This is both a Troll and flamebait... and some wisdom perhaps. Recently I had to use Quirk again after years of gratefully not having had anything to do with them. (The last time I had anything to do with Quirk was when they killed mTropolis out of sheer stupidity and the user base spent about 6 months trying to get enough money together to buy the code from Quirk, who wanted $1 million, and eventually gave up).
Quirk xDress did the job I needed it to do recently without many problems and was a step above Pagemaker in things such a usage of Fonts and images. The precision is also very good and the printing is very flexible, as are trapping. But it was Quirk 4.1 and the search/replace still fucked up numerous times, just like it always has.
But it "worked" which is exactly why Quirk has remained a staple of many printing shops. This doesn't change the fact that everybody hates Quirk and the whole world thinks Ebrahimi is a useless, greedy wanker.
But it will take more than Xpress6 to get the Xpress4 users to switch. Most shops that have not switched to InDesign have at least one copy around, and would more than likely switch to that when that time finally comes.
And finally... Fuck Quirk once again for killing mTropolis, I still dream about coding a replica myself today.
Isn't that the way civil law works in the USA? The RIAA hasn't only sued this guy, they've sued numerous others as well... and won.
The weighting in this system is that the RIAA, i.e. the ones with the most money, win.
The only way that the RIAA can be forced to back down is if it turns bad for them in MAINSTREAM news channels. Continuing bad publicity would be the only thing that would frighten them off in this capitalistic world of ours where getting the customers money is the most important thing in the world, and losing sales due to bad publicity is the biggest nightmare that the RIAA labels have.
I presume it has largely to do with financing. To make systems that must be reliable over long periods of time and huge distances, one would need to do a large amount of testing, something for which there is little budget today.
True, Mars is far away and hostile (but nowhere nearly as hostile as say Venus) and landers are automatically open to more risks than orbiters, but the simple lack of funding for good testing is probably what makes so many missions fail.
those mathematicians are arrogant and elitest and fail the basic forms of social communication?
Your post came across as snobish, and if most mathematicians were to behave as you did (which I doubt), then it would not be surprising if they aliented themselves from the others in a team that needs to communicate very well in order to function.
Considering that what this guy did is no different to what google does, I think that the law in the USA is going to hand over the financial control over every US citizen's wallets to the RIAA.
The only plus point in all of this is that sooner or later the RIAA will be so immensely unpopular even amongst non issue aware people, that there will be a backlash against the RIAA in the form of simply nobody buying CD's anymore.
This is somewhat OT, but it is relevant in that many percieve the Mac as being relegated to non business applications.
The introduction of the PPC970 will no doubt improve Apple's fortunes in a very cut throat computer market led mostly by FUD, price sensitivity and monopoly practices. Allow me to explain.
As many here know, Linux is eating into Windows server marketshare in all areas, as it is becoming acceptable in business to actually think about what one spends the IT dollars on before one spends them. This is a market that Linux will almost certainly dominate in the next 4 to 5 years, as I cannot imagine that Redmond will be able to introduce technology spectacular enough for corporations to not consider using Linux in that space instead, as has been shown in numerous articles here on slashdot.
On the desktop there is also movement, particularly in civillian infrastructure IT such as local government offices, health departments etc, worldwide as the departments are increasingly having to cope with IT spending cuts and definitely get more bang for their IT buck with Linux than they do with Windows.
Where does the Mac fit in here? Recently, here in Switzerland, I had to buy a new car after trashing my old one, and in my tour of various used car lots, came across a wierd phenomenon: The majority of the offices of said used car lots were using Filemaker database applications on Macs for their bookkeeping, inventory tracking etc. This would be similar to the windows world of Access applications, except the people claimed that the Macs "just work" when asked why they weren't using newer PC's with Access.
The Mac, with it's simplicity and robustness, makes friends even today where Windows can often be a royal pain in the butt to administer (my job) . Not only this, but Mac OSX is very compatible to Linux and the execs and management in a company would be more amenable to running a Mac with a hyped to the extreme PPC970 (the marketing is important in these areas) than a beige box if they thought that it could be used to bolster their egos ("the PPC970 is much faster than any Intel", "My Powerbook goes so well with my metallic Audi TT"). It is kind of elitist, but I've never known Management types not to fall for status symbols, and this status symbol would actually be worth something of true value as opposed to the chrome cufflinks and platinum Rolex.
