only three of IBM's counterclaims is about patents. The rest are about breach of contract (first counterclaim), Lanham Act violations (second counterclaim), unfair competition (third counterclaim), Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Relations (fourth counterclaim), unfair and deceptive trade practices (fifth counterclaim), breach of the GPL (sixth counterclaim), promisory estoppel (seventh counterclaim), copyright infringement (eight counterclaim).
The company I work for provides specialized web services (intranet sites, etc.) The software we use is GPL'ed. Both my employer and I have contributed code to this software.
It costs nothing to contribute (we would have written the code anyway), and we get back *way* more than we put into it. That's why we do what we do - because we get something back (better software.)
But I gotta ask.. what happens when a someone breaks into your house, you hide in the bed, and then the invader simply unplugs it and nails the lid shut?
The first thing that struck me when seeing that site is that they're missing the line "makes a great coffin, too!"
saying that your country no longer exists is much much better
Politically speaking, yes it is.
Forgetting that something exists is likely to elicit the response of "Look! They forgot our country.. haha, those idiots.", whereas claiming that you've been taken over by a political rival is more likely to elicit anger. ("How dare they! That's not true.")
Which is worse: reciting a list of and forgetting something, or making false claims about something on that list?
It's kind of funny that one of the things that Snopes uses to show that the Nova story is 'improbable' is pretty much exactly what happened here:
Even if nobody in Detroit knew enough rudimentary Spanish to notice the coincidence, the Nova could not have brought to market in Mexico and/or South America without the involvement of numerous Spanish speakers engaged to translate user manuals, prepare advertising and promotional materials, communicate with the network of Chevrolet dealers in the target countries, etc.
any player can just be a high-elf, or a half-elf, or a wizard, or an ent, or something else that's supposed to be rare as diamonds
Umm, first - diamonds aren't that rare. Most other gemstones (emeralds come to mind) are much rarer. The high cost of diamonds has to do more with the monopoly that controls distribution.
Second, if you're gonna bitch about rareness, why not bitch about the fact that 'anybody' can be an adventurer? Why are there more players who are adventurers than bakers/millwrighs/peasants/coopers/smiths/whatever ? Adventurers themselves are supposed to be really rare, and every player is gonna be one - what's up with that?!?!?
No, actually, *some traits* of homosexuality can be attributed to genetics - but studies of identical twins shows that it is most definitely not solely genetic.
Researchers are discovering that there are many biological and some sociological 'cues' that when present in the proper combination(s) can create sexual desire for members of the same sex.
I think it's more accurate to say that homosexuality is (mostly) biological, rather than learned, behaviour.
The problem isn't that the original code is free, or isn't free, or that MS's version is or isn't free. The problem is that THERE IS A FORK THAT WILL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO MERGE BACK.
A major point of Free software is to reduce the amount of wheel reinvention. Everybody gets to see and use everybody else's code. BSD-to-commercial forks provide a major impediment to that.
So what damage accrued to BSD or TCP users as a consequence?
MS TCP-users were not able to take advantage of the advances to the BSD stack, and are now stuck with a crippled version. This is the whole point.
It doesn't matter how good the technology is, if there is a way for someone you don't know to send you email, then there's a way for a spammer to send you spam.
Email addresses are cheap. Domain names are cheap. Blocking forged addresses will just mean that a spammer will buy a new domain name for each spam run, at a cost of $9.00 every other week or so - $9.00 which he'll simply pass on to the moron paying him $1500 to do the spam run.
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language By Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai iwth useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
From SCO's Amended Answer to IBM's Amended Counterclaims, filed March 13, 2004:
"EIGHT AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE
The GPL violates the U.S. Constitution, together with copyright, antitrust and export control laws, and IBM's claims based thereon, or related thereto, are barred."
Although they're not trying that angle anymore, they have argued it in writing in court documents.
2) Once we found out it was released everywhere by IBM the horse was way out of the barn.
Irrelevant. If you want to try to claim damages, you MUST do everything in your power to stop infringement.
3) IBM'S "illegal" actions have boosted the Linux market place
Again, irrelevant. How popular something is has no bearing.
4) To stay competitive we have to release a copy of Linux, under GPL, to be competitive.
