With this I forcee SCO turning from a software company with a panchance for litigation into an IP holder whos only projected revenue stream is lawsuits.
This just signals a focusing of SCOs efforts away from what was a core business, SOFTWARE, and onto what is now its business model (being redmonds courtroom distraction), this is just a holding measure to try to give microsoft the breathing room to change the game again.
with DRM, system management tools and the ubiquity of the media player for HDTV DVD, they are looking to lock out all other competition while everyone is focused on the yapping of this annoying little puppet.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he is of no consequence"
They don't just want all the money, they arent interested in money...
Its the power. No coders outside microsoft. only the corporate equiv. of script-kiddies allowed, and once moores cranks up so that decent apps can be coded in scripting languages, even that will be taken away.
Microsoft does not make all these apis soo big and clunky because they are a large corporate that cannot make something elegant and easy to use.
This is a mindgame designed to keep external programmers tearing there hair out with frustation battling the API and system.
Why do you think microsoft changes the core of every major subsystem every 2-3 years...
Cant have people getting to know the interface enough to engineer a decent management layer over it so that decent productivity can be achieved.
That abrogates too much control.
Keep the system fluid, force developers to restart their learning curves every couple of years.
Look at X, it has had the same underlying model for decades.
Ok there are layers of abstraction layed on top, but the basic core of static.
lock everyone else out of the "real" bare metal coding, keep the core to themselves. make everyone else subservient to the whim of microsoft.
DRM is the prize, a legal mandate to lock away our own systems away from us. To lock out all competition. whats next? Using the DMCA to force the uptake of MS DRM so as to lock out everyone else.
DRM ONLY works when the DRM scheme is locked away from external developers by a partitioning of the system into TRUSTED and untrusted...
By this, read "THEIRS" and ours.
Don't give away your machine along with your freedom.
Ahhhh.... I sound like a ranting lunatic, and I probably am, but lunacy is a blessed thing.
Final words...
In the end DRM is a trick being pulled on everyone to make them think that systems can have meaning embodied in them... "This bitpattern is an artifact with an owner, so can only be used in certain ways"
Rubbish, a bit pattern is nothing more than that and needs something to interpret it for us into some meaningful set of actions.
If any part of the system is free (as in speech), nothing is safe as everything is just a Turing machine.
Meaning free.
I read some guff today about MS DRM being able to lock down content even unto the analogue output.
Now I ask you, who are they kidding?
At some point the bitpattern of that top 10 hit is rendered into an analogue electrical signal that has to be pumped into some speakers, how can this signal be so altered as to leave it secure from re-sampling?
THERE IS NO MAGIC in computing. No amount of pigopolist flagwaving will make computer systems into anything they are not.
What is bill going to do when computers are soo fast that an excel spreadsheet can be used to playback fullscreen video by changing the colour of the cell backgrounds to generate pixels.
I suggest that a US (or UK) it worker should mention that the money they earn will be spent in the local economy. Thus promoting growth. But money spent on outsourced IT is money lost to the local economy (including for the products produced by the hiring company)
Where does the "chat" happen? is it in the jurisdiction of the server, or the chat client, if in the client side, which client? the operator of the IRC channel for instance. If its the operator, which one?
Ok, you are a member of a development department responsible for applications that need to be certified and tightly controlled. (maybe big pharma)
The FDA come a knocking and start asking about the checks in place that ensure that the code that you write and document is the code that actually gets performed.
FDA Auditor: So, this code specified in this document. Can you please show me how you ensure that this code is actually performed when you run the program here that you say is the one that this document references.
IT Guy: Sorry, Cant
FDA Auditor: Why isnt it?
IT Guy: because the code that gets run is different every time it is run, and indeed during a single run it changes.
FDA Auditor: So, What your saying is that you cannot guarantee that the applications specified in all these documents is the application code that actually runs.
IT Guy: Yep, thats about it...
Oh, now at this point in the discussion it gets serious.
Who on this list actually thinks that dynamic code obfustication like they propose is actually worth a damn.
What happens when this mutating mess gets it wrong?
Who is to blame?
Come on now, this is stupid, this is the worst form of pandering to corporate paranoia.
Hardware manufacturers like intel and others (ati, nvidia etc) make hardware. and then refuse to make OSS drivers available.
Surely this is against their best interests. The driver is not useful for anything else but their hardware (which is protected every which way by any number of patent and copywrite terms)
What do they gain by keeping the drivers closed?
Surely, the innovation is in the silicon they sell us, not the drivers.
Folks, this was on Kuro5hin yesterday and very thoroughly covered.
What the guy does not tell you is...
