I was referring more to the kind of clout an organization like this has, than their truth-handling ability.
When this sluggish market-force monster rears its ugly head and blasts SCO with this strength, there is even less chance that any white knight will come to the rescue of SCO (the princess in the tower? nah, the warty witch).
If you read some more Groklaw, especially here, when the filing first came out, you will see that SCO is still calling the GPL unenforceable, inapplicable, and so on, and IBM still claims that SCO's GPL violations are causing harm. So it will still be an issue in the suit and countersuit.
Specifically (I feel stupid quoting myself, but):
For one thing, "denies the enforceability or applicability of the GPL" is littered all over their responses. Paras. 24, 26, 28, 108, 143, 155, all have some statement to that effect. So they will have to explain why, when they distributed Linux and then broke the GPL, the GPL is not enforceable or applicable. Otherwise they will have a meager defense regarding, e.g. their breach of IBM's GPL'ed copyrights (Counterclaim 8, including paras. 155 and 157).
For another thing, read IBM's sixth counterclaim (142-147). The claim is that SCO breached the GPL, which is causing continued harm to IBM and other developers. SCO will have to explain what they believe about the GPL because IBM is making it an issue.
The National Retail Federation is the world's largest retail trade association, with membership that comprises all retail formats and channels of distribution including department, specialty, discount, catalog, Internet and independent stores as well as the industry's key trading partners of retail goods and services. NRF represents an industry with more than 1.4 million U.S. retail establishments, more than 20 million employees - about one in five American workers - and 2003 sales of $3.8 trillion. As the industry umbrella group, NRF also represents more than 100 state, national and international retail associations.
Yikes. One in five American workers and $3.8 trillion in Sales can't be wrong!
I started Algebra in 6th grade, so I was a little SOL for math classes by the time I got to high school. I took the Calculus course as a sophomore (that was half a year), skipped the Statistics half and took Journalism (basically a waste), didn't take math for another year, then took an experimental higher level math course with more calculus, graph theory, and other things more unmemorable.
In college I placed into Honors Calculus II. So there was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, in my high school work.
The moral of the story for me is that there is no room at the top of American (public) high schools for students who can push and excel. My family wasn't rich enough for private school. I wasted a lot of time there.
Me and this guy I know both have bad dreams about all our teeth falling out, or about our teeth getting smashed, or about biting something too hard and losing teeth.
I suppose now we will have nightmares about hideous mutant teeth bursting out of our cheeks in fountains of blood, and being called "Toothy".
My weak little mind is still smarting from the Over-Unity engine story a couple weeks back. I was suckered.
But in a world with uranium-eating bacteria, I suspect there are a few surprises left for scientists and the rest of us. I for one will be happy if these experiments pan out and I can read about it in Science.
People say the same things about genre fiction
on
Twisty Little Passages
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And frankly, I think the elitist insistence that the reader is not the author mirrors the chestnut that a bad reader is worse than no reader at all.
The question is not, "who is a legitimate author?" as you imply. Instead, the questions are, "who is a legitimate reader?" and "what is a legitimate reading?" If you can't respond as a reader to IF, or William Gibson, or Stephen King, that's no skin off my nose. If you boil down all our readings to your ideas about literary forms and formats and ignore us, it's your loss.
Read An Experiment in Criticism, and maybe you'll see what I mean.
To fully comply within 45 days of the entry of this order [NB: March 3 + 45 = April 17] with the court's previous order dated December 12, 2003. This is to include those items that SCO had difficulty in obtaining prior to the Court's previously ordered deadline of January 12, 2004.
As previously ordered, SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code that IBM is alleged to have contributed to Linux from either AIX or Dynix. This is to include all lines of code that SCO can identify at this time.
SCO is to provide and identify all specific lines of code from Unix System V from which IBM's contributions from AIX and Dynix are alleged to be derived.
SCO is to provide and identify with specificity all lines of code in Linux that it claims rights to.
SCO is to provide and identify with specificity the lines of code that SCO distributed to other parties. This is to include where applicable the conditions of release, to whom the code was released, the date and under what circumstances such code was released.
