In other news, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has changed the location of the future nuclear waste dump from Yucca Mountain in Nevada to the small town of Lindon, Utah.
A spokesperson for the NRC, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, said that, "the new site along Highway 520 will be excavated in late 2003 via our new Ballistic Outward Fissionary Haul process, or BOFH, which is a process for rapidly removing large quanitities of land by blowing it sky high with a nuclear missile."
The Ballistic Outward Fissionary Haul process uses a high-velocity nuclear projectile to deliver the nuclear ordnance to the Selected Clearing Object, or SCO. A demonstration of this method was given last week near the proving grounds in southern Nevada.
The project is to be completed sometime before the end of the year. Once completed, the NRC said, there will no longer be any barriers to the storage of nuclear waste nor will there be any impediment to the widespread adoption of sensible free software.
The reason they can't make cases any smaller is because of heat dissipation. The smaller the case, the harder it is to move air through it. Slap a 60-watt processor in it and you have a huge heat problem.
What they need to do first is get rid of ribbon cables (fer chrissake!) and use serial 2-wire busses for EVERYTHING. Those cables are a) really messy and b) a hinderance to air flow.
Then, they need to stop making these horribly inefficient power supplies and start designing well-made supplies using good parts.
Then, they need to STOP using Linear Voltage Regulators for voltage stepdowns.
Of course, all of this costs money, so they won't do it. SATA is a step in the right direction, though.
If you want a really small computer, get an ITX case with one of those 800MHz or 1GHz VIA processors. They have them already that are the size of a CD-ROM drive - you just haven't looked hard enough:)
While I don't necessarily agree that regulation is the answer, it's a simple matter of ethics.
De-regulation wasn't really de-regulation. It was RE-regulation. The rules simply changed, and there became many more of them, one of which was that no new generating plants could be built. Why the hell they decided this was beyond me. Most of these generators were built "way back when" before the age of computers and ubiquitous use of air conditioning. PECO Energy became the most expensive electricity in the nation after PA "de-regulated" the electricity industry. I pay almost $0.16 per kWh, which is ridiculous by any standard. That money is used to pay for electricity that is practically given away to neighboring producers like PP&L and ConEd.
Anyway...
You'd be AMAZED at what percentage of all generated power is dissipated in either a computer or an air conditioner/chiller/etc. 100 million computers at 200 watts each is 20 BILLION watts. 20 GIGAwatts. That's the capacity of more than 20 average-sized nuclear reactors. Limerick here in PA has two reactors each capable of about 1.134 (I was really hoping it was 1.21, really I was!) gigawatts.
Here's a Link to a list of all U.S. Nuclear facilities and their statistics and capacities.
And here is a link to a list of all the reactor statuses showing they're loaded to the teeth - almost all of them at 100%.
The U.S. Department of Energy maintains lots of useful information about the power grids in the United States and how they are running. There are also publicly available status reports on each generation facility.
One graph on the DoE site showed that generation capacity hasn't increased at all since about 1992 (when Clinton took office, what a surprise... bastard killed the military AND our power infrastructure... but that's another thread)...
It's not surprising that this happened since we've been increasing generation rapidly due to the deployment of computers and other tech gadgets, but not increasing capacity to make up for it. It also doesn't help that there's no incentive other than cost for people to use Alternative Energy like solar or wind. Well, that's not totally true, there are actually Lots and Lots of Incentives in some states for end-user renewable energy, but it's still really expensive.
Look, people. There isn't anything or anyone to blame for this.
The Niagra Mohawk power grid serves the area in question. The way a power grid works is that there is a mesh of generation stations that are all interconnected by high-voltage transmission lines, 480kV on up. Each generation station has a primary service area and one or more (usually more) entry/exit stations where energy can either enter or exit the primary service area, depending on what they're telling the control system to do.
A network of generation stations makes up a grid, and at the boundary of a grid, there are similar entry/exit stations.
All generators, whether they be nuclear, hydro, wind, or whatever, have TONS of safety interlocks that engage at various points during abnormal conditions to prevent catastrophic failure. One of these interlock behaviors is to shut down and remove the generator from the grid in the event of an overload.
