If nothing else, this slew of SCO suicide articles is giving Slashdotters an opportunity to come up with as many metaphors for the coming annihilation of SCO as possible.
Might as well throw in another one; IBM HULK SMASH PUNY SCO HUMANS!
We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred of thousands of lines of code.
Note how he says "entire programs"; the basis of the complaint is that code was copied into the Linux kernel. Apparently they are also claiming that some GNU tools and other programs are also "copied."
[...]
So, it is interesting that he is proposing taking Linux distributors (Red Hat, SuSE, etc.) and possibly other Linux users to court as well.
Or, at least, taking a good shot at slagging Linux coders and users as anti-IP thieves, a tactic that MS tries using from time to time. This, obviously, can do great harm to the reputations of Linux companies, and thus reduce their revenues, possibly to the point of bankruptcy.
If McBride's numerous allegations prove unfounded, so much vapourware, there is a word Slashdotters should become familiar with, as it will likely be the focus of many lawsuits against SCO and McBride, or just McBride if SCO is obliterated by IBM.
"Sun is clean," he saidâ"but he gave no answer in regards to Apple and Microsoft. "But I thought that Microsoft had signed a license agreement?" "No," Sontag said. Microsoft merely licensed an "applications interface layer."
Looks like they're creating cover for another injection of cash from MS.
Well, if the "applications interface layer" happens to be Services for Unix, I have to wonder what else M$ might use as cover to inject money.
Wasn't there a story some while back about MS working on a new CLI shell?
Sontag even hinted that SCO somehow has some ownership rights to Windows (and that the recent MS/SCO licensing agreement doesn't cover it).
The whole thing reeks of some small-dicked execs hoping to get golden parachutes with a buyout, but not before damaging the credibility of several companies and a few thousand volunteer hackers. Sadly, the stock market seems to reward this kind of blackmail.
I have this image in my head of a small SCO lawyer pounding on the feet of Bahamut, while the dragon just stands there, arms crossed, growing less patient with every pathetic stomp.
At the breaking point, Bahamut unleashes a nice, hot Mega Flare.
Bye-bye, annoying little bug.
Still, I've gotta wonder just what IBM is prepping.
SCO is claiming that everyone, everywhere has to destroy their copies of AIX.
If $CO really does go through with this exercise in futility, wait to see which companies jump at the opportunity to replace AIX boxen at the raided companies. Keep a close eye on which company(ies) make the most pitches. I understand, from a few posts on/., that Sun is already gearing up a campaign.
One of SCO's supposed licencees for the SysV code, along with MS, is unknown. Any bets?
I appreciate all the jokes about David vs. Goliath, with people cheering for Goliath, but I have to wonder why IBM hasn't taken the opportunity to annihilate SCO's case by now. Are the lawyers just waiting for this thing to reach a courtoom to unleash the legal nuclear weapons? Are they waiting to spring a nasty surprise on SCO, like proof that the code in question is really BSD, or even GPL? Do the charges really have merit, and the legal team is just buying time to figure out a way to extricate the company unscathed?
Seriously, Big Blue's been strangely dormant on this. What gives? For one thing, the reputation of Linux--a codebase that IBM's banking a big chunk of money on--is at stake.
Nice job failing to discern between Bush I, who made the aforementioned statement to an atheist reporter, and Bush II, who is just surrounded by religious fundamentalists and latter-day Roman expansionists, with the rare cooler head (ironically, the one person out of them all who saw actual military combat).
I'm in kind of a unique position. I work in computer retail (ok, I sling computer games and accessories to pay the rent), and I'm the only regular employee who's familiar with Linux and FOSS.
Once in a while, some poor schlub will come in, asking about the price of Word or Office. When I bring up the appropriate price from our chain's database, most of the time their jaws drop. Occasionally, the customer will ask if there's something cheaper they can buy. If the person just needs to view Word or Excel documents, I point them to Microsoft's viewer options. If the individual, however, needs to edit and send.doc or.xls files, and their tasks aren't overly complicated, I will point them to OpenOffice. I even tell them about StarOffice if they're not too sure about a piece of free software (the old line about "you get what you pay for" and all that). This works especially well if the customer mentions something about how their friend can pirate Office for them; I just tell them that OpenOffice is a perfectly legal option that still won't dent their wallet.
