You get turned down flirting with women? Wow, that's bad. Normally I don't get turned down until I ask them back to my place so I can show 'em how to use a joystick...
I have no legal training, but I would imagine that if every writer or contributor that has been infringed upon by Caldera's added licencing took their particular issue (as in code or code snippets, or project(s)) to court against Caldera, they might not be nearly so easily combined into a class action lawsuit. Individual projects might still have to have the multiple contributors filing as one suit, but if the kernel SMP team, the filesystems team, the IDE team, the memory allocation team, and the like could each launch lawsuits, as well as the authors of every one of the GNU utilities, Samba, the NFS services, and the like, it bring lots of extra lawsuits, lawsuits that might not be covered by the stock options that Boies et al. are receiving as payment. The only real downside would be if the copyright holders on the projects lost. An upside is that once one suit is ruled favourably for the author, that sets precedent that can be used in the other cases, regarding Caldera's actions.
Again, I don't have any legal training, though I did have to fight a criminal traffic ticket once...
What's funny about SCO having hired "bodyguards" is that now someone could view attempting to maim or kill a SCO exec as a challenge, and actually take up that challenge. The "oh, you're so important that you now need body guards, you're important enough to go after" mentality...
I've never purchased a mainstream commercial distribution. Other than dabbling with demonstrative releases of RedHat and SuSE for about a total of six months, I've used Slackware or Debian since I started using Linux back in 1996. I think that once I ordered a Cheapbytes CD of Slackware for 8.0 or something like that, but it was less than the cost of a large coke at a fast food restaurant.
So, Darl, faced with a product that is very often free to hobbyists or companies willing to support themselves internally is going to gain revenue from this how? If I never touch anything to do with Caldera Systems, the only way that they're going to even know that I have my copies of Linux would be to stage a BSA-style raid on my home or business, count the machines, audit the software, and the like.
This does scare me. Not in the sense that I think that Darl and his other brother Darl will win, but that if they were to somehow squeak by with a court victory, establish precedent, and continue winning court victories that somehow gave them rights to that which they shouldn't otherwise, what's to stop them from being even more asinine?
I have no love for the company whose operating system has the most market share, but at various times, when working for computer companies that sold product, if something were amiss, an actually friendly representative would come in and identify himself as a rep, tell us how the product distribution for the product (usually the OS) worked (like, minimum pricing put into the wholesale distribution), cite our ad if the price were lower than the initial wholesale price, and if something were amiss, he'd inspect the product. A couple of times we had forged copies, which was noticeable on the booklets on further inspection, and he traded us all of the faulty software for good copies, all that he wanted to know was where we got them. No fuss, no muss, no lawyers talking, even for software that would be fairly easy to prove as illegitimate if it came down to it.
Compare this to Caldera in their approach. They're huffing and puffing about $600+ licencing fees for the OS. Everone who bends and pays encourages them to seek out everyone else that has "product", regardless of origin. They'll be querying webservers, looking at NAT and Masquerade data that they find, and making a big pain out of themselves. They'll call the FBI to attempt to root out the "piracy" of what they "own" in BSA-style raids. They'll make a mockery of the criminal justice system the same as they have the civil system.
Yes, I'm being extremely paranoid, but a little paranoia now is better than a terrible situation later, especially if ways to combat this can be found.
A road is a passive structure. It is built to be use without fee by the community that it serves. There is no subscription to the road. Anyone can drive on it assuming that they meet the qualifications to obtain a license. Any law enforcement on the road is there for the purposes of ensuring safe driving (though I don't agree with all of the restrictions). Maintenance is provided by the government, but the concept of a road is one that requires installation and structural maintenance. Not routers, switches, IP addresses, unless they're for backend maintenance. The driver simply drives.
We also receive federal money to assist with the maintenance of many of our roads, for the purposes of fostering national defence through the ability to move war materials through the country.
The trouble with dealing with "The will of the people" is that it's rarely actually in the best interests of everyone. It's usually in the best interests of a small group, who doesn't accept things being different than their notions of the way the world works. So, rather than take a live-and-let-live approach, they feel a need to enforce their ideas upon others, even of the original ideas of the others do not harm those that wish to remain unharmed.
