One of my former staff members is now a DBA for Pfizer. When he started receiving Viagra spam, he traced the headers and tipped off the Pfizer legal department. Yes, the idiots were dumb enough to send Viagra spam to people with pfizer.com addresses. I could be wrong about this, but I think Pfizer employees can get prescriptions filled for free so long as it's for a Pfizer drug. I doubt they are looking for a cheap source of Viagra.
At the time, spammers were misusing the trademarked Viagra name to desribe a non-Pfizer product, which is a big no-no. While the Pfizer legal people are powerless to end the spam, the ads for Viagra are now pretty much limited to sleazy prescription factories that claim to sell the "real" product. Now they describe the knock-offs as the generic name "Sildenafil Citrate" or some goofball name-du-jour that claims to be "as effective as Viagra".
Not much of a victory in the war on spam, but it shows how dumb the spammers can be.
"Dumping is only an issue when: a) One is selling below cost. The per-unit production cost of Windows is nominal. It would be *very* hard to argue that Microsoft is selling below cost."
Dumping has nothing to do with selling below cost -- the basis for comparison is selling price in the producer's home market. The best quote I could find was written from the US import instead of US export point of view, but take a look at http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/articles/di-12-23-02.htm where you will find: "Dumping is said to occur when an exporter's prices in the United States are lower than those it charges for similar merchandise in its home market."
"b) The intent is to drive someone else out of the market. There is *one* provider of Windows, and that is Microsoft. Industrial-style economic terms just don't make sense here."
Precisely. Microsoft is the only company that makes Windows, but they certainly are NOT the only company that makes an OS for x86. We all know who Microsoft wants to drive out of the market. Refer to the "Halloween memos". Software just like many other products that have a high development cost combined with nominal production cost.
Microsoft's problem in many parts of the world is that their US & Western European prices are dead-on-arrival. People who make $200/month are not about to cough up $199 for a copy of XP Pro. If they sell at a price that makes sense in Thailand, they get accused of "dumping". Piracy has little to do with the situation. Linux is available with no piracy required. With or without piracy, customers are not going to spend money they don't have.
If I were in charge of global marketing for Microsoft, I would create a country-specific version for certain target markets (like Thailand). It would be cosmetically "dumbed down" and priced to sell. Of course, any of the features that are not included in the base install can probably be downloaded from microsoft.com in about 30 seconds. You can't be accused of dumping if the product in question isn't sold anywhere else.
The environmental issues would be there for ANYONE who sold a vast quantity of these disks. Unless they can be recycled like ordinary plastic, it becomes a problem. AOL used to get hammered on this issue back when they were spewing millions of junk floppies and CDs.
There is a real possibility that nobody can deploy this technology because of the environmental issues. If there is an elaborate/expensive method of recycling or disposing of these things, we're back to the cost issue as a deal breaker.
In the Netflix scenario, mailing them back for recycling is not a viable answer, for even more reasons than you mentioned. Cost and convenience issues aside, you still have the environmental impact of transporting millions of these things across the country. It's not like the disks are going to transport themselves back for recycling, using some kind of magical pollution-free vehicle. Whatever is done to placate the landfill environmentalists will be offset by the anger of "global warming" environmentalists.
Of course, Disney was involved, and we all know how much Disney loves DRM. I wonder how they intended to stop people from copying the disks onto DVD-R. Could it be that this idea died because of cheap DVD burners combined with the inability to suppress DeCSS code?
The fact that the disposable DVD was priced higher than conventional rental makes it a tough sell. Once again, the theory that consumers will pay a steep premium for minor convenience is proven wrong. Besides, I suspect the lack of a return means less foot traffic in the video store, and probably lower sales overall.
I wonder if it might have worked in a mail-order scenario. Getting rid of the turn process would be a big plus for companies like NetFlix. Any increase in the cost of media would be offset by a 50% reduction in the cost of postage.
SCO has at least as much motivation as anyone to launch this thing. A real geek attack on SCO would go way beyond a mere website DDOS.
If someone is running a pump-and-dump scam, they sure don't want people talking about the facts of the case, SCO's lack of revenue, the "IP license" fiasco, "death spiral" financing, or Darl's lies. The logical solution is to create a diversion. These are desperate people. Follow the money.
