Here is the content of a very interesing message posted to the alt.games.mame newsgroup by "NoRomsMoron":
QUOTE: THIS IS VERY BAD!
It's bad for the community. Why? Because these guys can now go around and sue anyone who posts roms they have license to. Even if you 'already had them'. Burners are screwed.
It's bad for mamedev... How much fun is it to spend hours and hours coding a game only to know some dipshit and 'his buddy' are getting paid to sell roms that they didn't creat that you make work with your free code!?
It's bad for the industry... The copyright holders will inevitably feel compelled to 'defend' their copyrights which NO ONE disputes and try to make a case that ancient rom sales are a viable business. I think the MAME market as a true 'market' is VASTLY over-rated. It's a closed community for the most part of Gen-X'ers and a few late-comers. We already have most of the mame roms we want anyway. Then, all they do is close down the distribution systems that exist, scare away mamedevs and lose a bunch of money. Whoever did that deal at Atari is a knucklehead.
It's just a bad 'taint' on the hobby which we all have tacitly agreed to keep above board and defended from scammers/spammers and Ebayers who try to sell roms over the last few years. If this proceeds.. do you think any of us will go out of our way to pull Ebay ads down or flame scammers? Why should we care anymore? Let the guys making the money do all the work.
Mame is already a 'legitimate' project. No one is getting their front doors kicked in for having roms or even trading them for free between friends. MOST of the commercial value of the old games is gone. Selling them online now only kills the future of the scene and pisses of those in it... who by the way probably spend a HUGE amount on new PCs, Video Game consoles and games than the average consumer.
That these Jackasses took it on themselves to 'help out the scene' is a crock of SHIT. I would like to propose that mamedev code mame so that whatever roms they're selling WON'T work on mame. If they want to make money from Mame.. then they better get coding.... from SCRATCH. Let's see how long they feel it's important to distribute roms 'to preserve them'.
I would have respected them more (only a little) if they'd just come out and said "Hey, we're poor, stupid s.o.b.s and we're going to try to cash in on Mame under the guise of legality and damn the consequences!"
They are raping the golden goose, killing it, and mounting it on their wall.... and soon they will wonder where all their precious golden eggs went and we'll all have moved on to other things because the scene will have DIED.
Think I'm over reacting? Mark this message friends... it will be cold comfort I'm afraid when you wonder how come Mame releases stopped coming out except to remove games from the source code.
By all means... Boycott Starroms and try to persuade the boys there to perhaps try to make money honestly by CREATING something rather than stick their leaching little lips to the hindside of Mame Developers and the community.
Man.. I'm pissed! I can't believe Atari did anything like this!!!
Someone talk me down... I'm gonna jump!
NoRomSmoRoN END OF QUOTE
I think I agree with his take on this. What about you?
Re:NDAs are a necessary evil to some environments
on
The Cult of the NDA
·
· Score: 1
I shuddered when I realized that the cartoon had first struck me as being normal.
I read an article a while back where the author stated that he had to sign a NDA before being taken to lunch by one of the Google people. When he asked about this, the receptionist said, "Well, this is Google after all."
Sheesh. Now that's beyond silly; I would have said, "Tell him that I'll meet him for lunch at the Mcdonalds down the block" and not signed the NDA. But that's just me.
Basic goes through and pre-selects everything for the user. Arbitrarily picks a desktop, and then installs *1* example of each type of application with a clear, understandable name.
I believe the word you're searching for here is Lindows. I have personally never looked at it, but it's my understanding that this is just exactly what it does (and is).
c) Write a new contract that looks almost the same and use it.
That sounds dangerously close to fraud and deceptive business practices to me. At the very least, it shows substantial bad faith on your part. If you want to negotiate something, then by all means negotiate it. But at least be honest about it.
Your terms of service for the sitefinder state that I can opt out if I do not agree to the terms of service.
I would like to exercise that option and opt out of using the sitefinder service.
Please take necessary steps to remove me from your sitefinder service, or tell me how to do it myself.
Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. Please act on this request as soon as possible.
I look forward to receipt of your acknowlegment of this request and a statement of actions you have taken to enact my request.
and got this back
From: sitefinder@verisign-grs.com
Subject: Re: Opting out of sitefinder
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 01:08:52 -0700
Thank you for contacting VeriSign Customer Service.
