Note for the record that the original version of the article referred to blocking port 80; the article has now been edited to refer to port 135.
I don't understand why so many companies have problems with IT security. Our company's IT security policy is simple and bulletproof: We do not use computers. In fact, just to be absolutely sure that those dangerous computer viruses don't get into our building somehow, there are no phone lines, cable lines, electric lines, water lines, or sewage lines entering the building. We don't even have windows or doors. We, the employees, simply stood around on a foundation while the brick walls were built around us. Nothing gets out; nothing gets in. We are 100% safe.
I would give the kids Windows XP. That way, the computers will cause so much trouble that Michigan will pass a law mandating the use of free software instead of Microsoft's garbage.
Hmmm... I know a lot of people who signed up for that stupid do not call thing. They hardly ever got calls before. But now, they're getting tons of telemarketing calls. Know why? Because the law doesn't take effect until next year, and in the meantime, telemarketers have access to the list. Furthermore, to show you how stupid government is: The government is now mandating that companies purchase the list of people they cannot call, and furthermore, the law says that only companies that purchase this list are affected by the law. In other words, if you don't buy the list, you can make the calls. Punishing the companies that did buy the list. Does that make any sense?
That's your tax dollars at work.
It only goes to prove that GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT GET INVOLVED IN STUPID STUFF LIKE WHO CAN CALL WHO. Don't like telemarketers? Nobody likes them? Then run marketing campaigns all over the damn country that tell everyone to HANG UP when a telemarketer calls! If EVERYBODY hangs up WITHOUT listening to anything that telemarketers say on the phone, then guess what? THE TELEMARKETERS WON'T CALL ANYMORE, BECAUSE IT WOULD NO LONGER BE PROFITABLE ANYMORE!!!
This reminds me of when I was bored one day and wrote a document about a country I conjured up in my imagination. It was a crime vs. punishment document. In other words, it gave examples of crimes and the corresponding punishment. It was something along the lines that stealing a loaf of bread would get you a life of extreme torture, beatings, pain, and suffering, while commiting multiple first degree murders would get you less than a slap on the wrist with a wooden ruler.
If sending SPAM will get you, "471 years in federal prison, $117 million in fines," then I firmly believe that the punishment for murder and rape should be reduced to five minutes in the corner with the dunce hat.
Who does this Torvalds think he is, claiming that only "strictly necessary stuff" is going into Linux? Hey, if I want to patch it with stuff that makes Linux make coffee, you better believe I'm gonna do it!
I think the judge should grant that Microsoft should go out of business and give all its assets to the free software community, or else pay a licensing fee to Eolas Technologies of one billion dollars per copy of Internet Explorer in distribution.
Bobby Fischer (sp?) once said that, "Chess is dead." I think he meant that because computers can play chess (better than most human players), and with things like chess databases, what's the point anymore?
Well, this is what I think will happen: One day, someone will build an enormous cluster of computers just to solve this problem. It'll have zillions of terabytes of storage, and computers will be put to the task of computing every possible move that the computer considers relevant. In other words, blatantly stupid moves, or those that lead to situations that a normal computer can figure out quickly "on the fly" will not be included. But otherwise, entire games will be computed to the point that no matter how you start and what moves you play, the computer will always win because it "knows" nearly every possibility by heart and will therefore will "force" you into a pre-specified set (a very LARGE set, but a set nonetheless) of moves. It will do this by simply looking in a huge lookup table. It will serve as a worldwide chess server, and thousands of people could simultaneously play against it. In the course of doing so, the computer will throw away information that is excessive and will store new relevant information that it must compute. Essentially, it would be a learning machine, and it would never forget a mistake or a good move.
When this happens, all the best chess minds in the world, working together as a team and taking a year to make each move, would not be able to beat a computer.
X is SO SLOW because it is coded in the most ineffecient way possible! It contains calls to subroutines, for crying out loud! Do you have any idea how much overhead is incurred for every push, call, and pop? It's almost frightening! I am running X on a manual processor (you have to carry out the instructions manually and pencil in the results on a big worksheet) with 128 sheets of 8.5x11 paper for RAM, with a display based on LEDs that are manually set with toggle switches (powered by six rats that run inside a generator, no less), over a TCP/IP connection based on smoke signals from my cave to the next mountain across the desert valley, and XFree86 has noticeable performance problems! Window dragging can be particularly choppy at times. THIS PROBLEM MUST BE FIXED!!!!
