One problem here, is that it's merely your opinion that SCO is "clearly violating the law."
Fortunately or unfortunately, it's really not at all clear that they have broken any law at all.
The SEC and the US Attorney General have indeed been notified of the suspicion, but the fact is they haven't actually done anything illegal (apparently). They are maybe just barely on the legal side of the hockey, but, until they actually cross it, there's not going to be any grounds for the criminal prosecution that you're hoping for.
They're properly going to the court to decide their case. There's not extortion, and there's no stock fraud. There is a lot of ugly business being done, but it's apparently all legal. Just on the side of legal, but that's good enough.
The indemnity offer is not extortion, it's not a protection racket, and shame on you if you pay it. (If it was a racket, you'd become an accomplice when you pay the protection money.)
I'm aware of the fix that was posted in response to your message, but it has not fixed the problem for me. I want more than the "pretty graphical boot".
I *must* be able to use fbset and get a high res console, or else the whole system is useless to me. I'm tired of being told that xterms are good enough (they're not), and I wish people would understand that the partial fixes that work for them don't work for all radeon cards.
It doesn't actually have to be framebuffer, mind you. I'd be satisfied if SVGATextMode could work, or an old-school vga mode that would give, say, a 160x64 console.
The radeonfb works flawlessly on 2.4. Why break it?
Oh well. I will try it again, and update my bug report.
Distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright holder may be grounds for a civil suit.
I'm annoyed at how people assume that anything with a copyright is encumbered with distribution restrictions. The enormous abuse of and corresponding response to the means of distribution, e.g., P2P and RIAA crackdowns, serves to diminish the value of individual copyrights in favor of media corporations.
The notion has entered into the public consciousness that distributing a piece of music is a crime. This merely empowers media corporations to have more authority than even government on these matters, and it also raises the barrier to entry for an independent artist.
The first really good means of distribution that has ever been available to the individual artist, is being taken away. It's not just the media companies' fault though. The hordes of people who abuse the privilege by using the distribution channel to distribute media without the consent of the copyright holders, do as much damage to freedom speech as the corporations and the government.
Instead of using the technology to copy music that the owners don't want copied, they ought to be using it to make their own art. See how you feel about distribution control when you *WANT* your own copyrighted work to be distributed, and that distribution is denied to you because it's been painted with this same broad brush. Merely having a copyright symbol should not make something illegal to look at!
"Kernel 2.6 has ALSA built in and with auto module loading it is really nice"
ALSA is nice, JACK is nice, and the soundsystem nuts and bolts might be the best thing available.
BUT, anyone who claims the linux sound system has arrived, isn't using cubase in a production environment. There is still a long, long way to go at the application level.
If the Magix folks would release their audio product for linux, that would be plenty, though. JACK/ALSA would have to provide an ASIO interface, and VST plugins would have to work. Magix is a high quality product that nobody seems to know about, from a German company. I thought German companies tended to be into linux, so maybe this is not far-fetched.
If the notion that "hollywood" uses linux could get further, maybe digi/protools or steinberg would start to notice too.
The problem with that is, if you have already downloaded the message from a POP server, it's too late to really make a difference. Sure I can filter them, dev/null or a spam folder, but that's not important. What matters is that I've already had the time and bandwidth costs for downloading them in the first place.
I agree with the idea of copyright. I disagree with the idea that copyright infringement is on the level of a violent crime, or with the idea that owning copyright interests should bestow law enoforcement authority onto a coroporation.
I don't even care what happens to the girl, although the world's worst lawyer should have no problem getting the suit dismissed.
What I do care about is that corporations are being given one definition of copyright, while individuals are given another. As an artist, I find this unacceptable.
Whenever I hear something expressed like "this may not be used to copy copyrighted information", I get sick. It means that if you want to distribute your work without the consent of a media coporation, you are basically expected to rescind your rights. That's not okay.
I do want it both ways. I want to be allowed to distribute my work, and I want to keep my copyrights too. And having it both ways is a fundamental right, not some accidental loophole in the law.
I see that right being eroded. The people responsible for that erosion are the same ones pulling lawsuits like the one in the story. So, if I were to take a side, I'd take the girl's side.
