I thought it was a troll when I read it too. I've encountered problems with a corrupted Netinfo database maybe two or three times in the last couple years working as a Mac technician, and the automatic backup always solves the issue if no backup was made previously.
As for remote root login, you can't ssh in as root, but it's not a problem, as you can easily ssh in as an admin and then run "sudo -s -H" to authenticate as root. I do that all the time.
No. *Netinfo Manager* is a GUI app, but far from the only way to actually work on the netinfo database, which is really files on a hard drive (what a novel concept!) which you can manipulate using command-line tools such as nicl, niutil, etc. So far, I've found almost nothing on Mac OS X which I can't do from the command-line, either with Terminal or logged in >console mode. Even in single-user mode, if you start up the services, you have access to pretty much anything.
Next time you're trolling, at least research your trolls.
There's no plot hole with Merry/Pippin/Gandalf there. Gandalf had been in Isengard before when rallying Rohan's army. Merry and Pippin actually explain this to the three travelers when they're eating at the gates. They were surprised to see him then the first time, but it's told in retrospective.
If you'd actually read the apple tech article that was released soon after the G5 were shipping (on august 25th), you'd have known that it didn't work:
Amid all the comments I've read among all the numerous SCO stories on Slashdot and articles elsewhere, I've never seen someone raise the point of what is RIGHT instead of what is LEGAL.
Regardless of the legality of SCO's claims, regardless of the contract claims, the copyright law, or whatever else, if SCO wins and has its way it's WRONG.
Wrong in the sense that it would destroy open-source. Wrong in the sense that it endangers society and its evolution.
Law are a tool human beings have used to build civilizations. A tool that should reflect the most important objective of any society: to survive and grow. When we start caring about that law more than about why those laws exist, more about the letter than about its spirit, it's wrong, and it can only degenerate into a society which will not grow, which is in decline.
Linux and the open-source movement is a step in the right way, to break the hold corporations have in these modern days on everyday people. They will of course fight against it, but should we just shrivel and die? If SCO wins, should we all send our checks to SCO or even stop using open-source software, only because they have the law behind them?
I say NO.
In addition to that, remember that any legal decision regarding this case will only hold within the US. It won't touch most other countries. Imagine how it would be if using Linux would be illegal in the US yet legal in other countries...
That's what gives humans sentience and free will. In parts of our brains, some basic functions are carried at the quantum level, and that's where it IS. The particle goes left or right, and we "decide" to go left or right.
And don't give me the "what about animals" line. They are simply "less" sentient than we are. It's all a question of degree, of the amount of freedom our brains allow to its consituent particles, on how many of those are actively involved in the decision process.
It may sound like a totally crazy idea, but it works if you think about it for a while...
Just to add my redundant opinion. I've used lots of fast machines, and all the Macs in the last few years, and numerous very fast PCs, and I've owned a dual-CPU system for years (6 years, 2 systems), and let me tell you all:
The G5 is FAST. The dual 2GHz is a monster, so fast that very often for reasonably complex task, I'd ask myself if it had done it since no progress bar even appeared on the screen. It's faster than any other Mac or PC I've used so far, and it's even faster running on 10.3 beta.
Oh it's not cheap. But if you consider the better OS (it comes with a UNIX BSD-based OS), the excellent FREE iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD) for which I have yet to find equivalents on any other platform for less than mounds of cash, the sleeker design, longer life (don't deny it, I've seen it again and again, Macs are still usable after 4 years and more while PCs often see their end of life around 2-3 years), and higher resell value, as well as a nice, affordable extended warranty with excellent customer service (Apple won the latest consumer evaluation in that regard), you get back the additional money in better performance, better productivity, and longer usability. After 3 years, when the extended warranty runs out, you can seel your computer for a resonable amount and get a new one, or keep it as a secondary backup unit that can still do useful work.
So XFS apparently has pieces of code in it that belong to SCO.
Nope. As far as we know, not a line; nothing, nada. SCO never claimed it did either.
Considering this, the rest of your argument that stems from this.
What SCO claims is that since XFS was originally put into a system that was derived from UNIX, and they own the rights to Unix, then XFS is bound to the UNIX license, which prevents sharing that code with anyone else who hasn't paid for a UNIX license. But XFS is a totally independent SGI creation which contains no non-free UNIX code as far as we know.
They're essentially claiming that XFS is a derivative work of UNIX since it was created to be put into Irix, a UNIX derivative OS. Which is ridiculous by any interpretation of property law or the UNIX license. It's as if the car lending company claimed ownership of your trailer because you used their car to pull it. They might sue you for damages to the car if you weren't allowed to do it, but they can't claim that the trailer is theirs.
What SGI actually did was to put some UNIX code in other portions of Linux (unrelated to XFS). That code was public domain or under a free license but was attributed to SGI instead of to the actual copyright holder. They removed those bits and are checking to make sure there aren't any others.