The likely sequence of events in this situation is that there was a failure at one of the generators in the N-M grid that resulted in the shutdown of that generator. What happens when a generator shuts down is that all of the entry/exit points flip to "entry" mode to allow neighboring generators to take up the slack. Most generator companies have agreements with their neighbors to buy however much electricity they need at whatever the current price is, without acknowledgement, when one of these shutdown events happens.
Anyway, once the initial generator shut down and the entry/exit stations flipped to entry mode, the neighboring generators were unable to take up the slack, so they in turn shut down as well. Then, a domino effect set in until it reached the boundary of the N-M grid, or when someone at the operator station woke up and hit the red button that prevents the transfer stations from automatically flipping to "entry" mode.
Keep in mind that it didn't necessarily have to be an overload that caused it - a generator can shut down for a number of reasons.
This all could have been a control system failure, an operator error, or some other unfortunate combination of events that happened to lead to a catastrophic grid failure.
I guarantee you that any stock gains to be had as a result of this deal have already been had, seeing as how investment firms and other certain priveleged individuals know weeks in advance whether or not these deals will get signed.
Stocks in Carrot Farms soared on the American exchanges on Tuesday, the day before Chinese experiments in Human-Rabbit cloning were announced to have created a successful cross-cloning.
Biff: Hey, McBride! You got that homework I asked you to do for me?
McBride: Well, no, biff, I was going to start working on it, but I couldn't find anyone to steal if from
Biff: *noogies* THINK, McBride, THINK! I need plenty of time to copy it into my kernel to make it look like it's mine. How else am I going to sue whomever you copied it from?
McBride: uh, uh, okay, Biff, I'll try to get you some Linux code as soon as I can.
It hasn't been. The license is perpetual and irrevokable. Barring a court order to the effect, IBM still has license to sell AIX. Darl McBride is just on crack.
If Sequent retained the copyright to the code in question, then SCOX does not have any business suing over violation of someone else's copyrights. Either SCOX or Sequent own the copyright, but not both.
IBM is going to squash SCOX like a little bug. I imagine that when the stock goes below $1 and is delisted, IBM will probably open up the petty cash account and make all of this go away.
I read through this thread and there are tons upon tons of very good suggestions to help combat this epidemic.
Would anyone like to join with me in creating an Identity Theft guide? This would be more or less a collection of these suggestions and ideas presented in a more organized fashion. I know documents like this exist, but it'd be cool to do anyway.
I had my identity stolen in 1995 which resulted in financial catastrophe for me in 1996. Back then, identity theft was a more or less unknown crime and people affected didn't exactly have a willing ear on the other side of the phone.
They finally did catch the person who had found a college transcript in the trash at the Administration building where I was going to college. The school had thrown out a whole bin full of transcripts that didn't print out correctly, but still had social security numbers on them.
The person who stole my identity ran up almost $30,000 in credit card debt, bought two cars, and left me holding the bag. They had changed my address so I wouldn't get the bills, so it was 6 weeks or so before I started calling to find out what was going on. A week of investigating turned up all of these accounts, but it was too late. Even with an open case, the lenders were still unwilling to take the hit and instead put all of the accounts into collections. The credit bureaus were similarly unwilling to listen, and I sat for nearly 7 years (ending this November) with bad credit items that were not mine.
So, here's what I did to protect my identity ex post facto:
1) ALWAYS choose one of the following options:
a) Elect to receive online statements INSTEAD of paper
b) Buy a really good cross shredder that has a split bin, so any given piece of paper ends up split between two different trash bags.
It is always better not to have important identity-related documents mailed to your home. A PO box is much better.
2) NEVER carry your social security card or use your social security number for anything other than the administration of your social security account. It is actually against the law to use the SS# for any purpose other than to maintian your SS account. Get a TIN number instead.
