Wow, they do a great job of pulling the reader in. This is a masterpiece.
The first half of this article is spent really discussing some good points
about the technology movement, lending credibility to the whole article.
They do a great job of detailing points and backing up their statements in
the first half as well.
I didn't have a huge problems with the first half, other than a few veiled
hints at where the article was going. I did get a chuckle when I read the
paragraph talking about.net.
Now, they start moving on to the negative points of OSS. Not that I don't
think OSS has it's problems. In some of these places I think microsoft
may have some points - but they often exaggerate them or extend them to
places where I don't think they are applicable. Some things they say:
Unhealthy forking that leads to incompatability. At first, I thought
"This is stupid, it doesn't happen". But in one way it does. Look
at the different releases of redhat. A program compiled for RH 7.1 most
likely won't work with redhat 6.2. Now, I don't call this "forking" as
much as I would call it "Upgrading". Microsoft has exactly the same
problems with their operating system upgrades as well though. The
difference is, when you upgrade an operating system or one software
component, often you have to upgrade others. With OSS it's easy, get the
source and recompile. With MS it costs money.
His point on the GPL and including other peoples code is ridiculous.
I'm glad he gets his information on licensing of the GPL technically
correct, but what he is complaining about is just silly.
In the proprietary world you can't include someone elses proprietary code
in your program and release it, right? So why would he even care that he
can't take GPL code and include it in his proprietary code? Whats the
point here? If you want your code to be proprietary, just write it all
yourself. To those who write and release proprietary code, GPL code is
nothing more than "someone elses proprietary code". Now him saying "The
viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of
any organization making use of it" is just plain FUD. Sure, if you take
the damn code and use it in your code, it affects you. If you just use
GPL software as 'end-user' software, you have no problems.
They talk about open source business model being support or hardware
oriented. They claim that it will fail due to the falure of similar
attempts earlier by other companies that are support or hardware specific.
For sure he can't be talking abut SUN (who still makes a great amount of
money by selling hardware and developing enterprise quality operating
systems). This model does work. But the good thing about OSS is that it
is not tied to a company. It existed before the companies sprung up to
support it and it will exist even if some or many of the companies die.
It will always provide a valuable product to the community and end-users
who rely on the product. When companies like microsoft die, you are
stuck with a pile of binary garbage that will never be maintained,
upgraded or fixed.
Ok, their real point here is that mass-marketed products tend to not
do so well with either of these models. I think Microsoft may be
partially right here. For example, selling PC games (not online type
games) will never work in a "support" model, nor would it work in a
"hardware business model" either. The only way to really support cool
single-user games that require lots of R&D, quick development times to be
competative, etc is to support them by paying customers. This is why I
think the number and types of free games doesn't even come close to the
numbers and quality of commercial games.
Free software is better suited for cool apps that have longer development
cycles, like a word processor, or operating system. Things that aren't
"completely redone" every few months like computer games are. Ok, maybe
even computer games will start slowing down once we achieve near-realistic
graphics and people can focus primarily on content. But for some reason
or another, I think the game industry still has quite a bit of evolution
to go through though.
Microsoft's primary business model is *not* games though. It is Operating
Systems and Office Applications. Given time, and number of upgrades, I
believe OSS products WILL catch microsoft products. Right now
microsoft does have the lead in end-user software such as
word-processors. Already, we notice that micorsoft is digging and
clawing for new ideas to "differentiate" or give a "competative
advantage" to their products over others. The failed "Paperclip" is one
example of an attempt to differentiate office from other products.
The question is, how long can microsoft continue to justify paying more
and more money to upgrade their apps? Microsoft themselves know this is a
dead-end. This is why they created ".NET"! There's no need to force
people to upgrade if they pay monthly fees. If they can change the
thought process of the users that "Users don't own software" "Users buy a
service", their business will live into the future.
The problem with payphones is their price. It's
just way too damn expensive to use them. The
competition in the marketplace for long distance
has not had an impact on the payphone market.
If the payphones provided more competative
pricing, I would actually use them.
But $2.00/minute for long-distance is just
ridiculous. I'm not on a stinking air-plane!
Now on the other hand, if payphones kept their
same pricing for local calls, but were like 30c
a minute for long distance calls, that would be
a different story.