Slashdot, you're like a second home to me, but please don't post stories like this any more. It's embarrasing. Try to look at the article, read it and evaluate it for validity before posting it.
For the record, the Java vulnerabilities the decidedly juvenile post is talking about is the bohttpd java vulnerability that existed in netscape 4.7 browsers up to 4.76 I think it was, where the exploit enabled the jvm to turn into a http server for the whole filesystem. This was around 1999 to 2000 I think.
However, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with java. It reads far more as if some teenager has just discovered that one can do some funky stuff with javascript, such as function callbacks, crossframe clowning around and a bit of childish mischief such as opening a miniwindow with a script to track the users movements, as a lot of pornon sites do.
Congratulations, kid, next thing you know, they'll be calling you Mitnik;)
The first computer I ever saw, back in 1979 in High School, was an Apple II (or I, I can't remember) I wasn't very much of a talented geek and even though I had an HP41 a couple of years later, I never managed to learn to programme for the thing (perhaps using RPN was a feat in itself;) ). My first working programmes at university in 1981 were written in Pascal at first on punch cards for an IBM 370, then on an Apple II. The years after that we were using IBM PC's.
I was never really interested in the Mac until I got my first PC job in 1989 selling and supporting Windows 2.11, Corel Draw 1 and some amazingly expensive AT&T Truevision Vista and Targa graphics boards and related software (Topaz, Rio). The company I was working for was a major Mac supplier and by chance in 1990, I got chance to work in Prepress on Macs, Using Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator.
That experience, one of being able to use a computer without having to mess around with dip-switches or address or mindless shit like extended memory drivers, or even having to configure much in any way, was what made me the fan of Macs that I am today.
I own and use an old Lombard Powerbook with OS8.6 and a Titanium Powerbook with Mac OSX. My job is supporting 20 Windows users at a company and the levels of frustration I have to go through to find out how to solve some PC/Windows problem ensure that I remain firmly in the Mac (and Linux) camp at home.
The graphics software market is something that no one ever really looks at closely, most people preferring to speak their mind on office and operating system software. While there have been various legal suits in this market (Adobe-Macromedia), it doesn't enjoy the high profile that Microsoft word does.
Corel getting bought out by the people who now own Real is not a good sign for Corel users. As someone who actually sold and supported version 1 of Corel Draw back on Windows 2.11 in 1989, I have watched this piece of Software go the way of many other innovative products. Corel was by far the leader in vector illustration software in the early years on Windows as there was no competition to speak of. Then Freehand and Illustrator were ported and those pros who use Windows (good luck) used these.
Corel never learned the lesson why the other programmes were taken seriously and CorelDraw was not: Quality. CD's enourmous amount of features and gimmicks mostly only got in the way. The programme's instability and,even to this day in CD 11, sometimes wildly inaccurate colourschemes and positioning, are the reason why almost no pros use it.
Corel has had almost no direction or focus, and buying up other software houses' products in order to bolster their bad model (Painter, Bryce, Knockout, Word Perfect, Ventura) only fragmented an already overworked development team.
I think I will buy Painter 8 now, before it ceases to exist. CorelDraw will probably carry on haunting the world in the form of die hards who still think Corel is fantastic, but I somehow doubt that we'll see any new versions of WP, Ventura, Bryce or Painter.
The relations were shown to be not as convivial as as some had hoped in the Iraq war. But to think it started there is naive. The idea of a European military initiative has been a thorn in the side of US military for some years now, and the US was opposed to the Gallileo system as well. While the US might try to increase other countries dependance on the US, a lot of countries have seen that this is not necessarily in their own best interests.
The EU is not alone in this kind of thinking, India also tries to minimise it's dependance on the US, as does China.
and finding out that's it's much harder to keep a country than defeat it, the empty warheads in the pentagon are now urging caution and not invasion, even though this country (NK) has openly admitted having WMD and has threatened to use them, as opposed to Iraq where now, finally, after months of pure unadulterated crap, people in the UK and the US of short_attention_span A are finally starting to realise that Bush, Blair and co. pulled a fast one on them.
