NEVER peer into powered waveguides or loaded gun barrels !! Microwave heating can especially damage the eyes and testes.
not only should you not "look it up," you should probably not feel it up either.
Re:apt-get is nice
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this article suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding? you cannot compare apt-get to rpm files. apt-get is a system for installing.debs and their dependencies. there are similar systems for rpms (apt-rpm or red carpet).
.debs suffer from all the same problems he complained about rpms having, because.debs are just a single package file. so do source code files (a la gentoo etc), since alot of your source code out there wont even./configure without the right stuff in place. where debian has apt-get to manage the dependency nightmare, gentoo has emerge.
what he is really bellyaching about is the fact that some big rpm based distros (mandrake and redhat) don't come with free dependency management software. 99% of his anti-rpm comments are not even wrong, they are wholly irrelevant.
The last 1% that might have value is the fact that developers can't make a "universal" rpm due to all the differences in filesystem layouts among rpm based distros (note that this can a problem with.debs too). From an end user perspective even this is not a problem with a dependency manager in place. since it will find the "right stuff" for you.
cut and paste keybinds might be fixed, but in my experience you can run into a world of hurt trying to cut and paste between gnome, kde, and "other" apps for many reasons. the keybinds are sometimes an issue, sometimes the clipboards simply do not see each other. Trying to cut and paste anything more complicated than text can get ugly fast.
it's true that many users will simply not have anything to compare fonts to, but many others will notice that their work pc "looks nicer," or friends will say something when they come over to gawk at the new pc. It's subtle but noticeable, my non-technical friends immediately notice how nice the display on my new Tibook is vs. my pc, and that perception has alot to do with anti-aliasing, etc. (and my pc is running a geforce3 on a LaCie 19" monitor).
aol may indeed work on lindows, but I would be surprised. aol installs funky "aol adapters" that do all sorts of damage to the windows network stack.
I'll admit my return rate predictions are a bit on the high side, but when you factor in the cost of processing each return, even a 10-20% return rate could wreck the margins on the rest.
there are potentially bad consequences to this. consider:
- lUser buys a Lindows PC from walmart
- lUser cannot figure out how to cut and paste from the Mozilla web browser to Abiword (a harsh welcome to Xwindows indeed). Worse, he never did figure out that to print he had to type "ghostview - | lpr -Pepson277/dev/usb0" into every single app's preferences.
- lUser realizes that the "screen is ugly" (i.e. fonts suck)
- lUser cannot get onto The AOL.
- of 100,000 units sold, 70,000 get returned.
- walmart takes a bath. "Linux Sucks" is now "proven" to all the business execs with buying power. Nothing scares the CFO like "losing money."
- Linux returns to it's ashes, the supergeek community.
well, it must be possible, otherwise the government probably wouldnt spend this many billions to do it. the NSA is already at least 15-20 years ahead of the state-of-the-art cryptography scene (well, probably that far ahead given the DES elliptical analysis thing that was recently revealed), maybe they have substantial hardware capabilities as well?
the nsa has top talent, infinite cash, infinite resources (like, gimme your best nuclear sub for a pet project, mr Navy Man.) while the us government's ability to waste money on ridiculous projects cannot be understated, when the nsa is involved, you gotta wonder what they really have up their sleeve.
this kind of thing is what MS fears most: one of the world's largest "customers" jumping into the GPL'd software ring. that would not only give alternatives an enormous confidence boost in the eyes of other businesses, but it would start a massive trickle down effect, as all the companies that the government does business with now need to be "compliant" with something not of Redmond.
this is why MS seems to be fighting gpl anything in the US Government tooth and nail. with bsd-style lincenses microsoft could just take the code for little or no effort, and continue to ride on their reputation (nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft), but GPL locks them out nice and tight.
I think the reason why you dont see many "open source" artists is that programmers generally make much more money. It's ok for them to give away their time because the paychecks are there anyway.
most artists on the other hand, find it hard to make ends meet, and so find it hard to "give away" the stuff that is barely bringing in the bread anyway.
In any case, how many hardcore artists read slashdot and even know there's a need for art in any particular open source effort?
this is the achilles heel of the whole "linux on the desktop" idea. The most basic operations just don't always work. Cut and paste between apps doesn't always work, printing doesn't always work, fonts don't always work, or totally suck if they do, etc. I can't switch my girlfriend over to a linux desktop because she would hit all of these obstacles within the first 30 seconds of use.
