"People keep banging on about "ooh, music flourished on people playing other people's songs" and all this crap. You're still allowed to do this"
Actually, no, you're not. You're supposed to pay a royalty every time you do a "cover" of another bands' material in a public performance. Go talk to the musician's guild if you have any doubts.
I was just pointing out the gigs in politics. They also do a lot of product ads for tv. Andie McDowell plugs Oil of Olay, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger make spots to encourage California tourism, William Shatner did all those internet ads...
"Throughout most of human history bittorrent did not exist."
And what does that have to do with anything, except to show that most people believe that the current "mode of distribution" of the RIAA/MPAA is obsolete, overpriced, and in need of some good competition?
A song is not worth a buck. Maybe a nickel
movie at $100 million to produce, 2 hours of entertainment, and you can buy a copy of the DVD, including DVD case, for $7.99 5 years later
music - 20 songs, $1 million to produce, 15 songs (10 or more crappy), and 5 years later they still want $1 a song or $15 for all 15 - no madia, no case.
If movies were priced like music, your movie dvd should cost $800.00 per copy. In reality, the RIAA is using the "monopoly what the market will bear" pricing scheme - and bittorrent sites break that artificial monopoly.
Most songs aren't even worth a buck. A lot of the stuff being "traded" isn't even available to most people, so its not like anyone's losing any revenue, anyway. Both the RIAA and MPAA should get over it, and find a different economic model.
Throughout most of human history, music flourished without any copyright. If the MPAA/RIAA had their way, even humming a tune would be a copyright infringement with micropayments, instead of just something people naturally do - which is, by the way what music is - something people naturally do.
There's nothing to stop you from going on tour if your music becomes popular - and the more people "pirate" it, the wider the audience for your tour gigs. Its why people want their stuff to get lots of air play, right?
In the previous century, a large part of the cost of each copy of music was the physical production and distribution (pressing each copy, shipping it to warehouses, then to wholesalers, then to retailers). Those costs are gone, but the price hasn't gone down to compensate.
Now consider the production costs. There is no way that any music CD ever produced costs as much as a blockbuster movie. And yet, the movie on DVD costs about the same as, and often less than, the music CD. Why? If a move costs $100M to produce, and a music cd $1M, shouldn't the music CD cost a lot less?
Must be the crack math skills of those RIAA accountants. Or just the crack. A song is worth a few cents in todays economy, not a buck or two.
Bullshit. In most jurisdictions the consumer protection statutes are clear - you CAN sue in the case of a one-sided "contract of adhesion." Buy a f*cking clue - at least learn what the term means before you say Gateway didn't impinge on them - they most certainly did!
Similarly, in a lot of places, consumer legislation gives you the right to sue any manufacturer for a defect
If and only if the manufacturer refuses to repair or replace it, unless the manufacturer signed a contract guaranteeing service provision by such and such a date. The problem with reciting laws you seem to remember is that they start meaning something really, really different once you know about the second half.
Get real. So-called "lemon laws" force the manufacturer to replace the item in question if a certain number of attempts to fix it fail - this in NO WAY limits the consumer from suing beforehand. You always have the right to bring an action before the courts, unless the courts have interdicted you for a history of frivolous lawsuits. You don't even have to be the original purchaser, and you don't have to allow the manufacturer or seller to "make it right" before suing.
I know this is slashdot, but really... do you have ANY legal experience? It doesn't look like it.
In other words, the law trumps any trumpted-up BS clause. The courts agree with me.
"So, if you want to buy that new car or get that credit card, you WILL sign away your right to sue in court."
WTF are you rambling on about? No wonder you post anonymously - you don't have a clue as to what you're talking about. Last I looked, people had no problem suing car manufacturers, car dealers, and finance companies. You don't even have to be the original purchaser.
Freedom is a statutory right. That's why you have, for example, the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery. Also, slavery has been the "natural" order of things thoughout history;
The right to sue someone over a defective product is a statutory, not natural, right - without statutes (laws), there is no such thing as a law suit.
