Heh heh...first off I'll do the disclaimer of saying I'm far from being a minor...oh my. Thanks though. *smirk*
I believe you. I realize this was retorical. Just a bit over stated.
Now for my ponderances. I agree and yet find some things that still make me think as I read over your reply. Yes, it's all a question of responsibility re: guns and wifi setups. However, these are finished products sold to the marketplace. But can we really toss someone in jail because they SAID something was going to be finished or have more functionality?
I believe this comes down to the responsibility of the buyer to do his homework. If it is not written down, it did not happen. If you are makeing descisions based on promises, get them in writing. This is more than CYA it is simply just plain good business. If your project is significanly harmed based on documented commitments (thats what I mean by promises) from somebody then the supplier is liable. If you accepted the supplier at his word then you should not be in business.
I wish it was that easy though...to just fire someone if they didn't do what they promised. But we all know it's not. A big contract was signed, time has been spent on the project, you can't just say "you failed to deliver, you're fired". In theory, that's how our economy works. In reality...it doesn't.
Unfortunatly and fortunatly this is true. One of the problems with the software industry is organizations ability to grow and reduce at the whim of somebody. I believe projects should be planed and that plan executed on. I also believe if these plans are honestly concieved, with all parties honestly participating, with marketing adaquatly proving the product is needed then products will far more often sucessfully come to market. Employees who do not perform, especially if honesty is concerned, that harm a project should not get the chance to do it again. Companies are not necessarily always guilty. But, as in the New York Times case, they may be strong contributers to the problem.
[ Reply to This ]
Well then most sales and managment can be excluded from prosecution. You have to believe you are doing something wrong before you can know you are lying.
I will answer this with a rousing yes. There may be many reasons why that road is is so late. There is, however, usually a very small group of root causes. Is it late because the workers are handle hanging? Fire them. Is it late because some politician is playing with the funding? Vote him out of office. Is it late because some construction comany is playing games and wasting public money? Prosecute them. Is it late because the company significaly underbid to get the job and then did not complete it without more? Prosecute them.
Business in America has a real problem with honesty. "Buyer beware" is considered OK. This is complete and total bull shit. It is also complete and total bull shit that many americans think the government should give them tons of money for their misuse of a product.
Somewhere in the middle the concept of responsibility comes into play. By obtaining a business license in America you are stating you will play be some principles set down for the governemnt to inforce them. By bying a product you are signing up to use it in a responsible manor. This applies to guns, cars, drugs, toys and software. If you sell a gun that is defective and it harms somebody you should be prosecuted. If you sell a gun and the idiot shoots himself in the head with it, I'll let you of the responsibility hook. If you sell, for example, an 802.11b router with oodles of security features and none of them work then you are responsible. If the user does not bother to learn how to turn them on they he is responsible.
I contend that this is much less of a gray area then you think. If you promise me something then I should expect you to deliver. Otherwise your promise was fraud. If you tell me something and I choose to ignore it then I am just stupid and should not expect help from the government.
By the way, as a minor you do not have rights in this situation. If you were getting fed and had the roof over your head to build a model under quit winning and help with the dishes. She probably deserves it.
Hasn't happened yet. Now the supply is comming from India, China, Russia, Mexico, Vietnam. Companies will find them everywhere. Anywhere somebody can get a job because of this it will happen.
Because that is supposed to be their function. Companies are required to register with the govenment in part so the government can control them in the interest of the common public. This is because the common public cannot be expected to have all the knowledge required. Governments are supposed to work for the people.
Regulations on industry are supposed to restrict unethical practices done in the name of free market. A company cannot dump tons of waste into a river making many people sick. By the same token, government responsibilites include prosecuting for fraud.
It should not be so hard to decide what is vaporware and what is not. When released does the software do what it is stated to do; and does it do it reliably? Did customers turn down other vendors due to your companies promises and then you did not deliver? Were they financially hurt by your actions? Does your product reliably work? If it fails were you customers financialy hurt by your product? Did you fail to find a solution to their problem in a timely manor?
If the answer to any of the above is yes they you are guilty of misrepresentation. This is fraud. In the software world it is vaporware.
Laws should be their to enforce basic common concepts of right and wrong. If you lieing hurt sombody it is wrong. This means fraud is wrong and vaporware is wrong.
Our industry has institutionalized lieing as a basic principle. Boy that makes me feel clean.
