...clever comebacks and snide remarks make little difference for corporate execs and lawyers keeping an eye on this case.
While Torvalds is a Linux-figurehead, he's still a techie - which means his commentary will be drowned out by the SCO lawyers, CEO and PR drones babbling on. While/. won't listen to them, I fear the ignorant public (investors, analysts, lawyers, execs) will get a one-sided view as long as only SCO official representatives and Linux techies exchange rounds with these statements in front of the press. IBM won't comment since they're in legal proceedings, but where are all the rest?
How can you prove the damages are $500 per email. That seems a little outrageous.
Those are punitive damages. The idea is to deter people from spamming. Besides, when you factor in all the millions of people who receive the spam, look at it for a second then hit delete it quickly adds up those cents.
Spam erodes the Internet and wastes everyone's time. Just because a single piece of spam is easily dealt with does not mean e-mail is not suffering a death of thousand cuts as we speak. All the Bayesian stuff, SpamAssassin, DNSbl's and Habeas are doing is buying some time until the inevitable.
LexisNexis services for $300,000? Yeah, right.
on
Adrian Lamo Surrenders
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Private individuals using LexisNexis for viewing court doduments will be charged $9 per document (not by search). I'm sure the NYT gets some kind of volume discount. This means Lamo would have had to fetch over 30,000 documents to rack up such a sum. Now assuming your average legal document is ten pages long (many are shorter, some are way longer) that makes 300,000 pages worth of legal documents. A full bookshelf of legal reference material. Why am I not buying this?
How much are you willing to bet the NYT took their monthly (yearly?) bill from LN and claimed that since Lamo had illegally benefitted from access to that material, he should pick up the whole tab?
...is actually pretty simple: Boycott the Music Industry. It's all over-marketed crap anyway - the Madonna/Britney Spears kiss, for example, wasn't an artistic expression, it was a shock statement made to get people to watch the awards program and pay money to RIAA for the music manufactured by their neutered artists.
I have some issues with this "advice":
1. There's really a lot of great music available in the catalogues of big record companies, and a lot of it is being rereleased in better format all the time. Pretending it doesn't exist and settling for second rate indie stuff just doesn't cut it.
Stop stealing music. Stop buying music too. Support your local artists.
2. When I'm home, I always have either MP3's or CD's playing in the background. Should I hire a band to play for me? Or maybe scrounge the Internet for whatever charity MP3's I can find?
Go to a local nightclub, watch the local bands, and happily pay the cover charge.
3. This is way more expensive than just buying good CD's, plus most of the money goes to the nightclub owner, which I don't see as fruitful way of promoting good music. Most of the time it's not even that good.
Buy only CD's the performers sell themselves, and don't steal their music, because you'll be ripping of a performer, and not RIAA.
4. This works only if a) the performer is small enough not to have a recording contract and b) isn't already dead. Neither is very likely in my case. Besides, buying from independent artists from across the pond is a major hassle.
Your local garage band won't be a technically proficient, but they will be more honest and original, even if they are a cover band playing other peoples' music.
5. I don't want to listen to "my local garage band". They have a tendency to suck wet goat nads.
And now, it is US big software companies who want software patents in Europe as well... I don't think they would accept anything less than what they already have in USA: They just want their patents to be practical in Europe as well.
I think it works the other way as well. European software companies are afraid that if unable to patent their innovations, their market will be invaded by American companies who hold American patents to said innovations. This will cause a situation where American companies can compete against European companies in Europe, but Europeans can't compete against Americans in the US.
Rather than implement similar software patents than in America, the EU should argue with the WTO that American software patents inhibit free trade and should therefore be struck down. It would make no sense whatsoever to implement weaker software patents than in America, since American companies would still hold the edge of stronger patents and European companies would still be blocked from competing in the US.
The battle is far from being won, and I think that the only good strategical way would be to move the battle to USA, and make them reconsider the way patents are used there, and how patents have helped Microsoft become the huge unstopable monster it is now.
Excuse me? How many million did they have to pay in restitution for patent infringement this week? What about last month?
FBI Guidelines Value Security Over Privacy By Jeffery L. Bineham
St. Cloud Times 26 June 2002: 5B.
[...]
As Ashcroft noted, "even a 12-year old" can surf the web, just as any citizen can frequent public events and public places or employ databases to gather information. The FBI should have the same rights to gather information as everyone else.