"The receipt should never come in to the voter's hands."
"Uh... why? Seriously."
Under the colonial rule, it was common for elections to be held like this:
On election day, the voters would gather to vote. Each would, in turn, step up on a platform and state his vote to a magistrate, and everyone in the community would know how he had voted.
The magistrate in charge of this was often the person being re-elected. The pressure to vote the status quo was enormous.
This situation is one of the big deals that the rebel founders could not tolerate. Thus, the institution of a secret ballot became one of the founding principles of the country.
There is plenty of historical basis to support the fact that a secret ballot is important, or rather, that the lack of assurance of a secret ballot is a disaster.
You put a reciept in the voters hand, then you make him subject to risks that we cannot tolerate at all, and that's something which is fundamental to the system.
Maybe it doesn't seem like the risks are so huge today (you won't be summarily executed at the polling place if you didn't vote for the incumbent) but I don't believe that's your call.
So, what would you put on the reciept? Would it identify the voter? Would it identify whether or not the voter voted? Or how he voted? If you can guarantee the receipt cannot be read or interpreted, what good is it? If you cannot make that guarantee, how do you answer for the fundamental violation of the voter's inalienable right to a secret ballot?
It's not a choice. The highest law of the land insists that the right to a secret ballot exists, and may no be abridged, period. So it doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but I don't think that's sufficient grounds to decide a fundamental right goes away.
Yeah. Rosa parks should've been clapped in irons, not celebrated. And why bother with all these different punishments? Just make the penalty death for anything. Speeding ticket, jaywalking, borrowing your neighbor's lawnmower and not returning it, murdering a cop, smoking a joint, or letting your license tag expire. Death penalty, why not? After all, a crime is a crime, right? Breaking the law is breaking the law, right?
The last thing I expect to hear from an engineer is how he doesn't want to do something because it's hard.
I agree with you, though. I've dealt with trying USB signals (playing with the USB midi driver) and it's fun, but tedious.
Still, I have to wonder what's the deal with Broadcom really. Allegedly, they'd be in some trouble with Uncle Charlie if the specs for their consumer products got out. But how does that help them if they get their specs handed to them by some kid in China or Norway? Sure they could try the DeCSS approach, and you know where THAT leads. DMCA keeps it out of commercial applications in the US, I suppose. But does it solve the problem for Broadcom, effectively that they have released a commo device into the wild that has the potential for misuse?
I'm just pissed because I own several of these things, purchased by make and model because they were supposed to be Intersil.
To me, the whole thing looks like a deliberate effort to exclude linux, bsd, and solaris from a major current network infrastructure. Perhaps if we miss a generation, that's the end?
Yes, I know it's about money, money, money, whatever. Either that tells me that linux and bsd still don't have a significant place in the market, but that was the story in 1994. It doesn't really look to me like we've gotten anywhere since then.
It's unreasonable to expect my car to run on water.
It is reasonable to expect the hardware in my computer to work with various operating systems.
Hardware manufacturers don't want their stuff being used under os's besides windows. You think that is directly, solely, and strictly associated with money. I think there is more to it than that. But I make a distinction between control and money, even though I realize that either control or money is a means to the end, whether money is the means to control, or whether control is the means to money.
All the nonpolitical consumer understands is there's no choice of OS for the X86.
But... Many Fiat fuel system parts are Bosch. And many Bosch parts are interchangeable between BMW, VW, Fiat, Volvo, Saab, etc. And there are aftermaket replacement parts that fit, if you don't want to buy an expensive Bosch part.
Perhaps more relevant, the FCC hasn't said you can't undo the bolts on your Fiat, or put BMW parts on it.
They uniformly miss the fact that the "community" includes members such as IBM, which is the entire point. It'll be fun to watch just how badly this strategy backfires.
All this slander against the "community" is being heard by the members of the community who don't happen to be some sort of undesirables who are easily dismissed. It'll all come out in the wash.
I don't want anything for free. I want the hardware I paid for, to work. It's that simple. If it doesn't work, that's not my fault.