I lived in Germany and worked for a German Software company for three years. The laws are much stricter in this respect there than here. It a larger degree it also comes down to the culture even more.
My impression while in Germany was that I could go into pretty much any business and believe the answers I got. Since being back in the states I have the distinct feeling that this is not so. It costs me more but I actually try to avoid the big consumer chains in america. The sales forces are usually badly trained and badly paid so looking for every bit of commision they can get. Reputation be damned.
I think the politicos in Germany are pretty much just as screwed up as here but at least they are trying to support small business in Germany. They give a lot of lip service to it here but make it pretty difficult in reality.
In general american companies work on the belief that advertising will get you sales world wide. German companies still seem to think producing a good product will get you sales.
Now you'll hear some screaming. I am convinced company success is irrelevent to most sales types. They expect it to fail and go into another company with commions soon.
But this is the american way. What about the CIA not finding information and various higher up, who want a point proved, just consider them incompetent becuase there is nothing to find. Is there a difference between this and the typical managment / developer problem in industry today.
The statement buyer beware should always apply. If you are being promised something then get it in writing. Until you do it is your fault. At the moment you have the promises documented it becomes the sellers fault of the product does not meet documented specifications. This is fraud. Until this moment it is just hype.
having said this, getting it in writing does not always work. Not everybody can understand all the consequenses of what they are buying. This leads to intentionably misleading and incorrect contracts / documentation that hurts customers. It is also often not possible to have everything checked out by an expert. It would cost too much.
Whether or not the government should prosecute fraud or not should be a question of scales. It is obvious Enron hurt large numbers of people who were not capable of understanding the situation. They should have stayed out in this case but Enron did delude them with "malice and aforthought". The fact that an Enron executive killed himself only upsets me because he was such a coward that he could not face the people he hurt.
Big salaries cary big responsibilities. These executive have sold out the american public. Our politicians for selling out to the highest bidder also. At this point is only when somebody completely screws up that they can come under scrutiny anyways. The government finally has an excuse to work in the publics good for change. Let it happen.
You must be a manager. You can write correct engish from the start but do not care about wether the product will actually work. And you post as anonymous coward becuase you do not want to be known.
As a software engineer I care first of all how the product functions. For the documentation I work with tech writers.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG and then WRONG. Software that is announced and significantly goes over its promised date or is release with significantly less features is vaporware.
Companies that listen to their customers needs and requests, make promises to meet them and then deliver have not produced vaporware.
Vaporware is just plain dishonest. It generally has been used for several different purples.
It is often used to gather market data as to what the customers are wanting. It is considered a cheap way to this. Why not do market surveys? Is the company really so cash straped that it cannot operate on a basic business level? Why customers continually do not see through this I will never know. They are being lied to.
It often occures due to a companies lack of communications paths. One hand really does understand what the other is doing or saying. I consider this to be the biggest problem with the industry and not admiting it is good for a company but basically dishonest.
Vaporware often occures because a company suddenly relizes a competitor has a good idea so it must also "be there" to prevent losing customers. This "smoke blowing" is also just lying to the customer. Just admit you did not think of this idea, give your customers a realistic date for delivery and promise it will integrate with their current apps from you better than the competitors.
This is far from and all inclusive list. But the biggest problem with vaporware is usually lack of understanding of the complexities of a problem. Ever wonder why bad executives go from company to company with no problem. Its because they can always blame the development staff for the problem. Today they are blaming it on cost and moving it off shore. Tomarrow they will blame it on lack of quality and move it somewhere else off shore. For engineer to say vaporware is necessary is very bad. it just hurts the credibility of engineers every where and makes the problem worse.
After reading many on the comments here I have a number of things I would like to say. First, for the last 16 years I have tried to honestly create solutions that are innovative and useful. At the same time I have tried to set expectations and schedules that were achievable. This can be a difficult process and is made more difficult by both the engineers and management.
At one company a number of years ago (who shall remain nameless), I was told by my manager to cut my schedule in half. This should be based on hireing 3 new engineers (doubling my staff). And then she said it did not matter if they were actually hired (we had no reqs for them) because it was expected that software schedules will slip.
I the other side I have not been selected for several very interesting projects as an engineer because I was honest with the manager about the chances of success on time. I would not commit to having a product on a data I knew could not be achived. On at least two of these I was brought in in the end to try and work some of the problems out. One was so badly done I left for another company rather than be stuck with it.
