This could turn out the be the best thing for the corporate image of Linux ever
I think that SCO must be really helping the Open Source Development Lab to bring more corporates on board. SCO's recent actions against the automobile industry, for instance, give the OSDL a great opportunity to go to all of the big automakers and say "this is what can happen if you buy software from proprietry vendors like SCO. We offer a different model..."
Re:Lawsuits dig a deeper financial hole for SCO?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Efforts to license Linux cost SCO $3.4 million in the first quarter. That's right, one-third of total revenue was wiped out. The payback? Twenty thousand dollars.
Some things about all of this are very clear to me.
SCO was a relatively big company before, which they are now knowingly destroying. They are are following legal actions that don't make sense and are unlikely to return as much money as they cost. Why? That doesn't make sense.
The common Slashdot response is it is because they are stupid. I don't think so. If they are not stupid, then what could explain these apparently nonsensical actions? Well, if it was in someone else's interest that Linux had legal difficulties...
maybe, just maybe EV1 was somehow tied into MS "you pay SCO a licensing fee, we'll discout your W2K server licenses by the same amount" but that's a bit too much tin-foil-hat thinking
Don't dismiss it just because it is "tin-foil-hat thinking". Microsoft couldn't fund SCO directly to cause Linux all these legal problems - the legal and PR implications of that would be too much. So they'd have to do it through partners.
Before we all get too excited, remember all the fuss in about 1996(?) when it was claimed that fossil bacteria traces had been found in a martian meteoite. And then turned out not to be true.
Just out of interest, does the media in the USA cover space news from other countries? For instance, was the launching of the European "Rosetta" probe today covered?
It is a fascinating project. Take a look at the "Animated guide to the Rosetta mission" about half way down the page on this BBC news item).
I know that views like yours are common in the USA. However, many of us here in Europe look to the USA and don't much difference in the level of "free speech" in either place. True, there are a few laws in a few countries in Europe that go against "free speech" in the strictest sense. But in the USA you have something we don't have so much of - increadable social pressure to conform to what society thinks is right.
For instance, we don't have any type of speech that is publicly ridiculed for being "Un-european". We don't have ridiculous over-reactions like that of your country to the exposure of a woman's breast. And what is "free speech" if your actors cannot give their personal opinions about current events when accepting awards?
The access to the infinitely duplicable material destroys the notion of scarcity of the product itself
Currently when assessing the "damage" when a copyright violation has taken place, the retail cost of the item is used. However, this doesn't make sense - when a 14 year old kid pirates a movie industry standard $40,000 dollar 3D rendering package - is the damage really $40,000? Of course not, it is really $0. (I'm not saying the kid should go unpunished - that's a different argument).
I think if they want to make this message strongly they should keep it simple. Making the distinction between "free software" and "open source" will just confuse most members of the public. Isn't "open source" also about free speech? The same general principals apply don't they? Why do they have to confuse the issue?
IBM are being very intelligent. They are moving with the market.
It used to be that everyone in the IT world was closed and proprietary. OSS is changing that, and IBM know it. IBM are going with the flow, not fighting it.
RTFA - Microsoft proposes a standard which any vendor can implement and provides a license for its use on the website describing the process. There sis nothing client specific about the implementation.
I did read the article. But MS has a history of breaking standards to create customer "lock-in", and also trumpeting open standards when in fact what they finally implement isn't open at all (Office "XML" for example). What I'm saying is that, in this case it would be difficult for MS to do that because email client software is very varied.
At least this is one area where MS will have a real problem using their monopoly to enforce a closed standard. A solution that doesn't work for people that don't use MS software just isn't going to fly.
Having done work on (opt-in) HTML newsletters for clients, I know that email clients used are really varied - more varied than web browsers for instance.
Any one else noticed that the quality of productions on the BBC has fallen off drastically the last couple of years?
