A grammer checker is the thing that is holding me back from a full fledged jump to an OSS OS. Otherwise, I love OOo. Heck, I had to do a PowerPoint presentation for one of my classes -- the professor didn't even notice that I created it using OOo's Impress. In another class we had to design a flyer, and turning it in as a.PDF really impresed her. Right now I am using both Office and OOo, with the occasional Vi just for flavor.
Hopefully I won't be stoned for heresy, but if MS office would run on Linux I would drop Windows like a red-headed step child. But I think Microsoft knows that and would be signing a death-warrent if they did that.
I look at that stat and think that it is good news. Why? Because that means that people that are really interested in IS and CS will be the ones majoring in it. It was yesterday, I think, that/. reported that only 1 out 7 IT professionals are really happy in their jobs, and the dicussion went to talk about people that had fallen into IT because of the money. Well, with these stats, it means that less people are are chosing IT because of the employment outlook and going someplace else. Maybe, for example, they liked computers, but really liked History. So instead of taking IS they chose history. Which is fine. It just means that those of us that are complete freaks when it comes to computers, where it be IS or CS will have the opportunity to recieve an education where our peers are interested in doing the job instead of the money. Further it also gives me more of an incentive to spend some time studying IS and looking into developing outside skill development. Those of us that actually spend time looking into getting some software or network to work will develop skills that the classroom can not teach. For example, I have spent time studying network security. My university does not really offer much in that way, but I have learned quite a bit about hacking, and defending against hacking. So in short, if you spend a little bit of time outside class and a potiential employer sees that you have a passion and have taken the time to learn what was not required it will be a great benefit. I mean who would you take if you were hiring -- the guy that spent time in the classes but really didn't care, or the freak that spent a year building a super cluster out of 386's, 486's, Pentium 1-4's? I can say that out of those that are in my University, only about 10% are excited about their subject in computers. One good buddy of mine is just doing it because he likes computers, but he doesn't know anything about them. It is truly commendable, but at the same time, having the passion to study and learn is the adantage that will help you to get a job in the IT field.
RTFA -- he contacted Google and threatened to sell the program to spammers. It has nothing to do with Copyright Infringment.
Re:David and Goliath and Goliath's big brother
on
SCO Aims For The Feds
·
· Score: 1
Very true, however, sometimes it is worth the trouble to make sure the company can't do it again. Even though SCO may be a gnat, that gnat can annoy you enough to pull out the DDT.
David and Goliath and Goliath's big brother
on
SCO Aims For The Feds
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
SCO wanted the general public to think of this case as one of David v. Goliath. However, it is becoming clearer and clear that it is not a David v. Goliath case at all. In the historical David v. Goliath, Goliath picked the fight. In fact Goliath taunted the Isrealites. The would-be David in this case is SCO, and SCO picked the fight. But it seems that SCO did not just limit the fight to one Goliath. Oh no. Getting cocky, while swinging its sling, and a limited supply of ammo, SCO has gone on to pick a fight with a couple of other Goliath's; some of the Goliaths are bigger and some are smaller. But now SCO has decided that by threatening to sue the Feds, SCO has decided to pick on the biggest Goliath of them all. But that is not the best part -- this new Goliath (we'll called it the US Goliath Family) has a family, one that has deep pockets and several methods of persuasion. Between the members of the US Goliath Family you have the FTC, with power to investigate and criminalize the actions of SCO; the FBI, which has the power to investigate rackateering and extortion amoung other things; the SEC, which can investigate the claims of M$ involvement and bring criminal charges for securities fraud; the IRS, which can look into the finances of the company and conduct an expensive and lengthy audit; and several others in the family. SCO has just opened a can of worms, and they had better hope that they are right, becasue if they are wrong, they will have sealed their own coffins.
The tables have now turned. Several government agencies have said this is a copyright issue. Now that there is a threat that government agencies will be dragged into the equation, there is now a huge financial incentive to look into possiable criminal conduct. The US government does not take well to extortion attempts. Perhaps SCO is doing this out the "spirit" of capitalism. Who knows. But one lesson that I learned quickly well growing up in the Wash, DC area is that when the government gets pissed off at a company things get rather unconfortable for the company. And forget the congressional support. When things start to hit the fan, you can bet that some General is going to have way more power in swaying a Congressman's opinion than SCO will.
