the ABILITY to track every moment of your citizens lives is just a handy bonus.
If I said tracking every..... then fine but ABILITY and DOING are two different things. On the other hand, deploying the tools oppression without a public backlash is the difficult bit and regardless of whether you consider Blair & Blunkett to be honest honourable politicians once the kits in place it's fairly easy for it to be abused by our rulers - oops, public servants, current or future.
Just because Brits make comments on th US doesn't mean we think our country's any better. Almost everything done in the UK now is for the benefit of making money, the ability to track every moment of your citizens lives is just a handy bonus.
UK politicians don't want to scrap the publicly funded services e.g. health and constantly seek new ways to raise money without increasing visible taxation.
For instance, speed cameras replace police in cars and traffic cops are put on to the latest "fad" crime i.e. the one that a focus group said they were most scared of. The lack of traffic police on the road means that you can now drive like a complete arsehole (so long as you don't do it near a speed camera) without having to worry too much about getting caught. The bonus is the vast income you bring in from the cameras which can then be used to fund projects that would otherwise require an interest in taxation.
Sadly, the British have, over the last twenty years, seen a lot of corruption and arrogance from their politicians and have lost the belief that they can do anything about it.
1984 - It took a Blair to write it and a Blair to make it a reality
Well folks, forget barratry, in the UK we have a law called obtaining funds by deception. The only actual info I could find based on a real case related to an estate agent who had tried selling a house he didn't own. The case fitted the offence because they matched following conditions:
(1) that certain property should exist,
(2) that that property should belong to another,
(3) that the defendant should obtain it, and
(4) that the defendant should act with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
So:
(1) that certain property should exist. exchange property for Linux and yes, it exists.
(2) that that property should belong to another. Well, regardless of the IBM contractual case and the validity of the GPL, the code so far included in by OSS coders remains their IP as the GPL doesn't remove their copyright.
(3) that the defendant should obtain it, and Sco are trying to hijack Linux that's for sure
and finally:
(4) that the defendant should act with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Given that Sco seem to be trying to get OSS authors ownership of their property revoked by nullifying the GPL this could be argued. Ultimately, the defining point must be that SCO are threatening UK businesses BEFORE they have proved a case that is becoming more and more complicated every week and will not be resolved until at least 2005. Without positive, watertight proof of the ownership that Novell are contesting SCO cannot prove they own Linux and any attempt to bill users without proof fits the bill for a charge of OFDC which is a criminal offence.
Now a question for any lawyers out there. Who do we right to within the UK legal system to get SCO UK jumped on and a warrant for the arrest of Evil Master errrrr.... OK maybe not mastermind, fill in your own abuse, the evil grinning Darl McBride should he ever set foot on our little island. Thinking about it, maybe he should move here now. I hear that British prisons are a lot more comfortable than US ones.
Pichinson, a self-described "doctor of reality" who helps liquidate companies, says he wouldn't have moved from Los Angeles to Palo Alto a few months ago had he not smelled more high-tech trouble looming....
If any real estate agents sell this guy a place in Lindon, Utah around 2005 can they post the news on/.
Are there any lawyers out there who can tell me why this isn't the ideal opportunity to shut SCO up for a while?
Theory as follows:
Sco have avoided directly threatening anyone to presumably avoid losing control of the case (what little control they had anyway). So long as they were issuing court cases and orders against others they had this control but that went tits up when IBM countersued and Redhat waded in. The killer event was the judge ordering their disclosure of their evidence to IBM.
Now that they're under orders to disclose evidence, the pressure will up if their case is anything other than watertight and this alone would justify throwing caution to the wind and threatening everyone in sight with the hope that some may sign up.
Now the hingepin of my theory revolves around the fact that SCO have still not proven anything and won't have the chance until 2005. Until then, the code is a kind of Schrodinger's Cat, i.e. until the box is opened in 2005, no-one know's its true state which leaves SCO making claims based on belief rather than fact.
