Quite. In fact, it might never get off the ground since while New Line has the rights to make the film MGM has the rights to distribute; not good. Let's face it, if you were negotiating on behalf of MGM, your goal would be to get as big a slice of the pie as possible. Lots of films have never made it because of lesser issues than bickering lawyers with a scent of tens of millions of pure profit. All we can do is hope that common sense prevails over greed, and how often does that happen in Hollywood?
Wonder if any of the box sets will include gollums acceptace speech at the MTV movie awards.
It's a hidden "Easter Egg" on one of the movie DVDs in the Two Towers box set. IIRC you need to try and scroll past the last scene entry in the menu to highlight the hidden ring menu option, and press enter.
Wouldn't this make EB themselves liable to prosecution for knowingly dealing in stolen goods? They don't seem to be denying that the goods are stolen from the bit about seeking restitution from the thief, which is pretty much an admission of guilt if that is the case. Anyone know for sure?
Oh, I'm skeptical alright, a few spelling mistakes yes, but this looks like it was written by a high school kid, not some MBA. I know educational standards are slipping, but *this* far? ESR has almost certainly tried to validate the document as much as possible, and it's managed to withstand that, but you can never be sure. Hence ESR's caveat emptor and suggestion that one (or more likely all) of the companies being sued by SCO should subpoena the original, assuming it exists.
I'd say spending the best part of $100m on what is basically a smear campagin, by a company already convicted of, and facing additional convictions for, anti-competetive business practices goes above and beyond "unfair". Just because this is the way that things are done in some sectors of the business world does not mean it should be excused at all. Give them an inch and all that...
But you do have a valid point about the "them and us" aspect. If someone condemns Microsoft for this, then by rights they should also condemn IBM if they were to, say invest $100m in an anti-MS smear campaign. Not that that would ever happen - IBM still has a policy of never smearing a competitor as far as I am aware...;)
If this turns out to be genuine (and I'm sure ESR would have gone to great lengths to validate the document before going public), I can't think of better grounds for another anti-trust case. It's already on the Register too, and Groklaw can't be far behind. Let's draw attention to this smoking gun, shall we?
And with current trends in engine management systems, what more do you really need on a standard "family" car? Sure, some engines still let you fiddle around tuning the thing yourself, but most require that much equipment it's pretty much a garage job for anything beyond fluids.
There are limits to this ultra tight, garage service only design ideal though - I think you have to be fully qualified gynacologist to change the damn headlights on my BMW for example. I have small hands and only managed to get the damn thing in after about half an hour and few CCs of blood from a badly grazed back of hand. Next time the garage will be doing it, which is probably the point of course - lots of extra visits to official dealers who get to charge $$$ for the "labour" involved in changing a bulb.
It will be useless on anything other than consumer point&shoots. The sensor on a Canon 10D DSLR for example is almost twice the width of that prototype they showed, and uses lenses 2-3x larger still.
Actually, it's too small for consumer P&S cameras too if the picture is anything to go by, but it might be workable for disposables and video phones though. I'd hate to think what the accuracy of the lens will be in practice though - it's a fluid, so must have some vicosity, which means it's going to move about, which I would assume would impinge on image quality. Of course, there are other uses for lenses other than in cameras and spectacles where this type of lens might do very well.
BTW, your scaling for the EOS 10D is *way* off - the Philips lens is 3mm across according to the press release, most P&S camera sensors are around 8x6mm, although some are as low as 4.5x3.5mm - the 10D's is more like 23x15mm. As to the glass, for a 35mm camera format the glass would typically be in the region of 40mm-100mm in diameter depending on the type of lens and the location of the individual piece of glass in it.
I wonder if MSN has one of those big screen displays of search queries in real-time like Google does. If they do I bet there's a few people looking at the screen scrolling "XFree69" ad infinitum and wondering "WTF!?!" right about now.
Actually, I think Blake Stowell has a valid point about Groklaw and twisting the facts that PJ seems so irate about in that post. I've noticed that the objective focus PJ had when she started the site has been steadily eroded since she really hit the big time. For someone whose web site banner proclaims that she is not a lawyer but a researcher, she doesn't seem to be doing very objective research anymore.
