MS has sued people for all kinds of IP issues. They have promised to sue for patents as well. What is the significance of them not suing for patent infringement yet? It's a very litigious company, they have tons of lawyers and like to sue.
THe best strategy is to press whoever is pitching idea. Confront them on the specifics of how they are measuring the TCO. I hope your CIO is not dumb enough to blindly accept some half assed TCO calculation but in case he is just keep hammering on the points they missed or mis-caculated.
Frequently they won't actually calculate things that make MS look bad. Things like downtime, virus infections, software distribution nightmare, etc. Go talk to your sysadmin and collect horror stories and ask "how much did it cost when we rolled out office last time?, did we have somebody go from desktop to desktop to change settings on our virus protection program?, how often do we have machines lock up for no reason and have to dispatch a tech?".
As I said keep hammering. They don't have good answers to your questions and that will call their TCO study into serious question.
Finally tell your CIO that there is no universally agreed upon best practice for calculating TCO and that he should base his decision more on total cost.
I think he would be happy because he will be able to take code from closed source apps as well. If software licenses are invalid then all source code is up for grabs which is exactly what he wants.
Whatever man. It's a license. If the GPL is invalid then all software licenses are invalid including the EULAS.
EULAS because they restrict use as well as ban redistribution are more restrictive then the GPL. There is no way any court is going to declare the GPL to be invalid while holding any old EULA to be valid.
If the GPL is invalid then chances are that all the EULAS are also invalid. There is nothing especially onorous about the GPL when you compare it the MS EULA for example.
If the GPL is found to be illegal I think it would make RMS very happy. It would nobody can put any restriction on software.
It's not just Darl's mouth. They said in court that the GPL is not valid. That's very important. By actually filing papers in court disputing the validity of the GPL SCO (the corporation) put themselves into a bind. There are only two possibilities here.
1) GPL is valid. If this is the case then MS just wasted all the money they funneled to SCO. 2) GPL is not valid and therefore SCO has no right to distribute IBM code. If the judge rules that the GPL is not valid then this would in all likelyhood make all EULAS invalid and that would be a happy day indeed.
You notice I said IBM code not samba, gimp or whatever. IBM is suing about IBM code was released under the GPL.
The case seems pretty open and shut to me but then again IANAL. In fact the more learn about the US legal system more bewildered and disgusted I get. How long has this suit been going on and they haven't even held a trial yet.
" Be careful what you wish for. Microsoft (which I don't believe has filed any patent infringement lawsuits to date) "
Not true see http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2003/10304113.asp
MS has been an awfully litigious company. They have sued dozens of companies for all kinds of stuff including trademarks, defamation, and yes even patent related stuff. There is no reason whatsoever to think that a company which has publicly stated it intends "vigorously defend our intellectual property" and has filed tons of lawsuits in the past will not sue over patent infringement.
For all the astro turfers here are the links to just some of the reading material you might run into when you google for microsoft lawsuits.
They don't need to be "Totally redisged". In the vast majority of the cases it's simply a case of rezoning. The idea is to mix residential and commercial development so that neighborhoods are more self sustaining.
Also most communities in the US are growing fast (the US population is expected to grow as much as 50% in the next 50 years). One can easily shape the growth so as to make it more friendly to public transportation.
TCO is a pretty bogus argument because nobody can agree on how to figure it out. People just make up stuff like "if I switch to OO I will have to retrain". That's just bogus because if somebody can figure out office they can figure out OO. Also you will have to retrain the people when there is a new version of office anyway.
Until somebody can point out a uniform way to figure out TCO you can pretty much throw the metric out. It's completely useless.
"The right to seek a redress of grievances does not mean you get to have civil disorder and break hundreds, perhaps thousands, of laws a day."
I hate to break it to you but you break hundreds or perhaps thousands of laws every day. There are so many laws in the US that everybody is a criminal all the time. You are at the mercy of the govt, anytime it wants to it can arrest you and jail you. I know people who have been arrested during protests for having "implements to aid conspiracy to commit" or some bullshit. The object in question was a cell phone.
"If you can think of something better, I'm all ears."
My point is simple. Free markets have been a failure everytime they have existed. Free markets end with revolutions. Free markets have to be tempered with socialism in order to work.
"If you can think of something better, I'm all ears."
people are born greedy, selfish, and unable to feel the pain of others. Any society that is unwilling to train those traits out of human beings is a failure in my book.
"Well sure, who cares about the working poor who live far away from their jobs and can only afford older, less fuel efficient cars. Let them eat Cake!"