"It will be a happy day when we can actually USE Linux on the desktop at work though."
You CAN use Oracle Apps with Linux. See my other post at this location.
I could be wrong about this, but Jinitiator looks like nothing more than a launching platform for the appropriate JRE. As we all know, there are many versions of Java out there, not to mention the less-than-perfect world of browser integration. Then we have the potential problem of M$ Java hijacking whatever other Java might be installed. Jinitiator gets around all that by installing it's own JRE and making sure that the jinit mimetype launches Jinitiator, which then launches the proper JRE. Nothing stops you from installing your own jre and forcing Oracle to use it (with a little creativity on the URL that launches Oracle apps). See my other post for details.
Jinitiator not required; Mozilla ALREADY works!
on
Oracle Embraces Mozilla
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· Score: 2, Informative
On Linux, all you need is the jdk1.4.1 from blackdown.org, jre properly integrated with Mozilla according to the directions. If you can run any java applet via Mozilla, then all you have to do is use a URL in the form of
I learned bits and pieces of this solution via numerous sources. This works great for me using Mozilla 1.5 on RH9. I posted this on Metalink and a few other places. IMHO it runs faster than Windoze/IE. This approach may not be supported, but I suspect the reason is that Oracle is trying to avoid supporting all those people who can't figure out how to set up Mozilla and jdk.1.4.1 from tarballs.
I fully agree. IBM needs to make an example out of SCO.
Funny you should mention the German Olympic Games incident. I saw a TV show that claimed the Mossad spent many years systematically hunting and killing the Olympic terrorists, one at a time. It seems there is only one guy left, and he probably has anxiety issues.
While I do not advocate physical violence against Darl and his buddies, they have earned a heap of bad karma. Let's hope they get the business world equivalent of Israeli-style retribution. An all-expenses-paid trip to Club Fed would be a good start.
In ancient times, my employer paid vast amounts of money to Digital Equipment Corporation for OS and software support. Back in the 80's, DEC had world class experts who could provide all kinds of insightful solutions, 24x7. It cost a fortune, but the quality of support was awesome by modern standards. Back when I was a newbie, they patiently explained all kinds of things in response to my questions. For what I was being paid at the time, my employer was lucky to have someone who knew enough to ask the questions and implement the answers. We did not have a properly qualified sysadmin and there were not enough systems people to go around. Therefore, people like me were pressed into service back in 1985.
This culture of helping the new people has been around for a long time. An expanding IT industry needs new people, so there was (until recently) nothing to lose by helping your colleagues. In fact, there are certain people who thrive on the prestige they get for displaying their knowledge and mentoring the newbies. Without them, I would be nothing. Now that the people asking the questions are replacements for those providing the answers, I wonder how long it will take for the experienced people to either shut up or move on to another profession after losing their jobs.
Today, nobody has support that goes beyond what you can browse online in an FAQ database. If you call for support, the best you will get is an offshore outsourced phone clerk who searches the FAQ list for you. If you can't find it online, rest assured that the phone clerk can't find it either. After 19 years in the IT industry, I don't ask newbie questions, so the support people have few opportunties to amaze me with instant solutions. Maybe its just me getting old, but I notice that my staff members are sometimes hobbled by problems that should be resolved through vendor support. We have Oracle. They sometimes have world class support, but there are also times when we post an issue on Metalink and I can tell from the clueless responses that we are dealing with people who fail to understand the question, much less provide an answer.
I believe one of two things will happen. (1)The offshore outsourcers gain knowledge and commoditize most of the IT industry, or (2) the outsourced model proves effective only to those who can tolerate a low skill level and simply can't tell the difference. I say there is a 50% chance of a market re-emerging for high skill people to clean up the trainwrecks caused by low-skill outsourcers (see prosecution exhibit A in the parent to this message). At this point, it could go either way.
In many cases, the alternative to Linux is Microsoft (or the other way around). Which is the bigger threat: BSA audit or SCO legal victory? One of these is current reality, the other is about as likely as me getting hit by lightning in the next 10 minutes. One of these organizations has collected lots of money from its customer/victims, the other talks about collecting lots of money.