That's a pretty good idea. Put the FBI behind SurfWatch or NetNanny or whatever and have them really surf the net like 12-year-olds.
Of course, most 12-year-olds are smarter than John Aschroft, but that's beside the point.
It's unbelievable how unimaginitive the photoart used on corporate websites and brochures can be.
At ork we used to make fun of the brochures for various business related software/hardware companies that always seemed to include the same type of photoart: a group of business men and women staring at a computer screen, pointing their fingers and going "ahh" at presumably how good the product was perceived to be. You could literally find this stuff in every single brochure you browsed through.
Since it is "floating in thin air", it has to be "lighter than air", wouldn't it? This would be the same principle that makes any boat "lighter than water" even though it might weigh thousands of tons.
This has nothing to do with mass or weight rather than with density. At least the Cecil Adams calculations assumed that water in a vaporized form has the same density as water in a glass, which is ridiculous. If nothing else it would make flying into a cloud deadly.
SCO: The Linux kernel has millions of lines of infringing SCO code. Torvalds: You're smoking crack. SCO: Would you believe one million? Torvalds: No. SCO: Would you believe 80 lines? Torvalds: Doubtful. SCO: How about two variables with the same names?
MS went absolutely over the top with Office; you get "features" now that well over 99% of their user base will never even SKIM the surface of.
Clever marketing and PHB one-upmanship are what convinced the masses to go with this ridiculous and unnecessary upgrade path.
The problem is, there are a lot of heavy-duty Office users who do use those features that somebody who just writes one research paper a month never uses. For example, some companies run their whole production and financial planning in custom-built Excel spreadsheets, and if Excel 2000/XP/2003 offers some feature OpenOffice doesn't they'll never switch in a million years if it requires them to rewrite the whole shebang.
Just because you don't use a feature of your Office suite, don't assume no one does. One percentage of ten million Office users equals a hundred thousand people who absolutely depend on that feature.
I don't understand why OpenPGP is not being adopted here.
Why? Because McAfee killed PGP. Something the US DOJ never managed to do.
PGP was a nice idea when it came but then S/MIME became the proposed standard, Microsoft adopted it and McAfee killed the commercial PGP implementation which meant that everybody went to using S/MIME with Outlook. Well not everybody obviously but enough people to make commercial PGP use unviable.
Bunch of *ix hobbyists sending PGP signed mails to each other was not enough to create an Internet-wide standard. Now we're forever stuck with VeriThawte and their greedy two-bit certification schemes that get pasted on just about every new Internet security proposal.
Damn, it's a great idea: how much would a small country like Belgium or Sweden save per year if they could find a workable alternative to SAP, for instance?
Having been there and done that, I can attest that the major cost is not the software licensing, it's:
a) Hardware (acquisition + maintenance)
b) Training
c) Support
None of these would really disappear under an OSS solution since you'd anyway have to pay $$$ to some consultant to set it up, train your employees and handle support when things go wrong (and they will). Actually a) can be better handled by outsourcing your ERP hosting to a service provider, and I don't know any ERP hosting services that offer OSS solutions like Compiere.
Still, it's a great idea for yet another EU boondoggle to spend some more of my money.
Where did the submitter pull the MD5 reference? Using MD5 to compare for similarity of two data streams is a bad idea, since very small changes will severely change the hash. It's about as useful at looking at the file size to see if the two MP3's match.
Does this mean that Earl Grey is selling a substance that is almost, but not quite, completely unlike tea?
"Earl Grey" aren't selling anything since EG is just a name for a certain blend of tea, like mocha java is for coffee. This particular blend of EG was sold by the UK department store Harrods'.
Sounds like we're about to enter the times of the Wild Wild Web, where vigilantism and marshal law run wild....sounds like fun to me!
"Vigilantism" is caused by the lack of law-enforcement authorities taking action. If nobody is willing to investigate these spamhausen, then it's up to the spam victims to have them shut down.
(Allegedly) taking source from someone elses commercial product and appropriating it in your public domain product?
-or-
Taking a product from the public domain and appropriating it for your own commercial purposes?
-or-
Taking source from the public domain, incorporating large bits of it in your commercial product, claiming suddenly you own it and threatening to sue everybody who took advantage of the same PD source because both your code looks similar?
