My take is that they're talking about what they consider to be their "derivative" code that is copyrighted by the likes of IBM / SGI, i.e. they maintain that the SysV license prohibits IBM and SGI from releasing NUMA, JFS, XFS, RCP, etc without their permission.
Remember, before Baystar taped their mouths shut these guys were fast and lose (and often contradictory) with their accusations. They've also alluded that *BSD and others (including MS) are in "violation" which furthers the thought that they're pursuing the "we control anything and everything that is associated with Unix" strategy instead of "there is actual SysV code that we own the copyrights to in Linux" strategy. Even though they try to muddy the waters when pressed they'll stress that the IBM case is about contracts, not copyright violation (although they're now claiming they may amend the suit to include that as well)
"HP is fscking over American IT employees because we let them. Our government won't even.... Ooooh, iPods!"
Just like Ford fscked over the buggy whip industry, the horse and carriage industry, and decimated the "we clean horse shit off of the street" service industry.
Joe Slashdot: just like everyone else "Keep the gov't off my back, man... but put it on HPs because they've found someone that can do my job for half the price. Fuck progress, I have a mountain of credit card debt to pay off."
Evolve or die, simple as that. If you're skill level was only as high as your average India-based call center worker / HTML jockey you ain't all that skilled.
From Apple's point of view, I'm not sure what they gain.
Mindshare and marketshare, not to mention money. If you want clout with component manufacturers on the hardware side and the Big 5 (soon to be Big 4) on the content side you have to be a volume leader. So lets see what happens if Apple told HP to go fly a kite.
HP comes up with their own player and service (or, more likely license someone else's) that would be.wma based (with respect to purchased music), and while it may not be the greatest bit of kit, nor the greatest service HP will sell enough of them with system bundles / special deals / etc. (and even if the content side of the equation blows a user would have the option to use any other.wma based content service, like BuyMusic.com, Music.Walmart.com, etc.)
Instead, cut a deal with HP (since they seem to love the iPod and iTunes) and you may lose some money on a per-unit basis, but you are further cementing the AAC format, increasing the volume of the iTunes store, and increasing the volume of equipment that you're buying from hardware suppliers, the latter two allowing you further leverage to bring down costs and/or increase profit margins.
Apple needs to continue to hold a large share of the music d/l market. Let, ahem, others grab too controling a share of the codec pie and they'll use that leverage to lock everyone else out.
Quick: without looking it up name all of the Clear Channel Radio stations in your market.............
Time's up. Betcha couldn't. Radio was crap before deregulation of radio, and it has been crap after deregulation of radio. What's causing its crappiness is the high cost of entry into the market -- in order to turn a profit most radio concerns go for the biggest slice of the pie, which is why every radio station of any given "format" pretty much sounds like the other, regardless of who owns them. What causes the high cost of entry? Why, the gov't with the way it doles out spectrum.
Oh, and who is one of the biggest opponents of things like micro radio and other initiatives that would open up the spectrum to much wider (and diverse) content? Can you say "NPR"?
Actually, let me back it up a little and not be so terribly insulting. The situation is this - companies are hiring, but they are scared of repeating the bust. One of the least talked about reasons that everything has fallen apart in the tech sector is the sheer worthlessness of so many of the people in it. I have worked with some of the worst programmers I can imagine over the last three years. These people will be shed, but it will be a painful process.
You hit the nail on the head. When the bubble burst back in 2000 most of the casualties were the "programmers" who's education had been "Teach Yourself HTML in 21 Days" or a night class. Yes, some damn good programmers got cought up in the collapse as well, but almost everyone I know who are damn good programmers either kept their jobs or have found new ones.
Some stupifyingly under-qualified people were making bank back in the late 90s as programmers. If they didn't take advantage of that situation to a) build a nice nest egg or b) learn the skills of the trade I won't shed too many tears over their exit from the Information Economy.
In my old neighborhood the local indi coffee house is Common Grounds. They have set up something similar (free access, tip jar to help pay). It couldn't hurt to drop them an e-mail and see how they've set things up.
