I can't wait for the exchanges to open again. "They do not so much fly as plummet [...and why not stop it?] Because of the enormous commercial possibilities if 'e succeeds". (-:
if SCO wanted to be sold, why not do it last year when the company was worth something[?]
Because you have to go back 2 or 3 years to find a SCO that was worth much more than it is today.
All of the other blips on their chart seem to be related to SCO making positive statements WRT Linux. Their stock has otherwise been trailing smoke and glycol since they first badmouthed the penguin. This is not an observation I expect them to learn anything from.
A collective of employees buys SCO just before they get delisted, GPLs everything they can (just in case), sells the offending rights to IBM or back to Novell, fires and sues D'ohl and co, splits the proceeds and they all retire (if not rich, then not wanting).
...on whether Linus was speaking to a journo or not. Even in private he's politer than average, but I think this might have annoyed him enough that politeness went by the board - in private. He's obviously been burned before, he plans ahead and thinks twice before saying anything in an interview.
I wonder how those lawyers are feeling right now about the misinformation SCO fed them for the complaint? If lawyers can sue for being shafted by their clients, they'd better get in now - ahead of the pack.
SCO didn't put the code in. SCO's position is that the code is not GPL. The GPL kernel doesn't take over SCO's "trade secret" code, SCO's "trade secret" code takes over the GPL kernel.
SCO's trade secret cannot take over the Linux kernel. Nowhere in SCO's licence does it say anything like "if you integrate our code into something else, we own that other thing." The GPL, on the other hand, says exactly that. In a way, it has its own legal penalty built right into the licence.
In continuing to knowingly publish the offending code in their own Linux distribution under the GPL and without qualification for two months after making complaint, SCO have implicitly agreed to the GPLing of that code. The question that remains is: is there any GPLed code in SCO's software. If so, I look forward to fetching my copy of the Unixware sources. Not because I want to use Unixware (it sucks) but as a trophy. I'm going to install a mantlepiece so I can stuff and mount the Unixware code over it.
SCO also can't sue people who don't know that the code or principles in question are their secrets. Which makes their refusal to identify the offending parts of Linux all the more suspicious.
In trying to taint all of Linux without identifying the purportedly copied code sections, they are carrying out a blackmail and restraining trade, and deserve to have their asses sued off.
If the case had not been laughed out of court, I can only assume that the US government would also own Vatican City right now.
Given the Christian Right's rise to power, it seems reasonably obvious that the reverse is true. Vatican City in many ways owns the US Gummint. As prophesied.
One, they don't take Linux seriously. They're saying the same things in their brainless complaint that they said in early 1999. They just don't get it.
Two, they're stupid enough to expect IBM to cave in on a bluff. And if IBM aply the wrong lawyers to the case (things aren't looking so crash-hot on that front judging by their last filing), SCO's stupidity may actually pay off. Even so, it would have been an unjustifiable gamble if SCO hadn't already been doomed anyway.
I think SCO's desperate and technically baseless actions are a reasonably clear indicator that they do know that they're doomed if this doesn't work.
those 100 lines define POSIX standard XYZ, and there really is no other way to write them
Dollars to doughnuts something like that's the case with every single one of their 10-to-15-line "violations".
It's like in biology everyone got excited when Stanley Miller made some racemised amino acids from crude chemicals plus electricity in a cunningly arranged apparatus. He got amino acids because that's the way chemistry works. You won't get proteins the same way because that's not how chemistry works.
Through a similar process, I would expect to see many dozen-line chunks of near identical code in any two large code bases addressing the same problem. Or even addressing different problems.
There's also a lesson to take home from statistics. One common trick pulled by statistics tutors is to split a class into two, and get half the class to toss a coin 100 times and write down the results, and the other half to "toss coins" in their heads and write out the results. The tutor can pick out the fake coin tosses because they are too even, there are no runs of five or six of the same side.
The complete absence of similarities would be strong evidence that someone had seen both SCO and Linux code and deliberately removed the similarities. The brain-breaker for the judge would be: does this negative evidence of awareness of SCO's code constitute misappropriation of trade secrets or abuse of contract? (-:
This isn't even trade secrets, they are discussing contract violations.
