One question: can't the RIAA still sue you if you just dl stuff from the net? They could set up a honeypot server, for example, and wait for people to dl from their server, and get their IP's
SCO CEO Posts Open Letter to the Open Source Community Slams Fundamental Flaws in Linux Development & Lousy Business Model September 9, 2003 Summary The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system...
The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
This debate about Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers. But in the last week of August two developments occurred that adversely affect the long-term credibility of the Open Source community, with the general public and with customers.
The first development followed another series of Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on SCO, which took place two weeks ago. These were the second and third such attacks in four months and have prevented Web users from accessing our web site and doing business with SCO. There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement and raises questions about whether Open Source is ready to take a central role in business computing. We cannot have a situation in which companies fear they may be next to suffer computer attacks if they take a business or legal position that angers the Open Source community. Until these illegal attacks are brought under control, enterprise customers and mainstream society will become increasingly alienated from anyone associated with this type of behavior.
The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003). Mr Perens continued with a string of arguments to justify the "error in the Linux developer's process." However, nothing can change the fact that a Linux developer on the payroll of Silicon Graphics stripped copyright attributions from copyrighted System V code that was licensed to Silicon Graphics under strict conditions of use, and then contributed that source code to Linux as though it was clean code owned and controlled by SGI. This is a clear violation of SGI's contract and copyright obligations to SCO. We are currently working to try and resolve these issues with SGI.
Well, since people are saying we need to write congress, and one person even asked for a sample letter, here's a sample letter from a history guy:
To Senator/Representative,
I am writing to you regarding H.R. 2885, the act cited as "Protecting Children from Peer -to-Peer Pornography Act of 2003." Despite this bill's good intentions, I fear that I must inform you about this bill's pitfalls.
This bill does more harm than good. It attempts to criminalize the usage of Peer to Peer (commonly referred to as P2P) programs. Despite the negative publicity that is associated with these programs, P2P is a revolutionary idea in the computing world. P2P programs helps to connect people in new ways. Simply because P2P can be used in malicious ways does not mean it is a bad thing.
If the express purpose of this bill is to prevent child pornograpy (which is a terrible thing indeed), why not disconnect the Internet altogether? There is no Act to do this because of the public outcry this would cause. Only an evil, Communist nation such as China or North Korea would contemplate such a thing. But the lobbyists pushing for this Act are attempting to solve the simple problem of music piracy through banning all P2P programs and the installation of a "beacon". There are still other ways to pirate music, and they will be used, from copying a friend's cds, to creating new networks, etc.
And the idea of a beacon violates my right to be free. If I install a government "beacon" into my computer, how do I know it does not have bugs in it, something a virus could attack?
As a computer specialist, even the implementation of a beacon system would be very hard. The technology does not yet exist, and even if it did, there probably would be someway for criminals to break it anyway.
Please stop this bill from passing. If you require further information about computers, I am at your service. My contact information is below. Thank you for your time.
Problem is, if such a case went up against a jury, the jury would be too stupid to realize the problems with netstat, etc, and probably convict. It might be better if the content was funneled through intermediaries (doesn't Kazaa do this already?) on it's way to the destination.
Who says the "beacon" has to actively search out and destroy P2P programs? The "beacon" could simply be a file marked "beacon.txt" on the main hard drive of the computer. And then the feds would simply legislate that if a P2P program finds the "beacon.txt" file on a computer, it has to stop installation. If not, huge fines. If the program (or anyone else) attempts to remove the file, huge fines again, possibly jail time.
I'm a student at UW Madison, and they're going nuts about viruses and worms over here as well. There are signs even in the lunchrooms reminding students to be careful of viruses...
I think the software they are looking for is called "Adobe Acrobat"...if prices are too high for books (and I know they are) then there are three steps... 1.Scan 2.Share 3.Profit!(Or lack therof for the campus bookstore)
And then the book-equivalent of the RIAA will come after you for copyright infringement.
