As a devoted employee trying to save your company money, the answer is obvious.
Step 1: Buy life insurance, lots of it. Name your employer sole beneficiary.
Step 2: Attempt to "fix" this yourself.
Step 3: PROFIT! The company can use the benefits (assuming the insurer doesn't use your actions as prima facie evidence of suicidal intent) to hire a professional to do the job right. You'll be dead, but that's a small price to pay, eh?
Seriously, what has our country come to where this is a legitimate question? Techies should be comfortable replacing wall switches and outlets, installing undercounter lighting, and other light work. But anything involving the main should go to the professionals without a second thought. If it's as bad as you said, it should also go to the lawyers - wasn't this building ever inspected? Who did this shoody work before, or allowed it to remain in such poor condition?
Think about it this way - imagine this was a manufacturing shop and people have routine cuts and burns and the like. No big deal, anyone with modest first aid skills can deal with it. But if somebody came in with a compound fracture and 4" of bone showing, would you patch them with the ace bandage and send them on their way? Or would you decide that this is one of those situations where you need to call in the professionals?
The deadline for humans is far earlier. Something endtime articles tend to overlook is the carbon cycle - when the earth was younger and the sun was dimmer there was more CO2 in the atmosphere and earth had beneficial warming from it. But over geologic times this carbon is locked up by life and other processes and the CO2 levels slowly dropped.
So far so good... but we're rapidly approaching (in geologic terms) the end of the road. 100 million years and there won't be enough CO2 to support trees or even shrubs. Nowhere on the planet will you see anything more complex than grasses. If we wipe ourselves out, our successors might have to develop a civilization without trees. No lumber for construction or art, no wood pulp for cheap paper, etc.
Not much later - 250MY from now? - even grasses will be gone - care for some slime mold with your algae? Temperatures would then start to rise and we would enter an era with a "wet greenhouse" that would last until the oceans literally boiled away.
The earth might survive the sun's red giant phase, but it's a moot point since the earth we've known (which is only something like 20% of it's lifetime anyway - ever hear of the "iceball earth" theory? Or the massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia or India) will be long gone... and we're far closer to the end than the beginning of the habitable era.
You want to see an online community where we all live by our own code of ethics?....
Fine. Earlier today I caught some asshole trying to run his spam through my mail server. The headers also showed him forging email addresses in my own domain name.
My "own code of ethics" is to pound this guy into a bloody pulp, then pound him some more. I doubt that you'll find many people in this situation who disagree with this attitude - this jerk is trying to profit by abusing my good name! He doesn't care that his actions will result in me getting bounce messages, angry responses, and possibly even being blacklisted. Hell, that's his PLAN!
Do you really want to turn us loose on the net as vigilantes enforcing our own law? Even if I might have qualms about taking out his upstream ISP - hell taking out his entire country's net - if it's necessary to make him stop, others won't hold back.
> The RIAA and MPAA were reportedly intrigued, but unavailable for comment.
No, they made comments. But they could only talk to one reporter at a time, and each reporter could only report the comments to one viewer or reader at a time.
You're scheduled to learn the comments as 2:37 AM on 11 October 2014.
What the law establishes is a floor - no license can prohibit the purchaser from making at least one backup/archival copy. Some vendors have tried to get around it by declaring the original media to be that single allowed archival copy, but I doubt that would stand up to a laugh test if it got to court.
It's common practice for lobbyists to try to convert floors into ceilings and vice versa during deliberation. That's why you'll occasionally see a group fight hard for a bill then suddenly oppose it - somebody managed to flip the sense of the bill. But you can't do that after the fact, especially for a product you don't own or produce. It's a silly as, oh, Red Hat claiming that copyright law prohibited any company from purchasing and installing more than a single copy of any Windows product.
If somebody rejects the GPL, they don't have the right to make or distribute ANY copies of the software.
(IANAL, but this is basic stuff that everyone should know.)
"Should have known..." means something different than you think.
He should have known something was wrong with his system when the home page of his browser changed without warning, when the system was active when nobody was around, etc.