Check out the AUP of the.kids.us. The NeuStar group that runs the domain has a content review procedure. When you apply for a.kids.us domain name you also get a content review of the data that you plan on posting. Further, any subdomain must comply with the AUP. If you screw up and post simething worthy of a.sex TLD, then they will yank your site. Further an interesting thing is that part of the.kids.us AUP states that you cannot link a.kids.us site to any other TLD. Simply put, once someone surfs into.kids.us, they stay in the TLD while at your site. Sites are also prohibited from exclusive content that requires access verification. Sites are banned from providing interactive services, FTP, POP, STMP, etc., etc.
So simply put, the way to deal with.kids and.sex is to have an AUP that has a requirement banning linking from.sex to.kids and.kids to.sex. Make the registar of.sex and.kids the same . Have a content review procedure for.kids, like the one in.kids.us. If there is a.sex found to be any linking to a.kids, it violates the AUP, and then it gets it.sex pulled for violating the AUP. The legal issues are rendered moot. In order to get a.sex or.kids you agree to the AUP. After all there are AUP on.tw,.nu,.de,.uk,.cn and.us. Some of them are residency requirements, but some are a whole lot more.
I noticed that my University employs the use of masking. While taking a test in the religion department at my University, I noticed that the air conditioner was a little loud. Looking around, I noticed that there were four speakers placed near the doors of the religion professors. I figured this was to provide privacy for the professors when counseling people, and so passer-bys would not hear any of the comments. Anyhow, since then, I noticed that in the new building that was just completed, there are a lot of these air-condition sounding speakers. It is a lot cheaper to implement a system where you just have a speaker replaying the sound of an air conditioner, than by going out and getting a system that creates white-noise.
Just another update -- they removed the link, as of 8:32MST, from the download page. The link is here. Which is rather interesting. Too much demand or did they find another bug?
And the big problem of the day is that you cannot download the file, because, well Microsoft is having problems with their website. Go figure. I mean, they say that the file is a critical upgrade, and then it is inaccessable. You would think that for the $300-$800 people pay for Office, they would at least have the bandwidth to get critical patches.
I don't think that Darl realizes that us Open Source folk would rather see him spend the next thousand or so years hanging out with Bubba in the Federal Pen. The idea that people want to kill him is stupid. Besides, after the SEC investigation, and then the Department of Justice investigation, Darl is going to have a lot of friends to hang with him from Microsoft, Baystar, and the Canopy group. Heck, I'm sure that they could have a nice wing in Leavenworth for software extortionist. Imagine the conversations that they could have?
If this memo is true, then there would be some serious implicications that would include jail time for both sides -- the impliciations reek of anti-competive behavior, violations of the Microsoft settlement (no suprise here), collusion, rackateering, and extortion. If it was just a licensing fee, then SCO would have to prove that the money was indeed a licensing fee and not just called a licensing fee, otherwise the execs could be facing federal time. Further, the value of the IP would have to be proved to be worth $86 million. If other vendors paid $5 or $10, or whatever, and Microsoft knew about the Linux asualt and then agreed to pay $86 million, that could constitute fraud and collusion. Depending on what M$ knew of the Linux campaign and what the money would be used for, that could mean rackateering and anti-competive practices.
If I were a Microsoft exec, I would adimately deny the charges. But the problem is that both grammer and basic spelling are missing from the memo. In particular parts, I had to wonder whether the writer even speaks English as his first language (words were consistantly mispelled through out the memo, for example, brought was spelled "brough"). But we don't know how the memo was presented and who actually typed up the memo -- was it done in house by Eric or was it actually typed by Mike. If I had come across something like this, then I would have cleaned it up.
Also it may be a complete fabrication. I had a discussion with a friend about fabricating an set of government documents stating that the CIA and the FBI considered the SCO suit a threat to Homeland Defense. We talked about the idea of placing a classification on the paper with "Top Secret" and the like with a note to "deny any allegations of an investigation." Did we do it? No, because we did not care to contract a liability that could land us in jail. But that is not to say that some other guy decided that he would do something like the memo. So it goes with out saying that although we are happy to see the memo, we need to be cautious until it can be deteremined whether the memo is legite or not.
