The
Drake Equation
Gives a probabilistic estimate of the number of civilization in the galaxy that we could expect to communicate with. The last factor in the equation, denoted by L, is the expected lifetime of a civilization that we could communicate with.
Some people speculate that the reason we have not had any results from SETI so far is because this last factor is extremely small: the time between when a civilization is able to communicate galactically and the time it discovers nuclear weapons and self annihilates is so small that even though there are potentially millions of civilizations in our galaxy, the chances of two them being able to communicate is extremely small due to their short life spans.
When the user/owner controls the keys it really is trusted computing. When someone other than the user/owner controls the keys then it is treacherous computing. Unfortunately, perhaps for marketing reasons, Microsoft does not use these definitions.
And for the record, Richard Stallman is very good at foreseeing problems way before other people, but that does not make him paranoid, just foresightful.
The vectorized version will, of course, run 25% slower than the non-vectorized version because the second multiply is performed twice as often. The vectorized version will run faster than the balanced version but a vectorized and balanced version will run slowest of all.
Balancing may not be needed at all with the vectorized version. Certainly the same top level calls are made each time through the loop regardless of the bits in the private key so the need to balance is totally dependent on the implementations of the arithmetic functions, particular the modulus. If the control flow in all these functions is data independent then there would be no need to balance the vectorized version. It will be immune from both branch table and timing attacks (I think). If the control flow in those functions is data dependent then it would probably more efficient to vectorize them rather than balance the top loop.
I think he realizes that, but the essential thing is that the alternatives in the arithmetic branches are not directly related to the bits in the secret key. The multiplications and additions can be implemented as simple loops. The modular arithmetic will have some data dependent branching, but:
The branching is not directly related to the bits in the key, and
The balanced approach I suggested should totally mask any indirect correlations since you will get the same amount of modular calculations regardless of the state of each bit in the key.
The implementation given in the original paper was vulnerable because the branch in the square-multiply loop directly corresponded to the bits in the private key. The proposed vectorized approach removes this direct correlation. The vectorized and balanced approach removes both the direct correlation and indirect correlations. It wasn't the branches per se that caused the vulnerability, it was the correlation between the branch outcomes and the bits in the private key.
Another way to see this is to imagine that the spy program were able to actually see all the branch decisions from the crypto code. If simple loops are used for the multiply and add then the only possible place they could glean any information would be from the branches in the modular arithmetic. This should be masked by the balancing but if it is not, the data dependent branches in the modular calculation could also be vectorized and balanced thus eliminating any useful signal in the branch table.
That is a clever vectorization of the square-multiply loop. It sure looks to me like it would work (I used RSA encryption as the final project in a University assembly language class I taught). The slight decrease in efficiency of your routine will be not be noticed. The timing of the entire process is totally dominated by the N-byte x N-byte multiplications. An extra N-byte x 1-byte multiplication will cause less than a 1% slowdown, probably much less.
A slight improvement to your idea might be to balance the loop anyway, using D = 1 - di, etc., essentially a vectorized version of figure 4. This would slow it down by a factor of two but it would make it resistant to conventional timing attacks.
As for the data, I can only point out that all of the data ever submitted to CDDB before it became "privatized" has been released to the public. You can go to freedb.org any time and
download that entire database, including all the data that users entered before CDDB became commercial.
Note: the word "download" is a link to the freeDB download page.
According to TFA, all of the information that was submitted before they went private is freely available to the public. Therefore I don't think your server analogy is accurate. A better server analogy would be if they left the publicly funded servers behind and started a new company with new servers.
I think you still have a valid reason to gripe, but I don't think it was the reason you gave. All of the public submissions are still freely available to the public which means your were not tricked out of your 5 minutes.
I think your valid complaint is not your investment in a public database but rather your investment in, and support of, the CDDB business model of a free and open database. The freely contributed data is still freely available so the real problem is that the free and open CDDB business is temporarily defunct. The obvious solution to this business-model problem is to get a group of like minded souls together, take the existing free and open data, and then use it in a free and open way much like the old CDDB.