So far, I've only pointed twenty, maybe twenty-five people to OpenOffice. However, if even five of those people like it and make it their regular office suite, they will probably end up telling five other people about it. If one of those five decides to try it, and one out of five of those people like it and continue spreading the word, that can add up to a lot of people satisfied with an alternative to the pricey MS Office.
I'm sure my boss might kill me for not encouraging people to pony up a few hundred dinero for Office, but then, I don't work on commission, and he's actually a pretty fair guy--so maybe not.
If SCO is trying to subvert the GPL with claims like those, they are screwed.
78. The primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software based on valuable commercial software. The primary operating system advanced by GNU is Linux.
Although RMS started GNU with the purpose of reimplementing Unix under a free license, I would argue it has gone beyond that. Otherwise, wtf is GNOME based on, or GNUsound, or gnuchess, or any number of other GNU programs?
80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property.
The last part of that claim is provably wrong. The GPL relies on copyright law to exist, and the author or copyright holder can relicense the code as he wishes. The Free Software Foundation holds copyright over numerous pieces of software under the GPL, and in fact encourages program authors who use the GPL to assign the FSF their copyrights for the purposes of defending the GPL, under copyright law.
If I understand the GPL, the code can remain confidential if the resulting program will not be distributed to third parties.
IBM will have a field day with these overpaid bullshit writers.
If one (or more) of the early Unix developers later went on to contribute to the Linux kernel, any code they wrote may well have similar comments, due to being for similar functions.
Or that an IBM coder who worked on Project Monterrey with SCO later went on to contribute code to the Linux kernel.
Depending on the exact contract terms between IBM and SCO, and the nature of the work, this could easily be a legitimate misunderstanding about contract terms that SCO is blowing up into a stock-pumping scheme. I wouldn't think IBM's well-paid legal eagles would let the company get stuck in a potentially vague contract, and it seems Big Blue does have strict contribution and source-tracking rules, but I'm willing to bet that one programmer trying to reuse his/her own work is the cause of all this trouble.
Out of curiosity, what's with all the whining about Slashdot being full of Marxist America-haters, when half the time I see comments by people who are definitely not Marxist America-haters?
Must be that "liberal media bias" I keep hearing about from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Fox News.
Remember that Claybrook, and any other independent analysts that comment on the code comparison, signed that infamous NDA we've all come to know and hate. SCO can pick and choose which lines to show the analysts, ones that bolster their case. They could very well be hiding lines that prove otherwise. Since they are the plaintiff, the burden of proof is on SCO.
However, everyone has been taking the "80 lines" thing wrong. Even the article states that SCO showed "blocks of code, some up to 80 lines in length", not just "80 lines".
That said, I still say look closely at any IBM-submitted patches and consider their possible relation to past IBM-SCO projects, because a contract dispute between IBM and SCO seems to be the basis of the legal case. Ignore the media game; SCO can be broken and humiliated if it turns out their court case is nothing but sour grapes and whining.
As far as IBM employees using unix code into linux, IBM may end up settling with SCO or paying them penalties, whatever. What worries me is IBM settling in such a way that somehow infringes on/seeks to infringe on the "freedom" of Linux.
Since SCO is pursuing contract violations in court against IBM, the logical thing to do would be to start looking at patches submitted to the kernel by IBM employees. Next, determine if those patches could in any way be related to projects that IBM would have worked on with SCO (some people have made reference to Project Monterery--details?).
SCO can't seem to keep its story straight in the media regarding what, exactly, their legal beef with Linux is, but if I understand what I've heard, the actual legal case refers to IBM and contracts between the two. I doubt SCO could play the same game of rope-a-dope with the courts and expect to get off easy. SCO is not Microsoft.
Completely baseless speculation time:
It is entirely possible that IBM coders who worked on IBM's end of Monterery, or another joint project, submitted code that ended up in SCO's Unix codebase. Depending on the details of the contract, ownership of the code in question might be jointly controlled by SCO and IBM, with both parties doing whatever the hell they wanted with the results--relicence, use in other projects, whatever. Or, the contract(s) could be written to award ownership of code produced to SCO exclusively, although I couldn't see IBM getting into a deal where the other party gets all the results. The contract(s) could be vague enough, or tricky enough, that either, or even both, above situations could be legally true depending on who is interpreting the language. After Monterey collapsed, the hypothetical coders could have gone to work on IBM's Linux-related projects, submitting kernel patches based on code they wrote for Monterey. Since, in my hypothetical situation, IBM owned (or thinks it owned) the submitted code, the question of the patch being the same as code in SCO's source would not have come up. This could legitimately be a big misunderstanding.