And he did know, he repeatedly attempted to restore the system. He should have known those attempts were unsuccessful, and he did, but nobody could give him instructions on how to fix the problem.
But should he have known that there were almost 200 kiddie porn images on his machine? No. Why should he know to check the machine for these images? Why should he even know how to run Windows' equivalent of "find" to look for those images? What if the images were marked 'hidden,' or the directories they were in?
"Should have known" should only be applied in cases of willful neglect, not just cases where the information is knowable if the person had sufficient technical skills and time to investigate.
Seriously. Can you "distribute" something to yourself?
The same technologies that are used by some people to listen to music they've never purchased is also used by other people to listen to music that they've legally purchased, but left at home to avoid risking damage to the fragile media. They aren't denying anyone a sale, in fact they've already purchased the item. All they are seeking is control over the time, manner and place of their peaceful enjoyment of their purchase.
On the other side, we saw RIAA executives attempting to tell a Congressional committee that they believed a husband could not share a CD with his wife, and neither could dupe a CD to listen to in the car or at work. This isn't even "fair use,' it's basic rights for any purchase under the doctrines of "first sale," "community marital property," etc. Yet the RIAA would seem to challenge even these rights.
Once we concede that there's A lawful use of this technology (e.g., me setting up an icecast server on my cable modem at home so I can listen to my collection at work, properly password protected etc.), then you can't presume criminal intent or argue that the tools themselves have no lawful use.
Depending on local conditions (Colorado and Oregon seem to be the slowest coming out of this mess) many of us HAVE been willing to take 70% pay cuts just to keep the mortgage paid and still can't get our phone calls returned.
That's not the case at all. If anything, the opposite seems to be true locally. (Local circumstances vary, etc.) The people with experience are getting shut out, but if you have just a bit of experience with exactly the tools that they are using, you're in.
The problem is that you aren't hired by the CEO or Board of Directors, people who put the needs of the business first. You're hired by somebody who may have only been working a few years himself when he was named manager of those 21-day wonders, and one of us coming in with a solid education and a decade of diverse experience will put his job in jeopardy. These people are usually (not always) going to go with the guy who's not threatening, not the guy who can stop the company from running off a cliff.
I bought a reader and a number of crypto cards directly from a manufacturer, as part of a Linux SDK kit.
I have never owned a dish system. I have continuously had a cable TV connection in my current resident (close to 10 years), a townhouse oriented in a manner that would make it difficult to set up a dish.
I have been involved in Unix/Linux security systems for a number of years.
I have discussed X.509 certificate authorities countless times in the past, and suggested that crypto cards would be good root certificates for small CAs. (The private key never leaves the cards, when you don't need them you toss them into a safe or safety deposit box, etc.)
Now tell me again where there is any probable cause in my case. I haven't gotten that letter yet, but if I do I'll demand the court award them to compensate me for any and all defense costs because there isn't a shred of probable cause in my case.
To be honest, I was surprised to learn that the dish systems use the same cards I had already purchased for use in experimenting with setting up a PAM module to recognize smart cards - I want something a lot like Solaris where you have to insert the card and enter your passphrase, and when you yank your card out you're automatically logged out. In the long run, it would also be nice to be able to store SSH RSA/DSA keys on the card, etc.
But using the same argument, the Linux source tree is well documented and somebody could trace the evolution of these comments over time.
What are the odds that hundreds of comments have slowly changed to become exact matches of the SCO code? Astronomical doesn't begin to describe it.
If the comments are unchanged since their initial appearance, then we can't say anything either way. But unless these are the type of comments where coincidence is expected, e.g., quoting pertinent RFC sections when implementing your own routines, you should see comments gradually changing.
That's MS BS. (And the cry of incompetent programmers for decades.) Even if we agree that all software has bugs - and I don't - that canard says nothing about all bugs being equal much less anything about all software having about the same number of bugs.