Here the base powerbook is CHF 2999.- which makes it $2230.- US. My sister lives in Sydney, and I'm well aware of the huge price differences in Australia, so if some folks club together to get some swiss Powerbooks and buy me a ticket to OZ, then bob's your uncle.
I'm not trolling. I'm old enough that I had to use a sliderule in school and log tables from a book. I learned how to calculate in my head and on paper and that's still how I work today: I have an A4 block and a pen with me whereever I go at work and it's still the most effective way of working for me.
I spent wednesday night mucking around with stty through ssh and here are people complaining about Window managers?
Seriously though, this EvilWM looks like being on the impractical side of things. Having a 1-Pixel border and no minimise,maximise,close buttons etc is going to confuse a lot of people who aren't exactly ecstatic about having to use the keyboard for everything if they're using a GUI.
I agree that it would be what they would have to do, but would a court judge an application that compiled into "nearly the same object code" as being proof of source code theft? I doubt it. The defendants, IBM in this case, would simply call in a number of well known developers, who would dispute it. In the end IBM would ask the court that SCO show the sources that were allegedly stolen in order for them to be able to make a line by line (diff) comparison of the sources. I see SCO trying to counter that by claiming that exposing the sources would damage their IP, but I simply see no court that would accept vague references of theft without proof as a basis for any trial. Indeed, the court could not let SCO go through with such a motion because it would set a precedent enabling any company to sue almost any other company based on mere rumour.
The solution to this would be to get an older SCO installation from anywhere around 1999 to 2002 and compare it to the "new" SCO that would have the false timestamped code you're referring to. Stuff and capabilities that would be alledged to be from say 2000 acording to the timestamps, yet not available in the software bought at that time would open them to charges of fraud, something that could Darl and co into jail.
Although Darl is probably as stupid as everyone suspects, I don't think he'll risk getting charged with fraud.
As for petitioning the court to keep the code secret, I don't think he'll be able to prove that secrecy will aid SCO's business in any way, as has being shown in SCO's financial performance. At the very least, in order to make the judge even consider the case, SCO will have to show the code to IBM's lawyers who have the right to subpoena anyone they like, including their own developers,Linus himself and any other developer listed in the source versioning system as having introduced the alledged offending code, in order to disprove the claims.
SCO's case is extremely shaky and is based on bluff IMO, as if that wasn't obvious to anyone following the NDA circus act that SCO is putting out.
Darl baby's comments that, "...allowing Linux to steamroller H^H^H^our property makes zero sense" in a response to the question about why SCO is only doing this now (well after IBM joined in the Linux party) and SCO's revenues have gone from $200 million to $60 million in 3 years, sort of makes it very clear what's going on:
It is simply a bluff, nothing more. Darl baby almost wetting himself with joy at the prospect that SCO get bought out because, "I'm looking after the sharholders".
His NDA making it impossible to actually comment on what is in the code, and analysts refusing to take the bait, must make him worry very very much.
This is what is going to happen: IBM and the rest of the Linux world will simply call his bluff and wait until the court discovery phase roll's around, where Darl and co will not be able to hinder anyone takng a look at the code. He is probably crapping himself at the thought of this scenario, because I don't think it will be at all possible for him to prove ONE SINGLE INFRINGEMENT.
The result will be that the case will get thrown out of court and SCO will have to file for chapter 11 almost immediately, and Darl will have to join the ranks of the unemployed...
That is, unless he takes MS up on that job offer to work in MS marketing.
Already today we have the possibility of far larger computations than we actually realise: The SETI@home project showed just how many CPU cycles are wasted all the time, or as Morpheus would put it, "Are those cycles on your P4 being used?".
But this is besides the point. There is a very good reason why we have independant thought, and that is that life itself in the form of evolution made independant thought a good mechanism for survival, which is why we are humans and sheep are sheep.
Simulating human existence will be far harder than most think: Even in my lifetime I have seen evolution in that todays younger people tend to be taller than my generation was. You'ld have to build evolution into the simulation itself, which in the end would mean having to simulate life itself, and although things like death and ageing (and taxes) are painful, they form a part of life itself and perhaps when viewed properly, can help one to make more of what one has than always wanting more of what one doesn't have.
