Answer that question, and it will probably become obvious why they would be willing to "waste" $50 million.
SCO is just a foot soldier in a war that is being fought by Microsoft and associated proprietary software firms against the adoption of Linux as the dominant Operating System for the next century.
They are buying time, for one thing. Every day this FUD campaign drags on, slows the rate at which corporations switch their infrastructure to Linux. For all that those in the know realize what a crock of steaming shit this is, the courts are unpredictable at best, and PHB's are a conservative lot. Many won't bet their future on an OS which is the subject of litigation because they cannot be certain of the outcome.
SCO will die. But that's what foot soldiers do. Meantime, those pushing them forward are happy to lend them all the resources they need to prolong the fight.
Actors, Musicians, Politicians, and the like are just people. The only real difference is that they've done something or been somewhere at the right time to make news. I think that people who go out of their way to remain in the news even when they've done nothing to merit it are the most pathetic types out there. This is why Torvalds is cool. Because he doesn't come across as attempting to live to make headlines, actions of his that actually have ramifications make news.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to recognize that politicians are just people. They are reptiles in humanoid form, perhaps.
This isn't meant to be taken seriously, of course, politicians are just not deserving of much respect in my book.
A little background for all the newbies out there, (If your ID is over 50k, you're probably a newbie) when Slashdot started user registration there was an anti-registration movement and loads of complaints about what slashdot may do with our personal information and such. When it got to about 15k registrations it mostly died down and everybody forgot about it. Most of the people with IDs between 10k and 20k are the ones that were anti-registration and held out for a while.
Artists are not only signing away their rights to their own music, they are being deprived of any alternate means of being paid for their work.
So perhaps the solution is, have the tipjar be in exchange for something else. A wink and a nod, so to speak. Give away some token in exchange for the tip, surely the artists are not prohibited from engaging in other trade.
I have to disagree with you on this point. Freshly distilled water is extremely tasty, though if it is left to sit in cheap plastic containers for a long period of time, it will absorb chemicals from the bottle which are poor tasting and possibly harmful to you.
Anyone who thinks that distilled water tastes bad should try a glass of freshly distilled water at room temperature. You will be amazed at how much better it is than any bottled water, much less tap water.
Patents must become increasingly absurd in order to make it clear to people that patenting ideas is not the best way to ensure that inventors receive credit for their innovations.
Perhaps instead we ought to have a public registry which new ideas may be entered into, and all prior art may also be seen and shown when it exists. Those with a truly novel concept would be clearly noted as such and those making use of their invention would voluntarily contribute to encourage the further development of science and progress.
Much like the Free Software movement, but as applied to all inventions.
Well said. Robin Hood is portrayed as a playful thief, but his main claim was to the rights of the people to the forests, which had been claimed by private interests under the English enclosures acts. This left many poor people without a right to live and support themselves, but on the terms set by the local lord. Therefore, all the wealth which the lords flaunted about themselves were in effect stolen in the first place from the peasants.
All the indications are clear. Within 10 years time, the consciousness of the people comprising the communications of the planet are combining into a common intelligence.
It is not only predictable, it is now inevitable. Just as Moore's Law predicts the doubling of circuit density every 18 months, the doubling of communications links proceeds at a geometric rate.
Copyright will fall to the network. The intelligence of the network is directly proportionate to the number of unique voices to which any individual may hear at any time. Copyright imposes a cost to hear each voice, as this cost reduces to zero, the entirety of the connected human population will hear one another, at will.
When this happens, a new Renaissance will flourish. Art will be promoted on quality, not on its profitability to the distributors. For if distribution costs nothing, there is no incentive to promote the latest Britney Spears album to the masses of people who do not know any better.
When you can hear anything, you will want to hear the best music you can find. Friends will recommend to you what they enjoy, and you will be able to listen at once and form your own opinions.
Artists will prosper under the new system. People will gladly pay people to produce quality, to perform, to entertain and enlighten them. And without the middleman distributors, 100% of the money going to such things will enrich the artist.
