The company disputes this analysis. "We're the owners of the Unix (AT&T) System V code, and so we would know what it would look like," the company told McMillan and the IDG News Service. "Until it comes to court, it's going to be our word against theirs."
The weird thing is, if they knew what it looked like, then why did they release it under the GPL? Off-hand statements like this from the company's CEOs do a lot to discredit the whole mess....
One of the best and newest game engines available for $100 is CipherEngine. The engine is actually written in mostly C, rather than C++, which accounts for the compile time of less than 15 seconds.
Another interesting and free engine is from
Qubesoft.
I'd be curious to know what impacts the behavior of people like McBride and others has on U.S. international business relations, existing or potential.
From the looks of it, SCO is not and has not been an exceptional company in terms of ingenuity or revenue. Their talent seems to be in their legal skills rather than technical prowess. It also looks as if they dangled a carrot in front of the nose of some programmers with the intention of creating the current situation (and I'm not saying that there is one). I'm not a business/financial person, but if I was in Europe or the UK, or anywhere in the world for that matter, I would be hesitant to engage in business transactions with people who are so obviously out of control. "Let's sue Linus!" "Make it another billion! No, wait, make it another TWO billion! Yeah!" These numbers are obviously not tied to any real assets. The transparency of the aggression by the owners of SCO, as well as recent transgressions by other CEOs in other companies, would not seem to bode well for U.S. international business relations. I sure as hell wouldn't want to interact with someone who might turn around and take my company away. I feel like my country is rotting.
The language of the parent post is disturbing in its own right:
"...you were all sh*t disturbers..."
"Nobody needs agitators..."
"rightly brand you as a trouble maker."
One need only pick up a copy of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" to see that you have unwittingly plagiarized the witticisms of "employers" during the Great Depression. Individuals who attempted to organize themselves and protest against the poor (understatement) working conditions were called "agitators," "trouble makers," and "reds" (i.e., communists) and were placed on blacklists (i.e., blackballed) that prevented them from getting work anywhere else. It was the formation of unions that saved our workforce from tyrants who made sure that mass revolt wasn't possible.
For an interesting alternative to all of the complications being presented in the current case, may I suggest a "picture book" view for the younger readers.
"When I arived at the ToL in Khar all I saw was a field of tombstones, and some guys kyting the guards around. Next thing i see (as i make my way to the Runemaster) is a R30 Mino barb beating the piss out of some r1 who went there to train (like i did), i mean beating him like a red headed step child."
I mean, isn't this the way that video games were MEANT to be played?
Eric references a Slashdot interview with the IBM Linux kernel hackers, among others. Code that the IBM Linux kernel hackers contributed had to pass the inspection of a "gatekeeper" who monitored the contributions for possible violations (see question #2 on OS blending).
Check out Marshall Kirk McKusick's chapter chapter in "Open Sources" for a rundown on the history of the various Unixes. It's a good, rapid-pace read.
I remembered the missing slot. It was:
8:00am -> 9:00am: Fat Albert (Bill Cosby's voice)
Also, Friday night's lineup included Bill Bixby as The Incredible Hulk. And in the early 1970s, one of the first shows I remember watching regularly with my friends was Darren McGavin in Kolchak: The Night Stalker. We were absolute rabid fans of that one. Remembering some of those shows still scares me today... Those are truly some classics of a bygone era.
I can still recount my Saturday mornings during the mid to late 1970s:
6:00am -> 7:00am: Superfriends
7:00am -> 8:00am: Scooby Doo
8:00am -> 9:00am: [actually, I forget this hour]
9:00am -> 11:00am: Bugs Bunny
11:00am -> 11:30am: Johnny Quest (greatest cartoon ever)
Usually, a couple of kids from the neighborhood or school had stayed the night, and Friday nights were spent watching Dukes of Hazzard. All in all, it was a heck of a good way to spend your weekend.
"If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness."
The key phrase here is then you would have some idea. Frankly, there is a point in astronomy and astrophysics where things get so big, and so fast, and so bright, that the only idea that remains in one's brain when trying to imagine such phenomena is a white light with a big hand reaching into it. The example above is classic: first I have to imagine 9 billion years (good luck, I can't even remember what happened yesterday) and then I have to imagine a tenth of a second, which is like a total brain fart. And then, and only then, would I have some idea of the brightness. Well, I guess that I would have some idea if my head hadn't imploded while trying to imagine that nanofart called a "tenth of a second." Geezus.
This site may have been up for a while, although I heard through the grapevine that most of the documents available here have not been previously available online and were recently added. But I'll add that the date that this site went online is probably less important than the events surrounding it. That said, I believe that it is important to examine our actions and the actions of our leaders within the context of our historical roots. Reading the transcripts of documents such as the Bill of Rights gives one a focal point from which the actions of our leaders, past and present, may be sensibly evaluated. That's just one opinion, however, and we all have a right to our opinion, and to voice that opinion...