That does not logically follow. Damages have no bearing on you continuing to be competitive or not.
5) But all of this is a result of the fruit of IBM's "illegal" actions so they still owe us damages.
By continuing to distribute it themselves, they are declaring that the value of the infringement is $0.00. There are no damages to be awarded.
Here's what SCOX should have done:
Once they discovered the 'infringing' code, they must immediately stopped distributing the material themselves, then contacted the responsible people to arrange for damages (which they claim was IBM.) In doing so, they must (as a matter of law) identify the lines of code that are 'infringing'.
They should then contact every distributor of Linux they know about (I'm guessing that a notification sent to Linux, kernel.org, along with a press release might be acceptable in this case), and notify them of the status of their claim, the lines of code that were at issue, and demand that they cease distributing the 'infringing' material.
Failure to follow these steps means that they can't claim damages.
There is *NO* (as in zero, nil, nada, zip, bupkiss) valid legal reason to not follow these steps, and many valid legal reasons they should.
The only answer as to *why* they didn't is as follows:
Either 1) they know they have no case, or 2) their lawyers don't know anything about the law at all, and should be disbarred and charged with fraud.
if that isn't settled, all someone has to do is pick up that IP at the firesale and start all over.
I honestly can't see that happening.
Any company that bought up the assets (especially if they plan on starting this all over) would also be buying the IBM countersuit - and I'm at a loss to think of any entity possessing the huge amounts of masochism and psychosis *that* would require.
Seriously, why would anybody (including MS) say to themselves "hey, let's spend a couple million dollars to buy a target to go on our chests."
No, if SCO goes under before a major win, you can bet that MS will just let it die, and use it as ammunition for their FUD cannon.
I doubt that they'd sue you for license violations as long as you have the right number of licenses and continue to pay the maintenance fees.
Just like Daimler Chrysler, right?
SCO has demonstrated that they love to invent restrictions which are not in a contract, and then sue over 'violating' them.
I have no doubt that when/if SCO decided they needed more money (perhaps to fund more litigation?) that they'd use the contract as a basis for extortion.
"Hey, we believe you're in violation of your contract by running Windows on your desktops - pay us more money or we'll sue you."
Chrysler got sued becuase they used to be a customer and they moved on.
NO, THEY WEREN'T. At the time the lawsuit was filed, SCO fully believed them to be a current customer (read the court documents.)
BitTorrent is designed to transfer data while verifying its validity, but in order for that to work the metafile (.torrent file) must come from a trusted source.
Which has exactly what to do with my post?
In this case, you aren't retrieving the file from microsoft.com, so you'd better have an alternate method of figuring out whether or not it's been tampered with.
Again, how is this different from any other executable download?
what you said simply doesn't follow from what he said
yes it does - by including the phrase "OS UPDATES" in the phrase "I wouldn't trust OS UPDATES I got from BT", he's implying that there are things that he *does* trust - otherwise, he should have just said "I wouldn't trust *SOFTWARE* I got from BT."
Normally, executable content can be sandboxed to a user with no rights on the system
Wrong - especially on windows. In order to be useful, most software requires interaction with other parts of the system (network, reading files, etc.) Software which has requires *no* rights is typically useless - this goes double for software which is large enough to be distributed via BT.
Slashdot Mirror
there's nothing about that format that allows for the sort of rich results that he seems to be talking about.
You are, of course, assuming that what he's talking about is actually what they're planning on doing.
MS has a long-standing tradition of talking about things that don't really happen (Win95 is a 32-bit OS, anyone?)
As they say, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
Personally, I'll believe it when I see it.
trade libel has nothing to do with this case.
Bullshit.
IBMs counterclaim is about patents.
*WRONG*
only three of IBM's counterclaims is about patents. The rest are about breach of contract (first counterclaim), Lanham Act violations (second counterclaim), unfair competition (third counterclaim), Intentional Interference with Prospective Economic Relations (fourth counterclaim), unfair and deceptive trade practices (fifth counterclaim), breach of the GPL (sixth counterclaim), promisory estoppel (seventh counterclaim), copyright infringement (eight counterclaim).
Any other lies you want me to debunk?
Proof, please?
what makes the community do what they do?
Because that's how they get the tools they want.
