That's exactly the issue here: SCO's stock price made a number of surprising upward jumps apparently as a result of this litigation. Their products have not been competitive for years, and the company appears to be failing otherwise.
Some people feel that SCO began this case as a way to bring "revenue" to the company directly (not to sell more products), or that they began it to line the pockets of their executives who plan to bail out when it's over. Some people see this as another Enron in the making and this arrangement is just fuel for their fire.
IANAL - are you? Your statement is convincing and I'm not sure how much to weigh it into my own view of SCO's case. Is this impolite to ask?
My experience with proprietary software development is that in the beginning, there is a deadline. Then requirements get added to that deadline and code gets written until the deadline is reached. At which point the code is either shipped as is or the deadline is extended and the cycle begins again.
Show me a company that has the money to pay for developers to sit around and double-check every commit to a source tree. Show me a code review at a company where anyone besides the author has read the code before the meeting. Then I'll believe that THAT company COULD detect a hack like this.
Open source is not perfect, there's probably exploits in the kernel, intentional or otherwise, that have never been found and there always will be. But compared to deadline-driven "not-my-department" development, it's pretty darn impressive. Heck, I'm impressed that anyone ever discovered this.
P.S. Pay attention to the fellow who suggested (in another post) that we check other software for a companion hack for this exploit. Someone clever enough for this back-door undoubtedly has another somewhere to set those flags remotely. Maybe in the next version of CVS or another tool he used to insert the hack that was found.
As far as branding goes, stick with the red lizard head - even/. uses it to represent mozilla. Plus it's cool - it reminds people of Godzilla and aids in pronouncing the name.
Tabbed browsing is great - keep it. In terms of "click on the purple monkey and it works," Microsoft will be popping up a dialog in IE whenever a web site calls for a plug-in, saying "This will play a plug in - [OK]." This is due to a patent lawsuit against them recently discussed on/. So clicking on the purple monkey will not work in IE at the beginning of next year. Don't get too excited though. I'm sure they'll be coming after you too soon enough.
I doubt any Windows users will bother to install a different browser. But you have the potential of capturing nearly the whole market of Linux users, who don't have IE.
As a web developer, it means one more browser to support, but it gives people alternatives. Support all applicable standards (especially XHTML and CSS 1.0) and I'll be happy.
If you want to add a feature, why not have font sizes match Netscape 6.1 and IE. I hate it when I go to a page where the fonts are all size="1". This may be easy to read on IE but it looks like fly shit on Mozilla and on older versions of Netscape. Web developers have to use size="15px" notation to get things to look the same on all browsers, and that makes it hard for users to enlarge the text if they need to on some browsers.
I'm not sure how many people are doing this, but it seems to me you could post a fake email address in public places to collect spam. Then filter any message from your real address that has a matching message at the fake address. It seems to me this could be very effective way to block spam at email servers.
Is this a standard practice already? I don't administer any email servers so I wouldn't know.
I spent 2.5 days last Christmas trying to remove all the crap that Gator and it's buddy the ad-downloader put on my in-laws system. The family that "agreed" to install this "legitimate" software had a difficult time understanding what it did even after I explained it to them several times. Their hard drive was full, and half of it was from adware that Gator downloaded. The system was so slow as to be almost unusable.
One person on our team of 6 tech support people at work was a full-time Gator uninstaller last year until we upgraded to virus protection which blocked it. That's how bad it was.
Gator may not be spying, but it is a malicious intruder, a trojan horse that pours out a malitia of bogus advertisement software under the guise of "helping" people by providing their personal information to any web page that asks for it (a pretty sobering thought by itself). I'd call it mal-ware after the word, "Malicious".
Like SCO, Gator masquerades as something that it's not - a legitimate company with a legitimate product. It is therefore very difficult to do anything about it legally. Somebody, somewhere is supporting this company. Maybe we can petition them to stop?
A good test will eventually be well respected by the community. The most accurate test would simulate the exact kinds of problems you want the applicants to solve. Ideally, this means giving each applicant a broken machine to fix and enhance.
I would have applicants solve a bunch of problems on a very badly-configured machine, and maybe have them bring up a new service or two on the same machine. You can have a library of 30 or so badly-configured machine images, and each applicant gets a random install.
