Well to be fair to the Fuel Lobby, they have repeatedly said that they had no intention of blockading refineries, and were picketing only to draw attention to their situation.
The panic seemed to start with a government announcement to the effect that it would impose fuel restrictions if necessary.
Colin Baker has largely returned to the theatre, although he still does the occasional TV program. He's a very good stage actor, imho. Didn't like him as the Doctor, but I've enjoyed watching him in a few different stage productions.
Not sure what Sylvester McCoy is doing, though. Stuffing live ferrets down his trousers?
It's also worth considering contractual obligations. If Intel has agreements which they are contractually obliged to keep confidential, I would imagine that they couldn't divulge said information to IBM even if they really wanted to.
A court order to produce such information (probably under seal) would trump the confidentiality agreement.
Also, there may be business reasons why Company A doesn't want to appear too eager to acquiesce to the demands of Company B. A subpoena will preserve the fiction that 'they made us do it'.
I have one of these: Wyvern Toccata III (yes, I have a huge organ *ba-dumm*)
It's a digital pipe(less) organ, and the quality of the sound it produces is absolutely first class. The Wyvern company prides itself on its digital technique, which involves sampling each individual note and faithfully replicating it with all of its idiosyncracies. I cant distinguish music played on a Wyvern organ from music played on a conventional pipe organ. My organ teacher, a church and concert organist for over 40 years, also finds it very hard to tell the difference.
Mind you, an organist has much less control over the quality of the sound produced than, say, a violinist. Nevertheless, I guess what I'm trying to say is that technology is sufficiently advanced that it IS possible to produce convincing digital representations of musical instrument. IMHO, of course.
Oh, I did.:) My response was short, to the point, factual and polite, just like criticism should be (but too often isn't).
I got a standardised reply from the author of that particular piece, which failed to address any of the points I raised. Actually it didn't really address anything, more of a "It's my article, I stand by what I wrote".
I wasn't disappointed by the response - I hadn't really expected to get one at all. I discussed it with a couple of people on the Groklaw IRC channel, who received an identical copy of the email, that similarly failed to address the points they raised. We could only assume that there had been a large amount of feedback on that particular article. Well we hoped so, anyway.
Makes up for their recent writeup on SCO
on
Linux Going Mainstream
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Tolkien's work was not considered serious literature by the people who (sadly) matter, until the late 80's at least. This is not to say that it isn't serious literature; 'The Lord of the Rings', for example, is considered by many - including me - to be one of the finest pieces of English literature ever written.
The literati of the 50's did not like Tolkien or his work, because it did not fit what they considered to be the One True Literary Model. Unfortunately, these people were in positions of influence, and so their opinion became the prevailing opinion of the time. That opinion lasted for decades. In fact, there are still many literary luminaries who consider Tolkien's work to be ridiculous, inferior and not to be recommended.
There was a recent BBC poll of the greatest books of the 20th Century, which was won by 'The Lord of the Rings'. It made some of people who think that they have a monopoly on what is considered 'acceptable' in the the literary canon, to become very cross indeed. I thought that was rather funny.
You're right about the length of the book, though. Even if it had been 'acceptable', the chances of it becoming required reading for the agerage school are very slim. Then again, if it had been 'acceptable', it wouldn't have been half as good as it is.
Be aware also of the role of the BBC Governors - they have a somewhat schizophrenic task: they are responsible for ensuring that the BBC sticks to its Royal Charter (unbiased, public service broadcasting, etc), but they are also responsible for defending the BBC against the attacks of the insidious^Wgovernment.
In this particular incident, the Governors didn't exactly cover themselves with glory when they leapt to the defence of Gilligan without, apparently, making any attempt to investigate the veracity of the report (or the reporter).
I agree, it is all most strange. However, here's a theory:
If SCO have the exclusive right to sub-license Novell's UNIX technology, they are also going to have to provide the manuals and datasheets to the new sublicensees. Owning the copyright to those manuals and datasheets would make it a lot easier for SCO to reprint/amend/update them, wouldn't it?
