I recently created a new hotmail account with a name that would not be found using any dictionary search. I selected _every_ privacy option I could find. Nobody but me and hotmail knew of the new account.
Within 6 hours I started to receive spam.
Hotmail _must_ be leaking registration information from somewhere.
Sorry, SCO is screwed. If they, themselves, distribute a product that contains their trade secrets in plain sight, then there is NO legal way to get their secrets back. Neither can they sue others for using those secrets.
Trade secrets depend on the holder keeping the secret. Going to a court and asking "We told everybody the formula for Coke by accident, will you now stop everybody from making it for themselves?" is likely to get the lawyers fined for wasting court time.
but still the old crappy half implemented document orientated interface that used on most computers.
All current GUIs are little more than rehashes of work done by Xerox 30 years ago.
Doesn't anybody have any _better_ ideas? Is the mouse actually an improvement on a well designed keyboard interface? Are icons really a good idea? Have we already, after just a few tries, invented the perfect user interface and all that's left to do is a bit of prettification?
I've not bought a full price CD for over two years. Neither do I use any p2p service.
Why, because the current music promoted by the big media companies is unoriginal rubbish.
There is new stuff worth buying, but you will never see it on the shelves of the mainstream retailers.
These people are nothing less than pirates
on
My Visit to SCO
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Remember - this weeks version of SCOs complaint is a contract matter between SCO and IBM. Copyright is NOT the issue. The code is not the issue. Linux is not the issue. The code is a blind.
What SCO want to do is invalidate all existing Unix licenses so that all Unix rights revert to SCO. By then arguing that ALL Unix-like code is a derivative work they will claim that all unix-like code, no matter who wrote it, is actually SCOs.
By this means SCO hopes to profit from the work of hundreds of thousands of coders who worked for no pay on the original AT&T Unix, BSD Unix, Linux etc as well as all the commercial developement done by IBM, HP, SGI etc etc.
But SCOs entire argument is based on the "trade secret" that is the Unix sources. If anyone can show that SCO and previous owners of the rights to Unix sources have NOT taken care of their trade secret, SCO has NO case whatsoever. This is what ESR is doing right now by gathering evidence that Unix source code was widely available to people who did not sign any NDA at the time.
Fortunately, it's almost trival to discover evidence that Unix code has been widely available during the 1990s. Many commercial releases of Unix back then included source. For example, Amdahls UTS was a Unix for the IBM390 including multiprocessor support that was distributed widely with the sources in/usr/src/uts/uts for all to see.
BTW I suspect that it was Fujitsu, not SUN, that was the other big unix company that recently bought a license from SCO...
1. it can't 2. it can't 3. Sun bought out their Unix source license for > $100M a few years ago - perhaps their lawyers were more careful in drafting the contract and even SCO can't find a crack in the language. 4. he can't 5. it isn't
Trade secrets are special. You can't put the worms back in the can. The best you can do is get damages and it would be up to SCO to minimise the damage. You can't wait 100 days and then claim 100 days worth of damage.
... is to hijack Unix and all derived works. If they can con a court into revoking the AIX license, it will not be long before they go after all the other whose business is based on Unix.
As their business depends on the "trade secret" which is the Unix sources, merely winning damages from anyone who leaks the secret DOESN'T help SCO (apart from the money.)
SCO has to recreate the situation where ALL existing Unix licenses are revoked and all Unix-like code is awarded to SCO for safe keeping. Then they can make massive amounts of money re-licensing Unix to IBM etc.
IBM must have a copy of the "offending" code as identified by SCO? In which case IBMs silence means they believe they have a killer defense. Any other situation IBM would be negotiating a settlement.
SCO motives have changed over the months. At first it was just a trivial copyright problems with some SCO libraries. They probably had a case then. Since expensive laywers have become involved everything changed. SCO is now attempting to hijack all Unix. It's obvious that they are on the road to trying to use legal tactics to invalidate ALL existing Unix licensing in the hope that ALL Unix rights and code will revert to SCO. If they win against IBM, SUN, HP SGI and many others will be next.
Remember, Linux is not the target, it's the means. SCO want to make money from licensing Unix, but the really major sellers of Unix based systems all bought perpetual licenses and have since enhanced their version of Unix in many ways. None of this makes any money for SCO. In fact because they have neither the ability nor the resources to duplicate the enhancements, SCO's sources are now almost worthless.
But, if SCO could win in court, not only would they get damages, they could also ask for and probably get access to the code that IBM wrote which would be folded back into SCO unix. If IBM loses, SUN and HP would be next to be accused. The grand plan is to bring control of Unix back to and only to SCO with all existing licensing cancelled by the courts.
Fortunately, SCOs case is weak, IBM can keep them in court from now to doomsday. As this will be heard in _civil_ court, damages can and will be adjusted depending on the actions of SCO. So far they have made _no_ attempt to minimize the damage to their IP. Very bad move and the judge will no doubt make a point of mentioning it...