Make it an open-internet test so that people can download their favorite tools and look up answers to things they might not know. The real world rewards people who get things done, not people who can cram for multiple-choice tests, so make your test work the same way.
People have bad days, so you should let them retake the test if they fail, but make sure not to randomly give them the same install twice. After three tries they should not be allowed to take the test again - that would cheapen it for the folks who prepared properly for their first try.
Only about half the people I look to for technical guidance have degrees and certifications. This suggests that most existing tests either do not attract these people or that these people don't necessarily do well with traditional tests. Configuring a real server would be fun for the applicant, and would give a good indication if an applicant could make the grade in a professional environment.
If this proves too expensive to administer, you could have a separate multiple-choice qualification test to prevent newbies from taking the (more expensive) real test.
You can stop a huge percentage of your junk mail by filling out and mailing the forms at junkbusters.com. I have done that at most places I lived and eliminated 90% of my junk mail - perminantly.
As far as suing is concerned, I agree you need to talk to a lawyer. Many laywers will give you a 5 minute free phone consultation if you just call and ask for advice. I have gotten excellent advice this way on at least 2 occasions.
It's nice for us RedHat stock owners too. I don't have the guts to risk accidentally supporting those clowns by buying their stock.
I've been pretty nervous about this case up until now. SCO filing a motion to dismiss is the first thing that made me feel reassured. They painted a BIG target on themselves, now it's time for... "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal!" (remember the Far-Side cartoon)
Reading your web page, I felt like I was there. I hope my accounts of events I attend read as well and are as entertaining. The only thing that would have made your site better for me is if you spelled out most of your acronyms.
I'm delighted that a spammer is getting busted, but I have to agree, the maximum sentence is more than a little over the top.
So, uh, what's Ken Lay facing? As long as we're making comparisons here, last I checked he defrauded his employees and/or shareholders of 4 billion dollars. Will he even be prosecuted for anything? I'd rather delete 100 spams from my mailbox every day than to loose my job and my retirement savings.
I think you are right on the money. Having 17 year patents in an industry that practically re-invents itself every 2-5 years is ridiculus. Not to mention that what's bad for Microsoft in this case is worse for the rest of us. Microsoft will just replace 3rd party plug-ins with "built-in's" such as (you guessed it) Powerpoint, Word, and Excel. Instead of downloading Mozilla for free to see your favorite web page, you will need to buy Microsoft Office.
In many ways, this decision might actually be good for Microsoft! If Microsoft buys this company, it could be the end of browser and plug-in wars for the next 8 years or so.
Substituting "built-ins" for optional "plug-ins" will probably make browser downloads many times bigger than they already are. Plus, it kills a whole segment of the tech market (one that Microsoft had effectively not entered). So long Acrobat, Flash, Quick-Time and client-side Java. Most major web sites will have to be completely revamped - as will all the processes that update them. January suddenly seems right around the corner! As someone-else pointed out, unemployment for Web Developers is officially over.
P.S. Let's hope a very different jury hears the SCO case.
You all almost have me convinced that everything is going to be OK, because of the intelligence of your arguments. Unfortunately, intelligence is necessary to understand your arguments and that is what will cause problems in court.
Not long ago in a software case, "cut and paste" was brought up and the judge replied, "you mean, with scissors?" This is the kind of person who will decide the fate of everyone who bought or sold Linux over the last few years. The jury will not read/. They won't even know what an operating system is.
I still say this will boil down to a character debate. The Cathedral vs. the bazaar. You put a bunch of Good Christian Capitalists on one side of the room and a bunch of Scruffy Linux Hackers, many of whom are self-proclaimed athiests and anarchists on the other, and ask a technologically ignorant jury to decide if the Scruffy Hackers have stolen something the jury is incapable of understanding. Thank God IBM is counter-sueing.
Microsoft can legally finance SCO as much as they want by burning copies of Linux and paying SCO for each one. In fact, they can probably legally demand all that money back if SCO looses!
In terms of the SCO buildings being vacant: SCO doesn't need anyone in the "company" except a CEO, a bunch of lawyers, and someone who'se not too good at security to patch up their web side each time one of those "Scruffy Hackers" breaks it. Those hacking attacks are just like an ace-in-the-hole for SCO in the character debate.