I'm running 2.6.0-Test9 on a Athlon (TB) 750. The desktop is MUCH more responsive (I'm running gnome), even when I was running pre-emp and low-latency patches on the 2.4 kernel. Much more noticeable that the jump from 2.2 to 2.4 was.
Not a Mac zealot (I run Linux, Win9x/2K, OSX at home and at work) and would also recommend OSX as the preferred "desktop" machine. Between Windows, KDE, Gnome (and every weird X11 based wm out there) nothing comes as close to being as "nice" as OSX. It ain't perfect, but I find I get a hell of a lot more done in a shorter time using my iBook than any other machine. The nice, unix'y plumbing underneath is the cherry on top.
Considering no one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them into a McDonalds or Starbucks if the local culture does disappear (and I'm highly skeptical that it will, such predictions have been almost universally false) wouldn't it be because the locals *chose* to abandon it?
I'm no fanboy -- I watch the original series on SciFi mainly for its "so cringingly bad its good" stories and acting -- and pretty much went into the miniseries unbiased to the point I really didn't care, and damned if I didn't get sucked in pretty quickly.
Was *very* impressed by the depth / complexity of the story and the characters. The humanity of the future wasn't' portrayed as some idyllic civilization where everyone got along and did the right thing. Moral dilemmas were presented and there was no miraculous resolution where everything turned out alright (the girl in the "greenhouse" ship comes to mind. When she first appeared I groaned "Not a cute orphan girl who will soften the heart of the tough president... how cliched." So much for that!). The acting was very good -- very little scenery was chewed -- and the melodrama was kept to a minimum. My only complaint was the "Mary Shelly's Battlestar Galactica" angle about the cylons being of human origin, but that's a minor quibble.
It was so good, in fact, I mistakenly thought it was a four part miniseries, not a four hour miniseries, and was damn disappointed last night when I figured out it was over.... oh yeah, and Starbuck was hot.
The funny thing about all of this is there IS NO "internet", at least nothing that can be controlled centrally. All the US (well, ICANN) does is (AFAIK) doll out IP numbers, set country domain letters and resolve domain disputes. It can't tell the Frogs not to block NAZI crap, and it can't tell the Chineese to give its citizens unfiltered net access. For all intents and purposes it just maintains the root DNS server. If the UN want to "run" the internet there's nothing to stop them setting up their own competing DNS scheme. Fat chance anyone will use it, but that's for the market to decide, not some UN asshats.
What are the options for revising the GPL, if any?
Why revise it? Its not like its the only software license in the world, or for that matter the only "open" license. If Wind River doesn't like the GPL it can always use BSDi (which it owns) or anything else under the BSD license. Problem solved.
But also, as someone who thinks that the Music Industry already creates enough atrificial pop "acts", this is more than just a tad worrying.
Why, are you forced at gunpoint to buy the new Nsync album? Is there a 2 album Backstreet Boys minimum every time you walk into HMV? I call bullshit on the whole "manufactured" complaint. Granted, its not my cup of tea, but there's an audience out there for boy bands and teeny girl singers. No amount of manufacturing will guarantee success either. For every Nsync and Brittany there's a dozen other boy bands and teeny girls who didn't amount to squat. And remember, "manufactured" is orthogonal to "quality." Almost every classic Motown group was manufactured, as was the entire Philles label's stable of artists and they've created some of the best music rock and roll has ever produced.
But how does this diminish creativity? Just like the synthesizer this will allow more creativity. I cannot sing worth a shit, just like I cannot play a bassoon worth a shit. The ability to add vocals whenever I want whether or not anyone with the ability to sing is available gives me more opportunities just like the ability to add bassoon to a composition without having to play the damn thing.
This is a tool, just like the real human voice. It will be used to make very "artistic" pieces, it will be used to make crap, it will be used to make everything in between. This technology in no way prevents anyone from achieving their artistic dream, since its not taking away anything from the toolkit. Just like synthesizers haven't destroyed symphony orchestras, this won't hurt anyone's creativity.
She's just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend's golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening's dinner menu. Scary.
Imagine a composer getting up in the middle of the night, going to his newfangled magical "keyboard" and whipping up an entire symphony without the need for a full orchestra..... ooooh... scary.