Not only that, but SCO could be inviting a claim for rackateering, copyright infringement, and extortion. Which is nothing new that we have been talking about on/. However, it is interested to note that even if the companies cannot get their money back, there are criminal procedures that can be brought. Due to SCO's threat of legal action if a company would not comply with the SCO tax, SCO has opened themselves up for a claim of extortion. Since they are commiting it on a wide scale, they are also asking for rackateering charges. The question about getting money back is rather moot -- the second that a judge rules in favor of IBM, or Redhat or Novell, then SCO has contracted criminal liability. With criminal liability suit can be brought where triple damages could be sought. IANAL.
When I started to read the German news report, I didn't go into German mode, and was throughly entertained to read that a news organization was saying to SCO "Die." But it was just saying "The SCO..." Oh well.
The important thing about that above comment is that the scum bag made money by misleading children to sex sites. In other words he exploited children to make money. Capitalism is not a crime, but exploiting children to make money is a crime. Both moraly and legally.
What about the cyber squating laws and copyright laws? This can be seen from the whole mikerowesoft.com game that was played out. Assuming that you get a domain via wls, then you are just opening up a can of worms for a copyright, trademark, and cyber squating lawsuits. Just because you failed to reregister a domain name does not mean that you intended to forfeit your right to that domain name. There is a domain name that I would love to have, however, I seriously doubt that if I used the WLS service and my new ownership was contested that I would win.
Besides, what about identity theft? Some people use domain names as an online identity. I currently own two domain names which I use as an online identity. Assuming that some punk decided to us the WLS service, what liability would the moron conjure up? I can see a reasonable case for cybersquating/identity theft case for the WLS service.
If that was the case (where you could only buy a license if you were approached by them) that *is* extortion. And because they are only selling to people that they choose, they are either discriminating or extorting. If they are discriminating then people that have been charged a license should find out how many have been turned away and file a dicrimination law suit. If it is extortion then those that have been charged should file a law suit allegeing rackateering, conspiracy to commit extortion and extortion. You cannot go around and say that if you don't pay a license you will be sued and then refuse to sell to people that don't meet your profile. What I would like to see is someone that was refused a license sued because on reconsideration, SCO decided they needed one. That would be a great case in court. Then another legal front would be for people that have been turned away for a license should sue and ask the court for a permament injunction barring any legal action against them. Those that would be bring such a suit should only accept "indemification" if that word works, from SCO as the terms of the settlement. Just some legal idea. IANAL.
Looking over the other posts there was some concern about security. But the thing that I saw that made me bulk was the idea of WUSB hard drive. The problem I see is what happens if you turn off your computer, and your WUSB hard drive is on? Does that mean that some punk can then access your hard drive? Some things should be left with the security of a wire. I am all for innovation, but this is one area that I can see problems. Brings wardriving to a whole new dimension. Forget trying to hack the computer, just hack the hard drive. A hackers dream. And the whole idea of security being implemented on the software level -- something tells me that it means that WUSB may not be open source friendly. What vendor is going to want to release open source drivers for something that they most likely half-aced? Somehow I see a problem akin to the WiFi drivers -- few selection for those of us that want to use open source and use WiFi. A nice idea, but I nessarily like the idea of having my printer hijacked because some smuck walks by with a laptop.
I received a trojan horse message the other day. Having nothing better to do, and to figure out what smuck was passing out SubSeven, I decided to hunt him down. I was able to determine the computer it came from, the user name of the person, and the service provider. Nothing special for someone with even remotely adiquate skill. The intersting thing was the guy's mail server was running Linux AND he had everything open from SSH, telent, finger, HTTP, samba, SWAT, et al. I amased that this guy actually had every imanginable service running. But then again, the guy was passing out SubSeven trojans, so it is not too suprising.
The point that I am making is that with the popularity of Linux there are probably people out there that install everything under the moon, and then they don't relized unless they running certain services they shouldn't. This may be a situtation where vendars need to take steps to secure Linux off the CD, so to speak, to help increase the security well-being of Linux. Using a port scanner I found out that I had over ten services running on my Windows machine -- when I didn't have zone alarm running.
Now, I am a FreeBSD guru. I love the system, and at first it was nice to see that my system of choice was doing really well. But before I celebrate, I would like to see a test that is a little more scientific. Besides, I have to question the Windows being less than Linux. It sounds like more Linux FUD to me.