Macromedia deserves some credit for staying in tune with the development world. But lets face it: Flash is for art majors. Even with its "standard" controls that are now available (e.g., scrolling text box), it is still a difficult environment to control; you always feel like "this could look so much better with this spinning, pulsing button." All those vector calculations in Flash still bring a PII to its knees. If people are interested in Web applications, they migh consider Runtime Revolution, a cheap ($300) cross-platform (Mac, Win, Linux, etc.) alternative with native support for sockets and other amazing tools, including multimedia support, that really allow you to accomplish what needs to be done. I've spent a LOT of time trying to find the right rapid application developement tools for the job, and Runtime Revolution has yet to be beat. Python with Boa Constructor (v.2) and Mcmillan installers is certainly awesome, but the multimedia (i.e., Quicktime) just isn't there yet. In other words, there are a lot of very nice alternatives to Flash, which is really not much more than a glorified banner advertisement tool.
Let's pay our teachers better, put administrative power over schools back at the local level, trim the bureaucratic fat at the state and federal levels, and demand more from our kids.
What about the process of teaching itself? It's funny how that is missing from your list and the list of so many others. Sigh... Direct instruction and programmed instruction address making improvements education by focusing on making education more efficient. We've had tremendous success with Thomas McHale'sprogrammedinstruction in mathematics at West Virginia University. We found that we didn't need to bother too much with "administrations" and "beaurocracies" once we identified some deficiciences in the instructional process.
"Apple should open up the interface for a bit more customization, expose the API's and maybe work in some kind of X11/Aqua hybrid feature so X11 applications can run on Aqua without extensive modification to the Aqua look and feel."
You should definitely have a look at wxWindows. A C++ environment that makes calls to the X11 architecture on almost every platform out there. Also, we all know about Qt, so I'm not sure about your statement. These development environments couldn't have been implemented without at least some documentation of the API...
... for Palladium. If this guy can get everyone worked up about the dangers of the Internet, maybe he can get them to adopt "very agreeable" legislation for modified hardware configurations that are GPL incompatible (i.e., Palladium). Good ol' Micros~t, they know how to work the system.
The previous post by Roblimo should be modded up, man. People are clamoring for a change in the content of Slashdot in addition to the changes in looks/features. IMHO, that would be a rather large mistake. Sure, maybe the site would be around in four years, but would it really be Slashdot?
I can't tell if this was posted or not, but I've downloaded and checked it out. It seems like a great way to build communities around a project while giving experience and allowing interaction with up and coming programmers. In other words, it sounds a lot like open source development in general. The folks at Autodesk seem a bit hyper about the registration process, but it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
Thanks for the site. Not only was it the only site that was up, but better coverage was provided. I think we're all a little traumatized, but if it wasn't for Slashdot, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. I have to admit, I was really proud of you guys for working so hard on this story. I think that we all are. Thanks again.
Incredible coordination and piloting skills... How is it possible that two airplanes were flown into those targets on the NY skyline? Those guys were trained, and trained well. NPR mentioned that the attacks couldn't have happened without a lot of help from the inside (i.e., U.S. citizens). Was it conducted by U.S. citizens, a sort of Timothy McVeigh rerun? It really makes you wonder.
The reason that the developers dropped this project may have been given by a developer from Heroine Virtual at the sourceforge forum link. The problem looks to be one of financing the project:
With this in mind you should realize what is involved in ensuring the software you use doesn't have to be paid for. The only reason you can use any software at all is because the developers are able to pay for it through day jobs which today don't exist. The GPL requires software to be paid for by the developer before it can be released to the public.
#1 Most of the computer scientists who once contributed to open source projects moved to different careers.
#2 Writing large applications is an undesirable hobby for anyone not interested or able to make a career out of software.
What a dilemma. Great goddamned software, and no way to even provide a micropayment for it??? All someone would have to do is threaten to sue these guys to break their bank. I guess I'm being offtopic but I can see why they took their toys and went home.
"Who would you listen to?" de Icaza moaned to an office mate. "Just another Mexican? Or the richest man in the world?"
How is it that open-source can get a channel into governments? The people who make the economic decisions, such as el Presidente, are the people that we should be talking to. I'm curious, as I'm sure Miguel is, as how that can be done...
Slashdot Mirror
The company disputes this analysis. "We're the owners of the Unix (AT&T) System V code, and so we would know what it would look like," the company told McMillan and the IDG News Service. "Until it comes to court, it's going to be our word against theirs."
The weird thing is, if they knew what it looked like, then why did they release it under the GPL? Off-hand statements like this from the company's CEOs do a lot to discredit the whole mess....