Sure, if you susbscribe to only one Ideology (kde/gnome) you can get past some of this, but then you can't use the best app for the job. What if you want to use Mozilla and Evolution and Koffice?
Choice is great, freedom is great, Linux is great, but I'd rather pay for commercialware and get those "little things."
You're absolutely correct. I can't believe he compared these products, they are completely unrelated. I mean really, VMWare lets you play with guest operating systems in a separate environment. And Bochs lets you play with guest operating systems in a separate environment.
Two clearly different "beasts" that should never even be mentioned in the same sentence. And don't forget that Virtual PC (for x86) lets you play with guest operating systems in a separate environment, which is again another thing entirely.
I can't understand why anyone would write a comparison detailing what each is best used for.
I think point #1 (non-discriminatory licensing to resellers) is in the DOJ settlement but with a loophole: MS does not have to license new versions at the same time for everyone.
Thus, if Dell does not agree to only preload Windows, then Dell may not get Windows XP SE (or whatever) for 6 months-1 year after HPQ gets it.
these are the kinds of loopholes the states are fighting.
I, for one, actually OWN a legitimate copy of every CD I have. That doesn't mean I don't need or want an extra copy for myself. Not everyone who is against copy-protection is stealing music, which is what lovely folks like the RIAA seem to forget.
no, the RIAA did not forget. You are just "collateral damage," they have no problems screwing you over in order to (try to) defeat the average college student with 10 gigs of mp3z. Sort of a "collective punishment" scheme.
it's important to fully understand their position in order to fight it.
that would be great. however the place where that falls down is icons and other system decorations, which are usually bitmaps. they'd either have to be scaled (and potentially uglified in the process), or unusably small. think scrollbar arrows, "close" boxes, application icons, etc.
Mac OS X with it's quartz/pdf system is a step in the right direction, but I think Aqua is still pretty dependent on bitmaps in certain places. However if any system could be hacked to handle 300+ dpi screens, it would be os x.
two feet away is alot closer than I like to operate, my monitor is usually twice that distance. Even when I work on my laptop, I work further away than that (the screen is about arms-distance away on the laptop, about 3 feet). My 19" desktop monitor is probably excessively far, but I love that nice roomy desk. I also need to keep the keyboard at length, if it was that close to me my wrists would bend too much and it would be uncomfortable.
I have reasonably decent eyesight, I just prefer to keep some distance so I dont have to spend hours focussing 2 feet away from my face. Try it sometime. It was a bit weird at first, and you may have to switch to "large fonts", but the eye relief is substantial. Just give yourself a day before deciding if you like it.
In any case, 6400x4800 on a 19" (or even a 25"!!!) is insane.:)
... 6400x4800... 1600x1200 is just barely enough I guess the nosegrease smeared across your monitor as you press your face against it to read gives you free anti-aliasing? Or perhaps the radiation will cook your eyeballs enough to give you free "anti-aliasing" ALL THE TIME??
no offense, but I do like to keep my 19" monitor at a respectable distance, and 1600x1200 is just on the edge of overkill. Get a second monitor, or learn to use alt-tab!
... electronic kiosks in Virgin's stores that allow customers to sample 30-second snippets from a database of approximately 250,000 CDs. The experiment began last year in two of the chain's outlets and was considered a huge success. Virgin executives found that when customers come into a store with a specific album in mind, they're three times as likely to actually purchase the product if they give it a test drive.
hmn... letting people try music makes them more likely to purchase? where have we seen that before?
absolutely. I work as a consultant and get to see lots of different kinds of corporate environments. Everyone wants Outlook and shared calendaring, which means Exchange, which means NT Server/Active Directory, which means Why Not Replace Novell While We're At It, etc.
the draw of the shared email/calendar/public folder/contacts cannot be understated. Nobody cares what's running in the data center, as long as they have groupware that doesn't suck.
Evolution is the outlook killer, but until there's a real Exchange killer, linux servers will not get far past the web/database market. When redhat has THAT, the PHB's will start returning phone calls.
I've been using a Kyocera Smartphone for about 6-8 months now, and it rocks. It is essentially the same concept: PalmOS/Cell phone. It has a flip up half-cover that has a regular phonepad on it, and I can get an IP address from Verizon (my service provider) in about 4 seconds by dialing #777. Data transfer is at around 14.4 modem speed, but it doesn't incur any extra costs (it just burns normal minutes while you're connected).