1. Java - there are too many releases and java applications seem to be too tightly tied to specific point releases. This causes huge support problems.
2. SUN supplied h/w to many of the dot.com companies. When they went bust a LOT of 2nd hand hardware appeared on the market. It's difficult to compete with your own h/w at 2nd hand prices.
(Does anybody else find that typing in the form for SlashDot submissions causes Mozilla/Redhat8 to bounce the form around the window for no apparent reason?)
...nothing will happen. Those running AIX systems are not going to switch them off. The courts won't tell IBM to stop selling AIX unless and until the contract questions are settled.
there MUST be a software patent that the riaa is violating on their web site. Perhaps a GIF generated by unlicensed code? Perhaps an xor cursor? Perhaps an example on a one-click shopping button!
I'd check myself but the site (www.riaa.org|.com) seems to be down. Not surprising since netcraft is reporting it runs IIS on W2K and is restarted every 5 days or so.
ESR has many less than pleasent characteristics. But he does get out and do stuff that others don't.
If you don't like what he puts in the hackers dictionary then contribute the stuff _you_ see in everyday use. If ESR doesn't accept it then fork a version.
Remember dictionaries don't contain stuff that is immutable, they contain current usage. Meanings and usage change with time, live with it.
I created a hotmail account with an unusual name unlikely to be guessed by any kind of directory attack, and selected every privacy option I could find but within four hours I got spam.
Slashdot Mirror
SCOs intent appears to be to widen the concept of a "derived work" to encompass eveything that behaves, looks or even smells like Unix.
If sucessful GNU software would not be immune. SCO actually claim that code written by 3rd parties is theirs if it's written to a Unix API...
They are a bunch of landgrabbing carpet-baggers.
I recently created a new hotmail account with a name that would not be found using any dictionary search. I selected _every_ privacy option I could find. Nobody but me and hotmail knew of the new account.
Within 6 hours I started to receive spam.
Hotmail _must_ be leaking registration information from somewhere.
Sorry, SCO is screwed. If they, themselves, distribute a product that contains their trade secrets in plain sight, then there is NO legal way to get their secrets back. Neither can they sue others for using those secrets.
Trade secrets depend on the holder keeping the secret. Going to a court and asking "We told everybody the formula for Coke by accident, will you now stop everybody from making it for themselves?" is likely to get the lawyers fined for wasting court time.
I wonder how many scientologists work at SCO. Their
legal tactics are very reminiscent of the behaviour of that cult.
but still the old crappy half implemented document orientated interface that used on most computers.
All current GUIs are little more than rehashes of work done by Xerox 30 years ago.
Doesn't anybody have any _better_ ideas? Is the mouse actually an improvement on a well designed keyboard interface? Are icons really a good idea?
Have we already, after just a few tries, invented the perfect user interface and all that's left to do is a bit of prettification?
I've not bought a full price CD for over two years. Neither do I use any p2p service.
Why, because the current music promoted by the big media companies is unoriginal rubbish.
There is new stuff worth buying, but you will never see it on the shelves of the mainstream retailers.
Remember - this weeks version of SCOs complaint is a contract matter between SCO and IBM. Copyright is NOT the issue. The code is not the issue. Linux is not the issue. The code is a blind.
/usr/src/uts/uts for all to see.
What SCO want to do is invalidate all existing Unix licenses so that all Unix rights revert to SCO. By then arguing that ALL Unix-like code is a derivative work they will claim that all unix-like code, no matter who wrote it, is actually SCOs.
By this means SCO hopes to profit from the work of hundreds of thousands of coders who worked for no pay on the original AT&T Unix, BSD Unix, Linux etc as well as all the commercial developement done by IBM, HP, SGI etc etc.
But SCOs entire argument is based on the "trade secret" that is the Unix sources. If anyone can show that SCO and previous owners of the rights to Unix sources have NOT taken care of their trade secret, SCO has NO case whatsoever. This is what ESR is doing right now by gathering evidence that Unix source code was widely available to people who did not sign any NDA at the time.
Fortunately, it's almost trival to discover evidence that Unix code has been widely available during the 1990s. Many commercial releases of Unix back then included source. For example, Amdahls UTS was a Unix for the IBM390 including multiprocessor support that was distributed widely with the sources in
BTW I suspect that it was Fujitsu, not SUN, that was the other big unix company that recently bought a license from SCO...
is your friend, use it wisely.
1. it can't
2. it can't
3. Sun bought out their Unix source license for > $100M a few years ago - perhaps their lawyers were more careful in drafting the contract and even SCO can't find a crack in the language.
4. he can't
5. it isn't
Trade secrets are special. You can't put the worms back in the can. The best you can do is get damages and it would be up to SCO to minimise the damage. You can't wait 100 days and then claim 100 days worth of damage.
