The Matrix is not an Anime rip-off, especially not Akira or Ghost In the Shell. If it were an anime story it would have to end with an all-devouring blob. That's the rule for sci-fi anime. No blob, not real anime.
As usual, another completely uninformed opinion on slashdot.
Here is a little history for you.
1. Microsoft forces a number of employees to switch to contract positions as a means of reducing cost of benefits. Essentially these people are forced into a paycut through a change in employment method. It is either accept this change in status or lose your job. Back in the early 90s when this happened, there wasn't much of a job market to speak of so these people bent over and took it.
2. Microsoft continues to treat these former employees exactly how they were treated before their switch to contractor status. Except not pay them benefits. Same responsibilities, same employer-imposed restrictions.
3. The IRS comes along and says, "these people do not satisfy the 20 questions rule for distinguishing between contractors and employees." This ruling is largely the result of Microsoft treating these contractors exactly the same way before and after the switch from employee to contractor status.
4. The IRS says, since they are employees, Microsoft must now pay back-taxes on FICA and Medicare. This is double-dipping by the IRS because the contractors have already paid those taxes and they won't get them back, but that is the way the law works. Plus, now Microsoft has to start to satisfy the 20 questions rule.
5. The contractors that have now been officially reclassified as employees by the US government say, "If I was an employee, where are my benefits?" In particular, 401K and profit-sharing - the internet bubble was really starting to bulge and the money involved was enough to retire on for a lot of them. They go to court as the infamous permatemp lawsuit and they win a very clearcut case.
So, all this grumbling about how the contractors screwed themselves is baloney. MS tried to screw some employees, the IRS busted their ass and MS started obeying the rules, meanwhile the screwed employees got what the benefits they were entitled to in the first place.
Meanwhile the entire industry over-reacts and instead of being content to satisfy a majority of the 20 questions, most big companies want to get as close to 100% coverage as possible. Part of the problem here is that the IRS doesn't spell out what the minimum requirement is, that is left up to their discretion on a case by case basis. But the other side of the problem is corporate conservatism where they would rather shoot themselves in the foot than try to put together a reasonable policy.
Anybody who needs to run this server edition of windows is going to pay for it and probably buy a support contract to boot. Joe Downloader who decides he wants to run Windows 2003 on his piddly two generation old machine just to show how cool he is would never ever pay for 2003 in the first place, he'd just stick with the XP Home edition that his machine came bundled with.
Mountains out of Molehills, or should that be mothballs in the case of a microsoft losing market dominance?
I was with you right up until the mpeg plays poorly under windows bit. That must be your system setup. I use a windows pc to drive my front-screen projector with a 10' wide screen. I use it to play the mpeg video from DVDs and the mpeg video from recorded HDTV broadcasts. In either case, as long as I don't run some sort of cpu hog in the background, the video plays smooth as silk with a video card set to 1360x1024. So far I get better quality mpeg decode using windows based decoders (in particular the cinemaster codec is best, but I have tried the powerdvd and the intervideo windvd decoders and none have had jerky playback) than I do under linux. FWIW the difference isn't jerkiness but rather better color decoding, less blotchiness, etc.
If they need a tax write-off, you can bet that it will be donated before the expiration date. Not directly to the public domain, but rather to some non-profit "shell." I think this kind of tax-evasion was covered here recently, or maybe that was kuro5hin.
I have no response for that, except to say your math sux - hostile fire zone only gets him the bonus of not paying taxes, he gets paid his $4K/month pre-tax working somewhere safe either way.
I believe the interface is almost always an LVDS thing, very similar to that used in one of the greatest desktop LCDs of all time, the SGI 1600W. The problem is that each different panel has a different set of parameters that you need to set/use with an LVDS controller and
1) the parameteres ain't easy to find publically documented 2) LVDS controllers for regular PCs (like an Nvidia card with an LVDS interface) are few, far between and not very cheap
I would desperately like to be proven wrong on this - I'd especially like to find a dvi2lvds box for a reasonable price that I could use with any of the thousand or so bare laptop LCD screens that are offered on ebay every day...