TFA mentions that
freedb already made a fork like this but from the article it sounds like there are some problems with it. It also sounds like the creator of CDDB prefers a non-open development model. IMO, that is both his choice to make and also his loss. Perhaps you know more about freedb than I do so I am seriously asking: what's wrong with throwing our efforts behind freedb and then seeing which development model (free vs. closed) works best?
The key point IMO is that Universal allowed their trademarks to be infringed when the infringement served as "free advertising". Universal is not allowed to come back now and try to retroactively enforce their trademarks. In the legal world, this is called
estoppel:
[Universal] has done or said something to induce an expectation
The [Browncoats] relied (reasonably) on the expectation...
...and would suffer detriment if that expectation were false.
It is perfectly copacetic to sell merchandise like this as long as the trademark owner knows about it and does nothing. It is not copacetic for Universal to come back now, years later, and try to change the ground rules upon which people have developed a business model.
I also disagree with your interpretation that this indicates Universal is considering a sequel. I think it indicates the exact opposite: they've given up on a sequel and are now trying to wring the last few pennies out of the franchise on its way to the trash heap.
If Universal were planning for a sequel then they would have wanted to encourage the fan-base buzz, not squash it.
Someone is going to have to hit Universal with a cluestick before they realize that the "legal bootleg" nature of the fan merchandising was a significant factor in its success. I almost never buy logo-wear but I've bought several items from
Blue Sun Shirts. I'm sorry they've been shut down because I would have continued to buy things from them. There is no way in Hell that I'd buy any Firefly merchandise from Universal now. The actions of the fans mimicked the actions of the heros in the series and the movie. Universal got cool points for letting these small businesses prosper. Now Universal is acting like the evil Alliance.
IANAL but I think the browncoats have an excellent chance of prevailing with an
estoppel defense:
[Universal] has done or said something to induce an expectation
The [Browncoats] relied (reasonably) on the expectation...
...and would suffer detriment if that expectation were false.
This is one of the many defenses IBM is using against SCO. IBM claims that for 20 years the owners of the AT&T contracts let IBM publish its own home-grown code
and therefore SCO is estopped from now trying to interpret the contracts differently.
Since Universal Pictures knew about the "infringing" activities and did nothing when those activities helped promote their film, their retroactive licensing fees should IMO be estopped. I don't know if Universal's cease and desist orders can be estopped or not. Since people built business models based upon Universal's tacit acceptance of the use of their trademarks, I think a good argument could be made that
Universal delayed too long and have thus invalidated their own trademarks. If trademarks are not vigorously enforced, they are forfeited.
In a related question, buggy whip manufacturers are asking what features we would like added to buggy whips in order to make them more attractive to consumers.
Here is what you are missing: The ruling the original poster was referring to was in a case where the misuse of copyright claim was denied.
If you follow this
link (provided by the original poster) you will see that the defendant tried to make it legal to share all of the music controlled by the RIAA. If they had won their misuse of copyright claim than it would have become perfectly legal for anyone to share any music that is currently controlled by the RIAA. Here is an excerpt from the article (emphasis added):
... the district court rightly rejected StreamCasts overly broad conception of the misuse defense as arising in the presence of any use of copyright in violation of public policy. If a defendant in an infringement suit could escape liability merely by invoking some open-ended notion of public policy, the exclusive rights afforded copyright owners in Title 17 would just about cease to exist.
The original poster was trying to make us all believe that if IBM prevails in their misuse of copyright claim then the ruling would be the same as a ruling where the misuse of copyright claim was denied. The argument given by the original poster is completely refuted by the very case they cite for support. Is it any wonder I thought they are working for SCO?
Thanks for that explanation. It makes sense in a way.
But if you follow this
link (provided by the orignal poster) and scroll down you will find that the "as long as" ruling he refers to was in a case where the misuse of copyright claim was denied.
