It might be honest. It's also boneheaded stupid. In that sense, you're reinforcing a stereotype that the rest of the world holds about America and Americans.
The people who wish for the destabilization or damage to the U.S. don't realize that it is not in the world's interest to see that happen.
Now you're playing up to another American stereotype. While you appear to be capable of understanding that other people should hold a mature and intelligent view of foreign policy, you still reserve the right to be a stupid, arrogant bonehead for yourself and your country.
Perhaps you should share your thoughts with the US troops currently in Iraq? I rather think that they'd take a somewhat different view to chickenhawks like yourself.
I actually wasn't referring to myself. I like America and spend a lot of time there. I was in Manhattan the October after 9/11 so probably had a better idea than someone in Buttfuck, Idaho what kind of impact and devastation it caused.
There's nothing you can do about it, without ensuring your own destruction.
Keep your adolescent dick waving for someone who might be impressed by it. Osama Bin Laden, for example...
I don't doubt it. The problem is that attitudes like yours seems to be what shapes American foreign policy these days.
Consequently, you shouldn't be too surprised when people feel that Americans are only any good for making dramatic statements to the world about how we're not gonna take it any more.
After all, a large section of the world actually *does* care what happens to Americans.
I'm not necessarily defending cnet as much as attacking a simplistic view of interview journalism.
I think your perspective holds when you're interviewing a celebrity or someone who is in a position of strength. However, this interview took place (or was published anyway) the day after SCO's new business strategy -- a strategy based upon litigation -- took the most mammoth battering of the whole sorry episode.
I imagine that there was real pressure on the interviewee to get out there and spin, spin, spin, to try and undo the damage that has just been done to the case in the court of public opinion. Under those circumstances, the lawyer needs the press more than the press needs the lawyer and you can get away with much more rigorous questions than you might otherwise be able to put.
I hate to say this, but your post is almost as incoherent as the original article.
I don't think anyone disputes the fact that copyright law 'trumps' the GPL. What's more pertinent is the fact that copyright law underpins the GPL.
I also don't think anyone disputes the fact that if code has mistakenly or accidentally been released under GPL, then it can rightfully be taken back.
Given the damage that they did to their case yesterday, I would have expected SCO or their lawyers to show an incontrovertable example of code in the Linux kernel that is clearly part of System V and backs up their severely damaged argument that their IP has been deliberately misappropriated by IBM -- the people that they've brought the action against. However, I didn't see any of that. I just saw yet more spin, yet more FUD and a refusal to try and block any of the gaping holes in their argument - like the issue of whether the code could have moved from Open Source to SCO's closed source. Had I been SCO's lawyer, this would have been my strategy, and so you've got to wonder why he didn't take this tack?
I'll grant you that there's a tendency on Slashdot to engage in wishful thinking about how the law works -- and I may well engage in that myself from time to time. But for anyone who has a grasp of the legal issues under consideration in this case, the article added nothing and made no new points.
As for the possibility that these arguments may muddle a jury, well, I suppose that's a possibility, but it seems pretty clear that any half-competent lawyer who is able to provide a good narrative of SCO's actions in this case are going to be just as disgusted as the average Slashdot reader.
They must really believe this. In fact, they must be shitting their pants. They've had months and months and teams of coders and lawyers working together to dig up the best example of copyright contravention that they can find, and this is what they come up with.
Five minutes after the code leaks, the world and his wife knows that SCO are completely full of shit and their law suit has suffered a mortal wound. Poor Darl's head must be spinning so fast that he doesn't know which way is up any more.
Darl: "Bwahahahaha. Mom, mom, it isn't fair! That big bully, GPL is cheating. I only wanted to steal a little bit of money from all those linux hippies, but GPL wants to keep it all for himself. Make him play nice. Make him GIVE me the money, or I'll scream and scream and scream until I turn purple and you have to call the doctor out...."
Darl's mommy: "Sorry son, but while you were out playing, I got myself a new boyfriend. Unlike GPL, my new guy IBM is pretty strict and he believes in corporal punishment for brattish children. You'd best run to your room and hide quietly, because I think I see him fetching his strap from the woodshed...."
I agree. I think this is a clear response to the rapidity with which Operation Footbullet (ie showing the code) was discredited by the mass media. This is the first sign I've seen of SCO being genuinely on the defensive. The team have obviously all been told to get out there and start spinning to try and turn this story around again -- another clear indication that they want to fight this action in the court of public opinion, not the law courts.