No, not really. Memory has the effect of compressing things from the past together (like how you only remember all the good songs from the last decade, and not all the crap), so it probably just seems that way.
Maybe leading to the creation a distributed archive of sorts, because the BBC doesn't exactly have a great track record of keeping its own archives,
For those Slashdotters that don't know, the BBC committed the outrageous sin of recording over much of the live shows of "Pete and Dud", Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Peter Cook was nothing short of a comic genius, and for the BBC to have destroyed much of his work when he was at his peak is a crying shame.
(Note that other than this outrage, I think the BBC is great.)
the problem for the US is that its traditional allies are starting to look more and more like strategic adversaries every day.
Yes, but it's the US that has changed, not the allies. When all your friends suddenly stop liking and trusting you, the chances are that it's you that's the problem, not your friends!
Arthur, it's one set of people perceiving themselves as different from (and by implication superior to) another
Yes, but the problem is that nearly all religions actually encourage people to perceive themselves as different, or superior, if they belong to that religion.
if man hadn't used religion as an excuse for this despicable behaviour, we'd have used something else instead.
Really? So the Crusades, for instance, would have still happened if there wasn't a religious basis for it? I doubt it very much.
So this is a similar effort to Autopackage except that it plans on using the native package formats?
Except that this guy has just stated the idea and made a couple of mock-up screenshots, whereas the autopackage guys are coming up with a complete, sensible solution and are leaving the interface until the end.
If it wasn't all commodity hardware it would cost too much to make a system with the Xbox's specifications
That's the kind of thinking that has got MS in so much trouble with the X-Box, and why they are loosing so much money on it.
When you are making 50 million of something which are all exactly the same then it is cheaper to design and manufacture specialist hardware than to use "off-the-shelf" components.
I remember reading the Wired article about the X-Box and remember thinking "what a bunch of dumbasses". It was as if they thought the major electronics manufacturers don't try to shave every last penny off production costs when they create a mass produced item. And of course the last laugh is on them, making huge losses with every X-Box sold because it is made with "off-the-shelf" components whilst Sony continues to lower the unit cost of the PS2 because it has complete control over the production of the hardware.
Does anyone know - are MS still losing money on the X-Box?
I read somewhere that they might reduce the price further to $99. It seems to have come down in price really fast, but they don't seem to have made the same efficiencies in production as Sony has with the PS2, because of the way the X-Box was designed. I imagine that Sony could reduce to $99 at the same time but MS would be taking the bigger hit.
Don't you think any halfway-decent conspiracy could plant a few of these things out in the desert somewhere?
Overall an OK hypothesis, but I think it falls down on this one point.
It was very easy for the government to lie about WMD. Say, the Intelligence Services have someone who says his brother knows a man who thinks overheard someone talking about Saddam's biological weapsons. The Intelligence Services dismiss it as poor evidence, but the government are so desparate to find anything that will support their desire to go to war that they choose to accept it. So in accepting a peice of dubious evidence, and then passing it onto the public, they have effectively lied. I don't find it too difficult to imagine this kind of "conspiracy" has taken place.
What you're talking about is in a whole different league. For the Brits or Americans to deliberately take biological or nuclear weapons into Iraq, hide them, and then pretend to "find" them - the risks of doing that, and the chances of getting found out, are so high that it's something I don't think they would never try.
I think they probably thought "we think they might have WMD, but we haven't got much good evidence. Let's tell the public we do have good evidence so they object less when we invade, then we're sure to find something once we're there and the public will be satisfied." Only they didn't.
Slashdot Mirror
This could turn out the be the best thing for the corporate image of Linux ever
I think that SCO must be really helping the Open Source Development Lab to bring more corporates on board. SCO's recent actions against the automobile industry, for instance, give the OSDL a great opportunity to go to all of the big automakers and say "this is what can happen if you buy software from proprietry vendors like SCO. We offer a different model..."
Efforts to license Linux cost SCO $3.4 million in the first quarter. That's right, one-third of total revenue was wiped out. The payback? Twenty thousand dollars.
