The part about this story that gets to me is that the researcher didn't alert Microsoft before posting to a public mailing list.
Thats because Microsoft's past record is to ignore people who have contacted them privately regarding security issues, or take legal action against them.
If you really wanted something fixed by MS, and the last 15 times you'd contacted them they'd ignored you, but you've seen someone else release information into the wild and get MS's attention re: a fix within hours... WWYD?
Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software
No. Commercial software is built by people who write software that's sold for money.
I've sold software, so it's commercial software. It was written by a friend and myself over a few weeks worth of late nights.
When it comes to commercial software made by vendors who make a business of writing & selling software, then it's written by the coders who can best pass job interviews.
"carefully selected and screened teams of programmers" my ass.
Next time somebody patents oxygen-nitrogen mix and the court will say you don't have to pay royalties for breathing air. Yeah, big win.
Didn't smething like this happen in the UK as a joke? Where high oxygen content air was available as a pick-me-up, but one particular bar patented (or copyrighted, or whatever) the particular mix that was Air?
I was wondering the same. I peeked in at SCO stock (which had been going down down down for the last week or more) then suddenly shot back up again within hours today.
My take on this is that (hopefully) just that will happen.
I think in the beginning, SCO looked at code, at what they owned (or thought they did) and saw many similarities and indeed identical parts with the next most popular OS, Linux. Instantly the idea of litigation entered their heads, and they proceeded without checking much further
Now, piece by piece their case has crumbled, and THEY KNOW IT. they can't NOT know it. They can't look at code they said was indicative of copying by linux but was proven to all be open and not know it. They can't look back at their own release of Linux under GPL and not know it. They can't look back at their release of older UNIX code under a BSD license and not know it. These are adults, they're not complete morons in that manner. They thought they had a case they could win, and they went ahead with pursuing it.
Oh they know for sure that their claim to code in Linux is tenuous, they're smart enough to know that. What they're failing to see is that there is a point, when you're losing, that you decide to call it a day, stop, see your mistakes and move on from them having learnt something.
Pressing ahead without fear indeed.
Curiously, what was Darl McBride and co up to BEFORE all this happened? what was his job? what kind of risks/payoffs did he work with before? perhaps that could give insight as to why they're not going "Oh fuck we're screwed, let's stop", but instead going "Oh fuck we're screwed, may as well dig deeper!"
SCO claim that there's a non compete clause in their contract with Novell, and hence, Novell may not compete with SCO.
Now, I don't see Novell running around like a madman shitting in their own bathwater and suing everyone who says "boo". Clear evidence that Novell is in no way competing with SCO's core business.
I've seen some amazing things left behind by businesses who've moved, either using the previous place as a dumping ground or just going bust. Comms cables, networking cables, networking *hardware*, chairs, desks, shelving. You name it, if someone owned it it's been left behind at some time or another
Reminds me of the recent story of a diligent sysadmin starting work at a new job, and running himself through a stocktake of systems and work performed. He not only found three servers running that didn't belong to the current occupant (his employers) but found they didn't belong to the previous one either. The servers went back to the occupant 8 years previous (who had since gone bust). Two companies who hadn't needed them had maintained them all those years.
The new voice with Panther (Mac OSX 10.3) is scary. Vicki can send shivers up my spine anytime. I KNOW it's only a manufactured voice, a speech synthezizer, but dammit it's a sultry one.
I'm almost considering getting a mac just to listen to her.
CNET didn't have to spam me with information about their site changing. Not only did I get a message to my oldest email account (which I think I did once use to access mp3.com) but to EVERY single other of 5 addresses I use, informing me cnet has acquired mp3.com
I don't care what their content is now, but I'm very apprehensive about giving attention to a site that spams.
IMHO we're in a transition period, where the market is flooded with more services than you can count, and more services than can possibly survive. This is something I see as only an incredibly good thing. The competition between them all will weed out the utter trash, the competition between the better services will improve those, and in time we'll have music download services that are actually useful
I don't consider any of the current pay-for-download services anywhere near useful yet, they all suffer from a variety of DRM, lock-in and cost problems, but more will come into the market to compete with those, on a platform that PEOPLE want, not manufacturers
...or does that phone look a shitload better designed than most of the current overgadgety, tacky, moronic-buttoned phones that saturate the market? I swear there's a special kind of drug you must need to be on to design current phones.