I don't think you need to worry, at least not just yet. All Novell said in their press release was that they haven't finalised their long-term strategy yet.
I think that any company which declares its long-term strategy in specific terms (eg: we will be using KDE long-term), particularly in a market such as Free/Open Source, which is moving incredibly fast at the moment, is probably in for a bit of a shock.
On the other hand, if in 18 months time SuSE has scaled back on its KDE contributions and Novell is talking up Ximian, I may get concerned.
I had a chat this evening with one of my contacts in SuSE. She had just left a rather long meeting and was somewhat behind the times (the news was made public whilst she was in the meeting). One of the first things she said was 'Have you read Slashdot? What do people think of the announcement?'
I'm not sure what Novell is planning, but (as at 2003-11-04 20:45GMT) http://www.novell.com seems to nail their colours to the mast. (In case it has changed by the time you click, the top 2.5 inches of the page are filled with 'LINUX', with a red N.)
Interesting times. This needs a chance to mature - a year or more, at least, I would hazard - but I can't say that I believe this to be a bad thing for Linux in general.
WRT journalists protecting their sources, the events leading up to the Hutton Inquiry in the UK are interesting. The spat between the UK government and the BBC blew up largely because Andrew Gilligan refused to name his source for a report even after it became clear who the source was. His stance was that he had guaranteed the anonymity of his source, and would under no circumstances reveal or confirm the name, even after that source had come forward to his superiors.
This is all notwithstanding the fact that Gilligan's report was third rate, sensational and, it seems, contained several inaccuracies. It is apparent that none of the parties in the affair is without blame (even Dr Kelly himself), but I will be very surprised if Gilligan is not singled out for particular criticism.
Nevertheless the whole debacle can be argued to stem from the fact that a journalist (and the news organisation for whome he was working) refused to bow to government pressure and break a guarantee of anonynimity.
The Open University is a case in point. It is a correspondence university that has been going for a few decades. It is a matter of pride for OU that many of its degree courses are recognised as equal to the courses offered in the top 'traditional' universities of any given field (see here for the independent audit report for 1999. At this site you can also see audit reports for most of the UK universities and centres of higher education.) Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Psychology, Law and CS courses offered by OU are of particular note - however I am basing this only on the opinion of friends in those three professions - only one of whom has an OU degree.
Disclaimer: I'm about to commence a LLB (Bachelor of Laws) degree with OU, so I may be a little biased. And yes, I know this is a strange choice of degree for a computer geek.:)
Ah, thanks for the clarification, I've been wondering about it all evening (details like that niggle me).
I can't help feeling that it's a rather odd system... I mean, what's to stop XYZ Corp. from inserting a function into the code that has not been deposited, and then claiming breach of copyright? In the case of a printed book, there's a fairly good chance that there will at least be a copy in the Library of Congress which would be fairly decisive in determining when a copyrighted work was created, but it seems to me that it would be hard to get independent verification of the veracity of the copyright claim if it was something like 'Umm, well you know those 20 pages of source code we deposited, well this function just happens to be on pages 48-53. Look, here are the relevant pages!'
I'm sure there's a completely obvious answer to this which I have overlooked entirely, but in my defence, it's late, and I'm hungry.
(note: The above is taken verbatim from the US Copyright Office online record database)
So... either SCO only copyrighted 20 pages of code, or you don't need to deposit the whole work with the CO in order to have it copyrighted. Unless the '(20 p.)' above means something entirely different...
Happened to me last year, and I was damn annoyed about it.
I was on a driving holiday in Cornwall (peerless beauty) and talking time out to visit some of the ancient sites, many of which are in the middle of moorland, and a mile or two off the road. When trying to find one particular site, an abandoned 11th Century village, I wasted nearly 2 hours trying to find a small dead-end road marked on the map which seemed to me to be the best starting point for the trek to the village. Eventually I got my compass out and after some triangulation concluded that I was in the right place, but the road did not in fact exist. Sure enough, the abandoned village was where it was supposed to be too.