With this in mind, is it not possible for one of the invoiced companies to haul SCO into court and gain an injunction against them issuing invoices without proof? From here it should be a short step to gain another injunction preventing them from repeating claims of ownership to the world in general until after the case is completed.
I know many Slashdotters would suffer abysmally from withdrawl systems if they could no longer call Darl McBride a twat, shithead, fuckwit, retard or whatever but I think it may just be a price worth us all paying.
Funnily enough, I almost made it. It was a small business comprising of 4 staff in one office (1x17 year old and three over 50's), and a second office with two 30+ year olds.
They'd had consultants in who had said they needed a network and had drawn up a Win 2k server / Win2k desktop / MSOffice set up. The second office was an expansion for the biz so the MD didn't feel like blowing the amount of cash specified at that time. To cap it, he'd also been using Linux for the previous year on his desktop while the minions ran 98 after KAK.worm, SirCAM and a couple of others had bollocks'd up his PC (he got all the office e-mail) despite McAffee virus guard which was subcribed and kept up to date daily.
Anyhows, we ended up with Mandrake 8.2 on server and all the desktops except one which had a 5 year legacy of Quicken accounts. Their database was CSV'd and loaded into MySQL and OO.Org provided the front end. The whole lot took about 12 hours to set up and it's been running flawlessly for the last year with Mandrake Update Robot taking care of updates, Postfix handling the mail and NIS/NFS/Samba doing the file sharing. Their firewall runs IPCop and connects them via ADSL.
Initally, OO.org gave us a couple of glitches until V1.03 which was stable enough. OO 1.1 works fine and retraining was minimal which was surprising when 3/4 of the users are in their 50's and used Works and MSOffice in the past. Once broadband hits the MDs home village, we'll be running an OpenVPN tunnel to his house so he can work from home.
All this and we still hadn't billed him as much as the bill for the software he'd have bought to do the same things using Windows. Maintainence costs are kept low partly by remote admin saving us the cost of going to the office (unless the DSL goes tits up) and the auto update. Mandrake 9.2 is on the cards now that support for 8.2 is off so I suspect we may break the initial 2k quote soon but if it performs as well as 8.2 has with no viruses, no crashes and minimal intervention on our part I don't see that lasting long.
If there is a problem with this customer, it's mainly that we get called in so few times that apart from the initial setup, we didn't make much money from them.
And how do you prove to the BSA that you are compliant by using license free software?
Simple, tell the BSA rep on the phone to piss off or tear their letter up and file it under W for wastebin.
Because at the end of the day the BSA can't enter your premises without your invitation or a court order and to get one of them would require them to have reasonable grounds to believe you have hooky software installed. If they do step on your premises without permission then technically they're trespassing. So, if you do have a full free software office, just ignore them and if they get a court order and enter let them see Linux/BSD on your boxes.
The only losers in this are the BSA because if they were wrong, they pick up the bill for the court order and time wasted.
I wouldn't worry. Until they provide some positive proof that they own whatever it is they claim they own along with a list of the exact code segments, no judge in their right mind would uphold the letter even if you signed it.
It's a bit like saying to someone:
"sign this letter to certify that you aren't using my company's oil in your car".
"What oil company do you own"?
"I'm not telling you that, just sign to say you're not using it"!
It is patently obvious to anyone with even the slightest bit of common sense that it is an unreasonable demand unless you're provided with at least the brand of oil, and proof of the fact that the guy owns it. To date, SCO still have no positive proof of anything until 2005 so you can ignore the ever more demented Darl and Co. at least until then.
Couldn't agree more. Several incidents make me feel very reluctant to offer anything other than total condemnation for this one.
1) Driving along the outside lane of the M25 a somewhere around 70 when an electrical fault in the ignition switch killed all the electrics including the indicators, ignition, etc. As the car slowed I hit the hazard lights and, not wanting to stop in the outside lane, started to pull over toward the hard shoulder while my wife frantically tried to gesture our intent to the continual stream of vehicles that were illegally passing us in the other two lanes. OK so it doesn't sound too bad on paper but it was bloody hair raising at the time and if people hadn't been paying attention it could easily have turned into a pile up.