(barring the T610, which is simple and gorgeous for it)
If anyone's interested in other results of conventional explosions, take a look at the texas city explosion in 1947 when a ship carrying fertilizer (supposedly, there is some debate about whether there was more behind it) detonated, or the fauld explosion in the UK in 1944 where 3670 tonnes of stored bombs exploded underground
I'm not sure Apple have much motivation to fix bugs going back to a system that was released nearly 13 years ago now.
Even a bug that allowed you to drop to a shell with root access in 7.x wouldn't get much press. It's not like a half percent share of 3% of the marketplace is enough machines to cause a worry for the world.
There's probably more monkeys at typewriters churning out shakespeare
I'm in two minds about this. One, it's a potentially good thing to keep a filesystem constantly running well, but Secondly, I've never had one single process kill more partitions in the last ten years of using computers than when I was defragmenting them. That's my biggest concern.
If I were to get a Mac I'd hope a feature like this could be turned OFF permanently. I'm not one for just using a machine and spontaneously having an unreadable drive.
In contrast, the IPv6 address length is '128 bits, or 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.' Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet."
They HOPE that 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses will solve the shortage...
That's like "hoping" that a 100megaton nuclear weapon will dislodge the stubborn tree stump near the driveway. I think it'll work.
These aren't the same G4 chips you're used to in Powerbooks, they're IBM manufactured "PPC 750GX". Yes, that's a G3 with AltiVec.
Previous PPC750s (the fx and so on) were called G3s. Add an AltiVec unit to it and Apple call it a G4
Remember Apple's marketing is perfectly justified in calling a chip anything it likes, and it looks to be using AltiVec as the demarcation between G3 and G4, rather than the rest of the core. It's still a PPC750 in these new iBooks however.
Of course, if an employer scans you for undesirable medication that they don't like (antipsychotics, birth control pills, antidepressants, mood stabilisers) that opens another can of worms.
I would have thought an employer would be pleased to hire a woman on birth control. Women are discriminated against by employers if they're young and potentially able to fall pregnant.
It just works. I fired up iTunes on the laptop, and the shared library, with all its playlist was immediately available in the Source pane. I'd suggest Microsoft take a page from this playbook. Anyone who has ever messed around with Microsoft's supposedly 'plug and play' home networking knows what I am talking about.
Not quite so quick. Know why it 'just works'? BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE A HOME NETWORK. You've already spent the time to setup your windows machine and mac machines on the network. You suggest plug & play isn't so easy, but have ended up getting networking working.
It's that effort you've used to get the 2 itunes setups working. Without having done that, the 2 iTunes would not have a clue each other exists
"It just works" because you've already put the effort into setting up your network, NOT because of some fad named "rendezvous"
This reminds me of some of the writing found on the walls of buildings in pompeii, see their graffiti here
Some of the inscriptions include:
"Lucius pinxit" (Lucius painted this), an ancient equivalent to "I was 'ere" and "Myrtis bene felas" (Myrtis, you do great blow jobs). People don't change:)
Curiously, it looks like investors are taking any old reason to invest in SCO. Yes, I think if their claims had any merit (ie hundreds of thousands of lines of their unique, owned code in Linux) then they'd be worth a lot. Else, they're worth nothing. The deutsche bank analysts said much the same "They're worth a lot if their case has merit, they're not worth a lot if it doesn't"
Guess investors are believing what they want to believe.
Under the license, if you distribute GPL software in a product, you must also distribute the software's source code. And not just the GPL code, but also the code for any "derivative works" you've created--even if publishing that code means anyone can now make a knockoff of your product.
I'm quite stunned at this statement. It's like, you've just gotten a software's source code, someone elses work, to use in your product for free. free. no payment. just you have to hand back what you take.
Now the bit about even if publishing that code means anyone can now make a knockoff of your product is what amazes me. Hello. If you're looking at it that way, then you, in the first place, by using GPLd code have gone and made a "knockoff of" someone ELSES product.
Slashdot Mirror
The part about this story that gets to me is that the researcher didn't alert Microsoft before posting to a public mailing list.
Thats because Microsoft's past record is to ignore people who have contacted them privately regarding security issues, or take legal action against them.
