The article didn't mention this, but the method the Russians would use actually involves duct-taping the nuke to the seabed so it doesn't move before exploding. So don't worry, no matter what solution ends up being used, there will be duct tape involved.
Pet peeve: Written agreements are verbal, too. Unwritten agreements can be either oral (what the parent meant to refer to) or tacit. Only tacit agreements are nonverbal.
Oral agreements are very much enforceable as a general rule in common law countries, such as England, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The question is whether a specific oral agreement is enforceable, and that depends on a variety of factors in all those places. What makes oral agreements worth less (note the space) than written agreements is not that they are oral but rather the difficulty of proving exactly which words are part of the agreement.
For that reason, when it comes to copyright to work that you are doing and started before you were hired, you really do want a written contract that spells out exactly who owns the copyright to which things. Of course, the submitter didn't mention how much work he had actually done before he was hired to finish it, and that's going to be a major concern. If you made a couple of UML diagrams and created a MySQL database with a few tables but didn't write any application logic, it's going to be hard to claim copyright to the code you wrote for the project. If it was all done other than a user-friendly interface and they hired you to make the UI, then it's a different situation altogether.
The other 95% was created about 80% by and for people who want Emacs but are afraid of it and 20% (we're talking portions of the 95%, not of the whole, here:P) for people who resist using a WYSIWYG word processor for some reason. I use vim for most of my text editing and all of my C-family programming other than when I use Xcode. I use Word or Google Docs for my word processing (except at work, where we use WordPerfect and curse a lot) and Emacs for a few things, including reading Usenet and coding in Lisp. Because I use other, appropriate tools for such tasks, I too only use about 5-10% of vim and don't have any problem with learning curves.
Why the hell is this moderated Troll? It's a valid question and based in reality, or at least in wikiality. Atmospheric water vapor, both in clouds and otherwise, plays a major role in determining Earth's climate.
So it's kind of like Lisp macros, except that they are expanded in the source to make maintenance both more difficult and less efficient than just starting over from scratch.
I didn't see the motion that you refer to. I only saw a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, which I did admit to not having taken the time to read (nor do I intend to) other than the headings. I did allow for their arguments bordering on the frivolous if that's the case, but if all you say is completely accurate then it's possible that they border frivolity from the wrong side.
I always prefer car analogies, but on this story in particular I was afraid of infringing on CarAnalogyGuy's patent, trademark, copyright, and/or sister.
What I meant is that there was not the same type of competition as you see now. Even now, after things have stabilized, there are DVD+R and DVD-R, and probably a few others that I have to sort through when I (rarely) buy blank DVDs. It seemed, although I was young at the time, that floppy disks were much quicker to standardize on one format. There were not 30 standards for 1.4-meg-class 3-1/2" drives, just the "IBM"/"PC" 1.44MB and the Apple 1.4MB. I don't recall there being a ton of competition in the 2.88MB size, either.
Actually, it's a completely valid solution to the problem, if you think about it. Install the 5-1/4" drive on the motherboard's floppy controller and ditch the internal 3-1/2" drive in favor of a USB 3-1/2" sitting on top of the case.
It had the twist, I installed it correctly, and I went to the BIOS settings, which only had options to enable one floppy drive. I don't know if it's a drive controller or BIOS/firmware thing but this motherboard, manufactured in 2003 IIRC, was not at all fond of having two floppy drives at the same time.
I stand corrected and educated. But I will stand by the point that the particular 5-1/4" diskettes that were a "precursor" to the 3-1/2" diskette (which were, as far as I can recall, originally 720KB and not 1440KB at the time that they could be called a successor to 5-1/4") held substantially more than 96KB, specifically either 360KB or 720KB.
Side note: If today's mentality had ruled the 80's, there would have been a different type of diskette drive for every one of those formats as floppies got larger. No way would a 1.44MB drive have been able to read a 720KB diskette. And if it could, it certainly wouldn't be able to write to it.
I tried to use a dual-drive cable and it only recognized one drive. And I did try every possible orientation of the cable on all connections, just in case I had it wrong.
I'd suggest that someone file a class action lawsuit against SCO to refund those license fees. However, one of the requirements in order to file a class action is that the class be so numerous that individual lawsuits would be impractical. The three of you who gave SCO your money aren't quite enough.;)
No sane lawyer would take the SCO case on a contingency fee (where the lawyer takes a portion of any future recovery in the case and gets paid nothing for his time if he loses it), but that doesn't rule out the possibility here. I'd say, though, that there is less than a 0.1% chance that this is being handled on a contingency.
Most of what's going on here is just part of the same lawsuit that we've heard about for years. News snippets tend to portray legal cases as if they are handled as on TV shows, where the client walks in the door with a problem on Monday and closing arguments at the trial are Thursday, with a big check to cover the verdict being spent on scotch and cigars by noon on Friday. For instance, the McDonald's coffee case was in the news just to report the jury verdict. The appeals, settlement, and years of prelude were not given nearly the same coverage.
