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Embarrassing Dispatches From The SCO Front
Posted by
timothy
on Sat Aug 23, 2003 12:44 PM
from the what-does-this-guy-ritchie-know dept.
from the what-does-this-guy-ritchie-know dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Dennis Ritchie has acknowledged he with Ken Thompson wrote the code cited as 'proof' by SCO. This seems to fit perfectly with Bruce Perens' Analysis of SCO's Las Vegas Slide Show, and undermine Blake Stowell's claim 'At this point it's going to be his word against ours." Andreas Spengler writes "In the ongoing battle between SCO and the Linux community, German publisher Heise has shown that not only was the Linux implementation of the Berkeley Packet filter written outside of Caldera (now SCO), but that it was common practice there and at other companies to remove the BSD copyright notices from the internally used source code. In effect, SCO has proven publicly that they violated the BSD license." (Warning, article is in German.) Finally, a semi-anonymous reader writes "Learn all about how IBM's stomach will be roasted on a pyre of CDs at WeLovetheSCOInformationMinister."
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Embarrassing Dispatches From The SCO Front
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SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://dotfuturemanifesto.blogspot.com/)
Unless SCO is behind the attack in order to create exactly the impression you cite.
Perhaps unlikely for SCO but in the 1950s the CIA organized mobs to riot againt the government then used the disorder to argue their case for a coup. Eisenhower was never told that the CIA rather than Tudeh (the Iranian communist party was behind it).
So yes this sort of thing does go on. But more generally it is important to police your supporters as vigilantly as your opponents. I was in Brazillia a couple of days ago for the Software Libre event in the parliament. The proceedings were in Protugeese and there was no translation so I did not follow all that was going on. But you could see the room turn against open source when the local loony firebrand started to speak. Instead of making the good case that his facts supported he went beyond the established facts to make claims that most people in the room simply dismissed as propaganda.
Up until that performance the tide was certainly with open source, afterwards there was a lot more opposition.
Basically the guy was speaking to his base, not building support.
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and by the way, the U.S. also prompted the U.S.S.R. to invade Afghanistan by getting involved there first, contrary to the official propaganda at the time. Carter's National Security Advisor admitted as much [globalresearch.ca]...
SCO's Website Down: It's Not A DDoS (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/~MuParadigm/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 09 2003, @06:23AM)
I posted this at Groklaw, and I'm reposting it here since it seems pretty relevant to the current thread:
I ran some traceroutes to see where the problem is, and the results are quite interesting.
First, let's start with www.canopy.com. I am listing the traceroute output from step 12, since that's just two steps before where things get revealing:
Tracing route to www.canopy.com [216.250.142.120] over a maximum of 30 hops:
12 77 ms 77 ms 76 ms 66.62.3.56
13 74 ms 77 ms 74 ms den1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.3.45]
14 77 ms 77 ms 76 ms den1-edge-01.tamerica.net [66.62.4.3]
15 77 ms 77 ms 77 ms vi-001.brdr01.den05.viawest.net [66.62.160.22]
16 75 ms 77 ms 76 ms gige-01-m00-00.crrt02.den05.viawest.net [64.78.230.210]
17 87 ms 87 ms 89 ms pos-03-01.crrt01.slc03.viawest.net [64.78.227.10]
18 89 ms 89 ms 89 ms c7pub-216-250-136-70.center7.com [216.250.136.70]
19 91 ms 88 ms 87 ms c7pub-216-250-142-126.center7.com [216.250.142.126]
20 88 ms 89 ms 90 ms c7pub-216-250-142-120.center7.com [216.250.142.120]
Trace complete.
Now, let's traceroute www.caldera.com
Tracing route to www.caldera.com [216.250.140.125] over a maximum of 30 hops:
12 74 ms 77 ms 77 ms dal1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.6.193]
13 76 ms 77 ms 74 ms den1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.3.45]
14 77 ms 74 ms 74 ms den1-edge-01.tamerica.net [66.62.4.3]
15 * * * Request timed out.
And finally, www.sco.com:
Tracing route to www.sco.com [216.250.140.112] over a maximum of 30 hops:
12 76 ms 77 ms 76 ms dal1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.6.193]
13 75 ms 77 ms 76 ms den1-core-01.tamerica.net [66.62.3.45]
14 77 ms 76 ms 75 ms den1-edge-01.tamerica.net [66.62.4.67]
15 * * * Request timed out.
Canopy, Caldera, and SCO, all have addresses that are within the same class C addressing range, respectively: 216.250.140.120, 216.250.140.125, 216.250.140.112. While this makes it very possible that all three sites are served by the same machine, we can't prove that from this information. It is however, likely that they are served from the same router.