Since then I have been just and engineer on a couple of projects and back in the low level manager / project architect position on a couple others. I now have an MBA and more training in project managment. I still do not know how to adaqutly bring the two levels together.
The MBA tought me some basic business information which has helped me alot. It also tought lots about managing employees that I beleive are more contributors to the problem than solutions. And I think this is the basic problem with Enron Broadband screw up.
Enron is just one example of the problem. The whole dot com crap more of the same. Most of it starts with somebody who has an idea, builds a business case for it and downplays all the problems. Expectations to investors are set that are unrealistic due to lack of business sense. Investors put money into it no understanding the technical road blocks and set expectations back to the company that are unrealistic. A great deal of this goes beyond tacking a calculated risk.
In this industry, everyone has a grand story with a kernel of truth. Open source software is no different. I like it because I can take the source and solve my own problems if I have the time. However, a very small percentage of people can do this so it is at best a minor argument. Much of the claims I have seen over the years are out right fraud. I left companies that were good because a buy out changed companies from engineering to hype / fraudulent.
Big business in the US is based mostly on hype. To keep "market share" this is necessary. Enron Broadband was a hype. It had a core of truth masked by hype in a search for that all important market share. In this case it was also fraudulent because its hype was so large that it was out right lieing and not just streaching the truth. It occured because business in the good old US of A is about making money and NOT about producing products. As long os the multi nationals can keep paying off politicians this will not change.
My tirade is ended. All of you who stated you could go to jail if this is true, check your resumes. In the economy today getting fired is just as bad as going to jail. Maybe you are guilty.
Come on get a life. These are afterall benchmarks. Over the years I've had to run benchmarks for various reasons and you do absolutly everything you can to get the best result you can.
This is a very normal situation. If you do not run them yourself then benchmark data is never better than marketing hype. NVidia is no more guilty than any other company. As a matter of fact they are no more guilty than any person running a benchmark. You always apply you best knowledge and, whether you realize it or not, most of the time prove a predeturmined belief.
As several others have stated here I doubt if the contract between Novell and SCO would allow Novell to GPL the UnixWare source code. However, it would be up to Novell to prosecute for copyright and patent infringment. SCO states it has found code in violation of the copyright if the Unixware code. I think the question would be how much is in violation. This could very well deturmine wether Novell is bound by it's contract with SCO to enforce its copyrights or not. If it is a small percentage (less than say 1% sould do it) Novell can still probably claim it is not a violation under the rules of fair use. If the offending code involves ideas that have been hashed over in publications this makes it even more a problem for SCO. In all cases Novell can probably just choose not to enforce its copyright. In a short amount of time the lack of enforcment would put the code in the public domain anyway.
Over the years I have seen many standards. When I started in this game in 1987 AT&T had the System V Interface Definition and I spent time making sure it was correct on Unisys released UNIX systems. I was able to stop strange mods to the kernel based on the fact that they would break SVID compiance. This was good and there are many others. Having said that I think many here have missed the point of the article. STANDARDS SHOULD MAKE SENSE. Many standards make since for the company pushing it hopping to make licensing revenue off of it. Others just want their standard accepted because they are early and do not want to change again. If the standard is a pure effort of one company to make a buck then it is probable wrong for the industry in general. Do not rate this article on the basis of the TCP/IP network stack. This is a standard that has been modified to fit several times and is an industry wide effort. Indeed it started as a government effort. It does not fit the catagory of standards this article is referent to. Want an example? Read the PIGMIG Redundant System Slot API standard. It will work well with an RSS implentation on a particular system. I will not say which one because it is irrelavent. For other systems there are way to many generics and users of the sub system will need alot of knowledge of the particular hardware they are running on and the implementation will never be portable. It was rammed through by one big chip maker so they could claim standards compience.
This could be true. Just 2 or 3 years ago Lineo (also of the canapy group) in a very shrewed move managed to talk Motorola into investing 20 million dollars. The money did not go to Lineo to be used to increase business, it went to Ray Norda and others in the canopy group to buy at their shares in a loosing entity. The canopy group knows all about gullible investors.