One of the best and newest game engines available for $100 is CipherEngine. The engine is actually written in mostly C, rather than C++, which accounts for the compile time of less than 15 seconds.
Another interesting and free engine is from Qubesoft.
Agreed. Several sayings come to mind:
There's no such thing as a Free lunch.
Beware of Geeks bearing gifts.
And on a lighter note, I wish I was there. It sounds like fun.
I'd be curious to know what impacts the behavior of people like McBride and others has on U.S. international business relations, existing or potential.
From the looks of it, SCO is not and has not been an exceptional company in terms of ingenuity or revenue. Their talent seems to be in their legal skills rather than technical prowess. It also looks as if they dangled a carrot in front of the nose of some programmers with the intention of creating the current situation (and I'm not saying that there is one). I'm not a business/financial person, but if I was in Europe or the UK, or anywhere in the world for that matter, I would be hesitant to engage in business transactions with people who are so obviously out of control. "Let's sue Linus!" "Make it another billion! No, wait, make it another TWO billion! Yeah!" These numbers are obviously not tied to any real assets. The transparency of the aggression by the owners of SCO, as well as recent transgressions by other CEOs in other companies, would not seem to bode well for U.S. international business relations. I sure as hell wouldn't want to interact with someone who might turn around and take my company away. I feel like my country is rotting.
The language of the parent post is disturbing in its own right:
"...you were all sh*t disturbers..."
"Nobody needs agitators..."
"rightly brand you as a trouble maker."
One need only pick up a copy of John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" to see that you have unwittingly plagiarized the witticisms of "employers" during the Great Depression. Individuals who attempted to organize themselves and protest against the poor (understatement) working conditions were called "agitators," "trouble makers," and "reds" (i.e., communists) and were placed on blacklists (i.e., blackballed) that prevented them from getting work anywhere else. It was the formation of unions that saved our workforce from tyrants who made sure that mass revolt wasn't possible.
For an interesting alternative to all of the complications being presented in the current case, may I suggest a "picture book" view for the younger readers.
"When I arived at the ToL in Khar all I saw was a field of tombstones, and some guys kyting the guards around. Next thing i see (as i make my way to the Runemaster) is a R30 Mino barb beating the piss out of some r1 who went there to train (like i did), i mean beating him like a red headed step child."
I mean, isn't this the way that video games were MEANT to be played?
Eric references a Slashdot interview with the IBM Linux kernel hackers, among others. Code that the IBM Linux kernel hackers contributed had to pass the inspection of a "gatekeeper" who monitored the contributions for possible violations (see question #2 on OS blending).
Check out Marshall Kirk McKusick's chapter chapter in "Open Sources" for a rundown on the history of the various Unixes. It's a good, rapid-pace read.
I remembered the missing slot. It was:
8:00am -> 9:00am: Fat Albert (Bill Cosby's voice)
Also, Friday night's lineup included Bill Bixby as The Incredible Hulk. And in the early 1970s, one of the first shows I remember watching regularly with my friends was Darren McGavin in Kolchak: The Night Stalker. We were absolute rabid fans of that one. Remembering some of those shows still scares me today... Those are truly some classics of a bygone era.
I can still recount my Saturday mornings during the mid to late 1970s:
6:00am -> 7:00am: Superfriends
7:00am -> 8:00am: Scooby Doo
8:00am -> 9:00am: [actually, I forget this hour]
9:00am -> 11:00am: Bugs Bunny
11:00am -> 11:30am: Johnny Quest (greatest cartoon ever)
Usually, a couple of kids from the neighborhood or school had stayed the night, and Friday nights were spent watching Dukes of Hazzard. All in all, it was a heck of a good way to spend your weekend.
"If you concentrated all the energy that the sun will put out over its entire 9 billion-year life into a tenth of a second, then you would have some idea of the brightness."
The key phrase here is then you would have some idea. Frankly, there is a point in astronomy and astrophysics where things get so big, and so fast, and so bright, that the only idea that remains in one's brain when trying to imagine such phenomena is a white light with a big hand reaching into it. The example above is classic: first I have to imagine 9 billion years (good luck, I can't even remember what happened yesterday) and then I have to imagine a tenth of a second, which is like a total brain fart. And then, and only then, would I have some idea of the brightness. Well, I guess that I would have some idea if my head hadn't imploded while trying to imagine that nanofart called a "tenth of a second." Geezus.
This site may have been up for a while, although I heard through the grapevine that most of the documents available here have not been previously available online and were recently added. But I'll add that the date that this site went online is probably less important than the events surrounding it. That said, I believe that it is important to examine our actions and the actions of our leaders within the context of our historical roots. Reading the transcripts of documents such as the Bill of Rights gives one a focal point from which the actions of our leaders, past and present, may be sensibly evaluated. That's just one opinion, however, and we all have a right to our opinion, and to voice that opinion...
