I haven't seen this new edition, but the last edition is sitting right there on my "most frequently used books" shelf right in front of me.
And those WYSIWYG web designers - coding is not something they're willing to do, or even think about. Except of course if its in Flash, which is somehow OK.
As a strong believer in free speech and in the essential rights of humans (as opposed to churches, corporations and governments), I tend to see free speech as being one of the strongest defenses people have against such governmental abuses. Isn't it possible that the US government is already torturing prisoners in Camp Delta (or whatever it is called this week)? If no one is free to speak or write of it how would you know?
Free speech is essential to making such abuses known, to gathering people interested in changing abusive systems, and to reaching out to people outside the system for assistance. And essential change of such a system is impossible without allowing people to talk about such change.
And restrictions on P2P systems, file sharing, encryption, and internet speech - whether imposed by governments and enforced by governmental agencies, or by corporations are all ways to restrict speech.
It may seem farfetched, but it is not hard for me to see corporations like Sprint, Verizon, and MS imposing very strict limits on what kind of information can be exchanged over their networks. After all we have the example of AOL to show them the way. And of course since they're not the government they're not limited (in the US) by that pesky Constitution. Or perhaps a corporation will implement "Total Information Awareness" and "voluntarily" share such information with the government - why bother with search warrants after all?
These are all just different facets of the same problem. There are those (typically those in power) who see everyone else as a threat to their power - and who are seriously motivated to quash any such threat - real or imagined.
Paranoid? Maybe. Dont fight the corporate powers. Let them quash file sharing, plant bombs in your computer (Sen Hatch's quaint notion of reasonableness), censor your mail. Vote for every politician who is more in favor of "Homeland Security" than human rights. Let these things go unchecked and tell me in 20 years or so.
I've been thinking about doing this - except that I was figuring on keeping all the major spam email addresses I've managed to collect and include those in a list in the email with the suggestion that they're sympathetic and that they should all get in touch with each other.
I haven't yet - but one more good spam attack and its likely.
Though I would add one twist. I'd encrypt the body of the message and add a single paragraph saying it was encrypted and giving the key - with some babble about how I was doing that for their protection and to keep the body of the message from triggering email scanner alarms. I'm quite sure that words like "encrypt" "rijndael" "AES" will pass through their scanners without being noticed.
I doubt it would end with bullets - I tend to figure that the internet censors and their gestapo friends are being well paid off to let the spam pass quickly.
I'd recommend that you sample the whole history of jazz - especially including some of the early blues stuff. I won't go as far as to say that you should buy at random (if I had the funds that would be my algorithm) - but sample stuff you don't know.
This can be much less expensive, by the way, if you have a vinyl to electron converter (ie turntable) and are willing to spend a bit of time in thrift stores - there's lots of jazz in the bins and while you do need to check for scratches, even scratched they can give a good flavor of thing very cheaply. Enough anyway to give you a feel for if you want more or not.
(Parenthetically, this is where the RIAA and their friends are losing out - much of this stuff could be made available digitally for free on file sharing networks. Doing so would hardly make a dent in their profits - but doing so would probably gain them a lot of listeners. However, I dont think the music company bigwigs are much interested in long term profits - just in this years salary and bonus.)
In no particular order, I'd suggest a few of the greats and one rather odder suggestion you'll probably not get anywhere else:
Louis Armstrong - you can rarely go wrong with Louis. And its hard to get tired of him.
Duke Ellington - maybe a bit formal and cool, but such cool!
Count Basie - big bandish sometimes. Where Ellington almost sounds (sometimes) like classical piano, Basie's piano is sparser and to my ear rather jazzier
Dave Brubeck - the album "Time Further Out" is one of the musts
Miles Davis - "Bitches Brew" is abstract jazz on acid. Hard to listen to for a while, but after a bit you'll hear what he's doing. Very important album - it touched (one way or another) so much afterwards. Almost everything by Davis is worth hearing.
Carla Bley - Bley does her own odd, warped, almost Dixiland take on things - not everyone lines it, not everyone calls it jazz - but great stuff. Try "European Tour".
I was going to patent the Google idea. Force everyone to link to my site who says anything even remotely non-complimentary and I've got it made. Next time I'll try to get the patent filed as soon as I read the slashdot story.