I can attest to universities having problems. I'm currently at the University of Wisconsin, @ Madison, reading/. in a public computer lab, because my dorm room ethernet connection isn't working. Why? Because the network servers are clogged up with junk. Some of them are down completely, and even in the public computer lab I'm in, net connections are iffy. The computer next to mine isn't connecting to the net at all. Estimated time to fix this? Tuesday at best. Why? Because of Labor day weekend, the techies are all gone.
If anyone has some connections with UW staff, tell them to call me so I can help. I'm a fully qualified techie guy too, just that I don't know anything about UW servers and what they run.
Can't we just ban all email that is NOT from the USA, Europe, and Canada? Seems to me that no good email comes from any country except the ones in Europe, US, and canada. and we can cut a few European countries as well... I've never received a good email from Serbia, let's say.
no, it's 0.07 per song PER USER, so when you get lots of users, the costs go way the hell up. Hey, if it was 0.07 cents per song, no matter the people who were listening to it, I would set up my own net radio station!
I don't want to be flamebait here, but he does make a good point. Almost every day, someone (computer-illiterate) calls me up and asks some stupid question on computers, because they know I'm the computer geek in the area. For example, you know the online ads that sometimes look like Windows error message? I have had so many inquiries concerning whether they were real that I had to write up a paper debunking those things and distribute it to everyone I work with.
And to all the people who say it doesn't matter whether -illiterate users use Linux, it really does matter. Whether we like it or not, lots of decisions are made by computer illiterate people, and they have grown up on Windows, and know no other way to use a computer. Linux has to become as easy to use as Windows. And yes, for all those Win-haters out there, you have my sympathy, but face it: Linux has to start making serious inroads into Windows market share, and to do that, Linux has to appeal to the -illiterate people of the world.
I personally think ESR's allusions to Star Wars is a good part in writing. I used to work as an aide to a HS English teacher, and one of the things I kept hearing again and again was how good euphemisms and allusions are in the real world.
As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words. We picture Darth Vader and immediately think: bad guy. Very bad guy. And the comment about the helmet and everything? Hits fairly close to home for most people.
I just logged on and saw that I received three SOBIG viruses. The funny part was, one email didn't have the.PIF attachment, but was the SOBIG virus in every other way. One email was allegedly from major-domo@cert.org!
Finally, another SCO story... I was thinking that/. had forgotten all about it...
Seriously, who the hell does SCO think they are? Hey, SCO, I own 2 servers running Red Hat Linux, and I'm thinking about putting Linux on my laptop to dual boot with Win XP. So come and sue me, you big losers. I'd love to get an threat from you. And if you need my name, subpoena/. (And hey,/., if you get a subpoena for my name, get my user info to SCO as fast as possible.)
Perhaps you should get a subpoena served to Verizon to get her name.... oh, wait, even if you're successful, the RIAA will subpoena you to figure out who she is....
Same for University of Wisc @ Madison, except they sent along another message telling us that we're not supposed to use Kazaa because of various copyright reasons... I didn't read the rest.
Sorry for posting again, but another thought just hit me. When anti-virus programs send their auto-notification junk emails, is there something common to all of them so the servers could filter them out? Like, is there a special flag that is set up?
I'm really kind of new to web servers.
Slashdot Mirror
the Linux license from SCO went to.
One question: can't the RIAA still sue you if you just dl stuff from the net? They could set up a honeypot server, for example, and wait for people to dl from their server, and get their IP's
wrong discussion, sorry
Here's the article:
SCO CEO Posts Open Letter to the Open Source Community
Slams Fundamental Flaws in Linux Development & Lousy Business Model
September 9, 2003
Summary
The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system...
The most controversial issue in the information technology industry today is the ongoing battle over software copyrights and intellectual property. This battle is being fought largely between vendors who create and sell proprietary software, and the Open Source community. My company, the SCO Group, became a focus of this controversy when we filed a lawsuit against IBM alleging that SCO's proprietary Unix code has been illegally copied into the free Linux operating system. In doing this we angered some in the Open Source community by pointing out obvious intellectual property problems that exist in the current Linux software development model.
This debate about Open Source software is healthy and beneficial. It offers long-term benefits to the industry by addressing a new business model in advance of wide-scale adoption by customers. But in the last week of August two developments occurred that adversely affect the long-term credibility of the Open Source community, with the general public and with customers.
