all about how the FBI was just oppressing innocent geeks,
They were; the FBI took apart an entire datacentre, screwing over hundreds of innocent customers. Now maybe slashbots can realise that not every 'hacker' is a hero who's been oppressed by Da Man.
And perhaps anonymous cowards can realise that you can't just every action, no matter how much collateral damage it causes, just because of "teh evil hackers"! Please bear that in mind next time you start ranting about "slashbots".
I enjoyed the article, but only in a smug self-satisfied Linux user kind of way. Aren't we preaching to the converted here? I don't mean to flame, but there wasn't anything new there. BTW, I have eight gmail invites to give away. First 8 followups that I see at +1 (my posting threshold) get an invite.
I wouldn't be so quick to indemnify myself; this just 'shows' SCO and their paid shills that they're right. "Look, these Linux users are getting indemnification... they obviously know they've stolen our code for communist activities!"
Article repost before the slashdot-ing hordes
on
Indemnification Roundup
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· Score: 2, Informative
Looking for Indemnification While Linux Sales Double by Tom Adelstein 06/28/2004
Little doubt exists; a legal cloud hangs over Linux from infringement claims of the SCO Group, Inc. In spite of that cloud, Linux server sales grew 56.9 percent in the first quarter of the year. Linux sales in 2004 follows six consecutive quarters of double-digit growth for the free operating system during unprecedented legal attacks from SCO over the same period.
Advertisement Linux success helped push all server growth to 7.3 percent according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. The contradictions of sales increases and legal uncertainties bring into question the degree of concern people actually feel about SCO's legal claims. One might say, if the defendants of the SCO suits don't see concern, why should I?
This article examines issues related to Linux use in the enterprise while copyright infringement claims exist. CIO's and others who need pragmatic information when deciding whether or not to deploy Linux will find this useful. Rather than examine the legal case, we will examine market perception and risk related to using Linux. Market Perception
SCO believes that Linux infringes on its Intellectual Property. SCO has sued IBM, Novell, AutoZone, and DaimlerChrysler on the basis of that belief. IBM and Novell market Linux while AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler use Linux in their businesses.
Realists consider Linux adoption remarkable. The word on the street and in the foxholes of the IT community has created a swell of adoption from small businesses to the entire Fortune 500. The marketing of Linux by HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, Oracle, and Novell demonstrates the commitment of industry to Linux. With all the agreement in the market, most observers do not give SCO much of a chance of winning its cases.
The recent announcement that the U.S. Federal Court system has deployed Linux adds further to the speculation that Linux deployment may be safe. People will reason that Linux use in the courts bodes poorly for SCO. Normal Risks Associated with Software Acquisition
Procurement policies within large organizations discuss infringement. For example, the basic policy for software purchases at the University of Texas states:
"We should expect that Vendors will develop their products without infringing the intellectual property rights of others, that is, without appropriating others' protected ideas or expression."
Large purchasers want warranties from vendors guaranteeing their software does not infringe. Such purchasers do not necessarily expect vendors to provide warranties. They do expect that if the software infringes someone else's rights, the vendor will take care of any expenses incurred if the purchaser is sued or asked to stop using the software because of alleged infringement. Large organizations expect protection from infringement. They want to know that a software vendor will pay for expenses related to infringement and they want that stated in the software license agreement. They also realize that exceptions exist if the software is:
* Beta test software
* Free, steeply discounted, or very low-cost software
* Software provided by nonprofit vendors
* Software whose source exists in the public domain
In enterprise terms, if a vendor agrees to indemnify, it means the vendor accepts the risk of financial loss.
The first three situations above illustrate circumstances where a vendor may not make enough money on the product to justify assuming risk for indemnification. In effect the vendor says, "If you want this software, you'll have to accept the risk that it might infringe. If you want us to accept that risk, it will cost you a lot of money." SCO's Unprecedented Infringement Case
Past infringement cases have focused on software makers rather than end users. For example, Microsoft has encountered many infringement cases from companies like Eolas, Stac, Burst, Netscape, Sun, and InterTrus
I believe this will turn out into another long running saga of the style of SCO vs Linux; one failing software company trying desperately to gain notoriety by picking on known good guys. Anyone know where we can find their stock price?;)
Matsushita unveils DVD recorder adopting Blu-ray Disc format+ , 06.30.04, 10:21 AM ET
OSAKA, Jun 30, 2004 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world's first DVD recorder that supports single-side, dual-layer Blu-ray Discs with a maximum capacity of 50 gigabytes.
The DMR-E700BD, the high-end model of Matsushita's DIGA DVD recorder series, will be put on the Japanese market on an open-price basis on July 31, said the major consumer electronics maker known for its Panasonic brand.
The new model can record up to four and a half hours of digital high-definition programming or up to 63 hours of analog programming, Matsushita said. The machine is equipped with built-in tuners for terrestrial digital broadcasting, broadcast satellites, 110-degree communications satellites and terrestrial analog broadcasting.
Matsushita is the second company after Sony Corp. to release a DVD recorder adopting the Blu-ray Disc, a next-generation large-capacity optical disc video recording format.
Using a blue-violet laser, the Blu-ray Disc achieves over two hours of digital high-definition video recording on a single-sided, single-layer CD/DVD-size disc with a diameter of 12 centimeters.
Why is everyone treating this like it's a bad thing? Finally, somebody has done the research that will allow ISPs to enforce the contract that you legally agreed to, and stop geeks stealing their bandwidth. Yes, you can come up with as many rationalisations as you want, but at the heart of it, it is still stealing and contract violation.
