At some point, you're going to have to admit that you're not loaning anything - you're handing your friend an additional copy of a file containing copyrighted content, and thus violating the copyright legislation.
File storage devices are too large to be "wasting" by sticking a dozen songs on them and handing them to a friend. Unless and until I can get my hands on 640MB USB drives for $0.50 each, furthering this discussion is futile.
How inept are your reading skills, that you can't even see the word dual-boot in my query?
Yes, PCs exist that ship with Linux on them - but none of those have Windows on them... which was part of my original point.
Part of the reason the Linux-equipped machines haven't sold well is that they have been crippled, hardware-wise, compared to the "equivalent" Windows system. "Half the ram" and "smaller processors" have been the norm, probably because Microsoft is afraid to compete on an even field - or perhaps it is due to over-estimating the efficiency of Linux in a desktop environment.
1: "not legally-binding". That pretty much sums it up. 2: I shouldn't have to break the law to play a game I legally purchased. 3: I still play games that are nearly 20 years old. I'm not saying I'm normal, or that this behavior is anywhere near "prevalent", but it is a fact. 4: So you're saying that a large number of people would need to break the law? See #2. Oh, and by the way - If you are any kind of serious about certifications, ethics, or legalities, then you don't do things that can land you in court (nevermind jail). There is a provision in the DMCA for software interoperability, but I wouldn't want to be the test-case for "cracking" XP's activation once the servers go down (for example).
tl;dr - Technical possibility, with or without ubiquity of method, does not indicate legality. See "P2P Piracy", "mp3 controversy", and/or "Jammie Thomas". I'll ignore the many ethical concerns associated with this topic at this time.
Sure, i could hand my friend my PC, or my mp3 player, or what have you. Should I have to hand my friend a stack of several hundred music CDs, if I just wanted to loan him a particular album by a particular artist? "The entire collection" is not exactly a convenient package size, nor is it consumer-friendly to lose access to my entire library of media because I want my friend to listen to a dozen songs from a particular artist.
"My entire media library, as well as the viewing/listening device" should not be the only method I have of sharing my media. This is one of the reasons I like to purchase physical media, and one of the reasons I dislike purchasing digital media without a physical format to go with it.
If it claims to be secure, but can be defeated simply by toggling an option in the pre-POST OS' system setup software (and infecting the boot sector), then it's not just insecure, it's ridiculously insecure.
Your argument about an unfair test is a bit like claiming that a specific vehicle will never lose traction, and then complaining about someone violating the test conditions of "a particular brand and model of tire are used, and one doesn't operate the vehicle unless the weather conditions are 'temperatures between 65 and 75 degrees, no clouds, a humidity between 25 and 30 percent, and no precipitation'".
"Huh, that's funny, I got it to slide off the road and into a ditch..." "It's not fair! You drove it in the rain!
This technology is going to have to function in the real world, not just a laboratory setting.
Go farther back in this thread, where I posted links showing some times when Microsoft has strong-armed PC manufacturers into not shipping competing operating systems, and/or threatened/coerced them into not shipping dual-boot systems.
As a matter of fact, point me at a single dual-boot (Windows and some non-Microsoft OS) PC produced by any major manufacturer... make that any manufacturer, period.
Except that since then we've seen the largest computer manufacturers in the world ship Linux-based PCs, Dell did it (and then canned it for lackluster sales), Best Buy tried it as well and even HP have recently announced that all of their desktop PCs will have the ability to run a webOS variant. So nice try, but that's the past, not the present.
Show me a single major PC manufacturer who ships a machine that dual-boots Windows and any non-Microsoft OS.
No they didn't, they just said "Shut up, you idiots, you're not allowed to say that!".
Effectively, they said "No, you can't say water is wet."
"dehydration" definition from the American Heritage dictionary: The removal of water; in chemistry, the loss of two hydrogen atoms for every oxygen atom.
In other words, they said it was illegal for someone to state that adding water can counteract the removal of water.
Next week, they're expected to rule on whether eating food can prevent starvation. Breaths are bated.
The original claim also included health benefits besides hydration.
