Exactly. Great idea, but it doesn't solve a thing.
In the USA, ZIP codes are set up to send mail to the substation that is best able to DEAL with the delivery, based on staffing, mailloads, etc. and the ZIP+5 indicates which carrier's route it's on. I'm less than a mile from the closest station, but it's handling a lot of business mail. The station that actually delivers my mail is about 10 miles away.
And let's have every company in the world REPRINT its letterhead and advertising brochures to add the UMDC (Universal Mail Delivery Code).
"Aggregate" data by 5-digit zip code is not enough to personally identify you. It's like watching log-ins by IP address. You get liumped with everybody else who was watching Smallville or Buffy reruns.
Marketing is ESSENTIAL to support broadcast TV as we know it. Someone has to pay for all those production costs, and right now it is the advertisers. I like it that way. TIVO and other time-shifting technologies scare advertisers and TV producers because they see costs rising and revenues dwindling.
Companies waste a lot of money on advertising because they don't know what commercials "work" (or are at least watched). If they could get fast feedback, maybe the really stupid and pointless commercials would go away faster. If they could get better at spotting what ads are getting viewed/skipped on what shows, maybe the shows wouldn't go away for lack of advertisers.
OOPS: Should have been phisher!
Phisher (contraction of "password fisher")... someone who sends you an email with a plausible reason why you should to a site and enter your account information. Invariably has a "click here" link leading you to the phisher's site.
Usually the site is a close replica of the site the phisher is trying to get steal accounts from, except that the form informaiton is sent to the scammer's site. eBay, AOL, and PayPal are commonly phished.
"Data" in this case is defined as the first name, last name, and any combination of the following: Social Security Number, driver's license number, account number, debit or credit card information."
And do pfishers have to tell California residents when they have stolen their credit card information?
" You do not diminish your rights to your copyrighted or patented IP if you ignore violations"
True your rights remain unimpaired, but you seriously hurt your chances of collecting damages. You have the duty to mitigate the infringement by telling the other person to cease and desist as soon as you discover the infringement. You can't sit back and hope they make it profitable, then sue for damages.
Alan -
The goal would be to not just find similar code, but confirm the ancestry of the similarities, much like theology scholars trace the often dubious ancestry of old manuscripts using various analytical programs. You could load the database with examples from hardware and chip vendors, programming books, etc. as well as just source code. And you include the earliest known publication date of that code.
You can fairly quickly eliminate many false positive matches by eliminating "duplicate" code that appears in both SCO-UNIX and Linux after that bit's appearance in a published source. If two chunks of code both trace to a common ancestor like an AMD or Intel code example, it can be credited to common ancestry. If they are similar because they comply with a standard, it's because they were forced to be similar to comply with the standard. What is left would be original contributions, "stolen" code, and code of uncertain origin.
If code matches between SCOs' UNIX and Linux are flagged that are NOT traceable to "clean" sources and published examples... then it gets interesting. Who committed what, and when was it commited? When were betas available? Where did the variant show up first, and can they prove it?
Like you, I think that a lot of the secret sauce was handed over by Caldera's staff, or they had a/some programmer/s who were taking Linux code and adapting it to SCO-UNIX because it was easier.
IANAL, but I can google for web sites, and trade secrets are just that... no good unless they are kepr secret:
Bohan Law discusses trade secrets here, and they say: "Although you may be able to sue for damages someone who reveals your trade secret, once the cat is publicly out of the bag, it's impossible to stuff it back in. Your trade secret is gone. Its value is lost." So SCO has to sue IBM for EVERYTHING that divulging the trade secrets cost them. The person who innocently published the recipe for the secret sauce that the restaurant employee sent in for the contest is in the clear, and all further use of the recipe is free and clear.
"is this legal? Not sue until it's right for the suing side while ignoring it for years?"
No. If you are aware of IP violations, but ignore them because the violator doesn't have enough money to make it worthwhile, then sue them after they have spent time and money and made it profitable or if someone else has picked up the violations, it usually gets thrown out.
