No? I even got Valve to give me a refund for a defective game, despite Steam's explicit "no refunds" policy. I've been quite impressed with Valve's attitude toward their customers.
(For the curious: Commandos:BEL and Commandos:BTCoD only supported Win9x, but Steam explicitly prevents you from running anything in Win9x compatibility mode; as a result the "Save game" functionality was broken, rendering the game useless unless I wanted to play the whole thing in one sitting. Despite numerous angry phone calls, Eidos wouldn't support the game unless I ran it in Win9x compatibility mode, so I contacted Valve and they gave me a refund. The older two Commandos games disappeared from Steam shortly thereafter, only recently making a reappearance.)
I dunno, it was just a theoretical question. I might be too tired to think about anything legal...
I suppose the issue might come up if you have code written by a parent company, who then gives the compiled program to a subsidiary, without also giving them the source code... but I'm just making stuff up as I go.
Is it possible to do two distinct forks simultaneously, if you're the one doing the coding on both forks? Couldn't your employer argue that your contributions to the personal fork are inevitably derived from the code you wrote for their fork? And if you write your fork first, and then soon thereafter write the employer's fork, isn't the employer's fork inevitably derived from your personal fork, since you wrote both?
I think a single person simultaneously (or even with weeks) writing both forks is a bad idea, at least from a legal "who owns this code" standpoint.
Honest question: does distribution internal to an organization count as distribution as described by the GPL? That is, if I have code subject to the GPL, and I distribute it to my employees without allowing them access to the source code, am I violating the GPL?
This question may be easily answered by another read-through of the GPL, but I'm too tired to do that myself right now...
With Firefox it isn't just the one window that sleeps - it's every Firefox window. Suppose you have two Firefox windows open (say, one on each monitor), each with its own set of tabs. You load up a Slashdot article, and both Firefox windows will freeze. (Turns out Firefox only runs one process, regardless of how many windows you have open.)
Same goes for car keyfobs. Keyless entry is nice, but you still need the ignition key anyway, and the keyfob will just run out of batteries someday.
My keyfob is built in to the plastic at the top of the key. Makes it bulky, and I can't leave it off my keychain without also losing access to my car... Any suggestions? ("Buy a different car" is not an option.)
At any rate, I think putting all auth tokens on the same device (chip, badge, wristband, whatever) is a terrible idea. Think how annoying it is to clear things up if you lose your credit card (or if it's stolen) - now multiply that by every authentication token you own. Do you really want to go through that?
Oh and the worst was Independence Day when they upload a "virus" to what would be a totally unknown operating system.
In theory they had had the one little ship for several years to study. If you're willing to suspend disbelief enough to suppose the existence of those aliens, it's silly not to extend that suspension to include the idea that they could have studied the computer on board the crashed ship enough to know how to interact with it.
But having the virus seek out displays to print skulls and seek out audio devices to broadcast evil laughter... that was a bit much.
Note: Most Live Linux and Unix discs will not complete booting from a SATA optical drive-- not sure why. You must use PATA
Depends on the distro and your hardware. For example, Gentoo's minimal CD won't boot on my desktop (or wouldn't as of a few months ago), because it is missing drivers for my motherboard; Ubuntu's LiveCD works fine. (I only have SATA drives.)
I have in my lap the box for an original 60GB PS3. No mention of "OtherOS" here, either. (I'm sure it's in the manuals, but I can't be bothered to pull them out.)
Maybe you should compare Starcraft's sales with the Halo/Halo 2 sales. The results might enlighten you as to why Blizzard still supports Starcraft, but MS dropped Halo multiplayer.
But Blizzard is moving away from that themselves - we're all aware that Starcraft II will lack LAN support. If/when Blizzard dies, or shuts down battle.net, or any number of other long-term possibilities, you won't be able to play Starcraft II even locally, but the original will still work fine...
That doesn't change the law. Besides, you're assuming Apple wouldn't check with the police department once they learned the device was missing. It seems quite clear to me that they would have done everything possible to track it down.
You're seriously trying to claim that there was nothing unethical about selling a device (which he knew was lost, not abandoned) for $5000 to a third party (not the device's owner)?
You're also forgetting that California law clearly states he was required to turn the device over to the police if he could not locate the owner. Failure to do so means he stole it.
What do we know from these two facts? He sold stolen property, period.
A police officer has the right to imprison you for committing a crime. Your neighbor does not (assuming he is not also a police officer). Does that mean your neighbor has had some of his rights taken away?
Slashdot Mirror
No? I even got Valve to give me a refund for a defective game, despite Steam's explicit "no refunds" policy. I've been quite impressed with Valve's attitude toward their customers.
(For the curious: Commandos:BEL and Commandos:BTCoD only supported Win9x, but Steam explicitly prevents you from running anything in Win9x compatibility mode; as a result the "Save game" functionality was broken, rendering the game useless unless I wanted to play the whole thing in one sitting. Despite numerous angry phone calls, Eidos wouldn't support the game unless I ran it in Win9x compatibility mode, so I contacted Valve and they gave me a refund. The older two Commandos games disappeared from Steam shortly thereafter, only recently making a reappearance.)
