SCO News Roundup

I know I've mentioned the other Caldera once or twice before. Here's their tasty, tasty IPA, now available in cans. In an amusing coincidence, the price tag shown here is exactly the price of one share of SCO at the high on August 9th, the day before Kimball's big copyright ruling. So if you bought one share back then, and sold today, you'd have 16 cents now. Whereas if you bought one can of Caldera IPA, drank it, and returned the can for the deposit, you'd have 5 cents now, and possibly a mild buzz, depending on how many, uh, "shares" you decide to "accumulate". It's true that both investment strategies have a bitter aftertaste, but only one of them involves beer. Mmmmm.... beeer......

Labels: beer, linux, open source, sco

Ahh, where to begin...

• So the bottom fell out of SCO's stock today. Down nearly 72%, closing at a pitiful 44 cents. Lowest close ever. In fact the high for the day was lower than the stock's previous all-time low -- which was back in June 2002, around the time Darl started. And the low was just 35 cents. 35 cents won't even buy you a freakin' postage stamp.
  
  For stock, um, "analysis" from a somewhat unusual corner, here's Slashdot's take on the action.
  
  
• Sunday night, a terrified SCO issued a press release about the ruling, which later appeared in an official 8K filing. It's quite a marvel of the spin-doctoring arts. They list a bunch of irrelevant copyrights they do own -- or at least ones for which the ownership hasn't been disputed yet. Among those is something called "Gemini 64", which is their code name for the never-released, never-completed operating system they worked on in the infamous Project Monterey, 11 years ago -- and they only claim to own "substantial portions" of it. Yeah, that sounds like a super-valuable chunk of IP there, guys. They go on to say they're "exploring their options" and just might file an appeal, without committing themselves to doing so. It's quite entertaining really.
  
  
• An InfoWorld piece about SCO's take on the ruling here.
  
  
• And there's GL coverage of course, exploring the Pythonesque aspects of SCO's statement.
  
  I expect the poor clueless PHBs at SCO are wondering who this Monty Python guy is, and why the "long-haired smellies" keep going on about him all the time.
  
  
• The local newspaper in Lindon has a new article on the stock tankage, which looks to be a front page story in Tuesday's print edition. This choice tidbit leaped out at me:
  

  
  Meanwhile, the overall sentiment at the Lindon company was described by one employee as one of "absolute shock," as its executive management and newly appointed public relations company, New York-based Coltrin & Associates, evaluated the situation Monday.
  

  
  
  
• And iTWire asks "Darl McBride, where are you?". And Blakey, and Didio too. (Yes, I know Blakey quit months ago. And someone else already mentioned that in the article's comments.)
  
  
• CNNMoney's coverage argues that the ruling removed a cloud over the open-source movement. Well, technically the ruling says the cloud never existed in the first place, but as long as they're saying there's no cloud now, hey, that's fine.
  
  
• Seattle's local newspaper has a blog devoted solely to all things Microsoft, and today's post explores the M$ angle of Friday's ruling, mostly devoted to email comments from PJ. The Beast of Redmond declined to comment for the story.
  
  
• Lyons has a rather neutral piece on Forbes. He naturally doesn't breathe a word about his earlier role touting SCO's idiotic claims. If you didn't know history, or have access to a search engine, you might think he was against them from day 1.
  
  
• Not all the fudsters are running for cover, though. Remember Paul McDougall? Last we heard from him, he was chiming in as part of SCO's failed anti-PJ jihad. They even used one of his articles as an exhibit, if I'm not mistaken. So in his latest bloviation, he wants to convince us that Friday's ruling is a disaster for Linux, and we're all doomed, because the Novell ruling doesn't resolve certain issues in the IBM case. That's essentially the same point "Paul Murphy" tried to make earlier, although McDougall is a bit more articulate and vicious about it. Sort of a bush-league Lyons, if you can imagine such a thing. PJ goes off on an extended rant about the McDougall piece here, and I can't blame her.
  
  With Lyons, at least you knew he had an ideological bone to pick. A silly and misguided ideological bone, but at least you knew where he was coming from. McDougall, I don't know what his angle is. Maybe he's just an especially zealous M$ fanboy -- although they usually just sit there smugly repeating that all Microsoft products are the best, and refusing to listen to reason. They tend not to get so malicious and personal about it. So your guess is as good as, or better than, mine.
  
  
• The schadenfreude-o-rama has spread to some of the more obscure forums. Check out this great post on the SiliconInvestor board responding to Scott Lemon (ex-CTO of SCO, an inconvenient fact he keeps trying to downplay). Meanwhile, the TheLion board has long been a playground for clueless bottom-feeding daytraders and shills, but today Baomike turned the lights on (so to speak) and they all ran back under the fridge, at least for the day. Might be interesting to see how that plays out. I'm not advocating bullying the poor dears, of course. But engaging in a vigorous debate about SCO's fundamentals, is another matter entirely. Ok, so they're just daytrading schmoes, but there are so few actual true believers left, and I got terminally bored with Biff about three years ago.
  
  
• Actually I'm glad I checked the minor boards, because TheLion has an interesting widget it calls an All-In-One Message Forum, which aggregates posts from IV and Y!, certain blog posts (although not SNR apparently), and the occasional minor-board post as well. And the UI is less offensive than Yahoo's native one, certainly. Interesting...
  
  
• There's even a new post on the moribund InvestorsHub board, although it's just a retread of the not overly clueful coverage at TheStreet.com.
  
  
• ComputerWorld has a roundup of posts about Friday's ruling from around blogospace. Naturally they fail to mention this humble blog. Feh. Bastards.
  
  
• Oh, and the very latest on c.u.s.m: The SCO+Darl Pants Game.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• More media coverage from the New York Times, InformationWeek, The Register, VNUnet, and Tech Blorge.
  
  
• SCO's "expert" witness Marc "Thousand Dollar Watch" Rochkind (or someone claiming to be him) has showed up on GL, offering lame excuses about why he's working for SCO. "Pays well" is probably a genuine reason of his, as is his desire for a career as an expert witness. He also lists "[redacted]" as a reason. Allegedly there's still some sort of super-seekrit evidence he can't tell us about, and we're all supposed to be impressed by that. Didn't work 4 years ago, why does he think it'll work now?
  
  
• He's not the only SCO shill who's freaking out over the ruling. Here's the latest from "Paul Murphy", in which he asserts the ruling has no bearing on the merits of the IBM case. Still in the denial phase, in other words.
  