Slashdot Mirror
...clever comebacks and snide remarks make little difference for corporate execs and lawyers keeping an eye on this case.
While Torvalds is a Linux-figurehead, he's still a techie - which means his commentary will be drowned out by the SCO lawyers, CEO and PR drones babbling on. While /. won't listen to them, I fear the ignorant public (investors, analysts, lawyers, execs) will get a one-sided view as long as only SCO official representatives and Linux techies exchange rounds with these statements in front of the press. IBM won't comment since they're in legal proceedings, but where are all the rest?
How can you prove the damages are $500 per email. That seems a little outrageous.
Those are punitive damages. The idea is to deter people from spamming. Besides, when you factor in all the millions of people who receive the spam, look at it for a second then hit delete it quickly adds up those cents.
Spam erodes the Internet and wastes everyone's time. Just because a single piece of spam is easily dealt with does not mean e-mail is not suffering a death of thousand cuts as we speak. All the Bayesian stuff, SpamAssassin, DNSbl's and Habeas are doing is buying some time until the inevitable.
Private individuals using LexisNexis for viewing court doduments will be charged $9 per document (not by search). I'm sure the NYT gets some kind of volume discount. This means Lamo would have had to fetch over 30,000 documents to rack up such a sum. Now assuming your average legal document is ten pages long (many are shorter, some are way longer) that makes 300,000 pages worth of legal documents. A full bookshelf of legal reference material. Why am I not buying this?
How much are you willing to bet the NYT took their monthly (yearly?) bill from LN and claimed that since Lamo had illegally benefitted from access to that material, he should pick up the whole tab?
Fit a Linux machine into a .50 caliber *cartridge* and we'll be talking.
<dogbert>Bah!</dogbert>
Fit one inside a 1/35 scale model of a .50 cal ammo cannister.
I have some issues with this "advice":
1. There's really a lot of great music available in the catalogues of big record companies, and a lot of it is being rereleased in better format all the time. Pretending it doesn't exist and settling for second rate indie stuff just doesn't cut it.
Stop stealing music. Stop buying music too. Support your local artists.
2. When I'm home, I always have either MP3's or CD's playing in the background. Should I hire a band to play for me? Or maybe scrounge the Internet for whatever charity MP3's I can find?
Go to a local nightclub, watch the local bands, and happily pay the cover charge.
3. This is way more expensive than just buying good CD's, plus most of the money goes to the nightclub owner, which I don't see as fruitful way of promoting good music. Most of the time it's not even that good.
Buy only CD's the performers sell themselves, and don't steal their music, because you'll be ripping of a performer, and not RIAA.
4. This works only if a) the performer is small enough not to have a recording contract and b) isn't already dead. Neither is very likely in my case. Besides, buying from independent artists from across the pond is a major hassle.
Your local garage band won't be a technically proficient, but they will be more honest and original, even if they are a cover band playing other peoples' music.
5. I don't want to listen to "my local garage band". They have a tendency to suck wet goat nads.
I hear he's going to be cast as Jar-Jar Binks.
I think it works the other way as well. European software companies are afraid that if unable to patent their innovations, their market will be invaded by American companies who hold American patents to said innovations. This will cause a situation where American companies can compete against European companies in Europe, but Europeans can't compete against Americans in the US.
Rather than implement similar software patents than in America, the EU should argue with the WTO that American software patents inhibit free trade and should therefore be struck down. It would make no sense whatsoever to implement weaker software patents than in America, since American companies would still hold the edge of stronger patents and European companies would still be blocked from competing in the US.
Excuse me? How many million did they have to pay in restitution for patent infringement this week? What about last month?FBI Guidelines Value Security Over Privacy By
Jeffery L. Bineham
St. Cloud Times 26 June 2002: 5B.
[...]
As Ashcroft noted, "even a 12-year old" can surf the web, just as any citizen can frequent public events and public places or employ databases to gather information. The FBI should have the same rights to gather information as everyone else.
That's a pretty good idea. Put the FBI behind SurfWatch or NetNanny or whatever and have them really surf the net like 12-year-olds. Of course, most 12-year-olds are smarter than John Aschroft, but that's beside the point.
It's unbelievable how unimaginitive the photoart used on corporate websites and brochures can be.