Some things about all of this are very clear to me.
SCO was a relatively big company before, which they are now knowingly destroying. They are are following legal actions that don't make sense and are unlikely to return as much money as they cost. Why? That doesn't make sense.
The common Slashdot response is it is because they are stupid. I don't think so. If they are not stupid, then what could explain these apparently nonsensical actions? Well, if it was in someone else's interest that Linux had legal difficulties...
maybe, just maybe EV1 was somehow tied into MS "you pay SCO a licensing fee, we'll discout your W2K server licenses by the same amount" but that's a bit too much tin-foil-hat thinking
Don't dismiss it just because it is "tin-foil-hat thinking". Microsoft couldn't fund SCO directly to cause Linux all these legal problems - the legal and PR implications of that would be too much. So they'd have to do it through partners.
Haliburtan probe to be launched at 4pm Friday.
To be paid for by the US tax payer at a cost of (pinkie to corner of mouth) one hundred billion dollars!!
Before we all get too excited, remember all the fuss in about 1996(?) when it was claimed that fossil bacteria traces had been found in a martian meteoite. And then turned out not to be true.
Just out of interest, does the media in the USA cover space news from other countries? For instance, was the launching of the European "Rosetta" probe today covered?
It is a fascinating project. Take a look at the "Animated guide to the Rosetta mission" about half way down the page on this BBC news item).
I know that views like yours are common in the USA. However, many of us here in Europe look to the USA and don't much difference in the level of "free speech" in either place. True, there are a few laws in a few countries in Europe that go against "free speech" in the strictest sense. But in the USA you have something we don't have so much of - increadable social pressure to conform to what society thinks is right.
For instance, we don't have any type of speech that is publicly ridiculed for being "Un-european". We don't have ridiculous over-reactions like that of your country to the exposure of a woman's breast. And what is "free speech" if your actors cannot give their personal opinions about current events when accepting awards?
The access to the infinitely duplicable material destroys the notion of scarcity of the product itself
Currently when assessing the "damage" when a copyright violation has taken place, the retail cost of the item is used. However, this doesn't make sense - when a 14 year old kid pirates a movie industry standard $40,000 dollar 3D rendering package - is the damage really $40,000? Of course not, it is really $0. (I'm not saying the kid should go unpunished - that's a different argument).
"It's free software, it's not open source"
I think if they want to make this message strongly they should keep it simple. Making the distinction between "free software" and "open source" will just confuse most members of the public. Isn't "open source" also about free speech? The same general principals apply don't they? Why do they have to confuse the issue?
What changed, specifically?
IBM are being very intelligent. They are moving with the market.
It used to be that everyone in the IT world was closed and proprietary. OSS is changing that, and IBM know it. IBM are going with the flow, not fighting it.
RTFA - Microsoft proposes a standard which any vendor can implement and provides a license for its use on the website describing the process. There sis nothing client specific about the implementation.
I did read the article. But MS has a history of breaking standards to create customer "lock-in", and also trumpeting open standards when in fact what they finally implement isn't open at all (Office "XML" for example). What I'm saying is that, in this case it would be difficult for MS to do that because email client software is very varied.
At least this is one area where MS will have a real problem using their monopoly to enforce a closed standard. A solution that doesn't work for people that don't use MS software just isn't going to fly.
Having done work on (opt-in) HTML newsletters for clients, I know that email clients used are really varied - more varied than web browsers for instance.
Any one else noticed that the quality of productions on the BBC has fallen off drastically the last couple of years?
No, not really. Memory has the effect of compressing things from the past together (like how you only remember all the good songs from the last decade, and not all the crap), so it probably just seems that way.
Maybe leading to the creation a distributed archive of sorts, because the BBC doesn't exactly have a great track record of keeping its own archives,
For those Slashdotters that don't know, the BBC committed the outrageous sin of recording over much of the live shows of "Pete and Dud", Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Peter Cook was nothing short of a comic genius, and for the BBC to have destroyed much of his work when he was at his peak is a crying shame.
