Actually, from what I see, hardware device support in Linux has been catching up. True, it still lags behind, but I don't see that "always" being the case. Lots of improvement should come with the 2.6 kernel, and with MS's next OS not coming out for 2-3 years, Linux device drivers should be able to catch up.
As far as applications go, well, as long as developers focus on MS compatibility, the apps will always lag behind for the simple reason that compatability for new Office "features" can't be added until they've been released by MS. The only way around that issue is for developers to concentrate on re-thinking the functionality of desktop apps and implementing their own features to compete with MS.
That may not be practical yet, because of the large installed base that needs that MS compatibility to migrate to Linux and to communicate the "WinWorld". But I do think hardware support will be just as up to date and cutting edge as Windows within a couple years. It's almost there now, and what is supported is usually more stable once it's configured correctly.
Well, we all know that most of the distros *can* be configured to run on older machines -- if you change all the defaults to load programs and interfaces running with lower memory requirements. Slack and Debian are probably the best for tis task.
But if you're looking for something designed for older PC's "out of the box" then Deli, Damn Small Linux, or most of the other live CD distributions designed for business card CD's will also work, since they're all designed for small memory footprints, which is probably the main constraint on older systems.
Deli, in particular, makes the interesting choice of using the 2.2.25 kernel, which should be good for older machines.
I suspect you're right, though really we're only talking about a couple hundred thousand years of evolution. Homo species prior to Sapiens probably didn't have the kind of symbolic processing ability that would make such linguistic or visual appeals, or the the ability to resist them, evolutionarily important, even if they had language, which is also under question. And in any case, the combined Homo and Austro primate branches have only been around for about 5 (+/- 1) million years.
However, let's say that a technique that can be shown to influence peoples buying and desire patterns, with a mechanism that can be adequately understood outside of statistical correlation (such as a visual-linguistic technique that provokes desire for an object through creating a dopaminic/serotonal cascade in a portion of the brain) exists and is discovered.
In that case, I expect one of two things would occur:
A) The technique would be made illegal, as being unduly intrusive and controlling, or
B) All advertisers would start using it, thereby negating the advantage it could give any particular advertiser.
These constraints might compel researchers in the field to avoid explaining, or even looking for an explanation of, how the effect actually works. Instead, they'll probably just identify certain correlations in focus groups between MRI results and patterns of desire and consumption (buying).
I wonder what would happen to such people. Would they be better paid than individuals in your typical focus group? After all, going through the MRI process would be far more intrusive, tedious, and time-consuming than sitting around a table answering questions.
What would happen to people who exposed themselves to such testing on a repeated basis? Would they become obsessives or fetishists, like the characters who went through SB-5 trials in William Gibson's "Idoru" and "All Tomorrow's Parties"? Given the amount of TV most people watch, would we accidentally create a society of such obsessives? Would MRI comparisons, between people who watch TV on a regular basis and people who don't, show that we've already created such a society?
Hmm, if nothing else, it could make for a good SF novel. But then, I suppose Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash" has already covered some of this territory.
Yep, and underpowered. If someone came out with one of these babys using a Centrino processor or better, then I would have considered buying or recomending one to my clients. But when a client asks me to recommend a notebook, well, I just can't recommend something with a PIII processor at this point.
For example, someone noted above that the Tablet PC's main use within his company seemed to be during meetings. That's fine, and some of my clients could use that funtionality. Hell, I'd even be interested in it as something I could take to a bar and write on or browse the web wirelessly. (Wireless notebooks, by the way, are *great* for resolving bar arguments.)
However, it would have to be priced as something that maybe cost a few hundred dollars more but gave you equivalent performance to a high-end notebook. It's been marketed as a notebook with extra-funtionality, but with the current processors on most of them, they'll be obsolete in a year.
The Tablet PC needs to not only be marketed as a notebook with extra funtionality, but built like one. I guarantee you they would be *far* more successful if they matched the specs of the rest of today's laptops.
Is there really a point anymore to advanced special purpose calculators?
I mean, yeah, I have fond memories of my HP calculator, and even fonder memories of my old TI and stupid calculator tricks (ok, I'm 38). But if I'm already carrying around a PDA, why not just download an HP emulator, or an algebraic calculator like Parens? I'm sure there's graphing software available for the Palm, too.
