Reginald Broughton, the Senior VP of SCO, has made approximately $1,493,650 since June 20, 2003 in stock sale... The worst they'll get is a slap on the wrist... Especially since it's a puny company perpetuating a stock scam based on a computer OS barely anybody outside of the technical realm has heard of.
Part of me entirely agrees with you... the executives at SCO and the Canopy Group are total scum and shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. This clearly looks like a scam, and hopefully some smoking gun evidence will come out that not only demonstrates that SCO is wrong, but that they knew they were wrong and can be held individually liable for their actions.
On the other hand, as you point out, this isn't a mainstream stock, and the earlier story on Renaissance Ventures gave us some insight into the mind of a typical SCO investor. SCO is closely held and unlikely to be held by many "average" joes -- I bet the majority of shareholders are either 1) insiders; 2) "strategic" partners; 3) investors who understand the big gamble and are betting on a slim chance of a big payoff; or 4) investors who haven't taken the time to do their homework.
In effect, the scam is really just money being transferred amongst wealthy people and companies that are either in on it, should know better, or do do know better but are taking their chances. I don't feel sorry for these investors and I'm not sure that there's necessarily anything illegal about it. If you're dumb enough or greedy enough to invest in a company like this (or buy silly licences from them) then you shouldn't be surprised when their executives walk away with your millions.
Of course, SCO and the Canopy Group need to be punished by the courts for messing with IBM, Linux, the IT industry, general confidence in the stock market, and especially for their abuse of the legal system. Again, I hope that a smoking gun emerges that clearly pins responsibility on individual executives and investors who can be held accountable for the actions of the company.
Maybe they just missed the boat on this one, but the final bullet point in the above document (also quoted in the Groklaw commentary) seems like a remarkable testament to a total lack of competence in very simple due diligence (or possibly to some unscruplous behavior, but either way I can only imagine investors having pretty good grounds to consider action) as well as their obvious inability to understand very basic facts about technology and the history of the computer industry:
"One possible outcome of the IBM lawsuit is the death of Linux, in which case, we believe, SCO owns the bulk of the intellectual property - the "root of the UNIX tree" - for the world's dominant, hardened enterprise operating system. Certainly software markets would be in disarray, but given the practical alternative to unplugging the lights, we believe a worst-case scenario of the world abandoning Linux and flocking back to UNIX would not be so bad for SCO. SCO once held the dominant UNIX market share, and we believe SCO's current management team is capable of delivering that again if it needs to do so."
In light of the above, please note that Renaissance also sells advisory services that essentially consist of "analysis" like the above about their portfolio companies:
"Minimum pricing begins at $10,000 and includes our detailed financial model, including margin analysis, of the specific issuing company plus 30 days of telephone consultation services. All fees are payable in advance. Please contact us to discuss your particular interest and pricing at info@renventures.com."
The entire point of this document is to get Darl & Co. out of hot water when the lawsuits start flying.
Agreed. But there might be a good case that this particular disclaimer is not strong enough if SCO execs can be shown to know how weak a case they have or that they've done little due diligence. Either SCO's executive's have something (they don't), they're really dumb (at least partly true), or they realize this is a long shot and they're just playing the probabilities and cashing out while they can (very possibly).
Here's a theory -- maybe the real villian is the Canopy Group itself. A VC knows that most of the companies in its portfolio will fail, but one or two might beat the odds and make it really big. Maybe the Canopy Group is doing the same thing, but playing the long odds with the courts rather than the markets. If so, we should really direct our anger at the Canopy Group, and encourage actions against them and their associated companies.
I would love to see the reporting shift from talking about "SCO..." to talking about "the Canopy Group's SCO..." or simply about the "Canopy Group...", or even the "Canopy Group, whose portfolio includes SCO, LinuxNetworx, SnapGear, Troll Tech, Helius, etc..." to spread the blame around and diminish this portfolio approach.
Who knows? Maybe some of the investors who are currently holding onto SCO stock realize how much of a scam this is and are just waiting to sue SCO and it's executives. At first glance, this would be dumb, because SCO will be out of business and pinning it personally on the executives and directors might be tough. But what perhaps they could stick it to the Canopy Group. What happens to them if SCO goes under and they're held blameless?
If you go to either mobokmeow.com or moobockmeow.com , it delivers you to a verisign page.
And some might say that at least that Verisign site includes a link to your site (and only your site). That might be okay, right? I mean better than everyone who doesn't get the benefit of the redirect. Well, of course not.
