It seems to me that he is still guilty of a crime.
The potential case by SCO against Linux is not a criminal one; this is a civil tort based on copyright legislation. As such, the burden of proof rests upon SCO to satisfy their claims in return for reparation.
However, the interesting bit of this situation is that it is the threat of legislation that SCO is pronouncing is intended to provide extrajudicial remuneration, potentially (and probably) worth more than any civil claim would find.
Irregardless of whether or not it has been proven that Linux has infringed upon SCO copyrights, SCO is seeking remuneration. So no law has yet been seen to be broken. It would be quite a different thing, and much closer to your analogy with theft, if the FBI were to enforce criminal plagarism.
So the situation procured by SCO would indeed collapse, if infringing code were to dissappear, as it would take with it the valuable threat of legislation.
I hope Boies was smart enough to get paid in advance.
Boies is working pro bono, meaning he isn't getting paid for his legal services, only for his expenses.
I can't say I understand this, short of his firm not understanding, or being deceived about, the merit of their case, or being substantially coerced from another party. (ie. kickbacks or guarantees for another case)
I would be inclined to believe the low price was to offset the rampant student piracy, rather than compete or usurp a Linux movement. This is the far more interesting case of a company bowing to the pressure of digital piracy.
If only the RIAA or MPAA would follow by lowering their prices...
If I loan my car to a friend and he gets drunk and runs someone over, am I at fault?
The facilitation of distribution of movies can be seen in a very different light. It may be more akin to loaning a gun to a friend who you know will murder with it. Wherein, you are now a party to the crime by providing the instruments of the act (instruments which have no other purpose; a jinx in this argument? Is the sole purpose of the instrument to circumvent copyright?).
Short of cited precedent, I think arguments, and judgement, could go either way.
The only freedom is technically guaranteed in plausible deniability, such as FreeNet.
If something major is in the works, like 9/11, what are the odds that someone, somewhere along the line wouldn't have placed some serious bets?
In our market economy, it is called Short Selling, and Osama Bin Laden et al., may have made billions from it. Given the volume of trading, it is very difficult to track and account.
I mean, you do know who is running this thing, right?
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic there, or not. The forces at play in this political polygomy are not entirely transparent.
If every one of my personal contacts had PGP/GPG easily available on their clients, spam would no longer be an issue to me, because I could just refuse unsigned mail, and then mail not on my allowed-keys list.
Why not just create a whitelist of email addresses belonging to those from whom you expect email?
In the best and worst of times, I encourage myself by stipulating rewards for valuable work. Ie. if I finish such-and-such by a certain time, I'll play Diablo II for an hour. The trick, of course, with Diablo II is to stop playing;)
I have found this trick to be a valuable exercise in motivation. Perhaps someone else may, too.
So Linux goes a long way to having a nice standard base system for portability. Is this another game released as a "Linux" game, but really meaning "Linux on x86" game?
Red Hat is a Linux on x86 distribution; it would hardly be fair to hold game manufacturers to a higher standard than their largest commercial target.
This is not to say that supporting many available hardware platforms is not a good thing to do. Only that many of the distribution organizations are incapable or unwilling to provide the support that would make these hardware platforms a viable target.
There has to be some lowest common commodity platform to target; in many cases it's limited to Red Hat, or at best, Red Hat, Suse and Debian (the latter most notably available on almost all Linux platforms). Unless the targets are across multiple platforms, the games will surely never be across multiple platforms.
I'm not saying becoming a Debian Developer is quick or easy (though few would describe it as really hard), but the process is very transparent, and available to anyone. In part, I suspect this transparency, in combination with its maturity, is why Debian has so many more packages than any other software distribution.
Never underestimate the power of transparency.:)
Re:DirectFB Inherently Insecure?
on
Qt On DirectFB
·
· Score: 1
Actually, the point goes much further than this. If you are on a RPM system and you lose control of RPM, either through library problems or dependencies, or what have you, you suddenly are robbed entirely of your ability to control the packages on your system, usually including the ability to fix the system itself.
This is not something anything but highly technical users, or even faint of heart, will encounter. However, it is something that has undermined my ability to recover from catastrophic failures on machines with RPM that do not have CD or network access. I have even been reduced to binary manipulation of RPM files to extract the cpio compatible archive (not a task I would undertake lightly).
