SCO News Roundup

• SCO's announced that Ed Iacobucci (the Dayjet guy) is not running for reelection to the company's board. Too busy, other commitments, yada yada yada. So they've got at least one job opening now. Wanted: Empty suit. Successful applicants will be skilled in not asking tough questions, and in meekly signing off on whatever cockamamie notions the CEO and Chairman come up with. Prior business or family ties to current management strongly preferred. Not a technology job (anymore) so prior experience in the tech sector is not required. Great hours, no heavy lifting.
  
  
• You might've noticed the recent rash of hardware problems at GL and Zen's. And then Blogger was being surly and uncooperative for much of the day, leaving me unable to post this thing until just now. What's the deal? Sunspots? Toad voodoo?
  
  
• SCO's HipCheck gets a quickie rave review. In related news, man bites dog.
  
  
• In what may be a first, we've actually got two Me Inc items today. PDA news site Brighthand has a short blurb about Shout Postcard.
  
  
• Stocks in China are tanking, affecting shares worldwide, including the Dow. Unsurprisingly, SCOX didn't budge. But perhaps it should have. They've been making a lot of noise lately about how they're placing a big bet on the so-called "BRIC" (Brazil, Russia, India, China) market. So if they're betting the farm on that, and the Chinese economy goes into a slump... Well, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
  
  
• Enderle has a cow about the potential Dell Linux thing. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but this FUD plus the persistent Y! trolling suggests that someone, somewhere, is really worried this might pan out. If you believe in conspiracy theories, at any rate.
  
  
• A press release concerning yet another lawsuit involving Microsoft. This time they're up against an ex-ISP named FutureLink, and they're apparently fighting over something related to WebTV. Putting out a press release to advertise one's pending litigation is an unusual practice, so my spidey sense tells me there's more to the story than what the release tells us.
  
  I don't see any news items about the suit itself, but you can get a sense of the MS-FutureLink relationship from these stories from (mostly) happier times, around the tail end of the dot-com era:
  
  
  
  • "ASP Pulse: Microsoft Invests $10 million in FutureLink"
    
  • "Microsoft Plans Joint R&D Lab for Hosted Application"
    
  • "FutureLink Finds Insight in the Channel"
    
  • "FutureLink becomes a thing of the past", including this fun tidbit:
    

    
    At its peak in November 1999, it was valued at $250 per share on Nasdaq (market capitalisation $2.44 billion), however the euphoria of the Internet boom did not last and the company has since lost 99.8% of its market value, and now trades at less than 40 cents at the time of writing (market capitalisation $3.7 million).
    

    
    Yow!
    
  
  
• Seems that Ralphie's decided he needs some friends in high places -- check out these campaign contributions of his from last year. Ok, technically some of them aren't legally his since they're made in the names of several of his kids, in order to get around that pesky $2000 donation limit. It's a nice loophole, especially if you have lots of kids. The McCain-Feingold act actually included provisions to close that loophole, but the matter seems to be tied up in court at present. I don't know if he just decided to chance it and hope he doesn't get caught, or what, exactly.
  
  Anyway, he seems to really like Sen. Hatch, who (let's not forget) is the daddy of one of SCO's top lawyers. Since this isn't a political blog, I'm not going to offer an opinion about the senator, although it may be worth noting that Rep. Cannon (the other recipient of Ralphie's largesse last year) had himself a bit of an Abramoff problem.
  
  
• Ralphie's not the only Yarro with "IP" interests. Here's a recent patent application by one Justin Yarro. For some sort of dubious lawnmower-weed whacker combo contraption. Yikes.
  
  Of course, given past history the point of this is not to actually produce this beast, but as an excuse to sue people. Another reason I'm glad I don't have a yard.
  
  
• The latest on the Y2K7 front: the weapons lab at Los Alamos is issuing a warning about non-DST-aware coffee makers. Actually that headline is kind of unfair. They're advising people to watch out for problems, and the coffee maker thing was part of a much longer list of things to look out for. But it's always more fun to take stuff out of context to get a cheap laugh at someone's expense. That's what the news media's for, right?
  
  The original piece is here.
  
  
• SJVN rolls his eyes at "showusthecode.com"
  
  
• On the BS&F front, they've finally managed to take over that weird Halliburton case I mentioned a while back, ejecting the previous firm.
  
  
• Boies has given Tulane University (in New Orleans) a cool $1.5M, so they're naming a chair after him. I would imagine the donation is in cash and not SCOSource licenses, but you never know.
  
  
• And on the heels of Al Gore's big win at the Oscars, the inevitable humor piece: Supreme Court, Boies, recount, dangling chads, etc.
  
  
• Seems that IBM's not real keen on Oracle's Linux. Gee, could DB2 have anything to do with that?
  
  
• A review of Linux on the PS3. Which sounds nice, although the odds of me buying a game console of any kind aren't exactly high. Ok, ok, I was pretty good at Tetris once, back in the day, but that was years ago. I also spent a lot of time on Adventure, but I don't think I ever actually finished it.
  
  
• FWIW, an article on Linux in Iran. Please, no "Linux terrorist" wisecracks. That just isn't nice.
  
  
• IDC's Q4/06 server marketshare numbers are out. Do a quick search and you'll see all sorts of takes on this, some declaring Sun the big winner, others giving the grand prize to HP. It all seems to depend on how you define "server", and whether you're counting boxes sold, CPUs sold, raw dollars earned, growth compared to last year, growth compared to competitors, or what have you. You can slice-n-dice it a zillion different ways. One constant though: Nobody ever mentions SCO. Never.
  
  
• Sun's making nice with the FSF. They're even teasing us yet again with the prospect of a GPL'd Solaris.
  
  
• A piece about the latest dev snapshot of KDE4.
  
  
• A review of FreeBSD 6.2, which came out recently. If you decided a while ago that everything after v4.x is teh suxor, you wouldn't be alone. The review asserts that things are finally improving, though.
  
  
• Here's a blast from the past for ya: Corel (remember them?) is previewing a new Web 2.0-ified WordPerfect. Believe it or not.
  
  
• If you're a Windows developer (you know who you are), M$ would like to gently suggest
  that maybe you could consider not using that nasty DDE garbage anymore, if it's not too much trouble. To which i can only add: please, do as they ask, already. Oh, the humanity!
  
  Of course, in the usual Windows fashion, not using DDE isn't enough. You (and Explorer) still have to tiptoe around just in case someone else out there hasn't gotten the memo. Bah. Humbug.
  
  
• From HPCWire, two takes on the future of supercomputing, from
  AMD and Intel. AMD wants to jump on the "heterogeneous HPC" bandwagon, although it looks like their definition of "heterogeneous" means Opterons plus GPUs from their new ATI subsidiary. So we're basically talking single-vendor heterogeneity here.
  
  
• Another piece on that quantum computing thing from last week. For some reason the article is bookended by some loopy new-agey stuff, which sadly is a common occurrence with any news items containing the word "quantum". You can avoid nearly all of it by scrolling down until you stop seeing the word "holistic", though.
  
  
• In other quantum news, researchers have figured out how to place six whole photons in a "Schrodinger's cat" state. Insert lame "Blepp's suitcase" joke here.
  
  
• Stupid IP litigation isn't limited to the tech industry. Seems that the USPTO is now letting people patent ideas for tax shelters. So now any money you don't owe to the IRS, you'll probably just owe to some stupid patent troll.
  
  
• The latest twist in the HD format wars: The triple-layer HD-DVD, which overcomes Blu-Ray's advantage in storage capacity.
  
  
• the mean, mean haters at the Inq have another piece about Itanic, er, Itanium. They really enjoy this stuff far too much, if you ask me.
  
  
• Today's fun gadget: The beer-launching fridge! Sadly, the thing runs on a puny 8-bit microcontroller (yes, I checked), so it's not going to run Linux or even NetBSD in its present form. Still, it's a freakin' fridge that catapults beer through the air. Which counts for something in my book. One big problem with this is finding canned beer you actually want to drink. I'm not going to drink Coors Lite even if a robot tosses it to me. I mean, I have my standards. Fortunately there are a few options, one of which -- coincidentally -- is the Pale Ale from Oregon's own Caldera Brewing (i.e. the Caldera with real products). For the big SCO BK party, I'd like a Linux-based beer catapult that flings Caldera through the air. Yeah, ok, that's sort of a stretch. Ok, a big stretch. Whatever. Still, it's a beer-flinging robofridge. How cool is that?
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• Shortly after I posted Friday's SNR, there were a few more court filings, sealed as usual.
  
• A lot more stuff about the latest M$ threats against Linux. The coverage often mentions SCO, unsurprisingly. Examples here and here.
  
• The Comes v. Microsoft archives are now available by BitTorrent. SCO gets a mention here as well, in connection with the mysterious destruction of all those old Caldera v. M$ docs a few years ago -- which I'm sure was 100% unrelated to the subsequent visit from the PIPE fairy.
  