  He does make one good point, though, completely by accident. Unless the courts explicitly deal with SCO's claims about IBM putting Unix code into Linux, the accusation continues to have FUD value, and IBM continues to be harmed by it. Whether SCO is permitted to continue making the claim in court, the notion is still rattling around out there in some quarters, and IBM could fairly argue the only way to undo the damage is to get the question resolved once and for all. I don't know whether that'll actually happen or not, since the courts are generally eager to dispose of issues as "moot" whenever possible. To me that's the most important thing to resolve in the whole SCO saga, and I hope IBM will keep trying to get it resolved decisively, not just tossed out over the copyright-ownership matter.
  
  
• Mr. "Murphy" is a big Solaris fan, so I'm surprised he isn't wringing his hands over the ruling causing trouble for Sun's OpenSolaris initiative, as discussed by SJVN, via Slashdot. Sun paid SCO all that cash and then open-sourced Solaris, so now that the court's decided Novell is the rightful owner, what does that mean for Sun? Are they
  
  Personally I hope Novell shrugs it off. As far as we know, Sun honestly believed SCO had the right to sell what it sold. And do we really need another round of ugly OS litigation? The way the ruling's worded, it sounds as though SCO did have the right to cut a deal with Sun (although I doubt it's the sort of deal envisioned by the APA); they just didn't have the right to keep all the cash for themselves.
  
  
• There's some discussion around the net on the bit where Kimball says SCO is liable for conversion. In other words, taking money that wasn't rightfully theirs. This could get interesting, as it's been suggested that SCO execs could be personally liable if SCO itself can't cough up enough cash to repay Novell. I'm not a legal expert and don't know for sure, but it certainly sounds promising.
  
  
• Meanwhile, here's a piece on ABC News sneering at Lyons's "Fake Steve" gig. The piece is funny and entertaining, but it has a bit of a vendetta feel to it. It seems that "Fake Steve" once went off on a rant about the article's author, so now it's payback time. The argument that it's wrong to use a pseudonym on the net is a very MSM, Old Media sort of notion, and one I disagree with for obvious reasons. Other than that, it's worth a look.
  
  
• While looking for SCO stories, I ran across a curious tale on The Inquirer, about a guy in Denver who had his thumbs surgically modified to better fit his new iPhone. The piece links to the original story at the North Denver News... but The Inq failed to notice the link to another piece explaining that the thumb-whittling article was satire, not news. You've just gotta love the tech media and the painstaking, in-depth research they always do. The tech trade press also spent a couple of years insisting that SCO had a viable case, so what does that tell you?
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

More media reaction to yesterday's big ruling in SCO v. Novell:

• Local reaction to the story at the Salt Lake Tribune and Provo Daily Herald.
  
  
• More tech media coverage at Wired, HTMLfixIT, Geekzone NZ and DesktopLinux.com
  
  
• And some business press coverage as well, from UPI and MarketWatch. It's worth paying extra attention to see how the story plays in the financial press, since that's where potential future bagholders get their news. So far it's being portrayed as a clearcut victory for the Linux camp, and a total defeat for SCO. No nuances, no letting a pro-SCO fudster like Enderle get the last word in. So that seems like a positive sign.
  
  
• Over on Y!, saltydogmn gets a couple of grumpy emails from none other than Andrea McBride, Darl's wife.
  
  
• The FUD brigade is out in full force already, either ranting about the ruling or trying to minimize the impact of it. MOG is outraged, as you might expect, and is even less coherent than usual. I normally don't encourage people to patronize stories by MOG, but it's a holiday, so y'all are off the hook just this once.
  
  
• A piece at 24/7 Wall St. titled "The Future of Linux is Still Dark", by one Douglas A. McIntyre. Dark, he claims, because of the continuing M$ patent FUD. There's always something, isn't there? When that gets resolved, next we'll hear that the future of Linux is dark because the sun will eventually go red giant and swallow the earth or something.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Kimball ruled, and SCO is now Officially Hosed. TuxRocks has the ruling here [Warning: 103 page PDF, but worth the wait.]

PJ's already got the story up too. Not totally surprising that she had it before I did, I mean, I'm sitting here at home with a nasty cold right now, medicated to the gills. But I wouldn't miss this for anything.

I can't wait to see what SCO has to say for itself now. That ought to be a real hoot. It's like Esker says: HAR!!!!! HAR!!!!! HAR!!!!


Updated:

• Al P. has additional sources for the ruling docs here. So load-balance, people. Thanks.
  
  
• And the inevitable Slashdot story. Although sometimes I suspect the average Slashdot reader hadn't even been born yet when this litigation circus began.
  
  
• Other stories so far from PC World, the WSJ, Computerworld, HardOCP, TechSpot, BetaNews, InfoWorld, and O'ReillyNet. That's just so far, and the stories tend to have a breathless just-off-the-wire flavor. It's fun to see everyone in such a rush, after all these years.
  
  
• The GL story's on Digg here.
  
  
• A certain Mr. Sizz was unable to restrain himself over on c.u.s.m. No replies from the denizens so far.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

I have all kinds of good excuses about why I haven't posted in a few days, even though there's been a mini-flurry of SCO news of fair-to-middlin' importance. I could take some time out and bore you with the excuses, but I won't.

• So I admit I'd completely forgotten about SCO Tec Forum 2007, which was the reason behind all those recent, fluffy, content-free press releases we've been seeing. I haven't seen any news reports about how the show was, and there's nothing in blogospace, and not even anything on comp.unix.sco.misc. But maybe it was a great conference, and the attendees just don't use the Interwebs or something. It does amuse me that SCO Tec Forum happened in the same city, at the same time, but not the same hotel, as DefCon 14. Maybe the DefCon organizers figured the hardcore "black hat" guys would all be at the SCO event and would leave everybody else alone that way. I dunno.
  
  
• I haven't covered all the new SCO press releases yet. Here's the one with their Team 1 Systems partnership on Me Inc. Seems SCO talked Team 1 (a longtime partner of theirs) into going into a whole new business segment they know nothing about. Team 1 must've figured they've gone this far with SCO, so why not take it to the next level (down)? What's the point of walking only half the plank?
  
  
• And the most recent one, on SCO's foray into Canadian politics, believe it or not.
  