I'm glad the the/. community is keeping a positive attitude about this issue and I don't want to kill anyone's spirits, but legal hypotheses have tended to be a bit technical-minded without regard for the kind of issues these cases will ultimately be decided on.
Seriously though, there's a great point hidden in this posting. Kanasta's friend might not be the brightest bulb, but that's no reason to lock him up as some have suggested. Although it's fun to joke about, stupidity should not be a crime, because everyone acts stupid sometimes. Stupidity comes complete with its own punishments anyway.
What I want to know is does he ever get any of the things he pays for this way? It's hard for me to believe anyone is dumb enough to think that they really can buy generic Viagra from spam. But it's equally hard to believe that spammers are so confident in this one overused scam that 2 or 3 Viagra spams show up in my inbox every day. I mean, both the spammers and the idiots who respond have to be born yesterday to fall for this or think that it works. How can they be smart enough to send an email and not realize how stupid they are being?
So, when a spammer get's started, does he say to his mom, "Hey, I've got this great Idea! I'm going to annoy the world with spam scams and get rich!" I mean, what happens to someone socialogically that makes them want to send spam?
Almost all proprietary software is shipped with a disclaimer which basicaly says that the company that created it is never liable for more than the purchase price of the software. Usually they also disclaim "Merchantability" and "fitness for a particular purpose" as well. Basically, if you don't like it, you may be able to return it.
Free software is not always cheap, and even if it is, the GNU public license specifically provides no warranty. No corporation is going to use Linux without a Red Hat or Debian to support it. Let's hope MS wins this one. This is a case of "What's bad for them is worse for us."
Has Microsoft actually claimed that their software is safer than something else? That would be false advertizing, but meerely publicising the fact that some of their products passed certain tests should not make them liable.
Slashdot Mirror
LOL! The article you point to is hillarious! I wish I'd seen the episode.
Your signature is excellent.
My imaginary friend is MUCH better than yours.
That's exactly the issue here: SCO's stock price made a number of surprising upward jumps apparently as a result of this litigation. Their products have not been competitive for years, and the company appears to be failing otherwise.
Some people feel that SCO began this case as a way to bring "revenue" to the company directly (not to sell more products), or that they began it to line the pockets of their executives who plan to bail out when it's over. Some people see this as another Enron in the making and this arrangement is just fuel for their fire.
IANAL - are you? Your statement is convincing and I'm not sure how much to weigh it into my own view of SCO's case. Is this impolite to ask?
My experience with proprietary software development is that in the beginning, there is a deadline. Then requirements get added to that deadline and code gets written until the deadline is reached. At which point the code is either shipped as is or the deadline is extended and the cycle begins again.
Show me a company that has the money to pay for developers to sit around and double-check every commit to a source tree. Show me a code review at a company where anyone besides the author has read the code before the meeting. Then I'll believe that THAT company COULD detect a hack like this.
Open source is not perfect, there's probably exploits in the kernel, intentional or otherwise, that have never been found and there always will be. But compared to deadline-driven "not-my-department" development, it's pretty darn impressive. Heck, I'm impressed that anyone ever discovered this.
P.S. Pay attention to the fellow who suggested (in another post) that we check other software for a companion hack for this exploit. Someone clever enough for this back-door undoubtedly has another somewhere to set those flags remotely. Maybe in the next version of CVS or another tool he used to insert the hack that was found.
Don't forget that the inorganic pesticides and fertilizers those Iowa corn farmers use are also made from oil.
As far as branding goes, stick with the red lizard head - even /. uses it to represent mozilla. Plus it's cool - it reminds people of Godzilla and aids in pronouncing the name.
Tabbed browsing is great - keep it. In terms of "click on the purple monkey and it works," Microsoft will be popping up a dialog in IE whenever a web site calls for a plug-in, saying "This will play a plug in - [OK]." This is due to a patent lawsuit against them recently discussed on /. So clicking on the purple monkey will not work in IE at the beginning of next year. Don't get too excited though. I'm sure they'll be coming after you too soon enough.
I doubt any Windows users will bother to install a different browser. But you have the potential of capturing nearly the whole market of Linux users, who don't have IE.
