They kind of screwed up in their response... Specifically: SCO specifically argues that open source (free) licensing "undermines our basic system of intellectual property
rights." This assertion lacks any legal justification and therefore appears to be merely self-serving. Nothing in
our intellectual property laws requires inventors to charge substantial fees for access or use of their inventions.
In fact, the laws of copyright and patents, which underlie the intellectual property rights that most often protect
computer software programs, give their owners complete discretion in deciding how large their licensing fees
should be, or, indeed, whether to impose fees at all.
They're mixing free beer and free speech. Stallanism aside, SCO is clearly attacking the freedom side of the GPL and USENIX is defending the freebie side.
Almost all of USENIX's text focuses on fees, and SCO's (feeble) threat is against the freedom to share code. I wonder if they know what the "Free" in "Free Software" means...
Suuuuuuuure they are. Considering the current amount of SPAM on the Internet, they probably have the world's entire population of monkeys analyzing it. 1000 monkeys just don't cut it anymore.
That would be John Gilmore. He's still out there, still runs an Open Relay, and still insists everyone should do it too for the sake of free speech.
While I like Gilmore and appreciate some of the things he's done, this must be the most idiotic First-Speech related stand I've seen.
Disclaimer: I'm a mail admin, and I would gladly see all Open Relays crushed with a steamroller and dumped into the Atlantic.
How to say "shove your licenses up where the sun doesn't shine" in several different languages.
In unrelated news, UnixWare will now support localized error messages.
Actually... we have 1 company which owns most of the local loops, and another which is the largest cable operator (but not the only one), both belonging to the monopolistic incumbent operator.
ADSL in Portugal is mostly (but not exclusively) wholesale reselling of the same product, at around 35 EUR/mo for 512/128 (with a 1:50 guarantee:) ). Some telcos do offer alternative solutions, which are cheaper and better (up to 4 Mbps for 300 EUR, and 2:1 guaranteed), but restricted to half-a-dozen areas.
Cable is a much more varied, but the largest operator top-seller is 640/128 for 35 EUR. Smaller telcos sell 64/64, 128/64, 256/128, 512/128. There are a few 1 and 2 Mbps offers, too.
The fun thing is that almost everyone limits the amount of traffic, and most of them make a distinction between national and international traffic (Portugal is just filled with interesting stuff... NOT).
About your PowerEdge 1750 prices... I really don't know where you got them, but I bought 8 of them less than a couple of months ago, $3k each, from Dell.
The difference is that mine came with only 2 36 Gb disks, 3GHz processors and no OS (they're happily running Fedora). Oh, and Gold NBD Support. I am a regular customer of Dell's but still... 3.2k difference? For what? Windows 2003?:)
It's better than that; both PoP 1 & 2 are in there. One when you finish the game for the first time, the other hidden behind a wall about one-third into the game.:-) There's probably more stuff in there, but I gave up on trying to destroy every wall to find it;-)
It shouldn't be, but they shouldn't be equally taxed, either.
Govt taxes should be applied only to property/land (holes dug, cables in the ground, cables in the air) and radio spectrum (which must be regulated as a deterrent, or we'll eventually have fried pigeons falling in our laps:-)). Trying to tax thing like "1 minute of voice conversation costs X cents" is both unjustifiable and dumb.
To keep it simple, think "OSI Layers".
When voice went from copper to fiber (or to whatever might come next), you basically kept the same protocols over it. In short, you still needed to allocate a full channel to have a voice conversation, and there's only so many channels you can push into a copper pair or a fiber link (say, a T1, with 24 channels, or an E1 with 30 channels.)
Imagine you're a telco with an E1; you can only carry 30 simultaneous voice calls. You upgrade to an STM-1 (IIRC, about 21 E1, or 630 channels). Still not many calls, right?
But an STM-1 carries up to 155 Mbps worth of data. A regular voice call usually takes about 64kbps; do the math: you can carry a lot more voice calls if you do them over IP; over 3 times more, in fact. That's 3 times less permits, taxes, and renting you have to pay the govt for landlines...
The actual numbers aren't really this straightforward, but you get the ideia...
So using OSS is now enough to be "one of the good guys"? Hah!
I use, defend, and contribute to open-source because I believe it's a sound and effective development model, and produces better software. That doesn't mean I'm willing to lower my pants and get spam shoved up my ass by a guy/corporation who has the same belief, as I happen to be one of those guys who wants all spammers hung by their nuts
Hmmm... That would turn IBM into the Vorlons, who ended up squashing younger races they helped earlier (Linux?) just to get rid of MS^H^HShadow traces.
Bad prospect:)
It isn't useless, just not open.
