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SCO and Ch. 11 Trustee Cahn Oppose Novell's Motion to Consolidate with IBM or Assign One Judge to B

iBot — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:15:10 GMT

SCO has responded [PDF] to Novell's Notice just filed in Utah District Court. Novell is asking that court to assign both the Novell case and the IBM case to the same judge or to consolidate the two cases. SCO's Chapter 11 Trustee, Edward Cahn, also submits a statement in support of SCO's position, which is basically that it needs to hurry up and finish the Novell trial. It's running out of money. It doesn't want to detour to decide the SUSE arbitration first, which Novell also is requesting, and it sees consolidation with IBM to be not only not necessary but something that will drag things out.
Granting the Novell request for the same judge to be assigned to both cases surely wouldn't slow down the Novell case at all, but it would help the new judge having to suddenly deal with these complicated and interwoven cases to at least comprehend how they interact, particularly with respect to the GPL.
Don't forget that Judge Dale Kimball was assigned to both IBM and Novell. So assigning the two cases to one new judge to replace him would simply be returning to a kind of status quo. And if Novell prevails in the arbitration, SCO's copyright claims pretty much go poof. Why wouldn't you want to do that first, particularly since now it's ripe on the vine, whereas when the Utah court decided to go forward on both tracks, the arbitration was just beginning. It would have been decided long ago, had it not been for SCO's bankruptcy filing.
Neither SCO nor Mr. Cahn show any comprehension, from what I could see, of the General Public License and how it will affect SCO.

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FreeBSD 8.0 press release

iBot — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:15:03 GMT

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FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE Available

iBot — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:00:05 GMT

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Comes Exhibit 2151 - Gates: "I have decided we should not publish these extensions."

iBot — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:00:01 GMT

Here's another relevant exhibit, Exhibit 2151 [PDF] from the collection of exhibits in the Comes v. Microsoft case, an email from Bill Gates, the subject was "Shell plans - iShellBrowser", dated October 3, 1994, to Bill Bass, Bob Muglia et al. In connection with iShellBrowswer, Gates writes:

I have decided that we should not publish these extensions. We should wait until we have a way to do a high level of integration that will be harder for the likes of Notes, Wordperfect to achieve, and which will give Office a real advantage. This means that Capone and Marvel can still live in the top level of the Explorer namespace, but will run separately. We can continue to use the iShellBrowser APIs for MS provided views such as control panel, and can use them for other MS-provided views that don't create a large compatibility or ISV issue....
Having the Office team really think through the information intensive scenarios, and be a demanding client of systems is absolutely critical to our future success. We can't compete with Lotus and Wordperfect/Novell without this. Our goal is to have Office '96 sell better because of the shell integration work, and to have the Ren/Office effort yield technology that can be an integral part of the shell in Windows '97.

There you are. X marks the spot.

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Apple Files Motion to Dismiss Psystar's Florida Case; Alternatively to Transfer Case to California

iBot — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:00:01 GMT

Apple has filed a motion to dismiss Psystar's litigation in Florida, or in the alternative to transfer it to the Northern District of California, where its so-far successful litigation against Psystar is taking place and consolidate it there. It requests a 30-minute hearing on its motion.
You'll recall that Apple told the California court that it would be filing this motion before Thanksgiving, and it now has. It has asked the California court to issue a permanent injunction against Psystar, and it would like it to cover all versions of Apple's Mac OSX software, including Snow Leopard, which is what the Florida case is supposedly about. If the Florida case is sent to California, that would ensure that any injunction would cover the entire enchilada.
Apple tells the court that Psystar is losing like crazy in California, and the Florida filing is Psystar forum shopping so it can attempt to relitigate issues it is losing or has already lost in the California action.

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Color naming: color scientists use Munsell Sheets of Color

iBot — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:00:06 GMT

HPL-2009-363 Color naming: color scientists use Munsell Sheets of Color - Beretta, Giordano B.; Moroney, Nathan M.
Keyword(s): color naming, categorization, crowd-sourcing, print automation
Abstract: With the advent of high dynamic range imaging and wide gamut color spaces, gamut mapping algorithms have to nudge image colors much more drastically to constrain them within a rendering device's gamut. Classical colorimetry is concerned with color matching and the developed color difference metrics ...
Full Report

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Wayne Gray's Motion to Lift Stay is Denied. And How.

iBot — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 23:45:09 GMT

Wayne Gray's motion to lift the stay [PDF]in the SCO bankruptcy has been denied. If you are new, here's the report from the hearing about it, and for details on the dispute here's more. Gray is not entitled to the relief he seeks, Judge Kevin Gross has ruled:

Wayne R. Gray ("Mr. Gray" or "Movant") has moved to lift the automatic stay pursuant to 11 U.S.C. $ 362(d) (the "Motion"), in Movant's words, to "permit the Debtor" to participate in pending litigation' and an appeal. The basic problem with the Motion is that the Chapter 11 Trustee does not wish to participate and Mr. Gray lacks standing to compel his participation. Mr. Gray's effort is confounding to the Court because he invested considerable time and money in an obviously ill-founded, losing effort. The Court is willing to give Mr. Gray the benefit of the doubt that he filed and proceeded with the Motion in the good faith belief that he is entitled to the relief. The Court is nevertheless fully satisfied that Mr. Gray is completely wrong.