If you're sued by Walpurgis Mart (for example) you've already lost - you'll spend quite a bit of money and time just to protect your "I had bad service the other day" remark. Or you can remove the remark. Or you can just never post anything negative about anyone or anything. Or you can put up their 100 Mb rebuttal.
Even if a judge does decide (after you've spent a few tens of thousands of euros in legal fees) that the 100 Mb response is overkill, they can easily try again with 10Mb. And so on.
Anyone also notice the requirement that a rebuttal be posted to everyone in a mailing list where you've posted something critical. I can see it now : Recently John Doe posted on this mailing list a note accusing me of fraud. However, I can prove that I am not deceiving you - I represent the widow of President Mobutu and have $3,790,000 tied up in Nigeria where....
This looks to me like a rather wonderful experiment in the law of unintended consequences.
I've already thought of a couple ways to subvert the intention of the rule and a couple more ways to just have fun with it all.
I think its a rather dumb rule, but would rather like to see it implemented just for the sheer amusement value of watching what happens.
(Imagine, for instance, IMDB being required to post a rebuttal to every negative movie review. )
No. The draft proposal says that a link is ok. It does not say that the person or organization that wants to provide a rebuttal needs to provide space for the reply. It looks to me like a statement like "Walpurgis Mart Sucks" could result in "Walpurgis Mart" requiring me to put up a 100 Mb response.
Even so, I do have a couple questions about links as required here....
If I link to someone's reply from a period (".")in my text, is that sufficient? How about linking from an image map? Or from some fancy javascript? Could my link be set up to popunder a 10 by 10 pixel window that looks like it originates from the people who dont like what I said and that refuses to close?
Management that behaves like this is not just bad, it is self defeating. This is a good way to accomplish any number of things :
Guarantee that the software produced will be of the worse possible quality
Up the probability that the project will be late and may not pass any acceptance tests required.
Give the company a bad reputation among potential employees.
Help encourage what would otherwise be valuable employees to dislike the company to the point of quitting, sabotage or worse.
Create enough stress in a development team that it becomes completely unable to accomplish anything.
The goal of management to get the job done, on time and in the right way. In a case like this, this should mean that managers go to their employees and say things like "what can we do to help you accomplish this?". Since that would involve the manager seeing their role as inverted from their usual view where the manager is the big boss, most managers won't see it. (It may also help to remember the Peter Principle - that everyone "rises to their own level of incompetence" and thus any manager that has not moved quickly up the ladder is almost certainly incompetent.)
Perhaps the best option is to do some research into the badly managed software project, and write a memo to your manager detailing the problems with doing what he wants. The first and last paragraphs should say, bluntly (but professionally) that those methods proposed will end up with a poor product which may be late, and will also risk some of the things above, then ask him to sign off on it - with a "CC:" to his boss and his bosses boss and so on. And send those copies up the chain - if he signs it, and if he does not (in which case, add a note to that effect).
There are lots of good works on management that talk about such things, so a couple of hours in a good bookstore and a couple hours more online should provide lots of ammunition.
Also, its easy for MS to change things at any time.
They can change the HTML layout engine at any time and in any way they want.
More interestingly, if they achieve serious (90% or so) dominance in the web server arena as well as the browser arena, they could easily change the way HTTP itself works and effectively cut out all other players on both the server and browser side. I'll bet they'd then find a way to make IE available to the Mac - at a nice premium, of course.
Gosling appears to have oblivious to most of the research
While this is certainly possible, I doubt it seriously. NeWS was specifically set up to be able to use OO techniques. I also remember that early discussions and descriptions of java mentioned most of the OO languages of interest at the time and discussed their good and bad points.
I don't know that Dylan was mentioned, but I'd be very surprised given Gosling's background that he was unaware of it. And I think it would be just as hard for him to be unaware of Self.
Given what Gosling has done over the years and the way he's done it, I tend to believe that he understood the issues very well - and that it is quite likely that many of the warts in Java were due to compromises and pressures out of his control.
But I could easily be wrong. I do that very well, in fact.
I can't seem to find any details at the moment, but if I remember correctly (quite unlikely, come to think of it) there was a project called "Juice" presented as an alternative to java back in java's early days that represented programs as parse trees. It was developed by Nicklaus Wirth and was an offshoot of oberon.