It's been discussed a few times, but I'll say it again: you CAN use a bcom chip in Linux, if you buy Linuxant's driverloader. My latest laptop has a bcm4301 builtin; I stopped carrying the Prism2 PCMCIA around once Linuxant's driver appeared: I ended up buying a license for it last week, since it works fine and saves me the trouble of carrying yet-another-PCMCIA.
Lucky you;
Last weekend I went over to my father-in-law's to help him install XP Home in his PC. The installation procedure had to be repeated 3 times, because it started failing with weird errors.
After we finally got the blasted thing up & running, time to let him have some fun: Boot, welcome tour, skip registration, "Welcome" screen, BAM... "system shutting down in 30 seconds" (you know, that cute window from Blaster)... And this BEFORE he had the chance to even look at the pretty cloud wallpaper. I hadn't noticed the cablemodem had been left on all the time... I suspect the error messages were Blaster hits, too.
So... I had a whole hour of fun and games typing "shutdown -a", killing MSBLAST.EXE, and removing it from disk, while I waited for the patches to download. Still no love, the thing kept coming in and killing the download process. Finally I remembered XP's firewall, spent 15 minutes looking for it, found it, and turned it on. 10 minutes later, everything was running smoothly.
Even though I hate updating machines without any user interaction, I left that feature on in his computer. And the firewall. And an anti-virus. And I still tremble with fear every time I see his caller-ID in my phone:)
Anyone benefiting from their spyware will now be able to anser:
Customer: "How the hell do you know I like that?"
Low-Life Advertiser: "Clariavoinacy!"
You're forgetting something: It runs Windows (pardon me: MS Pocket PC), so there isn't much power left for anything else;-)
The XScales are power hogs, and WinCE was never battery-friendly to begin with.
Subject half-right, text wrong:
The whole world (except for the US and 2 or 3 other countries) uses the same mobile phone tecnology: GSM 900/1800; this includes Korea, so the phone will be a GSM unit.
So no, it won't work in the US (*unless* it's a tri-band phone, in which case it'll work with US carriers which support GSM 1900); it'll work (almost) everywhere else.
Slashdot Mirror
That other freeswan (Super FreeS/WAN) has been dead for some time now, and has become OpenS/WAN (http://www.openswan.org/)
They kind of screwed up in their response... Specifically:
SCO specifically argues that open source (free) licensing "undermines our basic system of intellectual property rights." This assertion lacks any legal justification and therefore appears to be merely self-serving. Nothing in our intellectual property laws requires inventors to charge substantial fees for access or use of their inventions. In fact, the laws of copyright and patents, which underlie the intellectual property rights that most often protect computer software programs, give their owners complete discretion in deciding how large their licensing fees should be, or, indeed, whether to impose fees at all.
They're mixing free beer and free speech. Stallanism aside, SCO is clearly attacking the freedom side of the GPL and USENIX is defending the freebie side.
Almost all of USENIX's text focuses on fees, and SCO's (feeble) threat is against the freedom to share code. I wonder if they know what the "Free" in "Free Software" means...
You don't use a cable modem, do you? ;)
Suuuuuuuure they are. Considering the current amount of SPAM on the Internet, they probably have the world's entire population of monkeys analyzing it. 1000 monkeys just don't cut it anymore.
Nope. The one paying is the sender; if you don't pay, you won't send to Y! or MSN.
That would be John Gilmore. He's still out there, still runs an Open Relay, and still insists everyone should do it too for the sake of free speech.
While I like Gilmore and appreciate some of the things he's done, this must be the most idiotic First-Speech related stand I've seen.
Disclaimer: I'm a mail admin, and I would gladly see all Open Relays crushed with a steamroller and dumped into the Atlantic.
Somehow, I don't see anyone naming their kid "Scogue Rupe" :-)
How to say "shove your licenses up where the sun doesn't shine" in several different languages.
In unrelated news, UnixWare will now support localized error messages.
So it's obvious the CEO of SCO hails from a long line of bastards. :-)
Clearly. Or else he'd be McGroom
Actually... we have 1 company which owns most of the local loops, and another which is the largest cable operator (but not the only one), both belonging to the monopolistic incumbent operator. :) ). Some telcos do offer alternative solutions, which are cheaper and better (up to 4 Mbps for 300 EUR, and 2:1 guaranteed), but restricted to half-a-dozen areas.
ADSL in Portugal is mostly (but not exclusively) wholesale reselling of the same product, at around 35 EUR/mo for 512/128 (with a 1:50 guarantee
Cable is a much more varied, but the largest operator top-seller is 640/128 for 35 EUR. Smaller telcos sell 64/64, 128/64, 256/128, 512/128. There are a few 1 and 2 Mbps offers, too.