Man, for a bunch of geeks sometimes the/. crowd come off as downright luddites.
Assuming that the Inq is correct and some code violations came from the Sequent side of things this makes sense of the $50 million investment. Novell then is a distributer of the kernel, Novell has rights to the suspect code, therefor via the GPL (if I'm thinking correctly) since they're distributing everyone else gets those rights too.
Maybe, but the more pressing issue is they have/still are distributing GPL software (Samba for example) and if they succeed in invalidating the GPL then they're in a huge f**king bind for distributing other people's work without the concent the GPL gives. You can bet they'll be the first company anyone who holds copyright to code in Samba sues would be SCO.
Now, the reason they want to invalidate the GPL is that IBM's countersuit says they're in violation of the GPL, therefore illegally distributing IBM copyrighted code.
We shouldn't develop this weapon because there will always be cases where gov't intel gets it wrong and the wrong person/place/thing gets whacked. So instead of continuing to develop this high procesion weapon that could kill lots of enemy troop along with the odd civilian we should just go back to the good old days were we just carpet bombed the hell out of Dresden, Hiroshima, et al and wipe out cities of non-combatants?
Obligatory "I'm no lawyer" but that's going to be one stupendous arguement to make that GPL=Public Domain. Assuming they can somehow invalidate the GPL that doesn't mean that the copyright is somehow invalidated.
I've always see their trying to legally argue the GPL's validity coupled with their distribution of GPLed software as a damn good sign that they're all bark and no bite. I fail to see how any lawyer, even one who thinks the GPL is toothless, would advise a client to distribute software based on that very same license where there's a non-trivial chance that they'd be distributing software without the consent of the code owner. The potential liability they'd be facing would be *staggering*.
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My take is that they're talking about what they consider to be their "derivative" code that is copyrighted by the likes of IBM / SGI, i.e. they maintain that the SysV license prohibits IBM and SGI from releasing NUMA, JFS, XFS, RCP, etc without their permission.
Remember, before Baystar taped their mouths shut these guys were fast and lose (and often contradictory) with their accusations. They've also alluded that *BSD and others (including MS) are in "violation" which furthers the thought that they're pursuing the "we control anything and everything that is associated with Unix" strategy instead of "there is actual SysV code that we own the copyrights to in Linux" strategy. Even though they try to muddy the waters when pressed they'll stress that the IBM case is about contracts, not copyright violation (although they're now claiming they may amend the suit to include that as well)
"HP is fscking over American IT employees because we let them. Our government won't even.... Ooooh, iPods!"
Just like Ford fscked over the buggy whip industry, the horse and carriage industry, and decimated the "we clean horse shit off of the street" service industry.
Joe Slashdot: just like everyone else "Keep the gov't off my back, man... but put it on HPs because they've found someone that can do my job for half the price. Fuck progress, I have a mountain of credit card debt to pay off."
Evolve or die, simple as that. If you're skill level was only as high as your average India-based call center worker / HTML jockey you ain't all that skilled.
From Apple's point of view, I'm not sure what they gain.
.wma based (with respect to purchased music), and while it may not be the greatest bit of kit, nor the greatest service HP will sell enough of them with system bundles / special deals / etc. (and even if the content side of the equation blows a user would have the option to use any other .wma based content service, like BuyMusic.com, Music.Walmart.com, etc.)
Mindshare and marketshare, not to mention money. If you want clout with component manufacturers on the hardware side and the Big 5 (soon to be Big 4) on the content side you have to be a volume leader. So lets see what happens if Apple told HP to go fly a kite.
HP comes up with their own player and service (or, more likely license someone else's) that would be
Instead, cut a deal with HP (since they seem to love the iPod and iTunes) and you may lose some money on a per-unit basis, but you are further cementing the AAC format, increasing the volume of the iTunes store, and increasing the volume of equipment that you're buying from hardware suppliers, the latter two allowing you further leverage to bring down costs and/or increase profit margins.
Apple needs to continue to hold a large share of the music d/l market. Let, ahem, others grab too controling a share of the codec pie and they'll use that leverage to lock everyone else out.
Quick: without looking it up name all of the Clear Channel Radio stations in your market.............