This is most likely off topic, but I was thinking about it the other day -- isn't it interesting that RIAA is stating that theft of music is wrong? If you just happen to look at the artists that RIAA represents you have to wonder about the legitimacy of RIAA preaching morality. In the music that is pedaled by RIAA you get everything from sex, drugs, murder, all manner of crime andtheft. I guess my confusion is why does RIAA expect the customer base to follow a different moral and ethical standard than that of the music that is being sold? I am not saying that all of the music represented by RIAA is immoral or amoral, just that the subject matter of some is.
Just a thought...
(Now the question: offtopic, troll or flamebait. These things are so unpredictable)
Slashdot Mirror
Hopefully I won't be stoned for heresy, but if MS office would run on Linux I would drop Windows like a red-headed step child. But I think Microsoft knows that and would be signing a death-warrent if they did that.
Let's name it Wormwood! Give the religious folk a hell of a time.
I look at that stat and think that it is good news. Why? Because that means that people that are really interested in IS and CS will be the ones majoring in it. It was yesterday, I think, that /. reported that only 1 out 7 IT professionals are really happy in their jobs, and the dicussion went to talk about people that had fallen into IT because of the money. Well, with these stats, it means that less people are are chosing IT because of the employment outlook and going someplace else. Maybe, for example, they liked computers, but really liked History. So instead of taking IS they chose history. Which is fine. It just means that those of us that are complete freaks when it comes to computers, where it be IS or CS will have the opportunity to recieve an education where our peers are interested in doing the job instead of the money. Further it also gives me more of an incentive to spend some time studying IS and looking into developing outside skill development. Those of us that actually spend time looking into getting some software or network to work will develop skills that the classroom can not teach. For example, I have spent time studying network security. My university does not really offer much in that way, but I have learned quite a bit about hacking, and defending against hacking. So in short, if you spend a little bit of time outside class and a potiential employer sees that you have a passion and have taken the time to learn what was not required it will be a great benefit. I mean who would you take if you were hiring -- the guy that spent time in the classes but really didn't care, or the freak that spent a year building a super cluster out of 386's, 486's, Pentium 1-4's? I can say that out of those that are in my University, only about 10% are excited about their subject in computers. One good buddy of mine is just doing it because he likes computers, but he doesn't know anything about them. It is truly commendable, but at the same time, having the passion to study and learn is the adantage that will help you to get a job in the IT field.
RTFA -- he contacted Google and threatened to sell the program to spammers. It has nothing to do with Copyright Infringment.
Very true, however, sometimes it is worth the trouble to make sure the company can't do it again. Even though SCO may be a gnat, that gnat can annoy you enough to pull out the DDT.
SCO wanted the general public to think of this case as one of David v. Goliath. However, it is becoming clearer and clear that it is not a David v. Goliath case at all. In the historical David v. Goliath, Goliath picked the fight. In fact Goliath taunted the Isrealites. The would-be David in this case is SCO, and SCO picked the fight. But it seems that SCO did not just limit the fight to one Goliath. Oh no. Getting cocky, while swinging its sling, and a limited supply of ammo, SCO has gone on to pick a fight with a couple of other Goliath's; some of the Goliaths are bigger and some are smaller. But now SCO has decided that by threatening to sue the Feds, SCO has decided to pick on the biggest Goliath of them all. But that is not the best part -- this new Goliath (we'll called it the US Goliath Family) has a family, one that has deep pockets and several methods of persuasion. Between the members of the US Goliath Family you have the FTC, with power to investigate and criminalize the actions of SCO; the FBI, which has the power to investigate rackateering and extortion amoung other things; the SEC, which can investigate the claims of M$ involvement and bring criminal charges for securities fraud; the IRS, which can look into the finances of the company and conduct an expensive and lengthy audit; and several others in the family. SCO has just opened a can of worms, and they had better hope that they are right, becasue if they are wrong, they will have sealed their own coffins.