This story is a pretty obvious example of this kind of thing. It's basically a report dated mid February on an article from Bloomberg about a huge upswing of spam in January in which there is the line "As much as 15 percent came from home PCs infected with computer viruses such as the MyDoom worm, said D. K. Matai, chairman of Mi2g, a computer-security consulting firm based in London, citing reports from law-enforcement authorities and discussions with companies.". Fair enough, but take a look at how PJ spins that, bearing in mind the allegations that SCO was making about MyDoom: "I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. MyDoom was programmed to send spam, and it is.", and also: "Will Darl apologize for leaping to ugly conclusions before all the facts were in?"
Err, no. This was mid-February, remember, and at this stage MyDoom was still spreading and had not yet gone dormant and entered zombie only mode. (As an aside, I have yet to receive a *single* spam from an IP that sent me a copy of MyDoom.) Also, the report was about an upswing in spam for January, so how could MyDoom account for that anyway, given that it wasn't even released until the end of that month? Clearly the writer was just using MyDoom as an example since it was in the news and people were talking about it, so what was that about research and jumping to conclusions again?
I still find Groklaw to be a valuable reference site, and there is certainly a hell of a lot of effort by PJ in bringing all that together, so kudos to her for that. Editorially however, many of her posts have slowly sunk to the kind of thing I'd expect to see from Slashdot; blinkered SCO bashing without any attempt to see what the other side's take might be interspersed with the occasional +5 post. Sure, Groklaw is catering to the site's primary readership demographic, but I think it's prudent to read Groklaw with an open mind an a pinch of salt.
SCO cares because if they continue to distribute NMAP with their products then they potentially face a copyright lawsuit from Fyodor backed by the FSF. This is a definate liability and has to be mentioned on their 10Q filing to the SEC - you know; that document that any prudent potential or current shareholder will read. Fyodor doesn't actually have to file the case for this to happen, and it also raises the prospect of a flurry of other similar suites from the likes of Apache, Samba and the myriad of other GPL programs used by SCO.
Higher resolution GPL'd versions more suitable for use as wallpaper can be found here for a preview courtesy of KDE-Look and here for the actual pics ranging from 800x600 upto 1600x1200. The latter link looks like it might be a personal server, so anyone got a mirror?
To quote the lead comment on Groklaw... "priceless!";)
There is another example of this type of thing happening in the UK as well, but either my Google Fu is playing up or I read it on a dead tree because I can find any links. IIRC cars would experience periods when they were failing to start or engine management systems would temporarily fail, often causing cars being driven to stall. The cause was attributed to the local RAF base which had just had some new radar installation constructed which presumambly either uses or has a harmonic that matches frequencies present in the car electrics.
Since this appears to be production level tech I'd guess it's more likely that Nellis AFB has acquired something similar rather than some Skunk project at Area 51 being to blame. Of course the tinfoil hat brigade can (and no doubt will) continue to blame it all on the aliens at Dreamland.
Clearly they do not lie in making the punishment fit the crime. Five years for killing a baby like that is ridiculous, especially since the bastard will probably be out in two if he behaves himself and doesn't get butchered by his fellow inmates. However I assume that you don't read Terry Pratchett, because he makes a very good point which applies to spammers in the book "Good Omens", co-authored with Neil Gaiman.
In the story the protagonist, the Demon Crowley, is assigned responsibility for the design of the M25 (a 6-8 lane parking lot that surrounds London). Through great effort involving numerous bribes, computer hacks and when all else failed moving some marker posts a few incredibly significant feet he causes the M25 to resemble the ancient symbol "Odegra". As a result of this millions of people are forced to suffer daily torment and frustration, which then then take out on their colleagues/pet/whatever incurring a small amount of corruption of their soul. This is then contrasted with a "traditional" demon who will spend years working on the corruption of a single priest.
So, yes, twenty years and a big fine does seem excessive when you set it against the penalty for shooting someone in the head. But when you divide 20 years by the millions, or more likely billions, of moments of angst the spammer created, they are really getting off quite lightly.
Does the US need better security? Yes, it does, particulary given the fact that a new generation of extremists has no doubt been born from its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Realistically, it's probably just a matter of time before there is another successful attack on the US, the UK or another member of the Iraq coalition. The terrorists only have to get lucky once, remember?
What the DHS does, besides providing a placibo to help anxious Americans sleep at night by its existence, is keep people paranoid. Paranoid enough to think that they *need* to spend money on training their firefighters to deal with chemical or biological weapon attacks. Paranoid enough to question whether that guy really should be doing that, and so on. Maybe it'll even help prevent a terrorist from getting his way, but I suspect getting accurate and specific intelligence will do more good in that area.