Formalised features of Perl (in this book?)
on
XML and Perl
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· Score: -1, Troll
(Moderators: skip to note at the end before you moderate this;) ) I've programmed for some time in Perl, but at no time has this been anything to do with the CompSci degree I'm studying; no course even mentions it. Why is this? Perl doesn't seem to have much respect in educated programming circles, and I think this is why; It's type system is not entirely sound. Inference upon the typing rules (which aren't formally stated anywhere; I had to derive them from the sourcecode) can lead to propositional contradictions. It is most certainly _not_ Turing complete (trivially provable); hence not all algorithms can be implemented in it that you could with a Turing complete language like Java or C(++). It's reference counting system of garbage collection can sometimes result in memory leaks, as opposed to the more thorough graph traversal employed in other languages. IMPORTANT: Please, only reply to this post or moderate it if you actually understand the principles of compsci that I'm arguing about. I've been smacked down before by ignorant kiddies before, and would much prefer to see more reason in the future.
Prediction: Thousands of angry followups to this post by people who taught themselves to write C, consider themselves to be 'hackers', and think untypesafe code is 'l33t', saying something along the lines of; "People who teach themselves are just as good as people who have had a proper education". Fortunately, most sensible employers ignore this kind of attitude...;)
Let them try; I have right on my side
on
Shutting down Kazaa
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· Score: 0, Troll
As technically illegal as most of the activity on these networks is, it most certainly is not immoral. 99% of the files I download/upload on Kazaa may be copyrighted, but why should I pay for my music/movies? I have _fair use rights_ to do this, and besides, most of the music the RIAA churn out sucks, so why should I pay for it? Their business model just sucks; don't blame the people who merely share and trade. Information wants to be free.
Yeah, yeah, but there might be a fair use of dropping a snickers wrapper, man! Not all people who do that are criminals! They might've dropped it in case.. erm... backups... erm scratched snickers.. erm... someone help me out here with a flimsy fair use rationalisation?
> Seems like a bad idea on many fronts, but most importantly that of privacy.
Tragic; people who use their cars to commit crimes will find it that much harder to get away with it now in Oregon. You see these sorts of rant far too often; "Big Brother" won't let me commit crimes, oh no, revolution! Perhaps you would prefer it if dangerous speeders weren't as likely to get caught, and if we had no way of tracking a bank robber's getaway car? Great, just great...
2003: the year of Asian Linux By Robin Miller, NewsForge.com Posted: 27/12/2002 at 10:56 GMT
As most regular NewsForge readers know, I recently traveled to Arabeyes Project, was a small, independent computer store located in a back alley in one of Amman's many modest commercial districts.
There is a sameness to this kind of store the world over. I shop at one much like it in Sarasota, Florida, and another similar one in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The reason we were in this store was to find and buy a Linux-compatible PCMCIA modem. The salespeople in this store were just as clueless as the salespeople in equivalent U.S. stores, and there were the same know-it-all geek customers hanging around who offered us advice ranging from smart to useless. But there was one difference. When we wanted to test a modem for Linux compatibility, we found -- courtesy of one of the geek hangers-on -- a laptop running Linux on display, right up front.
As it turned out, we didn't need the physical test, and the modem ran just fine in the Red Hat-loaded laptop where it was destined to live, but the note that stuck with me was the fact that there was a laptop on display in a computer store, right up front, proudly running Linux, and people treated it as something normal, not as an oddity.
It wasn't Red Hat, either, but ThizLinux, a distribution from Hong Kong, which is appropriate since the laptop was a Hong Kong brand I've never seen in the U.S. before.
To top it off, the office suite CDs on display next to the laptop weren't from Microsoft or StarOffice or WordPerfect, but Hancom Office, out of South Korea. And it was an Arabic version, too, something neither StarOffice nor OpenOffice quite have ready.
Hancom makes major promo hay out of their support for many languages in their $59.95 (boxed edition) office suite. Their Web page says, "Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Arabic, Korean editions and Unicode support mean that Hancom Office is the best solution for companies with offices on multiple continents."
Asia is the next Linux hotbed
Linux, as we know it today, is an essentially European phenomenon. It started in Finland. KDE is centered in Germany and has close ties to Norwegian TrollTech. Mandrake is French, SuSE is German, and European governments have moved toward and supported Linux -- and Open Source in general -- faster than most governments elsewhere. The U.S. is the center of commercial Linux activity primarily because Red Hat and several other major distributions are based here, but most surveys show a higher percentage of European than U.S. developers writing Open Source software.
But a growing number of "next generation" Linux development is taking place in Asian countries, ranging from South Korea at one end of the continent to India diagonally across the continent's map, with China rising hugely -- in the Linux sense -- right in the middle of it all.
Africa and the Middle East are discovering Linux in a big way, but don't have nearly as much computer/IT infrastructure or as much computer-oriented education available as (some parts of) China or India -- or South Korea or Vietnam or Malaysia. Or Japan, where it looks like Linux will soon be adopted as a preload operating system by computer manufacturers on all kinds of gear, not just on the server and workstation levels as we see 99% of the time in the U.S. and Europe.
I see an increasing amount of Linux development and related Open Source activity coming out of Asia, almost all of it in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages.
I also see an increasing amount of Linux activity coming out of India, most of which is in English rather than in one of the many local Indian languages.
2003: the year of Asian Linux
I rarely make predictions. Heck, I am not all that sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning, let alone that the sun will come out from behind the clouds, assuming we have a cloudy sky tomorrow. But once in a while I let myself go and prognosticate. And this is my one and only NewsForge prognostication about Linux and Open Source in 2003: That some of the biggest advances we're going to see in the next year will come from Asia, not Europe or North America.