3) NEVER allow the state to use your social security number for your drivers' license. Since it also has your address and birthday, it's like carrying Carte Blanc for an identity thief
4) Have checking accounts at more than one bank and split your paycheck direct deposit between the two. This isn't so much to protect your identity, but more to have a backup in case one of your accounts is compromised. (I actually have three)
5) Never ever ever ever ever give your account information to ANYONE, EVER. If you're filling out an application on paper for a loan, just write "SEE CREDIT REPORT." There is absolutely no reason for anyone to ask you to write down your account information when you're applying for a loan. Remember, anything that you put on a piece of paper that is not under your complete control is ammunition against you. In general, you should never be filling out paper applications for credit anymore.
6) Get a Sharpie and write "CHECK ID" in the signature panel AND ACROSS THE FRONT of all of your credit cards. This is obvious. Cards with your photo are a neat option, but are usually ignored. Here's the important part: if someone does NOT ask for ID, get their manager and make a HUGE stink about it. Hold up the checkout line while you ream him/her out for 10 minutes about identity and credit card theft. Teach them a lesson about paying attention.
7) Demand that your creditors ask for a password or PIN from anyone who calls customer service. If they will not, close the account and find a lender who will. They do exist.
8) Get Steganos Security Suite (Windows) or use an encrypted filesystem (Linux) if you use your PC to maintain your financial records. Of course, linux is the better solution, but hey, not everyone runs it.
9) This is a new one, but in some places, the credit bureaus allow you to put a "HOLD" on your credit report. This causes the bureau to require your direct intervention to allow your report to be released to a lender. This is expensive ($40 for the hold, and $30 for each release, I think), but worth it if you are at risk of identity theft.
Now, I know the Security Weenie section of the Slashd
My website's terms of service explicity state that all email sent to recipients at my server become my property and that the sender agrees that he/she has no guarantee of confidentiality, regardless of any content within the actual email.
Neat trick eh? It either becomes yours, or the sender commits fraud... my lawyer says it probably wouldn't hold water, but it sure as hell might scare somebody:)
There is no reason to continue to support SCO. In fact, I think this action is immediately necessary to let potential licensees of SCO know that they will NOT have a free compiler if they buy SCO/Unix.
There is no reason not to defend the free software community against the illegal actions of SCO. This aggression will not stand.
SCO has profiteered off of the goodwill and charity of millions of programmers across the world. How are they repaying you? By suing you into oblivion and STEALING your code!
This is not the time to be benevolent and charitable. This is the time to be assertive and not let them bully you around.
I strongly urge the likes of the FSF and RedHat, who has already established a legal "defense" fund to also establish a legal "offense" fund and start fighing SCO for violating the GPL and the Copyrights of every developer that had their code distributed by SCO in violation of the GPL.
Everyone is so worried that the GPL won't hold water in court. If you're so worried, than it won't. The time to test the GPL is NOW, so that any weaknesses can be found and corrected.
SCO needs to be taken seriously no matter how irrational or stupid their claims become. Remember that the people they pack juries with are usually just as stupid and irrational.
As an idea aside, maybe British IP lawyers should sue America for using an unauthorize derivative work - i.e. basing the American languange on English without first licensing the IP. Of course, the damages should be triple because Americans continue to redistribute, even force, the new derivative work on the rest of the world in a Microsoft-esque fashion. Britain, having invented the English language, should be getting royalties from everyone who speaks it, except that if you pay tax in England, you'll be exempt from the licensing fees and the threat of any future lawsuits. Britain should be charging $32 for every person who speaks English, but $699 if they do so in order to run the government. Shit, this is starting to sound familiar...
But seriously, don't kernel developers have better things to do than argue about fscking spelling? Or is this one of those "blow-off-steam" things that happens from time to time?
If either of us is detached from reality here, it's not me. I design industrial electronics for a living, and believe me, everybody's stuff is made from the same stuff.
Everybody uses the same crap to make their crap. If you go buy 10 8-port ethernet switches or 10 nic cards or 10 home stereo receivers, and examine what parts are in them, you'll find the same stuff.
