I thought the old addage was "No publicity is bad publicity". This *might* seem synonymous with your "Any publicity is good publicity", however "No publicity is bad publicity." can be read two different and correct ways: First it can be interpreted as "not having any publicity is bad", or the more common perception "any publicity is better than not having any at all". Kind of subtle, I always think of both interpretations everytime I read it. "Any publicity is good publicity" just isn't as flexible nor is that really the saying.
As far as the point of your post, I completely agree that (almost) any publicity is good for Linux, I've commented a few times myself about the overlooked benefits of this whole fiasco. It's nice to see others with similar opinions.
Unbeknowst to some of your repliers, law offices have to do a little more than letter merge and simple accounting. The user base at a firm is usually very technically declined as well, so the software is specialized yet kept as simple as possible. Niche market.
Re:This shows how geeky Im am...
on
Goodbye, Galileo
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Why not offer to fund the project for a local school? You could more than likely afford a trophy case alone, besides the possibility of getting donations. Build the replicas yourself or again, I think volunteers would be forthcoming if you looked hard enough. Model hobbyists tend to be the geeky type and would love to get in on that action. I wouldn't be surprised if you put a couple of fliers at hobby shops, and did a little drive for the resources to build the thing that you could easily have it done.
I think it's a wonderful idea, but instead of just saying, how about doing?
I see no reason why most people should have some natural appreciation of what "550 tons" actually means.
I know how much 550 tons is, that's like
The weight of 9,500 ex girlfriends, or 550 ex girlfriends if you live in Utah.
The amount of shit expelled in the average SCO press release.
The weight of my formerly miniscule equipment after I replied to *every* penis enlarging piece of spam I've ever received.
Since they insist on reporting on the weights of things relative to others, instead of just sticking to a standard unit of measurment, I say the pick more interesting objects than VW Bugs or Elephants. For instance:
For extremely bad news, they could pick something friendly or cute to reference, such as "A comet with the mass of 7 billion cute fuzzy bunny rabbits is on a collision course with the Earth. I for one can't wait for the bunnies to get here!"
For scientific news trying to get your average Joe Blows attention for future (hopeful) government funding; "In other news, a space probe weighing as much as 170 pairs of Pamela Andersons breasts was launched at Mars today. The rocket carrying the probe created a massive 18,000lbs of thrust to get the probe headed on its way. Although there is a slight possibility of damage to the delicate probe, the 18,000 pounds of thrust must be used on the mass of Pamela Andersons tits to enable it to build up enough speed, faster and faster as it goes, to escape the Earths gravity. I'm sure every man involved is very proud at the success and has a special feeling at the moment."
We need more parents who are willing to let their kids grow up and experience things first hand. I'm not saying that it's a good idea to give a kid a box of matches, a gallon of gas and tell them to have a good time in their bedroom.
Damn straight, that's what their friends bedrooms are for!
"...The only question I have is this: when SCO lose, will they appeal?..."
That is an interesting point and is much more likely possibility than the parent post I (and grandparent post you) were responding to.
Personally, I think the first case is going to tear SCO a new hole wider than the grand canyon and prove to the non-technically inclined how full of it SCO's claims really are. I feel (again, just opinion) that if SCO appealed their loss to IBM, an appeals court may refuse to accept it. SCO would only appeal to pump their stock some more, but I doubt the manipulation for their stock prices will work anymore.
What I have often questioned, is what will happen to the ownership of the Sys V code that this is all about in the first place? SCO is doomed, and after their demise I only hope:
A) Sys V code is proclaimed community property. OR
B) IBM or Redhat obtains the code as part of the damages SCO brought them, and hopefully (in IBM's case because I have no doubt about what Redhat would do) the Sys V code is GPL'd.
My only concern is SCO filing for bankruptcy, liquidating its assets, and the Sys V code falls into the hands of a company that will try to create more FUD *cough*MS*cough*. Now that is a scary thought.
Male Wrote: "It sucks if you have multiple MSN accounts. I try to use one for work, and one for friends who insist on using it. If you use both with Trillian, it will add everybody as a contact on both MSN accounts. It makes it rather hard to login for a personal chat without work colleagues being alerted to your online presence and thus tempted to interrupt."
If you haven't already, you may want to try gaim. You won't run into the problem you are describing by using multiple MSM accounts, *nix and Win32 versions, it's OSS, and is rapidly developing. If Microsoft breaks the service, I doubt it would take the developers on the project long to fix it in their client.
Maul Wrote:
"While this still seems like a pump and dump for SCO's execs, the biggest danger here is that SCO lands itself in the courtroom with a stupid and/or tech ignorant judge who will agree with their baseless, stupid claim that they own this code.
It may be one heck of a long shot for them, but dumber rulings have been made before.