There are no such things as "natural rights." Ask any animal that's about to be eaten by a predator.
I'm not arguing "natural rights" here. Statutory rights are rights created by statute - law. Most areas have consumer protection legislation, and that legislation is quite specific as to your right to sue the manufacturer and the distributor and everyone else in the "food chain" down to the final vendor. Gateway can't "present" an EULA that takes away that right, in part because this would be a "contract of adhesion" between two very unequal parties, and also because most consumer protection laws state that they take precedence over any warranty or license that claims to remove your rights to bring suit.
Disclaimer of Warranty. The SDK is licensed "as-is." You bear the risk of using it. Microsoft gives no express or implied warranties, guarantees or conditions. You may have additional consumer rights under Your local laws which this agreement cannot change.
To the extent permitted under Your local laws, Microsoft excludes the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringem
Local law takes precedence. Gateway loses this one in a walk.
The "waive rights to sue" is only if you go to binding arbitration in lieu of suing. Its usually offered after one party files suit.
Also, you can agree to non-binding arbitration, in which case, if one of the parties still isn't satisfied, back to court it goes.
These are all set up in the framework of making using your statutory rights more accessible. What Gateway pretends to do is the opposite, and I can't see any court agreeing to Gateway's position under any legal theory.
Nobody can "sign away" their statutory rights. You can't make a contract whereby you agree to be someones slave, because freedom is a statutory right - one granted by statute. Similarly, in a lot of places, consumer legislation gives you the right to sue any manufacturer for a defect - as a statutory right, you can't waive it, and any contract that includes such wording is void.
That's why you always see wording like "Any provision of this agreement that are contrary to local law are excised. You may have other rights depending on your state or province...." You can't "waive" those rights with an EULA - even one you signed, never mind a post-purchase popup that you never saw and never agreed to.
Also, it'll be fun seeing Gateway try to appeal this one... they're out of luck here. Asking people to waive their rights to redress just means you think your product is so crappy that there's a good chance that people will sue you out of business.
Stupid Gateway! Remember the old saying - a happy customer might tell 2 peope - a p*ssed-off customer will tell 100? Try a MILLION, because you can be sure that everyone's going to hear about this one - the competition will make sure of it, if nothing else.
Source code that handles "corner cases" silently (no comments, no "We do this because...", no "case ERR_SOCKET_CLOSED_EARLY" or "if (data > MAX_DATA_LEN)") is not just ugly -its bad. Its a trap waiting to cause all sorts of problems, and should be fixed.
At the very least, a "// Yes, it strinks..." so that we know that whoever wrote it might have had a reason to do it that way as an exception, rather than "business as usual."
An elegant program that doesn't work, you can at least hope to find out why. An ugly one that you've introduced a bug into - you might not even know you've created a bug until its been in the field for 6 months, since you probably also don't have any test harnesses (ugly code is harder to create stand-alone tests for).
I agree that docs are mandatory; I've used doxygen and its variants, but I'm finding that stuffing everything into a wiki is better. Just create pages, do the [[feature]] or [[variable]] or [[function]] bit as you describe how the software *should* work, and then click on all the links and "fill in the pages".
Good documentation can keep you from inadvertently introducing memory leaks, and a wiki is so easy to set up, and to edit. The "discussion" features are handy too, to help annotate the thoughts of everyone as something was being modified...
"Finally, there is a motion to include garbage collection in the C++ language. "
Call me old-fashioned, but I hope that's one that they will throw in the garbage. Call it something else if you're going to have garbage collection as an integral part. As a set of libraries, or as a compiler-time switch, fine - but not as part of the core. That's not C++, that's D.
"leave the ugly but solid code alone until necessary."
If its ugly its not solid. Ugly code is hard to understand at first glance, and its easy to introduce an error. Or do you consider code that's easy to make a mistake with as actually being "maintainable"?
If its ugly, there's probably a non-ugly way to do the same thing that's better, more efficient, AND more maintainable.