Any competent manager would know that experienced coders are usually FAR cheaper than inexperienced ones because they make fewer mistakes due to ignorance or indifference ("it works for me, so it's done!"). That gets you to the point of dealing with the more subtle and intrinsic bugs (e.g., due to conflicting requirements) quicker and cheaper, and the apparent cheaper cost of inexperienced developers is only achievable if you plan to release after coding is finished, not after testing is completed. Which is pretty much every MS *.0 release, now that I think about it -- got to get to market first, even if it's pure crap!
Re:little known fact
on
dB Drag Racing
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
That reminds me of a Discover(?) or Scientific American magazine article on materials processing with sound. Hundreds, or was it thousands, of dB. I remember them commenting that the sound so intense it would set your hair on fire... but you wouldn't notice since your flesh would be liquified.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, of course, other than the wonderful mental image of what it would do to somebody trying to impress the neighborhood with their sound system.
SSH is great for what it does, but it really doesn't do that much. Most people don't notice this since they don't need it to do much - for them it's just a better telnet.
But it scales horribly, look at the other comments.
Worse, SSH drops authentication information. This doesn't sound like much until you've worked in an environment where clients and servers can perform mutual authentication "beneath the surface," but once you have going back is painful.
Unix systems have had Kerberos forever, via both commercial implementations and the MIT reference implementations. Linux DISTRIBUTIONS largely haven't had them, but that's because of the hassles with US export controls in place until recently. Anyone likely to use Kerberos also knew how to build the MIT reference implementation from scratch, if necessary.
Windows is actually a "Johnny-come-lately" - I had been working on unofficial Debian packages of the MIT Krb5 packages for about 3 years when MS announced Windows would use Kerberos in new products, and as usual they attempted to add their own unpublished proprietary crap to it. I (and many other people) didn't mind them adding add'l field specific to the W2K client model, but there was no need for the initial draconian non-disclosure policies.
Macs and X11 were usable in the 80s, but Windows was a joke until 3.11 (and not coincidently Microsoft started playing hardball on making other solutions work). Anyone doing real work at the time would have used the Borland or similar environments, or perhaps GEM (iirc).
But that doesn't take away from his point that he's been working in this environment for a very long time.
Re:Does it have Heinlein's extreme right-wing view
on
Altered Carbon
·
· Score: 1
Are you confusing the author's opinions with his editorial voice? Or stories framed to be understood in his own time with eternal political positions?
I think people who say Heinlein was "merely" a right-winger, esp. because of <i>Starship Troopers</i> are mistaken. I think people who say he's "merely" a sex-crazed liberal, esp. because of everything from <i>Time Enough for Love</i> onwards, are mistaken. He has his own views and they aren't easily characterized today...
BTW, never forget that "right wing" today is very different from what it was during Heinlein's main productive period (50s-70s). They objected to "tax and spend," and would be shocked speechless at anyone, much less "conservatives," pushing "borrow and spend" fiscal policies. They might be shocked at open homosexuality, but would be even more shocked at the police arrested consenting adults for acts done in their own bedroom. Etc.
With pictures and family contact information, e.g., the names of the parents or relatives authorized to pick up the child at school, identity theft is nothing compared to the other abuses that are possible.
E.g., a pedophile could go "shopping" for a victim, then use the information in the file to convince the kid that a trusted adult sent them to pick them up.
Or they could be even more aggressive and add an alias to the list of people authorized to pick up the kid at school. Then they show up and breeze past security that would normally extend from classroom to doorstep.
SCO is running off at the mouth, but until it actually starts saying things before a court there's not much IBM can do.
Except take notes. Which statements are slander or libel? Interference with trade? Etc. IBM will also be doing extensive research to see which statements are clearly false, which are debatable, and which may have a grain of truth (even if grossly distorted).
But some day the other foot will fall. SCO will sue IBM and IBM will hit them with a countersuit. Or SCO will announce a buyer, and IBM will hit both companies with its own suit. The damages will be some comfortable multiple of SCO's entire market capitalization. If there is any justice in the world, the SCO executives will be named personally, so they won't get multimillion dollar payoffs as the SCO stockholders lose their entire investment.