Whether we'll recognize how important these advances are (whatever they turn out to be) is another matter entirely. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. But that's a column I need to write at the end of 2003, not today.
It's obviously very important to the people behind this project that we have a free (as in GNU definition) implementation of Java. While they can espouse as much philosophy as they like, why is this practically important? Or rephrased; What's the worst that could happen if everyone uses non-free Java?
> washingtonpost.com is not going to get slashdotted!!!
My most profuse apologies! Had I been a sysadmin at the Washington post with detailed knowledge about its load performance, like you so obviously are, I would never have tried to be helpful:-)
tyranny? No one's stopping you from getting a real fucking OS that includes MP3 support.
I'm *so sorry* if your open sores "free" software doesn't.
Hmm, apologies for being the unintended origin of this little flamewar. To clarify, perhaps tyranny was too strong a word to use! However, the Redhat fiasco is indeed part of the reason I resent the MP3 format. It is not due to it not being a "real fucking OS", but because it's too high profile and could get easily smacked down by the ridiculously constructed patent laws in the US.
This may well be a subtle hint from Apple that the next firmware upgrade will allow the i*Pod* to play ogg files. Maybe Apple's significant market share can help swing the balance away from the tyranny of mp3? We can but hope...
Commerce Power Shift Could Shake Up Piracy, Broadband Debates
By David McGuire washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, December 23, 2002; 7:47 AM
As the newly Republican Senate prepares to take office in January, high-tech lobbyists are anxiously waiting to see how the power shift affects the measures they care about most. In the Commerce Committee, which holds sway over a clutch of high-tech issues, Arizona Republican John McCain's return to the chairmanship could shift the balance in key debates over broadband and electronic copyright protection.
The Commerce Committee has done little more than release a brief statement detailing its plans for early 2003, promising examinations of spectrum policy, media takeovers, cable rates, broadband rules, telecom competition and intellectual property law. But staff members won't discuss McCain's positions on these topics.
McCain has a record of fighting passionate yet sometimes unsuccessful battles against legislative juggernauts that often originated in his own party, but tech industry lobbyists said that he is a shrewd practitioner of compromise and may bring that art to some of the most difficult debates facing the technology industry.
The Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, described McCain's approach to broadband policy as "pragmatic deregulation." One of McCain's staffers noted that while the senator believes in free competition, he favors "consumer interests above special interests."
Reed Hundt, who headed up the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, said McCain's return to power on the committee wouldn't benefit any single group.
"He's pretty much an eclectic mix of policies when it comes to the FCC," Hundt said. "When I was at the FCC he was probably my best friend on 50 percent of the issues I cared about."
McCain in some ways occupies the opposite pole from outgoing Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.), a vital ally to those on his side of the ideological fence, and a fierce enemy to anyone on the other side.
That is not to say that the two men are completely different. Both are stalwart supporters of their parties, though McCain has frustrated and bedeviled many of his Senate Republican colleagues by bucking the party platform on big-money issues like campaign finance and tobacco. Hollings has tested the patience of senators of both parties because of his ardent, and usually intractable opinions on technology issues.
Each in his position on the committee has used the unique power that committee chairmen wield, but the technology industry in 2003 is preparing to focus on McCain, who could become the most powerful arbiter of the fates of telecommunications rules and the future of copyright and intellectual property on the Internet.
Booming Voices in Broadband
In the just-concluded session, the Commerce Committee considered several bills to make it easier for the traditional local phone companies -- the Baby Bells -- to sell high-speed digital subscriber-line services wherever they want. Hollings, a supporter of the long-distance companies and smaller firms that compete against the Bells, was no fan. When he was chairman, none of the proposals made it through the committee.
The Tauzin-Dingell Bill, named for Reps. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.), was the most prominent legislation that Hollings helped squelch. It would have removed many of the regulations that stand between the Bells and the nationwide high-speed Internet access market.
After passing the House of Representatives, it ran into Hollings, who buried it. Some telecom industry representatives predicted that McCain will consign it to history and take another approach.
"The question is whether Sen. McCain would be more interested in drafting some kind of a compromise," said John Windhausen, president of the Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS).
McCain last year took a stab at a compromise that gave the Baby Bells more freedom, but required them to make their services available to rural areas and places often considered poor investments. Hollings kept the bill down, instead writing legislation that would have authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in government handouts for broadband deployment without getting rid of any regulations.
U.S. Telecommunications Association (USTA) spokeswoman Allison Remsen said McCain's traditional stance on business matters favors Tauzin-Dingell supporters.
"I think he brings a different approach to the committee," Remsen said. "I think that he is going to look at the issues from more of a market-based approach and favors that over trying to heavily regulate competition."
Michael Boland, Verizon's senior lobbyist, said that the tussle between Hollings and the Tauzin-Dingell bill's supporters led to a deadlock on broadband.
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), said that supporters of deregulation should not cheer too loudly. Any one senator has enough power to put a "hold" on a bill, Miller said, noting that Hollings and other foes of deregulation still could wield a big stick.
Former FCC Chairman Hundt said he doubted that the Hollings-McCain power shift would change the likelihood that lawmakers will take their own direct action on broadband in the next two years.
"It's a mixed bag if you're a Bell company or if you're AT&T," Hundt said of McCain. "It's not 'he's with us or he's against us."
Yankee Group Senior Analyst J.P. Gownder also warned that McCain is not a shoe-in for deregulation.