It's a tall order. I foresee a lot of coffee drinking and nail-biting this weekend, whether or not the smoking suitcase is full of evidence.
Not that I know, but is it cheaper to harvest large permanent magnets than to pay for the electricity to run a more, um, standard motor? If it is, maybe this guy is going somewhere even if the juice in the permanent magnets runs out. What is the TCO?
of thermodynamics! You didn't finish the article, friend.
Next we move to a unit with its motor connected to a generator. What we see is striking. The meters showed an input to the stator electromagnets of approximately 1.8 volts and 150mA input, and from the generator, 9.144 volts and 192mA output. 1.8 x 0.15 x 2 = 540mW input and 9.144 x 0.192 = 1.755W out.
So far, so good, but...
But according to the laws of physics, you can't get more out of a device than you put into it. We mention this to Kohei Minato while looking under the workbench to make sure there aren't any hidden wires.
Minato assures us that he hasn't transcended the laws of physics. The force supplying the unexplained extra power out is generated by the magnetic strength of the permanent magnets embedded in the rotor. "I'm simply harnessing one of the four fundamental forces of nature," he says.
Although we learned in school that magnets were always bipolar and so magnetically induced motion would always end in a locked state of equilibrium, Minato explains that he has fine-tuned the positioning of the magnets and the timing of pulses to the stators to the point where the repulsion between the rotor and the stator (the fixed outer magnetic ring) is transitory. This creates further motion -- rather than a lockup. (See the sidebar on page 41 for a full explanation).
I live in a single-consent state, so this isn't currently a great problem for me. (A great problem for America, though, surely!)
Couldn't the detective (I call this detective a him, like in the FA) just speak the conversation into a tape recorder? Then he is creating a recording that only he is a party to, and the veracity of the evidence hinges on whether he is doing an accurate job recounting the screen conversation. In fact, why can't he videotape himself writing down the words on paper and speaking into a tape recorder and typing onto a screen? Then he has documentation of at least two legal forms of recording (he is the only party, remember), and oops, just by mistake the camera caught the screen too, if any of his testimony needs to be corroborated.
Why not just force another detective to be in the room with him and initial his printout, after he prints the conversation, and leaves it on the screen for comparison?
SCO's licensing behavior, as IBM has been pointing out in their Counterclaims to the SCO lawsuit (Counterclaim 6, para. 142-147 is especially relevant), violates the GPL, because SCO distributed Linux and other GPL software, then attempted to alter the terms of the license using SCOsource.
Paragraph 147 shows what kinds of damages open source developers have a right to expect:
147. As a result of SCO's breaches of the GPL, countless developers and users of Linux, including IBM, have suffered and will continue to suffer damages and other irreparable injury. IBM is entitled to a declaration that SCO's rights under the GPL terminated, an injunction prohibiting SCO from its continuing and threatened breaches of the GPL and an award of damages in an amount to be determined at trial.
SCO is unpopular with "the/. crowd" precisely because a significant number of them are Linux and open source developers. Yes, all open source projects get tarred with the same brush in the non-tech public (read: investors) when SCO claims the GPL is unconstitutional and threatens to sue end-users. These guys aren't multimillionaires being bankrolled by M$ and don't have the money, time, or ability to get into a legal fight with SCO. They all lose customers and support until the lawsuits are over. When the Yankee Group publishes yet another TCO study that says "Linux is great, but, oops, the costs of indemnity from legal challenges pending in the courts forced us to revise our cost estimate upward," businesses learn that Linux is risky until the court cases are over. Developers lose.
Someone must be responsible! Someone must pay for this damage! The thought that Darl McBride, Canopy, M$ et al. will come away from these lawsuits, no matter what, with their reputations, fortunes, business practices, quotidian lives intact is like a maddening thorn in the brain of "the/. crowd". That's why everyone keeps asking about criminal charges... not because they really hope to see these people in jail, but because they are yearning for justice.
in the same way that cigarettes are a nicotine delivery system. Everyone keeps talking like this thing is about Content and Quality Programming and Comedy Central. The truth is that they are marketing to us: "24 is presented without commercial interruption" (remember the next part?) "by Ford."
