I saw a TV show on a person in the UK who claims to be a 'water diviner' - he is employed by a drilling company, who has a 100% guarantee on their services. This man (a former geophysicist) claims that he has the ability to find underground sources of water - he boasts an 80% accuracy rate, and in most cases will tell you how far down to drill, as well as the amount of water (in cubic feet per minute) the well will produce
Well, considering that drilling at random in most places has about a 75% success rate, and geologists and others familiar with a given region have close to a 100% rate, how exactly is a geophysicist getting 80% supposed to impress me?
This loophole doesn't exist. If you look at the GPL, it states that a written offer for the source code must exist that offers the entire source to any third party to eligible to receive it, i.e. someone receiving a binary copy of the software
Nope. You need to reread the GPL, paying careful attention to section 3: "You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following" (emphasis added). Providing a written offer valid to any third party for the source code is one of the options available to the distributor under section 3, but the distributor is not required to choose that option. One of the other options is to distribute the source code with the binary. If company X includes the source with every binary they distribute, that's all they have to do.
The questions are: Can company X *prohibit* company Y from distributing the source through a contract agreement?
I don't think so. X would not be following GPL, and so couldn't distribute to Y.
One thing I forgot to mention, that also makes this whole situation less of a problem than it might seem at first: upgrades. If X or Y offers downloadable or otherwise user-installable kernel ROM upgrades to the end user, they'll fall under GPL.
So, this is only going to really be a possibility for devices where they can stick the GPL'ed code in, and not ever have to update it (or can update it by physically swapping ROM chips).
Still, it is an interesting interaction between First Sale and GPL that is rarely noticed.
These kind of cases are going to get interesting, when the following happens.
1. Company X makes the guts of one of these routers or access points. They modify GPL'ed software, and put it on ROM in the device.
2. Company X sells these things to OEMs, who put it in boxes, add their applications in a separate ROM, and sell it to customers. Company Y is one of these OEMs.
3. Company X includes the full machine readable source of the GPL'ed ROM with the board they sell to company Y. Note: Company X has completely satisfied their GPL obligation. They are completely off the hook as far as anyone who acquires the software from company Y is concerned.
4. Now it gets interesting. Company Y takes the board with the ROM, and sells it to an end user. Note that company Y is allowed to do this without the permission of the copyright holder, because of the first sale doctine (see footnote).
5. Because company Y didn't do anything other than what is allowed by copyright law, they are under no GPL obligation to provide ROM source to the end user.
6. Note the end result: no one has a GPL obligation to provide source to the end user! Company X satisfied all their GPL obligations in their dealings with company Y, and company Y distributed in a way that falls outside the GPL.
Note: this isn't as big a loophole in GPL as it might seem, since it only applies to things like ROMs, where someone like company Y receives a particular copy, and distributes that particular copy to the end user.
Footnote: the fair use doctine, codified at 17 USC 109 if I recall correctly, basically states that the legal owner of a particular copy of a copyright work can sell that copy, without that violating that copyright owner's exclusive right to distribute or authorize distribution of the work. This is what allows used bookstores, for example. Without the first sale doctrine, every time a book changed hands, it would require the publisher's permission!
This is also what lets you sell a used embedded device on eBay without incuring any GPL obligation if it turns out the device uses GPL'ed code, so I wouldn't say this loophole in GPL is a bad thing. If you just go down to BestBuy and buy a router, you should be able to resell that without worrying about whether or not the manufacturer used any GPL'ed code in the thing.
The big problem with games based on things like Star Wars is that the movies focus on a small number of heroic figures who make a major difference to the world. You come to the game, that's what you want to play. As I put it in a long post on usenet, you want to play Han Solo, not Han Solo's hair stylist or Han Solo's pistol maker.
The MMORPGs that have really worked have either used totally made up worlds based on generic fantasy (Everquest, for example), generic science-fiction (Anarchy Online...yes, I know the game didn't do well, but that was because they totally botched the launch), or existing mythologies that people know enough to find familiar but not well enough to identify too strongly with specific mythological characters (Dark Age of Camelot).
I don't have any hard numbers to support it, but it seems to be that with development times on MMOGs taking so much longer than other games, selling them at the same price point, which is the current practice* as other games would mean less profit, or possibly even taking a loss per unit sold
MMORPGs don't inherently take longer to develop than other games, nor take more development resources. DAoC, for example, took 18 months, with a total budget of $1.5 million, which is quite similar to single-player games developed around the same time.
There are interesting postmortems of many recent games, written by the developers or producers of those games, at Gamasutra, which give development times and budgets. That's where I got the numbers for DAoC, and that's where I compared it to several single player games.