I have done extensive programming with the SDL
library. It is an excellent (and fast) choice for
programming 2D graphics under linux (I haven't
used it for 3D graphics yet, I am using PLIB for
3D graphics now).
The limiting factors of SDL performance are not
really SDL itself, because it is a very light
API, but rather the limitations of X itself.
My experience with SDL is that it provides at most
a 2% performance degredation.
Furthermore, SDL is a wonderful cross-platform
library that I have used extensively under both
Windows and Linux. They also provide a cross
compiler that lets you compile a windows
executable under linux!
If you are considering SDL for 2D programming,
I can say it is probably the best out there for
speed, portability and ease of use.
If you want to do 3D programming, you can either
use SDL or some of the others out there, like
plib.
-- Twivel
It doesn't have to be an april fools joke
on
TCP/IP Over HTTP
·
· Score: 3
While this RFC may indeed have been designed as an
april fools joke, there is indeed a need for such
a thing.
I have seen firewalls that are overly strict, but
they allow HTTP or HTTPS through them. If you
have a host on the outside and a client on the
inside, you can setup a PPP connection using
stunnel between the two machines. Then you can
do anything you like (including display a browser
from the outside host back, run icq, etc. The
cool thing is, if you use stunnel you can encapsulate it over https. This gives you the
ability to have a secure, non-monitored, encryted
connection to the outside host.
Goto www.stunnel.org and you'll actually find examples of tunneling ppp (and thus tcp/ip) over HTTPS.
This is very similar to the complains I've heard
from other windows-favorible journalists. I'm
sure you've also heard about the common complaint
that Linux needs a consistent desktop and all
vendors should use that one.
Linux is not about consistency, linux is about
choices and customization. About picking your
favorite distribution, your favorite window
manager, your favorite theme within that window
manager.
If the skeptics are right - that linux must be
a single distribution with a single interface to
become the operating system of the "masses", then
I hope it never happens.
Honestly, I like linux for what it is - diversity,
choices and customization. After all, isn't that
why we have the source code in the first place? So
if we, as users, think an application or feature
could be made to better fit us - then we can make
that change?
If it takes sacrificing diversity to appease the
masses, I don't want the masses. This is just my
honest opinion. Even if the masses don't adopt
linux, it will still be a success - and I will
still use it.
-- Twivel
Ok, now I'll definitely give it to Debian for introducing such an awesome auto-install tool for debian packages, but to compare apt-get to 'rpm' is like comparing apples to oranges.
Apt-get is a utility used for installing and updating.deb packages. It currently has it's largest amount of support for the debian package management system, but there are also beta versions for.rpm and other package managers as well.
While apt-get is definitely a bonus for the debian distribution, because it makes things tremendously easier, it should be considered an application. I think it would be *great* if all linux distributions used apt. It is not necessarily a bad thing for apt to use different package managers underneath though!
-- Twivel
The first thing they should tell the dolphins...
on
Uplifting Dolphins
·
· Score: 1
There is nothing wrong with them taking it and using it in a closed-source situation, since they did indeed fund it's development. I suggest you create a sourceforge project for it - so free developement can continue even after they start using it commercially. What this does is creates a 'fork' between their commercial and the GPL version.
Now, the above may not work if the development has been assisted by outside parties. See the thing is, if someone else has contributed to a GPL project, they own the rights to their contributions. So if the Gov't wants to take it from GPL to a proprietary license, they will have to remove any other contributions. Or else they will need to get the other contributors to sign over their rights to the code they wrote.
I tell you what, I like google quite a bit. I think they provide an awesome search engine and I especially enjoy their platform-specific search options.
Even though I really believe they should have waited until their new solution was complete before pulling the deja site down to avoid interruption of service, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt in believing they are going to do the "right thing".
Hey, Mr. Artist, I see you're taking a break. It must be to go get me that Dr. Pepper I'm thirsty for. Hurry up, so you can get back to work again.
-- Twivel
I think technology is very important to games, but I agree that there is a trend towards selling games by looks. I've purchased too many games that looked good on the wrapper - and they put lots of work into graphics. But had very poor game play.
-- Twivel
Prior art should apply to trademarks as well as they do to patents. It's sad to see the exclusive about trademarks and commercial use. Isn't it the responsibility of the trademark holder to search out confusing names like this during the process of getting a trademark?
In any event, the silly rule about using it for commercial purposes should not apply to protecting a name.