Now admittedly this wasn't an Ordinance Survey map, and I should have got my compass out and started checking earlier. However, since the site was clearly marked on the map, you would think that the mapmaker would have assumed that someone, someday would actually want to visit it...
Hmm, this turned out to be a longer rant than I had anticipated. Still, it did make me bloody cross.
I'm glad you liked the talk. Personally, I thought it was far too much waffle.:)
It's true that the success of our email system has increased the value of Linux in the eyes of TPTB, but the fact remains that we are only *considering* Linux as a possibility. Just as we are considering Windows, Netware and various proprietary versions of Unix.
Wow, I haven't felt the need to log into Slashdot for years.:)
I'm the Nottingham City guy. The hype around this is all very good for my ego and whatnot, but it is just that - hype. What I *actually* said was something along the lines of 'As part of our normal upgrade cycle, we are considering several technologies, including Linux, Novell, proprietary Unix and Linux.
There is nothing special about our interest in FOSS, and I think it is a sign of the maturity of Linux that we are considering it as 'just another operating system', rather than jumping on one of the many bandwagons currently on the road.
I remember a few years ago, when I worked for British Gas (cough, spit). I was involved in testing a new utility billing system that was being implemented (failed miserably. horrible, off-the-shelf thing to replace a not-too-horrible bespoke thing).
Anyway, I remember being taken around the computer centre one day, by a very sexy sysadmin.. *blush*.. and walking past the rows and rows of VAXen (not sure which models) which ran the current billing system, until we came to a little rack which held two alphas and a huge raid device, on which was a copy of the entire billing database that all those rows and rows of VAXen were employed to crunch. I remember how awed I was. Sad really.
No point to this comment... but since this seems to be a 'memory lane' thread, I thought I would add my reminiscences.
Richard
--
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuam saxum immane mittam.
So there.
Slashdot Mirror
Well to be fair to the Fuel Lobby, they have repeatedly said that they had no intention of blockading refineries, and were picketing only to draw attention to their situation.
The panic seemed to start with a government announcement to the effect that it would impose fuel restrictions if necessary.
I still have one. :o) I use it for playing games when I'm feeling retro.
Colin Baker has largely returned to the theatre, although he still does the occasional TV program. He's a very good stage actor, imho. Didn't like him as the Doctor, but I've enjoyed watching him in a few different stage productions.
Not sure what Sylvester McCoy is doing, though. Stuffing live ferrets down his trousers?
It's also worth considering contractual obligations. If Intel has agreements which they are contractually obliged to keep confidential, I would imagine that they couldn't divulge said information to IBM even if they really wanted to.
A court order to produce such information (probably under seal) would trump the confidentiality agreement.
Also, there may be business reasons why Company A doesn't want to appear too eager to acquiesce to the demands of Company B. A subpoena will preserve the fiction that 'they made us do it'.
I have one of these:
Wyvern Toccata III
(yes, I have a huge organ *ba-dumm*)
It's a digital pipe(less) organ, and the quality of the sound it produces is absolutely first class. The Wyvern company prides itself on its digital technique, which involves sampling each individual note and faithfully replicating it with all of its idiosyncracies. I cant distinguish music played on a Wyvern organ from music played on a conventional pipe organ. My organ teacher, a church and concert organist for over 40 years, also finds it very hard to tell the difference.
Mind you, an organist has much less control over the quality of the sound produced than, say, a violinist. Nevertheless, I guess what I'm trying to say is that technology is sufficiently advanced that it IS possible to produce convincing digital representations of musical instrument. IMHO, of course.
Not 'Clue', just 'Who' :)
Oh, I did. :) My response was short, to the point, factual and polite, just like criticism should be (but too often isn't).
I got a standardised reply from the author of that particular piece, which failed to address any of the points I raised. Actually it didn't really address anything, more of a "It's my article, I stand by what I wrote".
I wasn't disappointed by the response - I hadn't really expected to get one at all. I discussed it with a couple of people on the Groklaw IRC channel, who received an identical copy of the email, that similarly failed to address the points they raised. We could only assume that there had been a large amount of feedback on that particular article. Well we hoped so, anyway.