It's a bit on the large side, but it does have excellent battery life. It can even become a wireless modem when in the cradle, just disable hotsync manager and use com1 or whatever as a modem. It's also a dual band phone so I'm ALWAYS connected.
A neat trick to using it to check email RIM style is to fork your messages as they come in to your phone's email address (phonenumber@provider.com usually). That way you get instant notification when a message comes in, and you can then fire up Eudora to get the full message via POP.
anyway, this phone seems to have all the advantages of the treo without any of the disadvantages. if only it could play mp3s, or there was a color unit...
you have the right to remain silent. anything you say has already been used against you. anything THEY (tm) say is protected by copyright and will be used against you unless used in the properly licensed, non-transferrable manner dictated by THEY (tm) lawyers.
you have the right to spend millions of dollars to defend yourself from frivolous corporate lawsuits, to pay for the lawyer's suits.
really folks, until we have our own multibillion dollar lobbying force to buy our government back from the corporations, this will be a VERY hard struggle to win.
Re:Sorry, I don't believe in paying for software.
on
How to Save PGP
·
· Score: 2
the problem with this apparent sell-friendly position is that it is not workable. lets see...
1. Corporation creates and sells an App under GPL for $1,000 (all legal but you do have to provide source).
2. one person buys your app. because it is gpl'd, Customer 1 puts it up on sourceforge for all to download free of charge. it's now GnuApp. all legal, all gpl.
3. Corporation now has to compete with it's own software available free of charge. Corporation can't pay rent, electricity, or those pesky programmer salaries.
4. therefore, whatever stallman SAYS about the ability to sell gpl software, the reality is that you are effectively giving it away for free. Ever wonder why you don't ever see pure play GPL software companies survive on their own for more than a few months?
I think GPL is great for stuff that you INTEND to be free forever, just be careful if you want to make $$$ by selling code.
I don't really understand this argument. Sure, bnetd is a cleanroom implementation, and is fair and good and all that.
it also doesn't check for cd key validity. This is about as "right" as writing a battle.net key generation program. sure, your keygen is clean room, legit, 100% gpl, and supposed to be used only by people who lost or forgot their legally purchased keys, right?
I think blizzard should just decouple their key checking from the battle.net service. make the game clients check cd keys from the mothership no matter what "battle.net" server you ultimately connect to. Isn't this what quake3 does? I was under the impression that the quake3 key authentication system was quite successful (excepting returned boxes, keys lifted via trojan, etc). And you can play on any damned server you want.
they can disable key checking for games that connect TO a private address (10., 192.168, etc) to cover lans that may not have internet connectivity.
blizzard can get back their "street creds" and coexist with open net servers with just a little bit of damned thought.
I see what you're saying, but regardless of front-end design, there is one giant hurdle: getting the coding done to modify every single app in a distro. API issues are great, but at some point the rubber has to hit the road and massive coding changes are going to have to happen.
Most free software programmers won't see any huge benefit to recoding their own apps to solve an already solved (from their point of view) problem. The people with an incentive are the distro makers, since it's in their best interest to have a common, easy administrative interface.
I do agree that the backend should be transparent to the user AND the app programmer, however.
the only way linux would get to such a state would be for a distro vendor to bite the bullet and rewrite ALL the included apps/utilities to use the new format.
that means little stuff and big stuff, like crontab -> xml format, smb.comf -> xml format and.GnuXDesktopWidgetFoo -> xml format.
who will step up to the plate? the design is the easy part.
master accounts would not be the same as game accounts... you can update ccard #, address, password, etc on it. However, each game character that you make is tied to that one master account, and cannot be given over to another master login account. Some muds do this (obviously not for pay, but they do validate master account email addresses). It would be easy to make it hard to have more than one master account, since you'd have each player's real life information.
As for removing item-trading fun, well, the developers have to decide whether allowing trading (and the inevitable item farming that follows) is more of a detriment to the gameplay experience than disallowing trading.
You could even maintain the whole roleplay-value thing by "tying" items to the "lifeforce" of the first owner. The Higheeled Boots of Domination you just got are keyed to you, and if you give them to anyone else, they become more like Birkenstocks +1.
In any case, I say leave the lawyers out of it. After all, who controls this virtual universe, the programmers or the item farmers?
