Earlier today while I was taking a break from grinding on the post that haunts my sleep (I gave myself the evening off, and yes, I really did dream about it awhile ago), I decided to get through some of the email of the last few days that made it into the 'general' pile.
After wading through some of the nastier ones (Which I still haven't figured out, as it's not like I remove profanity from the comments, and I do read them -- but perhaps they just want to be sure I see just how they think I was conceived) I noticed many of the questions were in regards to this bit in the last post referring to the third named defendant (David, aka 'dmsmac') in the Mac OS 10.4 beta leak fiasco:
I've talked to David, I actually interviewed him when I interviewed Sunny but pulled it at his request when he was able to obtain representation. The interview is sitting in an encrypted file in case it's ever needed for some reason.
The questions were all fine, wanting to know things I'd want to know if I were them, but by and large weren't things I could really answer. I probably shouldn't have thrown it in, I was just thinking out loud, but they've weighed on me after going through some of the emails.
David and I originally agreed that I would pull it, but then could use it once everything was all over. Truth be told, I've thought about it, and I can't really see what good can come of ever posting it. I've decided it's in everyone's best interest to just delete it.
posted on April 24, 2005 at 03:44 AMGoing by court documents filed a few days ago in the Northern District of California (which you can download below, since they are public record once you shell out a bit for them) it would appear Apple Computer and Vivek 'Sunny' Sambhara have reached a settlement agreement:
If you're new-ish to the situation, Sunny was one of three named individuals being sued for distributing a developer pre-release of Mac OS 10.4 over the internets, along with a score or so of 'John Does'. The site ended up sitting down with Sunny to get this side of what was going on, and eventually a whole bunch of notables from the Mac side of the fence weighed in with their varied thoughts on the situation.
It wasn't very pretty, and awhile afterwards Sunny was able to procure the services of Summers Rubinstein PC, who in a short Q&A explained why they were defending Sunny from Apple while forgoing their legal fees. The terms of the settlement are in the PDFs linked above, at least so far as I can tell. Just the fact that he'll be putting it behind him and focusing all of his attention on organic chemistry means it's a good day.
I know my shoulders loosened up a bit after seeing these papers, and while I do understand where Apple was coming from I can definitely say it's colored my view of Apple and their products. There's a bad aftertaste here, and I don't look at 10.4 the same way I may have otherwise. When they were factoring their return on investment on this course of action, I truly wish they'd been a little more creative.
While it is a great day for Sunny, and I'm whole heartedly glad they were able to work something out and put it behind them, I'd have to imagine that bad aftertaste outweighs whatever short term gains Apple procured (like 'sending a message') by a very wide margin.
Say hello to the new Cow of DrunkenBlog.
The Cow has evolved -- and fully come into its own -- which means the former Cow must step aside and quietly slink off into retirement. It's not without its sorrow, but before the next big post goes live, this post will be the final resting place of the former Cow.
Long-time readers know when the blog is really quiet for an extended period of time it usually means something personal is going on I'm having to deal with, or I'm working on something large which is taking up all of my time.
I've pretty much dropped off the map in all regards, and in this case it's the latter, and basically everything has been put on hold until I get this next thing out. I actually meant to have it out Monday, but stuff just keeps happening that deserves to both be in the story and be researched.
The next few days of my life will be nothing but a flurry of writing and compiling to get it out, so it'll be very soon, and then we can get back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Patience, grasshoppers.
While taking a break from something I'm working on for (hopefully) Monday, I had it forwarded onto me that Christopher Eccleston -- the actor currently playing the 9th Dr. Who -- already quit the damn show:
"The 41-year-old quit the show after just one series because he fears he will be typecast."
I know, I'm not as up on some things as I used to be, but this really does kinda suck from a viewer POV, as from the three episodes I've seen he's made one hell of a Doctor Who and the chemistry between the two leads really seemed to work. Looks like it kinda sucks for the BBC, too.
It turns out the Cubs lost, which I found out the next day, which means it was a great game and -- all things considered -- a beautiful day.
For my female readers who have never been to Wrigley Park, take heart, the restroom completely reverses itself from a bar or club.
It almost physically hurts to walk past uncontested women's restrooms towards the one with the gawd-awful lines and the nice pissing trough. I mention this because I forget about the situation every time and need to remind myself to get moving at the slightest inkling I may have to go.
I also mention this because of the women we sidled up with there, all seemed ignorant of our plight and were shocked that there are no urinals and that we're all looping around these centered troughs which -- if you were drinking soda -- would probably put one off of eating for the day. I'm always more in touch with my feminine side after these types of experiences.
Tomorrow is opening day for the Chicago Cubs season, and since I have ticket's it's a good excuse to completely kill a Friday and refresh a bit before jumping back on some things I'm trying to grind out.
We're all playing hooky and starting the day from 9am onwards, so it should get interesting.
If you're around the Wrigleyville bars or the stadium, and you see the guy to the right laying in a corner somewhere surrounded by empty bottles and hot dog wrappers, help a brother out.
Just about everyone saw that CherryOS went "open source" the other day, but I didn't write about it because I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, I'm working on something larger, and I was dealing with the ponce Brad Gibson over at MacObserver yet again.