2) Friend of mine cornering on his motorbike when an alarm immobiliser fault killed the ignition. Sudden loss of power while leant over on a bike? Broken ribs and trashed Suzuki.
3) Me and wife on RD350LC circling the roundabout at the M25/A2 junction. As we're crossing the lights an articulated lorry jumps the red light and pulls across our path. No way to stop, only way out was to dump it into second, whack the throttle open and cut across the cars in the two lanes to our right that were (luckily) driven by people who reacted fast enough when they noticed what was going on.
Anyway, the point is that sudden losses of power or unexpected changes in vehicle behaviour are, in certain circumstances, potential death not only for the driver but those around him/her who may not be expecting the vehicle in front to stop for no apparent reason. If I'd had a speed limiter acting on 3 above and hadn't been able to accelerate out of the way, the artic would have killed both of us.
For that other old favourite the speed camera, check out this article Safespeed.org and head for the bit marked "One third of roads fatalities are now caused by speed cameras".
That said, most everything they build is always missing one key ingredient. Maybe poor interface, maybe a critical technical componenet is under-engineered.
No offense taken. The problem is that since the 1980s, every engineering decision in the UK comes under a potential veto from accountants who it seems (according to management consultants) have such a powerful understanding of every subject under the sun that they are capable of making decisions based on instinct alone.
The end result is that you get things like a parchute regiment that carries 400lb of kit per man yet has parachute's made of toilet paper because the specified grade of nylon was 1p(1.5c) a sq. yard more expensive.
Hence the expression "To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer and to make a right fucking mess that sinks a project completely requires an accountant".
It's free, it works and does what I need it to (which is a lot more than 90% of computer users need)without crashing
and
2: What can be done to make Windows better
Make it free, make it work and do what I need it to without crashing.
Seriously, this is what it boils down to at base level. I have a free OS, free upgrades, I give and receive free support, submit bug reports etc. and I have not needed to use Win98 on my desktop or WinXP on my laptop for anything. People want documents, send them a PDF and I can say all I need to in spreadsheet with OO.org and no macros and it'll open in Excel.
For me to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds to do the same things I do now with MS would make me either so rich that I don't know what to do with my money or certifiably insane.
If Groklaw's interpretation is correct and the phrasing of the GPL is that watertight, where does this leave those who misrepresent it?
If it's as straightforward as it seems then any suitably qualified person, e.g. a lawyer should, upon reading it, be able to understand it's true meaning. It then follows that if a suitably qualified lawyer representing a proprietry software company fails to inform that company that their claims about the GPL are untrue they are failing in their duty to advise their clients that their claims are incorrect and possibly constitute fraud in a legal sense.
Should the lawyer inform the company only to be ignored that would then put the company in the position of having knowingly made false/ fraudulent claims in the pursuit of money e.g profit or to use another term "obtaining funds by deception".
Maybe sending a registered delivery copy of a plain language step by step explanation of the GPL interpreted by a lawyer would put them in a position where falsehood becomes potentially damaging in law.
On the plus front, top marks to Groklaw who are carrying out a superb job of undermining SCO's defenses.
Sorry folks, ballsed up that link:
http://www.adtsea.iup.edu/adtsea/TheChronicle/fall _94/risk_behavior_analysis.htm">riskup.edu/adtsea/ TheChronicle/fall_94/risk_behavior_analysis.htm"&g t;
You are absolutely correct in your underlying statements about bikers having a lot to pay attention to
Funnily enough, research carried out in the UK showed that the defensive riding techniques taught to motorcyclists are carried over when they move onto cars i.e. car drivers who rode motorcycles first have a significantly lower accident rate than people who have only ever driven cars as the methods they learn are on a par with the advanced car test.
