Linus doesn't want to be hindered by not being able to change the API/ABI for drivers when something better comes along. They've changed the framework EACH AND EVERY TIME that a new release has come out. Not enough each time to merit a new major number, but enough to need to re-write the drivers a little bit. Because he and the other kernel developers had a better idea than the last time for dealing with the driver infrastructure. If the vendors want closed source drivers, they need to keep up. Hell, if NVidia can, the others can- or they can open the technical data, it's not as if someone's going to steal their IP through those interfaces ANYHOW.
Re:Shielding RFID against security
on
RFID Explained
·
· Score: 1
All you have done is say that mobile units have gotten smaller.
You've not addressed the issue of range with regards to an RF device in any of your counterpoints. That's what we're actually talking about- nothing else.
Stop and think for a moment about all of what you're saying.
A better battery will not equate to a better coupling of the RF power from the transmitter stage to the antenna. It will only extend the standby and talk time of the mobile phone.
Smaller circuitry will not equate to a better coupling of the RF power from the transmitter stage to the antenna. It will allow you to make the phone smaller and very possibly use the battery better.
Only a better antenna will allow a better coupling of RF power from the transmitter to the antenna. This, combined with the coupling of ambient RF to the antenna dictate the effective range of an RF system. They came up with a somewhat smaller antenna to couple RF to in the case of mobile phones. The problem is, regulatory requirements limit how much RF they can emit- which is the effective bar on the range in the case of mobile phones (you can gain a couple of miles if you boosted the power by a factor of two, but then you start seeing dramatically diminishing returns because of the propagation characteristics of the frequencies they're using...). If you have a limit on RF power, either through coupling or by what regulations say you can emit, you have a very real and very definite limit on the range of the system. This is different than the very definite limits you will have with regards to RF systems in general. At some point, pouring more power does not equate to range- because the power doesn't propagate linearly, it propagates at the rate of an inverse square. At some point, it doesn't matter how sensitive the reciever is, it just can't pick the signal up at all- because the antenna just can't couple enough of the available power into the reciever's circuits for the same reasons as upping the power having it's limits.
You see, once you start talking about RF (and that is the key word here), you place yourself in a playground that has a very explicit set of rules. Physics, as it were, that has been established by a gentleman by the name of Maxwell and has been proven rigorously by literally millions of people throughout the years. No loopholes so long as you're talking about radio- none whatsoever.
With the antennas possible with these RFID tags, you're going to find that they're close to being up against a wall with regards to range. There's going to be an absolute limit to how much power you can couple into reflecting the RF signal back to the reader- and they're really close to it right now. Upping the reader's power won't do much good as the power the devices can possibly reflect back effectively is limited by the antenna, not anything else- making a "better" smaller antenna might help on the selectivity, but it's not enough to extend the range. Upping the sensitivity of the reciever, which would be the other way to extend the effective range, isn't going to help much either- there's limits to what can/can't be discriminated as a signal. While there's been improvements over the years in that arena, they've largely not improved range, but rather practical bandwidth of the signal.
RFID is limited by it's very nature- RF has very real and definite limits. You're going to have to come up with something outside of radio that has real range before you're going to have what you're claiming. Of course, you conceded that point to some extent.
Re:Shielding RFID against security
on
RFID Explained
·
· Score: 1
There's limits to what a "smaller" antenna system will do. What I said is a known fact- otherwise you'd have a mobile phone system that spanned the entire globe, etc. because you'd be able to boost the range on mobile phones to much more than the 1-2 miles it currently is. Believe me, if what you said was 100% the case, they'd have done up a mobile phone product with nearly 100% coverage because they could and people would pretty much fall all over themselves to have it.
RF just doesn't work the same way most people think it does.
The antenna on these sorts of tags is electrically very small except at millimeter wave frequencies (which would jack the prices on those tags WAAAY up). At the licensed and most usable frequencies, the noise floor for the signal would preclude any range past 10 or so feet because the antenna on the tag couldn't emit enough power to be heard by the reader at any further range.