While he sees it as a useful tool, "he really is quite a populist," Gownder said. "He really wants to see the consumers benefit. When he sees deregulation to a bad deal for consumers he's really quite critical."
The FCC Connection
High-speed Internet access remains a congressional priority, but industry focus has shifted to the FCC, which is pushing for telecom deregulation along the lines of what what Tauzin and Dingell want.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell has argued that consumers have plenty of high-speed access choices, and that it's time to rethink -- and maybe eliminate -- some of the rules that keep the Bells' DSL services in restricted markets. No less an authority than President Bush said that the White House will abide by Powell's decision.
Powell has less to worry about now that Hollings is not only out of the Commerce chair, but also of his role as chief of the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of FCC funding. Sen. Judd Gregg, (R-N.H.) will take the helm of that subcommittee from Hollings, who as chairman had repeatedly threatened to slash the FCC's budget.
Foes of the Baby Bells said that Gregg is no enemy, but he isn't the staunch ally when it comes to battling the local phone monopolies that Hollings was.
"We see him as taking a moderate position, but we can't say whether he's leaning [more] to one side or another," said ALTS's Windhausen.
ALTS, has Gregg listed as a "three" on a one-to-five scale that rates how friendly lawmakers are to competitive carriers. Hollings earns the highest rating of "one."
Hollings also will lose his chairmanship of the Commerce subcommittee that oversees the FCC's "reauthorization" bills, which determine the commission's agenda and scope. Reauthorization does not always affect the commission's budget, but has proven an effective vehicle for the committee to step up its oversight of the commission.
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) is expected to take the lead on the FCC's reauthorization, which is up this year, while Hollings likely will hold the ranking Democrat spot. Burns also has a higher opinion of Powell's deregulation tendencies than Hollings, noting in a press statement earlier this year "Powell's clear vision of where telecommunications needs to go in this country."
Although Hollings's threats to gut the FCC's funding were probably more hyperbolic than literal, they had the desired effect of slowing the pace of broadband deregulation, Gownder said.
"I think Michael Powell can certainly work with John McCain and vice versa," Gownder said.
Verizon's Boland added that Powell now "faces much less risk of congressional contravention so that he can now push his revisions of the current rules all the way through."
Guardian of Copyrights
If Hollings has been a tough opponent to the Bell companies, he has been seen as an ally to the movie studios and recording companies. McCain's return to the committee chair could herald a sea change in the debate.
Hollings's Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) earned him the scorn of computer makers and free speech advocates because it would have forced them to include anti-digital copying devices in their products.
The opponents said the bill would transform their products into glorified DVD players, but Hollings heeded Hollywood and pushed hard to get the legislation passed.
"My intuitive sense is that it will have an effect, and one that Hollywood won't be that happy about," said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. "If the Chairman is the champion of your bill and he's no longer the chairman, obviously that takes the wind out of the sails over your bill."
Public Knowledge is one of many public interest groups that opposes Hollings's proposal, saying it threatens the consumer's right to "fair use" of copyrighted works, like making a personal copy of an album or a videocassette.
Sohn said the Hollings legislation probably wouldn't fit in with McCain's other policy stances. "McCain is generally deregulatory and that's good news for the opponents of this bill because it's as regulatory as it (gets)," Sohn said.
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Jack Valenti -- one of the most vocal supporters of efforts to bolster copyright protection -- said the Senate shift wouldn't hurt that cause.
"I don't think it affects the debate at all. The change in chairmanship does not affect the need to protect creative works from piracy," Valenti said.
The ITAA's Miller said the party swap could provide a small boon to opponents of the Hollings bill, but that its supporters still will push hard for it.
"I never want to underestimate the (MPAA's) ability to lobby these issues," Miller said. "If Jack Valenti had been around at the time of Gutenberg he would have organized the monks to come and burn down the printing press."
McCain, however, remains the big question mark.
"I don't think McCain is seen as being particularly dogmatic on the issue on one side or other," Miller said. "McCain is obviously skeptical about government mandating industry standards, but the (type of) thing he feels zealous about is campaign finance reform, not necessarily beating up Hollywood or alternatively beating up the Internet.
"A committee chairman can be a major point of obstruction if he says 'this is not going through me.' A chairman who feels strongly about an issue can be a difficult rock to climb over," he added.
If a chairman is a strong opponent of legislation that must pass through his committee, he or she often might squelch the measure, even if it is popular among a majority of lawmakers. Committee chairmen can also champion less popular causes that might not receive congressional attention without their patronage.
McCain's unwillingness to be pigeonholed on pet issues makes it difficult to predict how he'll address them, observers said.
"That's the fear for all of us. We don't know where McCain is going to come out on these issues." Windhausen said.
-- washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Robert MacMillan contributed to this report.
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety...
Damn, forgot that's already been posted about 176 times in this article already hasn't it? Many apologies.
Will you still be saying that when America is once again awash with blood from another terrorist attack?
Innocent American lives are worth more than your "freedom" to download kiddiepr0n without the feds knowing about it.
People like you make me sick, with your twisted selfish priorities.
The international and unregulated nature of the internet has, up until now, enabled communication that was completely untappable. This should do more for solving that problem, at least for law enforcement authorities (no hackers tracking my traffic please;) ), giving criminals and terrorists alike nowhere to hide. I for one welcome these measures, as I don't wish to see another 9/11, and presumably neither do the rest of you.
Slashdot Mirror
Free iPods are not a PYRAMID SCHEME scam
all about how the FBI was just oppressing innocent geeks,
They were; the FBI took apart an entire datacentre, screwing over hundreds of innocent customers.