And most importantly, when Linux is mainstream enough, where's the guarantee that SOOC will not sue for frikkin billions for code theft / patent infingement / licensing agreement violations?
They could sue the person/company who put that code in there and force them to remove it. The company in question would then notify the code-keepers it was illegally put there, it would be removed and possibly have to be replaced, but there is NO LEGAL BASIS for making anyone else pay for damages other than the person who did the actual infringement of releasing the code, which is why everyone thinks the "SCO Linux license" is a piece of shit and means absolutely nothing. It's a racket, nothing else, and if they actually DID sell even one of them they could be sued under the RICO act for racketeering.
No, since SCO has no rights to XFS. It's an SGI creation. SCO claim they have a right to it, but they believe everything is theirs. Very soon, they'll be suing God for having created the universe, and they'll require people to pay 699$ in order to use the letters SCO.
In fact, it was the employer excercising their rights to fire an employee for making statements they didn't like, and it affirms, rather than denies the Bill of Rights.
But should corporations have constitutional rights? Like individuals?
Considering that the avowed objective of any corporation is to make money, and no other purpose, they are by definition non-ethical. The individuals that comprise them may well be ethical, but the resulting "virtual entity" isn't. A human being has a conscience, may care about the consequences of his actions; moral, ethical, religious, or justicial. A corporation has no conscience, no morals, and should not be considered equal or superior to a human being, and be given equal rights.
I have a little extension called "High Sierra File Access", a name that sounds just like a real extension, that when put in the Extensions folder in MacOS 8-9 will reverse ALL THE TEXT ON SCREEN. All menus, folder/file names, window names, even text boxes will have reversed text. It's really impressive and confusing.
Now, that guy who's not too computer-savvy was changing office and coming down near to us technicians. So after his iMac had been brought to his new desk and before he came in that morning, I put that little extension, then restarted so that it would load, and removed it to the trash.
Now when he came in, at first he couldn't quite understand what was going on. He managed to start up a few apps from the icons by habit, but couldn't do anything. I stayed close and he asked for help, so I looked at it carefully and said:
"Well, I've seen this problem before, it's because they moved it, and the letters got all mixed up in it. But I can cure it, all I need to do is to shake it up a bit."
I proceeded to shut down the system, and picked up the iMac and shook it every way. Put it back down, and started it up. The extension not being there anymore, it didn't load and everything was fine. He was looking at me with those BIG incredulous eyes, and he just couldn't believe I'd solved the problem this way. We all started laughing helplessly and explained it to him after a few minutes.
Please mod the parent up, he describes pretty well the Canadian voting system. I've worked as an official in many different positions, and I can say it's a system that works quite well, is fast and efficient, and not very likely to be abused or subject to fraud. The worst thing I've seen is a woman voting in the name of her mother seemingly by accident.
You could also have done the updates manually, by installing the updated packages. Fink lets you do that easily, it had 3.7.1p1 available a few days ago.
Same here at home, I get the normal timeouts, although DNS resolution for failed domains seems to take a bit longer, so I suspect my ISP has done something about it.
OTOH, at work Verisign's crap works, and we use our ISP's DNS servers, not our own, so not much I can do about it.
>So there you have it. In order to save everyone time and money, the cruise ship companies get away with it. I'm sure there are other examples with other types of tickets.
Of course there are reasonable exceptions which can be logical, but every day that passes by, I'm happy to live in Canada and NOT in the US.
Not sure what kind of disclaimers you are talking about; if you mean the restrictions against cameras and the like, it's handled differently, the promoters of an event have the right to limit your entrance to a site and impose conditions, but they have to reimburse you if you are not allowed in for some reason.
If you mean stuff about no warranty of performance, it's happened a few times, and people have been reimbursed by court order, making such non-warranties void. People occasionaly leave the theater during some very bad movies and get reimbursed. Theaters still print "disclaimers" on movie tickets but they're never enforced. I've gotten re-imbursed for unused movie tickets before, as long as I asked for it long enough before the showing (one day in advance usually).
The point still remains that EULA may very well not be valid in whole or in part in most jurisdictions.
I know they're invalid in most part here in Quebec. Essentially unenforcable.
You see, there's this point of contract law that's important here: that a contract is only valid if it can be read and signed by the party before at the time of sale. Any subsequent conditions, clauses, or contract modifications are null unless agreed by both parties. Once I've paid for Windows, it's mine. I can do what I can with it. Once I buy my Xbox it's mine (supposition here, I don't own an xbox and am not interested in buying one). I never signed any contract at the register allowing Microsoft to modify it without my permission, nor was there a mention of that on the box.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was a troll when I read it too. I've encountered problems with a corrupted Netinfo database maybe two or three times in the last couple years working as a Mac technician, and the automatic backup always solves the issue if no backup was made previously.