• Looks like all the Linux lobbying on Dell's IdeaStorm suggestion box might actually be working. Kewl.
  
• ESR has turned his back on Red Hat, partly because he's unhappy with company management, and partly over disagreements about shipping non-free software with the OS. I gather he's in favor, and Alan Cox, RMS, etc., aren't. So we'll see if Ubuntu makes him any happier. That isn't meant as a pro- or anti- ESR comment, since I'm probably in the minority in having no strongly held pro- or anti- ESR opinions. How about we just agree that he's a colorful and often polarizing figure, and leave it at that?
  
• The DOD gets another monster-sized SGI Altix machine. Linux on Itanium, NUMA, XFS (probably), the whole works. Yet another sign that SCO's effort to block the use of these technologies isn't working out. Film at 11.
  
• The latest piece from "Paul Murphy" mentions SCO in passing, but mostly it's about some sneaky business M$ did in Win3.0 to make it look faster than it really was. I think. It's always hard to tell with Murphy's stuff. I think he's saying he's against that sort of thing, but I could be wrong.
  
• Slashdot on the new ShowUsTheCode.com initiative. There are plenty of other stories about this, but I figured the /. one was the most fitting; it's a naive and silly idea (IMHO), and M$ is just going to ignore it. So it's the perfect Slashdot story, really.
  
  I'll admit to quickly scanning the comments section this time. SCO gets quite a few mentions, unsurprisingly.
  
• More delays for Dayjet. Dayjet's founder happens to be a SCO BOD member, in case you haven't been following this particular tangent. It's supposed to be a sort of flying taxi service aimed at busy and important executive types. (And priced to match, presumably.)
  
  Apropos of nothing, here's a bit about aviation and global warming.
  
• If you're a gadget geek, and you have nearly everything already, you may be interested in the new iPod breathalyzer (note: not an Apple product.) This baby would be perfect for music trivia drinking games.
  
  Rumor has it the device contains an easter egg: If you blow over 3x the legal limit, it will replace your current playlist with the greatest hits of Hank Williams Sr.
  
• More articles on the Alcatel/MS suit. for all of MS's faults, generally speaking they only threaten to be a patent troll.
  
  The suit concerns some patents that originated at Bell Labs, which became part of Lucent in the Great AT&T Trivestiture, and Lucent was in turn eaten by Alcatel a few years ago. Yes, Bell Labs belongs to a French company, believe it or not. If Alcatel decides it wants to pursue the IP troll business model, things could get really ugly even beyond the MP3 world. The SCO v. Novell case centers around the chain of ownership of the Precious UNIX(tm) IP, specifically whether there was ever a valid transfer of copyrights from Novell to OldSCO, and from OldSCO to Caldera/NewSCO. Novell, in turn, had bought the Unix biz from AT&T, but I don't think it's been established yet that that deal transferred any copyrights. The parties may have intended for that to happen, but if they didn't comply with legal requirements to the letter, the copyrights would've stayed with AT&T. This seems entirely possible, since it and the subsequent OldSCO and Caldera deals were done on a smile-and-handshake basis. Back then, nobody envisioned it would all end up in court like it has. Ahh, that was a simpler, happier era...
  
  So if the copyrights stayed with AT&T, who has them now? Back in the late '90s, the company split into thirds: AT&T proper, which kept the long distance business, and which was bought by SBC a couple of years ago; NCR, which got the computer hardware business; and Lucent, which got network gear and miscellaneous tech bits and pieces, including Bell Labs (the birthplace of Unix). If they didn't realize they still owned the Unix copyrights, they wouldn't have specified which piece got them in the big trivestiture. So it would probably depend on the precise wording of the deal. I doubt the rump AT&T would've been the lucky winner, which leaves us with either Lucent/Alcatel or NCR. And as the owner of Bell Labs I imagine Alcatel may have the better claim of the two. Although Lucent spun off a number of divisions before the Alcatel deal, and sold others, so there could be quite a few other claimants out there.
  
  I'm not trying to give anyone ideas here. I'm just speculating about how the murky Unix copyright situation might get even uglier. Although an Alcatel-owned Unix might not be a bad thing; they've been doing a bit of Linux work lately, like this for example.
  
  But then, even if Alcatel (or NCR, or some other firm) had clear title to the original Unix copyrights, they still might not be out of the woods. Multics (the predecessor to Unix) ended up in the hands of Groupe Bull, another French company. So there could be a really fun "derivative works" case there.
  
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• It's almost CC time again. Already. The announcement came yesterday afternoon, and the call's due March 1st, so mark those calendars. I hope someone remembers to ask about those headcount numbers. Oh, and the PJ thing. Someone ought to bring that up too. Mentioning PJ is always a great way to get Darl riled up, and that's when he's at his most quotable.
  
  So Thursday had a CC announcement and some product-related PR (the Me Inc. in the previous SNR), both in the same day. It's like SCO decided to pretend they were a real company for a few hours, just on a lark.
  
• M$ settles yet another patent case, this time with Alcatel to the tune of $1.5B. To most people, a price tag like that would be a real deterrent, but it's pocket change up in Redmond. It's strange how current patent law can make business prohibitively expensive for the little guys, and yet isn't a significant obstacle when the big boys decide to infringe someone's patents on a grand scale.
  
• Also on the M$ beat, it's being argued that Ballmer was misquoted when he seemed to threaten Linux users again, the other day. Which can happen now and then, of course; journalists are only human. Ok, almost human. It's funny, though, how often this happens, and doubly funny how Ballmer's always misquoted saying the same thing.
  
• Yet another school district switches to Linux.
  
• You probably don't remember this, but a couple of weeks ago I made some sort of joking reference to running Solaris on PowerPC hardware. Turns out that our lil' buddy "Paul Murphy" is really stoked about the idea.
  
• And Ms. Darrow over at Unblog has a highly relevant, hard-hitting piece about the great parties Lotus used to throw, way back in the day. I have to say the revels as she describes them actually sound kind of lame to me. A table made out of chocolate? Okayy. I'm sorry, but just because you wasted a lot of money on the thing doesn't mean anyone had a good time.
  
  Besides, if you work in the industry for any amount of time you'll soon realize that companies that throw lavish no-expense-spared parties don't stay in business for long. Often, a huge party is the first sign of trouble. Call me a cynic, if you like.
  
  
• New on Freshmeat, an updated Perl module that can talk to the new Y! Finance setup. But it just does the quote end of things, and there's no mention of message boards. Perhaps the author didn't think there was any value in it. These days I'm almost inclined to agree sometimes. Still, if you're a Perl fan and you're up for a bit of retrocomputing (things get retro real fast in this industry), feel free to submit a patch or something.
  
  You won't see a patch from me, though. Perl's not my bag. My usual Perl development methodology goes something like this:
  
  
  
  1. Estimate (= guess) about how large you expect the finished Perl program to be.
     
  2. Using dd, dump that many bytes from /dev/random to a file.
     
  3. Test the resulting file to see if it does what you need it to. If not, goto step 2, repeat as needed.
     
  
  
  It hasn't been a very successful methodology so far, but at least I don't have to memorize any Perl syntax this way.
  
  
• Oracle made quite a stir a few months back when they announced they'd sell support for a distro they didn't create (Red Hat). Not a lot of people realize this arrangement isn't unique. Since August '05, HP's been selling support for Debian, and it seems to be working out rather well for them.
  
• Elsewhere in Debianland, Nokia wants your ideas for cool stuff to do with the new N800, their sleek little Linux WiFi mini-tablet gizmo. Hint: One of your ideas should be "Sent a free one to that SNR guy". Ha, ha, just kidding. If I were to start taking free stuff, even ultra-cool free stuff, that would just invite sneers from Real Journalists, who never, ever do stuff like that. It's a red line they never cross. Ok, except for booze. And schwag at trade shows. And cash, 'natch. And stuff they can show off to look important. And anything else, so long as it's in moderation. And moderation can mean very different things to different people, of course...
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• SCO's Shout Postcard is out, finally. If you have a Treo, anyway. In all honesty, it doesn't sound like a completely terrible idea. In other words, it's not a very original idea, and duplicates a lot of existing Treo functionality. Also, it only plays in a small market segment, the Palm part of the smartphone sector. So even if every last Treo owner signs up for a professional Shout Postcard account, SCO's presence in the larger mobile phone world would still only be in the low single digits. Still, in the hands of a company other than SCO the product might have a future of some sort. But I guess that'll be for the BK trustee to figure out.
  
• New filings in the Novell & IBM cases. Zen's got 'em, and GL probably will soon.
  
• But in case you were worrying whether Groklaw's still relevant without PJ, never fear. Various GL readers managed to archive all those fascinating exhibits in Comes v. Microsoft before the Iowa antitrust suit's site went into lockdown. So now MathFox is working on putting them all up on GL for the sake of posterity.
  
• Closer to home, my fun tangle with a blogspammer continues. Updates are at the bottom of the page.
  
• Boies was on the Olbermann show the other day, surprisingly not as the Worst Person in the World.
  