And there are the obvious advantages that might be gained by representing programs as XML trees (internally at least, programmers don't need to see it).
I think MS knows very well that most people do not "just want an OS". Most users don't even really know that there is an OS under there (they know that its running "windows something" - but have no real idea of what an OS really does).
People now expect to get a browser, word processor, drawing program and so on with their computer, just as they expect to get a paint program with their digital camera and so on. (More, they expect to get IE specfically - installed along with Flash, media handlers and so on.)
They don't want to have to actually look for, evaluate and obtain this stuff for themselves. Let's face it, they're not usually capable of doing all that - in particular, evaluating software can be hard enough for someone who knows the field.
If there's any doubt about this, look at the reviews of linux installs for consumers and what people find troublesome. Invariably its not "the scheduler" or anything like that, its the lack of a good media player, or open office problems, or problems with sound cards or the like.
OK, so that was 1960's not 80's, but still it has the right flavor of complete unreality, surrealism and camp silliness that SCO has been foisting upon us.
I tried a dremel tool. Either it cut well but not exactly, or it cut poorly, but relatively accurately.
But now I have a better Idea!
I'll score the CD with a sharp blade and spin it at 30,000 RPM till the scored part just flies off. Repeat to get the next piece and there ya have it.
Slow, but potentially much fun.
In fact, corporations have legal protections that most (human) individuals do not. Corporations can not go to jail. This is a far reaching right indeed - for being charged with offenses far worse than most individuals are charged with, corporations do not even get jailed awaiting trial. This is in itself a serious punishment for individuals - you can end up in jail, unable to earn a living or even consult freely with your legal advisors - for periods of months or years. Even when bail is granted to individuals it is often in the form of bond which can be very expensive for most people.
Corporate officers can also be sheltered from legal repercussions in many cases.
And while it may not be a consideration for all, corporations have no ethical, moral or religious standards to uphold or be held to.
As is often said : Corporations have no soul to damn nor body to kick.
On a related note, what is the best way to cut (physically) CD's ?
I'd like to build a few hanging geometric things out of CD's and have not yet found a good way to cut them reliably and accurately. I've tried various kinds of saw, craft knives and the like, hot objects, scoring and bending till they break and so on. Getting a couple good cuts is easy - getting a bunch of accurate shapes is a bit tougher.
The Declaration of Independence contains the reference :
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Note the "among these", an implication that there may be other such rights not listed.
However, the Declaration of Independence, wonderful bit of prose that it is, has absolutely no legal bearing whatever on the United States. legislatures at any level can pass laws that would seem to be prohibited by the Declaration and it matters not a whit.
The bit that follows though, is also worth reading. The question that interests me these days is will someone end up in the ToTal TerrorisT InformaTion LisT (the TTTTITLT) just by quoting it.
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
The "covers ripped off books" thing has always seemed very dubious indeed to me. How can you tell the difference between a book with the cover ripped off by the bookstore and one with the cover ripped off by a previous owner? (I can't think of a reason why a book owner would tear off the cover and sell it, but who knows.) Also, to prove it was stolen you'd have to trace a chain of ownership somehow and that could be difficult. I've always just laughed at it and bought anyway (if the book was cheap enough and interesting enough).
If what I toss in the dumpster becomes the property of the garbage company, would that make dumpster diving by employees of the garbage company legal even if it were not legal for others? So they could (might, should) go through the trash stream looking for things that are recyclable/reusable.
I've been wondering about this for a while. SCO has been displaying itself to be ethically challenged for a while - so its quite possible that they'd be willing to edit timestamps and things.
That given, lets suppose that theres a block of code that SCO claims is theirs but that has shown up in the Linux source. How can SCO prove it is theirs?
Suppose that they show us magnetic media with the code. I'd personally not believe it if its only on a hard drive. I could be persuaded to believe a whole series of magnetic tapes given the opportunity to examine all of them and take diffs, and verify timestamps. Maybe. Given a chance to question developers for that code who are not currenly involved with the company. Its too easy for me to think of ways to write scripts that would write a series of backups that would slowly change and add code to them.
CDROM's? Same problem as mag tapes - way too easy to generate a series that look good, but that are forged.
Printouts - maybe if I could get a paper expert to determine the age of the paper.