In contrast, with Debian packages, I have been able to rebuild a machine from scratch with ar, tar, and gzip, which are extraordinarily unlikely to break. Even in the event that they are unavailable, one can copy them to lightweight media, statically compiled, and then they have no real dependencies. Even if dpkg or apt fails (the latter more likely than the prior, in my experience), it is almost always possible to recover from catastrophic mistakes.
In summary,.deb seems to be a far superior package format to recover from catastrophic failures in system utilities such as the package manager. Of course, as you may have ascertained from my comment on cpio, I have experiences precluding bias.;)
... this is not a broad, sweeping, stifling patent. Rather, it is a specific process that identifies how to solve the problem of "ethical simulation of artificial intelligence", which is "organized as a tandem, nested expert system, composed of a primary affective language analyzer, overseen by a master control unit-expert system".
It does not seem, at first glance, to stifle competition, but rather it seems to add to the global knowledge base for A.I.. In part, it specifically cites "verbal interchange". As such, I would be inclined to think its obsolesence will come about with that of the non-IP telephone which cannot display digital output. (Should IP telephony come to pass, that is) Nevertheless, it adds to the knowledge base that may be applied in derivative solutions.
I've only read some of the summary information, but it seems to be a bona fide creation, with specific applications. The only beasts I can see using, benefiting, and paying for this solution are the telecoms and customer support centers. Perhaps I am merely short sighted.
Course they're fine these days, but several years back it was like setting off a chainsaw inside your machine.
I keep thinking of a little Ash running around in the computer... "good... bad... I'm the guy with the gun"
... "Don't touch that please, your primitive intellect wouldn't understand things with alloys and compositions and things with... molecular structures."
I've been doing this with OpenBSD IP Bridging and Squid for about 4 years. I'm sure others have been doing it longer. I wonder if there is prior art in that (or if the non-obvious clause applies).
gcc produces inferior code on both platforms. Intel's C compiler kicks the shit out of gcc, and likewise metrowerks C and IBM's C compiler kick the shit out of gcc too.
not necessarily. we've production code that is 8x faster on x86 w/gcc than intel's icc 7.0. we're in discussion with their engineers about why. that blew my mind, though.
Since this sort of thing takes a while to get to debian... http://[debian mirror]/debian/pool/main/f/freecraft/ http://[deb ian mirror]/debian/pool/main/f/fcmp/
And, for those of you using debian... $ apt-get install freecraft $ apt-get source freecraft fcmp
Cheers...
Re:alternatives and cultural rant... munchausen
on
Working with ADHD?
·
· Score: 1
It's entirely possible this mother was making up the illness to get attention. This is a not-too-uncommon mental disorder.
It's called, in the maternal case, Munchausen syndrome. Although described as rare, it is much more common to lesser degrees. Indeed, as an example, there are entire sects of modern society that breed merely for status, which falls into the same category in my books. (YMMV)
... because EVERYONE knows they [SCO] wouldn't be paying lawyer's for this FUD if they didn't have the cash.
IIRC, David Boies et al. only get paid from the settlement. ie. If SCO loses, they get nothing. I honestly don't know much about that, and I'd like to know more, but I haven't been able to find the original reference I read it from.
I think one of Lou's contributions to the IBM culture is act of being more tight lipped in public. He openly referred to the IT industry as a media "circus", and I think one of his large cultural biases and influences, coming from American Express, was saying nothing until something needs to be said. Particularly in cases of legal importance.
In any other segment of the economy, I suspect, this is followed more as a tenet of the industry rather than an exception. IBM's response has been, I strongly suspect, reassuring the most important audience: their customers, shareholders, management team, and employees. Rather then entering into a childish public-affairs fiasco with SCO, I believe IBM has taken the high road, and deferred judgement to the courts, where it matters.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't there only be two buttons?
* Earth
* Space
It seems to me that he is still guilty of a crime.
The potential case by SCO against Linux is not a criminal one; this is a civil tort based on copyright legislation. As such, the burden of proof rests upon SCO to satisfy their claims in return for reparation.
However, the interesting bit of this situation is that it is the threat of legislation that SCO is pronouncing is intended to provide extrajudicial remuneration, potentially (and probably) worth more than any civil claim would find.