• A heartwarming story out of suburban New York about three developmentally disabled men who've been campaigning for better sidewalks in their town.
  
  I mention this because one of the men is employed as a document shredder for BS&F.
  
• M$ apologizes for serving malware banner ads.
  
• Remember the AutoZone case? Apparently SCO doesn't. They haven't filed any of those periodic status updates with the court since last October, at least according to the Tuxrocks page for the case.
  
• The iPhone trademark dispute has been resolved. So now both Apple and Cisco get to sell products named "iPhone".
  
• An interesting thread on c.u.s.m, from a consultant who's been asked to upgrade an old SCO box in a pizza parlor, The current machine is a Pentium 166 with a few dumb terminals hung off the side. Unfortunately the customer doesn't know the root password for the box. Actually it's not 100% certain it's a SCO box. The customer's running a PICK database (a topic I covered a few days ago, in a weird coincidence), and it's not even clear whether it's a PICK db running on top of a SCO OS, or it's a pure PICK environment, OS, db and all. I don't have any helpful advice to offer about that, except to not become an IT consultant if you can help it.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• Another batch of SCO v. IBM filings, on GL-lite, and Zen's Den. Two sealed docs and one of those overlength memo thingys. So nothing earthshaking today. As you were.
  
• On Lamlaw, an article on the many obstacles facing SCO right now.
  
• If you're stuck with OpenServer 5.0.7, you probably ought to know that a new Maintenance Pack is out, and it claims to address a long list of security holes.
  
• Today's Open Source Odds and Sods, including a tidbit about Linus's unhappiness with Gnome... a problem which Linus addresses in proper F/OSS fashion, by submitting a patch.
  
• More on this year's edition of the endless desktop wars here.
  
• And an unusual piece partly about KDE: A heartfelt plea to get rid of the tech world's "master" and "slave" terminology.
  
• Elsewhere in IP litigation land:
  
  
  
  • AT&T wins a round in a patent case against M$, but next we hear from the Supremes (not one of whom is an engineer, btw.)
    
  • A Blankenhorn piece about the Verizon v. Vonage VOIP case. SCO gets a quick mention, as it does every time another wannabe Evil IP Overlord crops up.
    
  • The RIAA declares holy jihad against the nation's college students. Often with the eager cooperation of their schools, believe it or not. Share an MP3, get suspended for a semester.
    
  • In hardware land, there's a settlement in the patent case between Synopsys and Magma Design. I haven't followed this one too closely, maybe someone out there can fill us in on the details.
    
  
  
• Lynne Jolitz (of 386BSD fame) has an interesting piece on "Academics vs. Developers". Note to academics: If you're writing code on Linux, even if you're just trying to prove a point, you really ought to use a modern kernel/distro so your startling innovations can be merged back and shared with the off-campus universe (which does really exist, btw.) A user comment links to a Douglas Comer bit on "How To Criticize Computer Scientists".
  
• Impress your friend(s) with this kewl mil-spec USB flash drive.
  
• A profile of the Apache Foundation. They want you to know they're not just about web servers anymore. My Java-based colleagues keep telling me that Tomcat and Jakarta are both da shiznit, but so far I haven't had the free time to learn more.
  
• Everyone knows by now that Vista's UAC is a total botch. ZDNet puts out a call for better ideas. Although they don't want to hear about your pesky Ubuntu, thank you very much.
  
• Speaking of UAC, have you seen the new Apple commercial? Seems that BillG doesn't like it too much.
  
• A piece with tips on using a Mac mini as a server.
  
• I'm probably tempting fate with 3 Mac bits in a row, but here's a thread on how to set up a RAID "array" on a floppy under OSX. Whatever. Wake me when you can boot an iMac off a 9-track tape.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• In case anyone thought it was unfair of me to add Barbara Darrow's "Unblog" to the pro-SCO column, check out today's piece, "Where's PJ? Chapter Two". Her two journalistic sources today are MOG and that "Where's PJ" blog. Naturally MOG has a catty little piece up too, but the full text of the article is only available on pay-per-spew. Pay to read a MOG article? Moi? Ha. It is to laugh.
  
  As for why it's called "Unblog", as far as I can tell it's because the thing doesn't accept user comments.
  
• More threats from Steve Ballmer. Naturally he's not about to specify exactly what precious M$ IP he's accusing people of violating. Sounds familiar, huh?
  
• A large home improvement chain in Europe is switching to Red Hat from Windows. Although I admit to being a bit disappointed. When first saw the word "Kingfisher", I thought the story was about the beer of that name. No such luck, at least not today.
  
• How to delete a shortcut off your Vista desktop, in seven easy steps.
  
• Dell recently unveiled a new system called "IdeaStorm", which is just marketing speak for "a suggestion box". The top suggestions were 1.) Linux preinstalled, and 2.) OOo preinstalled. So we'll see what comes of that, I guess.
  
• Blankenhorn on "The commie smear against open source".
  
• BBC on Big Media's latest attempt to bully non-DMCA-compliant countries around the world.
  
• From the DUH department: Default router passwords are Considered Harmful.
  
• From the WTF department: PC Magazine lists the 10 Weirdest Vibrating Devices. Must've been a slow day around HQ or something.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

It's a second-tier legal holiday here in the US, so the markets are closed, some businesses are open and others closed, and the malls and car dealerships are packed with shoppers. I'm sitting here at home waiting (once again) for the heater repair guy to show up. I should mention that I'm not much of a hardware guy. If it was a microcontroller issue, a problem with a component one can reason with, I might have a slim chance.

But I digress. I mention the bit about the holiday because there isn't much going on in the SCO world today. Here's what we've got right now:

• On the newly terse and dry GL, new posts about the latest SCO v. IBM filings, and IBM-961 in particular.
  
• Lamlaw on IBM-961.
  
• A recent CNN piece about the ongoing BS&F/Amici scandal. The piece has somewhat of a pro-Boies slant, which isn't surprising since they're CNN and he's a famous celebrity. The piece does have a good bit of background on all the key players in the case, and how they all go back years and years.
  
• From the boards, another tale about switching to Linux. The site the piece is about is kind of interesting, too, IMHO, although totally OT. I've always thought it was a shame this part of the world wasn't settled (by Europeans, I mean) until canals were already past their heyday.
  
• Ballmer says Vista isn't selling well, and it's all the fault of those pesky pirates. Even though they've been claiming for months now that Vista would be pirate-proof. Go figure. Although why anyone would pirate Vista is beyond me. So the plan now is to make "Windows Genuine Advantage" even stricter. As the Inq notes:
  

  
  Of course he is ignoring the fact that a lot of people are not buying Vista because it does not offer much more than XP and Windows Genuine Advantage makes their lives a misery. Cranking up WGA might backfire.
  

  
  
• A recent item about SGI's Linux+Itanium-based Altix line. Recall that SCO threatened SGI early on but never got around to suing them. And now, almost four years later, SGI's dropped its old IRIX+MIPS product line to focus on Linux & Itanium. Presumably their XFS filesystem (which SCO also complained about) makes an appearance on their Altix boxes as well. On the other hand, SGI doesn't have anywhere near the deep pockets that IBM has. I may sound like a broken record here, but this just goes to show, yet again, that SCO's IBM suit was all about trying to extort a quick-n-easy payoff rather than about actually defending SCO's "IP rights", such as they are.
  
• At the Daily Rotten, some rather NSFW comments about Ralphie's CP80.
  
• From Usenet: It's a bit late for Valentine's Day, but here's a post from a woman who's searching for an old AT&T 3B1 as a surprise gift for her husband. If you have one lying around and feel like making someone's day, more details are in the thread.
  

---

Updated:

• The heater guy came and replaced a faulty relay, for a mere US$172. Of course, that's only the beginning of what the new relay is going to cost me. You see, relays not entirely unlike my shiny new one were used in some of the earliest computers, such as Harvard's Mark I, back before everyone switched to those newfangled vacuum tubes. The Mark I was built by none other than IBM, the <very same IBM that later went on to develop JFS and contribute it to Linux. So in some sense, Linux is a derivative work of the Mark I, therefore SCO retroactively owns it too. And by extension, they also own the relay in my heater. Clearly I need a $699 SCOSource license for all that precious SCO IP.
  
  Sure, the heater doesn't actually have a CPU inside or anything, but the idea's not any stupider than anything else SCO's been proposing, so why not? Besides, even without a CPU you could probably still get it to run NetBSD....
  
• But seriously, folks, here's a great IV post by KWL listing seven ways SCO is oh, so screwed.
  
• Some more coverage on that quantum computing story from a couple of days ago, at: Daily Tech, ExtremeTech, Geek.com, and HPCWire. It looks like a lot of people are quite skeptical about the announcement and whether the whole thing is legit or not. It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out. The ExtremeTech piece refers to D-Wave's machine as " a new type of analog processor that taps into quantum mechanics", which is an interesting bit of phrasing. Analog computers (much more here) are actually a very old, almost forgotten, and deeply unfashionable subject -- albeit without any quantum weirdness mixed in. So if the new announcement is actually a new advance in a long-forgotten field, well, that would be pretty cool too. On the other hand, if it's all a big con game, that would fit in pretty well with this blog's ostensible topic.
  