Everything has become incredibly monolithic - that is - all of the necessary stuff for a given circuit is available on a single IC. This is certainly true for most computer-related stuff. An Ethernet switch has been reduced to a single IC, as have back-end audio amplifiers, PCI Ethernet MACs, video cards (with the exception of external memory), and so on. Car stereos are similar in that all the basic designs are the same - Sony just goes out and uses a CD Player reference design, the same one that JVC, Emerson, and Technics also use.
Companies that make consumer electronics are simply "connecting the dots" on the diagrams that the IC manufacturers give them.
This is why it's possible to ship all of our electrical engineering jobs over to India and Eastern Europe - because all of the engineering has already been done and all you need is someone to connect the dots. Any moron can follow datasheets and appnotes from Xilinx to put together an FPGA to do just about anything, whether it be control your home theater receiver or emulate a video card so you can cheat on benchmarks. The differences that you're depending on are only in form factor and packaging, which are each meaningless except in terms of aesthetics (assuming the app notes related to heat dissipation are followed).
Blanket electronics deserve blanket statements. As an industry, we've integrated ourselves right out of our jobs.
.... the links sent in spams are generally tailored to be able to identify someone following a link to an individual spam that was sent, these "attack back" filters would only serve to verify that the email address the spammer spammed is valid, thereby increasing (incredibly) the amount of spam that address received.
The resulting positive feedback created by automatically telling all spammers that your address is good can only cause more trouble for networks. You'll quickly find that the amount of spam you receive is unmanageable because every spammer on the planet will quickly learn that your email address opens and responds to every piece of spam it receives.
is the fault of idiots... idiots who are willing to agree to such licensing terms. If customers would just grow some gonads and say "NO," then these terms would never come into existence.
We live in a market economy - the Windows license got so bad becuase everyone accepted it. Cisco can charge more to relicense an O/S than they charge for a new router because idiots will pay it, or buy another Cisco router (!).
We have three fundamental problems:
1) People don't read anymore. 2) Most people, thanks to our wonderful public education system, are functionally illiterate and wouldn't be able to understand a license written in legalese if they _did_ read it. 3) people think that one maker of a commodity makes better widgets than another maker of that commodity. This is a complete fallacy.
A while back I was "inspecting" (read: opening up) some networking equipment and found that of four 8-port COTS switches, three of them used the EXACT SAME design. There were only very minor layout changes - but the BOM was the same (mostly because the IC vendors issue reference designs).
We need to get off this notion that things we buy are different from other things and realize that all of this garbage is just commodity. Buy on terms, not on names or price.
First, create a disclosure document for your IP attorney, then immediately file a method patent application on the bugfix.
Then, once your provisonal patent application is received, you can offer to license the bugfix (and since it was a method patent, they can't program around you) to the school for a modest fee.
"Method and Program for closing a known security hole in grade reporting software"
or something like that... I'd say you'd be a rich man, just don't forget to send me my cut:)
First of all, there's been no proof that they own ANY of the code that is in the linux kernel. What they're doing is equivalent to selling a house down the street that they don't own.
This is entirely fraudulent, and I'm surprised IBM hasn't motioned for a dismissal of claims, or at least tried to have the "offending code" subpoenaed.
If the judge has half a brain, they'll dismiss this case with prejudice, and attorneys general should promptly file criminal charges against SCOX for fraud, racketeering, extortion, and illegal trade practices.
I've never seen a more egregious case of these crimes, ever. It's plain as day, and it's completely unfathomable that this is still even an issue, and the SCO is becoming even more garish in their pursuits.
Either they're going out of business next week and are completely desparate, or their claims have merit. It has to be one or the other. This is not a gray issue - either they are lying, or they are not.
On another note, does anyone know if the "offending functions" have been re-written in 2.6 as of yet?
Slashdot Mirror
"I mean, how hard would it be to rewrite 70 lines (or less) of code"
//, /*, and */ ?
That depends - are there substitutes for #ifdef, #endif,
In other news, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has changed the location of the future nuclear waste dump from Yucca Mountain in Nevada to the small town of Lindon, Utah.