Firstly, the reasons that Microsoft are doing this is simply to make their OS business more financially efficient, as everything at Microsoft is done. That's my opinion. Whether they're trying to tie it into DRM is irrelevant because Microsoft already controls what the browser can and can't do on your computer. And crackers will find their around any security as they have always done.
Secondly, Slashdot is here, free to use for those of you who complain even more than some Microsoft flunky that Slashdot is biased. You aren't paying a cent to read/. yet you try to hold the editors up to some sort of standard that YOU THINK is correct. I think that if/. were to give in to people like you it would die very quickly, because no one would come here any more: They could get the same dilluted, spineless, commercially biased news on CNN, MSNBC or on MSDN.
Thirdly, Microsoft only Security in the form of online banking will be almost impossible for Microsoft to crack outside of the USA. My old mother uses a 300MHz PC with Win98 and IE5 and she's as happy as can be. So many people in the world use older PC's and older Windows versions, and what's more hand their computers down to the next users once they no longer want them. Banks mostly have to cater to those users as well as to users of the newest OS's and Browsers. My bank, Credit Suisse, is a good example, in that is provides a standalone Java application that requires Java 1.1.4 compatibility, thus ensuring it runs on every platform (except for OSX which has no older Java versions available- works fine in classic though). If they were to jump, say, to a DotNet application they would lose me and at least 40% of their online users.
Microsoft will probably continue to lead the marketshare in desktop computing for many years to come, with alternatives only gradually eroding away at that market, but as long as there are alternatives available, be it Linux, *BSD or OSX, I'm happy. I even still have an oldish 450MHz K6-2 with Win98 that is just fine for most things I need in computing. The lust for unneeded newer technology is as bad a drug as cocaine.
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This is both a Troll and flamebait... and some wisdom perhaps. Recently I had to use Quirk again after years of gratefully not having had anything to do with them. (The last time I had anything to do with Quirk was when they killed mTropolis out of sheer stupidity and the user base spent about 6 months trying to get enough money together to buy the code from Quirk, who wanted $1 million, and eventually gave up).
Quirk xDress did the job I needed it to do recently without many problems and was a step above Pagemaker in things such a usage of Fonts and images. The precision is also very good and the printing is very flexible, as are trapping. But it was Quirk 4.1 and the search/replace still fucked up numerous times, just like it always has.
But it "worked" which is exactly why Quirk has remained a staple of many printing shops. This doesn't change the fact that everybody hates Quirk and the whole world thinks Ebrahimi is a useless, greedy wanker.
But it will take more than Xpress6 to get the Xpress4 users to switch. Most shops that have not switched to InDesign have at least one copy around, and would more than likely switch to that when that time finally comes.
And finally... Fuck Quirk once again for killing mTropolis, I still dream about coding a replica myself today.
Isn't that the way civil law works in the USA? The RIAA hasn't only sued this guy, they've sued numerous others as well... and won.
The weighting in this system is that the RIAA, i.e. the ones with the most money, win.
The only way that the RIAA can be forced to back down is if it turns bad for them in MAINSTREAM news channels. Continuing bad publicity would be the only thing that would frighten them off in this capitalistic world of ours where getting the customers money is the most important thing in the world, and losing sales due to bad publicity is the biggest nightmare that the RIAA labels have.
If someone were to sue you for $12000, you'ld be kicking and screaming, you RIAA troll.
I presume it has largely to do with financing. To make systems that must be reliable over long periods of time and huge distances, one would need to do a large amount of testing, something for which there is little budget today.
True, Mars is far away and hostile (but nowhere nearly as hostile as say Venus) and landers are automatically open to more risks than orbiters, but the simple lack of funding for good testing is probably what makes so many missions fail.
those mathematicians are arrogant and elitest and fail the basic forms of social communication?
Your post came across as snobish, and if most mathematicians were to behave as you did (which I doubt), then it would not be surprising if they aliented themselves from the others in a team that needs to communicate very well in order to function.
Considering that what this guy did is no different to what google does, I think that the law in the USA is going to hand over the financial control over every US citizen's wallets to the RIAA.
The only plus point in all of this is that sooner or later the RIAA will be so immensely unpopular even amongst non issue aware people, that there will be a backlash against the RIAA in the form of simply nobody buying CD's anymore.
