Free Republic

Analysis of Linux Code that SCO Alleges Is In Violation Of Their Copyright and Trade Secrets. Bruce Perens <bruce@perens.com>, with help from many members of the Linux community. On August 18 at their trade show in Las Vegas, SCO showed code that they claim was copied into Linux in violation of their copyright or trade secrets. The German publisher Heise photographed two slides of SCO's code show and made them public on their news ticker. Heise publishes c't, a popular German computer magazine. These are the slides: This slide has some of the "System V" source code comments deliberately...

New Supercomputer Due At The U1,000-Computer 'Metacluster' To Tackle Tough Biomedical Problems Media Contacts   August 13, 2003 -- Construction of a $2 million supercomputer comprised of 1,000 smaller computers will begin in September at the University of Utah, where researchers will use the powerful machine to tackle complex problems in biomedical research. “This will be by far the largest computer in the state of Utah for scientific research,” says physicist Julio Facelli, director of the university’s Center for High Performance Computing. When the so-called “metacluster” supercomputer is assembled by the end of 2003 and tests are performed that...

Microsoft warns of fake security alertBy Mike Tarsala, CBS.MarketWatch.comLast Update: 6:50 PM ET Aug. 15, 2003SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- Microsoft warned late Friday that a fake security alert contains malicious code that can attack PCs.The bogus instructions purport to tell the software maker's customers how best to handle the dreaded Blaster computer worm that hit this week The fake Microsoft e-mail, first spotted early Friday, looks "very official," said Sean Sundwall, Microsoft spokesman. The fake e-mail includes instructions to check Microsoft's (MSFT: news, chart, profile) security Web site for a software patch and updates. It also suggests steps that home...

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. - A new type of "smart" machine that could fundamentally change how people interact with computers is on the not-too-distant horizon at the Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories. Over the past five years a team led by Sandia cognitive psychologist Chris Forsythe has been developing cognitive machines that accurately infer user intent, remember experiences with users and allow users to call upon simulated experts to help them analyze situations and make decisions. "In the long term, the benefits from this effort are expected to include augmenting human effectiveness and embedding these cognitive models into systems like robots...

Just days after announcing that it planned to halt development on Outlook Express, Microsoft has been forced to change its position following internal confusion and an outcry from customers. As reported earlier this week on silicon.com Microsoft had planned to stop product development on Outlook Express, which forms part of the Internet Explorer code bundled with consumer versions of Windows. At the time Dan Leach, Office product manager, said: "The technology doesn't go away, but no new work is being done." Under that vision, consumers would have been directed towards the company's MSN software, while businesses would be encouraged...

The internet's domain name system root servers have been pounded with up to 50% more domain lookups than usual this week, and VeriSign Inc, the company that manages some of the servers, thinks the Blaster worm is to blame. VeriSign said late yesterday that daily DNS queries on its infrastructure increased by 3.7 billion this week, roughly 33% more than usual. At 9am US Pacific time yesterday, the traffic was up 50% about normal levels, the company said. "A five percent deviation would be significant. It's usually very predictable," VeriSign's senior VP of security services Ben Golub said. "This...

I just learned that google has implemented a calculator as part of their feature set. "Big deal," you might say, but one capability that I found very useful is its ability to convert units. Try entering "100 pints in gallons" (don't put quotes around it when entering it), or "5000 kilometers in furlongs". Very cool, at least to me. I can't tell you how often I have to do those pesky "angstroms <--> parsecs" conversions (ok, I jest, but it will do "100 degrees fahrenheit to celsius," which definitely IS useful). It can also do ordinary math, of course, for...

PROF. SMALLEY'S LATEST BIG IDEA:NANO-ENERGY WILL SAVE THE EARTH By Stephan Herrera Small Times Correspondent         Photo by George Craig   "I think nanotech will play a role in providing the answers to these seemingly impossible problems that we all agree are soon going to be our children’s problems," said Richard Smalley.        MONTREAL – Aug. 28, 2002 – Nanotech guru Richard Smalley is working on a new challenge – his biggest one yet. And he traveled Monday to Montreal to test it in front of an audience of aerospace scientists gathered at a...

SUPPORT GROWING FOR FEDERAL PUSH TOWARD NANOTECH ENERGY SOLUTIONS By Candace Stuart Small Times Features Editor         Photo courtesy of Rice University   Wade Adams, director of Rice University’s Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, opens an energy conference on campus aboard his Segway Human Transporter. The conference drew about 450 attendees.        Aug. 13, 2003 - In Washington, they liken it to the Manhattan Project. In Houston, they prefer an Apollo Program metaphor. But the strategists behind two movements to make energy a priority agree on the need for an all-out commitment akin...

NANOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCHERS SAY SHRINKING COMPUTER CHIPS IS A TALL ORDER By Mitch Mitchell Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas      Aug. 12, 2003 - Researchers at Texas Instruments and the University of North Texas in Denton received $2.2 million this summer to find a way to build computer chips half the size of those currently in use. The new chips would be about 500 atoms across, said Phillip Matz, a TI researcher working on the project. By comparison, a human hair is about 100,000 atoms across. The goal is smaller, more powerful chips. About half the money is a National Science...