I guess that inadequacy would be my need to reply to trolls bearing strawmen. Since you clearly belong to the love-it-or-leave-it crowd, all I can say is that you might want to check into a guy named Martin Niemöller.
Funny you should mention it, even in this day and age people still gotta take it to the scotus to get protection under the sanctity of the home clause. Those guys definitely got themselves a whole heapfull of hassle because somebody didn't like them.
Back in the bad old days (prior to Jan. 1, 1984), you could only get a phone from AT&T.
You mean, you could only legally get a phone from AT&T. Lots of people, my family included, had "bootleg" phones. I distinctly remember my parents telling me, as a little kid, to keep quiet about the 4 extensions my father had wired up, should anyone in any kind of uniform ask about them.
The point is not whether it would stand up in court, the point is that it is a form of legalized harrassment. If the cops, or anyone else in the law enforcement power structure, doesn't like you for any reason valid or not, they have just one more tool to fuck you over with impunity.
Sometimes just calling you a terrorist is more trouble than its worth, probably gets the FBI and the Dept of the Fatherland involved which might actually question a few too many baseless accusations. This law just keeps their options open.
You'll be glad to know that there is a whole boatload of Fischerspooner stuff on kazaa so clearly somebody is ripping their CDs.
You might also be interested to know that EAC (Exact Audio Copy) a free as in beer program for windows is pretty good about handling these copy-stoppen schemes, especially if you have a "good" cd-rom drive.
Find it at: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ also see the forums at: http://www.digital-inn.de/forumdisplay.php?forumid =14
I sure hope that wayback machine is still doing its thing in another 4 years when that kid graduates from college. He's sure done a good job of demonstrating his ignorance. Just read his rant on why mozilla is just a way for AOL to steal from opensource programmers. His stuff is just too funny that there is no way it could be a joke.
I don't need evidence. Because power corrupts and these people have already shown themselves to be of very easily corrupted -- see my posting to which you've responded. Such is the nature of conflicts of interest that abuses will occur, not a matter of if, but only of how (forget when, its too late).
And if you think crony capitalism is about free markets and open competition, then I've got a bridge to sell you. Crony capitalism is one of the nastier manifestations of modern communism - corporate communism. It is practicaly the way the entire country of China is run and seems to have become remarkably entrenched in modern Russia (thanks in large part to the poorly administered economic initiatives during Clinton's reign).
The people who are hurt by crony capitalism wrt to Iraq are:
1) The Iraqis who don't get what they need but rather what is convenient for US corps. 2) The American taxpayers that will fund these oft quoted "lucrative reconstruction contracts" - if they are so lucrative you can bet that there would be competition for them, crony capitalism reduces, if not eliminates that competition thus keeping the lucre around to pay those 8 figure salaries.
So, we pay more, the iraqi people get less and the fatcats skim huge margins off the top. Hey, its a victimless crime, nobody gets hurt at all...
What about interest in Halliburton owned by family members, golfing buddies and other fellow back-scratchers?
What neither quote makes clear is that Cheney didn't think that maintaining stock options was a conflict of interest - he said words to this effect in public. It was only after a relatively large hoohaw in the press that he finally acquiesced. It is doubtful that he has changed his mind, divestiture was purely a face-saving political move. Given that, you can be pretty sure he (or rather his accountants) will have worked every angle and loophole to indirectly keep him "on the payroll" with Haliburton and who knows how many other companies.
For another example of this kind of mindset, look at Richard Perle who, after a couple of weeks of denial-tactics finally became too much of a liability, just like the stock options, to keep around. This guy, former Bush Sr top-dog and until today a Bush Jr top-dog too, was given $700K to convince the DoD that it would be ok for Global Crossing to self off to the Chinese. Why? Because his official top-dog title was "Chairman of the Defense Policy Board," an advisory panel to the Pentagon - making close to, if not the civilian with the most influence over the DoD. Not to mention the even larger issue of his ties to arab-owned corporations. Conflict of interest? Not in any dictionary of his.
