What you're missing is, that Bills statement was only about Windows-installations (worldwide) that crash (averaged over their lifetime/uptime) more than twice daily. We don't learn anything about the percentage of Windows-installations that crash 1-2 times per day or less than once per day (averaged) e.g. how the other 95% of Windows installations behave. They may crash never, or they may crash (on average) just a little less than twice daily. Of the 5% we only learn that they crash at least twice daily, some of em might crash every few minutes.
So your calculation that Windows-installations times.1 (10% or 2*5%, whatever) is only a lower estimate that could only result if the 5% crash twice daily (but no more) and the other 95% never crash.
Also note that this is a worldwide statistics over all Windows-installations. The instable systems may be badly configured or run on bad hardware, we just don't know. But some big business setting up their desktop- and server- installations carefully and on stable hardware might not have such problems, their Windows-installations might crash never or at least (on average) less than once daily. Indeed it can be expected that a bunch of similarly configured systems exhibit similar behaviour and that a good systems administration takes care of those systems that crash too often and reconfigures, repairs or replaces them.
I don't know why monday was such a bad day for SCOX (or rather i don't know why all other days aren't), but the course going back up and the heavy Volume set in when SCO announced that some undisclosed Fortune 500 Company bought at least one of their Linux licenses. The announcement was at 1400 and that's when the downward trend halted.
It's makes you lose all confidence in the stock market when you see such a reaction to an anouncement that really doesn't give out any hard facts (like the number of sold licenses) and is obviously designed to misrepresent a few sold licenses as a major revenue stream.
I will really laugh out loud when all those idiots who bought SCO stock will fall on their faces. I hope they then turn around and sue the SCO management.
This surely looks like SCO has bitten off more than they can handle. At the moment they've got three big lawsuits going: their own initiative against IBM, Redhat and now IBMs countersuit. Not to mention that in some countries they have been forced to shut up alltogether or pay huge fines (i'm really wondering if they can be forced to take a definitive stand about their Linux license in Germany). It'll be interesting to see if they can afford to pay all the lawyers. That brings up the question who else can increase the heat by bringing up some litigation against them. If they're entangled in enough lawsuits now that'll bring them down quite effectiveley: They have to pay all those lawyers, every time another lawsuit against them is announced their shares fall (so they'll have a hard time to pay all those lawyers), and they'll have to weigh any statement with respect to all those lawsuits (but i wouldn't expect them to).
Note that SCO did that to themselves: they are shooting their mouth off every which way and opened themselves up to dozens of ways of litigation. I'd say: hand it to them now, draw them into court for any case which has a good chance of winning (if they win the cases it'll only help them publicitywise, and for SCO publicity is boosting shares which equals money).
It'd be nice if the FSF could join the fray for copyright infringement (do they still distribute Linux? since their Linux License invalidates the GPL they'd be violating the copyrights of any kernel-developer out there).
So what? SCO spread some new FUD and stock price is where it was before.
And investors don't think. The dot.com bubble proved that quite well. They just look at stock prices and read some analyst info to make their decisions, but apparently nobody of em noticed that all SCO has done recently was producing hot air and using their inflated stock prices to shift some money to the canopy group by buying some heavily indebted corporation with the same postal address as SCO.
Aparenntly it's impossible in the US to make someone personally responsible for the statements he issues or to make a corporation responsible for the statements their management issues.
The US is aggressiveley pursuing their own economical benefits. Organisations like WTO try (and in most cases succeed) to dictate how to do trade, and these "free market" rules greatly benefit US-corporations or more generally "global players". Other governments are cajoled by any means to accept rules set forth bye those global players, but those rules are not about fair trade, they are about unregulated trade. OTOH when it comes to IP the US propagate a very rigid system that only serves to maintain the status quo. One of the most ridiculous examples of this is patenting rice genes and selling rice seeds for breeds that before said patenting were free to everyone. The patent system is actually a very good example: Why should other countries accept US-IP-laws when they only serve to hamper their own economy and drain loads of money from those countries into the pockets of US-corporations. Japan did very well ignoring those IP-laws and getting their economy up, and the US of A ignored IP-laws too when it was convenient.
So why should a country like China play by a set of rules that have mostly negative effects on their economy, and why shouldn't a country be allowed to boost their own economy? People seem to have forgotten that the job of a government is to care for their people, not for the welfare of multinational corporations.
What i said here about the USA holds true for most "rich" capitalistic countries and is more the doing of huge corporations than of any specific country, but the US also leverage their economical power to put pressure on other countries by means of embargoes or cutting development aids. And last but not least President Bush messing with the Microsoft trial to get one of the largest US-corporations out of their legal troubles scot-free is another very fine example of protectionism.
