Slashback: Hatred, Glass, Identification

Slashback brings you another source for the Unix Haters' Handbook, along with more news on the Caldera v. IBM lawsuit and other updates on topics from XPde to creating a stained-glass computer. Read on below for the details.

Why Yes, you can sell the Free books. ProteusQ writes "Project Gutenberg has released a 'Best Of' CD, April 2003 Edition. The CD compilation is copyrighted and licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows unlimited non-commercial duplication and distribution. You can even sell it, provided that you share 20% of the gross profits with Project Gutenberg. It contains almost 500 books, and the 'Best Of' project itself based on the Open Source model. All of the work was performed by volunteers (mostly by me, in this case), with the goal of building a volunteer base to create about three editions per year."

Welcome to the American legal system, mind your footing. An anonymous reader submits: "In an e-mail discussion that took place 24 and 25 April, SCO-Caldera Senior Vice President Chris Sontag told MozillaQuest Magazine that there is SCO-owned code in Red Hat and SuSE Linux distributions. He also told MozillaQuest Magazine that the tainted code is not in the Linux kernel that Linus [Torvalds] and others have helped develop. We're talking about what's on the periphery of the Linux kernel."

On this topic, Random BedHead Ed writes "IBM has released its denial of SCO Group's charges that it borrowed proprietary UNIX code in its development of the GNU/Linux system. Story at News.com.com.com.etc. The battle continues.

Also, check out PCLinuxOnline.com for a good summary of the events thus far. They also have a Boycott SCO page if you're interested."

The height of practicality. Jerami Campbell writes "I just saw your article in Slashdot 'Building a stained glass computer case?' I have made several stained glass computer cases, I thought you might be interested in checking them out. You can see all of my cases at lucentrigs.com. I will have a new one finished in a couple of days. It is black glass with a red lava lamp mounted in the front."

Gun buffs have well-adjusted sights. In regards to the MP3-player-in-a-rifle-magazine posted the other day, Mat S. writes "I would be reaaaaally surprised if this fit a standard AK-47, as it is an SVD (Russian infantry rifle, as opposed to the AK, which is in fact a carbine, although called an assault rifle) mag. It accommodates much more powerful ammo, and the cartridges are about 50% longer than the AK's. Thank you for your attention. I still WANT this player. Might be a bit on the heavy side, though. this case is stamped steel, about 3 mm thick :)"

Fair and balanced, naturally. An anonymous reader writes "For those of you who were unable to obtain the Microsoft propaganda about Unix, it's up at MIT."

Note for the humorless: the UHH is not "Microsoft propaganda."

The best Congress money can buy. If you thought Hilary Rosen writing Iraq's copyright law was an isolated incident, don't worry, she's not alone. theodp writes "The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand to make it clear to government officials that the pressure to enforce U.S. laws against pirating of music and movies 'is a unified message coming from all levels of the U.S. government.' Watchdog groups say the trip may have violated House ethics rules, and one is calling for a House Ethics Committee investigation. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said he could have used committee funds to pay for the trip but, 'I thought I would save the taxpayers some money on this.'"

Thanks a bundle.

A considerate way to fool your friends and family. We've mentioned the blink-twice Trompe L'Oeil Windows-looking desktop XPde a few times before; now xexen writes "On April 26th 2003, I received an email. The XPde Team released XPde 0.3.5, a major upgrade to the XPde desktop environment and window manager. Check out the announcement, view the screenshots, or read the detailed ChangeLog."

Build up your frequent flyer miles. A few weeks ago we mentioned that the proceedings of the most recent linux.conf.au (a Linux gathering Down Under) were available as an ISO; hemos, who was on hand at the conference, passes on word that the CDs have been sent out, and points to some more info on the next LCA.

MP3 Rifles?

All my rifles play ogg.

Yes

Fair and balanced, naturally.

Like coverage of Linux. Naturally.

Re:Yes

Fair and balanced.... like Fox News?

Re:Yes

Didja mean Faux News? =)

they have a CD?

So I didn't have to "wget -r" their entire FTP server from the local college's multiple T3 lines? Sorry guys.

(Just a joke, no need for you to do the same to my server.)

lava lamps

As cool as it might look, I cant imagine having a lava lamp on the front of your case is too practical - those things get verrry hot. If your anything like me, youd prefer to have it as bare bones as possible, concentrating more on temperature, in order to get the fan speeds down ( = less noise).

um

"The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand

Why is this buried in a Slashback? Come on! This is huge news.