I propose that we code XFree86 from scratch by putting an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite amount of time.
I lot of people, like me, are getting increasingly disenchanted by television. I stopped watching television almost completely about four years ago because the commercials were repetitive crap with garbage in between. 10,000 channels and nothing to watch on TV. And the news programs... don't even get me started. They tell you, "Up next," whatever story they were advertising all day. But the only thing that's "up next" is more commercials, and the story you're interested in is always about 2 seconds long and at the very end of the news program.
I decided that TV rots brains, so now, I have two televisions in my home and neither of them are plugged in. The big one is where all my clean laundry piles up, waiting to be folded, and the small one just sits there. I can tell you that since I made this change, I have become a much happier person. Suddenly, I have time to read books, which help to develop the imagination, rather than destroy it like TV does.
And a lot of people I know, who do not allow their children to watch television, are amazed at how full their children's lives are. They love to read; they spend time with friends; they do all sorts of stuff. So I swear by this: Television is a waste of time. The Internet is a better source of entertainment. (No, don't read all kinds of "inappropriate" messages from that statement.)
When I read/.'s blurb about this article (about how there will be many streams of content, not necessarily representing channels), the first thought that went through my mind was, "I certainly hope not."
Don't like being unemployed? Then instead of wasting your time writing this anti-Bush crap (notice that I did NOT say whether I am against or for Bush; that's for me to know and for the reader to wonder), you should:
Look for a job.
Start a small business. --OR--
Sign up for unemployment and welfare, like some lazy piece of shit.
That would be so freakin' down, dude!
on
The Borg MegaCube
·
· Score: 1
What I'd like to see is a boxed set of all Mission Impossble episodes, from the very first one in the 60's to the very last one in the early 90's. That show changed my life.
Everyone who owns a television should smash it with a 2x4. This would symbolize the dangers of watching too much television.
Everyone who owns a car should push it off a cliff. This would symbolize the dangers of irresponsible vehicle use.
Everyone who owns an airplane should crash it in the mountains. This would symbolize the dangers of being high in the air.
Everyone who owns a building should jump off its roof. This would symbolize the dangers of being inside a structure built by people.
Everyone who owns a gun should shoot himself. This would symbolize the dangers of irresponsible use of guns.
Everyone who owns a pen should write a suicide note before performing the above activities. This would symbolize the dangers of writing things down. That's all, folks.
I have this theory that when too many people enter a profession, it goes down the toilet.
Take computers, for example. Back in the day, only professionals used computers. Stupid questions like where the "any" key is, which drive to put a 3.5" disk, what every key on the keyboard does, why the "screen went black" when a power outtage happened... ridiculous, no-common-sense questions like these did not exist.
Now, every shmoe has a computer, a power tool of sorts, and doesn't know a damn thing about using it. The ridiculous questions that result are caused by that sort of thing.
Take other examples: shoe makers, key makers, blacksmiths, automobile drivers... there are thousands more examples. They were masters at their craft. Nowadays, their jobs have been replaced by machines, or by idiots who don't know anything about the job. You can easily see the difference between people who deeply understand their jobs and people who don't. Unfortunately, most computer users don't know or care how to use a computer, just as most automobile drivers don't know or care how to drive a car. (People flip over, skid off the road, hit things, and cause all kinds of trouble--especially in SUVs--because they do not understand how to drive, and do not know or care about the consequences of their ignorance.
The answer to this problem is education, and lots of it. Schools nowadays are teaching crap like political correctness, instead of important, interesting, intelligent things like how to do things, how to have respect for what you do, how to do things right.This crappy situation happened because marketing decided that more units needed to be sold; for that to happen, things needed to become user friendly. So complicated operations are (poorly) hidden behind icons and crap. Maybe instead of doing this, computers should have retained the "complicated" user interfaces of yesteryear. With a learning curve as a barrier, users might be forced to learn, and they wouldn't be so stupid.
Lobby to shut down the bastards!!!
on
Lobbying For Linux
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I know... Let's lobby to pass legislation that any commercial organization or group that in any way threatens free software will be automatically shut down by the government. People who do so will be shot.