In this case, we get snippets of things that people submit and the editors see fit to post on the Slashdot front page. But it's all part of a process. You see the same thing with space shuttle missions. They report blast-off, a major Hubble repair, and landing. But during all of that time, there are a million switches to flip and buttons to push. The astronauts don't just sit there for two weeks twiddling their thumbs. It's the same way in a lawsuit of any complexity, but especially something this big.
What this article is about is SCO's proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is filed late in the litigation process, generally after trial, and in the space shuttle analogy is the request for landing clearance. Novell files one, too, and then the judge decides which facts and legal conclusions are warranted on the jury verdict (which is decisive as to factual issues unless there is basically no evidence at all to support it) and the governing law (statutes, case precedents, etc.) Even if the shuttle mission were completely pointless, once you blast off you have to see it through to the end. Any argument that a lawyer makes with a straight face in this post-verdict filing is entitled to be reviewed by the judge and ruled on.
Ineffective assistance of counsel is basically never grounds for an appeal in a civil case, as this is. That one is pretty much reserved for criminal convictions, and even then if you choose your own lawyer it's a tough thing to get a court to agree with. But you would definitely have grounds for a legal malpractice claim if a lawyer intentionally lost your case.
Turning to the case actually going on here, what SCO filed is a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is a document familiar to any civil litigator, as it's what you want the judge to sign off on either after a bench trial or after a jury returns its verdict in a complicated matter such as this one. It's not more litigation or anything, it's just SCO's post-verdict filing for the court to either approve or modify. Granted, their arguments in it may border on frivolous (I haven't read it other than the table of contents, but it looks mostly legit from that), but their lawyers are ethically required to make the best arguments they can for their client and that's what they're doing.
What it sounds like is going on here is that the jury concluded that Novell owns the Unix copyright, so the lawyers looked for a reason why SCO should get it and came up with only one answer: That Novell had contracted to give the copyright to SCO and the Unix copyright is a unique thing that justifies specific performance (normally reserved for things like real estate sales and other unique things where just paying the value of the item won't allow you to go out and buy it for yourself, which is a more standard contract remedy). This is perfectly reasonable and a lawyer who doesn't at least try it is not a lawyer you'd want to hire.
Slashdot Mirror
I've always called it an eClit.
Ball lightning is different, but this article is definitely a dupe of yesterday's news.
The world would be a better place with more F-rays.
The whole operation could be paid for by pay-per-view footage of the blast.
The article didn't mention this, but the method the Russians would use actually involves duct-taping the nuke to the seabed so it doesn't move before exploding. So don't worry, no matter what solution ends up being used, there will be duct tape involved.
Pet peeve: Written agreements are verbal, too. Unwritten agreements can be either oral (what the parent meant to refer to) or tacit. Only tacit agreements are nonverbal.
Oral agreements are very much enforceable as a general rule in common law countries, such as England, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The question is whether a specific oral agreement is enforceable, and that depends on a variety of factors in all those places. What makes oral agreements worth less (note the space) than written agreements is not that they are oral but rather the difficulty of proving exactly which words are part of the agreement.
For that reason, when it comes to copyright to work that you are doing and started before you were hired, you really do want a written contract that spells out exactly who owns the copyright to which things. Of course, the submitter didn't mention how much work he had actually done before he was hired to finish it, and that's going to be a major concern. If you made a couple of UML diagrams and created a MySQL database with a few tables but didn't write any application logic, it's going to be hard to claim copyright to the code you wrote for the project. If it was all done other than a user-friendly interface and they hired you to make the UI, then it's a different situation altogether.
The other 95% was created about 80% by and for people who want Emacs but are afraid of it and 20% (we're talking portions of the 95%, not of the whole, here :P) for people who resist using a WYSIWYG word processor for some reason. I use vim for most of my text editing and all of my C-family programming other than when I use Xcode. I use Word or Google Docs for my word processing (except at work, where we use WordPerfect and curse a lot) and Emacs for a few things, including reading Usenet and coding in Lisp. Because I use other, appropriate tools for such tasks, I too only use about 5-10% of vim and don't have any problem with learning curves.
Why the hell is this moderated Troll? It's a valid question and based in reality, or at least in wikiality. Atmospheric water vapor, both in clouds and otherwise, plays a major role in determining Earth's climate.
I'm reminded of Genetic Algorithms.
Now I gotta practice my stabbin'! Ha-HAAAAA!
Lawyers and Network Engineers. In all seriousness, they're probably our best tool invented to date.
They're also among the worst people to play board games with because they both turn into rules lawyers.
The real question is whether we should be assigning a handicap for article quality based on who posted it to the front page.
So it's kind of like Lisp macros, except that they are expanded in the source to make maintenance both more difficult and less efficient than just starting over from scratch.
All heat on kdawson is well-deserved. Find a counterexample if you think there is one. I haven't noticed it yet, though.
I didn't see the motion that you refer to. I only saw a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, which I did admit to not having taken the time to read (nor do I intend to) other than the headings. I did allow for their arguments bordering on the frivolous if that's the case, but if all you say is completely accurate then it's possible that they border frivolity from the wrong side.