-- Twivel
At least they aren't arresting people for distributing linux source code and "destroying intellectual property" - like Microsoft would like to have done here.
-- Twivel Microsoft Humor
It doesn't threaten the american way. After all, americans are becoming more and more service oriented each year. With manufacturing plants moving to other countries like Mexico.
It threatens a business model, nothing more. It threatens the idea that you create software with the intent of keeping it secret and selling executables.
Please don't forget our free software fundamentals. Free software is not about price. In fact, there are costs to free software. Even the GNU philosophy describes what the "Free" in free software really means. It's freedom not price that matters.
The cost of free software is the work it takes to maintain, modify improve and support it. Free software relies on the community to support it and contribute back to it. This is why it is great to see big corporations like IBM paying money to develop and improve it. So everyone who reads this, go out and pick a project you like. Then start learning how to help it. Whether that be develop documentation or write code, it's your choice.
Every software patent that is overturned is a positive step in the right direction. It's sad to say that it'll take lots of these cases to get enough attention for our patent system to be reviewed.
The sad part of the story is this: everyone I talk to about amazon and software patents has no idea of the problem. It seems like over half of even the technical people are not aware of the problem. How do we increase publicity on the problems with the software patents?
For our voice to be heard, we need to make sure everyone understands the problems. For our government to act against the wishes of big companies (those who like patents), it takes lots of public outcry. It's just sad to say, but money has way too much influence on politics.
People need to understand that the internet exists due to the open standards found on the internet. They need to realize that trivial patents on software can be pushed through the system by merely providing a complex sounding description of their "invention".
The patent system was designed to increase innovation for inventions. Manufacturing inventions demand patents because it requires lots of funding to setup a factory to build an invention. But software (and especially the internet) is quite a different story.
Everyone, do your best to explain the situation. Do your best to make sure voters understand this topic. Put pressure on the legislature to change these laws.
-- Twivel
The trademark process takes a while - and he even claims that the trademark for Secure Shell is still pending. It could be that he just recently received his trademark registration and how has the legal grounds to enforce it. THat means he didn't 'wait a whole year' to enforce it - it just took that long to get the process completed.
-- Twivel
The open source community needs to do their best to work together and create standards such as this. It is only because of standards that our community can actually survive. The internet itself exists due to the widespread use of open standards.
I'd love to see this project become so popular that microsoft themselves are forced to adopt the standards for interoperability. Hrmm.. that'll be the day I guess, even when customers request their products on other platforms - they still refuse to do so.
-- Twivel
I'm sure it's a matter of preference. I prefer
the cd-rw one because the media is useful on anything that supports cd-rw. For example, my PC, my apex dvd player - and my portable mp3 player - can all play music off of the exact same media.
Being lighter, they are a bit more conveniant too - and they are even expandable. If you buy a HDD based player,
youre either going to hack it and void the warranty to make it expandable, or you need to buy
a new one to hold more data. (for example, when your collection exceeds the size of the device you bought).
You just can't beat the price per megabyte of the cd-rw players in expandability. The player costs about $100, plus the media at 30 cents a disc. This equals 103.00 for 6 gigs worth of storage. And whats the best price of the 6 gb nomad?
-- Twivel
The nomad is nice, but a tad expensive. You can get a very nice cdrw-mp3 player for 100-200 bucks. The cool thing is, one cd can hold over 15 hours
worth of music. CD media is dirt cheap too, at around 30 cents a disc if you buy in bulk. So you get unlimited capacity, you don't have to connect the player to a computer to change media (if you have it all on cd-rw you just put in a new cd with 15 hours worth of data before you leave each day). It skip-resistant and probably even weighs less than the nomad too.
-- Twivel
Software patents are the enemy, folks...
on
Suing Over... Fans?
·
· Score: 2
Ok guys, other than bad business practices, like rambus being on a standards committee and not revealing their patents, hardware patents aren't the problem.
Hardware patents indeed provide a meaningful purpose still - and they promote innovation. They
provide investors with a return on their money
for developing new hardware and financing the setup of a manufacturing plant.
Software patents are our enemy. If we want people to listen to us, we have to at least be consistent.
--
Twivel
The movie, not a disaster. This is pretty exciting news. The scientific possibilities are endless. Too bad it takes too long to make a round trip, you can forget about mining asteroids as some space novels talk about.