Public transportation and better designed communities.
"Trees are a crop. Trees are also a Carbon sink. Harvesting inefficient older trees and replacing them with faster growing, new trees helps reduce CO2 in the atmosphere."
Ugh. Faced with staggering ignorance I am speechless.
"The free market is well entrenched because it is, as far as I can tell, the most effective economic system for dealing with scarcity."
Free markets no longer exist. It's been a dismal failure. In history whenever free markets have existed all the wealth ended up concentrating in the hands of a few families.
In most of the world there is quite a bit of "socialism" mixed in with free markets to make sure that the inevitable concentration of wealth is slowed down a bit. Even in the country where free markets are worshipped (the US) there is a tremendous amount of socialism such as medicare, social scurity, welfare, farm subsidies etc.
Why something so obvious seems to escape people is amazing to me. Go ahead. Name one country in the world that is being run by free markets. I dare you.
This is classic discourse in the history of philosphy. The germans had a concept of "freedom" and the british came up with the concept of "liberty". While the germans struggled to define existential freedom the brits seemed more interested in freedom from their rulers.
In the end it's all bullshit. There is no such thing as freedom. You are not only subject to all the cruel laws of physics and entropy you are also subject to the whims of everybody who is stronger then you are.
The only freedom you have is that which you have fought for and won.
What's especially ironic is that all this came about during discovery. IBM had a chance to interview all the people who were parties to the contract and put their statements into the court records. Maybe before the lawsuits somebody could argue some vague wording but not anymore.
Thanks SCO!
Re:Ah the French...
on
Vive La Loafing!
·
· Score: -1, Flamebait
I think you misunderstood. The gradparent was posting what seems obvious any american that being.
1) America is always right. We are winners. 2) France is always wrong. They are loser surrender monkeys who smell.
"I accept the usefulness and necessity of ads for providing "free" access to some information that would not otherwise be free of direct cost (or even possible) otherwise"
I just want to point out that it's not "free". Since somebody is paying for the ad that cost is reflected in the price of everything you buy. It's not free, you just pay for it some other time when you buy some product or another.
Not quite a rollback but you can do point in time recovery.
As I said though there are some features in pgsql that are not in oracle and visa versa. What do you need more? Ability to roll back a drop table or merge replication, ability to deal with XML data, great optimizer, and detailed stats about what your database engine is doing.
First and foremost it has merge replication and real application clustering. Of course you need to spend buttloads of money to get the clustering. It's also extraordinarily self aware. For example you can have oracle email you the list of 10 slowest queries that ran yesterday. It's full of amazing stats about itself that really helps the DBA out when they are trying to troubleshoot weird problems. Oracle also has tons of other features such as dealing with XML data using SQL or xpath queries.
To be fair postgres has some features oracle does not. Things like user defined operators and aggregate fuctions for example. With postgres you can also write code in C and call it from an SP, pretty powerful even though it's quite dangerous.
Postgres is great and it will probably meet the needs of 99% of the people on this planet but if you are amongst the 1% that need oracle nothing else will do.
"What really irks most experience database developers about mysql is that mysql abandoned decades of standards and standard features - while insisting that 90% of the users didn't need transactions, triggers, views, etc. That's disingenuous misinformation."
What's even worse is that they are now scrambling to add all that after years of arguing it was pointless to do so.
After they add triggers, views, stored procs what they will have is just another OSS database in a field already crowded with extrememly capable databases such as postgres, sapdb, firebird, and now ingres. They should just keep mysql the way it is, a lightweight SQL interface to the filesystem. There is a role for that in building read-mostly web sites.
Why take it in the car with you in the first place?
Think about it. Somebody who took flying lessons needs a videotape? Why? Even if you buy that then why would he take it to the airport with him? Was he watching it in the car on the way in case he forgot something?
Just doesn't make sense. In fact a lot of what happened on 9/11 doesn't add up. check out the memory hole or whatreallyhappened.com for more.
Slashdot Mirror
"something that Microsoft has never done."
MS has sued people for all kinds of IP issues. They have promised to sue for patents as well. What is the significance of them not suing for patent infringement yet? It's a very litigious company, they have tons of lawyers and like to sue.
It's still a patent lawsuit. MS has sued hundreds of companies for all kinds of stuff. They are the original litigious bastards.
THe best strategy is to press whoever is pitching idea. Confront them on the specifics of how they are measuring the TCO. I hope your CIO is not dumb enough to blindly accept some half assed TCO calculation but in case he is just keep hammering on the points they missed or mis-caculated.