P.S., anyone who makes "David & Goliath" comparisons is an idiot. David was fighting a righteous battle and had God on his side, SCO is just an arrogant but clueless small company that failed to compete successfully in the marketplace and is now trying to extort some money from companies that did. It deserves to be squashed.
Forget coffee and breakfast in the morning - if I were the manager I would treat everyone to a nice dinner - with spouses if available - every single night. Either go out or get it delivered - pizza, corporate chain food (Chili's, Bennigan's, that type), whatever they want.
This won't totally compensate for the long hours, but the staff won't feel ignored or forgotten. A good boss would also try to make other compensatory arrangements for employees, e.g., arranging cars to be washed, or spending his weekend moving their lawns, or whatever. Small gestures can go a long way... and no gestures at all will not be soon forgotten.
As a practical matter, I don't think anyone can realistically expect to be fully compensated for the extra hours. It's part of the job.
But this is summertime when people like to spend time outdoors, with their kids, etc. This much OT eliminates all of that - no weekend hikes with the kids, no evening Little League games, etc. Giving them an extra two weeks vacation gives them a chance to make it up to their family and decompress....
More importantly, announcing this upfront gives people something to focus on and help them get past the initial hurdle. I know that I can keep focused for 12x7 for two or three weeks, but beyond that point I start to fade fast. But that's because it's psychologically oppressive to feel that things will be like this forever. With that scheduled time off, I'll know that every day brings me closer to a realistic break (not something months away) and it will actually be motivational.
With Michael Jackson and Diana Ross?
on
Remember The Wizard?
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
There should be a category for items that won't be comprehensible to anyone over 20 or so.
I swear my first thought was the Michael Jackson/Diana Ross take on The Wizard of Oz. But then I remembered that was The Wiz.
They just don't make movies like they used to... with child stars strung out on drugs pushed by their studios.
Slashdot Mirror
As a devoted employee trying to save your company money, the answer is obvious.
Step 1: Buy life insurance, lots of it. Name your employer sole beneficiary.
Step 2: Attempt to "fix" this yourself.
Step 3: PROFIT! The company can use the benefits (assuming the insurer doesn't use your actions as prima facie evidence of suicidal intent) to hire a professional to do the job right. You'll be dead, but that's a small price to pay, eh?
Seriously, what has our country come to where this is a legitimate question? Techies should be comfortable replacing wall switches and outlets, installing undercounter lighting, and other light work. But anything involving the main should go to the professionals without a second thought. If it's as bad as you said, it should also go to the lawyers - wasn't this building ever inspected? Who did this shoody work before, or allowed it to remain in such poor condition?
Think about it this way - imagine this was a manufacturing shop and people have routine cuts and burns and the like. No big deal, anyone with modest first aid skills can deal with it. But if somebody came in with a compound fracture and 4" of bone showing, would you patch them with the ace bandage and send them on their way? Or would you decide that this is one of those situations where you need to call in the professionals?
The deadline for humans is far earlier. Something endtime articles tend to overlook is the carbon cycle - when the earth was younger and the sun was dimmer there was more CO2 in the atmosphere and earth had beneficial warming from it. But over geologic times this carbon is locked up by life and other processes and the CO2 levels slowly dropped.
So far so good... but we're rapidly approaching (in geologic terms) the end of the road. 100 million years and there won't be enough CO2 to support trees or even shrubs. Nowhere on the planet will you see anything more complex than grasses. If we wipe ourselves out, our successors might have to develop a civilization without trees. No lumber for construction or art, no wood pulp for cheap paper, etc.
Not much later - 250MY from now? - even grasses will be gone - care for some slime mold with your algae? Temperatures would then start to rise and we would enter an era with a "wet greenhouse" that would last until the oceans literally boiled away.
The earth might survive the sun's red giant phase, but it's a moot point since the earth we've known (which is only something like 20% of it's lifetime anyway - ever hear of the "iceball earth" theory? Or the massive volcanic eruptions in Siberia or India) will be long gone... and we're far closer to the end than the beginning of the habitable era.