This ons still makes me slightly cross:
Earlier BBC story
Still, I suppose that the latest story is written by someone who has Clue. I'm told that they exist, even at the BBC.
This is getting way off-topic, but never mind. :)
Tolkien's work was not considered serious literature by the people who (sadly) matter, until the late 80's at least. This is not to say that it isn't serious literature; 'The Lord of the Rings', for example, is considered by many - including me - to be one of the finest pieces of English literature ever written.
The literati of the 50's did not like Tolkien or his work, because it did not fit what they considered to be the One True Literary Model. Unfortunately, these people were in positions of influence, and so their opinion became the prevailing opinion of the time. That opinion lasted for decades. In fact, there are still many literary luminaries who consider Tolkien's work to be ridiculous, inferior and not to be recommended.
There was a recent BBC poll of the greatest books of the 20th Century, which was won by 'The Lord of the Rings'. It made some of people who think that they have a monopoly on what is considered 'acceptable' in the the literary canon, to become very cross indeed. I thought that was rather funny.
You're right about the length of the book, though. Even if it had been 'acceptable', the chances of it becoming required reading for the agerage school are very slim. Then again, if it had been 'acceptable', it wouldn't have been half as good as it is.
Be aware also of the role of the BBC Governors - they have a somewhat schizophrenic task: they are responsible for ensuring that the BBC sticks to its Royal Charter (unbiased, public service broadcasting, etc), but they are also responsible for defending the BBC against the attacks of the insidious^Wgovernment.
In this particular incident, the Governors didn't exactly cover themselves with glory when they leapt to the defence of Gilligan without, apparently, making any attempt to investigate the veracity of the report (or the reporter).
I agree, it is all most strange. However, here's a theory:
If SCO have the exclusive right to sub-license Novell's UNIX technology, they are also going to have to provide the manuals and datasheets to the new sublicensees. Owning the copyright to those manuals and datasheets would make it a lot easier for SCO to reprint/amend/update them, wouldn't it?
I don't think you need to worry, at least not just yet. All Novell said in their press release was that they haven't finalised their long-term strategy yet.
I think that any company which declares its long-term strategy in specific terms (eg: we will be using KDE long-term), particularly in a market such as Free/Open Source, which is moving incredibly fast at the moment, is probably in for a bit of a shock.
On the other hand, if in 18 months time SuSE has scaled back on its KDE contributions and Novell is talking up Ximian, I may get concerned.
I had a chat this evening with one of my contacts in SuSE. She had just left a rather long meeting and was somewhat behind the times (the news was made public whilst she was in the meeting). One of the first things she said was 'Have you read Slashdot? What do people think of the announcement?'
I'm not sure what Novell is planning, but (as at 2003-11-04 20:45GMT) http://www.novell.com seems to nail their colours to the mast. (In case it has changed by the time you click, the top 2.5 inches of the page are filled with 'LINUX', with a red N.)
Interesting times. This needs a chance to mature - a year or more, at least, I would hazard - but I can't say that I believe this to be a bad thing for Linux in general.
Or even,
:)
"I am Evil itself, you insensitive clod!"
WRT journalists protecting their sources, the events leading up to the Hutton Inquiry in the UK are interesting. The spat between the UK government and the BBC blew up largely because Andrew Gilligan refused to name his source for a report even after it became clear who the source was. His stance was that he had guaranteed the anonymity of his source, and would under no circumstances reveal or confirm the name, even after that source had come forward to his superiors.
This is all notwithstanding the fact that Gilligan's report was third rate, sensational and, it seems, contained several inaccuracies. It is apparent that none of the parties in the affair is without blame (even Dr Kelly himself), but I will be very surprised if Gilligan is not singled out for particular criticism.
Nevertheless the whole debacle can be argued to stem from the fact that a journalist (and the news organisation for whome he was working) refused to bow to government pressure and break a guarantee of anonynimity.
You say 'Matrix', but I read 'Monty Python'. :)
Courtesy of Yahoo! Finance.