Now maybe slashbots can realise that not every 'hacker' is a hero who's been oppressed by Da Man.
And perhaps anonymous cowards can realise that you can't just every action, no matter how much collateral damage it causes, just because of "teh evil hackers"! Please bear that in mind next time you start ranting about "slashbots".
I enjoyed the article, but only in a smug self-satisfied Linux user kind of way. Aren't we preaching to the converted here? I don't mean to flame, but there wasn't anything new there.
BTW, I have eight gmail invites to give away. First 8 followups that I see at +1 (my posting threshold) get an invite.
I wouldn't be so quick to indemnify myself; this just 'shows' SCO and their paid shills that they're right. ... they obviously know they've stolen our code for communist activities!"
"Look, these Linux users are getting indemnification
Looking for Indemnification While Linux Sales Double
by Tom Adelstein
06/28/2004
Little doubt exists; a legal cloud hangs over Linux from infringement claims of the SCO Group, Inc. In spite of that cloud, Linux server sales grew 56.9 percent in the first quarter of the year. Linux sales in 2004 follows six consecutive quarters of double-digit growth for the free operating system during unprecedented legal attacks from SCO over the same period.
Advertisement
Linux success helped push all server growth to 7.3 percent according to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker. The contradictions of sales increases and legal uncertainties bring into question the degree of concern people actually feel about SCO's legal claims. One might say, if the defendants of the SCO suits don't see concern, why should I?
This article examines issues related to Linux use in the enterprise while copyright infringement claims exist. CIO's and others who need pragmatic information when deciding whether or not to deploy Linux will find this useful. Rather than examine the legal case, we will examine market perception and risk related to using Linux.
Market Perception
SCO believes that Linux infringes on its Intellectual Property. SCO has sued IBM, Novell, AutoZone, and DaimlerChrysler on the basis of that belief. IBM and Novell market Linux while AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler use Linux in their businesses.
Realists consider Linux adoption remarkable. The word on the street and in the foxholes of the IT community has created a swell of adoption from small businesses to the entire Fortune 500. The marketing of Linux by HP, IBM, Sun, Dell, Oracle, and Novell demonstrates the commitment of industry to Linux. With all the agreement in the market, most observers do not give SCO much of a chance of winning its cases.
The recent announcement that the U.S. Federal Court system has deployed Linux adds further to the speculation that Linux deployment may be safe. People will reason that Linux use in the courts bodes poorly for SCO.
Normal Risks Associated with Software Acquisition
Procurement policies within large organizations discuss infringement. For example, the basic policy for software purchases at the University of Texas states:
"We should expect that Vendors will develop their products without infringing the intellectual property rights of others, that is, without appropriating others' protected ideas or expression."
Large purchasers want warranties from vendors guaranteeing their software does not infringe. Such purchasers do not necessarily expect vendors to provide warranties. They do expect that if the software infringes someone else's rights, the vendor will take care of any expenses incurred if the purchaser is sued or asked to stop using the software because of alleged infringement. Large organizations expect protection from infringement. They want to know that a software vendor will pay for expenses related to infringement and they want that stated in the software license agreement. They also realize that exceptions exist if the software is:
* Beta test software
* Free, steeply discounted, or very low-cost software
* Software provided by nonprofit vendors
* Software whose source exists in the public domain
In enterprise terms, if a vendor agrees to indemnify, it means the vendor accepts the risk of financial loss.
The first three situations above illustrate circumstances where a vendor may not make enough money on the product to justify assuming risk for indemnification. In effect the vendor says, "If you want this software, you'll have to accept the risk that it might infringe. If you want us to accept that risk, it will cost you a lot of money."
SCO's Unprecedented Infringement Case
Past infringement cases have focused on software makers rather than end users. For example, Microsoft has encountered many infringement cases from companies like Eolas, Stac, Burst, Netscape, Sun, and InterTrus
I believe this will turn out into another long running saga of the style of SCO vs Linux; one failing software company trying desperately to gain notoriety by picking on known good guys. ;)
Anyone know where we can find their stock price?
*shrug*, it was slow for me.
I guess I might be behind a lame proxy.
Matsushita unveils DVD recorder adopting Blu-ray Disc format+
, 06.30.04, 10:21 AM ET
OSAKA, Jun 30, 2004 (Kyodo via COMTEX) -- Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. on Wednesday unveiled what it calls the world's first DVD recorder that supports single-side, dual-layer Blu-ray Discs with a maximum capacity of 50 gigabytes.
The DMR-E700BD, the high-end model of Matsushita's DIGA DVD recorder series, will be put on the Japanese market on an open-price basis on July 31, said the major consumer electronics maker known for its Panasonic brand.
The new model can record up to four and a half hours of digital high-definition programming or up to 63 hours of analog programming, Matsushita said. The machine is equipped with built-in tuners for terrestrial digital broadcasting, broadcast satellites, 110-degree communications satellites and terrestrial analog broadcasting.
Matsushita is the second company after Sony Corp. to release a DVD recorder adopting the Blu-ray Disc, a next-generation large-capacity optical disc video recording format.
Using a blue-violet laser, the Blu-ray Disc achieves over two hours of digital high-definition video recording on a single-sided, single-layer CD/DVD-size disc with a diameter of 12 centimeters.
Why is everyone treating this like it's a bad thing? Finally, somebody has done the research that will allow ISPs to enforce the contract that you legally agreed to, and stop geeks stealing their bandwidth. Yes, you can come up with as many rationalisations as you want, but at the heart of it, it is still stealing and contract violation.