Dumping a kilowatt into a rubber duckie antenna on a CB will only burn up the antenna and give you no more range than if you dumped 5 into it- the kilowatt is only useful if you've got something like a quarter-wave antenna. The same goes for an RFID tag.
Re:Shielding RFID against security
on
RFID Explained
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Based on the research of the RFID org that is fighting this (and I can't find the link now but I got if from a recent RFID posting on/.) The range of RFID tags can be up to 40 feet.
This strongly depends on the tag type. Even passive tags can have a range of 75 or so yards depending on the design of the tag (RF backscatter tags have an incredible range for a passive device...), frequency used, and the sensitivity and noise rejection characteristics of the reader's RF subsystems. Most of the tollway pass tags are passive or battery boosted passive (The battery doesn't power the unit per se, but lowers the response time of the tag dramatically because it's in a sleep state instead of powered off.). In the case of the tags they're talking about putting in merchandise, the range is typically only about 10 or so feet max, usually more along the lines of 3 or less feet- because the antennas on the tags are electrically speaking, crippling small and they're not operating on backscatter principles, but rather a beacon re-transmitting on a different frequency or on the same one when the power is turned off on the reader's end. Advances in tech can only bring you so far in this game. They can't radiate/recieve too much power because the antenna just won't do it for them. Upping the power on the reader will do only so much for you because you hit the wall on the range possible for the antenna on the tag itself. 40 feet's pretty amazing and I'd like to see a merchandise tag that actually can swing that with the measly 2.5 cm or less dipole or meander antennas these tags typically have on them.
Re:Shielding RFID against security
on
RFID Explained
·
· Score: 1
Smart shelves? Not going to happen for a while yet.
The costs of the readers ($3k average price for a basic reader for a system with a useful range...) combined with the prices for the tags (Something on the order of $.50 per tag or thereabouts...) is going to render that idea moot for most stores selling most products.
They're thinking about it...
on
RFID Explained
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· Score: 1
Up until about 3-4 years ago, the costs of an effective tag was pretty astronomical compared to what it was being used for.
The RFID tags used for tollway passes, developed mainly by TI and Amtech cost something like 30 dollars or so to make. They've been trying to make the tech cheaper and have succeeded to a small extent, but the tags were not much more than the sensormatic things that they've been using to keep shoplifting down. The cheap tags weren't smart. The cheap tags didn't have any sizable range.
About 4 years ago, this story changed. Several tags have popped up that are relatively intelligent and can be glued onto conductive ink antennas or integrated into labels and other things. I know about one of these tag types since I worked for Amtech/Intermec as one of their Team Leads and Technologists for their product lines.
PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS:
Length: 10 mm (.39") Height: 30 mm (1.18") Width: 0.5 mm (0.02")
HARDWARE:
Operating Frequency: 2450 MHz Memory Standard: Total 1024 bits Optional: 96 bits reserved for factory/system parameters; locked at the factory User Capacity: 928 usable read/write lockable bits Mounting Surface: Cardboard boxes Insert Material: Polyimide Data Rate:
Read 8 bytes of data from a tab in less than 12 ms.
Write a single bit of data to a tag in less than 25 ms. Antenna Type: Meander Read Range: 65 cm (25.99 in.) with single antenna (on cardboard box) Write range: approximately 70% of the effective read range.
It can be put onto other "insert" types including being directly placed on a self-destructing label for things like vehicle registration purposes or something akin to a Mobile SpeedPass (one of the projects I was working on at the time, in fact...). With this tag, you can read any number of them in a space as long as you have time to wait for each of them to respond in turn. Also keep in mind that the conductive ink antenna variety of tags out are even more range limited than this. They were estimating a cost per tag of about $.50 or so per tag in the thousands quantity on labels like in the specs statement when I was still working for them.
It all boils down to bottom line- and even now, the costs of these little tags are giving them pause because they can't be sure that the benefits for logistics and shoplift prevention are going to outweigh the costs of tagging everything.
