SCO's actions have threatened IBM, SGI, Novell, and a host of other companies. In addition, they've implicitly threated every *nix-running business data center in North America.
If they start claiming it was an "AIX fan" or a "disgruntled Novell admin", the media knows damn well they'd be sued into oblivion for the slander.
The "Linux community" isn't an organized group that could sue for slander, so it's "safe" for the media to associate the entire community with the supposed actions of a few.
I wouldn't put it past Darl & co. to have created and distributed it themselves just to keep grabbing media attention and paint themselves as victims again.
Please spend some time researching the difference between parallel channel memory controllers, bus architectures, and internal CPU caches before you continue on this line of thinking that the tests are relevant.
"Buy" is not the mindset, but "available" certainly is. If you want to test "commonly held beliefs" you don't do so by using a special fringe case that is relevant to less than 5% of the real world market.
Perhaps next they can evaluate a Model T and "demonstrate" that it doesn't have the top end and horsepower of a modern sedan, but more wheel torque for use as a tractor.
No, it's not a test of whether 32 or 64 bit is faster. It's a test of whether an obsolete architecture whose fastest younger siblings are still outperformed by IBM, Intel, and AMD.
The results tell you nothing about whether you should seriously consider 64 bit, nor where you should actually be using a 64 bit setup.
Maybe someone can post the performance results for Doom running on a new AMD 64 bit box with a top-end ATI or NVidia card. It'd be about as relevant as the performance of a SPARC5 is to making a purchase decision.
I completely fail to see how one can patent the use of domain names in this fashion. That strikes me like patenting the concept that a "record" corresponds to a physical object, citing an employee table as an example.
Obviously this patent was never examined by anyone with enough neurons to spark a thought.
Maybe it's time companies affected by these nonsense "patents" start suing the patent office to recover costs and damages for defending against such garbage.
A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.
They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.
It's about time some limits were imposed in US courts, as in:
You have 12 months to prepare your case, unless the defending party opts to extend. Under no circumstances may the preparation extend beyond 24 months. Should your claims prove false, you will be responsible for all legal costs and damages direct and incidental, not only for the defendant, but for any business in the court's jurisdiction whose financial performance can reasonably be presumed to be affected by the accusations.
Then maybe the world can get back to doing business instead of letting these useless "IP companies" affect billions of dollars of purchase and deployment decisions, without fear of repercussions for their fraud.
There is no "secret" to Linux kernel success. Any one of their developers should have been able to tell them years ago:
If it's broke, fix it.
If you can't fix it, replace it.
If you can't replace it, throw it away and start again, making sure you can replace it this time.
That was, is, and probably will be Window's heritage biggest problem: the demand for compatability with applications that rely on dangerous, obsolete programming interfaces.
UI/Desktop skillsets from Ximian. A very nice, clean programming interface equivalent to KDE or Apple's APIs, and far, far cleaner than Win32 GUI APIs.
Software distribution via Ximian's Red Carpet. It may not be perfect, but it works and is a pretty decent user interface compared to SuSE 8.0/8.1 YaST update management. Unlike Microsoft's updates, you can also add software with Red Carpet. (Of course seeing as Microsoft doesn't have a few dozen free modules, there wouldn't be much point to an "Install" option via Windows Update.)
Core system via SuSE. Conveniently enough, the Linux reputation acquired via SuSE also makes it easy to address SuSE's weak update interface. The rest of SuSE is already solid.
Directory services via NDS. Sure you could get an NDS appliance before, but now you can get it with a pretty GUI in case you can't afford a real support team.
File and print services. Novell's old bread and butter is still a solid alternative to Microsoft server packages and CALs. Or you could stick with Samba -- but I won't be surprised if Novell's engineers deliver better performance. They've got a couple decades experience with networked resources.
Solid business reputation. Novell is not a newcomer, they're not a startup, and they're not led by a flashy headline-chasing CEO.
My guess is a consulting firm or two are up next to handle support and enhancements.
Novell will then have every piece in place it needs to pimp-slap Microsoft from the small business market: reputation, technology, and experience.
