More from Google news on bird flu (H5N1) spreading to Germany here and Austria here.
Monthly Archives: February 2006
IBM run out of patience, SCO runs out of road..
Well well well, here’s an interesting turnup in the SCO vs IBM case that’s been dragging on and on for years.
SCO finally had to submit a list of what they were accusing IBM of, with specificity,and did so with a list of 294 alleged misdeeds that they filed under seal, so the rest of the world couldn’t see. Obviously they’d gotten fed up with the world pulling the rest of their previous allegations apart.
But now IBM have hit back, they’ve filed a motion in the court to strike 201 of those 294 allegations immediately because, surprise surprise, SCO give no evidence at all for them. Apparently they don’t cite any lines of code from Linux, AIX, Dynix or System V to support those particular 201 allegations. What makes it worse from SCOs point of view is that IBM wrote to them on the 5th December 2005 pointing this out and giving them the opportunity to fix it, but they ignored the warning. So IBM has done the only thing that they could in the circumstance and asked the court to strike these items, mentioning in passing that SCOs unresponsiveness to flag that it’s probably not worth ordering them to do anything as they’ve already been asked and had over 2 months to provide extra details.
The sorts of things SCO is up to are time wasting tricks like this (to pick a random example):
Item Nos. 271 and 294 of the Final Disclosures illustrate the problem. Item No. 271 claims that “AIX and Dynix/ptx patented technologies, based on UNIX System V, were improperly released for the benefit of, and use by, the Linux development community in developing Linux.†SCO does not identify a single version, file or line of Unix System V, AIX, Dynix or Linux technology that IBM is alleged to have misused. Instead, SCO merely attaches 34 patents. None of these 34 patents lists any versions, files or lines of code. There is, therefore, no way of telling what, if any, Unix System V, AIX, Dynix or Linux technology SCO contends was misused.
But this is probably only the first in a series of blows to SCO, as if the court does rule that SCO have not produced any particularised details for these allegations as the court had ordered (several times) and strike these allegations then IBM can start on those where they’ve got some idea about what SCO is prattling on about and then it’ll get interesting when we see what they then do to defend themselves.
There is already something about this foreshadowed in a footnote to the filing where IBM say:
In Item No. 204, SCO provides a comparison of System V source code and Dynix source code to support the unremarkable, and uncontested, proposition that the Dynix operating system contains certain code modified or derived from System V source code; neither party contests the fact that IBM (through Sequent) had a valid license to include System V source code in Dynix. In fact, as noted above, SCO makes no claim of misuse of the material identified in Item No. 204. (See supra note 1.)
Truly a Homer Simpson moment.. D’oh!
Review: Test Screening of New Australian Film : Kenny
Today Donna and I went to the first audience screening for a new Australian film called Kenny. It’s a fake documentary following the life and work of a portaloo person, Kenny, who works for a Melbourne company called Splashdown as he copes with customers, family, the public and, of course, sewage.
Kenny is much more than just a very funny film, it’s a film with a good heart and a sharp eye on the human condition – especially where it concerns those “invisible” folks doing the dirty work that keeps society going. The filming is great and it makes quite a convincing documentary, the character of Kenny is strong, humble, funny and very warm hearted.
The authenticity is helped by the fact that Splashdown is a real Melbourne company (doing “Corporate Bathroom Rentals” – the owner Glenn Preusker is the sole investor in the film) who lent them the equipment, yard and vehicles. You could say that’s the ultimate in product placement, and sure, it won’t do their image any harm, but that’s not what the story is, the story is how Kenny copes with lifes ups and downs with good grace and humour – whether that be trying to persuade a new recruit to retrieve a lost wedding ring at a festival, defending their precious thunderboxes from this years annual torching at a race meet or coping with your first flight to the US.
It was my first time at a test screening and what we got to see was not the finished movie, still left to do is doing the sound (we had the audio from the camera used, which was still damn good & added to the authenticity in my book), fixing up the colour matching between scenes and some tidying up. The films creator, producer and director Clayton Jacobson (IMDB entry) was there to introduce the film and lead discussion and questions afterwards, but also there was Kenny himself (believed to be Claytons brother Shane) and a number of others from the cast (ex-wife, son, co-worker) and the camera man.
The audience reaction was brilliant, they loved the film. A couple felt there was a flat bit prior to the trip to the US, but to me (and according to Clayton) that was because Kenny was going through a difficult patch and that life isn’t all roses. It also gave a good contrast to what came after.
Anyway, I think it was an awesome film and well worth going to see when it comes out!
It’s being distributed in Australia by Madman Entertainment and is due out around July – keep an eye out for it.
Oh, and Clayton, if you read this, any chance of keeping the soundtrack we heard at the test screening as an alternate option on the DVD ? Please ? 🙂
Review Score: 4.5 out of 5!Â
Email in India Inadmissable in Court
The Electronic Discovery and Evidence blog has a category on e-mail which contains an interesting article on the fact that e-mail is considered inadmissible as evidence in India which should inform anyone who wants to do business with folks there about how best to communicate on anything substantive.
Blog found via the RISKS digest.
Bird Flu Reaches Italy
The BBC has a breaking news story that H5N1 has reached Italy in Sicily and other cases are suspected elsewhere.
Typo3, htmlcssstyling and spacers
Note to self for next time I can’t remember how to get spacers to work in Typo3 menus when using the htmlcssstyling front end extension..
Need to edit typo3conf/ext/htmlcssstyling/static/setup.txt and add to each of the menu sections:
# Activate Spacer
SPC = 1
SPC.doNotShowLink = 0
SPC.doNotLinkIt = 1
SPC.allWrap =|
It doesn’t seem to work if you add it into the TS setup sections of the templates. To be fair it does say in the docs that:
Spacer’ is only meaningfull if your frontend navigation is programmed to use it. In this case it does not represent a page with content but is intended to be a non-clickable placeholder in the navigation.
Which, presumably, is precisely what the above code is doing in that setup.txt file.
Tasmania 2005 Photos in Gallery
Well finally gotten around to uploading some photos from our 2005 trip to Tasmania where we stayed near the town of Penguin on the north coast, which as it was coming up to Christmas had dressed the large penguin on the seafront in a seasonal costume! 🙂
We also took a trip across the island down to the south west coast and dropped in at Zeehan where we had a look around the Pioneer cemetery from this once prosperous town. It was quite odd wandering around, especially seeing some of the wooden graves that were there – no longer legible leaving you to wonder about who was buried there. Some of the graves had been destroyed by trees that had grown up in the hundred years or so since the people were buried there, shattering the tombstones and buckling the ground.
We also took a trip over to Queenstown and found that some wit had altered a roadsign on the descent into the famously desolate area to give it a bit of a Tolkien twist..
We also trundled around the north coast area a bit too, visitin the Leven Canyon (where we found a tiger snake sleeping under the steel walkway), Preston Falls and generally had a good time!
Australian Flying Car
Damn, they’ve spotted us!
Halo2 for PC Only for Windows Vista
In their latest brainwave on how to pry money out of people fed up with paying for upgrades they don’t want, Microsoft apparently are going to make the new version of Halo for PC only work on Vista.
Of course, this may also require people to upgrade their computers too as it is rumoured to require a lot more beef than XP does, though Microsoft are being very cagey about what they are for now. However, both AMD and Intel provide suggested processors. Then you’ve got to have at least 512MB RAM (though some would argue that XP really needs that) and a Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) capable card, for which nVidia, ATI and Intel provide specs. Also check out this blog post by Steven Roddis who’s come up with a list of the individual specs.
Did US Vice-President Authorise Leak of CIA Agent ?
The plot thickens in the US.
According to this Australian ABC News report Dick Cheney authorised his aide to leak the identify of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, which is a crime under the US’s Intelligence Identities and Protection Act stating:
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined not more than $50,000 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.