Time's up. Betcha couldn't. Radio was crap before deregulation of radio, and it has been crap after deregulation of radio. What's causing its crappiness is the high cost of entry into the market -- in order to turn a profit most radio concerns go for the biggest slice of the pie, which is why every radio station of any given "format" pretty much sounds like the other, regardless of who owns them. What causes the high cost of entry? Why, the gov't with the way it doles out spectrum.
Oh, and who is one of the biggest opponents of things like micro radio and other initiatives that would open up the spectrum to much wider (and diverse) content? Can you say "NPR"?
You're new to the world of consulting, aren't you? ;)
Its an entire industry based on rewording the obvious.
4 tests? Statistically meaningless. Do it 30 or so times and you may have something, but those four tests really don't tell squat.
Actually, let me back it up a little and not be so terribly insulting. The situation is this - companies are hiring, but they are scared of repeating the bust. One of the least talked about reasons that everything has fallen apart in the tech sector is the sheer worthlessness of so many of the people in it. I have worked with some of the worst programmers I can imagine over the last three years. These people will be shed, but it will be a painful process.
You hit the nail on the head. When the bubble burst back in 2000 most of the casualties were the "programmers" who's education had been "Teach Yourself HTML in 21 Days" or a night class. Yes, some damn good programmers got cought up in the collapse as well, but almost everyone I know who are damn good programmers either kept their jobs or have found new ones.
Some stupifyingly under-qualified people were making bank back in the late 90s as programmers. If they didn't take advantage of that situation to a) build a nice nest egg or b) learn the skills of the trade I won't shed too many tears over their exit from the Information Economy.
In my old neighborhood the local indi coffee house is Common Grounds. They have set up something similar (free access, tip jar to help pay). It couldn't hurt to drop them an e-mail and see how they've set things up.
I'm running 2.6.0-Test9 on a Athlon (TB) 750. The desktop is MUCH more responsive (I'm running gnome), even when I was running pre-emp and low-latency patches on the 2.4 kernel. Much more noticeable that the jump from 2.2 to 2.4 was.
Not a Mac zealot (I run Linux, Win9x/2K, OSX at home and at work) and would also recommend OSX as the preferred "desktop" machine. Between Windows, KDE, Gnome (and every weird X11 based wm out there) nothing comes as close to being as "nice" as OSX. It ain't perfect, but I find I get a hell of a lot more done in a shorter time using my iBook than any other machine. The nice, unix'y plumbing underneath is the cherry on top.
Considering no one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them into a McDonalds or Starbucks if the local culture does disappear (and I'm highly skeptical that it will, such predictions have been almost universally false) wouldn't it be because the locals *chose* to abandon it?
Oh.. and I also dug "Frell" from Farscape. Just sounded like a swear word should.
What about "smeg"?
Prolly the best made-up SciFi swear word out there (of course, it doesn't hurt that it comes from a comedy)
I'm no fanboy -- I watch the original series on SciFi mainly for its "so cringingly bad its good" stories and acting -- and pretty much went into the miniseries unbiased to the point I really didn't care, and damned if I didn't get sucked in pretty quickly.
... oh yeah, and Starbuck was hot.
Was *very* impressed by the depth / complexity of the story and the characters. The humanity of the future wasn't' portrayed as some idyllic civilization where everyone got along and did the right thing. Moral dilemmas were presented and there was no miraculous resolution where everything turned out alright (the girl in the "greenhouse" ship comes to mind. When she first appeared I groaned "Not a cute orphan girl who will soften the heart of the tough president... how cliched." So much for that!). The acting was very good -- very little scenery was chewed -- and the melodrama was kept to a minimum. My only complaint was the "Mary Shelly's Battlestar Galactica" angle about the cylons being of human origin, but that's a minor quibble.
It was so good, in fact, I mistakenly thought it was a four part miniseries, not a four hour miniseries, and was damn disappointed last night when I figured out it was over.