Organizations that lobby to pass free-software-unfriendly legislation will be shut down immediately after they begin lobbying.
Companies that write software that produces unpublicized data formats will be shut down.
People who review free software and compare it to commercial software, and who point out any sort of disadvantage to using the free software, or any advantage to using the commercial software, will be shot immediately.
I have a better idea: Propose a new federal law that would require an annual payment of $1000.00 by each user of each copy of any Microsoft product to a federal government department that will distribute the money to Linux developers.
Don't forget something important: A large portion of these 15 million dollars in revenue is money that SCO never earned and will never get. That's because of the way accrual-based accounting works: Invoices written by SCO are considered Revenue in SCO's books and financial statements.
Remember when SCO sent out zillions of invoices for $699 per copy of Linux? I believe that they don't actually expect to get paid for these invoices. They sent them out to increase their revenue, making their company look more successful, and when they won't get paid, they'll write it off on their federal taxes as "bad debts." It'll be years before this gets to court. In the meantime, showing revenue makes SCO LOOK successful, increasing their stock price.
Oh, I have a good idea for a good new law... Let's call it the Patriot Act, Part III. It'll give the government powers to track down and burn any book that contains information the government doesn't like. To save tax dollars, the government would decide that instead of going through all the books, it'll simply burn them all.
Books would be classified in the Terrorist Penal Code as Weapons of Mass Instruction.
It would be illegal, punishable by death by burning, to possess or traffic in any such materials banned by the government. For the convenience of the guilty, the government would offer the choice of being burned at the stake or in a huge bonfire.
To enforce compliance, the law would allow any federal agent, or anybody claiming to be a federal agent, to enter any property, with or without permission or the use of force, to search and seize anything, to beat up, rape, arrest, or kill anyone, and to charge the party being investigated any "reasonable" fee for the aforementioned services.
Of course, under the new law, acts of real terrorism, as in blowing things up and killing lots of people, would fall under civil code, like intellectual property laws. Thus, if you are killed in a terrorist attack, you would have to sue the terrorist in small claims court.
SCO cannot get away with this bull. SCO will not get away with this bull.
The question of code history is one I asked a *long* time ago; probably the first I heard of this SCO bs. I believe they wrote a little C program that crawls the source tree and looks for similar lines of code. Hell, I could write a program like that, make it compare two source trees that make up 10,000 lines of code, and have it print out that 1,000,000 of those 10,000 lines are identical. Just like the ad for PC-Lint in the programming magazines.
Darl McBride's silly little company is acting just like the idiot who was sitting in a cafe one day. When the waitress came to take his order, the man asked her to sign and date some official documents certifying that he had been in that cafe at that time and date, with records of what he ordered, how long he stayed, etc. The waitress was confused about this, but the man claimed that he was very paranoid of someday being framed of a crime, and therefore wanted a written alibi for every waking moment of his life. He shows the waitress a calendar book with exact notations of every step he had ever taken. Suddenly, the police storms into the establishment and asks the gentleman if he goes by such and such a name. He answers affirmatively. They asked him if he had been involved in a jewelry store robbery which took place at 1221 East West Street several nights prior, at 12:31 AM. As he had proof of everything he had ever done, he opened his book, flipped to the day and hour in question, and read aloud from his book, "Jewelry store robbery at 1221 East West Street, 12:31 AM." Before he realized what a stupid error he had made, the police snatched him and he was off to jail.
With that in mind, here is an open letter to SCO CEO Darl McBride:
Dear Darl,
I do not believe any of your company's claims. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: I believe that SCO's software is composed 100% of code your company deliberately stole from other companies. Because your company stole code from the Linux kernel, you later found that code and wrongly believe that the theft occured in the other direction. Further, I strongly believe that with your company's shoddy record keeping, you cannot prove the origin of your code, so it is therefore impossible to prove your false claims of its being misappropriated into Linux. I further believe that even if your company could produce such proof, the effects of doing so would be adverse for you, as the records would clearly indicate the thefts that SCO deliberately performed.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: In your poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled "open letter" to the free software community, you deliberately took some quotes out of context. This was silly because the misquoted documents are readily available for all to see your blatent and stupid attempt. To demonstrate the effect of misquoting, I offer the following text, quoted directly from your letter:
My company, the SCO Group... illegally copied... the free Linux operating system. In doing this we... adversely affect the... credibility of... SCO. SCO... violates... Linux... intellectual property rights. This is improper. SCO... has forfeited its rights to this code. SCO... copyright ownership... is null and void. SCO... needs a business model that is sustainable, if it is to grow beyond a part-time avocation into an enterprise-trusted development model. Rather than fight for the right for free software... I invite the Open Source community to... fire off a "rant"... across a negotiation table. [R]espect for intellectual property is not [an option]...