  
• Meanwhile, the preliminary maneuvering continues in SCO v. Novell. The pretrial disclosure stuff happened as scheduled, but now there are Rule 26(a)(3) objections to fight over. More delay? Don't bet against it.
  
  
• Oh, and Daniel Lyons is the Fake Steve Jobs, I suppose because shilling for SCO just doesn't pay like it used to. I'm pretty sure he's visited SNR at least once, and I suppose I ought to feel honored, now that he's a famous Interweb celebrity and all that. But he's still a sleazebag. I'll grant that he occasionally has a way with words, in a vicious, juvenile, one-dimensional sort of way. That's just his nature. It's pretty much all he does. Likewise, scorpions are quite good at stinging people, because it's instinctive, it's what they do, and it's what they've always done. When they do, you don't call them clever and praise the quality of their work.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Ok, lemme see if I can get caught up on recent SCO event(s) here. Shouldn't be too hard, I expect.

• As I'm sure you've heard already, there's a new stipulated pretrial schedule in the IBM case. It doesn't explicitly say so, but it appears to push the first possible trial date out into 2008. Who ever expected this stupid case could drag on so long? Not I, and I like to think of myself as a fairly cynical person.
  
  At least it means we should start seeing new documents in the case around October or so. Unless things get delayed further.
  
  
• New press release out today. They've found customer #2 for that Mobile Order app they sorta-announced through a previous press release. This time it's an Italian food distributor that claims to be America's leading olive importer. The Sopranos is off the air, so making knee-jerk mafia jokes every time one sees an Italian name is back to being un-PC again. But when someone does business with SCO, even indirectly... Well, you just have to wonder, a little. Or at least I do.
  
  
• There was another press release a couple of days ago. Seems now they're trying to sneak onboard the iPhone bandwagon. Seriously.
  
  Since there is as yet no such thing as a third-party app on an iPhone, this has to be something other than what they're implying it is. Most likely what's going on is that Genisys has slapped a web UI on top of their crufty old green-screen vertical market apps, and it just so happens that this web UI works OK in the iPhone's version of Safari.
  
  What really gets me is that the iPhone runs OS X, which is a BSD+Mach variant under the hood. Darl & Co. used to occasionally threaten to go after BSD users, which I think was a veiled (and failed) attempt to extract SCOSource money from Apple. Unless... the effort didn't fail, and the reason iPhones are so expensive is that you do get a SCOSource license when you buy one. That's a scary thought. Can't be true though; we'd have seen a SCO press release about it if it was, NDA or no NDA.
  
  
• I think I know why we've seen a flood (relatively speaking) of PR coming out of SCO lately. They have to get 'em out there while there's still a media organ that takes them seriously. And they'd better hurry, because the Weekly World News is going under! I gather that Elvis, Bat Boy, and the aliens all finally got fed up with the unwanted attention and decided to play a little hardball.
  
  
• Here's a ">positive take on the Genisys PR, from someone who's all starry-eyed about the iPhone, and knows squat about SCO.
  
  
• Here's a funny anti-iPhone rant.
  
  
• And here's a more serious negative review of the iPhone, from someone who used one for a month.
  
  
• SCO gets a quick mention over at InfoWorld. Of course it's an ancient-history mention, a funny nightmare story involving the corporate Xenix server and a clueless Unix n00b.
  
  
• Another MS-backed standardization effort, this time for the HD Photo file format they introduced in Vista. No word about patent encumbrances, licensing issues, whether you can use the format on an OS besides Vista, etc., since when MS uses the word "standard" it often means they've found a few partners to go along with their latest monopoly.
  
  One of the people quoted is the standards body rep from Hasselblad. I'm not an expert on $30,000 cameras, but something tells me that one typically shoots in RAW format with one of these bad boys, and a new compressed file format isn't going to attract a lot of interest. Even if MS insists it's the greatest thing since Windows ME. Besides, anyone who will spend that much on a camera probably hooks it up to a shiny new 8-core Mac Pro anyway.
  
  
• Linux kernel code may not be poetry, exactly, but sometimes the comments are.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

I've been at OSCON 2007 the last couple of days, so I haven't put together the usual long list of news items. My full(ish) OSCON report is over on that other blog, if you're interested. It's not really the most sober, comprehensive, or journalistic piece you'll read about the event, but hey. Nobody paid me to write it, and you aren't paying to read it. If you just want to look at the pictures, they're on Flickr here.

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• SCO loses yet another customer, understandably. Quote:
  

  
  By 2001, however, Spruce was ready for a change. Its software had been rewritten and updated as much as possible. The software’s “bones were old,” says Robert Fitzpatrick, President, Spruce Computer Systems, and updating the software again would not have been its best long-term solution. Given the relative paucity of SCO UNIX software, Spruce had to create much of the ancillary functionality for its solution itself, rather than acquiring plug-and-play applications that could complement the core functionality provided by Spruce. Perhaps because customers were also feeling the “old bones” of their SCO UNIX environments, they’d long been migrating those environments—to the Microsoft® Windows® operating system.
  

  
  
  Seems that even .NET was better, and more open, than sticking with SCO. Ouch! Oh, and they migrated with the help of DTR Business Systems, a company that's allegedly still a SCO Partner. With friends like these...
  
  I'd never be able to keep track of these things without you Astute Readers out there. Thanks again^6. You know who you are.
  
  
• SCO has a new partner in India, some outfit called "iBilt". That poor Rustaghi chump still seems to think he works for a real company, not just a publicly traded lawsuit. I almost feel for the guy, in a way. SCO must've realized that overseas bagholders are even cheaper than domestic ones.
  
  As a former British colony, it seems India's PHBs are not immune to the siren song of the golf course, a.k.a., the Scottish Disease. I realize that sounds ethnically insensitive, but I don't know how to explain this deal any other way. At least in this country it would've involved golf. And illegal Cuban cigars. And possibly a lost weekend in Vegas, if the terms were especially unfavorable. The details may vary by time and culture, but every PHB has his price, I'm afraid.
  
  More at EFYTimes.
  
  
• The photo is of a tour bus I ran across along trendy E. Burnside St. here in Portland. Because I'm not a hip-n-trendy twentysomething anymore, I've never heard of the band that sold its soul to the Beast of Redmond. You guys sold out to The Man. I hope you're happy. I hope every single pathetic Zune buyer out there (yes, both of them) buys a song of yours, tries to "squirt" it to their buddies, and runs afoul of the dire DRM consequences. Serves 'em right, the bastards.
  
