But the counterargument is that since they're self-evidently not following the terms of the license, then they don't have a binding contract
No. The license is a contract. Their violation of the license means that they are in breach of that contract, it does not mean that a valid contract does not exist.
Applying contract law, instead of copyright law, would seem to be to the defendant's advantage, because, in order to recieve damages, JMRI will have to show a material breach of contract. That is, they will have to show that they suffered harm. That may be made more difficult by the fact that they have been licensing the software free of charge, because JMRI can't argue that, by defendants distributing the software in violation of license, JMRI is losing revenue from selling licenses.
Well, one common way to dispel a myth is to find an authoritative source on the subject that explains why the myth is untrue. Perhaps a book on cryptography would be helpful, for example:
Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schneier
Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Alfred J. Menezes et al.
Either one will explain such things as why double-DES is not twice as strong as DES and common pitfalls in thought and design of cryptographic systems.
The popups and focus stealing are a symptom of a larger problem: application authors assume you bought a computer just to run their application.
You bought a computer just so that you could run AIM, so of course it should notify you loudly whenever something "interesting" happens.
You bought a computer just so that you could run MS Office, so of course it should hang around in memory all the time so that it will start faster.
You bought a computer just so that you could run Java applets, so of course there should be a program running all the time that checks for updates to the Java runtime. Also there should be a little coffee cup in the tray, right?
You bought a computer just so you could read PDFs, so Adobe Reader ought to install icons on your desktop, and in the root of the start menu. Never mind that you always open a PDF by double clicking on it, or automatically inside a web browser, and so you will never actually open Adobe Reader directly.
You bought a computer just so that you have something to scan for viruses, so of course McAfee virus scanner better tell you when it updates its virus definitions.
Speaking of the TweakUI powertool, here's my problem: I use TweakUI to set focus-follows-mouse behaviour in Windows. That way I can have a VNC session cast from a Linux open full-screen on one monitor. With click-to-focus, I'd have to click twice to get focus on a window inside the VNC session: once to get VNC the focus, and once to get the window on my X desktop the focus. With focus-follows-mouse, Windows focus follows the mouse into VNC, and X focus follows the mouse into xterm.
The problem is this: lots of Windows applications seem to behave really badly with focus follows mouse. They automatically raise and lower themselves (VNC, documents inside Photoshop). They randomly lose focus (Adobe Bridge). Operations can't be completed because the pop-up context menu extends over some other window, so the app loses focus immediately after selecting an option, and then decides to abort the op because it lost the focus.
There's probably no real solution to this, because almost nobody is testing their apps with this TweakUI option set. I have a feeling that most of the apps that behave badly are actually responding to events in an improper, if usually harmless, way.
You don't need to be able to short the contracts to make money off this. You're always allowed to purchase an IPO_DN + IP_UP bundle from the exchange for $1. Then you can sell the component contracts separately on the market for $1.15, pocketing the fifteen cents.
But, the other problem with the GOOGLE_LIN and GOOGLE_WTA markets is that they are very small, with low volume and don't appear to be very liquid. That's why they can support the $.15 and $.242 overpricing in the sum of the contract trading prices. It also means there's not much reason to belive this market is a better estimate of Google's IPO valuation than any other source out there.
If you look at, say, the Pres04_WTA market, you'll see much larger volumes, and the sum value of all the contracts is within $.001 or so of $1.
Slashdot Mirror
After looking at the websites of Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint, I'm left scratching my head and wondering where all the pagers went.
Of course they don't offer pagers—they're much too busy selling cell phone service at 10 times the cost of pager service to 1000 times the people.
Try Googling for "pager".
No. The license is a contract. Their violation of the license means that they are in breach of that contract, it does not mean that a valid contract does not exist.
Applying contract law, instead of copyright law, would seem to be to the defendant's advantage, because, in order to recieve damages, JMRI will have to show a material breach of contract. That is, they will have to show that they suffered harm. That may be made more difficult by the fact that they have been licensing the software free of charge, because JMRI can't argue that, by defendants distributing the software in violation of license, JMRI is losing revenue from selling licenses.
- Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schneier
- Handbook of Applied Cryptography by Alfred J. Menezes et al.
Either one will explain such things as why double-DES is not twice as strong as DES and common pitfalls in thought and design of cryptographic systems.Speaking of the TweakUI powertool, here's my problem: I use TweakUI to set focus-follows-mouse behaviour in Windows. That way I can have a VNC session cast from a Linux open full-screen on one monitor. With click-to-focus, I'd have to click twice to get focus on a window inside the VNC session: once to get VNC the focus, and once to get the window on my X desktop the focus. With focus-follows-mouse, Windows focus follows the mouse into VNC, and X focus follows the mouse into xterm.
The problem is this: lots of Windows applications seem to behave really badly with focus follows mouse. They automatically raise and lower themselves (VNC, documents inside Photoshop). They randomly lose focus (Adobe Bridge). Operations can't be completed because the pop-up context menu extends over some other window, so the app loses focus immediately after selecting an option, and then decides to abort the op because it lost the focus.
There's probably no real solution to this, because almost nobody is testing their apps with this TweakUI option set. I have a feeling that most of the apps that behave badly are actually responding to events in an improper, if usually harmless, way.
You don't need to be able to short the contracts to make money off this. You're always allowed to purchase an IPO_DN + IP_UP bundle from the exchange for $1. Then you can sell the component contracts separately on the market for $1.15, pocketing the fifteen cents.
But, the other problem with the GOOGLE_LIN and GOOGLE_WTA markets is that they are very small, with low volume and don't appear to be very liquid. That's why they can support the $.15 and $.242 overpricing in the sum of the contract trading prices. It also means there's not much reason to belive this market is a better estimate of Google's IPO valuation than any other source out there.
If you look at, say, the Pres04_WTA market, you'll see much larger volumes, and the sum value of all the contracts is within $.001 or so of $1.
The ReVirt system of the CoVirt project does exactly that, using virtual machine monitors. Also see the paper.