The first development followed another series of Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on SCO, which took place two weeks ago. These were the second and third such attacks in four months and have prevented Web users from accessing our web site and doing business with SCO. There is no question about the affiliation of the attacker - Open Source leader Eric Raymond was quoted as saying that he was contacted by the perpetrator and that "he's one of us." To Mr Raymond's partial credit, he asked the attacker to stop. However, he has yet to disclose the identity of the perpetrator so that justice can be done.
No one can tolerate DDoS attacks and other kinds of attacks in this Information Age economy that relies so heavily on the Internet. Mr Raymond and the entire Open Source community need to aggressively help the industry police these types of crimes. If they fail to do so it casts a shadow over the entire Open Source movement and raises questions about whether Open Source is ready to take a central role in business computing. We cannot have a situation in which companies fear they may be next to suffer computer attacks if they take a business or legal position that angers the Open Source community. Until these illegal attacks are brought under control, enterprise customers and mainstream society will become increasingly alienated from anyone associated with this type of behavior.
The second development was an admission by Open Source leader Bruce Perens that UNIX System V code (owned by SCO) is, in fact, in Linux, and it shouldn't be there. Mr Perens stated that there is "an error in the Linux developer's process" which allowed Unix System V code that "didn't belong in Linux" to end up in the Linux kernel (source: ComputerWire, August 25, 2003). Mr Perens continued with a string of arguments to justify the "error in the Linux developer's process." However, nothing can change the fact that a Linux developer on the payroll of Silicon Graphics stripped copyright attributions from copyrighted System V code that was licensed to Silicon Graphics under strict conditions of use, and then contributed that source code to Linux as though it was clean code owned and controlled by SGI. This is a clear violation of SGI's contract and copyright obligations to SCO. We are currently working to try and resolve these issues with SGI.
Thi
Then make way for a bachelor.... Do you think she would like a brand new NIC instead of flowers?
Well, since people are saying we need to write congress, and one person even asked for a sample letter, here's a sample letter from a history guy:
,
To Senator/Representative
I am writing to you regarding H.R. 2885, the act cited as "Protecting Children from Peer -to-Peer Pornography Act of 2003." Despite this bill's good intentions, I fear that I must inform you about this bill's pitfalls.
This bill does more harm than good. It attempts to criminalize the usage of Peer to Peer (commonly referred to as P2P) programs. Despite the negative publicity that is associated with these programs, P2P is a revolutionary idea in the computing world. P2P programs helps to connect people in new ways. Simply because P2P can be used in malicious ways does not mean it is a bad thing.
If the express purpose of this bill is to prevent child pornograpy (which is a terrible thing indeed), why not disconnect the Internet altogether? There is no Act to do this because of the public outcry this would cause. Only an evil, Communist nation such as China or North Korea would contemplate such a thing. But the lobbyists pushing for this Act are attempting to solve the simple problem of music piracy through banning all P2P programs and the installation of a "beacon". There are still other ways to pirate music, and they will be used, from copying a friend's cds, to creating new networks, etc.
And the idea of a beacon violates my right to be free. If I install a government "beacon" into my computer, how do I know it does not have bugs in it, something a virus could attack?
As a computer specialist, even the implementation of a beacon system would be very hard. The technology does not yet exist, and even if it did, there probably would be someway for criminals to break it anyway.
Please stop this bill from passing. If you require further information about computers, I am at your service. My contact information is below. Thank you for your time.
Signed,
Problem is, if such a case went up against a jury, the jury would be too stupid to realize the problems with netstat, etc, and probably convict. It might be better if the content was funneled through intermediaries (doesn't Kazaa do this already?) on it's way to the destination.
Who says the "beacon" has to actively search out and destroy P2P programs? The "beacon" could simply be a file marked "beacon.txt" on the main hard drive of the computer. And then the feds would simply legislate that if a P2P program finds the "beacon.txt" file on a computer, it has to stop installation. If not, huge fines. If the program (or anyone else) attempts to remove the file, huge fines again, possibly jail time.