While I'm generally in favour of letting sites freely link to any other site, this isn't just anybody putting your site on their webpage, this is a company you've paid money to (probably, directly or indirectly) that is pulling your name out of their database for a different commercial use without your permission. This is different from a search engine combing the net to create a published set of databases (even one that associate sites contextually or corrects typos) because this is a direct breach of trust with the very entity charged with protecting your information, and, at the very least, it's very bad business.
Surely this is infringing on the good name of moobokmeow.com!
There might be a legal trademark case, but I don't think there should be (unless this specifically breaches part of their contracts). While it's tempting to fight fire with fire, it would require a further abuse of IP laws of the kind that so many of us are against. Really, this is just a dumb business idea that should be stopped through market pressure -- hopefully they'll pull it either before or after they get some mainstream press picks up the angle and labels this as "typosquatting". If so, it could cause companies to start taking our opinions seriously.
IIRC, there was a website slipup where obituaries for people who weren't dead yet suddenly appeared in a code glitch. I think Ronald Reagan was one of them... pretty amusing how poignant they read.
It was a CNN webserver, and was fark.com that found and linked to the pages that included the pre-written obituaries. Some of them are available at The Smoking Gun.
I think their creative math comes into play in how they measure "major offenders". I mean, they're suing anonymous young kids who probably aren't fully aware of the ethics involved, but I highly doubt that they're suing those who freely admit to and encourage illegal file swapping, like the article in Time that was posted on the front page of CNN today and included links to P2P software reviews by CNET. Or what about NARAS president Michael Greene hiring three teenagers to download music - who gave him a free ride? I don't think the RIAA has the authority to even authorize its own executive to "violate" its members copyrights en masse.
Could the threatened students and teenagers point to these as examples of discrimination or selective prosecution? Or does it mean that journalists and industry types are immune and everyone else should safely restrict their P2P activities to "special projects" - like researching how many songs can be enjoyably swapped and listened to over a series of annual periods (for later publication, of course)?
a 15% change in form or function of a patented device is grounds for a new patent.
IANAL (either, I assume) but this type of reasoning is a common assumption that is entirely incorrect. If a patent is properly written it should come down to a binary test -- you either breach the claims or not. If the claims are very specific and the changes are novel, useful, and non-obvious, then even a minor change in form or function could allow be grounds for a new patent or allow one to engineer around an existing one. On the other hand, if the claims are very broad, or if the changes are quite obvious, then even a major alteration from the prefered embodiment described in the patent might not provide grounds for a new patent or even a way around the existing one. Of course the claims are often up for interpretation, but at any rate -- how can you even define an 15% change?
Also, I believe the original poster was aware that patents were around well before 1900 but was trying to make the point that if software patents (actually, business process patents) were accepted then the way they are today, then Ford (or someone similar) might have successfully patented automation processes and delayed their widescale adoption.
The cost of the RFID equipment probably gets back to the thief after the first house robbed.
Doubtful. I think most buglaries are committed by kids and opportunitists that will probably pawn your expensive stereo equipment for just enough money to pay for their next high. Unless you have some nice jewelry, they don't really care what kind of products you have in your house and mostly steal CD's and Videos because they're so easy to pawn, even though they're nearly worthless. If they got their hands on hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of RFID snooping equipment they'd probably pawn them off for about twenty bucks too.
I will second your opinion that the original post is "Damn" interesting (along with your follow-up) but I will add one more problem with this theory: by taking on and incurring the wrath of so many third parties, SCO has probably added to much potential liability for anyone who buys them out.
I actually argued in a previous post (earlier story) that IBM should buy SCO out at a ridiculously low price, partly to spite SCO's management and partly to avoid any potential cover-up in a settlement. But now I disagree: if IBM bought them out now then just about anyone involved with Linux or who has delayed Linux deployments would have a legitimate beef with the new IBM/SCO and could even point to IBM's case as an admission of guilt by IBM/SCO.
Great theory otherwise, and probably a less uncommon situation than we'd prefer to believe.
Very funny. Actually, part of me would like to see IBM buy them out - although at an embarassingly low value that would put any executive shares or options out of "the money".
A buyout would stop SCO from weaselling out with some settlement or partial court decision that lets them survive in some capacity or which would let avoid full admittance of fault. IBM could just buy them out for 25 cents a share and then fully "admit" and disclose without fair of slander/libel charges (as the owner of SCO - hard to libel yourself) what was done was entirely wrong.
Just a thought -- of course, at this point, buying SCO and admitting fault probably exposes the buyer to way too much liability. It would also be nice to see them crushed in court, hopefully sending a clear message to others...