Thank you for your feedback on the Site Finder service. It is not possible to opt out of the service. The Site Finder response is incurred when a non-existent domain name query in com/net is directed to us. It is not a service in which someone would subscribe to or sign up for.
For more information please refer to our FAQs: http://www.verisign.com/nds/naming/sitefind er/
We remain committed to ensuring that Site Finder improves Web navigation and the user experience.
Thank you.
If you require further assistance please contact us by replying to this email.
Best Regards,
David Reid Customer Service VeriSign, Inc. www.verisign.com sitefinder@verisign-grs.co m
I then replied with this:
Your terms of service say that I can opt out.
I would like to opt out.
Please take the necessary steps to allow me to do this, in accordance with your terms of service.
Thank you. I look forward to receipt of your response.
But even though I sent it to them twice today I've not received any reply.
Verisign's position as a chartered monopoly makes this duty even more important, because consumers have no choice to use an alternative.
On the contrary! There are alternatives.
Up to this point, few people use them but alternatives do exist.
This situation reminds me of the MS vs Linux "battle", to some degree. We could possibly end up with the in-crowd using alternative root DNS servers and Joe's grandpa using Verisign's servers. However, since technically-savvy folks run the DNS servers for most ISP's, that situation may not arise in exactly the same way as MS vs Linux has.
That depends entirely on your intended audience. For example, I print about 5000 advertising flyers each month. A few well-placed graphics and good headlines do wonders for getting folks to actually take a look at the document rather than just tossing it into the can. Dense text would get absolutely no attention from anyone.
No, this is receiving feedback from the affected administrators, engineers and other interested persons; said feedback hopefully leading ICANN to do the give Verisign a short, sharp lesson in "WHOA!".
You know, the job that they are supposed to be doing and all that kind of thing.
I believe that any ISP which hosts this sort of site almost DESERVES to be blocked.
Hello, thiis is your friendly ISP. We notice that you are hosting a website on our network. Be advised that you must provide us with advance copies of any and all material that you intend to post on your website (including material submitted by your users, if any) and give us at least 2 months to review it (due to the fact that there is a lot of material to review ahead of your stuff) before posting it on your site. Any changes to your site, no matter how insignificant they may seem (to you) must be reported to us and the same two month lead time will apply. Any materials that offend us in any way will be prohibited and you can not post it on your website.
It costs me the same amount of money (electricity, wear-and-tear, etc) to show a movie for three people as it does to show a movie for three hundred. Does this mean that any member of the public should be able to sit in any "unsold" seats and watch the movie without having to purchase a ticket? After all, I'll be playing the movie anyway....
Imagine a beowolf cluster of-- FUCK, they're gone!!!!
That reminds me of the old standard answer to someone who asked why Opus and Binkleyterm (two Fidonet-compatible BBS programs) would reinitialize the modem every several minutes when the BBS's were otherwise idle. "Just checking to see if the modem is still there. Crime is rampant, you know."
I recognize that you are making a joke here. However, the problem with your suggestion is that any IQ test doesn't actually measure intelligence and further the test is biased toward middle-class white people.
Answer this question: When setting the table, what goes under a cup?
Obvious to you, obvious to me, but not obvious to a poor person who has never seen a saucer. What goes under his cup? A table? A fruit box? Er... I dunno. Wrong answer! Gosh, this guy must be stupid, he doesn't even know what a saucer is....
Well, maybe, but I have a CA driver's license and I am not eligible to vote (think H1B, or green card, or L1, etc.).
You are, however, eligible to be drafted into the US military.
It's my understanding that when conscription was still being used in the USA, anyone living in the USA was required to register for the draft regardless of whether they were citizens or not.
So you can be forced to defend the country but you are not entitled to any "say" in how it is governed.
If you intend to sell your product at any store larger than the Joe's Corner Computer Mart, you'll have to get a barcode for it. This is not cheap (a few thousand dollars, as I recall). Further information is available here.
it has absolutely nothing to do with their running Linux, but distributing it.
Acutally, it does.
To use Linux requires that you copy it, from your hard drive to the ram in your computer.
Therefore, SCO could legally keep a copy of the software on one single hard drive or floppy, tape, or whatever, but could not make a backup copy and could not actually load the software and run it.
