More like chopping off the arms of a few people for giving you and 100 million others splinters, and probably getting a few extra splinters in the process.
Sending out spam is like dumping asbestos from a plane to get people to notice the "enlarge your member" banner flapping behind it. I would cheer if the plane was shot down after a hundreds of passes and millions of complaints, and accept the risk that occasionally a missile might fly astray.
I've seen a lot of SCO related articles going back to January and haven't seen anything claiming they did. The lawsuit was rather sudden I guess.
Sort of funny. SCO describes their relationship with IBM. I guess they forgot to take it down: http://www.sco.com/ibm/
They talk about working closely with IBM on OpenLinux and OpenUnix. And they talk about unifying the platforms and such. What did they expect was going to happen? Did they think the codebases would remain completely seperate after stating clear intentions toward the opposite while sharing the code with a third party? Even if IBM copied Unix code into Linux, who can blame them with all those mixed messages SCO was tossing around?
Off topic, but that's an interesting user id you have there, #666999.
If that happened they would probably just block users coming from slashdot. To which some of us would respond by saying "drag this link to your address bar instead of clicking it".
After some thought, I'd really like to see something like that. People could update their sites to say, "Before you leave, support linux by dragging this link to your address bar and hitting refresh a few times."
I didn't start programming until I was 9. Got a PCjr for free, with no software, turned it on, and after not finding a boot disk it would load up Cassette-BASIC from rom. What else could I do but learn to program? I had few friends, no game consoles, and little interest in doing homework or playing outside. Watching TV was fun, but it got boring at times. Programming was my only escape from boredom.
Put a kid in a situation where they can do little more than program, keep them interested, and they'll catch on really fast. They'll write games to play games, etc.
Although nowadays it's becoming gradually harder to protect kids from the temptations of the non-programming world. They sure don't make computers like they used to.
At least two of my CS professors are goat herders. The oldest and most experienced of them recommends that we never touch computers except to make money.
People don't naturally think of "The Open Group" when they hear the name "Unix". And people who buy products sold under the Unix name won't be disappointed to find that it wasn't made by the Open Group. They've lost control of the name and they'll never get it back. If they were allowed to sue anyone who used it, they could make it their new business model. But I think they have a chance of winning this lawsuit, since little I've said would matter in court.
But if they win it won't matter that they have no remaining customers. They'll have like 40 times their current market value to divide among their stockholders before closing their doors and retiring in style.
Windows has built in languages. Javascript, vbscript, etc.
Example javascript program. Run it with cscript.exe:
var con=WScript.StdIn; var out=WScript.StdOut;
out.write("Enter your name: "); var name=con.readline(); out.writeline("Your name is "+name);
You just can't do much with it, unless you put it into an html page and save it with an hta extension, in which case you can write pages that look like windows applications and run with full permissions. They're very easy to write but they can quickly become unmanageable if you're not careful, and many tasks require ugly hacks.
Otherwise kids can download decent compilers pretty easily nowadays. In the past, when most computers didn't have internet access, having a built in language like basic was all-important. I suppose that doesn't justify them taking it out though. Linux, on the other hand, usually ships with all the best programming languages.
It's become pretty clear to them that most users don't download windows updates at all. And many of their patches introduce new bugs or hinder functionality.
If they put a virus scanner into the operating system and make it auto-update by default, they can make it very hard for viruses to spread for more than a couple days, with the future possibility of reducing the truthfullness of the claim that all viruses run on Windows.
Another reason for the virus scanner may be to make end users feel more secure with their products, after all the nasty vulnerabilities that have been found and exploited in recent years. Most users who buy a new computer don't buy a piece of antivirus software to go with it.
Why did they buy a virus scanner rather than write one themselves? It's just the Microsoft way, like their street address, 1 Microsoft Way. Purchasing software and extending it allows them to get new software out the door faster, with fewer bugs in the initial release. This business model made them the billionaires they are.
I believe Martha Stewart uses a similar business model. She didn't invent hardly any of the products that are sold under her name, but with her coordination skills she's become a billionaire nonetheless.