Interesting points - I will try to find that article - but I'm pretty sure that most of the illegible spams that I get aren't simply "pings" or spammers ripping off third parties "clients". One of my own theories for this kind of spam is that most spammers aren't just dumb -- they're really, really, really dumb (and/or really, really, really, and probably clinically, nuts).
Although this article appears to indicate an exception, I've always assumed that most of the money made in spamming is by those that sell the spamming software and mailing lists to other (potential) spammers. I'd still bet that your average guilible spammer has spent a pretty penny on spam-ware, sent out millions of nearly illegible e-mails with no way to reply, and is still sitting back wondering why they aren't rich yet. There's probably pretty high turn-over and most eventually give up and start selling MLM with Amway or Primerica for the same reasons (the dream) with the same results (nothing).
Additionally, there's also the spammers who are just plain crazy, like the guy who needs help to travel back in time. Many of these are probably even less coherent in their delusions (or maybe they're using a secret language).
If there isn't a term already, someone should come up with a name for inept spam (maybe klik, prem, kam, or spork, named after the real world SPAM knock-offs - yes such things exist)...
I don't think this has anything to do with their lack of belief in Linux on the desktop. I think it's just further evidence that they have no interest in carrying on as a business entity and are entirely focused on litigation.
This certainly isn't a business decision - if it was they would continue to encourage the price advantage of Linux and offer much more reasonable fees, say $10 per seat, and maybe offer some support packages. Enough large businesses that already have Linux deployments would probably consider such a fee relatively incidental as an effective insurance policy. It might even encourage adoption at some companies who don't believe you can get anything for free. At anywhere between $5 and $50 per seat I bet they could do very well for themselves.
At $699 they very obviously don't expect anyone to pay (except maybe some allies like Microsoft who will very publicly purchase some token seats). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised that if you called their bluff and tried to purchase a seat that they're not even set up to sell them. This is only being done for legal reasons so they can easily quantify the damages they are seeking in court. I think they'll use these numbers (along with some comparable MSRP's for Windows and Unix seats) when trying to establish their "lost revenues" due to Linux.
Possibly they've hired the same "scienticians" as the RIAA. Hopefully the judge will see right through this ploy and nail them for flagrant abuse of the legal the system.
...failed at just about everything before becoming president.
Yeah, I guess you could say he was the George W. Bush of the 19th century...
[bracing to feel the wrath from conservative moderators who read that comparison as an undeserved attack and from liberals who read that as an undeserved compliment]
While college students and geeks have been downloading and ripping movies for years, at least on a limited basis, I don't think the general public has much awareness about movie piracy/sharing (certainly not when compared to music)......until now.
Sure there's usually stories about how the latest crappy sequel of the week is available on the net or in China before opening night, but I can't wait to see if movie downloading jumps significantly after this campaign.
I think this will be a case of "any publicity being good publicity" (where good = effective = bad from the MPAA perspective). Maybe they should just save their time and trade their millions in advertising right for a 25 cent call to Steve Jobs right now.
Perhaps successfully evading capture and surviving (maintaining full functionality, unlike in this case) for a proscribed period of time could be the basis for a new form of Turing test. Of course I have socks that meet that definition so it would need some heavy refinement...
Software Test Engineers could be a Software Design Enginer / Test (ie., a developer in the test department for automation and tools etc).
I probably shouldn't feed this, but I'll provide a clarification anyway - that was just an aside, my main point being more that there actually is a technical person listed on the patent - the smoking gun on these sorts of patents tends to be when they are registered by the VP of Marketing. My second point was simply to wonder how experienced the designer might be - a quick search found few results on variations of "Yonas D. Seme" so its doubtful he's very senior, but obviously a Software Test Engineer (even a junior one) could discribe such a system. The indication that this might be a relatively junior person and the fact there is only one "inventor" might also suggest that this whole discussion is a bit of a red herring - there is no indication that this is even under development at MS - maybe just something a junior engineer thought up and convinced their lawyers that there was enough worth to try for a patent.
This is why we need to change the system so that patents are published upon submission. The public can submit comments and prior art to the patent office and they can act more as administrators, like they are doing now.
In this case, the application has been published and this patent is likely two to three years away from approval (if ever). Of course this is only a voluntary process right now - and I wonder why MS has chosen this path - perhaps this is really just a "marketing patent" as someone else surmised (a quick Google search suggests that the "inventor" is a software test engineer - I wonder whether how experienced they are?).