Suddenly SCO not only owns Linux, but that could also qualify them as owning BSD as well as anything that even closely resembles UNIX in one way or another. They might even be able to lay claim to parts of every operating system out there so long as that OS borrowed concepts from UNIX (or BSD, Linux, etc.) Doesn't Windows have code copied from BSD too? Or maybe that is what Microsoft "lisenced" already..."
Thanks for the FUD.
A long shot SCO victory is possible, however, it is extremely unlikely. Considering the massive amounts of money attached to this suit, I highly doubt a random "stupid and/or tech ignorant judge" will be presiding.
In addition to the unlikelihood of a completely tech ignorant judge presiding, even if one did, that isn't much of a factor considering the suit is to be decided by a jury and not a judge. As far as one worrying about a stupid and/or tech ignorant jury, if the jurors are all too stupid to realize the outlandishness of SCO's claims, it will boil down to which companies lawyers can win at a pissing contest of courtroom showmanship. IBM is still highly favored in that respect.
Let's say the planets align, an ice skating rink opens in hell, and you see Miss Piggy fly by your window and SCO actually wins the suit. Well, I guess the world is screwed and belongs to SCO, unless I don't know, IBM decides to appeal the decision instead of handing McBride $3,000,000,000.
After reading the article, I had a haunting feeling of deja vu, most notably to the paragraph:
"...Blaster exploited a flaw in most current versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system for personal computers, laptops and server computers. Although Microsoft posted a software patch to fix the flaw on July 16, many users failed to download the patch, leaving them vulnerable to the worm, which first started hitting computers around the world on Monday...."
I could have sworn I had read the exact same statement in a different article a few days ago. The statement had stuck in my head because it implied the worm problem was completely users fault for not installing the patch. Since it seemed so familiar, I googled the phrase "Although Microsoft posted a software patch to fix the flaw" (google limits you to ten words or less). Lo and behold, hundreds of hits for individual separate articles from "different" news sources with the exact same paragraph, completely verbatim. I am aware that information is shared through the associated press, but personally I find it unsettling that all of these news authors do little more than cut and paste another authors words (and voice), instead of writing an article on the same subject with different points of view or ways of expressing the facts. It is especially concerning when the statement in this example seems to slant blame away from a responsible party, Microsoft, in a serious situation that they are largely (IMO) accountable for.
Perhaps I am off topic, but I felt obliged to point out my discovery. I didn't think it was possible, but my level of trust in the quality of information in the media has dropped yet another rung.
"...The 2.2 tree needs a new maintainer, someone who can spend their entire
life refusing patches, being ignored by the mainstream (because 2.2 is
boring) and by vendors (who don't ship 2.2 any more)..." -Alan Cox
Your comment reminds me of a very applicable joke to your thoughts:
An economist is in a public restroom and see's a quarter ($.25) in the toilet. He does some quick calculations in his head, and decides that the effort of bending over to pick up the 25 cents, the possibility of disease for sticking his hand in a filthy toilet, and the mental anguish of doing such a despicable act isn't worth the measly one quarter dollar. So he throws another quarter in the toilet, bends over, sticks his and in, and retrieves the 50 cents.
It's not the funniest joke on the planet, but this is the first chance I've had to use it and it does make one think of the logic of some people/professions.
"...when you get a distro recommendation based on "ethical considerations" rather than WHAT FITS THE USER'S NEEDS, you have to decide if RMS is really the person you should be asking...."
I think it is completely resonable to make decisions based soley on your ethics. To give an example, I have big feet. If the only shoes available in my size were made in 3rd world sweat shops, I would choose not to wear shoes, rather than rationalize "I need shoes and my only option is what comes from sweat shops." My feet would most likely quickly become worn and sore, I couldn't go into many businesses, yet I would still survive.
I see RMS as being disgusted with the proverbial "shoe sweatshops" of the software industry. The companies who pimp and profit at the dire expense of others. I think of his fanaticism as an equivilant to someone screaming "Don't buy Nike's! don't you know where they come from? Don't you know what you're supporting?!?"
It is up to each individual to decide if RMS is full of B.S., if the proverbial sweatshops even exist, but that has nothing to do with the idea of basing decisions off of ethics instead of gratification as being flawed.
--Part of Linux's appeal is the freedom to CHOOSE. If the *only* software that RMS ever uses has to be "free" then sorry, he's missing out.
Your last statement implies that "free" software might be the only thing RMS ever uses. I think it is quite safe to say it is the only thing RMS uses. He is quite the zealot, he not only started Gnu/FSF, but gave up his employment at the time due to his refusal to sign NDA's and use proprietary software. Many of his writings on Gnu/FSF's website reference his complete refusal to use any software that isn't "free" (speach). The whole point of Gnu/FSF is due to refusal to ever use non "free" software.