Dual use? Please don't try to be such a bleeding heart. Every single thing that humans have invented can be used for good or for evil. For example, the wheel can be used to transport people and property more rapidly than on foot; it can also be used to drive military equipment to kill people and destroy property.
Once you realize that the dual use argument applies to everything in our world, consider this: If you, your family, your city, or your nation are being attacked, it is not only your right, it is your responsibility to defend yourself and your neighbors. And sometimes, you need to kill enemies in order to stay alive yourself.
As far as the Pentagon money is concerned, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's not like the U.S. is going all over the world like the Roman empire and taking control of everything in sight. These technologies are for defense; they have the good side effect of commercial use; and if some country ends up getting attacked with them, it's probably their own damn fault anyway.
A plan by Japan, China and South Korea to develop an operating system alternative to Microsoft's Windows software could raise concerns over fair competition, Microsoft said Friday.
Microsoft's definition of fair competition: "A single company has a global monopoly and uses it to gain monopolies in other areas, unhindered by any market forces or acts by government agencies."
In other news, international terrorist Osama McBride threatened to cause death and destruction that exceeds in every way the deaths caused by every war in the world since the beginning of time.
A spokesperson for SCO said, "By leveraging innovative death and destruction technologies, content providers streamline compelling digital rights management solutions." In other words, dead men violate no copyrights.
Yeah? What if the mouse on my laptop is a scratchpad, the one in my desktop is a trackball, the one at work is a traditional mouse full of dust, and the one on my buddy's IBM laptop is that red "dot" thingy?
It sounds like this system of verifying stuff won't work in the real world.
A dumb CEO named McBride,
Made his stock price go up when he lied, ....Now he's cuffed and he's jailed, ....Because freedom prevailed,
Said his cellmate, "You're in for a ride."
* * *
For Immediate Release
August 24, 2003
The terrorist organization SCO (NASDAQ: SCOX) today announced that it has placed two Lincoln Continentals in Linus Torvald's driveway. "We hope to convince Mr. Torvalds that he is breaking the law by helping to create software that may be used to compete with SCO," said a spokesperson for The SCO Group. SCO alleges that Linux source code violates SCO copyrights by having been illegally copied into UNIX System V.
Blake Stowell, Director of Public Relations for The SCO Group, publically announced:
After I had those nine beers in the casino the other night, I produced these three lines from UNIX System V handwritten on a crumpled piece of paper:
10 FOR I=1 TO 10
20 PRINT I
30 NEXT I
Nearly stumbling onto my face, I then produced another piece of paper with three lines from the Linux kernel:
static u_int
mcclock_tlsb_read(device_t dev, u_int reg)
{
As you can plainly see, the above three lines of Linux source code are exactly identical to corresponding lines in our UNIX System V code. We have undeniable evidence of these claims because all of our programmers, Bob, told me so himself, and he is a highly trained MCSE.
Later, in an interview, SCO CEO Baghdad McBride cried, "There are no Americans in Iraq, er, I mean, Linux programmers are commiting suicide by the hundreds outside the Gates of SCO! We have them surrounded and there is no escape! The sword: Take the sword without any fear," he said. "Let them be witness to that. Take out the sword on the enemies against you! Long live the Jihad against free software!"
Further, SCO alleges that the GPL, under which Linux is licensed, is invalid in the United States because the following clause is prohibited by former USSR Copyright Law:
"Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it is not allowed."
Baghdad McBride said, "In Soviet Russia, documents make copies of you!"
Like a cocaine addict, SCO stock soared to new highs after today's announcement.