We live in a sad world when people feel a need to tell others what to do, think, or feel when what is already done, thought, or felt isn't really a problem.
Is the job of the government to provide high speed internet service to homes? As much as I like the sound of inexpensive bandwidth, if it's directly the government's service, there is a large potential for filtering or other restrictions on access, and a much greater threat for logging one's activities. I do not like this idea.
The government does not provide phone infrastructure, it instead regulates the companies that provide telephone service. I wouldn't want my telephone, television, newspaper, radio, or internet access to come from one extremely powerful group who would have a significant interest in manipulating information for their own benefit.
Worse than that, Broadcom is likely responsible for using Linux and not releasing their modifications to the source code to those who have purchased the product (a base station) containing the GPLed code. So on top of Broadcom playing a marketing game, we have more reason to hate them.
I suspect that Broadcom's network interface module wasn't written right, and rather than be a complete non-depending piece of code, it depends on something that's been GPLed or is part of the kernel itself, and that would mean that it too would have to be GPL. If it is GPLed, then Broadcom would be releasing specifications on their devices that they don't want us to have, and we wouldn't have to pay for the base station anymore, just for the card...
I had the interesting experience of working for a company back in 2001 that closed and couldn't pay me for the vacation that I'd accrued, so the office manager/CFO and I made a deal where I'd write off the time in exchange for the company video projector. It was probably the best deal that I'd made working with them.
I use a Philips Proscreen 4100, which is an older 800x600 projector that puts out 300 ANSI Lumens. It's not nearly as bright as modern projectors (coming in at 1000+ Lumens), but the 4000 hour lamp is nice.
I'll never go back to a TV. Even if my projector breaks and I am forced to replace it outright, I'll buy the $1500 projector again. The furniture savings, the space savings, and the ability to have a room not centered around a glass TV, but still able to become a multimedia room with 100" of screen with the pull of a retractable screen far outweighs having a fixed TV. I can take it wherever I go, and it'll fit in the trunk of my friend's Mazda Miata. I can show up to 200" diagonal picture from a computer, composite, or S-Video source on any wall suitable.
For versatility, picture size, and general niftiness, I don't think that you can beat a video projector.
I'd imagine that the thickness of atmosphere at a given point would have beneficial effects too, so if somehow a transmitter did end up being pointed just below the horizon of the Earth, it would be diluted similar to how sunlight is less powerful during a sunrise or sunset.
"microsoft vs. ibm round 1 let the carnage ensue. Ever seen mtc celeb showdown. Big Blue Vesrsus Big Red(?)"
Remember, if this were to happen, it wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft and IBM were in court against each other, or had business relations issues. Windows and OS/2 come to mind, and while IBM's loss originally is annoying, I somehow doubt that IBM is specifically out for retribution if they were to go to blows. IBM has their market, and while they don't have the PC market, "clones" have proven time and time again that there is no major profit in personal computer hardware.
Let me rephrase that: There is no profit in personal computer hardware. Many small computer companies squeak by on hardware sales, and usually only if they carry the latest video card or overclockable motherboard, or if they cater to businesses that need computers in spurts, ordering 30 here, 30 there. Apple's ideas of building a very nice and fairly expensive computer don't work very well right now on a large scale since people are used to computers being $500. They don't want to pay more than that for the original machine. Gamers are a different breed, which is why the Shuttle PC, Alienware, MSI, ASUS, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, and other such companies are still successful. But, they still have a highly volitile market to work in, and one major slipup and they'll be resting with 3dFX/STB, or absorbed like Cyrix.
IBM doesn't seem to care for that market. They seem to be more interested in providing large scale computing and the services needed to run that. Sometimes it's PCs. Sometimes they run Windows. Sometimes they run OS/2. Apparently now sometimes they'll be running Linux. Their corporate strategy makes a lot more sense, considering the hardware and support side.
Microsoft is unfortunately the leader on the desktop. They're also one of the most reviled companies in the world, as everyone who has had to deal with random freezes, Blue Screens of Death, and the like, has understood that they're running Windows. They don't associate their computer crashes with the hardware, they associate it with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Many that I know feel trapped, like they are forced to use a piece of shit, and have no solutions. I somehow doubt that IBM wants this dubious distinction, and is happy to let someone else be hated.