Unfortunately, this kind of bunker mentality, for want of a softer term, is not addressing the root cause of the problem: the perception that the terrorists have of the foreign policies of the nations they target. And now they see signs that even money is being poured into the military and related areas at the expense of scientific research that might benefit everyone.
Remain vigilent, yes, but frankly, I think the money would be much better spent trying to build some bridges instead of trying to find better and more efficient ways of blowing them up.
It gets worse. President Bush has just cut funding to the NIST's Advanced Technology Program. Where is the money going instead? Amongst other needy causes, The Department of Homeland Paranoia of course!
According to this article at the Register, it looks like tracking the source of the leak wasn't that hard owing to very specific comments in the code. The theory is that it's the old tale of boss gets new PC, user inherits old PC and so on at Mainsoft, one of Microsoft's partners. The twist in the tale this time is that the in this case the PC may have ended up on the desk of someone who recognised the code for what it was and decided to post it.
If this is true, then I suspect that the list of possible culprits is very short and some poor sap who didn't think things through is going to be in *very* hot water indeed early next week.
Actually, the answer is not necessarily "the original vendor", since I was using proprietary purely in the sense of the physical arrangement of the connector and power requirements.
My point was aimed at how laptop vendors don't even try and make it easy if you have a failure at a bad time, which it almost always is of course. The voltage and laptop connectors being proprietary to a given vendor means that you can't just jump in your car and go to a decent local electrical retailer for a generic replacement in an emergency. There is no technical reason I can think of why this should be the case; there are agreed standard connectors for almost everything else, so why not for laptop power (and media bays for that matter) as well?
Actually sourcing a replacement is not that hard, as a few quick Google searches will show that there are plenty of companies selling replacement PSUs for most major brands. It's not like matching a given power output to a connector requires a great deal of reverse engineering, is it? The problem is that, regardless of the source and state of warranty cover, the chances are you are going to have to order a replacement and then hope that the courier arrives before your battery dies.
Personally, I never bother with extended warranties on most of my stuff (not just computers) since it seems to be that while you have to pay through the nose for the odd repair, you save more by not having warranties on the stuff that doesn't fail. The other advantage to this approach is that should you have a failure, then you are not tied to getting a repair; you can also get a replacement, which is often the better option anyway, especially for computer kit. Just make sure you keep sufficient funds accumulating interest in your "rainy day" account to cover your butt should the worst happen!
Going the otherway however, if you are the clumsy type, then getting a decent computer insurance policy might be a better option. Warranties only cover you for hardware failures, a good insurance policy should cover that, theft, accidental drops down the stairs and so on. Most electrical kit will fail within the first few months or after several years (the bathtub curve), so you can use the standard 12 month manufacturer's warranty to cover that, and the insurance policy for the rest of the kit's life.
An extra AC adapter, to leave plugged in at home.
Absolutely essential - as is a second battery if you are not using it as a mobile desktop and hitting the road a lot - those AC adapter cables don't tend to like being repeatedly coiled and un-coiled, plugged and un-plugged... Also for some some unknown reason, laptop power supplies tend to be proprietary voltage/connector combinations which makes it very painful should one fail. Trying to eke two days use out of a pair of batteries while you wait for a replacement sucks, believe me! Also, if you can get a laptop with a media bay that will take a second battery it's worth it for the extra flexibility that offers.
OK, let's wax lyrical and assume that SCO's cupboard is finally bare and it's all over for SCO's case freeing up IBM to go for damages, and maybe Novell, Red Hat and others as well. Once the lawyers are paid off, there is not going to be much left in the piggy back except for SCO's various Unix licences and copyrights, which will probably get transferred to IBM or Novell. The big question then is, what will *they* do with them?
First and foremost, IBM is a hardware and services company; they don't *really* care about software beyond the fact that it helps them shift hardware and services. If they can get revenue from the software, great, but it's a drop in the ocean as far as their turnover is concerned. Novell is primarily a software company, although they do appear to be trying to reinvent themselves as a Linux networking services company to me.
So, what do either of them have to lose by simply releasing all of their newly acquired copyrights and licenses into the public domain? Perhaps not a lot. What they have to *gain* though, is phenomonal; for a start the OSS community is going to see them as the heroes that set UNIX free which brings its own rewards. Best of all for IBM and Novell though, it's going to be a big kick in the teeth for Microsoft and will probably have a serious impact on Solaris sales as well.