This crony capitalism mindset is endemic in the current administration and as far as I am concerned is 100x more of a moral defect than boffing an intern or two, or even ten. Because instead of just screwing a few people, it screws most of the country for the benefit of just a few people. These guys (and democrats too, but they at least know enough to be embarrassed about it) have taken the term, "spoils system" to a whole new level.
Now when you get pulled over in LA, you can use your war-driving setup to check the police records on the cops before they get of their car. You will be able to greet them by name and know if they are the type to give you the rodney king treatment for doing so.
What happens to an RFID tag if you put it in a microwave on high power for 30 seconds? Should we make it a regular practice to nuke any new piece of clothing we buy nowadays? Just watch out for zippers...
For all the whiners who don't know how to do "view source" to see the paragraph breaks, here it is with html paragraph breaks inserted.
(kind of ontopic)
In addition to the groups organized to freely redistribute systems built around the Networking Release 2 tape, a company, Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI), was formed to develop and distribute a commercially supported version of the code. (More information about BSDI can be found at http://www.bsdi.com.) Like the other groups, they started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release. BSDI began selling their system including both source and binaries in January 1992 for $995. They began running advertisements touting their 99% discount over the price charged for System V source plus binary systems. Interested readers were told to call 1-800-ITS-Unix.
Shortly after BSDI began their sales campaign, they received a letter from Unix System Laboratories (USL) (a mostly-owned subsidiary of AT&T spun off to develop and sell Unix). The letter demanded that they stop promoting their product as Unix and in particular that they stop using the deceptive phone number. Although the phone number was promptly dropped and the advertisements changed to explain that the product was not Unix, USL was still unhappy and filed suit to enjoin BSDI from selling their product. The suit alleged that the BSDI product contained proprietary USL code and trade secrets. USL sought to get an injunction to halt BSDI's sales until the lawsuit was resolved, claiming that they would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of their trade secrets if the BSDI distributions continued.
At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the University and on the BSDI products.
With the impending injunction hearing just a few short weeks away, preparation began in earnest. All the members of the CSRG were deposed as were nearly everyone employed at BSDI. Briefs, counter-briefs, and counter-counter-briefs flew back and forth between the lawyers. Keith Bostic and I personally had to write several hundred pages of material that found its way into various briefs.
In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a forty-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in the federal court system.
The University of California took the hint and rushed into California state court the following Monday morning with a counter-suit against USL. By filing first in California, the University had established the locale of any further state court action. Constitutional law requires all state filing to be done in a single state to prevent a litigant with deep pockets from bleeding an opponent dry by filing fifty cases against them in every state. The result was that if USL wanted to take any action against the University in state courts, they would be forced to do so in California rather than in their home state of New Jersey.
The University's suit claimed that USL had failed in their obligation to provide due credit to the University for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that they had signed with the University. If the claim were found to be valid, the University asked that USL be forced to reprint all their documentation with the appropriate due credit added, to notify all their licensees of their oversight, and to run full-page advertisements in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine notifying the business world of their inadvertent oversight.
Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993, settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceed slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed.
4.4BSD
The newly blessed release was called 4.4BSD-Lite and was released in June 1994 under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. Specifically, the terms allow free redistribution in source and binary form subject only to the constraint that the University copyrights remain intact and that the University receive credit when others use the code. Simultaneously, the complete system was released as 4.4BSD-Encumbered, which still required recipients to have a USL source license.
The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system. So, all the BSD groups that were doing releases at that time, BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite sources into which they then merged their enhancements and improvements. While this reintegration caused a short-term delay in the development of the various BSD systems, it was a blessing in disguise since it forced all the divergent groups to resynchronize with the three years of development that had occurred at the CSRG since the release of Networking Release 2.
You missed out, the 2nd season, when they went to hour-long shows, rocked. It was developing a decent on-going storyline and good character development as cleopatra slowly became competent - and had tons of potential over all.