In that case, the defendant tried to make all p2p sharing of the RIAA's music legal by making a misuse of copyright claim based on the idea that the virtual monopoly of the RIAA was against the public good. If the defendant had prevailed in their misuse of copyright claim then it would have been perfectly legal for you to share pirated music that had previously been controlled by the RIAA. Here is a quote from the article linked to above:
... the district court rightly rejected StreamCast's overly broad conception of the misuse defense as arising in the presence of 'any use of copyright in violation of public policy.' If a defendant in an infringement suit could escape liability merely by invoking some open-ended notion of public policy, the exclusive rights afforded copyright owners in Title 17 would just about cease to exist.
The IBM claim of misuse of copyright couldn't be more different. SCO is claiming control over hundreds of millions of lines of code and literally billions of dollars in damages because of 300 lines of code that probably don't even belong to SCO in the first place.
The original poster was trying to make us all believe that if IBM prevailed in their misuse of copyright claim then the ruling would be the same as a ruling in which a misuse of copyright claim was denied. This is complete poppycock.
We get a steady stream of anonymous posts like this on Groklaw making totally bogus claims about the SCO cases. There, we call such posts FUD and the people posting them trolls. I am only talking about the original poster. I think you (zsau) have been very reasonable pointing out possible interpretations of my words that I hadn't imagined.
Disabling RenderAccel:
Option "RenderAccel" "False"
will serve as a workaround for those who are not comfortable with running a 1.0-962x driver.
So I don't feel like they've left people like me, with legacy drivers, out to dry. A backport would be nice but I don't feel like I've been screwed over.
Nvidia's newer drivers don't work with my (3 year old) Nvidia card so a patch to their newest driver doesn't help me much. If they decide to backport their patch to all their older drivers then I will cut them a break, otherwise I will be pissed.
I'm in the same boat. I'm using the 7174 Nvidia driver under Gentoo. The problem is that the newer drivers don't work on the older cards. Gentoo has kept the older Nvidia drivers available to let people find a driver that works with their hardware. If Nvidia doesn't backport their patch to the older drivers then a lot of people are going to be very unhappy.
The key difference between the two phrases you say are harmonious is the words "... for as long as the misuse continues". But further on you say that losing the right to enforce a copyright is different from forfeiting the copyright. ISTM that the IBM statement, without the "for as long as..." clause means permanently losing the right to enforce. It had not occurred to me that this phrase by IBM meant anything but permanently losing the right to enforce. One reason for this is the concept of "the misuse continuing" makes almost no sense in the current case.
I tried to stress in my post that the IBM memo was about applying the law to this particular case.
Did you not find it somewhat ironic that the anonymous poster provided an implicit legal opinion (that the Grokster case was so similar to the current case that the same ruling would have to apply) and also warned us to not accept legal opinions from non-lawyers?
The Grokster case is vastly different from the current case. A better analogy would be if Grokster sued the RIAA for $5 Billion for copyright infringement of the RIAA's entire collection after Grokster surreptitiously put one song they owned the copyright to onto one compilation album. If the anonymous poster was a well informed lawyer then they were being disingenuous for implying the Grokster case and the IBM case were so similar that the same ruling would have to apply as a matter of law. If the anonymous poster was not a well informed lawyer then they were being disingenuous for implying they were. The anonymous poster also asked for links that a reader could check. I followed the links to get to IBM's memo and apparently the anonymous poster did not.
IBM does provide more evidence that backs up my interpretation of their phrase (and I remind you that I honestly did not imagine that a different interpretation was possible). On page 48 of the 2nd pdf IBM quotes from the ruling in the case of qad inc. v. ALN Assocs. Inc:
[qad's] copyright misuse extended [its] copyright
privilege beyond the scope of the grant and violated
the very purpose of a copyright, which is to give
incentive for authors to produce. After all, the creation of orignal writings is inhibited -- not promoted -- when a possessor of a copyright commits
the kind of misuse evident here. This Court should
not and will not offer its aid to a copyright holder
whose actions run contrary to the purpose of the
copyright itself.
