Because he's amusing and generally you don't get forced to use his products until you get to the top end of the market.
Joe-public all the way through mom+pop through to mini-corporates can survive quite nicely without Oracle by using more commonly available commercial or Open Source databases.
I'm relieved - I thought they had a strategy that may work like using Lawyers to attack core Linux technologies using Patents or leveraging DMCA.
Looks like its simply a market segmentation approach through increased componentisation that they are doomed to adopt.
In plain terms this means taking their one product and de-featuring or crippling it to suit what Microsoft thinks is best for a particular customer. They will always get this wrong for two reasons:
because everyone has unique demands on technology and
all GNU/Linux distributions are highly componentised from the very first day because thats how they are created using very different development teams.
A typical Linux distro is intrinsically componentised and so is years ahead of Microsoft.
A typical full-fat GNU/Linux distribution will always be the whole product and will (nearly) always provide the right product offering to its customers without having to crow-bar your requirements to fit Microsoft's view of who you are.
Who do you want to be today ? - I just want to be me not what you tell me to be !
This is why Microsoft just can't win by using market segmentation against Linux. It may work if the competition was commercial e.g. Microsoft verses Apple, but Linux development is user-demand driven not marketing-demand driven.
No mention is made of GPL/LGPL in the article. In my books this is also a key customer requirement of derisking single-suppliers through open source licensing. Shared source is not the answer as you cannot build from that source whereas I can, and do, build from kernel.org (now at 2.6.3 and very happy with what I see on my SMP machine).
In London, UK when you call the emergency services then they know where you are down to the last 500 meters (yards) to 3700 meters/Yards according to the radio cell size.
The Cell phone companies have always been able to triangulate your position (well at least GSM systems do). OK not as good as GPS but better than "I'm calling from England",
"With effect from July 2003, both fixed and mobile networks operators have been required to provide caller location information to emergency services responding to 999 calls under the EC Directive 2002/22/EC."
You need to be implanted with RFID chips. That way you can transmit a unique ID. The trick is to store the ID codes in a database (TIA like) and have it flaged as either issuing the details immediately or have the database raise a court order asking permission to issue the name details. That way peoples rights are kept with out all the hassle of carrying around little bits of paper.
Of course other biometric methods could work but RFID is successful with trackng other valuable animals like hourses and dogs. Unfortunately though, identity theft would be a lot more painful !
Don't like that view of the world ? - well this is the country that accepts that you can't get a beer without showing ID. You reap what you sow.
Europe is growing rapidly; Wild Wild East !
on
Linux in Munich Followup
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Unlike the US, the EU is expanding. In May this year 10 new countries become part of the EU.
Bordering Germany is Czeck republic and Poland - thats 48 Million people - around 260 Billion Euros GDP so not very rich but will get a few Billion Euros in EU money to easy transition: of which IT spending will, as usual, be a significant expense.
Germany is right in the middle of this. Strategicly the OSS/Linux vendors are in for a bonus few years.
You can guarantee that IBM, Novell and SuSE will all want to make this work out fine because they would then sell this solution on.
You have to ask youself - why spend hard earned EU taxpayer money on Microsoft licenses when it can be spent on local service providers integrating freely available OSS software ?. IBM Global Service are asking that same question - pity SCO are not getting stuck in too as their traditional strength in vertical integration would be perfect for the new EU countries, but now no-one will touch them with a barge pole.
For those of you who haven't followed diamonds for a while, De Beers is arguably the largest and most prolific monopoly in the world, having survived, among other incidents, an American anti-trust inquiry with its reputation, and vicariously that of diamonds, entirely unscathed.
No - Microsoft is the largest and most prolific monopoly in the world without a question. De Beers did not survive the US Anti-trust as its senior officers are forbidden to touch US soil for fear of being arrested.
No one , and I mean no-one, can simply wander in and check-in code to any OSS project without permission.
You have to have a track record and your submits get peer reviewed. After a while you may get change rights to the CVS. How long depends upon your skill and history. I'll never get bitkeeper access to linux kernel and neither could Mr Jones. I could try but it'll take a lot of hard effort to skill myself into kernel workings. I'll stick with userspace programs.