Having worked on the network infrastructure software for epicRealm, I can say that is exactly what they did- along with handling dynamic content caching. Keith had a patent on the system in question and had filed a US patent (important thing here...) six months prior to the Mirror Image US Patent application (They apparently filed elsewhere first...).
If it's not Copyright, it's Trade Secret or Patents, yes. Problem is, SCO doesn't have any applicable patents to their name (key thing for them to do ANYTHING regarding patents...) and if it was a Trade Secret, having it put into the kernel just blew the Trade Secret status all to Hell.
You can ask for subsequent royalties if it's Copyrighted.
You can ask for past, present, and future royalties if it's a Patent.
You can license a Trade Secret as long as it's one, but if someone "oopses", you can sue the person that screwed up, but you can't ask anyone else for licensing as it's no longer your IP.
The best they can hope for is that they have a Copyright case here, because anything else is a foregone conclusion against them.
EPIA-M10000 motherboard : $140 mini-ITX case (basic): $60 128Mb of DDR RAM: $60 40Gb HD: $50 16x DVD: $50
Total cost: $360
That's all it takes to make a basic business PC these days. It won't be a barn burner, but it will do the job nicely no matter what OS you choose, 98, Me, 2000, XP, *BSD, or Linux.
A DVD drive runs something like $50 or so for a decent one not on sale. So, the price is more like something along the lines of $360. Still quite a bit less than the $700 that this bunch is asking for it. I don't believe in paying THAT much a premium for "smaller" unless it brings something along with it like Laptops usually do.
It's okay, but unless you're talking about their 1GHz version, the performance is mediocre at best. The 733 MHz CPU compares favoribly on integer operations when compared to an equivalently clocked Celeron (About 1.25 times faster on average- mostly due to the higher FSB...) but is only about half as good as a Celeron on floating point operations. This is because the FPU is underclocked on all but the Nehemiah cores (1GHz and above...) by half the clock speed of the CPU.
The power consumption's great, but you need to be aware of the tradeoffs for that reduction in power- especially in the case of the earlier C3 cores. You want to use this as a set-top box machine or maybe as a home theatre PC if you're not planning on doing majorly strenuous things with it. As a business PC, it will do okay so long as you're doing something like worprocessing as your predominant task. Spreadsheets are going to drag miserably with this machine offering. A Nehemiah core machine would present itself well in the context of an office PC and while their price is MUCH higher than it ought to be for such a machine.
Fry's sells the 1GHz motherboards for about $140, the memory would set you back $60-120 depending on how much, a hard disk will set you back another $50-120 depending on what you bought, the special case for the new form factor motherboard will set you back $60-80.
So, doing the math, $310 is the base price for a better machine in a similar size factor.
...that this wasn't an individual being hacked, this was a block of people on Charter that got hacked. The stuff the hacker was doing would have collected a LOT of CC info, etc.
Sad to say, this is pretty damn big and while it's not a company this time per se, they companies are going to take it up the tailpipe all the same for it.
Through which your usage of the software is determined. A license is an agreement or a contract that can have portions violated and thereby activating other clauses of the license that could make you liable for damages, etc.
Your referenced article from kernel-traffic addressed the why. Broadcom's design allows for anyone to set the frequency, etc. and transmit outside of the 802.11g bands. It's that and the typical "got to keep our IP protected all the way" mentality that seems to think that an SDK will weaken their IP claims on a chip. It's rather stupid, really- on all counts in this case.
Paper doesn't have "protection". Never did, really. CD's didn't have "protection" until recently- what they've come up with is useless. Cassette didn't have "protection". Neither did vinyl.
Everybody did FINE without protection. Protection does NOT equate to incentive. Lack of protection does NOT equate to lack of incentive.
How do you deal with piracy? Not by locking the stuff up. You deal with it by making it such that it is no longer profitable to do so- that is the REAL reason why piracy happens.