The company I work for provides specialized web services (intranet sites, etc.) The software we use is GPL'ed. Both my employer and I have contributed code to this software.
It costs nothing to contribute (we would have written the code anyway), and we get back *way* more than we put into it. That's why we do what we do - because we get something back (better software.)
"What is the sound of one hand?"
/. :o)
fap-fap-fap-fap
Seriously dude, you should know better than to post a question like that to
Interesting how you have four levels, and the SCOCON is currently at level four.
That's hilarious!
But I gotta ask.. what happens when a someone breaks into your house, you hide in the bed, and then the invader simply unplugs it and nails the lid shut?
The first thing that struck me when seeing that site is that they're missing the line "makes a great coffin, too!"
saying that your country no longer exists is much much better
Politically speaking, yes it is.
Forgetting that something exists is likely to elicit the response of "Look! They forgot our country.. haha, those idiots.", whereas claiming that you've been taken over by a political rival is more likely to elicit anger. ("How dare they! That's not true.")
Which is worse: reciting a list of and forgetting something, or making false claims about something on that list?
Microsoft has flooded Poland in win2k/xp. Just check the map in time zone setting. They didn't get banned here though
Flooding isn't quite the same as saying that part of your land belongs to a different country.
I'm sure that there would have been quite an uproar if (for example) the map showed everything west of Warsaw as being part of Germany.
It's kind of funny that one of the things that Snopes uses to show that the Nova story is 'improbable' is pretty much exactly what happened here:
Even if nobody in Detroit knew enough rudimentary Spanish to notice the coincidence, the Nova could not have brought to market in Mexico and/or South America without the involvement of numerous Spanish speakers engaged to translate user manuals, prepare advertising and promotional materials, communicate with the network of Chevrolet dealers in the target countries, etc.
any player can just be a high-elf, or a half-elf, or a wizard, or an ent, or something else that's supposed to be rare as diamonds
r ? Adventurers themselves are supposed to be really rare, and every player is gonna be one - what's up with that?!?!?
Umm, first - diamonds aren't that rare. Most other gemstones (emeralds come to mind) are much rarer. The high cost of diamonds has to do more with the monopoly that controls distribution.
Second, if you're gonna bitch about rareness, why not bitch about the fact that 'anybody' can be an adventurer? Why are there more players who are adventurers than bakers/millwrighs/peasants/coopers/smiths/whateve
Homosexuality is genetic
No, actually, *some traits* of homosexuality can be attributed to genetics - but studies of identical twins shows that it is most definitely not solely genetic.
Researchers are discovering that there are many biological and some sociological 'cues' that when present in the proper combination(s) can create sexual desire for members of the same sex.
I think it's more accurate to say that homosexuality is (mostly) biological, rather than learned, behaviour.
I still don't see a problem.
Then you have blinders on.
The problem isn't that the original code is free, or isn't free, or that MS's version is or isn't free. The problem is that THERE IS A FORK THAT WILL NEVER BE ALLOWED TO MERGE BACK.
A major point of Free software is to reduce the amount of wheel reinvention. Everybody gets to see and use everybody else's code. BSD-to-commercial forks provide a major impediment to that.
So what damage accrued to BSD or TCP users as a consequence?
MS TCP-users were not able to take advantage of the advances to the BSD stack, and are now stuck with a crippled version. This is the whole point.
It doesn't matter how good the technology is, if there is a way for someone you don't know to send you email, then there's a way for a spammer to send you spam.
Email addresses are cheap. Domain names are cheap. Blocking forged addresses will just mean that a spammer will buy a new domain name for each spam run, at a cost of $9.00 every other week or so - $9.00 which he'll simply pass on to the moron paying him $1500 to do the spam run.
Yeah, but it's not nearly as good as jozxyqk :o)
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language
By Mark Twain
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai iwth useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
WRONG.
From SCO's Amended Answer to IBM's Amended Counterclaims, filed March 13, 2004:
Although they're not trying that angle anymore, they have argued it in writing in court documents.
Why can't SCO Claim.
1) we didn't know it was there
Because they're still distributing it themselves.
2) Once we found out it was released everywhere by IBM the horse was way out of the barn.
Irrelevant. If you want to try to claim damages, you MUST do everything in your power to stop infringement.