So this flap is not really about USA/TNT/TBS subsidizing poor TechTV or the Golf Channel. It is about cable companies and content providers selling us things. They gain a lot by packaging channels together: commercials on ABC that refer you to programming on TNT; covering a broader spectrum of demographics (read: target audiences) in the event that you get a girlfriend, a new roommate, or a kid; cable companies contracting for several channels of content at volume discounts... You can probably think of other reasons they would do this.
A la carte programming is a threat to their best practices of marketing: selling White-Male-Age-15-to-40-everyone-listens-to-me 50 channels, Asian-Woman-Age-55+ 5 channels. When we complain that we don't want the Nuts and Gum (together at last!) they listen politely, then laugh all the way to the bank.
No wonder they are so frightened by the substantial overhaul that a la carte would be. Follow the money! There are a lot of connections to sniff out here.
This article (on Voice of America) is about the UN Human Rights Convention, where the US once again dogged China on human rights, and China fired back. Winner: China.
Best quote, from a Chinese official:
"If the U.S. is really honest and concerned about human rights, then I will be very happy one day if the United States can table a resolution to name and shame yourself," he said. "We will suggest to the United States to buy a mirror and look at yourself in it. China is a poor developing country. If you do not have a mirror, we can buy one for you."
Here is an old article on the subject: the more-left and more-right Republicans and Democrats were mostly pushing for human rights, and the centrist Democrats and Republicans were mostly pushing for free trade. Kind of strange, huh? Clinton, in fact, flip-flopped on this one; he was in favor of granting MFN here and here, and finally pushed for and got permanent trade status for China. That last article also mentions that it happened on GW's watch when they finally entered the WTO.
We are not very far removed from the years when we linked China's trade status to progress on human rights in China (things more important, IMHO, than online gambling: the one-child policy, Tibet, civil rights, political prisoners, ad infinitum). Congress debated giving China MFN trade status every year, and every year Democrats (basically) said to give it up and grant them permanent trade status, and every year Republicans (basically) raked China over the coals.
It all ended when CLinton signed a bill in 2000, passed by the House and the Senate, to make trade status permanent, contingent upon their entry to the WTO. The idea was that WTO membership would make China responsible for its abuses and create other enforcement mechanisms, like tariffs and sanctions, so there would be no need to review their trade status every year. China entered the WTO in 2001.
If the US won't abide by the WTO decision on online gambling, it will send a strong message about the WTO to nations like China, who have far more compelling reasons to resist sanctions.
I agree with much of what has been said so far; I love games and I think the best ones are far better and more involving than most mindless, pop entertainment.
But I too have had the experience of looking at myself in the mirror at six in the morning, during finals week, after an entire night of [insert your favorite drug here] Tekken 3, and saying, what is all this for? When I can't think of an answer, I need to quit cold turkey for a while.
I also question whether all games should be included in the article's good graces. I am not one of those nuts who can't see the stunning value of the Grand Theft Autos; I've been playing them since the original. But some games are trash, and some are mindless, and some, of course, are so deeply flawed that they are barely games at all. That doesn't make me judgmental; it just means I'm exercising judgment.
As gamers, there is always a chance to judge what is great about games (realistic graphics, responsive worlds, involving stories, real community, for examples) and vote with our pocketbook. But there is another need to judge what is poor about games: what do they turn us into?
Again, I'm not trying to harp on media violence or blame Columbine on games. I think that is ludicrous. But a look in the mirror says everything about the influence of games. Games are addictive; they turn you into a gamer. By contrast, pick up a good book and read it through; what does it turn you into? If you are lucky, it turns you into a new human being.
This, finally, is what games are not providing enough of: the affective experience of what it means to be human. It is far too rare and precious in gaming (maybe the MMOs are onto something here). When we grow up as a community, that's what we'll demand.
The thing I like about this, more than the premise of the show or its upbeat, Pollyanna tone, is that science fiction is now so mainstream that a lawyer show, at least exploring possibilities of technology and the pros and cons of an imaginary future, can be pitched to a network.