This makes it doubly silly... all right, triply silly... in addition to the base silliness of the case, they appear to be suing IBM for code leaks (which they haven't even identified to us, let alone proven they own) which occurred before IBM got involved. Here, D'ohl is implying that they knew about the alleged contractual problem years ago and did nothing about it because there was nobody involved at the time who was a plump enough lawsuit target; this is tacit agreement with the violations. If I were IBM, I'd be asking my lawyers to go for summary dismissal with prejudice. If I were the judge I'd do SCO for contempt of court.
Then (as IBM) I'd delegate a couple of bright kids to go through our own IP, looking for stuff SCO might have violated, and while they were busy among the files, go and have a quiet chat with Novell about the rights to Unix. Then publicise the results and watch SCO's stock flatline.
Windows NT/2000/XP started from scratch using a different model.
The original version of NT was spelling-error-compatible with MICA, a VMS 5 variant. Microsoft did that by buying the programmers instead of buying DEC. They paid heavily for that in court later. DEC even back-ported NT drivers into VMS for a number of years. Then the usual Microsoft thing happened and they fucked it up completely. VMS could be secured to fairly deep military levels by setting a single system variable, contrast this with any released version of Windows. Microsoft even fucked up OS/2 somewhat by forcing IBM to use a "single message queue" design in it for Windows (at the time) compatibility. There is apparently no end to the reach of Microsoft's "passion fingers".
It's also noteworthy that Unix (in the form of Xenix) and OS/2 each had their turn in the limelight as the next Great White Hope for Microsoft. That's an implicit admission that what they had at the time sucked. They never seem to learn that it sucked because Microsoft wrote it. They copied as much as they could (too much, it turned out) of the Mac GUI into Windows because Bill knew that the Windows UI sucked and Mac OS =9 didn't (in relative terms). No innovation, just degradation. Every single worthwhile piece of software ever released by Microsoft was stolen or bought from or with another company.
Perhaps we should call this buy-the-tech process "exnovation"?
And the process of internally degrading software should be one or more of "infessation" (as in making weary or exhausted), "invetulation" (as in making elderly) or "insenelation" (as in making senile)?
I was there on the day and watched a BackOrifice port open on that box, then the server went away - again - a few seconds later (because of "lightning storms in the Redmond area", but the router immediately in front of it - also labelled Redmond - didn't die, and neither did the transparent router between that and the box proper, this on an "unfirewalled" box, but we're used to Microsoft telling multiple layers of outright lies anyway) and when it came back again a few hours later their log promptly grew an entry from someone who was whining about them intervening to cut him off just as he opened a back connection to pull a keylog. So when I see...
Sadly it received mostly packets from kiddies so that program was terminated.
...I tend to think, "Sadly, it was cancelled because it was up and down like a yoyo for about two weeks and that looked bad."
OTOH, the Free Software community responded by putting up a PPC Linux box that the cracker got to keep (major incentive, contrast this with the tight-assed billionaire company not awarding the cracker anything) and it took something like six months for a cracker to get that - and even then he didn't get root despite the root password being published, just rewrote the web-page.
So: +5 Informative, but very bad news for Microsoft.
My take on this latest flag day is: much too little, much too late, but it will be good if their security does improve - I'll get less constant knocking on my servers' doors from broken Borg boxen. I am still getting CodeRed and Nimda hits!
Why would you EVER consider manufacturing something ON the moon.
The atmosphere is near vacuum and can much more easily be made into a good vacuum than on Earth.
A related point, no corrosion even if you use iron for building, no weather to worry about.
Gravity is lower than on earth which makes some things much easier to do, but still present which eliminates some zero-gravity issues.
A related point, it's much easier to launch stuff from Luna than from Earth, which makes is especially attractive for supporting orbital or more remote missions; for example, getting metal structural members and solar panels from Moon operations for solar power satellites makes great economic sense. Luna launch is cheap enough to use it for throwing (e.g.) crushed rock as radiation shielding for L5 colonies or other semi-permanent orbital installations. Imagine sending up mine tailings on a Saturn (or Energia, LongMarch etc).
You can run nukes and other messy stuff up there, and if you turn yourself into a crater or glowing puddle it's no big deal (for potential biohazards I'd still insist on orbit 'coz you get natural quaratine and if it gets really bad you can light up an ion booster and spin the whole thing down into Sol), no Chernobyl.
You get uninterrupted full-strength solar power for two weeks at a time (indefinitely near the poles, where there's also some water).