(Moderators: Please score the limerick... The remainder of this post is what comes after the "but wait, there's more!")
* * *
(Please, help me finish this limerick... I'm drawing a blank.)
There was a dumb CEO named McBride,
And this was the scandal he tried: . . .
Slashdot Mirror
Note for the record that the original version of the article referred to blocking port 80; the article has now been edited to refer to port 135.
I don't understand why so many companies have problems with IT security. Our company's IT security policy is simple and bulletproof: We do not use computers. In fact, just to be absolutely sure that those dangerous computer viruses don't get into our building somehow, there are no phone lines, cable lines, electric lines, water lines, or sewage lines entering the building. We don't even have windows or doors. We, the employees, simply stood around on a foundation while the brick walls were built around us. Nothing gets out; nothing gets in. We are 100% safe.
1. Upon clearance of your check by the bank, we will sue you.
2. You agree to settle out of court for whatever amount we ask.
3. Failure to follow the terms of this agreement are grounds for lawsuit.
I think they're sending it up to drop bombs on something.
I would give the kids Windows XP. That way, the computers will cause so much trouble that Michigan will pass a law mandating the use of free software instead of Microsoft's garbage.
That's your tax dollars at work.
It only goes to prove that GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT GET INVOLVED IN STUPID STUFF LIKE WHO CAN CALL WHO. Don't like telemarketers? Nobody likes them? Then run marketing campaigns all over the damn country that tell everyone to HANG UP when a telemarketer calls! If EVERYBODY hangs up WITHOUT listening to anything that telemarketers say on the phone, then guess what? THE TELEMARKETERS WON'T CALL ANYMORE, BECAUSE IT WOULD NO LONGER BE PROFITABLE ANYMORE!!!
If sending SPAM will get you, "471 years in federal prison, $117 million in fines," then I firmly believe that the punishment for murder and rape should be reduced to five minutes in the corner with the dunce hat.
Who does this Torvalds think he is, claiming that only "strictly necessary stuff" is going into Linux? Hey, if I want to patch it with stuff that makes Linux make coffee, you better believe I'm gonna do it!
I think the judge should grant that Microsoft should go out of business and give all its assets to the free software community, or else pay a licensing fee to Eolas Technologies of one billion dollars per copy of Internet Explorer in distribution.
Bobby Fischer (sp?) once said that, "Chess is dead." I think he meant that because computers can play chess (better than most human players), and with things like chess databases, what's the point anymore?
Well, this is what I think will happen: One day, someone will build an enormous cluster of computers just to solve this problem. It'll have zillions of terabytes of storage, and computers will be put to the task of computing every possible move that the computer considers relevant. In other words, blatantly stupid moves, or those that lead to situations that a normal computer can figure out quickly "on the fly" will not be included. But otherwise, entire games will be computed to the point that no matter how you start and what moves you play, the computer will always win because it "knows" nearly every possibility by heart and will therefore will "force" you into a pre-specified set (a very LARGE set, but a set nonetheless) of moves. It will do this by simply looking in a huge lookup table. It will serve as a worldwide chess server, and thousands of people could simultaneously play against it. In the course of doing so, the computer will throw away information that is excessive and will store new relevant information that it must compute. Essentially, it would be a learning machine, and it would never forget a mistake or a good move.
When this happens, all the best chess minds in the world, working together as a team and taking a year to make each move, would not be able to beat a computer.
I propose that we code XFree86 from scratch by putting an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards for an infinite amount of time.
I decided that TV rots brains, so now, I have two televisions in my home and neither of them are plugged in. The big one is where all my clean laundry piles up, waiting to be folded, and the small one just sits there. I can tell you that since I made this change, I have become a much happier person. Suddenly, I have time to read books, which help to develop the imagination, rather than destroy it like TV does.
And a lot of people I know, who do not allow their children to watch television, are amazed at how full their children's lives are. They love to read; they spend time with friends; they do all sorts of stuff. So I swear by this: Television is a waste of time. The Internet is a better source of entertainment. (No, don't read all kinds of "inappropriate" messages from that statement.)
When I read /.'s blurb about this article (about how there will be many streams of content, not necessarily representing channels), the first thought that went through my mind was, "I certainly hope not."