Television and film have really only scratched the surface of the deep field that is science fiction. The future of the genre will be a thing of beauty to behold.
This is a very personal subject for me, because now, today, I am starting the process to reenter university for a CSE degree.
I understand the problems with the job market right now. Frankly, it's frightening. I am married and kidless, and the idea that I could doom my family to misery in the future by getting a worthless degree is a Treehouse of Horror-worthy nightmare.
I am not as skilled and specialized as the doctor who started the thread. How could I be? I agree, a doctor in a computer field can basically write their own ticket. What am I to do? I have spent a lot of time in university getting a broad, fulfilling education (in Linguistics, Math, and English, mostly), but I am not interested in pursuing any of those things the way I have turned on to CS. In many ways, that broad education has felt like incremental preparation for computers (learning languages, manipulating numbers), but it is not taking me anywhere fast.
I should add, too, that I am not interested in pursuing some American dream where I live in a dream house and eat my lobster. Keep the billions, I am not looking for anything like that.
What I am interested in, as far as work is concerned, is supporting my family and doing something I enjoy, a lot.
So my question is, how hard is it to do that in CS? Am I really going to eat my degree for food on the streets of Seattle ten years down the road? If I am pursuing science emphases or further education at the Master's or Ph.D. level, am I good to go or dead man walking? Is my variety of skills something CS companies are really interested in, or is it just not good enough?
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I think it will never be shown again in syndication (because it has the WTC so prominently in Homer's bathroom jaunts).
But there's always DVD! Thanks.
I was referring more to the kind of clout an organization like this has, than their truth-handling ability.
When this sluggish market-force monster rears its ugly head and blasts SCO with this strength, there is even less chance that any white knight will come to the rescue of SCO (the princess in the tower? nah, the warty witch).
SCO should have let this sleeping dragon lie.
If you read some more Groklaw, especially here, when the filing first came out, you will see that SCO is still calling the GPL unenforceable, inapplicable, and so on, and IBM still claims that SCO's GPL violations are causing harm. So it will still be an issue in the suit and countersuit.
Specifically (I feel stupid quoting myself, but):
(from their Mission Statement)
Yikes. One in five American workers and $3.8 trillion in Sales can't be wrong!
Or can they?
No.
I started Algebra in 6th grade, so I was a little SOL for math classes by the time I got to high school. I took the Calculus course as a sophomore (that was half a year), skipped the Statistics half and took Journalism (basically a waste), didn't take math for another year, then took an experimental higher level math course with more calculus, graph theory, and other things more unmemorable.
In college I placed into Honors Calculus II. So there was a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, in my high school work.
The moral of the story for me is that there is no room at the top of American (public) high schools for students who can push and excel. My family wasn't rich enough for private school. I wasted a lot of time there.
Me and this guy I know both have bad dreams about all our teeth falling out, or about our teeth getting smashed, or about biting something too hard and losing teeth.
I suppose now we will have nightmares about hideous mutant teeth bursting out of our cheeks in fountains of blood, and being called "Toothy".
My weak little mind is still smarting from the Over-Unity engine story a couple weeks back. I was suckered.
But in a world with uranium-eating bacteria, I suspect there are a few surprises left for scientists and the rest of us. I for one will be happy if these experiments pan out and I can read about it in Science.
And frankly, I think the elitist insistence that the reader is not the author mirrors the chestnut that a bad reader is worse than no reader at all.
The question is not, "who is a legitimate author?" as you imply. Instead, the questions are, "who is a legitimate reader?" and "what is a legitimate reading?" If you can't respond as a reader to IF, or William Gibson, or Stephen King, that's no skin off my nose. If you boil down all our readings to your ideas about literary forms and formats and ignore us, it's your loss.
Read An Experiment in Criticism, and maybe you'll see what I mean.
... where SCO has been ordered to:
It's a tall order. I foresee a lot of coffee drinking and nail-biting this weekend, whether or not the smoking suitcase is full of evidence.
Thank you. I feel somewhat sheepish. Baaa.