You can dig bloody big holes without people being able to see them (even on nearside) let alone scream "NIMBY!" or complain about the rare critter you're about to stomp.
You get at least 50% lower cosmic radiation than in orbit.
Farside you get rid of Earth's radio and light interference.
Have I made my point, or do you want some extra, more esoteric reasons? (-:
Come to sunny Perth, Western Australia
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
how about great weather all year around?
Move here. Swap Dubya and telephone chaos for Howard and Telstra. Admittedly not a great improvement, I know, but nevertheless an improvement.
If you're prepared to hedge on the weather a bit, move to Albany or Denmark, both in the South West of WA, and get scenery, peace and fresh air (straight off the southern ocean) instead. We have smaller, prettier places down there too but don't expect much by way of connectivity.
If you want something more tropical and don't mind the odd cyclone (I think y'all call them hurricanes), Broome's your pigeon. The beaches have to be seen to be believed.
...before the RIAA start requiring watermarked cinema screens and/or cinema footage so that they can process the telesync'ed versions to discover which cinema and/or "reel" were used in its making, and so zero in on the individual pirates?
I liked the mix in Dinotopia
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
There were a few plot disappointments (I was looking out for the previous-generation mechanical dinosaurs from the book series, for example), but the integrated CG, acting and puppets worked out all right.
If I had a critcism of the mechanics of the film it would be that the beasties' centre of gravity was often unrealistic, especially for the two-legged species. There were certain allowances for the mix (e.g. people walking down one side of an alley, dinos down the other, I guess because that was easier than integrating the two) but you had to be watching for them, they didn't intrude into the movie. The Americanisms and sometimes-dodgy acting did more of that. (-:
The other criticism I had was that the characters didn't abide by their own principles. They had armed guards when one of their rules was (effectively) "no weapons". They were supposed to be calm and thoughtful but stood outside in droves while the flapping nasties arrived and attacked them (indoors? we don't need no steenking indoors). One of the club-tailed beasties first defended him/herself (effectively) against a flapping nasty with his tail, then didn't the second time around when it would have been the obvious move) and so on. They also had a "prayer for hope" but no divinity to pray to. Que? That's as silly as an Atheist blaspheming ("Random fucking Fluctuations!" "Oh, my Coincidence!" - yadda yadda, you get the idea).
...I'd say that his intent was "Let's continue to fight together militant zealotry". I'm guessing he'd not be on the side of the Crusaders against Islam, nor on the side of the Atheists against everyone else in the French Revolution.
The violence you see out of Islam is the fault of a relatively few idiots, not of Joe Average Muslim in the street. Joe has his own problems, but violent militancy generally isn't one of them. Another thing to remember is that like Christianity (and Atheism, Jainism, Bhuddism etc), there is Islam as she are written, Islam as she are preached, and Islam as she are done, and they are all different.
Yanks, Poms, Brazilianos, Singaporeans, Chinese, Zimbabwians, Germans can all be stirred into violence by a relatively few energetic zealots. Race and religion have very little to do with it.
Lots of companies have to deal with the Munich city government, and the default formats for dealing with this organization just switched from MS Office to OpenOffice.org.
Wait 'till all of Europe cascades across to OOo formats for everything, not just wordprocessing and screadsheets.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't wait for the exchanges to open again. "They do not so much fly as plummet [...and why not stop it?] Because of the enormous commercial possibilities if 'e succeeds". (-:
(int not, char **really)
Because you have to go back 2 or 3 years to find a SCO that was worth much more than it is today.
All of the other blips on their chart seem to be related to SCO making positive statements WRT Linux. Their stock has otherwise been trailing smoke and glycol since they first badmouthed the penguin. This is not an observation I expect them to learn anything from.
Yes, I know, but I can dream... (-:
...on whether Linus was speaking to a journo or not. Even in private he's politer than average, but I think this might have annoyed him enough that politeness went by the board - in private. He's obviously been burned before, he plans ahead and thinks twice before saying anything in an interview.
I wonder how those lawyers are feeling right now about the misinformation SCO fed them for the complaint? If lawyers can sue for being shafted by their clients, they'd better get in now - ahead of the pack.
SCO's trade secret cannot take over the Linux kernel. Nowhere in SCO's licence does it say anything like "if you integrate our code into something else, we own that other thing." The GPL, on the other hand, says exactly that. In a way, it has its own legal penalty built right into the licence.