Remember, 90% of the investment in code is in the ongoing maintenance. Having to "relearn" all the "cute little hacks" that make that ugly POS code work, every time you have to change something, is a waste of resources. That ugly code is usually a monument to the "there's not enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over... and over... and over" and "ship it now - fix it later."
I've written enough ugly code to know that if its ugly, I'm not approaching the problem properly.
a. click a link
b. figure out what the link is pointing to
c. read the instruction at the location the link is pointing to
d. identify associated system command and
e. execute!
you mean they've patented the drive-by trojan/virus download?
Gee, and I thought it was a free "feature" included with every version of Windows and DOS.
FILE0001.CHK
FILE0002.CHK
FILE0003.CHK
FILE0004.CHK
FILE0005.CHK
...
FILE9999.CHK
Unable to find COMMAND.COM. Please insert system disk and press reset.
And slashcode needs its "plain-text post mode" fixed. It STILL eats < and > in PLAIN TEXT!!! Come on guys - this bug has been around for YEARS. (I guess they'll fix it around the time they fix the b0rked nested view when there are too many comments... in other words, not in your lifetime!!!)
FTFA:// move all the aliens for (short i = 0; I < MAX_NUM_ALIENS; i++)
if (aliens[i].exists())// this alien currently exist?
aliens[i].move_it();
Note that this is an infinite loop.
Should be "i < MAX_NUM_ALIENS;", not "I <MAX_NUM_ALIENS;" I MAX_NUM_ALIENS;
"But what drives people to perform selfless work for non-relatives?"
How about "the hope of getting lucky?"
Proof? Why do you think men fall all over themselves to open doors for women they don't even know, but won't lift a finger to help their wife do the dishes...?
Slashdot Mirror
"People keep banging on about "ooh, music flourished on people playing other people's songs" and all this crap. You're still allowed to do this"
Actually, no, you're not. You're supposed to pay a royalty every time you do a "cover" of another bands' material in a public performance. Go talk to the musician's guild if you have any doubts.
Actually, this water does ... Pluto's pissed about being kicked out of the family of planets, and he's marking territory.
I was just pointing out the gigs in politics. They also do a lot of product ads for tv. Andie McDowell plugs Oil of Olay, Clint Eastwood and Arnold Schwarzenegger make spots to encourage California tourism, William Shatner did all those internet ads ...
"Throughout most of human history bittorrent did not exist."
And what does that have to do with anything, except to show that most people believe that the current "mode of distribution" of the RIAA/MPAA is obsolete, overpriced, and in need of some good competition?
A song is not worth a buck. Maybe a nickel
- movie at $100 million to produce, 2 hours of entertainment, and you can buy a copy of the DVD, including DVD case, for $7.99 5 years later
- music - 20 songs, $1 million to produce, 15 songs (10 or more crappy), and 5 years later they still want $1 a song or $15 for all 15 - no madia, no case.
If movies were priced like music, your movie dvd should cost $800.00 per copy. In reality, the RIAA is using the "monopoly what the market will bear" pricing scheme - and bittorrent sites break that artificial monopoly.Most songs aren't even worth a buck. A lot of the stuff being "traded" isn't even available to most people, so its not like anyone's losing any revenue, anyway. Both the RIAA and MPAA should get over it, and find a different economic model.
Throughout most of human history, music flourished without any copyright. If the MPAA/RIAA had their way, even humming a tune would be a copyright infringement with micropayments, instead of just something people naturally do - which is, by the way what music is - something people naturally do.
There's nothing to stop you from going on tour if your music becomes popular - and the more people "pirate" it, the wider the audience for your tour gigs. Its why people want their stuff to get lots of air play, right?
In the previous century, a large part of the cost of each copy of music was the physical production and distribution (pressing each copy, shipping it to warehouses, then to wholesalers, then to retailers). Those costs are gone, but the price hasn't gone down to compensate.