• Also, you might (not) have noticed the addition of alt.os.linux.caldera to the left sidebar, in the "Tech" section. I didn't realize such a thing still existed, but it does, and it's in semi-active use by the good guys. Kewl.
  
• Oh, and I finally got around to officially adding the Creative Commons logo to SNR. It's in the sidebar, just scroll down a bit.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• Additional filings in SCO v. IBM. Zen's Den has 'em all here -- everything from #960 on is new. Right now I'm reading through #961, perhaps better known as "IBM’S MEMORANDUM IN OPPOSITION TO SCO’S OBJECTIONS TO THE MAGISTRATE JUDGE’S ORDER ON IBM’S MOTION TO CONFINE AND SCO’S MOTION TO AMEND ITS DECEMBER 2005 SUBMISSION". Say that ten times fast, I dare you. But apart from the title, the doc's a good read, as IBM docs usually are. This one's much smaller than SCO's #960, and it isn't full of SCO's brain-melting nonsense.
  
  
• Addendum D to doc #961 is a chart laying out SCO's 294 claims about "misused material". If SCO had a legit case, you'd see lots of rows with X's in the Linux columns, and also X's in columns for SysV, AIX, and/or Dynix/ptx. Go ahead and look for yourself, and see how many of those you can find. The chart's informative so far as it goes, but I suspect the Nazgul don't have any graphic artists on staff. When reading the chart you may find it helpful to cross-reference with this chart, also over at Zen's Den. (I'm sure there was something similar on GL too, but I can't find it at the moment.) It gives a brief summary of each claim and tells what's become of it. Much nicer to look at, although scrolling down through all those grey boxes marked "Dismissed" can get a little monotonous after a while.
  
  
• On IV, another rapid debunking of a silly SCO assertion, this one about RCU in #690. One great thing about programming as opposed to lawyering is that when an assertion fails, your entire process ends. If only the federal courts were as unforgiving as the immutable laws of the "Old Testament"...
  
  
• Wired on "How to Explain DRM to Your Dad".
  
  
• You still want an iPhone? Bah! When the iPhone 2.0 comes out, everyone in the whole Starbucks will just look at you and laugh. Ok, ok, it's an Onion story, but still. My wife has a 1st generation iPod, which she keeps because of the clickwheel that actually rotates. The thing came out what, 5 years ago? And it's already a collector's item, practically.
  
  
• A piece about an upcoming open source conference in India. You've just gotta love the florid Indian English:
  

  
  Brain Bogglers, the technology quiz, will witness some of the finest brains in the country lock horns in a neuronic battle while No Ugly Duckling, and the open source challenge will bear testimony to a clash of open source titans in their quest for supremacy.
  

  
  
  
• Finally, you no longer need an invite to get a Gmail account. Which I suppose also means that current Gmail account holders no longer have scarce & desirable Gmail invites to hand out. So start honing your best "Gmail used to be cool, before they let all the AOL punks in" sneer.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Anywayyyy, back at the Ponderosa, real stuff continues to happen:

• Another filing in SCO v. IBM, #IBM-960 [~5MB pdf, 200 pages], which is yet another redacted SCO motion in opposition to an IBM PSJ motion. Got all that straight? Good.
  
  The executive summary version: The silly go-for-broke arguments continue, and they repeat a number of arguments that Kimball & Wells have already rejected, like the recent "spoilation of evidence" thing.
  
  Despite having a blog, I'm not actually superhuman, so I haven't read the whole thing yet. It'll take the community a few days to digest something this big, but I suspect it simply overflows with weird, amusing, and ridiculous tidbits.
  
• Ralphie's CP80 con game is moving ahead in the Utah state legislature. In passing, Ralphie mentions something about a proposed law in Oregon. It's not clear exactly what proposal he has in mind, but anything remotely CP80-like would have a tough row to hoe here. Oregon takes an extremely expansive, libertarian view of free speech and free expression. A couple of years ago the state Supreme Court ruled that live sex shows constitute protected free speech, and they're very strict about overturning any laws that place restrictions on speech based on its content. For example, if you allow large artistic murals on the sides of buildings, you also have to allow large commercial advertising on the sides of buildings, since the state constitution doesn't explicitly authorize governments to distinguish between commercial and non-commercial speech. Putting CP80 into action here would require a change to the state constitution. That's been proposed several times in recent years, and the voters have always rejected it by wide margins. So if we're Ralphie's second best hope, I can't even imagine what the others are like.
  
• On GL, a bit about the M$ antitrust settlement in Iowa.
  
• The nice folks at X.org have released X11R7.2. Meanwhile, XFree86 hasn't been updated since last May. I'd guess that the new, more restrictive license the XFree crowd has adopted (at the behest of a longtime Y! troll, no less) isn't proving to be a net benefit.
  
• Red Herring claims Web 2.0 isn't dead yet. Which is good. I've been trying to learn a bit of Ruby in my rare free cycles, and it'd be a damn shame if the fad passed before I got much past "Hello World".
  
• A new SDK from NVidia to make it easier to use the GeForce 8800 GPU for general purpose computing (a.k.a. GPGPU, a hot buzzword in the supercomputing community ). And yes, it's available for Linux. Maybe this is what it's going to take to convince 'em to make nice and release video drivers the Linux Way. But speaking as a dedicated non-gamer, this is actually much cooler than any mundane video driver stuff anyway.
  
• Another pile-o-fun assortment from IBM's DeveloperWorks.
  
• Ubuntu's backing away from PowerPC support. I guess that's understandable, considering that Apple's 100% x86 at this point, but it's still kind of a shame. But never fear; if your favorite distro drops support for your favorite hardware, chances are that NetBSD still supports it. Yes, even that rusty old VAX 11/780 in your garage -- you do have one of those, right?
  
• Another advance on the "Linux for non-geeks" front: A distro called Tadpole Linux, aimed at elementary schools. It's Gentoo-based but it's a live CD, so presumably neither the students nor their teacher will be required to recompile the kernel from scratch. I sure hope that's the plan, at least. Anyway, they're looking for a project logo, so feel free to go contribute to a good cause -- that is, if you have any artistic talent, which I don't.
  
• Here's a bit to rile up the anti-FOSS ideologues. In the wake of all those other countries going the Linux route, Cuba's decided to follow suit. So I suppose there may actually be a few real-live Linux commies out there. The big announcement even featured a guest appearance by our very own RMS. This should give the AdTI clowns nightmares for months, if there's anyone left at AdTI.
  
• A few more Vista items for your enjoyment(?):
  
  • Vista: Chock full o' bugs
    
  • On Vista, your existing CAD apps won't work, because MS is sabotaging OpenGL in favor of its proprietary Direct3D. You've heard of vendor lock-in; this is ISV & developer lock-in.
    
  • This week's Patch Tuesday fixed a serious flaw in Vista's "Windows Defender",
    which is supposed to be a security tool. Nelson: Ha, ha.
    
  
  
• Although it's been a weird, weird day, I don't have a weird item to close out this post. So instead, perhaps you might enjoy the San Diego Zoo's PandaCam. As an aside, Netcraft says the zoo recently moved its website to Linux. So what's not to like? Oddly, ZooAtlanta's site (including another PandaCam) apparently runs on Tru64. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I rather like Tru64 actually. It's just not something you see everyday. Anyway, all together now: OMG PANDAS!!!! LOL!!!
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Ok, it isn't quite time yet for today's non-PJ items. Instead, we interrupt your normal programming for an exciting update on the blogspam I've been getting recently. The post with the name-and-shame details got this anonymous comment earlier today:

Be careful about publicly naming people. It happened to a mate of mine and he was sued under the freedom of information act in the uk.

.

This was followed almost immediately by a nasty email:

From: m@il2.us
Subject: http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 19:49:59 -0000
Remove my name and contact details immediately from the blog and the public domain. I have received harrassing telephone calls and will be filing a law suit against yourself and the company you represent.

Rowcliffe

My response:

Dear Mr. Rowcliffe,

All of the information posted on SNR comes from public WHOIS records. Anyone can find the same information with a brief, trivial search, without ever visiting or hearing of my site. Try it yourself if you don't believe me: Go to www.whois.net (for example), enter one of your domains in the provided form, and examine the results.

You haven't said anything so far about the bargainplace blogspam I've been getting. You haven't denied it's yours. Nor have you expressed any remorse about the annoyance it's caused, or the time I've wasted deleting all that spam. And yet you want me to bend over backwards to make *you* happy. Doesn't that strike you as a bit odd?

That said, if you truly have been receiving harassing phone calls, that's not ok with me. Purely out of the kindness of my heart, I'll remove the two phone numbers shown in your contact data, even though I have no legal obligation to do so, and you didn't even ask nicely.