I realize that I shouldn't expect hardware to work under linux, and I understand the issues. But, people still seem to be wondering what keeps other OS's from gaining widespread adoption, and I'm saying, here is the answer.
I assure you if the situation were the same with video cards or SCSI controllers, as it is with wireless network cards, there would be a whole lot more noise about it.
I also think there's more to this than just money. IBM could fix it like tipping for coffee. They're supposed to be into linux adoption, right?
You're just looking at the economics. I'm looking at the cultural implications of, say, linux having no wireless capabilities.
If the video card folks did this, and we had no graphics, that would pretty much kill any notions of "linux on the desktop" would it not?
Do I think the manufactures have any responsibility to "the culture?" No. But it surprises me that nobody in some free country has simply released a reverse-engineered driver for, say, broadcom chips, into the wild yet.
I suspect it's simply because everybody who wants wireless, has a prism2 card, and/or doesn't realize that there's almost nothing available in the retail market today that can be used at all.
Maybe a few companies are still making intersil devices, but it's damned hard to find them, and even harder to know what you've got before you buy it. In a commercial environment, that has ALREADY made it impossible to specify hardware, if you need 802.11b, and even worse if you need 802.11g.
Shutting out linux from the world of wireless networking might be an unintended consequence of economics, but I don't understand how that knowledge is supposed to help me.
"I don't know what country you live in, but here (The Netherlands) you can buy a car without any of that...."
It's that way in the US too. You won't be able to secure *financing* without a drivers' license and insurance most likely, but that's not really a requirement for owning a car. I owned a car when I was 15, before I had a drivers license. I couldn't drive it on the road except on farm business (specific exemption for moving feed and equipment from one part of your farm to another), but no problem, I had my own rally track!
"All they would have to do is make specs available, they should have documentation for internal use anyway so there is no extra cost, just a different attitude."
I think if the truth came out, you'd find out "They" do not own the information to such an extent that they can show it to you.
"It doesn't make sense for them to cater to a vanishingly small percentage of the marketplace."
But the effect is to increase the monopoly position of Microsoft. I don't care about economics or regulations. The thing I notice is that there are NO 802.11g devices for Linux, BSD, or any other OS, available AT ALL. I interpret this as an intentional leveraged attack on competitors to Microsoft.
"Since the transmit power levels and frequencies are all set differently in different parts of the world, the closed-source software is needed to restrict people's control over the hardware. "
It's a matter of opinion that "restricting people's control over the hardware" is necessary or appropriate. If there is some compelling state interest, then it should be considered a defective and/or dangerous product, which ought to be dispensable only to licensed purchasers.
Treating it as a problem that the consumer owns does not solve the problem. Just because the manufacturer hasn't enabled the consumer to alter the card's programming, doesn't change the fact that the dangerous device has been distributed into the wild.
As soon as some independent party (not subject to the US law-by-agency-order), creates software to unlock these cards, the disabled-by-obscurity features will be open. If that's a problem for the state, then they should have considered it before allowing the product to be sold.
If some product can be converted to a weapon, the fact is, the weapon is in the consumer's hands whether you've told him how to convert it or not. You hold some of the responsibility for this product getting into the consumer's hands.
Yes, but it gets a little gray if the code gets loose because some party within the organization was careless. Not that gray though. You don't lose your copyright just because the GPL exists. There really has to be intent on your part to distribute the software under that license -- nobody can do it for you, and nobody can force you to do anything, at least not strictly with the GPL and no other agreements.
"It follows pretty logically that pretty much anything you do "at home" might be considered overtime and anything you do during that time belongs to your employer."
I hope that backfires hard. What if it also means that any crime that the employee commits forces the company to be involved as well...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd love to see something like a Squad Leader scenario -- the US Secret Service versus the Vatican Swiss Guard.
One problem here, is that it's merely your opinion that SCO is "clearly violating the law."
Fortunately or unfortunately, it's really not at all clear that they have broken any law at all.
The SEC and the US Attorney General have indeed been notified of the suspicion, but the fact is they haven't actually done anything illegal (apparently). They are maybe just barely on the legal side of the hockey, but, until they actually cross it, there's not going to be any grounds for the criminal prosecution that you're hoping for.