3) IBM'S "illegal" actions have boosted the Linux market place
Again, irrelevant. How popular something is has no bearing.
4) To stay competitive we have to release a copy of Linux, under GPL, to be competitive.
That does not logically follow. Damages have no bearing on you continuing to be competitive or not.
5) But all of this is a result of the fruit of IBM's "illegal" actions so they still owe us damages.
By continuing to distribute it themselves, they are declaring that the value of the infringement is $0.00. There are no damages to be awarded.
Here's what SCOX should have done:
Once they discovered the 'infringing' code, they must immediately stopped distributing the material themselves, then contacted the responsible people to arrange for damages (which they claim was IBM.) In doing so, they must (as a matter of law) identify the lines of code that are 'infringing'.
They should then contact every distributor of Linux they know about (I'm guessing that a notification sent to Linux, kernel.org, along with a press release might be acceptable in this case), and notify them of the status of their claim, the lines of code that were at issue, and demand that they cease distributing the 'infringing' material.
Failure to follow these steps means that they can't claim damages.
There is *NO* (as in zero, nil, nada, zip, bupkiss) valid legal reason to not follow these steps, and many valid legal reasons they should.
The only answer as to *why* they didn't is as follows:
Either 1) they know they have no case, or
2) their lawyers don't know anything about the law at all, and should be disbarred and charged with fraud.
It's been here for over 200 years and people seem to like it.
So what you're saying is that people who don't know any better like it - or are you going to provide us a list of people who are over 200 years old?
People who understand and aren't theives, anyway.
Actually no. I understand it, I'm not a thief, I don't like it.
What you really mean is "people who DON'T understand it and ARE theives" like it (you know, like Disney executives and members of the RIAA.)
if that isn't settled, all someone has to do is pick up that IP at the firesale and start all over.
I honestly can't see that happening.
Any company that bought up the assets (especially if they plan on starting this all over) would also be buying the IBM countersuit - and I'm at a loss to think of any entity possessing the huge amounts of masochism and psychosis *that* would require.
Seriously, why would anybody (including MS) say to themselves "hey, let's spend a couple million dollars to buy a target to go on our chests."
No, if SCO goes under before a major win, you can bet that MS will just let it die, and use it as ammunition for their FUD cannon.
I doubt that they'd sue you for license violations as long as you have the right number of licenses and continue to pay the maintenance fees.
Just like Daimler Chrysler, right?
SCO has demonstrated that they love to invent restrictions which are not in a contract, and then sue over 'violating' them.
I have no doubt that when/if SCO decided they needed more money (perhaps to fund more litigation?) that they'd use the contract as a basis for extortion.
"Hey, we believe you're in violation of your contract by running Windows on your desktops - pay us more money or we'll sue you."
Chrysler got sued becuase they used to be a customer and they moved on.
NO, THEY WEREN'T. At the time the lawsuit was filed, SCO fully believed them to be a current customer (read the court documents.)
Buying a license from a company who sues its customers for license violations that are not in the license is not a smart idea.
If I wanted to be the target of a lawsuit, I can do that for free. Why would I pay a few thousand dollars for the privilege?
all SCO/Darl did is hand in some papers to court
Yeah, and all William E. Brockway did was hand in some papers to banks and merchants.
And all John Gotti did was tell some people to do stuff.
BitTorrent is designed to transfer data while verifying its validity, but in order for that to work the metafile (.torrent file) must come from a trusted source.
Which has exactly what to do with my post?
In this case, you aren't retrieving the file from microsoft.com, so you'd better have an alternate method of figuring out whether or not it's been tampered with.
Again, how is this different from any other executable download?
what you said simply doesn't follow from what he said
yes it does - by including the phrase "OS UPDATES" in the phrase "I wouldn't trust OS UPDATES I got from BT", he's implying that there are things that he *does* trust - otherwise, he should have just said "I wouldn't trust *SOFTWARE* I got from BT."
Normally, executable content can be sandboxed to a user with no rights on the system
Wrong - especially on windows. In order to be useful, most software requires interaction with other parts of the system (network, reading files, etc.) Software which has requires *no* rights is typically useless - this goes double for software which is large enough to be distributed via BT.