I'm also expecting to see some partnerships between Novell, IBM, and Sun to ensure that Mainframe, Power, and SPARC processors get tier 1 status alongside AMD64, x86, and Itanium.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. You probably just realized Mozilla Composer does 99% of anything useful that FrontPage does, costs nothing, and produces HTML that even works with more than one browser!!!
Or you could learn enough HTML to realize the display layout of a default page is configured in the browser, not forced by the document. Lo and behold, all those "ugly" HOWTO's look just the way you like them.
Think about it -- the Spammers and the hackers flood the networks with garbage traffic, impacting millions of users and thousands of businesses.
Currently over 20% of my bandwidth on a 1.5Mbit link is wasted by ping floods and other attempted attacks. We are not talking about a few script kiddies anymore, but thousands of infected nodes performing distributed attacks.
Skip throwing the book at them, and don't waste tax dollars housing these degenerates. Flag them as terrorists for their constant attacks on public infrastructures, and treat them accordingly.
I haven't been able to leave a pen on my desk for five minutes in years without someone stealing it. No one seems to clue that those nice pens I buy are not from departmental stock cabinets, or everyone would already be using them!
Then people wonder why I lock everything up in my desk, even when I'm "just" going for lunch.
Were you under the impression that you got the full contract rate when you sign up? The recruiter is paid out of the contract profit percentage. You just need to know your market and the play a bit of hardball when they start trying to con you into letting them take too big a slice.
Truth is, only a very few companies have treated me shabbily. I trust my instincts, so if the rep feels slimy, I just don't pursue the positions they claim to have.
The resume always goes out with a note denying agencies permission to broadcast it. Any agency that's wants the right to broadcast has proven to be shady at best -- a reputable agency knows you need to avoid conflicts where you've been submitted by more than one agency to the same client. If they're not willing to trust you enough to tell you where they're submitting you, why in the world would you think you can trust them?
The fact that you're running on a DHCP or pppoe link should make absolutely no difference, as you're not relying on any dynamic configuration protocols to tell you what DNS server to use. (Truth is the IPs for the DNS servers don't normally change within an ISP unless they start rolling out local caching nameservers for huge nets like AT&T's.)
If you don't have it set up as a caching nameserver first, make sure you have a directory entry like the following to specify where the included config files will be:
directory "/var/named";
In addition to the usual localhost and 0.0.127 zones, make sure you have a root zone:
zone "." in { type hint; file "root.hint"; };
The contents of the/var/named/root.hint file is downloaded from FTP.INTERNIC.NET, and is located in/domain/named.root.
Restart named ("/etc/rc.d/named restart" under SuSE, or send it a SIGHUP) and you should be getting your domain lookups directly from the root servers instead of your ISP's cache.
I don't take any credit for figuring it out -- it's part of what you'll learn by going through "Firewalls Complete" (sorry, I forget the author's name and don't have my copy at hand right now.) I hope they issue an updated edition soon -- many of the chapters are based on outdated syntax/releases of the tools involved.
I pay for and get 1.5 down, 1.0 up with Access Cable in Regina, SK. I had nothing but problems with Rogers in the GTA, with weekly downtimes of 20-36 hours, very poor download, and pathetic upload speeds. And this was on a shub with a whole 7 users, much less the 20+ that they later started rolling.
If you actually want the bandwidth, you have to get Roger's commercial links, but make sure you check the fine print on the SLA before signing up. The whole point of a commercial link is to get a static IP and to get a usefull SLA that you can give a lawyer to smack them around with when they continue playing games.
The other thing to do is run weekly speed tests, and whenever the bandwidth isn't up to snuff, send them the results along with your complaint. Mention that you're archiving the results, and that you intend to pursue legal action if they continue their breach of contract.
After three such reports, have your lawyer draft a legal notice of intent. That will cost you a few dollars (unless you have a lawyer for a friend), but it usually wakes them up to the fact that you aren't some newb who's going to go oooh-aaahhh just because they claim it's high speed.