They're properly going to the court to decide their case. There's not extortion, and there's no stock fraud. There is a lot of ugly business being done, but it's apparently all legal. Just on the side of legal, but that's good enough.
The indemnity offer is not extortion, it's not a protection racket, and shame on you if you pay it. (If it was a racket, you'd become an accomplice when you pay the protection money.)
I'm aware of the fix that was posted in response to your message, but it has not fixed the problem for me. I want more than the "pretty graphical boot".
I *must* be able to use fbset and get a high res console, or else the whole system is useless to me. I'm tired of being told that xterms are good enough (they're not), and I wish people would understand that the partial fixes that work for them don't work for all radeon cards.
It doesn't actually have to be framebuffer, mind you. I'd be satisfied if SVGATextMode could work, or an old-school vga mode that would give, say, a 160x64 console.
The radeonfb works flawlessly on 2.4. Why break it?
Oh well. I will try it again, and update my bug report.
Distributing copyrighted material without the consent of the copyright holder may be grounds for a civil suit.
I'm annoyed at how people assume that anything with a copyright is encumbered with distribution restrictions. The enormous abuse of and corresponding response to the means of distribution, e.g., P2P and RIAA crackdowns, serves to diminish the value of individual copyrights in favor of media corporations.
The notion has entered into the public consciousness that distributing a piece of music is a crime. This merely empowers media corporations to have more authority than even government on these matters, and it also raises the barrier to entry for an independent artist.
The first really good means of distribution that has ever been available to the individual artist, is being taken away. It's not just the media companies' fault though. The hordes of people who abuse the privilege by using the distribution channel to distribute media without the consent of the copyright holders, do as much damage to freedom speech as the corporations and the government.
Instead of using the technology to copy music that the owners don't want copied, they ought to be using it to make their own art. See how you feel about distribution control when you *WANT* your own copyrighted work to be distributed, and that distribution is denied to you because it's been painted with this same broad brush. Merely having a copyright symbol should not make something illegal to look at!
Most people seem to think only in terms of output.
A/V output is the easy part...
"Kernel 2.6 has ALSA built in and with auto module loading it is really nice"
ALSA is nice, JACK is nice, and the soundsystem nuts and bolts might be the best thing available.
BUT, anyone who claims the linux sound system has arrived, isn't using cubase in a production environment. There is still a long, long way to go at the application level.
If the Magix folks would release their audio product for linux, that would be plenty, though. JACK/ALSA would have to provide an ASIO interface, and VST plugins would have to work. Magix is a high quality product that nobody seems to know about, from a German company. I thought German companies tended to be into linux, so maybe this is not far-fetched.
If the notion that "hollywood" uses linux could get further, maybe digi/protools or steinberg would start to notice too.
The NeXT was never, by any stretch of the imagination, a "personal computer."
The problem with that is, if you have already downloaded the message from a POP server, it's too late to really make a difference. Sure I can filter them, dev/null or a spam folder, but that's not important. What matters is that I've already had the time and bandwidth costs for downloading them in the first place.
"What if the person put a lot of effort in using mp3.com to market their stuff?"
Then, hopefully that person has learned a valuable lesson about trusting a corporation without a contract. (You *can't*, ever).
I agree with the idea of copyright. I disagree with the idea that copyright infringement is on the level of a violent crime, or with the idea that owning copyright interests should bestow law enoforcement authority onto a coroporation.
I don't even care what happens to the girl, although the world's worst lawyer should have no problem getting the suit dismissed.
What I do care about is that corporations are being given one definition of copyright, while individuals are given another. As an artist, I find this unacceptable.
Whenever I hear something expressed like "this may not be used to copy copyrighted information", I get sick. It means that if you want to distribute your work without the consent of a media coporation, you are basically expected to rescind your rights. That's not okay.
I do want it both ways. I want to be allowed to distribute my work, and I want to keep my copyrights too. And having it both ways is a fundamental right, not some accidental loophole in the law.
I see that right being eroded. The people responsible for that erosion are the same ones pulling lawsuits like the one in the story. So, if I were to take a side, I'd take the girl's side.