It could well be that 2004 is *the* year that OSS really hits the big time that has been inevitable for so long. But who would have dreamed a few years ago that it might be IBM, Novell that made it happen after SCO/Caldera inadvertantly provided the catalyst?
Actually, I'm not suprised about this at all. A class action suit is basically a chance of some money for what is quite likely going to be nothing more than filling in a form. Now think about that in the context of the typical person who might respond to a spam, get rich quick scheme or whatever. It actually kind of makes me wonder how many people you could get to sign up for this kind of thing via a spam run. "Bought pills and still not satisfying your woman? Get your money back in our class action suit!".
Ah, but the beauty of this is that if you did actually did try it at home, then one way or another you wouldn't be at home for long. Depending on how successful you were you would be leaving in either a deep space probe, ambulance or meat wagon.
It's no longer the case and hasn't been for quite a while. Ad-Aware updates are now coming out very frequently; every few days normally. I think you are probably refering to Lavasoft's bungled handling of their decision to rewrite the core engine to cope with new threats when they failed to tell the users what was going on. The re-write is now done, and while I don't think version 6.x is as good as Spybot has become, it is still a good package to run as a failsafe and to make sure Spybot stays honest.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite. In fact, it might never get off the ground since while New Line has the rights to make the film MGM has the rights to distribute; not good. Let's face it, if you were negotiating on behalf of MGM, your goal would be to get as big a slice of the pie as possible. Lots of films have never made it because of lesser issues than bickering lawyers with a scent of tens of millions of pure profit. All we can do is hope that common sense prevails over greed, and how often does that happen in Hollywood?
It's a hidden "Easter Egg" on one of the movie DVDs in the Two Towers box set. IIRC you need to try and scroll past the last scene entry in the menu to highlight the hidden ring menu option, and press enter.
Wouldn't this make EB themselves liable to prosecution for knowingly dealing in stolen goods? They don't seem to be denying that the goods are stolen from the bit about seeking restitution from the thief, which is pretty much an admission of guilt if that is the case. Anyone know for sure?
Oh, I'm skeptical alright, a few spelling mistakes yes, but this looks like it was written by a high school kid, not some MBA. I know educational standards are slipping, but *this* far? ESR has almost certainly tried to validate the document as much as possible, and it's managed to withstand that, but you can never be sure. Hence ESR's caveat emptor and suggestion that one (or more likely all) of the companies being sued by SCO should subpoena the original, assuming it exists.
But you do have a valid point about the "them and us" aspect. If someone condemns Microsoft for this, then by rights they should also condemn IBM if they were to, say invest $100m in an anti-MS smear campaign. Not that that would ever happen - IBM still has a policy of never smearing a competitor as far as I am aware... ;)
If this turns out to be genuine (and I'm sure ESR would have gone to great lengths to validate the document before going public), I can't think of better grounds for another anti-trust case. It's already on the Register too, and Groklaw can't be far behind. Let's draw attention to this smoking gun, shall we?
There are limits to this ultra tight, garage service only design ideal though - I think you have to be fully qualified gynacologist to change the damn headlights on my BMW for example. I have small hands and only managed to get the damn thing in after about half an hour and few CCs of blood from a badly grazed back of hand. Next time the garage will be doing it, which is probably the point of course - lots of extra visits to official dealers who get to charge $$$ for the "labour" involved in changing a bulb.
Actually, it's too small for consumer P&S cameras too if the picture is anything to go by, but it might be workable for disposables and video phones though. I'd hate to think what the accuracy of the lens will be in practice though - it's a fluid, so must have some vicosity, which means it's going to move about, which I would assume would impinge on image quality. Of course, there are other uses for lenses other than in cameras and spectacles where this type of lens might do very well.
BTW, your scaling for the EOS 10D is *way* off - the Philips lens is 3mm across according to the press release, most P&S camera sensors are around 8x6mm, although some are as low as 4.5x3.5mm - the 10D's is more like 23x15mm. As to the glass, for a 35mm camera format the glass would typically be in the region of 40mm-100mm in diameter depending on the type of lens and the location of the individual piece of glass in it.