No different from a company ; start off low as a intern and then work up until you get to a responsible position and then you throw the spanner in the works.
The security breach will be placed into ANY source software from INSIDE, by someone working on the project.
Mr Jones - It doesn't matter is its closed or open source its usually an inside job. In closed source world the public will never hear of the problem as it'll get hidden under the carpet: in the open source world it in the open.
In a democratic society goverment taxpayer money should be seen to work and be seen working not hidden behind some closed door mentality.
SCO does an injustice to Unix technology.
on
SCOoby Snacks
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Windows was allowed to gain a foothold because of stupid in-fighting within the Unix community.
Current SCO management are old-school; they simply want traditional Unix technlogy to die under a mound of legal paperwork. They don't care who loses as long as the lawyers get paid.
Linux is Unix is Linux. As far as joe-user or joe-admin is concerned the GUI or shell is identical in that its not Microsoft Windows.
All they simply seem to be upset about is some ABI headers !. The joke being that they then seem to go on about the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) in Unixware. So they quite happily take but don't want to give back.
Their Unix is chocka full of juicy Open Source contributions which they have merrily grabbed and then they try and deflect interest in what they are doing by pointing fingers at others and calling these other Operating System developers pirates.
Pre-2.6 everyone knows what deficiencies there where in the Linux scheduler. This wasn't a cut+paste from Unix but was a paragmatic easy-to-understand scheduler that evolved over many years by many developers. Along comes 2.6 and it has fixes for the main known deficiencies. SCO have seen this happen. Why is it that both kernel 2.6 and 2.4 are priced the same from SCO's point of view ?. If the technology in 2.4 was top-of-the range Unix Intellectual Property then why was it so poor that it needed fixing for 2.6 to get 2.6. to scale ?. Something tells me 2.4 did not have any Unix SMP technolgy else it would not have been able to scale better in 2.6 !
This lack of personal privacy is very much a US-centric concept which divides the EU-US. The EU has a lot more stringent personal privacy and it would be in the interests of slashdotters to read the contents of the e.g. UK Data Protection Act and petition your own local legislators to get this mapped into US law. (substitute President for Majesty and Senate for Lords and Congress for Commons - the law is quite clear). Companies will squeal but its a fantastic law for citizens (voters).
Like many others I'm down as a Data Controller within the meaning of the Data Protection Act. I take this role very seriously even though I have just a few personal details, but also because I have access to a lot of other records and I view it from the point of view of: what if it was MY personal data that was being copied about ? My declaration also states that any data never leave the EU. Personally I see any data sent to the US as secure as posting it on the Internet. Good to see the actual US government confirming my views.
What the hell ! -
Mr McBean said that the ICT PC project had brought to Microsoft the reality and scope of the new market that first-time PC users around the world presented, and that the company had then looked at how it could best address this.
What exactly has MS been doing for the past 8 years if it wasn't to try and address the first-time PC market ! Mr McBean is really dishing out the marketting shit at that interview. I can almost envisage Redmond's finger up his arse wiggling it in lipsync.
How MS cripple their products is very strategic and solely to keep revenue intact by market segmentation. Its nothing to do with satisfying a new market segment.
WinXP home was crippled in subtle ways that a home user wouldn't even notice except if they expected to do certain things. The simple task of not being able to sync folders or join domains. The folder sync is really annoying for home users as it means that its harder to protect documents.
Something tells me that these two things were simple registry hacks and required very little testing to develope !
Simply too perverse legalese-wise to allow anyone to proceed into that site. You never know who may end up with their logs and stuff. What if it was a legal team that specialises in patent demands ?. Life is just too short to have to read pages of legalese even if it was meant as a joke. Was it actually meant as a joke ? I don't know and truthfully don't fucking care.
Curious as to exactly what code, software or sample do you get when you license a patent e.g, which lines of code do you get when you get a license that covers e.g. claim 92 ?.
Without an actual implementation in the flesh then hasn't a fundamental issue with patents been missed i.e. it has to have a working implementation at the time of filing.
This is what stops perpetual motion machines, time travel and other nonsensical patent attempts. Hell I'd be more than happy if someone got a patent on a perpetual motion machine as it certainly wouldn't have any prior art.