Frequently they won't actually calculate things that make MS look bad. Things like downtime, virus infections, software distribution nightmare, etc. Go talk to your sysadmin and collect horror stories and ask "how much did it cost when we rolled out office last time?, did we have somebody go from desktop to desktop to change settings on our virus protection program?, how often do we have machines lock up for no reason and have to dispatch a tech?".
As I said keep hammering. They don't have good answers to your questions and that will call their TCO study into serious question.
Finally tell your CIO that there is no universally agreed upon best practice for calculating TCO and that he should base his decision more on total cost.
I think he would be happy because he will be able to take code from closed source apps as well. If software licenses are invalid then all source code is up for grabs which is exactly what he wants.
Whatever man. It's a license. If the GPL is invalid then all software licenses are invalid including the EULAS.
EULAS because they restrict use as well as ban redistribution are more restrictive then the GPL. There is no way any court is going to declare the GPL to be invalid while holding any old EULA to be valid.
If the GPL is invalid then chances are that all the EULAS are also invalid. There is nothing especially onorous about the GPL when you compare it the MS EULA for example.
If the GPL is found to be illegal I think it would make RMS very happy. It would nobody can put any restriction on software.
"Still... I'm suspicious enough to wonder what their long-term (10+ year) plan for linux really is..."
Easy.
Here are the high points.
By making the operating system and other software open source you undercut MS. Less money MS has the less they can boss you around.
You concentrate on making good hardware especially mainframes where you are a market leader.
By boosting linux which can run on many platforms you undercut Intel and thereby giving your chip division chance to compete.
Continue to build up your services division because open source software needs lots of support.
Profit!!
Pretty simple actually.
It's not just Darl's mouth. They said in court that the GPL is not valid. That's very important. By actually filing papers in court disputing the validity of the GPL SCO (the corporation) put themselves into a bind. There are only two possibilities here.
1) GPL is valid. If this is the case then MS just wasted all the money they funneled to SCO.
2) GPL is not valid and therefore SCO has no right to distribute IBM code. If the judge rules that the GPL is not valid then this would in all likelyhood make all EULAS invalid and that would be a happy day indeed.
You notice I said IBM code not samba, gimp or whatever. IBM is suing about IBM code was released under the GPL.
The case seems pretty open and shut to me but then again IANAL. In fact the more learn about the US legal system more bewildered and disgusted I get. How long has this suit been going on and they haven't even held a trial yet.
" Be careful what you wish for. Microsoft (which I don't believe has filed any patent infringement lawsuits to date) "
p
r _s ql_apps_streetlegal/o m/info/2003/04/11/1416 01.htmlh florida/s tories/2004/04/26/daily19.htmls forge.com/trends/04/06/20/142024 5.shtml?tid=137&tid=147
Not true see http://www.ciol.com/content/news/2003/10304113.as
MS has been an awfully litigious company. They have sued dozens of companies for all kinds of stuff including trademarks, defamation, and yes even patent related stuff. There is no reason whatsoever to think that a company which has publicly stated it intends "vigorously defend our intellectual property" and has filed tons of lawsuits in the past will not sue over patent infringement.
For all the astro turfers here are the links to just some of the reading material you might run into when you google for microsoft lawsuits.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/07/13/are_you
http://www.mobiletechnews.c
http://southflorida.bizjournals.com/sout
http://trends.new
They don't need to be "Totally redisged". In the vast majority of the cases it's simply a case of rezoning. The idea is to mix residential and commercial development so that neighborhoods are more self sustaining.
Also most communities in the US are growing fast (the US population is expected to grow as much as 50% in the next 50 years). One can easily shape the growth so as to make it more friendly to public transportation.
TCO is a pretty bogus argument because nobody can agree on how to figure it out. People just make up stuff like "if I switch to OO I will have to retrain". That's just bogus because if somebody can figure out office they can figure out OO. Also you will have to retrain the people when there is a new version of office anyway.
Until somebody can point out a uniform way to figure out TCO you can pretty much throw the metric out. It's completely useless.
"The right to seek a redress of grievances does not mean you get to have civil disorder and break hundreds, perhaps thousands, of laws a day."
I hate to break it to you but you break hundreds or perhaps thousands of laws every day. There are so many laws in the US that everybody is a criminal all the time. You are at the mercy of the govt, anytime it wants to it can arrest you and jail you. I know people who have been arrested during protests for having "implements to aid conspiracy to commit" or some bullshit. The object in question was a cell phone.
"If you can think of something better, I'm all ears."
