first, you've obviously never tried to destory one of those things.
Yes, obviously. But I specifically mentioned explosives, and a friend pointed out that something corrosive would work about as well. You don't need to reduce it to dust, just damage it enough to make it unusable and irreparable. Shred the windings and you might as well replace the whole thing.
Second, I know of no power company in the US that does not have spares for every component in their grid.
My understanding is that spares are classified as 'enhancements', while ordering a replacement qualifies as an 'expense', so to minimize reported profits utilities keep as few spares around as they can possibly get away with. As I noted in another post, I'm far from an expert on the power grid so I'd welcome corrections on that score.
You seem to have this down pat pretty good. Any chance you're a terrorist?
Not even close. I have zero military experience, I don't even know that much about the power grid. This stuff isn't that hard, that's the problem.
Either the terrorists are almost comically disorganized, or they have a hard time finding people who are crazy enough to want to kill themselves and stable enough to carry out more complex operations than "go here and push the button", or they just aren't interested in economic damage, only initial body count.
How many died in this, the biggest outage in the US for decades? A half-dozen.
You don't target the plants. You hit the high-voltage transformers. They step down the power from the high-voltage long-distance power lines to the local transmission lines. There's only ~3000 in the whole United States. They're not made domestically and there's an 18 month lead time on manufacture.
You pick a municipality, e.g. New York. You get ~20 men, armed with automatic weapons and explosives. They start ~1am, and go around taking out HVTs. You have four groups; the first two hits each group makes (maybe more) meet no resistance at all, there's no security on these things beyond a padlocked gate.
By the time people realize that a coordinated attack is going on, and get armed guards capable of fighting off automatic weapons placed around the remaining HVTs, at least 30 of them are down. Restoring power takes weeks, possibly a couple of months. Imagine what that'd do to, e.g., Wall Street.
Now, imagine one of those four groups, instead of targeting HVTs, targets water mains instead. You now have a very large region without power or water. That requires a massive support effort, possibly even refugee camps. Picture the economic impact.
Pick two widely separated regions (e.g. New York and, I dunno, Dallas, Texas (they're even more dependent on water and power for survival there than most)) and you halve the damage to each one but more than double the chaos.
True, but what if you had better ways to detect and treat cancer than we do now?
Besides, many genes activate based on the whole body environment. Maintain a hormonal balance similar to a youthful state, and tissues will, to an extent, behave that way. The limits on cell division put an upper limit to this presently, of course.
The regeneration (or lack thereof) of nervous tissue.
Nerve tissue does regenerate, just slowly. Controlled application of growth factors may improve this.
Non-genetic chronic health issues like arterial plaque.
That can be dealt with mechanically (angioplasty), and by drugs, and last but not least diet. Other such things (accumulation of heavy metals, accumulation of debris in ocular fluid) can at least theoretically be dealt with in a simlar fashion. Long-lived humans might need regular maintenance, but that's not necessarily suprising.
More people may beat a hundred, but only a handful of freaks make it past 120.
Now, that's true. Hard to say it's impossible for that to change, though. If even a portion of what is theoretically possible for nanotechnology comes to pass, a lot of bets will be off.
No, I don't think it's terribly likely that a single magic pill will take care of everything. But 'regular maintenance' might keep things going until more long-lasting treatments (e.g. nanobots that detect cancer cells on first division, repair damaged neurons, etc.) are developed.
"Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious
Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude
has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues
for as many centuries as it takes." - Patrick Nielsen Hayden
But his work does have a certain something that makes it memorable even when it isn't worth remembering.
In general, I agree, but The Thing is just brilliant. Moody, atmospheric, the people behave comprehensibly (including panicking in reasonable ways), a perfect music score, and the special effects hold up remarkably well even today.
And I love Big Trouble In Little China just because the 'hero' is so completely out of his depth. Nobody else would tell the story that way.
Dang if I can find it now, but there was an effort to make a Palm-based Unix admin tool. It had a lot of menus and buttons for common remote-admin tasks ("ps -ef | grep", "kill", "cp", "rm", editing files, etc.) Last I saw it only worked via telnet but they were thinking of adding SSH and such.
Given a moderately good screen, and a moderately fast network, such a tool could be darn useful. I'd say slap a decent GUI on these existing tools and you could get a lot done.
So what if my ethics are different than the guy coming up with the scale?