In continuing to knowingly publish the offending code in their own Linux distribution under the GPL and without qualification for two months after making complaint, SCO have implicitly agreed to the GPLing of that code. The question that remains is: is there any GPLed code in SCO's software. If so, I look forward to fetching my copy of the Unixware sources. Not because I want to use Unixware (it sucks) but as a trophy. I'm going to install a mantlepiece so I can stuff and mount the Unixware code over it.
SCO also can't sue people who don't know that the code or principles in question are their secrets. Which makes their refusal to identify the offending parts of Linux all the more suspicious.
In trying to taint all of Linux without identifying the purportedly copied code sections, they are carrying out a blackmail and restraining trade, and deserve to have their asses sued off.
Ah, that would explain why D'ohl is threatening to sue RedHat, SuSE, Linus and Novell.
</sarcasm>
Given the Christian Right's rise to power, it seems reasonably obvious that the reverse is true. Vatican City in many ways owns the US Gummint. As prophesied.
One, they don't take Linux seriously. They're saying the same things in their brainless complaint that they said in early 1999. They just don't get it.
Two, they're stupid enough to expect IBM to cave in on a bluff. And if IBM aply the wrong lawyers to the case (things aren't looking so crash-hot on that front judging by their last filing), SCO's stupidity may actually pay off. Even so, it would have been an unjustifiable gamble if SCO hadn't already been doomed anyway.
I think SCO's desperate and technically baseless actions are a reasonably clear indicator that they do know that they're doomed if this doesn't work.
Dollars to doughnuts something like that's the case with every single one of their 10-to-15-line "violations".
It's like in biology everyone got excited when Stanley Miller made some racemised amino acids from crude chemicals plus electricity in a cunningly arranged apparatus. He got amino acids because that's the way chemistry works. You won't get proteins the same way because that's not how chemistry works.
Through a similar process, I would expect to see many dozen-line chunks of near identical code in any two large code bases addressing the same problem. Or even addressing different problems.
There's also a lesson to take home from statistics. One common trick pulled by statistics tutors is to split a class into two, and get half the class to toss a coin 100 times and write down the results, and the other half to "toss coins" in their heads and write out the results. The tutor can pick out the fake coin tosses because they are too even, there are no runs of five or six of the same side.
The complete absence of similarities would be strong evidence that someone had seen both SCO and Linux code and deliberately removed the similarities. The brain-breaker for the judge would be: does this negative evidence of awareness of SCO's code constitute misappropriation of trade secrets or abuse of contract? (-:
This makes it doubly silly... all right, triply silly... in addition to the base silliness of the case, they appear to be suing IBM for code leaks (which they haven't even identified to us, let alone proven they own) which occurred before IBM got involved. Here, D'ohl is implying that they knew about the alleged contractual problem years ago and did nothing about it because there was nobody involved at the time who was a plump enough lawsuit target; this is tacit agreement with the violations. If I were IBM, I'd be asking my lawyers to go for summary dismissal with prejudice. If I were the judge I'd do SCO for contempt of court.
Then (as IBM) I'd delegate a couple of bright kids to go through our own IP, looking for stuff SCO might have violated, and while they were busy among the files, go and have a quiet chat with Novell about the rights to Unix. Then publicise the results and watch SCO's stock flatline.
No! Really...?
Personally, I think the typoe in "Stupidty" was taking the demo a step too far. (-:
The original version of NT was spelling-error-compatible with MICA, a VMS 5 variant. Microsoft did that by buying the programmers instead of buying DEC. They paid heavily for that in court later. DEC even back-ported NT drivers into VMS for a number of years. Then the usual Microsoft thing happened and they fucked it up completely. VMS could be secured to fairly deep military levels by setting a single system variable, contrast this with any released version of Windows. Microsoft even fucked up OS/2 somewhat by forcing IBM to use a "single message queue" design in it for Windows (at the time) compatibility. There is apparently no end to the reach of Microsoft's "passion fingers".
It's also noteworthy that Unix (in the form of Xenix) and OS/2 each had their turn in the limelight as the next Great White Hope for Microsoft. That's an implicit admission that what they had at the time sucked. They never seem to learn that it sucked because Microsoft wrote it. They copied as much as they could (too much, it turned out) of the Mac GUI into Windows because Bill knew that the Windows UI sucked and Mac OS =9 didn't (in relative terms). No innovation, just degradation. Every single worthwhile piece of software ever released by Microsoft was stolen or bought from or with another company.