"The receipt should never come in to the voter's hands."
"Uh... why? Seriously."
Under the colonial rule, it was common for elections to be held like this:
On election day, the voters would gather to vote.
Each would, in turn, step up on a platform and state his vote to a magistrate, and everyone in the community would know how he had voted.
The magistrate in charge of this was often the person being re-elected. The pressure to vote the status quo was enormous.
This situation is one of the big deals that the rebel founders could not tolerate. Thus, the institution of a secret ballot became one of the founding principles of the country.
There is plenty of historical basis to support the fact that a secret ballot is important, or rather, that the lack of assurance of a secret ballot is a disaster.
You put a reciept in the voters hand, then you make him subject to risks that we cannot tolerate at all, and that's something which is fundamental to the system.
Maybe it doesn't seem like the risks are so huge today (you won't be summarily executed at the polling place if you didn't vote for the incumbent) but I don't believe that's your call.
So, what would you put on the reciept? Would it identify the voter? Would it identify whether or not the voter voted? Or how he voted? If you can guarantee the receipt cannot be read or interpreted, what good is it? If you cannot make that guarantee, how do you answer for the fundamental violation of the voter's inalienable right to a secret ballot?
It's not a choice. The highest law of the land insists that the right to a secret ballot exists, and may no be abridged, period. So it doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but I don't think that's sufficient grounds to decide a fundamental right goes away.
>Breaking the law is breaking the law.
Yeah. Rosa parks should've been clapped in irons, not celebrated. And why bother with all these different punishments? Just make the penalty death for anything. Speeding ticket, jaywalking, borrowing your neighbor's lawnmower and not returning it, murdering a cop, smoking a joint, or letting your license tag expire. Death penalty, why not? After all, a crime is a crime, right? Breaking the law is breaking the law, right?
The last thing I expect to hear from an engineer is how he doesn't want to do something because it's hard.
I agree with you, though. I've dealt with trying USB signals (playing with the USB midi driver) and it's fun, but tedious.
Still, I have to wonder what's the deal with Broadcom really. Allegedly, they'd be in some trouble with Uncle Charlie if the specs for their consumer products got out. But how does that help them if they get their specs handed to them by some kid in China or Norway? Sure they could try the DeCSS approach, and you know where THAT leads. DMCA keeps it out of commercial applications in the US, I suppose. But does it solve the problem for Broadcom, effectively that they have released a commo device into the wild that has the potential for misuse?
I'm just pissed because I own several of these things, purchased by make and model because they were supposed to be Intersil.
To me, the whole thing looks like a deliberate effort to exclude linux, bsd, and solaris from a major current network infrastructure. Perhaps if we miss a generation, that's the end?
Yes, I know it's about money, money, money, whatever. Either that tells me that linux and bsd still don't have a significant place in the market, but that was the story in 1994. It doesn't really look to me like we've gotten anywhere since then.
It's unreasonable to expect my car to run on water.
It is reasonable to expect the hardware in my computer to work with various operating systems.
Hardware manufacturers don't want their stuff being used under os's besides windows. You think that is directly, solely, and strictly associated with money. I think there is more to it than that. But I make a distinction between control and money, even though I realize that either control or money is a means to the end, whether money is the means to control, or whether control is the means to money.
All the nonpolitical consumer understands is there's no choice of OS for the X86.
But... Many Fiat fuel system parts are Bosch. And many Bosch parts are interchangeable between BMW, VW, Fiat, Volvo, Saab, etc. And there are aftermaket replacement parts that fit, if you don't want to buy an expensive Bosch part.
Perhaps more relevant, the FCC hasn't said you can't undo the bolts on your Fiat, or put BMW parts on it.
They uniformly miss the fact that the "community" includes members such as IBM, which is the entire point. It'll be fun to watch just how badly this strategy backfires.
All this slander against the "community" is being heard by the members of the community who don't happen to be some sort of undesirables who are easily dismissed. It'll all come out in the wash.
I don't want anything for free. I want the hardware I paid for, to work. It's that simple. If it doesn't work, that's not my fault.
I realize that I shouldn't expect hardware to work under linux, and I understand the issues.