A spokesperson for the NRC, who spoke to us on condition of anonymity, said that, "the new site along Highway 520 will be excavated in late 2003 via our new Ballistic Outward Fissionary Haul process, or BOFH, which is a process for rapidly removing large quanitities of land by blowing it sky high with a nuclear missile."
The Ballistic Outward Fissionary Haul process uses a high-velocity nuclear projectile to deliver the nuclear ordnance to the Selected Clearing Object, or SCO. A demonstration of this method was given last week near the proving grounds in southern Nevada.
The project is to be completed sometime before the end of the year. Once completed, the NRC said, there will no longer be any barriers to the storage of nuclear waste nor will there be any impediment to the widespread adoption of sensible free software.
The reason they can't make cases any smaller is because of heat dissipation. The smaller the case, the harder it is to move air through it. Slap a 60-watt processor in it and you have a huge heat problem.
:)
What they need to do first is get rid of ribbon cables (fer chrissake!) and use serial 2-wire busses for EVERYTHING. Those cables are a) really messy and b) a hinderance to air flow.
Then, they need to stop making these horribly inefficient power supplies and start designing well-made supplies using good parts.
Then, they need to STOP using Linear Voltage Regulators for voltage stepdowns.
Of course, all of this costs money, so they won't do it. SATA is a step in the right direction, though.
If you want a really small computer, get an ITX case with one of those 800MHz or 1GHz VIA processors. They have them already that are the size of a CD-ROM drive - you just haven't looked hard enough
AAARGH!!! Just when I had forgotten all about those horrible horrible images!!
Thanks for the backup on this one.
While I don't necessarily agree that regulation is the answer, it's a simple matter of ethics.
De-regulation wasn't really de-regulation. It was RE-regulation. The rules simply changed, and there became many more of them, one of which was that no new generating plants could be built. Why the hell they decided this was beyond me. Most of these generators were built "way back when" before the age of computers and ubiquitous use of air conditioning. PECO Energy became the most expensive electricity in the nation after PA "de-regulated" the electricity industry. I pay almost $0.16 per kWh, which is ridiculous by any standard. That money is used to pay for electricity that is practically given away to neighboring producers like PP&L and ConEd.
Anyway...
You'd be AMAZED at what percentage of all generated power is dissipated in either a computer or an air conditioner/chiller/etc. 100 million computers at 200 watts each is 20 BILLION watts. 20 GIGAwatts. That's the capacity of more than 20 average-sized nuclear reactors. Limerick here in PA has two reactors each capable of about 1.134 (I was really hoping it was 1.21, really I was!) gigawatts.
Here's a Link to a list of all U.S. Nuclear facilities and their statistics and capacities.
And here is a link to a list of all the reactor statuses showing they're loaded to the teeth - almost all of them at 100%.
The U.S. Department of Energy maintains lots of useful information about the power grids in the United States and how they are running. There are also publicly available status reports on each generation facility.
One graph on the DoE site showed that generation capacity hasn't increased at all since about 1992 (when Clinton took office, what a surprise... bastard killed the military AND our power infrastructure... but that's another thread)...
It's not surprising that this happened since we've been increasing generation rapidly due to the deployment of computers and other tech gadgets, but not increasing capacity to make up for it. It also doesn't help that there's no incentive other than cost for people to use Alternative Energy like solar or wind. Well, that's not totally true, there are actually Lots and Lots of Incentives in some states for end-user renewable energy, but it's still really expensive.
Look, people. There isn't anything or anyone to blame for this.
The Niagra Mohawk power grid serves the area in question. The way a power grid works is that there is a mesh of generation stations that are all interconnected by high-voltage transmission lines, 480kV on up. Each generation station has a primary service area and one or more (usually more) entry/exit stations where energy can either enter or exit the primary service area, depending on what they're telling the control system to do.
A network of generation stations makes up a grid, and at the boundary of a grid, there are similar entry/exit stations.
All generators, whether they be nuclear, hydro, wind, or whatever, have TONS of safety interlocks that engage at various points during abnormal conditions to prevent catastrophic failure. One of these interlock behaviors is to shut down and remove the generator from the grid in the event of an overload.
