Re:Question #4 from the SCO "Linux Q & A"....
on
United Linux Dead
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· Score: 1
That's interesting. Could you tell if they were developed by SCO or SuSE?
Re:Question #4 from the SCO "Linux Q & A"....
on
United Linux Dead
·
· Score: 5, Informative
What obligations? Paying SuSE? The UL base was pretty much created and maintained by SuSE, with the other vendors supposedly making their own "add-on" modifications. I don't think SCO/Caldera ever actually added anything, though.
Hell, SCO never even changed the name on the kernel source package, which stated pretty clearly that it came from SUSE.
Seems like Novell has some issues with that, in that SCO may owe Novell 95% of the proceeds from those deals.
And let's not forget that those are new contracts SUN and MS have with SCO. SCO's stated philosophy with regard to contracts is: "Contract are what you use against those you have relationships with."
So, while it's not true that every commercial transaction is a conspiracy, it is true that *SCO* treats them as such, or at least as a con to try to screw you later.
Darl and Co. really missed the boat on another revenue tie-in: Reality Programming. Can you *imagine* what a great comedy this would make? Just prop up the cameras, then let Darl, Chris Sontag, Blake Stowell, Jeff Hunsaker, Mark Heise, David Boies, Kevin McBride, and etc., rip.
They'd make a *fortune*!!!
And then they could sue Court TV for "IP infringement". More Money!
Po' li'l set upon Darl. All the big corporate boys are conspiring against him. And all the li'l Linux boys are piling on.
Seriously, though, I think Litigious Bastards 'R' Us, Inc. have finally signed their death warrant.
Seriously, though, that's because it's the only place in the world that didn't have a human population until 1200 years ago, and it was too remote and barren for anyone to care about invading it once it was settled.
There are other places where the aboriginal population controls the government, Madagascar comes to mind, as do perhaps Thailand, Cambodia, and Papua New Guinea, but even those have had their own share of civil wars, and colonization.
Europe, of course, doesn't count because there was an aboriginal population that existed before the Indo-European invasion, of which the Basques are the only remnant.
Russia stills retains a large portion of its aboriginal populations, much as the Americas contain remnants of the Native American cultures, New Zealand, the Maoris, Australia, the Aborigines, etc.
The Japanese were probably a Korean tribe that overran the original Ainu occupants, the Sino-Tibetans overran a large number of Australasian groups to conquer China, the Koreans themselves probably started as a Mongol tribe that overran that overran tribes on the Korean peninsula that may have been related to the Kamchatkan tribes of far Northwestern Russia, or even tribes that were related to the Na-Dene culture of America.
Anyway, my point is that you're mostly right, but there are *some* exceptions.
If you're really interested in following up on the history of human migrations, and conquests over one another, you may want to check out both Luca Cavalli-Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genes and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Those things do exist, and yes, they are far less common in Europe, however, they're not particularly common in the US either. Maybe in the more thinly populated area between the Appalachians and the Rockies they're more so, and in the south too, I suppose, but hell, I live in New York City, and insane Christian nonsense and anti-gun control attitudes do *not* go over well here.
And if you don't think that New York represents a good slice of the American population, well, just take into account that about 3% of the population lives here.
How the hell did this Anti-American rant get modded "Insightful"?
My own political stance is somewwere between Liberal Democrat and Libertian, check out their positions sometime and you'll notice that the Liberterians are usually closer to Democrats than Republicans on a lot of issues.
But anyone who accuses people of being Anti-Semitic, just because they thought the timing of waging war against Hussein was pretty bad, obviously has no respect for the American traditions of free-speech and disagreement.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm happy Hussein's out of power, but I'm not too thrilled about the price, neither in dollars nor in international good will. And if you don't realize that isolationism, unless there's a good cause that furthers American interests, is a Liberterian tradition, you really need to do some more reading.
Actually, the German courts told SCO to stick their head up their collective ass. This will just get the courts to push SCO's head further up it's ass, making SCO the first corporate Klein bottle.
Actually, SCO describes it in the SEC filing as being broken into "two components", one of which is the derivative. The upshot is that they only book a million if the stock loses a dollar.
I suspect Darl may have wanted the derivative to show an even greater profits on downward stock movement, but the new board member (Daniel Campbell?) who has accounting experience may have, umm, asked a few questions about it?