(Moderators: skip to note at the end before you moderate this ;) )
I've programmed for some time in Perl, but at no time has this been anything to do with the CompSci degree I'm studying; no course even mentions it. Why is this? Perl doesn't seem to have much respect in educated programming circles, and I think this is why;
It's type system is not entirely sound. Inference upon the typing rules (which aren't formally stated anywhere; I had to derive them from the sourcecode) can lead to propositional contradictions.
It is most certainly _not_ Turing complete (trivially provable); hence not all algorithms can be implemented in it that you could with a Turing complete language like Java or C(++).
It's reference counting system of garbage collection can sometimes result in memory leaks, as opposed to the more thorough graph traversal employed in other languages.
IMPORTANT: Please, only reply to this post or moderate it if you actually understand the principles of compsci that I'm arguing about. I've been smacked down before by ignorant kiddies before, and would much prefer to see more reason in the future.
Prediction: Thousands of angry followups to this post by people who taught themselves to write C, consider themselves to be 'hackers', and think untypesafe code is 'l33t', saying something along the lines of; "People who teach themselves are just as good as people who have had a proper education". ;)
Fortunately, most sensible employers ignore this kind of attitude...
As technically illegal as most of the activity on these networks is, it most certainly is not immoral. 99% of the files I download/upload on Kazaa may be copyrighted, but why should I pay for my music/movies?
I have _fair use rights_ to do this, and besides, most of the music the RIAA churn out sucks, so why should I pay for it? Their business model just sucks; don't blame the people who merely share and trade. Information wants to be free.
Yeah, yeah, but there might be a fair use of dropping a snickers wrapper, man! Not all people who do that are criminals! They might've dropped it in case.. erm... backups... erm scratched snickers.. erm... someone help me out here with a flimsy fair use rationalisation?
> Seems like a bad idea on many fronts, but most importantly that of privacy.
Tragic; people who use their cars to commit crimes will find it that much harder to get away with it now in Oregon. You see these sorts of rant far too often; "Big Brother" won't let me commit crimes, oh no, revolution! Perhaps you would prefer it if dangerous speeders weren't as likely to get caught, and if we had no way of tracking a bank robber's getaway car? Great, just great...
...is that his earliest memory was BSD kernel hacking ;)
In Soviet Russia, people who keep on making Soviet Russia jokes are SHOT! ;-)
2003: the year of Asian Linux
By Robin Miller, NewsForge.com
Posted: 27/12/2002 at 10:56 GMT
As most regular NewsForge readers know, I recently traveled to Arabeyes Project, was a small, independent computer store located in a back alley in one of Amman's many modest commercial districts.
There is a sameness to this kind of store the world over. I shop at one much like it in Sarasota, Florida, and another similar one in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The reason we were in this store was to find and buy a Linux-compatible PCMCIA modem. The salespeople in this store were just as clueless as the salespeople in equivalent U.S. stores, and there were the same know-it-all geek customers hanging around who offered us advice ranging from smart to useless. But there was one difference. When we wanted to test a modem for Linux compatibility, we found -- courtesy of one of the geek hangers-on -- a laptop running Linux on display, right up front.
As it turned out, we didn't need the physical test, and the modem ran just fine in the Red Hat-loaded laptop where it was destined to live, but the note that stuck with me was the fact that there was a laptop on display in a computer store, right up front, proudly running Linux, and people treated it as something normal, not as an oddity.
It wasn't Red Hat, either, but ThizLinux, a distribution from Hong Kong, which is appropriate since the laptop was a Hong Kong brand I've never seen in the U.S. before.
To top it off, the office suite CDs on display next to the laptop weren't from Microsoft or StarOffice or WordPerfect, but Hancom Office, out of South Korea. And it was an Arabic version, too, something neither StarOffice nor OpenOffice quite have ready.
Hancom makes major promo hay out of their support for many languages in their $59.95 (boxed edition) office suite. Their Web page says, "Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, Arabic, Korean editions and Unicode support mean that Hancom Office is the best solution for companies with offices on multiple continents."
Asia is the next Linux hotbed
Linux, as we know it today, is an essentially European phenomenon. It started in Finland. KDE is centered in Germany and has close ties to Norwegian TrollTech. Mandrake is French, SuSE is German, and European governments have moved toward and supported Linux -- and Open Source in general -- faster than most governments elsewhere. The U.S. is the center of commercial Linux activity primarily because Red Hat and several other major distributions are based here, but most surveys show a higher percentage of European than U.S. developers writing Open Source software.
But a growing number of "next generation" Linux development is taking place in Asian countries, ranging from South Korea at one end of the continent to India diagonally across the continent's map, with China rising hugely -- in the Linux sense -- right in the middle of it all.
Africa and the Middle East are discovering Linux in a big way, but don't have nearly as much computer/IT infrastructure or as much computer-oriented education available as (some parts of) China or India -- or South Korea or Vietnam or Malaysia. Or Japan, where it looks like Linux will soon be adopted as a preload operating system by computer manufacturers on all kinds of gear, not just on the server and workstation levels as we see 99% of the time in the U.S. and Europe.
I see an increasing amount of Linux development and related Open Source activity coming out of Asia, almost all of it in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages.
I also see an increasing amount of Linux activity coming out of India, most of which is in English rather than in one of the many local Indian languages.
2003: the year of Asian Linux
I rarely make predictions. Heck, I am not all that sure I'll wake up tomorrow morning, let alone that the sun will come out from behind the clouds, assuming we have a cloudy sky tomorrow. But once in a while I let myself go and prognosticate. And this is my one and only NewsForge prognostication about Linux and Open Source in 2003: That some of the biggest advances we're going to see in the next year will come from Asia, not Europe or North America.