No, the original claim was dehydration and its effects: The claimed effect is “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration and of concomitant decrease of performance”. Source: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1982.htm
concomitant/knkämitnt/ Adjective: Naturally accompanying or associated. Noun: A phenomenon that naturally accompanies or follows something. Synonyms: adjective. attendant - accompanying noun. concurrent
The claims were found to be unsubstantiated, the press of course simplified this to the point of hysteria.
The scientists were found to be idiots, and the press, the public, and the politicians forced to put this into law were found to be publicly ridiculing the scientists.
Roger Helmer, a Conservative member of the European Parliament, called it "stupidity writ large." "The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly paid, highly pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true," he told the Telegraph. Source: search google for "eu dehydration" and get your own sources. It's all over the news right now, and the EU is a laughingstock.
Next time someone tells me Americans are fat, I'm going to give them a link to one of these articles and respond that Europeans are retarded.
But if you have apps that aren't ported to Linux and don't run under Wine, where do you (legally) get that image?
I was actually referring to tossing a small bootable install of Linux on the thumbdrive, to facilitate using dd to push the image of the drive over the network. g4u is a good example of something designed for this purpose.
Sorry for the confusion, I should have been more specific.
... and would they do that for all their current software if they suddenly went out of business for some reason?
There's no reason to believe they would be that nice, and plenty of reasons to think that the first thing they'd do is pull the plug on the webserver farm, then go fire all the programmers - money has a nasty habit of making people into real jerks.
If you think that CDs or DVDs burnt on a consumer-grade burner are going to last more than three years - well, you _might_ be lucky. I wasn't.
Technically speaking, the ink/dye used in "burned" media should last 7-10 years. It often doesn't, because most people don't keep their burned media in a cool dark place, undisturbed by vibration.
Pressed discs, on the other hand, have an unknown lifespan; if cared for properly they could conceivably last long after you stop breathing. Most commercial media is pressed. My 15-20 year old games certainly are, and still work perfectly when I dust them off and lovingly place them in my drive for a bit of nostalgia.
Return to Zork lists a 2x CDROM as part of its system requirements. It was released in 1993. I still have it, and play it for a couple hours every couple years, just because I find it again while digging for something or other in my media storage area. I should probably burn an iso of it, to avoid having to find the physical media each time I think about playing it... but half the fun of playing it is coming across it while looking for something else, and popping it in later that day because I set it on my desk in case I had time.
"Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" (the plant's not the only thing that's potted!)
The optical disc was invented in 1958. Admittedly, CDROM is only 20 or so years old, but BluRay drives are backwards-compatible for DVD and CD media. My "20 year old storage peripheral" may have been manufactured last month.
Got any other half-baked ad-hominem attacks, today?
Punch cards are still readable - admittedly with a third party service (unless you've got a punched card reader in a disused basement somewhere) - for example, this site offers the service.
CD-ROM data is currently readable, and has been for 20 years or so. I still have my old Return to Zork CD (Surprisingly enough, I still occasionally whip it out and toss it in DOSBox for some retro gaming fun - yeah, I'm a weird geek, probably even a dork).
BluRay is a recent development in storage media, and the drives for PCs are only now getting inexpensive enough to call "consumer grade" devices. Those drives are backwards-compatible from BluRay through DVD to CD. I don't see that changing in the very near future.
Admittedly, at some point I'll notice that I need to rip iso images of all my optical media... but you can still buy brand-new VHS players at the big-box stores, so I'm not too concerned about having the rug yanked out from under me.
Dumbing down the populace is a stupid move, because a smarter populace means smarter professionals - whether they be politicians and lawyers, or doctors and IT workers.
Maybe the labor force should be unintelligent... but with the amount of automation available in these modern times, the actual amount of manual labor required by society should be extremely small. Please note the use of the word "should" in the previous sentence.
Uhm... what? I was rolling with the flow, after helping my step-daughter with her World Civ homework. If it weren't for the Protestants coming over here to escape religious persecution, there wouldn't be a United States of America as we know it today.
Lighten up, get off your ivory hobby-horse, and learn that just because a topic is serious doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. Sheesh.
Uhmmm, that is only the crippled Ubuntu that you have to jump through those hoops. On all other Linux versions, you can directly copy the installation ISO file to a memory stick using dd and it will boot.
