How come so many of the tech stories nowadays include the words: court, settlement, legal.
Getting tired of the misbehaviour and squabbling frankly.
All right letâ(TM)s see:
Loophole alert: âoeOne unusual provision, however, allows Microsoft to license some of the code â¦â
So thereâ(TM)s a disagreement on interpreting the scope of a term of the settlement. Just great.
⦠and now the second page of the storyâ(TM)s Slashdotted - prolly donâ(TM)t want to see it anyways â" ah, here it isâ¦
âMicrosoft requires companies that license the protocols to be audited -- at their own expense, by a third-party auditor selected by Microsoftâ
Then it isnâ(TM)t strictly third party, is it? Sort of more 1.3rd party than third party.
⦠and then theyâ(TM)re using a reverse version of SCOâ(TM)s NDA tactic, allowing them to potentially receive more information than they need in spirit. Did they learn this play from the same coach?
Howâ(TM)s the tail of this disagreement ever going to be chopped for good?
"When provided as a legitimate remote access tool for employees and business partners, VPNs can increase productivity, save time and reduce costs. When they are used to exploit gaps in the security architecture, they can have just the opposite effect."
Okay now I'm just a touch more concerned. I just signed off my work VPN connection half an hour ago, then read the linked article.
Perhaps I should direct someone on our company's network team to this article, just to be safe.
Our team's initial concern in this case was staff being quarantined individually in their homes under a health department edict, as potential SARS carriers. But the setup is robust enough for other purposes.
This is as opposed to having a group of people in a single off-site command center.
"Planning for Survivable Networks has many factual tidbits about disasters of all sorts..."
I wonder if that's included.
When SARS hit earlier this year our disaster recovery planning team was faced with a situation they hadnâ(TM)t anticipated: potential quarantining of large numbers of staff with critical business-continuity functions.
The building and computer systems would be physically secure, but staff would not allowed into the workplace.
So there was a scramble to survey everyoneâ(TM)s job function and set up broadband and VPN access from home if needed.
Maybe they have something similar in the hotel room. It's way quieter than our normal fridge.
My wife bought one of these coolers for camping. No compressor, but it does have a small fan to drive out the warm air.
Frankly I was strangely miffed that I wasn't the first one to bring a Peltier cooler into the house.
If you're into Star Trek, you can get extra kicks from reversing the polarity and turning it from a cooler to a heater. Instead of cooling the contents to 40 degrees below ambient, it warms to 80 degrees above.
Holy smokes - thanks for reminding me of that command. Some neurons that have been dormant for many years just fired again.
That was pretty darn impressive for a grade 4 student I'd say! No supposedly about it.
I was in grade 11 in the early 80's and tried that and the hi-res commands. It was my first time working in machine language, hand-assembling tiny programs just to see what happened to the very few registers - something like a,b, x,y stack, accumulator and that was pretty well it. But my memories are foggy. Will have to read some of the other posts to.
There was a really neat split-screen high-res mode where you could have a few lines of text at the bottom, but otherwise have pixel on the top 3/4 of the screen.
Thanks, I can picture that now. I was trying to picture the configuration but couldn't.
I think I'll stick to posting during the daytime from now on. A number of other people responding right now might need some sleep as much as I do - people sure get cranky in these wee hours!
Yeah I'm aware of the 10^3 versus 2^10 difference. My 80Gb drive fromatted to 76Gb or so.
As a matter of fact sir I did: - read through the whole linked article - opened a spreadsheet and tried to figure it out a couple of ways (failed miserably - it's been a long day) - searched for more information but mostly just found photographs and old presentations
258=129*2 . Ah, yes I see now.
Thanks for pointing out one of my character flaws though. Not laziness, but can't put 129 and 2 together.
"The cluster has a total of 258 2.4Ghz Intel Xeon processors and 258GB of RAM." 258, hm? Izzat metric or sump'n? Maybe it's like that feet/metres thing with that Mars probe. Or is it like how AMD numbers their chip speeds? Is it a Southern hemisphere localised effect perhaps?
When someone explains this to me I'm going to feel mighty small. Possibly 1/258 of my current stature.
This contract was created by only one side of the deal. So it's worded precisely the way SCO wants it for their maximum advantage. Usually in a dispute courts will favour the party which didn't create the unilateral contract, but it looks like they've covered off that angle by choosing Utah.
Bilateral contracts, where the parties negotiate and both have input into the final wording signed, are much safer as a rule.
This is a one-sided contract by a known litigous company.
The person signing gives up all kinds of rights, is straitjacketed legally, and doesn't even make any money on this.