Whether we'll recognize how important these advances are (whatever they turn out to be) is another matter entirely. Maybe we will, maybe we won't. But that's a column I need to write at the end of 2003, not today.
It's obviously very important to the people behind this project that we have a free (as in GNU definition) implementation of Java. While they can espouse as much philosophy as they like, why is this practically important? Or rephrased;
What's the worst that could happen if everyone uses non-free Java?
> washingtonpost.com is not going to get slashdotted!!! My most profuse apologies! Had I been a sysadmin at the Washington post with detailed knowledge about its load performance, like you so obviously are, I would never have tried to be helpful :-)
tyranny? No one's stopping you from getting a real fucking OS that includes MP3 support. I'm *so sorry* if your open sores "free" software doesn't.
Hmm, apologies for being the unintended origin of this little flamewar. To clarify, perhaps tyranny was too strong a word to use! However, the Redhat fiasco is indeed part of the reason I resent the MP3 format. It is not due to it not being a "real fucking OS", but because it's too high profile and could get easily smacked down by the ridiculously constructed patent laws in the US.
This may well be a subtle hint from Apple that the next firmware upgrade will allow the i*Pod* to play ogg files. Maybe Apple's significant market share can help swing the balance away from the tyranny of mp3? We can but hope...
Commerce Power Shift Could Shake Up Piracy, Broadband Debates
By David McGuire
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Monday, December 23, 2002; 7:47 AM
As the newly Republican Senate prepares to take office in January, high-tech lobbyists are anxiously waiting to see how the power shift affects the measures they care about most. In the Commerce Committee, which holds sway over a clutch of high-tech issues, Arizona Republican John McCain's return to the chairmanship could shift the balance in key debates over broadband and electronic copyright protection.
The Commerce Committee has done little more than release a brief statement detailing its plans for early 2003, promising examinations of spectrum policy, media takeovers, cable rates, broadband rules, telecom competition and intellectual property law. But staff members won't discuss McCain's positions on these topics.
McCain has a record of fighting passionate yet sometimes unsuccessful battles against legislative juggernauts that often originated in his own party, but tech industry lobbyists said that he is a shrewd practitioner of compromise and may bring that art to some of the most difficult debates facing the technology industry.
The Yankee Group, a Boston-based research firm, described McCain's approach to broadband policy as "pragmatic deregulation." One of McCain's staffers noted that while the senator believes in free competition, he favors "consumer interests above special interests."
Reed Hundt, who headed up the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1997, said McCain's return to power on the committee wouldn't benefit any single group.
"He's pretty much an eclectic mix of policies when it comes to the FCC," Hundt said. "When I was at the FCC he was probably my best friend on 50 percent of the issues I cared about."
McCain in some ways occupies the opposite pole from outgoing Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.), a vital ally to those on his side of the ideological fence, and a fierce enemy to anyone on the other side.
That is not to say that the two men are completely different. Both are stalwart supporters of their parties, though McCain has frustrated and bedeviled many of his Senate Republican colleagues by bucking the party platform on big-money issues like campaign finance and tobacco. Hollings has tested the patience of senators of both parties because of his ardent, and usually intractable opinions on technology issues.
Each in his position on the committee has used the unique power that committee chairmen wield, but the technology industry in 2003 is preparing to focus on McCain, who could become the most powerful arbiter of the fates of telecommunications rules and the future of copyright and intellectual property on the Internet.
Booming Voices in Broadband
In the just-concluded session, the Commerce Committee considered several bills to make it easier for the traditional local phone companies -- the Baby Bells -- to sell high-speed digital subscriber-line services wherever they want. Hollings, a supporter of the long-distance companies and smaller firms that compete against the Bells, was no fan. When he was chairman, none of the proposals made it through the committee.
The Tauzin-Dingell Bill, named for Reps. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) and John Dingell (D-Mich.), was the most prominent legislation that Hollings helped squelch. It would have removed many of the regulations that stand between the Bells and the nationwide high-speed Internet access market.
After passing the House of Representatives, it ran into Hollings, who buried it. Some telecom industry representatives predicted that McCain will consign it to history and take another approach.
"The question is whether Sen. McCain would be more interested in drafting some kind of a compromise," said John Windhausen, president of the Association for Local Telecommunications Services (ALTS).
McCain last year took a stab at a compromise that gave the Baby Bells more freedom, but required them to make their services available to rural areas and places often considered poor investments. Hollings kept the bill down, instead writing legislation that would have authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in government handouts for broadband deployment without getting rid of any regulations.
U.S. Telecommunications Association (USTA) spokeswoman Allison Remsen said McCain's traditional stance on business matters favors Tauzin-Dingell supporters.
"I think he brings a different approach to the committee," Remsen said. "I think that he is going to look at the issues from more of a market-based approach and favors that over trying to heavily regulate competition."
Michael Boland, Verizon's senior lobbyist, said that the tussle between Hollings and the Tauzin-Dingell bill's supporters led to a deadlock on broadband.
Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), said that supporters of deregulation should not cheer too loudly. Any one senator has enough power to put a "hold" on a bill, Miller said, noting that Hollings and other foes of deregulation still could wield a big stick.
Former FCC Chairman Hundt said he doubted that the Hollings-McCain power shift would change the likelihood that lawmakers will take their own direct action on broadband in the next two years.
"It's a mixed bag if you're a Bell company or if you're AT&T," Hundt said of McCain. "It's not 'he's with us or he's against us."