BTW, I limited my quotation from the IBM memo because the entire document was scanned in so I couldn't just simply copy-and-paste.
I still think the article gave an accurate summary of IBM's memo. I don't think the anonymous poster read the relevant section of the memo. Maybe there is a difference between forever losing the right to enforce a copyright and losing the copyright, but if there is, you would have to explain it to me because I don't see that it makes any real difference.
IMO, the key mistake made by the original poster was to assume that the ruling on a particular law in one case (Grokster) would automatically apply to all rulings on that law. That mistake, combined with the implication that the poster was a lawyer; the headline screaming "Serious mistake in the article about the law"; and insightful moderation led me to call FUD. I still think the original post was FUD from a troll. In contrast, I think you made valid points so I tried to address them.
Did you even bother to read the fine memo by IBM?
On page 43 of the second pdf, the IBM lawyers say:
V. SCO HAS MISUSED ITS ALLEGED COPYRIGHTS
SCO's infringement claim should also be rejected because SCO has misused the copyrights and therefore is not entitled to enforce them.
IBM's lawyers follow this up with five pages of discussion and explanations including copious references to previous cases all of which (they claim) back up their statement.
The article provided and accurate summary of IBM's misuse of copyright argument. It seems that you disagree with IBM's lawyers on the proper sanctions for misuse of copyright in this particular case. I believe that IBM's lawyers are lawyers and are very much trained in the law. They are also intimately familiar with this case.
So who should I believe? IBM's Nazgul or an obviously uninformed anonymous troll on Slashdot. H'mmm... the lawyers or the troll? A tough call, but I'm going to side with IBM's lawyers on this one. Of course the only opinion that really matters is that of the judge.
The level of bogosity and FUD in your post is extremely high. Since you seem to imply that you yourself are a lawyer and are trained in the law, perhaps you should have signed-in to post your comment so that you could use it as part of an application for a job at BS&F, the law firm representing SCO. On second thought, it occurs to me that perhaps you are already working for them.
While it is true that copyright can be violated without literally copied code, your comment seems to overlook the context of CC10, which is extremely important.
SCO was forced (by the judge) to disclose all possibly infringing code back in December of 2005. All sides agreed that this list from SCO could include methods and concepts as well as literally copied code. But, even for their methods and concepts claims, SCO was required to show where in "their" SysV code these methods and concepts were expressed and then also show where they were re-expressed in the Linux code.
SCO did not do this. Instead, they said that IBM already knew where the "copied" methods and concepts came from in SysV. IBM filed a motion to have all of these nebulous claims from SCO thrown out. The judge agreed with IBM and in her ruling said:
Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus, they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that 'you know what you stole I'm not telling.' Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus' entire inventory and say 'it's in there somewhere, you figure it out.'
With the methods and concepts claims tossed out, IBM
was left to deal with the literal copying claims. Most of these IBM refuted (in a separate memo) because the claims didn't involve any code that SCO even claimed to own. When the whittling down was done only 300-odd lines of "copied" SysV code were left. If you had bothered to RTFA, you would have seen that IBM claims:
The particular lines SCO has identified as allegedly copied are a scattered and fragmentary collection of define statements, data structures and function prototypes, not qualitatively different in form or character or content or their individual importance from the many thousands of lines of other interface code. (ex 215 P37) Nor is their any apparent pattern, regularity, consistency, or cohesiveness to the accused code; it is scattered throughout the files, sometimes only a line or two in a file
You are correct that copyright can be violated without literal copying but that fact is not applicable to the article or the IBM memo the article is discussing. I also disagree with your conclusion that these documents presented by IBM merely make SCO's case "that much harder to prove". IMO, the vast collection of memos by IBM to support their summary judgment motions provide overwhelming proof that SCO's claims are impossible to prove. If I am correct, and there are no legal gaffes, then IBM will prevail in their summary judgment motions.