There is another point in this statement that has not been discussed here. The letter states "Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers who had access to UNIX source code distributed by AT&T and were subject to confidentiality agreements, including confidentiality of the methods and concepts involved in software design." The courts have many times in the past rejected this kind of statement. This statement means that anybody who ever worked on UNIX source code, and codes again in other than a licensed UNIX environment has violated this agreement and is subject to prosecution. This denies a person his ability to earn a living and has been ruled illegal many time. As I have stated before, I learned many of my programming practices working on UNIX source code. My code still looks very Kernigan and Richie'ish. Lots of code I write will look related to what I wrote in this days. Am I currently copying any of it? No. Does a "for" loop I right still look the same? To a great extent yes. I tend to user longer variable names now but a for loop is a for loop. I am sure they can find sections of the Linux source code that looks much like some version of the UNIX sources. Probably some that is exactly the same for a few lines. SCO, I do not need the UNIX sources. Truth of the matter is I've seen much of them. They are just not that good.
I have seen pretty much every System V source base up to about 1994. I would seriously doubt there is a single line of code cut and pased into the Linux kernel sources. With so many lines of code there will be many that are the same. They will of course mostly consist of "contihue;", "break;", "}", "{", and other such stuff. There will also probably be a few such as "for (i=0' i
What I suspect is that SCO is claiming such code as the JFS, which I beleive was create in whole by IBM" is part of the UNIX code and under SCO license. If this is it then it should be interesting to see what the courts think about this. I have seen other licenses that have been interpreted as including all other pieces ever used with it.
Really! Makes money for me both in my full time job and part time cosulting on the side. Wow, build I better load Windows back on my systems and become a Windows Certified Engineer or whatever it is called these days. Secret to jobs and money is and always will be know what you are doing and know how to interview.
I think you had one sided advice. The real trick is to have a life. I enjoy computers and talk about them when in the right crowd. I also enjoy many aother things. Don't be one sided. In high school I played baseball, was a member of the chess, science, drama and math clubs. What I really liked to do was hang out in the drafting room and study architecture. I also was interested in cars and was in the process of restoring one. I also had a part time job and tried to go hiking or backpacking at least once a month. I did not fit exactly into any group but I at least got along with all of them. I would encourage the start of a computer club to scratch this itch. Just don't make it the only special thing you do in high school.
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Heh heh...first off I'll do the disclaimer of saying I'm far from being a minor...oh my. Thanks though. *smirk* I believe you. I realize this was retorical. Just a bit over stated. Now for my ponderances. I agree and yet find some things that still make me think as I read over your reply. Yes, it's all a question of responsibility re: guns and wifi setups. However, these are finished products sold to the marketplace. But can we really toss someone in jail because they SAID something was going to be finished or have more functionality? I believe this comes down to the responsibility of the buyer to do his homework. If it is not written down, it did not happen. If you are makeing descisions based on promises, get them in writing. This is more than CYA it is simply just plain good business. If your project is significanly harmed based on documented commitments (thats what I mean by promises) from somebody then the supplier is liable. If you accepted the supplier at his word then you should not be in business. I wish it was that easy though...to just fire someone if they didn't do what they promised. But we all know it's not. A big contract was signed, time has been spent on the project, you can't just say "you failed to deliver, you're fired". In theory, that's how our economy works. In reality...it doesn't. Unfortunatly and fortunatly this is true. One of the problems with the software industry is organizations ability to grow and reduce at the whim of somebody. I believe projects should be planed and that plan executed on. I also believe if these plans are honestly concieved, with all parties honestly participating, with marketing adaquatly proving the product is needed then products will far more often sucessfully come to market. Employees who do not perform, especially if honesty is concerned, that harm a project should not get the chance to do it again. Companies are not necessarily always guilty. But, as in the New York Times case, they may be strong contributers to the problem. [ Reply to This ]
Well then most sales and managment can be excluded from prosecution. You have to believe you are doing something wrong before you can know you are lying.
I will answer this with a rousing yes. There may be many reasons why that road is is so late. There is, however, usually a very small group of root causes. Is it late because the workers are handle hanging? Fire them. Is it late because some politician is playing with the funding? Vote him out of office. Is it late because some construction comany is playing games and wasting public money? Prosecute them. Is it late because the company significaly underbid to get the job and then did not complete it without more? Prosecute them.
Business in America has a real problem with honesty. "Buyer beware" is considered OK. This is complete and total bull shit. It is also complete and total bull shit that many americans think the government should give them tons of money for their misuse of a product.