Now consider the production costs. There is no way that any music CD ever produced costs as much as a blockbuster movie. And yet, the movie on DVD costs about the same as, and often less than, the music CD. Why? If a move costs $100M to produce, and a music cd $1M, shouldn't the music CD cost a lot less?
Must be the crack math skills of those RIAA accountants. Or just the crack. A song is worth a few cents in todays economy, not a buck or two.
"This was about the MPAA. Movie stars have gigs now?"
Sure they do. Look at The Governator of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ronald Reagan managed to do okay too, after quitting the movies - Governor, then President.
Sonny Bono - US Congress.
And internationally, there's La Cicciolina, the onetime porn star elected to the Italian parliament in 1987.
Would any of them have been able to get elected without the name recognition from their previous careers?
Bullshit. In most jurisdictions the consumer protection statutes are clear - you CAN sue in the case of a one-sided "contract of adhesion." Buy a f*cking clue - at least learn what the term means before you say Gateway didn't impinge on them - they most certainly did!
Get real. So-called "lemon laws" force the manufacturer to replace the item in question if a certain number of attempts to fix it fail - this in NO WAY limits the consumer from suing beforehand. You always have the right to bring an action before the courts, unless the courts have interdicted you for a history of frivolous lawsuits. You don't even have to be the original purchaser, and you don't have to allow the manufacturer or seller to "make it right" before suing.I know this is slashdot, but really ... do you have ANY legal experience? It doesn't look like it.
You'll notice that the lead story on slashdot right now has that a judge has held that one-sided arbitration agreements are void.
In other words, the law trumps any trumpted-up BS clause. The courts agree with me.
"So, if you want to buy that new car or get that credit card, you WILL sign away your right to sue in court."
WTF are you rambling on about? No wonder you post anonymously - you don't have a clue as to what you're talking about. Last I looked, people had no problem suing car manufacturers, car dealers, and finance companies. You don't even have to be the original purchaser.
There are no such things as "natural rights." Ask any animal that's about to be eaten by a predator.
I'm not arguing "natural rights" here. Statutory rights are rights created by statute - law. Most areas have consumer protection legislation, and that legislation is quite specific as to your right to sue the manufacturer and the distributor and everyone else in the "food chain" down to the final vendor. Gateway can't "present" an EULA that takes away that right, in part because this would be a "contract of adhesion" between two very unequal parties, and also because most consumer protection laws state that they take precedence over any warranty or license that claims to remove your rights to bring suit.
Here's boilerplate from as an example:
Local law takes precedence. Gateway loses this one in a walk.
The "waive rights to sue" is only if you go to binding arbitration in lieu of suing. Its usually offered after one party files suit.
Also, you can agree to non-binding arbitration, in which case, if one of the parties still isn't satisfied, back to court it goes.
These are all set up in the framework of making using your statutory rights more accessible. What Gateway pretends to do is the opposite, and I can't see any court agreeing to Gateway's position under any legal theory.
Nobody can "sign away" their statutory rights. You can't make a contract whereby you agree to be someones slave, because freedom is a statutory right - one granted by statute. Similarly, in a lot of places, consumer legislation gives you the right to sue any manufacturer for a defect - as a statutory right, you can't waive it, and any contract that includes such wording is void.
That's why you always see wording like "Any provision of this agreement that are contrary to local law are excised. You may have other rights depending on your state or province ...." You can't "waive" those rights with an EULA - even one you signed, never mind a post-purchase popup that you never saw and never agreed to.
Also, it'll be fun seeing Gateway try to appeal this one ... they're out of luck here. Asking people to waive their rights to redress just means you think your product is so crappy that there's a good chance that people will sue you out of business.
Stupid Gateway! Remember the old saying - a happy customer might tell 2 peope - a p*ssed-off customer will tell 100? Try a MILLION, because you can be sure that everyone's going to hear about this one - the competition will make sure of it, if nothing else.
Source code that handles "corner cases" silently (no comments, no "We do this because ...", no "case ERR_SOCKET_CLOSED_EARLY" or "if (data > MAX_DATA_LEN)") is not just ugly -its bad. Its a trap waiting to cause all sorts of problems, and should be fixed.