The term "ice weasel" was invented by Matt Groening
for one of his The Far Side cartoons. The
full quote is:
Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.
I think it is a good name actually. I don't think Debian is acting childishly. They faced a choice of leaving their users open to exploits or changing the name and I think they made the wise decision. Debian was willing to compromise on almost all issues except rapid security patches. Just my opinion.
How'd he know what the EOF card was supposed to look like?
Good question. I'm not certain of the answer. I'm sure he examined the punch card the company sent him and was able to interpret the information punched on it to enable him to at least make an educated guess. Perhaps it was a lucky guess as well. We were running all DEC machines at the lab but I know he had contact with at least the sales reps from IBM. There were also some IBM 360's at the campus computer center. If DEC and IBM used the same EOF then he probably just used that.
A premature EOF is just a headache for the operations staff on shift.
It's possible he embellished his story but I think he stayed pretty close to the truth. It caused a big enough problem that the people dealing with it figured out he was the person that had pulled the trick even though the card he sent in didn't have any ID information on it.
I think the problem he caused was that only half the payments were processed during that billing cycle. Your right that if the staff had caught the problem right away, it wouldn't have been anything worse than a minor annoyance. I think it was a much bigger problem for them because they were just not expecting an attack of this kind. I heard the story 30 years ago but the actual incident had occurred a number of years earlier.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people speculate that the reason we have not had any results from SETI so far is because this last factor is extremely small: the time between when a civilization is able to communicate galactically and the time it discovers nuclear weapons and self annihilates is so small that even though there are potentially millions of civilizations in our galaxy, the chances of two them being able to communicate is extremely small due to their short life spans.
And for the record, Richard Stallman is very good at foreseeing problems way before other people, but that does not make him paranoid, just foresightful.
Balancing may not be needed at all with the vectorized version. Certainly the same top level calls are made each time through the loop regardless of the bits in the private key so the need to balance is totally dependent on the implementations of the arithmetic functions, particular the modulus. If the control flow in all these functions is data independent then there would be no need to balance the vectorized version. It will be immune from both branch table and timing attacks (I think). If the control flow in those functions is data dependent then it would probably more efficient to vectorize them rather than balance the top loop.
- The branching is not directly related to the bits in the key, and
- The balanced approach I suggested should totally mask any indirect correlations since you will get the same amount of modular calculations regardless of the state of each bit in the key.
The implementation given in the original paper was vulnerable because the branch in the square-multiply loop directly corresponded to the bits in the private key. The proposed vectorized approach removes this direct correlation. The vectorized and balanced approach removes both the direct correlation and indirect correlations. It wasn't the branches per se that caused the vulnerability, it was the correlation between the branch outcomes and the bits in the private key.Another way to see this is to imagine that the spy program were able to actually see all the branch decisions from the crypto code. If simple loops are used for the multiply and add then the only possible place they could glean any information would be from the branches in the modular arithmetic. This should be masked by the balancing but if it is not, the data dependent branches in the modular calculation could also be vectorized and balanced thus eliminating any useful signal in the branch table.
A slight improvement to your idea might be to balance the loop anyway, using D = 1 - di, etc., essentially a vectorized version of figure 4. This would slow it down by a factor of two but it would make it resistant to conventional timing attacks.
I think you still have a valid reason to gripe, but I don't think it was the reason you gave. All of the public submissions are still freely available to the public which means your were not tricked out of your 5 minutes.
I think your valid complaint is not your investment in a public database but rather your investment in, and support of, the CDDB business model of a free and open database. The freely contributed data is still freely available so the real problem is that the free and open CDDB business is temporarily defunct. The obvious solution to this business-model problem is to get a group of like minded souls together, take the existing free and open data, and then use it in a free and open way much like the old CDDB.