What if you had a simple bar-code peripheral you could hook up to your wi-fi PDA? (Combining a couple of ideas from earlier posts.) Ideally, it would be built-in; have it dual-function as a laser pointer.
Anyway, then you could set up your PDA to query based on that UPC. You might disagree with PETA and the Christian Scientists, but like Consumer Reports and the Catholics. Set up an open rating protocol and you're set.
Then, of course, you have to worry about the privacy implications. If the store is providing the wi-fi access, can/should they monitor what people are scanning?
At the very least, this is an interesting project that raises interesting questions.
There's a GPL exemption in the linux kernal for binary only Nvidia drivers. SCO has no such provision.
No, Linus has just stated that he won't pursue such violations of the GPL. But even that doesn't apply to SCO. No matter how you look at it, they're in GPL trouble.
As has been noted, if you're going to another solar system, you use that sun's push to slow you down.
Another way is to have a big chunk of the sail detach and reflect light back at a smaller chunk of sail you hold onto. The big chunk accelerates away faster, but the light it focuses back on the smaller chunk slows you down.
Of course, if you build a big enough laser, you can have light just about anywhere you need it. You can have as powerful an engine as you like, you just leave it (and its mass) behind.
There are lots of parameters to play with here, don't just dismiss the idea out of hand.
I saw AOTC in DLP, and it made a few things better - noticeably the cityscapes, and the close-ups. You could see what materials the actors clothes were made from. But it was hardly life-changing.
Something is seriously wrong with the world when they are making "The Whole 10 Yards"... a sequel to that idiotic "The Whole 9 Yards" movie w/ Bruce Willis and the 'Friends' gimp.
Heck, I knew the world was on a death spiral when "Mannequin II" was announced.
Besides LoTR and animated films like Shrek, almost all action/sci-fi/fantasy films lately have totally over done it with the CG effects. Way over the top.
Back in the 80's even poor musicians started being able to afford synthesizers, and for a while all you heard was synth-heavy tunes. By the end of the decade people started to calm down and figure out where it makes sense to use synths and when it doesn't.
Now that CG has newly become fairly cheap, expect ~5-7 years of CG-heavy movies until everyone calms down and learns when to use this tool.
This works well for exploring the inner planets, or if you just want to do a flyby of the outer ones. The sun provides negligable energy out past the orbit of Mars.
Well, very long term this can be overcome. I've seen several science-fiction concepts that had things like solar power stations around Mercury that beam lasers to spacecraft in the outer solar system.
I know I feel a lot safer now than I did before -- the screening procedures have gotten a lot tighter and have improved with the technology.
I don't particularly. The Reid case showed that the barn door's been closed in that regard. Highjacking airplanes is effectively impossible now, and smuggling bomb-making materials on-board will run into problems if you have to put them together (though I wonder what would have happened if he'd been smart and tried to light them off in the bathroom...).
Arming the pilots and armoring the cockpits is the main thing needed. After that, take a few pointers from El Al and require luggage inspections (and depressurizations!), etc. A better interview than, "Did you pack your bags?" might help. That stops highjackings and bombings.
Not that it's worth the big concern everyone has for it. It's just not realistically that big a risk. Over the past ten years you're more likely to have drowned in your bathtub than to have died in a terrorist attack, even counting 9/11. Not that we shouldn't do anything, but total panic and wasteful (instead of smart) security doesn't help.
The theft involves the acquisition of an author's potential future gain derived from maintaining exclusive control of the copying and distribution of his work.
Someone reverse-engineered Applebee's tequila lime chicken recipie, and published it. Now my wife makes it from time to time. Are we stealing potential dinner revenue from our local Applebee's?
At heart, I believe a work's creator has absolute control over that work unless and until he sells/gives/relinquishes all or some of those rights to others.
Define 'work'. Do you pay royalties on fire as applied to cooking food? Should you?
Let's assume you're limiting your comments to copyright. If I tell you a story, should you be barred from repeating it unless I give you permission? What if you paraphrase it? What if you just embellish it? If, indeed, you should be restricted from repeating it, how long should this last?
Once you communicate an idea, you of necessity give up control over it. No "absolute control" is possible. Now, as incentive for people to create new ideas, we establish artifical and temporary monopolies, but that's not a natural right or anything. One of the defining characteristics of information is that it can be endlessly communicated and duplicated, unlike physical objects. You seem basically to want to make information into something it's not.