Lastly, I'm not exactly an RMS supporter, but I don't hate the guy either. I do believe in one deciding what their ethics are and standing by them. I also felt your reference to what "RMS might use" put into question his level of fanaticism so I felt obliged to respond that from reading what he's put on Gnu's website, I think it would be a cold day in the seventh ring before he used any software that wasn't "free".
"I'm not saying this guy didn't steal a tremendous amount of money, but I'm shocked he was able to perpetuate such an series of thefts. Isn't this the purpose of the eBay rating systems, etc.?"- The Only Druid
From the article:
"Since most auction bidders look at a seller's feedback messages before they place a bid to determine whether the seller is trustworthy, Nelson devoted a lot of energy to creating positive feedback profiles for his various online identities. One identity of Nelson's would "sell" an item to another, and then the "buyer" would post positive feedback on the "seller." Nelson would also buy inexpensive items, like paperback books, from sellers who actually existed, hoping that they would add good feedback to his profile. He didn't care about actually receiving the books, and he regularly used a fake mailing address.
Once an identity had received enough positive feedback to be considered trustworthy, Nelson would set up a "Dutch auction," in which he claimed to have a large batch of a particular item to sell. Dutch auctions allow sellers to post quantities of identical merchandise all at once, rather than item by item, and bidders can buy as many as they want. By the time buyers started complaining to Yahoo or eBay that they'd paid but never received the product, causing that particular identity of Nelson's to be suspended from selling, Nelson would have collected most of the money. In June 2000, one identity, harddrives4sale, took $32,104 from would-be buyers on Yahoo; in September, another identity raked in $12,985 on eBay."
So to answer your question, according to the article Nelson exploited an imperfect system to make his profile appear trustworthy.
"FAT32 has some severe limitations, one I'm sure that is ringing in his head is the 2gb file limitation."
-Shaitand
I'd mod you up if you were right. I want to mod you down since you're ill informed but I'd rather make a correction.
Your statement could be taken three ways, first, if you are implying the allocation capabilities of FAT32 is a disk size of 2GB:
FAT 16 has a 4GB limit.
FAT 32 has a 127GB limit.
Personally, I thought FAT16 had a 2GB allocation limit, and dated sources from Microsoft concurs with that. Yet the most informative reference I could find from the horse's mouth references 4GB for FAT16 under Win2k, and 127GB for FAT32. Most notably from the site:
"...The most significant difference between FAT16 and FAT32 is the maximum number of clusters supported, which in turn affects a volume's maximum size and storage efficiency. FAT32 breaks the 4-GB volume limitation of FAT16 by extending the maximum number of clusters to over 4 million. FAT32, as implemented in Windows 2000, can mount a volume as large as 127 GB..."
Secondly, if you are implying FAT32 has a 2GB filesize limitation, from the same MS source:
"...The largest possible file for a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 2 bytes..."
Emphasis mine.
I doubt this one, but if you are implying the FAT32 file allocation table has a 2GB limit, to reference MS again:
"...FAT32 contains 4 bytes per cluster in the file allocation table;...A FAT32 volume must have at least 65,527 clusters, but no more than 4,177,918 clusters..."
4,177,918*4 = 16,711,672 or a little over 16MB maximum limit for the table.
"It's likely that people who have not turned on their computers yet will discover that they have already been infected if they do not have the Microsoft patch, a firewall of some sort or anti- virus program installed,"
How could one already be infected if their computer hasn't been running? Maybe he's implying "as soon as you turn on your computer you'll be infected", I don't know.
Millions of unprotected personal computers remain vulnerable to the worm, which can infect any machine connected to the Internet, experts said Tuesday.
Really? I thought it was only Win2k, XP, and 03, not every computer on the planet. But experts said so, so I guess it must be true.
The worm attacks computers through a flaw in the part of Windows that allows computers to share files and control Inter net traffic. Four versions of Windows operating systems are targeted: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Oh you are aware it doesn't affect every computer on the planet. That's good because five paragraphs before you said it did and now you're contradicting yourself. Wonderful
"This is certainly a capable person who did this," Sundwall said. "In most cases, it takes about six to nine months for a worm to appear after a patch is released. This is certainly something that did occur quicker than we are accustomed to."
Because it is just so hard to create a self replicating buffer overflow program. It's not like this is down to a science. The statement implies a team of developers would have to sit down for a year to create something this "sophisticated". It couldn't be that MS products are inherently insecure and easily exploitable. There are thousands if not millions of people "capable" of this, just not immature enough.
You'll notice some of my excerpts are quotes from within the article, and not necessarily the words of the author. The author still choose to include this malformed crap.
I would recommend seeing this older Slashdot article concerning the worm or going to google to find better written information on the matter. The facts within the new article are interesting, but so blatantly misrepresented it's annoying and I would view an alternative source.
