Groklaw's PJ Says SCO's Demise Greatly Exaggerated 152
blackbearnh writes "Last week, the net was all abuzz with speculation that SCO was finally gone and done for. With the final judgment in SCO v. Novell in, and SCO millions of dollars in the hole to Novell, it seemed like the fat lady had finally sung. But like most things in the legal system, it isn't nearly that simple. O'Reilly Media sought out Groklaw's Pamela Jones, and got a rundown of what's still alive, and why a final end to the madness may be many years away. 'Summing up, it looks bleak for SCO at the moment, but let's enter the alternate realm of SCO's best-case scenario in its dreams: in that realm, SCO wins on appeal, which one of SCO's lawyers indicated might take a year and a half or five years, and the case is sent back to Utah for trial by jury, which is what SCO wanted (as opposed to trial by judge, which is what it got), then everything listed above (except for the IPO class action) comes alive again, presumably, depending on what the appellate court decides. Then SCO is in position once again to go after Linux end users, as well as IBM, et al.'"
OT but I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF is up with the userpage! It was bad I get slapped with the dumbass firehose-with-Idle's-stylesheet, but now I don't even have a tab for my comments.
If I want Firehose, I'll go to to Firehose. (I don't, and wont)
If I want Idle, I'll go to Idle. (I don't, and wont)
If I want my userpage to be a clean, simple and informative interface, I'll click on my username in the upper right. Oh wait, I can't!
If you want to dick around with the userpage, fine. Just give me a checkbox that says "opt out of this crapfest" like you did with the index and comments.
Re:Please (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. They can only keep this going with money. They don't have any, so it's not going to be five more years of crapola.
SCO is dead.
SCO have become what was suggested to them, a company that only does legal action. The employees and directors are getting paid well during this time.
Other companies who like the idea of Linux in a quagmire have provided money for 'licences', and will continue to do so.
Re:In other words... worse than zombies... (Score:2, Insightful)
they are worse than Cylons. They seem to be "killable", but keep replicating. Hell, they don't even improve models. You need to find the Resurrection Ship and put a nuke in its colon.... preferably making it a HUGE swollen colon, that no deep space Ben-Gay nor Preparation H can favorabley re-sequence...
SCO should be SCO^3, which could stand for: "Self-Contained Organism, Secreting Copies Over Secret Channel Outputs"
Or, SCO could be a tag/jingle for: "Semi-Conjugative Ogres: Screwing Companies Over"
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
When idle got jacked it didn't bother me because I almost never go there... but user pages? really?
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
Boggled (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The One (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OT but I don't care... HEY! I have an idea: (Score:2, Insightful)
Jeesus, some people (like whomever modded me off-topic) just hate to have (or let others in on) fun. Don't you realize that LAUGHING or helping someone laugh is a lot more healthier than disparaging a single person? Not as if i'm a politician with so much power over others that i MUST be under scrutiny for the good of the public.
I thought i was being funny. Maybe YOU don't know the issues of facebook for f/b users who hated "their" view of their profiles changing. There is a parallel here.
Besides, last week i saw to my dismay, LOTS of what qualified as "redundant" comments -- as many as 20 in a sub-200-comment topic -- and virtually NONE was marked redundant. This tells me i have one or more foes who sign up looking to slam-dunk/grind or agitate people.
Slashdot's moderation systems asks people to concentrate on being positive. Apparently, slashdot doesn't seem to track and reign in people who "stalk" or abuse karma/moderation points.
If i am so worthy of being bitch-slapped/fucked with and having my scores capriciously capped, slashed and turned from a positive rating/description to redundant/off-topic/troll, then WHY is my Karma never changing. Is that, too, another issue with Slashdot's karma and scoring systems? That could very well BE why these pages are being reshuffled. Maybe slashdot's core controllers are finally sick and tired of cowardly stalkers who never get listed as foe/hater, and gleefully do damage to people.
I virtually NEVER attack specific people here. I don't mod people, mainly because MY sense of humor often is at variance with others', and so, who am i to say what IS humor to a broad spectrum of readers here. It makes me feel good, and my day a few notches better when someone takes their time to comment back and on the occasion when they mod me up, or at least find some way to avoid undercutting me. Undercutting is, to me, a vindictive, petty way to suppress someone, literally censor them, by forcing others to have to read below -1 just to sleuth out player-hate victims.
This isn't a grouse: it's what i see/feel going on. I at first hated the new layouts, and to some extent thought the previous was better, but now, if the long range goal is to bury player haters, i whole-heartedly hope VA/slash adopt a player-hater tracker!
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, do what you will with Idle/Firehose, no one really reads those anyway, but leave the user page alone, it's genuinely useful... or at least it was till you fucked with it.
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Same here. I happened to like the old userpage, now all I've got is this pseudo-idle mess with the actual posts crammed into a little corner. I didn't ask for idle, I didn't ask for the firehose, I asked for a user page!
I think this is a sign that Slashdot has well and truly fallen for Incessant Redesign Disease, where they just have to change the design of everything every now and then to 'keep it fresh'. Nevermind if no one complained about the old design, or if you can't actually think of any way to improve on the old design, you've got to keep it fresh!
Note to the Slashdot staff: You know all those +5 modded rants about Vista? You're doing the SAME FUCKING THING. If the site design needs changing, we'll let you know.
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed
I want mine back as it was. This is a pretty pointless post in itself
but really the only way to get noticed is if enough of us bitch about it.
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:5, Insightful)
I just hope they can save it, unlike the last website I frequented that this happened to. thespark.com was originally run by some college kids with a sense of humor and some tech skills. It was awesome for years. Then some corporate overlords flashed lots of money at them and like any sane young group of people, they sold. Then it started going downhill. Then the original people got tired of it going downhill and quit. Then it went downhill really, really fast.
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:4, Insightful)
SCO Installs (Score:1, Insightful)
Has anyone seen an actual install of an SCO product in recent years? I mean a real, live, in production server running SCO Open Server?
Re:OT but I don't care (Score:3, Insightful)
+1. I was happy that I could undo all the JavaScript bullshit on the Slashdot front page and the story pages by logging in and setting my prefs but the user page looks like the database was trying to swallow Digg and threw up.
It's like Yahoo mail. Overall pretty good but when I log in to email I want to see my fucking INBOX, not this crappy summary+news+other crap I never look at. ESPECIALLY sucky since their most recent redesign REMOVED keyboard shortcuts (like shift-control-C to check for new mail, i.e. look at the inbox.) (Not even the new AJAXY, Outlook-looking "beta" version--I'm talking about the regular old HTML version.)
This is the worst thing to happen to Slashdot since the I.T. color scheme.
Just noticed something else... (Score:4, Insightful)
HOLY FUCK! As if the new user page weren't bad enough, it mixes the classic green color scheme with whatever the theme is for the current subdomain, if you happen to be on one. You thought http://slashdot.org/~CleverNickName [slashdot.org] looked bad? Check out http://yro.slashdot.org/~CleverNickName [slashdot.org] or http://games.slashdot.org/~CleverNickName [slashdot.org] or http://it.slashdot.org/~CleverNickName [slashdot.org]!!!!!
Orange links on green? My eyes! Ze googles, zey do nossing!
Me too (Score:3, Insightful)
'Nuff said. Except it's not enough because this sorry excuse for a redesign is still there. Oh, god, it's like a 15 year old with no concept of color got let loose with FrontPage and wanted to do a MySpace lookalike but without the same professionalism and restraint.