You want to see an online community where we all live by our own code of ethics?....
Fine. Earlier today I caught some asshole trying to run his spam through my mail server. The headers also showed him forging email addresses in my own domain name.
My "own code of ethics" is to pound this guy into a bloody pulp, then pound him some more. I doubt that you'll find many people in this situation who disagree with this attitude - this jerk is trying to profit by abusing my good name! He doesn't care that his actions will result in me getting bounce messages, angry responses, and possibly even being blacklisted. Hell, that's his PLAN!
Do you really want to turn us loose on the net as vigilantes enforcing our own law? Even if I might have qualms about taking out his upstream ISP - hell taking out his entire country's net - if it's necessary to make him stop, others won't hold back.
> The RIAA and MPAA were reportedly intrigued, but unavailable for comment.
No, they made comments. But they could only talk to one reporter at a time, and each reporter could only report the comments to one viewer or reader at a time.
You're scheduled to learn the comments as 2:37 AM on 11 October 2014.
What the law establishes is a floor - no license can prohibit the purchaser from making at least one backup/archival copy. Some vendors have tried to get around it by declaring the original media to be that single allowed archival copy, but I doubt that would stand up to a laugh test if it got to court.
It's common practice for lobbyists to try to convert floors into ceilings and vice versa during deliberation. That's why you'll occasionally see a group fight hard for a bill then suddenly oppose it - somebody managed to flip the sense of the bill. But you can't do that after the fact, especially for a product you don't own or produce. It's a silly as, oh, Red Hat claiming that copyright law prohibited any company from purchasing and installing more than a single copy of any Windows product.
If somebody rejects the GPL, they don't have the right to make or distribute ANY copies of the software.
(IANAL, but this is basic stuff that everyone should know.)
"Should have known..." means something different than you think.
He should have known something was wrong with his system when the home page of his browser changed without warning, when the system was active when nobody was around, etc.
And he did know, he repeatedly attempted to restore the system. He should have known those attempts were unsuccessful, and he did, but nobody could give him instructions on how to fix the problem.
But should he have known that there were almost 200 kiddie porn images on his machine? No. Why should he know to check the machine for these images? Why should he even know how to run Windows' equivalent of "find" to look for those images? What if the images were marked 'hidden,' or the directories they were in?
"Should have known" should only be applied in cases of willful neglect, not just cases where the information is knowable if the person had sufficient technical skills and time to investigate.
Seriously. Can you "distribute" something to yourself?
The same technologies that are used by some people to listen to music they've never purchased is also used by other people to listen to music that they've legally purchased, but left at home to avoid risking damage to the fragile media. They aren't denying anyone a sale, in fact they've already purchased the item. All they are seeking is control over the time, manner and place of their peaceful enjoyment of their purchase.
On the other side, we saw RIAA executives attempting to tell a Congressional committee that they believed a husband could not share a CD with his wife, and neither could dupe a CD to listen to in the car or at work. This isn't even "fair use,' it's basic rights for any purchase under the doctrines of "first sale," "community marital property," etc. Yet the RIAA would seem to challenge even these rights.
Once we concede that there's A lawful use of this technology (e.g., me setting up an icecast server on my cable modem at home so I can listen to my collection at work, properly password protected etc.), then you can't presume criminal intent or argue that the tools themselves have no lawful use.
Do us all a favor and quit, making room for a qualified but currently unemployed software developer.
There's no excuse for your attitude, ever.
Depending on local conditions (Colorado and Oregon seem to be the slowest coming out of this mess) many of us HAVE been willing to take 70% pay cuts just to keep the mortgage paid and still can't get our phone calls returned.
That's not the case at all. If anything, the opposite seems to be true locally. (Local circumstances vary, etc.) The people with experience are getting shut out, but if you have just a bit of experience with exactly the tools that they are using, you're in.