1) The officer NEVER said "investigating an investigation" 2) The "investigation" was a call related to a disturbance (the guy was arguing LOADLY with his daughter) while parked in the vehicle and a local householder phoned it in fearing for the girls safety. 3) he was not asked for ID, it did not get that far, he was asked to identify himself.
This sort of knee jerk reaction to a headline is why the K5 folk look down on/.
However, their coverage of most of this was exactly the same as here. but eventually the above information came out.
Well, it isn't off topic, but It feels that way with all the content about the decommissioning of hubble...
A simple question (note, I have only superficial understanding of astronomy so this is probably a very stupid question.)
This picture/set of pictures shows a galaxy as it was less than a billion years after the bb.
How long does a galaxy take to form? How long does a galaxy take to rotate (I have not seen the pictures, so do not know if it is a spiral galaxy or not)
Does a galaxy take longer to form (to the point this one shows) than is allowed for by our current estimates of the age of the universe?
Sorry, I will stop the off topic discussion now, and we can get back to talking about de-orbiting and such...:-)
By the way, in order to assure my own right to gravity, I have submitted my own patent claim to this important core "technology". All defensive you understand.
SGML begat HTML begat XML
nowhere in this chain do I see our men from Redmond.
Please forgive me if anyone out there believes I missed out any steps in the above geneology.
Hehe, sounds familiar, the last job I had before going contracting was the same (but without the internet, purely intranet stuff, it was '96) but with the added job of coding realtime assembler and C for the products (house alarm and cctv systems)
I will concede your point regarding the current state of Japan but would hope that you agree with me that you must hope that the people who designed and built your own car (if you have one) do not work to your professed principles. Either that or you probably wince every time you put the key in the ignition.
Not that "postman", the one by David Brin. (the one made into a really awful Kostner flic) don't bait me boy, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
you are onto a looser on that track, I have been coding for a living for 20 years! Assembler (about 4-5 varients), C, C++, Basic, Perl, Java, Javascript, XSLT, VB(all flavours)
As far as evidence is concerned, what about the dubious accounting practices around the share options and how they are recorded and payed for within Microsoft (and yes, google it if you must, cannot spend time trying to educate)
Do not start heaping scorn on someone you know nothing about.
Japanese firms are so strong because they have very rigid moral structures embodied within their culture which allows their workforce to be secure in the knowledge that not only will the company perform the actions required for its own existence and profit, it will take care of the people who make the company what it is. This very rigidity however, is not easily transplanted to our less structured cultures.
Respect and loyalty need to be earned, and as far as I have seen, very few american companies are prepared to do what is needed to engender this. As such, all that is left is the single minded striving for ever greater and ever more immediate financial return at the cost of all else.
I *WAS* ready to listen to any reasoned argument you may have put forwards, but all I have received is baiting and personal attacks.
Go back to the jungle as that appears to be the only law that you accept.
I make enough.
But lets get back to a point I made a couple of messages ago...
Would you be happy to purchase a car from a company that espouses your "ethical" standards?
Just how confortable would you feel riding around in such a car?
Could you entrust your family to such a vehicle?
or would you WALK!
From your standpoint, it would be perfectly ethical for two people to enter a room, one crippled and helpless, the other with a knife. with an understanding from onlookers that if the healthy person murdered the helpless one they would receive a sum of money.
Whatever boosts shareholder value is right.
Do you understand that this is what fuelled ENRON.
It is what increased the intensity of the downturn at the end of the 80 when "yuppy" culture imploded.
That it is perfectly fine for a large company to dictate such difficult trading terms on their suppliers that they go bust before payment is made and then no payment is made.
that the 0-sum game is the only thing in town, and that the prisoners dilemma always ends up with the other guy going to jail and you going free.
This is what is wrong.
Think about the prisoners dilemma.
Forget it.
There is one of 3 possibilities.
You are a Troll
You are an idiot
You are a rabid survivalist (read "the postman", the book, not the film)
In all of the above options, there is no further reason to talk to you, nothing I say will make any difference.
And I don't use any microsoft products at home (as far as I know)
Well, to be honest, my Sons machine has Win98 on it. but unfortunately, he runs stuff that is not available under linux (yet)
But, I feel sadness for a world where investor approval rates over morals. Are you saying that the auto industry where right to allow products to go out that where unsafe because the bean counters figured that the cost of lawsuits is less than a recall and so will impact shareholder value less.
Come on. At some point people have to take responsibility for their actions. Stand up and say "this is what I believe"...
I would like to remind you of something you may have forgotten.
Integrity. This is the quality of a person that lets him (or her) stand up, look themselves in the eye (in the mirror in the morning) without blinking. I know it is oldfashioned, I know it is unpopular. That should not matter.