Don't expect this to stop the flood of angry phone calls, though. Anyone on the entire net can easily find the same phone numbers without any help from me.

Spam is very annoying. A Google search for "bargainplace.co.uk" shows similar spam posts on a large number of other blogs. You should reasonably assume that behind each of these blogs is an annoyed blogger, and any one of these people could look up your WHOIS data just as easily as I did. If you don't like the reaction the spam's been getting, I'd encourage you to consider a different business model.

Regards,
-a

I meant what I said about the phone harassment thing. That's not ok with me, and I don't want to encourage that sort of behavior, so I've removed the phone numbers from the post. Quite honestly, I never would've guessed those were legit phone numbers in the first place. What sort of spammer gives out a real phone number in his WHOIS data, anyway?

While I was busy writing that last email, I got two more emails from our delightful Mr. Rowcliffe:

#1:

If my personal details are not removed from the site by 00:00 GMT I will be contacting the FBI under the terms of data protection.

#2:

Remove my name and contact details immediately from the blog and the public domain. I have received harrassing telephone calls and will be filing a law suit against yourself and the company you represent.

Rowcliffe

And just now, two more emails. Apparently he's not satisfied with my response.

To: security@google.com
CC: atul666@yahoo.com
Subject: Internet Security Breach
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:02:29 -0000
RE: http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/

This individual has placed my personal details in the public domain - a clear breach of Data Protection laws. Please can this blog be removed immediately and the listing removed from Google.com.

Thanks
Ian Rowcliffe

And:

From: m@il2.us
To: security@google.com
CC: atul666@yahoo.com
Subject: Fw: Internet Security Breach
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:04:45 -0000
I have received an email from the individual responsible and he refuses to remove my details from his blog. I reiterate please remove this blog immediately.

I should point out at this point that we don't have a UK-style Data Protection Act here in the US.

I'll update this page if there are any more fun developments in this thrilling saga.

---

Updated: Another email from my new friend across the pond. It seems he's feeling a little belligerent.

From: m@il2.us
To: atul666@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2007 22:16:18 -0000


You obviously haven't a clue how the law works pal - a good job you're
not stood in front of me now ywpos.

Anybody know what a "ywpos" is?

---

Updated II:

Nothing new from ol' whatsisname, but I've turned on word verification and turned off anon posting, at least for the time being. I realize that's an annoyance, but at least it should cut down on the spam. Given that last email, there's no telling what sort of reckless thing he's going to try next. It's always an adventure here at SNR...

---

Updated III:

It's about 3am GMT now, and I haven't heard another peep out of "Lord" Ian so far. I'll keep y'all posted if anything else happens on the blogspam front.

Oh, and I'd just like to point out one fun bit: The domain registration he's upset about is a .com registration, via Arizona-based GoDaddy. They also host his FreePremiership site, while his Bargainplace.co.uk site lives Texas-based Alpha Red. They appear to specialize in pr0n hosting. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. I'm just saying.

On top of that, Google/Blogspot is out of California, and I'm in Oregon. In short, everyone except Rowcliffe himself is on this side of the Atlantic. So I imagine he's going to have a spot of trouble getting everyone to knuckle under and submit to random EU directives out of Brussels. I just sort of don't see that happening.

And if we are going to go down the path of assuming his laws apply to me, mine presumably apply to him as well. Here's Oregon's anti-spam law. When someone posts here, Blogger automagically emails it to me, so it seems pretty clear that the email spam provisions apply to Mr. Rowcliffe's marketing efforts. I'm not sure yet what Texas' laws are about spammers. If you're lucky, they probably just send you to Guantanamo or something.

Oh, and an IV poster pointed out that the UK's data protection rules only apply because Lord Whatsisname claimed to be "non-trading". Since he's advertising, he's clearly running a business and engaging in trade (or at least attempting to do so), therefore EU privacy rules don't apply anyway. I don't know if there are actual penalties for misrepresenting one's business as non-trading to exploit privacy laws, but I'm sure it can't be a positive thing. And heck, the UK probably has laws about misrepresenting oneself as a "Lord", too. But maybe he's already realized all this stuff on his own, and that's why I haven't heard from him lately. We'll see, I guess.

---

Updated IV: Still no word from Lord Ian of Spamalot. Which is fine by me, really. But here's some more info about the guy that various people have dug up:

• He made a 2002 list of top non-US-based registrants in the .US domain. The domains he was "lord" of, as of that date:
  

  
  3dtv.us, activ8.us, cat5e.us, cat7.us, christen.us, contax.us, coupling.us, cybersurf.us, cyberzine.us, domainrent.us, dvcam.us, dvt.us, earthcam.us, e-commercial.us, e-comms.us, e-conomy.us, econsultancy.us, educ8.us, e-i.us, e-id.us, e-it.us, e-technology.us, freefone.us, freesoft.us, fxck.us, galore.us, ibanker.us, ipatent.us, ipcall.us, iportal.us, itdept.us, itechnology.us, liverpoolfc.us, look2.us, lotterywinner.us, matureporn.us, moneybroker.us, mufc.us, qualitydomains.us, readerswives.us, sexandthecity.us, singlesclub.us, squat.us, stalker.us, sunbed.us, sunbeds.us, surf4.us, surferswives.us, svcd.us, telecomms.us, ustld.us, virtua.us, virtualpc.us, webclick.us, webdj.us, webdns.us, webseek.us
  

  
  
  I'd guess from those domain names that he was doing a bit of cybersquatting on the side. Clearly he doesn't realize how rarely the .US domain is used. And "matureporn.us"? Eew.
  
  
• As an example, here's his registration for look2.us. A quick google for "Lord Rowcliffe" comes up with this page, plus the .US pages at Harvard, plus SNR.
  
• It's not 100% certain, but this may be our guy. He lists occupation as "Computer related (other)", which I guess is true, and under "Here for?" he answered:
  Dating: False
  Relationship: False
  Networking: False
  Friends: False
  Publishing: False
  And I can see all of that being true as well, except possibly the "publishing" bit.
  
• One of his spams wasn't just signed "Ian Rowcliffe", it even included a map to some sort of location in Blackpool. That seems like a rather silly thing to do, if one is going around spamming people left and right.
  
• Oddly, he's neglected to acquire ian-rowcliffe.co.uk or similar domains. If I thought he was worth the £1.99, it'd be a tempting thought.
  
• Another astute reader contributed a list of other domains associated with the Bozo of Blackpool:
  
  omega-3shop.blogspot.com
  omega3shop.blogspot.com
  thebestsitefor.blogspot.com
  wwwomega3.com
  omega-3-6-9.co.uk
  omega-3-6-9.com
  o3p.co.uk
  look2.us
  paypal-signup.com
  ebay-signup.com
  talktalk-signup.com
  sky-signup.com
  aa-signup.com
  rac-signup.com
  ntl-signup.com
  coolcreditcards.co.uk
  gaselectricitysuppliers.co.uk
  www-uswitch.com
  www-ebooks.com
  wwwdomain-registration.com
  www-fa.com
  www-barclays.com
  www-itv.com
  argosonlinecatalogue.co.uk
  www-argos.com
  www-nhs.com
  www-nhs.co.uk
  essentialforbodyandmind.com
  
  
  ...while also noting that A "James Smithson" using toasttopper@hotmail.co.uk also promotes some of the above.
  
  If we're going to look at this with a generous eye, he's merely looking for hits from poor typists. Or possibly these are for phishing purposes, or perhaps squatting on domains real phishers might want. Can't rule either out, based on names like those. paypal-signup.com? www-nhs.co.uk? The guy's really playing with fire, WIPO-style.
  
  
• Domains in the second set tend to come with contact info different than what was posted earlier. (And let me point out here that the "administrative contact" and "technical contact" WHOIS fields use the word contact for a reason. Precisely the reason I'm using the info for, in fact.)
  
  Ian Rowcliffe
  174 Norbreck Rd
  Blackpool, Lancs fy5 1qg
  United Kingdom
  
  And the aforementioned map points to an location somewhere on Norbreck Road. So either that's his real lair, or he wants people to think that's his real lair, and either way he's giving the info out for weird, inscrutable reasons of his own. Right now I'm inclined to think it's not a residence, since a quick Google indicates that street is full of tourist amenities: trinket stands, fish-and-chip shops, and the like. Plus he acts like a business, he says he's a business, he advertises himself as a business, so it's perfectly reasonable for me to assume this is a business address, and not just mum and dad's basement or something. I wonder what a spammer's real live brick-and-mortar storefront looks like, anyway?
  
  I should point out that I'm looking into this stuff strictly out of morbid but purely idle curiosity. He hasn't been back here, and he hasn't managed to spam me again since our fun episode on Friday. I'm not sure we've seen the last of the guy, though, and since the guy keeps threatening me, it's clearly in my best interest to learn as much as I can about the guy, just in case he tries something stupid. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens next.
  