"Gee, I dunno, maybe we ought to put all this Linux stuff on hold" Yeah, right.
Run an open relay, the ISP detects it, launches nastygrams and prepares to blast your ass to Mars. Complain to the average ISP about the average spammer, and the spammer is still spamming through the same ISP 6 months later. Hmmmm.
This is how Microsoft established market share in Asia; complaining about piracy while making sporadic efforts to stop it. For all we know, Microsoft could have given the product to the pirates just to avoid losing market share to Linux.
Microsoft deployed product activation first in Asia, and they had every intention of launching a major crackdown on piracy. Just as they fully ramped up the product activiation wonder-weapon, they discovered a more serious problem. Instead of seeing their products pirated for $5/disc, the market shifted to Linux. Now they can't give the product away fast enough.
I remember a Saturday Night Live skit in which they attempted to parody the "Iron Chef". For those who have never seen the Iron Chef, it's a Japanese TV show that is essentially a cooking competition, with a sportscaster doing play-by-play. The problem: the real Iron Chef is already so over-dramatic that the parody could not even match the original concept, much less exceed it.
If The Onion did a bit on SCO, could they really make up something more bizarre than the true story?
To me, the camera phone is so stupid I wonder why anyone would want one. Thanks to you, I understand.
Travel is best suited for young (single?) workers
on
Traveling Jobs in IT?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Many people with middle-age responsibilities (spouse & kids) are looking to minimize travel. Travel requirements are seldom viewed as a plus, except by young people want to travel. I never thought about it before, but high-travel jobs might be the one area where employers favor recent grads (few responsibilities, willingness to live cheaply, flexible schedules, few complaints).
Believe me, the mystique of travel fades soon enough. I had an around-the-world trip in 1999. Nobody would do it this way in 2003, but at the time I travelled alone. As an added bonus, I was sick as a dog every step of the way. Sick in UK, sick in Switzerland, sick in Hong Kong, sick in China. Over the course of two weeks, I was miserable in all 24 time zones. If I tried such a thing today, I would have been stuck in the SARS quarantine.
I met some great people, and discovered that British Air has very nice seats in Business Class on their long-haul international flights. All of this is fine, but travel is a "defensive" game. You are defending your property and yourself against a number of threats, and you are mostly trying to prevent things from going wrong. It's a fun game to play, but the novelty wears off.
There IS some hope that AT&T's patent can be used against spammers. After all, who else needs to defeat spam filtering, and why should AT&T license this technology when they can pillage and plunder anyone they catch using it. I suspect that spam is costing AT&T more than anything they could get through licensing this patent.
To those who think spammers will flout any law, I offer this interesing story: I used to get lots and lots of e-mail about "Herbal Viagra", and other "Viagra-like" products. So did one of my colleagues, who got really annoyed when the spam surpassed his ability to ignore it. It just so happens that this guy works for Pfizer (the manufacturer of Viagra). He started forwarding the "Herbal Viagra" spam to the Pfizer legal department, along with his analysis of who the real senders were. There is still plenty of spam, and much of it is for Viagra (real or generic), but you won't find Viagra used as the name of anything that is not Pfizer's Sildenafil Citrate (aka Viagra). If there was a TV show "America's Dumbest Trademark Infringers", I guess these Herbal Viagra clowns would be starring in episode #1.
The Patent Office is a government agency. Like all government agencies, it lwill do whatever it takes to sustain itself and grow. Their growth strategy has been to collect fees and issue patents, often without much regard for prior art and common sense.
Trying to stop the growth of USPTO is like trying to stop the sun from rising. Perhaps there is a way for them to collect additional (even higher) fees for re-examining questionable patents. Considering all the garbage that is out there, they is quite a bit of work to be done and a captive market to pay for it. I think the Patent Office needs something to do. Pulling the plug on misguided patents would be a worthwhile effort. All we need for patent reform is a way to align the inevitable collection of fees with the policy goal of protecting only those truly innovative ideas that cost big money for R&D.
Many of us have suspected that SCO is involved in a massive "pump & dump" scheme. Obviously so do the folks at IBM. A not-so-coincidental side effect of discovery may reveal evidence of exactly that. If SCO really had any solid evidence, they would be showing it to everyone. Of course, if the whole thing is a diversion to cover an investment exit strategy, then SCO's strategy would be 100% press releases, 0% substance.