Somewhere in the middle the concept of responsibility comes into play. By obtaining a business license in America you are stating you will play be some principles set down for the governemnt to inforce them. By bying a product you are signing up to use it in a responsible manor. This applies to guns, cars, drugs, toys and software. If you sell a gun that is defective and it harms somebody you should be prosecuted. If you sell a gun and the idiot shoots himself in the head with it, I'll let you of the responsibility hook. If you sell, for example, an 802.11b router with oodles of security features and none of them work then you are responsible. If the user does not bother to learn how to turn them on they he is responsible.
I contend that this is much less of a gray area then you think. If you promise me something then I should expect you to deliver. Otherwise your promise was fraud. If you tell me something and I choose to ignore it then I am just stupid and should not expect help from the government.
By the way, as a minor you do not have rights in this situation. If you were getting fed and had the roof over your head to build a model under quit winning and help with the dishes. She probably deserves it.
Hasn't happened yet. Now the supply is comming from India, China, Russia, Mexico, Vietnam. Companies will find them everywhere. Anywhere somebody can get a job because of this it will happen.
don't be so nieve.
Because that is supposed to be their function. Companies are required to register with the govenment in part so the government can control them in the interest of the common public. This is because the common public cannot be expected to have all the knowledge required. Governments are supposed to work for the people.
Regulations on industry are supposed to restrict unethical practices done in the name of free market. A company cannot dump tons of waste into a river making many people sick. By the same token, government responsibilites include prosecuting for fraud.
It should not be so hard to decide what is vaporware and what is not. When released does the software do what it is stated to do; and does it do it reliably? Did customers turn down other vendors due to your companies promises and then you did not deliver? Were they financially hurt by your actions? Does your product reliably work? If it fails were you customers financialy hurt by your product? Did you fail to find a solution to their problem in a timely manor?
If the answer to any of the above is yes they you are guilty of misrepresentation. This is fraud. In the software world it is vaporware.
Laws should be their to enforce basic common concepts of right and wrong. If you lieing hurt sombody it is wrong. This means fraud is wrong and vaporware is wrong.
Our industry has institutionalized lieing as a basic principle. Boy that makes me feel clean.
Hey my watch uses radium in the hand tips. Oh shit I am hording nuclear materials.
I expect to be attacked by the army any minute now.
I lived in Germany and worked for a German Software company for three years. The laws are much stricter in this respect there than here. It a larger degree it also comes down to the culture even more.
My impression while in Germany was that I could go into pretty much any business and believe the answers I got. Since being back in the states I have the distinct feeling that this is not so. It costs me more but I actually try to avoid the big consumer chains in america. The sales forces are usually badly trained and badly paid so looking for every bit of commision they can get. Reputation be damned.
I think the politicos in Germany are pretty much just as screwed up as here but at least they are trying to support small business in Germany. They give a lot of lip service to it here but make it pretty difficult in reality.
In general american companies work on the belief that advertising will get you sales world wide. German companies still seem to think producing a good product will get you sales.
Then I would say:
"Yes, give it back. Including your commision."
Now you'll hear some screaming. I am convinced company success is irrelevent to most sales types. They expect it to fail and go into another company with commions soon.
But this is the american way. What about the CIA not finding information and various higher up, who want a point proved, just consider them incompetent becuase there is nothing to find. Is there a difference between this and the typical managment / developer problem in industry today.
The statement buyer beware should always apply. If you are being promised something then get it in writing. Until you do it is your fault. At the moment you have the promises documented it becomes the sellers fault of the product does not meet documented specifications. This is fraud. Until this moment it is just hype.
having said this, getting it in writing does not always work. Not everybody can understand all the consequenses of what they are buying. This leads to intentionably misleading and incorrect contracts / documentation that hurts customers. It is also often not possible to have everything checked out by an expert. It would cost too much.
Whether or not the government should prosecute fraud or not should be a question of scales. It is obvious Enron hurt large numbers of people who were not capable of understanding the situation. They should have stayed out in this case but Enron did delude them with "malice and aforthought". The fact that an Enron executive killed himself only upsets me because he was such a coward that he could not face the people he hurt.
Big salaries cary big responsibilities. These executive have sold out the american public. Our politicians for selling out to the highest bidder also. At this point is only when somebody completely screws up that they can come under scrutiny anyways. The government finally has an excuse to work in the publics good for change. Let it happen.
You must be a manager. You can write correct engish from the start but do not care about wether the product will actually work. And you post as anonymous coward becuase you do not want to be known.
As a software engineer I care first of all how the product functions. For the documentation I work with tech writers.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG and then WRONG. Software that is announced and significantly goes over its promised date or is release with significantly less features is vaporware.