(Note that other than this outrage, I think the BBC is great.)
the problem for the US is that its traditional allies are starting to look more and more like strategic adversaries every day.
Yes, but it's the US that has changed, not the allies. When all your friends suddenly stop liking and trusting you, the chances are that it's you that's the problem, not your friends!
So the Atheist Fascists never did anything bad without Religon?
If you are referring to Adolf Hitler, he was a Christian and spoke quite a bit about Christianity in Mein Kampf.
Arthur, it's one set of people perceiving themselves as different from (and by implication superior to) another
Yes, but the problem is that nearly all religions actually encourage people to perceive themselves as different, or superior, if they belong to that religion.
if man hadn't used religion as an excuse for this despicable behaviour, we'd have used something else instead.
Really? So the Crusades, for instance, would have still happened if there wasn't a religious basis for it? I doubt it very much.
So this is a similar effort to Autopackage except that it plans on using the native package formats?
Except that this guy has just stated the idea and made a couple of mock-up screenshots, whereas the autopackage guys are coming up with a complete, sensible solution and are leaving the interface until the end.
Damn, that is a cute little beast.
Better not show it to Disney's lawyers or they'll be suing it for copyright infringement.
If it wasn't all commodity hardware it would cost too much to make a system with the Xbox's specifications
That's the kind of thinking that has got MS in so much trouble with the X-Box, and why they are loosing so much money on it.
When you are making 50 million of something which are all exactly the same then it is cheaper to design and manufacture specialist hardware than to use "off-the-shelf" components.
I remember reading the Wired article about the X-Box and remember thinking "what a bunch of dumbasses". It was as if they thought the major electronics manufacturers don't try to shave every last penny off production costs when they create a mass produced item. And of course the last laugh is on them, making huge losses with every X-Box sold because it is made with "off-the-shelf" components whilst Sony continues to lower the unit cost of the PS2 because it has complete control over the production of the hardware.
Does anyone know - are MS still losing money on the X-Box?
I read somewhere that they might reduce the price further to $99. It seems to have come down in price really fast, but they don't seem to have made the same efficiencies in production as Sony has with the PS2, because of the way the X-Box was designed. I imagine that Sony could reduce to $99 at the same time but MS would be taking the bigger hit.
Don't you think any halfway-decent conspiracy could plant a few of these things out in the desert somewhere?
Overall an OK hypothesis, but I think it falls down on this one point.
It was very easy for the government to lie about WMD. Say, the Intelligence Services have someone who says his brother knows a man who thinks overheard someone talking about Saddam's biological weapsons. The Intelligence Services dismiss it as poor evidence, but the government are so desparate to find anything that will support their desire to go to war that they choose to accept it. So in accepting a peice of dubious evidence, and then passing it onto the public, they have effectively lied. I don't find it too difficult to imagine this kind of "conspiracy" has taken place.
What you're talking about is in a whole different league. For the Brits or Americans to deliberately take biological or nuclear weapons into Iraq, hide them, and then pretend to "find" them - the risks of doing that, and the chances of getting found out, are so high that it's something I don't think they would never try.
I think they probably thought "we think they might have WMD, but we haven't got much good evidence. Let's tell the public we do have good evidence so they object less when we invade, then we're sure to find something once we're there and the public will be satisfied." Only they didn't.
A "Hutton"?
Good idea. It even sounds a bit like an insult.
Or how about "Brian?" (Hutton's first name)
Man 1: "Blair absolutely categorically denies that, so it can't be true."
Man 2: "You are such a fricking Brian".
sheep
Yep, sheep is a good term. I'm not sure what would motivate someone to mod you down to -1.
Well, before I thought you were just goofing around, but now you totally sound like a paranoid conspiracy nutter.
Why?