Irregardless of whether or not it has been proven that Linux has infringed upon SCO copyrights, SCO is seeking remuneration. So no law has yet been seen to be broken. It would be quite a different thing, and much closer to your analogy with theft, if the FBI were to enforce criminal plagarism.
So the situation procured by SCO would indeed collapse, if infringing code were to dissappear, as it would take with it the valuable threat of legislation.
I hope Boies was smart enough to get paid in advance.
Boies is working pro bono, meaning he isn't getting paid for his legal services, only for his expenses.
I can't say I understand this, short of his firm not understanding, or being deceived about, the merit of their case, or being substantially coerced from another party. (ie. kickbacks or guarantees for another case)
I would be inclined to believe the low price was to offset the rampant student piracy, rather than compete or usurp a Linux movement. This is the far more interesting case of a company bowing to the pressure of digital piracy.
...
If only the RIAA or MPAA would follow by lowering their prices
If I loan my car to a friend and he gets drunk and runs someone over, am I at fault?
The facilitation of distribution of movies can be seen in a very different light. It may be more akin to loaning a gun to a friend who you know will murder with it. Wherein, you are now a party to the crime by providing the instruments of the act (instruments which have no other purpose; a jinx in this argument? Is the sole purpose of the instrument to circumvent copyright?).
Short of cited precedent, I think arguments, and judgement, could go either way.
The only freedom is technically guaranteed in plausible deniability, such as FreeNet.
As a businessman, I'd give Bill Gates free gum in the hopes that he'd buy higher ticket items. This is not a courtesy I would extend to everyone.
What percentage of people who intend to install Linux are going to jump through these hoops?
...
It's obviously not 0%, so this article may have some worth
If something major is in the works, like 9/11, what are the odds that someone, somewhere along the line wouldn't have placed some serious bets?
In our market economy, it is called Short Selling, and Osama Bin Laden et al., may have made billions from it. Given the volume of trading, it is very difficult to track and account.
I mean, you do know who is running this thing, right?
I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic there, or not. The forces at play in this political polygomy are not entirely transparent.
If every one of my personal contacts had PGP/GPG easily available on their clients, spam would no longer be an issue to me, because I could just refuse unsigned mail, and then mail not on my allowed-keys list.
Why not just create a whitelist of email addresses belonging to those from whom you expect email?
Cheers
In the best and worst of times, I encourage myself by stipulating rewards for valuable work. Ie. if I finish such-and-such by a certain time, I'll play Diablo II for an hour. The trick, of course, with Diablo II is to stop playing ;)
I have found this trick to be a valuable exercise in motivation. Perhaps someone else may, too.
Cheers
So Linux goes a long way to having a nice standard base system for portability. Is this another game released as a "Linux" game, but really meaning "Linux on x86" game?
Red Hat is a Linux on x86 distribution; it would hardly be fair to hold game manufacturers to a higher standard than their largest commercial target.
This is not to say that supporting many available hardware platforms is not a good thing to do. Only that many of the distribution organizations are incapable or unwilling to provide the support that would make these hardware platforms a viable target.
There has to be some lowest common commodity platform to target; in many cases it's limited to Red Hat, or at best, Red Hat, Suse and Debian (the latter most notably available on almost all Linux platforms). Unless the targets are across multiple platforms, the games will surely never be across multiple platforms.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but the process for getting something into Debian is fairly transparent.
:)
Either add your package to the wanted list, or become a Debian Developer yourself.
I'm not saying becoming a Debian Developer is quick or easy (though few would describe it as really hard), but the process is very transparent, and available to anyone. In part, I suspect this transparency, in combination with its maturity, is why Debian has so many more packages than any other software distribution.
Never underestimate the power of transparency.
It's setuid/setgid root:
/usr/X11R6/bin/X
-rwsr-sr-x 1 root root 6988 2003-04-16 13:20
X goes a long way to preserving its integrity in spite of this. Presumably QT/DirectFB could provide similar priviledge separation.
Hope that helps.
I think SCO is more like Jar Jar. You just wish it would shut its trap.