You have to have made a good-faith effort to defend your IP as soon as it was discovered to have been misused, even if it's sending a C&D notice and telling the offender to delete "X" and rewrite the code.
What's racist? If it were as commonly done by Danes as it is by Nigerians, we'd be lampooning the Danes.
What proportion of the 419-style spam do you get that is from non-African sources (checking headers, phones, etc. and tracing follow-up email sources too). I have had exactly THREE that had no African links... one claiming to be Cuban, via mexico, one Romanian coming from various European IP addresses, and one claiming to be Iraqui, but sending through a server in Ireland.
There is anti-plagiarism software, usually used to prevent plagiarism of high school and college papers. It tags the potentially offending sections of the paper being analysed and creates links to the probable source if they are online, or cites what paper they are in if it's something in their database. In essence, it does a very sophisticated "diff" against a huge database of text documents. turnitin.com is the site.
Why don't they load a database for an installation of this software with code that is indisputably "clean" like the BSD code, code that is clean because it was released in the GPL'd Caldrea releases, the Lindows code they used with SCO's blessings, etc. Put in all the legitimate sources Linux developers could have used as inspiration, then load the current distro OS source, run a comparison and see how much came from "legitimate" origins. The remainder is original work OR possibly bastard code stolen from a illegitimate source.
Do the same with SCO's code, rev by rev, and see if there is any overlap. If there is stolen code, there will be identical text. If something is the same in Linux and SCO's UNIX... check the dates to see who wrote it first.
With this method, NO ONE has to see the source code but the people running the software that does the analysis, and even they just load it into the database. They need not be programmers because they just do a "pedigree" check on the code. In fact they should not be programmers... anyone can ifentify a string of matching ASCII text. They would not be hindered by an NDA, and would be EXPECTED to testify about the results.
Do you realize what this kind of interface could mean for quadriplegics? Kids with cerebral palsy? Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve? And all those people with stress-induced medical problems?
"Imagine 20,000 linux hackers and OSS developers going to their local court houses and filing a small claims"
And imagine the judge saying... "wrong jurisdiction, please go to ___ court and fork over a lot more money to file". Small claims courts have VERY limited jurisdiction.
Re:this is killing Linux, OSD in general
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 1
"Basically it demands that any departmental pilot projects involving open-source materials be placed on hold given the 'ongoing legal concerns about the licensing of open source materials'. "
Check the software list of sourcefoorge and the GNU organization against your installed software base. A lot of GPL and OSS programs are widely used for various purposes... the GIMP, image converting, etc. Shut down ALL computers they are on and see what is left of the company.
Babelfished Gernam Injunction against SCO
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 1
"That of Bremen Linux specialist univention _ obtained regional court before that of Bremen against the SCO Group GmbH a provisional order. The order forbids maintaining it SCO?dass Linux operating systems illegitimately acquired mental property of SCO Unix contains and/or that final users, who use Linux for the associated patent right injuries can be made liable. During offence an order money of up to 250.000 euro threatens."
So they are facing a 250,000 Euro fine is they don't stop claiming Linux has illigitimate SCO UNIX code in it, and stopinsinuating that Linux end users could be liable for anything.
He was not advocating that MS convert their source code to OSS... he was merely advocating that they get some persons who have not grown up in the Microsoftian culture to vet the code for security and recommend changes.
As it is, they are "code-blind", because everyone has spent so much time working the Microsoftian way, getting the code to work, that they can't see the holes that will let it work in unexpected ways. You need a fresh pair of eyes that is looking for ways the code might be coaxed to work in a way the programmer did not intend.
"They could always hire people not only to implement features, but to do auditing, code cleanup, API documentation, testing, things which are missing from a lot of OSS development."
They DO have such people. The problem is that the company is driven by marketing-oriented management, with one eye on the stock price and the other on the market share. Marketing (short-term ones at that)can overrule any other department. When security or bug fixing gets in the way of release dates and sales it's like a Yugo in the way of a freight train.
haven't we seen a security initiative before, the one that was supposed make Windows more secure than ever?