Slashdot Mirror
from the gunn faq:
20 GUNNPLEXER TIPS AND FACTS
NEVER peer into powered waveguides or loaded gun barrels !! Microwave heating can especially damage the eyes and testes.
not only should you not "look it up," you should probably not feel it up either.
someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this article suffer from a fundamental misunderstanding? you cannot compare apt-get to rpm files. apt-get is a system for installing .debs and their dependencies. there are similar systems for rpms (apt-rpm or red carpet).
.debs are just a single package file. so do source code files (a la gentoo etc), since alot of your source code out there wont even ./configure without the right stuff in place. where debian has apt-get to manage the dependency nightmare, gentoo has emerge.
.debs too). From an end user perspective even this is not a problem with a dependency manager in place. since it will find the "right stuff" for you.
.debs suffer from all the same problems he complained about rpms having, because
what he is really bellyaching about is the fact that some big rpm based distros (mandrake and redhat) don't come with free dependency management software. 99% of his anti-rpm comments are not even wrong, they are wholly irrelevant.
The last 1% that might have value is the fact that developers can't make a "universal" rpm due to all the differences in filesystem layouts among rpm based distros (note that this can a problem with
cut and paste keybinds might be fixed, but in my experience you can run into a world of hurt trying to cut and paste between gnome, kde, and "other" apps for many reasons. the keybinds are sometimes an issue, sometimes the clipboards simply do not see each other. Trying to cut and paste anything more complicated than text can get ugly fast.
it's true that many users will simply not have anything to compare fonts to, but many others will notice that their work pc "looks nicer," or friends will say something when they come over to gawk at the new pc. It's subtle but noticeable, my non-technical friends immediately notice how nice the display on my new Tibook is vs. my pc, and that perception has alot to do with anti-aliasing, etc. (and my pc is running a geforce3 on a LaCie 19" monitor).
aol may indeed work on lindows, but I would be surprised. aol installs funky "aol adapters" that do all sorts of damage to the windows network stack.
I'll admit my return rate predictions are a bit on the high side, but when you factor in the cost of processing each return, even a 10-20% return rate could wreck the margins on the rest.
there are potentially bad consequences to this. consider:
/dev/usb0" into every single app's preferences.
- lUser buys a Lindows PC from walmart
- lUser cannot figure out how to cut and paste from the Mozilla web browser to Abiword (a harsh welcome to Xwindows indeed). Worse, he never did figure out that to print he had to type "ghostview - | lpr -Pepson277
- lUser realizes that the "screen is ugly" (i.e. fonts suck)
- lUser cannot get onto The AOL.
- of 100,000 units sold, 70,000 get returned.
- walmart takes a bath. "Linux Sucks" is now "proven" to all the business execs with buying power. Nothing scares the CFO like "losing money."
- Linux returns to it's ashes, the supergeek community.
linux may not be ready for this, folks.
well, it must be possible, otherwise the government probably wouldnt spend this many billions to do it. the NSA is already at least 15-20 years ahead of the state-of-the-art cryptography scene (well, probably that far ahead given the DES elliptical analysis thing that was recently revealed), maybe they have substantial hardware capabilities as well?
the nsa has top talent, infinite cash, infinite resources (like, gimme your best nuclear sub for a pet project, mr Navy Man.) while the us government's ability to waste money on ridiculous projects cannot be understated, when the nsa is involved, you gotta wonder what they really have up their sleeve.
this kind of thing is what MS fears most: one of the world's largest "customers" jumping into the GPL'd software ring. that would not only give alternatives an enormous confidence boost in the eyes of other businesses, but it would start a massive trickle down effect, as all the companies that the government does business with now need to be "compliant" with something not of Redmond.
this is why MS seems to be fighting gpl anything in the US Government tooth and nail. with bsd-style lincenses microsoft could just take the code for little or no effort, and continue to ride on their reputation (nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft), but GPL locks them out nice and tight.
I think the reason why you dont see many "open source" artists is that programmers generally make much more money. It's ok for them to give away their time because the paychecks are there anyway.
most artists on the other hand, find it hard to make ends meet, and so find it hard to "give away" the stuff that is barely bringing in the bread anyway.
In any case, how many hardcore artists read slashdot and even know there's a need for art in any particular open source effort?
this is the achilles heel of the whole "linux on the desktop" idea. The most basic operations just don't always work. Cut and paste between apps doesn't always work, printing doesn't always work, fonts don't always work, or totally suck if they do, etc. I can't switch my girlfriend over to a linux desktop because she would hit all of these obstacles within the first 30 seconds of use.