The likely sequence of events in this situation is that there was a failure at one of the generators in the N-M grid that resulted in the shutdown of that generator. What happens when a generator shuts down is that all of the entry/exit points flip to "entry" mode to allow neighboring generators to take up the slack. Most generator companies have agreements with their neighbors to buy however much electricity they need at whatever the current price is, without acknowledgement, when one of these shutdown events happens.
Anyway, once the initial generator shut down and the entry/exit stations flipped to entry mode, the neighboring generators were unable to take up the slack, so they in turn shut down as well. Then, a domino effect set in until it reached the boundary of the N-M grid, or when someone at the operator station woke up and hit the red button that prevents the transfer stations from automatically flipping to "entry" mode.
Keep in mind that it didn't necessarily have to be an overload that caused it - a generator can shut down for a number of reasons.
This all could have been a control system failure, an operator error, or some other unfortunate combination of events that happened to lead to a catastrophic grid failure.
I guarantee you that any stock gains to be had as a result of this deal have already been had, seeing as how investment firms and other certain priveleged individuals know weeks in advance whether or not these deals will get signed.
Networking: Broadcom probably...
Audio: Any commodity D/A convertor will do...
Stocks in Carrot Farms soared on the American exchanges on Tuesday, the day before Chinese experiments in Human-Rabbit cloning were announced to have created a successful cross-cloning.
I thought they stopped developing OE a long time ago?
Biff: Hey, McBride! You got that homework I asked you to do for me?
McBride: Well, no, biff, I was going to start working on it, but I couldn't find anyone to steal if from
Biff: *noogies* THINK, McBride, THINK! I need plenty of time to copy it into my kernel to make it look like it's mine. How else am I going to sue whomever you copied it from?
McBride: uh, uh, okay, Biff, I'll try to get you some Linux code as soon as I can.
"why should IBM's license to AIX be revoked?"
It hasn't been. The license is perpetual and irrevokable. Barring a court order to the effect, IBM still has license to sell AIX. Darl McBride is just on crack.
If Sequent retained the copyright to the code in question, then SCOX does not have any business suing over violation of someone else's copyrights. Either SCOX or Sequent own the copyright, but not both.
IBM is going to squash SCOX like a little bug. I imagine that when the stock goes below $1 and is delisted, IBM will probably open up the petty cash account and make all of this go away.
Easy - all the people who sold short when it was 15 - they love buying it back at 9 :)
I read through this thread and there are tons upon tons of very good suggestions to help combat this epidemic.
Would anyone like to join with me in creating an Identity Theft guide? This would be more or less a collection of these suggestions and ideas presented in a more organized fashion. I know documents like this exist, but it'd be cool to do anyway.
Email me if you're interested
Thanks
I had my identity stolen in 1995 which resulted in financial catastrophe for me in 1996. Back then, identity theft was a more or less unknown crime and people affected didn't exactly have a willing ear on the other side of the phone.
They finally did catch the person who had found a college transcript in the trash at the Administration building where I was going to college. The school had thrown out a whole bin full of transcripts that didn't print out correctly, but still had social security numbers on them.
The person who stole my identity ran up almost $30,000 in credit card debt, bought two cars, and left me holding the bag. They had changed my address so I wouldn't get the bills, so it was 6 weeks or so before I started calling to find out what was going on. A week of investigating turned up all of these accounts, but it was too late. Even with an open case, the lenders were still unwilling to take the hit and instead put all of the accounts into collections. The credit bureaus were similarly unwilling to listen, and I sat for nearly 7 years (ending this November) with bad credit items that were not mine.
So, here's what I did to protect my identity ex post facto:
1) ALWAYS choose one of the following options:
a) Elect to receive online statements INSTEAD of paper
b) Buy a really good cross shredder that has a split bin, so any given piece of paper ends up split between two different trash bags.
It is always better not to have important identity-related documents mailed to your home. A PO box is much better.
2) NEVER carry your social security card or use your social security number for anything other than the administration of your social security account. It is actually against the law to use the SS# for any purpose other than to maintian your SS account. Get a TIN number instead.
