About the 30% without Internet connections. That seems really high. You don't suppose they're actually out doing things in meatspace? In person. *shudder* Horrible to contemplate.
Where exactly the line falls. If his name was John Doe and he registered JohnDoeSoft.com, would M$ try to claim every tech oriented product that ends in "soft" like PeopleSoft? Or is it that Mike Rowe sounds like Micro if you say it fast?
I can't blame them for wanting to protect their trademark, but this goes too far. Didn't Victoria's Secret lose their case against Victor's Little Secret? If I remember right the court's opionion (INAL) was there was no proof Victor's Little Secret diminished the trademark value of Victoria's Secret. M$ will have an uphill battle on this one, that MikeRoweSoft confuses people into thinking less of Microsoft (as if that were possible).
Yeah, shut up and get a lawyer, kid. I'm guessing there might even be someone willing to go to bat for a 17 year old pro bono. You can't buy advertising like this.
Unfortunately you're probably right. Not arguing your central point. But, like you, I just gotta try, even if it's futile. At least we can say we did something.
but nobody will actually do anything to stop the widespread adoption of DRM (who could possibly succeed?)
At least try and avoid it. Do something, even if it isn't much. Open an account at Bleep.com and warpmusic.com, throw a few bucks at companies giving you a non-DRM'd better deal or shop at independent labels like icehouserecords.com . Voting for freedom with your wallet will do more good than you might imagine, especially if enough people do it.
Download 10 bucks worth of music at each of those sites, money you would've spent on music anyway. Put your money somewhere it will do some good.
Just like product activation. So far I've managed to avoid buying any activated products. Might not be able to do that indefinitely, but so far I've rewarded companies pursuing alternate strategies with my software $$$$. It may not be much but at least I can say I did what I could.
But it's this little thing and that little thing that add up after a while. I've got a green screen in my studio and with a little work can make it look like I'm reporting from anywhere on any story. And really for a lot of news stories they are just "stand over there so we get the building in the shot" and it wouldn't matter if they were actually there or in front of a green screen somewhere else. But there has to be integrity in the process. If I see an anchor at the studio, I'd assume it was a stringer shooting the story. Happens all the time, no big deal. If the same anchor is super-imposed in front of the White House and says, "...reporting from the White House..." he's lying. To me that's a big difference. And if he'll lie about where he is, what else will he lie about? We have stations in town that the announcer will say he's in San Diego or somewhere else, they don't lie about being here. People still listen to them.
This guy lied. He was pretending to be there. He wasn't just saying, "definitely got Boston in the deep freeze today." He was saying it like he was there. Not admitting it or not announcing a disclaimer is not the same as being deliberately deceptive. Paint it any way you want, pretend it doesn't matter, he deceived his listeners. It's not like telecommuting. If your boss knows you're telecommuting, you're fine. If you're telecommuting pretending to be in the office, you're fired.
There is nothing "Republican" about assuming the worst about someone without any direct substantiating evidence.
Oh, really? We don't have to go any farther than Iraq for support of that observation. But for my first witness I'd call Karl Rove to the stand. Let's think back to the Rove-inspired Gay Rumors that were started about political opponents in Texas, a tactic later employed with equal success in a close race in Georgia and more recently in Colorado. Here's an older article as exhibit A, several books to back this up (if you read, that is) http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?Artic leID=398
That's only one example of many such incidents, but those are most relevant to the topic of indicment without evidence. Or don't you know about those? My next witnesses would be Mr. Prescription Drug Abuser wind bag and Haley Barbour, those are the warm up acts. We haven't even started with Cheney and his crew. Politics is dirty all around but the Republicans have taken it to new lows. So, yes, it is a republican trait and there are an unfortunate number of supporting observations.
Maybe you're not like that, but you support them. What's that say about you?
Hard to tell if trust is the real issue or if your first comment was more telling. One thing for sure, I'm getting seriously tired of this republican attitude of guilty until proven innocent. And that bubbles over into a lot of areas. Check points on roads that inconvenience everyone to check for a few people who have been drinking. Drug testing is another great example. Invade everyone's privacy to weed out few bad actors...one that strangely hasn't affected the actual level of drug use in this country. Software activation inconveniences everyone looking for a few pirates, and where is the payoff? Activation was supposed to lower prices to the consumer. Anyone seen lower prices? So that was bullshit. The DRM arguements are recycled bullshit. Finger printing and photgraphing millions of people looking for a handful of terrorists...more bullshit.