It's a valid argument. However, if they're claiming that they're not obligated under the GPL, they're mistaken.
They knew about the distribution of their code for over 5 months if other official statements made by SCO are to be believed. It is the obligation of distributors of ANY code that is GPLed to ensure that the said code is not encumbered with non-licensed code or patented algorithms without a compatible license. In other words, SCO, by distributing Linux is obligated at the time of discovery to NOT distribute the said code- excising it from the distribution as needed. Since they did not, they abrogated their rights under the GPL to distribute the code in question.
It's a simple matter really.
Either they tacitly licensed the code and they should cease comments about infringement or they're guilty of 5+ months of infringement on the copyrights of the code that has the alleged infringements in it.
No, Pandemic likes XBox...
on
Hacking the XBox
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The article said, and I quote,
"A combat simulator developed to train grunts in discipline and manoeuvres is being adapted for the Xbox games console."
This doesn't mean that the Army's using X-Boxes as you're implying. It only means that Pandemic's making an X-Box version of the simulation based upon the Army's version that they supplied.
Since the settlement absolved the IP issues with BSD and USL, since it's the same IP, no further suits can be filed. If, however, some "new" code were to be found that was proven (key word there) to have actually been cribbed from SCO's sources, then that's another ballgame.
However, for all intents and purposes, SCO can't just arbitrarily sue any of the BSD's or a Linux distribution over the BSD code. In fact, they keep saying that they explicitly excluded the BSD derived sources from comparison- for that very reason.
Cleaning their hands so that they can pursue damages against the vendors- not so likely. If they're not telling the "infringers" what they've done right now, they can't turn around and ask for damages later.
This is all a moot point. I doubt they have anything in hand and are now stuck with the reality that IBM won't buy them and plans on litigating this annoyance away. The thrashing around is a result of the coming to grips with said reality.
They'd just started issuing the new $20 bills and while I'd had a bunch of the old ones, at least one poor tourist had nothing but the new bills. The shopkeepers down in Nuevo Laredo were giving these poor people fits because they thought that the tourists in question were trying to rip them off with fake dollars.
It took somewhere around 10 minutes or so of arguing with the people, usually with something like 2-4 other American tourists trying to confirm the fact that the "new" money was legit to convince the shopkeepers.
And the changes are stupid, really. Leaching can be caught visually, but considering that the stores out there just use those stupid pens to check whether it's counterfeit or not, a leached bill will pass at least a couple of times. These changes will give the criminals pause for maybe a couple of months while the bills get into circulation.
Slashdot Mirror
Linus doesn't want to be hindered by not being able to change the API/ABI for drivers when something better comes along. They've changed the framework EACH AND EVERY TIME that a new release has come out. Not enough each time to merit a new major number, but enough to need to re-write the drivers a little bit. Because he and the other kernel developers had a better idea than the last time for dealing with the driver infrastructure. If the vendors want closed source drivers, they need to keep up. Hell, if NVidia can, the others can- or they can open the technical data, it's not as if someone's going to steal their IP through those interfaces ANYHOW.
All you have done is say that mobile units have gotten smaller.
You've not addressed the issue of range with regards to an RF device in any of your counterpoints. That's what we're actually talking about- nothing else.
Stop and think for a moment about all of what you're saying.
A better battery will not equate to a better coupling of the RF power from the transmitter stage to the antenna. It will only extend the standby and talk time of the mobile phone.
Smaller circuitry will not equate to a better coupling of the RF power from the transmitter stage to the antenna. It will allow you to make the phone smaller and very possibly use the battery better.