The problem is that you aren't hired by the CEO or Board of Directors, people who put the needs of the business first. You're hired by somebody who may have only been working a few years himself when he was named manager of those 21-day wonders, and one of us coming in with a solid education and a decade of diverse experience will put his job in jeopardy. These people are usually (not always) going to go with the guy who's not threatening, not the guy who can stop the company from running off a cliff.
> No question these are pirate devices.
I bought a reader and a number of crypto cards directly from a manufacturer, as part of a Linux SDK kit.
I have never owned a dish system. I have continuously had a cable TV connection in my current resident (close to 10 years), a townhouse oriented in a manner that would make it difficult to set up a dish.
I have been involved in Unix/Linux security systems for a number of years.
I have discussed X.509 certificate authorities countless times in the past, and suggested that crypto cards would be good root certificates for small CAs. (The private key never leaves the cards, when you don't need them you toss them into a safe or safety deposit box, etc.)
Now tell me again where there is any probable cause in my case. I haven't gotten that letter yet, but if I do I'll demand the court award them to compensate me for any and all defense costs because there isn't a shred of probable cause in my case.
To be honest, I was surprised to learn that the dish systems use the same cards I had already purchased for use in experimenting with setting up a PAM module to recognize smart cards - I want something a lot like Solaris where you have to insert the card and enter your passphrase, and when you yank your card out you're automatically logged out. In the long run, it would also be nice to be able to store SSH RSA/DSA keys on the card, etc.
Stargate SG-1 is currently the most popular show, by far, and is hardly lite fare.
But using the same argument, the Linux source tree is well documented and somebody could trace the evolution of these comments over time.
What are the odds that hundreds of comments have slowly changed to become exact matches of the SCO code? Astronomical doesn't begin to describe it.
If the comments are unchanged since their initial appearance, then we can't say anything either way. But unless these are the type of comments where coincidence is expected, e.g., quoting pertinent RFC sections when implementing your own routines, you should see comments gradually changing.
That's MS BS. (And the cry of incompetent programmers for decades.) Even if we agree that all software has bugs - and I don't - that canard says nothing about all bugs being equal much less anything about all software having about the same number of bugs.
Any competent manager would know that experienced coders are usually FAR cheaper than inexperienced ones because they make fewer mistakes due to ignorance or indifference ("it works for me, so it's done!"). That gets you to the point of dealing with the more subtle and intrinsic bugs (e.g., due to conflicting requirements) quicker and cheaper, and the apparent cheaper cost of inexperienced developers is only achievable if you plan to release after coding is finished, not after testing is completed. Which is pretty much every MS *.0 release, now that I think about it -- got to get to market first, even if it's pure crap!
That reminds me of a Discover(?) or Scientific American magazine article on materials processing with sound. Hundreds, or was it thousands, of dB. I remember them commenting that the sound so intense it would set your hair on fire... but you wouldn't notice since your flesh would be liquified.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, of course, other than the wonderful mental image of what it would do to somebody trying to impress the neighborhood with their sound system.
Yes. Many of them.
SSH is great for what it does, but it really doesn't do that much. Most people don't notice this since they don't need it to do much - for them it's just a better telnet.
But it scales horribly, look at the other comments.
Worse, SSH drops authentication information. This doesn't sound like much until you've worked in an environment where clients and servers can perform mutual authentication "beneath the surface," but once you have going back is painful.
Moderators on crack again?
Unix systems have had Kerberos forever, via both commercial implementations and the MIT reference implementations. Linux DISTRIBUTIONS largely haven't had them, but that's because of the hassles with US export controls in place until recently. Anyone likely to use Kerberos also knew how to build the MIT reference implementation from scratch, if necessary.
Windows is actually a "Johnny-come-lately" - I had been working on unofficial Debian packages of the MIT Krb5 packages for about 3 years when MS announced Windows would use Kerberos in new products, and as usual they attempted to add their own unpublished proprietary crap to it. I (and many other people) didn't mind them adding add'l field specific to the W2K client model, but there was no need for the initial draconian non-disclosure policies.