To summarize this question: "There are several ways to get legal music for an iPod, but I don't want to use them. How can I get legal music for my iPod?"
it's not just a niche - pair this with WETA and you've got real ammo
Weta isn't very good ammo. They used Apple Shake in LotR--running on Linux. That says a lot, considering that Apple prices non-Mac versions of Shake so high that you can add a G5 to the cost of Mac Shake and still come out cheaper.
This is just like the "One Click Order" patent that Amazon was trying to enforce a while ago
I'm amazed at your psychic powers that allow you to discern the contents of a patent entirely from the title. Were you born with this ability, or was it acquired?
NFS isn't even good for Unix file sharing. Why would anyone want to use it on Windows?
NFS is popular on Unix for exactly one reason: Sun gave it away for free, whereas AT&T wanted money for RFS (which, unlike NFS, actually supported Unix file system semantics).
Wheadon seems to not understand the enormous amounts of energy required for space travel, and moving livestock around is just not going to pay for it
You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how much energy would be required for such space travel, because in real life there is neither any theory nor any experiment that covers faster-than-light travel. Once your suspension of disbelief goes so far as to allow FTL, trying to do things like energy calculations is just silly.
You also have no clue at all what the value of livestock might be in an interstellar economy. If that livestock is key to allowing a colony to thrive on a planet, it could be very valuable.
And ancient projectile weapons? I'm sorry, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far
So you have no problem with FTL, which is something that is, as far as we know currently, impossible, but having some people using projectile weapons while others use more sophisticated weapons bothers you? Even though if you just look around on Earth, you can find societies that still use rocks and pointed sticks?
This is one of the things that Firefly got right that most other science fiction gets wrong--technology is too uniform in most science fiction. Based on a couple thousand years of Earth history, it is far more believable to have a wide range of technology.
Why bother when OpenOffice is equally as good and costs nothing?
Well, when OpenOffice is equally as good, there won't be a need to bother...but that when is not now.
OpenOffice in 2004 is not as good as Word and Wordperfect were on my Mac in 1994. It's got most of the necessary features, but the workflow is not nearly as good.
I've tried a few MMORPGs and have found them all to be lacking in the same key area: one's control over one's character is not real-time....Typically can do things like cast a spell or use a buff or otherwise make strategic changes to the way that your character is fighting, but you can't aim, run around, swing at the monster, etc, as you can with first person games.
That's because of the RPG in MMORPG. In an FPS game, it is supposed to be a contest of your skill and reflexes vs. mine. In an RPG, on the other hand, if I'm a 20th level Fighter and you are a 10th level Fighter, I should be able to always beat you on physical skill. The only way you should be able to win is if I do something strategically wrong. Hence, the lack of detailed control over the physical aspects of combat.
He didn't hurt anyone. He offended the religious, prudish sensibilities of some parents. Did he do anything to deserve 3 years of jail time? Certainly not
What is your qualification to make that statement? Are you an expert in child development?
Slashdot Mirror
I see. Apple is innovative because it only took them a year to copy Archos?
Well, considering that drilling at random in most places has about a 75% success rate, and geologists and others familiar with a given region have close to a 100% rate, how exactly is a geophysicist getting 80% supposed to impress me?
Well, I'd just install the GPL'ed TCPA driver for Linux from IBM and continue using Linux.
You are very confused. Go study section 3 of the GPL.
Nope. You need to reread the GPL, paying careful attention to section 3: "You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following" (emphasis added). Providing a written offer valid to any third party for the source code is one of the options available to the distributor under section 3, but the distributor is not required to choose that option. One of the other options is to distribute the source code with the binary. If company X includes the source with every binary they distribute, that's all they have to do.
I don't think so. X would not be following GPL, and so couldn't distribute to Y.
One thing I forgot to mention, that also makes this whole situation less of a problem than it might seem at first: upgrades. If X or Y offers downloadable or otherwise user-installable kernel ROM upgrades to the end user, they'll fall under GPL.
So, this is only going to really be a possibility for devices where they can stick the GPL'ed code in, and not ever have to update it (or can update it by physically swapping ROM chips).
Still, it is an interesting interaction between First Sale and GPL that is rarely noticed.
1. Company X makes the guts of one of these routers or access points. They modify GPL'ed software, and put it on ROM in the device.
2. Company X sells these things to OEMs, who put it in boxes, add their applications in a separate ROM, and sell it to customers. Company Y is one of these OEMs.
3. Company X includes the full machine readable source of the GPL'ed ROM with the board they sell to company Y. Note: Company X has completely satisfied their GPL obligation. They are completely off the hook as far as anyone who acquires the software from company Y is concerned.
4. Now it gets interesting. Company Y takes the board with the ROM, and sells it to an end user. Note that company Y is allowed to do this without the permission of the copyright holder, because of the first sale doctine (see footnote).