Yes, i am German, and no, i'm not a law student (else i would hope to have a better understanding of the differences between US- and german law). Please note, that my posting was in answer to a parent considering the german law weird as opposed to the american one, and that it expresses my perception of american law.
I understand, that case law is meant to treat everyone the same and hence everyone in a fair manner. Civil law tries to do the same by always applying the same rules (unless the laws change of course). The problem is: both fail, we all know that the better and the more lawyers you can afford the bigger your advantages are. All those lawyers will find loopholes in the law, win a case on technicalities or draw out a case indefinitely until the other party can no longer afford all those legal proceedings or the case becomes irrelevant. If you can't afford top-notch lawyers OTOH then it's highly likeley your lawyer won't know all applicable legislation and probably you'll have to go for a settlement before you run out of money.
This is not specific to the US-system, and i think the reason for this unfairness has its roots in an overly complex system of laws. But while the case-law-system could be used to decide on some cases quickly it also adds another layer of rules to an already complex law, which is often used to make a case more complicated, not less. Instead of using the laws to decide on a case now you also have to consider a lot of different cases and have to establish if, and to which extend all those cases are relevant. Hence i don't think that case-law makes for a fairer law, but that's just an opinion. Also note that your example of Mueller and Schmidt works equally well in the US if different case-law has to be considered in the different courts which apparently might happen in the US-system.
Another problem i see with case-law is that it kind of gives legislative powers to the highest courts; once a decision was upheld at the top of the hierarchy it becomes law. One particularly disturbing case-law is to consider corporations and the like with all their financial powers and influence as equals to natural persons. Apparently once this was decided it became written law and now there's no way to get rid of it.
Another point is the ridiculous sums of money that are involved in those cases. maybe that has to do with intermixing natural persons with mega-corporations and with lawyers getting a cut of that fantasy numbers. All i can tell you is, that this is perceived as just plain weird, at least by just about everyone i know. The case of a woman spilling some hot coffee over herself in a McDonalds and consequently demanding millions for not being warned that coffee is hot (yes, i know this is an overly simplistic representation of the case, but that's how it is perceived) is often cited to make a point about the weirdness of the US legal system.
I think that it'd probably all look less weird from a closer distance and if i wouldn't only read about the strangest cases from across the atlantic. I also think that this applies as well the other way around.
The american legal system allows to demand ridiculous sums of money, also there's this weird case-law which to my understanding means, that one wrong decision in one court has to be repeated by every other american court, and also that lawyers have to consider not only the given law but any case which might have some remote similarities to the case at hand.
In this case the german court halted the process to decide first if it is constitutional to put a competitor under pressure by demanding the unusually high sums the US-system allows for.
This isn't about napster, it is about EMI and Universal using napster and demanding ridiculous amounts of money to put pressure on Bertelsman. Then they'd probably go for some kind of settlement which has nothing to do with napster at all.
The idea is brilliant, it might even be legal, but the sad truth is, that the whole business would be probably tied up in the courts for 2-3 years with noone being able to hear any of those purchased records, the price of the shares falling to a few cents, a lot of wasted money and disappointed shareholders who don't want to hear anymore about it after the first year of legal troubles. The problem is not the idea itself, it is the fscked up legal system that allows to drag out the proceedings endlessly and bleed out anyone who hasn't got a few million dollars in his bank accounts.
That is not to say i wouldn't buy a share or even a few shares when it starts. Even betting on the off chance that something good results from this is better than just sitting around watching the RIAA turn back the wheel until we're back at feudalism. And at least it will tie up some of their lawyers in the courts. Yes, by now i'm so pissed off with the record industry that i'm willing to give away money if it hurts them in any way.
.. maybe investors should read about the "Risk Factors" here. To me that carefully worded document seems to be aimed at protecting the SCO management from just such a lawsuit.
You realize that the RIAA and all that labels they represent don't give a shit about musicians, let alone good ones? Just look at all those new "rock stars" and whatnot: prerequisites are good looks and no brains (so you don't give them a hard time haggling over contracts). And being actually able to sing or play an instrument even lowers your chances of doing business with them: They don't want any more of those pesky stars who aren't 100% dependent on them.
That would mean that noone can distribute Linux any longer, any form of license fees is incompatible with the GPL, the code must be freely redistributable. I think that would spur IBM, Redhat, Suse and anyone else doing business with Linux into action finally since otherwise they would open themselves up for lawsuits from all those kernel-developers who contributed GPLd code. If SCO can grab a piece of the cake the GPL is invalidated and everyone who copyrighted a bit of code can claim their share too. Even if most of them are to idealistic to do it for the money they might perceive this as the best way to make IBM deal with SCO.