Something that I've reasoned through, with my lack of engineering degree, is that the last satellite could be fixed so that in order to transmit, it must receive correct transmissions from strategically placed tight-beam ground signal transmitters. If it loses reception, it stops microwaving power. This way, if it drifts off course or is mis-aimed it won't send anything. Also, if someone were to attempt to take control of the satellite to aim it at a city or target, the satellite's repositioning would cause it to lose contact with it's ground-based failsafes and not function. It would also require a secure method of communicating from the ground, which would have to be kept secret so someone couldn't build their own ground based transmitters, but this would prevent the mis-alignment from being hazardous. If my idea works, which I have absolutely no idea if any of this is feasible.
"The embedded market is much larger than the PDA market. Think cellphones. Think consumer electronics, connected DVD players, industrial products, etc..." all running Windows, as far as the eye can see! My god, it'll be beautiful!
SCO Takes on IBM, that is bad from many people's perspectives, but the media doesn't take notice, so many others don't care.
SCO takes on Sun, SGI, and the like, and no one really cares beyond the computer enthusiasts.
RedHat files against SCO. No one who isn't a computer enthusiast seems to really notice.
IBM counterfiles against SCO, which is slightly noticed in SCO stock, but probably more because it's IBM suing, rather than what the suit is about.
What's going to happen when SCO starts actively taking on the very media that has publicized it's side but not publicized the other side of the argument? Remember, many media conglomerations own movie studios, television networks, newspapers, internet sites, and radio stations, or if they don't own them outright, they have a significant financial interest and a certain level of control. If the media feels that it's being attacked, it's in a great position to do two things: show the stories in a positive light for others that are also being attacked, and to villianize the attacker. This has the potential to be the single largest screwup that Caldera International d/b/a SCO Inc has committed.
This one I'm actually interested to see play out. This is going to be fun to watch.
"The next bunch of terrorists won't need airplanes, they'll just hack into the targeting computers of your transmitters and have the beam take a walk through the nearest city."
Well, you could always build a failsafe into the satellite, where ground based communication over a tight beam is required for the satellite to transmit to the Earth, and if the satellite orientation doesn't remain right, it'll break contact with the ground stations and auto-shutoff. To avoid someone hacking the system with extra equipment, you'd have to keep the orientation of the ground stations, the communications protocols, and the messages themselves secret, but the idea has some merit.
Well, specifically Audacity hiccups a lot. It does this on both my Celeron 700 machine and on my 2.0GHz Athlon. Also, some aspects of using it feel clunky. Most of these are UI related, so I know that they're personal preference, but it's difficult to describe.
I was not aware of Ardour, I'll have to give it a try and tell you what happens.
"The Guy Fawkes day was a frightning day for all of us British."
How do you know? I somehow doubt that you were there, and obviously some people were helping Guy Fawkes, or at least in agreement with him. It's rare to find everyone on one side of an agreement.
"There's a ton of bad closed source software too. For the most part it ends up in the $4.99 bin, if it ever gets into stores at all."
Yeah, in the open source environment, it gets turned into the only video player that we have for months on end...
For the humour-impaired, I'm joking. On a serious note though, the state of affairs with many of the audio programs that I've tried working with aren't particularly rhobust. I can't complain too much, after all they aren't charging me, but I'd even strongly consider paying for some professional multichannel audio recording software, if it were within justification. Right now, the open-source tools aren't completely horrid, but they do lack either the reliability or the features that would be particularly useful.
Slashdot Mirror
"1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!" (from signature)
Wow, that looks to be as good of a business plan as Caldera has...
You get turned down flirting with women? Wow, that's bad. Normally I don't get turned down until I ask them back to my place so I can show 'em how to use a joystick...