Not to mention that the hot black chick is seriously talented (sorry terrible with names) - she went on to co-star on Firefly, just did an episode of "The Agency" and married Laurence Fishburne (not that that reflects on her acting ability, but he's a smart guy so it stands to reason he'd marry a smart girl).
The other two girls have done ok, the muscular blonde starred on that x-men knock-off where she got to look very feline and sexy (never mind that show had the same plot each episode, not her fault). The stripper has had a couple of "guest star" roles on various shows since then as well - ironic since as cleopatra, the show was named for her character.
As for baywatch, I never noticed any storylines or acting, I was just let myself be hypnotized by the boobs swinging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...
Slashdot Mirror
The Matrix is not an Anime rip-off, especially not Akira or Ghost In the Shell. If it were an anime story it would have to end with an all-devouring blob. That's the rule for sci-fi anime. No blob, not real anime.
As usual, another completely uninformed opinion on slashdot.
Here is a little history for you.
1. Microsoft forces a number of employees to switch to contract positions as a means of reducing cost of benefits. Essentially these people are forced into a paycut through a change in employment method. It is either accept this change in status or lose your job. Back in the early 90s when this happened, there wasn't much of a job market to speak of so these people bent over and took it.
2. Microsoft continues to treat these former employees exactly how they were treated before their switch to contractor status. Except not pay them benefits. Same responsibilities, same employer-imposed restrictions.
3. The IRS comes along and says, "these people do not satisfy the 20 questions rule for distinguishing between contractors and employees." This ruling is largely the result of Microsoft treating these contractors exactly the same way before and after the switch from employee to contractor status.
4. The IRS says, since they are employees, Microsoft must now pay back-taxes on FICA and Medicare. This is double-dipping by the IRS because the contractors have already paid those taxes and they won't get them back, but that is the way the law works. Plus, now Microsoft has to start to satisfy the 20 questions rule.
5. The contractors that have now been officially reclassified as employees by the US government say, "If I was an employee, where are my benefits?" In particular, 401K and profit-sharing - the internet bubble was really starting to bulge and the money involved was enough to retire on for a lot of them. They go to court as the infamous permatemp lawsuit and they win a very clearcut case.
So, all this grumbling about how the contractors screwed themselves is baloney. MS tried to screw some employees, the IRS busted their ass and MS started obeying the rules, meanwhile the screwed employees got what the benefits they were entitled to in the first place.
Meanwhile the entire industry over-reacts and instead of being content to satisfy a majority of the 20 questions, most big companies want to get as close to 100% coverage as possible. Part of the problem here is that the IRS doesn't spell out what the minimum requirement is, that is left up to their discretion on a case by case basis. But the other side of the problem is corporate conservatism where they would rather shoot themselves in the foot than try to put together a reasonable policy.
Anybody who needs to run this server edition of windows is going to pay for it and probably buy a support contract to boot. Joe Downloader who decides he wants to run Windows 2003 on his piddly two generation old machine just to show how cool he is would never ever pay for 2003 in the first place, he'd just stick with the XP Home edition that his machine came bundled with.
Mountains out of Molehills, or should that be mothballs in the case of a microsoft losing market dominance?
I was with you right up until the mpeg plays poorly under windows bit. That must be your system setup. I use a windows pc to drive my front-screen projector with a 10' wide screen. I use it to play the mpeg video from DVDs and the mpeg video from recorded HDTV broadcasts. In either case, as long as I don't run some sort of cpu hog in the background, the video plays smooth as silk with a video card set to 1360x1024. So far I get better quality mpeg decode using windows based decoders (in particular the cinemaster codec is best, but I have tried the powerdvd and the intervideo windvd decoders and none have had jerky playback) than I do under linux. FWIW the difference isn't jerkiness but rather better color decoding, less blotchiness, etc.
If they need a tax write-off, you can bet that it will be donated before the expiration date. Not directly to the public domain, but rather to some non-profit "shell." I think this kind of tax-evasion was covered here recently, or maybe that was kuro5hin.