As to submitting comments: certainly the USPTO has been posting jobs extensively in various technical magazines and journals targeting members of the slashdot set - I wonder how many of these new patent examiners are reading Slashdot right now? While far from a cure for this broken system, hopefully we'll start to see some savier decision made if these ads lead to hiring more computer literate (and perhaps even skeptical) patent examiners.
Bowen accuses Microsoft of having alterior motives for backing (in her opinion) a weaker anti-spam law. She might be right (weaker anti-spam laws might allow Microsoft to promote their own anti-spam software and/or deliver their own spam and/or sell mailing lists to others) but I can't entirely fault Microsoft's position on this one.
According to Microsoft, they're not backing the new bill because they want indemnity from spamming. Rather, it's because Bowen's bill apparently places greater responsibility and blame on ISP's for the conduct of spammers. I liken this to the classic arguments about suing the phone company for what happens over their phone systems, finding P2P software developers liable for the conduct of their users, or holding Google responsible for publishing search results.
I haven't seen the actual proposals to be sure, but if the articles accurately describe the competing bills, I don't see anything hypocritical about Microsoft's stance. I would much rather hold the spammers responsible than blame the ISP's (even Microsoft) for the conduct of their users. This is the kind of measure that further erodes our rights to privacy and further restricts our freedoms to use telecommunications infrastructure.
Of course, the bills should still have some provisions to encourage responsible ISP's and I would certainly be against provisions that would provide indemnity for "brand name spam", but I don't see any evidence of that in this case. Microsoft isn't automatically the enemy - this might just be a case of author's envy by Bowen.
You're probably right about it not working, and certainly right about there being better ways to fix the system - but I still think it's worth a shot. One of the outcomes would simply be the opportunity to introduce all these silly patents into evidence and perhaps get more publicity for the problems with the system than either a regular patent case about some technical matter that the average person (or legislater) doesn't understand or an offbeat or funny news story about a silly patent that just seems harmless. This would combine the two (easily to relate to silly patents with economicly significant silly patents) and help establish a pattern for the general public and lawmakers that is already obvious to most slashdot readers.
Also, the fact that it's not cut and dry might give the case a chance to make it past a lower court to at least a higher profile appeals court. And I do think there's a chance it could work (at least as a temporary band-aid) but it might be better if it was thrown out on appeals since it would make the point that the underlying system needs to change, not the interpretation.
Because the patent has been granted by the PTO, it has a presumption of validity. Thus, it is not frivolous to sue someone who is infringing the terms of the claims.
Great point, but perhaps a challenge to this presumption would be the best legal challenge to counter these out of control patents and perhaps a good way to earn some public and political points in the process.
We need someone with a valid case (and probably good lawyers and deep pockets) to counter-sue over an invalid patent. They could bring forward patents like the infamous "swinging sideways on a swing" and other less humourous, but more more serious dumb patents to make the case that the patent system is more of a registry for applications than a proper validation system. If they win on this point they could effectively lower the bar for the consideration of patent validity and remove the seemingly blanket immunity enjoyed by those who abuse the system.
Such a case, especially if it were brought to a higher court, would also have some great PR value in the fight against stupid patents by introducing some of the dumbest ones as evidence. I would love to see someone like Lessig join forces with someone like an IBM (maybe over the SCO case?) on this one!
IE already has an integrated search PANE as well as "search from the URL box" options. MS already includes it's own serach engine along with 8 or so others as selectable preferences and any can be chosen as the default. So... uh what was your point again?
My point was exactly that IE already has these poorly executed and easily ignored/disabled/redirected search functions. The article speaks about MS trying to compete with Google while also improving searches for local files (another function which already exists in Windows). The previous poster doubted that they could compete with Google's non-instrusive format - while I assume that MS is obviously planning (as they should) something even less intrusive than a simple portal and more pervasive like an improved search bar type application. My concern is not that it will be integrated into the system, but that it will be built into the system at the expense of other alternatives that I might prefer.
More completely baseless anti-MS FUD from a/. moron. Just what the world needs more of.
I don't mind Windows doing this -- it's a pretty obvious evolution of their product and the poorly integrated search capabilities within Windows is a major flaw -- I just hope that Google is prepared for this development because I like their product and from past experience I think that they'll be able to meet my needs better than MS.
Slashdot Mirror
Reginald Broughton, the Senior VP of SCO, has made approximately $1,493,650 since June 20, 2003 in stock sale... The worst they'll get is a slap on the wrist... Especially since it's a puny company perpetuating a stock scam based on a computer OS barely anybody outside of the technical realm has heard of.