I have no legal training, but I would imagine that if every writer or contributor that has been infringed upon by Caldera's added licencing took their particular issue (as in code or code snippets, or project(s)) to court against Caldera, they might not be nearly so easily combined into a class action lawsuit. Individual projects might still have to have the multiple contributors filing as one suit, but if the kernel SMP team, the filesystems team, the IDE team, the memory allocation team, and the like could each launch lawsuits, as well as the authors of every one of the GNU utilities, Samba, the NFS services, and the like, it bring lots of extra lawsuits, lawsuits that might not be covered by the stock options that Boies et al. are receiving as payment. The only real downside would be if the copyright holders on the projects lost. An upside is that once one suit is ruled favourably for the author, that sets precedent that can be used in the other cases, regarding Caldera's actions.
Again, I don't have any legal training, though I did have to fight a criminal traffic ticket once...
I wonder what his religion grade was.
For some reason, I don't think of BYU when I think of great bachelor of science programs...
What's funny about SCO having hired "bodyguards" is that now someone could view attempting to maim or kill a SCO exec as a challenge, and actually take up that challenge. The "oh, you're so important that you now need body guards, you're important enough to go after" mentality...
"From my memory, everything they produced was the most complete, functional, secure and final solution around."
I guess that depends on your definition of "final solution"...
I've never purchased a mainstream commercial distribution. Other than dabbling with demonstrative releases of RedHat and SuSE for about a total of six months, I've used Slackware or Debian since I started using Linux back in 1996. I think that once I ordered a Cheapbytes CD of Slackware for 8.0 or something like that, but it was less than the cost of a large coke at a fast food restaurant.
So, Darl, faced with a product that is very often free to hobbyists or companies willing to support themselves internally is going to gain revenue from this how? If I never touch anything to do with Caldera Systems, the only way that they're going to even know that I have my copies of Linux would be to stage a BSA-style raid on my home or business, count the machines, audit the software, and the like.
This does scare me. Not in the sense that I think that Darl and his other brother Darl will win, but that if they were to somehow squeak by with a court victory, establish precedent, and continue winning court victories that somehow gave them rights to that which they shouldn't otherwise, what's to stop them from being even more asinine?
I have no love for the company whose operating system has the most market share, but at various times, when working for computer companies that sold product, if something were amiss, an actually friendly representative would come in and identify himself as a rep, tell us how the product distribution for the product (usually the OS) worked (like, minimum pricing put into the wholesale distribution), cite our ad if the price were lower than the initial wholesale price, and if something were amiss, he'd inspect the product. A couple of times we had forged copies, which was noticeable on the booklets on further inspection, and he traded us all of the faulty software for good copies, all that he wanted to know was where we got them. No fuss, no muss, no lawyers talking, even for software that would be fairly easy to prove as illegitimate if it came down to it.
Compare this to Caldera in their approach. They're huffing and puffing about $600+ licencing fees for the OS. Everone who bends and pays encourages them to seek out everyone else that has "product", regardless of origin. They'll be querying webservers, looking at NAT and Masquerade data that they find, and making a big pain out of themselves. They'll call the FBI to attempt to root out the "piracy" of what they "own" in BSA-style raids. They'll make a mockery of the criminal justice system the same as they have the civil system.
Yes, I'm being extremely paranoid, but a little paranoia now is better than a terrible situation later, especially if ways to combat this can be found.
If someone's stealing cable from you, are they sucking your COX?
...that narrow-minded politicians or lobbyists don't use a large deployment in a communist country as propaganda against open source.
Of course, taking a cue from the '50s (and from Dr. Strangelove):
"Mr. President! We cannot allow an open-source gap!"
With apologies to Stanley Kubrick...
A road is a passive structure. It is built to be use without fee by the community that it serves. There is no subscription to the road. Anyone can drive on it assuming that they meet the qualifications to obtain a license. Any law enforcement on the road is there for the purposes of ensuring safe driving (though I don't agree with all of the restrictions). Maintenance is provided by the government, but the concept of a road is one that requires installation and structural maintenance. Not routers, switches, IP addresses, unless they're for backend maintenance. The driver simply drives.
We also receive federal money to assist with the maintenance of many of our roads, for the purposes of fostering national defence through the ability to move war materials through the country.
The trouble with dealing with "The will of the people" is that it's rarely actually in the best interests of everyone. It's usually in the best interests of a small group, who doesn't accept things being different than their notions of the way the world works. So, rather than take a live-and-let-live approach, they feel a need to enforce their ideas upon others, even of the original ideas of the others do not harm those that wish to remain unharmed.