--
Twivel
I find this out of line as well, but it is a common practice. Especially with how important stock prices are to a company.
One person had posted bad information on the same stock messages board. The CEO found this posting and had came down to the IT department to try and find out if there was any way to track them down. I believe they planned on sending the lawyers after him for whatever they could drum up, including libel.
While not exactly the same as what you mention here, I think this is at least related:
Anonymous posting on the internet isn't really anonymous - and it can come back to bite you. For example, linuxtoday recently posted an article about MS Astro-Turfing Linux Today. They actually revealed this persons IP address to the entire community because it was a Microsoft address.
It sure was newsworthy to know who posted that article, but I tell you what - it's a serious violation of the trust of people who post anonymously on Linux Today. Is it a common practice for them to divulge this information? Not to mention it was against Linux Todays own policies (read their privacy policy). It looks like they have since pulled that article though.
What if the CEO from a company who had been slandered had asked yahoo's message board service for the IP address of the person who posted it? What if the message board gave it out?
I find it bad practice to use anonymous postings against the person posting in any situation. Whether for a news story in Linux Today's case, or to put pressure on someone to keep them from harming their stock values for voicing an opinion.
-- Twivel
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't have a huge problems with the first half, other than a few veiled hints at where the article was going. I did get a chuckle when I read the paragraph talking about .net.
Now, they start moving on to the negative points of OSS. Not that I don't think OSS has it's problems. In some of these places I think microsoft may have some points - but they often exaggerate them or extend them to places where I don't think they are applicable. Some things they say:
Unhealthy forking that leads to incompatability. At first, I thought "This is stupid, it doesn't happen". But in one way it does. Look at the different releases of redhat. A program compiled for RH 7.1 most likely won't work with redhat 6.2. Now, I don't call this "forking" as much as I would call it "Upgrading". Microsoft has exactly the same problems with their operating system upgrades as well though. The difference is, when you upgrade an operating system or one software component, often you have to upgrade others. With OSS it's easy, get the source and recompile. With MS it costs money. His point on the GPL and including other peoples code is ridiculous. I'm glad he gets his information on licensing of the GPL technically correct, but what he is complaining about is just silly. In the proprietary world you can't include someone elses proprietary code in your program and release it, right? So why would he even care that he can't take GPL code and include it in his proprietary code? Whats the point here? If you want your code to be proprietary, just write it all yourself. To those who write and release proprietary code, GPL code is nothing more than "someone elses proprietary code". Now him saying "The viral aspect of the GPL poses a threat to the intellectual property of any organization making use of it" is just plain FUD. Sure, if you take the damn code and use it in your code, it affects you. If you just use GPL software as 'end-user' software, you have no problems.
They talk about open source business model being support or hardware oriented. They claim that it will fail due to the falure of similar attempts earlier by other companies that are support or hardware specific. For sure he can't be talking abut SUN (who still makes a great amount of money by selling hardware and developing enterprise quality operating systems). This model does work. But the good thing about OSS is that it is not tied to a company. It existed before the companies sprung up to support it and it will exist even if some or many of the companies die. It will always provide a valuable product to the community and end-users who rely on the product. When companies like microsoft die, you are stuck with a pile of binary garbage that will never be maintained, upgraded or fixed.
Ok, their real point here is that mass-marketed products tend to not do so well with either of these models. I think Microsoft may be partially right here. For example, selling PC games (not online type games) will never work in a "support" model, nor would it work in a "hardware business model" either. The only way to really support cool single-user games that require lots of R&D, quick development times to be competative, etc is to support them by paying customers. This is why I think the number and types of free games doesn't even come close to the numbers and quality of commercial games.
Free software is better suited for cool apps that have longer development cycles, like a word processor, or operating system. Things that aren't "completely redone" every few months like computer games are. Ok, maybe even computer games will start slowing down once we achieve near-realistic graphics and people can focus primarily on content. But for some reason or another, I think the game industry still has quite a bit of evolution to go through though.
Microsoft's primary business model is *not* games though. It is Operating Systems and Office Applications. Given time, and number of upgrades, I believe OSS products WILL catch microsoft products. Right now microsoft does have the lead in end-user software such as word-processors. Already, we notice that micorsoft is digging and clawing for new ideas to "differentiate" or give a "competative advantage" to their products over others. The failed "Paperclip" is one example of an attempt to differentiate office from other products. The question is, how long can microsoft continue to justify paying more and more money to upgrade their apps? Microsoft themselves know this is a dead-end. This is why they created ".NET"! There's no need to force people to upgrade if they pay monthly fees. If they can change the thought process of the users that "Users don't own software" "Users buy a service", their business will live into the future.