Despatch ridrs in overcrowded London, a group traditionally criticsed for their "enthusiastic" riding style are also, per 100,000 miles, 60% less likely to be involved in an accident that leisure and commuting motorcyclists.
I read (admittedly some years ago), a research report based on police eveidence gathered at the scene that showed that 70+% of accidents involving motorcycles happen at junctions with a significant number resulting from another vehicle pulling out into their path (on which the motorcycle has right of way) i.e. "sorry mate I didn't see you" syndrome.
Look up risk compensation. If it's true, the safer you make people feel when they're driving, the greater the risks they are willing to take with those outside of the tin box being the victims while the occupants are protected from injury.
Best road safety device for cars? Could be a six inch, luminous yellow spike with painted on blood sticking out of the centre of the steering wheel and no seat belts.
'Cos when you've spent 4+ years selling Linux and have found yourself listening to this kind of crap for real the lines between reality and humour get blurred.
At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our server pool.
There is no shareware version of Linux it's open source.
I took it upon myself to configure the system from scratch
And herein probably lies your problem. Buy a boxed set, don't fuck about with it and you'll probably find your problems go away. I doubt whether a Forune 500 company would object to paying $90 for a package they can install on an unlimited number of servers.
Back in the 11th Century, King Cnut (I jest not) a Dane who invaded england was told by a toadying advisor, that he was so powerful and wise that the very sea itself would turn back on his command. Cnut (being wiser than his advisor) said it wouldn't and decided to prove the point by sitting on the beach and ordering the sea to retreat with obvious "pant's filled with sand" consequences, thus proving that though Cnut was appointed by god, only the Big G himself had power over the forces of nature.
Picture the scene:
Darl McBride in his office, playing with his executive toy. Enter a junior member of the SCO board. "Darl your a Genius! That DrDOS thing was fucking inspired, I mean, your mind and knowledge of Intellectual Property law is so great that even Big Blue itself would pay you billions of dollars if you made a claim against them. I mean they would be so awe struck at your wisdom and legal genius that they wouldn't even check to see if what you were saying was true no matter how ridiculous your claims".
Had someone in the UK that bought a laptop from Dell. It came with MS Works which she wanted to use for day to day paperwork while visiting clients. Anyhow, first problem was that there was no way to set the deafult page size to A4 or anything other than US Letter for that matter.
She calls Dell and asks them. The first thing they ask is "have you installed any software on it"? Not seeing a contractual getout coming she told them she'd installed her Mortgage Broking software (for that is her job) only to be told that as she's put software on that didn't come from them it would cost her 15 an answer.
Now I can see that they don't want to answer questions along the lines of "I put this obscure bit of freeware on and now it won't start" but for christ's sake, bundling a package that requires regedit to set the page size to the correct one for her country and then charging her to sort it out is shitwit behaviour of the worst order.
After this I won't use the likes of Dell, Gateway, etc., and go for small/medium independant suppliers or build it myself as you can at least get support from the same person who tends to remember you.
If only IBM pushed OS/2 onto the desktop If only Commodore could market their way out of a paper bag If only Atari hadn't fumbled the desktop and now: if only Novell had pushed for Linux rather than UNIX in the 90's... Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
How about "If only Mr McBride had used a condom"
I know, I know, -1 Troll... Oh go on then, guilty as charged
Slashdot Mirror
the ABILITY to track every moment of your citizens lives is just a handy bonus.
..... then fine but ABILITY and DOING are two different things.
If I said tracking every
On the other hand, deploying the tools oppression without a public backlash is the difficult bit and regardless of whether you consider Blair & Blunkett to be honest honourable politicians once the kits in place it's fairly easy for it to be abused by our rulers - oops, public servants, current or future.
I don't reply to anonymous cowards either.
Ha hahahahahaha,
Just because Brits make comments on th US doesn't mean we think our country's any better. Almost everything done in the UK now is for the benefit of making money, the ability to track every moment of your citizens lives is just a handy bonus.