As for remote root login, you can't ssh in as root, but it's not a problem, as you can easily ssh in as an admin and then run "sudo -s -H" to authenticate as root. I do that all the time.
No. *Netinfo Manager* is a GUI app, but far from the only way to actually work on the netinfo database, which is really files on a hard drive (what a novel concept!) which you can manipulate using command-line tools such as nicl, niutil, etc. So far, I've found almost nothing on Mac OS X which I can't do from the command-line, either with Terminal or logged in >console mode. Even in single-user mode, if you start up the services, you have access to pretty much anything.
Next time you're trolling, at least research your trolls.
Really. I mean is there even an argument here?
What??
There's no plot hole with Merry/Pippin/Gandalf there. Gandalf had been in Isengard before when rallying Rohan's army. Merry and Pippin actually explain this to the three travelers when they're eating at the gates. They were surprised to see him then the first time, but it's told in retrospective.
Note that on Monday there were still about a hundred tickets available for the Montreal Paramount Theatre showing. I bought mine last friday.
If you'd actually read the apple tech article that was released soon after the G5 were shipping (on august 25th), you'd have known that it didn't work:
8 64 44
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=
% kill $$ :-)
Too many )'s.
I guess one is too many.
Amid all the comments I've read among all the numerous SCO stories on Slashdot and articles elsewhere, I've never seen someone raise the point of what is RIGHT instead of what is LEGAL.
Regardless of the legality of SCO's claims, regardless of the contract claims, the copyright law, or whatever else, if SCO wins and has its way it's WRONG.
Wrong in the sense that it would destroy open-source. Wrong in the sense that it endangers society and its evolution.
Law are a tool human beings have used to build civilizations. A tool that should reflect the most important objective of any society: to survive and grow. When we start caring about that law more than about why those laws exist, more about the letter than about its spirit, it's wrong, and it can only degenerate into a society which will not grow, which is in decline.
Linux and the open-source movement is a step in the right way, to break the hold corporations have in these modern days on everyday people. They will of course fight against it, but should we just shrivel and die? If SCO wins, should we all send our checks to SCO or even stop using open-source software, only because they have the law behind them?
I say NO.
In addition to that, remember that any legal decision regarding this case will only hold within the US. It won't touch most other countries. Imagine how it would be if using Linux would be illegal in the US yet legal in other countries...
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
That's what gives humans sentience and free will. In parts of our brains, some basic functions are carried at the quantum level, and that's where it IS. The particle goes left or right, and we "decide" to go left or right.
And don't give me the "what about animals" line. They are simply "less" sentient than we are. It's all a question of degree, of the amount of freedom our brains allow to its consituent particles, on how many of those are actively involved in the decision process.
It may sound like a totally crazy idea, but it works if you think about it for a while...
Nope, it's been absolutely perfect, better than WMP, and not like Winamp and MM Jukebox with whom I had similar problems.
Gone nowhere.
Or I get timeouts, same here. It's been that way the whole day since 12.
Just to add my redundant opinion. I've used lots of fast machines, and all the Macs in the last few years, and numerous very fast PCs, and I've owned a dual-CPU system for years (6 years, 2 systems), and let me tell you all:
The G5 is FAST. The dual 2GHz is a monster, so fast that very often for reasonably complex task, I'd ask myself if it had done it since no progress bar even appeared on the screen. It's faster than any other Mac or PC I've used so far, and it's even faster running on 10.3 beta.
Oh it's not cheap. But if you consider the better OS (it comes with a UNIX BSD-based OS), the excellent FREE iApps (iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD) for which I have yet to find equivalents on any other platform for less than mounds of cash, the sleeker design, longer life (don't deny it, I've seen it again and again, Macs are still usable after 4 years and more while PCs often see their end of life around 2-3 years), and higher resell value, as well as a nice, affordable extended warranty with excellent customer service (Apple won the latest consumer evaluation in that regard), you get back the additional money in better performance, better productivity, and longer usability. After 3 years, when the extended warranty runs out, you can seel your computer for a resonable amount and get a new one, or keep it as a secondary backup unit that can still do useful work.
Nope. As far as we know, not a line; nothing, nada. SCO never claimed it did either.
Considering this, the rest of your argument that stems from this.
What SCO claims is that since XFS was originally put into a system that was derived from UNIX, and they own the rights to Unix, then XFS is bound to the UNIX license, which prevents sharing that code with anyone else who hasn't paid for a UNIX license. But XFS is a totally independent SGI creation which contains no non-free UNIX code as far as we know.
They're essentially claiming that XFS is a derivative work of UNIX since it was created to be put into Irix, a UNIX derivative OS. Which is ridiculous by any interpretation of property law or the UNIX license. It's as if the car lending company claimed ownership of your trailer because you used their car to pull it. They might sue you for damages to the car if you weren't allowed to do it, but they can't claim that the trailer is theirs.