Understand, I make money based on writing commercial, closed-source software. I agree with copyrights in principle, though as I said current practice is way out of control. But the reason why they are so hard to protect is because they are 'unnatural', like a garden.
The information age has changed a lot of things. Ideas and information are trivially easy to duplicate and communicate now; the 'physical, symbolic representation' is as bits rather than marks on paper. If you will, the soil and climate has changed, but you still seem to want to grow the same old plants in the same old ways.
I think ultimately software will shift over to a more 'services' basis, and competition will be in that area, with copyright playing only a minor role. People will get smaller slices, but of a much bigger pie.
I don't see the relevance of this focus on whether or not the original is destroyed.
Because, of course, that is the primary reason that 'copyright violations' are not theft.
Surely our protection of an author's interest in his work ought to include considerably more than just preserving the original... A stable and equaitable society will balance and regulate those interests to ensure the greatest overall benefit.
No kidding. Now, how much protection should be afforded, in what areas, and for what length of time? These are areas where people can and do have legitimate disagreements. I've already said that I disagree with much of how the current patent system is run. I think copyright terms are completely out of control in terms of length.
I suggest you actually read what Stallman hastosay before you decide whether he's wrong.
In other words, unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work deprives the copyright owner in the same way that leaving a department without paying for the clothes your carrying deprives the store's owners and staff. From my perpective, unauthorized copying of copyrighted work is essentially shoplifting.
What if I come in and just look at the clothes in your department store, then go home and sew up some copies for myself? Do I owe you money? What if I get the pattern from just seeing someone (who bought them from you) wearing them on the street?
If I walk out of a store without paying for clothes, I deprive you of the use of those clothes. If I walk out of the store with the idea of them in my head, you haven't lost the clothes.
Ideas and information are, it's true, instantiated as patterns of physical states (ink on paper, electrical potentials in RAM, neural firing rates and thresholds, etc.). But the process of copying the information does not, in all but contrived circumstances, destroy the original, "as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me".
Now, in practice, we recognize that it's in everyones interest for people to have incentives to come up with new ideas, and so copyrights, patents, and to a lesser extent trademarks were created. But we should not forget that this is an artificial state, not a natural one. Piracy in general is not desirable. But if the protections afforded to 'content creators' exceed their perceived value, it's going to happen, and it's a sign that things are out of balance.
To return for a moment to your original point, which appeared to be that Stallman was advocating piracy. He would (and has) argued that software is much more like mathematics than like a physical invention, and thus should not be subject to patents. I firmly agree with this.
He has also argued that the current laws regarding software copyrights are unethical. I'm less convinced by this; an algorithm is like a theorem and not restrictable, but a given bit of software is somewhat unique, and probably should be copyrightable, like a math textbook.
But even granting this, a copyright violation is not a property violation, and the basic laws of the land don't treat it as such. Moreover, a substantial part of the Unix code in question was written by others with the express intent of sharing openly, and was then misappropriated by AT&T. I think you can see why Stallman might not be troubled ethically by its inclusion elsewhere.
This "you can't own an idea" shibboleth is just a smokescreen.
Well, Thomas Jefferson disagreed with you, and explained why.
...ideas cannot be communicated and shared unless someone creates a physical symbolic representation of that idea: by speaking, writing, singing, painting, etc. That physical representation of the idea can, in fact, be owned.
You don't 'own' soundwaves, or the light bouncing off a screen or a peice of paper, and that's how ideas are communicated. Further, once you've communicated an idea to someone, (a) you haven't lost your copy, and (b) they can't voluntarily forget it. An idea is entirely unlike any kind of physical object that can be owned.
Indeed the Constitution does not describe patents and copyrights in terms of property. It's not a natural, recognized right; they are granted 'to promote the progress of science and the useful arts'.
Let's suppose I'm a teacher, and young Richard turns in a history paper that I recognize as a verbatim lift from the encyclopedia... Now, let's suppose young Richard then goes to his Beginning Programming course and turns in some coding homework... the teacher spots code lifted verbatim from Unix.
I call strawman. It is, of course, clearly wrong to pass off someone else's work as your own. In an educational context, where the whole point of the excercise is to actually have the student write something, it's especially wrong, which is, no doubt, why you chose such an example.
Of course, Stallman has never suggested claiming credit for the work of others. You don't understand what he's talking about.
