It could be that the people who orchestrated this scheme have already made their profits. Remember this time last year SCO stock was about a buck. Now it's $17. If they bought and sold at the right time (or just exercised options), it won't matter to them how violently SCO implodes.
The people who will get their butts kicked will be employees, late investors, and perhaps customers of SCO Unix.
This assumes no charges are ever laid. I have no idea about the likelihood of that.
Reminds me of when you could type www.pga.com and get Pig Growers of Alberta, who are, on the whole, rather mediocre golfers. That one, though, was probably in good faith (and undoubtedly gave the farmers a knee-slappin' good chuckle).
IBM is assessing the information, and will present to the court on January 23 their opinion on whether SCO has fully complied with the discovery request. If IBM says SCO has not complied, SCO gets to explain why they have complied, and so on and so forth.
Legal or not, anything that causes confusion about what is and what is not a true law enforcement officer is bad news. It could easily lead to a death. If I were LAPD I would have a long talk with RIAA.
Up to 1000 X cheaper? What country is that?
According to one article, skilled IT labour costs in India were about 1/10th that of the U.S. That has risen since then (due to rising salaries in India and falling salaries in the U.S.) to about 1/4. Even so, there's still a big difference, more than enough for companies to "go to the trouble".
By the way, by referring to Canada as "offshore" I think they meant Lake Ontario.
Speaking as a manager who hires IT professionals in Canada, and whose company has offices in the U.S., the general rule seems to be that labour costs are about the same in Canada as in the U.S., but in Canadian, not U.S., dollars.
When the loonie was US$.65, developing in Canada saved a lot of money. With the loonie now at US$.79, not so much.
Carly is exactly correct. "American" corporations may have their head offices in the U.S., but many of their customers and share holders are foreign.
U.S. citizens wants it both ways. They want to market to the world as if there are no borders, yet they want all the jobs and profits in the U.S. Doesn't work that way, and if the U.S. governement tries to force it, head offices will end up elsewhere.
SCO is a tiny little boat in a great sea of investment. At one point their market capitalization was less than $15 million. Convincing even one out of a thousand investors that their claims are legitimate would cause a huge upswing in stock price.
For this reason, I don't consider the stock market some grand adjudicator of truth. When you say, "look at all the people who invested" I say "but look who didn't."
What a lot of nonsense. Intellectual property is, on the whole, a great boon to society, although it's undeniable that the privelege can be abused. I wonder if those people who are so critical of IP rights have just never produced any of value.
Freedom begins with property rights - the freedom to hoard, destroy, sell, rent, lend, or give away the fruits of your labours. Stillman's rejection of all but the last option is repugnant. It's not freedom, it's slavery to the whole of society.
Sure lot of commies out there. Can you imagine a world without IP? You write a book, someone else publishes it without your permission or sharing the profits with you, maybe even putting their own name on it. You establish a sound and respected brandname, someone else uses it, trashes it, and makes a lot of money off of it. You write a nice piece of software that you license so that you can pay your bills and feed your family, someone rips it off and distributes it free to however wants it, and you (and your employees) get to flip hamburgers.
Had SCO only attacked IBM, then I could see your point. But they haven't. Darl McBride has been publically critical of the Linux community at large, calling them crooks, commies, and quacks. He's also been asking everyone to send him pots of money. Quite apart from any legal considerations, it seems entirely reasonable that people ask SCO to put up or shut up.
People are asking for information regarding a situation which, taking the broad view, clearly affects them. Telling them they don't need to know is paternalistic and idiotic.
And nothing makes me more nervous than the words "trust me". Okay, maybe "homeland security".
You've chosen a trivial example (one-click shopping) which probably should never have been awarded a patent in the first place due to its obviousness.
Second, I don't like that term "software patent". You don't patent software, you patent algorithms and methodologies which can be implemented in software. Many of the algorithms, however, could
conceivably be implemented through something other than through the running of a software program.
The economics of developing new algorithms are no different than developing a new automobile transmission. It entail risk, it costs money, it requires ingenuity and effort, and the results of your labour can easily be ripped off by others who had and did none of these things.
The real problem with "software patents" is the quality of the patents. Many should either never have been allowed, or have been cut back in scope.
Under "What values should underlie the foundations of the information society", WSIS says this: "The universal human values of equality, and justice, democracy, solidarity, mutual tolerance, human dignity, economic progress, protection of the environment, and respect for diversity are the foundations for a truly inclusive global information society."
Where oh where is freedom of expression in all this? Or is that too much of a threat to the organizations sponsering this summit?
Someone find me an oil or coil reservoir outside of a sedimentary basin, and I'll swallow this B.S. That some methane may have abiogenic origin is conceivable, but the natural gas we collect now is clearly primarly biological in origin. Petroleum geologists are not so dumb that they could so seriously wrong about the origins of petroleum.
Why do so many ads ask for self-motivated team players? What possible good could including this in an ad do? I mean, if the ad states that you must have experience in PL/Forgol++, then you can at least honestly ask yourself if you have experience in PL/Forgol++, and if you do you can then offer evidence to the hirer that this is so. But how many people are going to say "well, I'm not a self-motivated team player, so I'd better not respond to the ad"? This is something you ask the references, not the hiree.
The power of encryption methods is not the problem these days - it's the people using the system. What's the good of QC or 4096-bit encryption codes when users e-mail their password to associates across the continent in plain text? We put bars on the windows and leave the front door wide open.