  
• From c.u.s.m, a thread about hidden files in / on OSR 5.0.7. Hidden man pages in the root directory?! Feh!!!
  
  
• Via /.: Another court victory for GPLv2 in Germany.
  
  
• The president of Acer is disappointed with Vista, at least if the third-hand translations are accurate.
  
  
• A bit about the HP-Ubuntu tie-up. I'm afraid I've failed y'all here; I'll be at OSCON the next couple of days, and reporting on it over at that other blog, but I somehow forgot to register for Ubuntu Live. If that's conclusive evidence I'm a real person and not a shadowy cabal of IBM lawyers, so be it.
  
  
• From comp.unix.xenix.sco, a guy who needs help with his Xenix 2.3.4 system. I'm usually inclined to mock people who use old SCO OSes, but he uses the magic word "retro-computing", so I have to sympathize. I'm afraid to tell the guy he probably already owes Darl a few billion SCOSource dollars for daring to encroach upon the realm of SCO IP, but if you happen to know anything about Xenix, give a brother a hand, OK?
  
  Thx. Mgmt.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• Still nothing from the courts. Zero. Zilch. Nada. But SCO's stock has been climbing, in the absence of any news whatsoever. The stock manipulation theory is always a popular one, and I'm often inclined to believe it myself. But it's also reasonable to imagine SCO's attracting real, live speculators, and the recent price jumps weren't just engineered into existence. If that's true, the obvious question is "Why now?". I can think of a few reasons. First, IBM reported some great numbers last week, and people who haven't been paying attention might see a cash-rich IBM as a positive for SCO (bigger settlement/winnings, etc.). Some people really might think that, the poor saps. We're probably also seeing people effectively betting on the Novell case, buying tickets for the "Linux lottery" Darl & friends used to go on about. Sure, the odds are terrible, but apparently some clown out there thinks the ticket price is about right. There's one born every minute, you know, and if there's one thing the SCO saga has no shortage of, it's minutes.
  
  
• Matt Asay interviews Iain Gray, Red Hat's VP of Global Support Services at Red Hat. It's mentioned in passing that Mr. Gray once worked at SCO, or "SCO Group (back when it was a Unix company, not a law firm)" as the article puts it. This is one of the biggest mentions of SCO in the media over the last week, believe it or not.
  
  
• Here's another mention in passing, this time in a comment on Slashdot. When I'm linking to individual comments on Slashdot, you know it's a slow news week. The article's about dark energy and extra dimensions, actually, so the mention of SCO is just a cheap shot, not a real cameo appearance. And it's really not that clever of a cheap shot, even. But still, it's a mention of SCO, paired with M$ this time.
  
  
• Boies's son David III loses a big case.
  
  
• >Lookee here, another BS&F guy has written a book.
  
  
• InformationWeek seems to have widespread non-grokkage of GPLv3, not just the DeJean guy we've heard about already. C'mon, guys, it's not that complicated. Sheesh. It's almost as if you didn't want to understand it. But surely that can't be the case, can it?
  
  
• A piece on the latest, shiniest new Blackberry. No mention of any bundled Me Inc. apps. Ok, that was a cheap shot, and not a very clever one, but I'm trying to stay on topic, and it isn't easy in the absence of news. And seriously, Me Inc. doesn't have a future unless SCO can trick a mobile carrier or two into bundling it. As I've said before, it's pretty rare for mobile phone users to install third party apps after getting a phone, so unless you can get your app preinstalled, you aren't going to be making any money. I don't know exactly how these deals pencil out, but my guess is that the mobile app vendor typically pays the carrier in order to get preinstalled, not the other way around, and SCO just doesn't have that kind of money.
  
  
• While we're on dubious advances in telephony, here are two articles on Ooma, the "peer to peer" phone gadget announced last week. The thing seems oddly archaic, a throwback to the late dot-com era when "P2P" was a hot content-free buzzword.
  
  It's a heck of a lot of money to pay, just to maybe avoid some long distance phone charges now and then, if you're lucky. I await the inevitable article where someone figures out how to wipe the thing, put Linux on it, and use it as a firewall or a DNS appliance or something menial like that, purely for the "because it's there" points.
  
  
• Meanwhile, here's Gizmodo on ultra-tiny Linux boxen. I think I've covered some of these individually before, but hey. It's a slow news week, and I need material.
  
  
• Cringely: "Is Vista an Orphan?"
  
  
• We've gotten our hopes up before, but maybe this time patent reform could finally happen Although I ought to point out that Rep. Howard Berman, the bill's sponsor, is a big friend of the RIAA & MPAA in the copyright arena. So we oughtn't get our hopes up too high just yet.
  
  
• Speaking of the RIAA, they've got some attorney's fees to pay. It's a drop in the bucket so far as they're concerned, but it seems like a step in the right direction. Too many of these, though, and they'll just raise CD prices a bit more to compensate, and then complain when sales decline a bit further, and sue even more people. Always a cynic, I am.
  
  
• More news from last week: Xandros bought Scalix, a Linux-based competitor to M$ Exchange. Combine this with the recent M$-Xandros deal, and it's serious tin foil hat time.
  
  
• Apropos of nothing, here are Utah's 2007 regulations on amphibians & reptiles. 'P' means "Prohibited", "C" is "Controlled" and "N" is "Noncontrolled", if you're wondering. The notorious, toxic (and allegedly hallucinogenic) Cane Toad is prohibited statewide, in case anyone's wondering.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• We'll get to the photo in a moment, but first we have some actual court-related news for once. Three new docs in the IBM case to be precise. IBM-1072 is IBM asking for a 30-ish day extension of of those alleged "pretrial deadlines" they agreed on back in May. IBM-1073 is SCO opposing the motion, and IBM-1074 is Kimball quickly granting IBM's motion.
  
  The funny part about this episode, besides the fact that it's another minor defeat for SCO, is that IBM's proposed schedule conflicts with the Novell trial. They say they'll be happy to stipulate a further extension if needed, it's just that SCO hasn't told them when they expect the Novell trial might be over. SCO naturally couldn't take IBM's "yes" for an answer, and objected to the motion, while insisting they too would be delighted to stipulate to a further extension. They didn't make a concrete counterproposal about the dates though. So Kimball went ahead and granted IBM's motion, and unless there's a further stipulation SCO will soon be fighting on two fronts at once.
  