UK politicians don't want to scrap the publicly funded services e.g. health and constantly seek new ways to raise money without increasing visible taxation.
For instance, speed cameras replace police in cars and traffic cops are put on to the latest "fad" crime i.e. the one that a focus group said they were most scared of. The lack of traffic police on the road means that you can now drive like a complete arsehole (so long as you don't do it near a speed camera) without having to worry too much about getting caught. The bonus is the vast income you bring in from the cameras which can then be used to fund projects that would otherwise require an interest in taxation.
Sadly, the British have, over the last twenty years, seen a lot of corruption and arrogance from their politicians and have lost the belief that they can do anything about it.
1984 - It took a Blair to write it and a Blair to make it a reality
Would you want to?
Well folks, forget barratry, in the UK we have a law called obtaining funds by deception. The only actual info I could find based on a real case related to an estate agent who had tried selling a house he didn't own. The case fitted the offence because they matched following conditions:
(1) that certain property should exist,
(2) that that property should belong to another,
(3) that the defendant should obtain it, and
(4) that the defendant should act with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
So:
(1) that certain property should exist.
exchange property for Linux and yes, it exists.
(2) that that property should belong to another.
Well, regardless of the IBM contractual case and the validity of the GPL, the code so far included in by OSS coders remains their IP as the GPL doesn't remove their copyright.
(3) that the defendant should obtain it, and
Sco are trying to hijack Linux that's for sure
and finally:
(4) that the defendant should act with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
Given that Sco seem to be trying to get OSS authors ownership of their property revoked by nullifying the GPL this could be argued.
Ultimately, the defining point must be that SCO are threatening UK businesses BEFORE they have proved a case that is becoming more and more complicated every week and will not be resolved until at least 2005. Without positive, watertight proof of the ownership that Novell are contesting SCO cannot prove they own Linux and any attempt to bill users without proof fits the bill for a charge of OFDC which is a criminal offence.
Now a question for any lawyers out there. Who do we right to within the UK legal system to get SCO UK jumped on and a warrant for the arrest of Evil Master errrrr.... OK maybe not mastermind, fill in your own abuse, the evil grinning Darl McBride should he ever set foot on our little island. Thinking about it, maybe he should move here now. I hear that British prisons are a lot more comfortable than US ones.
Pichinson, a self-described "doctor of reality" who helps liquidate companies, says he wouldn't have moved from Los Angeles to Palo Alto a few months ago had he not smelled more high-tech trouble looming....
/.
If any real estate agents sell this guy a place in Lindon, Utah around 2005 can they post the news on
Cheers
Are there any lawyers out there who can tell me why this isn't the ideal opportunity to shut SCO up for a while?
Theory as follows:
Sco have avoided directly threatening anyone to presumably avoid losing control of the case (what little control they had anyway). So long as they were issuing court cases and orders against others they had this control but that went tits up when IBM countersued and Redhat waded in. The killer event was the judge ordering their disclosure of their evidence to IBM.
Now that they're under orders to disclose evidence, the pressure will up if their case is anything other than watertight and this alone would justify throwing caution to the wind and threatening everyone in sight with the hope that some may sign up.
Now the hingepin of my theory revolves around the fact that SCO have still not proven anything and won't have the chance until 2005. Until then, the code is a kind of Schrodinger's Cat, i.e. until the box is opened in 2005, no-one know's its true state which leaves SCO making claims based on belief rather than fact.
With this in mind, is it not possible for one of the invoiced companies to haul SCO into court and gain an injunction against them issuing invoices without proof? From here it should be a short step to gain another injunction preventing them from repeating claims of ownership to the world in general until after the case is completed.
I know many Slashdotters would suffer abysmally from withdrawl systems if they could no longer call Darl McBride a twat, shithead, fuckwit, retard or whatever but I think it may just be a price worth us all paying.