All the risk with no reward.
What could the counterparty to SCO possibly gain by agreeing to this?
I usually try to be ambivalent, but can't seem to find anything redeeming here.
At anything more than a few (100) miles an hour I think they'd both (pillow vs lead) hurt quite a bit.
In the balsa wood analogy not all the energy wood - I mean would - be transfered to the impacted body since the two pieces would continue flying by without slowing much.
So the energy transfered is different.
But you're right if your point was that the incidence of the impacting strangely shaped object has a big effect.
I agree with you that I'd get hurt way more by the ball. The pillow's compression would spread the impact's pressure over time as well. That and it's exploding. I wonder what the compressibility of the foam at high speeds was, if it was to hit along its smallest profile.
My point being that this would maximize pressure on the impacted body. (Unless it gave the object a greater chance to explode)...
Okay I give up up now.
You're right it is highly complex and not a subject solved by quick analysis.
Re:This really doesn't make sense....
on
C&W Bails Out
·
· Score: 1
If C&W borrowed heavily to pay for their expansion, then they still have to pay off their debt each period, even when normal physical maintenance expenses are low.
This fixed debt repayment expense can put a huge strain on a company with declining revenues, and cause them to show big losses where otherwise they'd have operating profit.
Growing broke
on
C&W Bails Out
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
"And we need to concentrate on those markets that are sustainable... "
Sustainable here means that you're collecting enough revenue (cash is good) to pay for all the inventory you're building. The first sign of trouble is a cashflow shortage.
Unmanaged growth is a temptation that's caught so many telecoms. Maybe they were thinking of achieving economies of scale or putting too much weight in the "grow or die" paradigm. Or maybe their CEO's were making pride-based decisions.
It's human to be overly optimistic about a venture that you're starting. Business plans quite often anticipate large profits in the future to pay for current excess spending and growth.
There's a Burmese saying "Big tiger, big paws", the analogy being that a large entity needs a lot to keep it upright - has big expenses and maintenance needs. This is even more significant when it's growing.
"asking a judge to declare his dumpster diving, and the selling of his treasures, legal."
I think for international open-sea salvage laws to apply, they'd need to demonstrate dumpster diving was in fact some form of underwater diving.
Any reference to treasures and pirates as in "Pirated sewing patterns" can only help Mosterpatterns demonstrate the applicability of sea-faring rules. Was there a captain in the dumpster at the time of the escapade?
This sounds like the North Korean story from a few days ago, so here are lines from both stories and you can guess which article the students are from:
- "White-hat Hackers" or "Cyber terrorists" - "hunger stricken" or "fortified with pizza" - "another weapon" or "band of pickpockets" - "creating mischief" or "training hackers"
Not a fair comparison, I know. All of the above is out of context.
``If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the software, you... must destroy any and all copies of the software, including by deleting it from your computer''
Other valid means are: - just throw the whole computer out. That way we'll have covered all the bases for future potential license violations - hmm can't think of anymore (well this list sure fizzled out fast)
``Any license that you may believe you acquired with the software is void, revoked and terminated.''
Well Schrodinger's license is definitely dead then. I never downloaded it but now I'm wondered if I got one through some quantum license-tunnelling effect.
I wonder about the order of voiding, revoking, and terminating? Was it in series or in parallel? Sounds like the license got taken out back and worked over by the three of them at once.
You're right, I hadn't thought of that. Their method is _so_ nonsensical and immeasurable that it should be disregarded outright. Producing a number out of that process is being disrespectful to numbers.
"And for software, because every PC is a software copying machine, since inception we have had a problem."
He has a point, but it must be strange looking around and having a paradigm of fear/distrust spin on what he sees.
Reminds me of this saying "If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets".
The other subjective view is where they attribute the reported 1% decline to their own efforts. Sounds more like either statistical fluctuation or just a noisy unstable way of measuring year to year.
"This is big news because it goes back to the old accounting scandals that have shaken investor confidence, starting with Enron," said Burton Schlichter, senior market analyst with Lind-Waldock & Co., a division of Refco LLC.
That isn't a fair statement. The SEC's issue with IBM is qualitatively different.
Enron created a number of derivative exchanges for gas distribution and pretended they were balanced and immune. This would have been fine if they just ran the boards like the NYSE. But Enron failed to remain neutral and took positions. If anyone's bought on margin or bought a derivative, you know (I hope) that you could lose way more than you've invested. There are two reasons to buy derivatives: to hedge or to speculate. Hedging decreases total risk, for a cost. Speculation increases potential reward, but also can greatly increases risk.