They accuse IBM of being this manipulating orwellian company that could somehow motivate us open source advocates to hate them.
This, I think, is the clearest sign of their desperation. In the past, the line that SCO were peddling was that they were an upstanding American business who believed in fair play, Mormon values and straight dealing. Someone had ripped off their IP, and they just wanted paying for what was rightfully theirs.
After yesterday's blunder, it has become clear to even the most sceptical of media that SCO are simply taking the piss. What tiny wad of credibility they did have, has now been spattered all over the face of the whorish analysts who were pumping the line about how the GPL was a hippie joke and wouldn't stand up in court.
So now, they are taking the only tack available to them. Seeking to present themselves as a poor battered underdog being fucked out of their intellectual property by evil megacorp, IBM.
It's clear that they are floundering now, as this is the most desperate of tactics. Anyone who isn't totally retarded can see that SCO have been trying to steal the IP of everyone who has written GPL code over the last few year. Even the pro-Microsoft trolls who post here couldn't be taken in by this one.
I don't envisage a short, painless death either. I see a future of protracted, excruciating embarrassment for SCO, while RedHat, IBM, Suse, Novell, SGI, the FSF and a whole pile others slice away at them, one cut at a time while they gradually bleed to death. And the whores who have been touting their propaganda will be reduced to their rightful place in the public imagination, as the clueless ambulance chasers that they have truly shown themselves to be.
Guys who kick other guys in the nuts are not playing with a full deck themselves. I mean I had my sure of bullying and I through a couple of J's in defense but I would never go below the belt.
Then you've never been *really* bullied. I'm talking about people who make children's lives so miserable that some proportion commit suicide every year. A kick in the nuts is a fairly moderate response, and one that is absolutely under the bully's control. If you don't want a kick in the nuts, don't bully people who are physically less able than yourself.
I can remember when I was being bullied as a child. I had persistent fantasies about visiting the bully's house in the middle of the night with a can of petrol and a funnel. The plan was to toast the motherfucker in his bed at night -- and his parents and siblings along with him.
If I could have been certain that I'd have gotten away with it, I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't have gone for it at my lowest moments.
Incidentally, what's all this about throwing J's at your bullies? Did you think that if they smoked the J, they'd mellow out and stop hitting you? I can't see that working somehow.
Every time you share on a P2P network, God kills a kitten.
That's only if you're sharing pr0n. He doesn't mind in the slightest if you happen to be sharing warez. mp3's, movies, etc. In fact, he completely supports that.
No, I want a big gun, because someone stole my bike
So let me get this straight. Somebody stole your bike, and now you want to go around shooting people?
Don't you worry that in those circumstances, bicycle theives will also start to arm themselves, and then what you'll have is the wild west, where scores are settled by the person who is fastest on the draw?
I mean, it's a nice fantasy when you're ten years old and you've just finished watching an old John Wayne movie, but when you get a little older, you start to realize that these things are better off being left up to the sheriff.
Hmm. Well, I've smoked crack as well, and I don't think Linus is so off beam. Lets look at the facts:
Smoking crack is expensive. You need a fair few dollars if you're going to have a decent binge. For some people at least, they'll do pretty well anything to get that money. Lie, steal, whore.
Smoking crack makes you obsessive/compulsive. After that first hit, all you think about is more crack. You talk and think about it obsessively, and when you aren't making progress towards your goal of getting more crack, you're kinda depressed.
Now look at SCO. No integrity at all. Prepared to do or say anything to get more crack (an increase in stock price.) Talk obsessively about it in the media, even though their tales are demonstrably filled with lies.
I'll accept not everyone reacts in this way, so perhaps Linus should have been a bit more careful in his characterization. SCO isn't just smoking crack. SCO is the Skanky Crack hO, hustling a nasty bony ass that nobody but other crazy crackheads wants to buy.
Now where's that motherfucker who keeps on boasting about his SCO stock? I hope he's been on to his broker in the last few hours.
You can try to "marginalize" my ideas, but I know I'm correct.
...and if you try and convince me of anything to the contrary, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and sing to myself in a VERY LOUD VOICE until you go away.
I'm a 20 year old card-carrying Republican who knows what's right.
Saints preserve us. You wouldn't happen to be a Promise Keeper as well, by any chance?
Yea, like Bruce Perens is an objective source of information about the GPL.
Just as well that isn't what he was providing then, isn't it?
What he was *actually* providing -- as you'd know if you'd bothered to read the article -- was hard evidence as to the provenance of the code in question.