The Yahoo note said Afganistan. They have Pushtu and Dari. Would Microsoft be sponsoring localisation into native languages ?.
I suspect that this is a spoiler for Open Source like OpenOffice, Apache and the likes of FreeBSD or GNU/Linux.
If its basic computer skills then you don't need any Microsoft software but any old PC like the junk we in the 3rd world typically toss out (you know all those P-300 and lower PCs.
I want to know is
a) what the hell they would be powering these PCs with ! and
b) how will Microsoft actually help the very poor rates of literacy in the females in Afganistan. Since the US got rid of the Taliban very little has been done to help female literacy. Female literacy is an essential part of the general children literacy rates as the females of the family teach children from an early age at home basic skills prior to formal schooling.
I still think that the 3rd world need the basics to survive not some 3rd rate software that has an inflated sticker price and can easily be replaced by alternatives at a zero price point. Anyone who thinks that GNOME/KDE is not desktop ready is talking sh*t. As for server technology then any typical Linux magazine cover CD has Apache, PHP, Perl, Linux, Postgresq/MySQL, Python.... You can get more software from some old Linux magazine at a newspaper stand than you'll ever get from Microsoft on their gift programs.
The difference is if this was knowingly done. Two years ago I'd presume he misunderstood things. He still does on many issues but given the past year of publishing code which SCO says it owns but its then stated by Linus to be his, then today its a lie.
I know that Linux contains no Unix code as SCO has not yet provided any maintainer with a diff file ergo Linux contains no SCO copyright code which they did not or still do not want to be present in Linux.
The president Bush, as well as president Blair (I think thats what he thinks he is) didn't lie per se as they removed the Inspectors. This was deliberate because without evidence its hard to say either way. Someone did lie on the so-called 45 minutes launch capability of the afformentioned WMD. Not even the US or the UK have a 45 minute launch capability for their own nuclear and chemical weapon ordanance !
Linux is different. There can be no hidden weapon caches as its all in the clear: almost as if you had sci-fi style millimeter radar scanning every inch of Iran. The process is simple for SCO: they diff it and send diffs to maintainer. They have not done so ergo there is nothing to do.
If SCO thought their case was strong or had a smoking gun in the hands of Tux then they wouldn't be trying the 'Reds under the bed/Communists are everywhere' angle.
While SCO go bust then IBM and HP are making billions out of this Open Source stuff mainly because they sell hardware and service too.
Nah - like I say: if he thinks he'll kill Linux legally then the community will migrate to a *BSD and then he'll have the same fight on that OS too.
This is a serious question because that letter is simply surreal.
If he thinks the Linux kernel is a threat then he hasn't been watching FreeBSD for the past 10 years.
Linux is used on a small percentage of web servers: Apache is the king here and it runs on anything. He's trying to talk up Linux ! Thanks but no Thanks.
Only SCO believes that GPL contradicts US Copyright law. I'd trust EFF here.
GPL keeps code IN COPYRIGHT and not the public domain. Public Domain is near impossible to achieve as an individual under US law as far as I know. I think some goverment stuff can be public domain but its quite rare (IANAL)
Free beer verses free freedom: usual misunderstandings ! Typical Lindows or Mandrake boxed set is quite a lot more expensive than free !.
I think of GPL not facing a court case like many would like other laws to also not be tested in court e.g. murder, rape, embezzlement, Dangerous Driving, Kidnap and so on. If I reword GPL for SCO: GPL is a social contract and it says: if you steal the code then you have certain obligations.
McBride: We've said this time and time again and yet you refuse to prove that Linux contains significant Unix code. Anyone who says that yet fails to prove it has something to hide.
The US a capitalist system ? Bullshit: its Federal Socialism when you cry to government because you can't get your way in the market. Open Source is the product of raw capitalism as it ruthlessly uses the economic might of many companies to remove all competition. Microsoft know this and will probably adapt but they have $40 billion to play with across many product lines, whereas SCO has one product that few are wanting.
Linux is not full of proprietary code. This is lie.
McBride: Open Source allows more money to be spent on value-added services. Its better for the economy not worse. Services are on-site not offshore whereas line of code can easily be created off-shore.