The tables have now turned. Several government agencies have said this is a copyright issue. Now that there is a threat that government agencies will be dragged into the equation, there is now a huge financial incentive to look into possiable criminal conduct. The US government does not take well to extortion attempts. Perhaps SCO is doing this out the "spirit" of capitalism. Who knows. But one lesson that I learned quickly well growing up in the Wash, DC area is that when the government gets pissed off at a company things get rather unconfortable for the company. And forget the congressional support. When things start to hit the fan, you can bet that some General is going to have way more power in swaying a Congressman's opinion than SCO will.
So simply put, the way to deal with .kids and .sex is to have an AUP that has a requirement banning linking from .sex to .kids and .kids to .sex. Make the registar of .sex and .kids the same . Have a content review procedure for .kids, like the one in .kids.us. If there is a .sex found to be any linking to a .kids, it violates the AUP, and then it gets it .sex pulled for violating the AUP. The legal issues are rendered moot. In order to get a .sex or .kids you agree to the AUP. After all there are AUP on .tw, .nu, .de, .uk, .cn and .us. Some of them are residency requirements, but some are a whole lot more.
GPL = Viral License
I noticed that my University employs the use of masking. While taking a test in the religion department at my University, I noticed that the air conditioner was a little loud. Looking around, I noticed that there were four speakers placed near the doors of the religion professors. I figured this was to provide privacy for the professors when counseling people, and so passer-bys would not hear any of the comments. Anyhow, since then, I noticed that in the new building that was just completed, there are a lot of these air-condition sounding speakers. It is a lot cheaper to implement a system where you just have a speaker replaying the sound of an air conditioner, than by going out and getting a system that creates white-noise.
Further, it has been running FreeBSD since 19 February 2003, and prior to that ran Open/NetBSD from October 2002.
God bless Netcraft.
Just another update -- they removed the link, as of 8:32MST, from the download page. The link is here. Which is rather interesting. Too much demand or did they find another bug?
And the big problem of the day is that you cannot download the file, because, well Microsoft is having problems with their website. Go figure. I mean, they say that the file is a critical upgrade, and then it is inaccessable. You would think that for the $300-$800 people pay for Office, they would at least have the bandwidth to get critical patches.
It should have been labeled "How to anti-RIAA your Motherdrive." Wow, that was entertaining.
M$ Exec: "Check out the Big-O on this."
SCO Exec: "Dude, that is a huge Big-O."
Bubba: "I'll show you 'Big-O'"
Well, with IBM abandoning M$, I could by M$ funding a slush fund to attack Linux.
If this memo is true, then there would be some serious implicications that would include jail time for both sides -- the impliciations reek of anti-competive behavior, violations of the Microsoft settlement (no suprise here), collusion, rackateering, and extortion. If it was just a licensing fee, then SCO would have to prove that the money was indeed a licensing fee and not just called a licensing fee, otherwise the execs could be facing federal time. Further, the value of the IP would have to be proved to be worth $86 million. If other vendors paid $5 or $10, or whatever, and Microsoft knew about the Linux asualt and then agreed to pay $86 million, that could constitute fraud and collusion. Depending on what M$ knew of the Linux campaign and what the money would be used for, that could mean rackateering and anti-competive practices.
If I were a Microsoft exec, I would adimately deny the charges. But the problem is that both grammer and basic spelling are missing from the memo. In particular parts, I had to wonder whether the writer even speaks English as his first language (words were consistantly mispelled through out the memo, for example, brought was spelled "brough"). But we don't know how the memo was presented and who actually typed up the memo -- was it done in house by Eric or was it actually typed by Mike. If I had come across something like this, then I would have cleaned it up.
Also it may be a complete fabrication. I had a discussion with a friend about fabricating an set of government documents stating that the CIA and the FBI considered the SCO suit a threat to Homeland Defense. We talked about the idea of placing a classification on the paper with "Top Secret" and the like with a note to "deny any allegations of an investigation." Did we do it? No, because we did not care to contract a liability that could land us in jail. But that is not to say that some other guy decided that he would do something like the memo. So it goes with out saying that although we are happy to see the memo, we need to be cautious until it can be deteremined whether the memo is legite or not.
Not only that, but SCO could be inviting a claim for rackateering, copyright infringement, and extortion. Which is nothing new that we have been talking about on /. However, it is interested to note that even if the companies cannot get their money back, there are criminal procedures that can be brought. Due to SCO's threat of legal action if a company would not comply with the SCO tax, SCO has opened themselves up for a claim of extortion. Since they are commiting it on a wide scale, they are also asking for rackateering charges. The question about getting money back is rather moot -- the second that a judge rules in favor of IBM, or Redhat or Novell, then SCO has contracted criminal liability. With criminal liability suit can be brought where triple damages could be sought. IANAL.