--
Twivel
The problem with payphones is their price. It's
just way too damn expensive to use them. The
competition in the marketplace for long distance
has not had an impact on the payphone market.
If the payphones provided more competative
pricing, I would actually use them.
But $2.00/minute for long-distance is just
ridiculous. I'm not on a stinking air-plane!
Now on the other hand, if payphones kept their
same pricing for local calls, but were like 30c
a minute for long distance calls, that would be
a different story.
--
Twivel
The limiting factors of SDL performance are not really SDL itself, because it is a very light API, but rather the limitations of X itself. My experience with SDL is that it provides at most a 2% performance degredation.
Furthermore, SDL is a wonderful cross-platform library that I have used extensively under both Windows and Linux. They also provide a cross compiler that lets you compile a windows executable under linux!
If you are considering SDL for 2D programming, I can say it is probably the best out there for speed, portability and ease of use. If you want to do 3D programming, you can either use SDL or some of the others out there, like plib.
--
Twivel
I have seen firewalls that are overly strict, but they allow HTTP or HTTPS through them. If you have a host on the outside and a client on the inside, you can setup a PPP connection using stunnel between the two machines. Then you can do anything you like (including display a browser from the outside host back, run icq, etc. The cool thing is, if you use stunnel you can encapsulate it over https. This gives you the ability to have a secure, non-monitored, encryted connection to the outside host.
Goto www.stunnel.org and you'll actually find examples of tunneling ppp (and thus tcp/ip) over HTTPS.
--
Twivel
Linux is not about consistency, linux is about choices and customization. About picking your favorite distribution, your favorite window manager, your favorite theme within that window manager.
If the skeptics are right - that linux must be a single distribution with a single interface to become the operating system of the "masses", then I hope it never happens.
Honestly, I like linux for what it is - diversity, choices and customization. After all, isn't that why we have the source code in the first place? So if we, as users, think an application or feature could be made to better fit us - then we can make that change?
If it takes sacrificing diversity to appease the masses, I don't want the masses. This is just my honest opinion. Even if the masses don't adopt linux, it will still be a success - and I will still use it.
--
Twivel
Apt-get is a utility used for installing and updating .deb packages. It currently has it's largest amount of support for the debian package management system, but there are also beta versions for .rpm and other package managers as well.
While apt-get is definitely a bonus for the debian distribution, because it makes things tremendously easier, it should be considered an application. I think it would be *great* if all linux distributions used apt. It is not necessarily a bad thing for apt to use different package managers underneath though!
--
Twivel
All your bases are belong to us!
Now, the above may not work if the development has been assisted by outside parties. See the thing is, if someone else has contributed to a GPL project, they own the rights to their contributions. So if the Gov't wants to take it from GPL to a proprietary license, they will have to remove any other contributions. Or else they will need to get the other contributors to sign over their rights to the code they wrote.
--
Twivel
Even though I really believe they should have waited until their new solution was complete before pulling the deja site down to avoid interruption of service, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt in believing they are going to do the "right thing".
--
Twivel
Hey, Mr. Artist, I see you're taking a break. It must be to go get me that Dr. Pepper I'm thirsty for. Hurry up, so you can get back to work again.
--
Twivel
I think technology is very important to games, but I agree that there is a trend towards selling games by looks. I've purchased too many games that looked good on the wrapper - and they put lots of work into graphics. But had very poor game play.
--
Twivel
Please, no. Superman would be driven from the earth. Remember his super-sensitive hearing?
--
Twivel
In any event, the silly rule about using it for commercial purposes should not apply to protecting a name.
--
Twivel
At least they aren't arresting people for distributing linux source code and "destroying intellectual property" - like Microsoft would like to have done here.
--
Twivel
Microsoft Humor
It threatens a business model, nothing more. It threatens the idea that you create software with the intent of keeping it secret and selling executables.
Please don't forget our free software fundamentals. Free software is not about price. In fact, there are costs to free software. Even the GNU philosophy describes what the "Free" in free software really means. It's freedom not price that matters.