North Korea supercomputer !: McBride, you ignoramus: Personal Computer do not need multi-processor capabilities. Personal computers are (generally) UNI-PROCESSOR. This means One processor you jerk. A cluster is many PCs and its useless with just Linux. It MUST also use Beowulf code or Mosix to be a cluster. If you thnk Beowulf or Mosix have got stolen Unix code then then say so. Linux on its own doesn't make a supercomputer.
It explains a lot about SCO press releases. I thought that there may just be some possiblity of Unix code leaking into Linux accidently and sincerely wish this was removed (I don't need JFS or NUMA anyway even if JFS was IMHO all from IBM and NUMA was from Dynix/Sequent).
Looks like it is simply an emotional breakdown by the CEO. It happens and its sad both for Mr McBride and for the employees and shareholders of SCO.
Given that the NYTimes article doesn't mention Mozilla or for that matter Opera's pop-up blocker even though Opera was very quick to ship a pop-up blocker there is a deeper story here.
Earthlink are in competition with AOL for customers. AOL own Netscape and never bothered with a pop-up blocker on Netscape 7.0 even though the Mozilla had it because AOL are in the portal/Advertising business. Thus Earthlink had provided a pop-up blocker because AOL don't and Earthlink were on the prowl for new subscribers and not as interested in pop-up ad traffic.
Microsft have also not bothered because they too are in the portal business. Microsoft are thus like AOL in that they don't initially care about end-user experience but ad revenues. When the end-user experience becomes painful then they move their products on.
Opera are NOT in the pop-up ad business and thus have had a pop-up blocker as soon as they could code it. Same with Mozilla.
As to how much the NYT online is biased by ad revenue is another question but I don't recall seeing any mention of Open Source products being mentioned; just commercial ad-blockers, portal sites and other vendors.
You make your own call if its information or informercials. Me: I use Mozilla 1.5 and IE/Google - I'm happy.
No it hasn't: we're still blowing the shit out of things for personal gain (won't mention names) and we're still dying of basic diseases related to supply of good food and water and though some technology has moved on we're still burning a lot of dead dinosaurs to get from A-B.
We're still 3 meals away from a systemic collapse of civilisation. You just have to look at how people handle vacation weekends in stocking up on food and watching supermarkets get depleted on the slightest inclination of a supply problem to know that even 1st world nations have a very fragile balance.
I agree and hope retailers make it easier: I'd also go out on a limb to say that the biggest purchase in many lives is the family home and its fairly well decided on by the wife.
Its also full of electronic gadgets from microwaves, TV, DVD, Video, Sat, ovens, washing machine/dryers, dishwasher, burglar alarms, WIFI/cable, dimmers, coffee/tea makers, breadmaker, mixers, fridge, freezer, printers, blenders, grillers, icemakers, water coolers, games consoles and air-con.
Now we geeks may think that after spending 5 hours evaluating various models of MP3 players before we make out informed decision that we are kings of technology: think again. In sheer tonnage the wife's purchasing decisions in electronics (or rather stuff that uses electricity) easily outweighs and out-costs the few gadgets we get left to decide to buy. We're just the grunt labour who have to cart this stuff home and install it and truthfully being a geek, I prefer to work out how to install something that someone else has bought as the shopping side of things can burn you out.
Nuff said as I still have to adjust declination on sat-dish as its not tracking all the arc right and still haven't replaced the soap dispenser on the dishwasher and the SCART switcher has lost audio on one socket. Labour saving ? A husband's work is never finished !
The rest of the patent means squat: As I see it Patent 6,671,714 consists of 2 claims comprised of both obvious methods and prior art as used by many ISP's throughout the world in allocation user web presence. The USPTO in this case has really spent a lot of time in research:not.
Does anyone actually know who the patent examiner is in real life ?
Truthfully I love this Patent: it provides excellent evidence on how to not run a Patent system.
And I bet the US middle-classes are still wondering why they are losing jobs to Indian sub-continent while they think that a patent on where to stick a '.' in a URL is really important ! I can see it now: US economy saved by @ period.