I don't think IBM is operating a secret dervative trading board.
Worldcom spent large amounts in start-up costs building physical networks and did not report these expenditures as current period expenses. Instead they deferred these to future peiods where they hoped they'd make money on the new grids. You're only allowed to defer reporting costs if there's a very good chance of paying them later. It's the principle of matching expenses to work/revenue. When the telecom bubble burst recognition dawned that all these expenses could not be matched with probable revenue.
IBM hasn't been creating huge new infrastructures at vast expenses. The SEC specifically mentioned revenue.
The other bad thing Enron and Worldcom did was to grant stock options to their executives and not show as an expense the increasing value of these. Again this is an underreporting of expense issue.
It sounds like a scare tactic to influence IBM's share price and drum up some trading fees.
Explaining the basis of any of my dislikes/fears will make me sound nuts. But since you asked (slightly tongue-in-cheek)...
I think some companies collect stats on local income/consumption by postal code, and use this for mass mailings. I don't want precisely targeted by "smart junk mail" the new way.
At least with addresses, a company must go through a process to find out where you are, and they need to store a whole messy address. This new way would make it too easy. They're starting with a compact end result.
With the increased precision of keyhole satellite imaging and GPS, plus all the movies using these technologies, it just plain gives me the willies when some new thing can "track me down" better and quicker.
It hurts my "run home and hide" sensibility.
Okay so now you _know_ I'm nuts. Just wanted to clear things up.
so plans are around long enough to reach fruition, rather than cutting down a crop mid-season and planting something else.
It makes a lot of sense. It's a time-weighted balance or a time series. A moving weighted average.
Here in Ontario each new provincial government seems to dimantle 25% of the structure build by the prior government, seemingly out of vindictiveness.
Thanks for the book tip, friend! I don't know how I missed The Dosadi Experiment, considering how much I enjoyed the first few Dune books, so many years ago. I'll read it this summer.
Slashdot Mirror
⦠or rather same old legal-tech story (SOLTS)
.
How come so many of the tech stories nowadays include the words:
court, settlement, legal
Getting tired of the misbehaviour and squabbling frankly.
All right letâ(TM)s see:
Loophole alert: âoeOne unusual provision, however, allows Microsoft to license some of the code â¦â
So thereâ(TM)s a disagreement on interpreting the scope of a term of the settlement. Just great.
⦠and now the second page of the storyâ(TM)s Slashdotted - prolly donâ(TM)t want to see it anyways â" ah, here it isâ¦
âMicrosoft requires companies that license the protocols to be audited -- at their own expense, by a third-party auditor selected by Microsoftâ
Then it isnâ(TM)t strictly third party, is it? Sort of more 1.3rd party than third party.
⦠and then theyâ(TM)re using a reverse version of SCOâ(TM)s NDA tactic, allowing them to potentially receive more information than they need in spirit. Did they learn this play from the same coach?
Howâ(TM)s the tail of this disagreement ever going to be chopped for good?
"When provided as a legitimate remote access tool for employees and business partners, VPNs can increase productivity, save time and reduce costs. When they are used to exploit gaps in the security architecture, they can have just the opposite effect."
Okay now I'm just a touch more concerned. I just signed off my work VPN connection half an hour ago, then read the linked article.
Perhaps I should direct someone on our company's network team to this article, just to be safe.
Somebody in .la has a quick Christmas spirit to have already thought and bought.
What do you suppose they'll do with it?
Not sure if I understand.
Our team's initial concern in this case was staff being quarantined individually in their homes under a health department edict, as potential SARS carriers. But the setup is robust enough for other purposes.
This is as opposed to having a group of people in a single off-site command center.
You donâ(TM)t have to worry about your current (pun intended) non-fully-depleted silicon oxide chips.
So you donâ(TM)t need to go shopping for a lead ATX case.
I think the full depletion increases insulation so the layer can be thinner.
"Planning for Survivable Networks has many factual tidbits about disasters of all sorts..."
I wonder if that's included.
When SARS hit earlier this year our disaster recovery planning team was faced with a situation they hadnâ(TM)t anticipated: potential quarantining of large numbers of staff with critical business-continuity functions.
The building and computer systems would be physically secure, but staff would not allowed into the workplace.
So there was a scramble to survey everyoneâ(TM)s job function and set up broadband and VPN access from home if needed.
Maybe they have something similar in the hotel room. It's way quieter than our normal fridge.
My wife bought one of these coolers for camping. No compressor, but it does have a small fan to drive out the warm air.
Frankly I was strangely miffed that I wasn't the first one to bring a Peltier cooler into the house.