Eweek and EPN caught the other shoe, where they basically say to ignore the GNU logo, they'll be releasing CherryOS under an open source license they've created themselves and charging $14.95. Oh, and all the evidence is a pack of lies.
This story is such a non-starter that I'm really kind of bored by this aspect of it. It should be obvious we're in for another round of rhyming history.
Early this morning I reached over someone to turn off the beeping noise and noticed my thumb hurt. I forgot about it until I realized holding my toothbrush really really hurt, and that the underside was red, raw, and practically had a little groove.
I also noticed a cracked bottle of ibuprofen next to the sink, so I can only surmise I tried to stave off what I knew would be a decent hangover by preemptively popping a few pills before crashing and didn't have the damn arrows on the bottle lined up. Judging by the stray pills on the floor, I'm also going to assume I gave up after awhile and just broke the bottle under my foot, took what I needed, and went to sleep.
Speaking of drunken ineptitude, if you get the G4 channel via cable, you can tune into Attack of the Show tonight at 7pm ET or 4pm PT and watch them demonstrate running Mac OS X on your PC via CherryOS. Every once in awhile someone asks me something along the lines of "Why on earth did Maui-X think they could get away with this?".
This type of thing, along with pieces like the one at MacObserver.com by Brad Gibson -- where he boils the evidence down to one sentence mentioning some forum post complaints -- is exactly why they'd think they'd have a shot. After crunching the numbers and demographics, it's not impossible to try to outrun the story and rake in some cash.
Back in Of flash crows and sharing logs, I mentioned being approached by a research group at UIUC who wanted me to send over my log files for use in their dual research projects on the characteristics of flash crowds, and their interesting idea of how to alleviate the effects of them on a server.
I wanted to give you an update on what's going on with that (we'll get to the graphic above shortly), as well as a few other things. I go into more specific detail regarding the project in the post above, as well as the problems it's trying to fix, but the gist involves three parts:
Since a bunch of us are going to be picking Mac OS 10.4 anyways, if you purchase by clicking to the right you can get a good deal on Tiger ($99, normally $130) and help support the site.
Amazon is generally good to buy from, it qualifies for free shipping, it's probably the best deal you'll find for a long while, and they seem to get a good amount of product from Apple... Or at least it seems like they're always one of the first to ship.The one sour note is that the $99 price comes about via a downloadable $35 rebate, but its through Amazon and they're much better at those things than most.
I would ask one caveat -- if you do buy Mac OS 10.4 through the link to the right, that you let me know via email so I can touch base with you and at least pass the full feed your way.
I'll also add an iTunes link deal to the sidebar of the site soon, I know some of you have pestered me about it for ages (I'm looking at you, Matthew Kreger). I've tried to avoid having the blog be peppered with that sort of thing, but if it's low-key and it helps someone contribute to the site while doing what they'd normally do, that's cool.
The above is what you get when you go to cherryos.com, and CherryOS has been removed from the list of products Maui-X sells. It's very amusing, but I wouldn't break out the party hats.
I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that this won't be the last these guys are heard of; they've sunk in too much time, money and effort into this endeavor to walk away without trying every angle they possibly can.
Minoki released a small utility that fixes the iSync local root exploit I've talked about a few times.
From a cursory glance, it basically does the terminal commands I gave back in a prior post, which means you'll have to rerun it every time you repair permissions and such.
Still, if you're not inclined to enter terminal commands, or keep them around to reenter them, and don't sync to a Symbian cell phone, this could well be for you. The site isn't in English, but it looks as though they have an English localization in the .app and Google can translate the site easily enough.
I keep getting asked about this exploit, and most of it isn't pretty... this one is really starting to touch a nerve with some people for reasons I don't quite understand yet. Some of them seem to think I've let Apple off too easy, some seem to think I may have some idea of what the hold up might be to cause it to go unfixed.
I've really said all I know about it and what might be causing this to go unfixed for months, or why it wasn't included in 10.3.8 or in the most recent security update, but I suppose I haven't said why I haven't shaken my fist in anger at Apple over it.
I wanted to touch base a bit on what's been going on with Sunny (Desicanuk) over the last while.
To recap, Sunny is one of three named defendants (there are many John Does) Apple is suing for allegedly leaking a beta version of the upcoming Mac OS 10.4 onto the internet. A week ago it came out that one of the three named was able to settle with Apple, and move on to dealing with the criminal charges the lawsuit had created.
Because they've been blurred, it's worth noting that this is an entirely separate situation from Apple's legal actions against ThinkSecret, which is also a separate situation from Apple's legal actions against PowerPage and AppleInsider. I know, someone needs to start a Wiki.
I sat down for an interview with Sunny and the admin of the network where the Tiger beta was leaked, and then a bit later Apple Computer cofounder Steve Wozniak and more than a score of other notables in the Mac world weighed in with their thoughts on the issue.
A client of Summers Rubinstein PC -- a San Francisco law firm specializing in intellectual property and business litigation -- saw the interview and passed it on to someone at Summers Rubinstein, and a few weeks later Sunny officially had representation. The firm agreed to take it on pro bono, which is short for "pro bono publico", which means "for the public good", which basically means they've waived all their fees.
Last week I was able to touch base with Yano Rubinstein (Sunny's counsel) about a few things, and he agreed to answer some questions that I could post publicly, to both fill in some gaps and to keep you as in touch with what's going on as I could.