3) NEVER allow the state to use your social security number for your drivers' license. Since it also has your address and birthday, it's like carrying Carte Blanc for an identity thief
4) Have checking accounts at more than one bank and split your paycheck direct deposit between the two. This isn't so much to protect your identity, but more to have a backup in case one of your accounts is compromised. (I actually have three)
5) Never ever ever ever ever give your account information to ANYONE, EVER. If you're filling out an application on paper for a loan, just write "SEE CREDIT REPORT." There is absolutely no reason for anyone to ask you to write down your account information when you're applying for a loan. Remember, anything that you put on a piece of paper that is not under your complete control is ammunition against you. In general, you should never be filling out paper applications for credit anymore.
6) Get a Sharpie and write "CHECK ID" in the signature panel AND ACROSS THE FRONT of all of your credit cards. This is obvious. Cards with your photo are a neat option, but are usually ignored. Here's the important part: if someone does NOT ask for ID, get their manager and make a HUGE stink about it. Hold up the checkout line while you ream him/her out for 10 minutes about identity and credit card theft. Teach them a lesson about paying attention.
7) Demand that your creditors ask for a password or PIN from anyone who calls customer service. If they will not, close the account and find a lender who will. They do exist.
8) Get Steganos Security Suite (Windows) or use an encrypted filesystem (Linux) if you use your PC to maintain your financial records. Of course, linux is the better solution, but hey, not everyone runs it.
9) This is a new one, but in some places, the credit bureaus allow you to put a "HOLD" on your credit report. This causes the bureau to require your direct intervention to allow your report to be released to a lender. This is expensive ($40 for the hold, and $30 for each release, I think), but worth it if you are at risk of identity theft.
Now, I know the Security Weenie section of the Slashd
You know what, that's a FANTASTIC idea :) I like that a lot - time to start digging through documentation.
My website's terms of service explicity state that all email sent to recipients at my server become my property and that the sender agrees that he/she has no guarantee of confidentiality, regardless of any content within the actual email.
:)
Neat trick eh? It either becomes yours, or the sender commits fraud... my lawyer says it probably wouldn't hold water, but it sure as hell might scare somebody
There is no reason to continue to support SCO. In fact, I think this action is immediately necessary to let potential licensees of SCO know that they will NOT have a free compiler if they buy SCO/Unix.
There is no reason not to defend the free software community against the illegal actions of SCO. This aggression will not stand.
SCO has profiteered off of the goodwill and charity of millions of programmers across the world. How are they repaying you? By suing you into oblivion and STEALING your code!
This is not the time to be benevolent and charitable. This is the time to be assertive and not let them bully you around.
I strongly urge the likes of the FSF and RedHat, who has already established a legal "defense" fund to also establish a legal "offense" fund and start fighing SCO for violating the GPL and the Copyrights of every developer that had their code distributed by SCO in violation of the GPL.
Everyone is so worried that the GPL won't hold water in court. If you're so worried, than it won't. The time to test the GPL is NOW, so that any weaknesses can be found and corrected.
SCO needs to be taken seriously no matter how irrational or stupid their claims become. Remember that the people they pack juries with are usually just as stupid and irrational.
As an idea aside, maybe British IP lawyers should sue America for using an unauthorize derivative work - i.e. basing the American languange on English without first licensing the IP. Of course, the damages should be triple because Americans continue to redistribute, even force, the new derivative work on the rest of the world in a Microsoft-esque fashion. Britain, having invented the English language, should be getting royalties from everyone who speaks it, except that if you pay tax in England, you'll be exempt from the licensing fees and the threat of any future lawsuits. Britain should be charging $32 for every person who speaks English, but $699 if they do so in order to run the government. Shit, this is starting to sound familiar...
But seriously, don't kernel developers have better things to do than argue about fscking spelling? Or is this one of those "blow-off-steam" things that happens from time to time?
If either of us is detached from reality here, it's not me. I design industrial electronics for a living, and believe me, everybody's stuff is made from the same stuff.