All the indications are clear. Within 10 years time, the consciousness of the people comprising the communications of the planet are combining into a common intelligence.
It is not only predictable, it is now inevitable. Just as Moore's Law predicts the doubling of circuit density every 18 months, the doubling of communications links proceeds at a geometric rate.
Copyright will fall to the network. The intelligence of the network is directly proportionate to the number of unique voices to which any individual may hear at any time. Copyright imposes a cost to hear each voice, as this cost reduces to zero, the entirety of the connected human population will hear one another, at will.
When this happens, a new Renaissance will flourish. Art will be promoted on quality, not on its profitability to the distributors. For if distribution costs nothing, there is no incentive to promote the latest Britney Spears album to the masses of people who do not know any better.
When you can hear anything, you will want to hear the best music you can find. Friends will recommend to you what they enjoy, and you will be able to listen at once and form your own opinions.
Artists will prosper under the new system. People will gladly pay people to produce quality, to perform, to entertain and enlighten them. And without the middleman distributors, 100% of the money going to such things will enrich the artist.
Regardless of how one may feel about the recreational use of psychedelics, there is an enormous amount of knowledge that can be gained from the study of their effects on the human brain, and the mechanisms that cause them.
How is it scientific to study synesthaesia, identify compounds that can possibly induce it, and then refuse to dig further in the connection between the two?
Also, it's worth noting that Itanium has always supported running x86 software without emulation. It just turns out their hardware implementation is slower than emulating the same thing in 64-bit IA-64 mode.
Sounds like a defensive reaction to the release of the Opteron. If AMD is offering a 64-bit chip with support for full-speed 32-bit x86 software, then Intel has to have a competitive answer *before* industry adopts the AMD64 over IA-64 for future migration.
To the objection that the community is poorly equipped to maintain the lines, and could wind up paying the RBOCs monopoly pricing for doing so:
Someone might suggest that maintenance could be put up for competitive bidding. Undoubtedly the RBOCs are best equipped to provide this at present, but the contracts could be limited in term and scope to allow for renegotiation as market conditions change. New market entrants may increasingly be able to offer the community better quality at better prices.
But this isn't ideal either, as the political games that go on in such government contracting are well known and impossible to avoid. Why not let the individual line consumers subscribe to the maintenance provider of their choice, just as they would be able to choose their service provider? In most cases, it's best to have the same company provide both, so you don't get finger-pointing nonsense.
The problem, fundamentally, is the local loop monopoly.
I'm no advocate of government regulation, but in economic terms, there is only one workable solution to prevent this sort of abuse. If the FCC and state regulators would get out of the way and let communities implement this, the cost and quality of phone service would improve to accurately reflect a competitive market value.
1. The community should purchase the network: all the last mile copper and rights of way should be owned by the commons and not monopolized by any private entity.
2. Any company (including the Baby Bells) can bid to rent the use of the network for the provision of any service (dialtone, DSL, etc.) to any customer. These rents should be for a term that allows for regular adjustment as the market changes.
With this approach, the Baby Bells would be in a good position to maintain a dominant market position in the near term, but not a monopoly which they can abuse. And if other firms can enter the market and do a better job of providing value to consumers and businesses, they will take market share away from the Bells.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a better explanation than any I've seen.
Take a look at this:
http://www.piratenet.com/index2.html
I was just watching the Preview for "Bludd".
It made me laugh.
This is another one of BayStar's investments.
Who controls BayStar?
Answer that question, and it will probably become obvious why they would be willing to "waste" $50 million.
SCO is just a foot soldier in a war that is being fought by Microsoft and associated proprietary software firms against the adoption of Linux as the dominant Operating System for the next century.
They are buying time, for one thing. Every day this FUD campaign drags on, slows the rate at which corporations switch their infrastructure to Linux. For all that those in the know realize what a crock of steaming shit this is, the courts are unpredictable at best, and PHB's are a conservative lot. Many won't bet their future on an OS which is the subject of litigation because they cannot be certain of the outcome.