"...it will have cost MS over a billion dollars to gain dominance over the web...I wonder if they feel like it was worth it. [A] billion is pocket change to MS but still it would have been cheaper to just license the patent."
Well, the article states:
"Eolas, a closely held Illinois company founded by former University of California professor Michael Doyle, had originally sought licensing fees that would potentially have totaled $1.2 billion."
To answer your question of whether Microsoft feels it was worth it, I think it's safe to assume they do. $500 million in damages that they may not even have to pay after the appeal is obviously much cheaper than the $1.2 billion they would've paid to license the patent.
Bundling GCC with a proprietary OS does not violate the GPL, let alone would anyone even suggest the OS should be GPL'd.
At most the company bundling GCC with an OS would have to make the _GCC source_ available to anyone who wants it. That's it.
If the OS maker used GCC code, added their own improvements, and released the new compiler (bundled with an OS, on cd's, or even off it's website for free) the company would have to make the source code for their _new complier_ freely available to anyone who wants it under the terms of the GPL.
The licensing of bundled pieces of software have nothing to do with one another. Bundling OSS and proprietary software together doesn't mean the GPL will "infect" the proprietary. Now if you take portions of GPL'd code and incorporate it in your OS, the OS is supposed to be GPL'd. If you don't want to GPL your OS, don't incorporate GPL'd code into it! Write your own.
"...Public goods need to benefit EVERYONE, not EVERYONE uses linux or open software..."
Well, by that rational there should be no Coast Guard since a significant amount of the population is landlocked. There should be no federal funding for the INS to increase patrols on the Mexico-U.S. border since that isn't much of a problem to the citizens in Minnesota. Heck, there shouldn't be federal funding for higher educational institutions because they do not benefit every citizen directly.
A typical response may be "Well, the Coast Guard, INS, and higher educational institutions benefit many directly, and benefit most indirectly, so they are still for the public good." Well that's exactly what OSS does.
Although not "EVERYONE" uses Linux or open source, "EVERYONE" does benefit from its use. Unless you live in a hole, you benefit from it directly on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not. Even those who do not benefit from it directly, benefit from it indirectly. Since further adoption benefits most if not all people, I think the author of the article suggesting further adoption and additional governmental support under the pretense of "the public good" is an insightful valid suggestion.
The thought that something for the public good means "an item or service that must benefit every individual directly" as is implied in your comment is completely ridiculous, a flawed presumption, and I feel you are careless for stating it as fact.
I have a hard time believing SCO can take its own claims seriously. They have become so ridiculous I just cannot imagine the law suits and demands are being made because the company truly believes every Linux user owes them $699, IBM owes them 3 billion, every TiVo owner owes them $32, etc. etc. Not only do I have a hard time believing that SCO isn't well aware that no one owes them money, but I have a hard time believing they are not well aware that their lawsuits and demands don't stand an ice cubes chance in hell. Yet the company is still filing law suits and still making outragous claims that anyone living or who has ever lived owes them money.
Since I feel they are aware that nobody owes them money, and they are also aware that they don't have a chance in getting anything from anyone, my question is, what's the point of all this? The first and obvious response is stock manipulation, which has obviously been going on. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I feel that there is more to it than that. In my opinion, this seems to be more than just a smear and FUD campaign to manipulate stock.
Besides the obvious stock manipulation, what do you think some motives for this campaign may be and why? I'd especially love to hear from those of you wearing a tin foil helmet. I just have a hard time believing the attempts at completely discrediting OSS is simply a convenient side effect of a smear/FUD campaign to manipulate stock. I think some good conspiracy theories would be intriguing.
...I would have thought it would take as much energy climbing out of Earth's gravity well regardless of how far away the target is...
Think of getting a probe to Mars as two steps:
1. Getting off the Earth and out of the gravity well.
2. Travel immense distance to Mars.
If Mars is closer, then not as much fuel is needed for step two. If there isn't as much fuel needed for step two, then the load will be lighter for step one. If everything is lighter in step one, a smaller rocket can be used to lift the whole mess off the ground.
To clear up confusion, the energy needed to escape from the Earths gravitational pull is constant, it's the amount of mass that needs to escape that is different. With Mars closer not as much fuel will be needed to reach the planet, so the probe + fuel lifted by the rocket will be lighter, so a smaller rocket can be used.
...but how much fun would a game be if it was only only nice guys helping ladies across the street?
It is role playing after all, and without evil roles being filled, who would be in conflict with all the do gooders?
Unless the game is "Virtual Boyscout" or "Utopia Online" I think the evil roles are definitely necessary.