If you really wanted something fixed by MS, and the last 15 times you'd contacted them they'd ignored you, but you've seen someone else release information into the wild and get MS's attention re: a fix within hours... WWYD?
Commercial software is built by carefully selected and screened teams of programmers working to build proprietary, secure software
No. Commercial software is built by people who write software that's sold for money.
I've sold software, so it's commercial software. It was written by a friend and myself over a few weeks worth of late nights.
When it comes to commercial software made by vendors who make a business of writing & selling software, then it's written by the coders who can best pass job interviews.
"carefully selected and screened teams of programmers" my ass.
Next time somebody patents oxygen-nitrogen mix and the court will say you don't have to pay royalties for breathing air. Yeah, big win.
Didn't smething like this happen in the UK as a joke? Where high oxygen content air was available as a pick-me-up, but one particular bar patented (or copyrighted, or whatever) the particular mix that was Air?
I was wondering the same. I peeked in at SCO stock (which had been going down down down for the last week or more) then suddenly shot back up again within hours today.
My take on this is that (hopefully) just that will happen.
I think in the beginning, SCO looked at code, at what they owned (or thought they did) and saw many similarities and indeed identical parts with the next most popular OS, Linux. Instantly the idea of litigation entered their heads, and they proceeded without checking much further
Now, piece by piece their case has crumbled, and THEY KNOW IT. they can't NOT know it. They can't look at code they said was indicative of copying by linux but was proven to all be open and not know it. They can't look back at their own release of Linux under GPL and not know it. They can't look back at their release of older UNIX code under a BSD license and not know it. These are adults, they're not complete morons in that manner. They thought they had a case they could win, and they went ahead with pursuing it.
Oh they know for sure that their claim to code in Linux is tenuous, they're smart enough to know that. What they're failing to see is that there is a point, when you're losing, that you decide to call it a day, stop, see your mistakes and move on from them having learnt something.
Pressing ahead without fear indeed.
Curiously, what was Darl McBride and co up to BEFORE all this happened? what was his job? what kind of risks/payoffs did he work with before? perhaps that could give insight as to why they're not going "Oh fuck we're screwed, let's stop", but instead going "Oh fuck we're screwed, may as well dig deeper!"
SCO claim that there's a non compete clause in their contract with Novell, and hence, Novell may not compete with SCO.
Now, I don't see Novell running around like a madman shitting in their own bathwater and suing everyone who says "boo". Clear evidence that Novell is in no way competing with SCO's core business.
I've seen some amazing things left behind by businesses who've moved, either using the previous place as a dumping ground or just going bust. Comms cables, networking cables, networking *hardware*, chairs, desks, shelving. You name it, if someone owned it it's been left behind at some time or another
Reminds me of the recent story of a diligent sysadmin starting work at a new job, and running himself through a stocktake of systems and work performed. He not only found three servers running that didn't belong to the current occupant (his employers) but found they didn't belong to the previous one either. The servers went back to the occupant 8 years previous (who had since gone bust). Two companies who hadn't needed them had maintained them all those years.
The new voice with Panther (Mac OSX 10.3) is scary. Vicki can send shivers up my spine anytime. I KNOW it's only a manufactured voice, a speech synthezizer, but dammit it's a sultry one.
I'm almost considering getting a mac just to listen to her.
The prototype is slowing already. You bastards! you slashdotted slashdot!
CNET didn't have to spam me with information about their site changing. Not only did I get a message to my oldest email account (which I think I did once use to access mp3.com) but to EVERY single other of 5 addresses I use, informing me cnet has acquired mp3.com I don't care what their content is now, but I'm very apprehensive about giving attention to a site that spams.
IMHO we're in a transition period, where the market is flooded with more services than you can count, and more services than can possibly survive. This is something I see as only an incredibly good thing. The competition between them all will weed out the utter trash, the competition between the better services will improve those, and in time we'll have music download services that are actually useful
I don't consider any of the current pay-for-download services anywhere near useful yet, they all suffer from a variety of DRM, lock-in and cost problems, but more will come into the market to compete with those, on a platform that PEOPLE want, not manufacturers
You should be using gentoo anyway
...or does that phone look a shitload better designed than most of the current overgadgety, tacky, moronic-buttoned phones that saturate the market? I swear there's a special kind of drug you must need to be on to design current phones.