Guess I'm wondering when we started to just accept this crap as part of the program? Have we turned into such pussies that we feel those things are somehow okay?
Does it bother anyone else that the same person who announced trustworthy computing is announcing seamless computing? What I hear is seamless virus propagation throughout all your connected systems. Yummy.
The longer I'm in this business the less I care about crap like this. I just want a box that comes on when I push the power button and works with a minimum of fuss. A bonus would be after few years being able to replace the mobo with the latest and greatest and it just keeps on working, only faster.
Hey, Carly, keep your utility computing crap and stick your DRM right up your ass.
but Joe CEO wants everything he uses to be backed 24/7/365 by the company making it. And you know what? Hes right.
And where does he get that now? Certainly not from MS, IBM, CA, or any other vendors we deal with. We have to PAY for support like that. You can get 24/7/365 OSS support for less money if you're willing to pay for it. I don't know any CEO's with the mistaken impression that if they buy proprietary software there's going to be a company standing by to assist 24/7/365 and they're even starting to wake up to the fact that most software companies don't provide the end user with much in the way of indeminification.
If your CEO gains some kind of comfort because a software company has a building he can point to, then I'd suggest he has bigger problems than not understanding OSS.
I'd have a hard time believing the judge is going to let this go any farther. If I were laying down odds, I'd take 3:1 on dismissal. Not as confident on dismissal with prejudice, but SCO's conduct makes that a distinct possibility. Depends what IBM comes back with in their motion to dismiss. So far Big Blue has been nearly flawless.
This isn't just a proactive strike, this is IBM rolling thunder. Think about it, they totally undermined SCO's FUD machine. The only card SCO has left is saying IBM wouldn't have put up the money if they weren't worried about IP issues. Anyone thinking of buying a license, just in case, is now going to tell SCO to bugger themselves. IBM won't have to actually part with any money unless SCO sues someone and the chances of it adding up to anything close to the total amount is nearly zero. The total amount, chump change for IBM, is realistically more than SCO has to spare.
IBM comes off looking like a hero, combined with the Linux commercials all over TV this weekend and it's a huge PR win. I'm not easily impressed but this was brilliantly conceived, timing and execution nearly flawless.
With everything else they've done so well one would have to believe that somewhere inside the folds of the cape there is a sword ready to strike the killing blow.
The dumpster would seemto be the obvious answer. Although that could backfire when the rest of the garbage gets up and walks out of the dump in protest.
It's clearly aimed at the upcoming IPO of Google and the last thing a company facing before an IPO is a legal battle
I really doubt Google would offer any kind of a settlement, IPO or not. There could be a downside to a settlement as it would insinuate that they didn't understand the IP issues of the OS they built their business on. Not likely.
Besides, it's not like they're counting on the IPO for survival. They make a ton of money. They're getting near the size they'd have to start publishing quarterly reports anyway. Absent the IPO they'd have all the reporting requirements but none of the advantages of a publicly traded company.
If you're serious about reaching a settlement you don't leave the negotiations to the "low level" underlings. Although "low level" at a flat organization like Google is a little hard to pin down. Still, I'm guessing the word SCO is getting from Google would be more along the lines of corporate, "Go ahead, make my day."
You make some good points but I disagree with the conclusion. I see Xandros and others like it as stepping stones away from the Windows world and a transition zone where proprietary and open source software learn to co-exist. It's perfect for my wife. She can use Word for her office docs and Photoshop without booting back to Win98. I like it because the install was dead flat simple. One disc, 30 minutes and it was up on the network printing test pages off the network printer. Bam, done.
The best part is when I upgrade her hardware I won't have to go back and beg MS if I can please use the OS I already paid for. Sure it needs work and Xandros needs an attitude check, but it's a good distro all the same.
I agree with the article author that Xandros needs to fire their lawyer. The EULA gave me Redmond flashbacks. And the Xmas tech support fumble was a disaster. If they don't execute better they will go out of business. But in the meantime I have a great OS that's a breeze to install and does everything I need right now. If they don't make it or if they don't change their MS-esque behavior I'll look for another one. No problem.