If you're into Star Trek, you can get extra kicks from reversing the polarity and turning it from a cooler to a heater. Instead of cooling the contents to 40 degrees below ambient, it warms to 80 degrees above.
Holy smokes - thanks for reminding me of that command. Some neurons that have been dormant for many years just fired again.
That was pretty darn impressive for a grade 4 student I'd say! No supposedly about it.
I was in grade 11 in the early 80's and tried that and the hi-res commands. It was my first time working in machine language, hand-assembling tiny programs just to see what happened to the very few registers - something like a,b, x,y stack, accumulator and that was pretty well it. But my memories are foggy. Will have to read some of the other posts to.
There was a really neat split-screen high-res mode where you could have a few lines of text at the bottom, but otherwise have pixel on the top 3/4 of the screen.
Thanks, I can picture that now. I was trying to picture the configuration but couldn't.
I think I'll stick to posting during the daytime from now on. A number of other people responding right now might need some sleep as much as I do - people sure get cranky in these wee hours!
Yeah I'm aware of the 10^3 versus 2^10 difference. My 80Gb drive fromatted to 76Gb or so.
Anyway, thanks for the explanation.
As a matter of fact sir I did:
- read through the whole linked article
- opened a spreadsheet and tried to figure it out a couple of ways (failed miserably - it's been a long day)
- searched for more information but mostly just found photographs and old presentations
258=129*2 . Ah, yes I see now.
Thanks for pointing out one of my character flaws though. Not laziness, but can't put 129 and 2 together.
"The cluster has a total of 258 2.4Ghz Intel Xeon processors and 258GB of RAM."
258, hm? Izzat metric or sump'n? Maybe it's like that feet/metres thing with that Mars probe. Or is it like how AMD numbers their chip speeds? Is it a Southern hemisphere localised effect perhaps?
When someone explains this to me I'm going to feel mighty small. Possibly 1/258 of my current stature.
"IN CONSIDERATION of the mutual promises ..."
This contract was created by only one side of the deal. So it's worded precisely the way SCO wants it for their maximum advantage. Usually in a dispute courts will favour the party which didn't create the unilateral contract, but it looks like they've covered off that angle by choosing Utah.
Bilateral contracts, where the parties negotiate and both have input into the final wording signed, are much safer as a rule.
This is a one-sided contract by a known litigous company.
The person signing gives up all kinds of rights, is straitjacketed legally, and doesn't even make any money on this.
All the risk with no reward.
What could the counterparty to SCO possibly gain by agreeing to this?
I usually try to be ambivalent, but can't seem to find anything redeeming here.
At anything more than a few (100) miles an hour I think they'd both (pillow vs lead) hurt quite a bit.
...
In the balsa wood analogy not all the energy wood - I mean would - be transfered to the impacted body since the two pieces would continue flying by without slowing much.
So the energy transfered is different.
But you're right if your point was that the incidence of the impacting strangely shaped object has a big effect.
I agree with you that I'd get hurt way more by the ball. The pillow's compression would spread the impact's pressure over time as well. That and it's exploding. I wonder what the compressibility of the foam at high speeds was, if it was to hit along its smallest profile.
My point being that this would maximize pressure on the impacted body. (Unless it gave the object a greater chance to explode)
Okay I give up up now.
You're right it is highly complex and not a subject solved by quick analysis.
If C&W borrowed heavily to pay for their expansion, then they still have to pay off their debt each period, even when normal physical maintenance expenses are low.
This fixed debt repayment expense can put a huge strain on a company with declining revenues, and cause them to show big losses where otherwise they'd have operating profit.
"And we need to concentrate on those markets that are sustainable ... "
Sustainable here means that you're collecting enough revenue (cash is good) to pay for all the inventory you're building. The first sign of trouble is a cashflow shortage.
Unmanaged growth is a temptation that's caught so many telecoms. Maybe they were thinking of achieving economies of scale or putting too much weight in the "grow or die" paradigm. Or maybe their CEO's were making pride-based decisions.
It's human to be overly optimistic about a venture that you're starting. Business plans quite often anticipate large profits in the future to pay for current excess spending and growth.
There's a Burmese saying "Big tiger, big paws", the analogy being that a large entity needs a lot to keep it upright - has big expenses and maintenance needs. This is even more significant when it's growing.
"asking a judge to declare his dumpster diving, and the selling of his treasures, legal."
I think for international open-sea salvage laws to apply, they'd need to demonstrate dumpster diving was in fact some form of underwater diving.