At any rate, this accounting for the PIPE as a derivative suggests that SCO may have been telling the truth when they announced last quarter that they were delaying their earnings statement to account for the PIPE deal.
I think I posted way back when, both here and on Groklaw, that they would structure this as a derivative, but I have to confess that I didn't foresee SCO using it to prop up their earnings in the event of a stock downturn. For some reason, I thought it would be the Canopy Group that benefited from the derivative instruent.
Anyway, I'm not an accountant, just someone who understands math relatively well, but I'm still kind of kicking myself for missing that one. After all, a derivative usually is structured as a hedge against losses.
It's called "risk management". Because the PIPE shares are "preferred", they don't pay dividends in cash, and because they are "convertible" the amount of money SCO owes Bay Star and RBC goes *up* if the stock goes up, thus it's marked as a loss to SCO, and vice versa if the stock goes down.
The principal behind the derivative is not that unusual. What is unusual is for a company to structure such a derivative as to impact so heavily on its books depending on its *own* stock movement.
The other unusual aspect of it is that it flies in the face of the common sense aspect of rewarding a CEO for upward stock movement. Darl McBride receives about 600,000 thousand stock options upon achieving 4 consecutive profitable quarters. He's already guaranteed 150,000 of those options for the first profitable quarter he achieved.
Now, if SCO can show a profit on it's books by taking actions that lower the value of the stock, Darl could be more motivated to let the stock price slide rather than take action to prop it up. So this deal puts the CEO's best interests in potential conflict with the investors. Which is just another reason no one should be invvesting in SCO stock and why it is *way* over-valued at present.
Problem is, a SEC filing, by SCO, today, reveals that the Bay Star / Royal Bank of Canada PIPE investment in SCO is treated as a derivative in SCO's books, such that if the stock goes down by a dollar, SCO books it as a million dollar *profit*. If the stock goes up by a dollar, it gets booked as a million dollar loss.
The numbers are approximate, but they come from SCO's SEC filing; in other words, they're not just bullshit numbers I made up -- they're bullshit numbers SCO made up. But likely to be how SCO will book their stock variations on their SEC filings going forward.
Anyway, this means that Darl has an interest in the stock price closing down at the end of the quarter, as he'll be able to book the loss in value as profit. It also means that he'll be interested in seeing the stock go up, damn the impact on GAAP numbers, once he gets his stock option bonus for four consecutive profitable (Pro Forma) quarters.
By the way, it's still not clear whether Darl's bonus is based on Pro Forma or GAAP profits, but given the extent of book-cooking that took place to show a Pro Forma profit for the last quarter.... Well, I can't see why Darl would do it unless he was getting *something* for showing the Pro Forma profit, so I'm guessing that's what his future bonus is based upon.
Yes, this is liable to piss of the judge, especially considering that the judge has shown a small amount of pissed offedness with SCO already.
I refer you to the following quotes from the transcript of the December 5, 2003 discovery hearing:
THE COURT:... the burden is on the plaintiff to prove the existence of the trade secrets assuming that that's part of it, all right, and that it is appropriate to postpone discovery in those circumstances until such time as the plaintiffs have acknowledged what the trade secrets may be, and otherwise this Court cannot determine, as the other party cannot determine, what is relevant as to future discovery.
MR. MCBRIDE: Thank you. Yes. I will, Your Honor.
THE COURT: None of us know.
Or, how about this one:
MR. MCBRIDE: Your Honor,... we gave them the source code of Unixwork so it's in there.
THE COURT: Didn't you give it to them in hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper, though, without specifically identifying it?
"You can fit a lot of files and line numbers on 60 pages, so I wouldn't dismiss it just because of the "millions of lines of code"."
Well, assuming 50 lines per pages, that would give you 3000 lines. Now, let's assume that SCO still claims 1500 files in Linux are violating. At one line per file, and another line per file to list the infringing line numbers, we've already hit the 60 pages. And that is only responsive to *one* interrogatory, Interrogatory 12.
Since there are ten other interrogatories to respond to, I think it's safe to assume there will be some serious deficiencies in SCO's responses. Can't wait to see IBM's response.
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That's interesting. Could you tell if they were developed by SCO or SuSE?