The fun thing is that almost everyone limits the amount of traffic, and most of them make a distinction between national and international traffic (Portugal is just filled with interesting stuff... NOT).
About your PowerEdge 1750 prices... I really don't know where you got them, but I bought 8 of them less than a couple of months ago, $3k each, from Dell. :)
The difference is that mine came with only 2 36 Gb disks, 3GHz processors and no OS (they're happily running Fedora). Oh, and Gold NBD Support. I am a regular customer of Dell's but still... 3.2k difference? For what? Windows 2003?
He has plastic surgeons??? :)
It's better than that; both PoP 1 & 2 are in there. One when you finish the game for the first time, the other hidden behind a wall about one-third into the game. :-) There's probably more stuff in there, but I gave up on trying to destroy every wall to find it ;-)
It shouldn't be, but they shouldn't be equally taxed, either. :-)). Trying to tax thing like "1 minute of voice conversation costs X cents" is both unjustifiable and dumb.
Govt taxes should be applied only to property/land (holes dug, cables in the ground, cables in the air) and radio spectrum (which must be regulated as a deterrent, or we'll eventually have fried pigeons falling in our laps
To keep it simple, think "OSI Layers".
When voice went from copper to fiber (or to whatever might come next), you basically kept the same protocols over it. In short, you still needed to allocate a full channel to have a voice conversation, and there's only so many channels you can push into a copper pair or a fiber link (say, a T1, with 24 channels, or an E1 with 30 channels.)
Imagine you're a telco with an E1; you can only carry 30 simultaneous voice calls. You upgrade to an STM-1 (IIRC, about 21 E1, or 630 channels). Still not many calls, right?
But an STM-1 carries up to 155 Mbps worth of data. A regular voice call usually takes about 64kbps; do the math: you can carry a lot more voice calls if you do them over IP; over 3 times more, in fact. That's 3 times less permits, taxes, and renting you have to pay the govt for landlines...
The actual numbers aren't really this straightforward, but you get the ideia...
So using OSS is now enough to be "one of the good guys"? Hah!
I use, defend, and contribute to open-source because I believe it's a sound and effective development model, and produces better software. That doesn't mean I'm willing to lower my pants and get spam shoved up my ass by a guy/corporation who has the same belief, as I happen to be one of those guys who wants all spammers hung by their nuts
Hmmm... That would turn IBM into the Vorlons, who ended up squashing younger races they helped earlier (Linux?) just to get rid of MS^H^HShadow traces. :)
Bad prospect
It isn't useless, just not open.
It's been discussed a few times, but I'll say it again: you CAN use a bcom chip in Linux, if you buy Linuxant's driverloader. My latest laptop has a bcm4301 builtin; I stopped carrying the Prism2 PCMCIA around once Linuxant's driver appeared: I ended up buying a license for it last week, since it works fine and saves me the trouble of carrying yet-another-PCMCIA.
Lucky you; Last weekend I went over to my father-in-law's to help him install XP Home in his PC. The installation procedure had to be repeated 3 times, because it started failing with weird errors. :)
After we finally got the blasted thing up & running, time to let him have some fun: Boot, welcome tour, skip registration, "Welcome" screen, BAM... "system shutting down in 30 seconds" (you know, that cute window from Blaster)... And this BEFORE he had the chance to even look at the pretty cloud wallpaper. I hadn't noticed the cablemodem had been left on all the time... I suspect the error messages were Blaster hits, too.
So... I had a whole hour of fun and games typing "shutdown -a", killing MSBLAST.EXE, and removing it from disk, while I waited for the patches to download. Still no love, the thing kept coming in and killing the download process. Finally I remembered XP's firewall, spent 15 minutes looking for it, found it, and turned it on. 10 minutes later, everything was running smoothly.
Even though I hate updating machines without any user interaction, I left that feature on in his computer. And the firewall. And an anti-virus. And I still tremble with fear every time I see his caller-ID in my phone
Assumption is the mother of all fuckups...
Read this, search for "complete access"
It white noises. :)
Anyone benefiting from their spyware will now be able to anser:
Customer: "How the hell do you know I like that?"
Low-Life Advertiser: "Clariavoinacy!"
You're forgetting something: It runs Windows (pardon me: MS Pocket PC), so there isn't much power left for anything else ;-)
The XScales are power hogs, and WinCE was never battery-friendly to begin with.
Subject half-right, text wrong:
The whole world (except for the US and 2 or 3 other countries) uses the same mobile phone tecnology: GSM 900/1800; this includes Korea, so the phone will be a GSM unit.
So no, it won't work in the US (*unless* it's a tri-band phone, in which case it'll work with US carriers which support GSM 1900); it'll work (almost) everywhere else.
It's the propulsion system: they turn on the headlights and then ride the photons at lightspeed ;)