Not that I know, but is it cheaper to harvest large permanent magnets than to pay for the electricity to run a more, um, standard motor? If it is, maybe this guy is going somewhere even if the juice in the permanent magnets runs out. What is the TCO?
This is a job for the Yankee Group!
http://users.skynet.be/kurtgode/minato_invention_2 004.pdf
of thermodynamics! You didn't finish the article, friend.
So far, so good, but...
Sounds pretty neat-o to me.
I live in a single-consent state, so this isn't currently a great problem for me. (A great problem for America, though, surely!)
Couldn't the detective (I call this detective a him, like in the FA) just speak the conversation into a tape recorder? Then he is creating a recording that only he is a party to, and the veracity of the evidence hinges on whether he is doing an accurate job recounting the screen conversation. In fact, why can't he videotape himself writing down the words on paper and speaking into a tape recorder and typing onto a screen? Then he has documentation of at least two legal forms of recording (he is the only party, remember), and oops, just by mistake the camera caught the screen too, if any of his testimony needs to be corroborated.
Why not just force another detective to be in the room with him and initial his printout, after he prints the conversation, and leaves it on the screen for comparison?
Dorks.
SCO's licensing behavior, as IBM has been pointing out in their Counterclaims to the SCO lawsuit (Counterclaim 6, para. 142-147 is especially relevant), violates the GPL, because SCO distributed Linux and other GPL software, then attempted to alter the terms of the license using SCOsource.
Paragraph 147 shows what kinds of damages open source developers have a right to expect:
SCO is unpopular with "the /. crowd" precisely because a significant number of them are Linux and open source developers. Yes, all open source projects get tarred with the same brush in the non-tech public (read: investors) when SCO claims the GPL is unconstitutional and threatens to sue end-users. These guys aren't multimillionaires being bankrolled by M$ and don't have the money, time, or ability to get into a legal fight with SCO. They all lose customers and support until the lawsuits are over. When the Yankee Group publishes yet another TCO study that says "Linux is great, but, oops, the costs of indemnity from legal challenges pending in the courts forced us to revise our cost estimate upward," businesses learn that Linux is risky until the court cases are over. Developers lose.
Someone must be responsible! Someone must pay for this damage! The thought that Darl McBride, Canopy, M$ et al. will come away from these lawsuits, no matter what, with their reputations, fortunes, business practices, quotidian lives intact is like a maddening thorn in the brain of "the /. crowd". That's why everyone keeps asking about criminal charges... not because they really hope to see these people in jail, but because they are yearning for justice.
His email is cfahey@blah blah and the article is on colinfahey.com. A little warning is in order. Thank you!
in the same way that cigarettes are a nicotine delivery system. Everyone keeps talking like this thing is about Content and Quality Programming and Comedy Central. The truth is that they are marketing to us: "24 is presented without commercial interruption" (remember the next part?) "by Ford."
So this flap is not really about USA/TNT/TBS subsidizing poor TechTV or the Golf Channel. It is about cable companies and content providers selling us things. They gain a lot by packaging channels together: commercials on ABC that refer you to programming on TNT; covering a broader spectrum of demographics (read: target audiences) in the event that you get a girlfriend, a new roommate, or a kid; cable companies contracting for several channels of content at volume discounts... You can probably think of other reasons they would do this.
A la carte programming is a threat to their best practices of marketing: selling White-Male-Age-15-to-40-everyone-listens-to-me 50 channels, Asian-Woman-Age-55+ 5 channels. When we complain that we don't want the Nuts and Gum (together at last!) they listen politely, then laugh all the way to the bank.
No wonder they are so frightened by the substantial overhaul that a la carte would be. Follow the money! There are a lot of connections to sniff out here.
Best quote, from a Chinese official:
Here is an old article on the subject: the more-left and more-right Republicans and Democrats were mostly pushing for human rights, and the centrist Democrats and Republicans were mostly pushing for free trade. Kind of strange, huh? Clinton, in fact, flip-flopped on this one; he was in favor of granting MFN here and here, and finally pushed for and got permanent trade status for China. That last article also mentions that it happened on GW's watch when they finally entered the WTO.