Linux doesn't need one. What it does have, is word of mouth and enthusiastic unpaid advocates from all those people, many of whom are respected IT professionals who prefer to use it to other operating systems, whose word tends to carry more weight than that of some shill for hire.
Given the amount of coverage linux has had over the last few years, I think you could fairly safely assume that real PR representation would actually hurt it's coverage rather than help it.
They simply wouldn't be able to afford the legal bill. So by going after these small time offenders first they can set precidence in the courts that would be harder (and take longer) to reverse when Redhat and IBM step up to the plate.
IANAL, but:
Sorry, but this isn't how precedents work. Firstly, if people can't afford the legal bill, they tend to settle. Settlements don't produce precedent. Not legal precedents, anyway.
Secondly, even if they went to court unrepresented, the courts would never find for SCO until they'd first demonstrated that they had a case to answer -- which would mean revealing the disputed source -- so I think we can certainly rule *that* avenue out.
Finally, you don't get precedents where you already have existing case law that covers an issue -- unless the case brings up some new and hitherto unresolved legal point -- which I haven't seen in this case so far.
You're right about the fact that this could bankrupt a small company and this is what they are counting on to try and collect their blood money. It's also why RedHat have gotten into the game. I'd expect RedHat's lawyers to have some decision -- or at least a restraining order -- on the issue of restraint of trade before it ever gets to this point though.
Slashdot Mirror
Just pure honesty.
It might be honest. It's also boneheaded stupid. In that sense, you're reinforcing a stereotype that the rest of the world holds about America and Americans.
The people who wish for the destabilization or damage to the U.S. don't realize that it is not in the world's interest to see that happen.
Now you're playing up to another American stereotype. While you appear to be capable of understanding that other people should hold a mature and intelligent view of foreign policy, you still reserve the right to be a stupid, arrogant bonehead for yourself and your country.
Perhaps you should share your thoughts with the US troops currently in Iraq? I rather think that they'd take a somewhat different view to chickenhawks like yourself.
It doesn't matter that you'd like to see us dead.
I actually wasn't referring to myself. I like America and spend a lot of time there. I was in Manhattan the October after 9/11 so probably had a better idea than someone in Buttfuck, Idaho what kind of impact and devastation it caused.
There's nothing you can do about it, without ensuring your own destruction.
Keep your adolescent dick waving for someone who might be impressed by it. Osama Bin Laden, for example...
I'm just being honest.
I don't doubt it. The problem is that attitudes like yours seems to be what shapes American foreign policy these days.
Consequently, you shouldn't be too surprised when people feel that Americans are only any good for making dramatic statements to the world about how we're not gonna take it any more.
After all, a large section of the world actually *does* care what happens to Americans.
They'd like to see you all dead.
I don't care about them. THey're just 20 dead chunks of charred flotsam to me.
Funny, that. A lot of people who feel the same way about those who perished in Manhattan a couple of years ago.
It was attitudes like yours that persuaded those people that they had it coming.
Go figure...
I'm not necessarily defending cnet as much as attacking a simplistic view of interview journalism.
I think your perspective holds when you're interviewing a celebrity or someone who is in a position of strength. However, this interview took place (or was published anyway) the day after SCO's new business strategy -- a strategy based upon litigation -- took the most mammoth battering of the whole sorry episode.
I imagine that there was real pressure on the interviewee to get out there and spin, spin, spin, to try and undo the damage that has just been done to the case in the court of public opinion. Under those circumstances, the lawyer needs the press more than the press needs the lawyer and you can get away with much more rigorous questions than you might otherwise be able to put.
I hate to say this, but your post is almost as incoherent as the original article.
I don't think anyone disputes the fact that copyright law 'trumps' the GPL. What's more pertinent is the fact that copyright law underpins the GPL.
I also don't think anyone disputes the fact that if code has mistakenly or accidentally been released under GPL, then it can rightfully be taken back.
Given the damage that they did to their case yesterday, I would have expected SCO or their lawyers to show an incontrovertable example of code in the Linux kernel that is clearly part of System V and backs up their severely damaged argument that their IP has been deliberately misappropriated by IBM -- the people that they've brought the action against. However, I didn't see any of that. I just saw yet more spin, yet more FUD and a refusal to try and block any of the gaping holes in their argument - like the issue of whether the code could have moved from Open Source to SCO's closed source. Had I been SCO's lawyer, this would have been my strategy, and so you've got to wonder why he didn't take this tack?