Besides the necessity, who wants to be a good guy all the time? I don't mind playing a bad guy, if in the process I'm taken down by do-gooders, so be it, I don't mind. If I'm playing a good guy and evildoers get me, oh well. That's the point of the game, conflict. I try to win, and if I'm going down, I'm going down hard (and taking as many with me as possible). I'm not just going to roll over, how much fun is it for anyone to win a rigged "good should always beat evil" fight?
Not to be offensive, but some comments I've read seem to hint at the idea "everyone should be winner". In my opinion, how can one win if someone doesn't lose? Forget that, I'll take my wins and my losses. Winning without the possibility of losing is meaningless, and even losing can be fun too.
The correct BBB office to file a complaint with against SCO is:
Better Business Bureau of Utah
5673 S. Redwood Rd., #22
Salt Lake City, UT 84123 -5322
Phone: (801)892-6009
Fax: (801)892-6002
Email: complaints@utah.bbb.org
WWW: http://www.utah.bbb.org
And the BBB has somewhat dated information still referring to them as Caldera. You may wish to reference the company as:
Caldera International
355 South 520 West
Lindon, UT 84042
(801) 765-4999
http://sco.com
Or it could be paying for the people who work in shipping.. go figure that one out.
Wow, nothing slips past you does it? $13.49 handling fee. Shipping worker wage is around minimum (what, around six dollars an hour these days?). So roughly two hours of handling necessary to warrant that much of a handling charge. See my previous comment for attempted light hearted ideas of what those two hours of "necessary" handling may be for. Or perish the thought, it really takes at most a minute of "handling", and the $13.49 is really just to squeeze more pennies out of customers.
go figure that one out
Now, why don't you "go figure that one out", troll.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as the point of your post, I completely agree that (almost) any publicity is good for Linux, I've commented a few times myself about the overlooked benefits of this whole fiasco. It's nice to see others with similar opinions.
Unbeknowst to some of your repliers, law offices have to do a little more than letter merge and simple accounting. The user base at a firm is usually very technically declined as well, so the software is specialized yet kept as simple as possible. Niche market.
I think it's a wonderful idea, but instead of just saying, how about doing?
I know how much 550 tons is, that's like
The weight of 9,500 ex girlfriends, or 550 ex girlfriends if you live in Utah.
The amount of shit expelled in the average SCO press release.
The weight of my formerly miniscule equipment after I replied to *every* penis enlarging piece of spam I've ever received.
Since they insist on reporting on the weights of things relative to others, instead of just sticking to a standard unit of measurment, I say the pick more interesting objects than VW Bugs or Elephants. For instance:
For extremely bad news, they could pick something friendly or cute to reference, such as "A comet with the mass of 7 billion cute fuzzy bunny rabbits is on a collision course with the Earth. I for one can't wait for the bunnies to get here!"
For scientific news trying to get your average Joe Blows attention for future (hopeful) government funding; "In other news, a space probe weighing as much as 170 pairs of Pamela Andersons breasts was launched at Mars today. The rocket carrying the probe created a massive 18,000lbs of thrust to get the probe headed on its way. Although there is a slight possibility of damage to the delicate probe, the 18,000 pounds of thrust must be used on the mass of Pamela Andersons tits to enable it to build up enough speed, faster and faster as it goes, to escape the Earths gravity. I'm sure every man involved is very proud at the success and has a special feeling at the moment."
Etc. Lame, but fun, try making your own.
Where the fsck have you been? Go ask 2600.
Damn straight, that's what their friends bedrooms are for!
That is an interesting point and is much more likely possibility than the parent post I (and grandparent post you) were responding to.
Personally, I think the first case is going to tear SCO a new hole wider than the grand canyon and prove to the non-technically inclined how full of it SCO's claims really are. I feel (again, just opinion) that if SCO appealed their loss to IBM, an appeals court may refuse to accept it. SCO would only appeal to pump their stock some more, but I doubt the manipulation for their stock prices will work anymore.
What I have often questioned, is what will happen to the ownership of the Sys V code that this is all about in the first place? SCO is doomed, and after their demise I only hope:
A) Sys V code is proclaimed community property.
OR
B) IBM or Redhat obtains the code as part of the damages SCO brought them, and hopefully (in IBM's case because I have no doubt about what Redhat would do) the Sys V code is GPL'd.
My only concern is SCO filing for bankruptcy, liquidating its assets, and the Sys V code falls into the hands of a company that will try to create more FUD *cough*MS*cough*. Now that is a scary thought.
What are your thoughts on it?
If you haven't already, you may want to try gaim. You won't run into the problem you are describing by using multiple MSM accounts, *nix and Win32 versions, it's OSS, and is rapidly developing. If Microsoft breaks the service, I doubt it would take the developers on the project long to fix it in their client.