What obligations? Paying SuSE? The UL base was pretty much created and maintained by SuSE, with the other vendors supposedly making their own "add-on" modifications. I don't think SCO/Caldera ever actually added anything, though.
Hell, SCO never even changed the name on the kernel source package, which stated pretty clearly that it came from SUSE.
Maybe Bill will buy Darl a membership for Valentine's Day.
Seems like Novell has some issues with that, in that SCO may owe Novell 95% of the proceeds from those deals.
And let's not forget that those are new contracts SUN and MS have with SCO. SCO's stated philosophy with regard to contracts is: "Contract are what you use against those you have relationships with."
So, while it's not true that every commercial transaction is a conspiracy, it is true that *SCO* treats them as such, or at least as a con to try to screw you later.
Wheeee!!! Another SCO lawsuit!
Darl and Co. really missed the boat on another revenue tie-in: Reality Programming. Can you *imagine* what a great comedy this would make? Just prop up the cameras, then let Darl, Chris Sontag, Blake Stowell, Jeff Hunsaker, Mark Heise, David Boies, Kevin McBride, and etc., rip.
They'd make a *fortune*!!!
And then they could sue Court TV for "IP infringement". More Money!
Po' li'l set upon Darl. All the big corporate boys are conspiring against him. And all the li'l Linux boys are piling on.
Seriously, though, I think Litigious Bastards 'R' Us, Inc. have finally signed their death warrant.
McAfee/NAI has been detecting it for the past day or two as well.
Um, Iceland?
Seriously, though, that's because it's the only place in the world that didn't have a human population until 1200 years ago, and it was too remote and barren for anyone to care about invading it once it was settled.
There are other places where the aboriginal population controls the government, Madagascar comes to mind, as do perhaps Thailand, Cambodia, and Papua New Guinea, but even those have had their own share of civil wars, and colonization.
Europe, of course, doesn't count because there was an aboriginal population that existed before the Indo-European invasion, of which the Basques are the only remnant.
Russia stills retains a large portion of its aboriginal populations, much as the Americas contain remnants of the Native American cultures, New Zealand, the Maoris, Australia, the Aborigines, etc.
The Japanese were probably a Korean tribe that overran the original Ainu occupants, the Sino-Tibetans overran a large number of Australasian groups to conquer China, the Koreans themselves probably started as a Mongol tribe that overran that overran tribes on the Korean peninsula that may have been related to the Kamchatkan tribes of far Northwestern Russia, or even tribes that were related to the Na-Dene culture of America.
Anyway, my point is that you're mostly right, but there are *some* exceptions.
If you're really interested in following up on the history of human migrations, and conquests over one another, you may want to check out both Luca Cavalli-Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genes and Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Those things do exist, and yes, they are far less common in Europe, however, they're not particularly common in the US either. Maybe in the more thinly populated area between the Appalachians and the Rockies they're more so, and in the south too, I suppose, but hell, I live in New York City, and insane Christian nonsense and anti-gun control attitudes do *not* go over well here.
And if you don't think that New York represents a good slice of the American population, well, just take into account that about 3% of the population lives here.
How the hell did this Anti-American rant get modded "Insightful"?
My own political stance is somewwere between Liberal Democrat and Libertian, check out their positions sometime and you'll notice that the Liberterians are usually closer to Democrats than Republicans on a lot of issues.
But anyone who accuses people of being Anti-Semitic, just because they thought the timing of waging war against Hussein was pretty bad, obviously has no respect for the American traditions of free-speech and disagreement.
Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm happy Hussein's out of power, but I'm not too thrilled about the price, neither in dollars nor in international good will. And if you don't realize that isolationism, unless there's a good cause that furthers American interests, is a Liberterian tradition, you really need to do some more reading.
Since the purchase price of the options is something like 1/10 of a cent, Darl will collect more than a million even if the stock tanks down to $2.00.
Actually, the German courts told SCO to stick their head up their collective ass. This will just get the courts to push SCO's head further up it's ass, making SCO the first corporate Klein bottle.
Also, check out the Legos version.
Actually, the French would probably greet McBride with cheese slicers and serve him up as Darl Tartare.
"Someone from slashdot getting a date with a hot french girl? Impossible."
Dude, I'm so glad I don't live in your world.
How 'bout not measuring it at all, just slice it off at the base and count the rings to find out how old he is.