So, what would it take? Paper logs with tape/cd ids as they're signed in/out of an off site facility of some sort? Better, but unless there's a way to guarantee that they're not rewritten along the way, I'd still consider them suspect.
If the backups were all digitally signed/timestamped and had a digital signature published in the newspaper or something, that would go a lot further. Preferably with each digital signature being applied to the current codebase and the previous signature in order to
establish continuity. Did SCO do this?
On the linux side, since the source has been publicly available for so long, finding a set of timestamped versions of a file online that agree is probably not that hard - and would be pretty convincing.
Even with that, if the code in question showed up in both the SCO source and Linux source in a period of a month or so, I'd have to say that reasonable doubt would fall on the pro-linux side.
So, really, how does SCO plan to prove any of this?
Its my suspicion that we seriously subsidize the interstate trucking industry by not charging them appropriately for the damage done to roads by the trucks.
This is based on something I heard once a while back - that the damage to a road goes up with the square of the speed and the fourth power of the weight. I don't know if that is true and have not been able to either verify and falsify that, but I have set up spreadsheet models that allow me to vary things like milage, the powers involved and so on. For simplicity I usually base it only on milage and weight as speed is much harder to quantify in any good way.
At one end (all factors are linear) and with conservative assumptions about the milage for truckers and my known milage, I come up with figures that say that for every dollar I pay for road maintenance for my single vehicle, a truck with a reasonable load should be paying about $20,000. At the far end (fourth power) the truck should be paying about $10,000,000. (Remember, this is a ratio - and does not indicate that anyone would have to actually spend that kind of fees for a truck. To construct a reasonable tax scheme would take some extra work.)
I don't know what truckers are actually paying, but even given the small amount of information I have, I suspect its not anywhere near what even the conservative estimates here are saying.
But the trucker lobby and the industries that depend on cheap trucking would probably fight any fair scheme as hard as the good citizens of Oregon will fight gas taxes.
Slashdot Mirror
And those WYSIWYG web designers - coding is not something they're willing to do, or even think about. Except of course if its in Flash, which is somehow OK.
Another excellent source for such information is zvon .
Free speech is essential to making such abuses known, to gathering people interested in changing abusive systems, and to reaching out to people outside the system for assistance. And essential change of such a system is impossible without allowing people to talk about such change.
And restrictions on P2P systems, file sharing, encryption, and internet speech - whether imposed by governments and enforced by governmental agencies, or by corporations are all ways to restrict speech.
It may seem farfetched, but it is not hard for me to see corporations like Sprint, Verizon, and MS imposing very strict limits on what kind of information can be exchanged over their networks. After all we have the example of AOL to show them the way. And of course since they're not the government they're not limited (in the US) by that pesky Constitution. Or perhaps a corporation will implement "Total Information Awareness" and "voluntarily" share such information with the government - why bother with search warrants after all?
These are all just different facets of the same problem. There are those (typically those in power) who see everyone else as a threat to their power - and who are seriously motivated to quash any such threat - real or imagined.
Paranoid? Maybe. Dont fight the corporate powers. Let them quash file sharing, plant bombs in your computer (Sen Hatch's quaint notion of reasonableness), censor your mail. Vote for every politician who is more in favor of "Homeland Security" than human rights. Let these things go unchecked and tell me in 20 years or so.
I haven't yet - but one more good spam attack and its likely.
Though I would add one twist. I'd encrypt the body of the message and add a single paragraph saying it was encrypted and giving the key - with some babble about how I was doing that for their protection and to keep the body of the message from triggering email scanner alarms. I'm quite sure that words like "encrypt" "rijndael" "AES" will pass through their scanners without being noticed.
I doubt it would end with bullets - I tend to figure that the internet censors and their gestapo friends are being well paid off to let the spam pass quickly.
This can be much less expensive, by the way, if you have a vinyl to electron converter (ie turntable) and are willing to spend a bit of time in thrift stores - there's lots of jazz in the bins and while you do need to check for scratches, even scratched they can give a good flavor of thing very cheaply. Enough anyway to give you a feel for if you want more or not.
(Parenthetically, this is where the RIAA and their friends are losing out - much of this stuff could be made available digitally for free on file sharing networks. Doing so would hardly make a dent in their profits - but doing so would probably gain them a lot of listeners. However, I dont think the music company bigwigs are much interested in long term profits - just in this years salary and bonus.)