So is this a business that HP can really profit from going into? Seems to me like it's a niche market now, or at least headed that way.
SCO will be lucky if that $50 mil. PIPE infusion from Bay Star lasts them long enough to go to trial with IBM. They can try to FUD some companies into buying a license for "SCO IP in Linux" or whatever they're calling it now, but I assume most companies - yes, even the Fortune 1K - will ignore them.
Whether or not SCO needs to show these companies the allegedly infringing code to close a sale is a moot point. Most of these companies will laugh at SCO for threatening them with legal action. SCO has about $50 million in cash, and is already involved in legal suits with IBM and Red Hat. Would you take them seriously?
I mean, SCO's like a 5' tall, skinny retard with anger management problems who, already having picked a fight with the two 7' tall, 300 lb. mercenaries in the bar, starts jumping up and down between fisticuffs, points at you, and shouts "You're next, dude! I'm coming after you next!"
"The mere act of SCO selling the license violates the GPL immediately for BOTH SCO AND THE FORTUNE 1000 company."
I've explained this several times already, but here we go again. The purchaser of a SCO IP license is NOT violating the terms of the GPL. Said purchaser would have to be a clueless idiot to buy the license, but they wouldn't be violating the GPL. On SCO would be violating it.
Think of it this way: the licensing restrictions of the GPL do not kick in unless you are a *distributor* of the code. If you are not distributing GPL'd code, then then GPL grants you complete rights to do whatever you want with it, including modify w/o sharing your source changes, burn it to a CD and jump up and down on it, or even purchase a useless license for it.
Having said that, I just want to add that I agree with everything else in your post.
The ISO's are not available for downloading yet, unless you're part of the Mandrake Club, but they should be available by the end of the October according to Mandrake's download page.
They will probably missing some proprietary drivers though. You can download most of them elsewhere, but if you want them to be part of the distribution, you'll need to buy it.
Really? Personally, I think he sounds kind of shrill and worried these days. I think he may be concerned that even if he achieves his four quarters of profits, and the associated bonus, he might not be able to keep the stock pumped long enough to cash out as profitable as he'd like.
Plus, there's the problem that once Canopy cashes out, there's every reason for them to use him as a scapegoat for all of SCO's other faults and failures.
No, I suspect at this point that if Darl is smiling at all, it's probably the tight little smile of suppressed fear.
"...claims against Linux users are based on copyright."
Actually, SCO's claims are, so far, based strictly on contract law. Their legal complaint says that IBM had no right to contribute the code without SCO's permission, since it is, SCO alleges, a "derivative work" of Unix.
Despite all of SCO's press releases and interview statements claiming copyright infringement, they actually *haven't* charged anyone with copyright infringement in their court briefings. The copyright claims are just more FUD.
"...let's say they do own the patents or copyrights or whatever to something someone else is using, then by law they do deserve what's theirs."
Well, no one has been able to find any patents possessed by SCO that would have any legal relationship to their claims or to Unix at all, so let's skip the patent question and go to copyrights.
As far as copyright is concerned we have two issues:
A) SCO hasn't filed any copyright claims in court (nor has it filed any patent claims, but that's already a moot point)
B) In the extremely hypothetical event that SCO had enforceable copyright claims, the damges would need to be compensated for by the infringer of those claims (i.e., IBM, etc.) and not the end-user.
So, if we're following the letter of the law and grant the dubious hyppothesis that their public pronouncements of copyright infringement have any merit - though they have not filed any claims of copyright infringement with the courts - SCO would still have no right to compensation from the end-users, but only from companies that contributed the infringing code.
Do you have a copy of the OpenServer distribution?
The reason I ask is that it's possible that they included the Samba source on the CD's of the product.
They're not required under the GPL to post the source on the internet, just to make it available to people to whom they've distributed the product.
Note: I'm not defending SCO here - I wouldn't be3 at all surprised if they abrogated the GPL again. I'm just suggesting that we make sure we've done the proper due diligence before accusing them of yet another GPL breach. It's certainly something the Samba dev team should look into.