Read the last sentence of this article.
I dunno if we should trust Telegraph, but one would assume they wouldn't publish a claim of official confirmation unless they knew it were true.
It wasn't a suggestion... I was pointing out exactly what you're saying - it's a bad idea. Read my last sentence again.
I dunno, it was just a theoretical question. I might be too tired to think about anything legal...
I suppose the issue might come up if you have code written by a parent company, who then gives the compiled program to a subsidiary, without also giving them the source code... but I'm just making stuff up as I go.
Is it possible to do two distinct forks simultaneously, if you're the one doing the coding on both forks? Couldn't your employer argue that your contributions to the personal fork are inevitably derived from the code you wrote for their fork? And if you write your fork first, and then soon thereafter write the employer's fork, isn't the employer's fork inevitably derived from your personal fork, since you wrote both?
I think a single person simultaneously (or even with weeks) writing both forks is a bad idea, at least from a legal "who owns this code" standpoint.
Honest question: does distribution internal to an organization count as distribution as described by the GPL? That is, if I have code subject to the GPL, and I distribute it to my employees without allowing them access to the source code, am I violating the GPL?
This question may be easily answered by another read-through of the GPL, but I'm too tired to do that myself right now...
I suspect it's a workaround of some sort; they note that the way they do it can slow some sites down.
Looks like there's a revision committed 8 hours ago to do what you want, which should go into the next release.
No, Chrome fully renders ads, even with adblock.
So... how would I go about verifying that?
Er... Adblock in Chrome uses the same filter list as Adblock in Firefox, so if one misses things, then so does the other...
With Firefox it isn't just the one window that sleeps - it's every Firefox window. Suppose you have two Firefox windows open (say, one on each monitor), each with its own set of tabs. You load up a Slashdot article, and both Firefox windows will freeze. (Turns out Firefox only runs one process, regardless of how many windows you have open.)
As has been pointed out to others, Chrome has had adblock for some time now.
I expect you'll be using Chrome daily now? ;)
Same goes for car keyfobs. Keyless entry is nice, but you still need the ignition key anyway, and the keyfob will just run out of batteries someday.
My keyfob is built in to the plastic at the top of the key. Makes it bulky, and I can't leave it off my keychain without also losing access to my car... Any suggestions? ("Buy a different car" is not an option.)
At any rate, I think putting all auth tokens on the same device (chip, badge, wristband, whatever) is a terrible idea. Think how annoying it is to clear things up if you lose your credit card (or if it's stolen) - now multiply that by every authentication token you own. Do you really want to go through that?
Someone deleting files remotely wouldn't close any apps you have open that are looking at those files.
Oh and the worst was Independence Day when they upload a "virus" to what would be a totally unknown operating system.
In theory they had had the one little ship for several years to study. If you're willing to suspend disbelief enough to suppose the existence of those aliens, it's silly not to extend that suspension to include the idea that they could have studied the computer on board the crashed ship enough to know how to interact with it.
But having the virus seek out displays to print skulls and seek out audio devices to broadcast evil laughter... that was a bit much.
Note: Most Live Linux and Unix discs will not complete booting from a SATA optical drive-- not sure why. You must use PATA
Depends on the distro and your hardware. For example, Gentoo's minimal CD won't boot on my desktop (or wouldn't as of a few months ago), because it is missing drivers for my motherboard; Ubuntu's LiveCD works fine. (I only have SATA drives.)
I have in my lap the box for an original 60GB PS3. No mention of "OtherOS" here, either. (I'm sure it's in the manuals, but I can't be bothered to pull them out.)
But Valve doesn't make any money keeping the master servers running for Counter-Strike players.
No? If they shut them down, how long do you think CS would keep its place near the top of Steam's "top sellers" list?
I wasn't an early Steam adopter, but they did it for me too, when I added my HL1 key to my account.
Maybe you should compare Starcraft's sales with the Halo/Halo 2 sales. The results might enlighten you as to why Blizzard still supports Starcraft, but MS dropped Halo multiplayer.
But Blizzard is moving away from that themselves - we're all aware that Starcraft II will lack LAN support. If/when Blizzard dies, or shuts down battle.net, or any number of other long-term possibilities, you won't be able to play Starcraft II even locally, but the original will still work fine...
You switch to Google's DNS servers? 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8 are pretty easy to remember, too.
Doesn't matter. Which was the legal choice?
That doesn't change the law. Besides, you're assuming Apple wouldn't check with the police department once they learned the device was missing. It seems quite clear to me that they would have done everything possible to track it down.
You're seriously trying to claim that there was nothing unethical about selling a device (which he knew was lost, not abandoned) for $5000 to a third party (not the device's owner)?
You're also forgetting that California law clearly states he was required to turn the device over to the police if he could not locate the owner. Failure to do so means he stole it.
What do we know from these two facts? He sold stolen property, period.
A police officer has the right to imprison you for committing a crime. Your neighbor does not (assuming he is not also a police officer). Does that mean your neighbor has had some of his rights taken away?