I wonder if MSN has one of those big screen displays of search queries in real-time like Google does. If they do I bet there's a few people looking at the screen scrolling "XFree69" ad infinitum and wondering "WTF!?!" right about now.
This story is a pretty obvious example of this kind of thing. It's basically a report dated mid February on an article from Bloomberg about a huge upswing of spam in January in which there is the line "As much as 15 percent came from home PCs infected with computer viruses such as the MyDoom worm, said D. K. Matai, chairman of Mi2g, a computer-security consulting firm based in London, citing reports from law-enforcement authorities and discussions with companies.". Fair enough, but take a look at how PJ spins that, bearing in mind the allegations that SCO was making about MyDoom: "I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. MyDoom was programmed to send spam, and it is.", and also: "Will Darl apologize for leaping to ugly conclusions before all the facts were in?"
Err, no. This was mid-February, remember, and at this stage MyDoom was still spreading and had not yet gone dormant and entered zombie only mode. (As an aside, I have yet to receive a *single* spam from an IP that sent me a copy of MyDoom.) Also, the report was about an upswing in spam for January, so how could MyDoom account for that anyway, given that it wasn't even released until the end of that month? Clearly the writer was just using MyDoom as an example since it was in the news and people were talking about it, so what was that about research and jumping to conclusions again?
I still find Groklaw to be a valuable reference site, and there is certainly a hell of a lot of effort by PJ in bringing all that together, so kudos to her for that. Editorially however, many of her posts have slowly sunk to the kind of thing I'd expect to see from Slashdot; blinkered SCO bashing without any attempt to see what the other side's take might be interspersed with the occasional +5 post. Sure, Groklaw is catering to the site's primary readership demographic, but I think it's prudent to read Groklaw with an open mind an a pinch of salt.
SCO cares because if they continue to distribute NMAP with their products then they potentially face a copyright lawsuit from Fyodor backed by the FSF. This is a definate liability and has to be mentioned on their 10Q filing to the SEC - you know; that document that any prudent potential or current shareholder will read. Fyodor doesn't actually have to file the case for this to happen, and it also raises the prospect of a flurry of other similar suites from the likes of Apache, Samba and the myriad of other GPL programs used by SCO.
To quote the lead comment on Groklaw... "priceless!" ;)
Since this appears to be production level tech I'd guess it's more likely that Nellis AFB has acquired something similar rather than some Skunk project at Area 51 being to blame. Of course the tinfoil hat brigade can (and no doubt will) continue to blame it all on the aliens at Dreamland.
Clearly they do not lie in making the punishment fit the crime. Five years for killing a baby like that is ridiculous, especially since the bastard will probably be out in two if he behaves himself and doesn't get butchered by his fellow inmates. However I assume that you don't read Terry Pratchett, because he makes a very good point which applies to spammers in the book "Good Omens", co-authored with Neil Gaiman.
In the story the protagonist, the Demon Crowley, is assigned responsibility for the design of the M25 (a 6-8 lane parking lot that surrounds London). Through great effort involving numerous bribes, computer hacks and when all else failed moving some marker posts a few incredibly significant feet he causes the M25 to resemble the ancient symbol "Odegra". As a result of this millions of people are forced to suffer daily torment and frustration, which then then take out on their colleagues/pet/whatever incurring a small amount of corruption of their soul. This is then contrasted with a "traditional" demon who will spend years working on the corruption of a single priest.
So, yes, twenty years and a big fine does seem excessive when you set it against the penalty for shooting someone in the head. But when you divide 20 years by the millions, or more likely billions, of moments of angst the spammer created, they are really getting off quite lightly.
Something like what EarthLink is doing, you mean?
What the DHS does, besides providing a placibo to help anxious Americans sleep at night by its existence, is keep people paranoid. Paranoid enough to think that they *need* to spend money on training their firefighters to deal with chemical or biological weapon attacks. Paranoid enough to question whether that guy really should be doing that, and so on. Maybe it'll even help prevent a terrorist from getting his way, but I suspect getting accurate and specific intelligence will do more good in that area.
Unfortunately, this kind of bunker mentality, for want of a softer term, is not addressing the root cause of the problem: the perception that the terrorists have of the foreign policies of the nations they target. And now they see signs that even money is being poured into the military and related areas at the expense of scientific research that might benefit everyone.
Remain vigilent, yes, but frankly, I think the money would be much better spent trying to build some bridges instead of trying to find better and more efficient ways of blowing them up.