Java's not dead, at least not in my work. Writing complex server software is a breeze in Java, and it gets faster, better, and more scalable with every release. The university I attend still teaches most of its programming classes in Java, although the first thing students learn here is VB.
You're right that it hasn't been appearing on desktops as much as it should. And Flash has more or less beaten it in the web applet market. But I have used Java to write server apps for my Flash applets to connect to, so it's not a total defeat.
And Java is facing increased competition from C/C++. The gcc compiler along with many open source libraries such as Gtk and SDL have been ported to every major operating system. So now you can write C/C++ apps that'll compile and run on any operating system with little or no modification, taking nearly full advantage of the hardware and operating system resources, while Java programs are slower and provide only a limited interface to the OS and hardware.
Hmm. I guess I've deconstructed my own argument. Java is pretty cool though. It'll live on in my work, if nowhere else. And it has several markets left to thrive in, such as application servers.
Microsoft blames Adobe Photoshop for the gamma problems. Photoshop stores the wrong gamma value (according to MS) in the PNG and IE obeys it, while most other browsers ignore gamma.
Save the PNG's from almost any other image editor and they'll look just fine.
Do they really think that they'll stop terrorists by asking them their names and refusing service if they appear on a list?
Like a terrorist is going to walk up to the counter and say, "Hello, my name is Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub and I'd like to buy a one way ticket from New York to Los Angeles, preferably on whichever flight has the fewest american infidels. Oops, did I say infidels? I meant passengers, good american passengers."
Terrorists just have to use fake names, or steal someone's identity.
As for soundex, it's a very useful tool for matching words based on how they sound. If someone asks you to search for "alan", you might type in alen, allen, ellen, etc. and still find what they're looking for. This is just a case of it being used in a foolish manner.
Unless they modified GPL'd source code, I don't see why they would have to redistribute the source or restate the GPL.
If I put Linux on one computer and wrote software that ran on top of it, without modifying any of the GPL'd source, I would have no such obligation. And I could sell that computer to someone, with Linux installed, along with my own software, and still not be obligated to release any source. Why should it be different if, say, I put it on a million smaller computers and sold them?
I have a feeling that SCO will never state to the public which of their code made it into Linux. Instead, they'll just try to prove it in court so that they can demand that all the linux distributors pay license fees. Since they won't know what code is SCO's, they won't be able to remove it to avoid the fees. If anyone does say which code is SCO's, they'll face charges of copyright violation.
Even if they don't get their billion they'll still try to get those license fees. But I'm certain that they'll be counter sued for multiple GPL violations. They can't force their code to remain in Linux yet disagree to the GPL, which is what they appear to want to do.
It's good to finally see a congress-person supporting what they feel is right rather than the opinion of whoever's giving them the most money.
Though this doesn't mean there won't be copy protection. It just means that if you download copy protected material, the DRM can't prevent you from moving it (copy&delete) to another computer.
Between steps 1 and 2, there should be "Recruit programmers who will work for free"
Almost everyone involved benefits from it somehow though. People who support open source software often use it in their day to day work, which earns them money. It's often easy to customize it or add new features. Working on it can be a valuable learning experience. They get to meet and work with other programmers. And it looks good on their resumes.
With the wealth of knowledge available on the Internet, there's really no longer any benefit to going to college except to meet people and get that piece of paper called a degree. And with online schools, you don't even meet people, not face to face at least. You're basically just paying money to learn at a slower pace and get a piece of paper that says you attended all the required classes. I've never tried an online school though.
I hope to leave college with a girlfriend and a piece of paper to show to employers saying that I know what I already knew before attending. I do make sure to take everything new that they have to offer, but most of it is just practicing old skills or taking non-cs classes.
You don't go to colleges to learn anymore. It's more of an initiation ritual you must go through to be allowed into the elite upper middle class, and possibly your last chance to find a decent spouse if you don't have one already. Attending an online college might only help you attain one of those goals. Again, I've never attended an online college so I can't be certain.
Re:Minor violation at most
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 1
Edit: oops. Make that a 200000000% markup, not 200000%.
Minor violation at most
on
SCO SCO SCO!