Companies that listen to their customers needs and requests, make promises to meet them and then deliver have not produced vaporware.
You're answer is far too simplistic.
Used for several different purposes. God I really need to learn to type.
Vaporware is just plain dishonest. It generally has been used for several different purples.
It is often used to gather market data as to what the customers are wanting. It is considered a cheap way to this. Why not do market surveys? Is the company really so cash straped that it cannot operate on a basic business level? Why customers continually do not see through this I will never know. They are being lied to.
It often occures due to a companies lack of communications paths. One hand really does understand what the other is doing or saying. I consider this to be the biggest problem with the industry and not admiting it is good for a company but basically dishonest.
Vaporware often occures because a company suddenly relizes a competitor has a good idea so it must also "be there" to prevent losing customers. This "smoke blowing" is also just lying to the customer. Just admit you did not think of this idea, give your customers a realistic date for delivery and promise it will integrate with their current apps from you better than the competitors.
This is far from and all inclusive list. But the biggest problem with vaporware is usually lack of understanding of the complexities of a problem. Ever wonder why bad executives go from company to company with no problem. Its because they can always blame the development staff for the problem. Today they are blaming it on cost and moving it off shore. Tomarrow they will blame it on lack of quality and move it somewhere else off shore. For engineer to say vaporware is necessary is very bad. it just hurts the credibility of engineers every where and makes the problem worse.
After reading many on the comments here I have a number of things I would like to say. First, for the last 16 years I have tried to honestly create solutions that are innovative and useful. At the same time I have tried to set expectations and schedules that were achievable. This can be a difficult process and is made more difficult by both the engineers and management.
At one company a number of years ago (who shall remain nameless), I was told by my manager to cut my schedule in half. This should be based on hireing 3 new engineers (doubling my staff). And then she said it did not matter if they were actually hired (we had no reqs for them) because it was expected that software schedules will slip.
I the other side I have not been selected for several very interesting projects as an engineer because I was honest with the manager about the chances of success on time. I would not commit to having a product on a data I knew could not be achived. On at least two of these I was brought in in the end to try and work some of the problems out. One was so badly done I left for another company rather than be stuck with it.
Since then I have been just and engineer on a couple of projects and back in the low level manager / project architect position on a couple others. I now have an MBA and more training in project managment. I still do not know how to adaqutly bring the two levels together.
The MBA tought me some basic business information which has helped me alot. It also tought lots about managing employees that I beleive are more contributors to the problem than solutions. And I think this is the basic problem with Enron Broadband screw up.
Enron is just one example of the problem. The whole dot com crap more of the same. Most of it starts with somebody who has an idea, builds a business case for it and downplays all the problems. Expectations to investors are set that are unrealistic due to lack of business sense. Investors put money into it no understanding the technical road blocks and set expectations back to the company that are unrealistic. A great deal of this goes beyond tacking a calculated risk.
In this industry, everyone has a grand story with a kernel of truth. Open source software is no different. I like it because I can take the source and solve my own problems if I have the time. However, a very small percentage of people can do this so it is at best a minor argument. Much of the claims I have seen over the years are out right fraud. I left companies that were good because a buy out changed companies from engineering to hype / fraudulent.
Big business in the US is based mostly on hype. To keep "market share" this is necessary. Enron Broadband was a hype. It had a core of truth masked by hype in a search for that all important market share. In this case it was also fraudulent because its hype was so large that it was out right lieing and not just streaching the truth. It occured because business in the good old US of A is about making money and NOT about producing products. As long os the multi nationals can keep paying off politicians this will not change.
My tirade is ended. All of you who stated you could go to jail if this is true, check your resumes. In the economy today getting fired is just as bad as going to jail. Maybe you are guilty.
Come on get a life. These are afterall benchmarks. Over the years I've had to run benchmarks for various reasons and you do absolutly everything you can to get the best result you can.
This is a very normal situation. If you do not run them yourself then benchmark data is never better than marketing hype. NVidia is no more guilty than any other company. As a matter of fact they are no more guilty than any person running a benchmark. You always apply you best knowledge and, whether you realize it or not, most of the time prove a predeturmined belief.