Which ones? Because I haven't seen any that are even as simple as the "crippled Ubuntu method" in your parent's post. Most of them require downloading additional software to format the USB device and/or write the (custom, img-not-standard-iso) image to the device, at least when using Windows to create your bootable USB device.
Interestingly enough, there isn't a Windows "dd" command, and the fact that you would need "syslinux.exe" would indicate that the parent's method is for using a Windows PC to create the bootable USB device.
I don't use slot-loaders in any system I build - they're too finicky, too flaky, too prone to eating discs, and there's no way to get the disc out without power.
Similarly, I have several laptops in my household, and not a one of them has a slot-loader.
Trays are what you use when you want to make sure not to chew up your disc.
That day will mark the death of the optical media, except perhaps for long term archival, stuff i never want to see again but can't get myself to delete i burn on a dvd and throw the dvd into the basement.:)
Even for that external hard drives are more convenient, reliable, and cheaper.
... but less likely to survive the airborne trip into the darkness.
That's funny; I got optical media when I bought my copy of Orange Box at the retail store. Interestingly enough, Steam was more than happy to accept my CD key and allow me to play the game without using the disc to install... but just in case, I have physical media, too.
To further this line of reasoning, you can't (legally) loan an avi or mp4 file to your friend to watch, and you can't (legally) hand your friend an mp3 file to listen to, whereas with physical media you can transfer ownership temporarily, and your friend can explore new audio or video content without having to pay a(n additional) licensing fee.
This is due to Apple's firm control over the hardware - they don't need to include umpty-bajillion NIC drivers, as they already know what's in the box.
Aside from the "Where can I find physical install media?" issue you mention, my other concern would be "What do I do when Apple deallocates the server that allows me to do this on this particular model?"
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose you could do all of your IT work using an onscreen keyboard and no physical keyboard, too, if makework was the objective
... and it also foils keyloggers, if it moves around on the screen and shuffles the letters/numbers randomly while you "type"!
Physical media that requires steam to decrypt and install so if you can't get online or steam disappears the disc wont help you.
Bummer. Guess I won't be buying any more Valve games, then. Out of curiosity, can you provide a link with supporting information?
At some point, you're going to have to admit that you're not loaning anything - you're handing your friend an additional copy of a file containing copyrighted content, and thus violating the copyright legislation.
File storage devices are too large to be "wasting" by sticking a dozen songs on them and handing them to a friend. Unless and until I can get my hands on 640MB USB drives for $0.50 each, furthering this discussion is futile.
How inept are your reading skills, that you can't even see the word dual-boot in my query?
Yes, PCs exist that ship with Linux on them - but none of those have Windows on them... which was part of my original point.
Part of the reason the Linux-equipped machines haven't sold well is that they have been crippled, hardware-wise, compared to the "equivalent" Windows system. "Half the ram" and "smaller processors" have been the norm, probably because Microsoft is afraid to compete on an even field - or perhaps it is due to over-estimating the efficiency of Linux in a desktop environment.
1: "not legally-binding". That pretty much sums it up.
2: I shouldn't have to break the law to play a game I legally purchased.
3: I still play games that are nearly 20 years old. I'm not saying I'm normal, or that this behavior is anywhere near "prevalent", but it is a fact.
4: So you're saying that a large number of people would need to break the law? See #2.
Oh, and by the way - If you are any kind of serious about certifications, ethics, or legalities, then you don't do things that can land you in court (nevermind jail). There is a provision in the DMCA for software interoperability, but I wouldn't want to be the test-case for "cracking" XP's activation once the servers go down (for example).
tl;dr - Technical possibility, with or without ubiquity of method, does not indicate legality. See "P2P Piracy", "mp3 controversy", and/or "Jammie Thomas". I'll ignore the many ethical concerns associated with this topic at this time.
Sure, i could hand my friend my PC, or my mp3 player, or what have you. Should I have to hand my friend a stack of several hundred music CDs, if I just wanted to loan him a particular album by a particular artist? "The entire collection" is not exactly a convenient package size, nor is it consumer-friendly to lose access to my entire library of media because I want my friend to listen to a dozen songs from a particular artist.