This is somewhat OT, but it is relevant in that many percieve the Mac as being relegated to non business applications.
The introduction of the PPC970 will no doubt improve Apple's fortunes in a very cut throat computer market led mostly by FUD, price sensitivity and monopoly practices. Allow me to explain.
As many here know, Linux is eating into Windows server marketshare in all areas, as it is becoming acceptable in business to actually think about what one spends the IT dollars on before one spends them. This is a market that Linux will almost certainly dominate in the next 4 to 5 years, as I cannot imagine that Redmond will be able to introduce technology spectacular enough for corporations to not consider using Linux in that space instead, as has been shown in numerous articles here on slashdot.
On the desktop there is also movement, particularly in civillian infrastructure IT such as local government offices, health departments etc, worldwide as the departments are increasingly having to cope with IT spending cuts and definitely get more bang for their IT buck with Linux than they do with Windows.
Where does the Mac fit in here? Recently, here in Switzerland, I had to buy a new car after trashing my old one, and in my tour of various used car lots, came across a wierd phenomenon: The majority of the offices of said used car lots were using Filemaker database applications on Macs for their bookkeeping, inventory tracking etc. This would be similar to the windows world of Access applications, except the people claimed that the Macs "just work" when asked why they weren't using newer PC's with Access.
The Mac, with it's simplicity and robustness, makes friends even today where Windows can often be a royal pain in the butt to administer (my job) . Not only this, but Mac OSX is very compatible to Linux and the execs and management in a company would be more amenable to running a Mac with a hyped to the extreme PPC970 (the marketing is important in these areas) than a beige box if they thought that it could be used to bolster their egos ("the PPC970 is much faster than any Intel", "My Powerbook goes so well with my metallic Audi TT"). It is kind of elitist, but I've never known Management types not to fall for status symbols, and this status symbol would actually be worth something of true value as opposed to the chrome cufflinks and platinum Rolex.
Slashdot, you're like a second home to me, but please don't post stories like this any more. It's embarrasing. Try to look at the article, read it and evaluate it for validity before posting it.
;)
For the record, the Java vulnerabilities the decidedly juvenile post is talking about is the bohttpd java vulnerability that existed in netscape 4.7 browsers up to 4.76 I think it was, where the exploit enabled the jvm to turn into a http server for the whole filesystem. This was around 1999 to 2000 I think.
However, this post has nothing whatsoever to do with java. It reads far more as if some teenager has just discovered that one can do some funky stuff with javascript, such as function callbacks, crossframe clowning around and a bit of childish mischief such as opening a miniwindow with a script to track the users movements, as a lot of pornon sites do.
Congratulations, kid, next thing you know, they'll be calling you Mitnik
The first computer I ever saw, back in 1979 in High School, was an Apple II (or I, I can't remember) I wasn't very much of a talented geek and even though I had an HP41 a couple of years later, I never managed to learn to programme for the thing (perhaps using RPN was a feat in itself ;) ). My first working programmes at university in 1981 were written in Pascal at first on punch cards for an IBM 370, then on an Apple II. The years after that we were using IBM PC's.
I was never really interested in the Mac until I got my first PC job in 1989 selling and supporting Windows 2.11, Corel Draw 1 and some amazingly expensive AT&T Truevision Vista and Targa graphics boards and related software (Topaz, Rio). The company I was working for was a major Mac supplier and by chance in 1990, I got chance to work in Prepress on Macs, Using Quark, Photoshop and Illustrator.
That experience, one of being able to use a computer without having to mess around with dip-switches or address or mindless shit like extended memory drivers, or even having to configure much in any way, was what made me the fan of Macs that I am today.
I own and use an old Lombard Powerbook with OS8.6 and a Titanium Powerbook with Mac OSX. My job is supporting 20 Windows users at a company and the levels of frustration I have to go through to find out how to solve some PC/Windows problem ensure that I remain firmly in the Mac (and Linux) camp at home.
I'd love to. Perhaps you could provide a link to a vector drawing package that is as good as Corel Draw?
Try this or perhapsthis. Not so many features, but a lot more quality.
I have to agree that the balloon didn't improve Corel's chances in the serious market much.
that the exploits will be released to the net anyway, in the form of hackers who don't give a shit anyway.
