SCO News Roundup: 11/30 SNR

Thursday, November 30, 2006

11/30 SNR

Another day, another defeat for SCO. As usual, PJ's got the very latest here. Wells ruled from the bench this time, even. Important life lesson for Darl & Co.: When you exhaust the patience of a very patient federal judge, your realistic options have basically run out.
Coverage of yesterday's ruling at Slashdot & Ars Technica, and the Salt Lake Tribune.
If you see anything about the deal in your local newspaper, it'll probably be this Associated Press story. Which is ok; it's a pretty decent and well-researched story, by wire service standards.
The Seattle P-I has a quick blurb about the ruling here, which seems to be condensed from the full AP story.
KSL-TV in Salt Lake has a very brief blurb here. They accept user comments, so feel free to drop by and say hello, or smirk quietly, or gloat, or whatever.
Even Daniel Lyons can't totally ignore yesterday's events. In a new piece, he says he's "shocked, shocked!!!" that SCO lied to Forbes about the particulars of their IBM case. Since he's an MSM insider, we're supposed to ignore the fact that he was a willing, eager participant in SCO's con game from the beginning. I suspect he knew it was a scam from day 1, but stayed onboard anyway for misguided, purely ideological reasons.
Enderle's still drinking the Kool-Aid, if his latest rambling screed is any indication.
Yesterday, SJVN airily dismissed the whole SCO situation, saying they don't matter anymore. Here's PJ's response. I actually tend to lean towards SJVN's point of view, in a way; it's fun to follow, if you're a geek, but nothing remotely surprising has happened for a very long time now. If it was a fair fight, if there was any chance SCO had any case whatsoever, it would be much more newsworthy than it is now. There's no "man bites dog" here anymore.
One break in the gloom if you're a SCO employee: Tomorrow your latest batch of precious Employee Stock Purchase Plan shares will vest, and you can sell to your evil, shrivelled-up hearts' content, for all the good it'll do you. Just remember: Darl & Ralphie get to run for the border for real, but all you get is dinner at Taco Bell.
From the USPTO (which is hard to deep-link to), we learn that SCO applied for separate trademarks for the terms "ME INC" (#78711213) and "ME, INC." (#78608239), but the latter application has been abandoned. Also abandoned are their applications for the terms "MYVOTE", "MOBILET", "EXECUTION PROCESS SERVER", "ROADRUNNER MOBILE", "ABOVE THE LINE", "EPS MOBILE", and "GOMOBILE". "Roadruner Mobile" and "GoMobile" were refused due to the likelihood of confusion with already-trademarked products, and "Execution Process Server" was refused since the USPTO thinks it's just a description of a product, which is not protectable. "EPS Mobile" was refused because SCO didn't explain what "EPS" stood for, and there were plenty of examples of it standing for other already-trademarked things, e.g. Encapsulated PostScript. Even better, "Above the Line" was refused as a generic term, and the trademark examiner cited age-old references to IBM COBOL as a prime example. W00t! And in the case of "Mobilet", everything basically checked out, but the USPTO asked for more info about exactly what it was SCO was trying to trademark, and SCO failed to respond, so that application was tossed out as well.

Even the classic "SCO Grows Your Business" is no longer owned by SCO. The USPTO sent SCO's application to the big circular file in the sky, for failing to file a "Statement of Use". That's just a sworn statement asserting they've actually used the term in commerce. We've seen the term in their PR and so forth; even the most die-hard SCO opponent (such as myself) will probably admit to having seen SCO use the phrase. So that's the rare legal hurdle they should've had no problem with, but they botched it. What a bunch of maroons.
Meanwhile, the USPTO wants to refuse SCO's application for the word "HANDBOOK", again saying it's merely a descriptive term, but Darl & Co. are putting up a fight this time. I like this tidbit from SCO's response, where they argue their use of the word is unrelated to the dictionary definition of the word.

Thus, when the true nature of Applicant's goods are considered, there is nothing that relates these goods to the meaning of the word "handbook" by the Examiner. In other words, the word "handbook" in no way describes the nature, characteristics, features, and/or properties of the Applicant's communications software. Instead, upon hearing and seeing the mark, consumers are required to use their thought, perception, and/or imagination to fully understand and comprehend the nature and the characteristics of the Applicant's goods function to enable communications/collaboration with cellular phones, smart phones, PDAs, computers, etc.
From Usenet, a thread on nz.comp about yesterday's ruling.
Also from Usenet, some hand-wringing on c.u.s.m. about the ill-considered Daylight Savings experiment in Western Australia. Dealing with that will be enough of a pain with a common, mainstream, well-supported OS, so I can only imagine the fun SCO customers are in for in the next few days. Blech!
From blogospace, a failed attempt to locate SCO HQ.
Also from blogostan, what happens if you write your Christmas cards with a Me Inc. schwag pen.
Yet more from blogodelphia, a thread on NNSeek that originated on the Y! board.
IDC's stats about the server market in Q2 are here. ITJungle's spin on the numbers is here.
Seems that competence is occasionally rewarded at BS&F. The lawyer who handled the Bad Elf beer case is in line for an open state judicial spot in New York. Of course, then he won't be a BS&F lawyer anymore.