You can also try disabling the DNS forward-first that queries their DNS servers first. As the majority of users are running default Win32 boxen, the DNS servers for cable and DSL ISPs tend to be woefully inadequate for the request volume they deal with. My own page load times have dropped by 40% by removing the ISP's DNS servers from the equation. (Yes, I know that's not nice, but if the ISP won't provide capacity, you have to do what you can to get around it.)
You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing. You're spending so much time doing DNS lookups for all the )@%&)@%&)@&% banner advertising on most pages that the actual content transfer is a mere fraction of the time the page takes to load.
(Yes, HTML is easy, until you start bouncing back and forth with vB-syntax boards. I'd love to smack the wanker who came up with that perverse syntax!)
I pay for and get 1.5 down, 1.0 up with Access Cable in Regina, SK.
I had nothing but problems with Rogers in the GTA, with weekly downtimes of 20-36 hours, very poor download, and pathetic upload speeds. And this was on a shub with a whole 7 users, much less the 20+ that they later started rolling.
If you actually want the bandwidth, you have to get Roger's commercial links, but make sure you check the fine print on the SLA before signing up. The whole point of a commercial link is to get a static IP and to get a usefull SLA that you can give a lawyer to smack them around with when they continue playing games.
The other thing to do is run weekly speed tests, and whenever the bandwidth isn't up to snuff, send them the results along with your complaint. Mention that you're archiving the results, and that you intend to pursue legal action if they continue their breach of contract.
After three such reports, have your lawyer draft a legal notice of intent. That will cost you a few dollars (unless you have a lawyer for a friend), but it usually wakes them up to the fact that you aren't some newb who's going to go oooh-aaahhh just because they claim it's high speed.
You can also try disabling the DNS forward-first that queries their DNS servers first. As the majority of users are running default Win32 boxen, the DNS servers for cable and DSL ISPs tend to be woefully inadequate for the request volume they deal with. My own page load times have dropped by 40% by removing the ISP's DNS servers from the equation. (Yes, I know that's not nice, but if the ISP won't provide capacity, you have to do what you can to get around it.)
You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing. You're spending so much time doing DNS lookups for all the )@%&)@%&)@&% banner advertising on most pages that the actual content transfer is a mere fraction of the time the page takes to load.
I don't know about anyone else, but the box I usually use for testing a new OS from any vendor or distro often sits for months on my internal net until I get around to trying something else. I sure wouldn't be buying new hardware to test a beta release!
Given the market for server-class OS is pretty small compared to the desktop, 5% of those boxes being test systems is not unreasonable. Betcha those same boxes have run different flavours of Win32, Linux, OS/2, etc, depending on what was available while they've existed.
How many alcohol distillers were put out of business during prohibition?
How many dealers and wait staff were put out of business in states that banned gambling?
I think you get the drift that when an industry is made illegal, it will obviously force those working in the industry to find a new career. What's next -- do we ban further research into alternate-energy sources because it will put a bunch of pipeline welders and gas-station attendants out of work?
Listing off the possibilities doesn't change the fact that the only one we humans have any real control over are your first two points: greenhouse gasses and energy waste.
Even if we were to immediately cut the greenhouse emissions to 25% of their current level, it would take years, possibly decades to repair the damage done. If we wait for "proof" that it's the greenhouse gasses and energy waste causing the problem, we're quite likely to find the changes happening too late to make a difference.
Crops in the north american midwest (US and Canada) have been damaged by more years of near drought than there have ever been before. Sloughs and low spots that were always wet for the first 25 years of my life are now dry and dusty by mid-June.
For crying out loud, even Florida has drought conditions the past couple of years, and it used to rain 4-5 days a week when I lived there a few years ago!
If it isn't too late to make changes, it's getting damned close. I find it absolutely incredible that we allow the oil companies to continue to push fossil fuels, and that the US government is seriously considering selling out the Alaskan wilds to be damaged by those same oil companies.
It is equally mind-boggling that there are still so many coal fired power plants scattered around the continent. Even worse is that the pollution "points" which were to encourage the energy companies to reduce emissions are simply traded between corps, and that little to nothing has been done by some of the worst offenders.
At least when you open the package, you expect to find some sort of EULA. You don't expect to agree to a damned thing when you make a type in the address bar!