Yankee Group Senior Analyst J.P. Gownder also warned that McCain is not a shoe-in for deregulation.
While he sees it as a useful tool, "he really is quite a populist," Gownder said. "He really wants to see the consumers benefit. When he sees deregulation to a bad deal for consumers he's really quite critical."
The FCC Connection
High-speed Internet access remains a congressional priority, but industry focus has shifted to the FCC, which is pushing for telecom deregulation along the lines of what what Tauzin and Dingell want.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell has argued that consumers have plenty of high-speed access choices, and that it's time to rethink -- and maybe eliminate -- some of the rules that keep the Bells' DSL services in restricted markets. No less an authority than President Bush said that the White House will abide by Powell's decision.
Powell has less to worry about now that Hollings is not only out of the Commerce chair, but also of his role as chief of the Appropriations subcommittee in charge of FCC funding. Sen. Judd Gregg, (R-N.H.) will take the helm of that subcommittee from Hollings, who as chairman had repeatedly threatened to slash the FCC's budget.
Foes of the Baby Bells said that Gregg is no enemy, but he isn't the staunch ally when it comes to battling the local phone monopolies that Hollings was.
"We see him as taking a moderate position, but we can't say whether he's leaning [more] to one side or another," said ALTS's Windhausen.
ALTS, has Gregg listed as a "three" on a one-to-five scale that rates how friendly lawmakers are to competitive carriers. Hollings earns the highest rating of "one."
Hollings also will lose his chairmanship of the Commerce subcommittee that oversees the FCC's "reauthorization" bills, which determine the commission's agenda and scope. Reauthorization does not always affect the commission's budget, but has proven an effective vehicle for the committee to step up its oversight of the commission.
Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) is expected to take the lead on the FCC's reauthorization, which is up this year, while Hollings likely will hold the ranking Democrat spot. Burns also has a higher opinion of Powell's deregulation tendencies than Hollings, noting in a press statement earlier this year "Powell's clear vision of where telecommunications needs to go in this country."
Although Hollings's threats to gut the FCC's funding were probably more hyperbolic than literal, they had the desired effect of slowing the pace of broadband deregulation, Gownder said.
"I think Michael Powell can certainly work with John McCain and vice versa," Gownder said.
Verizon's Boland added that Powell now "faces much less risk of congressional contravention so that he can now push his revisions of the current rules all the way through."
Guardian of Copyrights
If Hollings has been a tough opponent to the Bell companies, he has been seen as an ally to the movie studios and recording companies. McCain's return to the committee chair could herald a sea change in the debate.
Hollings's Security Systems Standards and Certification Act (SSSCA) earned him the scorn of computer makers and free speech advocates because it would have forced them to include anti-digital copying devices in their products.
The opponents said the bill would transform their products into glorified DVD players, but Hollings heeded Hollywood and pushed hard to get the legislation passed.
"My intuitive sense is that it will have an effect, and one that Hollywood won't be that happy about," said Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn. "If the Chairman is the champion of your bill and he's no longer the chairman, obviously that takes the wind out of the sails over your bill."
Public Knowledge is one of many public interest groups that opposes Hollings's proposal, saying it threatens the consumer's right to "fair use" of copyrighted works, like making a personal copy of an album or a videocassette.
Sohn said the Hollings legislation probably wouldn't fit in with McCain's other policy stances. "McCain is generally deregulatory and that's good news for the opponents of this bill because it's as regulatory as it (gets)," Sohn said.
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) President Jack Valenti -- one of the most vocal supporters of efforts to bolster copyright protection -- said the Senate shift wouldn't hurt that cause.
"I don't think it affects the debate at all. The change in chairmanship does not affect the need to protect creative works from piracy," Valenti said.
The ITAA's Miller said the party swap could provide a small boon to opponents of the Hollings bill, but that its supporters still will push hard for it.
"I never want to underestimate the (MPAA's) ability to lobby these issues," Miller said. "If Jack Valenti had been around at the time of Gutenberg he would have organized the monks to come and burn down the printing press."
McCain, however, remains the big question mark.
"I don't think McCain is seen as being particularly dogmatic on the issue on one side or other," Miller said. "McCain is obviously skeptical about government mandating industry standards, but the (type of) thing he feels zealous about is campaign finance reform, not necessarily beating up Hollywood or alternatively beating up the Internet.
"A committee chairman can be a major point of obstruction if he says 'this is not going through me.' A chairman who feels strongly about an issue can be a difficult rock to climb over," he added.
If a chairman is a strong opponent of legislation that must pass through his committee, he or she often might squelch the measure, even if it is popular among a majority of lawmakers. Committee chairmen can also champion less popular causes that might not receive congressional attention without their patronage.
McCain's unwillingness to be pigeonholed on pet issues makes it difficult to predict how he'll address them, observers said.
"That's the fear for all of us. We don't know where McCain is going to come out on these issues." Windhausen said.
-- washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Robert MacMillan contributed to this report.
"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety... Damn, forgot that's already been posted about 176 times in this article already hasn't it? Many apologies.
Will you still be saying that when America is once again awash with blood from another terrorist attack? Innocent American lives are worth more than your "freedom" to download kiddiepr0n without the feds knowing about it. People like you make me sick, with your twisted selfish priorities.
The international and unregulated nature of the internet has, up until now, enabled communication that was completely untappable. This should do more for solving that problem, at least for law enforcement authorities (no hackers tracking my traffic please ;) ), giving criminals and terrorists alike nowhere to hide. I for one welcome these measures, as I don't wish to see another 9/11, and presumably neither do the rest of you.