5. Because company Y didn't do anything other than what is allowed by copyright law, they are under no GPL obligation to provide ROM source to the end user.
6. Note the end result: no one has a GPL obligation to provide source to the end user! Company X satisfied all their GPL obligations in their dealings with company Y, and company Y distributed in a way that falls outside the GPL.
Note: this isn't as big a loophole in GPL as it might seem, since it only applies to things like ROMs, where someone like company Y receives a particular copy, and distributes that particular copy to the end user.
Footnote: the fair use doctine, codified at 17 USC 109 if I recall correctly, basically states that the legal owner of a particular copy of a copyright work can sell that copy, without that violating that copyright owner's exclusive right to distribute or authorize distribution of the work. This is what allows used bookstores, for example. Without the first sale doctrine, every time a book changed hands, it would require the publisher's permission!
This is also what lets you sell a used embedded device on eBay without incuring any GPL obligation if it turns out the device uses GPL'ed code, so I wouldn't say this loophole in GPL is a bad thing. If you just go down to BestBuy and buy a router, you should be able to resell that without worrying about whether or not the manufacturer used any GPL'ed code in the thing.
The MMORPGs that have really worked have either used totally made up worlds based on generic fantasy (Everquest, for example), generic science-fiction (Anarchy Online...yes, I know the game didn't do well, but that was because they totally botched the launch), or existing mythologies that people know enough to find familiar but not well enough to identify too strongly with specific mythological characters (Dark Age of Camelot).
MMORPGs don't inherently take longer to develop than other games, nor take more development resources. DAoC, for example, took 18 months, with a total budget of $1.5 million, which is quite similar to single-player games developed around the same time.
There are interesting postmortems of many recent games, written by the developers or producers of those games, at Gamasutra, which give development times and budgets. That's where I got the numbers for DAoC, and that's where I compared it to several single player games.
Here for Opteron and here for Apple.
To summarize this question: "There are several ways to get legal music for an iPod, but I don't want to use them. How can I get legal music for my iPod?"
The fastest Apple G5 has a 1 GHz bus. The slowest Opteron has a 1.4 GHz bus, and the fastest has a 2.2 GHz bus.
Weta isn't very good ammo. They used Apple Shake in LotR--running on Linux. That says a lot, considering that Apple prices non-Mac versions of Shake so high that you can add a G5 to the cost of Mac Shake and still come out cheaper.
Idiot moderator--learn the difference between sarcasm and trolling.
I'm amazed at your psychic powers that allow you to discern the contents of a patent entirely from the title. Were you born with this ability, or was it acquired?
NFS isn't even good for Unix file sharing. Why would anyone want to use it on Windows?
NFS is popular on Unix for exactly one reason: Sun gave it away for free, whereas AT&T wanted money for RFS (which, unlike NFS, actually supported Unix file system semantics).
They addressed it on 18 Feb.
Gosh...an ISP might decide to not carry alt.binaries groups whose main purpose is to distribute copyrighted material without permission?
This is suppose to bother me how?
You have absolutely no clue whatsoever how much energy would be required for such space travel, because in real life there is neither any theory nor any experiment that covers faster-than-light travel. Once your suspension of disbelief goes so far as to allow FTL, trying to do things like energy calculations is just silly.
You also have no clue at all what the value of livestock might be in an interstellar economy. If that livestock is key to allowing a colony to thrive on a planet, it could be very valuable.
And ancient projectile weapons? I'm sorry, my suspension of disbelief only goes so far
So you have no problem with FTL, which is something that is, as far as we know currently, impossible, but having some people using projectile weapons while others use more sophisticated weapons bothers you? Even though if you just look around on Earth, you can find societies that still use rocks and pointed sticks?
This is one of the things that Firefly got right that most other science fiction gets wrong--technology is too uniform in most science fiction. Based on a couple thousand years of Earth history, it is far more believable to have a wide range of technology.
Start with this book, and a time machine to go back to before the casinos made changes to make it not work.
Well, when OpenOffice is equally as good, there won't be a need to bother...but that when is not now.
OpenOffice in 2004 is not as good as Word and Wordperfect were on my Mac in 1994. It's got most of the necessary features, but the workflow is not nearly as good.
Mac user's use Microsoft Office.
One of the main reasons often given by technical people who switch to Macs (such as scientists) is that it is a Unix that can run Office.
That's because of the RPG in MMORPG. In an FPS game, it is supposed to be a contest of your skill and reflexes vs. mine. In an RPG, on the other hand, if I'm a 20th level Fighter and you are a 10th level Fighter, I should be able to always beat you on physical skill. The only way you should be able to win is if I do something strategically wrong. Hence, the lack of detailed control over the physical aspects of combat.
What is your qualification to make that statement? Are you an expert in child development?