Monday, September 10, 2007
9/10 SNR
Not much legal action today, but the trial-in-the-media continues.
- Another day, another Darl interview. The guy's everywhere right now, shilling the same set of lame talking points we've heard I don't know how many times before. Blah, blah, noncompete, blah, blah, we were shocked by the ruling, blah, blah, Project Monterey. The guy could really use some new material. Although I do like the part where he suggests all the bad publicity he and SCO have gotten is the result of a vast conspiracy by SCO's enemies. If the SCO charade goes on much longer, and Darl keeps blabbing to the press, we may start hearing about Area 51 and black helicopters.
Among its inaccuracies, the article is the second one to assert that SCO's already filed an appeal. One instance of that looks like carelessness. Two, and it starts to look like a pattern of deception.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks the photo in that piece looks like a mugshot. Maybe it's just wishful thinking, I dunno -- but what I'm really wishing for is to see the latest batch of interviews show up as Novell or IBM exhibits, just like Darl's previous ones have. The guy just doesn't learn. - The Inquirer, on the Wired interview: "SCO's Darl McBride remains defiant". It's worth a read, as it's one of those rare articles that dares to call a spade a spade. For example:
He continues to conflate New SCO with Old SCO, which is by now a tiresome verbal sleight of hand, and he repeats the rationale that Santa Cruz Operation must have gotten all those UNIX copyrights from Novell, simply because it paid Novell $149 million. In other words, for all that money, SCO must have gotten a nice pony. Oh yawn. - Well, ok, there were a couple of filings today, just nothing earth-shattering. Just Novell opposing SCO's whining for another do-over. Zen's got the goods here.
- A deeply peculiar FUD piece on the Fortune/CNNMoney "Legal Pad" blog, ranting on at great length -- mind-numbing, Bifflike length -- about how Kimball's copyright ruling is a terrible injustice. Roger Parloff (the blogger) has written about SCO before, way back in May '04. The article is quite detailed coming from someone who hasn't been covering SCO regularly. Did he just come up with all of this stuff on his own, or did someone at SCO or BS&F lend a friendly helping hand?
And, btw, why exactly is it "Linux-mob justice" when individuals are merely speaking their minds about issues they're concerned about. Labeling it "mob justice" implies such behavior ought to be illegal. Maybe I'm making too much of that, but it troubles me when media types are unclear on the concept of free speech. It's not reserved just for mainstream Old Media reporter types, you know.
I think I'm going to have to add the guy to the "Pro-SCO" column in the sidebar here. - SJVN on Friday's no-jury ruling. SJVN also shows up in the comments to the Parloff article, disputing the guy's goofy claims.
- The one and only Dvorak chimes in about the Parloff piece. He's just phoning it in, though. A couple of quick sentences, followed by an extended quote from Parloff. Dvorak: Clueless doofus, or skanky page-view ho? Discuss.
- Ars Technica piece about Friday's rulings.
- There's also a piece about the rulings at Global Toad News. No, really, that's the site's actual name. I swear I'm not making this up.
- And the inevitable Slashdot story, in case you're curious about the "In Soviet Russia" angle on the latest news.
- A post on MSDN's Channel 9 rolls its eyes at SCO. About Darl's silly "get knocked down seven times, get up eight" comment, it responds "I think somebody has been watching too many Rocky movies!". You know you're completely out of friends when even the fanboys on MSDN make fun of you.
- Boies is quoted in a recent WSJ piece, "
Lawyers Gear Up Grand New Fees", about lawyers' rates breaking the $1000/hour barrier. Boies gets all sanctimonious about it:
"Frankly, it's a little hard to think about anyone who doesn't save lives being worth this much money," says David Boies, one of the nation's best-known trial lawyers, at the Armonk, N.Y., office of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.
So expect to see them raise their rates in the near future.
The article also quotes a guy from Andrews Kurth, another of SCO's law firms. Not one, but two top-dollar law firms, and what does SCO have to show for it? - SCO's famous celebrity lawyer shows up briefly in a suburban NY-NJ paper. It just says his clients include the New York Yankees and American Express. What, not a word about SCO? Shocking!
- This isn't a political blog, but when one of the SCO saga's dramatis personae wanders into the political arena, I've got to at least pass the item along. And here's a good one. You've heard about that Norman Hsu guy, right? The fugitive fundraiser? Seems that he recently cohosted a fundraiser with Boies. And get this, the fundraiser was for a Kennedy.
- A recent article on Unix history at Roughly Drafted, with a focus on the SCO saga. A post on comp.os.linux.advocacy claims the piece is in reponse to FUD by Lyons.
- And from comp.unix.sco.misc, the sad tale of a guy whose Vista printer won't talk to his SCO box. Insert pithy remark about poetic justice here. And this after all SCO's done for Microsoft. Talk about ingratitude...
- And from comp.unix.sys5.r4, an amusing recent thread where a guy asks which OS is the best: SVR4 or BSD. Like it was still freakin' 1989 or something.
By brx0 @ 9:09 AM 