...the GPL boils down to: "Here's the source code. You can use it if you want but then you must make it and your derivatives based on it available to the public."
Sorry to get nitpicky about this, but that's a common misconception that feeds into the Anti-Open Source propaganda. They want people to believe the GPL compels publication and distribution of any code. This is NOT the case.
The GPL only compels you to distribute the source if you are distributing GPL'd software. A better way to sum it up would be:
Here's the program and the source code. You can do anything you want with it and modify it any way you want. But if you distribute the program, you've got to include the source code too. And if you distribute your modified version, you've got to include the source code for that also.
"...the University of Arkansas as a example of an institution that has combined the two technologies and was able to circumvent its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000 by using voice over IP technology"
All of which savings were transferred to the football team. I mean, this is the South we're talking about.
"The server's down? Look, I'm really sick.... thirty thousand an hour?... I know we're losing a lot of money, it's just.... At the movies? No that's just my DVD player... Hello?... Hello?... I can't hear you... I think we've got a bad connection... (Makes static sounds)... Yeah, this phone has been giving me trouble for a couple weeks now.... Hello?.... (click)"
Disrupting SCO's road shows won't do the Open Source community any good. The best tactic is simply to attend and report. Maybe one or two pointed questions during Q&A, but anything more than that will get in the way of the attendees coming to their own conclusions. No need to interrupt your enemy when he is shooting himself in the foot.
"Darl doesn't take a shit with out getting permission from Ray Norda."
Noorda was forced out of Novell, in part due to short term memory problems. That was ten years ago. I expect that Ray is probably pretty senile by now.
The person who Darl needs permission from to to take a shit is Ralph Yarrow. Noorda, if you recall, was the one who originally ordered Novell's and ATT's lawyers to quicken the pace on settling the BSD suit. Of course, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that SCO's legal actions are Yarrow's brain-child, not Ray's.
IBM and SGI have limited rights to distribute System V source code to sub-licensees. Rather than worry about getting into issues with those limited rights, they have typically referred the sub-licensees to get the source from ATT/Novell/OldSCO/Caldera/NewSCO.
This is the root of Darl's claims that IBM, et. al., refers their sub-licensees to SCO for source, and doesn't prove, as Darl claims, that SCO "owns" the code for AIX, Irix, etc. It just proves that the companies involved were trying to respect their contractual obligations in the easiest, least controversial, manner possible.
Dude, that's their market cap., based on stock price, which would sink like a stone if SCO won. The question is, how much *cash* does SGI have on hand, and what are its assets worth?
A stink wasn't made over them at the time because it hadn't become common and only a few people, generally regarded then as "chicken littles", theorized publicly that it may not be the best idea.
Europeans are in a better position to make a stink about it, because they can hold the U.S. up as an example of the problems inherent in granting software patents.
However, I think I can answer this one. SCO has repeatedly claimed that they are only planning to seek damages from businesses running Linux, rather than individual users. So, even as a class-action, if the class represented individual users rather than businesses, SCO would, probably successfully, be able to claim that the plaintiff had no standing.
Contributors to the Unix kernel would probably have standing to sue SCO for breach of the GPL, and copyright infringement as a result of that breach, either individually or as a class. Especially if Licenses for SCO IP in Linux could be shown to have been sold by SCO, though the web site adverising those licenses and the associated FAQ may be enough to grant standing.
Finally, businesses might be able to sue for declarative judgement, again individually or as a class, regarding SCO's threats. In particular, those businesses which rec'd the original SCO letter regarding IP infringements in Linux could have a particularly strong suit. A class-action by over a thousand companies against SCO would be very gratifying, and damaging to SCO's credibility. Won't happen, of course, but one can dream.
Anyway, as individual users, there isn't a whole hell of a lot we can do to SCO in court. At least as far as I can see. I'm kind of hoping one of the lawyers here will see this and come up with something that individual Linux users could sue SCO over, but I doubt it.
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Actually, from what I see, hardware device support in Linux has been catching up. True, it still lags behind, but I don't see that "always" being the case. Lots of improvement should come with the 2.6 kernel, and with MS's next OS not coming out for 2-3 years, Linux device drivers should be able to catch up.