I can't see IBM's legal team letting a mistake, or glaring hole in SCO's case, go unnoticed and unmentioned this long. It's possible, I just don't see it as likely. Therefore, I don't think my hypothetical situation is close to reality.
Is there a link to the court filings submitted so far? I'd love to skim over them and try to figure out just what the hell SCO is trying to claim in court, as opposed to whatever smoke and farts they're releasing in the media.
Considering that SCO seems to be relying on the L. Ron Hubbard theory of public relations ("always attack, never defend"), that it relies on waves of lawsuits for survival, and that other posters have pointed out what a huge foot bullet this statement is, I suspect SCO has closer ties to another cult.
Raise your hand if you thought DARPA wouldn't try to pull this stunt.
Keep your hand up if you think the people who wrote the original PATRIOT Act and its draft successor are only concerned with your safety and security, and would never try to get around constitutional limits using a hot-button issue.
Keep your hand up if you believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Re:Confused
on
OSI vs SCO
·
· Score: 4, Informative
Probably because the kernel itself has no direct relation to BSD-derived or USL-derived kernels, many of the tools are GNU (Gnu's Not Unix, remember?:) rewrites of basic Unix programs, and the BSD-derived software kind of found its way into various distributions over time since they worked just fine, thank you. I may be wrong, but I think even parts of the kernel can be traced to free BSD implementations alongside the homemade spaghetti. A hypothetical "standard" Linux installation is a mishmash of various codebases that developed outside of closed-source Unixen.
Defining Linux is notoriously tricky, since some people primarily rely on kernel heritage, while others try to build a definition based on the collection of software considered part of the "standard" package. This is complicated by various distributions that may or may not use the same pieces of software for similar tasks. The basics may be all GNU/BSD, but once you get beyond that, things can get ugly fast.
Someone making a chart would therefore likely either decide to stuff Linux off to one side on the justification that the kernel has no direct heritage, or draw a crapload of lines to other Unixen and codebases to really nail down every last relation.
During our final presentation last week in a CS class, a fellow was trying to explain to the teacher why his entire presentation featured scrunched up, barely legible text. "I created it in OpenOffice and brought it into PowerPoint," he explained, as the class laughed at at him.
Should've checked the fonts on the machine he intended to run the presentation on beforehand. I always did that before running presentations made in OO. Hell, you have to do this with any presentation that's run on a computer different from the one it was created on, since there is no guarantee both machines will have the same fonts. The fonts should be your only issue that doesn't involve forgetting to bring the images along, however.
Incidentally, using TrueType support under Linux can go a long way to getting around this, since you can (illegally) bring whatever fonts you need with you on floppy or CD and install them before doing your presentation.
Microsoft just wants to be absolutely sure you really purchased a licence for that copy of Office you're running, and you're not a communist pirate pig-dog who hasn't coughed up tribute to the God of your computer, He Who Controls Windows.
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Thus, making everyone subject to blackmail by the state--"obey our every command, or we'll find something bad you've done and punish you. Bow before Zod!"
I dunno, I seem to run into a person per month who swears they've seen me someplace where I've never been before.
Either an innocent man got knocked off last fall, or Khalid's dust, and an innocent man and his family are currently in custody somewhere.
I'm a bit too lazy/sick to search for information right now, but I wonder if a report from last fall confirmed that Khalid didn't die during the attack in question.
Slashdot Mirror
If nothing else, this slew of SCO suicide articles is giving Slashdotters an opportunity to come up with as many metaphors for the coming annihilation of SCO as possible.
Might as well throw in another one; IBM HULK SMASH PUNY SCO HUMANS!
How far along is the countdown to IBM's legal equivalent of Mega Flare turning SCO into ash?
Would this statement be considered "Countdown: 3"?
We're not talking about just lines of code; we're talking about entire programs. We're talking about hundred of thousands of lines of code.