The same guy was behind the big fundraising campaign for that ritzy private school in Albany, NY, so that may be the real reason behind the nomination, for all we know.
Elsewhere, BS&F is arguing that bribing Chinese government officials is perfectly legal. Anything for a buck, I guess.
A real, live example of spam from EdgeClick / Me Inc. It's not even any good by the usual spam standards, just some boring crap about preapproved loans. Sorry, Darl, but half of Nigeria is having a laugh at your expense right now.
I guess Vista's on the market now, sort of, FWIW. BBC coverage here, and reader responses here. And a piece at CBR saying Vista stays in the lab for now. This jibes up with my own experience: I do a fair bit of Windows coding in RL, and I'd really like to verify that my code runs OK on Vista, but right now I can't. The new OS scares my IT department shitless, and they won't permit any Vista boxes on the corporate network until further notice.
From the boards, two fun(?) YouTube clips of Steve Ballmer.
From across the pond, the very latest on Birmingham's Linux situation. According to the city, the program was a success after all, just an unreasonably expensive success.
Some ancient history: a Forbes piece about Darl getting turfed out of SolutionBank way back in 1998.
Also, another bit about the MS-Corel deal, way back in 2000. The parallels with the recent Novell deal are a bit alarming.
At LinuxWorld, a rare positive piece about the MS-Novell deal.
In non-MS news about Novell, seems they've delayed the release of SuSE Enterprise 10 Service Pack 1, in case you were holding your breath. They're currently previewing their upcoming "Open Enterprise Server" release, an unholy mashup of Linux & NetWare. The same piece meanders off into Solaris world, mentioning that Trusted Solaris Extensions for Sol10 should be available in a few weeks. This is only cause for celebration if you've never actually tried to use Trusted Solaris. Eeegah!!!!
In related news, El Reg (ok, Orlowski) speculates about whether there's a GNU/Solaris in our future. Hmm.....
On the kewl tech front, pieces about dual-core and quad-core Opterons. 16-core boxes are on the horizon, and remember, you're gonna need a $699 SCOSource license for every damn one of those cores. So you'd better start saving those pennies now.
Are you sick of the ever-growing dominance of the x86 architecture? There's still a little hope left, if you're a geek with copious free time, and you want to homebrew your own CPU. It really is possible. You won't be winning any speed awards, but you can do it, if you really want to.
Got a weird urge to run some precious SCO IP on your Linux box? Here's the closest you're likely to get: Meet "Unix on Linux", an effort to extend the existing User-Mode Linux project so it can host other OSes, specifically a ported version of Seventh Edition Unix, circa 1975 or so. That is, if you think SCO has any rights to so-called "Ancient UNIX", which is highly doubtful.
FWIW: If you see ads for a movie titled "Breakfast with Sco", be aware that it's about gay hockey players in Canada, and not about "our" SCO. Actually "Sco" might be a typo in that story, but it came up in a Google news search, so I thought I'd pass it along. So, well, whatever.

By brx0 @ 1:54 AM

Comments:

According to a rough draft found blowing in the parking lot at a deserted Lindon, UT building, SCO is poised to release (amidst much fanfare) its latest offering, the Yuu video game console.

Darl McFried is quoted as saying that the new console will work seamlessly with ME technology, allowing indecisive gamers to poll their friends for hints on how to slay Gorgons and hopefully those pesky Nazgul.

SCO also announced that Fred's Video Game Trade-0-Rama in Salt Lake City will be the exclusive distributor and strategic partner.

The SCO Group is the owner of USELESS System V and uh, pay no attention to the stock price that just fell out from under the curtain.

Anonymous : 6:41 PM

Regarding the Me Inc spam, it was farmed out to the notorious Expedite Media Group by the Utah Capital Mortgage/Edgelink Solutions crew.

See the Y! SCOX post titled "Expediting Me Inc." on 27-Mar-06.

Anonymous : 7:49 AM

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11/30 SNR

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