In no particular order, I'd suggest a few of the greats and one rather odder suggestion you'll probably not get anywhere else:
Nowhere near enough.
I was going to patent the Google idea. Force everyone to link to my site who says anything even remotely non-complimentary and I've got it made. Next time I'll try to get the patent filed as soon as I read the slashdot story.
Even if a judge does decide (after you've spent a few tens of thousands of euros in legal fees) that the 100 Mb response is overkill, they can easily try again with 10Mb. And so on.
Anyone also notice the requirement that a rebuttal be posted to everyone in a mailing list where you've posted something critical. I can see it now :
Recently John Doe posted on this mailing list a note accusing me of fraud. However, I can prove that I am not deceiving you - I represent the widow of President Mobutu and have $3,790,000 tied up in Nigeria where....
Not just spam, but court required spam!
I've already thought of a couple ways to subvert the intention of the rule and a couple more ways to just have fun with it all.
I think its a rather dumb rule, but would rather like to see it implemented just for the sheer amusement value of watching what happens. (Imagine, for instance, IMDB being required to post a rebuttal to every negative movie review. )
No. The draft proposal says that a link is ok. It does not say that the person or organization that wants to provide a rebuttal needs to provide space for the reply. It looks to me like a statement like "Walpurgis Mart Sucks" could result in "Walpurgis Mart" requiring me to put up a 100 Mb response.
Even so, I do have a couple questions about links as required here.... If I link to someone's reply from a period (".")in my text, is that sufficient? How about linking from an image map? Or from some fancy javascript? Could my link be set up to popunder a 10 by 10 pixel window that looks like it originates from the people who dont like what I said and that refuses to close?
Enquiring minds and all that ....
The goal of management to get the job done, on time and in the right way. In a case like this, this should mean that managers go to their employees and say things like "what can we do to help you accomplish this?". Since that would involve the manager seeing their role as inverted from their usual view where the manager is the big boss, most managers won't see it. (It may also help to remember the Peter Principle - that everyone "rises to their own level of incompetence" and thus any manager that has not moved quickly up the ladder is almost certainly incompetent.)
Perhaps the best option is to do some research into the badly managed software project, and write a memo to your manager detailing the problems with doing what he wants. The first and last paragraphs should say, bluntly (but professionally) that those methods proposed will end up with a poor product which may be late, and will also risk some of the things above, then ask him to sign off on it - with a "CC:" to his boss and his bosses boss and so on. And send those copies up the chain - if he signs it, and if he does not (in which case, add a note to that effect).
There are lots of good works on management that talk about such things, so a couple of hours in a good bookstore and a couple hours more online should provide lots of ammunition.
More interestingly, if they achieve serious (90% or so) dominance in the web server arena as well as the browser arena, they could easily change the way HTTP itself works and effectively cut out all other players on both the server and browser side. I'll bet they'd then find a way to make IE available to the Mac - at a nice premium, of course.
While this is certainly possible, I doubt it seriously. NeWS was specifically set up to be able to use OO techniques. I also remember that early discussions and descriptions of java mentioned most of the OO languages of interest at the time and discussed their good and bad points. I don't know that Dylan was mentioned, but I'd be very surprised given Gosling's background that he was unaware of it. And I think it would be just as hard for him to be unaware of Self.
Given what Gosling has done over the years and the way he's done it, I tend to believe that he understood the issues very well - and that it is quite likely that many of the warts in Java were due to compromises and pressures out of his control.
But I could easily be wrong. I do that very well, in fact.
And there are the obvious advantages that might be gained by representing programs as XML trees (internally at least, programmers don't need to see it).
Gosling Emacs, NeWS and SC should also be mentioned. Not all well known now, but all things I've used and appreciated.
People now expect to get a browser, word processor, drawing program and so on with their computer, just as they expect to get a paint program with their digital camera and so on. (More, they expect to get IE specfically - installed along with Flash, media handlers and so on.)
They don't want to have to actually look for, evaluate and obtain this stuff for themselves. Let's face it, they're not usually capable of doing all that - in particular, evaluating software can be hard enough for someone who knows the field.