As far as applications go, well, as long as developers focus on MS compatibility, the apps will always lag behind for the simple reason that compatability for new Office "features" can't be added until they've been released by MS. The only way around that issue is for developers to concentrate on re-thinking the functionality of desktop apps and implementing their own features to compete with MS.
That may not be practical yet, because of the large installed base that needs that MS compatibility to migrate to Linux and to communicate the "WinWorld". But I do think hardware support will be just as up to date and cutting edge as Windows within a couple years. It's almost there now, and what is supported is usually more stable once it's configured correctly.
Well, we all know that most of the distros *can* be configured to run on older machines -- if you change all the defaults to load programs and interfaces running with lower memory requirements. Slack and Debian are probably the best for tis task.
But if you're looking for something designed for older PC's "out of the box" then Deli, Damn Small Linux, or most of the other live CD distributions designed for business card CD's will also work, since they're all designed for small memory footprints, which is probably the main constraint on older systems.
Deli, in particular, makes the interesting choice of using the 2.2.25 kernel, which should be good for older machines.
Really. What is the point of this product now? There's nothing *important* left for it to support.
I suspect you're right, though really we're only talking about a couple hundred thousand years of evolution. Homo species prior to Sapiens probably didn't have the kind of symbolic processing ability that would make such linguistic or visual appeals, or the the ability to resist them, evolutionarily important, even if they had language, which is also under question. And in any case, the combined Homo and Austro primate branches have only been around for about 5 (+/- 1) million years.
However, let's say that a technique that can be shown to influence peoples buying and desire patterns, with a mechanism that can be adequately understood outside of statistical correlation (such as a visual-linguistic technique that provokes desire for an object through creating a dopaminic/serotonal cascade in a portion of the brain) exists and is discovered.
In that case, I expect one of two things would occur:
These constraints might compel researchers in the field to avoid explaining, or even looking for an explanation of, how the effect actually works. Instead, they'll probably just identify certain correlations in focus groups between MRI results and patterns of desire and consumption (buying).
I wonder what would happen to such people. Would they be better paid than individuals in your typical focus group? After all, going through the MRI process would be far more intrusive, tedious, and time-consuming than sitting around a table answering questions.
What would happen to people who exposed themselves to such testing on a repeated basis? Would they become obsessives or fetishists, like the characters who went through SB-5 trials in William Gibson's "Idoru" and "All Tomorrow's Parties"? Given the amount of TV most people watch, would we accidentally create a society of such obsessives? Would MRI comparisons, between people who watch TV on a regular basis and people who don't, show that we've already created such a society?
Hmm, if nothing else, it could make for a good SF novel. But then, I suppose Neil Stephenson's "Snow Crash" has already covered some of this territory.
"...WAYYYY overpriced as a notebook."
Yep, and underpowered. If someone came out with one of these babys using a Centrino processor or better, then I would have considered buying or recomending one to my clients. But when a client asks me to recommend a notebook, well, I just can't recommend something with a PIII processor at this point.
For example, someone noted above that the Tablet PC's main use within his company seemed to be during meetings. That's fine, and some of my clients could use that funtionality. Hell, I'd even be interested in it as something I could take to a bar and write on or browse the web wirelessly. (Wireless notebooks, by the way, are *great* for resolving bar arguments.)
However, it would have to be priced as something that maybe cost a few hundred dollars more but gave you equivalent performance to a high-end notebook. It's been marketed as a notebook with extra-funtionality, but with the current processors on most of them, they'll be obsolete in a year.
The Tablet PC needs to not only be marketed as a notebook with extra funtionality, but built like one. I guarantee you they would be *far* more successful if they matched the specs of the rest of today's laptops.
Is there really a point anymore to advanced special purpose calculators?
I mean, yeah, I have fond memories of my HP calculator, and even fonder memories of my old TI and stupid calculator tricks (ok, I'm 38). But if I'm already carrying around a PDA, why not just download an HP emulator, or an algebraic calculator like Parens? I'm sure there's graphing software available for the Palm, too.
So is this a business that HP can really profit from going into? Seems to me like it's a niche market now, or at least headed that way.