The only differences you'll notice switching from Win98 are:
Your computer hardly ever crashes
The virus of the day won't infect your machine
It won't keep getting bogged down with spyware
Much faster to switch between users
Other than that you can still run your Office applications, play music, burn CD's, most of the stuff you do now. Save your Windows partition for those apps that are Windows only, but you'll find you don't need to go back very often.
Okay, it's pretty close. I work in one office that has all XP workstations. It's a guarantee that every time in there I'm going to spend the first 20 minutes running Spybot Search & Destroy and cutting out a huge list of spyware infesting those machines. I'll go back a week later, it's all back in there again. Not in my house.
Just got done switching the wife's machine over to Xandros 2.0. She doesn't play games but she can do everything else. Check her mail, keep a calendar, set reminders, surf, chat, play music, DVD's or movies. And all that right out of the box. I did zero configuration. Zero. Just plugged in one disc, answered a few questions and away it goes. It detected the network card, found the network and Internet connections, configured the three-button mouse properly, detected all my hardware, let me configure a network printer, set up users and set the administrator password. Not just as easy as Windows, it was easier. And it comes bundled with Cross0ver so I was able to get Photoshop working in no time. What a nice distro.
Yeah, yeah I know it's paint-by-numbers Linux, but it sure made my life easier. The wife can get around with it, even for burning CD's and she thought having Photoshop back was totally cool. It's a lot more intuitive for Windows users than SUSE. No more worries about the virus-of-the-day and cleaning off spyware crap.
Windows is crapware. The longer I use Linux, the more I despise Windows. It's...dirty.
..some time in the next year you're going to have conflict with someone you care about very much.
The future of Linux is no longer in doubt, it's past the tipping point and rolling downhill. At this point it would be like trying to stop the wind. Even if my some miracle of purchased justice or legislation it was stalled here, US actions are not going to stop it from spreading in the rest of the world. But I don't think that's going to happen, either. The GPL is actually pretty good and based on US copyright law. Telling people they can't donate their time and code to a community project would raise 1rst amendment issues, not that Bush and his thugs care about that but legally it would be a tough sell. And almost every company is benefiting from OSS in some way by this time, so every day the political landscape is changing, too.
I think the proprietary software industry is doing all it can. Attacking any OSS project politically, spinning an aura of fear, discounting to hang on to customers. If there were other legal avenues, they'd be using them already, SCO notwithstanding.
But Cringley may be right in one aspect, it is getting near the point when Linux needs to be more unified and this year may be it. Either way it's still the best show in town. All the really fun stuff in IT is happening around Linux and OSS.
About what it takes to launch a spacecraft and guide it to a rendezvous with a chunk of ice billions of miles out in space and get it back again. Brilliant!
I'm being serious. That's absolutely fucking amazing. How they know where the comet is going to be in space at a particular time and get another object going over 13,000 miles an hour to pass through its tail and snap pictures from a mere 200 miles away and all that by remote control when it takes an hour for instructions to get to the craft. Astounding. The shit we take for granted.
Slashdot Mirror
You were a lot nicer than I would be. I'd have started it out Dear Butt For Brains. That may be a troll, but it's an honest one.
About the 30% without Internet connections. That seems really high. You don't suppose they're actually out doing things in meatspace? In person. *shudder* Horrible to contemplate.
I can't blame them for wanting to protect their trademark, but this goes too far. Didn't Victoria's Secret lose their case against Victor's Little Secret? If I remember right the court's opionion (INAL) was there was no proof Victor's Little Secret diminished the trademark value of Victoria's Secret. M$ will have an uphill battle on this one, that MikeRoweSoft confuses people into thinking less of Microsoft (as if that were possible).
Yeah, shut up and get a lawyer, kid. I'm guessing there might even be someone willing to go to bat for a 17 year old pro bono. You can't buy advertising like this.
Unfortunately you're probably right. Not arguing your central point. But, like you, I just gotta try, even if it's futile. At least we can say we did something.
At least try and avoid it. Do something, even if it isn't much. Open an account at Bleep.com and warpmusic.com, throw a few bucks at companies giving you a non-DRM'd better deal or shop at independent labels like icehouserecords.com . Voting for freedom with your wallet will do more good than you might imagine, especially if enough people do it.