Actually, the point goes much further than this. If you are on a RPM system and you lose control of RPM, either through library problems or dependencies, or what have you, you suddenly are robbed entirely of your ability to control the packages on your system, usually including the ability to fix the system itself.
.deb seems to be a far superior package format to recover from catastrophic failures in system utilities such as the package manager. Of course, as you may have ascertained from my comment on cpio, I have experiences precluding bias. ;)
This is not something anything but highly technical users, or even faint of heart, will encounter. However, it is something that has undermined my ability to recover from catastrophic failures on machines with RPM that do not have CD or network access. I have even been reduced to binary manipulation of RPM files to extract the cpio compatible archive (not a task I would undertake lightly).
In contrast, with Debian packages, I have been able to rebuild a machine from scratch with ar, tar, and gzip, which are extraordinarily unlikely to break. Even in the event that they are unavailable, one can copy them to lightweight media, statically compiled, and then they have no real dependencies. Even if dpkg or apt fails (the latter more likely than the prior, in my experience), it is almost always possible to recover from catastrophic mistakes.
In summary,
... this is not a broad, sweeping, stifling patent. Rather, it is a specific process that identifies how to solve the problem of "ethical simulation of artificial intelligence", which is "organized as a tandem, nested expert system, composed of a primary affective language analyzer, overseen by a master control unit-expert system".
It does not seem, at first glance, to stifle competition, but rather it seems to add to the global knowledge base for A.I.. In part, it specifically cites "verbal interchange". As such, I would be inclined to think its obsolesence will come about with that of the non-IP telephone which cannot display digital output. (Should IP telephony come to pass, that is) Nevertheless, it adds to the knowledge base that may be applied in derivative solutions.
I've only read some of the summary information, but it seems to be a bona fide creation, with specific applications. The only beasts I can see using, benefiting, and paying for this solution are the telecoms and customer support centers. Perhaps I am merely short sighted.
I keep thinking of a little Ash running around in the computer
The patent was filed December, 2001. If Kopete didn't have it before then, it's not prior art, unfortunately.
I've been doing this with OpenBSD IP Bridging and Squid for about 4 years. I'm sure others have been doing it longer. I wonder if there is prior art in that (or if the non-obvious clause applies).
gcc produces inferior code on both platforms. Intel's C compiler kicks the shit out of gcc, and likewise metrowerks C and IBM's C compiler kick the shit out of gcc too.
:)
not necessarily. we've production code that is 8x faster on x86 w/gcc than intel's icc 7.0. we're in discussion with their engineers about why. that blew my mind, though.
just a note, so you don't take it for granted
I was under the impression that Mussolini called if Fascism.
Ditto - no troll, no joke.
Since this sort of thing takes a while to get to debian ...
b ian mirror]/debian/pool/main/f/fcmp/
...
...
http://[debian mirror]/debian/pool/main/f/freecraft/
http://[de
And, for those of you using debian
$ apt-get install freecraft
$ apt-get source freecraft fcmp
Cheers
It's entirely possible this mother was making up the illness to get attention. This is a not-too-uncommon mental disorder.
5 55 /0.html
It's called, in the maternal case, Munchausen syndrome. Although described as rare, it is much more common to lesser degrees. Indeed, as an example, there are entire sects of modern society that breed merely for status, which falls into the same category in my books. (YMMV)
http://health.yahoo.com/health/encyclopedia/001
... because EVERYONE knows they [SCO] wouldn't be paying lawyer's for this FUD if they didn't have the cash.
IIRC, David Boies et al. only get paid from the settlement. ie. If SCO loses, they get nothing. I honestly don't know much about that, and I'd like to know more, but I haven't been able to find the original reference I read it from.
I think one of Lou's contributions to the IBM culture is act of being more tight lipped in public. He openly referred to the IT industry as a media "circus", and I think one of his large cultural biases and influences, coming from American Express, was saying nothing until something needs to be said. Particularly in cases of legal importance.
In any other segment of the economy, I suspect, this is followed more as a tenet of the industry rather than an exception. IBM's response has been, I strongly suspect, reassuring the most important audience: their customers, shareholders, management team, and employees. Rather then entering into a childish public-affairs fiasco with SCO, I believe IBM has taken the high road, and deferred judgement to the courts, where it matters.
We shall see, in any case.