The next thing to note is that the route to SCO and Caldera both fail at the 14th step in the tracert. The last router that responds for each of them, at the 13th step, is den1-edge-01.tamerica.net (albeit from different ports). Canopy also passes through den1-edge-01.tamerica.net at the 13th step, but continues on to a router at viawest.com. From there, it passes through 2 more routers at ViaWest, and 3 routers at Center7.
ViaWest and Center7 are both Canopy companies.
On initial analysis, for any other company, a network manager/sys admin/networking consultant (such as me) would simply assume that SCO/Caldera was having a problem with its ISP. The weird thing, though, is the presence of Canopy's IP address right *between* SCO's and Caldera's addresses.
Assume that all 3 segments are served by the same router (no, we can't prove it from this data, but it's extremely likely). Canopy, in that case, should be experiencing problems too if the site were under a DOS attack.
In fact, anyone planning a DDOS attack would find it easier to just take out the whole address range, thereby including all 3 sites, rather than focus on just the SCO/Caldera sites -- and for technical reasons alone. Never mind that they would *want* to target Canopy as well.
Given all this, it is a pretty safe bet that SCO/Caldera has taken its websites down itself.
Why? To protect themselves from a DDOS attack? No. Any decent firewall could take care of that for them. That's why I suspected that it was not DoS attack: they've simply been down too long.
I don't know *why* they're still down. I wonder if they're about to collapse.
Re:SCO's Website Down: It's Not A DDoS (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://yarbles.poptart.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 01 2003, @02:13PM)
In fact, he would point out that every time a new story was posted about them, they (at the IDC) would brace themselves for another DoS/DDoS against the SCO and other assorted domains.
These attacks do nothing but give some techs here a lot of extra work to worry about for no good purpose.
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://jesusislife.net/micah/ | Last Journal: Monday November 24 2003, @02:09AM)
Ok, cool. But why would someone do that on a Saturday? Should have done it during the week when their customers might be more likely to try to get to their site.
Of course, this tactic opens up a massive internal conflict.
Ultimately, since it's illegal and rather immature, we really should put our foots down against this type of technique. SCO will be crushed in the marketplace and in court soon enough. We don't need to take down their site for that to happen.
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.webworks.se/)
Its not part of SCO business model to have customers.
The site is down for maintenance as they needed to do a search & replace operation on all their webpages, to replace the word "customer" with the word "defendent"
Yeah, what do you call a TSG customer in a suit? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://burningwell.org/)
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Funny)
Because script kiddies don't go to school on Saturdays.
Re:Forget Satuday... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually that doesn't sound any more nonsensical than their current machinations.
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone who holds a copyright to some part of the linux kernel has invoked the DMCA with SCO's upstream provider. Since SCO has been distributing the linux kernel in voilation of the GPL, thus violating this person's copyright.
Doesn't the DMCA give the power to turn off access to the Internet and ask questions later?
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes ... but the person you got shut down merely has to file a "put up or shut up" reply with the ISP, and the person who made the DMCA complaint MUST proceed to filing a formal infringement court case within 10 days or shut up for all time. It's not something you should do lightly.
Some eBay users were being hassled by a fabric manufacturer, because they mentioned their name and showed the fabric made into various objects, or were reselling vintage fabric. The manufactuer accused them of violating their design copyrights by showing the pictures. It was VERY easy to get them to back off, just by firing back a "sez who?" and teelling them that they had 10 days to file something sreoius. The harassment stopped.
re: using the dmca (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.rwcinc.net/ | Last Journal: Sunday March 21 2004, @02:34PM)
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe hundreds of millions of retarded private investors are visiting SCO.com and that's causing their servers down. hehe
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Interesting)
When a stock is borrowed to short, it has to be returned upon demand. The short seller will have to buy replacement shares at the current price. More sellers are willing to sell at this price, which causes more shorted shares to be called for return. This becomes a cycle that can rapidly bump up the price for a day or two.
Shorting a stock is definitely a short term gamble. It would be better to use options, but they are not offered on SCOX.
Re:SCO's Website Down (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure this must be a fairly well known phenomenon, but it strikes me as remarkably poor marketplace efficiency - the market is supposed to be a good indicator of the aggregate psychological perception of worth of an equity, and right now the rules of engagement are preventing the market mechanism from working well for SCOX.
True believers and bubbles (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 17 2003, @02:06AM)
Look, I think that SCOX is worth $0.50 to $1.00 per share. I'm sure for the Slashdot crowd, that's a high estimate, and I'll get a bunch of replies saying "no! $0.01 per share! $0.000001 per share! Negative $699 per share!" But face it, reality says that there are people, right now, who are actually paying $13 per share for SCOX.
I have to try to get inside these people's heads, and I have to do it without taking cheap shots, which means that everyone else will take cheap shots at ME, the messenger.
But if you really want to understand
McBride gets up on stage with "Slide A" and "Slide B". McBride says that Slide A is from SCO Unix. McBride says that Slide B is from Linux. It's obvious to everybody that Slide B looks like Slide A.
Then the Linux community replies and says "We admit that Slide B is from Linux 2.4 Yes, but that code is properly licensed. Yes, but that code doesn't run on desktops or embedded systems. Yes, but that code has already been removed from the 2.6 series".
All of these things are true, and they are all important in a court of law. Especially the bit about proper licensing.
But the SCO-lovers and the Linux-haters aren't interested in "Yes, But". So our message doesn't make it through their filter. They put a lot of weight on "Slide B equals Slide A", and are not listening to an argument that Slide B has every legal right to look like Slide A.
Human beings are like that. They discount arguments and evidence that disagree with them. And once a human being "flips the bozo bit" on another person, or another group of people, it stays flipped.
That's what I think is happening with the stock.
As far as "marketplace efficiency" goes -- whole new topic. I agree that this kind of bubble is inefficient for capital formation. However, it does satisfy the psychological need of people to identify with something that embodies their ideals, just like a sports team. Some people buy SCOX because it fulfills their desire to hate Linux.
Re: True believers and bubbles (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 17 2003, @02:06AM)
Well, actually, the run-up started Thursday morning. Here is a five-day graph. [yahoo.com] Look at the price and the volume starting on Thursday morning.
I don't know. But here are some guesses:
Somebody is trading on news that hasn't become public yet. Like maybe, Monday, we'll hear that some huge company bought a Linux license for a lot of money. I am disinclined to believe this because news like that generally comes out within 24 hours, and it's been longer than that since Thursday morning. But it could happen.
Or
Somebody is trading on a really effective rumor that hasn't become public yet. It's hard to prove or disprove this either way.
Or
Somebody had a big short position and they capitulated (bought a lot of stock back). This happens on Friday afternoons because short-sellers are wary about holding big short positions over the weekend. But this move started Thursday morning!
Or
Somebody is intentionally buying a lot of stock in order to squeeze the short-sellers. There is no need to invoke an anti-Linux motive here; if they can buy at $11, and sell at $13, that's good money. And it does not take much to set off a stampede in a stock shorted as heavily as this.
Or
After McBride said "Slide A equals Slide B", the pro-SCO people waited to see if the Linux people would say anything really devastating, such as "Slide B does not appear anywhere in our code, McBride pulled that out of his ass!"
McBride did his show on Monday, and we got all our responses into the media by Tuesday night. So this hypothesis is that the SCOX-ers were waiting to see what we had before they committed, and then it took another day (Wednesday) for the SCOX-ers to convince themselves that we didn't have a crushing reply to McBride.
The trouble with this hypothesis is that a whole day (Wednesday) is too much time for a volatile stock like SCOX. With that hypothesis, I'd expect more of a rally Monday, followed by a dip on Tuesday and Wednesday, with big volume. But that didn't happen. The volume numbers say that McBride's announcement on Monday and the Linux'ers reaction on Tuesday were both not important.
Summary
I don't like any of these explanations very much.
Valuation models for SCOX (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday September 17 2003, @02:06AM)
The next model is that you try to figure out why other people are buying stock. You try to figure out what is going to be fashionable next month and buy it this month (or figure out what will be disgusting next month and short-sell it this month).
People using the first model are like retail buyers -- end users of stock, almost. People using the second model are like merchants or wholesalers -- they buy the stock because they think someone else will want it a little bit later.
I sorta think that bubbles happen when a lot of people become wholesalers and think they are going to sell to other wholesalers with no clear idea of where the end of the value chain is. Warren Buffett says that he asks this question: "would I buy this stock if the stock market was open only once a year?"
Also, some people are momentum traders -- they buy whatever is going up. The ordinary laws of supply and demand do not apply, because the demand curve actually turns UP with increasing price, and the supply curve turns a little bit DOWN. So the curves do not cross in that beautiful Econ 1 diagram, and the usual negative-feedback loops of micro-economics become damaging positive-feedback loops.
I think that's what's happening to SCOX. Lots of momentum buyers, not enough fundamental buyers (where "fundamental" includes "chances of winning IBM suit" * "value of suit" of course).
That still leaves the question: why were Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday flat, and then big price increases on heavy volume on Thursday, Friday.
time to play a new game! (Score:5, Funny)
- Question 1 -
Your best friend kindly lent you his new Toyota, but you have literally destroyed it in a accident you were entirely responsible.
What do you do?
[ ] a) You apologize.
[ ] b) You buy him a new car.
[ ] c) You sue him.
[ ] d) You sue him AND General Motors.
Answer
If you choose D, congratulations! You could be SCO's CEO!
DarlThink (Score:5, Funny)
-Hope
Re:time to play a new game! (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Sunday October 07, @01:01AM)
Re:time to play a new game! (Score:5, Funny)
(http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday November 03, @04:58AM)
Re:time to play a new game! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://home.arcor.de/36bit/samba.html)
Leaving that site's analysis now: When SCO folds - as it soon will - this presumably means that they will be unable to meet the legal bills of the (for example) IBM and RedHat lawyers. SCO's strategy has to be to exist for as long as possible so that their company can be milked for all it is not even worth, and then run.
That is the SCO directors, their lawyers have made a very eloquent case for the adoption of Gowachin Law [lojban.org] in real life. (sorry about that link, it was the best I could find).
Gowachin Law was a creation of the 'Dune' author, Frank Herbert, and appeared in several of his ConSentiency books. The losing lawyer is killed by the winning one. There are ill-defined rules where other participants - including judges who do not meet standards - can also be killed.
The whole idea is that the participants are personally responsible for their misdeeds. Gowachin law is not going to be adopted any time soon, but the current system has obviously failed in that this turkey has been allowed to run for so long.
Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday September 25 2006, @01:19PM)
Now if only he sold t-shirts and playing cards to go with it. Or perhaps diapers with the name McBride stamped on them. Honey, I think he needs a new McBride, this one is all poopy.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
"Honey, I think he needs a new daiper, this one is all McBridy."
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday September 25 2006, @01:19PM)
no more SCO after the 10Q (Score:4, Interesting)
As soon as they have to publish their 10Q everyone is going to see that SCO has little future revenue and that the execs have been engaged in wash-trades to pump and dump the stock. I'm mildly amused that the SEC and FTC haven't stepped in to prevent all the stock-holders from being royally screwed over. Nope... Nope... the government will step in only after everyone has been fucked and the execs are kicking it in Bermuda on everyone else's retirements.
Kiss SCO's copyrights goodbye (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ajwm.net/amayer/)
That's a large part of what cost AT&T in the ATT/USL vs BSD case -- AT&T had incorporated BSD code without the BSD copyright notices, violating the BSD license and thus BSD's copyrights. IIRC, AT&T ended up paying BSD's legal costs in that trial.
Hey SCO, how do you feel about paying IBM's (and anyone else you were thinking of suing) legal costs?
here's one from news.com (Score:5, Informative)
(http://detroityes.com/index.html | Last Journal: Sunday May 09 2004, @02:04AM)
Re:Kiss SCO's copyrights goodbye (Score:4, Troll)
(http://bioinformatics.ucsf.edu/bwtaylor)
I would hope that the Berkeley Regents would not stand idly by when their IP is pirated like that. Hopefully they will sue SCO for copyright infringement.
Darl responds (Score:5, Funny)
Yours Truly,
Darl
Oh yeah, we are also implementing a new SCO trademark, "SCO owner of all IP post Genesis". What do you think?
Re:Kiss SCO's copyrights goodbye (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday August 11 2003, @11:31AM)
Hey SCO, how do you feel about paying IBM's (and anyone else you were thinking of suing) legal costs?
It's clear that SCO executives were planning to inflate share prices, dump stock, then run. SCO won't be paying anybody's legal costs after it declares bankruptcy.
Ritchie vs Torvalds: Celebrity showdown ... (Score:5, Funny)
Funny as the thought is (Score:5, Informative)
(http://antiwar.com/)
Fact is Linus didn't call Ritchie's code ugly. He called SGI's patch ugly, that's a big difference. Yes, the patch included some of Ritchie's code, but the ugly part was the rest of it - having a separate malloc implementation just for their code in particular.
Sounds like it's time... (Score:5, Interesting)
This isn't to say that everyone else is perfect, but then again, everyone else hasn't tried to benefit from open source licenses only to turn around and bash the concept while still using the technology that they gained from such licensing.
Re:Sounds like it's time... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 31 2004, @05:25PM)
We don't want Linux or Open Source software in general to be referred to as 'that free software that everone and his dog is sueing one another over'. John Q User may not care much about the lawsuits, but corporations certainly do, and well they should. If Linux gets a reputation for having all sorts of (potential) legal issues, that will hurt the OSS movement in the long run, even if some of the lawsuits are against scumbag outfits such as SCO. The only group that had the right idea was RedHat, who filed suit against SCO to stop the FUD.