All I see Verislime doing is becoming the latest address hijacker. Maybe if IBM, Microsoft, et. al. get a bunch of staff to punch in mistyped variants on their corp domains they'll have enough to sue Verislime for false advertising and fraud.
That doesn't change the bottom line that the "victim" put hot coffee in a position where it could spill while driving. Therein lies the stupidity that deserves no compensation.
Had the coffee somehow melted the coffee cup, I could have seen a case. Had the cups been poorly constructed and collapsed or leaked the hot coffee, there might have been a case.
Someone being awarded damages for burns from a liquid that is expected to be hot is asinine, no matter what temperature McD's kept it at. Had she ordered tea, which is made by steeping in water that has just stopped boiling, would you still be claiming it was the restaurant's fault?
Of course not! That would have made it obvious to even the most slow-witted that it was a frivolous lawsuit that should have been tossed the first time it came before a judge.
This is the same mentality that would ban baking soda because it could be used to make crack, hunting rifles because "guns" are used in crimes, and information about making black powder because it could be used for explosives.
If the software provider has been warned about the issue and provided a copy of the exploit code for testing their fixes, I have absolutely NO sympathy for a vendor which doesn't provide a fix.
Nor do I subscribe to the asinine american penchant for blaming everyone else for the stupid decisions and accidents individuals encounter. Spill your coffee, "reenact" a video game, commit suicide after listening to Ozzy -- and blame/sue someone else.
Bullshit.
It's time to stop trying to make excuses for stupidity and put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the perpetrators. If you want to blame someone, blame our pathetic spineless north american governments who are more concerned about the "rights" of criminals than defending society from them.
If some script-kiddie is smart enough to download and fire up cracker scripts, they're damned well smart enough to know what they're doing is wrong, and should pay the price when caught.
What kind of idiot kids have you been dealing with that don't know what murder and death are by the age of 12? The fact that many kids destined for a life of gangs and guns are cruel and callous does not mean they don't know what happens when you shoot someone.
Kids might not be too good at moral judgements of right and wrong, but to claim a 12 year old doesn't know what they're doing when they aim and fire a weapon at someone requires a degree of naivete that I find astonishing.
I sympathize with the victims of this inane stupidity, but not with their greed. It is long past the time when the lawyers involved in such frivolous lawsuits were permanent disbarred and jailed themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
SCO's actions have threatened IBM, SGI, Novell, and a host of other companies. In addition, they've implicitly threated every *nix-running business data center in North America.
If they start claiming it was an "AIX fan" or a "disgruntled Novell admin", the media knows damn well they'd be sued into oblivion for the slander.
The "Linux community" isn't an organized group that could sue for slander, so it's "safe" for the media to associate the entire community with the supposed actions of a few.
I wouldn't put it past Darl & co. to have created and distributed it themselves just to keep grabbing media attention and paint themselves as victims again.
Please spend some time researching the difference between parallel channel memory controllers, bus architectures, and internal CPU caches before you continue on this line of thinking that the tests are relevant. "Buy" is not the mindset, but "available" certainly is. If you want to test "commonly held beliefs" you don't do so by using a special fringe case that is relevant to less than 5% of the real world market. Perhaps next they can evaluate a Model T and "demonstrate" that it doesn't have the top end and horsepower of a modern sedan, but more wheel torque for use as a tractor.
No problem -- the RIAA refuses to sign anything they can't market to the under 20's anyhow. Most of what I listen to is from independants.
No, it's not a test of whether 32 or 64 bit is faster. It's a test of whether an obsolete architecture whose fastest younger siblings are still outperformed by IBM, Intel, and AMD.
The results tell you nothing about whether you should seriously consider 64 bit, nor where you should actually be using a 64 bit setup.
Maybe someone can post the performance results for Doom running on a new AMD 64 bit box with a top-end ATI or NVidia card. It'd be about as relevant as the performance of a SPARC5 is to making a purchase decision.
What do you mean "almost no content"?
I saw nothing in this ad-clogged "article" that didn't look like it was ripped straight from a manufacturer's website.
