and are proceeding along this path with the certainty of a lemming marching toward the sea.
So who plays the role of the journalists herding them off the cliff for the cameras? Lemmings don't naturally jump off cliffs, the odd one falls (gets nudged) off by accident. Only humans are stupid enough to do that voluntarily.
...and they don't need any Linux code themselves to run their extortion racket.
You could, however, hurt The SCO Group (different to the Santa Cruz Operation, different company, different people, different management, different culture; all they have in common they got from The Canopy Group) and anyone who is dumb enough to still be running one of their Linuces by insisting that they destroy all source and binary copies of your IP (Linux kernel) in their possession and recall and destroy every copy or Linux that they ever sold or licenced. As I understand the law and the GPL, any kernel developer who contributed code that they distributed has the right to do that.
If you really want to add insult to injury, send them a court injunction requiring them to identify their F500 licencee (it will be Microsoft) as part and parcel of that recall and destruction.
For contracts, my understanding is that if a later contract between two parties explicitly contradicts an earlier contract, the later one wins.
So if a contract contradicts itself (say that six times fast), the text furthest down the contract - being conceptually "later" in the contract - wins?
They had 2.4 up to something like 19 on their FTP servers until well after they sued. Think in terms of months. They still have pieces of same up there to this day.
...IBM proper have a licence to use SysV-R4 code (even granted TSG's rantings, they unquestionably did have such a right after they macrophaged Sequent), so whatever Sequent contributed back to that codebase as per their own agreement, IBM would have had a right to use via their separate SysV-R4 licence.
Amendment X gives both IBM and Novell some pretty amazing contract powers. Novell can tell The SCO Group to jump, and they must jump. Presumably with the delays and potential for mistakes in court in mind, N can further act on behalf of TSG in carrying out N's will WRT the contract - which they did when TSG gave themselves airs and graces about IBM's right to develop and distribute AIX. It also made the agreement "perpetual and irrevocable", so N didn't even need to go that far, in theory (but you can understand why they did). "Please, Brer TSG, don't throw me in the legal briar patch!"
It's certainly more substantial, sweeping and better verified than the "bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory marked 'beware of the leopard' Amendment 2" for a different contract that TSG dug out for the (few, essentially useless) copyrights they wanted transferred.
And The SCO Group know this. They're just whipping their shares into one last frenzy so they can dump big-time and flee back to The Canopy Group for protection. We should be publishing articles seriously asking whether D'ohl is a closet AL Quaeda agent.
Go on, mod me down for the cliche! You know you want to! (-:
Not installing a free update to fix a problem like this is just asking for trouble.
Installing the free update has often been asking for trouble. Microsoft have an unenviable reputation for breaking things with their patches. This is kind of inevitable when they have such poor understanding of exactly what's going on inside their own (possession really is 9/10ths of the law) OS.
Just install Service Pack MAXINT. Problem solved. Hint: it has a penguin on it.
If you want to see your MS-Windows alive again, fill a suitcase with unmarked non-sequential medium-sized Bills... er, I mean, use Knoppix to download the patch(es), then reboot and apply them to 'doze toot-sweet before she reboots. Having a DOS window handy to type "shutdown/a" into is good medicine as well.
Linux: The kernel (1). Stuff commonly exposed by a desktop Linux installation (0). Remote all-your-base-are-belong-to-us exploits (0).
Windows: all-your-base-ar[Rebooting in 60 seconds]
Now go and average that out over a year. Bear in mind that MS-Windows exploits are being reported on a small software set (OS, email client, database, web server, web browser, email client) and Linux exploits are being reported on any of 4000 (Mandrake) - 8000 (Debian) packages, most of which will not be installed on your typical desktop or server. Estimate a percentage installed on each and discount appropriately.
Now assign a severity rating, maybe base=25% remote=50% privesc/root/admin/ring0=25% to each incident and see how they compare.
And so on. No sense comparing an overdecorated Niva with a Land Cruiser and complaining about the mileage, either.
...will display a WANTED poster featuring D'ohl Macbride. In ASCII if it's not a graphic app. Instead of the usual "dead or alive" terms it will say "for special manned Pluto mission".
In point of fact, paying The SCO Group for a licence makes your software illegal, since applying their licence contradicts the GPL the software is distributed under.
BTW, how much am I bet that the Fortune 500 company in question is Microsoft?
Maybe we should also add a --borg flag which triples the size of the binary, makes it crash randomly every day or so, causes it to repeatedly try to contact servers in the messenger.hotmail.com and msgr.hotmail.com domains, add lots of N's and X's to any webserver logs it can find and open an RPC listener?