Part of me entirely agrees with you... the executives at SCO and the Canopy Group are total scum and shouldn't be allowed to get away with this. This clearly looks like a scam, and hopefully some smoking gun evidence will come out that not only demonstrates that SCO is wrong, but that they knew they were wrong and can be held individually liable for their actions.
On the other hand, as you point out, this isn't a mainstream stock, and the earlier story on Renaissance Ventures gave us some insight into the mind of a typical SCO investor. SCO is closely held and unlikely to be held by many "average" joes -- I bet the majority of shareholders are either 1) insiders; 2) "strategic" partners; 3) investors who understand the big gamble and are betting on a slim chance of a big payoff; or 4) investors who haven't taken the time to do their homework.
In effect, the scam is really just money being transferred amongst wealthy people and companies that are either in on it, should know better, or do do know better but are taking their chances. I don't feel sorry for these investors and I'm not sure that there's necessarily anything illegal about it. If you're dumb enough or greedy enough to invest in a company like this (or buy silly licences from them) then you shouldn't be surprised when their executives walk away with your millions.
Of course, SCO and the Canopy Group need to be punished by the courts for messing with IBM, Linux, the IT industry, general confidence in the stock market, and especially for their abuse of the legal system. Again, I hope that a smoking gun emerges that clearly pins responsibility on individual executives and investors who can be held accountable for the actions of the company.
Maybe they just missed the boat on this one, but the final bullet point in the above document (also quoted in the Groklaw commentary) seems like a remarkable testament to a total lack of competence in very simple due diligence (or possibly to some unscruplous behavior, but either way I can only imagine investors having pretty good grounds to consider action) as well as their obvious inability to understand very basic facts about technology and the history of the computer industry:
"One possible outcome of the IBM lawsuit is the death of Linux, in which case, we believe, SCO owns the bulk of the intellectual property - the "root of the UNIX tree" - for the world's dominant, hardened enterprise operating system. Certainly software markets would be in disarray, but given the practical alternative to unplugging the lights, we believe a worst-case scenario of the world abandoning Linux and flocking back to UNIX would not be so bad for SCO. SCO once held the dominant UNIX market share, and we believe SCO's current management team is capable of delivering that again if it needs to do so."
In light of the above, please note that Renaissance also sells advisory services that essentially consist of "analysis" like the above about their portfolio companies:
"Minimum pricing begins at $10,000 and includes our detailed financial model, including margin analysis, of the specific issuing company plus 30 days of telephone consultation services. All fees are payable in advance. Please contact us to discuss your particular interest and pricing at info@renventures.com."
Any buyers?
The entire point of this document is to get Darl & Co. out of hot water when the lawsuits start flying.
Agreed. But there might be a good case that this particular disclaimer is not strong enough if SCO execs can be shown to know how weak a case they have or that they've done little due diligence. Either SCO's executive's have something (they don't), they're really dumb (at least partly true), or they realize this is a long shot and they're just playing the probabilities and cashing out while they can (very possibly).
Here's a theory -- maybe the real villian is the Canopy Group itself. A VC knows that most of the companies in its portfolio will fail, but one or two might beat the odds and make it really big. Maybe the Canopy Group is doing the same thing, but playing the long odds with the courts rather than the markets. If so, we should really direct our anger at the Canopy Group, and encourage actions against them and their associated companies.
I would love to see the reporting shift from talking about "SCO..." to talking about "the Canopy Group's SCO..." or simply about the "Canopy Group...", or even the "Canopy Group, whose portfolio includes SCO, LinuxNetworx, SnapGear, Troll Tech, Helius, etc..." to spread the blame around and diminish this portfolio approach.
Who knows? Maybe some of the investors who are currently holding onto SCO stock realize how much of a scam this is and are just waiting to sue SCO and it's executives. At first glance, this would be dumb, because SCO will be out of business and pinning it personally on the executives and directors might be tough. But what perhaps they could stick it to the Canopy Group. What happens to them if SCO goes under and they're held blameless?
If you go to either mobokmeow.com or moobockmeow.com , it delivers you to a verisign page.
And some might say that at least that Verisign site includes a link to your site (and only your site). That might be okay, right? I mean better than everyone who doesn't get the benefit of the redirect. Well, of course not.
While I'm generally in favour of letting sites freely link to any other site, this isn't just anybody putting your site on their webpage, this is a company you've paid money to (probably, directly or indirectly) that is pulling your name out of their database for a different commercial use without your permission. This is different from a search engine combing the net to create a published set of databases (even one that associate sites contextually or corrects typos) because this is a direct breach of trust with the very entity charged with protecting your information, and, at the very least, it's very bad business.