Sure, if you susbscribe to only one Ideology (kde/gnome) you can get past some of this, but then you can't use the best app for the job. What if you want to use Mozilla and Evolution and Koffice?
Choice is great, freedom is great, Linux is great, but I'd rather pay for commercialware and get those "little things."
You're absolutely correct. I can't believe he compared these products, they are completely unrelated. I mean really, VMWare lets you play with guest operating systems in a separate environment. And Bochs lets you play with guest operating systems in a separate environment.
Two clearly different "beasts" that should never even be mentioned in the same sentence. And don't forget that Virtual PC (for x86) lets you play with guest operating systems in a separate environment, which is again another thing entirely.
I can't understand why anyone would write a comparison detailing what each is best used for.
I think point #1 (non-discriminatory licensing to resellers) is in the DOJ settlement but with a loophole: MS does not have to license new versions at the same time for everyone.
Thus, if Dell does not agree to only preload Windows, then Dell may not get Windows XP SE (or whatever) for 6 months-1 year after HPQ gets it.
these are the kinds of loopholes the states are fighting.
I, for one, actually OWN a legitimate copy of every CD I have. That doesn't mean I don't need or want an extra copy for myself. Not everyone who is against copy-protection is stealing music, which is what lovely folks like the RIAA seem to forget.
no, the RIAA did not forget. You are just "collateral damage," they have no problems screwing you over in order to (try to) defeat the average college student with 10 gigs of mp3z. Sort of a "collective punishment" scheme.
it's important to fully understand their position in order to fight it.
that would be great. however the place where that falls down is icons and other system decorations, which are usually bitmaps. they'd either have to be scaled (and potentially uglified in the process), or unusably small. think scrollbar arrows, "close" boxes, application icons, etc.
Mac OS X with it's quartz/pdf system is a step in the right direction, but I think Aqua is still pretty dependent on bitmaps in certain places. However if any system could be hacked to handle 300+ dpi screens, it would be os x.
two feet away is alot closer than I like to operate, my monitor is usually twice that distance. Even when I work on my laptop, I work further away than that (the screen is about arms-distance away on the laptop, about 3 feet). My 19" desktop monitor is probably excessively far, but I love that nice roomy desk.
:)
I also need to keep the keyboard at length, if it was that close to me my wrists would bend too much and it would be uncomfortable.
I have reasonably decent eyesight, I just prefer to keep some distance so I dont have to spend hours focussing 2 feet away from my face. Try it sometime. It was a bit weird at first, and you may have to switch to "large fonts", but the eye relief is substantial. Just give yourself a day before deciding if you like it.
In any case, 6400x4800 on a 19" (or even a 25"!!!) is insane.
... 6400x4800 ... 1600x1200 is just barely enough
I guess the nosegrease smeared across your monitor as you press your face against it to read gives you free anti-aliasing? Or perhaps the radiation will cook your eyeballs enough to give you free "anti-aliasing" ALL THE TIME??
no offense, but I do like to keep my 19" monitor at a respectable distance, and 1600x1200 is just on the edge of overkill. Get a second monitor, or learn to use alt-tab!
hmn... letting people try music makes them more likely to purchase? where have we seen that before?
absolutely. I work as a consultant and get to see lots of different kinds of corporate environments. Everyone wants Outlook and shared calendaring, which means Exchange, which means NT Server/Active Directory, which means Why Not Replace Novell While We're At It, etc.
the draw of the shared email/calendar/public folder/contacts cannot be understated. Nobody cares what's running in the data center, as long as they have groupware that doesn't suck.
Evolution is the outlook killer, but until there's a real Exchange killer, linux servers will not get far past the web/database market. When redhat has THAT, the PHB's will start returning phone calls.
I've been using a Kyocera Smartphone for about 6-8 months now, and it rocks. It is essentially the same concept: PalmOS/Cell phone. It has a flip up half-cover that has a regular phonepad on it, and I can get an IP address from Verizon (my service provider) in about 4 seconds by dialing #777. Data transfer is at around 14.4 modem speed, but it doesn't incur any extra costs (it just burns normal minutes while you're connected).