3. Sign up for an email account with either a free provider (Yahoo, hotmail, what-have-you) or pay a small monthly fee to another ISP to host an email account for you. You can still use your local ISP for net access and to access your email account on another server.
To those who don't get the refrence, I do believe the orignal poster was trying to give them the "Boss from Office Space." kinda spin on them.
Actually, it looks pretty much like what a genuine verbatin transcript of a normal casual conversation would look like. You'd be surprised at how many "um", "er", "yah no" and the like are included in most conversations when you really listen to them.
and this was seven or eight years ago when this kind of crap was rare.
That, I think, is the problem. It's not rare any more. I think I went through the first ten years of my "computing" life without seeing more than one virus, maybe two at the most. (On other folks' computers; I remember one chap who went to Russia on some kind of a missionary trip and returned wondering why his portable computer didn't work any more.)
Now viruses are common. And "just shut the bugger down" isn't a workable option any more when such a huge percentage of the users (who actually do expect to be able to USE the services they are paying for or are being paid to use) can be affected by things like this.
You have to call a 900 number and pay $1.99 a minute to hear the source:
That wouldn't be acceptable to satisfy their obligations pursuant to the GPL.
The GPL states that where source is provided it must be in the form of "a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code,...on a medium customarily used for software interchange".
So printing it on the back of old telephone books or sending an audio tape of someone reading it off or other funky stuff like that is not acceptable.
Slashdot Mirror
Here is the content of a very interesing message posted to the alt.games.mame newsgroup by "NoRomsMoron":
QUOTE:
THIS IS VERY BAD!
It's bad for the community. Why? Because these guys can now go around
and sue anyone who posts roms they have license to. Even if you
'already had them'. Burners are screwed.
It's bad for mamedev... How much fun is it to spend hours and hours
coding a game only to know some dipshit and 'his buddy' are getting
paid to sell roms that they didn't creat that you make work with your
free code!?
It's bad for the industry... The copyright holders will inevitably
feel compelled to 'defend' their copyrights which NO ONE disputes and
try to make a case that ancient rom sales are a viable business. I
think the MAME market as a true 'market' is VASTLY over-rated. It's a
closed community for the most part of Gen-X'ers and a few late-comers.
We already have most of the mame roms we want anyway. Then, all they
do is close down the distribution systems that exist, scare away
mamedevs and lose a bunch of money. Whoever did that deal at Atari is
a knucklehead.
It's just a bad 'taint' on the hobby which we all have tacitly agreed
to keep above board and defended from scammers/spammers and Ebayers
who try to sell roms over the last few years. If this proceeds.. do
you think any of us will go out of our way to pull Ebay ads down or
flame scammers? Why should we care anymore? Let the guys making the
money do all the work.
Mame is already a 'legitimate' project. No one is getting their front
doors kicked in for having roms or even trading them for free between
friends. MOST of the commercial value of the old games is gone.
Selling them online now only kills the future of the scene and pisses
of those in it... who by the way probably spend a HUGE amount on new
PCs, Video Game consoles and games than the average consumer.
That these Jackasses took it on themselves to 'help out the scene' is
a crock of SHIT. I would like to propose that mamedev code mame so
that whatever roms they're selling WON'T work on mame. If they want
to make money from Mame.. then they better get coding.... from
SCRATCH. Let's see how long they feel it's important to distribute
roms 'to preserve them'.
I would have respected them more (only a little) if they'd just come
out and said "Hey, we're poor, stupid s.o.b.s and we're going to try
to cash in on Mame under the guise of legality and damn the
consequences!"
They are raping the golden goose, killing it, and mounting it on their
wall.... and soon they will wonder where all their precious golden
eggs went and we'll all have moved on to other things because the
scene will have DIED.
Think I'm over reacting? Mark this message friends... it will be cold
comfort I'm afraid when you wonder how come Mame releases stopped
coming out except to remove games from the source code.
By all means... Boycott Starroms and try to persuade the boys there to
perhaps try to make money honestly by CREATING something rather than
stick their leaching little lips to the hindside of Mame Developers
and the community.
Man.. I'm pissed! I can't believe Atari did anything like this!!!
Someone talk me down... I'm gonna jump!
NoRomSmoRoN
END OF QUOTE
I think I agree with his take on this. What about you?