Actually, SCO describes it in the SEC filing as being broken into "two components", one of which is the derivative. The upshot is that they only book a million if the stock loses a dollar.
I suspect Darl may have wanted the derivative to show an even greater profits on downward stock movement, but the new board member (Daniel Campbell?) who has accounting experience may have, umm, asked a few questions about it?
At any rate, this accounting for the PIPE as a derivative suggests that SCO may have been telling the truth when they announced last quarter that they were delaying their earnings statement to account for the PIPE deal.
I think I posted way back when, both here and on Groklaw, that they would structure this as a derivative, but I have to confess that I didn't foresee SCO using it to prop up their earnings in the event of a stock downturn. For some reason, I thought it would be the Canopy Group that benefited from the derivative instruent.
Anyway, I'm not an accountant, just someone who understands math relatively well, but I'm still kind of kicking myself for missing that one. After all, a derivative usually is structured as a hedge against losses.
It's called "risk management". Because the PIPE shares are "preferred", they don't pay dividends in cash, and because they are "convertible" the amount of money SCO owes Bay Star and RBC goes *up* if the stock goes up, thus it's marked as a loss to SCO, and vice versa if the stock goes down.
The principal behind the derivative is not that unusual. What is unusual is for a company to structure such a derivative as to impact so heavily on its books depending on its *own* stock movement.
The other unusual aspect of it is that it flies in the face of the common sense aspect of rewarding a CEO for upward stock movement. Darl McBride receives about 600,000 thousand stock options upon achieving 4 consecutive profitable quarters. He's already guaranteed 150,000 of those options for the first profitable quarter he achieved.
Now, if SCO can show a profit on it's books by taking actions that lower the value of the stock, Darl could be more motivated to let the stock price slide rather than take action to prop it up. So this deal puts the CEO's best interests in potential conflict with the investors. Which is just another reason no one should be invvesting in SCO stock and why it is *way* over-valued at present.
Yes, I'm kind of curious as to what the Finnish and Swedish reactions will be.
I'm reminded of that section in Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, where the narrator talks about the Finnish designing their own guns...
Upgrades.
"(2) see how mean looking that CEO is..."
This a typo. I'm sure you meant, "how dumb looking that CEO is..."
I'm not sure about that. China and Brazil are pretty far up there too.
Meanwhile, bystanders will be murmurming to each other:
Problem is, a SEC filing, by SCO, today, reveals that the Bay Star / Royal Bank of Canada PIPE investment in SCO is treated as a derivative in SCO's books, such that if the stock goes down by a dollar, SCO books it as a million dollar *profit*. If the stock goes up by a dollar, it gets booked as a million dollar loss.
The numbers are approximate, but they come from SCO's SEC filing; in other words, they're not just bullshit numbers I made up -- they're bullshit numbers SCO made up. But likely to be how SCO will book their stock variations on their SEC filings going forward.
Anyway, this means that Darl has an interest in the stock price closing down at the end of the quarter, as he'll be able to book the loss in value as profit. It also means that he'll be interested in seeing the stock go up, damn the impact on GAAP numbers, once he gets his stock option bonus for four consecutive profitable (Pro Forma) quarters.
By the way, it's still not clear whether Darl's bonus is based on Pro Forma or GAAP profits, but given the extent of book-cooking that took place to show a Pro Forma profit for the last quarter.... Well, I can't see why Darl would do it unless he was getting *something* for showing the Pro Forma profit, so I'm guessing that's what his future bonus is based upon.
Yes, this is liable to piss of the judge, especially considering that the judge has shown a small amount of pissed offedness with SCO already.
I refer you to the following quotes from the transcript of the December 5, 2003 discovery hearing:
Or, how about this one:
Including the copyright notices in each file?
They should at least be excluding those. Therefore, such a response would not be sufficient.
"You can fit a lot of files and line numbers on 60 pages, so I wouldn't dismiss it just because of the "millions of lines of code"."
Well, assuming 50 lines per pages, that would give you 3000 lines. Now, let's assume that SCO still claims 1500 files in Linux are violating. At one line per file, and another line per file to list the infringing line numbers, we've already hit the 60 pages. And that is only responsive to *one* interrogatory, Interrogatory 12.
Since there are ten other interrogatories to respond to, I think it's safe to assume there will be some serious deficiencies in SCO's responses. Can't wait to see IBM's response.