Will this group have the authority to hold up a release if there are security holes? If not, they are just window dressing.
Is this group REALLY going to be able to get Microsoft to create secure code, or just avoid goofs so large they provoke those embarassing industry articles about lack of security?
Mistakes! Moi! They weren't mistakes, just non-standard spellings (in the USA), such as grey instead of gray. And some sentence structures I habitually use are avoided by most writers (they aren't wrong, I'm not wrong, it's a question of style).
But in programming, you can't use non-standard spellings. I've heard it doesn't compile very well. And if the developers were using the same programming tool, a lot of the trimmings would be automatically created and strongly resemble all the others. If you pick "includes" from lists of potential candidates, they are undoubtedly going to be alphabetical lists. Your chances of having them in a different order are slim to none.
Slashdot Mirror
In the USA, ZIP codes are set up to send mail to the substation that is best able to DEAL with the delivery, based on staffing, mailloads, etc. and the ZIP+5 indicates which carrier's route it's on. I'm less than a mile from the closest station, but it's handling a lot of business mail. The station that actually delivers my mail is about 10 miles away.
And let's have every company in the world REPRINT its letterhead and advertising brochures to add the UMDC (Universal Mail Delivery Code).
"Aggregate" data by 5-digit zip code is not enough to personally identify you. It's like watching log-ins by IP address. You get liumped with everybody else who was watching Smallville or Buffy reruns.
Marketing is ESSENTIAL to support broadcast TV as we know it. Someone has to pay for all those production costs, and right now it is the advertisers. I like it that way. TIVO and other time-shifting technologies scare advertisers and TV producers because they see costs rising and revenues dwindling.
Companies waste a lot of money on advertising because they don't know what commercials "work" (or are at least watched). If they could get fast feedback, maybe the really stupid and pointless commercials would go away faster. If they could get better at spotting what ads are getting viewed/skipped on what shows, maybe the shows wouldn't go away for lack of advertisers.
Phisher (contraction of "password fisher")
Usually the site is a close replica of the site the phisher is trying to get steal accounts from, except that the form informaiton is sent to the scammer's site. eBay, AOL, and PayPal are commonly phished.
And do pfishers have to tell California residents when they have stolen their credit card information?
True your rights remain unimpaired, but you seriously hurt your chances of collecting damages. You have the duty to mitigate the infringement by telling the other person to cease and desist as soon as you discover the infringement. You can't sit back and hope they make it profitable, then sue for damages.
Alan - The goal would be to not just find similar code, but confirm the ancestry of the similarities, much like theology scholars trace the often dubious ancestry of old manuscripts using various analytical programs. You could load the database with examples from hardware and chip vendors, programming books, etc. as well as just source code. And you include the earliest known publication date of that code. You can fairly quickly eliminate many false positive matches by eliminating "duplicate" code that appears in both SCO-UNIX and Linux after that bit's appearance in a published source. If two chunks of code both trace to a common ancestor like an AMD or Intel code example, it can be credited to common ancestry. If they are similar because they comply with a standard, it's because they were forced to be similar to comply with the standard. What is left would be original contributions, "stolen" code, and code of uncertain origin. If code matches between SCOs' UNIX and Linux are flagged that are NOT traceable to "clean" sources and published examples ... then it gets interesting. Who committed what, and when was it commited? When were betas available? Where did the variant show up first, and can they prove it?
Like you, I think that a lot of the secret sauce was handed over by Caldera's staff, or they had a/some programmer/s who were taking Linux code and adapting it to SCO-UNIX because it was easier.
ROFL! If I ever go back to Intel, I'll be sure to buy the shirt.
Bohan Law discusses trade secrets here, and they say: "Although you may be able to sue for damages someone who reveals your trade secret, once the cat is publicly out of the bag, it's impossible to stuff it back in. Your trade secret is gone. Its value is lost." So SCO has to sue IBM for EVERYTHING that divulging the trade secrets cost them. The person who innocently published the recipe for the secret sauce that the restaurant employee sent in for the contest is in the clear, and all further use of the recipe is free and clear.