I'll grant you that there's a tendency on Slashdot to engage in wishful thinking about how the law works -- and I may well engage in that myself from time to time. But for anyone who has a grasp of the legal issues under consideration in this case, the article added nothing and made no new points.
As for the possibility that these arguments may muddle a jury, well, I suppose that's a possibility, but it seems pretty clear that any half-competent lawyer who is able to provide a good narrative of SCO's actions in this case are going to be just as disgusted as the average Slashdot reader.
Certainly nothing else does.
You aren't familiar with the Distillers/Guinness takeover, are you?
They must really believe this. In fact, they must be shitting their pants. They've had months and months and teams of coders and lawyers working together to dig up the best example of copyright contravention that they can find, and this is what they come up with.
Five minutes after the code leaks, the world and his wife knows that SCO are completely full of shit and their law suit has suffered a mortal wound. Poor Darl's head must be spinning so fast that he doesn't know which way is up any more.
Darl: "Bwahahahaha. Mom, mom, it isn't fair! That big bully, GPL is cheating. I only wanted to steal a little bit of money from all those linux hippies, but GPL wants to keep it all for himself. Make him play nice. Make him GIVE me the money, or I'll scream and scream and scream until I turn purple and you have to call the doctor out...."
Darl's mommy: "Sorry son, but while you were out playing, I got myself a new boyfriend. Unlike GPL, my new guy IBM is pretty strict and he believes in corporal punishment for brattish children. You'd best run to your room and hide quietly, because I think I see him fetching his strap from the woodshed...."
Nope, it's not paranoia, it's desperation!
I agree. I think this is a clear response to the rapidity with which Operation Footbullet (ie showing the code) was discredited by the mass media. This is the first sign I've seen of SCO being genuinely on the defensive. The team have obviously all been told to get out there and start spinning to try and turn this story around again -- another clear indication that they want to fight this action in the court of public opinion, not the law courts.
They accuse IBM of being this manipulating orwellian company that could somehow motivate us open source advocates to hate them.
This, I think, is the clearest sign of their desperation. In the past, the line that SCO were peddling was that they were an upstanding American business who believed in fair play, Mormon values and straight dealing. Someone had ripped off their IP, and they just wanted paying for what was rightfully theirs.
After yesterday's blunder, it has become clear to even the most sceptical of media that SCO are simply taking the piss. What tiny wad of credibility they did have, has now been spattered all over the face of the whorish analysts who were pumping the line about how the GPL was a hippie joke and wouldn't stand up in court.
So now, they are taking the only tack available to them. Seeking to present themselves as a poor battered underdog being fucked out of their intellectual property by evil megacorp, IBM.
It's clear that they are floundering now, as this is the most desperate of tactics. Anyone who isn't totally retarded can see that SCO have been trying to steal the IP of everyone who has written GPL code over the last few year. Even the pro-Microsoft trolls who post here couldn't be taken in by this one.
I don't envisage a short, painless death either. I see a future of protracted, excruciating embarrassment for SCO, while RedHat, IBM, Suse, Novell, SGI, the FSF and a whole pile others slice away at them, one cut at a time while they gradually bleed to death. And the whores who have been touting their propaganda will be reduced to their rightful place in the public imagination, as the clueless ambulance chasers that they have truly shown themselves to be.
Please tell me that you are a girl.
Please tell me that you are retarded.
Guys who kick other guys in the nuts are not playing with a full deck themselves. I mean I had my sure of bullying and I through a couple of J's in defense but I would never go below the belt.
Then you've never been *really* bullied. I'm talking about people who make children's lives so miserable that some proportion commit suicide every year. A kick in the nuts is a fairly moderate response, and one that is absolutely under the bully's control. If you don't want a kick in the nuts, don't bully people who are physically less able than yourself.
I can remember when I was being bullied as a child. I had persistent fantasies about visiting the bully's house in the middle of the night with a can of petrol and a funnel. The plan was to toast the motherfucker in his bed at night -- and his parents and siblings along with him.
If I could have been certain that I'd have gotten away with it, I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't have gone for it at my lowest moments.
Incidentally, what's all this about throwing J's at your bullies? Did you think that if they smoked the J, they'd mellow out and stop hitting you? I can't see that working somehow.
Every time you share on a P2P network, God kills a kitten.
That's only if you're sharing pr0n. He doesn't mind in the slightest if you happen to be sharing warez. mp3's, movies, etc. In fact, he completely supports that.
No, I want a big gun, because someone stole my bike
So let me get this straight. Somebody stole your bike, and now you want to go around shooting people?