--OR--
What I'd like to see is a boxed set of all Mission Impossble episodes, from the very first one in the 60's to the very last one in the early 90's. That show changed my life.
Everyone who owns a car should push it off a cliff. This would symbolize the dangers of irresponsible vehicle use.
Everyone who owns an airplane should crash it in the mountains. This would symbolize the dangers of being high in the air.
Everyone who owns a building should jump off its roof. This would symbolize the dangers of being inside a structure built by people.
Everyone who owns a gun should shoot himself. This would symbolize the dangers of irresponsible use of guns.
Everyone who owns a pen should write a suicide note before performing the above activities. This would symbolize the dangers of writing things down. That's all, folks.
Take computers, for example. Back in the day, only professionals used computers. Stupid questions like where the "any" key is, which drive to put a 3.5" disk, what every key on the keyboard does, why the "screen went black" when a power outtage happened... ridiculous, no-common-sense questions like these did not exist.
Now, every shmoe has a computer, a power tool of sorts, and doesn't know a damn thing about using it. The ridiculous questions that result are caused by that sort of thing.
Take other examples: shoe makers, key makers, blacksmiths, automobile drivers... there are thousands more examples. They were masters at their craft. Nowadays, their jobs have been replaced by machines, or by idiots who don't know anything about the job. You can easily see the difference between people who deeply understand their jobs and people who don't. Unfortunately, most computer users don't know or care how to use a computer, just as most automobile drivers don't know or care how to drive a car. (People flip over, skid off the road, hit things, and cause all kinds of trouble--especially in SUVs--because they do not understand how to drive, and do not know or care about the consequences of their ignorance.
The answer to this problem is education, and lots of it. Schools nowadays are teaching crap like political correctness, instead of important, interesting, intelligent things like how to do things, how to have respect for what you do, how to do things right.This crappy situation happened because marketing decided that more units needed to be sold; for that to happen, things needed to become user friendly. So complicated operations are (poorly) hidden behind icons and crap. Maybe instead of doing this, computers should have retained the "complicated" user interfaces of yesteryear. With a learning curve as a barrier, users might be forced to learn, and they wouldn't be so stupid.
Organizations that lobby to pass free-software-unfriendly legislation will be shut down immediately after they begin lobbying.
Companies that write software that produces unpublicized data formats will be shut down.
People who review free software and compare it to commercial software, and who point out any sort of disadvantage to using the free software, or any advantage to using the commercial software, will be shot immediately.
I have a better idea: Propose a new federal law that would require an annual payment of $1000.00 by each user of each copy of any Microsoft product to a federal government department that will distribute the money to Linux developers.
Remember when SCO sent out zillions of invoices for $699 per copy of Linux? I believe that they don't actually expect to get paid for these invoices. They sent them out to increase their revenue, making their company look more successful, and when they won't get paid, they'll write it off on their federal taxes as "bad debts." It'll be years before this gets to court. In the meantime, showing revenue makes SCO LOOK successful, increasing their stock price.
Books would be classified in the Terrorist Penal Code as Weapons of Mass Instruction.
It would be illegal, punishable by death by burning, to possess or traffic in any such materials banned by the government. For the convenience of the guilty, the government would offer the choice of being burned at the stake or in a huge bonfire.
To enforce compliance, the law would allow any federal agent, or anybody claiming to be a federal agent, to enter any property, with or without permission or the use of force, to search and seize anything, to beat up, rape, arrest, or kill anyone, and to charge the party being investigated any "reasonable" fee for the aforementioned services.
Of course, under the new law, acts of real terrorism, as in blowing things up and killing lots of people, would fall under civil code, like intellectual property laws. Thus, if you are killed in a terrorist attack, you would have to sue the terrorist in small claims court.
The question of code history is one I asked a *long* time ago; probably the first I heard of this SCO bs. I believe they wrote a little C program that crawls the source tree and looks for similar lines of code. Hell, I could write a program like that, make it compare two source trees that make up 10,000 lines of code, and have it print out that 1,000,000 of those 10,000 lines are identical. Just like the ad for PC-Lint in the programming magazines.