I have no response for that, except to say your math sux - hostile fire zone only gets him the bonus of not paying taxes, he gets paid his $4K/month pre-tax working somewhere safe either way.
Of course, being in a hostile fire zone (read: no taxes) helps some. :)
Until some of that hostile fire comes your way. No thanks, my life is worth more than ~$1K/month to me.
Sadly enough, USA have a big karmic responsibility to the world of being a role-model, and is failing horribly.
What are you talking about? The US isn't meant to be a role-model but instead a benevolent world hegemony. And, if you haven't noticed, everything is going according to plan!
Right, but what does it take to configure it to work with arbitrary panels?
I believe the interface is almost always an LVDS thing, very similar to that used in one of the greatest desktop LCDs of all time, the SGI 1600W. The problem is that each different panel has a different set of parameters that you need to set/use with an LVDS controller and
1) the parameteres ain't easy to find publically documented
2) LVDS controllers for regular PCs (like an Nvidia card with an LVDS interface) are few, far between and not very cheap
I would desperately like to be proven wrong on this - I'd especially like to find a dvi2lvds box for a reasonable price that I could use with any of the thousand or so bare laptop LCD screens that are offered on ebay every day...
I guess that inadequacy would be my need to reply to trolls bearing strawmen. Since you clearly belong to the love-it-or-leave-it crowd, all I can say is that you might want to check into a guy named Martin Niemöller.
Funny you should mention it, even in this day and age people still gotta take it to the scotus to get protection under the sanctity of the home clause. Those guys definitely got themselves a whole heapfull of hassle because somebody didn't like them.
Back in the bad old days (prior to Jan. 1, 1984), you could only get a phone from AT&T.
You mean, you could only legally get a phone from AT&T. Lots of people, my family included, had "bootleg" phones. I distinctly remember my parents telling me, as a little kid, to keep quiet about the 4 extensions my father had wired up, should anyone in any kind of uniform ask about them.
The point is not whether it would stand up in court, the point is that it is a form of legalized harrassment. If the cops, or anyone else in the law enforcement power structure, doesn't like you for any reason valid or not, they have just one more tool to fuck you over with impunity.
Sometimes just calling you a terrorist is more trouble than its worth, probably gets the FBI and the Dept of the Fatherland involved which might actually question a few too many baseless accusations. This law just keeps their options open.
VPNs are illegal in Michigan and NOW you see a need for the ACLU... you almost deserve having your rights taken away.
You damn pinko! Don't you know Civil Liberties don't matter until its my rights that have been taken away.
You'll be glad to know that there is a whole boatload of Fischerspooner stuff on kazaa so clearly somebody is ripping their CDs.
d =14
You might also be interested to know that EAC (Exact Audio Copy) a free as in beer program for windows is pretty good about handling these copy-stoppen schemes, especially if you have a "good" cd-rom drive.
Find it at: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
also see the forums at: http://www.digital-inn.de/forumdisplay.php?forumi
I sure hope that wayback machine is still doing its thing in another 4 years when that kid graduates from college. He's sure done a good job of demonstrating his ignorance. Just read his rant on why mozilla is just a way for AOL to steal from opensource programmers. His stuff is just too funny that there is no way it could be a joke.
I don't need evidence. Because power corrupts and these people have already shown themselves to be of very easily corrupted -- see my posting to which you've responded. Such is the nature of conflicts of interest that abuses will occur, not a matter of if, but only of how (forget when, its too late).
And if you think crony capitalism is about free markets and open competition, then I've got a bridge to sell you. Crony capitalism is one of the nastier manifestations of modern communism - corporate communism. It is practicaly the way the entire country of China is run and seems to have become remarkably entrenched in modern Russia (thanks in large part to the poorly administered economic initiatives during Clinton's reign).
The people who are hurt by crony capitalism wrt to Iraq are:
1) The Iraqis who don't get what they need but rather what is convenient for US corps.