Not everyone is as nice as Judge Gross. But I admire his willingness to look for the best in everyone. But for sure that is the right question: why would he spend so much money and effort on something bound to fail? And even if he wanted to, why would his lawyers? Did they not tell him it was a losing effort? Here's the order:

11/25/2009 - 973 - Memorandum Order (related document(s) 942 ) Order Signed on 11/25/2009. (TAS) (Entered: 11/25/2009)

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A Comes Exhibit: "Undoc APIs document"

iBot — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:45:03 GMT

I'm deep into trying to list all 158 exhibits to Novell's response to Microsoft's cross motion for summary judgment in the WordPerfect antitrust litigation. We are also trying to go through all the exhibits from the Comes v. Microsoft antitrust litigation, because Microsoft and Novell were having trouble finding relevant materials in discovery, since the database they have available is not easily searchable. We have not finished, but I did find one Comes exhibit so far that I think you might find of interest. So I thought I'd take a break and share it with you.
It's Comes Plaintiff's Exhibit 1614 [PDF], an email thread begun by Dennis Adler to Jeff Price, with ccs to Bill Miller and David Cole, at Microsoft, and the subject line is "Undoc APIs document". The thread goes from April 7 to April 12, 1993.

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Apple Asks for Permanent Injunction Against Psystar

iBot — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:30:06 GMT

Apple has filed a motion asking for a permanent injunction against Psystar, statutory damages, and attorneys' fees and costs. Unless Psystar is permanently enjoined, Apple says, it won't stop. And by stop, Apple means Snow Leopard too. It plans to file a motion of transfer in Florida to bring that matter to California. It wants the injunction to cover Snow Leopard too.
For Psystar, this isn't the fun part. Apple's expert calculates [PDF] statutory damages from copyright infringement at "between $1500 and $300,000 and the statutory damages to Apple as a result of Psystar's violations of the DMCA are between $449,500 and $4,495,000".

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Exhibits to Microsoft's Cross Motion for Summary Judgment in Novell WordPerfect Case

iBot — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:15:09 GMT

I'm so glad you answered my question with a resounding Yes as to whether you wanted to get all the exhibits attached to Microsoft's Memorandum of Law [PDF] in support of Microsoft's cross motion for summary judgment in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust litigation. We finally find out what Microsoft paid Caldera to settle the DrDOS litigation back in 2000: $280 million. We even get to read the settlement agreement. It's attached as an exhibit. Can you imagine? I'm so surprised.
The settlement terms were sealed for all these years, but lo and behold, now that mystery is solved. There are many more goodies on the list of exhibits.
We also find out what Caldera/Canopy then paid Novell from that $280 million: $35.5 million at first, and then after Novell successfully sued Canopy in 2004, Caldera's successor-in-interest on this matter, an additional $17.7 million, according to page 16 of the Memorandum.
Microsoft claims that Novell is not the real party in interest in this antitrust case, and so it can't sue Microsoft for the claims it has lodged against it, because, Microsoft says, Novell sold its antitrust claims to Caldera when it sold it DrDOS. So the exhibits are trying to demonstrate that Novell got paid in full, so to speak, via that earlier litigation. As a result, we get to read a number of documents from the Novell v. Canopy litigation. Novell responds [PDF] it retained its antitrust claims in the applications market.
So those are the parties' positions, but to us, this is a history. We have all the Microsoft exhibits for you, thanks to your kind donations, and there are a lot of exhibits. We'll be posting all the exhibits to the Novell response in opposition to this motion next, so keep in mind this is only half of the story.

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New in JavaFX 1.2: RSS and Storage

iBot — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:15:04 GMT

This second article in a series covers the more technical features, such as RSS and Atom tasks and local storage using JavaFX's built-in storage classes.

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More on What Happened at the Nov. 20th SCO Bankruptcy Hearing

iBot — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:00:03 GMT

I've been listening to the audio of the November 20, 2009 hearing in the SCO bankruptcy, and I'd like to share with you more details and clarifications about what happened, as I said I would. This was the hearing principally about the Wayne Gray motion to lift the stay [PDF]. I thought it would be useful to put everything we have ever collected on Gray and on the UNIX and UnixWare trademarks, all in one place, so you can meaningfully follow the Gray arguments and the counterarguments.
When we purchased the audio, the court didn't mention any time embargo, unlike what happens with transcripts, so I hope I can share the audio shortly, and I will check with the court next week about that. It's fascinating, but they may want to give the parties time to ask for any privacy redactions first. I'll share it as soon as I can without causing problems. Meanwhile, I'll tell you what I heard.

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Color naming: color scientists do it between Munsell Sheets of Color

iBot — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:00:08 GMT

HPL-2009-363 Color naming: color scientists do it between Munsell Sheets of Color - Beretta, Giordano B.; Moroney, Nathan M.
Keyword(s): color naming, categorization, crowd-sourcing, print automation
Abstract: With the advent of high dynamic range imaging and wide gamut color spaces, gamut mapping algorithms have to nudge image colors much more drastically to constrain them within a rendering device's gamut. Classical colorimetry is concerned with color matching and the developed color difference metrics ...
Full Report

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Revoking Personal Data in the Digital World

iBot — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:00:08 GMT

HPL-2009-362 Revoking Personal Data in the Digital World - Kounga, Gina; Bramhall, Pete
Keyword(s): Privacy, Security and Privacy Protection
Abstract: Requiring data subjects to authorise organisations, from which they request some services, to use their personal data in order for these services be provided has become common practice. This, partly because in order to provide a service to the right individual, an organization needs to know who that ...
Full Report

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Extending XACML Access Control Architecture for Allowing Preference-Based Authorisation

iBot — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 08:00:08 GMT

HPL-2009-361 Extending XACML Access Control Architecture for Allowing Preference-Based Authorisation - Kounga, Gina; Casassa Mont, Marco; Bramhall, Pete
Keyword(s): Privacy, Access controls
Abstract: Data protection regulations, such as the UK Data Protection Act, require organisations to process personal data according to the conditions consented by the data subjects. Such conditions can be expressed with data items or preferences collected from data subjects and stored in data repositories. Th ...
Full Report

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