If there's any doubt about this, look at the reviews of linux installs for consumers and what people find troublesome. Invariably its not "the scheduler" or anything like that, its the lack of a good media player, or open office problems, or problems with sound cards or the like.
OK, so that was 1960's not 80's, but still it has the right flavor of complete unreality, surrealism and camp silliness that SCO has been foisting upon us.
But now I have a better Idea!
I'll score the CD with a sharp blade and spin it at 30,000 RPM till the scored part just flies off. Repeat to get the next piece and there ya have it. Slow, but potentially much fun.
Corporate officers can also be sheltered from legal repercussions in many cases.
And while it may not be a consideration for all, corporations have no ethical, moral or religious standards to uphold or be held to.
As is often said :
Corporations have no soul to damn nor body to kick.
I'd like to build a few hanging geometric things out of CD's and have not yet found a good way to cut them reliably and accurately. I've tried various kinds of saw, craft knives and the like, hot objects, scoring and bending till they break and so on. Getting a couple good cuts is easy - getting a bunch of accurate shapes is a bit tougher.
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
Note the "among these", an implication that there may be other such rights not listed.
However, the Declaration of Independence, wonderful bit of prose that it is, has absolutely no legal bearing whatever on the United States. legislatures at any level can pass laws that would seem to be prohibited by the Declaration and it matters not a whit.
The bit that follows though, is also worth reading. The question that interests me these days is will someone end up in the ToTal TerrorisT InformaTion LisT (the TTTTITLT) just by quoting it.
to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
or to paraphrase Dr. Dick Solomon :
Nuclear weapons don't kill people, physics kills people.
If what I toss in the dumpster becomes the property of the garbage company, would that make dumpster diving by employees of the garbage company legal even if it were not legal for others? So they could (might, should) go through the trash stream looking for things that are recyclable/reusable.
That given, lets suppose that theres a block of code that SCO claims is theirs but that has shown up in the Linux source. How can SCO prove it is theirs?
Suppose that they show us magnetic media with the code. I'd personally not believe it if its only on a hard drive. I could be persuaded to believe a whole series of magnetic tapes given the opportunity to examine all of them and take diffs, and verify timestamps. Maybe. Given a chance to question developers for that code who are not currenly involved with the company. Its too easy for me to think of ways to write scripts that would write a series of backups that would slowly change and add code to them.
CDROM's? Same problem as mag tapes - way too easy to generate a series that look good, but that are forged.
Printouts - maybe if I could get a paper expert to determine the age of the paper.
So, what would it take? Paper logs with tape/cd ids as they're signed in/out of an off site facility of some sort? Better, but unless there's a way to guarantee that they're not rewritten along the way, I'd still consider them suspect.
If the backups were all digitally signed/timestamped and had a digital signature published in the newspaper or something, that would go a lot further. Preferably with each digital signature being applied to the current codebase and the previous signature in order to establish continuity. Did SCO do this?
On the linux side, since the source has been publicly available for so long, finding a set of timestamped versions of a file online that agree is probably not that hard - and would be pretty convincing.
Even with that, if the code in question showed up in both the SCO source and Linux source in a period of a month or so, I'd have to say that reasonable doubt would fall on the pro-linux side.
So, really, how does SCO plan to prove any of this?
This is based on something I heard once a while back - that the damage to a road goes up with the square of the speed and the fourth power of the weight. I don't know if that is true and have not been able to either verify and falsify that, but I have set up spreadsheet models that allow me to vary things like milage, the powers involved and so on. For simplicity I usually base it only on milage and weight as speed is much harder to quantify in any good way.
At one end (all factors are linear) and with conservative assumptions about the milage for truckers and my known milage, I come up with figures that say that for every dollar I pay for road maintenance for my single vehicle, a truck with a reasonable load should be paying about $20,000. At the far end (fourth power) the truck should be paying about $10,000,000. (Remember, this is a ratio - and does not indicate that anyone would have to actually spend that kind of fees for a truck. To construct a reasonable tax scheme would take some extra work.)
I don't know what truckers are actually paying, but even given the small amount of information I have, I suspect its not anywhere near what even the conservative estimates here are saying.
But the trucker lobby and the industries that depend on cheap trucking would probably fight any fair scheme as hard as the good citizens of Oregon will fight gas taxes.