Only a better antenna will allow a better coupling of RF power from the transmitter to the antenna. This, combined with the coupling of ambient RF to the antenna dictate the effective range of an RF system. They came up with a somewhat smaller antenna to couple RF to in the case of mobile phones. The problem is, regulatory requirements limit how much RF they can emit- which is the effective bar on the range in the case of mobile phones (you can gain a couple of miles if you boosted the power by a factor of two, but then you start seeing dramatically diminishing returns because of the propagation characteristics of the frequencies they're using...). If you have a limit on RF power, either through coupling or by what regulations say you can emit, you have a very real and very definite limit on the range of the system. This is different than the very definite limits you will have with regards to RF systems in general. At some point, pouring more power does not equate to range- because the power doesn't propagate linearly, it propagates at the rate of an inverse square. At some point, it doesn't matter how sensitive the reciever is, it just can't pick the signal up at all- because the antenna just can't couple enough of the available power into the reciever's circuits for the same reasons as upping the power having it's limits.
You see, once you start talking about RF (and that is the key word here), you place yourself in a playground that has a very explicit set of rules. Physics, as it were, that has been established by a gentleman by the name of Maxwell and has been proven rigorously by literally millions of people throughout the years. No loopholes so long as you're talking about radio- none whatsoever.
With the antennas possible with these RFID tags, you're going to find that they're close to being up against a wall with regards to range. There's going to be an absolute limit to how much power you can couple into reflecting the RF signal back to the reader- and they're really close to it right now. Upping the reader's power won't do much good as the power the devices can possibly reflect back effectively is limited by the antenna, not anything else- making a "better" smaller antenna might help on the selectivity, but it's not enough to extend the range. Upping the sensitivity of the reciever, which would be the other way to extend the effective range, isn't going to help much either- there's limits to what can/can't be discriminated as a signal. While there's been improvements over the years in that arena, they've largely not improved range, but rather practical bandwidth of the signal.
RFID is limited by it's very nature- RF has very real and definite limits. You're going to have to come up with something outside of radio that has real range before you're going to have what you're claiming. Of course, you conceded that point to some extent.
There's limits to what a "smaller" antenna system will do. What I said is a known fact- otherwise you'd have a mobile phone system that spanned the entire globe, etc. because you'd be able to boost the range on mobile phones to much more than the 1-2 miles it currently is. Believe me, if what you said was 100% the case, they'd have done up a mobile phone product with nearly 100% coverage because they could and people would pretty much fall all over themselves to have it.
RF just doesn't work the same way most people think it does.
Pure and simple physics, my friend.
The antenna on these sorts of tags is electrically very small except at millimeter wave frequencies (which would jack the prices on those tags WAAAY up). At the licensed and most usable frequencies, the noise floor for the signal would preclude any range past 10 or so feet because the antenna on the tag couldn't emit enough power to be heard by the reader at any further range.
Dumping a kilowatt into a rubber duckie antenna on a CB will only burn up the antenna and give you no more range than if you dumped 5 into it- the kilowatt is only useful if you've got something like a quarter-wave antenna. The same goes for an RFID tag.
This strongly depends on the tag type. Even passive tags can have a range of 75 or so yards depending on the design of the tag (RF backscatter tags have an incredible range for a passive device...), frequency used, and the sensitivity and noise rejection characteristics of the reader's RF subsystems. Most of the tollway pass tags are passive or battery boosted passive (The battery doesn't power the unit per se, but lowers the response time of the tag dramatically because it's in a sleep state instead of powered off.). In the case of the tags they're talking about putting in merchandise, the range is typically only about 10 or so feet max, usually more along the lines of 3 or less feet- because the antennas on the tags are electrically speaking, crippling small and they're not operating on backscatter principles, but rather a beacon re-transmitting on a different frequency or on the same one when the power is turned off on the reader's end. Advances in tech can only bring you so far in this game. They can't radiate/recieve too much power because the antenna just won't do it for them. Upping the power on the reader will do only so much for you because you hit the wall on the range possible for the antenna on the tag itself. 40 feet's pretty amazing and I'd like to see a merchandise tag that actually can swing that with the measly 2.5 cm or less dipole or meander antennas these tags typically have on them.
Smart shelves? Not going to happen for a while yet.
The costs of the readers ($3k average price for a basic reader for a system with a useful range...) combined with the prices for the tags (Something on the order of $.50 per tag or thereabouts...) is going to render that idea moot for most stores selling most products.