"No one gave it to him." so, he starting off without a bean? NO he started off with a multimillion dollar trust fund. then Kildall, and IBM *GAVE* it to him...
But I digress, at one point Bill was a world class coder (can't comment now, what has he written). He is now a screwd businessman and a very clever tactician.
He has learned to manipulate the world markets and the financial infrastructure to give him riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
The only thing I can possibly say against him is that he has no scruples/morals/and hopefully no concience (else he would not be able to sleep)
He is the essence of might makes right. and I really hope he never wakes up and realises what he has done.
Yes, Microsoft assisted the software industry in the beginning when standards where needed in order to generate the critical mass of common infrastructure needed to get us off the ground. but now, microsoft equates what is good for microsoft with what is good for the world, and these two points no longer co-incide.
We need to treat infrastructure computing as we do science. Openness, HONESTY and peer review.
Microsofts stance is no longer HONEST. they profess that their vision is what is best for the customer. this is dishonest. their vision is what is best for microsoft.
Honesty above all else. I know it is a foreign idea in advertising (which is what Microsofts vision is) but I truely believe that honesty is what computing needs.
I know, in todays world of shareholder confidence and ENRON, honesty is not fashionable. Well, sometimes fashion is too expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
More likely, then end of the beginning.
With this I forcee SCO turning from a software company with a panchance for litigation into an IP holder whos only projected revenue stream is lawsuits.
This just signals a focusing of SCOs efforts away from what was a core business, SOFTWARE, and onto what is now its business model (being redmonds courtroom distraction), this is just a holding measure to try to give microsoft the breathing room to change the game again.
with DRM, system management tools and the ubiquity of the media player for HDTV DVD, they are looking to lock out all other competition while everyone is focused on the yapping of this annoying little puppet.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, he is of no consequence"
Finished, off to bed.
Yes, but you are not going far enough!
Recompile the kernel, it wont work, not signed.
They don't just want all the money, they arent interested in money...
Its the power. No coders outside microsoft. only the corporate equiv. of script-kiddies allowed, and once moores cranks up so that decent apps can be coded in scripting languages, even that will be taken away.
Microsoft does not make all these apis soo big and clunky because they are a large corporate that cannot make something elegant and easy to use.
This is a mindgame designed to keep external programmers tearing there hair out with frustation battling the API and system.
Why do you think microsoft changes the core of every major subsystem every 2-3 years...
Cant have people getting to know the interface enough to engineer a decent management layer over it so that decent productivity can be achieved.
That abrogates too much control.
Keep the system fluid, force developers to restart their learning curves every couple of years.
Look at X, it has had the same underlying model for decades.
Ok there are layers of abstraction layed on top, but the basic core of static.
lock everyone else out of the "real" bare metal coding, keep the core to themselves. make everyone else subservient to the whim of microsoft.
DRM is the prize, a legal mandate to lock away our own systems away from us. To lock out all competition. whats next? Using the DMCA to force the uptake of MS DRM so as to lock out everyone else.
DRM ONLY works when the DRM scheme is locked away from external developers by a partitioning of the system into TRUSTED and untrusted...
By this, read "THEIRS" and ours.
Don't give away your machine along with your freedom.
Ahhhh.... I sound like a ranting lunatic, and I probably am, but lunacy is a blessed thing.
Final words...
In the end DRM is a trick being pulled on everyone to make them think that systems can have meaning embodied in them... "This bitpattern is an artifact with an owner, so can only be used in certain ways"
Rubbish, a bit pattern is nothing more than that and needs something to interpret it for us into some meaningful set of actions.
If any part of the system is free (as in speech), nothing is safe as everything is just a Turing machine.
Meaning free.
I read some guff today about MS DRM being able to lock down content even unto the analogue output.
Now I ask you, who are they kidding?
At some point the bitpattern of that top 10 hit is rendered into an analogue electrical signal that has to be pumped into some speakers, how can this signal be so altered as to leave it secure from re-sampling?
THERE IS NO MAGIC in computing.
No amount of pigopolist flagwaving will make computer systems into anything they are not.
What is bill going to do when computers are soo fast that an excel spreadsheet can be used to playback fullscreen video by changing the colour of the cell backgrounds to generate pixels.
Ranting off. Tired. Sickened.
I suggest that a US (or UK) it worker should mention that the money they earn will be spent in the local economy. Thus promoting growth. But money spent on outsourced IT is money lost to the local economy (including for the products produced by the hiring company)
Where does the "chat" happen?
is it in the jurisdiction of the server, or the chat client, if in the client side, which client? the operator of the IRC channel for instance.