We live in a sad world when people feel a need to tell others what to do, think, or feel when what is already done, thought, or felt isn't really a problem.
Is the job of the government to provide high speed internet service to homes? As much as I like the sound of inexpensive bandwidth, if it's directly the government's service, there is a large potential for filtering or other restrictions on access, and a much greater threat for logging one's activities. I do not like this idea.
The government does not provide phone infrastructure, it instead regulates the companies that provide telephone service. I wouldn't want my telephone, television, newspaper, radio, or internet access to come from one extremely powerful group who would have a significant interest in manipulating information for their own benefit.
"America has been based on consumerism for the last 50 years. Doesn't that make it part of American culture?"
No wonder many people hold American culture in lower esteem than that of a petri dish...
Worse than that, Broadcom is likely responsible for using Linux and not releasing their modifications to the source code to those who have purchased the product (a base station) containing the GPLed code. So on top of Broadcom playing a marketing game, we have more reason to hate them.
I suspect that Broadcom's network interface module wasn't written right, and rather than be a complete non-depending piece of code, it depends on something that's been GPLed or is part of the kernel itself, and that would mean that it too would have to be GPL. If it is GPLed, then Broadcom would be releasing specifications on their devices that they don't want us to have, and we wouldn't have to pay for the base station anymore, just for the card...
"Some people see 'rainbows' with DLP projectors. Some people see excess screen door with LCD projectors."
Well, some people need to lay off Timothy Leary's activity of choice too. I wonder if these are the same people?
I had the interesting experience of working for a company back in 2001 that closed and couldn't pay me for the vacation that I'd accrued, so the office manager/CFO and I made a deal where I'd write off the time in exchange for the company video projector. It was probably the best deal that I'd made working with them.
I use a Philips Proscreen 4100, which is an older 800x600 projector that puts out 300 ANSI Lumens. It's not nearly as bright as modern projectors (coming in at 1000+ Lumens), but the 4000 hour lamp is nice.
I'll never go back to a TV. Even if my projector breaks and I am forced to replace it outright, I'll buy the $1500 projector again. The furniture savings, the space savings, and the ability to have a room not centered around a glass TV, but still able to become a multimedia room with 100" of screen with the pull of a retractable screen far outweighs having a fixed TV. I can take it wherever I go, and it'll fit in the trunk of my friend's Mazda Miata. I can show up to 200" diagonal picture from a computer, composite, or S-Video source on any wall suitable.
For versatility, picture size, and general niftiness, I don't think that you can beat a video projector.
I'd imagine that the thickness of atmosphere at a given point would have beneficial effects too, so if somehow a transmitter did end up being pointed just below the horizon of the Earth, it would be diluted similar to how sunlight is less powerful during a sunrise or sunset.
"microsoft vs. ibm round 1 let the carnage ensue. Ever seen mtc celeb showdown. Big Blue Vesrsus Big Red(?)"
Remember, if this were to happen, it wouldn't be the first time that Microsoft and IBM were in court against each other, or had business relations issues. Windows and OS/2 come to mind, and while IBM's loss originally is annoying, I somehow doubt that IBM is specifically out for retribution if they were to go to blows. IBM has their market, and while they don't have the PC market, "clones" have proven time and time again that there is no major profit in personal computer hardware.
Let me rephrase that: There is no profit in personal computer hardware. Many small computer companies squeak by on hardware sales, and usually only if they carry the latest video card or overclockable motherboard, or if they cater to businesses that need computers in spurts, ordering 30 here, 30 there. Apple's ideas of building a very nice and fairly expensive computer don't work very well right now on a large scale since people are used to computers being $500. They don't want to pay more than that for the original machine. Gamers are a different breed, which is why the Shuttle PC, Alienware, MSI, ASUS, AMD, Nvidia, ATI, and other such companies are still successful. But, they still have a highly volitile market to work in, and one major slipup and they'll be resting with 3dFX/STB, or absorbed like Cyrix.