The funny thing about all of this is there IS NO "internet", at least nothing that can be controlled centrally. All the US (well, ICANN) does is (AFAIK) doll out IP numbers, set country domain letters and resolve domain disputes. It can't tell the Frogs not to block NAZI crap, and it can't tell the Chineese to give its citizens unfiltered net access. For all intents and purposes it just maintains the root DNS server. If the UN want to "run" the internet there's nothing to stop them setting up their own competing DNS scheme. Fat chance anyone will use it, but that's for the market to decide, not some UN asshats.
What are the options for revising the GPL, if any?
Why revise it? Its not like its the only software license in the world, or for that matter the only "open" license. If Wind River doesn't like the GPL it can always use BSDi (which it owns) or anything else under the BSD license. Problem solved.
But also, as someone who thinks that the Music Industry already creates enough atrificial pop "acts", this is more than just a tad worrying.
Why, are you forced at gunpoint to buy the new Nsync album? Is there a 2 album Backstreet Boys minimum every time you walk into HMV? I call bullshit on the whole "manufactured" complaint. Granted, its not my cup of tea, but there's an audience out there for boy bands and teeny girl singers. No amount of manufacturing will guarantee success either. For every Nsync and Brittany there's a dozen other boy bands and teeny girls who didn't amount to squat. And remember, "manufactured" is orthogonal to "quality." Almost every classic Motown group was manufactured, as was the entire Philles label's stable of artists and they've created some of the best music rock and roll has ever produced.
But how does this diminish creativity? Just like the synthesizer this will allow more creativity. I cannot sing worth a shit, just like I cannot play a bassoon worth a shit. The ability to add vocals whenever I want whether or not anyone with the ability to sing is available gives me more opportunities just like the ability to add bassoon to a composition without having to play the damn thing.
This is a tool, just like the real human voice. It will be used to make very "artistic" pieces, it will be used to make crap, it will be used to make everything in between. This technology in no way prevents anyone from achieving their artistic dream, since its not taking away anything from the toolkit. Just like synthesizers haven't destroyed symphony orchestras, this won't hurt anyone's creativity.
She's just standing at the ready, game to perform whatever silly song you might make up for her: a ballad about her love for you, a tribute to your best friend's golf game, a stirring rendition of the evening's dinner menu. Scary.
/. crowd come off as downright luddites.
Imagine a composer getting up in the middle of the night, going to his newfangled magical "keyboard" and whipping up an entire symphony without the need for a full orchestra..... ooooh... scary.
Man, for a bunch of geeks sometimes the
Assuming that the Inq is correct and some code violations came from the Sequent side of things this makes sense of the $50 million investment. Novell then is a distributer of the kernel, Novell has rights to the suspect code, therefor via the GPL (if I'm thinking correctly) since they're distributing everyone else gets those rights too.
Or get the shit kicked out of him by Groo (the Wanderer). What a mendicant!
Maybe, but the more pressing issue is they have/still are distributing GPL software (Samba for example) and if they succeed in invalidating the GPL then they're in a huge f**king bind for distributing other people's work without the concent the GPL gives. You can bet they'll be the first company anyone who holds copyright to code in Samba sues would be SCO.
Now, the reason they want to invalidate the GPL is that IBM's countersuit says they're in violation of the GPL, therefore illegally distributing IBM copyrighted code.
So let me get this straight:
We shouldn't develop this weapon because there will always be cases where gov't intel gets it wrong and the wrong person/place/thing gets whacked. So instead of continuing to develop this high procesion weapon that could kill lots of enemy troop along with the odd civilian we should just go back to the good old days were we just carpet bombed the hell out of Dresden, Hiroshima, et al and wipe out cities of non-combatants?
I know BP has a few of these at their major sites and use them for looking at seismic data for exploration and for some teleconferencing, I believe.
Obligatory "I'm no lawyer" but that's going to be one stupendous arguement to make that GPL=Public Domain. Assuming they can somehow invalidate the GPL that doesn't mean that the copyright is somehow invalidated.
I've always see their trying to legally argue the GPL's validity coupled with their distribution of GPLed software as a damn good sign that they're all bark and no bite. I fail to see how any lawyer, even one who thinks the GPL is toothless, would advise a client to distribute software based on that very same license where there's a non-trivial chance that they'd be distributing software without the consent of the code owner. The potential liability they'd be facing would be *staggering*.