Macromedia deserves some credit for staying in tune with the development world. But lets face it: Flash is for art majors. Even with its "standard" controls that are now available (e.g., scrolling text box), it is still a difficult environment to control; you always feel like "this could look so much better with this spinning, pulsing button." All those vector calculations in Flash still bring a PII to its knees. If people are interested in Web applications, they migh consider Runtime Revolution, a cheap ($300) cross-platform (Mac, Win, Linux, etc.) alternative with native support for sockets and other amazing tools, including multimedia support, that really allow you to accomplish what needs to be done. I've spent a LOT of time trying to find the right rapid application developement tools for the job, and Runtime Revolution has yet to be beat. Python with Boa Constructor (v .2) and Mcmillan installers is certainly awesome, but the multimedia (i.e., Quicktime) just isn't there yet. In other words, there are a lot of very nice alternatives to Flash, which is really not much more than a glorified banner advertisement tool.
Looks like this may be a holy war after all. "Shekinah" means the presence of God." Shock and awe? More and more, every day.
Let's pay our teachers better, put administrative power over schools back at the local level, trim the bureaucratic fat at the state and federal levels, and demand more from our kids.
What about the process of teaching itself? It's funny how that is missing from your list and the list of so many others. Sigh... Direct instruction and programmed instruction address making improvements education by focusing on making education more efficient. We've had tremendous success with Thomas McHale's programmed instruction in mathematics at West Virginia University. We found that we didn't need to bother too much with "administrations" and "beaurocracies" once we identified some deficiciences in the instructional process.
"Apple should open up the interface for a bit more customization, expose the API's and maybe work in some kind of X11/Aqua hybrid feature so X11 applications can run on Aqua without extensive modification to the Aqua look and feel."
You should definitely have a look at wxWindows. A C++ environment that makes calls to the X11 architecture on almost every platform out there. Also, we all know about Qt, so I'm not sure about your statement. These development environments couldn't have been implemented without at least some documentation of the API...
... for Palladium. If this guy can get everyone worked up about the dangers of the Internet, maybe he can get them to adopt "very agreeable" legislation for modified hardware configurations that are GPL incompatible (i.e., Palladium). Good ol' Micros~t, they know how to work the system.
The previous post by Roblimo should be modded up, man. People are clamoring for a change in the content of Slashdot in addition to the changes in looks/features. IMHO, that would be a rather large mistake. Sure, maybe the site would be around in four years, but would it really be Slashdot?
Just my two cents.
I can't tell if this was posted or not, but I've downloaded and checked it out. It seems like a great way to build communities around a project while giving experience and allowing interaction with up and coming programmers. In other words, it sounds a lot like open source development in general. The folks at Autodesk seem a bit hyper about the registration process, but it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
CmdrTaco,
Thanks for the site. Not only was it the only site that was up, but better coverage was provided. I think we're all a little traumatized, but if it wasn't for Slashdot, I don't know what I'd be doing right now. I have to admit, I was really proud of you guys for working so hard on this story. I think that we all are. Thanks again.
Steve
Incredible coordination and piloting skills... How is it possible that two airplanes were flown into those targets on the NY skyline? Those guys were trained, and trained well. NPR mentioned that the attacks couldn't have happened without a lot of help from the inside (i.e., U.S. citizens). Was it conducted by U.S. citizens, a sort of Timothy McVeigh rerun? It really makes you wonder.
The reason that the developers dropped this project may have been given by a developer from Heroine Virtual at the sourceforge forum link. The problem looks to be one of financing the project:
With this in mind you should realize what is involved in ensuring the software you use doesn't have to be paid for. The only reason you can use any software at all is because the developers are able to pay for it through day jobs which today don't exist. The GPL requires software to be paid for by the developer before it can be released to the public.
#2 Writing large applications is an undesirable hobby for anyone not interested or able to make a career out of software.
What a dilemma. Great goddamned software, and no way to even provide a micropayment for it??? All someone would have to do is threaten to sue these guys to break their bank. I guess I'm being offtopic but I can see why they took their toys and went home.
...violent protest. This can't be true
THE DEPARTMENT ALSO said it will not pursue the bundling issues in its protracted antitrust suit against the software giant.
What's left?
"Who would you listen to?" de Icaza moaned to an office mate. "Just another Mexican? Or the richest man in the world?"
How is it that open-source can get a channel into governments? The people who make the economic decisions, such as el Presidente, are the people that we should be talking to. I'm curious, as I'm sure Miguel is, as how that can be done...
Just starting out, and I want to check my prefs.