Download 10 bucks worth of music at each of those sites, money you would've spent on music anyway. Put your money somewhere it will do some good.
Just like product activation. So far I've managed to avoid buying any activated products. Might not be able to do that indefinitely, but so far I've rewarded companies pursuing alternate strategies with my software $$$$. It may not be much but at least I can say I did what I could.
This guy lied. He was pretending to be there. He wasn't just saying, "definitely got Boston in the deep freeze today." He was saying it like he was there. Not admitting it or not announcing a disclaimer is not the same as being deliberately deceptive. Paint it any way you want, pretend it doesn't matter, he deceived his listeners. It's not like telecommuting. If your boss knows you're telecommuting, you're fine. If you're telecommuting pretending to be in the office, you're fired.
Oh, really? We don't have to go any farther than Iraq for support of that observation. But for my first witness I'd call Karl Rove to the stand. Let's think back to the Rove-inspired Gay Rumors that were started about political opponents in Texas, a tactic later employed with equal success in a close race in Georgia and more recently in Colorado. Here's an older article as exhibit A, several books to back this up (if you read, that is) http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?Artic leID=398
That's only one example of many such incidents, but those are most relevant to the topic of indicment without evidence. Or don't you know about those? My next witnesses would be Mr. Prescription Drug Abuser wind bag and Haley Barbour, those are the warm up acts. We haven't even started with Cheney and his crew. Politics is dirty all around but the Republicans have taken it to new lows. So, yes, it is a republican trait and there are an unfortunate number of supporting observations.
Maybe you're not like that, but you support them. What's that say about you?
Hard to tell if trust is the real issue or if your first comment was more telling. One thing for sure, I'm getting seriously tired of this republican attitude of guilty until proven innocent. And that bubbles over into a lot of areas. Check points on roads that inconvenience everyone to check for a few people who have been drinking. Drug testing is another great example. Invade everyone's privacy to weed out few bad actors...one that strangely hasn't affected the actual level of drug use in this country. Software activation inconveniences everyone looking for a few pirates, and where is the payoff? Activation was supposed to lower prices to the consumer. Anyone seen lower prices? So that was bullshit. The DRM arguements are recycled bullshit. Finger printing and photgraphing millions of people looking for a handful of terrorists...more bullshit.
Guess I'm wondering when we started to just accept this crap as part of the program? Have we turned into such pussies that we feel those things are somehow okay?
The longer I'm in this business the less I care about crap like this. I just want a box that comes on when I push the power button and works with a minimum of fuss. A bonus would be after few years being able to replace the mobo with the latest and greatest and it just keeps on working, only faster.
Hey, Carly, keep your utility computing crap and stick your DRM right up your ass.
And where does he get that now? Certainly not from MS, IBM, CA, or any other vendors we deal with. We have to PAY for support like that. You can get 24/7/365 OSS support for less money if you're willing to pay for it. I don't know any CEO's with the mistaken impression that if they buy proprietary software there's going to be a company standing by to assist 24/7/365 and they're even starting to wake up to the fact that most software companies don't provide the end user with much in the way of indeminification.
If your CEO gains some kind of comfort because a software company has a building he can point to, then I'd suggest he has bigger problems than not understanding OSS.
I'd have a hard time believing the judge is going to let this go any farther. If I were laying down odds, I'd take 3:1 on dismissal. Not as confident on dismissal with prejudice, but SCO's conduct makes that a distinct possibility. Depends what IBM comes back with in their motion to dismiss. So far Big Blue has been nearly flawless.
IBM comes off looking like a hero, combined with the Linux commercials all over TV this weekend and it's a huge PR win. I'm not easily impressed but this was brilliantly conceived, timing and execution nearly flawless.
With everything else they've done so well one would have to believe that somewhere inside the folds of the cape there is a sword ready to strike the killing blow.
If you can't handle being Slashdot'ed keep your pussy web server off the Internet.
The dumpster would seemto be the obvious answer. Although that could backfire when the rest of the garbage gets up and walks out of the dump in protest.
http://news.com.com/2100-1030-5119504.html I'm too tired to list the rest of the regulations, go look them up yourself.
