SCO Missing 16,209 Files? 273
FileSortingZombie writes "After all the allegations by SCO that IBM is abusing or dragging out the discovery process, over in this story on Groklaw you can read about IBM's objections to what SCO is producing in discovery, not the least of which is that there are suddenly 16,209 fewer files in the privilege log, and IBM wants to know what's become of them. Are they unprivileged, lost, destroyed, already produced, or quite simply gone? As of yet, no one seems to know. All told, IBM found fault with some 76% of their claims, especially one case where IBM says that SCO appears to be trying to claim that a conversation it had with an IBM employee should be considered confidential. One helpful Groklaw reader went so far as to put up this analysis of the complaint on his Web site for those interested in just how objectionable IBM found SCO's filing."
Re:DAmn (Score:5, Informative)
I KNOW this goes without saying.... (Score:3, Informative)
You know folks the cure for FUD is an informed populace. God Bless you PJ. There is a place in heaven for you.
Re:I KNOW this goes without saying.... (Score:0, Informative)
commentate
v 1: make a commentary on
2: serve as a commentator, as in sportscasting
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:1, Informative)
That's so wrong it's right, in a vacuous sort of way. None of their lawsuits are being "thrown out", but they aren't winning them by any stretch of the imagination.
There won't be anything left of The SCO Group to "cripple" after their half of the litigation. They are dying by their own sword - the strategy of prolonging and delaying, filing multiple suits, changing their complaint periodically, etc. They are running out of money.
The case has never been about winning, IMHO, but all about the insiders milking the stock. The FUD game was just a part of that (as it certainly wasn't designed to win a lawsuit, only perhaps to achieve a lucrative settlement).
If there is anything left of The SCO Group before the countersuits or not, IBM will leave a smoking crater. At the center of the crater will be a sign, etched in Google, saying:
The IBM countersuit will use, among other things, the Lanham Act to pierce the corporate veil, bringing Ralph Yarro and Darl McBride to justice. They'll all be left penniless, bankrupt, and imprisoned.
There won't be two atoms left to stack on one another.
Utterly wrong on so many levels... (Score:5, Informative)
"Linux was based on Minix. A UnixLite OS designed to run on PCs. However, it was really only a teaching tool. Andrew Tanenbaum repeatedly refused to add the new (legitimate) features the users and even developers asked for. Linus Torvalds set out simply to add functionality to his own version of Minix (the copyright allows use to do so for your own personal use, but you cannot sell or distibute it).
Over time, in adding functionality to Minix, Linus Torvalds found that he had created an entirely new kernel. I was very similar to Minix but used none of the Minix source code..."
(Who modded the preceeding garbage "Informative!?)
Linux began as a development that was hosted on a pc running Minix. Linus set out, from the start, to create a posix compatible kernel of his very own. The idea that he created the kernel by accident is as laughable as it is insulting.
See here [uiuc.edu] for a a rather more factual account of the development of the Linux kernel.
T&K.
What would they know? (Score:3, Informative)
That would mean that one hour from now, the number of electronic records created has doubled, in two hours it's 4 times, in 3 hours its 8 times, and so on, for the next 10 years.
2 to the power of 87600 (number of hours in 10 years) is a decimal number with 26,371 digits. Contrast this to one estimate of the count of the number of atoms in the observable universe (a number with 79 digits). The claim is clearly nonsensical.
The quote is attributed to:
I checked out that paper and the original authors say something quote different. They say:
The authors are referring to a decrease in the amount of time required for the number of records on earth to increase. So eventually (within 10 years) they expect the rate to increase to a point where eventually the number will double after only 60 minutes. This may be possible, but such a rate clearly cannot be maintained for very long.
Re:I'd claim Haig McNamee to be confidential too (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is a "privilege log"? (Score:3, Informative)
So SCO sends a list over: "Here are all the documents pertaining to this matter we have ever produced." Call that list List A. Then they send a list that says "here are all the documents on List A that we won't hand over, because they are covered by client-attorney privilege." That's List B, the Privilege Log. What SCO has to hand over is all documents on List A but not on List B.
What IBM has done is complained to the court that SCO is putting lots of documents on List B for no good reason.
They've already been subpoenaed. That's how they wound up on the Privilege List.
P.S. If you have a document pertaining to a lawsuit, but you don't declare it, you go to jail for obstruction of justice.