Surely this is infringing on the good name of moobokmeow.com!
There might be a legal trademark case, but I don't think there should be (unless this specifically breaches part of their contracts). While it's tempting to fight fire with fire, it would require a further abuse of IP laws of the kind that so many of us are against. Really, this is just a dumb business idea that should be stopped through market pressure -- hopefully they'll pull it either before or after they get some mainstream press picks up the angle and labels this as "typosquatting". If so, it could cause companies to start taking our opinions seriously.
IIRC, there was a website slipup where obituaries for people who weren't dead yet suddenly appeared in a code glitch. I think Ronald Reagan was one of them... pretty amusing how poignant they read.
It was a CNN webserver, and was fark.com that found and linked to the pages that included the pre-written obituaries. Some of them are available at The Smoking Gun.
I think their creative math comes into play in how they measure "major offenders". I mean, they're suing anonymous young kids who probably aren't fully aware of the ethics involved, but I highly doubt that they're suing those who freely admit to and encourage illegal file swapping, like the article in Time that was posted on the front page of CNN today and included links to P2P software reviews by CNET. Or what about NARAS president Michael Greene hiring three teenagers to download music - who gave him a free ride? I don't think the RIAA has the authority to even authorize its own executive to "violate" its members copyrights en masse.
Could the threatened students and teenagers point to these as examples of discrimination or selective prosecution? Or does it mean that journalists and industry types are immune and everyone else should safely restrict their P2P activities to "special projects" - like researching how many songs can be enjoyably swapped and listened to over a series of annual periods (for later publication, of course)?
a 15% change in form or function of a patented device is grounds for a new patent .
IANAL (either, I assume) but this type of reasoning is a common assumption that is entirely incorrect. If a patent is properly written it should come down to a binary test -- you either breach the claims or not. If the claims are very specific and the changes are novel, useful, and non-obvious, then even a minor change in form or function could allow be grounds for a new patent or allow one to engineer around an existing one. On the other hand, if the claims are very broad, or if the changes are quite obvious, then even a major alteration from the prefered embodiment described in the patent might not provide grounds for a new patent or even a way around the existing one. Of course the claims are often up for interpretation, but at any rate -- how can you even define an 15% change?
Also, I believe the original poster was aware that patents were around well before 1900 but was trying to make the point that if software patents (actually, business process patents) were accepted then the way they are today, then Ford (or someone similar) might have successfully patented automation processes and delayed their widescale adoption.
The cost of the RFID equipment probably gets back to the thief after the first house robbed.
Doubtful. I think most buglaries are committed by kids and opportunitists that will probably pawn your expensive stereo equipment for just enough money to pay for their next high. Unless you have some nice jewelry, they don't really care what kind of products you have in your house and mostly steal CD's and Videos because they're so easy to pawn, even though they're nearly worthless. If they got their hands on hundreds or thousands of dollars worth of RFID snooping equipment they'd probably pawn them off for about twenty bucks too.
I will second your opinion that the original post is "Damn" interesting (along with your follow-up) but I will add one more problem with this theory: by taking on and incurring the wrath of so many third parties, SCO has probably added to much potential liability for anyone who buys them out.
I actually argued in a previous post (earlier story) that IBM should buy SCO out at a ridiculously low price, partly to spite SCO's management and partly to avoid any potential cover-up in a settlement. But now I disagree: if IBM bought them out now then just about anyone involved with Linux or who has delayed Linux deployments would have a legitimate beef with the new IBM/SCO and could even point to IBM's case as an admission of guilt by IBM/SCO.
Great theory otherwise, and probably a less uncommon situation than we'd prefer to believe.
Very funny. Actually, part of me would like to see IBM buy them out - although at an embarassingly low value that would put any executive shares or options out of "the money".
A buyout would stop SCO from weaselling out with some settlement or partial court decision that lets them survive in some capacity or which would let avoid full admittance of fault. IBM could just buy them out for 25 cents a share and then fully "admit" and disclose without fair of slander/libel charges (as the owner of SCO - hard to libel yourself) what was done was entirely wrong.
Just a thought -- of course, at this point, buying SCO and admitting fault probably exposes the buyer to way too much liability. It would also be nice to see them crushed in court, hopefully sending a clear message to others...
Interesting points - I will try to find that article - but I'm pretty sure that most of the illegible spams that I get aren't simply "pings" or spammers ripping off third parties "clients". One of my own theories for this kind of spam is that most spammers aren't just dumb -- they're really, really, really dumb (and/or really, really, really, and probably clinically, nuts).