  
• As for the "Smithson" angle, here's one example. The entry lists Rowcliffe's "wwwomega3.com", a Norbreck Rd. address, and the same phone# as one listed on His Lordship's freepremiership.com registration. (Please note that I'm mentioning the phone# bit strictly for correlation purposes.) I also like how the listing claims that Omega-3 fish oil is good for cancer and AIDS. Ok, so he's not a doctor, but he plays one on the Interwebs. Niiiice.
  
  
• The ironic thing about all this is that he could've easily avoided all this unpleasantness. For starters, he could've just not spammed me. That would've been nice. But suppose he had, and I'd posted that WHOIS data. There were all sorts of other approaches he could've tried that might've worked better than immediately threatening me. He could've apologized and sworn never to spam anyone again. He could've sworn up and down he had nothing to do with the spams. He could've even admitted to it and said he was only doing it because he really needed the money and had a good reason for it, like paying off a gambling debt, or getting mum a liver transplant, or something. In any of those cases, I might've been persuaded to ditch that WHOIS info, because I'm a nice person and I try to be understanding about these things. But no. Nothing but threats from the get-go. And here we are now.
  

---

Updated V (2/21/07):

Got this in my inbox earlier today:

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:20:52 -0800
From: "Blogger Help"
To: m@il2.us
CC: atul666@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: [#114154105] Internet Security Breach

Hello,

Thanks for writing in. If you could provide us with the confidential
information that is being posted as well as links to the specific posts
containing this information, we can investigate the issue further.
Thank
you for your continued patience.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Time

If Rowcliffe replied to that, he didn't cc me. And if he replied, I imagine that there are certain crucial details he'd leave out of his account, like the spam bit for example. So I took the liberty of composing a reply of my own. I cc'd Rowcliffe, of course, since I'm all about the free flow of information.

From: "atul666@yahoo.com"
Subject: Re: [#114154105] Internet Security Breach
To: "Blogger Help" , m@il2.us
CC: atul666@yahoo.com


Hello,

Thanks for writing in. If you could provide us with
the confidential information that is being posted as
well as links to the specific posts containing this
information, we can investigate the issue further.
Thank you for your continued patience.

Sincerely,
The Blogger Time


I'm the individual Mr. Rowcliffe complained about in
the original mail. Here's some additional detail on
the situation. For some time now, I've been getting
constant blogspam advertising the sites
"bargainplace.co.uk" and "freepremiership.com", both
of which are registered to Mr. Rowcliffe, according to
publicly available WHOIS data. You can see many
examples of what I was having to put up with by
searching on either URL. For example:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bargainplace.co.uk

So I posted that public WHOIS data, in an attempt to
get the guy to stop spamming me. Here's my original
post on the topic (look towards the bottom of the
post):

http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/2007/02/212-snr.html


And my further adventures with Mr. Rowcliffe can be
found here. Instead of leaving me and my blog alone,
which is all that I wanted, he started sending me
threats. As you can see, at one point he even
threatened me with physical violence, all because I
was sick and tired of having my blog spammed all the
time.

http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/2007/02/blogspam-update.html

As with the first post, every last bit of the info in
the second post is publicly available and can be found
easily with a bit of Google-fu.

As I mention in the second post, I've reluctantly
turned word verification on now, and I haven't gotten
any blogspam since then. In retrospect I really
should've done that from day 1, but you live and
learn, I guess.

I don't believe that anything in either of those posts
is over the line, since it's all 100% public
information. I wouldn't have posted it, otherwise.
As far as I can determine, Rowcliffe wants to prohibit
any criticism of his "business practices" anywhere on
the net, which strikes me as a bit on the unreasonable
side. All that said, if there's anything in either
post that shouldn't be there, let me know and I'll
make the appropriate adjustments.

Thanks for listening,
-a

So we'll see where this thrilling circus goes from here.

---

Updated VI:

I figured that last exchange would elicit a response from Rowcliffe, and I was right:

From: "Ian Rowcliffe"
To: "Blogger Help", security@google.com
CC: atul666@yahoo.com, "Ian Rowcliffe"
Subject: Re: [#114154105] Internet Security Breach
Date: Thu, 22 Feb 2007 09:40:55 -0000

I am not aware of anyone I know spamming this gentleman's blog account
and in fact had never even visited it or even heard about it until I found
that the blog had been indexed in the Google search engine.

Obviously, the information this individual is spreading around the
public domain is confidential and he has absolutely no justification in doing
it.

His further posts to various blogs is not only damaging to my
reputation but is cyber bullying and is highly illegal in that Data Protection Laws in
the UK and US do not permit such an activity - see
http://www.census.gov/privacy/files/data_protection/002777.html

Extract:
a.. Private Information is Never Published
It is against the law to disclose or publish any private information
that
identifies an individual or business:
a.. No names
b.. No addresses
c.. No Social Security Numbers or Employer Identification Numbers
d.. No telephone numbers
b.. We Collect Information to Produce Statistics
We use your information to produce statistics. Your personal
information
cannot be used against you by any government agency or court.
c.. Sworn for Life to Protect Your Confidentiality
Every person with access to your information is sworn for life to
protect
your confidentiality.
d.. Violating the Law is a Serious Crime
If anyone violates this law, it is a federal crime; they will face
severe
penalties, including a federal prison sentence of up to five years, a
fine
of up to $250,000, or both.

It is for this reason that I have had to contact the FBI in America who
are in the process of investigating this matter - penalties for such an
offence are clear for all to see. I gave this individual plenty of time to
comply with my request but instead prefers to post more spurious blurb and has
been obsessively hounding me by contacting my domain providers.

Finally as a result of this gentleman's rather obsessive actions I
havebeen inundated with nuisance telephone calls around the clock for over a
week and this is very disturbing, frightening and upsetting for my wife and
young children. I have made the individual aware of this but he clearly does
not wish to comply with removing the offensive data.

As this information is currently held on your servers, I am kindly
requesting that you remove any information relating to the name
Rowcliffe off your servers as soon as possible. I do not give permission for
this information to be held on your servers.

Damaging blogs that I am aware of - there could be more:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScoNewsRoundup
http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/

The guy tells a few real whoppers in there, so I felt I had to reply:

From: "atul666@yahoo.com"
Subject: Re: [#114154105] Internet Security Breach
To: "Blogger Help" , security@google.com
CC: atul666@yahoo.com, "Ian Rowcliffe"

I hate to drag out this silly situation any further,
but Mr. Rowcliffe's latest email contains a number of
false statements that I can't let stand uncorrected.


I am not aware of anyone I know spamming this
gentleman's blog account.


The available evidence *strongly* suggests otherwise. A Google search on "freepremiership.com" (for example)
shows many, many examples of spam advertising that site. A WHOIS search on the same domain name returns
your name, email address, and other particulars.

What part of this situation are you not involved in, Mr. Rowcliffe?


he has absolutely no justification in doing it.


My justification is actually quite simple. I want the spam and harassment to stop.


Data Protection Laws in the UK and US do not permit
such an activity - see
http://www.census.gov/privacy/files/data_protection/002777.html


The law Mr. Rowcliffe refers to applies only to the release of US Census data. It's utterly ridiculous to suggest it applies to public WHOIS records.

And as Rowcliffe owns literally dozens, perhaps hundreds, of domain names, it seems wilfully dishonest for him to suggest he doesn't know what WHOIS records are. That idea boggles the mind, and defies basic common sense.


has been obsessively hounding me by contacting my
domain providers.


A complete fabrication. Perhaps some other blogger he's offended (and I imagine there are many) has done this, but I have not. I'd be well within my rights if I chose to do so, but so far I haven't.


I have been inundated with nuisance telephone calls
around the clock for over a week


If this accusation is really true, the callers could not be obtaining this information from my blog at this point. My posts have been scrubbed of any phone numbers, as I strongly oppose that sort of thing. I've explained this to Mr. Rowcliffe before, to no avail.

The information is elsewhere on the net, though, and can easily be found by anyone out there without ever visiting my blog. Rowcliffe wants a harsh punishment meted out without even knowing where the alleged callers -- if they even existed -- got the information, which is just plain ridiculous.


Damaging blogs that I am aware of - there could be
more:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ScoNewsRoundup
http://sconewsroundup.blogspot.com/
<<

Another strange notion. The Feedburner URL is simply an enhanced RSS feed for my existing blog, not a second blog. See http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/help/blogger_quickstart



Anyway, thanks again for your time and patience in this matter. Don't hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance.

-a

The fun just never stops, does it?

---

Updated VII (5/4/2023): Yes, I'm posting this over 16 years after the previous updates. Seems this post was flagged as "adult content" and placed behind a warning that users have to click through, and I imagine that whole process is completely AI-driven at this point. I thought about just letting it slide, since this blog hasn't been updated in ages and almost certainly won't be ever again. But then I reread the post and remembered what a dishonest asshole this guy was, and presumably still is. The notice received asked me to update the post and request that it be re-reviewed, so I'm adding this update here, and I'm going to request a review, and ideally the reviewer(s) will notice there never was any adult content here in the first place, and that the complaint was made maliciously and is entirely without merit.