No comparisons. No comments on tactile feel, travel, weight, comfort, battery lifespan (if applicable), range, responsiveness, etc.
It would have been less fraudulent to just put up a sales catalog of the products "reviewed".
I completely fail to see how one can patent the use of domain names in this fashion. That strikes me like patenting the concept that a "record" corresponds to a physical object, citing an employee table as an example.
Obviously this patent was never examined by anyone with enough neurons to spark a thought.
Maybe it's time companies affected by these nonsense "patents" start suing the patent office to recover costs and damages for defending against such garbage.
A lot of those delays stem from the simple fact that legal staff usually haven't got the vaguest understanding of how software is architected or compiled. They don't know that half the headers mentioned are part of ANSI and ISO C/C++ standards.
They don't know that every single platform with a C compiler since the early '80s has had an "errno.h" header file.
It's about time some limits were imposed in US courts, as in:
Then maybe the world can get back to doing business instead of letting these useless "IP companies" affect billions of dollars of purchase and deployment decisions, without fear of repercussions for their fraud.
There is no "secret" to Linux kernel success. Any one of their developers should have been able to tell them years ago:
That was, is, and probably will be Window's heritage biggest problem: the demand for compatability with applications that rely on dangerous, obsolete programming interfaces.
Novell now has some solid pieces in place:
My guess is a consulting firm or two are up next to handle support and enhancements.
Novell will then have every piece in place it needs to pimp-slap Microsoft from the small business market: reputation, technology, and experience.
I'm also expecting to see some partnerships between Novell, IBM, and Sun to ensure that Mainframe, Power, and SPARC processors get tier 1 status alongside AMD64, x86, and Itanium.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. You probably just realized Mozilla Composer does 99% of anything useful that FrontPage does, costs nothing, and produces HTML that even works with more than one browser!!!
Or you could learn enough HTML to realize the display layout of a default page is configured in the browser, not forced by the document. Lo and behold, all those "ugly" HOWTO's look just the way you like them.
Think about it -- the Spammers and the hackers flood the networks with garbage traffic, impacting millions of users and thousands of businesses.
Currently over 20% of my bandwidth on a 1.5Mbit link is wasted by ping floods and other attempted attacks. We are not talking about a few script kiddies anymore, but thousands of infected nodes performing distributed attacks.
Skip throwing the book at them, and don't waste tax dollars housing these degenerates. Flag them as terrorists for their constant attacks on public infrastructures, and treat them accordingly.
I haven't been able to leave a pen on my desk for five minutes in years without someone stealing it. No one seems to clue that those nice pens I buy are not from departmental stock cabinets, or everyone would already be using them! Then people wonder why I lock everything up in my desk, even when I'm "just" going for lunch.
Were you under the impression that you got the full contract rate when you sign up? The recruiter is paid out of the contract profit percentage. You just need to know your market and the play a bit of hardball when they start trying to con you into letting them take too big a slice.
Truth is, only a very few companies have treated me shabbily. I trust my instincts, so if the rep feels slimy, I just don't pursue the positions they claim to have.
The resume always goes out with a note denying agencies permission to broadcast it. Any agency that's wants the right to broadcast has proven to be shady at best -- a reputable agency knows you need to avoid conflicts where you've been submitted by more than one agency to the same client. If they're not willing to trust you enough to tell you where they're submitting you, why in the world would you think you can trust them?
The fact that you're running on a DHCP or pppoe link should make absolutely no difference, as you're not relying on any dynamic configuration protocols to tell you what DNS server to use. (Truth is the IPs for the DNS servers don't normally change within an ISP unless they start rolling out local caching nameservers for huge nets like AT&T's.)
Trivial -- in /etc/named.conf in the options section, you just comment out the forwarders and forward first lines:
If you don't have it set up as a caching nameserver first, make sure you have a directory entry like the following to specify where the included config files will be:
In addition to the usual localhost and 0.0.127 zones, make sure you have a root zone:
The contents of the /var/named/root.hint file is downloaded from FTP.INTERNIC.NET, and is located in /domain/named.root.
Restart named ("/etc/rc.d/named restart" under SuSE, or send it a SIGHUP) and you should be getting your domain lookups directly from the root servers instead of your ISP's cache.