Funnily enough, I almost made it. It was a small business comprising of 4 staff in one office (1x17 year old and three over 50's), and a second office with two 30+ year olds.
They'd had consultants in who had said they needed a network and had drawn up a Win 2k server / Win2k desktop / MSOffice set up. The second office was an expansion for the biz so the MD didn't feel like blowing the amount of cash specified at that time. To cap it, he'd also been using Linux for the previous year on his desktop while the minions ran 98 after KAK.worm, SirCAM and a couple of others had bollocks'd up his PC (he got all the office e-mail) despite McAffee virus guard which was subcribed and kept up to date daily.
Anyhows, we ended up with Mandrake 8.2 on server and all the desktops except one which had a 5 year legacy of Quicken accounts. Their database was CSV'd and loaded into MySQL and OO.Org provided the front end. The whole lot took about 12 hours to set up and it's been running flawlessly for the last year with Mandrake Update Robot taking care of updates, Postfix handling the mail and NIS/NFS/Samba doing the file sharing. Their firewall runs IPCop and connects them via ADSL.
Initally, OO.org gave us a couple of glitches until V1.03 which was stable enough. OO 1.1 works fine and retraining was minimal which was surprising when 3/4 of the users are in their 50's and used Works and MSOffice in the past. Once broadband hits the MDs home village, we'll be running an OpenVPN tunnel to his house so he can work from home.
All this and we still hadn't billed him as much as the bill for the software he'd have bought to do the same things using Windows. Maintainence costs are kept low partly by remote admin saving us the cost of going to the office (unless the DSL goes tits up) and the auto update. Mandrake 9.2 is on the cards now that support for 8.2 is off so I suspect we may break the initial 2k quote soon but if it performs as well as 8.2 has with no viruses, no crashes and minimal intervention on our part I don't see that lasting long.
If there is a problem with this customer, it's mainly that we get called in so few times that apart from the initial setup, we didn't make much money from them.
And how do you prove to the BSA that you are compliant by using license free software?
Simple, tell the BSA rep on the phone to piss off or tear their letter up and file it under W for wastebin.
Because at the end of the day the BSA can't enter your premises without your invitation or a court order and to get one of them would require them to have reasonable grounds to believe you have hooky software installed. If they do step on your premises without permission then technically they're trespassing. So, if you do have a full free software office, just ignore them and if they get a court order and enter let them see Linux/BSD on your boxes.
The only losers in this are the BSA because if they were wrong, they pick up the bill for the court order and time wasted.
I wouldn't worry. Until they provide some positive proof that they own whatever it is they claim they own along with a list of the exact code segments, no judge in their right mind would uphold the letter even if you signed it.
It's a bit like saying to someone:
"sign this letter to certify that you aren't using my company's oil in your car".
"What oil company do you own"?
"I'm not telling you that, just sign to say you're not using it"!
It is patently obvious to anyone with even the slightest bit of common sense that it is an unreasonable demand unless you're provided with at least the brand of oil, and proof of the fact that the guy owns it. To date, SCO still have no positive proof of anything until 2005 so you can ignore the ever more demented Darl and Co. at least until then.
What a dangerous idea
Couldn't agree more. Several incidents make me feel very reluctant to offer anything other than total condemnation for this one.
1) Driving along the outside lane of the M25 a somewhere around 70 when an electrical fault in the ignition switch killed all the electrics including the indicators, ignition, etc. As the car slowed I hit the hazard lights and, not wanting to stop in the outside lane, started to pull over toward the hard shoulder while my wife frantically tried to gesture our intent to the continual stream of vehicles that were illegally passing us in the other two lanes. OK so it doesn't sound too bad on paper but it was bloody hair raising at the time and if people hadn't been paying attention it could easily have turned into a pile up.
2) Friend of mine cornering on his motorbike when an alarm immobiliser fault killed the ignition. Sudden loss of power while leant over on a bike? Broken ribs and trashed Suzuki.