It's a bit on the large side, but it does have excellent battery life. It can even become a wireless modem when in the cradle, just disable hotsync manager and use com1 or whatever as a modem. It's also a dual band phone so I'm ALWAYS connected.
A neat trick to using it to check email RIM style is to fork your messages as they come in to your phone's email address (phonenumber@provider.com usually). That way you get instant notification when a message comes in, and you can then fire up Eudora to get the full message via POP.
anyway, this phone seems to have all the advantages of the treo without any of the disadvantages. if only it could play mp3s, or there was a color unit...
you have the right to remain silent. anything you say has already been used against you. anything THEY (tm) say is protected by copyright and will be used against you unless used in the properly licensed, non-transferrable manner dictated by THEY (tm) lawyers.
you have the right to spend millions of dollars to defend yourself from frivolous corporate lawsuits, to pay for the lawyer's suits.
really folks, until we have our own multibillion dollar lobbying force to buy our government back from the corporations, this will be a VERY hard struggle to win.
the problem with this apparent sell-friendly position is that it is not workable. lets see...
1. Corporation creates and sells an App under GPL for $1,000 (all legal but you do have to provide source).
2. one person buys your app. because it is gpl'd, Customer 1 puts it up on sourceforge for all to download free of charge. it's now GnuApp. all legal, all gpl.
3. Corporation now has to compete with it's own software available free of charge. Corporation can't pay rent, electricity, or those pesky programmer salaries.
4. therefore, whatever stallman SAYS about the ability to sell gpl software, the reality is that you are effectively giving it away for free. Ever wonder why you don't ever see pure play GPL software companies survive on their own for more than a few months?
I think GPL is great for stuff that you INTEND to be free forever, just be careful if you want to make $$$ by selling code.
I don't really understand this argument. Sure, bnetd is a cleanroom implementation, and is fair and good and all that.
it also doesn't check for cd key validity. This is about as "right" as writing a battle.net key generation program. sure, your keygen is clean room, legit, 100% gpl, and supposed to be used only by people who lost or forgot their legally purchased keys, right?
I think blizzard should just decouple their key checking from the battle.net service. make the game clients check cd keys from the mothership no matter what "battle.net" server you ultimately connect to. Isn't this what quake3 does? I was under the impression that the quake3 key authentication system was quite successful (excepting returned boxes, keys lifted via trojan, etc). And you can play on any damned server you want.
they can disable key checking for games that connect TO a private address (10., 192.168, etc) to cover lans that may not have internet connectivity.
blizzard can get back their "street creds" and coexist with open net servers with just a little bit of damned thought.
perhaps they should move to a more peer-to-peer system, with new work units downloadable by "peers." everyone would be a bandwidth sponsor.
add some digital signatures, and you could avoid (or detect) tampering.
I see what you're saying, but regardless of front-end design, there is one giant hurdle: getting the coding done to modify every single app in a distro. API issues are great, but at some point the rubber has to hit the road and massive coding changes are going to have to happen.
Most free software programmers won't see any huge benefit to recoding their own apps to solve an already solved (from their point of view) problem. The people with an incentive are the distro makers, since it's in their best interest to have a common, easy administrative interface.
I do agree that the backend should be transparent to the user AND the app programmer, however.
the only way linux would get to such a state would be for a distro vendor to bite the bullet and rewrite ALL the included apps/utilities to use the new format.
.GnuXDesktopWidgetFoo -> xml format.
that means little stuff and big stuff, like crontab -> xml format, smb.comf -> xml format and
who will step up to the plate? the design is the easy part.
um, when the Corporations have US Marshalls knock down your door and confiscate all your hard disks, you bet the Constitution applies.
master accounts would not be the same as game accounts... you can update ccard #, address, password, etc on it. However, each game character that you make is tied to that one master account, and cannot be given over to another master login account. Some muds do this (obviously not for pay, but they do validate master account email addresses). It would be easy to make it hard to have more than one master account, since you'd have each player's real life information.
As for removing item-trading fun, well, the developers have to decide whether allowing trading (and the inevitable item farming that follows) is more of a detriment to the gameplay experience than disallowing trading.
You could even maintain the whole roleplay-value thing by "tying" items to the "lifeforce" of the first owner. The Higheeled Boots of Domination you just got are keyed to you, and if you give them to anyone else, they become more like Birkenstocks +1.
In any case, I say leave the lawyers out of it. After all, who controls this virtual universe, the programmers or the item farmers?