It may be one heck of a long shot for them, but dumber rulings have been made before. Suddenly SCO not only owns Linux, but that could also qualify them as owning BSD as well as anything that even closely resembles UNIX in one way or another. They might even be able to lay claim to parts of every operating system out there so long as that OS borrowed concepts from UNIX (or BSD, Linux, etc.) Doesn't Windows have code copied from BSD too? Or maybe that is what Microsoft "lisenced" already..."
Thanks for the FUD.
A long shot SCO victory is possible, however, it is extremely unlikely. Considering the massive amounts of money attached to this suit, I highly doubt a random "stupid and/or tech ignorant judge" will be presiding.
In addition to the unlikelihood of a completely tech ignorant judge presiding, even if one did, that isn't much of a factor considering the suit is to be decided by a jury and not a judge. As far as one worrying about a stupid and/or tech ignorant jury, if the jurors are all too stupid to realize the outlandishness of SCO's claims, it will boil down to which companies lawyers can win at a pissing contest of courtroom showmanship. IBM is still highly favored in that respect.
Let's say the planets align, an ice skating rink opens in hell, and you see Miss Piggy fly by your window and SCO actually wins the suit. Well, I guess the world is screwed and belongs to SCO, unless I don't know, IBM decides to appeal the decision instead of handing McBride $3,000,000,000.
"...Blaster exploited a flaw in most current versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system for personal computers, laptops and server computers. Although Microsoft posted a software patch to fix the flaw on July 16, many users failed to download the patch, leaving them vulnerable to the worm, which first started hitting computers around the world on Monday. ..."
I could have sworn I had read the exact same statement in a different article a few days ago. The statement had stuck in my head because it implied the worm problem was completely users fault for not installing the patch. Since it seemed so familiar, I googled the phrase "Although Microsoft posted a software patch to fix the flaw" (google limits you to ten words or less). Lo and behold, hundreds of hits for individual separate articles from "different" news sources with the exact same paragraph, completely verbatim. I am aware that information is shared through the associated press, but personally I find it unsettling that all of these news authors do little more than cut and paste another authors words (and voice), instead of writing an article on the same subject with different points of view or ways of expressing the facts. It is especially concerning when the statement in this example seems to slant blame away from a responsible party, Microsoft, in a serious situation that they are largely (IMO) accountable for.
Perhaps I am off topic, but I felt obliged to point out my discovery. I didn't think it was possible, but my level of trust in the quality of information in the media has dropped yet another rung.
"...The 2.2 tree needs a new maintainer, someone who can spend their entire life refusing patches, being ignored by the mainstream (because 2.2 is boring) and by vendors (who don't ship 2.2 any more)..." -Alan Cox
Emphasis mine.
An economist is in a public restroom and see's a quarter ($.25) in the toilet. He does some quick calculations in his head, and decides that the effort of bending over to pick up the 25 cents, the possibility of disease for sticking his hand in a filthy toilet, and the mental anguish of doing such a despicable act isn't worth the measly one quarter dollar. So he throws another quarter in the toilet, bends over, sticks his and in, and retrieves the 50 cents.
It's not the funniest joke on the planet, but this is the first chance I've had to use it and it does make one think of the logic of some people/professions.
I think it is completely resonable to make decisions based soley on your ethics. To give an example, I have big feet. If the only shoes available in my size were made in 3rd world sweat shops, I would choose not to wear shoes, rather than rationalize "I need shoes and my only option is what comes from sweat shops." My feet would most likely quickly become worn and sore, I couldn't go into many businesses, yet I would still survive.
I see RMS as being disgusted with the proverbial "shoe sweatshops" of the software industry. The companies who pimp and profit at the dire expense of others. I think of his fanaticism as an equivilant to someone screaming "Don't buy Nike's! don't you know where they come from? Don't you know what you're supporting?!?"
It is up to each individual to decide if RMS is full of B.S., if the proverbial sweatshops even exist, but that has nothing to do with the idea of basing decisions off of ethics instead of gratification as being flawed.
--Part of Linux's appeal is the freedom to CHOOSE. If the *only* software that RMS ever uses has to be "free" then sorry, he's missing out.
Your last statement implies that "free" software might be the only thing RMS ever uses. I think it is quite safe to say it is the only thing RMS uses. He is quite the zealot, he not only started Gnu/FSF, but gave up his employment at the time due to his refusal to sign NDA's and use proprietary software. Many of his writings on Gnu/FSF's website reference his complete refusal to use any software that isn't "free" (speach). The whole point of Gnu/FSF is due to refusal to ever use non "free" software.
Lastly, I'm not exactly an RMS supporter, but I don't hate the guy either. I do believe in one deciding what their ethics are and standing by them. I also felt your reference to what "RMS might use" put into question his level of fanaticism so I felt obliged to respond that from reading what he's put on Gnu's website, I think it would be a cold day in the seventh ring before he used any software that wasn't "free".