TFA mentions that freedb already made a fork like this but from the article it sounds like there are some problems with it. It also sounds like the creator of CDDB prefers a non-open development model. IMO, that is both his choice to make and also his loss. Perhaps you know more about freedb than I do so I am seriously asking: what's wrong with throwing our efforts behind freedb and then seeing which development model (free vs. closed) works best?
Well, at least I can make a couch out of some of the extra FedEx boxes.
... should have been enough for anyone.
The key point IMO is that Universal allowed their trademarks to be infringed when the infringement served as "free advertising". Universal is not allowed to come back now and try to retroactively enforce their trademarks. In the legal world, this is called estoppel:
It is perfectly copacetic to sell merchandise like this as long as the trademark owner knows about it and does nothing. It is not copacetic for Universal to come back now, years later, and try to change the ground rules upon which people have developed a business model.
I also disagree with your interpretation that this indicates Universal is considering a sequel. I think it indicates the exact opposite: they've given up on a sequel and are now trying to wring the last few pennies out of the franchise on its way to the trash heap. If Universal were planning for a sequel then they would have wanted to encourage the fan-base buzz, not squash it.
Someone is going to have to hit Universal with a cluestick before they realize that the "legal bootleg" nature of the fan merchandising was a significant factor in its success. I almost never buy logo-wear but I've bought several items from Blue Sun Shirts. I'm sorry they've been shut down because I would have continued to buy things from them. There is no way in Hell that I'd buy any Firefly merchandise from Universal now. The actions of the fans mimicked the actions of the heros in the series and the movie. Universal got cool points for letting these small businesses prosper. Now Universal is acting like the evil Alliance.
Since Universal Pictures knew about the "infringing" activities and did nothing when those activities helped promote their film, their retroactive licensing fees should IMO be estopped. I don't know if Universal's cease and desist orders can be estopped or not. Since people built business models based upon Universal's tacit acceptance of the use of their trademarks, I think a good argument could be made that Universal delayed too long and have thus invalidated their own trademarks. If trademarks are not vigorously enforced, they are forfeited.
In a related question, buggy whip manufacturers are asking what features we would like added to buggy whips in order to make them more attractive to consumers.
If you follow this link (provided by the original poster) you will see that the defendant tried to make it legal to share all of the music controlled by the RIAA. If they had won their misuse of copyright claim than it would have become perfectly legal for anyone to share any music that is currently controlled by the RIAA. Here is an excerpt from the article (emphasis added):
The original poster was trying to make us all believe that if IBM prevails in their misuse of copyright claim then the ruling would be the same as a ruling where the misuse of copyright claim was denied. The argument given by the original poster is completely refuted by the very case they cite for support. Is it any wonder I thought they are working for SCO?
In that case, the defendant tried to make all p2p sharing of the RIAA's music legal by making a misuse of copyright claim based on the idea that the virtual monopoly of the RIAA was against the public good. If the defendant had prevailed in their misuse of copyright claim then it would have been perfectly legal for you to share pirated music that had previously been controlled by the RIAA. Here is a quote from the article linked to above: The IBM claim of misuse of copyright couldn't be more different. SCO is claiming control over hundreds of millions of lines of code and literally billions of dollars in damages because of 300 lines of code that probably don't even belong to SCO in the first place.
The original poster was trying to make us all believe that if IBM prevailed in their misuse of copyright claim then the ruling would be the same as a ruling in which a misuse of copyright claim was denied. This is complete poppycock.
We get a steady stream of anonymous posts like this on Groklaw making totally bogus claims about the SCO cases. There, we call such posts FUD and the people posting them trolls. I am only talking about the original poster. I think you (zsau) have been very reasonable pointing out possible interpretations of my words that I hadn't imagined.
I tried to stress in my post that the IBM memo was about applying the law to this particular case. Did you not find it somewhat ironic that the anonymous poster provided an implicit legal opinion (that the Grokster case was so similar to the current case that the same ruling would have to apply) and also warned us to not accept legal opinions from non-lawyers?