When thats done then the dramatic boost to the global economy will easily allow for the massive financial investments in off-planet travel. But right now its very premature: a few moonshots over 20 years ago does not make a space travelling nation. It will take generations to effect this if past history is anything to go by (seafaring travel).
What would help the economy is if everyone in the world had clean water. Unfortunately Manned flight to Mars would be a walk-in-the-park compared to that so Bush has really just taken the easy way.
Lets face it: Mars would be hard but given that already had people in space repeatedly (both US and USSR) and done this for many months (USSR/Russian have best experience here) and have had people land on another surface (US) then doing these all at once is simply a matter of project management and funding. Both of which NASA is good at handling.
Now if Bush had said clean water for all on the planet then this has not been done in recent history but it would create untold wealth for the US in increased demand for US products. Currently much of the world is fighting basic health issues due to water and just doesn't have the capability to be part of the worlds capital flows and trading systems. It has been done before on a smaller scale - the wealth of the Roman empire was sustained by water feed using aquaducts and roads - some of which are still in use 2000 years later.
Now why exactly was the space program stopped last time if it was of such a benefit to the economy ?.
Answer is simple - when times are good (and the 50's and 60's were good for Federal deficits) - then programs like that are a great way of helping focus Federal spending and also absorbing excess tax dollars. When times are bad (70's with the oil shocks) or wars then space programs are a luxury a country can ill afford while it is burning cash on imported oil or bombing others in the middle of no-where.
Bush has burnt all his cash from the Clinton era Graph by party on his two most recent big projects and those projects are two wars. Nothing left for Mars or the Moon and he still hasn't finished those wars.
Slashdot Mirror
Boy are Amazon in for a long fight !.
Hides as wife walks into room...
Joe-public all the way through mom+pop through to mini-corporates can survive quite nicely without Oracle by using more commonly available commercial or Open Source databases.
MySQL, Postgresql, Firebird (1.5 now out), ...
Looks like its simply a market segmentation approach through increased componentisation that they are doomed to adopt.
In plain terms this means taking their one product and de-featuring or crippling it to suit what Microsoft thinks is best for a particular customer. They will always get this wrong for two reasons:
because everyone has unique demands on technology and
all GNU/Linux distributions are highly componentised from the very first day because thats how they are created using very different development teams.
A typical Linux distro is intrinsically componentised and so is years ahead of Microsoft. A typical full-fat GNU/Linux distribution will always be the whole product and will (nearly) always provide the right product offering to its customers without having to crow-bar your requirements to fit Microsoft's view of who you are.
Who do you want to be today ? - I just want to be me not what you tell me to be !
This is why Microsoft just can't win by using market segmentation against Linux. It may work if the competition was commercial e.g. Microsoft verses Apple, but Linux development is user-demand driven not marketing-demand driven.
No mention is made of GPL/LGPL in the article. In my books this is also a key customer requirement of derisking single-suppliers through open source licensing. Shared source is not the answer as you cannot build from that source whereas I can, and do, build from kernel.org (now at 2.6.3 and very happy with what I see on my SMP machine).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3485141.stm
"With effect from July 2003, both fixed and mobile networks operators have been required to provide caller location information to emergency services responding to 999 calls under the EC Directive 2002/22/EC."
Of course other biometric methods could work but RFID is successful with trackng other valuable animals like hourses and dogs. Unfortunately though, identity theft would be a lot more painful !
Don't like that view of the world ? - well this is the country that accepts that you can't get a beer without showing ID. You reap what you sow.
Germany is right in the middle of this. Strategicly the OSS/Linux vendors are in for a bonus few years.
You can guarantee that IBM, Novell and SuSE will all want to make this work out fine because they would then sell this solution on.
You have to ask youself - why spend hard earned EU taxpayer money on Microsoft licenses when it can be spent on local service providers integrating freely available OSS software ?. IBM Global Service are asking that same question - pity SCO are not getting stuck in too as their traditional strength in vertical integration would be perfect for the new EU countries, but now no-one will touch them with a barge pole.
No - Microsoft is the largest and most prolific monopoly in the world without a question. De Beers did not survive the US Anti-trust as its senior officers are forbidden to touch US soil for fear of being arrested.