I don't take any credit for figuring it out -- it's part of what you'll learn by going through "Firewalls Complete" (sorry, I forget the author's name and don't have my copy at hand right now.) I hope they issue an updated edition soon -- many of the chapters are based on outdated syntax/releases of the tools involved.
I pay for and get 1.5 down, 1.0 up with Access Cable in Regina, SK. I had nothing but problems with Rogers in the GTA, with weekly downtimes of 20-36 hours, very poor download, and pathetic upload speeds. And this was on a shub with a whole 7 users, much less the 20+ that they later started rolling.
If you actually want the bandwidth, you have to get Roger's commercial links, but make sure you check the fine print on the SLA before signing up. The whole point of a commercial link is to get a static IP and to get a usefull SLA that you can give a lawyer to smack them around with when they continue playing games.
The other thing to do is run weekly speed tests, and whenever the bandwidth isn't up to snuff, send them the results along with your complaint. Mention that you're archiving the results, and that you intend to pursue legal action if they continue their breach of contract.
After three such reports, have your lawyer draft a legal notice of intent. That will cost you a few dollars (unless you have a lawyer for a friend), but it usually wakes them up to the fact that you aren't some newb who's going to go oooh-aaahhh just because they claim it's high speed.
You can also try disabling the DNS forward-first that queries their DNS servers first. As the majority of users are running default Win32 boxen, the DNS servers for cable and DSL ISPs tend to be woefully inadequate for the request volume they deal with. My own page load times have dropped by 40% by removing the ISP's DNS servers from the equation. (Yes, I know that's not nice, but if the ISP won't provide capacity, you have to do what you can to get around it.)
You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing. You're spending so much time doing DNS lookups for all the )@%&)@%&)@&% banner advertising on most pages that the actual content transfer is a mere fraction of the time the page takes to load.
(Yes, HTML is easy, until you start bouncing back and forth with vB-syntax boards. I'd love to smack the wanker who came up with that perverse syntax!)
I pay for and get 1.5 down, 1.0 up with Access Cable in Regina, SK. I had nothing but problems with Rogers in the GTA, with weekly downtimes of 20-36 hours, very poor download, and pathetic upload speeds. And this was on a shub with a whole 7 users, much less the 20+ that they later started rolling. If you actually want the bandwidth, you have to get Roger's commercial links, but make sure you check the fine print on the SLA before signing up. The whole point of a commercial link is to get a static IP and to get a usefull SLA that you can give a lawyer to smack them around with when they continue playing games. The other thing to do is run weekly speed tests, and whenever the bandwidth isn't up to snuff, send them the results along with your complaint. Mention that you're archiving the results, and that you intend to pursue legal action if they continue their breach of contract. After three such reports, have your lawyer draft a legal notice of intent. That will cost you a few dollars (unless you have a lawyer for a friend), but it usually wakes them up to the fact that you aren't some newb who's going to go oooh-aaahhh just because they claim it's high speed. You can also try disabling the DNS forward-first that queries their DNS servers first. As the majority of users are running default Win32 boxen, the DNS servers for cable and DSL ISPs tend to be woefully inadequate for the request volume they deal with. My own page load times have dropped by 40% by removing the ISP's DNS servers from the equation. (Yes, I know that's not nice, but if the ISP won't provide capacity, you have to do what you can to get around it.) You should also be aware that once you pass about 256Mbit, you stop seeing a real difference for "normal" surfing. You're spending so much time doing DNS lookups for all the )@%&)@%&)@&% banner advertising on most pages that the actual content transfer is a mere fraction of the time the page takes to load.
I don't know about anyone else, but the box I usually use for testing a new OS from any vendor or distro often sits for months on my internal net until I get around to trying something else. I sure wouldn't be buying new hardware to test a beta release!
Given the market for server-class OS is pretty small compared to the desktop, 5% of those boxes being test systems is not unreasonable. Betcha those same boxes have run different flavours of Win32, Linux, OS/2, etc, depending on what was available while they've existed.
How many alcohol distillers were put out of business during prohibition?