Note how he says "entire programs"; the basis of the complaint is that code was copied into the Linux kernel. Apparently they are also claiming that some GNU tools and other programs are also "copied."
[...]
So, it is interesting that he is proposing taking Linux distributors (Red Hat, SuSE, etc.) and possibly other Linux users to court as well.
Or, at least, taking a good shot at slagging Linux coders and users as anti-IP thieves, a tactic that MS tries using from time to time. This, obviously, can do great harm to the reputations of Linux companies, and thus reduce their revenues, possibly to the point of bankruptcy.
If McBride's numerous allegations prove unfounded, so much vapourware, there is a word Slashdotters should become familiar with, as it will likely be the focus of many lawsuits against SCO and McBride, or just McBride if SCO is obliterated by IBM.
Slander.
"Sun is clean," he saidâ"but he gave no answer in regards to Apple and Microsoft.
"But I thought that Microsoft had signed a license agreement?" "No," Sontag said. Microsoft merely licensed an "applications interface layer."
Looks like they're creating cover for another injection of cash from MS.
Well, if the "applications interface layer" happens to be Services for Unix, I have to wonder what else M$ might use as cover to inject money.
Wasn't there a story some while back about MS working on a new CLI shell?
Sontag even hinted that SCO somehow has some ownership rights to Windows (and that the recent MS/SCO licensing agreement doesn't cover it).
The whole thing reeks of some small-dicked execs hoping to get golden parachutes with a buyout, but not before damaging the credibility of several companies and a few thousand volunteer hackers. Sadly, the stock market seems to reward this kind of blackmail.
I have this image in my head of a small SCO lawyer pounding on the feet of Bahamut, while the dragon just stands there, arms crossed, growing less patient with every pathetic stomp.
At the breaking point, Bahamut unleashes a nice, hot Mega Flare.
Bye-bye, annoying little bug.
Still, I've gotta wonder just what IBM is prepping.
SCO is claiming that everyone, everywhere has to destroy their copies of AIX.
/., that Sun is already gearing up a campaign.
If $CO really does go through with this exercise in futility, wait to see which companies jump at the opportunity to replace AIX boxen at the raided companies. Keep a close eye on which company(ies) make the most pitches. I understand, from a few posts on
One of SCO's supposed licencees for the SysV code, along with MS, is unknown. Any bets?
I appreciate all the jokes about David vs. Goliath, with people cheering for Goliath, but I have to wonder why IBM hasn't taken the opportunity to annihilate SCO's case by now. Are the lawyers just waiting for this thing to reach a courtoom to unleash the legal nuclear weapons? Are they waiting to spring a nasty surprise on SCO, like proof that the code in question is really BSD, or even GPL? Do the charges really have merit, and the legal team is just buying time to figure out a way to extricate the company unscathed?
Seriously, Big Blue's been strangely dormant on this. What gives? For one thing, the reputation of Linux--a codebase that IBM's banking a big chunk of money on--is at stake.
That was a great troll, right up to the final three paragraphs that would tip off anyone who is not a clueless moron. I salute you.
Nice job failing to discern between Bush I, who made the aforementioned statement to an atheist reporter, and Bush II, who is just surrounded by religious fundamentalists and latter-day Roman expansionists, with the rare cooler head (ironically, the one person out of them all who saw actual military combat).
I'm in kind of a unique position. I work in computer retail (ok, I sling computer games and accessories to pay the rent), and I'm the only regular employee who's familiar with Linux and FOSS.
.doc or .xls files, and their tasks aren't overly complicated, I will point them to OpenOffice. I even tell them about StarOffice if they're not too sure about a piece of free software (the old line about "you get what you pay for" and all that). This works especially well if the customer mentions something about how their friend can pirate Office for them; I just tell them that OpenOffice is a perfectly legal option that still won't dent their wallet.
Once in a while, some poor schlub will come in, asking about the price of Word or Office. When I bring up the appropriate price from our chain's database, most of the time their jaws drop. Occasionally, the customer will ask if there's something cheaper they can buy. If the person just needs to view Word or Excel documents, I point them to Microsoft's viewer options. If the individual, however, needs to edit and send
So far, I've only pointed twenty, maybe twenty-five people to OpenOffice. However, if even five of those people like it and make it their regular office suite, they will probably end up telling five other people about it. If one of those five decides to try it, and one out of five of those people like it and continue spreading the word, that can add up to a lot of people satisfied with an alternative to the pricey MS Office.