This will be yet another attempt by MS and co to stymify OSS (illegal to report bugs) and control the world.
The world will respond with code red III and Slammer II.
The graphics software market is something that no one ever really looks at closely, most people preferring to speak their mind on office and operating system software. While there have been various legal suits in this market (Adobe-Macromedia), it doesn't enjoy the high profile that Microsoft word does.
,even to this day in CD 11, sometimes wildly inaccurate colourschemes and positioning, are the reason why almost no pros use it.
Corel getting bought out by the people who now own Real is not a good sign for Corel users. As someone who actually sold and supported version 1 of Corel Draw back on Windows 2.11 in 1989, I have watched this piece of Software go the way of many other innovative products. Corel was by far the leader in vector illustration software in the early years on Windows as there was no competition to speak of. Then Freehand and Illustrator were ported and those pros who use Windows (good luck) used these.
Corel never learned the lesson why the other programmes were taken seriously and CorelDraw was not: Quality. CD's enourmous amount of features and gimmicks mostly only got in the way. The programme's instability and
Corel has had almost no direction or focus, and buying up other software houses' products in order to bolster their bad model (Painter, Bryce, Knockout, Word Perfect, Ventura) only fragmented an already overworked development team.
I think I will buy Painter 8 now, before it ceases to exist. CorelDraw will probably carry on haunting the world in the form of die hards who still think Corel is fantastic, but I somehow doubt that we'll see any new versions of WP, Ventura, Bryce or Painter.
R.I.P.
The relations were shown to be not as convivial as as some had hoped in the Iraq war. But to think it started there is naive. The idea of a European military initiative has been a thorn in the side of US military for some years now, and the US was opposed to the Gallileo system as well. While the US might try to increase other countries dependance on the US, a lot of countries have seen that this is not necessarily in their own best interests.
The EU is not alone in this kind of thinking, India also tries to minimise it's dependance on the US, as does China.
and finding out that's it's much harder to keep a country than defeat it, the empty warheads in the pentagon are now urging caution and not invasion, even though this country (NK) has openly admitted having WMD and has threatened to use them, as opposed to Iraq where now, finally, after months of pure unadulterated crap, people in the UK and the US of short_attention_span A are finally starting to realise that Bush, Blair and co. pulled a fast one on them.
Here the base powerbook is CHF 2999.- which makes it $2230.- US. My sister lives in Sydney, and I'm well aware of the huge price differences in Australia, so if some folks club together to get some swiss Powerbooks and buy me a ticket to OZ, then bob's your uncle.
Offer's also open for Germany(Berlin) and the UK.
I'm not trolling. I'm old enough that I had to use a sliderule in school and log tables from a book. I learned how to calculate in my head and on paper and that's still how I work today: I have an A4 block and a pen with me whereever I go at work and it's still the most effective way of working for me.
I spent wednesday night mucking around with stty through ssh and here are people complaining about Window managers?
Seriously though, this EvilWM looks like being on the impractical side of things. Having a 1-Pixel border and no minimise,maximise,close buttons etc is going to confuse a lot of people who aren't exactly ecstatic about having to use the keyboard for everything if they're using a GUI.
Perhaps make it a 2-pixel border...
I agree that it would be what they would have to do, but would a court judge an application that compiled into "nearly the same object code" as being proof of source code theft? I doubt it. The defendants, IBM in this case, would simply call in a number of well known developers, who would dispute it. In the end IBM would ask the court that SCO show the sources that were allegedly stolen in order for them to be able to make a line by line (diff) comparison of the sources. I see SCO trying to counter that by claiming that exposing the sources would damage their IP, but I simply see no court that would accept vague references of theft without proof as a basis for any trial. Indeed, the court could not let SCO go through with such a motion because it would set a precedent enabling any company to sue almost any other company based on mere rumour.
The solution to this would be to get an older SCO installation from anywhere around 1999 to 2002 and compare it to the "new" SCO that would have the false timestamped code you're referring to. Stuff and capabilities that would be alledged to be from say 2000 acording to the timestamps, yet not available in the software bought at that time would open them to charges of fraud, something that could Darl and co into jail.
Although Darl is probably as stupid as everyone suspects, I don't think he'll risk getting charged with fraud.
