My first IBM check for a billion dollars just cleared! IBM told me that if I post this message to as many sites as possible, I will get derivitives (pun intended) from all those people below me on the pyramid. IBM has promised that if I sign just five people, I can be receiving a weekly check for a gazillion dollars for the rest of my life.
"Even with Linux there are some binary only drivers that can lead to the exact same problems that Windows exhibits. So the real problem isn't with Microsoft at all, it's with hardware vendors."
You have argued reasonably well to make the parent poster's point, and I can add to it. In the 7 or 8 years I was using the older Open Source video drivers, I only once had a system crash (while playing Quake). When I bought my NVIDIA GeForce 2 and installed the NVIDIA 3D driver, my system would sporadically and randomly lock up with only flashing LEDs doing anything.
The point the parent was making is not that Linux is immune to drivers freezing the system (because it's not immune), but that Open Source drivers are far more stable and reliable than closed drivers (which has been my experience).
While using Open Source drivers, my only system crashes were one occurance while playing Quake and several occurances of hardware failure (CDROMs locking the IDE channel when they die, HD cables working loose, etc.).
One other person, a few months ago, suggested that XFree86 4.x may have been the cause, but that doesn't seem to be the case since I can replace the NVIDIA driver with the Open Source driver and not have any crashes.
Let's not forget that Microsoft -always- claims that whatever it's currently selling is the best and most secure version that it's ever made.
NT was the most secure Windows ever made.
95 was the best Windows ever made.
98 was the best Windows ever made.
2000 was the best and most secure Windows ever made.
XP was the best and most secure Windows ever made.
2003 is the best and most secure Windows ever made.
And all those claims could be defended, as each successive Windows fixed past vulnerabilities (with subsequent service packs sometimes reactivating the same vulnerabilities) and made some minor improvements.
However, no version of Windows has come even remotely close to being secure, even if you disable all network services configurable by users.
Having never used Win2003, I can confidently assume that it will be little, if at all, more secure and reliable than any past version of Windows. Keeping logs telling you that you've been screwed rather than taking steps to keep you from being screwed in the first place is not an improvement.
I have to disagree. Getting hit by this worm, due to not patching your Windows system, requires only past experience with prior Windows upgrades.
I agree that you have to cross your fingers when you accept a Windows upgrade, but not because users might disable the upgrade. You are actually crossing your fingers that the upgrade doesn't do more harm than good. There are several cases where a Windows "upgrade" disabled previous upgrades, re-enabled prior vulnerabilities, or simply killed the system.
Getting hit by this worm does not make a person a laughing stock. It merely means that the 50-50 gamble landed on the wrong side this time. Next time the people who don't patch may be the ones who are the least vulnerable.
"But in accepting SCO's claim to have the right to charge these fees, in paying these fees, the unnamed company is effectively in breach of paragraph 6, and may not redistribute to itself..."
This is not true. The GPL clearly states that the recipient of GPL'd software retains all the rights originally granted to the original distributor, even though the original distributor is now barred (or even if the distributor had been previously barred) from distributing the same. As long as the recipient adheres to the GPL, then it retains the full rights granted by the GPL for that software.
A recipient is not in violation of the GPL by receiving covered software from someone not allowed to distribute the software. The GPL does not cover receiving software; only modification, distribution (giving, not receiving [except to tell what what the given must provide to you]), and copying.
I'm amazed that this is still a question any Slashdot reader may still have. The answer is remarkably easy.
The law does not want your help in making other companies' software secure. End of story. In fact, the law wants to put you in prison and throw away the key for making other companies' software more secure.
Do not exploit the weakness unless it is a normal part of the software's operation, and do not distribute the exploit for the software. Do not tell the software maker that you discovered the flaw, as you are more likely to be sued than thanked.
If you needed to do any reverse engineering to discover the flaw, then do not discuss the flaw, do not tell your teacher you found the flaw, and do not attempt to alter your grades by exploiting the flaw (unless, as stated above, the flaw can be exploited by using the software in its normal course of operation, without resorting to outside tools).
I agree with you on item 1. Allowing users to visually modify the system menu is a much better approach than the menu editor.
KDE has gotten majorly faster at displaying directory contents, but some things can slow it down (such as turning on folder icons reflect contents). Speed improves with each release, so I expect this to improve soon.
KDE gives you the option of single vs. double click interface. To to the KDE Control Center | Peripherals | Mouse, and set your preference.
"Furthermore, 80% of the Linux users believed that they needed only one week to become as competent with the new system as with their existing one, compared with 85% of the XP users."
48 members of the Linux group said they would need only a week to become proficient with Linux, whereas only 17 of the XP group said they would need only a week to become proficient with XP. Our spin: Linux is easier to learn than Windows.
"83% of the Linux users said they liked the design of the desktop and the programs...."
49 members of the Linux group said they liked the design of the KDE desktop, whereas only 20 members of the Windows group said they liked the design of the Windows desktop. Our spin: KDE has a better desktop design than Windows.
Of course, the spin is nonsense (all spin is nonsense). And the report methodology is a bit flawed. Anyone with "computer experience" (meaning PC experience) is going to have a bias towards the familiar Windows whether they know it or not.
The fact that an unfamiliar interface (KDE) scored so closely to the well known interface (Windows) speaks highly of the KDE team members and all the other contributors. Their work is greatly appreciated.
"Errr, no, we need to actually eliminate these functions that are unsafe by design, and if a program uses gets(), then too bad, it needs rewritten by an actual programmer and it can't be ported until it is rewritten."
Linux is not in the position to dictate terms to anyone, but it is now in a position where people depend upon it to run their old apps. There are too many alternatives to which people can turn if Linux system developers get too snooty.
Encouraging people to use the correct alternative, but leaving the entrenched and unsafe standard in place for compatibility, is a must. You cannot expect people, who are already hard pressed to meet deadlines, to go back and change thousands of occurances of gets() to fgets() (or something else) on a whim just because some glibc developer got onto his high horse. Such changes invariably cause unintended consequences, some of which may cost your employer hundreds of thousands of dollars in completely wasted time.
gets(), dangerous as it is, cannot just be yanked out from under the millions of lines of product code that it supports.
Linux should be striving to be POSIX compatible. Extensions are fine (and frequently even necessary) to address problems/omissions of the standard, but they should be separate from the standard implementation.
I fully endorse the deprecation of gets (it's a truly brain-dead function), but only if it's marked as deprecated and not removed from the system. There are large numbers of (insecure) heavily used programs that use gets() and that are not going to be changed in the near future simple because of time/budget constraints.
"Also, Kmail's LDAP feature is not integrated with the mail client...."
KMail is my primary email client at work, but it barfs really bad on merely-non-trivial IMAP attachments. The Archives department had sent me fifteen Word Perfect documents through email that needed to be converted to PDFs and put onto the web site, and KMail worked my computer into a 5.0+ load average (and froze the whole system for nearly a minute) trying to retrieve the attachments. If I try right-clicking on the email to delete it, KMail crashes.
I love KMail, and KDE in general, but there are still a few little things scattered about that are quite painful. I'm extremely greatful to the KDE crew, despite the few remaining problems. Those guys are miracle workers.
Mr. O'Leary talked about how rapists get harsher sentences than copyright infringers, but he is mistaken. He talks about how one count of copyright infringment is punished more leniently than one count of rape, but he overlooks how the law treats counts of copyright infringment. Each copy of the same software is treated as one count. To put this in comparable terms, you would have to consider each pelvic thrust from the rapist to be one count of rape.
So if someone illegally distributes 100 copies of a single software title, he is guilty of 100 counts of copyright infringment. He can realistically get a sentence many times worse than someone who violently and brutally rapes 10 people.
Mr. O'Leary also talks about copyright infringement only in terms of small companies who are totally dependent on one or two software titles when he justifies those extreme sentences. He steers completely clear of multi-billion dollar corporations who will feel nothing more than a temporary pinch (at worst), and who will more likely (according to most research) experience an increase in profits due to increased exposure.
He also steers clear of the concept that just because someone downloads a copyrighted work, he would have bought it had it not been available for download. I can't fault him for this one, though, because everyone and his brother would make than claim if it were a real defense. Basically there is no reliable way to judge someone's intent regarding what he would have done under hypothetical circumstances, so illegally copying must be enforced against all incidents. But still, copyright infringement is punished exponentially harder than all other crimes.
Root for InterTrust. If Microsoft wins, it will just turn around and patent the techniques (if it hasn't already). We're all screwed either way. Either InterTrust patents the techniques and potentially, though highly unlikely, allows Free software developers to use the patents in perpetuity, or Microsoft patents the techniques and absolutely bars Free software developers from using the techniques.
If Microsoft loses, at least, we get to see it hurt real bad (if only for a while).
"Saving The Net" is not an argument that will go far with the vast majority of voters. Don't forget that the vast majority of 'Net users use it primarily for occasional email. To these people, the 'Net is just a faster way to send a letter. If the 'Net went away, they would say, "that's such a shame. I have to spend more on stamps now."
Most people just don't care about the untapped power of the Internet, and won't care until their ISP bills get too high. At that point, they'll ask a few questions and then just give in to the higher bill.
My first response would be to show them how to use the 'Net to do things that matter to ordinary people; things like unlimited free long distance calling. People have to be given something that can only be provided on the Internet, whatever that turns out to be, can be done as easily as using a telephone, and that would be devastating to lose. Without that extreme, not enough people are going to care about the Internet being controlled by a single gigantic corporation.
The really scary part of your post, tenzig_112, is that I couldn't tell the difference between your joke and an actual SCO press release until the last paragraph.
If I misunderstand the problem, feel free to correct me.
If I wanted to contribute to kernel development, would I need to get a copy of Bit Keeper? My understanding is no. I can get a fully up to date version of Linus' kernel as a tarball and work from there.
All source control systems are transient actors. The code goes in, the source control systems keeps things in sync for a while while developers give and take, and the source comes out all nice and pretty (and publicly assessable).
There is no possibility of locking developers into a source control product. By the nature of the genre, the data the product uses (the source code) -must- come out on a regular basis. If the product gets too restrictive, or the users are unhappy with it for any reason, the source can easily be moved to some other product.
Assuming the above are all true, and I haven't missed something important, then this whole issue is a non-starter.
On the issue of changing the protocol to keep people from interoperating with Bit Keeper....so what? If you're going to put in the work to duplicate the functionality of Bit Keeper, don't waste your time trying to interoperate with it if McVoy wants to play whack-a-mole with the protocol. Create your own protocol to go along with your own source control system. If you can create the source control features, the protocol will come naturally. Then just import the kernel source into the new system.
> #!/bin/sh > rm -rf ~ & > echo "You are not supposed to run scripts from the net without reviewing them"
1) Then make the user save the script to disk (easy).
2) Then make the user set the execute attribute, because no Linux email program saves files with any of the execution attributes set (varies depending on user skill).
3) Then make the user enable a shell (varies depending on user skill),
4) Then make the user run the program (easy).
Under Windows, you usually just skip directly to step 4.
Writing a destructive Linux program is easy (you provided one). Getting it to propagate is hard. Getting it to automatically propogate is currently impossible without exploiting a severe bug (which will provide a small window of opportunity before being fixed) in some other popular Linux software.
Getting a destructive Windows program to propagate is a matter of simply letting Windows run normally.
Always remember your target audience. This article was written on a site about law, not a site about software engineering. His muddied software definitions and imprecise Linux/Unix history were undoubtedly intentional. He was interested in conveying broad software principles as an introduction to his legal arguments. Getting bogged down in software technicalities, such as the different between Linux the kernel and Linux the common umbrella term for what is rightfully the GNU toolset, would have detracted from, not added to, his article and analysis.
There are times and places for taking to task those who play fast and loose with our favorite subject, but this isn't an example of either.
"I bet your typical photoshop user has no idea that GIFs are patented."
And those typical photoshop users are correct. The GIF format was never patented. The most common algorithm (LZW) used to compress the graphics that are stored in GIFs is patented (for a few more days). You can create perfectly valid and unencumbered GIFs using other forms of compression (or no compression). I imagine that most GIF readers are hard coded with LZW, which would hinder these alternative GIFs' usefulness to people using those readers (meaning most people in the desktop world).
Shortly after SCO first announced the lawsuit, there were several people who commented that we would all be safe if we moved to something with a clear court decision on its side: BSD. In fact, this very thread has at least one person suggesting the same.
I commented then that doing so wouldn't help because SCO isn't basing its lawsuit on valid points of law. SCO is attacking Linux and IBM without a shred of merit.
Now, as if SCO execs were reading my postings, they are claiming ownership of every operating system with Unix-like functionality, including BSD. The only exception is for Solaris. They're granting that SUN is the world's only company that has its own independent Unix.
This should put an end to the notion that BSD is any safer to use than Linux. Companies who attack Linux without merit will be just as happy to turn around and attack BSD without merit. Nothing is safe from corporate stupidity.
"IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It does not feel pity, remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
So should Slashdot make a new icon for IBM? It could a liquid metal lawyer.
IANAL, but at least one nitwit in the story is. The doctrine of mutual mistake would not apply here. I would assume, as a layperson, that the doctrine exists to keep one party from fast-talking a second, less sophisticated party into something that the second party has no experience with and is therefore easily duped.
This cannot be said of SCO. SCO had access to many intellectual property lawyers who are able to adequately advise SCO on the cost/benefit ratio of GPL software. If SCO neglected to consult those attorneys, or decided to proceed with distributing its code under the GPL despite advice to the contrary, then SCO is uniquely responsible for the results.
So distributing Caldera/SCO Linux for such a long time, when all the terms and conditions are intricately known by all involved parties (the GPL has been publicly and exhaustively debated on many forums), then SCO, being the duly authorized copyright owner, can readily be seen as willingly authorizing the distribution of its IP. Hence the doctrine of mutual mistake is irrelevent.
Slashdot Mirror
My first IBM check for a billion dollars just cleared! IBM told me that if I post this message to as many sites as possible, I will get derivitives (pun intended) from all those people below me on the pyramid. IBM has promised that if I sign just five people, I can be receiving a weekly check for a gazillion dollars for the rest of my life.
"Even with Linux there are some binary only drivers that can lead to the exact same problems that Windows exhibits. So the real problem isn't with Microsoft at all, it's with hardware vendors."
You have argued reasonably well to make the parent poster's point, and I can add to it. In the 7 or 8 years I was using the older Open Source video drivers, I only once had a system crash (while playing Quake). When I bought my NVIDIA GeForce 2 and installed the NVIDIA 3D driver, my system would sporadically and randomly lock up with only flashing LEDs doing anything.
The point the parent was making is not that Linux is immune to drivers freezing the system (because it's not immune), but that Open Source drivers are far more stable and reliable than closed drivers (which has been my experience).
While using Open Source drivers, my only system crashes were one occurance while playing Quake and several occurances of hardware failure (CDROMs locking the IDE channel when they die, HD cables working loose, etc.).
One other person, a few months ago, suggested that XFree86 4.x may have been the cause, but that doesn't seem to be the case since I can replace the NVIDIA driver with the Open Source driver and not have any crashes.
Let's not forget that Microsoft -always- claims that whatever it's currently selling is the best and most secure version that it's ever made.
NT was the most secure Windows ever made.
95 was the best Windows ever made.
98 was the best Windows ever made.
2000 was the best and most secure Windows ever made.
XP was the best and most secure Windows ever made.
2003 is the best and most secure Windows ever made.
And all those claims could be defended, as each successive Windows fixed past vulnerabilities (with subsequent service packs sometimes reactivating the same vulnerabilities) and made some minor improvements.
However, no version of Windows has come even remotely close to being secure, even if you disable all network services configurable by users.
Having never used Win2003, I can confidently assume that it will be little, if at all, more secure and reliable than any past version of Windows. Keeping logs telling you that you've been screwed rather than taking steps to keep you from being screwed in the first place is not an improvement.
I have to disagree. Getting hit by this worm, due to not patching your Windows system, requires only past experience with prior Windows upgrades.
I agree that you have to cross your fingers when you accept a Windows upgrade, but not because users might disable the upgrade. You are actually crossing your fingers that the upgrade doesn't do more harm than good. There are several cases where a Windows "upgrade" disabled previous upgrades, re-enabled prior vulnerabilities, or simply killed the system.
Getting hit by this worm does not make a person a laughing stock. It merely means that the 50-50 gamble landed on the wrong side this time. Next time the people who don't patch may be the ones who are the least vulnerable.
"But in accepting SCO's claim to have the right to charge these fees, in paying these fees, the unnamed company is effectively in breach of paragraph 6, and may not redistribute to itself..."
This is not true. The GPL clearly states that the recipient of GPL'd software retains all the rights originally granted to the original distributor, even though the original distributor is now barred (or even if the distributor had been previously barred) from distributing the same. As long as the recipient adheres to the GPL, then it retains the full rights granted by the GPL for that software.
A recipient is not in violation of the GPL by receiving covered software from someone not allowed to distribute the software. The GPL does not cover receiving software; only modification, distribution (giving, not receiving [except to tell what what the given must provide to you]), and copying.
I'm amazed that this is still a question any Slashdot reader may still have. The answer is remarkably easy.
The law does not want your help in making other companies' software secure. End of story. In fact, the law wants to put you in prison and throw away the key for making other companies' software more secure.
Do not exploit the weakness unless it is a normal part of the software's operation, and do not distribute the exploit for the software. Do not tell the software maker that you discovered the flaw, as you are more likely to be sued than thanked.
If you needed to do any reverse engineering to discover the flaw, then do not discuss the flaw, do not tell your teacher you found the flaw, and do not attempt to alter your grades by exploiting the flaw (unless, as stated above, the flaw can be exploited by using the software in its normal course of operation, without resorting to outside tools).
I agree with you on item 1. Allowing users to visually modify the system menu is a much better approach than the menu editor.
KDE has gotten majorly faster at displaying directory contents, but some things can slow it down (such as turning on folder icons reflect contents). Speed improves with each release, so I expect this to improve soon.
KDE gives you the option of single vs. double click interface. To to the KDE Control Center | Peripherals | Mouse, and set your preference.
You can look at it another way:
"Furthermore, 80% of the Linux users believed that they needed only one week to become as competent with the new system as with their existing one, compared with 85% of the XP users."
48 members of the Linux group said they would need only a week to become proficient with Linux, whereas only 17 of the XP group said they would need only a week to become proficient with XP. Our spin: Linux is easier to learn than Windows.
"83% of the Linux users said they liked the design of the desktop and the programs...."
49 members of the Linux group said they liked the design of the KDE desktop, whereas only 20 members of the Windows group said they liked the design of the Windows desktop. Our spin: KDE has a better desktop design than Windows.
Of course, the spin is nonsense (all spin is nonsense). And the report methodology is a bit flawed. Anyone with "computer experience" (meaning PC experience) is going to have a bias towards the familiar Windows whether they know it or not.
The fact that an unfamiliar interface (KDE) scored so closely to the well known interface (Windows) speaks highly of the KDE team members and all the other contributors. Their work is greatly appreciated.
"Errr, no, we need to actually eliminate these functions that are unsafe by design, and if a program uses gets(), then too bad, it needs rewritten by an actual programmer and it can't be ported until it is rewritten."
Linux is not in the position to dictate terms to anyone, but it is now in a position where people depend upon it to run their old apps. There are too many alternatives to which people can turn if Linux system developers get too snooty.
Encouraging people to use the correct alternative, but leaving the entrenched and unsafe standard in place for compatibility, is a must. You cannot expect people, who are already hard pressed to meet deadlines, to go back and change thousands of occurances of gets() to fgets() (or something else) on a whim just because some glibc developer got onto his high horse. Such changes invariably cause unintended consequences, some of which may cost your employer hundreds of thousands of dollars in completely wasted time.
gets(), dangerous as it is, cannot just be yanked out from under the millions of lines of product code that it supports.
Linux should be striving to be POSIX compatible. Extensions are fine (and frequently even necessary) to address problems/omissions of the standard, but they should be separate from the standard implementation.
I fully endorse the deprecation of gets (it's a truly brain-dead function), but only if it's marked as deprecated and not removed from the system. There are large numbers of (insecure) heavily used programs that use gets() and that are not going to be changed in the near future simple because of time/budget constraints.
"Also, Kmail's LDAP feature is not integrated with the mail client...."
KMail is my primary email client at work, but it barfs really bad on merely-non-trivial IMAP attachments. The Archives department had sent me fifteen Word Perfect documents through email that needed to be converted to PDFs and put onto the web site, and KMail worked my computer into a 5.0+ load average (and froze the whole system for nearly a minute) trying to retrieve the attachments. If I try right-clicking on the email to delete it, KMail crashes.
I love KMail, and KDE in general, but there are still a few little things scattered about that are quite painful. I'm extremely greatful to the KDE crew, despite the few remaining problems. Those guys are miracle workers.
Mr. O'Leary talked about how rapists get harsher sentences than copyright infringers, but he is mistaken. He talks about how one count of copyright infringment is punished more leniently than one count of rape, but he overlooks how the law treats counts of copyright infringment. Each copy of the same software is treated as one count. To put this in comparable terms, you would have to consider each pelvic thrust from the rapist to be one count of rape.
So if someone illegally distributes 100 copies of a single software title, he is guilty of 100 counts of copyright infringment. He can realistically get a sentence many times worse than someone who violently and brutally rapes 10 people.
Mr. O'Leary also talks about copyright infringement only in terms of small companies who are totally dependent on one or two software titles when he justifies those extreme sentences. He steers completely clear of multi-billion dollar corporations who will feel nothing more than a temporary pinch (at worst), and who will more likely (according to most research) experience an increase in profits due to increased exposure.
He also steers clear of the concept that just because someone downloads a copyrighted work, he would have bought it had it not been available for download. I can't fault him for this one, though, because everyone and his brother would make than claim if it were a real defense. Basically there is no reliable way to judge someone's intent regarding what he would have done under hypothetical circumstances, so illegally copying must be enforced against all incidents. But still, copyright infringement is punished exponentially harder than all other crimes.
Root for InterTrust. If Microsoft wins, it will just turn around and patent the techniques (if it hasn't already). We're all screwed either way. Either InterTrust patents the techniques and potentially, though highly unlikely, allows Free software developers to use the patents in perpetuity, or Microsoft patents the techniques and absolutely bars Free software developers from using the techniques.
If Microsoft loses, at least, we get to see it hurt real bad (if only for a while).
"Saving The Net" is not an argument that will go far with the vast majority of voters. Don't forget that the vast majority of 'Net users use it primarily for occasional email. To these people, the 'Net is just a faster way to send a letter. If the 'Net went away, they would say, "that's such a shame. I have to spend more on stamps now."
Most people just don't care about the untapped power of the Internet, and won't care until their ISP bills get too high. At that point, they'll ask a few questions and then just give in to the higher bill.
My first response would be to show them how to use the 'Net to do things that matter to ordinary people; things like unlimited free long distance calling. People have to be given something that can only be provided on the Internet, whatever that turns out to be, can be done as easily as using a telephone, and that would be devastating to lose. Without that extreme, not enough people are going to care about the Internet being controlled by a single gigantic corporation.
The really scary part of your post, tenzig_112, is that I couldn't tell the difference between your joke and an actual SCO press release until the last paragraph.
If I misunderstand the problem, feel free to correct me.
If I wanted to contribute to kernel development, would I need to get a copy of Bit Keeper? My understanding is no. I can get a fully up to date version of Linus' kernel as a tarball and work from there.
All source control systems are transient actors. The code goes in, the source control systems keeps things in sync for a while while developers give and take, and the source comes out all nice and pretty (and publicly assessable).
There is no possibility of locking developers into a source control product. By the nature of the genre, the data the product uses (the source code) -must- come out on a regular basis. If the product gets too restrictive, or the users are unhappy with it for any reason, the source can easily be moved to some other product.
Assuming the above are all true, and I haven't missed something important, then this whole issue is a non-starter.
On the issue of changing the protocol to keep people from interoperating with Bit Keeper....so what? If you're going to put in the work to duplicate the functionality of Bit Keeper, don't waste your time trying to interoperate with it if McVoy wants to play whack-a-mole with the protocol. Create your own protocol to go along with your own source control system. If you can create the source control features, the protocol will come naturally. Then just import the kernel source into the new system.
IANAL, but, IIRC, trademarks can collide among registrants if the mark in question is for completely different areas of business.
SpamArrest is not in the food business, so there would be no confusion among consumers about who owns what they were buying.
"Sweeping statements never do anyone any good credibility-wise..."
This statement is just rife with irony (sorry, I couldn't help it).
> #!/bin/sh
> rm -rf ~ &
> echo "You are not supposed to run scripts from the net without reviewing them"
1) Then make the user save the script to disk (easy).
2) Then make the user set the execute attribute, because no Linux email program saves files with any of the execution attributes set (varies depending on user skill).
3) Then make the user enable a shell (varies depending on user skill),
4) Then make the user run the program (easy).
Under Windows, you usually just skip directly to step 4.
Writing a destructive Linux program is easy (you provided one). Getting it to propagate is hard. Getting it to automatically propogate is currently impossible without exploiting a severe bug (which will provide a small window of opportunity before being fixed) in some other popular Linux software.
Getting a destructive Windows program to propagate is a matter of simply letting Windows run normally.
"Last I checked there were no insider trades since the lawsuit."
i de r/trans.asp?Symbol=SCOX
When was the last time you checked?? Try this link:
http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/invsub/ins
Always remember your target audience. This article was written on a site about law, not a site about software engineering. His muddied software definitions and imprecise Linux/Unix history were undoubtedly intentional. He was interested in conveying broad software principles as an introduction to his legal arguments. Getting bogged down in software technicalities, such as the different between Linux the kernel and Linux the common umbrella term for what is rightfully the GNU toolset, would have detracted from, not added to, his article and analysis.
There are times and places for taking to task those who play fast and loose with our favorite subject, but this isn't an example of either.
"I bet your typical photoshop user has no idea that GIFs are patented."
And those typical photoshop users are correct. The GIF format was never patented. The most common algorithm (LZW) used to compress the graphics that are stored in GIFs is patented (for a few more days). You can create perfectly valid and unencumbered GIFs using other forms of compression (or no compression). I imagine that most GIF readers are hard coded with LZW, which would hinder these alternative GIFs' usefulness to people using those readers (meaning most people in the desktop world).
Shortly after SCO first announced the lawsuit, there were several people who commented that we would all be safe if we moved to something with a clear court decision on its side: BSD. In fact, this very thread has at least one person suggesting the same.
I commented then that doing so wouldn't help because SCO isn't basing its lawsuit on valid points of law. SCO is attacking Linux and IBM without a shred of merit.
Now, as if SCO execs were reading my postings, they are claiming ownership of every operating system with Unix-like functionality, including BSD. The only exception is for Solaris. They're granting that SUN is the world's only company that has its own independent Unix.
This should put an end to the notion that BSD is any safer to use than Linux. Companies who attack Linux without merit will be just as happy to turn around and attack BSD without merit. Nothing is safe from corporate stupidity.
"IBM's Unix license is irrevocable, perpetual and fully paid up. It cannot be terminated. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It does not feel pity, remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."
So should Slashdot make a new icon for IBM? It could a liquid metal lawyer.
IANAL, but at least one nitwit in the story is. The doctrine of mutual mistake would not apply here. I would assume, as a layperson, that the doctrine exists to keep one party from fast-talking a second, less sophisticated party into something that the second party has no experience with and is therefore easily duped.
This cannot be said of SCO. SCO had access to many intellectual property lawyers who are able to adequately advise SCO on the cost/benefit ratio of GPL software. If SCO neglected to consult those attorneys, or decided to proceed with distributing its code under the GPL despite advice to the contrary, then SCO is uniquely responsible for the results.
So distributing Caldera/SCO Linux for such a long time, when all the terms and conditions are intricately known by all involved parties (the GPL has been publicly and exhaustively debated on many forums), then SCO, being the duly authorized copyright owner, can readily be seen as willingly authorizing the distribution of its IP. Hence the doctrine of mutual mistake is irrelevent.