From the article:
"Since most auction bidders look at a seller's feedback messages before they place a bid to determine whether the seller is trustworthy, Nelson devoted a lot of energy to creating positive feedback profiles for his various online identities. One identity of Nelson's would "sell" an item to another, and then the "buyer" would post positive feedback on the "seller." Nelson would also buy inexpensive items, like paperback books, from sellers who actually existed, hoping that they would add good feedback to his profile. He didn't care about actually receiving the books, and he regularly used a fake mailing address.
Once an identity had received enough positive feedback to be considered trustworthy, Nelson would set up a "Dutch auction," in which he claimed to have a large batch of a particular item to sell. Dutch auctions allow sellers to post quantities of identical merchandise all at once, rather than item by item, and bidders can buy as many as they want. By the time buyers started complaining to Yahoo or eBay that they'd paid but never received the product, causing that particular identity of Nelson's to be suspended from selling, Nelson would have collected most of the money. In June 2000, one identity, harddrives4sale, took $32,104 from would-be buyers on Yahoo; in September, another identity raked in $12,985 on eBay."
So to answer your question, according to the article Nelson exploited an imperfect system to make his profile appear trustworthy.
I'd mod you up if you were right. I want to mod you down since you're ill informed but I'd rather make a correction.
Your statement could be taken three ways, first, if you are implying the allocation capabilities of FAT32 is a disk size of 2GB:
FAT 16 has a 4GB limit.
FAT 32 has a 127GB limit.
Personally, I thought FAT16 had a 2GB allocation limit, and dated sources from Microsoft concurs with that. Yet the most informative reference I could find from the horse's mouth references 4GB for FAT16 under Win2k, and 127GB for FAT32. Most notably from the site:
"...The most significant difference between FAT16 and FAT32 is the maximum number of clusters supported, which in turn affects a volume's maximum size and storage efficiency. FAT32 breaks the 4-GB volume limitation of FAT16 by extending the maximum number of clusters to over 4 million. FAT32, as implemented in Windows 2000, can mount a volume as large as 127 GB..."
Secondly, if you are implying FAT32 has a 2GB filesize limitation, from the same MS source:
"...The largest possible file for a FAT32 volume is 4 GB minus 2 bytes..."
Emphasis mine.
I doubt this one, but if you are implying the FAT32 file allocation table has a 2GB limit, to reference MS again:
"...FAT32 contains 4 bytes per cluster in the file allocation table;...A FAT32 volume must have at least 65,527 clusters, but no more than 4,177,918 clusters..." 4,177,918*4 = 16,711,672 or a little over 16MB maximum limit for the table.
How could one already be infected if their computer hasn't been running? Maybe he's implying "as soon as you turn on your computer you'll be infected", I don't know.
Millions of unprotected personal computers remain vulnerable to the worm, which can infect any machine connected to the Internet, experts said Tuesday.
Really? I thought it was only Win2k, XP, and 03, not every computer on the planet. But experts said so, so I guess it must be true.
The worm attacks computers through a flaw in the part of Windows that allows computers to share files and control Inter net traffic. Four versions of Windows operating systems are targeted: Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Oh you are aware it doesn't affect every computer on the planet. That's good because five paragraphs before you said it did and now you're contradicting yourself. Wonderful
"This is certainly a capable person who did this," Sundwall said. "In most cases, it takes about six to nine months for a worm to appear after a patch is released. This is certainly something that did occur quicker than we are accustomed to."
Because it is just so hard to create a self replicating buffer overflow program. It's not like this is down to a science. The statement implies a team of developers would have to sit down for a year to create something this "sophisticated". It couldn't be that MS products are inherently insecure and easily exploitable. There are thousands if not millions of people "capable" of this, just not immature enough.
You'll notice some of my excerpts are quotes from within the article, and not necessarily the words of the author. The author still choose to include this malformed crap.
I would recommend seeing this older Slashdot article concerning the worm or going to google to find better written information on the matter. The facts within the new article are interesting, but so blatantly misrepresented it's annoying and I would view an alternative source.
Well, the article states:
"Eolas, a closely held Illinois company founded by former University of California professor Michael Doyle, had originally sought licensing fees that would potentially have totaled $1.2 billion."
To answer your question of whether Microsoft feels it was worth it, I think it's safe to assume they do. $500 million in damages that they may not even have to pay after the appeal is obviously much cheaper than the $1.2 billion they would've paid to license the patent.
At most the company bundling GCC with an OS would have to make the _GCC source_ available to anyone who wants it. That's it. If the OS maker used GCC code, added their own improvements, and released the new compiler (bundled with an OS, on cd's, or even off it's website for free) the company would have to make the source code for their _new complier_ freely available to anyone who wants it under the terms of the GPL.
