Sun is also selling Linux, though. If you assume that SCO's claims will hold up in court (yeah, the claims are BS, but this is the U.S. court system we're talking about), Sun's Linux could be considered a "licensed" version which, unlike SCO's, is also not in flagrant breach of the GPL. Note that, unlike the argument that any SCO trade secrets or code have also been distributed as part of the Linux kernel by SCO itself, this doesn't depend on the alleged "viral" properties of the GPL.
Of course, Sun itself must be breaking some copyright law if it's distributing code under the GPL which it believes may belong to SCO, but this about FUD, not facts, and it can probably claim just to be hedging its bets. And while I'm sure Sun would prefer people to run Solaris on SPARC, it also wins if Linux users buy x86 servers from Sun rather than IBM, HP or a no-name vendor.
The question is, will this strategy boost Sun as intended, or will Unix/Linux users decide to boycott it too? Unlike SCO, Sun is still a real company with products that someone might conceivably want to buy, so a boycott could have some effect.
Medical research can be funded by both the government and corporations. (And probably by charities too, as you can never have too much research.)
The government needs to fund things that private companies won't, which in medicine means research that might cure profitable diseases or treat conditions that don't affect rich people. But there's nothing inherently wrong with private drug companies.
The problem with drug companies is that they pretend to be all about curing diseases, when most of their business is really just marketing consumer products. As far as consumer products go, drugs aren't bad. Even "lifestyle" drugs like Prozac and Viagara are more useful and less environmentally toxic than most of the junk that corporations try to sell people, and patent expiration means they eventually become available to everyone.
Only if you assume marketing involves providing true information, something that very few companies seem to believe. Microsoft has done a very effective job of using.Net as a catch-all brand name for everything from hotmail to server operating systems.
MS has done a bad job explaining the concept of the development framework and how it differs from Java, but marketing is about throwing around buzzwords (and sprading FUD), and MS is very good at that.
Amazon's defense seems to be based on one of the few not-so-evil provisions in the DMCA: that ISPs cannot be blamed for the actions of their users ("common carrier" status). This will all hinge on whether or not Amazon's third-party listings are more like a service provider or a publisher.
True. But war has historically been a great spur to innovation (computers, rockets, etc.), and technology developed for the military often has peaceful uses. If the military can fund the expensive design and testing work on hypersonic engines, we may eventually see a mach-7 airliner.
The Tomahawk was originally nuclear, too. They have one at the Smithsonian, standing next to the SS-20, the (bigger) Soviet equivalent. Both were eliminated in one of the first arms control treaties of the 1980s. If it can be adapted for different types of warhead, so can ICBMs.
Another problem with ICBMs is a high failure rate --- not that they miss the target but that they explode during launch or crash during the "boost" phase. They're just rockets, after all. You don't want them launching with a flight path over any populated area. That wasn't a problem in the Cold War, because it was assumed that ICBMs wouldn't be launched unless we're all going to die anyway, bit it would be in any more limited conflict.
This is why many big-time criminals use money-laundering schemes. It can be as simple as a drug dealer going to a casino, buying a bunch of chips and then cashing in his "winnings", or as complex as the web of off-balance-sheet partnerships created by Enron.
Capone was just too arrogant and greedy. He didn't want to pay taxes, and thought he wouldn't get caught.
TCPA does have some good applications, in areas such as authentication. It also has great potential for abuse in DRM and vendor lock-in. Which will be used depends on how it is implemented.
Palladium/NGSCB is the same, except that it has even more potential for abuse without any more potential benefits. I really can't see anything good that Palladium offers over and above regular TCPA. It does, however, have a lot of extra downside. In particular, it's designed to plug the "analog hole": Programs can refuse to run if there is a non-DRM-crippled loudspeaker or monitor connected.
Friedman's famous statement is simply wrong. The Belgrade branch of McDonald's was actually damaged in the NATO bombing campaign.
Friedman's defenders might say that this wasn't technically a war or that it involved more than two nations, but then any statement can be made true if you redefine enough terms.
The problem isn't a lack of elections. It's that the Parliament has little power compared to the unelected European Commission. Everyone should still vote, of course: They have some power, which could be relevant in this particular case, and a lack of turnout in elections is often used to justify a lack of democracy.
In truth, national governments can and do ignore European rules when they want to. However, the EU provides them an excuse to do things that are unpopular and outright wrong: "It's not our fault; blame those foreigners!"
We see a similar pattern with other international treaties and orgs. In particular, the US government says that it needs evermore draconian IP laws to be harmonized with Europe, while European governments make exactly the same argument about bringing their laws into line with the US!