  
• It looks like Biff finally got himself banned from the Y! SCOX board. The offending post has been deleted, but it's been saved for posterity here in all its vileness and malice. The guy had no redeeming qualities at all. Good riddance.
  
  ...or is he really gone? This post by a brand-new nym has a certain bifflike style to it. Although it also might be a second-rate Biff impostor, and if so, how would we be able to tell?
  
  
• Oh, and about the photo: It's a page from a peculiar little book called "A Day With Biff". It looks like a children's book about the adventures of a small black dog named Biff, but in fact it's meant as a showcase for clip art by a pair of Bay Area graphic designers. There's a Mac-formatted floppy in the back full of EPS versions of various illustrations in the book, along with a restrictive EULA, appropriately enough. So if you want to see any of the illustrations for yourself, you'll need to check your local library / used book shop, or Amazon if neither of them have it. In case you're really that interested, I mean.
  
  
• Panglozz on an OOXML standards "committee" being packed with M$ pawns.
  
  
• A new interview with PJ, in which she insists she isn't a superhero. Which, of course, is exactly what they all say when asked about it directly. C'mon, everybody knows that.
  
  
• I forgot to post this last time, and GL's already covered it now, but here's that clueless anti-GPL fud piece by that David DeJean guy. If you read it when it first came out, you might want to take another look. He's given the pig's lipstick a touch up, backpedalling about what he said about SCO earlier, while leaving his GPL 2 vs. 3 drivel intact. The comments section is rather... entertaining, as you might expect.
  
  I swear, I think the less scrupulous parts of the trade press (i.e. all of them) have figured out that nothing drives page views like an ignorant doofus columnist spouting off about issues he doesn't have a clue about. Dvorak perfected that way back in the dead-tree days, and it works even better on the interwebs. Sure, what DeJean generated was a tidal wave of geeks showing up to taunt the guy, but that still meant a big pile of banner ad revenue.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• There's a pretrial schedule for the Novell case now, so events should finally start ramping up in the near future. If the schedule is to be believed, at any rate. There's a bit more about the schedule in a recent GL article.
  
  
• We got a new SCO press release yesterday. It looks like another boring Me Inc. "customer win" tale, but hidden cleverly within it we learn about a brand new Me Inc. app SCO hasn't mentioned before, something called "Mobile Order". (SCO's marketing guy(s) must've worked overtime on that name.) The fine print indicates "Mobile Order" is a custom-built app requiring
  
  Atlas Paper makes paper bags, btw. Insert clever "bagholder" joke here.
  
  
  
• Enderle gets quoted in an article about rising concert ticket prices. Wearing his ill-fitting music industry guru hat, bemoans how kids these days aren't loyal to favorite bands anymore, not like it was back in his day when everyone picked a band and followed it to the bitter end. As a grumpy ol' boomer, he might be pleased to know that not one but two competing versions of Jefferson Airplane/Starship are still touring and putting out new material. Wikipedia says one of them was on the Today show a couple of weeks ago. I suppose that's a step up from doing the county fair circuit, which is where Night Ranger is these days, touring in support of their latest (2007) album. They'll be at the Umatilla County Fair out in Hermiston OR (pop. 15,030) on August 10th. Tickets may still be available.
  
  Remember, kids, be very, verrrrry careful when you pick a favorite band, because then you're stuck with 'em forever, at least if Enderle has any say in it.
  
  
• The trademark troll Leo Stoller gets a smackdown, delivered with wit and style. Meanwhile we're still waiting for any word from Utah. Maybe Kimball's trying to deliver something like the Stoller ruling and came down with a bad case of writer's block or something. It makes as much sense as all the other theories do.
  
  
• Sony sues its own rootkit vendor. I've seen this movie before. The plan goes awry, and then the perps turn on each other. Sort of like Reservoir Dogs.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Ok, it's been a week. So sue me. It's not like the judges ruled on anything, or any new filings showed up on Edgar. Heck, I even checked the USPTO site this morning to see if either SCO or Ralphie's CP80/ThinkAtomic cabal have anything new over there. No dice.

• ServerWatch on the "Ghosts of Xenix Past", about M$ code that lived on inside SCO OSes long after Xenix was put out to pasture. I actually remember reading about this years ago, but people are acting like it's a big new revelation. No, it isn't new, and no, I don't think it explains the murky M$-(Old)SCO relationship. M$ wanted to impede Linux, and needed a proxy to do it. NewSCO needed money, and M$ offered them some. I don't think it's any more complex than that.
  
  
• SCO gets a rare mention as a possible threat to open source, a spin we rarely see anymore. This pops up in a consultant report that babbles on about technology in local government in the UK. The piece mentions the Birmingham library situation as a Linux "win", not mentioning how they bungled it. So someone's obviously not on the ball here. Apparently they're trying to be successful, highly compensated global consultants without reading SNR regularly. Beats me why they think that'll work out ok. With the posting traffic here of late it's not like it'd be that hard to keep up or anything. Oh, well....
  
  
• If you check Google News for "SCO", you'll occasionally see old stories pop up as if they were new. This often seems to happen if someone's just done a site redesign, for whatever reason. In any case, today's example was this 2005 NetworkWorld story, which discusses the rapid decline of SCO. And that was two years ago, and they're still declining. Asymptotically, it seems.
  
  
• If Darl's starting to think this may be a good time to change careers, I've got just the thing for him, and he won't even need to relocate. Seems that Lindon, UT needs a new mayor, as the current guy is stepping down and leaving the country. He'd better hurry, though; the deadline is tomorrow, July 11th. But if he's learned anything at SCO, it's the importance of always filing papers at the absolute last moment. Or even later than that, if at all possible.
  
  
• While I'm still in the mood to give useful advice to SCO folk, which is a rare thing, I'd like to offer them some helpful hardware hints. In the last few years they've gone on about cutting preinstall deals with white-box vendors nobody's ever heard of. Hello!? Nobody's ever heard of those guys because their puny white boxes are boring. If you want to move any product, you guys need to make like Apple and come up with hardware that reflects the OS within. And with a product like OpenServer, the "steampunk" look would be quite appropriate. The Steampunk Workshop offers several promising -- and functional -- designs, including a brass and marble flat panel monitor, and a keyboard with manual typewriter keys, among other delights. And check out this case mod gallery on Flickr, for a machine the creator dubs the "Telecalculograph". Look at it. It practically demands a SCO operating system. This is your big chance, guys. Trust me on this.
  
  
• A few local bloggers here in Portland posting about the iPhone: Jeff the Great (no, not that Jeff), ~stevenf, i, viddy, and the local paper's Silicon Forest blog
  
  
• It's almost old news now, but here's Slashdot on the MPAA spyware scandal.
  
  
• I went out and bought a Roomba over the weekend, and -- I say this at the risk of losing nerd points -- so far it remains unmodded. Right now we're still in the phase of watching it scoot around the rug, going "awwwww, it's so cuuuuuute!". Surprisingly there's only one real hit on the entire net for "LOLROOMBA" right now, and it just comes up as "Service Unavailable" at the moment.
  
  
• A bit of a setback for Steorn, the very latest perpetual motion machine that, uh, doesn't work. Actually can't work would be a better way to put it. They aren't based in Utah (surprisingly), but they do have an entertaining history of making ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims, and they've stuck around for far longer than anyone reasonably imagined they might. Sound familiar?
  
  If you get a kick out of this sort of thing, or even if you don't, you might enjoy The Museum of Unworkable Devices. Steorn isn't there yet, but it's only a matter of time.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Still nothin' from the Utah Courts, of course. It's at the point where I'm getting concerned that the PSJ backlog will hold up the Novell trial date. September 17th is just about 10 weeks away, and both sides are going to want some prep time for the case once PSJ decisions are handed down, whenever that ends up being.

I suppose we could still see filings today, but I wouldn't bet on it.

In the meantime:

• Just one recent mention of SCO to report this time around. SCO makes yet another cameo as the canonical bunch of litigious bastards, in a recent Slashdot story about the RIAA.
  
  
• It's a shame SCO weaseled its way off delisting watch, but here's a small bit of consolation. The French company SCOR, which traded under the ticker symbol "SCO" (leading to much confusion over the years) is undergoing an eye-popping 10x reverse split, while also changing to the ticker symbol "SCR". Today's the day the old "SCO" shares were officially delisted from the Paris stock exchange. It's fun to imagine that their low stock price and ticker symbol change are due to confusion with "our" SCO, but that's probably giving Darl & Co. far too much credit.
  
  
• Although I'm sure Boies is spending most of his waking hours right now feverishly prepping for the Novell trial of the century (ok, maybe the centicentury, or the nanocentury at the very least), he's still managing to find a few spare moments to party with Kennedys and hedge fund billionaires. It sounds like nobody put an arm through a Picasso this time around, so that's something, I guess.
  
  
• EETimes has a detailed piece about the innards of an iPhone. I just played with an iPhone today, down at my friendly neighborhood Apple store. They're lucky they designed the things to be drool-proof. I used to think my Blackberry was a cool gadget, and all of a sudden it just seems impossibly old and clunky. I can only imagine what those poor saps with Windows Mobile phones must think.
  
  
• Naturally people are already tinkering with the thing. Some early results here and here.
  
  When I was playing with that iPhone, I pointed the browser right here at SNR to see how it looked. It looked fine, if a bit on the small side. It identifies itself as Mac OS X, with the browser string Safari 2.0
  Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3. The screen resolution is reported as 320 x 396, 32-bit color. FWIW.
  
  
• And the weird open source metaphor of the day, which doesn't concern computers at all. No, it's about junk food and obesity:
  

  
  The FDA doesn't have to give you permission to not enter the drive-through. The U.S. Patent Office doesn't have to put its seal on your decision not to supersize. It's here, it's free, it's open-source. It's dietary Linux. It doesn't discriminate by race, gender, religion, or income.
  
  And it couldn't be simpler:
  
  All you have to do is eat something besides junk food.
  

  
  
  Dietary Linux, eh? Which reminds me, McDonalds is still a SCO customer, right? So every time you avoid buying a Happy Meal, you owe Ronald McDonald another $699, I guess. And come to think of it, can it really be a coincidence that the names "Ronald McDonald" and "Darl McBride" are so similar? They even possess the same impeccable fashion sense. And as far as credibility in the tech industry goes, it's a dead heat between the two guys. It can't be pure coincidence. It just can't, I tell you.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

The SCO news drought continues, although tomorrow promises to be a big day in Somewhat Related News.

• First, the finalized GPL v3 will be unveiled tomorrow. GL has a story about the big event. In it, PJ mentions she was part of the GPL v3 process, which I'm not sure I was aware of before. Here's an InternetNews piece about the new license. The author says he was convinced there'd be no new GPL version until the SCO cases were resolved, due to SCO's claim the GPL was unconstitutional.
  
  
• Oh, and the iPhone comes out tomorrow, too. Here's David Pogue's review, if you haven't seen it already. (Interesting side note: The review was for the New York Times, one of those registration-required news sites. But most of the NYT's interesting articles also appear on the International Herald Tribune's site, which is a wholly-owned NYT subsidiary these days, and the IHT's site doesn't ask you to register. Something to file for future reference, or whatever.)
  
  
• Seems people are already lining up to buy an iPhone. Which is more than a little silly, of course. But refresh my memory, does anyone remember people lining up to get a copy of Vista? Or a Zune? Or any SCO product in all of history?
  
  
• Regarding SCO's gigantic Madhya Pradesh announcement a few days ago, MSN Money asserts that it caused the latest wobble in SCO's stock. You could blame that on the obvious M$ connection, but TheStreet drew the same conclusion. This is a great example of the eternal post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy. The stock's been rattling around like this, back and forth, ever since the still-unexplained pump back over a dollar, but now there's news of a sort, so suddenly they play connect the dots. They probably have unpaid interns writing these things or something. At least you'd hope nobody got paid to write that silliness.
  
  
• Over on IV, hashkekan is busy researching the Madhya Pradesh news. The story so far: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4].
  
  
• During the talk around the new announcement, SCO's long-promised DT4 Daytimer app has come up repeatedly. BritTim has a good roundup of SCO's DT4 PR here. Funny how that expected ship date just gets later and later all the time...
  
  
• Also on IV, Al P. points us at a great ruling in an unrelated case, in which the parties were involved in endless discovery disputes (sound familiar?) The judge finally got sick of it all and ripped them new ones (sound unfamiliar?)
  
  
• The new Top500 supercomputing list is out, and IBM dominates the list again. Many of the top machines are Linux clusters, so it's kind of fun to read down the list and tally up all the SCOSource revenue SCO isn't getting.
  
  
• Elsewhere in BS&F Land, here's the latest on the AIG / Greenberg case (they're countersuing now), and the Michael Moore / Cuba situation (they're making loud noises trying to ward off the Feds).
  
  They're also involved in the Amaranth Advisors fiasco, although oddly not on behalf of the bad guys for once. And a BS&F guy speaks up about backdated stock options although it looks like he's just speaking in a pundit capacity, not on behalf of a client, at least not yet.
  
  Less interestingly, they're involved in a private equity deal to buy Water Pik.
  
  
• And here's the latest reorg at Baystar / LRG, for whatever it's worth.
  
  
• Here's a piece about the Feds' recent takedown of a few big bot herders. I mention this because the guy from UnSpam is quoted briefly. FWIW.
  
  
• Now here's a bit of fun irony. Brent Hatch recently accepted an award from the Utah branch of the American Heart Association. Ok, technically he accepted on behalf of his parents, Senator & Mrs. Hatch. Still, seeing his name and the word "heart" in the same sentence is good for a brief snicker or two.
  
  
• I don't remember where I saw the link to this first (the boards, probably), and it's not exactly on-topic here, but check out this embroidered plush Nintendo NES. Damn, I wish I had that kind of free time...
  
  
• In a new nightmare for SCO and M$, researchers have discovered fossils of a huge prehistoric penguin. I've said this before elsewhere, but I think "Icadyptes" would be a great name for a new distro. Not that the world needs yet another new distro, but if there has to be one more, this would be a good name for it.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

As I suspected, nothing major happened in my absence. So at least it'll be fairly simple to get caught up, I suppose.

• Just today, SCO announced what on the surface looks like a huge Me Inc. deal with the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. There's always less than meets the eye with SCO PR, and a few paragraphs into the piece you finally see the key phrase "pilot project".
  
  
• Another of those rare beasts, PR that mentions SCO. Discusses a healthcare company choosing Ericom's web-based terminal emulation software. I suppose this is what you do when you rely on legacy green-screen apps on your SCO box. You can be pretty sure these apps won't ever be updated with a modern UI (if the vendors even still exist), and you almost certainly don't have the source to do the job yourself, either.
  
  
• Mandriva isn't joining the M$ patent parade. This may have something to do with being based outside the US with our goofy patent laws.
  
  
• I saw the headline "U.S. Public Wi-Fi Networks Suffer Political, Technical Setbacks" and figured it might at least mention the CP80 jihad, but no.
  
  
• Linux PCs from Venezuela? It's true. Whatever you think about Mr. Chavez (a topic which would be OT here anyway), this looks like an interesting initiative.
  
  
• Linux in space? Also true, in 2009. Here's NASA's site about the Space Technology 8 mission, if you're interested.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

I'll be out of Series Of Tubes range for a few days, taking a mini-vacation from all and sundry. I'm very much aware that SCO is an evil that does not sleep, but it's been a while since anything really momentous has happened on the SCO front. Odds are things will be exactly as they are now when I get back. And if not, hey, that's great (probably). Last time I was out of town, I said something to the effect that my inability to cover SCO would somehow make the company implode. Well, no such luck, so I'm not going to make a similar prediction this time. So: Same bad time, same bad station, Friday, or Saturday at the latest, unless it ends up being Sunday. So here's one vote for holding the SCOpocalypse no earlier than next Monday, but as soon as possible after that.

Until I get back, I've got a couple of pics of yesterday's mini-roadtrip here, in the unlikely event that you're interested.

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

So here's what's happened in the last few days in the ongoing SCOap opera. What didn't happen, once again, is a ruling on any of the pending PSJ's in the Novell & IBM cases. Non-rulings

• The latest 10-Q is out. At one point SCO asserts they have enough cash on hand to stay in business through Halloween. I wouldn't necessarily bet on them going out of business the next day, but it would be appropriate, somehow.
  
  
• it's official, SCO's on the Russell Microcap deletions list. I've stopped trying to predict how SCO stock responds to news, since it just doesn't follow a logical pattern of any kind. Which is fine with me really; I don't have any money riding on it, and it's more of a fun spectator sport this way.
  
  
• SCO and BS&F have at least temporarily abandoned their get-PJ strategy for now , since the deposition deadline passed with no deposition taken. I don't think the matter's really over, given Darl's unhealthy obsession with PJ, and SCO's, um, relaxed attitude towards other court-imposed deadlines.
  
  
• However that turns out in the end, the fact they tried in the first place will be remembered for a long time. In the last post I mentioned the new book praising internet journalism, written by a guy at BS&F. I haven't read the book, but I gather it argues that it's fabulous when people report on current events on the net. Well, unless they criticize one of your clients, in which case they must be silenced by any means necessary. That struck me as a tad hypocritical, and I'm not alone, if the book's Amazon reviews are any indication.
  
  They can praise the first amendment all they want, but talk is cheap, even at $26.00 $17.16. Have grandmas stopped telling kids that actions speak louder than words, or what?
  
  
• On GL, the Novell hearing transcripts from a couple weeks ago.
  
  
• Linspire jumped on the M$ patent bandwagon. Looks like all the also-ran commercial distros are signing up, probably hoping to achieve what they couldn't in the marketplace.
  
  
• CP80 editing its own Wikipedia article. It's surprising what people think they can get away with sometimes.
  
  
• SCO's one of several firms involved in a weird trademark lawsuit by one Wayne Grey. Sk43999 has more on Mr. Grey's trademark shenanigans here. I wouldn't go so far as to actually root for SCO in this case, but it's kind of funny to see them getting a taste of their own medicine for once.
  
  It's a curious thing about the tech industry. You often see the industry described as a "food chain", and I'm sure I've used that metaphor here on occasion. But it's an unusual food chain in that it has no apparent lowest rung. As soon as you think you've found the bottom, another rung soon appears, even further down in the murk and slime.
  
  
• Meanwhile, Nintendo's attracted a patent troll.
  
  
• Trademarks aren't always a bad thing. Sometimes trademark law can be a great tool to keep shoddy or unsafe counterfeit goods off the market. Here's a current case where a number of dollar stores in the Eastern US were found to be selling fake Colgate toothpaste from China. Turns out the stuff contains diethylene glycol, a component in antifreeze. Yow.
  
  
• Speaking of China, the 10-Q had a bit about SCO's mysterious Chinese subsidiary.
  
  
• Jonathan Schwartz's open letter to Linus. FWIW.
  
  
• Microsoft's latest idea: beating spammers... with kittens! Ok, sure, it's not an original idea, but that's M$ for ya. Still, kittens!
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

• The recent bubble in SCO's stock means they're off delisting watch. For all the good that's going to do 'em. Coverage at InternetNews, Earthtimes, TechRockies & RTTNews
  
  
• SCO's still trying the ol' sandbag trick in the Novell case, and Novell's fighting back. You might just consider this gross misconduct born of desperation, but SCO signaled from the very beginning that they were going to try to withhold evidence. Not real smart to cue people in advance that you're going to try a stunt like this.
  
  The fundamental problem here is that there are no serious penalties for gaming the system, nothing sufficient to deter this kind of behavior. If your courts are full of people who are incapable of feeling embarrassed over their own behavior, your only alternative is strict sanctions, rigorously enforced. By rule, and by tradition, the courts just don't do that in this country. At least not yet.
  
  
• A mildly belated piece on SCO's Q2 numbers from IT Jungle
  
  
• A piece on the USDOJ siding with M$ in its current fight with Google.
  
  
• Another ugly example of telco astroturfing.
  
  
• A note of skepticism about the recently announced "WiTricity" thing.
  
  
• A review of Parallels 3.0 on OS X, in case you're interested.
  
  
• A controversy over the patenting of "synthetic life". The patent angle actually worries me more than the "synthetic life" thing. Does that make me a geek?
  
  
• Another piece on the Julie Amero circus, blaming the whole episode on Windows.
  
  
• Slashdot on patenting security patches for other companies' products. a good way to win very few friends indeed in the IT industry.
  
  It's getting harder every day to pick out a single poster child for patent reform. there's just so many volunteers.
  
  
• A new controversy over whether Vista really supports "Turbo Memory" or not. Sony says it doesn't, which is why they aren't shipping
  
  
• A sort of IP issue from space, regarding the use of raw Cassini images of Saturn by "amateurs". A whole community's grown up around looking at raw NASA images as they come in, speculating about them, and sometimes doing a bit of homegrown image processing. Mission scientists are used to having dibs on raw data, and aren't too keen on getting scooped by outsiders, so there's a bit of tension going on right now.
  
  
• Slashdot on the recent RIAA raid here in Oregon. The local TV news coverage showed a number of people going around in gear that looked just like regular SWAT team gear, but the lettering on the back said "RIAA" instead of "FBI" or "DEA". It's like they fancy themselves an arm of the government now. Or more to the point, they fancy that the government is one of their arms now.
  
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. I've been a bit busy this week. Fortunately(?) nothing truly major has happened lately, so I can still at least try to get caught up. Here's what we've seen over the last couple of days:

• Coverage of SCO's numbers, mostly quick blurbs all to the effect that "Q2 loss narrows".
  CBR Online
  Forbes
  SmallCapInvestor.com
  TradingMarkets.com
  RTTNews
  
  
• Another take on the numbers: "SCOSource dries up". Which is true, there was zero SCOSource revenue in Q2. But that was already a tiny number even before now.
  
  
• Stories about SCO's dreams of beeeeelions, from InternetNews & ITNews Australia. Darl's comments about the money owed to SCO being a "ridiculously big number" are getting a lot of play. The guy's remarkably quotable, in an "open mouth, insert additional foot" sort of way.
  
  
• Kieran O'Shaughnessy, SCO's man in Australia, has jumped ship, going to Sage Software. Oh, how we'll miss his colorful antipodean metaphors. I still don't understand that bit about "we have broken our duck".
  
  He's also the guy who once said Linux didn't exist. If he still thinks that, he's going to be in for a shock at his new employer. Yep, at least some of their products run on Linux.
  
  
• GL has eyewitness reports from Monday's SCO v. Novell hearings.
  
  
• Here's a bit about the M$ vs. TestDriven.NET ugliness. It tells you a lot about M$ that their default reaction is to start threatening people, even when the potential "danger" to its revenue stream is absolutely miniscule. Even if there was more money to be made embracing innovation than fighting it, they just won't do it.
  
  
• SJVN & GL comment on the "mixed source" announcement I covered recently.
  i've read over the announcement a couple of times and this is a case where I don't think PJ gets it right. I don't like the phrase "mixed source", and this isn't the first time Novell's used it. but at least in this case it looks like all they really mean by it is closed source apps running on Linux, which is very much allowable under the GPL. Some PHB must've taken a fancy to the term "mixed source", not realizing how inflammatory it sounds to the Linux world.
  
  
• Seems that Scott Gant of bs&f has a new book out, "We are All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age". I wonder if he mentions Groklaw? I wonder, furthermore, if he mentions BS&F trying to get a gag order on Groklaw?
  
  So are we all journalists, really? Am I? It's a tough call. I like the legal protections traditionally afforded to print journalists. It's far from a settled matter whether such protections are available to mere unpaid bloggers. On the other hand, being a journalist is the next closest thing to being unpaid, you spend much of your time in grubby little bars drowning your sorrows with other journalists, and the odds of acquiring superpowers are far lower than Hollywood summer movies might lead you to believe. It would be a mixed blessing, at best.
  
  
• A judge has ordered a retrial for Julie Amero. She, as you might recall, is the teacher recently convicted of internet porn charges widely considered to be bogus. Apparently the prosecutor & jury didn't know much about the interwebs, and the scourge of pop-up ads. Or at least they were willing to convict someone else of it
  
  
• Someone's done a cute webcomic about the rumored Vista SP1. Enter the Microtrix!
  
  
• IHT: "U.S. cellphone users chafing at carriers". People are getting sick and tired of vendor lock-in with mobile phone handsets, and I think understandably so. From the article:
  
  

  
  Tim Wu, a Columbia University law professor, compares today's wireless world to the U.S. landline industry of the 1950s, when consumers had to lease phones from AT&T. In 1968, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that AT&T could not decide which devices could be attached to the network, opening the phone world to competition and leading to landline innovations people take for granted today, such as cheaper phones, answering and fax machines and modems.
  

  
  
  
• Today's retrotech item: The Apple ][ is 30 years old. No, seriously, it is. 30 years. And we aren't talking Internet years either.
  
  
• And from Shiny Shiny, a piece about the new bling-laden Hello Kitty laptop. Go ahead, try to tell me this is any sillier than Enderle's Ferrari laptop.
  

Labels: linux, open source, sco, tech