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Even if SCO in fact owns the code that they claim was copied, how can they expect to get a billion off of it? They themselves say it's only a couple hundred lines at most. That's nothing. How much do you think the author of the code was paid? $30 for writing it? Plus $200 for debugging it? Lets say he was drunk that week and got $500 total for the code in question, or about $2 a line. SCO's demanding a 200000% markup on that. That's not justice and the leaked IP has nothing to due with SCO's financial troubles.
They decided to stake their future on a small set of products and instead of introducing new products and services when faced with tough competition, they just ignored the problem for so long that now the only way they can profit is by suing their once most valuable customers.
Oregon is going to use GPS to track every car's pos... err... uhm... Gas mileage. Yeah, gas mileage. That's the ticket.
It's really just another way for them to waste money. Oregon legistlators have been on a vengeance strike for several months now because we voted down one of their measures. Mostly increased road construction and other unnecessary spending, 3 day school weeks for children, and cuts in various other vital services.
I don't see a problem with AOL pulling WASTE, if it was written by an employee during work hours. If not, disregard the following.
They own it. Their immediate disapproval shows that the source code was released under the GPL without the consent of the owner, nullifying the license (forgive the pun). They have the right to take it back.
If they had let it go for weeks, months, or years, then you could say there was implied consent, and there would have been good cause to go after AOL for violating the GPL, but in this case there has been no evidence that AOL, the owner of WASTE, had consented to release it under the GPL.
It annoys me when businesses depend on law enforcement rather than sound security practices to stop hackers.
I've heard of many incidents where honest (non-cheating) mmorpg players who reported security exploits in private were ignored for months and finally banned after going public with them. Some are banned before going public. Many of the companies focus too much on fighting the discovery and sharing of exploits rather than taking steps to reduce them.
I suppose you have little to fear from the RIAA/MPAA. Outlawing BitTorrent would be like outlawing ftp or http. Those guys are already facing embarrassment in that their arguments against p2p can be used against search engines and the internet in general.
Slashdot Mirror
More like chopping off the arms of a few people for giving you and 100 million others splinters, and probably getting a few extra splinters in the process.
Sending out spam is like dumping asbestos from a plane to get people to notice the "enlarge your member" banner flapping behind it. I would cheer if the plane was shot down after a hundreds of passes and millions of complaints, and accept the risk that occasionally a missile might fly astray.
I've seen a lot of SCO related articles going back to January and haven't seen anything claiming they did. The lawsuit was rather sudden I guess.
Sort of funny. SCO describes their relationship with IBM. I guess they forgot to take it down:
http://www.sco.com/ibm/
They talk about working closely with IBM on OpenLinux and OpenUnix. And they talk about unifying the platforms and such. What did they expect was going to happen? Did they think the codebases would remain completely seperate after stating clear intentions toward the opposite while sharing the code with a third party? Even if IBM copied Unix code into Linux, who can blame them with all those mixed messages SCO was tossing around?
Off topic, but that's an interesting user id you have there, #666999.
If that happened they would probably just block users coming from slashdot. To which some of us would respond by saying "drag this link to your address bar instead of clicking it".
After some thought, I'd really like to see something like that. People could update their sites to say, "Before you leave, support linux by dragging this link to your address bar and hitting refresh a few times."
I didn't start programming until I was 9. Got a PCjr for free, with no software, turned it on, and after not finding a boot disk it would load up Cassette-BASIC from rom. What else could I do but learn to program? I had few friends, no game consoles, and little interest in doing homework or playing outside. Watching TV was fun, but it got boring at times. Programming was my only escape from boredom.
Put a kid in a situation where they can do little more than program, keep them interested, and they'll catch on really fast. They'll write games to play games, etc.
Although nowadays it's becoming gradually harder to protect kids from the temptations of the non-programming world. They sure don't make computers like they used to.
At least two of my CS professors are goat herders. The oldest and most experienced of them recommends that we never touch computers except to make money.
People don't naturally think of "The Open Group" when they hear the name "Unix". And people who buy products sold under the Unix name won't be disappointed to find that it wasn't made by the Open Group. They've lost control of the name and they'll never get it back. If they were allowed to sue anyone who used it, they could make it their new business model. But I think they have a chance of winning this lawsuit, since little I've said would matter in court.