... is to hijack Unix and all derived works. If they can con a court into revoking the AIX license, it will not be long before they go after all the other whose business is based on Unix.
As their business depends on the "trade secret" which is the Unix sources, merely winning damages from anyone who leaks the secret DOESN'T help SCO (apart from the money.)
SCO has to recreate the situation where ALL existing Unix licenses are revoked and all Unix-like code is awarded to SCO for safe keeping. Then they can make massive amounts of money re-licensing Unix to IBM etc.
(BTW, Sun invested $5M in SCO/Caldera in 2000)
Satirical Analogy Of The Day:
SCO=Henery Hawk, IBM=Foghorn Leghorn
is to open up your client software. That way you get your code ported to more platforms than you can count... for free.
It's difficult for a company that only really supports one platform to compete against s/w that's in widespread use everywhere.
Opening up netscape five years earlier would have killed IE before it even got started. Real may understand this now, I wonder if Macromedia does yet.
Sun invested $5M in Caldera in 2000.
Did they ever sell, or do they still have a stake
in SCO?
Two points...
IBM must have a copy of the "offending" code as identified by SCO? In which case IBMs silence means they believe they have a killer defense. Any other situation IBM would be negotiating a settlement.
SCO motives have changed over the months. At first it was just a trivial copyright problems with some SCO libraries. They probably had a case then. Since expensive laywers have become involved everything changed. SCO is now attempting to hijack all Unix. It's obvious that they are on the road to trying to use legal tactics to invalidate ALL existing Unix licensing in the hope that ALL Unix rights and code will revert to SCO. If they win against IBM, SUN, HP SGI and many others will be next.
Remember, Linux is not the target, it's the means.
SCO want to make money from licensing Unix, but the really major sellers of Unix based systems all bought perpetual licenses and have since enhanced their version of Unix in many ways. None of this makes any money for SCO. In fact because they have neither the ability nor the resources to duplicate the enhancements, SCO's sources are now almost worthless.
But, if SCO could win in court, not only would they get damages, they could also ask for and probably get access to the code that IBM wrote which would be folded back into SCO unix. If IBM loses, SUN and HP would be next to be accused. The grand plan is to bring control of Unix back to and only to SCO with all existing licensing cancelled by the courts.
Fortunately, SCOs case is weak, IBM can keep them in court from now to doomsday. As this will be heard in _civil_ court, damages can and will be adjusted depending on the actions of SCO. So far they have made _no_ attempt to minimize the damage to their IP. Very bad move and the judge will no doubt make a point of mentioning it...
As soon as they can make more money doing so than continuing as they are now.
I see the results of these hot shot programmers. Over engineered, fragile software that works fine on their development system but nowhere else.
If you want good s/w look for a slow, lazy programmer...
SUN has two problems they must sort out.
1. Java - there are too many releases and java applications seem to be too tightly tied to specific point releases. This causes huge support problems.
2. SUN supplied h/w to many of the dot.com companies. When they went bust a LOT of 2nd hand hardware appeared on the market. It's difficult to compete with your own h/w at 2nd hand prices.
(Does anybody else find that typing in the form for SlashDot submissions causes Mozilla/Redhat8 to bounce the form around the window for no apparent reason?)
...wants to watch themselves watching TV?
If you want a "mirror" just attach a camera to the monitor and reverse the image. Then you don't need the big, heavy mirror.
...nothing will happen. Those running AIX systems are not going to switch them off. The courts won't tell IBM to stop selling AIX unless and until the contract questions are settled.
SCO plays lousy poker.
there MUST be a software patent that the riaa is violating on their web site. Perhaps a GIF generated by unlicensed code? Perhaps an xor cursor? Perhaps an example on a one-click shopping button!
I'd check myself but the site (www.riaa.org|.com) seems to be down. Not surprising since netcraft is reporting it runs IIS on W2K and is restarted every 5 days or so.
all those musicians could always go out and play live again, can't they :-)
The music industry have created their own downfall and I have no sympathy at all for them.
But the music won't die, just the RIAA, managers, agents, publishers and all the middleman hangers on who create nothing but take their cut anyway.
ESR has many less than pleasent characteristics. But he does get out and do stuff that others don't.
If you don't like what he puts in the hackers dictionary then contribute the stuff _you_ see in everyday use. If ESR doesn't accept it then fork a version.
Remember dictionaries don't contain stuff that is immutable, they contain current usage. Meanings and usage change with time, live with it.
will kill it, but not before a lot of people end up falsely imprisoned.
Shake hands with Mr. Joseph McCarthy.
I created a hotmail account with an unusual name unlikely to be guessed by any kind of directory attack, and selected every privacy option I could find but within four hours I got spam.
How could that be without Hotmail leaking names?