Call it a new front in the war over open source: SCO's decision to seek licensing fees from Linux users has the IT industry--and IT investors--pondering the legality of building for-profit products on Linux. While the market's initial reaction to the SCO announcement boosted its share price, it's not at all clear that SCO understands what it's up against--or the opening it's giving industry titan IBM to line up as the defender of the little guy. Start with the fact that Linux isn't as much product as it is a movement. As the emblem of open source and brainchild of...

SCO Insider Trades Here's a list of all the insider trades since 2002 that I could find so far. I compiled it from SEC public records. I am seeing approximately $1,375,654 in sales since March. I can't guarantee 100% accuracy, though my eyeballs are melting and my head about to explode from trying for it. It's surely the big picture: 11-Aug-03 (8/8/03) - BENCH ROBERT K., CFO 7000 ... $10.90 . . . value= $76,300.00 221,043 shares still owned after transaction. 07-Aug-03 (8/5/03) BROUGHTON REGINALD CHARLES, Sr VP Int'l Sales 1900 . . . $12.57 . . . $23,883.00...

Home • About Icarus Films International Arise ye prisoners of starvation Arise ye toilers of the earth For reason thunders new creation `Tis a better world in birth. Never more traditions' chains shall bind us Arise ye toilers no more in thrall The earth shall rise on new foundations We are naught but we shall be all. The Internationale A Film by Peter Miller The story of the Internationale.2001 DoubleTake Documentary Film Festival 2001 Cleveland International Film Festival2001 Ann Arbor Film Festival 2000 Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival THE INTERNATIONALE draws on people’s stories of an emotionally charged...

After Combustion:Detonation! At first glance, the engine bolted to the test stand looks like an unlikely candidate to lead an aerospace revolution. Its size is unimpressive: At about four feet long, it's dwarfed by the machinery that feeds it air and fuel, machinery that fills a house-size structure at the China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center in California. And its appearance is unremarkable: This machine has none of the grace of the high-bypass turbofans that power modern jetliners, with wide, sweeping inlets and delicate blades. From the outside, it's simply a collection of metal tubes, one large cylinder feeding into...

Issue 11.09 - September 2003The New Diamond AgeArmed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel.Next up: the computing industry.By Joshua DavisAron Weingarten brings the yellow diamond up to the stainless steel jeweler's loupe he holds against his eye. We are in Antwerp, Belgium, in Weingarten's marbled and gilded living room on the edge of the city's gem district, the center of the diamond universe. Nearly 80 percent of the world's rough and polished diamonds move through the hands of Belgian gem traders like Weingarten, a dealer who wears the thick beard...

SCO execs unloading shares By Jonathan Berr Bloomberg News SCO Group executives have sold about 119,000 shares of their company since it filed a lawsuit against IBM in March and the stock price increased more than fourfold. The company has accused IBM of illegally transferring software from the Unix operating system into Linux. SCO bought licensing rights to Unix in 1995 and is threatening to sue other companies that use Linux, which IBM backs as a cheaper alternative to Microsoft's Windows program. Chief Financial Officer Robert Bench began the $1.2 million in executive share sales four days after Lindon -based...

AN FRANCISCO, Aug. 11 — A federal jury awarded a former University of California researcher $521 million today in a lawsuit against Microsoft that asserted its Explorer Web browser infringed a patent for sending software applications over the Internet. The lawsuit, which was filed in 1999 by Michael Doyle, now a Chicago businessman and founder of Eolas Technologies Inc., and the University of California, had sought $1.2 billion. The plaintiffs asserted that the invention had been crucial in permitting Microsoft to compete against the Netscape Navigator Web browser, now owned by AOL Time Warner Inc. A Microsoft spokesman, Jim Desler,...

If you e-mail me in response to this article, you may not hear back. That is not because I'm too lazy to reply. Well, sometimes I'm not too lazy to reply. Mainly, however, it is because I get so much spam that survival means fast-deleting anything in my mailbox that looks like junk, which sometimes includes real mail from people I don't know. Like a lot of Internet users, in the last year or so I have gone from regarding spam as one of life's little nuisances to seeing it as a threat to the basic usefulness of e-mail. Technologically,...

Quick question. I'm getting TiVo, now I have a HDTV which is hooked up to Time Warner digital cable, can the 2 of them work together? The sales person was telling me that TiVo won't record digital programing over some kind of copyright issue, but he didn't know how it works involving Time Warner digital cable, and I can't reach anyone in customer service at the cable company (Its AOL Time Warner, what do you expect?). Does any freeper out there have HDTV, use Time Warner digital cable, and have TiVo? Do they work together with no problems?I appreciate any...

<p>Sometimes in a David and Goliath story, you want to root for Goliath.</p> <p>SCO, a small Utah software company, has made news lately by suing IBM, in its capacity as a big user of Linux. SCO also has its sights on all the other users of Linux, the free operating system that most people consider a bright spot of the modern tech world. Linux, after all, is run by volunteers, and its ever-growing popularity keeps Microsoft up at night. In other words, what's not to like?</p>