But if they win it won't matter that they have no remaining customers. They'll have like 40 times their current market value to divide among their stockholders before closing their doors and retiring in style.
Windows has built in languages. Javascript, vbscript, etc.
Example javascript program. Run it with cscript.exe:
var con=WScript.StdIn;
var out=WScript.StdOut;
out.write("Enter your name: ");
var name=con.readline();
out.writeline("Your name is "+name);
You just can't do much with it, unless you put it into an html page and save it with an hta extension, in which case you can write pages that look like windows applications and run with full permissions. They're very easy to write but they can quickly become unmanageable if you're not careful, and many tasks require ugly hacks.
Otherwise kids can download decent compilers pretty easily nowadays. In the past, when most computers didn't have internet access, having a built in language like basic was all-important. I suppose that doesn't justify them taking it out though. Linux, on the other hand, usually ships with all the best programming languages.
Well, one counter argument is that there were a lot of toxic chemicals and depleted uranium left over from the previous gulf war.
Someone had to remove all those dangerous uranium slugs from the crumbled buildings and busted tanks so that they could reprocess them and...
It's become pretty clear to them that most users don't download windows updates at all. And many of their patches introduce new bugs or hinder functionality.
If they put a virus scanner into the operating system and make it auto-update by default, they can make it very hard for viruses to spread for more than a couple days, with the future possibility of reducing the truthfullness of the claim that all viruses run on Windows.
Another reason for the virus scanner may be to make end users feel more secure with their products, after all the nasty vulnerabilities that have been found and exploited in recent years. Most users who buy a new computer don't buy a piece of antivirus software to go with it.
Why did they buy a virus scanner rather than write one themselves? It's just the Microsoft way, like their street address, 1 Microsoft Way. Purchasing software and extending it allows them to get new software out the door faster, with fewer bugs in the initial release. This business model made them the billionaires they are.
I believe Martha Stewart uses a similar business model. She didn't invent hardly any of the products that are sold under her name, but with her coordination skills she's become a billionaire nonetheless.
Java's not dead, at least not in my work. Writing complex server software is a breeze in Java, and it gets faster, better, and more scalable with every release. The university I attend still teaches most of its programming classes in Java, although the first thing students learn here is VB.
You're right that it hasn't been appearing on desktops as much as it should. And Flash has more or less beaten it in the web applet market. But I have used Java to write server apps for my Flash applets to connect to, so it's not a total defeat.
And Java is facing increased competition from C/C++. The gcc compiler along with many open source libraries such as Gtk and SDL have been ported to every major operating system. So now you can write C/C++ apps that'll compile and run on any operating system with little or no modification, taking nearly full advantage of the hardware and operating system resources, while Java programs are slower and provide only a limited interface to the OS and hardware.
Hmm. I guess I've deconstructed my own argument. Java is pretty cool though. It'll live on in my work, if nowhere else. And it has several markets left to thrive in, such as application servers.
Microsoft blames Adobe Photoshop for the gamma problems. Photoshop stores the wrong gamma value (according to MS) in the PNG and IE obeys it, while most other browsers ignore gamma.
Save the PNG's from almost any other image editor and they'll look just fine.
Do they really think that they'll stop terrorists by asking them their names and refusing service if they appear on a list?
Like a terrorist is going to walk up to the counter and say, "Hello, my name is Ibrahim Salih Mohammed Al-Yacoub and I'd like to buy a one way ticket from New York to Los Angeles, preferably on whichever flight has the fewest american infidels. Oops, did I say infidels? I meant passengers, good american passengers."
Terrorists just have to use fake names, or steal someone's identity.
As for soundex, it's a very useful tool for matching words based on how they sound. If someone asks you to search for "alan", you might type in alen, allen, ellen, etc. and still find what they're looking for. This is just a case of it being used in a foolish manner.
I think I first heard that in the form of a blond joke.
Unless they modified GPL'd source code, I don't see why they would have to redistribute the source or restate the GPL.