As several others have stated here I doubt if the contract between Novell and SCO would allow Novell to GPL the UnixWare source code. However, it would be up to Novell to prosecute for copyright and patent infringment. SCO states it has found code in violation of the copyright if the Unixware code. I think the question would be how much is in violation. This could very well deturmine wether Novell is bound by it's contract with SCO to enforce its copyrights or not. If it is a small percentage (less than say 1% sould do it) Novell can still probably claim it is not a violation under the rules of fair use. If the offending code involves ideas that have been hashed over in publications this makes it even more a problem for SCO. In all cases Novell can probably just choose not to enforce its copyright. In a short amount of time the lack of enforcment would put the code in the public domain anyway.
Over the years I have seen many standards. When I started in this game in 1987 AT&T had the System V Interface Definition and I spent time making sure it was correct on Unisys released UNIX systems. I was able to stop strange mods to the kernel based on the fact that they would break SVID compiance. This was good and there are many others. Having said that I think many here have missed the point of the article. STANDARDS SHOULD MAKE SENSE. Many standards make since for the company pushing it hopping to make licensing revenue off of it. Others just want their standard accepted because they are early and do not want to change again. If the standard is a pure effort of one company to make a buck then it is probable wrong for the industry in general. Do not rate this article on the basis of the TCP/IP network stack. This is a standard that has been modified to fit several times and is an industry wide effort. Indeed it started as a government effort. It does not fit the catagory of standards this article is referent to. Want an example? Read the PIGMIG Redundant System Slot API standard. It will work well with an RSS implentation on a particular system. I will not say which one because it is irrelavent. For other systems there are way to many generics and users of the sub system will need alot of knowledge of the particular hardware they are running on and the implementation will never be portable. It was rammed through by one big chip maker so they could claim standards compience.
And at the same time the only real competitor to SCO.
This could be true. Just 2 or 3 years ago Lineo (also of the canapy group) in a very shrewed move managed to talk Motorola into investing 20 million dollars. The money did not go to Lineo to be used to increase business, it went to Ray Norda and others in the canopy group to buy at their shares in a loosing entity. The canopy group knows all about gullible investors.
I use a well known process. Edit, compile, run, now what the fuck! Edit, compile, run, now what the fuck! Edit, compile, run, now what the fuck ...
There is another point in this statement that has not been discussed here. The letter states "Many Linux contributors were originally UNIX developers who had access to UNIX source code distributed by AT&T and were subject to confidentiality agreements, including confidentiality of the methods and concepts involved in software design." The courts have many times in the past rejected this kind of statement. This statement means that anybody who ever worked on UNIX source code, and codes again in other than a licensed UNIX environment has violated this agreement and is subject to prosecution. This denies a person his ability to earn a living and has been ruled illegal many time. As I have stated before, I learned many of my programming practices working on UNIX source code. My code still looks very Kernigan and Richie'ish. Lots of code I write will look related to what I wrote in this days. Am I currently copying any of it? No. Does a "for" loop I right still look the same? To a great extent yes. I tend to user longer variable names now but a for loop is a for loop. I am sure they can find sections of the Linux source code that looks much like some version of the UNIX sources. Probably some that is exactly the same for a few lines. SCO, I do not need the UNIX sources. Truth of the matter is I've seen much of them. They are just not that good.
I have seen pretty much every System V source base up to about 1994. I would seriously doubt there is a single line of code cut and pased into the Linux kernel sources. With so many lines of code there will be many that are the same. They will of course mostly consist of "contihue;", "break;", "}", "{", and other such stuff. There will also probably be a few such as "for (i=0' i What I suspect is that SCO is claiming such code as the JFS, which I beleive was create in whole by IBM" is part of the UNIX code and under SCO license. If this is it then it should be interesting to see what the courts think about this. I have seen other licenses that have been interpreted as including all other pieces ever used with it.
Really! Makes money for me both in my full time job and part time cosulting on the side. Wow, build I better load Windows back on my systems and become a Windows Certified Engineer or whatever it is called these days. Secret to jobs and money is and always will be know what you are doing and know how to interview.
I think you had one sided advice. The real trick is to have a life. I enjoy computers and talk about them when in the right crowd. I also enjoy many aother things. Don't be one sided. In high school I played baseball, was a member of the chess, science, drama and math clubs. What I really liked to do was hang out in the drafting room and study architecture. I also was interested in cars and was in the process of restoring one. I also had a part time job and tried to go hiking or backpacking at least once a month. I did not fit exactly into any group but I at least got along with all of them. I would encourage the start of a computer club to scratch this itch. Just don't make it the only special thing you do in high school.