The RFID tags used for tollway passes, developed mainly by TI and Amtech cost something like 30 dollars or so to make. They've been trying to make the tech cheaper and have succeeded to a small extent, but the tags were not much more than the sensormatic things that they've been using to keep shoplifting down. The cheap tags weren't smart. The cheap tags didn't have any sizable range.
About 4 years ago, this story changed. Several tags have popped up that are relatively intelligent and can be glued onto conductive ink antennas or integrated into labels and other things. I know about one of these tag types since I worked for Amtech/Intermec as one of their Team Leads and Technologists for their product lines.
It can be put onto other "insert" types including being directly placed on a self-destructing label for things like vehicle registration purposes or something akin to a Mobile SpeedPass (one of the projects I was working on at the time, in fact...). With this tag, you can read any number of them in a space as long as you have time to wait for each of them to respond in turn. Also keep in mind that the conductive ink antenna variety of tags out are even more range limited than this. They were estimating a cost per tag of about $.50 or so per tag in the thousands quantity on labels like in the specs statement when I was still working for them.
It all boils down to bottom line- and even now, the costs of these little tags are giving them pause because they can't be sure that the benefits for logistics and shoplift prevention are going to outweigh the costs of tagging everything.
Having worked on the network infrastructure software for epicRealm, I can say that is exactly what they did- along with handling dynamic content caching. Keith had a patent on the system in question and had filed a US patent (important thing here...) six months prior to the Mirror Image US Patent application (They apparently filed elsewhere first...).
If it's not Copyright, it's Trade Secret or Patents, yes. Problem is, SCO doesn't have any applicable patents to their name (key thing for them to do ANYTHING regarding patents...) and if it was a Trade Secret, having it put into the kernel just blew the Trade Secret status all to Hell.
You can ask for subsequent royalties if it's Copyrighted.
You can ask for past, present, and future royalties if it's a Patent.
You can license a Trade Secret as long as it's one, but if someone "oopses", you can sue the person that screwed up, but you can't ask anyone else for licensing as it's no longer your IP.
The best they can hope for is that they have a Copyright case here, because anything else is a foregone conclusion against them.
EPIA-M10000 motherboard : $140
mini-ITX case (basic): $60
128Mb of DDR RAM: $60
40Gb HD: $50
16x DVD: $50
Total cost: $360
That's all it takes to make a basic business PC these days. It won't be a barn burner, but it will do the job nicely no matter what OS you choose, 98, Me, 2000, XP, *BSD, or Linux.
(OT: The "lameness" filter is really lame...)
A DVD drive runs something like $50 or so for a decent one not on sale. So, the price is more like something along the lines of $360. Still quite a bit less than the $700 that this bunch is asking for it. I don't believe in paying THAT much a premium for "smaller" unless it brings something along with it like Laptops usually do.
It's okay, but unless you're talking about their 1GHz version, the performance is mediocre at best. The 733 MHz CPU compares favoribly on integer operations when compared to an equivalently clocked Celeron (About 1.25 times faster on average- mostly due to the higher FSB...) but is only about half as good as a Celeron on floating point operations. This is because the FPU is underclocked on all but the Nehemiah cores (1GHz and above...) by half the clock speed of the CPU.
The power consumption's great, but you need to be aware of the tradeoffs for that reduction in power- especially in the case of the earlier C3 cores. You want to use this as a set-top box machine or maybe as a home theatre PC if you're not planning on doing majorly strenuous things with it. As a business PC, it will do okay so long as you're doing something like worprocessing as your predominant task. Spreadsheets are going to drag miserably with this machine offering. A Nehemiah core machine would present itself well in the context of an office PC and while their price is MUCH higher than it ought to be for such a machine.
Fry's sells the 1GHz motherboards for about $140, the memory would set you back $60-120 depending on how much, a hard disk will set you back another $50-120 depending on what you bought, the special case for the new form factor motherboard will set you back $60-80.