3) Me and wife on RD350LC circling the roundabout at the M25/A2 junction. As we're crossing the lights an articulated lorry jumps the red light and pulls across our path. No way to stop, only way out was to dump it into second, whack the throttle open and cut across the cars in the two lanes to our right that were (luckily) driven by people who reacted fast enough when they noticed what was going on.
Anyway, the point is that sudden losses of power or unexpected changes in vehicle behaviour are, in certain circumstances, potential death not only for the driver but those around him/her who may not be expecting the vehicle in front to stop for no apparent reason. If I'd had a speed limiter acting on 3 above and hadn't been able to accelerate out of the way, the artic would have killed both of us.
For that other old favourite the speed camera, check out this article Safespeed.org and head for the bit marked "One third of roads fatalities are now caused by speed cameras".
That said, most everything they build is always missing one key ingredient. Maybe poor interface, maybe a critical technical componenet is under-engineered.
No offense taken. The problem is that since the 1980s, every engineering decision in the UK comes under a potential veto from accountants who it seems (according to management consultants) have such a powerful understanding of every subject under the sun that they are capable of making decisions based on instinct alone.
The end result is that you get things like a parchute regiment that carries 400lb of kit per man yet has parachute's made of toilet paper because the specified grade of nylon was 1p(1.5c) a sq. yard more expensive.
Hence the expression "To err is human, to really foul things up requires a computer and to make a right fucking mess that sinks a project completely requires an accountant".
1: asking why they use Linux
It's free, it works and does what I need it to (which is a lot more than 90% of computer users need)without crashing
and
2: What can be done to make Windows better
Make it free, make it work and do what I need it to without crashing.
Seriously, this is what it boils down to at base level. I have a free OS, free upgrades, I give and receive free support, submit bug reports etc. and I have not needed to use Win98 on my desktop or WinXP on my laptop for anything. People want documents, send them a PDF and I can say all I need to in spreadsheet with OO.org and no macros and it'll open in Excel.
For me to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds to do the same things I do now with MS would make me either so rich that I don't know what to do with my money or certifiably insane.
If Groklaw's interpretation is correct and the phrasing of the GPL is that watertight, where does this leave those who misrepresent it?
If it's as straightforward as it seems then any suitably qualified person, e.g. a lawyer should, upon reading it, be able to understand it's true meaning. It then follows that if a suitably qualified lawyer representing a proprietry software company fails to inform that company that their claims about the GPL are untrue they are failing in their duty to advise their clients that their claims are incorrect and possibly constitute fraud in a legal sense.
Should the lawyer inform the company only to be ignored that would then put the company in the position of having knowingly made false/ fraudulent claims in the pursuit of money e.g profit or to use another term "obtaining funds by deception".
Maybe sending a registered delivery copy of a plain language step by step explanation of the GPL interpreted by a lawyer would put them in a position where falsehood becomes potentially damaging in law.
On the plus front, top marks to Groklaw who are carrying out a superb job of undermining SCO's defenses.
Sorry folks, ballsed up that link: http://www.adtsea.iup.edu/adtsea/TheChronicle/fall _94/risk_behavior_analysis.htm">riskup.edu/adtsea/ TheChronicle/fall_94/risk_behavior_analysis.htm"&g t;
You are absolutely correct in your underlying statements about bikers having a lot to pay attention to
Funnily enough, research carried out in the UK showed that the defensive riding techniques taught to motorcyclists are carried over when they move onto cars i.e. car drivers who rode motorcycles first have a significantly lower accident rate than people who have only ever driven cars as the methods they learn are on a par with the advanced car test.
Despatch ridrs in overcrowded London, a group traditionally criticsed for their "enthusiastic" riding style are also, per 100,000 miles, 60% less likely to be involved in an accident that leisure and commuting motorcyclists.
I read (admittedly some years ago), a research report based on police eveidence gathered at the scene that showed that 70+% of accidents involving motorcycles happen at junctions with a significant number resulting from another vehicle pulling out into their path (on which the motorcycle has right of way) i.e. "sorry mate I didn't see you" syndrome.