Just as a matter of interest, how does one send out a press release?
I'm a student at UW Madison, and they're going nuts about viruses and worms over here as well. There are signs even in the lunchrooms reminding students to be careful of viruses...
Excellent, yesterday Dell, now this. Linux is coming into the home.
There are houses, in the middle, I think. if you look closely, there's a pool next to one of them.
I think the software they are looking for is called "Adobe Acrobat"...if prices are too high for books (and I know they are) then there are three steps... 1.Scan 2.Share 3.Profit!(Or lack therof for the campus bookstore)
And then the book-equivalent of the RIAA will come after you for copyright infringement.
I can attest to universities having problems. I'm currently at the University of Wisconsin, @ Madison, reading /. in a public computer lab, because my dorm room ethernet connection isn't working. Why? Because the network servers are clogged up with junk. Some of them are down completely, and even in the public computer lab I'm in, net connections are iffy. The computer next to mine isn't connecting to the net at all. Estimated time to fix this? Tuesday at best. Why? Because of Labor day weekend, the techies are all gone.
If anyone has some connections with UW staff, tell them to call me so I can help. I'm a fully qualified techie guy too, just that I don't know anything about UW servers and what they run.
Can't we just ban all email that is NOT from the USA, Europe, and Canada? Seems to me that no good email comes from any country except the ones in Europe, US, and canada. and we can cut a few European countries as well... I've never received a good email from Serbia, let's say.
no, it's 0.07 per song PER USER, so when you get lots of users, the costs go way the hell up. Hey, if it was 0.07 cents per song, no matter the people who were listening to it, I would set up my own net radio station!
I don't want to be flamebait here, but he does make a good point. Almost every day, someone (computer-illiterate) calls me up and asks some stupid question on computers, because they know I'm the computer geek in the area. For example, you know the online ads that sometimes look like Windows error message? I have had so many inquiries concerning whether they were real that I had to write up a paper debunking those things and distribute it to everyone I work with.
And to all the people who say it doesn't matter whether -illiterate users use Linux, it really does matter. Whether we like it or not, lots of decisions are made by computer illiterate people, and they have grown up on Windows, and know no other way to use a computer. Linux has to become as easy to use as Windows. And yes, for all those Win-haters out there, you have my sympathy, but face it: Linux has to start making serious inroads into Windows market share, and to do that, Linux has to appeal to the -illiterate people of the world.
Well... damn, I'm just drooling over the thought of that much computing power.... Wonder how much $ for my own supercomputer....
I personally think ESR's allusions to Star Wars is a good part in writing. I used to work as an aide to a HS English teacher, and one of the things I kept hearing again and again was how good euphemisms and allusions are in the real world. As they say, pictures are worth a thousand words. We picture Darth Vader and immediately think: bad guy. Very bad guy. And the comment about the helmet and everything? Hits fairly close to home for most people.
I just logged on and saw that I received three SOBIG viruses. The funny part was, one email didn't have the .PIF attachment, but was the SOBIG virus in every other way. One email was allegedly from major-domo@cert.org!
So we "slashdot" these BSA lobbyists via analog mode and hit them with tons of letters? I'm game. Anyone else want to join in?
Finally, another SCO story... I was thinking that /. had forgotten all about it... /. (And hey, /., if you get a subpoena for my name, get my user info to SCO as fast as possible.)
Seriously, who the hell does SCO think they are? Hey, SCO, I own 2 servers running Red Hat Linux, and I'm thinking about putting Linux on my laptop to dual boot with Win XP. So come and sue me, you big losers. I'd love to get an threat from you. And if you need my name, subpoena
Perhaps you should get a subpoena served to Verizon to get her name.... oh, wait, even if you're successful, the RIAA will subpoena you to figure out who she is....
Same for University of Wisc @ Madison, except they sent along another message telling us that we're not supposed to use Kazaa because of various copyright reasons... I didn't read the rest.
Sorry for posting again, but another thought just hit me. When anti-virus programs send their auto-notification junk emails, is there something common to all of them so the servers could filter them out? Like, is there a special flag that is set up?
I'm really kind of new to web servers.