1) There's no real difference between a monopolistic corporation that controls every aspect of life and a totalitarian state. Sure, CEOs talk of "enterprise", but it's just as meaningless as Stalin's talk of "equality". Socialism is state-owned corporations, modern America is a corporate-owned state.
2) In 1984, most of the people (the "proles") are technically free. It's only a relatively powerful subset that the party bothers to exert absolute control over.
Bill benefits more from the government than anyone else. The government protects property rights, and he has more property than anyone. It also enforces copyright, and he makes more from copyright than anyone. It gives those little pieces of paper that show pictures of dead presidents their value, and he has more of them than anyone.
Fortunately for Bill, he has more say in government than anyone. American politicians (especially Republicans, but Democrats too) do whatever corporations want, and Bill has more stock than anyone.
Actually, yes he has. Or at least, he's very closely connected to the SCO litigation. According to this story at news.com:
The company retained Brent O. Hatch and Mark F. James of the law firm Hatch, James & Dodge. Hatch is the son of Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, a representative for SCO confirmed Monday.
They also speculate about suing a major hardware vendor. I think this is Intel, just based on the sudden accusation in the Byte article that Intel is (like IBM) using Linux to violate export controls.
Intel is making a huge push towards Linux at the high-end, though it's not as visible as IBM. Free or commodiy software is good for hardware vendors.
Many, many people hate what their company is doing. The problem is that most corporations do some nasty things, finding a new job is hard, and companies sometimes become very evil very quickly. SCO is a good example of the latter: People signed up thinking they were joining a Linux company, then two months ago found out they were actually part of a lawsuit factory! IANA SCO employee, but I'd feel very betrayed if I was.
For that matter, the GPL doesn't even prevent you from reading someone else's GPLd code, understanding their nifty, super-cool algorithm and implementing it yourself in your own, closed software.
And nor should it. It would be crazy to suggest that a novelist not read books, or an architect not look at building blueprints. Yet there seems to be this idea in the software development community that even reading someone else's source code will "contaminate" your mind, and make you unable to write a similar program without infringing on copyright.
IBM won't buy them out, because that would be giving in to blackmail. This isn't some kind of principle (IBM is, after all, a corporation), just good business sense for the long term: Don't publicly pay a ransom, because it encourage others.
Of course, SCO doesn't need to get bought up. The stock price has increased by about 500% since this BS started, so the insiders are still getting a chance to cash out. The losers will be people who think "stock going up, must buy now before it goes up further!", of whom there are a surprising number.
There are two licensees: Microsoft and someone/something else that doesn't want to be identified. Microsoft was the second licensee, so the 10Q is referring to the other one, not Microsoft.
So who is it? Previously, I thought it must be a well-known company that wants to remain secret because it fears bad publicity from being associated with SCO. Perhaps someone like Sun, who might even believe that the suit is baseless but sees a license as a form of insurance.
Based on the 10Q, I see another possibility: A shell corporation set up solely for the purpose of selling stock and channeling the money back to the company as licensing fees. This would be a classic pyramid scheme: A company whose only product is its own stock, using a shell corporation to make it appear to be dealing in something real.
4) SCO executives are simply seeking a short-term boost in the company's stock price, so that they can exercise their share options and retire rich. It's a pump-and-dump scheme.
Unless we can get nuclear fusion working, the only long-term (>10 years) solution to energy problems is to use less.
Solar, wind and water will become increasingly important used as fossil fuels run out, but they simply don't supply enough energy to support widespread heavy industry, SUVs or 747s. This will become very clear once oil extraction starts to decline (at some point between 2010 and 2020).
Spamming should be treated like any other crime. There need to be the usual safeguards, but there's no need for either special protection for spammers or special powers for the cops investigating them. The most important rules are:
FTC should get a warrant, just as the cops do when investigating other crimes.
Alleged spammers should get their day in court, in front of a judge and jury. Even spammers are innocent until proven guilty, and entitled to the same (rapidly diminishing) constitutional rights as everyone else.
That's a really great idea. It really would help everyone. Unfortunately, my guess is that MS's usability labs will tell them that most people aren't interested in programming, so it probably wouldn't go on the top-level Start menu.
Still, I wish they'd do it, even just as a command to type in the "Run" dialog. I remember my first computer went straight to a BASIC prompt as soon as I plugged it in. (There was no "On/Off" switch!) You could have written and be running a simple program in the time that it takes Windows, Linux, etc. to boot.
The company I work for just cut vacation. I get 1 week a year now. I also have to take it before the fiscal year end on 9/1.
This is illegal in some states. IANAL, but the company I work for tried to force everyone to take their vacation before the end of the fiscal year.