The Grokster case is vastly different from the current case. A better analogy would be if Grokster sued the RIAA for $5 Billion for copyright infringement of the RIAA's entire collection after Grokster surreptitiously put one song they owned the copyright to onto one compilation album. If the anonymous poster was a well informed lawyer then they were being disingenuous for implying the Grokster case and the IBM case were so similar that the same ruling would have to apply as a matter of law. If the anonymous poster was not a well informed lawyer then they were being disingenuous for implying they were. The anonymous poster also asked for links that a reader could check. I followed the links to get to IBM's memo and apparently the anonymous poster did not.
IBM does provide more evidence that backs up my interpretation of their phrase (and I remind you that I honestly did not imagine that a different interpretation was possible). On page 48 of the 2nd pdf IBM quotes from the ruling in the case of qad inc. v. ALN Assocs. Inc: BTW, I limited my quotation from the IBM memo because the entire document was scanned in so I couldn't just simply copy-and-paste.
I still think the article gave an accurate summary of IBM's memo. I don't think the anonymous poster read the relevant section of the memo. Maybe there is a difference between forever losing the right to enforce a copyright and losing the copyright, but if there is, you would have to explain it to me because I don't see that it makes any real difference.
IMO, the key mistake made by the original poster was to assume that the ruling on a particular law in one case (Grokster) would automatically apply to all rulings on that law. That mistake, combined with the implication that the poster was a lawyer; the headline screaming "Serious mistake in the article about the law"; and insightful moderation led me to call FUD. I still think the original post was FUD from a troll. In contrast, I think you made valid points so I tried to address them.
The article provided and accurate summary of IBM's misuse of copyright argument. It seems that you disagree with IBM's lawyers on the proper sanctions for misuse of copyright in this particular case. I believe that IBM's lawyers are lawyers and are very much trained in the law. They are also intimately familiar with this case.
So who should I believe? IBM's Nazgul or an obviously uninformed anonymous troll on Slashdot. H'mmm
The level of bogosity and FUD in your post is extremely high. Since you seem to imply that you yourself are a lawyer and are trained in the law, perhaps you should have signed-in to post your comment so that you could use it as part of an application for a job at BS&F, the law firm representing SCO. On second thought, it occurs to me that perhaps you are already working for them.
SCO was forced (by the judge) to disclose all possibly infringing code back in December of 2005. All sides agreed that this list from SCO could include methods and concepts as well as literally copied code. But, even for their methods and concepts claims, SCO was required to show where in "their" SysV code these methods and concepts were expressed and then also show where they were re-expressed in the Linux code.
SCO did not do this. Instead, they said that IBM already knew where the "copied" methods and concepts came from in SysV. IBM filed a motion to have all of these nebulous claims from SCO thrown out. The judge agreed with IBM and in her ruling said:
With the methods and concepts claims tossed out, IBM was left to deal with the literal copying claims. Most of these IBM refuted (in a separate memo) because the claims didn't involve any code that SCO even claimed to own. When the whittling down was done only 300-odd lines of "copied" SysV code were left. If you had bothered to RTFA, you would have seen that IBM claims:
You are correct that copyright can be violated without literal copying but that fact is not applicable to the article or the IBM memo the article is discussing. I also disagree with your conclusion that these documents presented by IBM merely make SCO's case "that much harder to prove". IMO, the vast collection of memos by IBM to support their summary judgment motions provide overwhelming proof that SCO's claims are impossible to prove. If I am correct, and there are no legal gaffes, then IBM will prevail in their summary judgment motions.
I think the problem he caused was that only half the payments were processed during that billing cycle. Your right that if the staff had caught the problem right away, it wouldn't have been anything worse than a minor annoyance. I think it was a much bigger problem for them because they were just not expecting an attack of this kind. I heard the story 30 years ago but the actual incident had occurred a number of years earlier.