At most, he has stated that that code should be available for others to use, not available for others to take credit for.
When you consider that a good chunk of that Unix code was written by people outside AT&T, and was incorporated without credit into AT&T Unix (look up the history of the AT&T/BSD suit), it's clear that RMS would have a valid case for saying the code is currently misattributed. But I haven't seen him make that case.
Basically, the argument goes, SCO accidentally GPL'ed their code. In order for this to apply, SCO would have to be the one who released the code under the GPL. This is incorrect; the alleged SCO code that was included when SCO released their own distro under the GPL was not released by SCO, it was being redistributed.
But, once they became aware of the alleged violations, they didn't stop distributing the Linux source code themselves. They continue to distribute code that they do not have the copyright to.
The only legal way that they can do so is if they accept the GPL. Otherwise, they are violating copyright, just as much as any 'music pirate'. At least one kernel developer has explicitly demanded that they stop distributing his code.
So, which is it, in your view? Is SCO violating copyright law? Or have they accepted the GPL for the code they are distributing, i.e. the Linux kernel? I don't see how they can have it both ways...
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Yes, obviously. But I specifically mentioned explosives, and a friend pointed out that something corrosive would work about as well. You don't need to reduce it to dust, just damage it enough to make it unusable and irreparable. Shred the windings and you might as well replace the whole thing.
Second, I know of no power company in the US that does not have spares for every component in their grid.
My understanding is that spares are classified as 'enhancements', while ordering a replacement qualifies as an 'expense', so to minimize reported profits utilities keep as few spares around as they can possibly get away with. As I noted in another post, I'm far from an expert on the power grid so I'd welcome corrections on that score.
Not even close. I have zero military experience, I don't even know that much about the power grid. This stuff isn't that hard, that's the problem.
Either the terrorists are almost comically disorganized, or they have a hard time finding people who are crazy enough to want to kill themselves and stable enough to carry out more complex operations than "go here and push the button", or they just aren't interested in economic damage, only initial body count.
You don't target the plants. You hit the high-voltage transformers. They step down the power from the high-voltage long-distance power lines to the local transmission lines. There's only ~3000 in the whole United States. They're not made domestically and there's an 18 month lead time on manufacture.
You pick a municipality, e.g. New York. You get ~20 men, armed with automatic weapons and explosives. They start ~1am, and go around taking out HVTs. You have four groups; the first two hits each group makes (maybe more) meet no resistance at all, there's no security on these things beyond a padlocked gate.
By the time people realize that a coordinated attack is going on, and get armed guards capable of fighting off automatic weapons placed around the remaining HVTs, at least 30 of them are down. Restoring power takes weeks, possibly a couple of months. Imagine what that'd do to, e.g., Wall Street.
Now, imagine one of those four groups, instead of targeting HVTs, targets water mains instead. You now have a very large region without power or water. That requires a massive support effort, possibly even refugee camps. Picture the economic impact.
Pick two widely separated regions (e.g. New York and, I dunno, Dallas, Texas (they're even more dependent on water and power for survival there than most)) and you halve the damage to each one but more than double the chaos.
The only weird thing is why something like this hasn't happened yet.
True, but what if you had better ways to detect and treat cancer than we do now?
Besides, many genes activate based on the whole body environment. Maintain a hormonal balance similar to a youthful state, and tissues will, to an extent, behave that way. The limits on cell division put an upper limit to this presently, of course.
The regeneration (or lack thereof) of nervous tissue.
Nerve tissue does regenerate, just slowly. Controlled application of growth factors may improve this.
Non-genetic chronic health issues like arterial plaque.
That can be dealt with mechanically (angioplasty), and by drugs, and last but not least diet. Other such things (accumulation of heavy metals, accumulation of debris in ocular fluid) can at least theoretically be dealt with in a simlar fashion. Long-lived humans might need regular maintenance, but that's not necessarily suprising.
More people may beat a hundred, but only a handful of freaks make it past 120.
Now, that's true. Hard to say it's impossible for that to change, though. If even a portion of what is theoretically possible for nanotechnology comes to pass, a lot of bets will be off.
No, I don't think it's terribly likely that a single magic pill will take care of everything. But 'regular maintenance' might keep things going until more long-lasting treatments (e.g. nanobots that detect cancer cells on first division, repair damaged neurons, etc.) are developed.
Ask me in 10^33 years.
So, what date have you picked out for dying?
"Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes." - Patrick Nielsen Hayden
In general, I agree, but The Thing is just brilliant. Moody, atmospheric, the people behave comprehensibly (including panicking in reasonable ways), a perfect music score, and the special effects hold up remarkably well even today.
And I love Big Trouble In Little China just because the 'hero' is so completely out of his depth. Nobody else would tell the story that way.
Given a moderately good screen, and a moderately fast network, such a tool could be darn useful. I'd say slap a decent GUI on these existing tools and you could get a lot done.
What if you had a simple bar-code peripheral you could hook up to your wi-fi PDA? (Combining a couple of ideas from earlier posts.) Ideally, it would be built-in; have it dual-function as a laser pointer.
Anyway, then you could set up your PDA to query based on that UPC. You might disagree with PETA and the Christian Scientists, but like Consumer Reports and the Catholics. Set up an open rating protocol and you're set.
Then, of course, you have to worry about the privacy implications. If the store is providing the wi-fi access, can/should they monitor what people are scanning? At the very least, this is an interesting project that raises interesting questions.
No, Linus has just stated that he won't pursue such violations of the GPL. But even that doesn't apply to SCO. No matter how you look at it, they're in GPL trouble.
Actually, a parachute made of gold, lead, or any other heavy metal would be fine. Just so long as they're kicked out from 8km or higher.
As has been noted, if you're going to another solar system, you use that sun's push to slow you down.
Another way is to have a big chunk of the sail detach and reflect light back at a smaller chunk of sail you hold onto. The big chunk accelerates away faster, but the light it focuses back on the smaller chunk slows you down.
Of course, if you build a big enough laser, you can have light just about anywhere you need it. You can have as powerful an engine as you like, you just leave it (and its mass) behind.
There are lots of parameters to play with here, don't just dismiss the idea out of hand.
I saw AOTC in DLP, and it made a few things better - noticeably the cityscapes, and the close-ups. You could see what materials the actors clothes were made from. But it was hardly life-changing.
Heck, I knew the world was on a death spiral when "Mannequin II" was announced.
Back in the 80's even poor musicians started being able to afford synthesizers, and for a while all you heard was synth-heavy tunes. By the end of the decade people started to calm down and figure out where it makes sense to use synths and when it doesn't.
Now that CG has newly become fairly cheap, expect ~5-7 years of CG-heavy movies until everyone calms down and learns when to use this tool.
Well, very long term this can be overcome. I've seen several science-fiction concepts that had things like solar power stations around Mercury that beam lasers to spacecraft in the outer solar system.
I don't particularly. The Reid case showed that the barn door's been closed in that regard. Highjacking airplanes is effectively impossible now, and smuggling bomb-making materials on-board will run into problems if you have to put them together (though I wonder what would have happened if he'd been smart and tried to light them off in the bathroom...).
Arming the pilots and armoring the cockpits is the main thing needed. After that, take a few pointers from El Al and require luggage inspections (and depressurizations!), etc. A better interview than, "Did you pack your bags?" might help. That stops highjackings and bombings.
Not that it's worth the big concern everyone has for it. It's just not realistically that big a risk. Over the past ten years you're more likely to have drowned in your bathtub than to have died in a terrorist attack, even counting 9/11. Not that we shouldn't do anything, but total panic and wasteful (instead of smart) security doesn't help.
Someone reverse-engineered Applebee's tequila lime chicken recipie, and published it. Now my wife makes it from time to time. Are we stealing potential dinner revenue from our local Applebee's?
At heart, I believe a work's creator has absolute control over that work unless and until he sells/gives/relinquishes all or some of those rights to others.
Define 'work'. Do you pay royalties on fire as applied to cooking food? Should you?
Let's assume you're limiting your comments to copyright. If I tell you a story, should you be barred from repeating it unless I give you permission? What if you paraphrase it? What if you just embellish it? If, indeed, you should be restricted from repeating it, how long should this last?
Once you communicate an idea, you of necessity give up control over it. No "absolute control" is possible. Now, as incentive for people to create new ideas, we establish artifical and temporary monopolies, but that's not a natural right or anything. One of the defining characteristics of information is that it can be endlessly communicated and duplicated, unlike physical objects. You seem basically to want to make information into something it's not.
Understand, I make money based on writing commercial, closed-source software. I agree with copyrights in principle, though as I said current practice is way out of control. But the reason why they are so hard to protect is because they are 'unnatural', like a garden.