No one , and I mean no-one, can simply wander in and check-in code to any OSS project without permission.
You have to have a track record and your submits get peer reviewed. After a while you may get change rights to the CVS. How long depends upon your skill and history. I'll never get bitkeeper access to linux kernel and neither could Mr Jones. I could try but it'll take a lot of hard effort to skill myself into kernel workings. I'll stick with userspace programs.
No different from a company ; start off low as a intern and then work up until you get to a responsible position and then you throw the spanner in the works.
The security breach will be placed into ANY source software from INSIDE, by someone working on the project.
Mr Jones - It doesn't matter is its closed or open source its usually an inside job. In closed source world the public will never hear of the problem as it'll get hidden under the carpet: in the open source world it in the open.
In a democratic society goverment taxpayer money should be seen to work and be seen working not hidden behind some closed door mentality.
Current SCO management are old-school; they simply want traditional Unix technlogy to die under a mound of legal paperwork. They don't care who loses as long as the lawyers get paid.
Linux is Unix is Linux. As far as joe-user or joe-admin is concerned the GUI or shell is identical in that its not Microsoft Windows.
All they simply seem to be upset about is some ABI headers !. The joke being that they then seem to go on about the Linux Kernel Personality (LKP) in Unixware. So they quite happily take but don't want to give back.
Their Unix is chocka full of juicy Open Source contributions which they have merrily grabbed and then they try and deflect interest in what they are doing by pointing fingers at others and calling these other Operating System developers pirates.
Pre-2.6 everyone knows what deficiencies there where in the Linux scheduler. This wasn't a cut+paste from Unix but was a paragmatic easy-to-understand scheduler that evolved over many years by many developers. Along comes 2.6 and it has fixes for the main known deficiencies. SCO have seen this happen. Why is it that both kernel 2.6 and 2.4 are priced the same from SCO's point of view ?. If the technology in 2.4 was top-of-the range Unix Intellectual Property then why was it so poor that it needed fixing for 2.6 to get 2.6. to scale ?. Something tells me 2.4 did not have any Unix SMP technolgy else it would not have been able to scale better in 2.6 !
Like many others I'm down as a Data Controller within the meaning of the Data Protection Act. I take this role very seriously even though I have just a few personal details, but also because I have access to a lot of other records and I view it from the point of view of: what if it was MY personal data that was being copied about ? My declaration also states that any data never leave the EU. Personally I see any data sent to the US as secure as posting it on the Internet. Good to see the actual US government confirming my views.
What exactly has MS been doing for the past 8 years if it wasn't to try and address the first-time PC market ! Mr McBean is really dishing out the marketting shit at that interview. I can almost envisage Redmond's finger up his arse wiggling it in lipsync.
How MS cripple their products is very strategic and solely to keep revenue intact by market segmentation. Its nothing to do with satisfying a new market segment.
WinXP home was crippled in subtle ways that a home user wouldn't even notice except if they expected to do certain things. The simple task of not being able to sync folders or join domains. The folder sync is really annoying for home users as it means that its harder to protect documents.
Something tells me that these two things were simple registry hacks and required very little testing to develope !
Simply too perverse legalese-wise to allow anyone to proceed into that site. You never know who may end up with their logs and stuff. What if it was a legal team that specialises in patent demands ?. Life is just too short to have to read pages of legalese even if it was meant as a joke. Was it actually meant as a joke ? I don't know and truthfully don't fucking care.
IP datagrams don't care what country they come from. Guess they're going to have to host the code for claim 92 to Europe.
Without an actual implementation in the flesh then hasn't a fundamental issue with patents been missed i.e. it has to have a working implementation at the time of filing.
This is what stops perpetual motion machines, time travel and other nonsensical patent attempts. Hell I'd be more than happy if someone got a patent on a perpetual motion machine as it certainly wouldn't have any prior art.
I suspect that this is a spoiler for Open Source like OpenOffice, Apache and the likes of FreeBSD or GNU/Linux.
If its basic computer skills then you don't need any Microsoft software but any old PC like the junk we in the 3rd world typically toss out (you know all those P-300 and lower PCs.