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

First off, you might enjoy "Where Is PJ?", a silly new blog all about the ongoing frantic search for PJ, with sighting reports, updates on the rampaging hordes of Groklaw zombies, and much, much more. As you can see, this PJ situation has more exciting twists and turns than even the Anna Nicole thing. Which is saying a lot.

On a more serious note, SJVN has a chat with the Darl incarnate. Some new choice quotes from the most hated man in IT:

"It's my understanding that she has some material of importance to our slander of title case with Novell. I don't know the exact details."

So apparently Darl wants us to think he's been out of the loop on the PJ thing. BS&F wanted to go down this road, and he didn't ask them why in any great detail. Any idiot could've seen this would be a PR disaster, but he just shrugged and figured the lawyers knew best. Then, knowing he was going to be interviewed on the topic, he still didn't bother to bone up on the details of why his company was doing this. Sure, yeah, right.

You could look at this and marvel at the guy's breathtaking incompetence, if all of that's really true. But I just think he's lying through his teeth again, and (as usual) it's not even a very good lie. He says PJ has "material of importance" to the Novell case, while also asserting she doesn't even exist. How much sense does that make?

It doesn't take an MIT rocket scientist to see that the real motive here is just to intimidate and silence the company's critics.

So then Darl goes on to say:

"Pamela, if you read this, please, give me a call. We just want to chat."

Just want to chat!? It's been a long while since I've heard anything quite so smarmy and insincere. Smarmy, insincere, and vaguely menacing, as well. It's not, you know, Gotti-style professional grade menacing. Imagine a high school production of the "Army Protection Racket" Python sketch. Now imagine the cast have never seen the original and are trying to play it as a serious crime drama. When Darl puts on his "scary face", that's pretty much what it's like.

In a way SCO's performed a valuable service with the latest episode. Yes, the company is an industry punchline, and a tired one at that. And it's tough to argue their lawsuits are a credible threat to Linux anymore. But the new PJ incident should remind people that SCO's still run by a band of ruthless and truly vile individuals, and there's no telling what else they'll try to pull before this is all over.

More PJ-relatedness:

• A nice rant at technocrat.net.
  
• The Inquirer's latest: "Pamela Jones exists, claims bloke", where SJVN is the aforementioned "bloke". Oh, those cheeky Brits.
  
• Slashdot covers the same territory, but with a less thrilling title: "Groklaw No Front for IBM". I haven't read all the user comments. They're usually all about Soviet Russia and Natalie Portman anyway, so why bother?
  
• A few blog posts about the situation at Dhampir Dreams, it's about time, and The detritus of a Button Monkey (you gotta love those colorful blog names..).
  

I was going to wrap this up with a section of non-PJ-related items, since there's a lot more going on in the industry besides the childish obsessions of litigious minor-league PHBs. I think I'll move those to a separate post instead, so they aren't just marooned at the bottom of a page full of PJ stories.

Until then, go visit "Where Is PJ?" if you haven't already. Or if you have, go again. It's probably been updated again by now.

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• Life Insurance Corp. of India is replacing its Windows desktops with Linux boxes. The article mentions that two years ago they landfilled their remaining SCO boxes in favor of Linux. I seem to remember when that happened. It probably showed up in a daily SNR back when they were just Y! board posts. Wow. This goofy SCO saga's been going on for forever and a day, hasn't it?
  
  The piece mentions that RHEL does a better job running their crufty old legacy Cobol apps than Unix could, and I assume they're referring to SCO Unix there. Ouch. Legacy app support has been pushed as one of OpenServer's big selling points, so that's got to hurt a bit.
  
  
• In "Yes, there is a PJ", SJVN responds to yesterday's flurry of PJ fud, saying he's sure PJ exists because he's met her several times. Which would seem to be pretty conclusive -- assuming, of course, that he exists.
  
  
• An SL Trib story on Blakey's departure.
  
  
• IDC says the Linux "ecosystem" will be worth $40B (US) by 2010. Any guesses about what the SCO "ecosystem" will be worth then?
  
  
• I've been getting a regular stream of hits from people looking for info on updating their old SCO boxes for this year's silly daylight savings tweakage. As noted in these threads on comp.unix.sco.misc and comp.unix.unixware.misc, SCO's being somewhat less than helpful on that account. In some cases they want to charge an arm and a leg, and in others they just aren't supporting the new DST at all. While I detest SCO, I don't extend that animosity to poor beleaguered sysadmins who happen to be stuck with old SCO boxes, so here's the info I've been able to find. It looks like you just need to tweak /etc/TIMEZONE, as noted in the aforementioned c.u.s.m thread, and this thread at WebServerTalk. If I can spare anyone from having to pay SCO another $2000 for this rather trivial fix, I'm happy to help out.
  
  In fairness, SCO isn't the only Unix vendor that isn't supporting the timezone changes on old OS versions. If you're running Solaris older than Sol8, here's a thread on how to do the update. Unlike SCO OSes, timezone info on Solaris is compiled into a binary format (for speed, I guess), so the update involves an obscure tool called zic, which the man page describes as a "time zone compiler". Who knew there even was such a thing? You learn something every day, I guess.
  
  
• Speaking of Solaris, Sun's released a patch for that nasty Telnet vulnerability someone found the other day. Although as others have noted, the real fix is to turn off telnetd. And turn off all those stupid Berkeley 'r' commands, while you're at it. Sheesh.
  
  
• And HP-UX 11i V3 was released today. Recall that OldSCO teamed up with IBM on Project Monterey only after their earlier Unixware-on-Itanium partnership with HP (oddly named "Summit 3D") didn't work out for some reason. HP doesn't seem to have suffered very much because of SCO's absence.
  
  
• A few links found on Slashdot:
  
  
  
  • A piece wondering if Blackberries are chaining people to their jobs 24/7. Speaking as a Blackberry owner, I have to say that's basically true, but when you're sitting at home waiting for a repair person to show up -- as I am today -- that's not necessarily a bad thing.
    
  • The OLPC, the $100-ish Linux laptop we've been hearing about for years, has topped 1 million pre-orders.
    
  • The latest news in quantum computing, an update to the piece I linked to a few days ago. Seems the demo went well, and you'll be able to rent time on a real live quantum computer by early next year. Supposedly. The current machine is a proof-of-concept box, but it plays Sudoku, which I guess is something.
    
  
  
  
• Windows: Snooze-inducing. (Warning: link goes to Cute Overload, so if you follow it you may be there for hours. Unless you don't like cute animals, that is, in which case you're probably a SCO employee or something.)
  
  
• Apple has branched out again. First mobile phones, and now swimwear. (Warning, fairly NSFW).
  
  
• If you have fond memories of the old Acorn/Archimedes RISC machines from back in the day, you might be interested to know that RISC OS is going to a nearly-open-source license.
  
  
• A new, ugly Firefox flaw. I figure this is worth reporting here because a.) FF is an open source app, and b.) if my hit counter's browser stats are accurate (a big if), Firefox is used by roughly 2/3 of all visitors to SNR (or its sibling blog, since they both share the same counter). Almost 1/3 of you are on FF 2.x, and slightly more are still on FF 1.x, with another 4% still using Mozilla 1.x. IE has a paltry 22% browser share here (7% IE7, 15% IE6), plus 5% for Safari and 4% for Opera to round out the stats.
  
  As for reported OS share, a bit over half of you use Windows of some sort, and a bit over 1/3 of you use Linux. The rest is mostly OS X, although I've gotten a surprisingly large (i.e. nonzero) number of hits from OS/2 boxes recently. Weird.
  
  I look at browser and OS stats about once in a blue moon, but it's been fairly consistent over time. Occasionally I've seen hits from ancient versions of Netscape or IE, but it's quite rare. It's nice to think that people are generally smart enough not to run old, unpatched browsers.
  
  
• Enderle on M$ and Linux. He argues that M$ has done a poor job so far competing with Linux, and offers his unique insights on what they might do differently. Oddly enough, it doesn't involve calling people commies or terrorists, or filing baseless lawsuits, or any of the usual stuff. Maybe he's realized that's been tried already and it didn't work out too well.
  
  
• Over on the boards, Ed Almos suggests that PJ is somewhere in this photo
  
  
• This is completely OT except for the funny name: A boy scout camp in New Jersey called Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco. If the place wasn't 3000 miles away, and they were willing to rent it out when the scouts weren't using it (they aren't, I checked already), it'd be a nice spot for an anti-SCO victory party. Hey, it's never too early to start planning. At minimum, there'll have to be brewskis from Oregon's own Caldera Brewing, a.k.a. the Caldera that has real products that people actually want.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Yet more SCO vs. PJ coverage:

• An InformationWeek piece by Paul McDougall spends much of its time exploring the "what if SCO's right about PJ" angle. Many of its quotes and allegations come from unnamed "SCO insiders". Or possibly all from the same SCO insider. The article is unclear on that point.
  