I shuddered when I realized that the cartoon had first struck me as being normal.
I read an article a while back where the author stated that he had to sign a NDA before being taken to lunch by one of the Google people. When he asked about this, the receptionist said, "Well, this is Google after all."
Sheesh. Now that's beyond silly; I would have said, "Tell him that I'll meet him for lunch at the Mcdonalds down the block" and not signed the NDA. But that's just me.
Basic goes through and pre-selects everything for the user. Arbitrarily picks a desktop, and then installs *1* example of each type of application with a clear, understandable name.
I believe the word you're searching for here is Lindows. I have personally never looked at it, but it's my understanding that this is just exactly what it does (and is).
c) Write a new contract that looks almost the same and use it.
That sounds dangerously close to fraud and deceptive business practices to me. At the very least, it shows substantial bad faith on your part. If you want to negotiate something, then by all means negotiate it. But at least be honest about it.
I sent them this message:
d er/
o m
Your terms of service for the sitefinder state that I can opt out if I do not agree to the terms of service.
I would like to exercise that option and opt out of using the sitefinder service.
Please take necessary steps to remove me from your sitefinder service, or tell me how to do it myself.
Thank you very much for your attention to this matter. Please act on this
request as soon as possible.
I look forward to receipt of your acknowlegment of this request and a statement of actions you have taken to enact my request.
and got this back
From: sitefinder@verisign-grs.com
Subject: Re: Opting out of sitefinder
Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2003 01:08:52 -0700
Thank you for contacting VeriSign Customer Service.
Thank you for your feedback on the Site Finder service. It is not
possible to opt out of the service. The Site Finder response is incurred
when a non-existent domain name query in com/net is directed to us. It
is not a service in which someone would subscribe to or sign up for.
For more information please refer to our FAQs:
http://www.verisign.com/nds/naming/sitefin
We remain committed to ensuring that Site Finder improves Web navigation
and the user experience.
Thank you.
If you require further assistance please contact us by replying to this
email.
Best Regards,
David Reid
Customer Service
VeriSign, Inc.
www.verisign.com
sitefinder@verisign-grs.c
I then replied with this:
Your terms of service say that I can opt out.
I would like to opt out.
Please take the necessary steps to allow me to do this, in accordance with
your terms of service.
Thank you. I look forward to receipt of your response.
But even though I sent it to them twice today I've not received any reply.
Verisign's position as a chartered monopoly makes this duty even more important, because consumers have no choice to use an alternative.
On the contrary! There are alternatives.
Up to this point, few people use them but alternatives do exist.
This situation reminds me of the MS vs Linux "battle", to some degree. We could possibly end up with the in-crowd using alternative root DNS servers and Joe's grandpa using Verisign's servers. However, since technically-savvy folks run the DNS servers for most ISP's, that situation may not arise in exactly the same way as MS vs Linux has.
Better still, they should give the users the option of installing ad-filters, spam-filters, and flash-filters to filter out all those
Eh? Users have those options now. Just download something like privoxy, install, and have at it.
Ever needed an item that wasn't in your library? OCLC handles the system for arranging inter-library loans.
You could have fooled me. Around here, that function (and other related functions)is taken care of by the provincial governent. See information here.
It just distracts from the content.
That depends entirely on your intended audience. For example, I print about 5000 advertising flyers each month. A few well-placed graphics and good headlines do wonders for getting folks to actually take a look at the document rather than just tossing it into the can. Dense text would get absolutely no attention from anyone.
I wanted to route e-mail to it to a black hole.
Route it to example.com. example.com always resolves and it exists for just exactly that type of purpose.
What is this, better living through DDoS?
No, this is receiving feedback from the affected administrators, engineers and other interested persons; said feedback hopefully leading ICANN to do the give Verisign a short, sharp lesson in "WHOA!".
You know, the job that they are supposed to be doing and all that kind of thing.
I believe that any ISP which hosts this sort of site almost DESERVES to be blocked.
Hello, thiis is your friendly ISP. We notice that you are hosting a website on our network. Be advised that you must provide us with advance copies of any and all material that you intend to post on your website (including material submitted by your users, if any) and give us at least 2 months to review it (due to the fact that there is a lot of material to review ahead of your stuff) before posting it on your site. Any changes to your site, no matter how insignificant they may seem (to you) must be reported to us and the same two month lead time will apply. Any materials that offend us in any way will be prohibited and you can not post it on your website.