It turns out that they're not allowed to do this in my state (California): They can have a policy that asks people to take their vacation, but they can't just delete accrued days: They have to let me take them in the next fiscal year, or (if I quit or get fired) pay me for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Sun is also selling Linux, though. If you assume that SCO's claims will hold up in court (yeah, the claims are BS, but this is the U.S. court system we're talking about), Sun's Linux could be considered a "licensed" version which, unlike SCO's, is also not in flagrant breach of the GPL. Note that, unlike the argument that any SCO trade secrets or code have also been distributed as part of the Linux kernel by SCO itself, this doesn't depend on the alleged "viral" properties of the GPL.
Of course, Sun itself must be breaking some copyright law if it's distributing code under the GPL which it believes may belong to SCO, but this about FUD, not facts, and it can probably claim just to be hedging its bets. And while I'm sure Sun would prefer people to run Solaris on SPARC, it also wins if Linux users buy x86 servers from Sun rather than IBM, HP or a no-name vendor.
The question is, will this strategy boost Sun as intended, or will Unix/Linux users decide to boycott it too? Unlike SCO, Sun is still a real company with products that someone might conceivably want to buy, so a boycott could have some effect.
Medical research can be funded by both the government and corporations. (And probably by charities too, as you can never have too much research.)
The government needs to fund things that private companies won't, which in medicine means research that might cure profitable diseases or treat conditions that don't affect rich people. But there's nothing inherently wrong with private drug companies.
The problem with drug companies is that they pretend to be all about curing diseases, when most of their business is really just marketing consumer products. As far as consumer products go, drugs aren't bad. Even "lifestyle" drugs like Prozac and Viagara are more useful and less environmentally toxic than most of the junk that corporations try to sell people, and patent expiration means they eventually become available to everyone.
Microsoft did a bad job marketing .net.
.Net as a catch-all brand name for everything from hotmail to server operating systems.
Only if you assume marketing involves providing true information, something that very few companies seem to believe. Microsoft has done a very effective job of using
MS has done a bad job explaining the concept of the development framework and how it differs from Java, but marketing is about throwing around buzzwords (and sprading FUD), and MS is very good at that.
They don't have to, but it would have been nice!
Several companies have released (under GPL or otherwise) software that they don't legally have to. Apple (Darwin) is a prominent example.
Amazon's defense seems to be based on one of the few not-so-evil provisions in the DMCA: that ISPs cannot be blamed for the actions of their users ("common carrier" status). This will all hinge on whether or not Amazon's third-party listings are more like a service provider or a publisher.
IANAL, but this will be interesting.
True. But war has historically been a great spur to innovation (computers, rockets, etc.), and technology developed for the military often has peaceful uses. If the military can fund the expensive design and testing work on hypersonic engines, we may eventually see a mach-7 airliner.
The Tomahawk was originally nuclear, too. They have one at the Smithsonian, standing next to the SS-20, the (bigger) Soviet equivalent. Both were eliminated in one of the first arms control treaties of the 1980s. If it can be adapted for different types of warhead, so can ICBMs.
Another problem with ICBMs is a high failure rate --- not that they miss the target but that they explode during launch or crash during the "boost" phase. They're just rockets, after all. You don't want them launching with a flight path over any populated area. That wasn't a problem in the Cold War, because it was assumed that ICBMs wouldn't be launched unless we're all going to die anyway, bit it would be in any more limited conflict.
This is why many big-time criminals use money-laundering schemes. It can be as simple as a drug dealer going to a casino, buying a bunch of chips and then cashing in his "winnings", or as complex as the web of off-balance-sheet partnerships created by Enron.
Capone was just too arrogant and greedy. He didn't want to pay taxes, and thought he wouldn't get caught.
TCPA does have some good applications, in areas such as authentication. It also has great potential for abuse in DRM and vendor lock-in. Which will be used depends on how it is implemented.
Palladium/NGSCB is the same, except that it has even more potential for abuse without any more potential benefits. I really can't see anything good that Palladium offers over and above regular TCPA. It does, however, have a lot of extra downside. In particular, it's designed to plug the "analog hole": Programs can refuse to run if there is a non-DRM-crippled loudspeaker or monitor connected.
Friedman's famous statement is simply wrong. The Belgrade branch of McDonald's was actually damaged in the NATO bombing campaign.
Friedman's defenders might say that this wasn't technically a war or that it involved more than two nations, but then any statement can be made true if you redefine enough terms.
The problem isn't a lack of elections. It's that the Parliament has little power compared to the unelected European Commission. Everyone should still vote, of course: They have some power, which could be relevant in this particular case, and a lack of turnout in elections is often used to justify a lack of democracy.