We are not very far removed from the years when we linked China's trade status to progress on human rights in China (things more important, IMHO, than online gambling: the one-child policy, Tibet, civil rights, political prisoners, ad infinitum). Congress debated giving China MFN trade status every year, and every year Democrats (basically) said to give it up and grant them permanent trade status, and every year Republicans (basically) raked China over the coals.
It all ended when CLinton signed a bill in 2000, passed by the House and the Senate, to make trade status permanent, contingent upon their entry to the WTO. The idea was that WTO membership would make China responsible for its abuses and create other enforcement mechanisms, like tariffs and sanctions, so there would be no need to review their trade status every year. China entered the WTO in 2001.
If the US won't abide by the WTO decision on online gambling, it will send a strong message about the WTO to nations like China, who have far more compelling reasons to resist sanctions.
I agree with much of what has been said so far; I love games and I think the best ones are far better and more involving than most mindless, pop entertainment.
But I too have had the experience of looking at myself in the mirror at six in the morning, during finals week, after an entire night of [insert your favorite drug here] Tekken 3, and saying, what is all this for? When I can't think of an answer, I need to quit cold turkey for a while.
I also question whether all games should be included in the article's good graces. I am not one of those nuts who can't see the stunning value of the Grand Theft Autos; I've been playing them since the original. But some games are trash, and some are mindless, and some, of course, are so deeply flawed that they are barely games at all. That doesn't make me judgmental; it just means I'm exercising judgment.
As gamers, there is always a chance to judge what is great about games (realistic graphics, responsive worlds, involving stories, real community, for examples) and vote with our pocketbook. But there is another need to judge what is poor about games: what do they turn us into?
Again, I'm not trying to harp on media violence or blame Columbine on games. I think that is ludicrous. But a look in the mirror says everything about the influence of games. Games are addictive; they turn you into a gamer. By contrast, pick up a good book and read it through; what does it turn you into? If you are lucky, it turns you into a new human being.
This, finally, is what games are not providing enough of: the affective experience of what it means to be human. It is far too rare and precious in gaming (maybe the MMOs are onto something here). When we grow up as a community, that's what we'll demand.
Necromancer is a (usually evil) death magician.
Maybe we could add the more populist Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven types, too. That should get those networks boiling the pot.
The thing I like about this, more than the premise of the show or its upbeat, Pollyanna tone, is that science fiction is now so mainstream that a lawyer show, at least exploring possibilities of technology and the pros and cons of an imaginary future, can be pitched to a network.
Television and film have really only scratched the surface of the deep field that is science fiction. The future of the genre will be a thing of beauty to behold.
Did it for DeCSS. I don't see why someone doesn't take their ink-brush in hand and start summarizing. (someone uninvolved in OSS projects)
This is a very personal subject for me, because now, today, I am starting the process to reenter university for a CSE degree. I understand the problems with the job market right now. Frankly, it's frightening. I am married and kidless, and the idea that I could doom my family to misery in the future by getting a worthless degree is a Treehouse of Horror-worthy nightmare. I am not as skilled and specialized as the doctor who started the thread. How could I be? I agree, a doctor in a computer field can basically write their own ticket. What am I to do? I have spent a lot of time in university getting a broad, fulfilling education (in Linguistics, Math, and English, mostly), but I am not interested in pursuing any of those things the way I have turned on to CS. In many ways, that broad education has felt like incremental preparation for computers (learning languages, manipulating numbers), but it is not taking me anywhere fast. I should add, too, that I am not interested in pursuing some American dream where I live in a dream house and eat my lobster. Keep the billions, I am not looking for anything like that. What I am interested in, as far as work is concerned, is supporting my family and doing something I enjoy, a lot. So my question is, how hard is it to do that in CS? Am I really going to eat my degree for food on the streets of Seattle ten years down the road? If I am pursuing science emphases or further education at the Master's or Ph.D. level, am I good to go or dead man walking? Is my variety of skills something CS companies are really interested in, or is it just not good enough?