I really doubt Google would offer any kind of a settlement, IPO or not. There could be a downside to a settlement as it would insinuate that they didn't understand the IP issues of the OS they built their business on. Not likely.
Besides, it's not like they're counting on the IPO for survival. They make a ton of money. They're getting near the size they'd have to start publishing quarterly reports anyway. Absent the IPO they'd have all the reporting requirements but none of the advantages of a publicly traded company.
If you're serious about reaching a settlement you don't leave the negotiations to the "low level" underlings. Although "low level" at a flat organization like Google is a little hard to pin down. Still, I'm guessing the word SCO is getting from Google would be more along the lines of corporate, "Go ahead, make my day."
When Girls Go Wild!
Though rarely do those events coincide. You could combine them into When Geek Girls Go Wild Camping! I'd buy that for a dollar.
I am Cornholio! I need tp for my bunghole! Bung-bung-bunghole. Hehehehehehe. Bunghole! Bunghole! Bunghole!
Dear Mr. So-and-So
In response to your request for certification that we have not contributed SCO IP into Linux our official response:
Bullshit.
Sincerely,
Mr. Shadow
Director Software Support
XYZ Corporation
Of course legal would nix it anyway. Might get fired for sending it without their chop, but what a way to go out, huh? Hehe.
The best part is when I upgrade her hardware I won't have to go back and beg MS if I can please use the OS I already paid for. Sure it needs work and Xandros needs an attitude check, but it's a good distro all the same.
I agree with the article author that Xandros needs to fire their lawyer. The EULA gave me Redmond flashbacks. And the Xmas tech support fumble was a disaster. If they don't execute better they will go out of business. But in the meantime I have a great OS that's a breeze to install and does everything I need right now. If they don't make it or if they don't change their MS-esque behavior I'll look for another one. No problem.
Other than that you can still run your Office applications, play music, burn CD's, most of the stuff you do now. Save your Windows partition for those apps that are Windows only, but you'll find you don't need to go back very often.
Just got done switching the wife's machine over to Xandros 2.0. She doesn't play games but she can do everything else. Check her mail, keep a calendar, set reminders, surf, chat, play music, DVD's or movies. And all that right out of the box. I did zero configuration. Zero. Just plugged in one disc, answered a few questions and away it goes. It detected the network card, found the network and Internet connections, configured the three-button mouse properly, detected all my hardware, let me configure a network printer, set up users and set the administrator password. Not just as easy as Windows, it was easier. And it comes bundled with Cross0ver so I was able to get Photoshop working in no time. What a nice distro.
Yeah, yeah I know it's paint-by-numbers Linux, but it sure made my life easier. The wife can get around with it, even for burning CD's and she thought having Photoshop back was totally cool. It's a lot more intuitive for Windows users than SUSE. No more worries about the virus-of-the-day and cleaning off spyware crap.
Windows is crapware. The longer I use Linux, the more I despise Windows. It's...dirty.
..some time in the next year you're going to have conflict with someone you care about very much. The future of Linux is no longer in doubt, it's past the tipping point and rolling downhill. At this point it would be like trying to stop the wind. Even if my some miracle of purchased justice or legislation it was stalled here, US actions are not going to stop it from spreading in the rest of the world. But I don't think that's going to happen, either. The GPL is actually pretty good and based on US copyright law. Telling people they can't donate their time and code to a community project would raise 1rst amendment issues, not that Bush and his thugs care about that but legally it would be a tough sell. And almost every company is benefiting from OSS in some way by this time, so every day the political landscape is changing, too. I think the proprietary software industry is doing all it can. Attacking any OSS project politically, spinning an aura of fear, discounting to hang on to customers. If there were other legal avenues, they'd be using them already, SCO notwithstanding. But Cringley may be right in one aspect, it is getting near the point when Linux needs to be more unified and this year may be it. Either way it's still the best show in town. All the really fun stuff in IT is happening around Linux and OSS.
I'm being serious. That's absolutely fucking amazing. How they know where the comet is going to be in space at a particular time and get another object going over 13,000 miles an hour to pass through its tail and snap pictures from a mere 200 miles away and all that by remote control when it takes an hour for instructions to get to the craft. Astounding. The shit we take for granted.
...that we're fast? How do we know the rest of the universe isn't slowing down?