SCO will be lucky if that $50 mil. PIPE infusion from Bay Star lasts them long enough to go to trial with IBM. They can try to FUD some companies into buying a license for "SCO IP in Linux" or whatever they're calling it now, but I assume most companies - yes, even the Fortune 1K - will ignore them.
Whether or not SCO needs to show these companies the allegedly infringing code to close a sale is a moot point. Most of these companies will laugh at SCO for threatening them with legal action. SCO has about $50 million in cash, and is already involved in legal suits with IBM and Red Hat. Would you take them seriously?
I mean, SCO's like a 5' tall, skinny retard with anger management problems who, already having picked a fight with the two 7' tall, 300 lb. mercenaries in the bar, starts jumping up and down between fisticuffs, points at you, and shouts "You're next, dude! I'm coming after you next!"
Riiight. Whatever, dude.
"The mere act of SCO selling the license violates the GPL immediately for BOTH SCO AND THE FORTUNE 1000 company."
I've explained this several times already, but here we go again. The purchaser of a SCO IP license is NOT violating the terms of the GPL. Said purchaser would have to be a clueless idiot to buy the license, but they wouldn't be violating the GPL. On SCO would be violating it.
Think of it this way: the licensing restrictions of the GPL do not kick in unless you are a *distributor* of the code. If you are not distributing GPL'd code, then then GPL grants you complete rights to do whatever you want with it, including modify w/o sharing your source changes, burn it to a CD and jump up and down on it, or even purchase a useless license for it.
Having said that, I just want to add that I agree with everything else in your post.
Absolutely correct. But kind of a moot point until SCO actually sues someone for a license fee, or until someone sues them over being invoiced for it.
Perhaps my meaning would have been clearer, though, had I specified "legal claims" rather than just "claims".
The ISO's are not available for downloading yet, unless you're part of the Mandrake Club, but they should be available by the end of the October according to Mandrake's download page.
They will probably missing some proprietary drivers though. You can download most of them elsewhere, but if you want them to be part of the distribution, you'll need to buy it.
"The rumor has it that Sontag has decided that attacking Hollywood will generate a lot of press..."
Darl: Ok, anyone got any ideas for pushing the stock price up further?
Chris: Yeah, let's go after those promiscuous, atheist, Linux-loving, Hollywood commies. It worked for Joe McCarthy.
Darl: Hmm...
Really? Personally, I think he sounds kind of shrill and worried these days. I think he may be concerned that even if he achieves his four quarters of profits, and the associated bonus, he might not be able to keep the stock pumped long enough to cash out as profitable as he'd like.
Plus, there's the problem that once Canopy cashes out, there's every reason for them to use him as a scapegoat for all of SCO's other faults and failures.
No, I suspect at this point that if Darl is smiling at all, it's probably the tight little smile of suppressed fear.
"...claims against Linux users are based on copyright."
Actually, SCO's claims are, so far, based strictly on contract law. Their legal complaint says that IBM had no right to contribute the code without SCO's permission, since it is, SCO alleges, a "derivative work" of Unix.
Despite all of SCO's press releases and interview statements claiming copyright infringement, they actually *haven't* charged anyone with copyright infringement in their court briefings. The copyright claims are just more FUD.
"...let's say they do own the patents or copyrights or whatever to something someone else is using, then by law they do deserve what's theirs."
Well, no one has been able to find any patents possessed by SCO that would have any legal relationship to their claims or to Unix at all, so let's skip the patent question and go to copyrights.
As far as copyright is concerned we have two issues:
So, if we're following the letter of the law and grant the dubious hyppothesis that their public pronouncements of copyright infringement have any merit - though they have not filed any claims of copyright infringement with the courts - SCO would still have no right to compensation from the end-users, but only from companies that contributed the infringing code.
Do you have a copy of the OpenServer distribution?
The reason I ask is that it's possible that they included the Samba source on the CD's of the product.
They're not required under the GPL to post the source on the internet, just to make it available to people to whom they've distributed the product.
Note: I'm not defending SCO here - I wouldn't be3 at all surprised if they abrogated the GPL again. I'm just suggesting that we make sure we've done the proper due diligence before accusing them of yet another GPL breach. It's certainly something the Samba dev team should look into.