Perhaps we should call this buy-the-tech process "exnovation"?
And the process of internally degrading software should be one or more of "infessation" (as in making weary or exhausted), "invetulation" (as in making elderly) or "insenelation" (as in making senile)?
First post? (-:
...I tend to think, "Sadly, it was cancelled because it was up and down like a yoyo for about two weeks and that looked bad."
OTOH, the Free Software community responded by putting up a PPC Linux box that the cracker got to keep (major incentive, contrast this with the tight-assed billionaire company not awarding the cracker anything) and it took something like six months for a cracker to get that - and even then he didn't get root despite the root password being published, just rewrote the web-page.
So: +5 Informative, but very bad news for Microsoft.
My take on this latest flag day is: much too little, much too late, but it will be good if their security does improve - I'll get less constant knocking on my servers' doors from broken Borg boxen. I am still getting CodeRed and Nimda hits!
Have I made my point, or do you want some extra, more esoteric reasons? (-:
Move here. Swap Dubya and telephone chaos for Howard and Telstra. Admittedly not a great improvement, I know, but nevertheless an improvement.
If you're prepared to hedge on the weather a bit, move to Albany or Denmark, both in the South West of WA, and get scenery, peace and fresh air (straight off the southern ocean) instead. We have smaller, prettier places down there too but don't expect much by way of connectivity.
If you want something more tropical and don't mind the odd cyclone (I think y'all call them hurricanes), Broome's your pigeon. The beaches have to be seen to be believed.
...before the RIAA start requiring watermarked cinema screens and/or cinema footage so that they can process the telesync'ed versions to discover which cinema and/or "reel" were used in its making, and so zero in on the individual pirates?
There were a few plot disappointments (I was looking out for the previous-generation mechanical dinosaurs from the book series, for example), but the integrated CG, acting and puppets worked out all right.
If I had a critcism of the mechanics of the film it would be that the beasties' centre of gravity was often unrealistic, especially for the two-legged species. There were certain allowances for the mix (e.g. people walking down one side of an alley, dinos down the other, I guess because that was easier than integrating the two) but you had to be watching for them, they didn't intrude into the movie. The Americanisms and sometimes-dodgy acting did more of that. (-:
The other criticism I had was that the characters didn't abide by their own principles. They had armed guards when one of their rules was (effectively) "no weapons". They were supposed to be calm and thoughtful but stood outside in droves while the flapping nasties arrived and attacked them (indoors? we don't need no steenking indoors). One of the club-tailed beasties first defended him/herself (effectively) against a flapping nasty with his tail, then didn't the second time around when it would have been the obvious move) and so on. They also had a "prayer for hope" but no divinity to pray to. Que? That's as silly as an Atheist blaspheming ("Random fucking Fluctuations!" "Oh, my Coincidence!" - yadda yadda, you get the idea).
But again, the CG and integration went well.
Hijacking is an interesting indicator. Hijackers prefer American craft, because if they pick on (say) Israeli vehicles, they're dead - guaranteed.
BTW - terrorist attacks - Germany cops one and another, and a German citizen is killed by hijackers, Germany fights hijackers and so on. They get their share, you just don't hear about it because you're not German.
...I'd say that his intent was "Let's continue to fight together militant zealotry". I'm guessing he'd not be on the side of the Crusaders against Islam, nor on the side of the Atheists against everyone else in the French Revolution.
The violence you see out of Islam is the fault of a relatively few idiots, not of Joe Average Muslim in the street. Joe has his own problems, but violent militancy generally isn't one of them. Another thing to remember is that like Christianity (and Atheism, Jainism, Bhuddism etc), there is Islam as she are written, Islam as she are preached, and Islam as she are done, and they are all different.
Yanks, Poms, Brazilianos, Singaporeans, Chinese, Zimbabwians, Germans can all be stirred into violence by a relatively few energetic zealots. Race and religion have very little to do with it.
Wait 'till all of Europe cascades across to OOo formats for everything, not just wordprocessing and screadsheets.
This was near delta territory. Perhaps that makes a difference (soil or politics).