SCO will die. But that's what foot soldiers do. Meantime, those pushing them forward are happy to lend them all the resources they need to prolong the fight.
Actors, Musicians, Politicians, and the like are just people. The only real difference is that they've done something or been somewhere at the right time to make news. I think that people who go out of their way to remain in the news even when they've done nothing to merit it are the most pathetic types out there. This is why Torvalds is cool. Because he doesn't come across as attempting to live to make headlines, actions of his that actually have ramifications make news.
I'm sorry, but I refuse to recognize that politicians are just people. They are reptiles in humanoid form, perhaps.
This isn't meant to be taken seriously, of course, politicians are just not deserving of much respect in my book.
A little background for all the newbies out there, (If your ID is over 50k, you're probably a newbie) when Slashdot started user registration there was an anti-registration movement and loads of complaints about what slashdot may do with our personal information and such. When it got to about 15k registrations it mostly died down and everybody forgot about it. Most of the people with IDs between 10k and 20k are the ones that were anti-registration and held out for a while.
Right. Whatever.
"OpenBSD is, of course, wonderful. Unlike those commies using FreeBSD."
ObMontyPython:
Splitters!
Put your .torrent files on Freenet.
This is the best of both worlds. You have the efficiency and scalability of BitTorrent, plus the redundancy and anonymity of FreeNet.
That makes me angry.
Artists are not only signing away their rights to their own music, they are being deprived of any alternate means of being paid for their work.
So perhaps the solution is, have the tipjar be in exchange for something else. A wink and a nod, so to speak. Give away some token in exchange for the tip, surely the artists are not prohibited from engaging in other trade.
This is not such a bad idea.
More artists should put up a website with a button that lets people contribute to them by the method of their choice, using PayPal (ugh) or whatever.
Even if it's just a buck or two, think of it like a tip jar. You want your favorite artists to be supported, so support them.
I have to disagree with you on this point. Freshly distilled water is extremely tasty, though if it is left to sit in cheap plastic containers for a long period of time, it will absorb chemicals from the bottle which are poor tasting and possibly harmful to you.
Anyone who thinks that distilled water tastes bad should try a glass of freshly distilled water at room temperature. You will be amazed at how much better it is than any bottled water, much less tap water.
Patents must become increasingly absurd in order to make it clear to people that patenting ideas is not the best way to ensure that inventors receive credit for their innovations.
Perhaps instead we ought to have a public registry which new ideas may be entered into, and all prior art may also be seen and shown when it exists. Those with a truly novel concept would be clearly noted as such and those making use of their invention would voluntarily contribute to encourage the further development of science and progress.
Much like the Free Software movement, but as applied to all inventions.
Well said. Robin Hood is portrayed as a playful thief, but his main claim was to the rights of the people to the forests, which had been claimed by private interests under the English enclosures acts. This left many poor people without a right to live and support themselves, but on the terms set by the local lord. Therefore, all the wealth which the lords flaunted about themselves were in effect stolen in the first place from the peasants.
Legalizing pot? Next thing you'll be saying cigarettes are mainly dangerous because of all the chemicals and radioactive fertilizers they use.
So, about 9 or 10 years ought to do it...
I believe it is a sexually transmitted disease. Slashdot users have nothing to fear.
Indeed! Take the red pill, and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
The network will become fully sentient soon.
All the indications are clear. Within 10 years time, the consciousness of the people comprising the communications of the planet are combining into a common intelligence.
It is not only predictable, it is now inevitable. Just as Moore's Law predicts the doubling of circuit density every 18 months, the doubling of communications links proceeds at a geometric rate.
Copyright will fall to the network. The intelligence of the network is directly proportionate to the number of unique voices to which any individual may hear at any time. Copyright imposes a cost to hear each voice, as this cost reduces to zero, the entirety of the connected human population will hear one another, at will.