...the GPL boils down to: "Here's the source code. You can use it if you want but then you must make it and your derivatives based on it available to the public."
Sorry to get nitpicky about this, but that's a common misconception that feeds into the Anti-Open Source propaganda. They want people to believe the GPL compels publication and distribution of any code. This is NOT the case.
The GPL only compels you to distribute the source if you are distributing GPL'd software. A better way to sum it up would be:
Here's the program and the source code. You can do anything you want with it and modify it any way you want. But if you distribute the program, you've got to include the source code too. And if you distribute your modified version, you've got to include the source code for that also.
"...the University of Arkansas as a example of an institution that has combined the two technologies and was able to circumvent its local carrier and reduced monthly service fees from $530,000 to a mere $6,000 by using voice over IP technology"
All of which savings were transferred to the football team. I mean, this is the South we're talking about.
"...if they don't show which 50% they claim to own, won't the system be in an undetermined state?"
Only until the cat dies.
Or better yet:
... I know we're losing a lot of money, it's just.... At the movies? No that's just my DVD player... Hello? ... Hello? ... I can't hear you... I think we've got a bad connection... (Makes static sounds)... Yeah, this phone has been giving me trouble for a couple weeks now.... Hello?.... (click)"
"The server's down? Look, I'm really sick.... thirty thousand an hour?
Removes phone battery.
Loses job.
Disrupting SCO's road shows won't do the Open Source community any good. The best tactic is simply to attend and report. Maybe one or two pointed questions during Q&A, but anything more than that will get in the way of the attendees coming to their own conclusions. No need to interrupt your enemy when he is shooting himself in the foot.
"Darl doesn't take a shit with out getting permission from Ray Norda."
Noorda was forced out of Novell, in part due to short term memory problems. That was ten years ago. I expect that Ray is probably pretty senile by now.
The person who Darl needs permission from to to take a shit is Ralph Yarrow. Noorda, if you recall, was the one who originally ordered Novell's and ATT's lawyers to quicken the pace on settling the BSD suit. Of course, I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that SCO's legal actions are Yarrow's brain-child, not Ray's.
IBM and SGI have limited rights to distribute System V source code to sub-licensees. Rather than worry about getting into issues with those limited rights, they have typically referred the sub-licensees to get the source from ATT/Novell/OldSCO/Caldera/NewSCO.
This is the root of Darl's claims that IBM, et. al., refers their sub-licensees to SCO for source, and doesn't prove, as Darl claims, that SCO "owns" the code for AIX, Irix, etc. It just proves that the companies involved were trying to respect their contractual obligations in the easiest, least controversial, manner possible.
Dude, that's their market cap., based on stock price, which would sink like a stone if SCO won. The question is, how much *cash* does SGI have on hand, and what are its assets worth?
A stink wasn't made over them at the time because it hadn't become common and only a few people, generally regarded then as "chicken littles", theorized publicly that it may not be the best idea.
Europeans are in a better position to make a stink about it, because they can hold the U.S. up as an example of the problems inherent in granting software patents.
I am not a Lawyer.
However, I think I can answer this one. SCO has repeatedly claimed that they are only planning to seek damages from businesses running Linux, rather than individual users. So, even as a class-action, if the class represented individual users rather than businesses, SCO would, probably successfully, be able to claim that the plaintiff had no standing.
Contributors to the Unix kernel would probably have standing to sue SCO for breach of the GPL, and copyright infringement as a result of that breach, either individually or as a class. Especially if Licenses for SCO IP in Linux could be shown to have been sold by SCO, though the web site adverising those licenses and the associated FAQ may be enough to grant standing.
Finally, businesses might be able to sue for declarative judgement, again individually or as a class, regarding SCO's threats. In particular, those businesses which rec'd the original SCO letter regarding IP infringements in Linux could have a particularly strong suit. A class-action by over a thousand companies against SCO would be very gratifying, and damaging to SCO's credibility. Won't happen, of course, but one can dream.
Anyway, as individual users, there isn't a whole hell of a lot we can do to SCO in court. At least as far as I can see. I'm kind of hoping one of the lawyers here will see this and come up with something that individual Linux users could sue SCO over, but I doubt it.