If, on the other hand they say, "your existing license is invalid, here have another." Then they are in the right.
But anyone distributing code that needs to be licensed under the GPL isn't. It's impossible to combine code that has to be licensed for a fee with code that is GPLd (Section 2b of the GPL) and that also holds for SCO. So the only option is to see to it that all code in the Linux-kernel can be licensed under the GPL free of charge (either by removing some parts or by making them available under the GPL).
Also unless they prove that Linux infringes on their copyright they are not in the right. Since their unwillingness to identify the infringing code stalls any efforts to remove that pieces they can't claim any damages until they identify the infringing code-parts.
This is not about SCO unknowingly GPLing their code by distributing a Linux-distribution (that might have contained some of their code without their knowledge) themselves. It's about them distributing Linux (or more generally GPLd code) under a restrictive License. Even if a judge decides that some of the code in Linux (the kernel) is under SCO-copyright and hence has to be licensed with SCO to be further distributed, the majority of Linux is copyrighted by others, not by SCO.
All those contributions to the kernel are GPLd. The GPL is what gives anyone the rights to further distribute all that copyrighted code in the kernel. So everyone who distributes Linux has to obey the terms of the GPL. If he violates the GPL that invalidates his rights to distribute the GPLd code and if he goes ahead to distribute the code he infringes on all those copyrights that are not his own.
Distribution of Linux under a restrictive license is in violation of the GPL. Distributing Linux without giving out the source-code also is. And tightly bundling Linux-kernel code with proprietary code is too (the best you could do is writing some proprietary modules and then you better use the proper interfaces, but that is useful for hardware-drivers, not for central kernel-routines).
So there is no way SCO can demand license fees for Linux, be it their own distribution or someone elses. Neither can they give out a "binary only" distribution, they have to provide the source-code and that source-code must be GPLd (and now they can't claim anymore that they unknowingly distribute their own code, so they better clean it from anything they don't want to put under GPL).
To summarize: SCO can either distribute Linux under GPL or not at all. Their claims of being in a position to sell "Linux licenses" is bogus and serves just to boost their shares.
And it's impossible too: the GPL is incompatible with licensing and run-only-binary-distribution (unless the sourcecode is made available). So SCO can't sell a run-only binary distribution under their licensing terms and any distributor who accepts SCOs licensing terms and imposes them on his customers can't distribute anything either since he would violate the GPL.
Violating the GPL means that it is replaced by normal copyright of all the individuals who contributed to the kernel (we're still only talking about the Linux-kernel here) and you need to make explicit deals with each of them to distribute the kernel-code as a whole. It is more likeley that most of those copyrightholders will sue SCO for infringing on their copyrights by distributing their Linux under a restrictive license, in violation of the GPL and hence without permission.
This is just SCO raising up the ante again spewing propaganda to up their shares another few bucks. On the day their bubble bursts and the shares fall through the floor, i will cheer and gleefully tell all those idiots who bet their money on SCO 0wn1ng Linux, that Linux can't be 0wn3d and never will be.
He was talking from a Web developpers point of view and talked to other Web developpers. As such he explained why IE is bad (because it already lags behind in implementing standards (CSS is an example) and that will only get worse over the next years) and why not (MS integrating IE with the OS doesn't mean everyone will buy a new OS because of the browser, but it means IE6 will be a liability even longer).
So IE should go, preferably fast, and that means end users should be talked into using alternative browsers to make it go. If Microsofts grip on the browsermarket and hence their leverage to push proprietary standards at the same time so all the better. It doesn't matter if end users switch their browsers for all the "right" reasons, the important thing is that they do.
To talk end users into using another browser propaganda is necessary. Confusing them with talk about web-standards won't do, their eyes glaze over, they say "yeah, whatever" and continue using IE. So it's necessary to tell them that IE is becoming senile and that it's bad without talking about the confusing stuff. Hence the nice little story about aging Kings, drawing parallels from IE to Netscape 4, the snide remarks about evil MS integrating IE with their OS again despite the antitrust and all the stuff.
One thing was his talking to other Web-developpers and explaining why they don't want IE, the other thing was the propaganda he was developping, and the missing ingredient for that propaganda to work: something neat and tidy that works to replace IE with.
they seem to think they can just pretend like it [the GPL] isn't there and the courts will wink and understand
The GPL is what gives them the right to redistribute Linux and create derivatives of it for distribution in the first place. If the court "winks" it away they face standard copyright which is far more restrictive. SCOs problem at the moment is, that since they themselves try to restrict what you may or may not do to their Linux (if they didn't you could simply take one copy of their Linux point at the GPL and make their case vanish in a puff of smoke) they are in violation of the GPL. To my understanding (IANAL, #include "stdDisclaimer") that means every developper who has a code-snippet in their distribution can sue them for copyright-violation (at least one already did).