When this happens, a new Renaissance will flourish. Art will be promoted on quality, not on its profitability to the distributors. For if distribution costs nothing, there is no incentive to promote the latest Britney Spears album to the masses of people who do not know any better.
When you can hear anything, you will want to hear the best music you can find. Friends will recommend to you what they enjoy, and you will be able to listen at once and form your own opinions.
Artists will prosper under the new system. People will gladly pay people to produce quality, to perform, to entertain and enlighten them. And without the middleman distributors, 100% of the money going to such things will enrich the artist.
This is the new world, it will be here soon.
The network will become fully sentient soon.
All the indications are clear. Within 10 years time, the consciousness of the people comprising the communications of the planet are combining into a common intelligence.
It is not only predictable, it is now inevitable. Just as Moore's Law predicts the doubling of circuit density every 18 months, the doubling of communications links proceeds at a geometric rate.
Copyright will fall to the network. The intelligence of the network is directly proportionate to the number of unique voices to which any individual may hear at any time. Copyright imposes a cost to hear each voice, as this cost reduces to zero, the entirety of the connected human population will hear one another, at will.
When this happens, a new Renaissance will flourish. Art will be promoted on quality, not on its profitability to the distributors. For if distribution costs nothing, there is no incentive to promote the latest Britney Spears album to the masses of people who do not know any better.
When you can hear anything, you will want to hear the best music you can find. Friends will recommend to you what they enjoy, and you will be able to listen at once and form your own opinions.
Artists will prosper under the new system. People will gladly pay people to produce quality, to perform, to entertain and enlighten them. And without the middleman distributors, 100% of the money going to such things will enrich the artist.
This is the new world, it will be here soon.
Why do I think labor groups will be unhappy about this?
says it all
Regardless of how one may feel about the recreational use of psychedelics, there is an enormous amount of knowledge that can be gained from the study of their effects on the human brain, and the mechanisms that cause them.
How is it scientific to study synesthaesia, identify compounds that can possibly induce it, and then refuse to dig further in the connection between the two?
Also, it's worth noting that Itanium has always supported running x86 software without emulation. It just turns out their hardware implementation is slower than emulating the same thing in 64-bit IA-64 mode.
Sounds like a defensive reaction to the release of the Opteron. If AMD is offering a 64-bit chip with support for full-speed 32-bit x86 software, then Intel has to have a competitive answer *before* industry adopts the AMD64 over IA-64 for future migration.
To the objection that the community is poorly equipped to maintain the lines, and could wind up paying the RBOCs monopoly pricing for doing so:
Someone might suggest that maintenance could be put up for competitive bidding. Undoubtedly the RBOCs are best equipped to provide this at present, but the contracts could be limited in term and scope to allow for renegotiation as market conditions change. New market entrants may increasingly be able to offer the community better quality at better prices.
But this isn't ideal either, as the political games that go on in such government contracting are well known and impossible to avoid. Why not let the individual line consumers subscribe to the maintenance provider of their choice, just as they would be able to choose their service provider? In most cases, it's best to have the same company provide both, so you don't get finger-pointing nonsense.
The problem, fundamentally, is the local loop monopoly.
I'm no advocate of government regulation, but in economic terms, there is only one workable solution to prevent this sort of abuse. If the FCC and state regulators would get out of the way and let communities implement this, the cost and quality of phone service would improve to accurately reflect a competitive market value.
1. The community should purchase the network: all the last mile copper and rights of way should be owned by the commons and not monopolized by any private entity.
2. Any company (including the Baby Bells) can bid to rent the use of the network for the provision of any service (dialtone, DSL, etc.) to any customer. These rents should be for a term that allows for regular adjustment as the market changes.
With this approach, the Baby Bells would be in a good position to maintain a dominant market position in the near term, but not a monopoly which they can abuse. And if other firms can enter the market and do a better job of providing value to consumers and businesses, they will take market share away from the Bells.