lost, Nasa is measured in years and lives lost.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with that is you cannot just bring suit to compel a company to open up its proprietary code for you to check for violations. You have to make a realistic case that there are violations *before* getting access. Otherwise, what's to stop every out-of-work coder from bombarding software companies with nuiscance lawsuits saying "You used my sekrit weeblefetzer quicksort variation without a license! Spend $500,000 responding to my demands for evidence or settle (buy a license) for $69,900!"
Second and more interesting there is actually a tort in the UK that covers this exact type of case.
Interesting--can you give a bit of background on this? The barratry thing doesn't apply until after SCO starts sueing aix or linux users, which probably won't happen. The general point I'm trying to make is that sueing or threatening to sue people for profit (hello Canopy Group) is a riskier endeavor in the UK than in the USA.
Doesn't the UK have a law against barratry, something the USA desperately needs? SCO could get royally fucked by playing their legal games in the UK. We can only hope.
ssh into a shell account, or use a web client to your SMTP or (gack) exchange server.
Bingo. The legal (in both ways) pump and dump.
As part of their pump-and-dump strategy based on the premise of a viable lawsuit, SCO will try to attach themselves to every week's top news story. In coming weeks:
SCO bills NASA! (suspects Linux installed on Mars Rover)
SCO sues to stop presidential election tally! (unlicensed linux used in vote-counting machines)
SCO demands 25 million dollar reward for capture of Saddam! (We withheld a linux license so he couldn't legally use that terrorist O/S)
SCO requests injunction to stop sales of Ipod (Darl says they "could be hacked to run Linux")
You're right--in the dutch auction everybody who bid above the settlement price gets that price. The sfgate website has Hambrecht among the investment bankers, and Hambrecht is known for trying dutch auctions, so maybe it'll happen in a limited way.
It will be interesting to see the financials in the prospectus. Everybody "knows" that Google is profitable, but by how much? How long? What are the main sources of income?
Another thought, the smart thing to do would be a dutch auction, where every interested party posts blind bids in advance for lots of stock, with the highest bids being filled first, then next-highest, etc, until all the stock is sold. This means Google gets every penny they should and prevents investment bankers from underpricing the IPO to create a first-day "pop" in share value, where the IB and favored clients get to flip the stock for the difference between IPO price and pop price.
Only if I'm in the passenger's seat...
Sigh. The email address on her contact page bounces. Looking around at other assembly-persons' pages, the correct format for the email address appears to be:
Assemblymember.Reyes@assembly.ca.gov
For those of you living in California, especially around Fresno, contact the bills author, Sarah Reyes: Assemblywoman Reyes' contact info"
Carpooling passenger can't use a laptop or pda??? Do these people even live in the same world as those of us trying to make a living?
Yep, Ralsky's complaints are nothing but a head-fake. Off with his head.
The machines that we use are not all that great, P4 1.7Ghz with 2 year old NVidia graphics cards, so Quake and the likes are out of the question.
Oh great. Now even the slashdot editors are trolling.
Just for the record, my P450 with a TNT2 runs Q3 at around 80 FPS at 800x600.
We once again apologize for the fault in the patch process. Those responsible for patching the patchers who have patched the patch process, have now been patched.
I don't work for you. I work for the systems. They are my "customers" if you will.
Wrong. You work for the company (or organization--judging by your other posts, I suspect you're admining for a university, because you're cheerfully ignoring real-world business imperatives). Sometimes its more important to be first, to recognize revenue, to get "good enough" out there in the hands of users. Business pressures didn't disappear along with the dot.com boom. That doesn't excuse fundamental screw-ups, but your self-righteous tone and implication that developers are incapable of architecting a functional, deployable system appear very self-serving.
Knocking down straw men and delaying releases to make them more perfect doesn't make money (usually).
You, sir, are a BOFH (google for it). Get a clue, before you get thrown out on your ass. Your bugaboo about developers having (gasp) root access on dev/testing boxes is costing your company serious money while developers contort their architecture to cope with your control fantasies. Grow up.
If you're trolling, then congratulations, but I've dealt with sysnazis before.
As you layer on more and more security, the organization will start working around the security measures in order to get their jobs done in a timely manner. Any organization that is crippling itself with overly cumbersome security measures becomes very vulnerable to social engineering.
As an example, take forced password rotation. If you make your users change passwords once a month, I guarantee you about a third of them will include the current month in their password, and another third will have a yellow sticky with the password written down either in their wallet or in their desk.
It's Reagan. R -- e -->>>> A -- g -- a -- n. Soon to be St. Reagan, brought to you by our ideologues in power.
Microsoft involved in chip design? Um, so how do apply service packs to silicon?
Print TWO receipts, place one in a an old-fashioned ballot-box, to be used for spot-checking the electronic voting system. The voter keeps the other receipt. In the event of a manual recount, allow any voter to demand to compare his receipt with that in the contingency ballot-box. Yes, it costs a little more. But not as much as fixed elections will cost.
The problem, then, is verifying the integrity of a paper trail.
You verify the paper trail by spot-checking precincts--eg. exit pools showed this precinct with 600 voters voted 52% for candidate Foo, yet the voting system showed only 45% for candidate Foo. Invite all supporters of candidate Foo to bring in their PKI signed paper voting receipts, when you get to 46% receipts for candidate Foo, you know you have a problem.
The biggest stupid software fashion is IT outsourcing--it has reached the point where every corporate middle manager feels they have to have a story on how they're outsourcing, long before (if ever) outsourcing has proven any reliable ROI.
Unfortunately, unlike other stupid fads applied to software such as TQM, ISO9000, RUP, etc., outsourcing does real economic damage to the victims, (as opposed to just the psychological damage represented by trying to work around the others).
Wow--fascinating stuff. Thanks for posting that.
So, it looks like Nasa's as fucked up as any corporation, but unlike software where the failure cycles are measured in months and jobs lost, Nasa is measured in years and lives lost.
I suggest joining the parade of insiders dumping their stock: Insider sales
This is funny; not insightful, informative, or troll. Dumbass moderators, should be automatic one-year banishment from slashmod.