The licensing of bundled pieces of software have nothing to do with one another. Bundling OSS and proprietary software together doesn't mean the GPL will "infect" the proprietary. Now if you take portions of GPL'd code and incorporate it in your OS, the OS is supposed to be GPL'd. If you don't want to GPL your OS, don't incorporate GPL'd code into it! Write your own.
Well, by that rational there should be no Coast Guard since a significant amount of the population is landlocked. There should be no federal funding for the INS to increase patrols on the Mexico-U.S. border since that isn't much of a problem to the citizens in Minnesota. Heck, there shouldn't be federal funding for higher educational institutions because they do not benefit every citizen directly.
A typical response may be "Well, the Coast Guard, INS, and higher educational institutions benefit many directly, and benefit most indirectly, so they are still for the public good." Well that's exactly what OSS does.
Although not "EVERYONE" uses Linux or open source, "EVERYONE" does benefit from its use. Unless you live in a hole, you benefit from it directly on a daily basis, whether you realize it or not. Even those who do not benefit from it directly, benefit from it indirectly. Since further adoption benefits most if not all people, I think the author of the article suggesting further adoption and additional governmental support under the pretense of "the public good" is an insightful valid suggestion.
The thought that something for the public good means "an item or service that must benefit every individual directly" as is implied in your comment is completely ridiculous, a flawed presumption, and I feel you are careless for stating it as fact.
Not only do I have a hard time believing that SCO isn't well aware that no one owes them money, but I have a hard time believing they are not well aware that their lawsuits and demands don't stand an ice cubes chance in hell. Yet the company is still filing law suits and still making outragous claims that anyone living or who has ever lived owes them money.
Since I feel they are aware that nobody owes them money, and they are also aware that they don't have a chance in getting anything from anyone, my question is, what's the point of all this? The first and obvious response is stock manipulation, which has obviously been going on. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I feel that there is more to it than that. In my opinion, this seems to be more than just a smear and FUD campaign to manipulate stock.
Besides the obvious stock manipulation, what do you think some motives for this campaign may be and why? I'd especially love to hear from those of you wearing a tin foil helmet. I just have a hard time believing the attempts at completely discrediting OSS is simply a convenient side effect of a smear/FUD campaign to manipulate stock. I think some good conspiracy theories would be intriguing.
Think of getting a probe to Mars as two steps:
1. Getting off the Earth and out of the gravity well.
2. Travel immense distance to Mars.
If Mars is closer, then not as much fuel is needed for step two. If there isn't as much fuel needed for step two, then the load will be lighter for step one. If everything is lighter in step one, a smaller rocket can be used to lift the whole mess off the ground.
To clear up confusion, the energy needed to escape from the Earths gravitational pull is constant, it's the amount of mass that needs to escape that is different. With Mars closer not as much fuel will be needed to reach the planet, so the probe + fuel lifted by the rocket will be lighter, so a smaller rocket can be used.
It is role playing after all, and without evil roles being filled, who would be in conflict with all the do gooders?
Unless the game is "Virtual Boyscout" or "Utopia Online" I think the evil roles are definitely necessary.
Besides the necessity, who wants to be a good guy all the time? I don't mind playing a bad guy, if in the process I'm taken down by do-gooders, so be it, I don't mind. If I'm playing a good guy and evildoers get me, oh well. That's the point of the game, conflict. I try to win, and if I'm going down, I'm going down hard (and taking as many with me as possible). I'm not just going to roll over, how much fun is it for anyone to win a rigged "good should always beat evil" fight?
Not to be offensive, but some comments I've read seem to hint at the idea "everyone should be winner". In my opinion, how can one win if someone doesn't lose? Forget that, I'll take my wins and my losses. Winning without the possibility of losing is meaningless, and even losing can be fun too.
Isn't the whole point just to have fun anyway?
Better Business Bureau of Utah 5673 S. Redwood Rd., #22 Salt Lake City, UT 84123 -5322 Phone: (801)892-6009 Fax: (801)892-6002 Email: complaints@utah.bbb.org WWW: http://www.utah.bbb.org
And the BBB has somewhat dated information still referring to them as Caldera. You may wish to reference the company as:
Caldera International 355 South 520 West Lindon, UT 84042 (801) 765-4999 http://sco.com
Wow, nothing slips past you does it? $13.49 handling fee. Shipping worker wage is around minimum (what, around six dollars an hour these days?). So roughly two hours of handling necessary to warrant that much of a handling charge. See my previous comment for attempted light hearted ideas of what those two hours of "necessary" handling may be for. Or perish the thought, it really takes at most a minute of "handling", and the $13.49 is really just to squeeze more pennies out of customers.
go figure that one out
Now, why don't you "go figure that one out", troll.
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