At the very least, a "// Yes, it strinks ..." so that we know that whoever wrote it might have had a reason to do it that way as an exception, rather than "business as usual."
An elegant program that doesn't work, you can at least hope to find out why. An ugly one that you've introduced a bug into - you might not even know you've created a bug until its been in the field for 6 months, since you probably also don't have any test harnesses (ugly code is harder to create stand-alone tests for).
I agree that docs are mandatory; I've used doxygen and its variants, but I'm finding that stuffing everything into a wiki is better. Just create pages, do the [[feature]] or [[variable]] or [[function]] bit as you describe how the software *should* work, and then click on all the links and "fill in the pages".
Good documentation can keep you from inadvertently introducing memory leaks, and a wiki is so easy to set up, and to edit. The "discussion" features are handy too, to help annotate the thoughts of everyone as something was being modified...
"Finally, there is a motion to include garbage collection in the C++ language. "
Call me old-fashioned, but I hope that's one that they will throw in the garbage. Call it something else if you're going to have garbage collection as an integral part. As a set of libraries, or as a compiler-time switch, fine - but not as part of the core. That's not C++, that's D.
"leave the ugly but solid code alone until necessary."
If its ugly its not solid. Ugly code is hard to understand at first glance, and its easy to introduce an error. Or do you consider code that's easy to make a mistake with as actually being "maintainable"?
If its ugly, there's probably a non-ugly way to do the same thing that's better, more efficient, AND more maintainable.
Remember, 90% of the investment in code is in the ongoing maintenance. Having to "relearn" all the "cute little hacks" that make that ugly POS code work, every time you have to change something, is a waste of resources. That ugly code is usually a monument to the "there's not enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it over ... and over ... and over" and "ship it now - fix it later."
I've written enough ugly code to know that if its ugly, I'm not approaching the problem properly.
How about the patents that *might* be infringing, if they were valid ... and could stand scrutiny.
If they really existed, you know darned well that Microsoft would have already closed THAT barn door. They're not afraid to sue anyone.
Is that why you keep going around saying "Pull my finger?" Lack of verbal skills?
a. click a link
b. figure out what the link is pointing to
c. read the instruction at the location the link is pointing to
d. identify associated system command and
e. execute!
you mean they've patented the drive-by trojan/virus download?
No, they'll both get revoked because SCO will claim to have some sort of "prior art" to hijacking patents.
FILE0001.CHK
...
FILE0002.CHK
FILE0003.CHK
FILE0004.CHK
FILE0005.CHK
FILE9999.CHK
Unable to find COMMAND.COM. Please insert system disk and press reset.
Its like the saying goes - the best time to look for a new job is when you already have a job.
And slashcode needs its "plain-text post mode" fixed. It STILL eats < and > in PLAIN TEXT!!! Come on guys - this bug has been around for YEARS. (I guess they'll fix it around the time they fix the b0rked nested view when there are too many comments ... in other words, not in your lifetime!!!)
// move all the aliens // this alien currently exist?
FTFA:
for (short i = 0; I < MAX_NUM_ALIENS; i++)
if (aliens[i].exists())
aliens[i].move_it();
Note that this is an infinite loop.
Should be "i < MAX_NUM_ALIENS;", not "I <MAX_NUM_ALIENS;"
I MAX_NUM_ALIENS;
FTFA: // move all the aliens // this alien currently exist?
for (short i = 0; I MAX_NUM_ALIENS; i++)
if (aliens[i].exists())
aliens[i].move_it();
Note that this is an infinite loop.
Should be "i MAX_NUM_ALIENS;", not "I MAX_NUM_ALIENS;"
"But what drives people to perform selfless work for non-relatives?"
How about "the hope of getting lucky?"
Proof? Why do you think men fall all over themselves to open doors for women they don't even know, but won't lift a finger to help their wife do the dishes ...?