2) The American taxpayers that will fund these oft quoted "lucrative reconstruction contracts" - if they are so lucrative you can bet that there would be competition for them, crony capitalism reduces, if not eliminates that competition thus keeping the lucre around to pay those 8 figure salaries.
So, we pay more, the iraqi people get less and the fatcats skim huge margins off the top. Hey, its a victimless crime, nobody gets hurt at all...
What about interest in Halliburton owned by family members, golfing buddies and other fellow back-scratchers?
What neither quote makes clear is that Cheney didn't think that maintaining stock options was a conflict of interest - he said words to this effect in public. It was only after a relatively large hoohaw in the press that he finally acquiesced. It is doubtful that he has changed his mind, divestiture was purely a face-saving political move. Given that, you can be pretty sure he (or rather his accountants) will have worked every angle and loophole to indirectly keep him "on the payroll" with Haliburton and who knows how many other companies.
For another example of this kind of mindset, look at Richard Perle who, after a couple of weeks of denial-tactics finally became too much of a liability, just like the stock options, to keep around. This guy, former Bush Sr top-dog and until today a Bush Jr top-dog too, was given $700K to convince the DoD that it would be ok for Global Crossing to self off to the Chinese. Why? Because his official top-dog title was "Chairman of the Defense Policy Board," an advisory panel to the Pentagon - making close to, if not the civilian with the most influence over the DoD. Not to mention the even larger issue of his ties to arab-owned corporations. Conflict of interest? Not in any dictionary of his.
This crony capitalism mindset is endemic in the current administration and as far as I am concerned is 100x more of a moral defect than boffing an intern or two, or even ten. Because instead of just screwing a few people, it screws most of the country for the benefit of just a few people. These guys (and democrats too, but they at least know enough to be embarrassed about it) have taken the term, "spoils system" to a whole new level.
Now when you get pulled over in LA, you can use your war-driving setup to check the police records on the cops before they get of their car. You will be able to greet them by name and know if they are the type to give you the rodney king treatment for doing so.
LOL! There is no such act. "Fair Use" comes from common law, not an act of congress - those are reserved for eating away at fair use.
What happens to an RFID tag if you put it in a microwave on high power for 30 seconds? Should we make it a regular practice to nuke any new piece of clothing we buy nowadays? Just watch out for zippers...
(kind of ontopic)
In addition to the groups organized to freely redistribute systems built around the Networking Release 2 tape, a company, Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI), was formed to develop and distribute a commercially supported version of the code. (More information about BSDI can be found at http://www.bsdi.com.) Like the other groups, they started by adding the six missing files that Bill Jolitz had written for his 386/BSD release. BSDI began selling their system including both source and binaries in January 1992 for $995. They began running advertisements touting their 99% discount over the price charged for System V source plus binary systems. Interested readers were told to call 1-800-ITS-Unix.
Shortly after BSDI began their sales campaign, they received a letter from Unix System Laboratories (USL) (a mostly-owned subsidiary of AT&T spun off to develop and sell Unix). The letter demanded that they stop promoting their product as Unix and in particular that they stop using the deceptive phone number. Although the phone number was promptly dropped and the advertisements changed to explain that the product was not Unix, USL was still unhappy and filed suit to enjoin BSDI from selling their product. The suit alleged that the BSDI product contained proprietary USL code and trade secrets. USL sought to get an injunction to halt BSDI's sales until the lawsuit was resolved, claiming that they would suffer irreparable harm from the loss of their trade secrets if the BSDI distributions continued.
At the preliminary hearing for the injunction, BSDI contended that they were simply using the sources being freely distributed by the University of California plus six additional files. They were willing to discuss the content of any of the six added files, but did not believe that they should be held responsible for the files being distributed by the University of California. The judge agreed with BSDI's argument and told USL that they would have to restate their complaint based solely on the six files or he would dismiss it. Recognizing that they would have a hard time making a case from just the six files, USL decided to refile the suit against both BSDI and the University of California. As before, USL requested an injunction on the shipping of Networking Release 2 from the University and on the BSDI products.