"Die SCO Group"
When I started to read the German news report, I didn't go into German mode, and was throughly entertained to read that a news organization was saying to SCO "Die." But it was just saying "The SCO..." Oh well.
The important thing about that above comment is that the scum bag made money by misleading children to sex sites. In other words he exploited children to make money. Capitalism is not a crime, but exploiting children to make money is a crime. Both moraly and legally.
What about the cyber squating laws and copyright laws? This can be seen from the whole mikerowesoft.com game that was played out. Assuming that you get a domain via wls, then you are just opening up a can of worms for a copyright, trademark, and cyber squating lawsuits. Just because you failed to reregister a domain name does not mean that you intended to forfeit your right to that domain name. There is a domain name that I would love to have, however, I seriously doubt that if I used the WLS service and my new ownership was contested that I would win.
Besides, what about identity theft? Some people use domain names as an online identity. I currently own two domain names which I use as an online identity. Assuming that some punk decided to us the WLS service, what liability would the moron conjure up? I can see a reasonable case for cybersquating/identity theft case for the WLS service.
If that was the case (where you could only buy a license if you were approached by them) that *is* extortion. And because they are only selling to people that they choose, they are either discriminating or extorting. If they are discriminating then people that have been charged a license should find out how many have been turned away and file a dicrimination law suit. If it is extortion then those that have been charged should file a law suit allegeing rackateering, conspiracy to commit extortion and extortion. You cannot go around and say that if you don't pay a license you will be sued and then refuse to sell to people that don't meet your profile. What I would like to see is someone that was refused a license sued because on reconsideration, SCO decided they needed one. That would be a great case in court. Then another legal front would be for people that have been turned away for a license should sue and ask the court for a permament injunction barring any legal action against them. Those that would be bring such a suit should only accept "indemification" if that word works, from SCO as the terms of the settlement. Just some legal idea. IANAL.
Looking over the other posts there was some concern about security. But the thing that I saw that made me bulk was the idea of WUSB hard drive. The problem I see is what happens if you turn off your computer, and your WUSB hard drive is on? Does that mean that some punk can then access your hard drive? Some things should be left with the security of a wire. I am all for innovation, but this is one area that I can see problems. Brings wardriving to a whole new dimension. Forget trying to hack the computer, just hack the hard drive. A hackers dream. And the whole idea of security being implemented on the software level -- something tells me that it means that WUSB may not be open source friendly. What vendor is going to want to release open source drivers for something that they most likely half-aced? Somehow I see a problem akin to the WiFi drivers -- few selection for those of us that want to use open source and use WiFi. A nice idea, but I nessarily like the idea of having my printer hijacked because some smuck walks by with a laptop.
I received a trojan horse message the other day. Having nothing better to do, and to figure out what smuck was passing out SubSeven, I decided to hunt him down. I was able to determine the computer it came from, the user name of the person, and the service provider. Nothing special for someone with even remotely adiquate skill. The intersting thing was the guy's mail server was running Linux AND he had everything open from SSH, telent, finger, HTTP, samba, SWAT, et al. I amased that this guy actually had every imanginable service running. But then again, the guy was passing out SubSeven trojans, so it is not too suprising.
The point that I am making is that with the popularity of Linux there are probably people out there that install everything under the moon, and then they don't relized unless they running certain services they shouldn't. This may be a situtation where vendars need to take steps to secure Linux off the CD, so to speak, to help increase the security well-being of Linux. Using a port scanner I found out that I had over ten services running on my Windows machine -- when I didn't have zone alarm running.
Now, I am a FreeBSD guru. I love the system, and at first it was nice to see that my system of choice was doing really well. But before I celebrate, I would like to see a test that is a little more scientific. Besides, I have to question the Windows being less than Linux. It sounds like more Linux FUD to me.
Just a thought...
(Now the question: offtopic, troll or flamebait. These things are so unpredictable)
No, no, no! You have it wrong. The true, died in the wool copyright infringer will use Kazaa-lite!