I'm sure my boss might kill me for not encouraging people to pony up a few hundred dinero for Office, but then, I don't work on commission, and he's actually a pretty fair guy--so maybe not.
If SCO is trying to subvert the GPL with claims like those, they are screwed.
78. The primary purpose of the GNU organization is to create free software based on valuable commercial software. The primary operating system advanced by GNU is Linux.
Although RMS started GNU with the purpose of reimplementing Unix under a free license, I would argue it has gone beyond that. Otherwise, wtf is GNOME based on, or GNUsound, or gnuchess, or any number of other GNU programs?
80. Any software licensed under the GPL (including Linux) must, by its terms, not be held proprietary or confidential, and may not be claimed by any party as a trade secret or copyright property.
The last part of that claim is provably wrong. The GPL relies on copyright law to exist, and the author or copyright holder can relicense the code as he wishes. The Free Software Foundation holds copyright over numerous pieces of software under the GPL, and in fact encourages program authors who use the GPL to assign the FSF their copyrights for the purposes of defending the GPL, under copyright law.
If I understand the GPL, the code can remain confidential if the resulting program will not be distributed to third parties.
IBM will have a field day with these overpaid bullshit writers.
Dammit, I should have known posting this would jinx the whole thing.
Did I miss something, or has /. gone almost an entire day without an article on $CO?
My god, how will I live without another forty or fifty threads on how SCO is a bunch of scum-sucking MS agents? (Not that I mind...)
If one (or more) of the early Unix developers later went on to contribute to the Linux kernel, any code they wrote may well have similar comments, due to being for similar functions.
Or that an IBM coder who worked on Project Monterrey with SCO later went on to contribute code to the Linux kernel.
Depending on the exact contract terms between IBM and SCO, and the nature of the work, this could easily be a legitimate misunderstanding about contract terms that SCO is blowing up into a stock-pumping scheme. I wouldn't think IBM's well-paid legal eagles would let the company get stuck in a potentially vague contract, and it seems Big Blue does have strict contribution and source-tracking rules, but I'm willing to bet that one programmer trying to reuse his/her own work is the cause of all this trouble.
Actually, according to the Jargon file itself, it was GLS who did the editing for the first book: (see here).
Butbutbut, he at least invented the Internet and personally wrote the suite of software that makes the Linux kernel useful, right?
Out of curiosity, what's with all the whining about Slashdot being full of Marxist America-haters, when half the time I see comments by people who are definitely not Marxist America-haters?
Must be that "liberal media bias" I keep hearing about from Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Fox News.
Remember that Claybrook, and any other independent analysts that comment on the code comparison, signed that infamous NDA we've all come to know and hate. SCO can pick and choose which lines to show the analysts, ones that bolster their case. They could very well be hiding lines that prove otherwise. Since they are the plaintiff, the burden of proof is on SCO.
However, everyone has been taking the "80 lines" thing wrong. Even the article states that SCO showed "blocks of code, some up to 80 lines in length", not just "80 lines".
That said, I still say look closely at any IBM-submitted patches and consider their possible relation to past IBM-SCO projects, because a contract dispute between IBM and SCO seems to be the basis of the legal case. Ignore the media game; SCO can be broken and humiliated if it turns out their court case is nothing but sour grapes and whining.
As far as IBM employees using unix code into linux, IBM may end up settling with SCO or paying them penalties, whatever. What worries me is IBM settling in such a way that somehow infringes on/seeks to infringe on the "freedom" of Linux.
Since SCO is pursuing contract violations in court against IBM, the logical thing to do would be to start looking at patches submitted to the kernel by IBM employees. Next, determine if those patches could in any way be related to projects that IBM would have worked on with SCO (some people have made reference to Project Monterery--details?).
SCO can't seem to keep its story straight in the media regarding what, exactly, their legal beef with Linux is, but if I understand what I've heard, the actual legal case refers to IBM and contracts between the two. I doubt SCO could play the same game of rope-a-dope with the courts and expect to get off easy. SCO is not Microsoft.