  I especially like how GL's longtime Domains By Proxy registration is portrayed as an astonishing mystery and perhaps a damning bit of evidence. Earth to McDougall: Everyone except you has known about this for years and years now. For some reason it's perfectly horrid that PJ wants a little anonymity, but perfectly fine to write an article like this one, which relies almost exclusively on anonymous sources. Okayyy....
  
• Instead of anonymous SCO insiders, the new Register piece sits MOG down for a chat. Needless to say, she's got nothing but vitriol to spew about PJ. And it isn't even new vitriol. Yawn.
  
• At least the VNUNet coverage avoids all the ax-grinding and superheated rhetoric. It's refreshing.
  
• More coverage at WebProNews, including a suggestion that SCO's now pursuing a "scorched earth" policy.
  

All in all, I think we're seeing a return to the all-out vicious SCO of old. The latest filings in IBM and Novell have started tossing out all sorts of wild and expansive allegations, the likes of which we haven't seen since 2003 or so. It's as if the last few years of adverse court rulings had never happened. They've returned once again to their longtime obsession with PJ, which they'd seemed to have given up on after the MOG stalking incident. I wouldn't be surprised if their next move is to fire off a fresh round of new frivolous lawsuits.

From their perspective, I suppose they've concluded they've got nothing to lose at this point. And in a way they're probably right. The lawsuits are going nowhere good. Their Unix business continues its long, slow and probably irreversible decline. Their attempts to make nice (MySQL) or change the subject entirely (Me Inc.) have had no significant impact on their bottom line. And making nice at this point is probably not going to do them any good anyway. I know I'm not inclined to change my mind about them, and I know I'm not alone. Lashing out at critics probably won't help either, but it's about the only option they haven't exhausted yet.

I was going to make an analogy here along the lines of "lashing out like a wounded animal", but that's unfair to wounded animals. They at least have a good reason for their actions. SCO management, not so much. The only "injury" they've suffered is not making quite as much money off the SCO scam as they would've liked -- although they've still all done pretty well for themselves, considering that the company itself has never made an honest quarter's profit in its entire existence.

So no wounded animal cliches here. I have a vastly geekier analogy in mind anyway. Darl is sort of like the software industry's Khan Noonien Singh: He and his followers hijacked SCO (the USS Reliant in the analogy) and went on the warpath, trying to avenge all sorts of perceived wrongs, real and imaginary, many of them decades old. From there, the plan was to go on to rule the universe somehow, although that part was never very clear. Darl kept saying victory was a slam dunk, and he convinced a lot of poor saps to follow him to the bitter end, and for what? The vengeance part turned out rather badly, and now SCO's adrift, disabled and on fire. Abandon ship? Bah. No, there's nothing left to do but set off the ol' Genesis device. So if we hear Darl quoting Captain Ahab (""From Hell's heart, I stab at thee... For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee..."), or he's seen being fitted for a prosthetic musclebound rubber chest, we can be pretty sure something bad is right around the corner.

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

More coverage of SCO's attack on PJ:

• The Ars Technica piece is appropriately scathing, and gets points for mentioning MOG's stalking debacle from a while back.
  
• A brief bit at OSDir points at the Lyons story.
  
• At LinuxToday, a repeat of the OSDir tidbit. The user comments are original, at least. Mostly just Lyons-bashing, though. Speaking of Lyons, it's awfully curious how he knew about this before anyone else. I wonder if he'd be gloating so much if IBM ever decided to subpoena him about his dealings with SCO?
  
• A piece by CRN's Barbara Darrow takes more of a ha-ha-isn't-it-funny attitude, quoting Lyons and the Inq article from earlier. Ms. Darrow, you may recall, interviewed Darl & Chris back in November '03 and seemed to buy into SCO's party line back then. It's always good to pair Darl up with a sympathetic interviewer, because he ends up telling some real whoppers; in fact, the whole interview ended up as Exhibit #361 to IBM's so-called "Greatest Hits" filing last October. So maybe she holds a grudge towards PJ over that, I dunno. In any case, I'm adding her "Unblog" to the Pro-SCO column in the sidebar, even though it's really more of an "I (heart) Microsoft" blog than anything else. (Thanks to J. Sizz for the background on Ms. Darrow.)
  
• Out in blogsville (I'm trying to avoid saying "blogosphere"), Jeff Kaplan, bytewriter, and the "Boycott Novell" blog all focus on the free speech / intimidation angle. Speaking of Novell, it's interesting that SCO's trying to go after PJ as part of the Novell case, even though they allege she's somehow tied up with IBM. Perhaps they figure Novell won't put up a big fight about it, after all the stuff PJ's had to say about Novell and Microsoft lately. That would be my current hypothesis, anyway.
  
• A Robert Lemos piece focuses more on the earlier MOG situation, and how much privacy PJ should really expect under the circumstances. He concludes with what I think is a rather ill-considered and unnecessary remark:
  

  
  One last thought: While I have no idea if Jones is really a 61-year-old spinster living alone (as O’Gara describes her) or a team of corporate lawyers, I would point out that “a 61-year-old woman” and “Linux enthusiast” are two sets that I would have imagined to have a really small intersection, if any at all.
  

  
  
• The subpoena thing gets a mention at PCSpy too, including about the ten millionth underpants-gnome reference I've seen in connection with SCO. Heck, I may have been responsible for one or two of those myself. But like all pop-culture reference memes, it's gotten old, and we need a new one. Ideas, anyone?
  

Elsewhere in the Land 'O SCO:

• On GL, MathFox has the latest batch of SCO filings. It's stuff we knew about already, so the real news here is that GL posts are continuing, albeit without PJ's usual wit and flair for the time being.
  
• And some new ownership disclosure docs on Edgar, with both Jet Capital and Glenhill reducing their stakes in SCO. Both firms were players in SCO's last cash infusion back in 2005, so it's interesting that these guys are getting out now, and apparently doing so at a loss. (They got their shares at $3.50, and Glenhill's filing shows them selling at $3.16-$3.19.) They could've all saved themselves a pile of cash if they'd only listened to us, but nooooo....
  
  Glenhill, btw, is Glenn Krevlin's outfit, and they specialize in distressed companies. So what does it say if they're untangling themselves from SCO?
  
• SCO gets a brief mention in an Enterprise Unix Roundup piece at ServerWatch. But only as a joke, as usual.
  
• MS has settled the Iowa antitrust case, although we won't learn details until mid-April for some reason.
  

Oh, and here's a fun (and mildly relevant) blast from the past. I was doing some retrocomputing googlin' the other day, seeing what I could find out about a weird machine I vaguely remembered from a company I used to work for years ago. The thing was from a firm called General Automation, and ran an OS called "Pick". I never touched the thing myself, but I knew the sysadmin, and so I had to put up with the occasional rant about why the world was full of idiots who didn't understand the glories of his favorite OS.

His second-favorite OS was NetWare, and he kept proposing to replace everyone's desktop machines (well, everyone who didn't have a dumb terminal to the Pick box, which was still the ideal) with diskless PC's hooked up to the NetWare mothership. The existing fleet of Macs (along with their unauthorized LocalTalk networks) and Amigas would be banished from the realm, forthwith. If you couldn't find a DOS-based, non-graphical replacement for your QuarkXPress or Video Toaster, well, that wasn't IT's problem, was it?

Eventually he and the company parted ways, and I later had the pleasure of helping nuke the existing NetWare server, turning it into our very first Linux box. This was around kernel 0.9x or so, if I recall correctly.

Anyway, I mention all of this because of a few weird connections and similarities with our friends in Lindon.

• The Pick OS vendor, then known as Pick Systems, was involved in near-constant IP litigation at the expense of promoting the OS and keeping it modernized. I'm not familiar enough with the situation to know the merits of the various court cases, but it shows again that litigiousness often isn't a good long-term corporate strategy, even if you win.
  
• Their business model seems to have been fairly similar to SCO's, with a focus on small & medium businesses, a reseller-based sales model, and a reliance on licensing the OS to third-party hardware vendors.
  
• The company had a partnership with OldSCO's Tarantella division, back in the day.
  
• Meanwhile, General Automation's president back in the early 70's was a certain Ray Noorda, as noted in this highly amusing Time article from 1975. When Noorda left the building, the wackos took over. Sound familiar, anyone?
  
• IBM's first commercial stab at the RISC market, the IBM RT, featured an early microkernel-esque environment. One of the OSes hosted on top of the RT's microkernel was AIX v2, and another was the Pick OS, and apparently you could switch between OSes with a simple Alt-Tab. (IBM later abandoned the microkernel in AIX v3, the first version of AIX to run on the POWER architecture). The WP article notes that the AIX v2 kernel was written mostly in PL/I, not C, so I don't see how that version could've been a SCO/Novell/AT&T Unix derivative. This is one of the prehistoric AIX versions SCO was recently fussing over, claiming IBM was "spoilating evidence" or some such nonsense.
  

(Much more in the way of Pick oldtimer reminiscences here in case you're interested.)

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech