A young man in the United States stands accused of a horrible crime. Federal agents recently raided his home, and he faces as much as ten years in a federal prison. According to his accusers, his wanton illegal acts are many and varied, and all necessary steps should be taken to insure he pays for his crimes.
Once again the media is full of reports of the impending collapse of the internet. Apparently we users are to blame, as we are using too much bandwidth watching movies and so forth- thus says yet another study by “respected” think tank, Nemertes Research. They tried to push this line of bull on us in 2007, again in 2008, and now in 2009. Only the dates of the “impending” collapse have changed: always a year or two in the future. But anyone who knows much of about the internet and infrastructure behind it knows this “impending doom” is a fallacy. So why is Nemertes repeating it over and over and over?
SCO used to sell operating systems and related software based around Linux, Unix, and in their early years Xenix. A few years ago they decided to start suing everyone they could think of with the claim that companies like IBM, Novell, and RedHat had “stolen” their Unix intellectual property. You can read all about the legal history of it here at Groklaw. After years of losing every legal battle they started, facing counter-suits from the people who *really* own the Unix intellectual capital, and filing for bankruptcy, they are doing the only reasonable (at least in America) thing: they are selling all of their real assets so that they can continue the legal battle