The cost of free software is the work it takes to maintain, modify improve and support it. Free software relies on the community to support it and contribute back to it. This is why it is great to see big corporations like IBM paying money to develop and improve it. So everyone who reads this, go out and pick a project you like. Then start learning how to help it. Whether that be develop documentation or write code, it's your choice.
--
Twivel
The sad part of the story is this: everyone I talk to about amazon and software patents has no idea of the problem. It seems like over half of even the technical people are not aware of the problem. How do we increase publicity on the problems with the software patents?
For our voice to be heard, we need to make sure everyone understands the problems. For our government to act against the wishes of big companies (those who like patents), it takes lots of public outcry. It's just sad to say, but money has way too much influence on politics.
People need to understand that the internet exists due to the open standards found on the internet. They need to realize that trivial patents on software can be pushed through the system by merely providing a complex sounding description of their "invention".
The patent system was designed to increase innovation for inventions. Manufacturing inventions demand patents because it requires lots of funding to setup a factory to build an invention. But software (and especially the internet) is quite a different story.
Everyone, do your best to explain the situation. Do your best to make sure voters understand this topic. Put pressure on the legislature to change these laws.
--
Twivel
Advertise it as opensecsh or Sec Shell. (instead of secure shell).
--
Twivel
The trademark process takes a while - and he even claims that the trademark for Secure Shell is still pending. It could be that he just recently received his trademark registration and how has the legal grounds to enforce it. THat means he didn't 'wait a whole year' to enforce it - it just took that long to get the process completed.
--
Twivel
I'd love to see this project become so popular that microsoft themselves are forced to adopt the standards for interoperability. Hrmm.. that'll be the day I guess, even when customers request their products on other platforms - they still refuse to do so.
--
Twivel
Being lighter, they are a bit more conveniant too - and they are even expandable. If you buy a HDD based player, youre either going to hack it and void the warranty to make it expandable, or you need to buy a new one to hold more data. (for example, when your collection exceeds the size of the device you bought).
You just can't beat the price per megabyte of the cd-rw players in expandability. The player costs about $100, plus the media at 30 cents a disc. This equals 103.00 for 6 gigs worth of storage. And whats the best price of the 6 gb nomad?
--
Twivel
The nomad is nice, but a tad expensive. You can get a very nice cdrw-mp3 player for 100-200 bucks. The cool thing is, one cd can hold over 15 hours worth of music. CD media is dirt cheap too, at around 30 cents a disc if you buy in bulk. So you get unlimited capacity, you don't have to connect the player to a computer to change media (if you have it all on cd-rw you just put in a new cd with 15 hours worth of data before you leave each day). It skip-resistant and probably even weighs less than the nomad too.
--
Twivel
Hardware patents indeed provide a meaningful purpose still - and they promote innovation. They provide investors with a return on their money for developing new hardware and financing the setup of a manufacturing plant.
Software patents are our enemy. If we want people to listen to us, we have to at least be consistent. --
Twivel
The movie, not a disaster. This is pretty exciting news. The scientific possibilities are endless. Too bad it takes too long to make a round trip, you can forget about mining asteroids as some space novels talk about.
--
Twivel
Or, even better - a great place to stuff the FBI agents who are investigating the bonzaikitten website.
--
Twivel
One person had posted bad information on the same stock messages board. The CEO found this posting and had came down to the IT department to try and find out if there was any way to track them down. I believe they planned on sending the lawyers after him for whatever they could drum up, including libel.
While not exactly the same as what you mention here, I think this is at least related: Anonymous posting on the internet isn't really anonymous - and it can come back to bite you. For example, linuxtoday recently posted an article about MS Astro-Turfing Linux Today. They actually revealed this persons IP address to the entire community because it was a Microsoft address. It sure was newsworthy to know who posted that article, but I tell you what - it's a serious violation of the trust of people who post anonymously on Linux Today. Is it a common practice for them to divulge this information? Not to mention it was against Linux Todays own policies (read their privacy policy). It looks like they have since pulled that article though.
What if the CEO from a company who had been slandered had asked yahoo's message board service for the IP address of the person who posted it? What if the message board gave it out?
I find it bad practice to use anonymous postings against the person posting in any situation. Whether for a news story in Linux Today's case, or to put pressure on someone to keep them from harming their stock values for voicing an opinion. --
Twivel