Everybody uses the same crap to make their crap. If you go buy 10 8-port ethernet switches or 10 nic cards or 10 home stereo receivers, and examine what parts are in them, you'll find the same stuff.
Everything has become incredibly monolithic - that is - all of the necessary stuff for a given circuit is available on a single IC. This is certainly true for most computer-related stuff. An Ethernet switch has been reduced to a single IC, as have back-end audio amplifiers, PCI Ethernet MACs, video cards (with the exception of external memory), and so on. Car stereos are similar in that all the basic designs are the same - Sony just goes out and uses a CD Player reference design, the same one that JVC, Emerson, and Technics also use.
Companies that make consumer electronics are simply "connecting the dots" on the diagrams that the IC manufacturers give them.
This is why it's possible to ship all of our electrical engineering jobs over to India and Eastern Europe - because all of the engineering has already been done and all you need is someone to connect the dots. Any moron can follow datasheets and appnotes from Xilinx to put together an FPGA to do just about anything, whether it be control your home theater receiver or emulate a video card so you can cheat on benchmarks. The differences that you're depending on are only in form factor and packaging, which are each meaningless except in terms of aesthetics (assuming the app notes related to heat dissipation are followed).
Blanket electronics deserve blanket statements. As an industry, we've integrated ourselves right out of our jobs.
.... the links sent in spams are generally tailored to be able to identify someone following a link to an individual spam that was sent, these "attack back" filters would only serve to verify that the email address the spammer spammed is valid, thereby increasing (incredibly) the amount of spam that address received.
The resulting positive feedback created by automatically telling all spammers that your address is good can only cause more trouble for networks. You'll quickly find that the amount of spam you receive is unmanageable because every spammer on the planet will quickly learn that your email address opens and responds to every piece of spam it receives.
is the fault of idiots... idiots who are willing to agree to such licensing terms. If customers would just grow some gonads and say "NO," then these terms would never come into existence.
We live in a market economy - the Windows license got so bad becuase everyone accepted it. Cisco can charge more to relicense an O/S than they charge for a new router because idiots will pay it, or buy another Cisco router (!).
We have three fundamental problems:
1) People don't read anymore.
2) Most people, thanks to our wonderful public education system, are functionally illiterate and wouldn't be able to understand a license written in legalese if they _did_ read it.
3) people think that one maker of a commodity makes better widgets than another maker of that commodity. This is a complete fallacy.
A while back I was "inspecting" (read: opening up) some networking equipment and found that of four 8-port COTS switches, three of them used the EXACT SAME design. There were only very minor layout changes - but the BOM was the same (mostly because the IC vendors issue reference designs).
We need to get off this notion that things we buy are different from other things and realize that all of this garbage is just commodity. Buy on terms, not on names or price.
First, create a disclosure document for your IP attorney, then immediately file a method patent application on the bugfix.
:)
Then, once your provisonal patent application is received, you can offer to license the bugfix (and since it was a method patent, they can't program around you) to the school for a modest fee.
"Method and Program for closing a known security hole in grade reporting software"
or something like that... I'd say you'd be a rich man, just don't forget to send me my cut
SCO is on crack!
First of all, there's been no proof that they own ANY of the code that is in the linux kernel. What they're doing is equivalent to selling a house down the street that they don't own.
This is entirely fraudulent, and I'm surprised IBM hasn't motioned for a dismissal of claims, or at least tried to have the "offending code" subpoenaed.
If the judge has half a brain, they'll dismiss this case with prejudice, and attorneys general should promptly file criminal charges against SCOX for fraud, racketeering, extortion, and illegal trade practices.
I've never seen a more egregious case of these crimes, ever. It's plain as day, and it's completely unfathomable that this is still even an issue, and the SCO is becoming even more garish in their pursuits.
Either they're going out of business next week and are completely desparate, or their claims have merit. It has to be one or the other. This is not a gray issue - either they are lying, or they are not.
On another note, does anyone know if the "offending functions" have been re-written in 2.6 as of yet?
Divide and conquer...
Now that the RedHat pushers are fighting each other, they'll topple themselves without any further help from M$...