"My entire media library, as well as the viewing/listening device" should not be the only method I have of sharing my media. This is one of the reasons I like to purchase physical media, and one of the reasons I dislike purchasing digital media without a physical format to go with it.
If it claims to be secure, but can be defeated simply by toggling an option in the pre-POST OS' system setup software (and infecting the boot sector), then it's not just insecure, it's ridiculously insecure.
Your argument about an unfair test is a bit like claiming that a specific vehicle will never lose traction, and then complaining about someone violating the test conditions of "a particular brand and model of tire are used, and one doesn't operate the vehicle unless the weather conditions are 'temperatures between 65 and 75 degrees, no clouds, a humidity between 25 and 30 percent, and no precipitation'".
"Huh, that's funny, I got it to slide off the road and into a ditch..."
"It's not fair! You drove it in the rain!
This technology is going to have to function in the real world, not just a laboratory setting.
Go farther back in this thread, where I posted links showing some times when Microsoft has strong-armed PC manufacturers into not shipping competing operating systems, and/or threatened/coerced them into not shipping dual-boot systems.
As a matter of fact, point me at a single dual-boot (Windows and some non-Microsoft OS) PC produced by any major manufacturer... make that any manufacturer, period.
Except that since then we've seen the largest computer manufacturers in the world ship Linux-based PCs, Dell did it (and then canned it for lackluster sales), Best Buy tried it as well and even HP have recently announced that all of their desktop PCs will have the ability to run a webOS variant. So nice try, but that's the past, not the present.
Show me a single major PC manufacturer who ships a machine that dual-boots Windows and any non-Microsoft OS.
No, really. Go ahead, I'll wait.
No they didn't, they just said "Shut up, you idiots, you're not allowed to say that!".
Effectively, they said "No, you can't say water is wet."
"dehydration" definition from the American Heritage dictionary:
The removal of water; in chemistry, the loss of two hydrogen atoms for every oxygen atom.
In other words, they said it was illegal for someone to state that adding water can counteract the removal of water.
Next week, they're expected to rule on whether eating food can prevent starvation. Breaths are bated.
The original claim also included health benefits besides hydration.
No, the original claim was dehydration and its effects:
The claimed effect is “regular consumption of significant amounts of water can reduce the risk of development of dehydration and of concomitant decrease of performance”.
Source: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/1982.htm
concomitant/knkämitnt/
Adjective:
Naturally accompanying or associated.
Noun:
A phenomenon that naturally accompanies or follows something.
Synonyms:
adjective. attendant - accompanying
noun. concurrent
Source: http://www.google.com/search?q=concomitant
The claims were found to be unsubstantiated, the press of course simplified this to the point of hysteria.
The scientists were found to be idiots, and the press, the public, and the politicians forced to put this into law were found to be publicly ridiculing the scientists.
Roger Helmer, a Conservative member of the European Parliament, called it "stupidity writ large."
"The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly paid, highly pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true," he told the Telegraph.
Source: search google for "eu dehydration" and get your own sources. It's all over the news right now, and the EU is a laughingstock.
Next time someone tells me Americans are fat, I'm going to give them a link to one of these articles and respond that Europeans are retarded.
Well, toss an image on a thumb-drive, then.
But if you have apps that aren't ported to Linux and don't run under Wine, where do you (legally) get that image?
I was actually referring to tossing a small bootable install of Linux on the thumbdrive, to facilitate using dd to push the image of the drive over the network. g4u is a good example of something designed for this purpose.
Sorry for the confusion, I should have been more specific.
... and would they do that for all their current software if they suddenly went out of business for some reason?
There's no reason to believe they would be that nice, and plenty of reasons to think that the first thing they'd do is pull the plug on the webserver farm, then go fire all the programmers - money has a nasty habit of making people into real jerks.
If you think that CDs or DVDs burnt on a consumer-grade burner are going to last more than three years - well, you _might_ be lucky. I wasn't.
Technically speaking, the ink/dye used in "burned" media should last 7-10 years. It often doesn't, because most people don't keep their burned media in a cool dark place, undisturbed by vibration.
Pressed discs, on the other hand, have an unknown lifespan; if cared for properly they could conceivably last long after you stop breathing. Most commercial media is pressed. My 15-20 year old games certainly are, and still work perfectly when I dust them off and lovingly place them in my drive for a bit of nostalgia.