Macs and X11 were usable in the 80s, but Windows was a joke until 3.11 (and not coincidently Microsoft started playing hardball on making other solutions work). Anyone doing real work at the time would have used the Borland or similar environments, or perhaps GEM (iirc).
But that doesn't take away from his point that he's been working in this environment for a very long time.
Are you confusing the author's opinions with his editorial voice? Or stories framed to be understood in his own time with eternal political positions?
I think people who say Heinlein was "merely" a right-winger, esp. because of <i>Starship Troopers</i> are mistaken. I think people who say he's "merely" a sex-crazed liberal, esp. because of everything from <i>Time Enough for Love</i> onwards, are mistaken. He has his own views and they aren't easily characterized today...
BTW, never forget that "right wing" today is very different from what it was during Heinlein's main productive period (50s-70s). They objected to "tax and spend," and would be shocked speechless at anyone, much less "conservatives," pushing "borrow and spend" fiscal policies. They might be shocked at open homosexuality, but would be even more shocked at the police arrested consenting adults for acts done in their own bedroom. Etc.
With pictures and family contact information, e.g., the names of the parents or relatives authorized to pick up the child at school, identity theft is nothing compared to the other abuses that are possible.
E.g., a pedophile could go "shopping" for a victim, then use the information in the file to convince the kid that a trusted adult sent them to pick them up.
Or they could be even more aggressive and add an alias to the list of people authorized to pick up the kid at school. Then they show up and breeze past security that would normally extend from classroom to doorstep.
Huh? CRLF is 0x0D, 0x0A, not 0xDA. You can't get from here to there without some pretty weird nibble shuffling.
SCO is running off at the mouth, but until it actually starts saying things before a court there's not much IBM can do.
Except take notes. Which statements are slander or libel? Interference with trade? Etc. IBM will also be doing extensive research to see which statements are clearly false, which are debatable, and which may have a grain of truth (even if grossly distorted).
But some day the other foot will fall. SCO will sue IBM and IBM will hit them with a countersuit. Or SCO will announce a buyer, and IBM will hit both companies with its own suit. The damages will be some comfortable multiple of SCO's entire market capitalization. If there is any justice in the world, the SCO executives will be named personally, so they won't get multimillion dollar payoffs as the SCO stockholders lose their entire investment.
P.S., anyone who makes "David & Goliath" comparisons is an idiot. David was fighting a righteous battle and had God on his side, SCO is just an arrogant but clueless small company that failed to compete successfully in the marketplace and is now trying to extort some money from companies that did. It deserves to be squashed.
Forget coffee and breakfast in the morning - if I were the manager I would treat everyone to a nice dinner - with spouses if available - every single night. Either go out or get it delivered - pizza, corporate chain food (Chili's, Bennigan's, that type), whatever they want.
This won't totally compensate for the long hours, but the staff won't feel ignored or forgotten. A good boss would also try to make other compensatory arrangements for employees, e.g., arranging cars to be washed, or spending his weekend moving their lawns, or whatever. Small gestures can go a long way... and no gestures at all will not be soon forgotten.
As a practical matter, I don't think anyone can realistically expect to be fully compensated for the extra hours. It's part of the job.
But this is summertime when people like to spend time outdoors, with their kids, etc. This much OT eliminates all of that - no weekend hikes with the kids, no evening Little League games, etc. Giving them an extra two weeks vacation gives them a chance to make it up to their family and decompress....
More importantly, announcing this upfront gives people something to focus on and help them get past the initial hurdle. I know that I can keep focused for 12x7 for two or three weeks, but beyond that point I start to fade fast. But that's because it's psychologically oppressive to feel that things will be like this forever. With that scheduled time off, I'll know that every day brings me closer to a realistic break (not something months away) and it will actually be motivational.
I swear my first thought was the Michael Jackson/Diana Ross take on The Wizard of Oz. But then I remembered that was The Wiz.
They just don't make movies like they used to... with child stars strung out on drugs pushed by their studios.