I always prefer car analogies, but on this story in particular I was afraid of infringing on CarAnalogyGuy's patent, trademark, copyright, and/or sister.
What I meant is that there was not the same type of competition as you see now. Even now, after things have stabilized, there are DVD+R and DVD-R, and probably a few others that I have to sort through when I (rarely) buy blank DVDs. It seemed, although I was young at the time, that floppy disks were much quicker to standardize on one format. There were not 30 standards for 1.4-meg-class 3-1/2" drives, just the "IBM"/"PC" 1.44MB and the Apple 1.4MB. I don't recall there being a ton of competition in the 2.88MB size, either.
Actually, it's a completely valid solution to the problem, if you think about it. Install the 5-1/4" drive on the motherboard's floppy controller and ditch the internal 3-1/2" drive in favor of a USB 3-1/2" sitting on top of the case.
It had the twist, I installed it correctly, and I went to the BIOS settings, which only had options to enable one floppy drive. I don't know if it's a drive controller or BIOS/firmware thing but this motherboard, manufactured in 2003 IIRC, was not at all fond of having two floppy drives at the same time.
I stand corrected and educated. But I will stand by the point that the particular 5-1/4" diskettes that were a "precursor" to the 3-1/2" diskette (which were, as far as I can recall, originally 720KB and not 1440KB at the time that they could be called a successor to 5-1/4") held substantially more than 96KB, specifically either 360KB or 720KB.
Side note: If today's mentality had ruled the 80's, there would have been a different type of diskette drive for every one of those formats as floppies got larger. No way would a 1.44MB drive have been able to read a 720KB diskette. And if it could, it certainly wouldn't be able to write to it.
Thanks. Those are both apparently good solutions, depending on volume. I'll look into it.
I tried to use a dual-drive cable and it only recognized one drive. And I did try every possible orientation of the cable on all connections, just in case I had it wrong.
I'd suggest that someone file a class action lawsuit against SCO to refund those license fees. However, one of the requirements in order to file a class action is that the class be so numerous that individual lawsuits would be impractical. The three of you who gave SCO your money aren't quite enough. ;)
No sane lawyer would take the SCO case on a contingency fee (where the lawyer takes a portion of any future recovery in the case and gets paid nothing for his time if he loses it), but that doesn't rule out the possibility here. I'd say, though, that there is less than a 0.1% chance that this is being handled on a contingency.
Most of what's going on here is just part of the same lawsuit that we've heard about for years. News snippets tend to portray legal cases as if they are handled as on TV shows, where the client walks in the door with a problem on Monday and closing arguments at the trial are Thursday, with a big check to cover the verdict being spent on scotch and cigars by noon on Friday. For instance, the McDonald's coffee case was in the news just to report the jury verdict. The appeals, settlement, and years of prelude were not given nearly the same coverage.
In this case, we get snippets of things that people submit and the editors see fit to post on the Slashdot front page. But it's all part of a process. You see the same thing with space shuttle missions. They report blast-off, a major Hubble repair, and landing. But during all of that time, there are a million switches to flip and buttons to push. The astronauts don't just sit there for two weeks twiddling their thumbs. It's the same way in a lawsuit of any complexity, but especially something this big.
What this article is about is SCO's proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is filed late in the litigation process, generally after trial, and in the space shuttle analogy is the request for landing clearance. Novell files one, too, and then the judge decides which facts and legal conclusions are warranted on the jury verdict (which is decisive as to factual issues unless there is basically no evidence at all to support it) and the governing law (statutes, case precedents, etc.) Even if the shuttle mission were completely pointless, once you blast off you have to see it through to the end. Any argument that a lawyer makes with a straight face in this post-verdict filing is entitled to be reviewed by the judge and ruled on.
Ineffective assistance of counsel is basically never grounds for an appeal in a civil case, as this is. That one is pretty much reserved for criminal convictions, and even then if you choose your own lawyer it's a tough thing to get a court to agree with. But you would definitely have grounds for a legal malpractice claim if a lawyer intentionally lost your case.
Turning to the case actually going on here, what SCO filed is a proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law. This is a document familiar to any civil litigator, as it's what you want the judge to sign off on either after a bench trial or after a jury returns its verdict in a complicated matter such as this one. It's not more litigation or anything, it's just SCO's post-verdict filing for the court to either approve or modify. Granted, their arguments in it may border on frivolous (I haven't read it other than the table of contents, but it looks mostly legit from that), but their lawyers are ethically required to make the best arguments they can for their client and that's what they're doing.
What it sounds like is going on here is that the jury concluded that Novell owns the Unix copyright, so the lawyers looked for a reason why SCO should get it and came up with only one answer: That Novell had contracted to give the copyright to SCO and the Unix copyright is a unique thing that justifies specific performance (normally reserved for things like real estate sales and other unique things where just paying the value of the item won't allow you to go out and buy it for yourself, which is a more standard contract remedy). This is perfectly reasonable and a lawyer who doesn't at least try it is not a lawyer you'd want to hire.