For those of you, like me, who were like what!? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Inside Baseball Leading /.ers to Law School? (Score:2, Informative)
"Inside Baseball" is a phrase meant to describe insider knowledge about a topic; applied to politics and political campaigns as much to baseball itself. Often used to describe a journalist who covers a topic, be it baseball or whatever, from a privileged position. Political bloggers have been using the phrase recently to criticize journalists who gain access to an organization or topic, and then block other's access to the same topic.
(clicketyclicketygooglegoogle)
Here's a quick definition lifted from a review of the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang: inside baseball, "meaning the intricate knowledge and actions involved in an activity that are not usually known to the public, or, putting it another way, the boring technical details." Review [worldwidewords.org]
The point was to argue that many, many technically minded people are, through PJ et al., getting an insider's view of a trial-in-progress, a viewpoint generally only available to lawyers and lawyers-in-training. Surely this must result in (insert your preferred wild generalization and crazed extrapolation here), since some people really like the "boring technical details" of stuff.
Re:I Dont want to be SCO. (Score:5, Informative)
SCO will not have the resources to adequately defend itself. IBM will be able to pound away and, at the very least, force SCO to a settlement on IBM's terms, the very opposite of what SCO had intended by this whole legal schmegegy; and at most leave a smoking crater whose bones it can pick at its leisure.
SCO goes bankrupt, IBM won't be able to collect anything. Unless that's a false assumption. . .
Assets man, assets! They claim one rather valuable one in particular.
. .
The simplest reason is that they are the defendant. The plaintif is in the driver's seat. IBMs only choices are to see out the case or settle. Countersuits are offense as defense; and if someone's been pounding you in the courts you might feel inclined to pound back a little longer and harder than is strictly necessary when you get the upper hand. Especially if you know the suit was only filed in the first place out of some scum sucking corporate business tactic that has no real merit on its own.
But I believe the more pressing issue is what I wrote in my very first post on the whole SCO "thing."
Millions for defense. Not one damned cent for tribute.
IBM does not seem inclined to settle. Go figure. It is simply in IBMs, indeed the entire industry's, best interests to leave a smoking crater where SCO used to stand to serve as a practical example of what happens to people who file a lawsuit in an attempt to force a buyout.
No matter what it costs. Otherwise you might just as well paint a huge target around your asshole, put sand in the Vaseline, and bend over.
No. There are two kinds of bankruptcy. The first kind is for those businesses that if it weren't for the debt load would still be viable businesses. Somehow, somewhere along the line, they acquired debt that is crushing the company, but business is good. So the courts absolve them of enough of their debt and/or restructure some of it to make them a going concern again. It's a cashflow issue and a win/win for everybody, because a going concern turning a profit is better able to pay debt monies. And taxes.
This is the sort of bankruptcy that saved Man(Gag!Choke!Vomit!)diva. In the Rolls-Royce case the court was perspicacious enough to realize that the debt of only one division was dragging the whole company down, which was otherwise profitable, and allowed the car division to live on as a seperate entity unencumbered by the debts of the aero engine division, which it liquidated.
There are also laws to protect viable companies from being bankrupted by court judgments, since a bankrupt company cannot pay the judgment. .
Then there's the other kind of bankruptcy. Liquidation. The kind applied to the aero engine division of Rolls-Royce. If you're so far down the hole that you not only can't pay your debts, but have no means of producing income either, then you are not allowed to rise from the ashes. From ashes you came, to ashes you shall return.
In this case the courts absolve you of debts, but sieze the assets of the company to be used in defraying them. Assests may be distributed directly or, as is more often the case, auctioned off to raise money. There's nothing left of a company after this but a piece of paper. They have no debts, but no income, no assets, and very likely a bunch of pissed
Genealogy wrong (Score:3, Informative)
Caldera bought OldSCO's Operating system division, and merged it into Caldera. What remained of OldSCO became Tarantella. Just before the fiaSCO, Caldera renamed itself "The SCO Group", allegedly for goodwill purposes, but now we see it was to confuse OldSCO and NewSCO.
I'm not sure when Caldera/newSCO became part of Canopy. And with the settlement of the Yarro case, I'm not sure Canopy owns any of newSCO anyways. I think part of the settlement was that Yarro got all of Canopy's newSCO stock.