Re:um

Yeah, this is huge news. A U.S. congressman spent $18,000 to go to Taiwan and Thailand? I know for a fact that at the most expensive hotels and with the most expensive food, you can only spend about $8,000 on a trip to those countries. So the other $10,000 went to prostitutes, drugs, and... what? Into his pocket?

Re:um

Already mentioned the prostitutes.

Re:um

Why is this buried in a Slashback? Come on! This is huge news.

No it's not. "Fact-finding"junkets like this are perfectly routine. You may find that reassuring or you may find it cause for even more concern. (In any case, the story of a British MP taking hundreds of thousands of pounds from an Iraqi intelligence agency has gone almost unnoticed in the US.)

Meanwhile, I had a story rejected today that seems like it would be of interest: Boycott Hollywood [boycott-hollywood.us] had their domain revoked after legal threats from the William Morris Agency. They posted contact information for anti-war celebrities and their agents, incurring the wrath of a powerful firm.

Keep that in mind the next time you hear Susan Sarandon and Martin Sheen whining about being silenced.

Re:um

It's not huge news because the junket was paid for - It's huge news because Sensenbrenner, the Chairman of the *House Judiciary Committee*, was actually *criticized* for it - and Rupert Murdoch's news empire took notice. It even ran on the front page of foxnews.com for a while.

Unfortunately, THAT is not at all routine, and should be front page news here.

Just in case MIT gets slashdotted...

PlanetMirror [planetmirror.com] has the UHH here [planetmirror.com].

Enjoy (yeah, second time i've posted this - the last time got deleted - thanks guys)

Re:Just in case MIT gets slashdotted...

MIT? Get Slashdotted? Pardon me while I die of laughter.
These guys have more bandwith than Jesus. Of course Jesus never owned a computer but if he did you could betcha he would have some pretty heavy fiber.

Microsoft propaganda

Note for the humorless: the UHH is not "Microsoft propaganda."

I note that since the original story was posted, a disclaimer has been put up at the site (no doubt in response to the humorless):

Due to being announced on Slashdot.org, the book has gotten a lot of fresh attention. I've added this page so that those downloading the book can be aware of some history before starting their read.

• This book is ten years old . I started work on it in 1992 (maybe even 1991) while I was a professor at Stanford. My co-editors took over after I started work at Microsoft. (So no, it's not a Microsoft conspiracy.) A lot has happened in the intervening decade.
• This book's target audience was people who themselves have noticed certain weaknesses in Unix at that time and could relate to our stories. Our goal was humor. Many readers have told us we succeeded in this. Even Eric Raymond liked it (his name is in the acknowledgements).
• The book is not meant to be balanced, it is a screed, pure and simple. Is it over the top? Yes.
• We wrote the contract with our publisher to have the copyright revert to us once the book went out of print. So yes, we have the right to publish it online. Feel free to mirror it where ever you want, print it out, and bind it.
• Do I have any regrets? Yes, that the funniest item in the book probably isn't anything we wrote, but is Dennis Ritchie's anti-forword. (We had asked Dennis to write a forword, thinking that since he was doing Plan 9 at that time, it would give him an opportunity to talk about how he had moved on from Unix and fixed its flaws in his next OS. (We were young and had a lot chutzpah then.) He read the Preface, and then sent back his essay. We thought it was great and tremendously funny, so we added it in (with permission). To this day, I don't know if he expected us to publish it.)
• If you enjoyed reading this book and felt it was worth the price of a least a movie and popcorn, send a $10 check to your favorite charity.

Affirmative action for a right

I don't exactly know what the u.s. equivalent is, but in Germany there is something called negative Feststellungsklage which means that Suse could apply for a court order declaring that SCOs claims are false and prohibits them to repeat their allegations.

If SCO seeks to achieve a precedent by sueing Suse this might be the appropriate backfire.

Just a thought.

Re:Affirmative action for a right

I don't exactly know what the u.s. equivalent is, but in Germany there is something called negative Feststellungsklage which means that Suse could apply for a court order declaring that SCOs claims are false and prohibits them to repeat their allegations. If SCO seeks to achieve a precedent by sueing Suse this might be the appropriate backfire.

There's a similar mechanism in the US (nothing to do with "affirmative action", at least in the US sense): you can petition the court for a "Declaratory Judgement". Effectively, winning such a judgement in your favor would mean SCO had already lost the first court case - they'd have to start off by appealing an existing ruling in your favor, instead of starting a new case against you. Definition here [gsm.com].

Another mirror for everyone

I grabbed the UHH from the MIT guy and threw it on a Purdue server. Download away.

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~anthontj/random/ugh.pdf [purdue.edu]

Saved all but one of four tax payers...