Completely baseless speculation time:
It is entirely possible that IBM coders who worked on IBM's end of Monterery, or another joint project, submitted code that ended up in SCO's Unix codebase. Depending on the details of the contract, ownership of the code in question might be jointly controlled by SCO and IBM, with both parties doing whatever the hell they wanted with the results--relicence, use in other projects, whatever. Or, the contract(s) could be written to award ownership of code produced to SCO exclusively, although I couldn't see IBM getting into a deal where the other party gets all the results. The contract(s) could be vague enough, or tricky enough, that either, or even both, above situations could be legally true depending on who is interpreting the language. After Monterey collapsed, the hypothetical coders could have gone to work on IBM's Linux-related projects, submitting kernel patches based on code they wrote for Monterey. Since, in my hypothetical situation, IBM owned (or thinks it owned) the submitted code, the question of the patch being the same as code in SCO's source would not have come up. This could legitimately be a big misunderstanding.
I can't see IBM's legal team letting a mistake, or glaring hole in SCO's case, go unnoticed and unmentioned this long. It's possible, I just don't see it as likely. Therefore, I don't think my hypothetical situation is close to reality.
Is there a link to the court filings submitted so far? I'd love to skim over them and try to figure out just what the hell SCO is trying to claim in court, as opposed to whatever smoke and farts they're releasing in the media.
Considering that SCO seems to be relying on the L. Ron Hubbard theory of public relations ("always attack, never defend"), that it relies on waves of lawsuits for survival, and that other posters have pointed out what a huge foot bullet this statement is, I suspect SCO has closer ties to another cult.
So... does that make Unix an anagram for an alien locked in a volcano somewhere?
Raise your hand if you thought DARPA wouldn't try to pull this stunt.
Keep your hand up if you think the people who wrote the original PATRIOT Act and its draft successor are only concerned with your safety and security, and would never try to get around constitutional limits using a hot-button issue.
Keep your hand up if you believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Probably because the kernel itself has no direct relation to BSD-derived or USL-derived kernels, many of the tools are GNU (Gnu's Not Unix, remember?:) rewrites of basic Unix programs, and the BSD-derived software kind of found its way into various distributions over time since they worked just fine, thank you. I may be wrong, but I think even parts of the kernel can be traced to free BSD implementations alongside the homemade spaghetti. A hypothetical "standard" Linux installation is a mishmash of various codebases that developed outside of closed-source Unixen.
Defining Linux is notoriously tricky, since some people primarily rely on kernel heritage, while others try to build a definition based on the collection of software considered part of the "standard" package. This is complicated by various distributions that may or may not use the same pieces of software for similar tasks. The basics may be all GNU/BSD, but once you get beyond that, things can get ugly fast.
Someone making a chart would therefore likely either decide to stuff Linux off to one side on the justification that the kernel has no direct heritage, or draw a crapload of lines to other Unixen and codebases to really nail down every last relation.
During our final presentation last week in a CS class, a fellow was trying to explain to the teacher why his entire presentation featured scrunched up, barely legible text. "I created it in OpenOffice and brought it into PowerPoint," he explained, as the class laughed at at him.
Should've checked the fonts on the machine he intended to run the presentation on beforehand. I always did that before running presentations made in OO. Hell, you have to do this with any presentation that's run on a computer different from the one it was created on, since there is no guarantee both machines will have the same fonts. The fonts should be your only issue that doesn't involve forgetting to bring the images along, however.
Incidentally, using TrueType support under Linux can go a long way to getting around this, since you can (illegally) bring whatever fonts you need with you on floppy or CD and install them before doing your presentation.
Microsoft just wants to be absolutely sure you really purchased a licence for that copy of Office you're running, and you're not a communist pirate pig-dog who hasn't coughed up tribute to the God of your computer, He Who Controls Windows.
There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Thus, making everyone subject to blackmail by the state--"obey our every command, or we'll find something bad you've done and punish you. Bow before Zod!"
I dunno, I seem to run into a person per month who swears they've seen me someplace where I've never been before.
Either an innocent man got knocked off last fall, or Khalid's dust, and an innocent man and his family are currently in custody somewhere.
I'm a bit too lazy/sick to search for information right now, but I wonder if a report from last fall confirmed that Khalid didn't die during the attack in question.