So, doing the math, $310 is the base price for a better machine in a similar size factor.
...that this wasn't an individual being hacked, this was a block of people on Charter that got hacked. The stuff the hacker was doing would have collected a LOT of CC info, etc.
Sad to say, this is pretty damn big and while it's not a company this time per se, they companies are going to take it up the tailpipe all the same for it.
Through which your usage of the software is determined. A license is an agreement or a contract that can have portions violated and thereby activating other clauses of the license that could make you liable for damages, etc.
Informative? Hardly.
They can't relitigate- they SETTLED the case and as long as this didn't violate the terms of the settlement, they can't go back after him over it.
Your referenced article from kernel-traffic addressed the why. Broadcom's design allows for anyone to set the frequency, etc. and transmit outside of the 802.11g bands. It's that and the typical "got to keep our IP protected all the way" mentality that seems to think that an SDK will weaken their IP claims on a chip. It's rather stupid, really- on all counts in this case.
Paper doesn't have "protection". Never did, really.
CD's didn't have "protection" until recently- what they've come up with is useless.
Cassette didn't have "protection". Neither did vinyl.
Everybody did FINE without protection. Protection does NOT equate to incentive. Lack of protection does NOT equate to lack of incentive.
How do you deal with piracy? Not by locking the stuff up. You deal with it by making it such that it is no longer profitable to do so- that is the REAL reason why piracy happens.
It's a valid argument. However, if they're claiming that they're not obligated under the GPL, they're mistaken.
They knew about the distribution of their code for over 5 months if other official statements made by SCO are to be believed. It is the obligation of distributors of ANY code that is GPLed to ensure that the said code is not encumbered with non-licensed code or patented algorithms without a compatible license. In other words, SCO, by distributing Linux is obligated at the time of discovery to NOT distribute the said code- excising it from the distribution as needed. Since they did not, they abrogated their rights under the GPL to distribute the code in question.
It's a simple matter really.
Either they tacitly licensed the code and they should cease comments about infringement or they're guilty of 5+ months of infringement on the copyrights of the code that has the alleged infringements in it.
This doesn't mean that the Army's using X-Boxes as you're implying. It only means that Pandemic's making an X-Box version of the simulation based upon the Army's version that they supplied.
Since the settlement absolved the IP issues with BSD and USL, since it's the same IP, no further suits can be filed. If, however, some "new" code were to be found that was proven (key word there) to have actually been cribbed from SCO's sources, then that's another ballgame.
However, for all intents and purposes, SCO can't just arbitrarily sue any of the BSD's or a Linux distribution over the BSD code. In fact, they keep saying that they explicitly excluded the BSD derived sources from comparison- for that very reason.
According to VNU.net, SCO has suspended support of United Linux.
Cleaning their hands so that they can pursue damages against the vendors- not so likely. If they're not telling the "infringers" what they've done right now, they can't turn around and ask for damages later.
This is all a moot point. I doubt they have anything in hand and are now stuck with the reality that IBM won't buy them and plans on litigating this annoyance away. The thrashing around is a result of the coming to grips with said reality.
They're still blaming piracy for the current drop in sales- even though other groups have fingered what is actually wrong.
I do believe that the color ones are the only copiers with this lovely "feature".
They'd just started issuing the new $20 bills and while I'd had a bunch of the old ones, at least one poor tourist had nothing but the new bills. The shopkeepers down in Nuevo Laredo were giving these poor people fits because they thought that the tourists in question were trying to rip them off with fake dollars.
It took somewhere around 10 minutes or so of arguing with the people, usually with something like 2-4 other American tourists trying to confirm the fact that the "new" money was legit to convince the shopkeepers.
And the changes are stupid, really. Leaching can be caught visually, but considering that the stores out there just use those stupid pens to check whether it's counterfeit or not, a leached bill will pass at least a couple of times. These changes will give the criminals pause for maybe a couple of months while the bills get into circulation.