How many dealers and wait staff were put out of business in states that banned gambling?
I think you get the drift that when an industry is made illegal, it will obviously force those working in the industry to find a new career. What's next -- do we ban further research into alternate-energy sources because it will put a bunch of pipeline welders and gas-station attendants out of work?
Listing off the possibilities doesn't change the fact that the only one we humans have any real control over are your first two points: greenhouse gasses and energy waste.
Even if we were to immediately cut the greenhouse emissions to 25% of their current level, it would take years, possibly decades to repair the damage done. If we wait for "proof" that it's the greenhouse gasses and energy waste causing the problem, we're quite likely to find the changes happening too late to make a difference.
Crops in the north american midwest (US and Canada) have been damaged by more years of near drought than there have ever been before. Sloughs and low spots that were always wet for the first 25 years of my life are now dry and dusty by mid-June.
For crying out loud, even Florida has drought conditions the past couple of years, and it used to rain 4-5 days a week when I lived there a few years ago!
If it isn't too late to make changes, it's getting damned close. I find it absolutely incredible that we allow the oil companies to continue to push fossil fuels, and that the US government is seriously considering selling out the Alaskan wilds to be damaged by those same oil companies.
It is equally mind-boggling that there are still so many coal fired power plants scattered around the continent. Even worse is that the pollution "points" which were to encourage the energy companies to reduce emissions are simply traded between corps, and that little to nothing has been done by some of the worst offenders.
At least when you open the package, you expect to find some sort of EULA. You don't expect to agree to a damned thing when you make a type in the address bar!
All I see Verislime doing is becoming the latest address hijacker. Maybe if IBM, Microsoft, et. al. get a bunch of staff to punch in mistyped variants on their corp domains they'll have enough to sue Verislime for false advertising and fraud.
Worse, it also means that Verisign gets a log entry of every queried domain so they can register it before you or one of their competitors can.
Verislime seems to have opted with joining the group of corps with nothing but SCOrn for the community they claim to service and support.
That doesn't change the bottom line that the "victim" put hot coffee in a position where it could spill while driving. Therein lies the stupidity that deserves no compensation.
Had the coffee somehow melted the coffee cup, I could have seen a case. Had the cups been poorly constructed and collapsed or leaked the hot coffee, there might have been a case.
Someone being awarded damages for burns from a liquid that is expected to be hot is asinine, no matter what temperature McD's kept it at. Had she ordered tea, which is made by steeping in water that has just stopped boiling, would you still be claiming it was the restaurant's fault?
Of course not! That would have made it obvious to even the most slow-witted that it was a frivolous lawsuit that should have been tossed the first time it came before a judge.
This is the same mentality that would ban baking soda because it could be used to make crack, hunting rifles because "guns" are used in crimes, and information about making black powder because it could be used for explosives.
If the software provider has been warned about the issue and provided a copy of the exploit code for testing their fixes, I have absolutely NO sympathy for a vendor which doesn't provide a fix.
Nor do I subscribe to the asinine american penchant for blaming everyone else for the stupid decisions and accidents individuals encounter. Spill your coffee, "reenact" a video game, commit suicide after listening to Ozzy -- and blame/sue someone else.
Bullshit.
It's time to stop trying to make excuses for stupidity and put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the perpetrators. If you want to blame someone, blame our pathetic spineless north american governments who are more concerned about the "rights" of criminals than defending society from them.
If some script-kiddie is smart enough to download and fire up cracker scripts, they're damned well smart enough to know what they're doing is wrong, and should pay the price when caught.
What kind of idiot kids have you been dealing with that don't know what murder and death are by the age of 12? The fact that many kids destined for a life of gangs and guns are cruel and callous does not mean they don't know what happens when you shoot someone.
Kids might not be too good at moral judgements of right and wrong, but to claim a 12 year old doesn't know what they're doing when they aim and fire a weapon at someone requires a degree of naivete that I find astonishing.
I sympathize with the victims of this inane stupidity, but not with their greed. It is long past the time when the lawyers involved in such frivolous lawsuits were permanent disbarred and jailed themselves.