As a web developer, it means one more browser to support, but it gives people alternatives. Support all applicable standards (especially XHTML and CSS 1.0) and I'll be happy.
If you want to add a feature, why not have font sizes match Netscape 6.1 and IE. I hate it when I go to a page where the fonts are all size="1". This may be easy to read on IE but it looks like fly shit on Mozilla and on older versions of Netscape. Web developers have to use size="15px" notation to get things to look the same on all browsers, and that makes it hard for users to enlarge the text if they need to on some browsers.
Interesting - thanks!
I'm not sure how many people are doing this, but it seems to me you could post a fake email address in public places to collect spam. Then filter any message from your real address that has a matching message at the fake address. It seems to me this could be very effective way to block spam at email servers.
Is this a standard practice already? I don't administer any email servers so I wouldn't know.
I spent 2.5 days last Christmas trying to remove all the crap that Gator and it's buddy the ad-downloader put on my in-laws system. The family that "agreed" to install this "legitimate" software had a difficult time understanding what it did even after I explained it to them several times. Their hard drive was full, and half of it was from adware that Gator downloaded. The system was so slow as to be almost unusable.
One person on our team of 6 tech support people at work was a full-time Gator uninstaller last year until we upgraded to virus protection which blocked it. That's how bad it was.
Gator may not be spying, but it is a malicious intruder, a trojan horse that pours out a malitia of bogus advertisement software under the guise of "helping" people by providing their personal information to any web page that asks for it (a pretty sobering thought by itself). I'd call it mal-ware after the word, "Malicious".
Like SCO, Gator masquerades as something that it's not - a legitimate company with a legitimate product. It is therefore very difficult to do anything about it legally. Somebody, somewhere is supporting this company. Maybe we can petition them to stop?
A good test will eventually be well respected by the community. The most accurate test would simulate the exact kinds of problems you want the applicants to solve. Ideally, this means giving each applicant a broken machine to fix and enhance.
I would have applicants solve a bunch of problems on a very badly-configured machine, and maybe have them bring up a new service or two on the same machine. You can have a library of 30 or so badly-configured machine images, and each applicant gets a random install.
Make it an open-internet test so that people can download their favorite tools and look up answers to things they might not know. The real world rewards people who get things done, not people who can cram for multiple-choice tests, so make your test work the same way.
People have bad days, so you should let them retake the test if they fail, but make sure not to randomly give them the same install twice. After three tries they should not be allowed to take the test again - that would cheapen it for the folks who prepared properly for their first try.
Only about half the people I look to for technical guidance have degrees and certifications. This suggests that most existing tests either do not attract these people or that these people don't necessarily do well with traditional tests. Configuring a real server would be fun for the applicant, and would give a good indication if an applicant could make the grade in a professional environment.
If this proves too expensive to administer, you could have a separate multiple-choice qualification test to prevent newbies from taking the (more expensive) real test.
Good luck!
You can stop a huge percentage of your junk mail by filling out and mailing the forms at junkbusters.com. I have done that at most places I lived and eliminated 90% of my junk mail - perminantly.
As far as suing is concerned, I agree you need to talk to a lawyer. Many laywers will give you a 5 minute free phone consultation if you just call and ask for advice. I have gotten excellent advice this way on at least 2 occasions.
Good luck!
It's nice for us RedHat stock owners too. I don't have the guts to risk accidentally supporting those clowns by buying their stock.
I've been pretty nervous about this case up until now. SCO filing a motion to dismiss is the first thing that made me feel reassured. They painted a BIG target on themselves, now it's time for... "Bummer of a birthmark, Hal!" (remember the Far-Side cartoon)
Reading your web page, I felt like I was there. I hope my accounts of events I attend read as well and are as entertaining. The only thing that would have made your site better for me is if you spelled out most of your acronyms.
Thanks for attending, thanks for sharing.
I'm delighted that a spammer is getting busted, but I have to agree, the maximum sentence is more than a little over the top.
So, uh, what's Ken Lay facing? As long as we're making comparisons here, last I checked he defrauded his employees and/or shareholders of 4 billion dollars. Will he even be prosecuted for anything? I'd rather delete 100 spams from my mailbox every day than to loose my job and my retirement savings.