If its the operator, which one?
as is said, the devil is in the details.
We are all screwed.
It is no longer the lunatics that run the asylum.
Its the shitheads...
I did'nt think you could present a barcode on an emissive display and expect it to scan.
barcode scanners illuminate with their own (laser) light, and so, scanning the display of a barcode should not work.
Am I missing something?
So, in paying for this license, you agree that anything you develope IN unix/linux becomes their IP...
What a wonderful license.
And they called the GPL viral.
Ok, you are a member of a development department responsible for applications that need to be certified and tightly controlled. (maybe big pharma)
The FDA come a knocking and start asking about the checks in place that ensure that the code that you write and document is the code that actually gets performed.
FDA Auditor: So, this code specified in this document. Can you please show me how you ensure that this code is actually performed when you run the program here that you say is the one that this document references.
IT Guy: Sorry, Cant
FDA Auditor: Why isnt it?
IT Guy: because the code that gets run is different every time it is run, and indeed during a single run it changes.
FDA Auditor: So, What your saying is that you cannot guarantee that the applications specified in all these documents is the application code that actually runs.
IT Guy: Yep, thats about it...
Oh, now at this point in the discussion it gets serious.
Who on this list actually thinks that dynamic code obfustication like they propose is actually worth a damn.
What happens when this mutating mess gets it wrong?
Who is to blame?
Come on now, this is stupid, this is the worst form of pandering to corporate paranoia.
This is true snakeoil.
These are all just turing machines.
There is something here I do not understand.
Hardware manufacturers like intel and others (ati, nvidia etc) make hardware. and then refuse to make OSS drivers available.
Surely this is against their best interests. The driver is not useful for anything else but their hardware (which is protected every which way by any number of patent and copywrite terms)
What do they gain by keeping the drivers closed?
Surely, the innovation is in the silicon they sell us, not the drivers.
Or is it just me?
Folks,
/.
this was on Kuro5hin yesterday and very thoroughly covered.
What the guy does not tell you is...
1) The officer NEVER said "investigating an investigation"
2) The "investigation" was a call related to a disturbance (the guy was arguing LOADLY with his daughter) while parked in the vehicle and a local householder phoned it in fearing for the girls safety.
3) he was not asked for ID, it did not get that far, he was asked to identify himself.
This sort of knee jerk reaction to a headline is why the K5 folk look down on
However, their coverage of most of this was exactly the same as here. but eventually the above information came out.
While it would not have the same effect.
wouldn't it be more "apt" for those addresses to be...
sales@sco.con
mcbride@sco.con
etc...
And this is why I read SLASHDOT... :-)
Well, it isn't off topic, but It feels that way with all the content about the decommissioning of hubble...
:-)
A simple question (note, I have only superficial understanding of astronomy so this is probably a very stupid question.)
This picture/set of pictures shows a galaxy as it was less than a billion years after the bb.
How long does a galaxy take to form?
How long does a galaxy take to rotate (I have not seen the pictures, so do not know if it is a spiral galaxy or not)
Does a galaxy take longer to form (to the point this one shows) than is allowed for by our current estimates of the age of the universe?
Sorry, I will stop the off topic discussion now, and we can get back to talking about de-orbiting and such...
reasonable point...
By the way, in order to assure my own right to
gravity, I have submitted my own patent claim to this important core "technology". All defensive
you understand.
SGML begat HTML begat XML
nowhere in this chain do I see our men from Redmond.
Please forgive me if anyone out there believes I missed out any steps in the above geneology.
Did RED HAT start a lawsuit when Yellow Dog Linux came out...
Yellow's a colour, just like red...
and
Dog, well DOG has the same number of letters as HAT... and you could wear one on your head too...
(or is that just me! oops, did I type that out loud)
Well, if Microsoft win (finally) we could have
;-)
TOSFKAL
It does not have the ring to it that
TAFKAP, but you get the idea.
Hehe, sounds familiar, the last job I had before going contracting was the same (but without the internet, purely intranet stuff, it was '96) but with the added job of coding realtime assembler and C for the products (house alarm and cctv systems)
I will concede your point regarding the current state of Japan but would hope that you agree with me that you must hope that the people who designed and built your own car (if you have one) do not work to your professed principles. Either that or you probably wince every time you put the key in the ignition.
Cheers.
And just what do you do to earn a living?
Not that "postman", the one by David Brin. (the one made into a really awful Kostner flic)
don't bait me boy, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
you are onto a looser on that track, I have been coding for a living for 20 years! Assembler (about 4-5 varients), C, C++, Basic, Perl, Java, Javascript, XSLT, VB(all flavours)
As far as evidence is concerned, what about the dubious accounting practices around the share options and how they are recorded and payed for within Microsoft (and yes, google it if you must, cannot spend time trying to educate)
Do not start heaping scorn on someone you know nothing about.