The information age has changed a lot of things. Ideas and information are trivially easy to duplicate and communicate now; the 'physical, symbolic representation' is as bits rather than marks on paper. If you will, the soil and climate has changed, but you still seem to want to grow the same old plants in the same old ways.
I think ultimately software will shift over to a more 'services' basis, and competition will be in that area, with copyright playing only a minor role. People will get smaller slices, but of a much bigger pie.
Just recently (2003-03-17) the 2.2 kernel was updated to 2.2.25... and 2.0.40-rc6 is still testing.
Because, of course, that is the primary reason that 'copyright violations' are not theft.
Surely our protection of an author's interest in his work ought to include considerably more than just preserving the original... A stable and equaitable society will balance and regulate those interests to ensure the greatest overall benefit.
No kidding. Now, how much protection should be afforded, in what areas, and for what length of time? These are areas where people can and do have legitimate disagreements. I've already said that I disagree with much of how the current patent system is run. I think copyright terms are completely out of control in terms of length.
I suggest you actually read what Stallman has to say before you decide whether he's wrong.
What if I come in and just look at the clothes in your department store, then go home and sew up some copies for myself? Do I owe you money? What if I get the pattern from just seeing someone (who bought them from you) wearing them on the street? If I walk out of a store without paying for clothes, I deprive you of the use of those clothes. If I walk out of the store with the idea of them in my head, you haven't lost the clothes.
Ideas and information are, it's true, instantiated as patterns of physical states (ink on paper, electrical potentials in RAM, neural firing rates and thresholds, etc.). But the process of copying the information does not, in all but contrived circumstances, destroy the original, "as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me".
Now, in practice, we recognize that it's in everyones interest for people to have incentives to come up with new ideas, and so copyrights, patents, and to a lesser extent trademarks were created. But we should not forget that this is an artificial state, not a natural one. Piracy in general is not desirable. But if the protections afforded to 'content creators' exceed their perceived value, it's going to happen, and it's a sign that things are out of balance.
To return for a moment to your original point, which appeared to be that Stallman was advocating piracy. He would (and has) argued that software is much more like mathematics than like a physical invention, and thus should not be subject to patents. I firmly agree with this. He has also argued that the current laws regarding software copyrights are unethical. I'm less convinced by this; an algorithm is like a theorem and not restrictable, but a given bit of software is somewhat unique, and probably should be copyrightable, like a math textbook.
But even granting this, a copyright violation is not a property violation, and the basic laws of the land don't treat it as such. Moreover, a substantial part of the Unix code in question was written by others with the express intent of sharing openly, and was then misappropriated by AT&T. I think you can see why Stallman might not be troubled ethically by its inclusion elsewhere.
Well, Thomas Jefferson disagreed with you, and explained why.
You don't 'own' soundwaves, or the light bouncing off a screen or a peice of paper, and that's how ideas are communicated. Further, once you've communicated an idea to someone, (a) you haven't lost your copy, and (b) they can't voluntarily forget it. An idea is entirely unlike any kind of physical object that can be owned.
Indeed the Constitution does not describe patents and copyrights in terms of property. It's not a natural, recognized right; they are granted 'to promote the progress of science and the useful arts'.
I call strawman. It is, of course, clearly wrong to pass off someone else's work as your own. In an educational context, where the whole point of the excercise is to actually have the student write something, it's especially wrong, which is, no doubt, why you chose such an example.
Of course, Stallman has never suggested claiming credit for the work of others. You don't understand what he's talking about. At most, he has stated that that code should be available for others to use, not available for others to take credit for.
When you consider that a good chunk of that Unix code was written by people outside AT&T, and was incorporated without credit into AT&T Unix (look up the history of the AT&T/BSD suit), it's clear that RMS would have a valid case for saying the code is currently misattributed. But I haven't seen him make that case.
But, once they became aware of the alleged violations, they didn't stop distributing the Linux source code themselves. They continue to distribute code that they do not have the copyright to.
The only legal way that they can do so is if they accept the GPL. Otherwise, they are violating copyright, just as much as any 'music pirate'. At least one kernel developer has explicitly demanded that they stop distributing his code.
So, which is it, in your view? Is SCO violating copyright law? Or have they accepted the GPL for the code they are distributing, i.e. the Linux kernel? I don't see how they can have it both ways...