What they also fail to understand is that they can't charge royalties on Linux: If they try that the GPL doesn't apply any longer (the source-code has to be freely redistributable) and they again violate the copyrights of anyone who contributed code to that distribution. If they take off the GPL they no longer have the right to distribute the code or the binaries.
So even if they get their case through they can only demand that their stuff be removed from Linux, but they can't have it all for themselves, since they don't have any rights to all the parts that are not from them. That's the nice thing about the GPL: even if you manage to "remove" it from a piece of code you fall back on standard copyright, so unless the code was yours to GPL in the first place you gain no rights to it.
IBM simply put a brick wall into SCOs way. Considering that with all the ruckus they made SCO has burned all bridges behind them and will never be able to get this resolved on friendly terms there's no way SCO can go: if they stall the shareholders will finally loose confidence and SCO stock will drop through the floor to it's real value, and if they go to court IBM has them where it wants them and SCOs bubble will burst, maybe they can drag along the case a little longer by fighting in court, but then IBM might also countersue for damaged reputation, reduced sales because of FUD etc.
IBM is calling on SCOs bluff, so SCO either has to fold or show their weak hand and lose.
I'd buy put-options, since i think that SCO shares will soon drop below $1. Another tactic might be to buy shares and a lot more put options. That way if SCOX experiences any drastic changes, be it up or down, you win. It will be quite interesting to watch SCOX when IBMs Unix-license with SCO expires and SCOs bluff not to renew the license is called.
While an "NDA for NDA" wouldn't work as several others pointed out would copyright do the trick? I know that some legal texts are copyrightprotected (bad as it is) and i am wondering when we will see copyright-notices under contracts like that NDA, just to prevent them being publicly sneezed at.
I found it interesting that ATI claimed they simply "optimized" the code by simply shuffling around a few instructions while still getting the same results. That may even be so, but obviously they made this optimisation only for the very specific case of one of 3dmarks benchmarks, else it would have worked as well with the slightly altered drivers as well. Will their engineers look at all and any game out there and optimize that code too or will they come over to my house and write a new driver on the fly when i need one? No? Well then, since i don't benefit from their optimisation in any real-world szenario and it only serves to boost their score a little. In the real world their graphics card will have to deal with suboptimal drivers as well, if they want to improve the situation they should give out a few guidelines to game-developers how to write a fast engine.
This isn't about Nvidia vs. ATI or about defending Nvidia, what NV did by clipping planes was even worse. It's just that there is no justification for cheating on the benchmarks, even if the graphical results are the same. The benchmarks should be an indicator how the card will perform in real-world-szenarios (i.e. games) and any driver-tweaks that are benchmark-specific but don't help performance otherwise are just cheating and make-believe.
So if an evil minded Hax0r gets his hands into Phoenix' server, or manages to get at the keycodes and to redirect the trafic, he can wipe all of any corporations laptops if they adopted this scheme?
That means they're introducing a risc to get their business fscked (or rather formatted) if they depend on those laptops and need to connect them to the internet. I think that's a high price to pay to protect against the theft of a few laptops.
Also it doesn't even work: maybe it's hard to change the BIOS chip (given a replacement BIOS and the right equipment it should be doable), but if the thief is really interested in just the data he simply reads it without conecting the laptop to the internet, or he even removes the harddisk altogether and analyses its contents.
If they really want to protect their data they should go for encrypted filesystems or at least encrypt the sensible data so only authorized persons can access it, problem solved.
Re:a good explanation from....
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OSI vs SCO
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Your comment lost contact with reality by the end of "If it was your IP being stolen [...]".
The linked text explains in detail that SCO's IP-claims are invalid, and that no IP that SCO can claim ownership to was stolen. Maybe you should read the text.
Mentioning "axis-of-evil" countries and resurrecting language from the cold war doesn't contribute any credibility to your comment.
Since the "If Linux does contain SCO IP" condition evaluates to false the rest of your post is invalid as well.
I liked it too, it came preconfigured, it's easy to use, a few clicks, a little waiting, the inevitable reboot and whoopdedoo updated System.
I like it a lot less, now that i learn that it's easy to use because anytime it encounters any trouble it misinforms me and tells me everything is fine when it is not.