Japanese firms are so strong because they have very rigid moral structures embodied within their culture which allows their workforce to be secure in the knowledge that not only will the company perform the actions required for its own existence and profit, it will take care of the people who make the company what it is. This very rigidity however, is not easily transplanted to our less structured cultures.
Respect and loyalty need to be earned, and as far as I have seen, very few american companies are prepared to do what is needed to engender this. As such, all that is left is the single minded striving for ever greater and ever more immediate financial return at the cost of all else.
I *WAS* ready to listen to any reasoned argument you may have put forwards, but all I have received is baiting and personal attacks.
Go back to the jungle as that appears to be the only law that you accept.
It is too good to resist.
I refer you to todays Dilbert...
I make enough. But lets get back to a point I made a couple of messages ago... Would you be happy to purchase a car from a company that espouses your "ethical" standards? Just how confortable would you feel riding around in such a car? Could you entrust your family to such a vehicle? or would you WALK! From your standpoint, it would be perfectly ethical for two people to enter a room, one crippled and helpless, the other with a knife. with an understanding from onlookers that if the healthy person murdered the helpless one they would receive a sum of money. Whatever boosts shareholder value is right. Do you understand that this is what fuelled ENRON. It is what increased the intensity of the downturn at the end of the 80 when "yuppy" culture imploded. That it is perfectly fine for a large company to dictate such difficult trading terms on their suppliers that they go bust before payment is made and then no payment is made. that the 0-sum game is the only thing in town, and that the prisoners dilemma always ends up with the other guy going to jail and you going free. This is what is wrong. Think about the prisoners dilemma. Forget it. There is one of 3 possibilities. You are a Troll You are an idiot You are a rabid survivalist (read "the postman", the book, not the film) In all of the above options, there is no further reason to talk to you, nothing I say will make any difference.
Yum, that bunny tasted good...
I do run my own business. I am an independent IT contractor in the UK.
I do hope that the people you purchased your car off do not think the same way as you.
I suppose that you feel that the Cocacola exec who decided to start palming off their toxic waste to the local(indian) farmers was a fiscal genius.
Really, you cannot honestly feel that the shareholder happiness is the only metric of corporate behaviour.
Your tagline states that you hate me.
So be it, I do not however hate you, I will just do everything in my power to ensure that I never buy anything from you.
Don't Forget to breath! (slowly) and can you close your mouth while you do it?
And I don't use any microsoft products at home (as far as I know)
Well, to be honest, my Sons machine has Win98 on it. but unfortunately, he runs stuff that is not available under linux (yet)
But, I feel sadness for a world where investor approval rates over morals. Are you saying that the auto industry where right to allow products to go out that where unsafe because the bean counters figured that the cost of lawsuits is less than a recall and so will impact shareholder value less.
Come on. At some point people have to take responsibility for their actions. Stand up and say "this is what I believe"...
I would like to remind you of something you may have forgotten.
Integrity. This is the quality of a person that lets him (or her) stand up, look themselves in the eye (in the mirror in the morning) without blinking. I know it is oldfashioned, I know it is unpopular. That should not matter.
Sorry, said shrewd, types screwd!
Should have used preview...
mea culpa.
"No one gave it to him." so, he starting off without a bean?
NO he started off with a multimillion dollar trust fund.
then Kildall, and IBM *GAVE* it to him...
But I digress, at one point Bill was a world class coder (can't comment now, what has he written). He is now a screwd businessman and a very clever tactician.
He has learned to manipulate the world markets and the financial infrastructure to give him riches beyond the dreams of avarice.
The only thing I can possibly say against him is that he
has no scruples/morals/and hopefully no concience (else he would not be able to sleep)
He is the essence of might makes right. and I really hope he never wakes up and realises what he has done.
Yes, Microsoft assisted the software industry in the beginning when standards where needed in order to generate the critical mass of common infrastructure needed to get us off the ground. but now, microsoft equates what is good for microsoft with what is good for the world, and these two points no longer co-incide.
We need to treat infrastructure computing as we do science. Openness, HONESTY and peer review.
Microsofts stance is no longer HONEST. they profess that their vision is what is best for the customer. this is dishonest. their vision is what is best for microsoft.
Honesty above all else. I know it is a foreign idea in advertising (which is what Microsofts vision is) but I truely believe that honesty is what computing needs.
I know, in todays world of shareholder confidence and ENRON, honesty is not fashionable. Well, sometimes fashion is too expensive.