(barring the T610, which is simple and gorgeous for it)
If anyone's interested in other results of conventional explosions, take a look at the texas city explosion in 1947 when a ship carrying fertilizer (supposedly, there is some debate about whether there was more behind it) detonated, or the fauld explosion in the UK in 1944 where 3670 tonnes of stored bombs exploded underground
Are you on drugs?
I'm not sure Apple have much motivation to fix bugs going back to a system that was released nearly 13 years ago now.
Even a bug that allowed you to drop to a shell with root access in 7.x wouldn't get much press. It's not like a half percent share of 3% of the marketplace is enough machines to cause a worry for the world.
There's probably more monkeys at typewriters churning out shakespeare
I'm in two minds about this. One, it's a potentially good thing to keep a filesystem constantly running well, but Secondly, I've never had one single process kill more partitions in the last ten years of using computers than when I was defragmenting them. That's my biggest concern.
If I were to get a Mac I'd hope a feature like this could be turned OFF permanently. I'm not one for just using a machine and spontaneously having an unreadable drive.
In contrast, the IPv6 address length is '128 bits, or 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses.' Experts hope this will solve a predicted IP address shortage as more devices are created to use the Internet."
They HOPE that 340 billion billion billion billion unique addresses will solve the shortage...
That's like "hoping" that a 100megaton nuclear weapon will dislodge the stubborn tree stump near the driveway. I think it'll work.
These aren't the same G4 chips you're used to in Powerbooks, they're IBM manufactured "PPC 750GX". Yes, that's a G3 with AltiVec.
Previous PPC750s (the fx and so on) were called G3s. Add an AltiVec unit to it and Apple call it a G4
Remember Apple's marketing is perfectly justified in calling a chip anything it likes, and it looks to be using AltiVec as the demarcation between G3 and G4, rather than the rest of the core. It's still a PPC750 in these new iBooks however.
Of course, if an employer scans you for undesirable medication that they don't like (antipsychotics, birth control pills, antidepressants, mood stabilisers) that opens another can of worms.
I would have thought an employer would be pleased to hire a woman on birth control. Women are discriminated against by employers if they're young and potentially able to fall pregnant.
It just works. I fired up iTunes on the laptop, and the shared library, with all its playlist was immediately available in the Source pane. I'd suggest Microsoft take a page from this playbook. Anyone who has ever messed around with Microsoft's supposedly 'plug and play' home networking knows what I am talking about.
Not quite so quick. Know why it 'just works'? BECAUSE YOU ALREADY HAVE A HOME NETWORK. You've already spent the time to setup your windows machine and mac machines on the network. You suggest plug & play isn't so easy, but have ended up getting networking working.
It's that effort you've used to get the 2 itunes setups working. Without having done that, the 2 iTunes would not have a clue each other exists
"It just works" because you've already put the effort into setting up your network, NOT because of some fad named "rendezvous"
This reminds me of some of the writing found on the walls of buildings in pompeii, see their graffiti here
:)
Some of the inscriptions include:
"Lucius pinxit" (Lucius painted this), an ancient equivalent to "I was 'ere" and "Myrtis bene felas" (Myrtis, you do great blow jobs). People don't change
Curiously, it looks like investors are taking any old reason to invest in SCO. Yes, I think if their claims had any merit (ie hundreds of thousands of lines of their unique, owned code in Linux) then they'd be worth a lot. Else, they're worth nothing. The deutsche bank analysts said much the same "They're worth a lot if their case has merit, they're not worth a lot if it doesn't"
Guess investors are believing what they want to believe.
Not one. You want Unix? Linux on Athlon
Want speed Better than Apple's? Athlon ANYTHING
Want design better than Apple's? liebermann
Someone remind me why I should even consider a mac?
Under the license, if you distribute GPL software in a product, you must also distribute the software's source code. And not just the GPL code, but also the code for any "derivative works" you've created--even if publishing that code means anyone can now make a knockoff of your product.
I'm quite stunned at this statement. It's like, you've just gotten a software's source code, someone elses work, to use in your product for free. free. no payment. just you have to hand back what you take.
Now the bit about even if publishing that code means anyone can now make a knockoff of your product is what amazes me. Hello. If you're looking at it that way, then you, in the first place, by using GPLd code have gone and made a "knockoff of" someone ELSES product.
Hypocrisy.