Slashdot Mirror
What you're missing is, that Bills statement was only about Windows-installations (worldwide) that crash (averaged over their lifetime/uptime) more than twice daily. We don't learn anything about the percentage of Windows-installations that crash 1-2 times per day or less than once per day (averaged) e.g. how the other 95% of Windows installations behave. They may crash never, or they may crash (on average) just a little less than twice daily. Of the 5% we only learn that they crash at least twice daily, some of em might crash every few minutes.
.1 (10% or 2*5%, whatever) is only a lower estimate that could only result if the 5% crash twice daily (but no more) and the other 95% never crash.
So your calculation that Windows-installations times
Also note that this is a worldwide statistics over all Windows-installations. The instable systems may be badly configured or run on bad hardware, we just don't know. But some big business setting up their desktop- and server- installations carefully and on stable hardware might not have such problems, their Windows-installations might crash never or at least (on average) less than once daily. Indeed it can be expected that a bunch of similarly configured systems exhibit similar behaviour and that a good systems administration takes care of those systems that crash too often and reconfigures, repairs or replaces them.
I don't know why monday was such a bad day for SCOX (or rather i don't know why all other days aren't), but the course going back up and the heavy Volume set in when SCO announced that some undisclosed Fortune 500 Company bought at least one of their Linux licenses. The announcement was at 1400 and that's when the downward trend halted.
It's makes you lose all confidence in the stock market when you see such a reaction to an anouncement that really doesn't give out any hard facts (like the number of sold licenses) and is obviously designed to misrepresent a few sold licenses as a major revenue stream.
I will really laugh out loud when all those idiots who bought SCO stock will fall on their faces. I hope they then turn around and sue the SCO management.
This surely looks like SCO has bitten off more than they can handle. At the moment they've got three big lawsuits going: their own initiative against IBM, Redhat and now IBMs countersuit. Not to mention that in some countries they have been forced to shut up alltogether or pay huge fines (i'm really wondering if they can be forced to take a definitive stand about their Linux license in Germany). It'll be interesting to see if they can afford to pay all the lawyers. That brings up the question who else can increase the heat by bringing up some litigation against them. If they're entangled in enough lawsuits now that'll bring them down quite effectiveley: They have to pay all those lawyers, every time another lawsuit against them is announced their shares fall (so they'll have a hard time to pay all those lawyers), and they'll have to weigh any statement with respect to all those lawsuits (but i wouldn't expect them to).
Note that SCO did that to themselves: they are shooting their mouth off every which way and opened themselves up to dozens of ways of litigation. I'd say: hand it to them now, draw them into court for any case which has a good chance of winning (if they win the cases it'll only help them publicitywise, and for SCO publicity is boosting shares which equals money).
It'd be nice if the FSF could join the fray for copyright infringement (do they still distribute Linux? since their Linux License invalidates the GPL they'd be violating the copyrights of any kernel-developer out there).
So what? SCO spread some new FUD and stock price is where it was before.
And investors don't think. The dot.com bubble proved that quite well. They just look at stock prices and read some analyst info to make their decisions, but apparently nobody of em noticed that all SCO has done recently was producing hot air and using their inflated stock prices to shift some money to the canopy group by buying some heavily indebted corporation with the same postal address as SCO.
Aparenntly it's impossible in the US to make someone personally responsible for the statements he issues or to make a corporation responsible for the statements their management issues.
The US is aggressiveley pursuing their own economical benefits. Organisations like WTO try (and in most cases succeed) to dictate how to do trade, and these "free market" rules greatly benefit US-corporations or more generally "global players". Other governments are cajoled by any means to accept rules set forth bye those global players, but those rules are not about fair trade, they are about unregulated trade. OTOH when it comes to IP the US propagate a very rigid system that only serves to maintain the status quo. One of the most ridiculous examples of this is patenting rice genes and selling rice seeds for breeds that before said patenting were free to everyone. The patent system is actually a very good example: Why should other countries accept US-IP-laws when they only serve to hamper their own economy and drain loads of money from those countries into the pockets of US-corporations. Japan did very well ignoring those IP-laws and getting their economy up, and the US of A ignored IP-laws too when it was convenient.
So why should a country like China play by a set of rules that have mostly negative effects on their economy, and why shouldn't a country be allowed to boost their own economy? People seem to have forgotten that the job of a government is to care for their people, not for the welfare of multinational corporations.
What i said here about the USA holds true for most "rich" capitalistic countries and is more the doing of huge corporations than of any specific country, but the US also leverage their economical power to put pressure on other countries by means of embargoes or cutting development aids. And last but not least President Bush messing with the Microsoft trial to get one of the largest US-corporations out of their legal troubles scot-free is another very fine example of protectionism.