Still think this is a good idea?
Artificial scarcity is illogical.
In real life, I own and operate a movie theatre.
It costs me the same amount of money (electricity, wear-and-tear, etc) to show a movie for three people as it does to show a movie for three hundred. Does this mean that any member of the public should be able to sit in any "unsold" seats and watch the movie without having to purchase a ticket? After all, I'll be playing the movie anyway....
Imagine a beowolf cluster of-- FUCK, they're gone!!!!
That reminds me of the old standard answer to someone who asked why Opus and Binkleyterm (two Fidonet-compatible BBS programs) would reinitialize the modem every several minutes when the BBS's were otherwise idle. "Just checking to see if the modem is still there. Crime is rampant, you know."
let's just make IQ tests mandatory for everyone.
I recognize that you are making a joke here. However, the problem with your suggestion is that any IQ test doesn't actually measure intelligence and further the test is biased toward middle-class white people.
Answer this question: When setting the table, what goes under a cup?
Obvious to you, obvious to me, but not obvious to a poor person who has never seen a saucer. What goes under his cup? A table? A fruit box? Er... I dunno. Wrong answer! Gosh, this guy must be stupid, he doesn't even know what a saucer is....
Well, maybe, but I have a CA driver's license and I am not eligible to vote (think H1B, or green card, or L1, etc.).
You are, however, eligible to be drafted into the US military.
It's my understanding that when conscription was still being used in the USA, anyone living in the USA was required to register for the draft regardless of whether they were citizens or not.
So you can be forced to defend the country but you are not entitled to any "say" in how it is governed.
Interesting....
If you intend to sell your product at any store larger than the Joe's Corner Computer Mart, you'll have to get a barcode for it. This is not cheap (a few thousand dollars, as I recall). Further information is available here.
And what happens when it is the linebacker who has the infected computer?
Send TWO little geeks, of course.
it has absolutely nothing to do with their running Linux, but distributing it.
Acutally, it does.
To use Linux requires that you copy it, from your hard drive to the ram in your computer.
Therefore, SCO could legally keep a copy of the software on one single hard drive or floppy, tape, or whatever, but could not make a backup copy and could not actually load the software and run it.
Boies worked for IBM too.
And ever since this whole thing started to unravel, Mr. Boies has been on the missing persons list.
Interesting; when the going got tough (i.e. when Boies saw what kind of a case this thing REALLY is) the tough (i.e. Boies) got going. Elsewhere.
I find it very interesting and suggestive that Mr. Boies has so suddenly disappeared from the scene after the big show at the beginning.
3. Sign up for an email account with either a free provider (Yahoo, hotmail, what-have-you) or pay a small monthly fee to another ISP to host an email account for you. You can still use your local ISP for net access and to access your email account on another server.
To those who don't get the refrence, I do believe the orignal poster was trying to give them the "Boss from Office Space." kinda spin on them.
Actually, it looks pretty much like what a genuine verbatin transcript of a normal casual conversation would look like. You'd be surprised at how many "um", "er", "yah no" and the like are included in most conversations when you really listen to them.
and this was seven or eight years ago when this kind of crap was rare.
That, I think, is the problem. It's not rare any more. I think I went through the first ten years of my "computing" life without seeing more than one virus, maybe two at the most. (On other folks' computers; I remember one chap who went to Russia on some kind of a missionary trip and returned wondering why his portable computer didn't work any more.)
Now viruses are common. And "just shut the bugger down" isn't a workable option any more when such a huge percentage of the users (who actually do expect to be able to USE the services they are paying for or are being paid to use) can be affected by things like this.
You have to call a 900 number and pay $1.99 a minute to hear the source:
...on a medium customarily used for software interchange".
That wouldn't be acceptable to satisfy their obligations pursuant to the GPL.
The GPL states that where source is provided it must be in the form of "a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code,
So printing it on the back of old telephone books or sending an audio tape of someone reading it off or other funky stuff like that is not acceptable.
I believe it would be contrary to the constitutional right to trial by jury (but I Am Not An American Lawyer)
Could be. "You have the right to have this case decided by a jury. However, we don't have to abide by the jury's decision."