IBM doesn't seem to care for that market. They seem to be more interested in providing large scale computing and the services needed to run that. Sometimes it's PCs. Sometimes they run Windows. Sometimes they run OS/2. Apparently now sometimes they'll be running Linux. Their corporate strategy makes a lot more sense, considering the hardware and support side.
Microsoft is unfortunately the leader on the desktop. They're also one of the most reviled companies in the world, as everyone who has had to deal with random freezes, Blue Screens of Death, and the like, has understood that they're running Windows. They don't associate their computer crashes with the hardware, they associate it with Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, or Windows XP. Many that I know feel trapped, like they are forced to use a piece of shit, and have no solutions. I somehow doubt that IBM wants this dubious distinction, and is happy to let someone else be hated.
Something that I've reasoned through, with my lack of engineering degree, is that the last satellite could be fixed so that in order to transmit, it must receive correct transmissions from strategically placed tight-beam ground signal transmitters. If it loses reception, it stops microwaving power. This way, if it drifts off course or is mis-aimed it won't send anything. Also, if someone were to attempt to take control of the satellite to aim it at a city or target, the satellite's repositioning would cause it to lose contact with it's ground-based failsafes and not function. It would also require a secure method of communicating from the ground, which would have to be kept secret so someone couldn't build their own ground based transmitters, but this would prevent the mis-alignment from being hazardous. If my idea works, which I have absolutely no idea if any of this is feasible.
I think that it sounds cool though.
"The embedded market is much larger than the PDA market. Think cellphones. Think consumer electronics, connected DVD players, industrial products, etc..." all running Windows, as far as the eye can see! My god, it'll be beautiful!
With apologies to Christopher Lloyd and the makers of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
- SCO Takes on IBM, that is bad from many people's perspectives, but the media doesn't take notice, so many others don't care.
- SCO takes on Sun, SGI, and the like, and no one really cares beyond the computer enthusiasts.
- RedHat files against SCO. No one who isn't a computer enthusiast seems to really notice.
- IBM counterfiles against SCO, which is slightly noticed in SCO stock, but probably more because it's IBM suing, rather than what the suit is about.
What's going to happen when SCO starts actively taking on the very media that has publicized it's side but not publicized the other side of the argument? Remember, many media conglomerations own movie studios, television networks, newspapers, internet sites, and radio stations, or if they don't own them outright, they have a significant financial interest and a certain level of control. If the media feels that it's being attacked, it's in a great position to do two things: show the stories in a positive light for others that are also being attacked, and to villianize the attacker. This has the potential to be the single largest screwup that Caldera International d/b/a SCO Inc has committed.This one I'm actually interested to see play out. This is going to be fun to watch.
"The next bunch of terrorists won't need airplanes, they'll just hack into the targeting computers of your transmitters and have the beam take a walk through the nearest city."
Well, you could always build a failsafe into the satellite, where ground based communication over a tight beam is required for the satellite to transmit to the Earth, and if the satellite orientation doesn't remain right, it'll break contact with the ground stations and auto-shutoff. To avoid someone hacking the system with extra equipment, you'd have to keep the orientation of the ground stations, the communications protocols, and the messages themselves secret, but the idea has some merit.
Well, specifically Audacity hiccups a lot. It does this on both my Celeron 700 machine and on my 2.0GHz Athlon. Also, some aspects of using it feel clunky. Most of these are UI related, so I know that they're personal preference, but it's difficult to describe.
I was not aware of Ardour, I'll have to give it a try and tell you what happens.
"The Guy Fawkes day was a frightning day for all of us British."
How do you know? I somehow doubt that you were there, and obviously some people were helping Guy Fawkes, or at least in agreement with him. It's rare to find everyone on one side of an agreement.
"There's a ton of bad closed source software too. For the most part it ends up in the $4.99 bin, if it ever gets into stores at all."
Yeah, in the open source environment, it gets turned into the only video player that we have for months on end...
For the humour-impaired, I'm joking. On a serious note though, the state of affairs with many of the audio programs that I've tried working with aren't particularly rhobust. I can't complain too much, after all they aren't charging me, but I'd even strongly consider paying for some professional multichannel audio recording software, if it were within justification. Right now, the open-source tools aren't completely horrid, but they do lack either the reliability or the features that would be particularly useful.