Slashdot Mirror
So who plays the role of the journalists herding them off the cliff for the cameras? Lemmings don't naturally jump off cliffs, the odd one falls (gets nudged) off by accident. Only humans are stupid enough to do that voluntarily.
You could, however, hurt The SCO Group (different to the Santa Cruz Operation, different company, different people, different management, different culture; all they have in common they got from The Canopy Group) and anyone who is dumb enough to still be running one of their Linuces by insisting that they destroy all source and binary copies of your IP (Linux kernel) in their possession and recall and destroy every copy or Linux that they ever sold or licenced. As I understand the law and the GPL, any kernel developer who contributed code that they distributed has the right to do that.
If you really want to add insult to injury, send them a court injunction requiring them to identify their F500 licencee (it will be Microsoft) as part and parcel of that recall and destruction.
So if a contract contradicts itself (say that six times fast), the text furthest down the contract - being conceptually "later" in the contract - wins?
They had 2.4 up to something like 19 on their FTP servers until well after they sued. Think in terms of months. They still have pieces of same up there to this day.
...IBM proper have a licence to use SysV-R4 code (even granted TSG's rantings, they unquestionably did have such a right after they macrophaged Sequent), so whatever Sequent contributed back to that codebase as per their own agreement, IBM would have had a right to use via their separate SysV-R4 licence.
It's certainly more substantial, sweeping and better verified than the "bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory marked 'beware of the leopard' Amendment 2" for a different contract that TSG dug out for the (few, essentially useless) copyrights they wanted transferred.
And The SCO Group know this. They're just whipping their shares into one last frenzy so they can dump big-time and flee back to The Canopy Group for protection. We should be publishing articles seriously asking whether D'ohl is a closet AL Quaeda agent.
At least make it painless.
...load it from paper tape before you could start using it.
Read it and weep.
...so would you care to restate that "I'd trust the computers in a car before I trust" part? (-:
Installing the free update has often been asking for trouble. Microsoft have an unenviable reputation for breaking things with their patches. This is kind of inevitable when they have such poor understanding of exactly what's going on inside their own (possession really is 9/10ths of the law) OS.
Just install Service Pack MAXINT. Problem solved. Hint: it has a penguin on it.
...if you're agoraphobic. (-:
...just like they do for cars and such?
...problem solved. (-:
/a" into is good medicine as well.
If you want to see your MS-Windows alive again, fill a suitcase with unmarked non-sequential medium-sized Bills... er, I mean, use Knoppix to download the patch(es), then reboot and apply them to 'doze toot-sweet before she reboots. Having a DOS window handy to type "shutdown
Windows: all-your-base-ar[Rebooting in 60 seconds]
Now go and average that out over a year. Bear in mind that MS-Windows exploits are being reported on a small software set (OS, email client, database, web server, web browser, email client) and Linux exploits are being reported on any of 4000 (Mandrake) - 8000 (Debian) packages, most of which will not be installed on your typical desktop or server. Estimate a percentage installed on each and discount appropriately.
Now assign a severity rating, maybe base=25% remote=50% privesc/root/admin/ring0=25% to each incident and see how they compare.
And so on. No sense comparing an overdecorated Niva with a Land Cruiser and complaining about the mileage, either.
Sorry, I have no actual mod points. (-:
I remember installing gcc and gmake from sunfreesoftware into Solaris 8 so I could actually compile stuff and have it work.
Don't you mean, "When the meteor comes home to roost?"
In point of fact, paying The SCO Group for a licence makes your software illegal, since applying their licence contradicts the GPL the software is distributed under.
BTW, how much am I bet that the Fortune 500 company in question is Microsoft?
Maybe we should also add a --borg flag which triples the size of the binary, makes it crash randomly every day or so, causes it to repeatedly try to contact servers in the messenger.hotmail.com and msgr.hotmail.com domains, add lots of N's and X's to any webserver logs it can find and open an RPC listener?
...and maybe they won't notice? (-: deem g/d/r included :-)
Velikovskian? alt.rec.explosives lurker? OOPArt freak? White Ribboner? Gun owner? Plenty of scope available... (-:
Microsoft does not weigh the same as a duck!
...then surely WordPerfect, Microsoft's own help system (or OS/2's), Mosaic itself and countless other programs all constitute prior art?
...following through on your logic, they have 48,000,000,000 reasons to bust every other company and free competitor on the planet. Feeling comfy?