As for petitioning the court to keep the code secret, I don't think he'll be able to prove that secrecy will aid SCO's business in any way, as has being shown in SCO's financial performance. At the very least, in order to make the judge even consider the case, SCO will have to show the code to IBM's lawyers who have the right to subpoena anyone they like, including their own developers,Linus himself and any other developer listed in the source versioning system as having introduced the alledged offending code, in order to disprove the claims.
SCO's case is extremely shaky and is based on bluff IMO, as if that wasn't obvious to anyone following the NDA circus act that SCO is putting out.
Darl baby's comments that, "...allowing Linux to steamroller H^H^H^our property makes zero sense" in a response to the question about why SCO is only doing this now (well after IBM joined in the Linux party) and SCO's revenues have gone from $200 million to $60 million in 3 years, sort of makes it very clear what's going on:
It is simply a bluff, nothing more. Darl baby almost wetting himself with joy at the prospect that SCO get bought out because, "I'm looking after the sharholders".
His NDA making it impossible to actually comment on what is in the code, and analysts refusing to take the bait, must make him worry very very much.
This is what is going to happen: IBM and the rest of the Linux world will simply call his bluff and wait until the court discovery phase roll's around, where Darl and co will not be able to hinder anyone takng a look at the code. He is probably crapping himself at the thought of this scenario, because I don't think it will be at all possible for him to prove ONE SINGLE INFRINGEMENT.
The result will be that the case will get thrown out of court and SCO will have to file for chapter 11 almost immediately, and Darl will have to join the ranks of the unemployed...
That is, unless he takes MS up on that job offer to work in MS marketing.
Already today we have the possibility of far larger computations than we actually realise: The SETI@home project showed just how many CPU cycles are wasted all the time, or as Morpheus would put it, "Are those cycles on your P4 being used?".
But this is besides the point. There is a very good reason why we have independant thought, and that is that life itself in the form of evolution made independant thought a good mechanism for survival, which is why we are humans and sheep are sheep.
Simulating human existence will be far harder than most think: Even in my lifetime I have seen evolution in that todays younger people tend to be taller than my generation was. You'ld have to build evolution into the simulation itself, which in the end would mean having to simulate life itself, and although things like death and ageing (and taxes) are painful, they form a part of life itself and perhaps when viewed properly, can help one to make more of what one has than always wanting more of what one doesn't have.
Firstly, the reasons that Microsoft are doing this is simply to make their OS business more financially efficient, as everything at Microsoft is done. That's my opinion. Whether they're trying to tie it into DRM is irrelevant because Microsoft already controls what the browser can and can't do on your computer. And crackers will find their around any security as they have always done.
/. yet you try to hold the editors up to some sort of standard that YOU THINK is correct. I think that if /. were to give in to people like you it would die very quickly, because no one would come here any more: They could get the same dilluted, spineless, commercially biased news on CNN, MSNBC or on MSDN.
Secondly, Slashdot is here, free to use for those of you who complain even more than some Microsoft flunky that Slashdot is biased. You aren't paying a cent to read
Thirdly, Microsoft only Security in the form of online banking will be almost impossible for Microsoft to crack outside of the USA. My old mother uses a 300MHz PC with Win98 and IE5 and she's as happy as can be. So many people in the world use older PC's and older Windows versions, and what's more hand their computers down to the next users once they no longer want them. Banks mostly have to cater to those users as well as to users of the newest OS's and Browsers. My bank, Credit Suisse, is a good example, in that is provides a standalone Java application that requires Java 1.1.4 compatibility, thus ensuring it runs on every platform (except for OSX which has no older Java versions available- works fine in classic though). If they were to jump, say, to a DotNet application they would lose me and at least 40% of their online users.
Microsoft will probably continue to lead the marketshare in desktop computing for many years to come, with alternatives only gradually eroding away at that market, but as long as there are alternatives available, be it Linux, *BSD or OSX, I'm happy. I even still have an oldish 450MHz K6-2 with Win98 that is just fine for most things I need in computing. The lust for unneeded newer technology is as bad a drug as cocaine.
And anyway it's -22.04 now!
I wonder if taking bets on SCO going out of business by 5PM is not a good idea?