SCO GROUP INC (RTM/ECN)
Symbol: SCOX
Last Trade: 14.29 4:00PM ET
After Hours Change: N/A
Today's Change: 2.94 (17.06%)
Bid: 13.70
Ask: 14.75
It dropped a ways below $14 a time or two just before the close. Some shoring up going on, I suspect.
After Hours trading might be interesting.
Yes, I know it's Friday night and no, I have nothing better to do.
Disclaimer: I'm about to commence a LLB (Bachelor of Laws) degree with OU, so I may be a little biased. And yes, I know this is a strange choice of degree for a computer geek. :)
Ah, thanks for the clarification, I've been wondering about it all evening (details like that niggle me).
I can't help feeling that it's a rather odd system... I mean, what's to stop XYZ Corp. from inserting a function into the code that has not been deposited, and then claiming breach of copyright? In the case of a printed book, there's a fairly good chance that there will at least be a copy in the Library of Congress which would be fairly decisive in determining when a copyrighted work was created, but it seems to me that it would be hard to get independent verification of the veracity of the copyright claim if it was something like 'Umm, well you know those 20 pages of source code we deposited, well this function just happens to be on pages 48-53. Look, here are the relevant pages!'
I'm sure there's a completely obvious answer to this which I have overlooked entirely, but in my defence, it's late, and I'm hungry.
(note: The above is taken verbatim from the US Copyright Office online record database)
So... either SCO only copyrighted 20 pages of code, or you don't need to deposit the whole work with the CO in order to have it copyrighted. Unless the '(20 p.)' above means something entirely different...
Interesting, all the same.
Happened to me last year, and I was damn annoyed about it.
I was on a driving holiday in Cornwall (peerless beauty) and talking time out to visit some of the ancient sites, many of which are in the middle of moorland, and a mile or two off the road. When trying to find one particular site, an abandoned 11th Century village, I wasted nearly 2 hours trying to find a small dead-end road marked on the map which seemed to me to be the best starting point for the trek to the village. Eventually I got my compass out and after some triangulation concluded that I was in the right place, but the road did not in fact exist. Sure enough, the abandoned village was where it was supposed to be too.
Now admittedly this wasn't an Ordinance Survey map, and I should have got my compass out and started checking earlier. However, since the site was clearly marked on the map, you would think that the mapmaker would have assumed that someone, someday would actually want to visit it...
Hmm, this turned out to be a longer rant than I had anticipated. Still, it did make me bloody cross.
I'm glad you liked the talk. Personally, I thought it was far too much waffle. :)
It's true that the success of our email system has increased the value of Linux in the eyes of TPTB, but the fact remains that we are only *considering* Linux as a possibility. Just as we are considering Windows, Netware and various proprietary versions of Unix.
Wow, I haven't felt the need to log into Slashdot for years. :)
I'm the Nottingham City guy. The hype around this is all very good for my ego and whatnot, but it is just that - hype.
What I *actually* said was something along the lines of 'As part of our normal upgrade cycle, we are considering several technologies, including Linux, Novell, proprietary Unix and Linux.
There is nothing special about our interest in FOSS, and I think it is a sign of the maturity of Linux that we are considering it as 'just another operating system', rather than jumping on one of the many bandwagons currently on the road.
(Or jelly, for Merkins and other strange creatures). Spread thinly on the inside of the envelope. Honey is good, too, or sandwich paste.
I remember a few years ago, when I worked for British Gas (cough, spit). I was involved in testing a new utility billing system that was being implemented (failed miserably. horrible, off-the-shelf thing to replace a not-too-horrible bespoke thing).
Anyway, I remember being taken around the computer centre one day, by a very sexy sysadmin.. *blush*.. and walking past the rows and rows of VAXen (not sure which models) which ran the current billing system, until we came to a little rack which held two alphas and a huge raid device, on which was a copy of the entire billing database that all those rows and rows of VAXen were employed to crunch. I remember how awed I was. Sad really.
No point to this comment... but since this seems to be a 'memory lane' thread, I thought I would add my reminiscences.
Richard
--
Catapultam habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuam saxum immane mittam.
So there.