I think you are right on the money. Having 17 year patents in an industry that practically re-invents itself every 2-5 years is ridiculus. Not to mention that what's bad for Microsoft in this case is worse for the rest of us. Microsoft will just replace 3rd party plug-ins with "built-in's" such as (you guessed it) Powerpoint, Word, and Excel. Instead of downloading Mozilla for free to see your favorite web page, you will need to buy Microsoft Office.
In many ways, this decision might actually be good for Microsoft! If Microsoft buys this company, it could be the end of browser and plug-in wars for the next 8 years or so.
Substituting "built-ins" for optional "plug-ins" will probably make browser downloads many times bigger than they already are. Plus, it kills a whole segment of the tech market (one that Microsoft had effectively not entered). So long Acrobat, Flash, Quick-Time and client-side Java. Most major web sites will have to be completely revamped - as will all the processes that update them. January suddenly seems right around the corner! As someone-else pointed out, unemployment for Web Developers is officially over.
P.S. Let's hope a very different jury hears the SCO case.
You all almost have me convinced that everything is going to be OK, because of the intelligence of your arguments. Unfortunately, intelligence is necessary to understand your arguments and that is what will cause problems in court.
Not long ago in a software case, "cut and paste" was brought up and the judge replied, "you mean, with scissors?" This is the kind of person who will decide the fate of everyone who bought or sold Linux over the last few years. The jury will not read /. They won't even know what an operating system is.
I still say this will boil down to a character debate. The Cathedral vs. the bazaar. You put a bunch of Good Christian Capitalists on one side of the room and a bunch of Scruffy Linux Hackers, many of whom are self-proclaimed athiests and anarchists on the other, and ask a technologically ignorant jury to decide if the Scruffy Hackers have stolen something the jury is incapable of understanding. Thank God IBM is counter-sueing.
Microsoft can legally finance SCO as much as they want by burning copies of Linux and paying SCO for each one. In fact, they can probably legally demand all that money back if SCO looses!
In terms of the SCO buildings being vacant: SCO doesn't need anyone in the "company" except a CEO, a bunch of lawyers, and someone who'se not too good at security to patch up their web side each time one of those "Scruffy Hackers" breaks it. Those hacking attacks are just like an ace-in-the-hole for SCO in the character debate.
I'm glad the the /. community is keeping a positive attitude about this issue and I don't want to kill anyone's spirits, but legal hypotheses have tended to be a bit technical-minded without regard for the kind of issues these cases will ultimately be decided on.
Your post made me laugh out loud!
Seriously though, there's a great point hidden in this posting. Kanasta's friend might not be the brightest bulb, but that's no reason to lock him up as some have suggested. Although it's fun to joke about, stupidity should not be a crime, because everyone acts stupid sometimes. Stupidity comes complete with its own punishments anyway.
What I want to know is does he ever get any of the things he pays for this way? It's hard for me to believe anyone is dumb enough to think that they really can buy generic Viagra from spam. But it's equally hard to believe that spammers are so confident in this one overused scam that 2 or 3 Viagra spams show up in my inbox every day. I mean, both the spammers and the idiots who respond have to be born yesterday to fall for this or think that it works. How can they be smart enough to send an email and not realize how stupid they are being?
So, when a spammer get's started, does he say to his mom, "Hey, I've got this great Idea! I'm going to annoy the world with spam scams and get rich!" I mean, what happens to someone socialogically that makes them want to send spam?
"won't be a jury of our peers." Thank you. You summed up all those wordy paragraphs in one short sentence.
Almost all proprietary software is shipped with a disclaimer which basicaly says that the company that created it is never liable for more than the purchase price of the software. Usually they also disclaim "Merchantability" and "fitness for a particular purpose" as well. Basically, if you don't like it, you may be able to return it. Free software is not always cheap, and even if it is, the GNU public license specifically provides no warranty. No corporation is going to use Linux without a Red Hat or Debian to support it. Let's hope MS wins this one. This is a case of "What's bad for them is worse for us." Has Microsoft actually claimed that their software is safer than something else? That would be false advertizing, but meerely publicising the fact that some of their products passed certain tests should not make them liable.
I wrote the above post before getting my login name.