But, people still seem to be wondering what keeps other OS's from gaining widespread adoption, and I'm saying, here is the answer.
I assure you if the situation were the same with video cards or SCSI controllers, as it is with wireless network cards, there would be a whole lot more noise about it.
I also think there's more to this than just money. IBM could fix it like tipping for coffee.
They're supposed to be into linux adoption, right?
I'm seeing a bigger picture than you are.
You're just looking at the economics. I'm looking at the cultural implications of, say,
linux having no wireless capabilities.
If the video card folks did this, and we had no graphics, that would pretty much kill any notions of "linux on the desktop" would it not?
Do I think the manufactures have any responsibility to "the culture?" No. But it surprises me that nobody in some free country has simply released a reverse-engineered driver for, say, broadcom chips, into the wild yet.
I suspect it's simply because everybody who wants wireless, has a prism2 card, and/or doesn't realize that there's almost nothing available in the retail market today that can be used at all.
Maybe a few companies are still making intersil devices, but it's damned hard to find them, and even harder to know what you've got before you buy it. In a commercial environment, that has ALREADY made it impossible to specify hardware, if you need 802.11b, and even worse if you need 802.11g.
Shutting out linux from the world of wireless networking might be an unintended consequence of economics, but I don't understand how that knowledge is supposed to help me.
"I don't know what country you live in, but here (The Netherlands) you can buy a car without any of that...."
It's that way in the US too. You won't be able to secure *financing* without a drivers' license and insurance most likely, but that's not really a requirement for owning a car. I owned a car when I was 15, before I had a drivers license. I couldn't drive it on the road except on farm business (specific exemption for moving feed and equipment from one part of your farm to another), but no problem, I had my own rally track!
"All they would have to do is make specs available, they should have documentation for internal use anyway so there is no extra cost, just a different attitude."
I think if the truth came out, you'd find out "They" do not own the information to such an extent that they can show it to you.
"It doesn't make sense for them to cater to a vanishingly small percentage of the marketplace."
But the effect is to increase the monopoly position of Microsoft. I don't care about economics or regulations. The thing I notice is that there are NO 802.11g devices for Linux, BSD, or any other OS, available AT ALL. I interpret this as an intentional leveraged attack on competitors to Microsoft.
"Since the transmit power levels and frequencies are all set differently in different parts of the world, the closed-source software is needed to restrict people's control over the hardware. "
It's a matter of opinion that "restricting people's control over the hardware" is necessary or appropriate. If there is some compelling state interest, then it should be considered a defective and/or dangerous product, which ought to be dispensable only to licensed purchasers.
Treating it as a problem that the consumer owns does not solve the problem. Just because the manufacturer hasn't enabled the consumer to alter the card's programming, doesn't change the fact that the dangerous device has been distributed into the wild.
As soon as some independent party (not subject to the US law-by-agency-order), creates software to unlock these cards, the disabled-by-obscurity features will be open. If that's a problem for the state, then they should have considered it before allowing the product to be sold.
If some product can be converted to a weapon, the fact is, the weapon is in the consumer's hands whether you've told him how to convert it or not. You hold some of the responsibility for this product getting into the consumer's hands.
>Correct?
Yes, but it gets a little gray if the code gets loose because some party within the organization was careless. Not that gray though. You don't lose your copyright just because the GPL exists. There really has to be intent on your part to distribute the software under that license -- nobody can do it for you, and nobody can force you to do anything, at least not strictly with the GPL and no other agreements.
"Whether you like it or not is not relevent. If he willingly signed his employee contract stating that they own him, then they own him."
If a clause in a contract is in conflict with a state law, the state wins.
" Can you guarantee that anything you write has not benefitted from knowledge gained while working for you current employer. "
No, and I can't guarantee anything I produce hasn't benefitted from knowledge gained anywhere.
Does this mean my 3rd grade math teacher's name goes on my Ph.D. instead of mine?
"It follows pretty logically that pretty much anything you do "at home" might be considered overtime and anything you do during that time belongs to your employer."
I hope that backfires hard. What if it also means that any crime that the employee commits forces the company to be involved as well...