So which of the 4 poor saps sued by the RIAA (and then settled) paid for the congressman's trip?

The XPde FAQ thought about everything...

including this personal favourite of mine:

I'm a avid reader of Slashdot, I'm a Linux guru, I'm a BOFH, I'm a geek, Why the hell would I want this f#@#ng software?

Sorry, but I think this is not the project for you. (well, at least geeks like any kind of tech, so if you want to look at the source code.. ;-)

Re:The XPde FAQ thought about everything...

I'm a avid reader of Slashdot, I'm a Linux guru, I'm a BOFH, I'm a geek, Why the hell would I want this f#@#ng software?

Heh... Yeah, I liked that, too.

Actually, I think XPde goes a long way toward getting Linux ready for mass adoption on the desktops of the corporate world.

Microsoft has spent millions of dollars on focus groups to have ordinary Joes and Janes sit down and play with Windows, telling them what's good and bad, from a user's perspective.

The open source desktop metaphors don't have that resource - but Windows XP - ugly and inefficient as it may be to most Slashdot readers - does represent a lot of UI design experience.

XPde goes the right way to adopting and trying to learn from the expertise of Microsoft and Apple.

Having a Linux distro ship KDE with fluorescent pink menus and background wallpaper that looks like it was designed by a 14-year-old Run Lola Run fan from East Berlin does very little to encourage IT buyers that they can take the risk and leave Microsoft's comfortable if expensive and unreliable embrace.

XPde also works to try to migrate casual users who don't have very specific or great requirements. There's one in every office: the 66-year-old executive to whom Outlook *is* e-mail, and who gets confused when you present another program with exactly the same features and operations but different icons. Just as there's no way to explain to this user that the Send button still sends e-mail and have him confidently understand it, there's also no reason for that person to run Windows with its vulnerabilities to mailbox Klez and Nimbda attacks.

I can think of a few desktops which I'm going to migrate from XP to XPde.

And I won't tell them they're running Linux until they've been using it for a couple of weeks.

Boycott SCO?

Wow, that'll affect all of SCO's 3 customers...?

IP Patents

I just filled a patent for printf("Hello World\n"):!

Soon every elementary C Book will be violating my IP, and thus be required to pay me royalites.

PS: Thanks SCO for giving me such a great idea on how to make money fast, easy, and sleasy

from the FAQ of XPde

Can this project be sued by Microsoft?

We don't know, we are not lawyers. But in any case, we are ready for that. We don't use any of Microsoft's registered trademarks, graphics, logos, or anything. This means someone could create a complete theme that mimics the Windows XP environment - where the dialogs are the same, the controls are positioned in the same places and with the same text.

Maybe that would be illegal, but *we* don't include *copyrighted* material. In the case Microsoft have ownership over (for example) a-dialog-that-shows-running-processes (i.e. TaskManager) and our dialog has the controls in the same positions as the Windows one, we are right now creating the translation system. This translation system will also allow "anyone" to position the controls of any dialog in any place. We can create a version with completely different dialogs (the same controls in different places) and *someone* could create a theme which modifies these controls to the Windows XP places.

But this is not our problem. Could Microsoft have copyrighted an environment like the taskbar concept? Could Microsoft have copyrighted the start menu concept? Could Microsoft have copyrighted the tray icon concept? Could Microsoft have copyrighted the desktop concept? In that case every desktop has a problem ;-)

The solution here is that we are not going to ship a complete Windows XP interface clone out-of-the-box, but it will be so easy to configure that *someone* could make it look *exactly* like the Windows XP interface. We won't provide this configuration.

Anyone found the filing?

IBM's court filing would seem to be public information. Has anyone managed to locate a copy of it on the web somewhere?

oh

At first I read that line

...RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand...

as

...RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Ludicracy Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand...

Telling thing is, it made perfect sense to me the first time I scanned it.

carbine? assault rifle?

can someone tell me what these terms mean? thanks.

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

A carbine is a short rifle (barrel length under 20").

"assault rifle" is a general term some anti-gun activists and politicians and media have created.
In the People's Republic of California, it is (defined by law as) a semiautomatic centerfire rifle with any of the following characterics:
a pistol grip
a flash suppressor
magazines holding more than 10 rounds
folding or collapsible butt stock ...
See here [state.ca.us] or here [state.ca.us] for more exact PRC legal info.

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

Just to be clear, until about 1990 or so, any dictionary and encyclopedia (as people have been missing the obvious lately, I feel the need to say 'that I was able to get my hands on to look at') defined assault rifle with the additional charactaristic 'Must be capable of burst fire and fully automatic fire'.

Re:carbine? assault rifle?

the term was in use circa WWII to denote automatic weapons firing cartridges more powerful than pistol ammunition (used in submachine guns), but less powerful than a typical rifle bullet. The rationale is that most infantry combat took place at shorter range than what made a regular rifle necessary, and it's difficult to fire an automatic rifle using the more powerful cartridges.

Germany had a couple in WWII, the Russians had one too, I think. The U.S. went with the M14 (looks a lot like the M1, but has a detachable magazine and automatic fire) for a while, which was an automatic rifle by this definition. Then the M16.

SCO/Caldera have destroyed any claim vs. RedHat

IANOAL, But, the article states that SCO/Caldera will eventually make a copyright claim against RedHat and other GNU/Linux distributors.

Yet, since SCO/Caldera have released the same code under the GPL, they have given away their rights to make copyright claims while RedHat and others only re-distribute according to their rights under the GPL.

$18000 eh ?

The RIAA paid $18,000 for the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee to travel to Taiwan and Thailand

Now you know what they needed those students' money [com.com] for.

BitTorrent of the Gutenberg CD?

I know that ibiblio exists to serve up stuff like this, but is there someone out there with a compressed copy of April's CD that could post a .torrent?
Slashdotters have been good lately about using BitTorrent to shoulder some of the bandwidth load (for example, when the Matrix Reloaded trailer was released.)

I wondered how long it would take

For SCO to start attacking the Distros. Now they're claiming that Linus is lying when he says that Linux was a project independant of any Unix code. SCO is getting more and more desperate as time goes on.

more unix hatin' badness

There's another set of archives of stuff from the unix-haters list at this website [mindspring.com]. It's a bunch of stuff that didn't make the handbook, and is not as interesting in general (more repetitive), etc. However, if you're at an academic environment and there's crufty old stuff (say, like the zephyr IM system) sitting around, or you've been in the unix admin business for a while..., you're bound to find some mention of numerous design and implementation bogosities in your (least) favorite packages.

Unix Lover...

I know Unix like I know the back of my hand. I love Unix like I love the palm of my hand.

XPDE

I noticed that the XPDE screenshots use mozilla/netscape with the classic skin. There is an Internet Explorer skin [mozdev.org] at mozdev.org they could be using. (if they want to copy windows explorer, this would be a must)

PG favourite book

Best PG book ever:
Square Root of 4 To A Million Places, The [ibiblio.org]
A must read...

MP3 Player Ammo-mag sounds silly

I'm sorry, I'm sure this has been brought up before, but to me the whole idea of an MP3 player in ammo-mag sounds really silly to me. If you have your MP3 ammo-magazine plugged into your gun, you can't shoot it. In essence you no longer have a gun and instead you just have a bulky gun-shaped iPod. Wouldn't it make more sense to have something like an MP3 playing laser scope that you attach to your gun? That way you can shoot your gun and listen to MP3s at the same time?

Case not hot enough?

Did you see that lava lamp computer case? Like most computer geeks computers aren't hot enough already. Add 2 40-watt and one 30-watt light bulb to it.... I think overclocking is pretty much out of the question with that puppy ;)

Interesting thing about the Unix haters people

The book was published before Windows NT was released. They then went quiet after Windows NT was released.

Given a choice between Unix and Windows ...

Rusted case

That rusted case is so cool! Redefines 'old and busted'.

Task Manager!

XPde might have a task manager that could actually kill a process.

What is the signame for the Unix equivalent of Window's:
kill -HALTORIGNORETHISREQUEST

Microsoft should sue IBM too

By contributing to Linux IBM is trying to increase their hardware sales by essentially selling software at a loss (they pay programmers to develop code that they give away). Microsoft will lose business as a result and should be able to sue IBM for antitrust violations since this is illegal.

SUSE & SCO

Anybody know anything about SUSE and SCOs' relationship now? The last I heard they "were re-evaluating their position" or something like that. I am very interested in what Redhat and SUSE has to say...

From News.com

This is not about 10 lines of code, it's about 20 years of extremely valuable intellectual property we're trying to protect...Am I supposed to lie down and not say anything about it?" McBride asked. "There's a certain point here where you stand up for what's right and let the chips fall where they will."

Geesh.

Mozilla quest

I've been impressed with the Mozilla quest SCO series. Obviously, it's not hard to tell which way the author is biased, but the interviews were good and the answers were recorded verbatim.

Fascinating stuff.

Stained Glass

Man, those are [lucentrigs.com] pretty [lucentrigs.com] cool [lucentrigs.com].

[shatner]

My...god...it's.....

....... beautiful!

[/shatner]

Interesting:

I titled this case "HEMOPHILIA" due to the red of the glass, my many wounds from working on this case, and the fact that I have hemophilia (a rare genetic blood disorder that hinders my blood from clotting.)

My god, the man's willing to risk death for his art!

I am still laughing at "Unix Haters"...

No seriously. I haven't read a more complete load of elephant dung in the past 10 years. (well, it probably ties with "I smoked it, but never inhaled", and "We never had sexual relations" from certain presidents of the US).

My favorite quote section is the "Sytems Administration" section. Now I actually do this as a living. We have a very large base of unix systems as well as a very large base of Windows systems. We have upwards of 100 unix servers, and about 600 clients that my group administers. Which comes to a ratio of about 70-80 systems per admin. That is a hell of a lot more then the "20" the article is saying. We also have something like 1/8 the amount of problems reported then the Windows Admins get reported, and that can't be chalked up to the user base as we have the same user base. It also can't be accounted for in the percentage of usage (i.e. people spending more time on PC's and not on UNIX) as roughly all the work being done is engineering work using the unix systems, with people having a PC for mainly having access to Visio and powerpoint, the majority of work is done on the unix boxes and software. So how it that our systems have been running longer, with less problems, and shorter downtimes, and less admin staff then the Windows boxes? And how is it that someone can honestly believe a single word written in that book?

Stained Glass?

Nah, it's pretty but impractical. I already have enough trouble with my machines crashing...

IBM and Linux Shall Pay!

I found the code that matches up exactly, the top five matches are ( drum roll )

5) for ( int x=0;x<10;x++)
4) while ( x<10 ) {
3) #include stdio.h
2) #include math.h
1) int main( String args[] )

Number 1) shows up in every .cpp file! Linux developers will pay for this blatant violation of SCO's IP rights!

At last, an easy boycott

Boycotting Amazon or music companies is hard work and a great personal loss, but boycotting SCO? Sure, can do!! Done it my whole life and honestly, it hasn't degraded my quality of living at all!

...Uh wait, I use Red Hat though. Darn.

Ade_
/

SVD

I would be reaaaaally surprised if this fit a standard AK-47, as it is an SVD (Russian infantry rifle, as opposed to the AK, which is in fact a carbine, although called an assault rifle) mag.

SVD is an acronym from "Snaiperskaya Vintovka Dragunova" (Dragunov sniper rifle). It is clearly not a carabine.

Also, the term 'assault rifle' is absent from the official Russian military lexicon. I have no idea who would call SVD an assault rifle.

You are correct though that it was not an AK mag depicted.

Caldera != SCO

Caldera is not SCO, SCO is not Caldera. I've worked for both (now I work for neither). SCO is a different company with a different direction, different management, different employees, different products, different everything.

Saying SCO is Caldera is like saying Red Hat is the ACC Bookstore, or whatever it was called before the name was changed to Red Hat, Inc.

The Lava Lamp Case

The height of practicality. Jerami Campbell writes "I just saw your article in Slashdot 'Building a stained glass computer case?' I have made several stained glass computer cases, I thought you might be interested in checking them out. You can see all of my cases at lucentrigs.com. I will have a new one finished in a couple of days. It is black glass with a red lava lamp mounted in the front."

Anyone else disappointed that the Lava Lamp case [lucentrigs.com] uses 40-Watt lamps? I was kinda hoping there was a overclocked AMD processor at the bottom of that thing...

Good quote from Unix Hater's Guide

"Unix survives only because everyone else has done so badly." - Donald A. Norman

As true today as when it was written...

Unix Haters

awwwwright. if windows isn't an OS and Unix is as bad a OS as herpes is to health, then what would be the alternative? That funky mainframe OS (which runs ROSCOE, I do not know the name of it)?????

If so, where do I get an ISO to burn a CD?

Re:Unix Haters' Handbook?

OK. I found it.

Fair and balanced, naturally. An anonymous reader writes "For those of you who were unable to obtain the Microsoft propaganda about Unix, it's up at MIT."

It wasn't written as Microsoft propaganda though.

This is made clear by reading comments such as: MS Windows is not a real operating system (page 50 of the pdf file).

Re:Hey, the story doesn't say that

You're right. But the problem with using the term Linux for the OS is, for me, not related to a movement, and nothing against Linus, and not because I am a zealot. It's for clarity. SCO has said that none of the "tainted" code is in the kernel itself. So the legal battle between IBM and SCO promises to be very confusing when both sides argue about code in "Linux" and each side is speaking about a different thing.