Now that the participants face the possibility of being "outed", let's see how much outside support SCO gets from analysts.
Slashdot Mirror
Because you don't need a SCO license to use a product they already released under GPL.
Unless you work from (or depend on) Microsoft, that is.
One of my former staff members is now a DBA for Pfizer. When he started receiving Viagra spam, he traced the headers and tipped off the Pfizer legal department. Yes, the idiots were dumb enough to send Viagra spam to people with pfizer.com addresses. I could be wrong about this, but I think Pfizer employees can get prescriptions filled for free so long as it's for a Pfizer drug. I doubt they are looking for a cheap source of Viagra.
At the time, spammers were misusing the trademarked Viagra name to desribe a non-Pfizer product, which is a big no-no. While the Pfizer legal people are powerless to end the spam, the ads for Viagra are now pretty much limited to sleazy prescription factories that claim to sell the "real" product. Now they describe the knock-offs as the generic name "Sildenafil Citrate" or some goofball name-du-jour that claims to be "as effective as Viagra".
Not much of a victory in the war on spam, but it shows how dumb the spammers can be.
Take a look at this
"Dumping is only an issue when:
2 .htm where you will find: "Dumping is said to occur when an exporter's prices in the United States are lower than those it charges for similar merchandise in its home market."
a) One is selling below cost. The per-unit production cost of Windows is nominal. It would be *very* hard to argue that Microsoft is selling below cost."
Dumping has nothing to do with selling below cost -- the basis for comparison is selling price in the producer's home market. The best quote I could find was written from the US import instead of US export point of view, but take a look at http://www.freetrade.org/pubs/articles/di-12-23-0
"b) The intent is to drive someone else out of the market. There is *one* provider of Windows, and that is Microsoft. Industrial-style economic terms just don't make sense here."
Precisely. Microsoft is the only company that makes Windows, but they certainly are NOT the only company that makes an OS for x86. We all know who Microsoft wants to drive out of the market. Refer to the "Halloween memos". Software just like many other products that have a high development cost combined with nominal production cost.
Microsoft's problem in many parts of the world is that their US & Western European prices are dead-on-arrival. People who make $200/month are not about to cough up $199 for a copy of XP Pro. If they sell at a price that makes sense in Thailand, they get accused of "dumping". Piracy has little to do with the situation. Linux is available with no piracy required. With or without piracy, customers are not going to spend money they don't have.
If I were in charge of global marketing for Microsoft, I would create a country-specific version for certain target markets (like Thailand). It would be cosmetically "dumbed down" and priced to sell. Of course, any of the features that are not included in the base install can probably be downloaded from microsoft.com in about 30 seconds. You can't be accused of dumping if the product in question isn't sold anywhere else.
"But on the other hand, how many records do you play that you bought 20 years ago? 50? 100? "
Most of them.
The environmental issues would be there for ANYONE who sold a vast quantity of these disks. Unless they can be recycled like ordinary plastic, it becomes a problem. AOL used to get hammered on this issue back when they were spewing millions of junk floppies and CDs.
There is a real possibility that nobody can deploy this technology because of the environmental issues. If there is an elaborate/expensive method of recycling or disposing of these things, we're back to the cost issue as a deal breaker.
In the Netflix scenario, mailing them back for recycling is not a viable answer, for even more reasons than you mentioned. Cost and convenience issues aside, you still have the environmental impact of transporting millions of these things across the country. It's not like the disks are going to transport themselves back for recycling, using some kind of magical pollution-free vehicle. Whatever is done to placate the landfill environmentalists will be offset by the anger of "global warming" environmentalists.
Of course, Disney was involved, and we all know how much Disney loves DRM. I wonder how they intended to stop people from copying the disks onto DVD-R. Could it be that this idea died because of cheap DVD burners combined with the inability to suppress DeCSS code?
The fact that the disposable DVD was priced higher than conventional rental makes it a tough sell. Once again, the theory that consumers will pay a steep premium for minor convenience is proven wrong. Besides, I suspect the lack of a return means less foot traffic in the video store, and probably lower sales overall.