Darl McBride's silly little company is acting just like the idiot who was sitting in a cafe one day. When the waitress came to take his order, the man asked her to sign and date some official documents certifying that he had been in that cafe at that time and date, with records of what he ordered, how long he stayed, etc. The waitress was confused about this, but the man claimed that he was very paranoid of someday being framed of a crime, and therefore wanted a written alibi for every waking moment of his life. He shows the waitress a calendar book with exact notations of every step he had ever taken. Suddenly, the police storms into the establishment and asks the gentleman if he goes by such and such a name. He answers affirmatively. They asked him if he had been involved in a jewelry store robbery which took place at 1221 East West Street several nights prior, at 12:31 AM. As he had proof of everything he had ever done, he opened his book, flipped to the day and hour in question, and read aloud from his book, "Jewelry store robbery at 1221 East West Street, 12:31 AM." Before he realized what a stupid error he had made, the police snatched him and he was off to jail.
With that in mind, here is an open letter to SCO CEO Darl McBride:
Dear Darl,
I do not believe any of your company's claims. In fact, I believe quite the opposite: I believe that SCO's software is composed 100% of code your company deliberately stole from other companies. Because your company stole code from the Linux kernel, you later found that code and wrongly believe that the theft occured in the other direction. Further, I strongly believe that with your company's shoddy record keeping, you cannot prove the origin of your code, so it is therefore impossible to prove your false claims of its being misappropriated into Linux. I further believe that even if your company could produce such proof, the effects of doing so would be adverse for you, as the records would clearly indicate the thefts that SCO deliberately performed.
Oh yeah, and one other thing: In your poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled "open letter" to the free software community, you deliberately took some quotes out of context. This was silly because the misquoted documents are readily available for all to see your blatent and stupid attempt. To demonstrate the effect of misquoting, I offer the following text, quoted directly from your letter:
How does that feel, Darl?Sincerely,
rice burners suck
Chief Karma Whore
Slashdot
Once you realize that the dual use argument applies to everything in our world, consider this: If you, your family, your city, or your nation are being attacked, it is not only your right, it is your responsibility to defend yourself and your neighbors. And sometimes, you need to kill enemies in order to stay alive yourself.
As far as the Pentagon money is concerned, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's not like the U.S. is going all over the world like the Roman empire and taking control of everything in sight. These technologies are for defense; they have the good side effect of commercial use; and if some country ends up getting attacked with them, it's probably their own damn fault anyway.
Microsoft's definition of fair competition: "A single company has a global monopoly and uses it to gain monopolies in other areas, unhindered by any market forces or acts by government agencies."
A spokesperson for SCO said, "By leveraging innovative death and destruction technologies, content providers streamline compelling digital rights management solutions." In other words, dead men violate no copyrights.
It sounds like this system of verifying stuff won't work in the real world.
A dumb CEO named McBride,
....Now he's cuffed and he's jailed,
....Because freedom prevailed,
Made his stock price go up when he lied,
Said his cellmate, "You're in for a ride."
* * *
For Immediate Release
August 24, 2003
The terrorist organization SCO (NASDAQ: SCOX) today announced that it has placed two Lincoln Continentals in Linus Torvald's driveway. "We hope to convince Mr. Torvalds that he is breaking the law by helping to create software that may be used to compete with SCO," said a spokesperson for The SCO Group. SCO alleges that Linux source code violates SCO copyrights by having been illegally copied into UNIX System V.
Blake Stowell, Director of Public Relations for The SCO Group, publically announced:
Later, in an interview, SCO CEO Baghdad McBride cried, "There are no Americans in Iraq, er, I mean, Linux programmers are commiting suicide by the hundreds outside the Gates of SCO! We have them surrounded and there is no escape! The sword: Take the sword without any fear," he said. "Let them be witness to that. Take out the sword on the enemies against you! Long live the Jihad against free software!"Further, SCO alleges that the GPL, under which Linux is licensed, is invalid in the United States because the following clause is prohibited by former USSR Copyright Law:
Baghdad McBride said, "In Soviet Russia, documents make copies of you!"Like a cocaine addict, SCO stock soared to new highs after today's announcement.
(Moderators: Please score the limerick... The remainder of this post is what comes after the "but wait, there's more!")
* * * (Please, help me finish this limerick... I'm drawing a blank.) There was a dumb CEO named McBride,
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And this was the scandal he tried: