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Seth Godin had an interesting post regarding religion longevity, specifically Zoroastrianism, and viral marketing.

It turns out that Zoroastrians are all but extinct, as they have completely integrated with the general populace and no longer have a compelling message (subjectively speaking).

Despite its ancient roots, its message has been superseded by other memes that have successfully integrated several key features (e.g. evangelism, (very) long-term benefits for believers, sharp distinction between insiders and outsiders). Be sure to read the post as well as the original NY Times piece he quotes from.

So how does this notion of idea extinction mix with artificial monopolies on intellectual thought?

Is there an apodictic, a priori axiom of idea longevity or must empiricism be used? Will ideas in the “public domain” last longer than highly regulated concepts? Can written and oral language be an example of this?

Is the continued dominance of English in everyday business affairs due to its relatively liberal ability to integrate new words and concepts that other pure/purified languages (e.g. French, Latin) cannot?

Will this era of mash-ups, open source, robust APIs and other relatively free platform extensions transcend closed and proprietary solutions?

Or, do the artificially high barriers of obtaining and reproducing knowledge of its philosophy prohibit movements like Objectivism (whose adherents are firm proponents of strict IP enforcement) from spreading exponentially?

In short: does the openness of a movements corpus effect the spreading of its core ideas, and does this in turn contribute to its survival?

[Note: Objectivism in its official, State-protected form is essentially closed-source (kind of like Scientology); the only way to view the code is to buy its officially sanctioned books and pay a bunch of sacrosanct interpreters who are "officially licensed." Other non-licensed works are considered "unholy" and heretical.]

I recently had a conversation with a friend about how companies can effectively incorporate “Web 2.0� applications and services inside their firm.  For instance, over the past year IBM employees have effectively used podcasting to save time, money and streamline long distance operations internally.  And in addition to putting a human-face on a seemingly impersonal entity, weblogs can also help foster and engender a loyal community as well as add transparency.

To take full advantage of many of the relatively free marketing and advertising benefits characteristic to public weblogs, I have previously suggested that a stereotypically impersonal organization such as Universities could benefit from maintaining a frequently updated blog.

Another technology that I have seen very little use of by firms such as airliners is RSS.  This web feed format could help travelers stay abreast of cancellations and delays as it was designed specifically for easy and broad dissemination of frequently updated data.   As a testament to its broad range of universal versatility it is also used by many news organizations such as Reuters, popular P2P applications like BitTorrent, climatologists and most notably in weblogs.

Earlier this week, News.com published a good write-up of other uses these technologies have found in the workplace.  Crafty and creative, like home chemistry sets.

I mentioned in the last portion of the last footnote in my University article that in “More undergrads playing hooky when the classes go online,” the Chicago Tribune recently noted that the advent of technologies such as podcasting has actually decreased attendance of many classes. This unsurprisingly has caused consternation among some faculty members who have started pulling the material offline in order to restore regular attendance.

Today, an AP story came across the wire, “Nebraska Professor Uses IPod for Lectures.” Among other odds and ends, the story notes that,

The technology-savvy professor was already loading up recordings of his classes to the Internet, making lectures available to students. But this semester, students don’t have to sit at the computer to listen. The portable player allows students to take the lecture anywhere.

“I’m not worried about attendance,” Garbin said. “I think I put on a pretty good show.”

That last part is prescient as it suggests that one potential competitive advantage that traditional institutions can leverage is the performance an instructor puts on during the class. While I am not suggesting that every class needs light shows involving ceiling-high pyrotechnics synchronized with raver tracks, perhaps a tune-up on the entertainment value could be evaluated.

While there may be a legitimate argument contrasting teaching and research, if you are going to teach — and you want the students to comprehend what is being taught — why not crack some jokes or in some manner, break the ice? Some of the more lucid reading I have ever encountered involve explaining truthiness in the realm of science, or the Cargo Cult Science. However, it was done in such a easy-to-understand, non-intimidating manner that I still enjoy reciting various passages from its author Richard Feynman.

Would you pay to have someone, a seasoned speaker covered in wit like Feynman, lecture to your class? While you may have answered yes, have you settled for less? Perhaps this could be another area that an enterprise could take advantage of (i.e. compiling hundreds of entertaining, yet educational lectures). Could you imagine Chris Rock doing a stand-up session on Shakespeare? What would happen if writers from The Simpsons or South Park created episodes on the Pythagoras theorem in this manner?

Cogently tangential

While I did note that I would not update the list of institutions offering online education programs, I did come across a resource that had a similar mission: “Earning Degrees by Distance Learning” over at Degree.net. The listings are extensive and purportedly up-to-date.

And speaking of online education programs, ever heard of an open-source platform called Moodle? It is a content management system designed to enable educators the freedom and ability to effectively instruct and manage curriculum with. Similar to the detested WebCT (no, I’m not a fan).

In closing, I’d like to refer to a recent post from Arnold Kling who compared college with summer camp; noting that college is a “consumption good” which may explain why Universities have gone to pains to offer more amenities on-campus. If this really is a goal (which I suspect is), then using the Shop24 automated stores could potentially save everyone money, as shown on at least one campus. And lastly, I noticed a discussion on open-access in which the author, fade theory, mentioned my own brevity and compared it with other ideas proposed recently. Neat-o.

Backlash against free internet calls:

MANY of the phone companies that own the wires connecting people to the internet are gearing up to block free phone calls that use voice over internet protocol (VoIP) technology.

The online edition of IEEE Spectrum, the house journal of the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, says phone companies in France, Germany, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced they will block VoIP calls on their networks.

New software from Narus of Mountain View, California, will help them do it. Called IP Platform, it can detect VoIP’s characteristic data packets, allowing the phone company to block or de-prioritise them. This either stops the call entirely or makes it sound awful, and the companies hope this will drive people back to paid-for phones.

Well, thankfully there are others who think differently: Does Open-Source Software Make The FCC Irrelevant? - and - ‘4G’ Leapfrogs Next-Gen Wireless

It has been all of 3 days since I last mentioned anything about Google. Today is a quick discussion of Google Print.

What this endeavor is in a nutshell: Google is financing a book-scanning operation of material found at Stanford, Harvard, University of Michigan, Oxford and the New York Public Library. All books, including those that are copyrighted, are included in their databases which can be accessed just like their normal web query tool we have grown accustomed to using. In addition, those little text ads on the side will be displayed each time your search hits a keyword someone paid for (e.g. economics, basketball, Britney Spears).

When Google first announced the library portion of the project, two large organizations cried foul. The first was not a surprise, brick-and-mortar publishers. In fact, the Author’s Guild was so upset that it has actually filed a lawsuit to prevent Google from displaying any information from copyrighted books (here is Google’s non-PR speak response). Due in part to these legal concerns, Google stopped scanning copyrighted texts in August, however it will resume scanning in November. The intervening weeks is a time period in which Google has requested that any publisher or writer that wishes to opt-out of the program can do so by simply filling out this form.

The other organization that went up in arms was various nation-states from Europe, most notably France. In April, several uber nationalists such as Jacques Chirac suggested that Google’s actions will invariably bias the scope of material found online to the Anglo-Saxon variety, “Google’s plans have rattled the cultural establishment in Paris, raising fears that the French language and ideas could be just sidelined on the worldwide web, which is already dominated by English.”

This past September, Google announced that it had begun working with various non-English European publishers to participate in this program.

Despite these accommodations, today the Europe Union and various other regulatory bodies announced they are funding an initiative to place the same material online at tax payers expense (versus financed privately via Google).

To add to this helter-skelter trail, Yahoo announced yesterday that it will be working with the University of California, the University of Toronto and various other Archiving services (such as the Internet Archive) to scan and provide access to books in the public domain (it is called the Open Content Alliance).

There is a catch however. Whereas Google will scan every book and allow users to search each text (although you cannot read the entirety of the book unless otherwise permitted by the author or publisher — similar to Amazon’s Search-Inside-The-Book feature), Yahoo is realistically only going to be able scan approximately 15% of the content available in these libraries. Another oddity in Yahoo’s approach is that it will allow anyone to index the text they scan (mining via metadata like RSS), including Google (whereas Google is relatively closed and proprietary). That raises an unanswered question mark in terms of a business model for Yahoo (perhaps they will use it as a tax write-off).

Incidentally O’Reilly Media is opening up their volumes for free access via Yahoo’s book-scanning project — which is odd considering that Tim O’Reilly sits on the advisory board at Google and has publically endorsed Google Print.

So where does that leave you, Mr. Internet User? I think this digitazation movement can be seen almost unanimously as a win-win situation (sans the operations subsidized via taxes). This will enable people from every walk of life to find information that would otherwise be left to obscurity: it is empowering. And on a personal level, it is a fantastic resource to have on hand as a graduate student working on research projects (Google Scholar is also a great service).

QUESTIONS FOR LINUS TORVALDS:

O.K. So what are your views on sharing music files?

I don’t actually think about it much; I listen to the radio if I listen to music. What I do find interesting is how the file-sharing thing ends up changing how people think about computers and copyright law. Some of it is a bit scary: just the fact that your question equated sharing with something bad is a pretty scary statement in itself. What also bothers me is the apparent dishonesty of especially the R.I.A.A., claiming that file-sharing is destroying their business and that they are losing billions of dollars on it. There’s been a number of studies done, and it looks like the major reason for the dip in CD sales ends up being lack of interest in the music produced. And let’s face it — how many boy bands can you try to sell before your revenues start dipping?

We’ve been getting hit with a lot of viruses and worms lately. What’s your idea for ending the attacks?

When you have people who hook up these machines that weren’t designed for the Internet, and they don’t even want to know about all the intricacies of network security, what can you expect? We get what we have now: a system that can be brought down by a teenager with too much time on his hands. Should we blame the teenager? Sure, we can point the finger at him and say, ”Bad boy!” and slap him for it. Will that actually fix anything? No. The next geeky kid frustrated about not getting a date on Saturday night will come along and do the same thing without really understanding the consequences. So either we should make it a law that all geeks have dates — I’d have supported such a law when I was a teenager — or the blame is really on the companies who sell and install the systems that are quite that fragile.

Yea Mike, I know it’s from Slashdot.

Oh, and did you know that Tux (the mascot for Linux) was designed by an Aggie, Larry Ewing?

That’s my 3rd claim to fame.

IBM KICKS OFF GLOBAL LINUX AD PUSH:

Muhammad Ali Appears in 90-Second TV Spot

SAN FRANCISCO (AdAge.com) — IBM is launching a global advertising campaign for Linux, the open-source operating system that has become the world’s

Created by WPP Group’s Ogilvy & Mather, New York, and directed by Joe Pytka, the Linux TV effort breaks in the U.S. with a 90-second ad during Sunday’s National Football League games and the U.S. Open Men’s Finals. A 60-second version will then go into rotation. Print ads will encourage readers to visit Web sites with Linux content.

Yea, I know this is a couple week old, but I decided to actually watch it on a slow Sunday evening.

I understand the underlying theme and what it’s trying to convey, but it seemed a bit too 1980’sish to be too deeply profound anymore (maybe if it was the same chick that did the Mac 1984 ad, that would’ve been funny).

Donncha didn’t care much for it and I’m more inclined to agree with Dave who stated: “IBM is showing that it’s serious by spending lots of cash.”

This is what geeks do in their spare time, talk about how to produce a Linux ad.

- Apple sued by The Beatles over iPod, ITMS:

Apparently when Apple Computer first started, The Beatles sued them for the use of the corporate name. In addition to a hefty cash settlement, Apple agreed to only use the corporate name for computer products and not enter the music markeplace.

Years later, The Beatles sued and won another lawsuit when Apple shipped computers that allowed music to be played through attachable speakers. That lawsuit charged breach of a trademark agreement since Apple had agreed to steer clear of the music business. Fox News estimates Apple has paid US$50 million in the lost suits so far.

God damn it’s hard to be an objective 3rd party when happens. I can however, restate the thoughts from my amigo, ehmunro:

“I think this is like the 48th lawsuit they filed. My favourite was the 1980 or so suit where they sued Apple for making a computer capable of reproducing sound — which put them in violation of the Beatles trademark somehow.

Because, how could you possibly tell the difference between a Beatles LP and an Apple ||? I can’t tell you how many times I mixed them up.”

- Should Net surfers be licensed?:

A virus fouls your computer and you haplessly pass it on. Advertising software loads stealthily on your machine. Your password gets stolen because of your neglect. Or the music industry sues you because of something your kids or grandkids did on your computer. Barely a day goes by without someone, somewhere getting stung or stinging others through careless Internet use. Though many of these threats are preventable, relatively few of us take the necessary precautions.So why not institute mandatory education before people can go online? After all, motorists must obtain licenses before they can legally hit the road, and computers are much more complicated.

This whole thing reminds me of the following scene from The Simpsons:

The family is trying to escape some predicament, and are in the car getting ready to roll, but for some reason (I don’t recall why) Homer doesn’t have his driver’s license.

Lisa cries, “Dad! We can’t go–you don’t have your driver’s license.” Homer, dismayed, nonetheless grits his teeth and mutters, “Well, I’m going to try anyway.”

He turns the key, the car starts, and off he goes.

Elated, he cries, “Hey, it worked!”

License schmicense. If surfing the net is outlawed, only outlaws will surf the net.

- Torvalds to SCO: Negotiate what?:

Linux creator says there is no proof of copyright infringement

In a letter dated Tuesday, the maintainer of the Linux kernel dismissed an offer from SCO Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride to negotiate the dispute with the open-source community. “There doesn’t seem to be anything to negotiate about. SCO has yet to show any infringing IP (intellectual property) in the open-source domain,” Torvalds wrote.

Torvalds also had a few sarcastic words for the Lindon, Utah-based SCO, noting that it is ironic that SCO acquired much of its capital from an initial public offering based on a Linux business model. “We have to sadly decline taking business model advice from a company that seems to have squandered all of its money … and now seems to play the U.S. legal system like a lottery,” he wrote.

Hey, but uhh, my equally ambiguous claim to own all code in both Tetris and Asteroids is legitimate! I’m going to send a letter out to everyone using the software and charge $699 per processor or can of TaB, whichever there are more of.

- Guidelines for submission of resumes to Damage Studios:

Please send all resumes in text or pdf format. We do not open word documents sent from outside the company. We will immediately delete them, and the mail they came attached to, if received. Any resumes which include the SCO Group after September of 2003 will be immediately deleted as well.

Collectrix.com, BlogPromotion.com and HeroicDesigns.com have also started a similar policy. Of course we only hire Chinese and Indians in China and India, so it wouldn’t have mattered anyways…

And I haven’t posted a picture for way too long, so here is one in rememberance of jobs, employment and things we wished we had:

Are you a know-it-all? Beat all your witless friends in Trivial Pursuit? Win all five days in a row at Jeopardy? Well then, step right up my friend, because I have an outlet for the yoke that is your brain (or some other real Confucianism).

If you have a bit of spare time, are objective at least once in a blue moon and have the keen ability to write technical articles, then the Wikipedia is for you.

And quickly, a wiki is like a collaborative white-board. So imagine you’re back at the School of Hard Knocks (circa 1975) and you’re trying to explain to some coeds the social game of Twister. Trying to take advantage of their naïveté, you insert risqué rules that are not otherwise in the “Official” rulebook – like nekkidness and wine coolers.

Now a Puritan classmate of yours comes by, sees what you’re doing and immediately erases everything on the board. Not only is a certain anatomical feature being blocked from any frisky adventures, but you’re dignity is squashed like a third-party candidate in a California gubernatorial election.

So you’re officially punch-drunk (isn’t Thesaurus.com great?) — all Wikipedia is, is an online encyclopedia that anyone and everyone can add to, edit and delete articles. So if your master’s thesis was on the effects of peanut butter in high altitudes, you could add a paragraph or two, to a couple topics, namely “peanut butter” and “altitude.”

The biggest advantage of Wikipedia is also its biggest weakness (though I’d have to say it’s a major advantage currently) – since anyone can edit or add articles, the number of entries grows faster than the population of Sutter’s Mill in 1849.

Sadly, once users from AOL discover it, what could happen is the sky will and fall and it could eventually turn into another DMOZ – great idea, but in combination with a high signal-to-noise ratio you could have an ideological tug-of-war or scripted bots that ruin the fun for everyone.

All post-apocalyptical P.K. Dick melodrama out of the way, here are a few articles I’ve enjoyed from Wikipedia of late:

- l33t (be sure to check out the leet version of Google)
- B1FF (is ESR supposed to be Mr. Linux advocate himself?)
- Yakov Smirnoff (In Soviet Russia, women dress you)
- Slashdot Trolling Phenomena (I’ve been actively reading the site for over 5 years now and still had no clue how the Natalie Portman troll evolved)
- Engrish (that’s flied lice you plick!)

And I’ll close with a recent story of a White Hat Hacker (hackers that find exploits and bugs in your server security code and try to help you fix them): Adrian Lamo. Although he is not certain of the actual charges, he is turning himself over to the FBI in response to an outstanding (#4) warrant. The reason I mention this is because I got hacked several months ago, by some script kiddies – I would have gladly enjoyed someone like Mr. Lamo poking his head into my providers system to help discover potential exploits which in turn could have saved me time, money and several girlfriends.

I suppose the moral of the story is, if you’re going to try and help a high-profile company like the NY Times, don’t take SSN’s, that’s just asking for trouble.

Oh, and yes, for those of you that were wondering I now can splurge with all the endorsement monies I made from Wikipedia LLC [insert meniachal laugh here].

Lastest: if only Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia could fuse, then the sum of all human knowledge could be downloaded into my brain through my Super Ultra WiFi 802.11Z antenna…

SCO CEO says IBM behind open source attacks

“We have absolute direct knowledge of this. If you go behind the scenes, the attacks that we get that don’t have IBM’s name on them, underneath the covers, are sponsored by IBM,” McBride said.

I’d like to take a moment out of my busy schedule to thank IBM for the huge bonuses, expense accounts and vacation pay time they have given me over the past 4 months. I also appreciated the time-share in South Padre and the sky-blue Rolls Royce, a nice touch to my greying world. Oh and Blue, just one request, try not to call me after-hours anymore, the lady friends get feisty and your calls interupt the mood big time.

Anyways, IBM isn’t paying me for slouching, so viva Linux, viva IBM and muerte SCO.

You have all probably seen various parodies of default templates (ex: like the suicide assistant), Rick Bruner at Up2Speed (formerly MarketingFix) compiled three parodies using the IE 404 template.

I was inspired and decided to give it show with the SCO fiasco, so without any further ado I bring you: Cannot find source code.

Actually, here is some ado explaining that parody.

- Chris Sontag is Senior Vice President at SCO and has been at the forefront of their chickenhawk crusade against both companies and individuals that contribute code to the Linux kernel.

- As reported by Daniel Lyons at Forbes, The Canopy Group is supposedly the mastermind organization behind the various lawsuits including the one with IBM.

- Jeff_K is the fictional epitome of just how feebleminded and undeveloped someone’s thinking can be.

- The Netcraft survey I mention is the real deal. Even as I write this the SCO site is still powered by Linux. Sophist indeed… Pharisee even.

- There are dozens of other Unixes (Unices) that have developed over the past 20 years, some from actual AT&T code, some built from the ground up, some licensed from others, etc. What some of them do have in common are various standards like POSIX which standardize various formats for, among other things universal interoperability. It’s incredulous and nonsensical to believe that Johnny-Come-Lately’s like SCO can possibly have a claim on derivatives which were created prior to their Novell IP acquisition.

Anyways, let me know if you see a better 404 parody of the SCO situation, mine is by no means the wittiest.

Oh, and in reference to the shredded newspapers, that was in honor of Lionel Hutz – America’s Finest Attorney.

There are hundreds of computer-based trade associations in existence currently. Some of them standardize protocols, some act as a defense and lobbying group and some just sit around as they are powerless or inept.

IEEE and Underwriters Laboratories are two independent non-profit organizations which utilize research and collaboration with a number of players (consumers, producers, regulators, etc.) to design standards and test products (although IEEE doesn’t actually work with end-user products, they do define standards which in turn, become practical applications).

A new organization called CE Linux Forum was recently formed to tackle similar tasks:

Eight of the world’s largest consumer electronics companies—including the world’s No. 3 mobile-phone maker—said they will team together to promote and standardize Linux technology for electronic devices, including mobile phones.

Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. Ltd., Sony Corp., Hitachi Ltd., NEC Corp., Royal Philips Electronics, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Sharp Corp. and Toshiba Corp. founded the new CE Linux Forum. IBM Corp. said it is pursuing membership.

One name that is notable only in its absence is Motorola Inc. The world’s No. 2 mobile-phone maker recently announced major support for a Linux/Java operating system and said it would include the technology in a majority of its devices. Motorola officials could not immediately comment on whether Motorola will participate in the new CE Linux Forum.

The CE Linux Forum said it will work to promote Linux technology, to improve device startup and shutdown time, reduce ROM/RAM size requirements and improve power management.

The move comes as Linux technology makes its way into the mobile-phone industry as an alternative to major operating system efforts like Symbian and Microsoft Corp.’s Smartphone OS. Chinese carriers and manufacturers have voiced major support for Linux, and Sharp has already shipped a personal digital assistant-style device using a Linux operating system.

Both Information Week and InternetNews have more details on this announcement. Maybe one day you will be able to tell your kids what that CELF on the back of the cell-phone means — where were you when CELF landed on the moon?

Well, largely because of peer-pressure, and the need to feel both warm and special, I filled out all of the forms necessary to display this pleasing-to-the-eye picture. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do:

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.

Get this pic of Aimee Deep when you
Sign the Petition to Reclaim Our Public Domain!.
My Signer Number is 14932

Well, via Slashdot I found several funny posters that employees at SCO placed in front of their building (there was a protest in front of the HQ out in Utah, the employees launched a pre-emptive attack first apparently — we all know how those work).

Anyways, to spite SCO, I’d like to put the posters their employees made onto t-shirts, mouse-pads, etc. without permission or paying royalties. If I get enough demand I’ll let you know how it will pan out (or if you’d like to parody them, I’d link to that as well).

And to get into the spirit of things, I’m going to sue the creators of any blogging software for stealing my copyrighted material. I won’t tell you what the specific code in question is, but generally speaking it deals with programming, designing and presenting information through the use of an XHTML-based API — additionally I own all the derivative works which reference the code in question, as shown through a license I found in a crackerjack box.

Donncha just linked to an unfolding drama between PHP and MySQL. Now some of you are familiar with PHP, it’s a server-side scripting language (like Perl) that is very powerful (it competes directly with ASP and JSP). It is released/developed under the BSD license. MySQL has been since 2000, a database released with a GPL license, well not every bit of it, at least not till now. I need to cover my back right quick.

When Six Apart announced TypePad I wrote a rather terse analysis of the situation, including a brief mention regarding MySQL and how it was not entirely open-sourced. Mark Pilgrim informed me the next day, it is open-sourced via the GPL. The database in and of itself is indeed GPL’ed, however the client libraries were not – which is a big deal, though pointless to debate in those circumstances.

It is important enough that several developers of PHP are annoyed with MySQL AB (the parent company that develops MySQL) in its decision to GPL the client-libraries recently. And rightly so, because developing a product that does not comply with stipulated guidelines (ala the GPL) can create a unfriendly legal situation (among other things, GPL zealots are not the funnest (sic) people to fight with).

Anyways, if you’re interested in this matter, be sure to read George Schlossnagle’s analysis of the situation.

Yea, this SCO situation gets better and better each day. Today SCO “terminated” IBM’s license to Unix because IBM would not acquiesce to the whims of the inferiority-complexed (sic) company. I found this quote rather amusing:

SCO said that the termination of the AIX license means that all IBM Unix customers also have no license to use the software. “This termination not only applies to new business by IBM, but also existing copies of AIX that are installed at all customer sites. All of it has to be destroyed,” Sontag said.

That statement reminded me of a comment I saw on Slashdot earlier today, regarding the Iraqi Information Minister (Comical Ali). I have my doubts with respects to Mr. Sontag wearing a beret, but based on the above quote, I wouldn’t be surprised if he said:

“My feelings - as usual - we will slaughter them all”

“Our initial assessment is that they will all die”

“I can assure you that those villains will recognize, will discover in appropriate time in the future how stupid they are and how they are pretending things which have never taken place.”

“I have detailed information about the situation…which completely proves that what they allege are illusions . . . They lie every day.”

“We have placed them in a quagmire from which they can never emerge except dead”

“Our estimates are that none of them will come out alive unless they surrender to us quickly.”

“We’re giving them a real lesson today. Heavy doesn’t accurately describe the level of casualties we have inflicted.”

“They will be burnt. We are going to tackle them”

“Yesterday, we slaughtered them and we will continue to slaughter them.”

“They think we are retarded - they are retarded.”

“We will push those crooks, those mercenaries back into the swamp”

“We are surrounding them and pounding them. The whole trend has changed and we are going to finalize this very soon.”

“After we finish defeating all of those animals we will disclose that with facts and figures.”

“We’re now trying to exhaust them, until our leadership decides the time and method to clean our territory of their desecration.”

“We besieged them and killed most of them, and I think we will finish them soon.”

“They are achieving nothing; they are suffering from casualties. Those casualties are increasing, not decreasing.”

“Fight them everywhere. Don’t give them a chance to breathe until they withdraw and retreat.”

“The criminals will be humiliated… To hurt the enemy more, raise the level of your attacks.”

“We are winning!”

I propose a contest anyone can partake in and I’ll be the steward for the “funds.” To enter you have to pay $5, and you submit the hypothetical ‘Most Belicose Statement from an SCO executive.’ Whichever contestant is closest (based on context, not necessarily wording), will get the whole pot. It starts today and goes until the statement is made by some hot-headed knucklehead at the Company-Formerly-Known as Caldera. Let me know if you would like to partake in it so we can hammer out any other “rules.”

I’ve mentioned the SCO soap opera several times now - here, here and here. I was reading yet more news from inside the bowels of the dying company from a report posted at News.com, this passage was particularly interesting:

“If it were a few lines of code, I’d give it to you,” he said. SCO wasn’t aware of any potential infringement until CEO Darl McBride began to ask engineers to investigate how Linux could have grown so quickly. Statements by IBM to shift customers away from its Unix product AIX to Linux also prompted the company to consider if Big Blue was violating any licensing agreements.

Now to be fair, nothing else was mentioned regarding the immediate analysis by the SCO engineers, however, based on the fact that I’m writing this in the first place because SCO sued IBM back in March over “infringement” and “breach of contract” issues, it should be safe to assume they found ’something.’ Now that something could indeed be lines of code “copied” from AIX to Linux as Mr. McBride continues to suggest, it could also be the Duke Nukem Forever codebase and even the unreleased secure version of Windows NT Server. But that is besides the point as SCO has yet to publicly release their findings.

What is interesting however is his personal quagmire: how Linux grew so rapidly. That is an extremely broad topic of which various angles are continuously extrapolated daily on television, radio, magazines, newspapers, websites, blogs, etc. Does he mean, why are people adopting Linux distributions versus Unix/Windows solutions?

An appropriate analogy to that possibility could be, why the English language, out of all European and world-wide dialects has become the dominant language on the Internet and in international business. That is an insatiable topic that could consume entire careers just delving into the meticulous exchanges which took place hundreds of years ago and up until this moment in time. However I do not think this is what he meant by that statement.

Another possible explanation for his befuddlement, is the “growth” he mentioned is in fact the kernel size itself. If this is the case, then I’ve gone in a complete circle, digging up nothing of interest and am quite disappointed. Until SCO has released the actual code in question, nothing but conjecture can be written, though, I’d have to say this was some grade-A hearsay, especially that vaporware reference.

Note: I did find out that SCO is still running it’s own web site on Linux, an action that some individuals would point out to be hypocritical. I’m wondering if Mr. McBride is going to put an engineering task force on that sometime soon as well (use DRDOS or OS/2 to be on the safe side of things, I don’t think either utilizes *nix code… remember, you can never be too cautious in this Era of Litigation).

I mentioned the SCO lawsuit last week and really didn’t think SCO could do much more to discredit itself as a member of planet earth. News.com (like always), is running a series of stories that discuss various happenings in this ever-growing lawsuit.

What has happened since last I spoke of our friend (that is not located in Santa Cruz, California but in Lindon, Utah — wherever that is)?

- A German company called LinuxTag is suing SCO for anti-competitive practices with regards to the development of Linux. What is funny is that the German court system requires the defendant to show its cards to an accusation like this. Not that I’m a fan of courts, but the word ‘poetic justice’ comes to mind (irony) — being bit by the same creature you are using against an opponent.

- Novell, the real ‘owners’ of System V Unix came out this morning and essentially told SCO to talk to the hand. The CEO of Novell penned a rather biting letter to the CEO of SCO, you’ll have to read it to believe it (I enjoyed it as a geek, you might not in your inferior non-geek status).

- Then in the afternoon, SCO issued a quick reply and made a rather bellicose statement:

SCO has the contractual right to prevent improper donations of UNIX code, methods or concepts into Linux® by any UNIX vendor.

Mike Magee thinks they want to put on some condoms, for that extra sense of security. I’m not quite sure, but if prophylactics are going to be involved, I’ll simply remind everyone that every sperm is a sacred sperm.

- They couldn’t stop the bacchanal there either, right after the market closed, Darl McBride, the CEO of SCO stated:

“…that unless more companies start licensing SCO’s property, he may also sue Linus Torvalds, who is credited with inventing the Linux operating system, for patent infringement.”

That’s right, and unless more companies start licensing blogging software from Collectrix, I might have to sue Dave Winer, who is credited with inventing modern blogs, for offering a competing service.

Like usual my compadre, Jason Ditz, had a neat solution to this whole debacle:

So then I got to thinking, here’s a plan that would put Novell forever in the hearts of Linux users… and would send SCO crashing back to the penny stock it was a few months ago. GPL the whole damned thing. Hell, if Novell owns System V, and all its related patents and copyrights, a fact that even SCO doesn’t dispute… what’s to stop them? For the cost of some code to software they don’t even sell anymore, they could get a ton of free publicity. Hell, have a big “GPLing” ceremony, where Novell’s CEO hands a printed copy of the entire System V source code to Linus, you know the press would eat that up.

I mentioned Caldera (it’s another name for SCO which used to be Santa Cruz Operation) about a week ago. So what has changed? Well, for starters, suspicions regarding Microsoft being a player behind Caldera’s claims seem to be right on the money.

Yes my friends, Microsoft has decided to license to Caldera’s version of Unix. News.com is running a pile of stories regarding the latest action by the dying Caldera.

One I liked in particular was penned by Bruce Perens, who is a well-known GNU/Linux advocate and develops the Debian distribution.

To show you how desperate SCO/Caldera is (sorry for so many different names, it just shows you how skitzoid they are), they compiled a rather small, grasping-at-straws list of quotes by both Richard Stallman (the ‘father‘ of GNU) and Mr. Perens. Here they are in all of their glory:

Richard Stallman

“Linux is a copy of UNIX. There is very little new stuff in Linux.”
Linux kernel forum

“I consider the law prohibiting the sharing of copies with your friend the moral equivalent of Jim Crow. It does not deserve respect.”
Richard Stallman, Free as in Freedom, Richard Stallman’s Crusade for Free Software: O’Reilly (2002) at p. 72

“The whole GNU project is really one big hack. It’s one big act of subversive playful cleverness…”
Richard Stallman, Revolution OS (DVD)

Bruce Perens

“This is becoming a tradition. I go there and break the law every year in the name of free speech.”
Bruce Perens, explaining his plan to demonstrate how to modify DVD technology to attendees of an Open Source convention.

“We have to remember that Linux is a follow-on to UNIX. It’s not just a UNIX clone. It’s actually a UNIX successor.”
Bruce Perens, mpulse magazine, December 2001.

I’ll probably be sued now for republishing these out-of-context quotes (SCO didn’t bother to hyperlink them anywhere and they used ellipses: they would receive an F in my history classes…). So, erase all of this from your memory, because you might be prosecuted as a material witness. Don’t kiss-and-tell.

Addendum: Eric Raymond kicks so much [insert favorite word for rump].

Many of you can probably recount a couple of high-profile lawsuits in the past that are just plain stupid or unfounded. But when was the last time you’ve heard of geeks suing geeks over geeky things and then blaming geekdom for all your geeky woes?

Well, one minor example was Be Inc. suing Microsoft for ‘anti-competitive’ practices. Followed closely with Sun suing Microsoft over interoperability issues with Java; Sun’s own proprietary technology did not work with Microsoft’s proprietary technology, go ahead and cry – get it out of your system (a double-standard).

The latest and most extreme example in this lawsuit frenzied world began three months ago: Caldera versus the World. Actually, it started out as Caldera suing IBM for $1 billion regarding source-code that Caldera is alleging IBM to have misappropriated/abused/copied/lifted/used/kissed/licked/dance dance revolutioned upon/etc.

Then IBM issued a counter-statement essentially saying: “You guys are grabbing at straws, stop whining and evolve. We’ve got a business to run, you should try it sometime: piss off.” I actually thought that would do the trick, I mean when someone says “go get a blow job” do you sit there and argue or do you find the nearest motel by a college campus?

Nope, Caldera lawyers must be former Jesuits, as not only did they not take that advice, but our now trying to screw members of their own congregation. Or as Jason Ditz aptly states:

In what has to be an historic legal precedent, SCO/Caldera has announced that they will now be suing people simply for buying their products.

Yup, now all we need is a large powerful organization to sue consumers of music for consuming music in a new manner (err, never mind).

You better hope that you’ve never come in contact with any kind of computing device that might have used a version of Linux within the past few years; you too could be an accomplice in this conspiratorial crime. Anyone up for some Amiga action?