At ork we used to make fun of the brochures for various business related software/hardware companies that always seemed to include the same type of photoart: a group of business men and women staring at a computer screen, pointing their fingers and going "ahh" at presumably how good the product was perceived to be. You could literally find this stuff in every single brochure you browsed through.
Since it is "floating in thin air", it has to be "lighter than air", wouldn't it? This would be the same principle that makes any boat "lighter than water" even though it might weigh thousands of tons.
This has nothing to do with mass or weight rather than with density. At least the Cecil Adams calculations assumed that water in a vaporized form has the same density as water in a glass, which is ridiculous. If nothing else it would make flying into a cloud deadly.
SCO: The Linux kernel has millions of lines of infringing SCO code.
Torvalds: You're smoking crack.
SCO: Would you believe one million?
Torvalds: No.
SCO: Would you believe 80 lines?
Torvalds: Doubtful.
SCO: How about two variables with the same names?
MS went absolutely over the top with Office; you get "features" now that well over 99% of their user base will never even SKIM the surface of.
Clever marketing and PHB one-upmanship are what convinced the masses to go with this ridiculous and unnecessary upgrade path.
The problem is, there are a lot of heavy-duty Office users who do use those features that somebody who just writes one research paper a month never uses. For example, some companies run their whole production and financial planning in custom-built Excel spreadsheets, and if Excel 2000/XP/2003 offers some feature OpenOffice doesn't they'll never switch in a million years if it requires them to rewrite the whole shebang.
Just because you don't use a feature of your Office suite, don't assume no one does. One percentage of ten million Office users equals a hundred thousand people who absolutely depend on that feature.
I don't understand why OpenPGP is not being adopted here.
Why? Because McAfee killed PGP. Something the US DOJ never managed to do.
PGP was a nice idea when it came but then S/MIME became the proposed standard, Microsoft adopted it and McAfee killed the commercial PGP implementation which meant that everybody went to using S/MIME with Outlook. Well not everybody obviously but enough people to make commercial PGP use unviable.
Bunch of *ix hobbyists sending PGP signed mails to each other was not enough to create an Internet-wide standard. Now we're forever stuck with VeriThawte and their greedy two-bit certification schemes that get pasted on just about every new Internet security proposal.
Damn, it's a great idea: how much would a small country like Belgium or Sweden save per year if they could find a workable alternative to SAP, for instance?
Having been there and done that, I can attest that the major cost is not the software licensing, it's:
a) Hardware (acquisition + maintenance)
b) Training
c) Support
None of these would really disappear under an OSS solution since you'd anyway have to pay $$$ to some consultant to set it up, train your employees and handle support when things go wrong (and they will). Actually a) can be better handled by outsourcing your ERP hosting to a service provider, and I don't know any ERP hosting services that offer OSS solutions like Compiere.
Still, it's a great idea for yet another EU boondoggle to spend some more of my money.
I'm thinking of stuff like accounting systems, stock-control systems, ERP systems, financial planning systems, currency management, and so on.
Compiere? It's not native and it still needs Orrible, I think, but it's getting somewhere.
Where did the submitter pull the MD5 reference? Using MD5 to compare for similarity of two data streams is a bad idea, since very small changes will severely change the hash. It's about as useful at looking at the file size to see if the two MP3's match.
Does this mean that Earl Grey is selling a substance that is almost, but not quite, completely unlike tea?
"Earl Grey" aren't selling anything since EG is just a name for a certain blend of tea, like mocha java is for coffee. This particular blend of EG was sold by the UK department store Harrods'.
Sounds like we're about to enter the times of the Wild Wild Web, where vigilantism and marshal law run wild....sounds like fun to me!
"Vigilantism" is caused by the lack of law-enforcement authorities taking action. If nobody is willing to investigate these spamhausen, then it's up to the spam victims to have them shut down.
This monitoring goes on exclusively in the msnews.microsoft.com domain, plus a few others that are also run by the company.
Well, msnews.microsoft.com has a full feed of the microsoft.public.* tree from T-Online in Germany, so it is a part of Usenet.
(Allegedly) taking source from someone elses commercial product and appropriating it in your public domain product?
-or-
Taking a product from the public domain and appropriating it for your own commercial purposes?
-or-
Taking source from the public domain, incorporating large bits of it in your commercial product, claiming suddenly you own it and threatening to sue everybody who took advantage of the same PD source because both your code looks similar?