If I put Linux on one computer and wrote software that ran on top of it, without modifying any of the GPL'd source, I would have no such obligation. And I could sell that computer to someone, with Linux installed, along with my own software, and still not be obligated to release any source. Why should it be different if, say, I put it on a million smaller computers and sold them?
I have a feeling that SCO will never state to the public which of their code made it into Linux. Instead, they'll just try to prove it in court so that they can demand that all the linux distributors pay license fees. Since they won't know what code is SCO's, they won't be able to remove it to avoid the fees. If anyone does say which code is SCO's, they'll face charges of copyright violation.
Even if they don't get their billion they'll still try to get those license fees. But I'm certain that they'll be counter sued for multiple GPL violations. They can't force their code to remain in Linux yet disagree to the GPL, which is what they appear to want to do.
It's good to finally see a congress-person supporting what they feel is right rather than the opinion of whoever's giving them the most money.
Though this doesn't mean there won't be copy protection. It just means that if you download copy protected material, the DRM can't prevent you from moving it (copy&delete) to another computer.
Between steps 1 and 2, there should be "Recruit programmers who will work for free"
Almost everyone involved benefits from it somehow though. People who support open source software often use it in their day to day work, which earns them money. It's often easy to customize it or add new features. Working on it can be a valuable learning experience. They get to meet and work with other programmers. And it looks good on their resumes.
With the wealth of knowledge available on the Internet, there's really no longer any benefit to going to college except to meet people and get that piece of paper called a degree. And with online schools, you don't even meet people, not face to face at least. You're basically just paying money to learn at a slower pace and get a piece of paper that says you attended all the required classes. I've never tried an online school though.
I hope to leave college with a girlfriend and a piece of paper to show to employers saying that I know what I already knew before attending. I do make sure to take everything new that they have to offer, but most of it is just practicing old skills or taking non-cs classes.
You don't go to colleges to learn anymore. It's more of an initiation ritual you must go through to be allowed into the elite upper middle class, and possibly your last chance to find a decent spouse if you don't have one already. Attending an online college might only help you attain one of those goals. Again, I've never attended an online college so I can't be certain.
Edit: oops. Make that a 200000000% markup, not 200000%.
Even if SCO in fact owns the code that they claim was copied, how can they expect to get a billion off of it? They themselves say it's only a couple hundred lines at most. That's nothing. How much do you think the author of the code was paid? $30 for writing it? Plus $200 for debugging it? Lets say he was drunk that week and got $500 total for the code in question, or about $2 a line. SCO's demanding a 200000% markup on that. That's not justice and the leaked IP has nothing to due with SCO's financial troubles.
They decided to stake their future on a small set of products and instead of introducing new products and services when faced with tough competition, they just ignored the problem for so long that now the only way they can profit is by suing their once most valuable customers.
Oregon is going to use GPS to track every car's pos... err... uhm... Gas mileage. Yeah, gas mileage. That's the ticket.
It's really just another way for them to waste money. Oregon legistlators have been on a vengeance strike for several months now because we voted down one of their measures. Mostly increased road construction and other unnecessary spending, 3 day school weeks for children, and cuts in various other vital services.
I don't see a problem with AOL pulling WASTE, if it was written by an employee during work hours. If not, disregard the following.
They own it. Their immediate disapproval shows that the source code was released under the GPL without the consent of the owner, nullifying the license (forgive the pun). They have the right to take it back.
If they had let it go for weeks, months, or years, then you could say there was implied consent, and there would have been good cause to go after AOL for violating the GPL, but in this case there has been no evidence that AOL, the owner of WASTE, had consented to release it under the GPL.
It annoys me when businesses depend on law enforcement rather than sound security practices to stop hackers.
I've heard of many incidents where honest (non-cheating) mmorpg players who reported security exploits in private were ignored for months and finally banned after going public with them. Some are banned before going public. Many of the companies focus too much on fighting the discovery and sharing of exploits rather than taking steps to reduce them.
How do you plan to use the $10 I gave you?
I suppose you have little to fear from the RIAA/MPAA. Outlawing BitTorrent would be like outlawing ftp or http. Those guys are already facing embarrassment in that their arguments against p2p can be used against search engines and the internet in general.