My Visit to SCO (Linux Journal)

Posted Jun 20, 2003 9:23 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]

These are precisely the reasons why there are so many outlaws now that used to not be outlaws.

In the 19th century, I could grow hemp on my farm. I could make it into rope. I could celebrate my few hours of relaxation with a pipe of leaves if I wished to. No longer.

There are a lot of people on this planet who attribute this change to scheming, manipulation, politics, corruption, lies, media spin, and hypocricy. But what difference does it make?

I will tell you: poor decisions by judges, juries, and politicians, especially if they come down because of some power grab result in:

- Cynicism
- Political corruption
- Disrespect for the laws, sometimes by those who are supposed to uphold and make them
- Black markets
- Ruination of families
- Civil war
- Human-rights violations
- Civil-rights violations
- Economic ruin (Harlem, early 20th century)
- Betrayal

Kind of sad that techies are only just now learning about this. I used to be a member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. I know someone who still is; her ex-husband is in jail over it, she keeps paying NORML her dues, and nothing is done; there is no justice for that man.

Then again, back in the '70s and '80s, when I would campaign on this issue with my techie co-workers, I was often laughed away, as they lit their cigarettes at their desks and planned their Friday night bar-hopping. The few who used marijuana seemed to think "no one will ever bother me--why should they? I'm not hurting anyone?"

Friends, learn this: When someone pleads to you for help getting justice, don't ever forget that you may be next person denied that justice.

Posted Jun 20, 2003 9:40 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]

Just thought of something.

My opinion is that the hemp laws are what they are because of a media campaign started by the Hearst family. This happened shortly after someone invented a machine that made paper from hemp, and Hearst was afraid it would ruin his wood-pulp empire.

Thing is, the wholesale slaughter of trees on this planet may very well cost all of us our lives.

That would be an interesting kind of justice, no?

Posted Jun 20, 2003 10:35 UTC (Fri) by southey (subscriber, #9466) [Link]

"Number 2 is the one that took a long time to sink in. Law != Science.
Don't forget it."

Actually I sort of disagree because you can never prove a hypothesis - just disprove it. Likewise in Law guilt is virtually never proved, even when someone admits it. BUT the only things lawyers are interested in is obtaining either a guilty or non-guilty verdict for their client and nothing about what really happened.

Posted Jun 20, 2003 12:27 UTC (Fri) by naughty-artkitekt (guest, #10552) [Link]

Hehe, you got me humming and whistling the Perry Mason tune. It got me
thinking about Ironside, and that weird-assed panelwagon they hauled Raymond
Burr around in. Now, I'm thinking about Room 222, for some reason. I'm only 38,
but I guess I saw plenty/too much TV.

Speaking of distrust of the legal system, justice and so forth, I feel compelled to
reiterate my partial victory/partial failure against a lying lawyer. She outright lied,
and the lies came off her tongue, as in Matrix: Reloaded, regarding "cussing in
French", 'as smooth as wiping your ass with silk'. THAT was EXACLY how
smoothly an operator she was. Boy, she had SKILL and went for the KILL. I was
DUMBSTRUCK that she so boldly/brazenly/cooly LIED. OUTRIGHT LIED. Too
bad I didn't have Dr. Simon van Gelder's recidevist correction machine to strap
her ass into and sonically alter her brain. I am sure I'll someday need a laywer, but
I don't think I'll EVER lie to him or her, and I would fire him or her for lying on my
behalf. At least have a plausible, forgivable REASON or misunderstanding for
being in a fix, but to outright LIE and know your "oponnent" is lying is
unforgivable, particularly if the lie has nothing to do with saving a corporeal (not
corporate) existence.

Anyway, I will get back to my diabolical plan to start up a Linux Users business to
woo small businesses owners and motivated learners to come and get educated
for a low price, have fun, and learn about OSS and how free their companies'
futures from ms/proprietary tyranny. (Except, no, I will not do business with CNA
Insurance company if there are here...see below for why...)

Anybody know any secret, equally diabolical investors or donors who are itchin' to
flow some capital to a worthiy cause such as "McDonaldizing" Linux/OSS?
If/since ms still weids power over computer makers and unjustifiably commands
over 84 to 94% of the market, then a "market correction" is SORELY overdue.
Linux will NOT be competition for ms unless ms suddenly is at the
50%-market-share-and-plummeting threshold, says I...

David Syes

========
Excerpted from my drivel at:
http://lwn.net/Articles/36856/

I fought a case against Jack in the Box (Food Maker) back round 1992. I
essentially "lost" because I forgot to bring to court my developed, condemning
pictures showing the condition of JITB's property which led to damage to my car.
It was my proof that they "maintained an atractive nuissance" or invitation to
repeated right rocker-panel crushing. That JITB was there since the mid 70's and
the curb had been hit REPEATEDLY, nicked, chipped, cracked, damaged and
such all because it was a few inches higher than most cars' rocker panels and
because the long wait and no post sign lulled drivers to forget the curb was there,
particularly when no cars perpendicular-parked against the curb, which would
automatically prompt a driver to turn wider.

I wasn't trying to get rich, just make the franchise pay for its failure to maintain a
required danger sign (required because city code required it, and because the
repeated damaged clearly proved SOME reason existed for the curb being hit all
the time) due to their curb being high enough to damage cars when drivers pull
out. I only hit it because the heavily pouring rain distracted me and mainly
because they took over 5 or 10 minutes in the drive-thru to give me my food. It
was so bad a wait that I had to shut off the engine (to save gas and reduce
emissions), and I swear the wait was over 8-10 minutes. Long story short (or so
I'll attempt here), Food Maker's lawyer, (her name was Nyree (phonetically
Kachikian or something like that) LIED, GODDAM LIED to the judge stating:
"Your honor there was no damage, is no damage, and ther have been no
incidents since his. He is just a bad driver..."

That JITB was on Tully Road in San Jose, next to Alvin Street, near Highway
101. She lied her ass off, calmly, cooly and collectedly. But, I was honest, and
only lost because without my pictures, that dum-bass pro-tem was not about to
go to Tully Road and checkmate her off the bar/bench. And, my car was in the
parking lot of the court, and JITB did not dispute my being there that rainy night.
But, to add insult to injury, the after-case paperwork had to happen, and in the
foyer of the court house in Santa Clare, the JITB district manager (from
Richmond, CA area, I think) just snickered and sneered, as if to convey or effuse
"We're big corporations, and you're SMALL FRY, you scum...". I wanted to knock
him on his ass for being so cocky and gloating and arrogant that they LIED and
got away with it; maintained unsafe property conditions to save a buck, and got
away with it; KNEW that hundreds of customers from the 1970's on into the 1992
and beyond years hit and would continue to hit it, yet never get RID of that
damned nuissance curb. Bastard! Anyway, I told them that I believed in Karma,
and that something BAD would eventually happen to JITB. Sure enough, around
1993, SEVERAL people in CA died from e-coli in under-cooked meats (oh, let us
not forget the allegations of Kangaroo meat and deep-fried rats at JITB...). JITB
had a looong bout dealing with that bad press. Momma Nature? God? Fate?
Who the hell knows, but felt a small piece of vindication, but sadness for the
families who suffered to JITB's sloppy handling of food.

So, I swore I would ALWAYS dig into the background of ANY business
arrangement I would enter in the future with the SOLE purpose of excluding Food
Maker's insurance company: CNA Insurance. (Even when I hear or read ads for
Certified Nursing Assistant, I flash-back to 1992...) . CNA of Burlingame or San
Mateo or HIllsdale, CA. In contempt of court I refused to file the follow up
paperwork because the dumbass Pro-Tem let them off the hook. PRICK. I STILL
have the unfiled papers.. I wonder if there's a statue of limitations aganst the
state.... ANY one who's been to a tight drive through knows the curbs get hit. I
am sure that moron has been to a few dozen drivethrus scaling his way to the
bar exams, either as a driver or a passenger. Food Maker's franchise simply got
tired of re-installing the threaded steel poles and resorted to broom sticks and
candy-cane-striped plastic/PVC pipes, which all were removed by thugs,
ganger-bangers, and other miscreants who made the drive through dangerous,
PARTICULARLY since the lot-dividing curb was deep-gray and blended into the
night. ALL the manager had to do was to contract someone to weld the damn
pole into the base, reflective-stripe it, and only worry if it actually got knocked out
by a deep-incursion right turn. THEN, he/they could say the driver was a "bad
driver."

So, I have a HEALTHY, JADED, SKEWED, CYNICAL regard for the "justice"
system, the "legal" system, and pro-tems. Since the case information was a
matter of public record, I am legally free to disclose the stuff I said above, even
CNA's and Nyree Kachi something's name.
======

Posted Jun 27, 2003 19:04 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

As a lawyer and scientist, I find law quite scientific. The problem with law is just that it is way too complex. The rules are there as surely as Newton's, but there are an incredible number of them. That makes legal decisions seem quite arbitrary to non-lawyers, especially when they are reported in snippets in the mainstream news.

The reason law is so complex is precisely because of the current trend toward individual justice -- doing the right thing in every individual case. It wasn't always that way. Until the early part of the 20th century, the rules were simple and few. Accordingly, there were lots of individual cases of people getting screwed. The rule that gave the greatest good to the greatest number gave unreasonable results in individual cases.

An example of this is the hearsay rule of evidence. Used to be, you just couldn't use hearsay evidence. Period. That meant on average you got better evidence in court, but sometimes good, verdict-changing evidence got excluded. Now the hearsay rule goes on for pages. Exceptions run into the dozens, different in every jurisdiction.

Another example is contract liability. In the old days, you were nearly always bound by what you signed. The law assumed the fiction that if you signed a contract, you understood the deal and agreed to it. Naturally, people got screwed right and left. But at least cases were always predictable. Today, you must study for years to know just when a signature is binding. Cases go to trial 10 times as often as they used to, and when they do, the legal talent to try them costs a lot more.

The first people to witness subatomic particles zipping around defying the laws of physics must have thought physics wasn't very scientific either. Eventually, they figured out the myriad refinements of Newton's laws that showed it really is scientific. Law is the same way.

Posted Jun 20, 2003 10:25 UTC (Fri) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link]

I understand the claim was made before investigation of any proof? Sounds strange!

What are you talking about? Of course they had proof: Linux is now an enterprise grade operating system. There's no way on earth it could have got that way without people stealing code from SCO. I was so obvious actually looking and investigating the code isn't really necessary. It had to be IBMs doing as they're the only company currently making money off Linux. Those dirty cheats.

Posted Jun 20, 2003 12:10 UTC (Fri) by zonker (subscriber, #7867) [Link]

At what point does the doctrine of fair use come into play with software?

I'm not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt, but I'd say it doesn't come into play at all if you're talking about unpublished source code -- or even published source code if the license prohibits redistribution.

You mention fair use in terms of copying text -- but that's not really quite appropriate when talking about code, because it's being used differently. That is to say -- you're not taking a chunk of code and elaborating on it in a text or something, you're using it to perform a function, which is different than what fair use would normally provide for. You might be able to argue fair use if you publish 10 lines of code in a magazine to illustrate a function, but I don't think you could argue fair use if you copied the same 10 lines to perform a function -- particularly if the code is only distributed in binary fashion where the end user has no opportunity to study the code.

Think about sampling music, for example. It's okay to use a small chunk of a song when you're producing a different work -- maybe a syndicated radio show where you play a snippet of a song to illustrate a genre of music.

That same snippet of a song used as a sample would not be okay unless previously approved by the copyright holder.

Posted Jun 20, 2003 15:14 UTC (Fri) by nowster (subscriber, #67) [Link]

My hunch would be that the disputed code is based on an algorithm that is well known, and which is documented in one of Knuth's TAOCP tomes, most probably Volume 3.

Posted Jun 20, 2003 11:17 UTC (Fri) by nosnilmot (subscriber, #746) [Link]

Because IBM told them ... and they interpreted it their own way :)

Posted Jun 20, 2003 11:19 UTC (Fri) by nosnilmot (subscriber, #746) [Link]

And LWN told them about RCU

Posted Jun 20, 2003 12:58 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]

They don't want to kill it, they want to own it.