Although this article appears to indicate an exception, I've always assumed that most of the money made in spamming is by those that sell the spamming software and mailing lists to other (potential) spammers. I'd still bet that your average guilible spammer has spent a pretty penny on spam-ware, sent out millions of nearly illegible e-mails with no way to reply, and is still sitting back wondering why they aren't rich yet. There's probably pretty high turn-over and most eventually give up and start selling MLM with Amway or Primerica for the same reasons (the dream) with the same results (nothing).
Additionally, there's also the spammers who are just plain crazy, like the guy who needs help to travel back in time. Many of these are probably even less coherent in their delusions (or maybe they're using a secret language).
If there isn't a term already, someone should come up with a name for inept spam (maybe klik, prem, kam, or spork, named after the real world SPAM knock-offs - yes such things exist)...
I don't think this has anything to do with their lack of belief in Linux on the desktop. I think it's just further evidence that they have no interest in carrying on as a business entity and are entirely focused on litigation.
This certainly isn't a business decision - if it was they would continue to encourage the price advantage of Linux and offer much more reasonable fees, say $10 per seat, and maybe offer some support packages. Enough large businesses that already have Linux deployments would probably consider such a fee relatively incidental as an effective insurance policy. It might even encourage adoption at some companies who don't believe you can get anything for free. At anywhere between $5 and $50 per seat I bet they could do very well for themselves.
At $699 they very obviously don't expect anyone to pay (except maybe some allies like Microsoft who will very publicly purchase some token seats). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised that if you called their bluff and tried to purchase a seat that they're not even set up to sell them. This is only being done for legal reasons so they can easily quantify the damages they are seeking in court. I think they'll use these numbers (along with some comparable MSRP's for Windows and Unix seats) when trying to establish their "lost revenues" due to Linux.
Possibly they've hired the same "scienticians" as the RIAA. Hopefully the judge will see right through this ploy and nail them for flagrant abuse of the legal the system.
Funny, for something moderated off-topic, this was the first thing I thought of too...
It really would be a travesty of progress if we lost all those wonderful "Hello World" programs to history.
Fortunately, we have the classic ACM "Hello World" project to remind us of past glory.
...failed at just about everything before becoming president.
Yeah, I guess you could say he was the George W. Bush of the 19th century...
[bracing to feel the wrath from conservative moderators who read that comparison as an undeserved attack and from liberals who read that as an undeserved compliment]
Also, everybody, start using broadband and DVD-RW instead of .zip and floppies.
While college students and geeks have been downloading and ripping movies for years, at least on a limited basis, I don't think the general public has much awareness about movie piracy/sharing (certainly not when compared to music)... ...until now.
Sure there's usually stories about how the latest crappy sequel of the week is available on the net or in China before opening night, but I can't wait to see if movie downloading jumps significantly after this campaign.
I think this will be a case of "any publicity being good publicity" (where good = effective = bad from the MPAA perspective). Maybe they should just save their time and trade their millions in advertising right for a 25 cent call to Steve Jobs right now.
I just tried calling and it just rings, and rings, and rings... perhaps we've slashdotted it!
Of course I should preview before submitting to head off the grammar police -- that should be prescribed not proscribed.
Perhaps successfully evading capture and surviving (maintaining full functionality, unlike in this case) for a proscribed period of time could be the basis for a new form of Turing test. Of course I have socks that meet that definition so it would need some heavy refinement...
Software Test Engineers could be a Software Design Enginer / Test (ie., a developer in the test department for automation and tools etc).
I probably shouldn't feed this, but I'll provide a clarification anyway - that was just an aside, my main point being more that there actually is a technical person listed on the patent - the smoking gun on these sorts of patents tends to be when they are registered by the VP of Marketing. My second point was simply to wonder how experienced the designer might be - a quick search found few results on variations of "Yonas D. Seme" so its doubtful he's very senior, but obviously a Software Test Engineer (even a junior one) could discribe such a system. The indication that this might be a relatively junior person and the fact there is only one "inventor" might also suggest that this whole discussion is a bit of a red herring - there is no indication that this is even under development at MS - maybe just something a junior engineer thought up and convinced their lawyers that there was enough worth to try for a patent.
This is why we need to change the system so that patents are published upon submission. The public can submit comments and prior art to the patent office and they can act more as administrators, like they are doing now.
In this case, the application has been published and this patent is likely two to three years away from approval (if ever). Of course this is only a voluntary process right now - and I wonder why MS has chosen this path - perhaps this is really just a "marketing patent" as someone else surmised (a quick Google search suggests that the "inventor" is a software test engineer - I wonder whether how experienced they are?).
As to submitting comments: certainly the USPTO has been posting jobs extensively in various technical magazines and journals targeting members of the slashdot set - I wonder how many of these new patent examiners are reading Slashdot right now? While far from a cure for this broken system, hopefully we'll start to see some savier decision made if these ads lead to hiring more computer literate (and perhaps even skeptical) patent examiners.
Bowen accuses Microsoft of having alterior motives for backing (in her opinion) a weaker anti-spam law. She might be right (weaker anti-spam laws might allow Microsoft to promote their own anti-spam software and/or deliver their own spam and/or sell mailing lists to others) but I can't entirely fault Microsoft's position on this one.
According to Microsoft, they're not backing the new bill because they want indemnity from spamming. Rather, it's because Bowen's bill apparently places greater responsibility and blame on ISP's for the conduct of spammers. I liken this to the classic arguments about suing the phone company for what happens over their phone systems, finding P2P software developers liable for the conduct of their users, or holding Google responsible for publishing search results.
I haven't seen the actual proposals to be sure, but if the articles accurately describe the competing bills, I don't see anything hypocritical about Microsoft's stance. I would much rather hold the spammers responsible than blame the ISP's (even Microsoft) for the conduct of their users. This is the kind of measure that further erodes our rights to privacy and further restricts our freedoms to use telecommunications infrastructure.
Of course, the bills should still have some provisions to encourage responsible ISP's and I would certainly be against provisions that would provide indemnity for "brand name spam", but I don't see any evidence of that in this case. Microsoft isn't automatically the enemy - this might just be a case of author's envy by Bowen.
You're probably right about it not working, and certainly right about there being better ways to fix the system - but I still think it's worth a shot. One of the outcomes would simply be the opportunity to introduce all these silly patents into evidence and perhaps get more publicity for the problems with the system than either a regular patent case about some technical matter that the average person (or legislater) doesn't understand or an offbeat or funny news story about a silly patent that just seems harmless. This would combine the two (easily to relate to silly patents with economicly significant silly patents) and help establish a pattern for the general public and lawmakers that is already obvious to most slashdot readers.
Also, the fact that it's not cut and dry might give the case a chance to make it past a lower court to at least a higher profile appeals court. And I do think there's a chance it could work (at least as a temporary band-aid) but it might be better if it was thrown out on appeals since it would make the point that the underlying system needs to change, not the interpretation.
Because the patent has been granted by the PTO, it has a presumption of validity. Thus, it is not frivolous to sue someone who is infringing the terms of the claims.
Great point, but perhaps a challenge to this presumption would be the best legal challenge to counter these out of control patents and perhaps a good way to earn some public and political points in the process.
We need someone with a valid case (and probably good lawyers and deep pockets) to counter-sue over an invalid patent. They could bring forward patents like the infamous "swinging sideways on a swing" and other less humourous, but more more serious dumb patents to make the case that the patent system is more of a registry for applications than a proper validation system. If they win on this point they could effectively lower the bar for the consideration of patent validity and remove the seemingly blanket immunity enjoyed by those who abuse the system.
Such a case, especially if it were brought to a higher court, would also have some great PR value in the fight against stupid patents by introducing some of the dumbest ones as evidence. I would love to see someone like Lessig join forces with someone like an IBM (maybe over the SCO case?) on this one!
IE already has an integrated search PANE as well as "search from the URL box" options. MS already includes it's own serach engine along with 8 or so others as selectable preferences and any can be chosen as the default. So... uh what was your point again?
/. moron. Just what the world needs more of.
My point was exactly that IE already has these poorly executed and easily ignored/disabled/redirected search functions. The article speaks about MS trying to compete with Google while also improving searches for local files (another function which already exists in Windows). The previous poster doubted that they could compete with Google's non-instrusive format - while I assume that MS is obviously planning (as they should) something even less intrusive than a simple portal and more pervasive like an improved search bar type application. My concern is not that it will be integrated into the system, but that it will be built into the system at the expense of other alternatives that I might prefer.
More completely baseless anti-MS FUD from a
I don't mind Windows doing this -- it's a pretty obvious evolution of their product and the poorly integrated search capabilities within Windows is a major flaw -- I just hope that Google is prepared for this development because I like their product and from past experience I think that they'll be able to meet my needs better than MS.