What SGI actually did was to put some UNIX code in other portions of Linux (unrelated to XFS). That code was public domain or under a free license but was attributed to SGI instead of to the actual copyright holder. They removed those bits and are checking to make sure there aren't any others.
They could sue the person/company who put that code in there and force them to remove it. The company in question would then notify the code-keepers it was illegally put there, it would be removed and possibly have to be replaced, but there is NO LEGAL BASIS for making anyone else pay for damages other than the person who did the actual infringement of releasing the code, which is why everyone thinks the "SCO Linux license" is a piece of shit and means absolutely nothing. It's a racket, nothing else, and if they actually DID sell even one of them they could be sued under the RICO act for racketeering.
No, since SCO has no rights to XFS. It's an SGI creation. SCO claim they have a right to it, but they believe everything is theirs. Very soon, they'll be suing God for having created the universe, and they'll require people to pay 699$ in order to use the letters SCO.
But should corporations have constitutional rights? Like individuals?
Considering that the avowed objective of any corporation is to make money, and no other purpose, they are by definition non-ethical. The individuals that comprise them may well be ethical, but the resulting "virtual entity" isn't. A human being has a conscience, may care about the consequences of his actions; moral, ethical, religious, or justicial. A corporation has no conscience, no morals, and should not be considered equal or superior to a human being, and be given equal rights.
I have a little extension called "High Sierra File Access", a name that sounds just like a real extension, that when put in the Extensions folder in MacOS 8-9 will reverse ALL THE TEXT ON SCREEN. All menus, folder/file names, window names, even text boxes will have reversed text. It's really impressive and confusing.
Now, that guy who's not too computer-savvy was changing office and coming down near to us technicians. So after his iMac had been brought to his new desk and before he came in that morning, I put that little extension, then restarted so that it would load, and removed it to the trash.
Now when he came in, at first he couldn't quite understand what was going on. He managed to start up a few apps from the icons by habit, but couldn't do anything. I stayed close and he asked for help, so I looked at it carefully and said:
"Well, I've seen this problem before, it's because they moved it, and the letters got all mixed up in it. But I can cure it, all I need to do is to shake it up a bit."
I proceeded to shut down the system, and picked up the iMac and shook it every way. Put it back down, and started it up. The extension not being there anymore, it didn't load and everything was fine. He was looking at me with those BIG incredulous eyes, and he just couldn't believe I'd solved the problem this way. We all started laughing helplessly and explained it to him after a few minutes.
A judge needs to approve such a subpoena. The issue here is that the DMCA removes this limitation.
Please mod the parent up, he describes pretty well the Canadian voting system. I've worked as an official in many different positions, and I can say it's a system that works quite well, is fast and efficient, and not very likely to be abused or subject to fraud. The worst thing I've seen is a woman voting in the name of her mother seemingly by accident.
You could also have done the updates manually, by installing the updated packages. Fink lets you do that easily, it had 3.7.1p1 available a few days ago.
If you're not happy, just install Fink, compile OpenSSH 3.7.1p1 and enable it instead of Apple's version.
That's what a lot of us did.
Same here at home, I get the normal timeouts, although DNS resolution for failed domains seems to take a bit longer, so I suspect my ISP has done something about it.
OTOH, at work Verisign's crap works, and we use our ISP's DNS servers, not our own, so not much I can do about it.
>So there you have it. In order to save everyone time and money, the cruise ship companies get away with it. I'm sure there are other examples with other types of tickets.
Of course there are reasonable exceptions which can be logical, but every day that passes by, I'm happy to live in Canada and NOT in the US.
Not sure what kind of disclaimers you are talking about; if you mean the restrictions against cameras and the like, it's handled differently, the promoters of an event have the right to limit your entrance to a site and impose conditions, but they have to reimburse you if you are not allowed in for some reason.
If you mean stuff about no warranty of performance, it's happened a few times, and people have been reimbursed by court order, making such non-warranties void. People occasionaly leave the theater during some very bad movies and get reimbursed. Theaters still print "disclaimers" on movie tickets but they're never enforced. I've gotten re-imbursed for unused movie tickets before, as long as I asked for it long enough before the showing (one day in advance usually).
I know they're invalid in most part here in Quebec. Essentially unenforcable.
You see, there's this point of contract law that's important here: that a contract is only valid if it can be read and signed by the party before at the time of sale. Any subsequent conditions, clauses, or contract modifications are null unless agreed by both parties. Once I've paid for Windows, it's mine. I can do what I can with it. Once I buy my Xbox it's mine (supposition here, I don't own an xbox and am not interested in buying one). I never signed any contract at the register allowing Microsoft to modify it without my permission, nor was there a mention of that on the box.