SCO News Roundup

• 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

By brx0 @ 3:43 PM