Yes, i am German, and no, i'm not a law student (else i would hope to have a better understanding of the differences between US- and german law). Please note, that my posting was in answer to a parent considering the german law weird as opposed to the american one, and that it expresses my perception of american law.
I understand, that case law is meant to treat everyone the same and hence everyone in a fair manner. Civil law tries to do the same by always applying the same rules (unless the laws change of course). The problem is: both fail, we all know that the better and the more lawyers you can afford the bigger your advantages are. All those lawyers will find loopholes in the law, win a case on technicalities or draw out a case indefinitely until the other party can no longer afford all those legal proceedings or the case becomes irrelevant. If you can't afford top-notch lawyers OTOH then it's highly likeley your lawyer won't know all applicable legislation and probably you'll have to go for a settlement before you run out of money.
This is not specific to the US-system, and i think the reason for this unfairness has its roots in an overly complex system of laws. But while the case-law-system could be used to decide on some cases quickly it also adds another layer of rules to an already complex law, which is often used to make a case more complicated, not less. Instead of using the laws to decide on a case now you also have to consider a lot of different cases and have to establish if, and to which extend all those cases are relevant. Hence i don't think that case-law makes for a fairer law, but that's just an opinion. Also note that your example of Mueller and Schmidt works equally well in the US if different case-law has to be considered in the different courts which apparently might happen in the US-system.
Another problem i see with case-law is that it kind of gives legislative powers to the highest courts; once a decision was upheld at the top of the hierarchy it becomes law. One particularly disturbing case-law is to consider corporations and the like with all their financial powers and influence as equals to natural persons. Apparently once this was decided it became written law and now there's no way to get rid of it.
Another point is the ridiculous sums of money that are involved in those cases. maybe that has to do with intermixing natural persons with mega-corporations and with lawyers getting a cut of that fantasy numbers. All i can tell you is, that this is perceived as just plain weird, at least by just about everyone i know. The case of a woman spilling some hot coffee over herself in a McDonalds and consequently demanding millions for not being warned that coffee is hot (yes, i know this is an overly simplistic representation of the case, but that's how it is perceived) is often cited to make a point about the weirdness of the US legal system.
I think that it'd probably all look less weird from a closer distance and if i wouldn't only read about the strangest cases from across the atlantic. I also think that this applies as well the other way around.
The american legal system allows to demand ridiculous sums of money, also there's this weird case-law which to my understanding means, that one wrong decision in one court has to be repeated by every other american court, and also that lawyers have to consider not only the given law but any case which might have some remote similarities to the case at hand.
In this case the german court halted the process to decide first if it is constitutional to put a competitor under pressure by demanding the unusually high sums the US-system allows for.
This isn't about napster, it is about EMI and Universal using napster and demanding ridiculous amounts of money to put pressure on Bertelsman. Then they'd probably go for some kind of settlement which has nothing to do with napster at all.
The idea is brilliant, it might even be legal, but the sad truth is, that the whole business would be probably tied up in the courts for 2-3 years with noone being able to hear any of those purchased records, the price of the shares falling to a few cents, a lot of wasted money and disappointed shareholders who don't want to hear anymore about it after the first year of legal troubles. The problem is not the idea itself, it is the fscked up legal system that allows to drag out the proceedings endlessly and bleed out anyone who hasn't got a few million dollars in his bank accounts.
That is not to say i wouldn't buy a share or even a few shares when it starts. Even betting on the off chance that something good results from this is better than just sitting around watching the RIAA turn back the wheel until we're back at feudalism. And at least it will tie up some of their lawyers in the courts. Yes, by now i'm so pissed off with the record industry that i'm willing to give away money if it hurts them in any way.
.. maybe investors should read about the "Risk Factors" here. To me that carefully worded document seems to be aimed at protecting the SCO management from just such a lawsuit.
simply change the OS to BSD
Wouldn't it be sufficient to switch to kernel 2.2?
According to SCO they only demand their extortion fees for 2.4 and upwards.
You realize that the RIAA and all that labels they represent don't give a shit about musicians, let alone good ones? Just look at all those new "rock stars" and whatnot: prerequisites are good looks and no brains (so you don't give them a hard time haggling over contracts). And being actually able to sing or play an instrument even lowers your chances of doing business with them: They don't want any more of those pesky stars who aren't 100% dependent on them.
That would mean that noone can distribute Linux any longer, any form of license fees is incompatible with the GPL, the code must be freely redistributable. I think that would spur IBM, Redhat, Suse and anyone else doing business with Linux into action finally since otherwise they would open themselves up for lawsuits from all those kernel-developers who contributed GPLd code. If SCO can grab a piece of the cake the GPL is invalidated and everyone who copyrighted a bit of code can claim their share too. Even if most of them are to idealistic to do it for the money they might perceive this as the best way to make IBM deal with SCO.
If, on the other hand they say, "your existing license is invalid, here have another." Then they are in the right.
But anyone distributing code that needs to be licensed under the GPL isn't. It's impossible to combine code that has to be licensed for a fee with code that is GPLd (Section 2b of the GPL) and that also holds for SCO. So the only option is to see to it that all code in the Linux-kernel can be licensed under the GPL free of charge (either by removing some parts or by making them available under the GPL).
Also unless they prove that Linux infringes on their copyright they are not in the right. Since their unwillingness to identify the infringing code stalls any efforts to remove that pieces they can't claim any damages until they identify the infringing code-parts.
This is not about SCO unknowingly GPLing their code by distributing a Linux-distribution (that might have contained some of their code without their knowledge) themselves. It's about them distributing Linux (or more generally GPLd code) under a restrictive License. Even if a judge decides that some of the code in Linux (the kernel) is under SCO-copyright and hence has to be licensed with SCO to be further distributed, the majority of Linux is copyrighted by others, not by SCO.
All those contributions to the kernel are GPLd. The GPL is what gives anyone the rights to further distribute all that copyrighted code in the kernel. So everyone who distributes Linux has to obey the terms of the GPL. If he violates the GPL that invalidates his rights to distribute the GPLd code and if he goes ahead to distribute the code he infringes on all those copyrights that are not his own.
Distribution of Linux under a restrictive license is in violation of the GPL. Distributing Linux without giving out the source-code also is. And tightly bundling Linux-kernel code with proprietary code is too (the best you could do is writing some proprietary modules and then you better use the proper interfaces, but that is useful for hardware-drivers, not for central kernel-routines).
So there is no way SCO can demand license fees for Linux, be it their own distribution or someone elses. Neither can they give out a "binary only" distribution, they have to provide the source-code and that source-code must be GPLd (and now they can't claim anymore that they unknowingly distribute their own code, so they better clean it from anything they don't want to put under GPL).
To summarize: SCO can either distribute Linux under GPL or not at all. Their claims of being in a position to sell "Linux licenses" is bogus and serves just to boost their shares.
And it's impossible too: the GPL is incompatible with licensing and run-only-binary-distribution (unless the sourcecode is made available). So SCO can't sell a run-only binary distribution under their licensing terms and any distributor who accepts SCOs licensing terms and imposes them on his customers can't distribute anything either since he would violate the GPL.
Violating the GPL means that it is replaced by normal copyright of all the individuals who contributed to the kernel (we're still only talking about the Linux-kernel here) and you need to make explicit deals with each of them to distribute the kernel-code as a whole. It is more likeley that most of those copyrightholders will sue SCO for infringing on their copyrights by distributing their Linux under a restrictive license, in violation of the GPL and hence without permission.
This is just SCO raising up the ante again spewing propaganda to up their shares another few bucks. On the day their bubble bursts and the shares fall through the floor, i will cheer and gleefully tell all those idiots who bet their money on SCO 0wn1ng Linux, that Linux can't be 0wn3d and never will be.
He was talking from a Web developpers point of view and talked to other Web developpers. As such he explained why IE is bad (because it already lags behind in implementing standards (CSS is an example) and that will only get worse over the next years) and why not (MS integrating IE with the OS doesn't mean everyone will buy a new OS because of the browser, but it means IE6 will be a liability even longer).
So IE should go, preferably fast, and that means end users should be talked into using alternative browsers to make it go. If Microsofts grip on the browsermarket and hence their leverage to push proprietary standards at the same time so all the better. It doesn't matter if end users switch their browsers for all the "right" reasons, the important thing is that they do.
To talk end users into using another browser propaganda is necessary. Confusing them with talk about web-standards won't do, their eyes glaze over, they say "yeah, whatever" and continue using IE. So it's necessary to tell them that IE is becoming senile and that it's bad without talking about the confusing stuff. Hence the nice little story about aging Kings, drawing parallels from IE to Netscape 4, the snide remarks about evil MS integrating IE with their OS again despite the antitrust and all the stuff.
One thing was his talking to other Web-developpers and explaining why they don't want IE, the other thing was the propaganda he was developping, and the missing ingredient for that propaganda to work: something neat and tidy that works to replace IE with.
they seem to think they can just pretend like it [the GPL] isn't there and the courts will wink and understand
The GPL is what gives them the right to redistribute Linux and create derivatives of it for distribution in the first place. If the court "winks" it away they face standard copyright which is far more restrictive. SCOs problem at the moment is, that since they themselves try to restrict what you may or may not do to their Linux (if they didn't you could simply take one copy of their Linux point at the GPL and make their case vanish in a puff of smoke) they are in violation of the GPL. To my understanding (IANAL, #include "stdDisclaimer") that means every developper who has a code-snippet in their distribution can sue them for copyright-violation (at least one already did).
What they also fail to understand is that they can't charge royalties on Linux: If they try that the GPL doesn't apply any longer (the source-code has to be freely redistributable) and they again violate the copyrights of anyone who contributed code to that distribution. If they take off the GPL they no longer have the right to distribute the code or the binaries.
So even if they get their case through they can only demand that their stuff be removed from Linux, but they can't have it all for themselves, since they don't have any rights to all the parts that are not from them. That's the nice thing about the GPL: even if you manage to "remove" it from a piece of code you fall back on standard copyright, so unless the code was yours to GPL in the first place you gain no rights to it.
IBM simply put a brick wall into SCOs way. Considering that with all the ruckus they made SCO has burned all bridges behind them and will never be able to get this resolved on friendly terms there's no way SCO can go: if they stall the shareholders will finally loose confidence and SCO stock will drop through the floor to it's real value, and if they go to court IBM has them where it wants them and SCOs bubble will burst, maybe they can drag along the case a little longer by fighting in court, but then IBM might also countersue for damaged reputation, reduced sales because of FUD etc.
IBM is calling on SCOs bluff, so SCO either has to fold or show their weak hand and lose.
I'd buy put-options, since i think that SCO shares will soon drop below $1. Another tactic might be to buy shares and a lot more put options. That way if SCOX experiences any drastic changes, be it up or down, you win. It will be quite interesting to watch SCOX when IBMs Unix-license with SCO expires and SCOs bluff not to renew the license is called.
While an "NDA for NDA" wouldn't work as several others pointed out would copyright do the trick? I know that some legal texts are copyrightprotected (bad as it is) and i am wondering when we will see copyright-notices under contracts like that NDA, just to prevent them being publicly sneezed at.
I found it interesting that ATI claimed they simply "optimized" the code by simply shuffling around a few instructions while still getting the same results. That may even be so, but obviously they made this optimisation only for the very specific case of one of 3dmarks benchmarks, else it would have worked as well with the slightly altered drivers as well. Will their engineers look at all and any game out there and optimize that code too or will they come over to my house and write a new driver on the fly when i need one? No? Well then, since i don't benefit from their optimisation in any real-world szenario and it only serves to boost their score a little. In the real world their graphics card will have to deal with suboptimal drivers as well, if they want to improve the situation they should give out a few guidelines to game-developers how to write a fast engine.
This isn't about Nvidia vs. ATI or about defending Nvidia, what NV did by clipping planes was even worse. It's just that there is no justification for cheating on the benchmarks, even if the graphical results are the same. The benchmarks should be an indicator how the card will perform in real-world-szenarios (i.e. games) and any driver-tweaks that are benchmark-specific but don't help performance otherwise are just cheating and make-believe.
So if an evil minded Hax0r gets his hands into Phoenix' server, or manages to get at the keycodes and to redirect the trafic, he can wipe all of any corporations laptops if they adopted this scheme?
That means they're introducing a risc to get their business fscked (or rather formatted) if they depend on those laptops and need to connect them to the internet. I think that's a high price to pay to protect against the theft of a few laptops.
Also it doesn't even work: maybe it's hard to change the BIOS chip (given a replacement BIOS and the right equipment it should be doable), but if the thief is really interested in just the data he simply reads it without conecting the laptop to the internet, or he even removes the harddisk altogether and analyses its contents.
If they really want to protect their data they should go for encrypted filesystems or at least encrypt the sensible data so only authorized persons can access it, problem solved.
Your comment lost contact with reality by the end of "If it was your IP being stolen [...]".
The linked text explains in detail that SCO's IP-claims are invalid, and that no IP that SCO can claim ownership to was stolen. Maybe you should read the text.
Mentioning "axis-of-evil" countries and resurrecting language from the cold war doesn't contribute any credibility to your comment.
Since the "If Linux does contain SCO IP" condition evaluates to false the rest of your post is invalid as well.
I liked it too, it came preconfigured, it's easy to use, a few clicks, a little waiting, the inevitable reboot and whoopdedoo updated System.
I like it a lot less, now that i learn that it's easy to use because anytime it encounters any trouble it misinforms me and tells me everything is fine when it is not.