My point is simple. Free markets have been a failure everytime they have existed. Free markets end with revolutions. Free markets have to be tempered with socialism in order to work.
"If you can think of something better, I'm all ears."
people are born greedy, selfish, and unable to feel the pain of others. Any society that is unwilling to train those traits out of human beings is a failure in my book.
"Well sure, who cares about the working poor who live far away from their jobs and can only afford older, less fuel efficient cars. Let them eat Cake!"
Public transportation and better designed communities.
"Trees are a crop. Trees are also a Carbon sink. Harvesting inefficient older trees and replacing them with faster growing, new trees helps reduce CO2 in the atmosphere."
Ugh. Faced with staggering ignorance I am speechless.
"The free market is well entrenched because it is, as far as I can tell, the most effective economic system for dealing with scarcity."
Free markets no longer exist. It's been a dismal failure. In history whenever free markets have existed all the wealth ended up concentrating in the hands of a few families.
In most of the world there is quite a bit of "socialism" mixed in with free markets to make sure that the inevitable concentration of wealth is slowed down a bit. Even in the country where free markets are worshipped (the US) there is a tremendous amount of socialism such as medicare, social scurity, welfare, farm subsidies etc.
Why something so obvious seems to escape people is amazing to me. Go ahead. Name one country in the world that is being run by free markets. I dare you.
This is classic discourse in the history of philosphy. The germans had a concept of "freedom" and the british came up with the concept of "liberty". While the germans struggled to define existential freedom the brits seemed more interested in freedom from their rulers.
In the end it's all bullshit. There is no such thing as freedom. You are not only subject to all the cruel laws of physics and entropy you are also subject to the whims of everybody who is stronger then you are.
The only freedom you have is that which you have fought for and won.
What's especially ironic is that all this came about during discovery. IBM had a chance to interview all the people who were parties to the contract and put their statements into the court records. Maybe before the lawsuits somebody could argue some vague wording but not anymore.
Thanks SCO!
I think you misunderstood. The gradparent was posting what seems obvious any american that being.
1) America is always right. We are winners.
2) France is always wrong. They are loser surrender monkeys who smell.
"I accept the usefulness and necessity of ads for providing "free" access to some information that would not otherwise be free of direct cost (or even possible) otherwise"
I just want to point out that it's not "free". Since somebody is paying for the ad that cost is reflected in the price of everything you buy. It's not free, you just pay for it some other time when you buy some product or another.
Not quite a rollback but you can do point in time recovery.
As I said though there are some features in pgsql that are not in oracle and visa versa. What do you need more? Ability to roll back a drop table or merge replication, ability to deal with XML data, great optimizer, and detailed stats about what your database engine is doing.
First and foremost it has merge replication and real application clustering. Of course you need to spend buttloads of money to get the clustering. It's also extraordinarily self aware. For example you can have oracle email you the list of 10 slowest queries that ran yesterday. It's full of amazing stats about itself that really helps the DBA out when they are trying to troubleshoot weird problems. Oracle also has tons of other features such as dealing with XML data using SQL or xpath queries.
To be fair postgres has some features oracle does not. Things like user defined operators and aggregate fuctions for example. With postgres you can also write code in C and call it from an SP, pretty powerful even though it's quite dangerous.
Postgres is great and it will probably meet the needs of 99% of the people on this planet but if you are amongst the 1% that need oracle nothing else will do.
"What really irks most experience database developers about mysql is that mysql abandoned decades of standards and standard features - while insisting that 90% of the users didn't need transactions, triggers, views, etc. That's disingenuous misinformation."
What's even worse is that they are now scrambling to add all that after years of arguing it was pointless to do so.
After they add triggers, views, stored procs what they will have is just another OSS database in a field already crowded with extrememly capable databases such as postgres, sapdb, firebird, and now ingres. They should just keep mysql the way it is, a lightweight SQL interface to the filesystem. There is a role for that in building read-mostly web sites.
In that case you can use firebird or SAPDB as a litmus test.
Why take it in the car with you in the first place?
Think about it. Somebody who took flying lessons needs a videotape? Why? Even if you buy that then why would he take it to the airport with him? Was he watching it in the car on the way in case he forgot something?
Just doesn't make sense. In fact a lot of what happened on 9/11 doesn't add up. check out the memory hole or whatreallyhappened.com for more.
I guess I must have missed all the negotiation, dialog, and criminal proceedings that came out of those.
America has only two responses. 1) do nothing 2) Drop 500 pound bombs inside cities and tens of thousands of civillians.