This book, and its predecessor "How to Lie with
Statistics", have been described as "The Elements of Style" for graphics. But William Strunk Jr. would have been horrified by the title. Visual Display? What other kind of display is there? A better title would have been "Displaying Quantitative Information".
Having said that, I greatly enjoyed the book, and learned much from the 1st edition. Anyone working with graphics should read it.
Slashdot Mirror
The people who will get their butts kicked will be employees, late investors, and perhaps customers of SCO Unix.
This assumes no charges are ever laid. I have no idea about the likelihood of that.
Reminds me of when you could type www.pga.com and get Pig Growers of Alberta, who are, on the whole, rather mediocre golfers. That one, though, was probably in good faith (and undoubtedly gave the farmers a knee-slappin' good chuckle).
IBM is assessing the information, and will present to the court on January 23 their opinion on whether SCO has fully complied with the discovery request. If IBM says SCO has not complied, SCO gets to explain why they have complied, and so on and so forth.
Legal or not, anything that causes confusion about what is and what is not a true law enforcement officer is bad news. It could easily lead to a death. If I were LAPD I would have a long talk with RIAA.
Up to 1000 X cheaper? What country is that? According to one article, skilled IT labour costs in India were about 1/10th that of the U.S. That has risen since then (due to rising salaries in India and falling salaries in the U.S.) to about 1/4. Even so, there's still a big difference, more than enough for companies to "go to the trouble". By the way, by referring to Canada as "offshore" I think they meant Lake Ontario.
When the loonie was US$.65, developing in Canada saved a lot of money. With the loonie now at US$.79, not so much.
U.S. citizens wants it both ways. They want to market to the world as if there are no borders, yet they want all the jobs and profits in the U.S. Doesn't work that way, and if the U.S. governement tries to force it, head offices will end up elsewhere.
Welcome to the rest of the world, America.
For this reason, I don't consider the stock market some grand adjudicator of truth. When you say, "look at all the people who invested" I say "but look who didn't."
What a lot of nonsense. Intellectual property is, on the whole, a great boon to society, although it's undeniable that the privelege can be abused. I wonder if those people who are so critical of IP rights have just never produced any of value.
Freedom begins with property rights - the freedom to hoard, destroy, sell, rent, lend, or give away the fruits of your labours. Stillman's rejection of all but the last option is repugnant. It's not freedom, it's slavery to the whole of society.
Doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me.
People are asking for information regarding a situation which, taking the broad view, clearly affects them. Telling them they don't need to know is paternalistic and idiotic.
And nothing makes me more nervous than the words "trust me". Okay, maybe "homeland security".
If there's a rational here, I would (seriously) appreciate an explanation.
Amen. The music industry drags itself into the 1990's. Pretending technology doesn't exist, in the hope that it goes away, was never a sound strategy.
Microsort lists "Windows" (as well as "Microsoft Windows", "Windows NT" etc) as one of their trademarks. Mistake or not, there it is.
You don't copyright a brand name, you trademark it. And yes, Microsoft has a trademark on "Windows".
You've chosen a trivial example (one-click shopping) which probably should never have been awarded a patent in the first place due to its obviousness.
Second, I don't like that term "software patent". You don't patent software, you patent algorithms and methodologies which can be implemented in software. Many of the algorithms, however, could conceivably be implemented through something other than through the running of a software program.
The economics of developing new algorithms are no different than developing a new automobile transmission. It entail risk, it costs money, it requires ingenuity and effort, and the results of your labour can easily be ripped off by others who had and did none of these things.
The real problem with "software patents" is the quality of the patents. Many should either never have been allowed, or have been cut back in scope.
Hope they catch the SOB's who instigated the attack and throw them in jail. As unpopular as SCO is amongst the IT community, this is unforgiveable.
Where oh where is freedom of expression in all this? Or is that too much of a threat to the organizations sponsering this summit?
By my calculations, we're going to bottom out at around 10 terra Hz / chip. Seems adequate, but so did 16-bit addressing.
Someone find me an oil or coil reservoir outside of a sedimentary basin, and I'll swallow this B.S. That some methane may have abiogenic origin is conceivable, but the natural gas we collect now is clearly primarly biological in origin. Petroleum geologists are not so dumb that they could so seriously wrong about the origins of petroleum.
If you think that's all there is to managing, then you haven't done much managing.
Why do so many ads ask for self-motivated team players? What possible good could including this in an ad do? I mean, if the ad states that you must have experience in PL/Forgol++, then you can at least honestly ask yourself if you have experience in PL/Forgol++, and if you do you can then offer evidence to the hirer that this is so. But how many people are going to say "well, I'm not a self-motivated team player, so I'd better not respond to the ad"? This is something you ask the references, not the hiree.
The power of encryption methods is not the problem these days - it's the people using the system. What's the good of QC or 4096-bit encryption codes when users e-mail their password to associates across the continent in plain text? We put bars on the windows and leave the front door wide open.
This book, and its predecessor "How to Lie with Statistics", have been described as "The Elements of Style" for graphics. But William Strunk Jr. would have been horrified by the title. Visual Display? What other kind of display is there? A better title would have been "Displaying Quantitative Information". Having said that, I greatly enjoyed the book, and learned much from the 1st edition. Anyone working with graphics should read it.