I wonder if it might have worked in a mail-order scenario. Getting rid of the turn process would be a big plus for companies like NetFlix. Any increase in the cost of media would be offset by a 50% reduction in the cost of postage.
Just wondering.
SCO has at least as much motivation as anyone to launch this thing. A real geek attack on SCO would go way beyond a mere website DDOS.
If someone is running a pump-and-dump scam, they sure don't want people talking about the facts of the case, SCO's lack of revenue, the "IP license" fiasco, "death spiral" financing, or Darl's lies. The logical solution is to create a diversion. These are desperate people. Follow the money.
You CAN use Oracle Apps with Linux. See my other post at this location.
I could be wrong about this, but Jinitiator looks like nothing more than a launching platform for the appropriate JRE. As we all know, there are many versions of Java out there, not to mention the less-than-perfect world of browser integration. Then we have the potential problem of M$ Java hijacking whatever other Java might be installed. Jinitiator gets around all that by installing it's own JRE and making sure that the jinit mimetype launches Jinitiator, which then launches the proper JRE. Nothing stops you from installing your own jre and forcing Oracle to use it (with a little creativity on the URL that launches Oracle apps). See my other post for details.
I fully agree. IBM needs to make an example out of SCO.
Funny you should mention the German Olympic Games incident. I saw a TV show that claimed the Mossad spent many years systematically hunting and killing the Olympic terrorists, one at a time. It seems there is only one guy left, and he probably has anxiety issues.
While I do not advocate physical violence against Darl and his buddies, they have earned a heap of bad karma. Let's hope they get the business world equivalent of Israeli-style retribution. An all-expenses-paid trip to Club Fed would be a good start.
In ancient times, my employer paid vast amounts of money to Digital Equipment Corporation for OS and software support. Back in the 80's, DEC had world class experts who could provide all kinds of insightful solutions, 24x7. It cost a fortune, but the quality of support was awesome by modern standards. Back when I was a newbie, they patiently explained all kinds of things in response to my questions. For what I was being paid at the time, my employer was lucky to have someone who knew enough to ask the questions and implement the answers. We did not have a properly qualified sysadmin and there were not enough systems people to go around. Therefore, people like me were pressed into service back in 1985.
This culture of helping the new people has been around for a long time. An expanding IT industry needs new people, so there was (until recently) nothing to lose by helping your colleagues. In fact, there are certain people who thrive on the prestige they get for displaying their knowledge and mentoring the newbies. Without them, I would be nothing. Now that the people asking the questions are replacements for those providing the answers, I wonder how long it will take for the experienced people to either shut up or move on to another profession after losing their jobs.
Today, nobody has support that goes beyond what you can browse online in an FAQ database. If you call for support, the best you will get is an offshore outsourced phone clerk who searches the FAQ list for you. If you can't find it online, rest assured that the phone clerk can't find it either. After 19 years in the IT industry, I don't ask newbie questions, so the support people have few opportunties to amaze me with instant solutions. Maybe its just me getting old, but I notice that my staff members are sometimes hobbled by problems that should be resolved through vendor support. We have Oracle. They sometimes have world class support, but there are also times when we post an issue on Metalink and I can tell from the clueless responses that we are dealing with people who fail to understand the question, much less provide an answer.
I believe one of two things will happen. (1)The offshore outsourcers gain knowledge and commoditize most of the IT industry, or (2) the outsourced model proves effective only to those who can tolerate a low skill level and simply can't tell the difference. I say there is a 50% chance of a market re-emerging for high skill people to clean up the trainwrecks caused by low-skill outsourcers (see prosecution exhibit A in the parent to this message). At this point, it could go either way.
In many cases, the alternative to Linux is Microsoft (or the other way around). Which is the bigger threat: BSA audit or SCO legal victory? One of these is current reality, the other is about as likely as me getting hit by lightning in the next 10 minutes. One of these organizations has collected lots of money from its customer/victims, the other talks about collecting lots of money.
"Gee, I dunno, maybe we ought to put all this Linux stuff on hold" Yeah, right.
Run an open relay, the ISP detects it, launches nastygrams and prepares to blast your ass to Mars. Complain to the average ISP about the average spammer, and the spammer is still spamming through the same ISP 6 months later. Hmmmm.