In truth, national governments can and do ignore European rules when they want to. However, the EU provides them an excuse to do things that are unpopular and outright wrong: "It's not our fault; blame those foreigners!"
We see a similar pattern with other international treaties and orgs. In particular, the US government says that it needs evermore draconian IP laws to be harmonized with Europe, while European governments make exactly the same argument about bringing their laws into line with the US!
1) There's no real difference between a monopolistic corporation that controls every aspect of life and a totalitarian state. Sure, CEOs talk of "enterprise", but it's just as meaningless as Stalin's talk of "equality". Socialism is state-owned corporations, modern America is a corporate-owned state.
2) In 1984, most of the people (the "proles") are technically free. It's only a relatively powerful subset that the party bothers to exert absolute control over.
Fortunately for Bill, he has more say in government than anyone. American politicians (especially Republicans, but Democrats too) do whatever corporations want, and Bill has more stock than anyone.
Bi-partisanship at its finest!
They also speculate about suing a major hardware vendor. I think this is Intel, just based on the sudden accusation in the Byte article that Intel is (like IBM) using Linux to violate export controls.
Intel is making a huge push towards Linux at the high-end, though it's not as visible as IBM. Free or commodiy software is good for hardware vendors.
Many, many people hate what their company is doing. The problem is that most corporations do some nasty things, finding a new job is hard, and companies sometimes become very evil very quickly.
SCO is a good example of the latter: People signed up thinking they were joining a Linux company, then two months ago found out they were actually part of a lawsuit factory! IANA SCO employee, but I'd feel very betrayed if I was.
For that matter, the GPL doesn't even prevent you from reading someone else's GPLd code, understanding their nifty, super-cool algorithm and implementing it yourself in your own, closed software.
And nor should it. It would be crazy to suggest that a novelist not read books, or an architect not look at building blueprints. Yet there seems to be this idea in the software development community that even reading someone else's source code will "contaminate" your mind, and make you unable to write a similar program without infringing on copyright.
IBM won't buy them out, because that would be giving in to blackmail. This isn't some kind of principle (IBM is, after all, a corporation), just good business sense for the long term: Don't publicly pay a ransom, because it encourage others.
Of course, SCO doesn't need to get bought up. The stock price has increased by about 500% since this BS started, so the insiders are still getting a chance to cash out. The losers will be people who think "stock going up, must buy now before it goes up further!", of whom there are a surprising number.
According to Harry Newton, many brokers are calling up rich people, trying to persuade them to buy SCO stock. Classic pump and dump behaviour.
There are two licensees: Microsoft and someone/something else that doesn't want to be identified. Microsoft was the second licensee, so the 10Q is referring to the other one, not Microsoft.
So who is it? Previously, I thought it must be a well-known company that wants to remain secret because it fears bad publicity from being associated with SCO. Perhaps someone like Sun, who might even believe that the suit is baseless but sees a license as a form of insurance.
Based on the 10Q, I see another possibility: A shell corporation set up solely for the purpose of selling stock and channeling the money back to the company as licensing fees. This would be a classic pyramid scheme: A company whose only product is its own stock, using a shell corporation to make it appear to be dealing in something real.
4) SCO executives are simply seeking a short-term boost in the company's stock price, so that they can exercise their share options and retire rich. It's a pump-and-dump scheme.
Unless we can get nuclear fusion working, the only long-term (>10 years) solution to energy problems is to use less.
Solar, wind and water will become increasingly important used as fossil fuels run out, but they simply don't supply enough energy to support widespread heavy industry, SUVs or 747s. This will become very clear once oil extraction starts to decline (at some point between 2010 and 2020).
That's a really great idea. It really would help everyone. Unfortunately, my guess is that MS's usability labs will tell them that most people aren't interested in programming, so it probably wouldn't go on the top-level Start menu.
Still, I wish they'd do it, even just as a command to type in the "Run" dialog. I remember my first computer went straight to a BASIC prompt as soon as I plugged it in. (There was no "On/Off" switch!) You could have written and be running a simple program in the time that it takes Windows, Linux, etc. to boot.
The company I work for just cut vacation. I get 1 week a year now. I also have to take it before the fiscal year end on 9/1.
This is illegal in some states. IANAL, but the company I work for tried to force everyone to take their vacation before the end of the fiscal year.
It turns out that they're not allowed to do this in my state (California): They can have a policy that asks people to take their vacation, but they can't just delete accrued days: They have to let me take them in the next fiscal year, or (if I quit or get fired) pay me for them.