Don't you worry that in those circumstances, bicycle theives will also start to arm themselves, and then what you'll have is the wild west, where scores are settled by the person who is fastest on the draw?
I mean, it's a nice fantasy when you're ten years old and you've just finished watching an old John Wayne movie, but when you get a little older, you start to realize that these things are better off being left up to the sheriff.
Who the hell cares about this? What we want is:
More SCO!
Better SCO!
Faster SCO!
SCO, SCO, SCO, SCO, SCO, SCO, SCO, SCO
SCO, wonderful SCO...
Do they dangle to and fro?
Can you tie 'em in a knot?
Can you tie 'em in a bow?
Hmm. Well, I've smoked crack as well, and I don't think Linus is so off beam. Lets look at the facts:
Smoking crack is expensive. You need a fair few dollars if you're going to have a decent binge. For some people at least, they'll do pretty well anything to get that money. Lie, steal, whore.
Smoking crack makes you obsessive/compulsive. After that first hit, all you think about is more crack. You talk and think about it obsessively, and when you aren't making progress towards your goal of getting more crack, you're kinda depressed.
Now look at SCO. No integrity at all. Prepared to do or say anything to get more crack (an increase in stock price.) Talk obsessively about it in the media, even though their tales are demonstrably filled with lies.
I'll accept not everyone reacts in this way, so perhaps Linus should have been a bit more careful in his characterization. SCO isn't just smoking crack. SCO is the Skanky Crack hO, hustling a nasty bony ass that nobody but other crazy crackheads wants to buy.
Now where's that motherfucker who keeps on boasting about his SCO stock? I hope he's been on to his broker in the last few hours.
You can try to "marginalize" my ideas, but I know I'm correct.
...and if you try and convince me of anything to the contrary, I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and sing to myself in a VERY LOUD VOICE until you go away.
I'm a 20 year old card-carrying Republican who knows what's right.
Saints preserve us. You wouldn't happen to be a Promise Keeper as well, by any chance?
To me she comes across as a naive college kid
.sig that promises a Dirty Sanchez is clearly the height of sophistication...
While a
I'm dying to see what he looks like with the beard and the haircut that are compulsory for all MBA's.
Before and after?
Yea, like Bruce Perens is an objective source of information about the GPL.
Just as well that isn't what he was providing then, isn't it?
What he was *actually* providing -- as you'd know if you'd bothered to read the article -- was hard evidence as to the provenance of the code in question.
Fuckwit.
That's 'cos Linux doesn't have a PR department.
Linux doesn't need one. What it does have, is word of mouth and enthusiastic unpaid advocates from all those people, many of whom are respected IT professionals who prefer to use it to other operating systems, whose word tends to carry more weight than that of some shill for hire.
Given the amount of coverage linux has had over the last few years, I think you could fairly safely assume that real PR representation would actually hurt it's coverage rather than help it.
They simply wouldn't be able to afford the legal bill. So by going after these small time offenders first they can set precidence in the courts that would be harder (and take longer) to reverse when Redhat and IBM step up to the plate.
IANAL, but:
Sorry, but this isn't how precedents work. Firstly, if people can't afford the legal bill, they tend to settle. Settlements don't produce precedent. Not legal precedents, anyway.
Secondly, even if they went to court unrepresented, the courts would never find for SCO until they'd first demonstrated that they had a case to answer -- which would mean revealing the disputed source -- so I think we can certainly rule *that* avenue out.
Finally, you don't get precedents where you already have existing case law that covers an issue -- unless the case brings up some new and hitherto unresolved legal point -- which I haven't seen in this case so far.
You're right about the fact that this could bankrupt a small company and this is what they are counting on to try and collect their blood money. It's also why RedHat have gotten into the game. I'd expect RedHat's lawyers to have some decision -- or at least a restraining order -- on the issue of restraint of trade before it ever gets to this point though.
All these supposedely 'Linux kernel hackers' are nothing but copy-cats.
Absolutely. And the fact that this code:
a.) a driver, rather than part of the kernel, and
b.) was written by SGI, an organization that produces closed source software
shows that your astute observation is bang on the nail.
But the truth is Microsoft has locked in all but the most simplistic of Word users
Surely this amounts to no more than about 1% of the Word processing market? The other 99% do little more than write the odd letter or report.
There also was an economy based on royality and not free market economies.
Remind me again, why don't you? Which economies is it that are based on the free market? I can't seem to find any.
Ah yes, the "free market" by military cooercion. Works every time.
Just like democracy by military coercion, in fact.