Monday, October 30, 2006
10/30 SNR
- Word on the street now has it that the rumored layoffs at SCO are in the 20-40% range. This is still unconfirmed news. Nothing on FC about it so far.
- Also from c.u.s.m., a question about what to do about Daylight Savings Time next year, since Congress has decided to inflict another week or so of it on us. The poster has a customer on OSR 5.0.6 who wants his box to display the correct date and time, but without having to upgrade anything. Good luck!
Actually this is one time it's unfair to blame SCO. Who could have anticipated that the government would go and change DST, without considering the technical issues (i.e. stuff breaking) that would result? Someone ought to explain to them the new DST rules are going to cause some major kinks in the "series of tubes".
At least this debacle will probably result in future calendar code that doesn't hardcode everything, so that future changes won't be as painful. That way, when Congress starts renaming months after major campaign contributors (say hello to "Exxonuary" and "Starbuckstember"), all we'll need to do is change a config file here and there, and we're good to go. Yay!
- Just in time for Halloween, another "phantom server" story. This one involves an ancient SCO Unix box, lurking in a dark closet behind some buckets of spare parts. Unlike the well-known story about the Netware box at UNC that was accidentally sealed behind a wall, where the box quietly went about its humble job for years without any maintenance, this SCO box drew attention to itself by causing mysterious disruptions of network traffic. That just sorta figures, doesn't it?
- David Boies fils, the son of "our" David Boies, is following in dad's footsteps and involving himself in New York politics, except that Junior is funding Republican candidates. I guess that's one way to rebel against one's parents, if one has the money.
- The amusing thing is that the Democratic candidate in the NY Attorney General's race has a big backer in Andrew J. Farkas, of Baystar infamy.
- An interesting post about the Spamhaus case, by the guy who (among other things) is the CEO of UnSpam, the company behind Utah's do-not-spam registry. Interesting how he argues in the article that Illinois courts shouldn't have jurisdiction over London-based Spamhaus, and yet Utah's quite happy to try to drag accused spammers from the UK, Singapore, and elsewhere into court, on the idea that the Utah courts have jurisdiction over anyone, anywhere, who sends email to someone within the state. Talk about expansive. Sheesh.
- RHAT: not dead yet.
- SCO cases are far from the only things occupying Judge Kimball's time. He seems to have gotten a lot of high-profile fraud cases of late, involving an greedy ex-cop, a suspected evildoer from Jordan, and a crooked mortgage broker. The last link goes to a list of short blurbs about recent cases, and the relevant item is at the bottom. If you have a weak stomach, do not, not, not read the top item, titled "Body fat causes funeral home fire". Yecch!
By brx0 @ 12:58 PM 