Ligitation is expensive, but making an example out of SCO is (as the IBM attorneys will surely point out) a good long-term investment.
This is how Microsoft established market share in Asia; complaining about piracy while making sporadic efforts to stop it. For all we know, Microsoft could have given the product to the pirates just to avoid losing market share to Linux.
Microsoft deployed product activation first in Asia, and they had every intention of launching a major crackdown on piracy. Just as they fully ramped up the product activiation wonder-weapon, they discovered a more serious problem. Instead of seeing their products pirated for $5/disc, the market shifted to Linux. Now they can't give the product away fast enough.
I remember a Saturday Night Live skit in which they attempted to parody the "Iron Chef". For those who have never seen the Iron Chef, it's a Japanese TV show that is essentially a cooking competition, with a sportscaster doing play-by-play. The problem: the real Iron Chef is already so over-dramatic that the parody could not even match the original concept, much less exceed it.
If The Onion did a bit on SCO, could they really make up something more bizarre than the true story?
To me, the camera phone is so stupid I wonder why anyone would want one. Thanks to you, I understand.
Many people with middle-age responsibilities (spouse & kids) are looking to minimize travel. Travel requirements are seldom viewed as a plus, except by young people want to travel. I never thought about it before, but high-travel jobs might be the one area where employers favor recent grads (few responsibilities, willingness to live cheaply, flexible schedules, few complaints).
Believe me, the mystique of travel fades soon enough. I had an around-the-world trip in 1999. Nobody would do it this way in 2003, but at the time I travelled alone. As an added bonus, I was sick as a dog every step of the way. Sick in UK, sick in Switzerland, sick in Hong Kong, sick in China. Over the course of two weeks, I was miserable in all 24 time zones. If I tried such a thing today, I would have been stuck in the SARS quarantine.
I met some great people, and discovered that British Air has very nice seats in Business Class on their long-haul international flights. All of this is fine, but travel is a "defensive" game. You are defending your property and yourself against a number of threats, and you are mostly trying to prevent things from going wrong. It's a fun game to play, but the novelty wears off.
There IS some hope that AT&T's patent can be used against spammers. After all, who else needs to defeat spam filtering, and why should AT&T license this technology when they can pillage and plunder anyone they catch using it. I suspect that spam is costing AT&T more than anything they could get through licensing this patent.
To those who think spammers will flout any law, I offer this interesing story: I used to get lots and lots of e-mail about "Herbal Viagra", and other "Viagra-like" products. So did one of my colleagues, who got really annoyed when the spam surpassed his ability to ignore it. It just so happens that this guy works for Pfizer (the manufacturer of Viagra). He started forwarding the "Herbal Viagra" spam to the Pfizer legal department, along with his analysis of who the real senders were. There is still plenty of spam, and much of it is for Viagra (real or generic), but you won't find Viagra used as the name of anything that is not Pfizer's Sildenafil Citrate (aka Viagra). If there was a TV show "America's Dumbest Trademark Infringers", I guess these Herbal Viagra clowns would be starring in episode #1.
The Patent Office is a government agency. Like all government agencies, it lwill do whatever it takes to sustain itself and grow. Their growth strategy has been to collect fees and issue patents, often without much regard for prior art and common sense.
Trying to stop the growth of USPTO is like trying to stop the sun from rising. Perhaps there is a way for them to collect additional (even higher) fees for re-examining questionable patents. Considering all the garbage that is out there, they is quite a bit of work to be done and a captive market to pay for it. I think the Patent Office needs something to do. Pulling the plug on misguided patents would be a worthwhile effort. All we need for patent reform is a way to align the inevitable collection of fees with the policy goal of protecting only those truly innovative ideas that cost big money for R&D.
Many of us have suspected that SCO is involved in a massive "pump & dump" scheme. Obviously so do the folks at IBM. A not-so-coincidental side effect of discovery may reveal evidence of exactly that. If SCO really had any solid evidence, they would be showing it to everyone. Of course, if the whole thing is a diversion to cover an investment exit strategy, then SCO's strategy would be 100% press releases, 0% substance.
Now that the participants face the possibility of being "outed", let's see how much outside support SCO gets from analysts.