I want to know is
a) what the hell they would be powering these PCs with ! and
b) how will Microsoft actually help the very poor rates of literacy in the females in Afganistan. Since the US got rid of the Taliban very little has been done to help female literacy. Female literacy is an essential part of the general children literacy rates as the females of the family teach children from an early age at home basic skills prior to formal schooling.
I still think that the 3rd world need the basics to survive not some 3rd rate software that has an inflated sticker price and can easily be replaced by alternatives at a zero price point. Anyone who thinks that GNOME/KDE is not desktop ready is talking sh*t. As for server technology then any typical Linux magazine cover CD has Apache, PHP, Perl, Linux, Postgresq/MySQL, Python.... You can get more software from some old Linux magazine at a newspaper stand than you'll ever get from Microsoft on their gift programs.
NO CARRIER
I know that Linux contains no Unix code as SCO has not yet provided any maintainer with a diff file ergo Linux contains no SCO copyright code which they did not or still do not want to be present in Linux.
The president Bush, as well as president Blair (I think thats what he thinks he is) didn't lie per se as they removed the Inspectors. This was deliberate because without evidence its hard to say either way. Someone did lie on the so-called 45 minutes launch capability of the afformentioned WMD. Not even the US or the UK have a 45 minute launch capability for their own nuclear and chemical weapon ordanance !
Linux is different. There can be no hidden weapon caches as its all in the clear: almost as if you had sci-fi style millimeter radar scanning every inch of Iran. The process is simple for SCO: they diff it and send diffs to maintainer. They have not done so ergo there is nothing to do.
If SCO thought their case was strong or had a smoking gun in the hands of Tux then they wouldn't be trying the 'Reds under the bed/Communists are everywhere' angle.
While SCO go bust then IBM and HP are making billions out of this Open Source stuff mainly because they sell hardware and service too.
Nah - like I say: if he thinks he'll kill Linux legally then the community will migrate to a *BSD and then he'll have the same fight on that OS too.
If he thinks the Linux kernel is a threat then he hasn't been watching FreeBSD for the past 10 years.
Linux is used on a small percentage of web servers: Apache is the king here and it runs on anything. He's trying to talk up Linux ! Thanks but no Thanks.
Only SCO believes that GPL contradicts US Copyright law. I'd trust EFF here.
GPL keeps code IN COPYRIGHT and not the public domain. Public Domain is near impossible to achieve as an individual under US law as far as I know. I think some goverment stuff can be public domain but its quite rare (IANAL)
Free beer verses free freedom: usual misunderstandings ! Typical Lindows or Mandrake boxed set is quite a lot more expensive than free !.
I think of GPL not facing a court case like many would like other laws to also not be tested in court e.g. murder, rape, embezzlement, Dangerous Driving, Kidnap and so on. If I reword GPL for SCO: GPL is a social contract and it says: if you steal the code then you have certain obligations.
McBride: We've said this time and time again and yet you refuse to prove that Linux contains significant Unix code. Anyone who says that yet fails to prove it has something to hide.
The US a capitalist system ? Bullshit: its Federal Socialism when you cry to government because you can't get your way in the market. Open Source is the product of raw capitalism as it ruthlessly uses the economic might of many companies to remove all competition. Microsoft know this and will probably adapt but they have $40 billion to play with across many product lines, whereas SCO has one product that few are wanting.
Linux is not full of proprietary code. This is lie.
McBride: Open Source allows more money to be spent on value-added services. Its better for the economy not worse. Services are on-site not offshore whereas line of code can easily be created off-shore.
North Korea supercomputer !: McBride, you ignoramus: Personal Computer do not need multi-processor capabilities. Personal computers are (generally) UNI-PROCESSOR. This means One processor you jerk. A cluster is many PCs and its useless with just Linux. It MUST also use Beowulf code or Mosix to be a cluster. If you thnk Beowulf or Mosix have got stolen Unix code then then say so. Linux on its own doesn't make a supercomputer.
It explains a lot about SCO press releases. I thought that there may just be some possiblity of Unix code leaking into Linux accidently and sincerely wish this was removed (I don't need JFS or NUMA anyway even if JFS was IMHO all from IBM and NUMA was from Dynix/Sequent).