Look up risk compensation. If it's true, the safer you make people feel when they're driving, the greater the risks they are willing to take with those outside of the tin box being the victims while the occupants are protected from injury.
Best road safety device for cars? Could be a six inch, luminous yellow spike with painted on blood sticking out of the centre of the steering wheel and no seat belts.
SCO claims their website was the target of a DoS (Denial of Service) attack. Was it really?
No your mistaken. When they said DoS they meant Disconnection of Socket, i.e. some pratt tripped over the cat 5 that connects them to the net.
Maybe they've been down for so long 'cos they're still trying to work out which way up the plug goes.
True, but then a one legged,acid tripping dopehead with two realllly bad ear infections was more stable than Win95.
Possible alternative headlines:
;)
Bad News:
British Health System tries to knock price of MS licence renewal down by claiming to consider Open Source.
Good News:
British Health System thinks Darl McBride's talking shit as well
Let's hold a slashdot poll
'Cos when you've spent 4+ years selling Linux and have found yourself listening to this kind of crap for real the lines between reality and humour get blurred.
At one of the major corps(5000+ employees) that I consult
for, we wanted to integrate the shareware version of Linux into our
server pool.
There is no shareware version of Linux it's open source.
I took it upon myself to configure the
system from scratch
And herein probably lies your problem. Buy a boxed set, don't fuck about with it and you'll probably find your problems go away. I doubt whether a Forune 500 company would object to paying $90 for a package they can install on an unlimited number of servers.
Back in the 11th Century, King Cnut (I jest not) a Dane who invaded england was told by a toadying advisor, that he was so powerful and wise that the very sea itself would turn back on his command. Cnut (being wiser than his advisor) said it wouldn't and decided to prove the point by sitting on the beach and ordering the sea to retreat with obvious "pant's filled with sand" consequences, thus proving that though Cnut was appointed by god, only the Big G himself had power over the forces of nature.
Picture the scene:
Darl McBride in his office, playing with his executive toy. Enter a junior member of the SCO board. "Darl your a Genius! That DrDOS thing was fucking inspired, I mean, your mind and knowledge of Intellectual Property law is so great that even Big Blue itself would pay you billions of dollars if you made a claim against them. I mean they would be so awe struck at your wisdom and legal genius that they wouldn't even check to see if what you were saying was true no matter how ridiculous your claims".
Bullshit said Darl, and to prove it...........
Had someone in the UK that bought a laptop from Dell. It came with MS Works which she wanted to use for day to day paperwork while visiting clients. Anyhow, first problem was that there was no way to set the deafult page size to A4 or anything other than US Letter for that matter.
She calls Dell and asks them. The first thing they ask is "have you installed any software on it"? Not seeing a contractual getout coming she told them she'd installed her Mortgage Broking software (for that is her job) only to be told that as she's put software on that didn't come from them it would cost her 15 an answer.
Now I can see that they don't want to answer questions along the lines of "I put this obscure bit of freeware on and now it won't start" but for christ's sake, bundling a package that requires regedit to set the page size to the correct one for her country and then charging her to sort it out is shitwit behaviour of the worst order.
After this I won't use the likes of Dell, Gateway, etc., and go for small/medium independant suppliers or build it myself as you can at least get support from the same person who tends to remember you.
Seems a bit of a shame that they only provide Windows Media Player streaming video of the premier though.
If you're not doing anything wrong you have nothing to fear citizen...
MUHAhahahahahahahahahaha.......
Hindsight is always 20/20.
If only IBM pushed OS/2 onto the desktop
If only Commodore could market their way out of a paper bag
If only Atari hadn't fumbled the desktop
and now:
if only Novell had pushed for Linux rather than UNIX in the 90's...
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
How about "If only Mr McBride had used a condom"
I know, I know, -1 Troll... Oh go on then, guilty as charged