Return to Zork lists a 2x CDROM as part of its system requirements. It was released in 1993. I still have it, and play it for a couple hours every couple years, just because I find it again while digging for something or other in my media storage area. I should probably burn an iso of it, to avoid having to find the physical media each time I think about playing it... but half the fun of playing it is coming across it while looking for something else, and popping it in later that day because I set it on my desk in case I had time.
"Want some rye? 'Course ya do!" (the plant's not the only thing that's potted!)
The optical disc was invented in 1958. Admittedly, CDROM is only 20 or so years old, but BluRay drives are backwards-compatible for DVD and CD media. My "20 year old storage peripheral" may have been manufactured last month.
Got any other half-baked ad-hominem attacks, today?
Punch cards are still readable - admittedly with a third party service (unless you've got a punched card reader in a disused basement somewhere) - for example, this site offers the service.
CD-ROM data is currently readable, and has been for 20 years or so. I still have my old Return to Zork CD (Surprisingly enough, I still occasionally whip it out and toss it in DOSBox for some retro gaming fun - yeah, I'm a weird geek, probably even a dork).
BluRay is a recent development in storage media, and the drives for PCs are only now getting inexpensive enough to call "consumer grade" devices. Those drives are backwards-compatible from BluRay through DVD to CD. I don't see that changing in the very near future.
Admittedly, at some point I'll notice that I need to rip iso images of all my optical media... but you can still buy brand-new VHS players at the big-box stores, so I'm not too concerned about having the rug yanked out from under me.
Dumbing down the populace is a stupid move, because a smarter populace means smarter professionals - whether they be politicians and lawyers, or doctors and IT workers.
Maybe the labor force should be unintelligent... but with the amount of automation available in these modern times, the actual amount of manual labor required by society should be extremely small. Please note the use of the word "should" in the previous sentence.
Uhm... what? I was rolling with the flow, after helping my step-daughter with her World Civ homework. If it weren't for the Protestants coming over here to escape religious persecution, there wouldn't be a United States of America as we know it today.
Lighten up, get off your ivory hobby-horse, and learn that just because a topic is serious doesn't mean you can't have fun with it. Sheesh.
What if you buy them "on the road"?
Uhmmm, that is only the crippled Ubuntu that you have to jump through those hoops. On all other Linux versions, you can directly copy the installation ISO file to a memory stick using dd and it will boot.
Which ones? Because I haven't seen any that are even as simple as the "crippled Ubuntu method" in your parent's post. Most of them require downloading additional software to format the USB device and/or write the (custom, img-not-standard-iso) image to the device, at least when using Windows to create your bootable USB device.
Interestingly enough, there isn't a Windows "dd" command, and the fact that you would need "syslinux.exe" would indicate that the parent's method is for using a Windows PC to create the bootable USB device.
I don't use slot-loaders in any system I build - they're too finicky, too flaky, too prone to eating discs, and there's no way to get the disc out without power.
Similarly, I have several laptops in my household, and not a one of them has a slot-loader.
Trays are what you use when you want to make sure not to chew up your disc.
That day will mark the death of the optical media, except perhaps for long term archival, stuff i never want to see again but can't get myself to delete i burn on a dvd and throw the dvd into the basement. :)
Even for that external hard drives are more convenient, reliable, and cheaper.
... but less likely to survive the airborne trip into the darkness.
That's funny; I got optical media when I bought my copy of Orange Box at the retail store. Interestingly enough, Steam was more than happy to accept my CD key and allow me to play the game without using the disc to install... but just in case, I have physical media, too.
To further this line of reasoning, you can't (legally) loan an avi or mp4 file to your friend to watch, and you can't (legally) hand your friend an mp3 file to listen to, whereas with physical media you can transfer ownership temporarily, and your friend can explore new audio or video content without having to pay a(n additional) licensing fee.
This is due to Apple's firm control over the hardware - they don't need to include umpty-bajillion NIC drivers, as they already know what's in the box.
Aside from the "Where can I find physical install media?" issue you mention, my other concern would be "What do I do when Apple deallocates the server that allows me to do this on this particular model?"