Looks like it is simply an emotional breakdown by the CEO. It happens and its sad both for Mr McBride and for the employees and shareholders of SCO.
Earthlink are in competition with AOL for customers. AOL own Netscape and never bothered with a pop-up blocker on Netscape 7.0 even though the Mozilla had it because AOL are in the portal/Advertising business. Thus Earthlink had provided a pop-up blocker because AOL don't and Earthlink were on the prowl for new subscribers and not as interested in pop-up ad traffic.
Microsft have also not bothered because they too are in the portal business. Microsoft are thus like AOL in that they don't initially care about end-user experience but ad revenues. When the end-user experience becomes painful then they move their products on.
Opera are NOT in the pop-up ad business and thus have had a pop-up blocker as soon as they could code it. Same with Mozilla.
As to how much the NYT online is biased by ad revenue is another question but I don't recall seeing any mention of Open Source products being mentioned; just commercial ad-blockers, portal sites and other vendors.
You make your own call if its information or informercials. Me: I use Mozilla 1.5 and IE/Google - I'm happy.
We're still 3 meals away from a systemic collapse of civilisation. You just have to look at how people handle vacation weekends in stocking up on food and watching supermarkets get depleted on the slightest inclination of a supply problem to know that even 1st world nations have a very fragile balance.
We can /. faster though !
Its also full of electronic gadgets from microwaves, TV, DVD, Video, Sat, ovens, washing machine/dryers, dishwasher, burglar alarms, WIFI/cable, dimmers, coffee/tea makers, breadmaker, mixers, fridge, freezer, printers, blenders, grillers, icemakers, water coolers, games consoles and air-con.
Now we geeks may think that after spending 5 hours evaluating various models of MP3 players before we make out informed decision that we are kings of technology: think again. In sheer tonnage the wife's purchasing decisions in electronics (or rather stuff that uses electricity) easily outweighs and out-costs the few gadgets we get left to decide to buy. We're just the grunt labour who have to cart this stuff home and install it and truthfully being a geek, I prefer to work out how to install something that someone else has bought as the shopping side of things can burn you out.
Nuff said as I still have to adjust declination on sat-dish as its not tracking all the arc right and still haven't replaced the soap dispenser on the dishwasher and the SCART switcher has lost audio on one socket. Labour saving ? A husband's work is never finished !
On the other hand: is Linux legal anyway ! No say SCO so maybe I've just shot down my own answer.
Does anyone actually know who the patent examiner is in real life ?
Truthfully I love this Patent: it provides excellent evidence on how to not run a Patent system.
And I bet the US middle-classes are still wondering why they are losing jobs to Indian sub-continent while they think that a patent on where to stick a '.' in a URL is really important ! I can see it now: US economy saved by @ period.
When thats done then the dramatic boost to the global economy will easily allow for the massive financial investments in off-planet travel. But right now its very premature: a few moonshots over 20 years ago does not make a space travelling nation. It will take generations to effect this if past history is anything to go by (seafaring travel).
Lets face it: Mars would be hard but given that already had people in space repeatedly (both US and USSR) and done this for many months (USSR/Russian have best experience here) and have had people land on another surface (US) then doing these all at once is simply a matter of project management and funding. Both of which NASA is good at handling.
Now if Bush had said clean water for all on the planet then this has not been done in recent history but it would create untold wealth for the US in increased demand for US products. Currently much of the world is fighting basic health issues due to water and just doesn't have the capability to be part of the worlds capital flows and trading systems. It has been done before on a smaller scale - the wealth of the Roman empire was sustained by water feed using aquaducts and roads - some of which are still in use 2000 years later.
Now why exactly was the space program stopped last time if it was of such a benefit to the economy ?. Answer is simple - when times are good (and the 50's and 60's were good for Federal deficits) - then programs like that are a great way of helping focus Federal spending and also absorbing excess tax dollars. When times are bad (70's with the oil shocks) or wars then space programs are a luxury a country can ill afford while it is burning cash on imported oil or bombing others in the middle of no-where.
Bush has burnt all his cash from the Clinton era Graph by party on his two most recent big projects and those projects are two wars. Nothing left for Mars or the Moon and he still hasn't finished those wars.