No. If you are aware of IP violations, but ignore them because the violator doesn't have enough money to make it worthwhile, then sue them after they have spent time and money and made it profitable or if someone else has picked up the violations, it usually gets thrown out.
You have to have made a good-faith effort to defend your IP as soon as it was discovered to have been misused, even if it's sending a C&D notice and telling the offender to delete "X" and rewrite the code.
No. Intel's IP police would be after you for trademark violation. Especially if you used that blue swirl around it.
It's not meant to anything except protect Microsoft's profits. And let them muck about with your system as they see fit.
What's racist? If it were as commonly done by Danes as it is by Nigerians, we'd be lampooning the Danes. What proportion of the 419-style spam do you get that is from non-African sources (checking headers, phones, etc. and tracing follow-up email sources too). I have had exactly THREE that had no African links ... one claiming to be Cuban, via mexico, one Romanian coming from various European IP addresses, and one claiming to be Iraqui, but sending through a server in Ireland.
Why don't they load a database for an installation of this software with code that is indisputably "clean" like the BSD code, code that is clean because it was released in the GPL'd Caldrea releases, the Lindows code they used with SCO's blessings, etc. Put in all the legitimate sources Linux developers could have used as inspiration, then load the current distro OS source, run a comparison and see how much came from "legitimate" origins. The remainder is original work OR possibly bastard code stolen from a illegitimate source.
Do the same with SCO's code, rev by rev, and see if there is any overlap. If there is stolen code, there will be identical text. If something is the same in Linux and SCO's UNIX ... check the dates to see who wrote it first.
With this method, NO ONE has to see the source code but the people running the software that does the analysis, and even they just load it into the database. They need not be programmers because they just do a "pedigree" check on the code. In fact they should not be programmers ... anyone can ifentify a string of matching ASCII text. They would not be hindered by an NDA, and would be EXPECTED to testify about the results.
I expected to see the alien hatchling erupting out of the CPU.
Do you realize what this kind of interface could mean for quadriplegics? Kids with cerebral palsy? Stephen Hawking and Christopher Reeve? And all those people with stress-induced medical problems?
And imagine the judge saying ... "wrong jurisdiction, please go to ___ court and fork over a lot more money to file". Small claims courts have VERY limited jurisdiction.
Check the software list of sourcefoorge and the GNU organization against your installed software base. A lot of GPL and OSS programs are widely used for various purposes ... the GIMP, image converting, etc. Shut down ALL computers they are on and see what is left of the company.
So they are facing a 250,000 Euro fine is they don't stop claiming Linux has illigitimate SCO UNIX code in it, and stopinsinuating that Linux end users could be liable for anything.
As it is, they are "code-blind", because everyone has spent so much time working the Microsoftian way, getting the code to work, that they can't see the holes that will let it work in unexpected ways. You need a fresh pair of eyes that is looking for ways the code might be coaxed to work in a way the programmer did not intend.
They DO have such people. The problem is that the company is driven by marketing-oriented management, with one eye on the stock price and the other on the market share. Marketing (short-term ones at that)can overrule any other department. When security or bug fixing gets in the way of release dates and sales it's like a Yugo in the way of a freight train.
Will this group have the authority to hold up a release if there are security holes? If not, they are just window dressing.
Is this group REALLY going to be able to get Microsoft to create secure code, or just avoid goofs so large they provoke those embarassing industry articles about lack of security?
I gave up on my dreams of being a pimpled neck-bearded UNIX coder with no life. Karma whore is perhaps attainable.
But in programming, you can't use non-standard spellings. I've heard it doesn't compile very well. And if the developers were using the same programming tool, a lot of the trimmings would be automatically created and strongly resemble all the others. If you pick "includes" from lists of potential candidates, they are undoubtedly going to be alphabetical lists. Your chances of having them in a different order are slim to none.
I've become a karma whore instead of an anti-commerce net-terrorist.
And there is no mechanism in ANY company that can ensure that the contributions of someone are truly their own.