It gets worse. President Bush has just cut funding to the NIST's Advanced Technology Program. Where is the money going instead? Amongst other needy causes, The Department of Homeland Paranoia of course!
If this is true, then I suspect that the list of possible culprits is very short and some poor sap who didn't think things through is going to be in *very* hot water indeed early next week.
My point was aimed at how laptop vendors don't even try and make it easy if you have a failure at a bad time, which it almost always is of course. The voltage and laptop connectors being proprietary to a given vendor means that you can't just jump in your car and go to a decent local electrical retailer for a generic replacement in an emergency. There is no technical reason I can think of why this should be the case; there are agreed standard connectors for almost everything else, so why not for laptop power (and media bays for that matter) as well?
Actually sourcing a replacement is not that hard, as a few quick Google searches will show that there are plenty of companies selling replacement PSUs for most major brands. It's not like matching a given power output to a connector requires a great deal of reverse engineering, is it? The problem is that, regardless of the source and state of warranty cover, the chances are you are going to have to order a replacement and then hope that the courier arrives before your battery dies.
Personally, I never bother with extended warranties on most of my stuff (not just computers) since it seems to be that while you have to pay through the nose for the odd repair, you save more by not having warranties on the stuff that doesn't fail. The other advantage to this approach is that should you have a failure, then you are not tied to getting a repair; you can also get a replacement, which is often the better option anyway, especially for computer kit. Just make sure you keep sufficient funds accumulating interest in your "rainy day" account to cover your butt should the worst happen!
Going the otherway however, if you are the clumsy type, then getting a decent computer insurance policy might be a better option. Warranties only cover you for hardware failures, a good insurance policy should cover that, theft, accidental drops down the stairs and so on. Most electrical kit will fail within the first few months or after several years (the bathtub curve), so you can use the standard 12 month manufacturer's warranty to cover that, and the insurance policy for the rest of the kit's life.
An extra AC adapter, to leave plugged in at home.
Absolutely essential - as is a second battery if you are not using it as a mobile desktop and hitting the road a lot - those AC adapter cables don't tend to like being repeatedly coiled and un-coiled, plugged and un-plugged... Also for some some unknown reason, laptop power supplies tend to be proprietary voltage/connector combinations which makes it very painful should one fail. Trying to eke two days use out of a pair of batteries while you wait for a replacement sucks, believe me! Also, if you can get a laptop with a media bay that will take a second battery it's worth it for the extra flexibility that offers.
First and foremost, IBM is a hardware and services company; they don't *really* care about software beyond the fact that it helps them shift hardware and services. If they can get revenue from the software, great, but it's a drop in the ocean as far as their turnover is concerned. Novell is primarily a software company, although they do appear to be trying to reinvent themselves as a Linux networking services company to me.
So, what do either of them have to lose by simply releasing all of their newly acquired copyrights and licenses into the public domain? Perhaps not a lot. What they have to *gain* though, is phenomonal; for a start the OSS community is going to see them as the heroes that set UNIX free which brings its own rewards. Best of all for IBM and Novell though, it's going to be a big kick in the teeth for Microsoft and will probably have a serious impact on Solaris sales as well.
It could well be that 2004 is *the* year that OSS really hits the big time that has been inevitable for so long. But who would have dreamed a few years ago that it might be IBM, Novell that made it happen after SCO/Caldera inadvertantly provided the catalyst?
Actually, I'm not suprised about this at all. A class action suit is basically a chance of some money for what is quite likely going to be nothing more than filling in a form. Now think about that in the context of the typical person who might respond to a spam, get rich quick scheme or whatever. It actually kind of makes me wonder how many people you could get to sign up for this kind of thing via a spam run. "Bought pills and still not satisfying your woman? Get your money back in our class action suit!".
Ah, but the beauty of this is that if you did actually did try it at home, then one way or another you wouldn't be at home for long. Depending on how successful you were you would be leaving in either a deep space probe, ambulance or meat wagon.
It's no longer the case and hasn't been for quite a while. Ad-Aware updates are now coming out very frequently; every few days normally. I think you are probably refering to Lavasoft's bungled handling of their decision to rewrite the core engine to cope with new threats when they failed to tell the users what was going on. The re-write is now done, and while I don't think version 6.x is as good as Spybot has become, it is still a good package to run as a failsafe and to make sure Spybot stays honest.