With the impending injunction hearing just a few short weeks away, preparation began in earnest. All the members of the CSRG were deposed as were nearly everyone employed at BSDI. Briefs, counter-briefs, and counter-counter-briefs flew back and forth between the lawyers. Keith Bostic and I personally had to write several hundred pages of material that found its way into various briefs.
In December 1992, Dickinson R. Debevoise, a United States District Judge in New Jersey, heard the arguments for the injunction. Although judges usually rule on injunction requests immediately, he decided to take it under advisement. On a Friday about six weeks later, he issued a forty-page opinion in which he denied the injunction and threw out all but two of the complaints. The remaining two complaints were narrowed to recent copyrights and the possibility of the loss of trade secrets. He also suggested that the matter should be heard in a state court system before being heard in the federal court system.
The University of California took the hint and rushed into California state court the following Monday morning with a counter-suit against USL. By filing first in California, the University had established the locale of any further state court action. Constitutional law requires all state filing to be done in a single state to prevent a litigant with deep pockets from bleeding an opponent dry by filing fifty cases against them in every state. The result was that if USL wanted to take any action against the University in state courts, they would be forced to do so in California rather than in their home state of New Jersey.
The University's suit claimed that USL had failed in their obligation to provide due credit to the University for the use of BSD code in System V as required by the license that they had signed with the University. If the claim were found to be valid, the University asked that USL be forced to reprint all their documentation with the appropriate due credit added, to notify all their licensees of their oversight, and to run full-page advertisements in major publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine notifying the business world of their inadvertent oversight.
Soon after the filing in state court, USL was bought from AT&T by Novell. The CEO of Novell, Ray Noorda, stated publicly that he would rather compete in the marketplace than in court. By the summer of 1993, settlement talks had started. Unfortunately, the two sides had dug in so deep that the talks proceed slowly. With some further prodding by Ray Noorda on the USL side, many of the sticking points were removed and a settlement was finally reached in January 1994. The result was that three files were removed from the 18,000 that made up Networking Release 2, and a number of minor changes were made to other files. In addition, the University agreed to add USL copyrights to about 70 files, although those files continued to be freely redistributed. 4.4BSD
The newly blessed release was called 4.4BSD-Lite and was released in June 1994 under terms identical to those used for the Networking releases. Specifically, the terms allow free redistribution in source and binary form subject only to the constraint that the University copyrights remain intact and that the University receive credit when others use the code. Simultaneously, the complete system was released as 4.4BSD-Encumbered, which still required recipients to have a USL source license.
The lawsuit settlement also stipulated that USL would not sue any organization using 4.4BSD-Lite as the base for their system. So, all the BSD groups that were doing releases at that time, BSDI, NetBSD, and FreeBSD, had to restart their code base with the 4.4BSD-Lite sources into which they then merged their enhancements and improvements. While this reintegration caused a short-term delay in the development of the various BSD systems, it was a blessing in disguise since it forced all the divergent groups to resynchronize with the three years of development that had occurred at the CSRG since the release of Networking Release 2.
You missed out, the 2nd season, when they went to hour-long shows, rocked. It was developing a decent on-going storyline and good character development as cleopatra slowly became competent - and had tons of potential over all.
Not to mention that the hot black chick is seriously talented (sorry terrible with names) - she went on to co-star on Firefly, just did an episode of "The Agency" and married Laurence Fishburne (not that that reflects on her acting ability, but he's a smart guy so it stands to reason he'd marry a smart girl).
The other two girls have done ok, the muscular blonde starred on that x-men knock-off where she got to look very feline and sexy (never mind that show had the same plot each episode, not her fault). The stripper has had a couple of "guest star" roles on various shows since then as well - ironic since as cleopatra, the show was named for her character.
As for baywatch, I never noticed any storylines or acting, I was just let myself be hypnotized by the boobs swinging back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...
Duh! If it compiles it must be fine! What kind of newbie developer are you?