Any reference to treasures and pirates as in "Pirated sewing patterns" can only help Mosterpatterns demonstrate the applicability of sea-faring rules. Was there a captain in the dumpster at the time of the escapade?
So the license is real but the termination imaginary. No wonder what they said sounded off. Thanks for straightening it out.
"Soon they shall learn how unimportant they really are".
That's great! It has an ominous air, like it should have been in Star Wars.
This sounds like the North Korean story from a few days ago, so here are lines from both stories and you can guess which article the students are from:
- "White-hat Hackers" or "Cyber terrorists"
- "hunger stricken" or "fortified with pizza"
- "another weapon" or "band of pickpockets"
- "creating mischief" or "training hackers"
Not a fair comparison, I know. All of the above is out of context.
``If you downloaded or otherwise obtained a copy of the software, you ... must destroy any and all copies of the software, including by deleting it from your computer''
Other valid means are:
- just throw the whole computer out. That way we'll have covered all the bases for future potential license violations
- hmm can't think of anymore (well this list sure fizzled out fast)
``Any license that you may believe you acquired with the software is void, revoked and terminated.''
Well Schrodinger's license is definitely dead then. I never downloaded it but now I'm wondered if I got one through some quantum license-tunnelling effect.
I wonder about the order of voiding, revoking, and terminating? Was it in series or in parallel? Sounds like the license got taken out back and worked over by the three of them at once.
Woah - thought crime. Lock me up now.
You're right, I hadn't thought of that. Their method is _so_ nonsensical and immeasurable that it should be disregarded outright. Producing a number out of that process is being disrespectful to numbers.
"And for software, because every PC is a software copying machine, since inception we have had a problem."
He has a point, but it must be strange looking around and having a paradigm of fear/distrust spin on what he sees.
Reminds me of this saying "If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets".
The other subjective view is where they attribute the reported 1% decline to their own efforts. Sounds more like either statistical fluctuation or just a noisy unstable way of measuring year to year.
Man they'd have to have big balls to attempt that scene!
"This is big news because it goes back to the old accounting scandals that have shaken investor confidence, starting with Enron," said Burton Schlichter, senior market analyst with Lind-Waldock & Co., a division of Refco LLC.
That isn't a fair statement. The SEC's issue with IBM is qualitatively different.
Enron created a number of derivative exchanges for gas distribution and pretended they were balanced and immune. This would have been fine if they just ran the boards like the NYSE. But Enron failed to remain neutral and took positions. If anyone's bought on margin or bought a derivative, you know (I hope) that you could lose way more than you've invested. There are two reasons to buy derivatives: to hedge or to speculate. Hedging decreases total risk, for a cost. Speculation increases potential reward, but also can greatly increases risk.
I don't think IBM is operating a secret dervative trading board.
Worldcom spent large amounts in start-up costs building physical networks and did not report these expenditures as current period expenses. Instead they deferred these to future peiods where they hoped they'd make money on the new grids. You're only allowed to defer reporting costs if there's a very good chance of paying them later. It's the principle of matching expenses to work/revenue. When the telecom bubble burst recognition dawned that all these expenses could not be matched with probable revenue.
IBM hasn't been creating huge new infrastructures at vast expenses. The SEC specifically mentioned revenue.
The other bad thing Enron and Worldcom did was to grant stock options to their executives and not show as an expense the increasing value of these. Again this is an underreporting of expense issue.
It sounds like a scare tactic to influence IBM's share price and drum up some trading fees.
Explaining the basis of any of my dislikes/fears will make me sound nuts. But since you asked (slightly tongue-in-cheek)...
I think some companies collect stats on local income/consumption by postal code, and use this for mass mailings. I don't want precisely targeted by "smart junk mail" the new way.
At least with addresses, a company must go through a process to find out where you are, and they need to store a whole messy address. This new way would make it too easy. They're starting with a compact end result.
With the increased precision of keyhole satellite imaging and GPS, plus all the movies using these technologies, it just plain gives me the willies when some new thing can "track me down" better and quicker.
It hurts my "run home and hide" sensibility.
Okay so now you _know_ I'm nuts. Just wanted to clear things up.
so plans are around long enough to reach fruition, rather than cutting down a crop mid-season and planting something else.
It makes a lot of sense. It's a time-weighted balance or a time series. A moving weighted average.
Here in Ontario each new provincial government seems to dimantle 25% of the structure build by the prior government, seemingly out of vindictiveness.
Thanks for the book tip, friend! I don't know how I missed The Dosadi Experiment, considering how much I enjoyed the first few Dune books, so many years ago. I'll read it this summer.